A nonprofit that provides support to people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is set to hold a legal fundraiser for 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 set to take place at the golf club on Sept. 5, with tickets priced at up to $50,000 for a table of 12, according to an online listing. The money is being raised to pay the legal costs of those prosecuted for their roles on Jan. 6, when a mob stormed the Capitol to protest Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.
Although 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 a guest speaker, but a spokesman for Giuliani did not respond to a request for confirmation.
Sign up for the New York Times Morning Newsletter
Whether or not Trump attends, it is an unusual — and potentially risky — move to allow an evening of support for those who stormed the Capitol to be held at one of his most recognizable homes just as his presidential campaign is in full swing in the final months of his life.
Trump himself faces multiple conspiracy charges in connection with the events of January 6. On the same day the group is scheduled to hold a fundraiser in Bedminster, a hearing will be held in U.S. District Court in Washington to determine how to weigh the impact on Trump's case of a recent Supreme Court ruling granting him a broad version of executive immunity.
Democrats have repeatedly made the Capitol siege a central part of their attacks on Trump. At their convention in Chicago on Wednesday night, they showed an extended montage of violent footage of the assault superimposed over clips from Trump’s incendiary Jan. 6 speech, urging the crowd to “fight like hell.”
Still, Trump has not shied away from supporting either the events of January 6 or his supporters who took part in them. He has appeared with some of the defendants at private events on his properties. He has often referred to 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 prison cells.
He also promised to pardon people accused in connection with the events of January 6, including those who attacked police officers that day.
According to the organization’s website, Stand in the Gap is run by Sarah McAbee. According to a person familiar with the group, McAbee is the wife of Ronald Colton McAbee, a former Tennessee deputy sheriff who is serving a five-year prison sentence for his role in what prosecutors called a “sustained, multiple assault on police officers” at the Capitol.
McAbee founded the organization with another defendant on January 6, Shane Jenkins, a Texas man now serving a seven-year prison sentence for smashing a window at the Capitol with a tomahawk and then pelting officers defending the building with a wooden desk box, a flagpole, a metal cane and a broken wooden pole.
In the days that followed, Jenkins sent a message to a colleague saying he was “not over this election yet,” adding, “Murder is in my heart and mind,” prosecutors said.
2024 The New York Times Company