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March 15, 2023
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Editor’s note: This story includes graphic descriptions of injuries, and one graphic image taken from inside a classroom. We are not publishing images of injured or deceased victims.
UVALDE — The gunman had an AR-15, a rifle design used by U.S. soldiers in every conflict since Vietnam. Its bullets flew toward the officers at three times the speed of sound and could have pierced their body armor like a hole punch through paper. They grazed two officers in the head, and the group retreated.
Uvalde Police Department Sgt. Daniel Coronado stepped outside, breathing heavily, and got on his radio to warn the others.
“I have a male subject with an AR,” Coronado said.
The dispatch crackled on the radio of another officer on the opposite side of the building.
“Fuck,” that officer said.
“AR,” another exclaimed, alerting others nearby.
Almost a year after Texas’ deadliest school shooting killed 19 children and two teachers, there is still confusion among investigators, law enforcement leaders and politicians over how nearly 400 law enforcement officers could have performed so poorly. People have blamed cowardice or poor leadership or a lack of sufficient training for why police waited more than an hour to breach the classroom and subdue an amateur 18-year-old adversary.
But in their own words, during and after their botched response, the officers pointed to another reason: They were unwilling to confront the rifle on the other side of the door.
A Texas Tribune investigation, based on police body cameras, emergency communications and interviews with investigators that have not been made public, found officers had concluded that immediately confronting the gunman would be too dangerous. Even though some officers were armed with the same rifle, they opted to wait for the arrival of a Border Patrol SWAT team, with more protective body armor, stronger shields and more tactical training — even though the unit was based more than 60 miles away.
“You knew that it was definitely an AR,” Uvalde Police Department Sgt. Donald Page said in an interview with investigators after the school shooting. “There was no way of going in. … We had no choice but to wait and try to get something that had better coverage where we could actually stand up to him.”
“We weren’t equipped to make entry into that room without several casualties,” Uvalde Police Department Detective Louis Landry said in a separate investigative interview. He added, “Once we found out it was a rifle he was using, it was a different game plan we would have had to come up with. It wasn’t just going in guns blazing, the Old West style, and take him out.”
Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was fired in August after state officials cast him as the incident commander and blamed him for the delay in confronting the gunman, told investigators the day after the shooting he chose to focus on evacuating the school over breaching the classroom because of the type of firearm the gunman used.
“We’re gonna get scrutinized (for) why we didn’t go in there,” Arredondo said. “I know the firepower he had, based on what shells I saw, the holes in the wall in the room next to his. … The preservation of life, everything around (the gunman), was a priority.”
None of the officers quoted in this story agreed to be interviewed by the Tribune.
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The gunman's AR-15 style rifle lays in a supply closet of Room 111 at Robb Elementary School. Credit: Law enforcement photo
That hesitation to confront the gun allowed the gunman to terrorize students and teachers in two classrooms for more than an hour without interference from police. It delayed medical care for more than two dozen gunshot victims, including three who were still alive when the Border Patrol team finally ended the shooting but who later died.
Mass shooting protocols adopted by law enforcement nationwide call on officers to stop the attacker as soon as possible. But police in other mass shootings — including at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida — also hesitated to confront gunmen armed with AR-15-style rifles.
Even if the law enforcement response had been flawless and police had immediately stopped the gunman, the death toll in Uvalde still would have been significant. Investigators concluded most victims were killed in the minutes before police arrived.
But in the aftermath of the shooting, there has been little grappling with the role the gun played. Texas Republicans, who control every lever of state government, have talked about school safety, mental health and police training — but not gun control.
A comprehensive and scathing report of law enforcement’s response to the shooting, released by a Texas House investigative committee chaired by Republican Rep. Dustin Burrows in July, made no mention of the comments by law enforcement officers in interviews that illustrated trepidation about the AR-15.
Other lawmakers have taken the position that the kind of weapon used in the attack made no difference.
“This man had enough time to do it with his hands or a baseball bat, and so it’s not the gun. It’s the person,” Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, said in a hearing a month after the shooting.
Republican state and legislative leaders, who are in the midst of the first legislative session since the shooting, are resisting calls for gun restrictions, like raising the age to purchase semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has suggested such a law would be unconstitutional, while House Speaker Dade Phelan said he doubts his chamber would support it.
Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and four Republican members of the Legislature — Phelan, Hall, Burrows and Rep. Ryan Guillen, chair of the House committee that will hear all gun-related proposals, declined to discuss the findings of this story or did not respond. Two gun advocacy groups, Texas Gun Rights and the Texas State Rifle Association, also did not respond.
Limiting access to these kinds of rifles may not decrease the frequency of mass shootings, which plagued the country before the rifle became popular among gun owners. During the decade that the federal assault weapons ban was in place, beginning in 1994, the number of mass shootings was roughly the same as in the decade prior, according to a mass shooting database maintained by Mother Jones. It also would not address the root causes that motivate mass shooters, merely limit the lethality of the tools at their disposal.
Relatives of Uvalde victims, like Jesse Rizo, whose 9-year-old niece Jackie Cazares was killed in the shooting, say the comments by police who responded in Uvalde are undeniable proof that rifles like the AR-15 should be strictly regulated.
“(Police) knew the monster behind the door was not the kid. It’s the rifle the kid is holding,” said Rizo, referring to the 18-year-old gunman. “It’s the freaking AR that they’re afraid of. … Their training doesn’t say sit back and wait.”
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Jesse Rizo, the uncle of Robb Elementary victim Jackie Cazares, 9, said that the police “knew the monster behind the door was not the kid. It’s the rifle the kid is holding.” Credit: Evan L'Roy/The Texas Tribune
A weapon of war
Officers arriving at Robb Elementary on May 24 had similar reactions as they realized that the gunman had an AR-15.
“You know what kind of gun?” state Trooper Richard Bogdanski asked in a conversation captured on his body-camera footage outside of the school.
“AR. He has a battle rifle,” a voice responded.
“Does he really?” another asked.
“What’s the safest way to do this? I’m not trying to get clapped out,” Bogdanski said.
They had good reason to worry: The AR-15 was designed to efficiently kill humans.
ArmaLite, a small gunmaker in California, designed the AR-15 in the late 1950s as a next-generation military rifle. Compared with the U.S. Army’s infantry rifle at the time, the AR-15 was less heavy, had a shorter barrel and used lighter ammunition, allowing soldiers to carry more on the battlefield. It also fired a smaller-caliber bullet but compensated for it by increasing the speed at which it is propelled from the barrel.
A declassified 1962 Department of Defense report from the Vietnam War found the AR-15 would be ideal for use by South Vietnamese soldiers, who were smaller in stature and had less training than their American counterparts, for five reasons: its easy maintenance, accuracy, rapid rate of fire, light weight and “excellent killing or stopping power.”
“The lethality of the AR-15 and its reliability record were particularly impressive,” the authors reported.
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A rifle cartridge identical to the ammunition used in the Robb Elementary shooting. Credit: Photo illustration by Evan L'Roy/The Texas Tribune
Its bullets could also penetrate the body armor worn by the initial responding officers to Robb Elementary, an added level of danger they were aware of. While most departments, including the city of Uvalde’s, have rifle-rated body armor, it is not typically worn by officers on patrol because of its added weight.
“Had anybody gone through that door, he would have killed whoever it was,” Uvalde Police Department Lt. Javier Martinez told investigators the day after the shooting. You “can only carry so many ballistic vests on you. That .223 (caliber) round would have gone right through you.”
Coronado echoed the concern in his own interviews with investigators about the moment he realized the gunman had a battle rifle.
“I knew too it wasn’t a pistol. ... I was like, ‘Shit, it’s a rifle,’” he said. He added, “The way he was shooting, he was probably going to take all of us out.”
The AR-15 is less powerful than many rifles, such as those used to hunt deer or other large game. But it has significantly more power than handguns, firing a bullet that has nearly three times the energy of the larger round common in police pistols.
The AR-15 also causes more damage to the human body. Handgun bullets typically travel through the body in a straight line, according to a 2016 study published by The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. High-energy bullets become unstable as they decelerate in flesh, twisting and turning as they damage a wider swath of tissue. This creates “not only a permanent cavity the size of the caliber of the bullet, but also a … second cavity often many times larger than the bullet itself.”
The Defense Department report detailed this effect in plainer language, describing the AR-15’s performance in a firefight with Viet Cong at a range of 50 meters: “One man was shot in the head; it looked like it exploded. A second man was hit in the chest; his back was one big hole.”
