According to new reporting by The Uprising, the man behind arranging a now-infamous meeting, captured on video, between Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman and Kanye West’s publicist Trevian Kutti is Harrison Floyd, a former Trump campaign aide.
Floyd worked on Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and was the executive director of Black Voices For Trump, a group designed to help the one-term, twice-impeached president gain a modicum of traction with the Black vote. According to his LinkedIn profile, Floyd is currently a partner with Commonwealth Holdings International, located in Washington, D.C.
Floyd tells The Uprising that although he was not working with Trump at the time of the meeting with Freeman, he was the man Kutti referred to in the video as “Harrison Ford.”
“Since November 15 [2020], I have not worked in an official capacity with the campaign. I have not spoken with anybody with the campaign in an official capacity,” Floyd said. “The only conversations I have had were in a personal capacity.”
Freeman, a 62-year-old grandmother, and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, 37, were falsely accused by Trump of attempting to manipulate ballots. The result has been an onslaught of racist harassment from Trump and his sycophants. This includes messages calling for Freeman’s lynching, one urging people to “hunt” her, and even threats against her teenage grandson.
Floyd, who briefly ran for Congress in Georgia in 2019, claims that one month after the election, he began hearing that Freeman “needed immunity” and “wanted to get a message to the president.”
“Lawyers and different people from all across the country were asking me … if I had heard anything,” Floyd said. “They were saying, ‘Well, if she wants immunity let her know that I would be able to give it to her.’”
Freeman says he became more involved in the meeting after a phone call from an unnamed “chaplain who has a background in law enforcement.”
The chaplain, who is white, felt that Freeman wouldn’t trust him because of his race. So, Floyd “offered to get on the phone” with her.
“I’m a Black guy, I’m from Georgia, and I know how they do Black folks down in Georgia,” Floyd explained to The Uprising, adding: “The conversation was based around her getting immunity.”
But, since Floyd is based in Washington, D.C., and wasn’t able to get to Georgia, Kutti and another man who is only known as “Garrison” met with Freeman in person.
Floyd told The Uprising that he did not know whether Kutti was working for West when she and Garrison went to Freeman’s home unannounced and uninvited.
Kutti and Garrison eventually spoke with Freeman at her request at a Cobb County police station. Body camera video of the meeting obtained by Reuters showed Kutti telling Freeman she “was in danger” and had “48 hours” before “unknown subjects” would turn up at her home.
“I cannot say what specifically will take place,” Kutti is heard telling Freeman in the recording. “I just know that it will disrupt your freedom," she adds, "and the freedom of one or more of your family members.
“You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up,” Kutti continued. She added that “federal people” were involved, without offering specifics.
Growing suspicious, Freeman told Reuters that she jumped up from her chair and told Kutti: “The devil is a liar,” before calling for an officer.
The following day, Freeman says an FBI agent pushed her to leave her home of 20 years. Far-right extremists were discussing her on the social app Parler, talking about murdering her. “She will go missing very soon,” one post said. Another said she would be “suicided with 2 bullets to the back of the head.” Yet another said: “Time for Ruby to die for what she believed in.”
The next day was Jan. 6, and just as Kutti had warned, an angry gaggle of Trump supporters surrounded her home.
Floyd told The Uprising that he knew Kutti through the campaign. He’d met her at a Trump rally.
“Trevian Kutti was not associated with Kanye West or any of his enterprises at the times of the facts that are reported in various articles or since these facts occurred,” Pierre Rougier, a spokesperson for West, wrote in an email to The Uprising.