Transcribed Interview of Dustin Stockton/2:02pm
[2:02 p.m.]
The Witness. So that highlight—so, for the November rally, the overwhelming number of people that we weren't prepared—in a lot of ways, that things—I remember saying afterwards, we got really lucky. Because at one point we had seen a large group of counterprotestors who I think the only reason they didn't start a conflict was just the overwhelming numbers that were there.
But I remember, when we were debriefing afterwards, telling, like, wow, we got really lucky in a lot of these cases that things went as well as they did.
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Q You mentioned—the phrase you had used is, you know, these people are going to tear me apart, in terms of the quick decision. Why did you think that?
A The Alex Jones contingent, which was a regular presence in, right, November and December and January, they are very intense. And I didn't have, like, a real security. I had a bunch of little Vietnamese Asian people who had been holding my stage for me.
And even the short, like, discussion I had about allowing him to speak briefly under these conditions, I was being yelled at from people in the immediate crowd. And I had had the confrontation with the same people, like, 10 minutes before while I was trying to work my way through the crowd. And so it was clear to me that, like, it would be a bad situation to, like, cut his sound at that point.
Q You mentioned seeing, you know, people with their hands on the shoulders. Could you identify them as being a part of a particular volunteer group?
A The only person I recognized was Stewart Rhodes, but I did recognize Stewart as part of that group.
Q Okay. And so Stewart Rhodes is the leader of the Oath Keepers.
A Correct.
Q So is it fair to say these folks who were there as part of either in support of providing some security for Alex Jones were Oath Keepers?
A Yes. Well, I can't speak to all of them, but I made the assumption that they were, because where Stewart goes, usually he's got the same group of, like, national Oath Keepers with him.
Q Right.
Do you have anything specific on that?
Q Was Alex Jones under the impression that he was going to speak on that day, whether or not misguided?
A So I didn't find this out till later. So we have—so that happens at the November rally. In the December rally, the day before, Kylie arrives at the Willard, and Alex confronts her, gets right up in her face, like, spittle, right, telling her—calling her Miss Piggy and that he is going to take over our stage the next day.
This time I was prepared for him, though. So Lyndon and the boys, like, we—I think we had 15, at least 15 to 20 professional security. We also had some stout volunteers, like kind of surrounding the immediate area. So, when Alex that time tried to take the stage, we beat him back.
And the crowd was chanting, like, "We want Alex." And I remember Amy was like, "Don't do it," but I went and I got the microphone, and I explained, "This guy has done nothing but try to sabotage everything we've been doing. And so what kind of man would I be if I allowed this man, who's done nothing but try to attack us and harm us, to get up and use the stage that we paid for, the sound system that we paid for, the security we provided, to speak? I'm not going to let it happen." And then I let Millie Weaver, who had had a, like, big, public falling-out, like, get on the microphone and kind of taunt him.
So that's—so that confrontation led to him calling me Satanic Santa on his show for a couple—like, a week. It's on my resume now. I'm kinda proud of it.
But, before the January event, January 4th or 5th—and I've got a picture of this—I was outside smoking, and I could tell that Alex was lingering and, like, watching me, like, kind of—like, being courteous to let me finish my phone call. And I didn't really want to talk to him, so, like, I kept talking and talking and talking. And he wasn't going anywhere.
And so I—when I got off the phone, he came over, and he's like, "Hey, Santa! Hey, Santa!" And he apologized profusely. And what he explained was that he had paid a significant, like, six figures—I believe he used "six figures"—to Ali both in November and December to set up a stage at the Supreme Court, and he was under the impression that I was denying him access to his own stage, which is why he was acting the way he was.
And I took it—I took that as being sincere from him. And he really did apologize over and over and over again. He explained that he's always been kind of a radio guy, not an event production guy. And he specifically said, like, this Ali guy fucked me over.
But then the next—like, then I saw them palling around again later, so who knows with these guys.
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Q And just to clarify, both of these, sort of, stage-side confrontations, November and December, are on the stage at the Supreme Court?
A Correct.
