Some Trump supporters are reportedly outraged that Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle apparently paid $60,000 for a speech that lasted just three minutes during the rally leading up to the Capitol uprising on January 6, 2021.
On Tuesday, January 6, committee member Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, told CNN that “people were being ripped off by the former president. They were defrauded into believing that the election had been stolen and that they should go to the Capitol as the president had asked them to do.”
“They got scammed – I think the average donation from those fake email requests was about $17. These were people who weren’t rich people,” she added. “They were ripped off by the president. It was a big lie and it was also a big scam.”
“We know that Guilfoyle was paid for the introduction she gave during the January 6 speech. She was paid for that,” Ms Lofgren said. “I’m not saying it’s a crime, but I think it’s a scam.”
Ms. Lofgren said Ms. Guilfoyle received “$60,000 for two and a half minutes” in funds raised with donations from Trump supporters who believed the money would be used to challenge President Joe Biden’s election victory in court. .
“You had money to [Trump Chief of Staff] Mark Meadows’ foundation and to another foundation that hired the Trump supporters who lost their jobs,” Ms Lofgren said. “So it wasn’t what he said to his backers, this is to defend the election. It was a very different goal. I think that was deceptive and incorrect.”
“People in Trumpworld are sharing that clip. They are stunned that this is the amount she got for a speech to introduce her boyfriend.” New York Times Reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN on Tuesday.
Haberman said a former Trump adviser said “these were people who were raising money in small amounts from retirees and telling them this was going to be a legal battle that didn’t actually happen and instead Kimberly Guilfoyle was being paid.”
Haberman said this is how Trump’s “ecosystem” works.
“There’s a certain level of this that happens a lot around Trump and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone,” she said.
Donald Trump’s Save America PAC brought in nine figures last year, says Philip Bump of The Washington Post noted. “It raised tens of millions of dollars well after there was a case for a legal battle against the election results.”
“The last legal battle ended at the end of 2020, but he is still raising tens of millions of dollars from people,” he added. “So it looks like a lot of this money… is showing support for Donald Trump, which is something, I looked, yesterday he sent 1,700 emails, right. This is something that’s been going on for a long time. It’s totally unrelated to the election results themselves.”
