New Insights on Jan. 6th and Right-Wing Women + One Thing You Can Do to Protect Our Democracy
Some much badness, so little time....
New Insights into the January 6th Insurrection
By Alyssa Bowen, Evan Vorpahl, and Lisa Graves
This past week the House select committee held its first hearing on the January 6 attack on our Capitol and our democracy. While law enforcement officers described risking their lives battling the armed insurrection, right-wing political figures wasted no time spewing outrageous conspiracy theories to try to rewrite history through social media.
Some tried to transfigure the insurrectionist and QAnon follower Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by police while trying to breach the barricaded door to the Speaker’s Lobby, into a martyr.
Still others, like Amy Kremer of “Women for America First” spent time trying to rebrand the arrested Trump-supporting rioters as “political prisoners.”
Some white women like Babbitt have played a visible role in advancing outlandish online conspiracies like QAnon that back Trump and skew to the far right. They, like Kremer, have also joined a majority of white men in forming the bulk of Trump’s support. Recent polling shows he won white women voters by an even larger margin in 2020 (7 points) than in 2016 (2 points).
But it is not just a few white women being manipulated to act on the obscene lies that they must “save the children” from Democrats or fundraising off of claims that people need to protect the election from being stolen from Trump by Democrats. Right-wing women’s groups—funded by billionaires, huge corporations, and other dark money sources—have also been prominent in propping up some of the conspiratorial claims about election fraud that fueled the insurrection.
In this week’s Substack, we take a closer look at three of the players in the right-wing women’s infrastructure that have aided the debunked lie that Trump won the election: Women for America First, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and the Independent Women’s Forum/Independent Women’s Voice. Their actions warrant more illumination.
Who Is “Women for America First,” which Held the Jan. 6 Event Where Trump Incited His Followers?
Women for America First was created in 2019 by Amy Kremer, who was previously paid as a leader of the fundraising operation called Tea Party Express that raised millions to attack President Obama’s policies like the Affordable Care Act. In addition to other controversies, Tea Party Express’ chair Mark Williams wrote a letter in 2010 praising slavery. Kremer became chair and then left the group in 2014. In February 2016, she became the chair of TrumPAC, which later became the “Great America PAC.”
By mid-2016, she left that to co-found Women Vote Trump, which aimed to raise more than $30 million but raised far, far less. It also changed its name to Women Vote Smart. As treasurer of the Women Vote Smart PAC—a pro-Trump super PAC she founded with Ann Stone (the ex-wife of Roger Stone) and Kathryn Serkes—Kremer was fined more than $6K by the Federal Elections Commission for failing to file a required fundraising report in 2020.
She also ran for Congress in 2017 in the race for the Sixth District of Georgia that Jon Ossoff won. She received only 351 votes out of 193,981 ballots cast.
In 2019, Kremer created Women for America First, with her daughter Kylie Kremer. It focused on attacking the 2019 impeachment of Trump and then later on attacking public health efforts to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus. In 2019, it also received $25,000 from the Trump-connected America First Policies.
In 2020, Women for America First applied for and received non-taxable status as a 501(c)(4). Unlike a PAC, it is not required to disclose its donors. Immediately following the 2020 election, the group created a “Stop the Steal” Facebook group, which gained 350,000 followers in a single day and was quickly pulled from the platform because it was "organized around the delegitimization of the election process and we saw worrying calls for violence from members of the group.”
Following the election, Women for America First coordinated a 20+ city bus tour using the phrase “March for Trump,” that, according to a report by BuzzFeed, “[spread] incendiary propaganda, lies, and hate across an American tinderbox” before co-organizing the January 6th rally. In the nearly eight months since Joe Biden was elected, the group has continued to spread “the Big Lie” that Trump actually won the 2020 election. It has been coordinating events across Georgia that challenge the legitimacy of the election results and plans to expand the tour to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Women for America First also recently announced a campaign to remove Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger who refused Trump’s demand that he “find” votes in Georgia that would have overturned Biden’s legitimate victory in the state. Women for America First said that to “make our elected officials… do what we want… we use the power we have in successfully recalling the worst of the worst, it’s likely that others will straighten up and fly right. If they don’t we will recall them too.”