Q Not at the stage at Freedom Plaza?
A Not at the stage at Freedom Plaza. And he did not speak in either the November or December rally at the Freedom Plaza event.
Q Okay.
So then let's go on, then, to some of the things we picked out in this transition between November and December.
If we look at exhibit 6, which is back to the M4T Core Team, at page 36, November 20th, the text you sent to the group says, "Whatever media you guys did in the last hour and half is really delivering!"
Tell us what that means.
A So what that means, whatever media hit they did, lots of contributions were coming in. Like, I saw a noticeable uptick in the frequency of contributions coming in.
Q And for those of us who don't work in this world, what does—give us a sense of what an uptick in frequency might look like in this context.
A So, in this instance, I can't say specifically. But, generally speaking, like, maybe we were getting 4 to 10 contributions an hour most hours, and a significant uptick would be, like, all of a sudden there were 200 or 300.
Q And if you look at the bottom of the next page here, on page 37, it looks like you sent a screenshot?
A Yeah. And so this is one of the issues I had with production. Frankly, to show good faith and because of the previous things that had happened, I wanted to go through and redact the individual donor's names.
But this is a case where I noticed a significant contribution come in. And when I see somebody gives a thousand dollars straight and then a hundred bucks a month, I would forward that on to Amy and the rest of the team, like, this person deserves a phone call.
Q So you went right to what my question was going to be about this, which was: In your professional work at this time, was a $1,000 one-time contribution a notable donation to the cause?
A Yes.
Q And so—
A Well, I won't say it was overly notable, right? We were getting quite a few. But it was that he did a thou—I remember he did a thousand dollars and a recurring hundred dollars, which is a significant commitment.
Q And when you said earlier raising—correct me if I'm wrong. I think you had said earlier that the fundraising for Women for America First during this time period generated a few hundred thousand dollars?
A Which time period are you referring to?
Q Well, let me actually just ask you: Between this post-election-to-January-6th timeframe, how much, if you had to ballpark it, were they raising?
A I believe, in grassroots contributions, I believe we brought in between $700,000 and $800,000.
Q And that does not count the $250,000 donation—
A That is not including the Lindell donation or any other large donations the Kremers may have got without my knowledge or, you know, have shared with me.
Q Okay.
Another financial piece. If you go to page 56 of this exhibit, exhibit 6, the bottom left is Amy Kremer sharing a screenshot with the group that you can't read in this but you can zoom in. And if you look in the front cover of your binder, there's something that's hand-labeled "exhibit 6A." This is a magnified version of that screenshot.
And in it, James Lyle says to I believe Amy and Kylie, "Please push on Bannon for the second 20K." Do you know what that's in reference to?
A So "Steve Bannon's War Room" had—we had had Kylie reach out to get them to sponsor. I believe that they had agreed to a $25,000 sponsorship, and I believe they paid $5,000 of that up front and $20,000 was still outstanding.
Q But I take it you didn't have any role in generating that donation?
A Unfortunately, we were still unable to contact Steve directly. However, we did tell—like, we sent Kylie to talk to Steve, who made it clear that we were a part of it, and we assumed that that would be helpful.
Q So this donation was to help support the December 12th rally?
A The bus tour specifically. And, in exchange for the contribution, the "Steve Bannon's War Room" logo was put on the bus.
Q Okay. And you believe that was a $25,000 donation to Women for America First?
A I do, yes. I don't know what the second $20,000 ever got paid, but I think they did pay an immediate $5,000, and there was still, like, 20,000 outstanding, to the last of my knowledge.
Q If we look at exhibit 3, at page 3—exhibit 3 is a text conversation that includes you and Cindy Chafian and Amy and Kylie Kremer.
On December 5th, if you look in the middle of the page, Cindy Chafian writes, "I'm planning to speak with Jericho March tomorrow. I need confirmation that you want me to be clear that we are in no way working with Ali or stopthesteal.us at all. That if they intend to proceed with that partnership we will not be incorporating their March plans on our permit."
I think you had earlier described November as being a group effort and then December it's not. Is that what this is in reference to?
