A former organizer to Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., has come forward in a damning interview with Rolling Stone, claiming top White House officials and campaign staff intentionally planned on having massive crowds descend on the Capitol.
The plan, according to an exclusive interview published Sunday with ex-organizer Scott Johnston, was to “make it look like they went down there on their own,” he said.
Johnston testified before the Jan. 6 committee last December and told investigators he overheard former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, and Women for America First Executive Director Kylie Kremer discussing the scheme to march on the Capitol without permits.
[Related: Mark Meadows held in contempt of Congress]
Johnston said they pursued this specific ploy because they knew a permitless march translated to less security and therefore, less cost to the campaign. They also knew, Johnston claims, that the scheme had to be pulled off quietly.
Pierson, who was subpoenaed by the select committee back in September, has denied the accusations and Chris Barron, a spokesman for Kylie Kremer, has categorically denied Johnston’s account to Rolling Stone.
In the interview, however, Johnston said it was late Dec. 2020 when he overhead Kremer hashing out ideas for a march to the Capitol while she was on speakerphone. He was driving her between different pro-Trump events.
“They were very open about how there was going to be a march. Everyone knew there was going to be a march,” Johnston recalled.
But when Meadows, Kremer, and Pierson wrestled with the idea of needing to obtain a permit for the march, beyond the increased security it would garner, there was also shared apprehension about the optics.
Having an organized march on the U.S. Capitol, inspired by the outgoing president, was not a good public-facing look, they decided. Instead, Johnston claims, the Trump officials thought of a clever workaround.
They would “direct the people down there and make it look like they went down there on their own,” Johnston told Rolling Stone.
That conversation reportedly took place on a burner phone; one of many Johnston said he purchased at Women for America First co-founder Kylie Kremer’s request.
Johnston said Kremer explicitly asked him to purchase the burner phones on Dec. 28 so campaign staff could talk to high-level officials.
In the conversation he overheard, Johnston said Kylie Kremer was insistent that Women for America First and the march on the Capitol would not be publicly linked.
According to Rolling Stone:
Johnston says Meadows was willing to help secure a permit for the march but was also amenable to Trump supporters converging on the Capitol without one.
Meadows has outwardly maintained that the riot on Jan. 6 was in no way premeditated and the spokesperson for Kremer insinuated Johnston was a liar. He called Johnston’s accounting of the phone called “absolutely false.”
“If anyone gave testimony to the J6 committee claiming that such a call took place, and that was the substance of the call, should be incredibly concerned. The last I looked, lying to Congress was a crime,” Barron told the magazine Sunday.
Pierson has disputed the call and Johnston’s retelling, calling his actions defamatory. A review of phone records would disprove his allegations, she said.
Only one other person would have been witness to the call and potentially overheard the plan, Johnston says. That would be fellow Trump rally planner Matthew McCleskey.
But McCleskey has denied being present for the call and said Johnston’s account was “not true.”