The Defense Department placed its first mass order for the rifle in 1963, calling its version the M16, and based each of its service rifles until 2022 on this design. The only significant difference between the military and civilian versions of the AR-15 is that the military rifle can fire automatically, meaning the user can depress the trigger to shoot multiple rounds. The civilian AR-15 is semi-automatic, requiring a trigger pull for each round.
In the context of mass shootings, it is a distinction without a meaningful difference: Both rates of fire can kill a roomful of people in seconds.
That’s what happened in Uvalde.
In two and a half minutes, before any police officer set foot inside the school, the gunman fired more than 100 rounds at students and teachers from point-blank range. Several victims lost large portions of their heads, photos taken by investigators show. Bullets tore gashes in flesh as long as a foot. They shattered a child’s shin, nearly severed another’s arm at the elbow, ripped open another’s neck, blasted a hole the size of a baseball in another’s hip. Other rounds penetrated the wall of Room 111, passed through the empty Room 110, punctured another wall and wounded a student and teacher in Room 109, who survived.
When medics finally reached the victims, there was nothing they could do for most, they said in interviews with investigators. Eighteen of the 21 were pronounced dead at the school. Police assigned each a letter of the alphabet and took DNA samples so they could be identified by family.
Rifle popularity surges
Ruben Torres, who saw what the rifle can do in combat while serving as a Marine infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan, never imagined someone would use it to try and kill his daughter, Khloie, who was wounded by bullet fragments at Robb Elementary.
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Ruben Torres, whose daughter, Khloie, was wounded in the Robb Elementary shooting, served as a Marine infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has no objection to civilians owning AR-15s but thinks they should be required to complete training like soldiers do. Credit: Evan L'Roy/The Texas Tribune
The Corps spends so much time drilling firearm safety into Marines that Torres can recite the rules from memory. Even now, he has no objection to civilians owning AR-15s, but he thinks they should be required to complete training like soldiers because too many who buy one treat it like a toy.
“You get people that never served in the military or law enforcement, and yet they’re wannabes,” Torres said. “They purchase this weapons system, not having a clue how to use it, the type of power and the level of maturity needed to even operate it.”
It was customers seeking a military experience who helped spur the rifle’s surge in popularity over the past 15 years, gun industry researchers say. Civilians have been able to buy an AR-15 since the mid-1960s, but for decades it was a niche product whose largest customer segment included police SWAT units.
A federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004, creating a new opportunity to market rifles like the AR-15 to the general public, said Timothy Lytton, a professor at the Georgia State University College of Law who researches the gun industry.
“In the 2000s, there was a shift in the industry’s marketing to people who are not just looking for self-defense, but people who are also looking for some sort of tactical experience,” Lytton said. He said this new consumer wanted to “simulate military combat situations.”
Sales of the rifle exploded. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a prominent trade group, estimates American gunmakers produced 1.4 million semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 in 2015, excluding exports — a figure 10 times higher than a decade earlier. This group of semi-automatic rifles accounted for 89% of the rifles made by domestic manufacturers in 2020, according to government and industry data.
As it grew more popular with the public, the rifle also became more popular with mass shooters. AR-15-style rifles weren’t used in any mass shootings until 2007, according to the mass shooting database maintained by Mother Jones, which includes indiscriminate killings of at least three people in public places, excluding crimes that stem from robbery, gang activity or other conventionally explained motives.
Gunmen used the rifle in 5% of attacks that decade and 27% in the 2010s. 2022 cemented the AR-15 as the weapon of choice for mass shooters. They wielded the rifle in 67% of the 12 massacres that year, including a parade in Illinois where seven were slain and a supermarket shooting in New York that killed 10.
The death toll in Uvalde exceeded them both.
The gunman’s purchase
Little is known about what motivated the shooter in Uvalde or why he targeted the elementary school he once attended. But signs of planning, and a fixation on guns, stretched back months.
Beginning in late 2021, he began buying accessories: an electronic gun sight, rifle straps, shin guards, a vest with pockets to hold body armor and a hellfire trigger, which can be snapped onto semi-automatic weapons to allow near-automatic fire.
He faced a single significant obstacle to assembling an arsenal: Under Texas law, the minimum age to purchase long guns like rifles is 18. That hindrance vanished on May 16, 2022, his 18th birthday. He ordered an AR-15-style rifle from the website of Daniel Defense, a gunmaker that has pioneered marketing firearms via social media.
