Katrina Pierson, who used to work for Donald Trump’s campaign and was one of the people who planned the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, said that Trump wanted Alex Jones and Ali Alexander to speak at the event even though they raised “red flags.”
Rep. Stephanie Murphy, who is on the House select committee looking into the Capitol riot, showed a video of Pierson’s testimony to the committee on Tuesday. In it, Pierson said that Trump likes “crazies” like Jones and Alexander.
Murphy said that Pierson had become “increasingly worried” about the speakers who were going to be at the rally. He pointed out that Jones, the host of Infowars and a conspiracy theorist, and Alexander, another organizer of the “Stop the Steal” rally, were two of the people who worried Pierson the most.
Murphy showed a log of text messages between Pierson and a pro-Trump activist named Kylie Kremer. The messages were sent on December 30, about a week before the riot.
Kremer said in the message thread that Pierson should “let the crazy people be crazy” because “you can’t do anything about them.”
Pierson wrote back that “he likes the crazies,” which is why the organizers of the rally had to “try to work with everyone.” Murphy then played a tape of Pierson’s deposition, where he was asked if the phrase “he likes the crazies” was about Trump.
“Yes, I was talking about Trump as president. He liked it when people fought hard for him in public “Pierson said.
During the hearing, Murphy talked about how Pierson’s worries about Alexander and Jones being at the rally led her to talk to Mark Meadows, who was chief of staff at the White House at the time. She told the panel that some of the “entities coming in” to the event were “very suspect.” Pierson also said that she told investigators she had tried to warn people about Jones and Alexander when she saw “red flags.”
Alexander and Jones were not on the final list of people who were going to speak at the Ellipse rally. But both men have been asked to talk about the riot in front of a House panel.
Insider asked Jones’s and Alexander’s lawyers and Trump’s post-presidential office for a comment, but they didn’t get back to us right away.
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