WFAF Executive Director Kylie Kremer has also hinted that her organization’s “election integrity” efforts would include another bus tour. It promises to “get to the bottom of what really happened on November 3rd in Georgia,” with the foregone conclusion that, as the t-shirts they sell proclaim, “Trump won.”
Last week, Amy Kremer tried to wrap her actions in the mantle of the founders:
What Happened at Women for America First’s “SAVE AMERICA” Event with Trump on Jan. 6th?
It was Amy Kremer’s group that applied for the permit for the January 6th event on the Ellipse where Trump exhorted the crowd to march on the Capitol, before it was attacked by a violent mob.
In her daughter Kylie Kremer’s permit request, Women for America First listed Rudy Giuliani as a likely speaker at the rally, along with elected officials. The request also noted that it was not organizing an official march to the Capitol but some participants “may leave to attend rallies at the Capitol” around the Electoral College vote on the afternoon of January 6.
As described by the House managers of the second impeachment trial of Trump, it was at the Women for America First event that Trump told the crowd:
"We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore” before urging them to go to the Capitol. He also said ‘We will not let them silence your voices. We're not going to let it happen, I'm not going to let it happen.’”
He used the Women for America First platform to inflame and incite the crowd, claiming:
“States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people… But this year, using the pretext of the China virus and the scam of mail-in ballots, Democrats attempted the most brazen and outrageous election theft and there's never been anything like this. So pure theft in American history. Everybody knows it.”
He also repeated other lies, like:
“We won in a landslide… [We]'re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
The Women for America First rally, which includes signs saying “SAVE AMERICA,” is also the event where earlier Giuliani, Trump’s most prominent lawyer trying to stop the count, implored the crowd to engage in “trial by combat.” Kimberly Guilfoyle shouted: “We will not allow the liberals and the Democrats steal our dream or steal our elections.” Donald Trump, Jr., also urged the crowd to fight and they responded with the chant: “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!”
According to ProPublica, Amy and Kylie Kremer said they worked behind the scenes to keep Alex Jones and Ali Alexander, the organizers of the January 6 Stop the Steal rally near the Capitol, off the stage of the Women for America First/SAVE AMERICA event where Trump was speaking. The night before January 6th, Jones and Alexander gave speeches at an event that included Alexander shouting “Victory or Death!” Trump reportedly wanted to make sure both venues at each end of Pennsylvania Avenue were happening on January 6th. And, as Women for America First noted in its application, the crowd would be moving toward the Capitol for the Joint Session of Congress, just as Trump and other speakers at the SAVE AMERICA event urged.
Earlier this year, Trump was impeached by the House, a second time, based in part on his statements at the Women for America First/SAVE AMERICA event. A majority of U.S. Senators voted to convict Trump, although the Senate trial ran short of the number of votes needed for a super-majority vote in favor of convicting him.
Key Timeline Re: Rep. Lauren Boebert’s Tweet that Speaker Pelosi Had Been “Removed” from the House Chamber
On January 6th, freshman Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted that the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), had been “removed” from the chamber of the House as the violent mob swarmed the Capitol building. Critics excoriated Rep. Boebert for tweeting about the location of Speaker Pelosi,who is second in the presidential line of succession and was directly threatened by some of the insurrectionists. Many called for Boebert’s resignation as a result.
In response, Rep. Boebert asserted that she was just relaying what was already reported on C-SPAN. On Rep. Boebert’s behalf, her then-Communications Director Laura Carno (who is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum) said C-SPAN had “announced [Pelosi] had left the chamber” before Boebert’s tweet, and that the media and Democrats were “making it up.” Rep. Boebert herself asserted in a tweet that C-SPAN had “broadcasted it first.”
