A nonprofit organization that supports people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is set to hold a legal fundraiser for the rioters next month at former President Donald Trump’s private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The event — billed as the J6 Awards Gala and hosted by the Stand in the Gap Foundation — is scheduled to take place at the golf club on Sept. 5, according to an online announcement, with tickets costing up to $50,000 for a table for 12. The money is being raised to pay for legal fees for those being prosecuted for their roles on Jan. 6, when a mob stormed the Capitol to protest Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
While the announcement lists Trump as an “invited guest speaker,” Trump does not plan to attend the event, according to a person familiar with his plans. Trump’s former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is also listed as an invited speaker, but a representative for Giuliani did not respond to a request for confirmation.
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Regardless of whether Trump will be present, it is an unusual — and potentially risky — move to permit a soiree supporting those who stormed the Capitol to be held at one of his most recognizable properties just as his presidential campaign goes full speed for its final few months.
Trump himself is facing multiple conspiracy charges in connection with the events of Jan. 6. The same day the group is to hold its fundraiser in Bedminster, a hearing will be held in U.S. District Court in Washington to determine how to assess the effect on Trump’s case of the recent Supreme Court ruling granting him a broad version of executive immunity.
Democrats have repeatedly placed the siege of the Capitol at the center of their attacks against Trump. At their convention in Chicago on Wednesday night, they played an extended video montage of violent footage from the assault, overlaid with excerpts from Trump’s incendiary speech on Jan. 6, exhorting the crowd to “fight like hell.”
Still, Trump has not shied away from embracing either the events of Jan. 6 or his supporters who took part in them. He has appeared with some of the defendants at private events at his properties. He has often described them as “hostages” and “political prisoners.” And he has opened campaign events with a recording of some of the defendants singing the national anthem from their jail cells.
He has also promised to pardon people charged in connection with Jan. 6, including those who assaulted officers that day.
The Stand in the Gap Foundation is run by Sarah McAbee, according to the organization’s website. McAbee, according to a person familiar with the group, is the wife of Ronald Colton McAbee, a former deputy sheriff from Tennessee who is serving five years in prison on charges of taking part in what prosecutors called “a prolonged multi-assailant attack on police officers” at the Capitol.
McAbee founded the organization with another Jan. 6 defendant, Shane Jenkins, a man from Texas who is now serving seven years in prison for shattering a window at the Capitol with a tomahawk and then pelting officers defending the building with a wooden desk drawer, a flagpole, a metal walking stick and a broken wooden pole.
In the days that followed, prosecutors say, Jenkins sent a message to an associate saying he was “not over this election,” adding, “I have murder in my heart and head.”
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