In what’s sure to be another damaging blow to Republican politicians with ties to the January 6 riot following Donald Trump‘s “Stop The Steal” rally, two rising stars in the MAGA world have revealed that they are cooperating with Congress and telling everything they know about the events leading up to the attacks. The couple, Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence, have ties to Steve Bannon going all the way back to 2014, and that’s how they found themselves heavily involved in the “Big Lie” movement following the 2020 presidential election.
Via Rolling Stone:
“The people and the history books deserve a real account of what happened,” Stockton explains. Lawrence puts it more bluntly: “Violent shit happened,” she says. “We want to get to the bottom of that.”
In a lengthy interview with Rolling Stone, the two reveal that they were involved in Bannon’s “We Build The Wall” political group that ended up bilking MAGA supporters and resulted in Bannon getting arrested by USPS officers. While Bannon ultimately secured a pardon from Trump, Stockton and Lawrence believed they were exposed legally even though they had not faced any charges yet.
Those circumstances put them on the radar of Republican Paul Gosar, who allegedly dangled pardons in front of the couple in exchange for their efforts in protesting the election results and helping to organize the “Stop the Steal” really. While Stockton and Lawrence did attend the Jan. 6 event, they fled as soon as they realized that Trump had none of the evidence that he boasted and that things were about to get violent:
Stockton claims he was so upset by the speech that he turned to Lawrence and said, “Let’s get the f*ck out of here.” He was incensed by both Trump’s call to march and the lack of concrete evidence that was presented onstage.
“We assumed that him sitting with all the access to all the agencies of government and classified information he … had access to vastly more information than we did,” Stockton says. “We trusted when he told us that it was black-and-white and that there was clear evidence over, and over, and over again. We trusted that it would be there, and it ended up being a bluff, and he finally got caught in it.”
Rolling Stone has been able to confirm that the couple did not participate in the attack on the Capitol. Disgusted by Trump’s refusal to quell the violence, they are now fully cooperating with the Jan. 6 committee to make sure the truth is told “on both sides.” Despite everything that happened, Stockton and Lawrence are still fans of Trump’s message, and while they don’t believe the actual election was rigged, they do think that “Big Tech” and the media colluded to help Joe Biden win.
(Via Rolling Stone)