However, a review of the livestream of C-SPAN as well as other traditional and social media coverage that day appears to demonstrate that Boebert was the first person to announce to the public that Speaker Pelosi had been “removed” from the Chamber as it was being swarmed by rioters. (For the full set of Rep. Boebert’s election tweets, read the social media report by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) has also requested an investigation of Rep. Boebert and others.)
Here is a review of the relevant time-frame on January 6 (all times Eastern and are based on the Congressional Record, the live stream from C-SPAN, and other eyewitness news):
1:00pm Speaker Nancy Pelosi gavels the joint session of Congress to count the Electoral College votes.
1:10pm Trump ends his speech at the Women for America First “SAVE AMERICA” event on the ellipse by the White House after multiple calls to go to the Capitol. Many head to the Capitol.
1:20pm Speaker Pelosi gavels open the House session on objections to counting the Electoral College ballots. Impassioned arguments about the certified ballots from Arizona are made by Reps. Steve Scalise (R-LA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Jamie Raskin (D-MD). (The Senate is also hearing objections.)
1:50pm Metropolitan Police on-scene incident commander Robert Glover declares a riot, as Trump supporters attack officers and breach the security perimeters on the Capitol grounds.
1:55pm Rep. Boebert shouts throughout most of her remarks, calling the decision to allow Americans in Arizona ten more days for voter registration due to the Covid pandemic “indefensible.” She also yells that she was elected to represent Coloradoans and says “I have constituents outside this building right now.” She then screams that “every fraudulent vote cancelled out the vote of an honest American.” She yields the remainder of her time to Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL). (Earlier in the day she had tweeted simply “1776” — the year of the Revolutionary War.)
1:59pm Capitol Police Chief Sund receives the first reports that rioters had reached the Capitol's doors and windows and were trying to break in.
2:00pm Over the next 14 minutes, Speaker Pelosi recognizes or calls on Reps. Joe Neguse (D-CO), Mike Johnson (R-LA), and Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who also give passionate statements.
2:13pm Meanwhile, the President of the Senate, Charles Grassley (R-IA), gavels the Senate into recess due to the danger in the Capitol as Sen. Jim Lankford (R-OK) is speaking. Around that same time, as the public later learns, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman was luring a menacing mob of insurrectionists away from the hallway to the Senate chambers which was full of Senators.
2:14pm Speaker Pelosi recognizes Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ). (Through this point in the timeline, from Speaker Pelosi’s opening gavel an hour earlier, there was no break in coverage from C-SPAN, which was live streaming video of the remarks in the House uninterrupted.)
2:14pm Separate from C-SPAN, MSNBC announces live that the Secret Service ushered Vice President Pence and Senator Grassley (R-IA) out of the Senate chamber, but it made no mention of Speaker Pelosi’s whereabouts.
2:16pm On C-SPAN, Rep. Gosar looks up from his remarks to address “Madam Speaker” due to noise in the gallery above the House chamber and realizes that Speaker Pelosi no longer has the gavel, though this is not visible on the live stream. Slightly after 2:16pm, Rep. Gosar corrects himself and requests that “Mr. Speaker” (Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)) bring order to the Chamber. When the live stream from the camera filming the front of the House is shown, Speaker Pelosi is not visible in the rostrum at the front of the chamber. However, the full House chamber cannot be seen on C-SPAN and so there is no way for viewers to know if she is elsewhere on the floor or not.
2:16pm Federal Protective Service officers relay internally that the House and Senate chambers are being locked down to be protected from the rioters who are swarming the Capitol.
2:17pm Rep. Boebert tweets “We were locked in the House Chambers.” (That is, she was not back in her office in the Longworth Building watching what was happening on the floor of the chamber on C-SPAN; Boebert was still in there, where she had spoken just minutes earlier as part of the lead efforts to blockthe counting of Arizona’s votes.) C-SPAN’s live stream broadcasts only the front of the chamber where Rep. McGovern is presiding and other Members are moving about. There is no film showing Speaker Pelosi being removed from the chambers. Rep. McGovern did not announce that the Members were locked in the Chambers and no press reported that was happening at that time.
