A new report claims that groups who are backing the so-called "Freedom Convoy" that was scheduled to leave from California on Wednesday include a political action committee that has focused on defending Florida GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz, as well as a group led by former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn.
"Though it was billed as a grass-roots, nonpartisan event intended to oppose government Covid-19 mandates, a trucker demonstration that left California for Washington, D.C., on Wednesday appeared to be tightly aligned with far-right organizations and activists," the New York Times reports. "Many of those behind the demonstration, which was planned as an American version of last month’s chaotic Canadian protest, have connections to the violent attack on the Capitol in January 2021, or supported the lie that fraud in the 2020 presidential election was to blame for Donald J. Trump’s loss."
About 40 truckers reportedly gathered for the kickoff of the convoy Adelanto, Calif., on Wednesday.
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"A flag-strewn send-off rally that resembled a Make America Great Again event drew about a hundred more vehicles," the NYT reports. "Unlike in Ottawa, where a recent weekslong protest shut down parts of Canada’s capital, the activity near Barstow, Calif., on Wednesday seemed highly staged, with memorabilia stands and food trucks."
Last month, the Great American Patriot Project PAC, which focused on defending Gaetz amid allegations that he sex-trafficked a minor, issued a call for people to support the convoy.
"Darrel Courtney, the chief executive of the Adelanto Stadium and Event Center, said he received a call last Tuesday from Leigh Dundas, an Orange County lawyer and Republican activist, who wanted to rent the parking lot," the NYT reports. "Ms. Dundas, a lawyer for an anti-vaccine group whose leader was charged with entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Ms. Dundas was videotaped the day before the riot rallying pro-Trump crowds with calls to kill any “alleged Americans” who might have helped undermine the 2020 elections."
Dundas told a crowd in DC on Jan. 5, “We would be well within our rights to take any alleged American who acted in a turncoat fashion and sold us out and committed treason — we would be well within our right to take them out back and shoot them or hang them."
Other organizations supporting the convoy include those led by anti-vaxx leader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Flynn.
"That latter group, the America Project, has combined its attempts to challenge Covid-19 policies with the relentless promotion of pro-Trump election conspiracy theories," the NYT reports. "The group is run by Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com who, with General Flynn, was central in a bizarre plot to persuade the former president to use the military to seize voting machines in a bid to stay in power."