A Yeah, so this is also around the time that we start getting red flags from Cindy that she is kind of collaborating with, for lack of a better term, the enemy at that point, right, which is the Ali group.
And a lot—there was a lot of controversy internally about the Jericho March because we had done a pretty blanket securing of permits, like, around town. So we had permits for not just Freedom Plaza but we had also, I think, grabbed, like four or five—like, we had secured the permits for several other locations so that it would be more difficult for, like, groups to kind of break off and do their own thing.
And there was a call between me and Cindy and the Jericho March leadership, like, on the bus at one point, that seemed to go really well, that we were going to try to work together. And then Cindy had come back, like, shortly after that saying that they had kind of, like, stopped responding to her. And eventually what we found out is that they were working with Ali on some of their stuff.
And this is Cindy asking us if that's a deal-breaker and getting the response that, yes, it's a deal-breaker.
Q So, when Cindy Chafian says that she's speaking with Jericho March, do you know who that is
A I can't remember specifically. It's the couple who's been doing it forever.
Q Last name Weaver, do you know?
A That sounds correct to me, but it's a couple who have done it, like, for a long time.
Q And was the concern with Ali at this point over rhetoric, or was it over, sort of, the trying to take credit for stages that he didn't actually contribute to?
A Well, so, at this point, a lot of it's personal, because he is regularly attacking us. And, more specifically—i shouldn't say "us," because he never really fired any shots at Jen and I, but he was really getting nasty with the Kremers. And, like, it was getting ugly. So there was definitely a personal element to it.
But this is also when, like, the—right around when Roger Stone put out the attack that we weren't allowing them to speak on our stages because their language was too harsh, right? So that was—this is probably right when that was starting to bubble up.
Q And so, ultimately, there was no association with Jericho March or Ali Alexander for December 12th.
A None. In fact—and that would get to—so they would do—they did their own separate program and stage on December 12th.
And to go back to the, quote/unquote, "appeasement" agreement, one of the things that was a justification to make the agreement to me at that point was that the difference in how the crowd looked in November versus December was significant. Even though the attendance was, I think, slightly less for the December rally, but not by that much, it looked significantly less because we had split the crowd. They had done their own stage, I can't even remember where, and we had done the same program at Freedom Plaza.
And there was discussion around the January stuff of not splitting the crowd so that the crowd looked as massive as possible for wherever Trump was going to speak. Because, frankly, he's into the biggest—you know? So—
Q I understand.
Same question about security but specific to the December event. Do you recall conversations about how you were going to deploy new security for December?
A Yeah, so December is where it really gets into it.
So Cindy is—what's the word I'm looking for? Not "passionately," but she is vociferously advocating that we use 1AP to handle security, right? "It's cheaper. They're great guys. All they want us to do is some emails to help them raise a little money." And we're not having it at all.
So we reached kind of an agreement where 1AP would act as a secondary barrier, but the professionals would handle the inner barrier. An I kind of referenced this a little bit earlier, in that sometimes we would let the volunteer guys kind of feel like they had a role kind of on the outskirts as, like, a secondary barrier, but the professionals would be the ones handling the real security.
And the December rally is also where we got—I didn't—I wasn't there for it—but Jen, my fiancee, was there for it, and I think Amy and a couple of other people, received their security briefing, which included, like, maps that they had just printed off. And their threat assessment, compared to the real threat assessment that I had seen, just did not—like, the two were night and day as far as, like, their professionalism.
Q Were there any assessments at November or December about—talking about threat assessments that you saw—assessments that referenced the potential for the crowd becoming unruly in any way?
A The December one, the threat assessment specifically was about confrontations between counterprotesters and the crowd. That was the primary threat concern in the December and January threat assessments that I saw.
Q But nothing about members that—members of the attending public for your event themselves being the source of violence?
A No, not at all.
Q Anything else specific—you've already covered, I think, in pretty good detail at the Alex Jones stuff. Anything else stand out to you specifically about the December event?
A The General Flynn stuff was, like, very pointed, in that we had the heated discussion beforehand, which felt like a very tense situation.
