WASHINGTON ― The woman who hosted the Jan. 6 rally in front of the White House that immediately preceded the deadly insurrection at the Capitol is hosting a “Save America Summit” at Donald Trump’s financially troubled golf course near the Miami airport next month.
Amy Kremer’s Women for America First is selling “general admission” tickets, which include golf and spa discounts as well as a swag bag, for $500, not including hotel rooms. A “Diamond package” goes for $5,000 and includes access to VIPs, among them Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The four-day event, which starts April 8 and coincides with a Republican National Committee donor retreat 75 miles to the north in Palm Beach, is to focus on “election integrity,” “big tech and censorship,” and the First and Second Amendments. Trump is hosting his appearance at the RNC meeting at his own Mar-a-Lago country club. It is unclear whether he will be appearing at Kremer’s event at his golf resort in Doral.
Depending on how many people attend, the event could put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the cash registers at the resort, which began suffering from the backlash to Trump’s actions and words as president even before the arrival of the pandemic last year.
Kremer did not respond to HuffPost’s queries.
She and her group were the main sponsor of the “Save America” rally where Trump urged attendees to march on the Capitol and intimidate Vice President Mike Pence and Congress into overturning the election he had lost by 7 million votes and nevertheless installing him for a second term.
Before Trump took the stage, Kremer was repeating the same lies that Trump had started spreading the night of the election, claiming that he had won and it had been “stolen” from him.
“We know that there was voter fraud, we absolutely know it and that’s why we’re here, to stop the steal,” Kremer told the crowd gathered on the Ellipse. “We’re not going to let them steal an election. You guys, we cannot back down.”
Not long afterward, thousands of Trump supporters broke through police barriers around the Capitol. Some 800 entered the building itself in an attempt to carry out Trump’s demand that Congress stop the certification of Democrat Joe Biden as the winner. Three police officers died as a result, with 140 others injured.
Kremer said in a statement afterward: “We unequivocally denounce violence of any type and under any circumstances” ― even though her group’s rallies had featured multiple speakers advocating violence to return Trump to power.
A since-deleted webpage shows Kremer’s “March for Trump” bus that a month earlier had completed a two-week, 20-stop tour spreading Trump’s election falsehoods. The words “March to Save America Rally” appear in bold, followed by: “Democrats are scheming to disenfranchise and nullify Republican votes. It’s up to the American people to stop it. Along with President Trump, we will do whatever it takes to ensure the integrity of this election for the good of the nation.”
Kremer’s group is registered as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization under the IRS code, with a tax-exempt status that allows it to keep its donors’ names secret but which does not permit it to devote more than half of its spending to political activity every year. How it will justify that in 2020 or this year is unclear, given the hundreds of thousands or even millions it spent openly supporting Trump.
How much, precisely, the group spent on its various pro-Trump events or how much it will be spending at Trump’s Doral golf course may not be known for years. Nor can it determined how much Kremer is paying herself. The group was registered as a nonprofit in Virginia on Feb. 6, 2019, and received a “determination letter” granting its tax status on Feb. 19, 2020, but no annual tax returns are yet on file at the IRS website.
Kremer paid herself $306,268 from a handful of super PACs she helped run between 2010 and 2019, including the Tea Party Express and the pro-Trump Great America PAC, according to Federal Election Commission records. She paid her daughter, Kylie Kremer, who is also an officer in the Women for America First group and who also appeared at the Jan. 6 rally, an additional $11,250.