(FreedomBeacon.com)- The House’s special committee investigating the attacks on January 6, 2021, has revealed that the campaign for former President Donald Trump has spent a load of money on things not related to what he was fundraising for.
One of those “things” was a two-minute speech that his son’s fiancée gave at the Stop the Steal rally that happened before the attack on the U.S. Capitol building that infamous day.
One of the members of the House special committee, California Representative Zoe Lofgren, revealed on a CNN interview recently that Kimberly Guilfoyle was paid $60,000 for giving her speech. Guilfoyle is the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., and served as an adviser to the former president.
Talking with Jake Tapper on CNN, Lofgren said that Guilfoyle was paid that amount for only a 2.5-minute speech that she gave as an introduction to the rally that day. She said:
“I’m not saying it is a crime, but it’s a gift.”
The interview with Tapper was a follow-up to the committee’s second public hearing held on Monday. During the hearing, Lofgren introduced evidence that showed Trump’s campaign collected $250 million from donors following the 2020 presidential election. They were donating to what the campaign called the “election defense fund.”
The Trump campaign sent email blitzes as well as other tactics to raise money for what they said would pursue their claims of election fraud through the court system.
The House committee revealed that the money did go to the Save America PAC, which supports Trump and his efforts. However, it didn’t go to supporting election defenses. A large sum of $5 million was paid to Event Strategies Inc., a group that helped to plan the January 6 rally.
Some of the funds went to the Trump Hotel Collection. Some went to the America First Policy Institute. Some went to a charitable foundation run by Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows. And $60,000 went to Guilfoyle for a very short speech.
Speaking on CNN, Lofgren explained:
“People were conned by the former president. They were conned into believing that the election had been stolen and that they should go to the Capitol once the president asked them to.
“I think the average donation from those … false email requests was something like $17. These weren’t rich people. They were conned by the president. The big lie was also a big ripoff.”
She also explained that the money wasn’t used for “what he said to his donors — ‘this is to defend the election.’ It was for an entirely different purpose I think that was deceptive and not right.”
Asked whether she thought what the Trump campaign did amounted to a crime, she said she wasn’t sure, explaining:
“We are a legislative committee. That is for somebody else to decide.”
Will the people who donated to the “election defense fund” care that their money didn’t directly support the efforts the campaign was touting it would? Maybe, but maybe not.
Maybe they’re happy to support anything the former president