The—I'm trying to think if there's anything else that stands out.
It felt real—like, compared to November, it felt like we had done a really good job at adapting, and we felt that we did a vastly superior job with security. And then also that there were vastly less confrontations between the people who—we see ourselves as representing, like, the Tea Party grandmas, if you will. And, after the November rally, I remember how upset we were to go home and watch—there were a bunch of viral videos of, like, Trump people walking back to their hotel and getting attacked, like, even old ladies and stuff. And I remember we didn't—the feeling in December was that—there were a bunch of Proud Boys and antifa people who had, like, clashed; like, both sides were out looking for the same fight. So, like, for us, the crazies are the crazies, but our job was to protect and secure, like, the patriotic Americans who were answering our call to come out and have their voices heard. And December felt like we did a really good job with that.
Q When you say "the crazies are the crazies," is that—you're referring to—
A I mean on both sides. So, like, the—there are elements, right, within the Proud Boys and some of these—some of the militia groups that are, frankly—they're like soccer hooligans. They're looking to get into—like, they get off on battling each other.
And you see it play out in, you know, these events all over the country where you see the leftist crazies and the right-wing crazies fight each other with their shields and all the other silliness.
Q But it was your sense that the security you had put in place for December at least was sufficient to protect the Tea Party grandmas or the people who were coming to show support but not be hooligans.
A Yeah. We didn't see any of the confrontation with people who weren't—like, who didn't seem like went looking for fights, right, who were just trying to get back to their hotels, for example. So we felt like we had vastly improved, like, across the board on how that was handled in December.
Q It's been, you know, publicly reported and I think there's a few videos of Roger Stone speaking to crowds around this time outside the Willard Hotel. Did you have any interaction with Roger Stone or his circle about his presence or involvement in these events?
A We saw Roger Stone pretty frequently. There was a—they would meet nightly. But—
Q Sorry. When you say "they," who do you mean?
A Roger Stone, Ali, and, like, their most fervent supporters would meet nightly and drink outside—right outside at the JW Marriott.
And our rooms at the Willard overlooked the plaza. So, if things started to get rowdy—and I don't think—actually, I haven't sent it over yet, but one of the things Jen and I will provide subsequently, we actually have Roger Stone speaking to that group outside one night that Jen I think captured on one of her videos.
A couple times when we saw confrontations, we went down to, like—there was a—one time in particular, there was, like, a small group of, I think, Black Lives Matter activists who were trying to provoke that crowd. That crowd seemed like they were going to take the bait. And I remember then Jason Funes was running around, like, screaming, "Argh, we must"—and the whole thing seemed bad. So I believe me and Pastor Gibson went down and organized everybody in a prayer circle and, like, kind of calmed things down that way.
But they would meet and drink late into the night right around then. And it was not uncommon to hear Roger or Ali speak to that group.
Q But you didn't have any communications yourself with Roger Stone?
A Nothing outside of normal pleasantries, like, outside—because of my association with Steve Bannon and the controversy surrounding the congressional subpoenas, right, between him and Steve, there's never been a—I think mutually there's never been an interest in interacting with each other, outside of just being polite.
Did you have anything on December—
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Q For 1st Amendment Praetorian, can you just speak a little bit more specifically as to, like, the division of labor between them and then, you know, the professional security group that you all hired?
A Yeah. So the professional security group handled what we would call the inner perimeter, which is really, like, everything behind the fences. That's stationed at every entry point, managing getting the VIPs from the Willard to whatever stage they were speaking at by golf cart and different routes. They handled—so they handled all of the entry points, all of the speaker movements, VIP movements, and any conflicts that broke out. I think we had one issue in December at the media pen that the security guys handled. So they were doing the bulk of the event security.
The 1AP kind of set up a, quote/unquote, like, "secondary perimeter," I think, like, outside the fences to, you know, keep confrontations from happening.