2:18pm Rep. Boebert tweets “The Speaker has been removed from the Chambers.” C-SPAN has not broadcast any “removal” of Speaker Pelosi or mentioned her at all in this period. (Boebert did not tweet about any other Member’s whereabouts, that is where they could be found or could not be.)
2:18pm Rep. McGovern gavels the House into recess. Shortly thereafter, “‘There was a call for people to start preparing their gas masks because they're deploying tear gas to keep these people at bay,’ said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ).” For the next nearly 20 minutes, House Members and staff sheltered on the floor within the House chamber and gallery, with many in fear for their lives. Security officers barricaded the doors and stood ready with guns aimed at the internal doors.
2:18pm Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg tweets that Vice President Pence was escorted out of the Senate, but makes no mention of Speaker Pelosi.
2:22pm C-SPAN reports that other media is saying “the Vice President has left.”
2:23pm OAN retweets “Where’s Mike Pence?” and does not mention Speaker Pelosi.
2:24pm As TV stations show rioters breaking into the Capitol and attacking police, Trump tweets: "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” (Trump also later said: “I mean, personally, what I wanted was what they wanted.”)
2:35pm MSNBC announces that Vice President Pence and Sen. Grassley have been taken to a secure location but does not mention Speaker Pelosi.
2:37pm CQ Roll Call Senior Reporter Niels Lesniewski says live on C-SPAN that those in the presidential line of succession were shuffled away. He also states he does not want to say more because it could be dangerous for them.
2:40pm Fox News announces live that the entire house floor is being evacuated, but does not mention Speaker Pelosi. Rep. Gallego took a photo of the barricaded door in the hall of the Speaker’s Lobby, with a crowd amassed outside it.
2:44pm Ashli Babbitt is shot trying to fling herself through a broken window in the door to the Speaker’s Lobby. In other parts of the Capitol, rioters were caught on tape taunting “Where’s Nancy?” Meanwhile, some of Speaker Pelosi’s staff were barricaded within the Speaker’s suite of offices as rioters broke into the Speaker’s personal office and searched for her, along with rifling through documents and her possessions, as she detailed in her interview on 60 Minutes.
Accordingly, the available evidence suggests that it was Rep. Boebert who first alerted people that Speaker Pelosi had been “removed” from the House Chamber as of 2:18pm.
There is no record that C-SPAN ever announced prior to 2:18pm that Speaker Pelosi had been removed from the Chamber, and we can find no other news outlet that reported it contemporaneously. In addition, Boebert was locked in the Chamber at that time, and was not in her office in the Longworth Building watching the floor on C-SPAN. Additionally, C-SPAN watchers at home could only see that Speaker Pelosi was not in the rostrum shortly after 2:16pm, not whether she was in another part of the chamber conferring with other Members and not if she had left or been “removed” from the House chamber as Rep. Boebert tweeted to the public following her tweets.
Accordingly, we award four out of four Benedict Arnolds of falseness to Rep. Boebert’s claim that she was not the first to announce that the Speaker had been “removed” from the House chamber along with her claim that C-SPAN had told viewers Speaker Pelosi had been removed from the House chamber.
The Independent Women’s Forum Has Lauded Rep. Boebert, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Others Who Sought to Block the Electoral College Vote
The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), a pay-to-play group that got its start defending Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court and that spent big aiding Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination despite the evidence women presented against them, has recently been praising several of the Members of Congress who voted to block the counting of the Electoral College votes in January. IWF released a statement condemning the January 6th riot that also argued that concerns about the election of Joe Biden are legitimate and that Republicans are being treated unfairly.