Its sleek Instagram videos often feature young men rapidly firing the company’s rifles, wearing outfits that resemble combat uniforms. Other posts feature members of the U.S. military. A lawsuit filed by Uvalde victims’ families against Daniel Defense alleges the gunmaker’s marketing intentionally targets vulnerable young men driven by military fantasies.
The company rejected these claims and cast the lawsuit as an attempt to bankrupt the gun industry.
“To imply that images portraying the heroic work of our soldiers risking their lives in combat inspires young men back home to shoot children is inexcusable,” then-CEO Marty Daniel said last year. The case is ongoing.
Federal law requires weapons purchased online to be picked up at a licensed dealer, which also performs a background check. The Uvalde gunman had no criminal history and had never been arrested, ensuring he would pass. He had the Daniel Defense rifle shipped to Oasis Outback, a gun store in town.
The gunman visited the store alone three times between May 17 and May 20. First, he purchased a Smith & Wesson AR-15-style rifle, then returned to buy 375 rounds of ammunition, then came back again to pick up the Daniel Defense rifle. Surveillance footage from the shop shows an employee placing the case on the counter and opening it. The gunman picked up the rifle, peered down the barrel and placed his finger on the trigger — a breach of a cardinal rule of gun safety, to never do so until you are ready to fire.
This video shows the person who was the shooter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Credit: Surveillance footage from Oasis Outback
Having trouble viewing? Watch this video on texastribune.org.
The gun store’s owner told investigators he was an average customer with no “red flags,” though patrons told FBI agents he was “very nervous looking” and “appeared odd and looked like one of those school shooters.”
An online order he’d placed for 1,740 rifle cartridges arrived at 6:09 p.m. on May 23. In the eight days after he became eligible to purchase firearms, he bought two AR-15-style rifles and 2,115 rounds of ammunition.
He had broken no laws. He had aroused no suspicion with authorities. And, like many mass shooters, he had given no public warning about his plan.
May 24, the day of the Uvalde shooting, was most likely the first time he had ever fired a gun, investigators concluded. To do so with an AR-15 is simple: Insert a loaded magazine, cock the rifle to force a cartridge into the firing chamber, slide the safety switch off and pull the trigger. Still, he initially struggled to attach the magazine correctly in the previous days, a relative recalled to investigators, and it kept falling to the floor.
He figured it out by the time he pointed one of the rifles at his grandmother and shot her in the face, amid a dispute about his cellphone plan. The bullet tore a gash in the right side of her face; she required a lengthy hospitalization but survived. He took only the Daniel Defense rifle to the school, leaving the Smith & Wesson at his grandmother’s truck, which he had stolen, driven three blocks and crashed on the west edge of the elementary campus.
When other officers hesitated
The 77-minute delay in breaching the fourth grade classroom was an “abject failure” that set the law enforcement profession back a decade, the Texas state police director said in June. Police had failed to follow protocol developed after the 1999 Columbine school shooting that states the first priority is to confront shooters and stop the killing. Yet even beyond Uvalde, the performance of police against active shooters with AR-15-style rifles — which were rarely used in mass shootings when the standards were developed — is inconsistent.
When a gunman began firing an AR-15-style rifle in 2016 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, an officer providing security waited six minutes for backup before pursuing the suspect into the club; he later said his handgun was “no match” for the shooter’s rifle.
Two years later, a sheriff’s deputy at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida did not confront the AR-15-wielding shooter there, either. Investigators said he instead retreated for four and a half minutes, during which the gunman shot 10 students and teachers, six fatally.
In some instances, police have confronted the rifle without hesitation. Officers killed a gunman who had fatally shot seven people in a 2019 shooting spree in Midland and Odessa. During the 2021 supermarket shooting in Boulder, Colorado, one of the 10 victims the gunman killed with his AR-15 was one of the first responding officers.
The extreme stress the body experiences in a gunfight slows critical thinking and motor skills, said Massad Ayoob, a police firearms trainer since the 1970s. Officers can overcome this with repeated training that is as realistic as possible, he said. Without it, they are more likely to freeze or retreat.
“Have you ever been in a firefight? Have you ever been in a situation where you were about to die?” said Kevin Lawrence, a law enforcement officer for 40 years and the executive director of the Texas Municipal Police Association. “None of us knows how we’re going to react to that circumstance until we’re in it.”