It was—where it becomes relevant: In hindsight, the Supreme Court police were not probably—were probably even less staffed than the Capitol Police were at the Capitol on January 6th. But we had set it up so that there were volunteers and professionals—like, in December, at the Supreme Court, there were both volunteers and professionals that anyone who was trying to cause a conflict with the Supreme Court police would have to get through before that conflict ever happened. Because the optics of fighting law enforcement is, frankly, counter to so much of how we on the right portray ourselves.
Q So was the concern for why you did not want to have 1AP handle the inner perimeter that they would be have strong of a reaction if someone was disgruntled or something?
A Yeah, I mean, so there was a sense of—an I remember using the Hells Angels example on occasion. But there is also just a difference between people who do this professionally and people who, even if they have backgrounds as veterans or law enforcement, right, who are doing it not professionally, like, as volunteers.
And so the concern wasn't so much that we thought they would—that we actively thought they would cause problems, right? It wasn't so much that we thought that the 1AP guys were bad actors at that point. But the concern was that—well, and they also—you know, with professionals, they come with liability insurance and, you know—so it just—but there was less concern that they would be over the top that way.
But they also looked differently, which is, the professional security guys aren't wearing tac gear, right? They don't look like paramilitary. The professional security guys look like professional security guys. And the optics that we were trying to project was not, this is a paramilitary group looking to take over. This is a professional group that you can come have—that you could, Tea Party-style, come have a safe, productive time, right, airing your grievances with people who are like-minded.
Q So was it a concern that, just by their gear, it would almost project a more militant message than you intended?
A Absolutely.
And we knew—and it's not that we were actively—like, that we were discouraging people who wanted to do that from coming. It was more of—like, it was—because there were lots of people in there volunteering for me who I would fit kind of into the same kind of category with patriot groups. So it's not that we were discouraging them.
But it's what the optics look like from the stage, which is projected out to the world through the cameras, and also to the people who are there. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have those people to discourage, like, possible counterprotester attacks. But it wasn't the image that we were trying to project.
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Q Is it safe to say that the concern about projecting a militant message might be compounded negatively if the message is also ramping up rhetoric suggesting violence?
A Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that there's a—like, it's a fine line with political hyperbole and rhetoric and with the language of fighting, right, that all politicians use on both sides. The trick is using strong rhetoric to bring people in and then making sure that you give them an outlet to vent that kind of frustration productively.
And, if you're projecting militant, what you're steering them to is militant. And our goal was to steer them into, like, more engagement with their Members, right, their elected Representatives and in their local elections and getting involved in the process.
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Q So, at that point in December, was the strategy more like reaching out to your legislators or Members of Congress?
A Yes. At that point, I think the Rally Congress had really taken off. We were putting up big numbers. We had modified it to incorporate the—well, I don't know if we did it before or after the 12th, but at some point I modify the sample letter or even create a separate Rally Congress campaign that's centered around the objections and stuff.
But the Rally Congress was one of the primary things that we were steering people towards.
Q Just real quick, I think you've mentioned golf carts a few times today. Can you just tell us real quickly what the purpose of the golf carts were at the two rallies in November and December?
A Yeah. So, in coordination with Metro, we had shut down huge swaths of areas surrounding Freedom Plaza—
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Q Just to clarify, when you say "Metro," you mean the Metropolitan Police?
A Correct.
Q Not the Metro underground trains?
A Yes. No, the police force—and several other parks and other agencies. So we had huge areas shut down to nothing but foot traffic, right? There was no vehicle traffic for, I want to say, in December, it was like, 12 square blocks at least. And so, to get around quickly, we had—I think we had four or five golf carts in November, and I think we upped that to, like, eight in December.
And, like, for me, personally, if I needed to go to the Supreme Court because the staging guy needed an adapter or something, or Jason calls and General Flynn is going to show up suddenly, we would use the golf carts to get from point to point quickly.
Q All right.
Let's start talking about the planning for January 6th.
A Okay.
Q If you go to exhibit 7, this is another text message thread that you provided to us. The title of this one was "March For Trump Bus Team," which was distinct from the "M4T Core Team" text.
A There were a lot of groups.
