Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Helped Plan Jan. 6 March — Source

Donald Trump’s White House Chief of Staff and a national campaign spokesperson were involved in efforts to encourage the president’s supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. That’s according to a person who says he overheard a key planning conversation between top Trump officials and the organizers of the Jan. 6 rally on the White House Ellipse — and has since testified to House investigators about the phone call.

Trump and his allies have tried to minimize his role in calling his supporters to the Capitol and argue he was simply participating in a lawful, peaceful demonstration.

Scott Johnston — who worked on the team that helped plan the Ellipse rally — says that’s just not so. He claims that leading figures in the Trump administration and campaign deliberately planned to have crowds converge on the Capitol, where the 2020 election was being certified — and “make it look like they went down there on their own.”

Johnston, who says he described the phone call to House select committee investigators, detailed his allegations in a series of conversations with Rolling Stone. Johnston says he overheard Mark Meadows, then-former President Trump’s chief of staff, and Katrina Pierson, Trump’s national campaign spokesperson, talking with Kylie Kremer, the executive director of Women For America First, about plans for a march to the Capitol. Johnston said the conversation was clearly audible to him since it took place on a speakerphone as he drove Kremer between the group’s rallies in the final three days of 2020.

“They were very open about how there was going to be a march. Everyone knew there was going to be a march,” Johnston says.

According to Johnston, Meadows, Pierson, and Kremer discussed the possibility of setting up a permit to make the march from the White House to the Capitol official. He says the trio decided against officially permitting the march, citing concerns about security costs and about the optics of a sitting president organizing a push towards Congress as lawmakers certified his loss in the 2020 election. Ultimately, Johnston tells Rolling Stone, they planned to “direct the people down there and make it look like they went down there on their own.”

Kremer’s group, Women For America First, helped lead the Jan. 6 rally at the White House Ellipse, where Trump delivered a speech and told supporters to “fight like hell” and said he expected them to march on the Capitol. “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said. As Trump spoke, people began leaving the rally to walk towards the Capitol.

The president’s camp insists this wasn’t part of any pre-planned push. In the book where he recounted his time in the White House, Meadows called the Jan. 6 violence “the actions of a handful of fanatics across town.”

Johnston’s account suggests there was a deliberate strategy by Trump’s allies to have supporters descend on the Capitol. Such a connection would implicate top White House and campaign officials in drawing crowds to the Congress without a permit — a step that could have required added security and may have allowed law enforcement to better prepare for the day’s events. Those crowds overwhelmed the Capitol Police and engaged in an hours-long battle with law enforcement. Four people died during the attack.

According to Johnston, rally organizers were “constantly” using “burner phones” — cheap, pre-paid cells that can be harder to trace because they’re not personally identified with a user or a user’s account — “to talk about” potential permits and plans for a march with Trump aides.

Johnston says that, in the key phone conversation he overheard, the group settled on ordering a march without an official permit. “Nobody wanted to do it because they didn’t want to pay for it,” Johnston says of obtaining a permit. “They didn’t want to have to provide security and all the other expenses.”

On Dec. 20, 2021, Johnston testified to the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack and he provided Rolling Stone multiple pieces of documentation showing his interactions with the committee. Johnston also says he told investigators that he knew the call took place on a “burner phone” in the final days of 2020 because the discussion came right after Kylie Kremer directed him to purchase three phones for her group.

“I’m the one that bought the burner phones,” Johnston says.

The committee did not respond to an inquiry regarding Johnston’s allegations about the rally organizers and about his testimony. A source familiar tells Rolling Stone that committee investigators have asked Amy Kremer, Kylie’s mother and the chair of “Women For America First,” about their use of burner phones. The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation, said Amy Kremer has denied using the devices. The source did, however, confirm that key phones used by the rally organizers were purchased in California. That corroborates the account from Johnston, who says he told committee investigators that he bought the phones at a CVS in Cathedral City, California.

The committee is also seeking Meadows’ phone records via a subpoena sent to Verizon, but the former White House chief of staff sued to block that subpoena in December. The case is ongoing. A spokesman for Meadows declined to comment.

Rolling Stone reported in November that Kremer and other Jan. 6 rally organizers used burner phones to communicate with White House officials during the planning stages of that event. After that report, Kylie and Amy Kremer denied using burner phones in a statement from their lawyers. Johnston, who was one of the sources for that reporting, says Kylie Kremer directed him to purchase the phones on December 28, 2020 so she could “communicate with high-level people.”

According to Johnston, on the call with Meadows and Pierson, Kylie Kremer was adamant that her group — Women for America First — could not be publicly affiliated with the march even though she privately approved of it. 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.

Pierson disputed Johnston’s version of events in a text message to Rolling Stone. “No such call took place,” Pierson wrote. Pierson further suggested that she did not know who Johnston was and that “phone records” would disprove his “defamatory claims.”

Asked about Johnson’s allegations, Kylie and Amy Kremer responded through their spokesman, Chris Barron. “The claim regarding the substance of any phone call between Katrina Pierson, Kylie Kremer and Mark Meadows is absolutely false,” Barron wrote. “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.”

Organizers of the Ellipse rally told Rolling Stone last year that they participated in “dozens” of meetings with White House staff and pro-Trump Republicans in Congress as they planned protests against Trump’s election loss. And Rolling Stone reviewed text messages among the rally organizers — including Johnston — in which the organizers’ said they were “following [Trump’s] lead” in planning the Ellipse rally.

While the House select committee is clearly investigating the high-level organization of the Ellipse rally and related efforts to overturn Trump’s election loss, it does not have criminal authority. The congressional committee can, however, make referrals to the Justice Department, which is conducting its own investigation. Thus far, the FBI has largely focused on militant groups that were present at the Capitol and people involved in the storming of the building, hundreds of whom have been arrested and now face criminal prosecutions, jail time, probation, and fines. While these rank-and-file supporters have suffered criminal consequences, many prominent figures involved in the January 6 rally remain members of good standing within the GOP, where they continue to hold powerful and lucrative positions in and out of government.

Rolling Stone cannot independently verify Johnston’s claim about the December phone conversation. He says he’s unaware of any recording of the call. The only other person Johnston believes may have overheard it is another Ellipse rally planner, Matt McCleskey. Johnston says McCleskey was also in the car when Kylie Kremer spoke about the march with Meadows and Pierson. However, Johnston says it’s unclear if McCleskey would have heard the call, as the staffer often wore headphones as he…