Improved training that reinforces the expectation that police immediately confront active shooters would improve the likelihood that they do so, said Jimmy Perdue, president of the Texas Police Chiefs Association. But because they attack at random locations and times, he said it is unrealistic to expect that all 800,000 law enforcement officers in the United States would be prepared. That rifles like the AR-15 are especially lethal, he acknowledged, adds an additional mental obstacle for officers.
“All we can do is play the averages … and hope that the training will take place and they’ll be able to understand the gravity of the situation and respond accordingly,” Perdue said. “But there is no guarantee that the one officer that happens to be on duty when this next shooting occurs is going to respond correctly.”
In many cases, whether officers follow active-shooter training is irrelevant. Most mass shootings end in less than five minutes, research from the FBI concluded, often before officers arrive.
This was the case in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman killed 26 people at an elementary school in 2012, and in Aurora, Colorado, where another killed 12 people at a movie theater the same year. Both used AR-15-style rifles.
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Family members of the Robb Elementary shooting victims and their supporters wait to meet with an aide of a state senator to ask the lawmaker to consider supporting gun reform legislation. Credit: Evan L'Roy/The Texas Tribune
Resistance to gun control
Texas has a long, proud and increasingly less-regulated history of gun ownership. It is rooted in a belief in personal responsibility, that average citizens can sensibly own guns to protect themselves and their families and intervene to stop armed criminals in the absence of police.
“Ultimately, as we all know, what stops armed bad guys is armed good guys,” said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston three days after the Uvalde shooting.
He cited two examples: the Border Patrol team who finally breached the classroom at Robb Elementary and the firearms instructor who shot the gunman who in 2017 attacked a church in Sutherland Springs with an AR-15-style rifle. Both actions potentially saved lives. But they failed to prevent the murders of 47 people.
This year a group of Uvalde families has been regularly visiting the Capitol to push for stricter gun laws, including to raise the age someone can legally purchase AR-15-style rifles to 21.
The mass shootings since 2016 in Dallas, Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe, El Paso and Midland-Odessa — all but one committed with a semi-automatic rifle — did not persuade the Legislature to restrict access to guns. Instead, lawmakers relaxed regulations, including allowing the open carry of handguns without a license or training. And Democrats who have proposed a number of new restrictions this session admit that their bills face nearly insurmountable odds.
The AR-15s carried by state troopers at the Capitol give Sandra Torres flashbacks. Her daughter, 10-year-old Eliahna, a promising softball player, died at Robb Elementary. Sandra never got to tell her she’d made the all-star team. Mack Segovia, Eliahna’s stepfather, didn’t grow up around guns, but he’s seen enough pictures of 200-pound wild hogs his friends tore up with AR-15s while hunting to understand what the rifle did to his daughter.
The couple has made the six-hour round trip to Austin five times already, squeezing with other families into tiny offices for meetings with lawmakers to ask for what they think are commonsense regulations. Most legislators are cordial, but sometimes the families can tell they are being rebuffed, Torres said. Her partner recalled how the House speaker drove 360 miles from his home in Beaumont to Uvalde to tell families he did not support new gun laws, which struck him as a hell of a long way for a man to travel to say: Sorry, I can’t help you.
The experience is frustrating. Torres and Segovia said they did not have a strong opinion about guns until their daughter was taken from them by a young man who bought one designed for combat, no questions asked. They said they feel compelled, if Eliahna’s death served any purpose, to make it harder for other people to do the same.
“Those were babies,” Segovia said. “I promise you, if it happened to those people in the Senate, or the governor, it would be different.”
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Sandra Torres and her partner, Mack Segovia, dedicated a room in their new house to Eliahna Torres, 10, who was killed at Robb Elementary. Credit: Evan L'Roy/The Texas Tribune
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/20/uvalde-shooting-police-ar-15/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Since Trump had signaled his intention to be at the rally via Twitter on Dec. 27 , the Kremers grappled with new considerations. First, the rally would have to be moved from Freedom Plaza to the Ellipse. Second, and more pressing, Trump’s involvement aggravated a growing feud among the various organizers and MAGA hangers-on about who would get to share the stage with the president.
More granular details also demanded attention this day — Jan. 1, 2021 — with the rally five days away. One decidedly practical problem: organizers needed marshals who could greet the thousands of people expected to show up to support Trump — and direct them to bathrooms when nature trumped activism.
The solution? Tap a willing reserve of militant Trump supporters known as Three Percenters who had shown up at a previous rally organized in D.C. by Women for America First.