Q And you go to page 25. Page 25—and I should've asked you this at the outset. Because these are the text messages that you produced to us, and I understand that you live full-time maybe, you know, towards the West Coast—or, I guess I wanted to ask you, do you know whether the timestamps on these text messages reflect eastern time or mountain time?
A I have no idea. Like, Jen and I spend our time—we have a house in Florida. My kids are in Reno. We have a place down in Vegas. So we're kind of bouncing around a lot, so I'm not sure.
Q Okay. Fair enough.
So December 19th here, there's a text that you send to this group, "Welp, we know where we need to be." And it looks like it's sent alongside a link to a tweet that, you know, "President Donald Trump Calls for Protest in D.C. on January 6th."
Does this reflect the first time you heard about January 6th being a date to gather in D.C.?
A In my review of the text messages, there is another text message that may have just been between me and Amy that may have been like the 18th, like, in the preceding days, where Amy directs us to have Cindy pull the permits for the 6th that I believe came before this, but shortly before this.
Q Well, let's go—I think we might have that at exhibit 6 at page 59.
In the middle of that page, also December 19th, but this is at 3:16 a.m.—
A There you go.
Q —Amy Kremer says, "I think we have to have Cindy pull the permits for January 6th. Thoughts?"
What does that—when I read that, if I hear someone say "pull the permits," my first question is, does that mean to cancel permits that had already been filed?
A Amy there is saying, go secure the permits. Right? So go to the Parks Department, pull the paperwork, secure the permits.
Q Okay.
So December 19th is—that gets me back to the original question I asked, was, does this reflect the first time you had heard about January 6th being a day to gather in Washington?
A Yes. I think so.
Q Okay. Do you remember any other conversations preceding the conversation with Women for America First about permits, knowing that January 6th was a day that maybe you should have an event in D.C.?
A No. Because I remember discussing making sure we had the permits around the inauguration, which the Inauguration Committee actually controls. Actually, they control actually going all the way back to these two, that we had to get them released from the Inauguration Committee.
But—yes. But, before this, this is also right around when I believe Amy first told me that she thought the President was going to speak at the January 6th event.
Q So was that—immediately, was the thought that the President might speak for this event?
A So it was right around this time on the 19th, like, shortly before Christmas. I can't remember. And this was a conversation. I remember Amy excitedly telling me that Trump had done the drive-by in November, he'd done the flyover in December, and she was almost certain that he was going to speak in January. And my guess is it's actually probably, like, the night of the 18th.
Q Do you know why Amy decided to hold an event on January 6th?
A My assumption was that she had heard from somebody that that was the day.
Q If we go to exhibit 9, this is the text thread that you labeled "March for Trump II."
At page 3, on December 26th, the day after Christmas, Kylie Kremer texts this group, "Effective immediately, no further communications with Cindy Chafian regarding anything WFAF," and goes on to explain, you know, talk to Kylie or Amy about this.
Tell us what happens between December 19th and December 26th from your perspective.
A Yep. And this is one of those butterfly effect moments, in my personal opinion.
So Cindy's role through November and December was primarily to handle the permits and the bureaucracy, right? So she's providing the COVID mitigation plan, the emergency escape route, right, and all the different boxes we had to check to hold a march—the first aid kits, the medics, the first aid stations, the stopping station, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? Her primary role was, like, handling that process, day in and day out.
Around this time—so security had noticed—I believe it was Lyndon personally. I'd have to double-check with him, but almost certain. Lyndon had noticed Cindy having breakfast with Alex Jones, who we had just filed a police report for and beat back from, like, attacking our stage, and—which sounded concerning.
When we confronted Cindy about it, what she told us, frankly, just rang as, like, yeah, that's not really what Alex Jones said.
Q What did she tell you?
A That Alex was apologetic and wanted to work together and—like, it just—I can't remember exactly, like—but I just—I remember being like, yeah, that's not—like, she's not being genuine there.
Shortly after that, Cindy had gone to the Parks Department and changed the permit from "Women for America First-Cindy Chafian" or "Cindy Chafian, Point of Contact," and just removed "Women for America First" from the permit.
