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Paid aides to Trump campaign played key roles in organizing fascist assault on US Capitol

A recent analysis conducted by the Associated Press (AP) confirms that high-level operatives within the Republican Party and President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign organized the fascist rabble outside the White House for the “Save America Rally,” who would then go on to storm the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the election and install a presidential dictatorship.

Preparations are made prior to a dress rehearsal for the 59th inaugural ceremony for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Monday, January 18, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, Pool)

The AP wrote: “A pro-Trump nonprofit group called Women for America First hosted the ‘Save America Rally’ on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, an oval-shaped, federally owned patch of land near the White House. But an attachment to the National Park Service public gathering permit granted to the group lists more than half a dozen people in staff positions for the event who just weeks earlier had been paid thousands of dollars by Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. Other staff scheduled to be ‘on site’ during the demonstration have close ties to the White House.”

In their report the AP noted that they “reviewed social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records for more than 120 people either facing criminal charges related to the Jan. 6 unrest or who, going maskless during the pandemic, were later identified through photographs and videos taken during the melee.

“The review found the crowd was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, off-duty police, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals.”

Despite the public reporting which confirms that several people with direct connections to either Trump himself or the Trump campaign were responsible for inciting and organizing the coup, not a single Democrat has drawn attention to this report, much less called for immediate public investigations and the arrest of the ringleaders. Taking their cue from the Democrats and President-elect Joe Biden, the corporate media has likewise buried the story with the major networks' Monday night news broadcasts omitting this startling report.

The AP’s exposure is a confirmation of the analysis put forth in the World Socialist Web Site’s October 1, 2020 Perspective “Trump’s Operation Dictatorship: What the debate exposed,” in which authors Joe Kishore and David North wrote that the debate between Trump and Biden revealed an “... undeniable fact that the White House is the political nerve center of a far-advanced conspiracy to establish a presidential dictatorship and suppress constitutionally guaranteed democratic rights.”

Below are some notable people who were on the payroll of the Trump campaign and organized the attempted coup:

  • Megan Powers: The permit listed Powers as one of two operations managers for the event, and according to her LinkedIn profile, as of January 2021 she was the director of operations for Trump’s reelection campaign, where she was paid thousands of dollars a month.

  • Caroline Wren: Described as a “veteran GOP fundraiser” by the AP, Wren was listed as a “VIP Advisor” on an attachment to the Park Service permit. Federal Election Commission records state that Wren was paid $20,000 a month between mid-March and mid-November by Donald J. Trump for President Inc. Wren also served as the national finance consultant for “Trump Victory,” a joint fundraising committee between the Trump reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee. Wren retweeted several messages promoting the event and from fellow conspirators from the “Stop the Steal” group, which also organized for the coup attempt. In a since deleted tweet, Wren shared a message thanking Republican senators Josh Hawley (Missouri) and Ted Cruz (Texas) for voting to overturn the election results.

  • Maggie Mulvaney: Mulvaney is the niece of former acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Maggie was listed as a “VIP Lead” in the Park Service permit granted for the event and was paid $5,000 every two weeks while employed for the campaign, with the last payment made on November 13. According to her LinkedIn account, she worked as a director of operations and manager of external affairs for Trump’s 2020 campaign. Like Wren, Mulvaney deleted posts on her social media account promoting the event after January 6.

  • Tim Unes: Founder and president of Event Strategies, was the stage manager of the rally, according to the permit paperwork. Trump’s presidential campaign paid Event Strategies $1.3 million in 2020 for “audio visual services,” according to campaign finance records.

These names represent just a fraction of the high-level Republican operatives who organized the coup. It was reported last week by the AP that a branch of the Republican Attorneys General Association, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, had paid for and authorized thousands of “robo-calls” across the country urging “patriots like you... to fight to protect the integrity of our elections” the night before January 6.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, who heads the fund, told the AP that he was “unaware of unauthorized decisions made by [Rule of Law Defense Fund] staff with regard to this week’s rally,” and called for an “investigation.”

Up until last week, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody proudly boasted on the official state website that she had the support of her peers by noting her appointment to the board of directors of the Rule of Law Defense Fund. After the connection was revealed, Moody scrubbed the board appointment from the website.

While Moody attempts to wash her hands of her role in the fascist insurrection, Florida scientist and COVID-19 whistleblower Rebekah Jones is facing scurrilous charges from the state for publishing factual data exposing the lie that schools can be reopened safely during the pandemic.

Seemingly every day, new revelations confirm the coordination, complicity and support for the insurrectionists from the White House and Republican officials across the country. During a CNN interview on Monday, Tennessee Democratic Representative Steve Cohen confirmed that he and Kentucky Representative John Yarmuth saw freshman Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert give a tour to “a large group of people... sometime after the 3rd and before the 6th.”

Cohen added that it was “pretty clear her team... she’s not on the home team. She was with the visitors.”

The fact that it has been nearly two weeks since the coup, and Cohen is the first Democrat to publicly name one of the alleged congressional Republican conspirators testifies to the degree to which the Democratic Party is working to conceal the true extent of the fascist plot. Joe Biden and the rest of the party know that unmasking all of the accomplices would reveal not only that substantial sections, if not a majority, of the Republicans in Congress were complicit in the coup attempt, but also major sections of the Capitol police, the intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense.

The extreme crisis within the US ruling class and by extension what remains of bourgeois democracy is expressed in the military occupation of Washington DC. A small fire at a homeless encampment Monday morning, roughly a mile away from the White House, spurred an immediate lockdown of several buildings in the Capitol Complex and ended practice rehearsals for the inauguration. As of this writing, some 25,000 National Guard soldiers have been deployed to the Capitol Complex, roughly five times as many soldiers as are currently deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria combined.

The presence of so many soldiers, however, has not eased fears of fascistic terrorist violence leading up to, on or after Biden’s inauguration on January 20. On Sunday, the FBI announced that due to the threat of an “insider attack,” the FBI would attempt to vet all 25,000 National Guard soldiers in Washington to confirm their loyalties. The Washington Post reported Monday night that the FBI warned police agencies that QAnon adherents have discussed posing as National Guard troops in order to infiltrate secure areas during the inauguration.

It is no secret that many of those seeking to take hostages, or worse, on January 6 were ex- or current military, as well as police. Already one current Virginia National Guardsman and current police officer, Jacob Fracker, was arrested after posting a selfie featuring himself and another cop inside the Capitol on January 6.

On Sunday, Sky News identified one of those dressed in military fatigues and body armor storming the Capitol as 38-year-old former Army soldier and Afghanistan veteran Jessica Watkins. Watkins was photographed walking in what is known as a “Ranger file” into the Capitol with members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia.

Watkins, who claims she formed the Ohio Regular Militia as an affiliate of the Oath Keepers in 2019, was arrested on Sunday.

In the nearly two weeks since the breach of the Capitol, just over 100 people have been charged out of the thousands that took part in the assault. The low number is a testament to the support among the police and sections of the state apparatus for the insurrectionists. For comparison’s sake, during the June 1 Rose Garden assault on peaceful multiracial protesters demanding an end to police violence, the DC Metropolitan Police Department made 326 arrests.