Such frantic preparations for the ambitious rally, to be named “Save America,” also necessitated that Women for America First relay signals in two directions — one up to the White House, and the other down to the militants, some of whom would wind up joining the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol in Trump’s name.
From the time of the president’s announcement that he would be at the Save America rally, Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign, played an increasingly important role and began communicating directly with the Kremers.
“One additional thing we need to know about is volunteers,” Kylie Jane Kremer said in a group text to Pierson on Jan. 1 at 4:44 p.m. “Do we need to provide those or have they already started it? We can do so but don’t want to overstep.”
Added Kylie Jane Kremer: “I’m literally terrified to ask any questions to anyone so as they come, I will send your way.”
Pierson deferred to Kylie Jane Kremer.
“I think you guys can take over volunteers,” she replied. “Are you good with that?”
Pierson suggested recruiting 30 volunteers, including “10 mature types” to serve as marshals.
Amy Kremer had someone in mind for the job of coordinating the marshals: Charles Bowman.
Bowman joined the bus tour at the request of Dustin Stockton, one of the lead organizers, to help out on the advance team.
“Ladies, I just talked to Bowman, and he’s going to get us 10 marshals,” Kremer announced in a new group text on Jan. 2. “He’s on this text message. Thank you, Bowman.”
“Do you want us to handle the 30 volunteers under the marshals?” Kylie Jane Kremer asked. “You will be the lead marshal, unless you want someone else to be.”
“Sit tight,” Bowman responded. “Let me see if I have 40 people who will pass the background check.”
Amy Kremer tapped Bowman for the job because “he’s one of those people that know everybody,” she later told the January 6th Committee. And Bowman moved quickly.
Most notably, he called Jeremy Liggett, the founder of a Florida-based Three Percenter group called Guardians of Freedom, to ask for names of volunteers to cover marshal duties.
RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Our best face’: How ‘peaceful’ MAGA leader Amy Kremer cultivated ties to a violent Three Percenter group
A former law enforcement officer and firearms instructor, Liggett and a group of loosely affiliated Three Percenters — an authoritarian movement whose adherents view themselves as revolutionary vanguard in the mold of the original American patriots, and the U.S. government as the latter-day equivalent of the British crown — had assisted with security during a previous pro-Trump rally organized by Women for America First in D.C. on Dec. 12. Bowman later acknowledged to the committee that Liggett had added him to a Guardians of Freedom Telegram chat so that he “could get a feel for what the group is.”
Amy Kremer’s enlistment of Three Percenters to serve as marshals at the Ellipse rally underscores a critical component of the bus tour and D.C. rallies culminating on Jan. 6 that her group organized.
Despite Women for America First’s efforts to project a “peaceful” image and whitewash the violence as an unexpected byproduct of an otherwise law-abiding Jan. 6 rally, an exhaustive review of depositions, interviews and phone texts by Raw Story reveals that the group, particularly Stockton, cultivated ties with violent militants almost from the start.
This is the second in a three-part series detailing the links among the White House, Women for America First and pro-Trump militants. (Read Part 1 here.)
Liggett didn’t need much prodding. He had already booked hotel rooms by the time Bowman called him requesting volunteers, and his group had announced plans to come to D.C. for Jan. 6.
On Christmas Eve, Guardians of Freedom had circulated a flyer headlined “Calling All Patriots!!” that announced that “the March for Trump Bus tour, powered by Women for America First” was “rolling into Washington, D.C. to demand transparency and election integrity” on Jan. 6.
“I got called by Charles and said, ‘Hey, we need guys to marshal. We need volunteers to marshal — marshal the event,’” Liggett recalled. “And I said, ‘Okay. No problem.’ And I said, ‘I’ll get people together to marshal the event.’ And he said, ‘All right. You know, it’s a voluntary basis.’ And I said, ‘That’s fine.’
Four hours later, Bowman sent the Women for America First organizers a list of 10 people, including Liggett.
Kremer said she didn’t know any of the people on the list, and had no idea they were associated with the Three Percenter movement, although she also told the January 6th Committee that she was familiar with Three Percenters based on hearing Bowman and Stockton discuss the movement.
White House hotline
While Bowman was enlisting members of Guardians of Freedom to serve as marshals at the Ellipse rally on behalf of Women for America First, Pierson was coordinating with the White House.
