A top Republican donor and heiress to the Publix supermarket fortune provided much of the funding for the Washington DC rally that ended in the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol, fundraising documents reveal.
Longtime Trump supporter Julie Jenkins Fancelli kicked in $300,000 to help the “Stop the Steal” group stage the event at the Ellipse, where then-President Trump exhorted the crowd to “fight like hell” against election results that gave Joe Biden the presidency, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
His rhetoric led to an impeachment vote this month, as House Democrats accused the president with “incitement of an insurrection.”
The funding documents confirmed the claims of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has said that he helped plan the event and broker its funding.
“Thank God a donor came in and paid like 80 percent of it,” Jones said in a video posted to his InfoWars website Jan. 7. “Because it cost close to half a million dollars, with all the equipment, all the stages and the rest of it. Port-a-Potties, you name it.”
Security barriers, a concert stage, and $100,000 worth of grass coverings were also included on the bill, the documents show.
Alex Jones has been in legal trouble for pushing bogus coronavirus cures. zz/STRF/starmaxinc.com/Newscom/Sipa USAThe pro-Trump group Women for America First, which staged several post-election rallies in state capitals and two “Million MAGA Marches” in Washington, obtained the permit for the Ellipse event.
Meanwhile Stop the Steal, a group claiming rampant fraud in the Nov. 3 presidential election, coordinated with Jones to hold a rally on the grounds of the Capitol.
Both groups, along with former Trump campaign staffer Katrina Pierson, were involved in planning the day’s events.
Jones has been in legal trouble for pushing bogus coronavirus cures on his website — and for using it to push the theory that the 26 deaths in the Sandy Hook school massacre were faked as part of an anti-Second Amendment plot.
He has not been charged in connection with the storming of the Capitol that followed the outdoor rallies. Video footage from that day shows him using a bullhorn to exhort the crowd to remain outside the building.
