Anyone who has ever watched The Wire (and, side note: if you haven’t, you should) knows that you only use a burner phone when you’re up to some no-good shenanigans and want to eliminate any possible trail of your shady-ass activities linking back to you. While the folks who stormed the Capitol on January 6th didn’t seem to be nearly as organized as the Barksdale Organization, it appears they took a hint from Stringer Bell when they planned out how the organizers of the day’s events would communicate with White House higher-ups.
According to a new report in Rolling Stone, which was confirmed by three different sources who worked with the March for Trump group, say that the group’s leader had three burner phones purchases—one of which she kept for herself—to speak with White House staffers and members of Trump’s inner circle (including family members) while planning for the events of January 6th.
As Hunter Walker writes for Rolling Stone:
Kylie Kremer, a top official in the “March for Trump” group that helped plan the Ellipse rally, directed an aide to pick up three burner phones days before Jan. 6, according to three sources who were involved in the event. One of the sources, a member of the “March for Trump” team, says Kremer insisted the phones be purchased using cash and described this as being “of the utmost importance.”
The three sources said Kylie Kremer took one of the phones and used it to communicate with top White House and Trump campaign officials, including Eric Trump, the president’s second-oldest son, who leads the family’s real-estate business; Lara Trump, Eric’s wife and a former senior Trump campaign consultant; Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; and Katrina Pierson, a Trump surrogate and campaign consultant.
While Kylie had one of the phones and her mother/fellow organizer, Amy Kremer, kept another, it is not yet known who received the third phone.
A March for Trump team member, whose claims were confirmed by two others, said that Kylie “said she needed burner phones in order to communicate with high-level people” and that “any conversation she had with the White House or Trump family took place on those phones.” No one on Team Trump—including Trump himself, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, or his family members—responded to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
Rolling Stone was able to review some of the Kremers’ group messages and other communications, and did not find evidence of planning for any sort of violence, though Walker writes that:
There could still be some evidence of direct communications between Kylie Kremer and the White House in more traditional phone records. The team member says that there were rare exceptions in which Kylie Kremer used her regular phone to communicate with Trump officials. “She talked with Mark Meadows on her personal phone once, but mainly on the burner phone,” the team member says.
But the conversations on those phones were not just limited to the MAGA riots of January 6th. One source recalled that around December 2020, just as the “March for Trump” tour began its journey in Las Vegas, the group stayed at the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, which is co-owned and managed by Trump’s former real estate company. When the group asked to park their bus—which was decked out with ginormous pictures of the then-president and divisive messaging about the 2020 presidential election results—in front of the property, hotel management said no… unless they could get a Trump family member to approve it. Photos from that event show the bus parked front and center, with the Rolling Stone source noting that “Amy and Kylie got Eric and Lara on the phone right away.”
(Via Rolling Stone)