Caroline Wren, a prominent fundraiser for the Trump 2020 campaign and Republican National Committee, had lined up a $3 million pledge from Publix heiress Julie Fancelli to foot the bill for the rally.
As a purse-holder of sorts, Wren exerted increasing influence over the event, and the Kremer mother-daughter duo viewed her as a threat. They found an ally — Pierson — who shared their desire to keep rival organizer Ali Alexander and other more controversial speakers, such as InfoWars host Alex Jones and political consultant Roger Stone, off the Ellipse stage.
As the new year arrived, the fragile alliance neared a breaking point. About five hours after Pierson delegated responsibility for marshals to Women for America First, Kylie Jane Kremer raised a more pressing matter with her.
“We are team players and are grateful to work with y’all,” Kremer told Pierson in a text at 10:19 p.m. on Jan. 1. “But it’s out of line to tell me we’re only here because Caroline got us here and we have no say whatsoever.”
After some back-and-forth discussion, Pierson tried to assuage Kremer’s concerns.
“Bottom line, I’ve set you up will [sic] the entire trump team all the way down to a ‘Trump’ looking website,” Pierson said. “This isn’t grassroots anymore.
“So, are you used as a pass through?” Pierson continued. “YES! Your brand hosting the President of the United States on Whit House [sic] grounds on a historic day. Win!”
She added: “You will be able to claim that with the highest production reel possible for donor recruitment.”
After reassuring Kylie Jane Kremer, Pierson found herself mediating between Wren and the Kremers again the following day.
At 4:15 p.m. on Jan. 2, Wren emailed Pierson a list that included Alexander, Jones and Stone as speakers at the Ellipse event — a proposition that Pierson would later characterize as a “deal breaker” in her interview with the January 6th Committee.
To resolve the conflict, Pierson decided to go directly to the White House.
“Would you mind giving me a call regarding this January 6th event?” Pierson texted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, according to her recollection to the January 6th Committee. “Things have gotten crazy, and I desperately need some direction.”
Pierson said she told Meadows that Wren was trying to include Jones, Alexander “and all these crazy people on the president’s stage, and that’s a disaster.” She said that during the conversation she also briefed Meadows “that some people were going to the Capitol,” later adding that the chief of staff “agreed” with that idea.
Pierson said Meadows told her that no one had spoken to him about speakers.
He supported her position.
“So, why don’t you just take this over to make sure that this doesn’t go bad,” Pierson recalled Meadows telling her.
At 10:49 p.m. on Jan. 2, Pierson sent an email to Wren and Taylor Budowich, another senior adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign. Pierson noted in the email that she had spent the day on the phone with the rally organizers and had received guidance from the White House.
“POTUS expectations are to have something intimate at the Ellipse, and call on everyone to march to the Capitol,” Pierson told Wren and Budowich. “This actually works out because Ali’s group is already setting up at the Capitol, and SCOTUS is on the way.”
Page 1 of Pierson email 1-2-21
But Wren wasn’t giving up. She wanted to secure speaker slots for allies.
On Jan. 3, Pierson texted Meadows again, saying she was “done” and complaining that Wren “has decided to move forward with the original psycho list,” based on apparent approval from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino.
Pierson said Meadows called her and recommended that she “talk it over with Scavino.”
Pierson reached Scavino on the phone that night. He told her she should speak directly to the president.
“You just need to come talk to him, and you let him put this to bed,” Pierson recalled Scavino saying.
Pierson, who was recovering from a back injury, soon found herself booking a flight from Dallas to Washington, D.C.
Arriving the next morning, she sat across the table from Trump by afternoon.
Seated across from him in the dining room off the Oval Office. Pierson gave Trump her list of proposed speakers. Trump nixed almost all of them, which at least resolved — in the Kremers’ favor — the question of whether Alexander and Jones would rank among his opening acts.
Pierson said Trump told her he wanted a few members of Congress to speak, with the event broken up by big blocks of music — a hybrid between a political rally and party.
Trump himself raised the issue of a march to the Capitol.
“Are people going to the Capitol?” Trump asked, according to Pierson.
“Yes, there are some people going to the Capitol,” she replied. “There’s a permit for a stage at the Capitol.”
“Well, I should walk with the people,” Trump said.
Pierson and a presidential aide tried to discourage Trump from walking to the Capitol. But Pierson, who declined to comment for this story when reached by phone, said Trump cut her off and asserted the National Guard should help secure his route.