IWF has praised numerous elected officials as part of their PR campaign called “Champion Women,” several of whom challenged the results of the 2020 election:
Rep. Lauren Boebert was profiled December 2020 and included in IWF’s celebratory March 2021 video about Members of Congress who are Champion Women;
Rep. Lisa McClain was featured on IWF’s “She Thinks” podcast in March 2021;
Rep. Claudia Tenney was featured on IWF’s She Thinks podcast on “the importance of election security” in May 2021 (she co-founded House election integrity caucus, but was not confirmed to her seat in time to vote on election results);
Sen. Cynthia Lummis was interviewed on IWV’s YouTube in July 2021 on immigration and energy, and profiled in April 2021;
Rep. Yvette Herrell profiled in February 2021;
Rep. Malliotakis profiled in March 2021;
Rep. Kat Cammack profiled in February 2021;
Rep. Beth Van Duyne profiled in January 16, 2021;
Rep. Carol Miller profiled in June 2020;
Sen. Hyde-Smith profiled in 2020;
Rep. Walorski was featured on a Facebook Live discussion with IWF’s leader, Carrie Lukas, in April 2021; and
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was listed in IWF’s video on “Champion Women.”
Additionally, IWF fellow Ashley MacLeay (who is now on the RNC’s “Committee on Election Integrity”) helped to organize a “Stop the Steal” march in Washington D.C after the election in November. She described the goal of that march as “want[ing] to confront antifa and hopefully...at the end of the day keep their current president in office.”
IWF and its sister group, the Independent Women’s Voice (IWV), also threw doubt onto the integrity of the 2020 election in media appearances leading up to and immediately following it. For example:
At the end of September 2020, IWF Senior Policy Analyst Kelsey Bolar argued that “any reasonable American would be concerned” with voter fraud, because “you have mass mail-in voting that opens the door” for it, and asked “why this is not a top concern for [Democrats]?”
On November 4th, then-IWV President Tammy Bruce argued that the election system “failed Americans” and claimed that Trump had massive leads in states not being called. She accused the establishment of lying and cheating. A day later Bruce insinuated that Democrats were stealing votes because they were the ones doing most of the counting and called on Trump to do “everything in his power…[to make this] a fair and free election.”
On November 12th, IWF Fellows Heather Madden and Michelle Vogt published a video on IWF’s YouTube channel arguing that “election integrity is critical'' and contending that vote by mail increases the risk of fraud, as do out of date voter rolls. They called for “count[ing] every legitimate ballot” which they asserted may take time.
Tammy Bruce argued that “Even when we have decisions that we don’t like and are very dangerous, we must continue to speak up and not just say ‘oh well, that’s the way it is now’ because there is always more we can do. The American people always know there is something we can do. We are revolutionaries at heart. It is in our DNA and it’s never gonna stop.”
IWF/V has also opposed changes to our voting system that would make elections more democratic, such as electing the president based on the popular vote. It also defended Trump as not a threat to democracy leading up to the 2020 election. And, among other things, it opposes HR1, the For the People Act, which protects vote by mail and would require disclosure of the sources of funding for dark money groups that run ads near elections.
Notably, IWV purchased more than $800K in independent expenditures around the recent elections. This outside spending included nearly $500,000 favoring the incumbent GOP Senators from Georgia who ultimately lost their seats on January 5:
Sen. Loeffler: $250K (initially opposed certification but changed position on Jan. 6)
Sen. Perdue: $250K (initially opposed certification; supported lawsuit to overturn)
IWV also made six-figure expenditures favoring Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Joni Ernst (R-IA), who on January 6 voted in favor of counting the Electoral College votes.
The Shot
The Chaser
Here is one thing you can do this week to help advance the common good: call 1-888-453-3211 to tell your Senator to pass the For the People Act. That patch-through call is made possible by Stacey Abrams’ organizing group, Fair Fight Action.
Your Senators need to hear from you again and again to protect our democracy from dark money and right-wing efforts urged by Trump to restrict our freedom to vote.
After I call again, I am going to reward myself with a tall glass of iced tea and the best version, in my view, of the song “Summertime,” and I hope you will do the same!