And it was around the holidays. I remember, when we found out about it, we couldn't immediately get to the Parks Department to be like, she was not authorized to remove the organization and give herself the permit. So it was—I want to say it was, like—it was a long wait, maybe 4 days, before we could get to the Parks Department and get the permit situation switched back to Women for America First.
Q Do you know how they were able to accomplish that?
A Yeah. So I remember specifically, like, that we were waiting for them to open at 8:00 a.m. on Monday morning or Tuesday morning, whatever the day they opened back up was, right, where Amy and Kylie—maybe Kylie even went in person? I'm not—no. It was before she went to D.C.
Anyway, we reached out to them as soon as the office opened to explain that we had had this staff-slash-volunteer go rogue and try to take the permits from us without authorization from the board or anybody in the organization and we needed to rectify that.
And, in the interim, there was a short period of time where Cindy Chafian actually did technically have the permits for January 6th, right? So she was in—in that time period between when she changed them and we found out about it and we were able to get Parks Department to switch them back, there was a time that she had technically her name on the permits for January 6th.
While I don't have firsthand knowledge of exactly what the arrangement was, it is my understanding that she took money from Alex Jones, like, a significant six-figure payment from Alex Jones and possibly Ali to put them front and center on January 6th, because they had felt slighted over the fact that they hadn't been given much of a role at the December rally at all.
And Cindy—so this is Kylie letting—we'd been dealing with it before this, but this is Kylie letting the rest of the group know what we've uncovered this plot by Cindy to try to take the permits for her own benefit, and we'll be getting them back, don't worry, but nobody associate with Cindy.
Q So the original permit that was submitted by Women for America First was for Freedom Plaza, right?
A Right. Yeah. We were doing the exact—we were—for organizational reasons and just, you know, sheer logistical reasons, we were going to use the exact same model and template that we'd used at the two previous rallies.
Q So how did it end up being at the Ellipse on January 6th?
A So, when Trump—when it was confirmed that President Trump was going to speak to the rally, it was taken—it was basically taken from us, like, the group, minus Kylie, who on New Year's Eve flies I think from El Paso to D.C. to kind of represent us in the new planning group, which includes Katrina Pierson, Caroline Wren, Megan Mulvaney, Justin Caporale, and—who am I forgetting?
Mr. Nass. You mentioned Caroline Wren.
The Witness. Yeah, Caroline Wren, Katrina, Megan Mulvaney, Justin Caporale, Kylie—
Was Megan Powers involved?
The Witness I'm not sure.
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Q But a group of other people are—
A Yeah. So, essentially, it's taken over by, like, Trump Team, as we called them on the bus, and we were kind of relegated towards the bus tour.
And then, shortly thereafter, I was asked to at first kind of coordinate the agreement on January 5th and then later called in to, like, ball it out, because it was, frankly, a shitshow. So they asked me to leave the bus tour early and salvage what I could for January 5th.
Q So let's just take a look, then, at further on, page 5 of this exhibit. In the middle of the page, Amy Kremer is I think sending a tweet showing an image of somebody with a selfie.
A I believe that's a video.
Q Oh, okay. Sending some kind of media file to the text—
A And that's Scott Presler.
Q Okay. So it's a video of Scott Presler saying something about, you know, being in January on December—
A Oh, it's a tweet. It continues on the second page.
Q So Amy is sending this post referencing Scott Presler, you know. And she says, "Not only are they doing the 5th, they are also doing the 6th too." "Interesting," Scott Johnston says. And then Kylie says, "RIGHT! Because it's all the people who aren't invited or POTUS won't be associated with."
And then, further down, I won't read this, but it seems like, from having read through this, there is—I don't want to mischaracterize it, but was there some internal conflict among the folks who had been involved on the bus tour regarding how all of the organizing for January 5th and 6th was now unfolding at this time period?
A Yes.
Q Can you explain that to us?
A Yeah. So we put together the two D.C. events and these two bus tours. Our team was running on fumes at that point. And there was contention even initially of why we would send Kylie to D.C. to kind of, like, represent our interests, right? So there was some initial with that, and then there was tons of concern about what feedback we were getting from Kylie and from, kind of, the D.C. organizers about how that was all shaping up.
