A nonprofit organization that supports people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is hosting a legal fundraiser for the 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 scheduled for Sept. 5 at the golf club, according to an online announcement, with tickets costing up to $50,000 for a table of 12. The money is being raised to pay the legal fees of those facing charges for their roles on Jan. 6, when a mob stormed the Capitol to protest Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
Although Trump is listed in the announcement as an “invited guest speaker,” Trump does not plan to attend the event, according to a person familiar with his plans. Trump’s former attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is also listed as an invited speaker, but a representative for Giuliani did not respond to a request for confirmation.
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Regardless of whether Trump attends, it’s an unusual — and potentially risky — move to host a party in support of those who stormed the Capitol at one of his most recognizable properties as his presidential campaign ramps up for the final few months.
Trump himself faces multiple conspiracy charges in connection with the events of January 6. On the same day that the group holds its Bedminster fundraiser, a hearing will be held in U.S. District Court in Washington to determine how the recent Supreme Court ruling granting him broad executive immunity should impact Trump’s case.
Democrats have repeatedly made the Capitol siege a central focus of their attacks on Trump. At their convention in Chicago on Wednesday night, they played an extended video montage of violent footage of the attack, overlaid with clips of Trump’s incendiary Jan. 6 speech in which he urged the crowd to “fight like hell.”
Yet Trump has not shied away from embracing the events of January 6 or the supporters who participated in them. He has appeared with some of the suspects at private events on his properties. He has frequently referred to them as “hostages” and “political prisoners.” And he has opened campaign events with a recording of some of the suspects singing the national anthem from their cells.
He has also promised to pardon those charged in connection with the January 6 incident, including those who attacked officers that day.
The Stand in the Gap Foundation is run by Sarah McAbee, according to the organization’s website. According to a person familiar with the group, McAbee is the wife of Ronald Colton McAbee, a former Tennessee sheriff’s deputy who is serving five years in prison on charges he took part in what prosecutors called a “sustained, multiple-assault attack on police officers” at the Capitol.
McAbee founded the organization with another defendant, Shane Jenkins, a Texas man who on January 6 is serving a seven-year prison sentence for smashing a Capitol window with a tomahawk and then pelting officers defending the building with a wooden desk drawer, a flagpole, a metal walking stick and a broken wooden baton.
Prosecutors said in the days that followed, Jenkins texted an aide saying he was “not over this election,” adding, “I have murder in my heart and mind.”
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