Damage Control? Unnamed Sources Step Up to Claim Guilfoyle’s $60k Didn’t Come From Retirees, Small Trump Donors
Amid a blistering wave of criticism, unnamed sources have stepped forward to claim that Kimberly Guilfoyle’s $60,000.00 fee for a minutes-long appearance at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally was paid by a single wealthy donor.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren of the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol made waves Monday when she revealed to CNN’s Jake Tapper that Guilfoyle was paid “$60,000 for two and a half minutes” of introduction at former President Donald Trump‘s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021.
And on Tuesday morning, New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman dished to CNN that “People in Trumpworld are sharing that clip.”
“They are aghast that this is the amount of money that she got for a speech to introduce her boyfriend. They couldn’t really get over, I had one former adviser say to me, essentially, these were folks who were raising money in small amounts from retirees, telling them this was going to some legal fight that didn’t really happen,” Haberman said.
By Tuesday night, two sources told The Washington Post‘s Isaac Stanley-Becker and Beth Reinhard that the fee — funneled through Turning Point Action — was paid by a single wealthy donor:
For her appearance, she was compensated $60,000 by Turning Point Action, a conservative nonprofit led by Charlie Kirk, according to two people with knowledge of her compensation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The two people said the sponsoring donor was Julie Fancelli, the 72-year-old daughter of the founder of the Publix grocery store chain.
Eight days before the Jan. 6 rally, Fancelli wired $650,000 to several organizations that helped stage and promote the event.
The January 6 committee also revealed at a hearing on Monday that Trump raised over $250 million — using emails that promoted Trump’s lies about election fraud — for a so-called “official election defense fund” that the committee showed did not exist.