And this one with Scott Presler is—do you see the date on that, by the way?
Q I believe from the preceding page you see that it's December 31st.
A There we go.
So, at this point, I believe—yeah, at this point, I'm helping the pastors negotiate what I'm calling the appeasement rally. And I'm already kind of not happy about that, right, which is, now you're—so now you're saying that I'm relegated to putting this event on the 5th, not the big event but the little event on the 5th, and I have to include all of the most toxic personalities and—right?
And this is Amy expressing the frustration—and there's another thread somewhere—I don't know that I came across it when I was digging through this stuff—where it's a Matt Couch tweet, as well, that still has them promoting event at the Capitol on the 6th. This is what preceded me and Amy having the conversation about going to Meadows and Mercedes Schlapp and everybody else we could think of to, like, squash what was happening. Because, to us, this was them violating the agreement that we had reluctantly accepted for the appeasement thing anyway.
And what we kept getting back from Kylie were these, like, angry rants. And these were followed up with also, like, angry phone calls, right, where it would be—as an example, we wanted to make sure that the pastors had a role on January 6th. Like, they had put money up, they had provided venues and helped bringing out crowds all over the country. We wanted to make sure that they had a speaking role and were concerned that they weren't going to have that opportunity. And that also includes, like, Jen and I and everybody else who was kind of on the bus tour side of things.
And we continued to get feedback that there was this internal conflict on the organizing group about what the event at the Ellipse was going to look like, who was going to be able to speak, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And so there was a level of, like, confrontation over that. And then there was continued confrontation over how things were going with the, quote/unquote, "appeasement rally" to the point we almost blew it up completely, like, right before it happened. Like, it was a last-minute decision for me to say, we'll go forward with this without—let's—it was really close to just pulling the permits entirely, not letting anyone do anything on January 5th.
Q So let me see if I understand this, in terms of some of the conflicts you've identified.
There is a conflict over what you've referred to as the appeasement rally, which involves, on one side, what role, if any, the pastors would have, and other folks from your team—
A Yep.
Q —because you've more or less been relegated to that on the 5th, and also—
A I'd like to clarify—
Q Sure.
A —that we were assured right up until—actually, it wasn't until Caroline Wren told me the night before, like, on late the night of January 5th, that I was told that none of our people were speaking except Amy and Kylie.
Q Okay. So that just cuts straight to a question I wanted to ask, in terms of teeing up these conflicts. Why did Caroline Wren have say in all of this?
A So I was only a loose acquaintance of Caroline. Like, I'd only interacted with her briefly a couple times before the night of January 5th.
And we were having an issue—so the night of the 5th, the, quote/unquote, "appeasement rally," actually it turns out all right, right? Like, it goes pretty well overall. Everybody changes the stage over when they're supposed to, and it goes off pretty much without a hitch.
And, at this point, I am wiped out. And the Kremers are freaking out in the suite because they don't have their VIP badges, like, for all of our VIPs. And we're told—like, we keep getting basically "it's in the mail"-type messages. "Oh, somebody's on their way right now with them," and they keep not showing up. And so it's a—all of our, like, VIP people are angry at us because they're seeing other people with their VIP badges already.
And it's late, maybe 11:00 p.m., midnight. And I'm walking through the lobby of the Willard, and Alexandra Preate, who I know from her being a long-term—like, Bannon's long-term media gal, stops me and reintroduces me to Caroline, who I'd talked to a little bit earlier. And they invite me up to their suite because they want to talk about a couple of things with me.
And so I go up to the suite, and Caroline has the stack of our, like, VIP badges right there. And she proceeds to literally say, like, "Fuck Kylie Kremer. She's the worst person I've ever worked with ever." And we have maybe a half-hour-or-so conversation where essentially what she's trying to do is separate me from the Kremers.
But she tells me a lot of stuff. So she tells me that she raised—
[Coughs]
I'm sorry. Give me a second.