The meeting ended. Trump was about to leave for a campaign rally in Georgia. The plan to deploy the National Guard as a protective escort was never executed.
‘Go forth and do great things’
The fact that Women for America First lined up a group of Three Percenters acting as marshals at the Ellipse rally on Jan. 6, at roughly the same time Pierson was confirming speakers and Trump’s desire for people to walk to the Capitol after the event, wasn’t a fluke.
Guardians of Freedom and other militants had been hovering around a previous pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., that was organized by Women for America First — particularly one of its lead organizers, Dustin Stockton.
Stockton made no secret of his enthusiasm for the Three Percenter movement, despite Women for America First’s conspicuous efforts to project safe optics.
“The optics that we were trying to project was not, this is a paramilitary group looking to take over,” Stockton told the January 6th Committee in December 2021, describing the Dec. 12, 2020, rally. “This is a professional group that you can come have — that you could, Tea Party-style, come have a safe, productive time, right, airing your grievances with people who are like-minded.”
But at the time of the rally, Stockton was flaunting his links to Three Percenters by toasting his “III% brothers.”
A photo taken from the Dec. 12 rally showed a grinning Stockton jammed into an elevator with seven other men. Some of them wore tactical vests and balaclavas that concealed most of their faces.
Among them: Charles Bowman and Matthew Robinson, a former Proud Boy who, like Bowman, was from Florida.
“I was in some never-forget photos on Saturday, but the photo Bowman took of us on the elevator with our III% brothers might just top them all,” Bowman gushed in a Substack article published four days after the Dec. 12 rally.
Photo of Charles Bowman (front left) and Dustin Stockton (back right) published on Stockton's Substack. Via "Tyrant's Curse" Substack
Though the Dec. 12 rally might have been a high point, Stockton’s enthusiasm for the Three Percenter movement was no passing interest.
Seven months after the insurrection, Stockton would make a direct endorsement of Three Percenters, Oath Keepers and, albeit subtly, QAnon — all groups heavily represented among those arrested on charges related to the attack on the Capitol.
“Now more than ever, I encourage people to join or start patriot groups dedicated to preserving the Constitution,” Stockton would write on his Substack in July 2021. “It’s the perfect time to attend an Oath Keepers meeting, join a III% training, or get involved in an Anon research group.”
Referring to Three Percenters specifically, Stockton said, “There are lots of independent groups across the country that organize under the iconic III% patch. The best of them offer a healthy dose of range time, training and community service. Groups worth joining have membership that includes community leaders, professionals, and current/former law enforcement.”
Security measures in D.C. on Dec. 12, when Women for America First’s rally at Freedom Plaza vied with a competing Jericho March on the National Mall, gave the organizers further exposure to the militant groups.
In a phone text to Kylie Jane Kremer at 2:01 p.m. on Dec. 12, Bowman said, “Three-quarters of Proud Boys are at monument now. So if antifa is going to come in and try to break the box, it will be now.”
Asked about the text by the January 6th Committee, Bowman was unable to explain where he obtained information about the movements of the Proud Boys, although video of the group at that location had been shared on social media around 1:30 p.m.
“I’m sure I was just regurgitating something,” Bowman told investigators.
Kylie Jane Kremer dismissed the Proud Boys as “very much a fringe group,” as she told committee investigators a year after the insurrection.
As such, she said, Women for America First wanted to make “a distinction between, I guess, with some of the fringe-type people in the conservative movement just as there are fringe-type people, you know, on the left.”
And yet other militant groups, including Guardians of Freedom, Oath Keepers and 1st Amendment Praetorian — a volunteer security group that had worked with Ali Alexander — made an impression at the Dec. 12 rally hosted by Women for America First, according to Jason Funes, a former Trump campaign worker and former Department of Interior staffer who helped Women for America First with the bus tour and D.C. rallies.
“I barely had to [time] to reach and network the security teams that day,” Funes told the January 6th Committee. “So, if this person telling me that person’s good and that person’s telling me this person’s good, okay, fine. I don’t know if they’re Oath Keepers, if they’re Praetorian group, or they’re Guardians of Freedom or Three Percent — I don’t even — I heard of most of those groups for the first time when I was doing the D.C. events, right?”
Funes told the committee he didn’t think Amy Kremer knew about the militant groups buzzing around the Women for America First rally on Dec. 12, but he was more inclined to think Kylie Jane Kremer was aware.
“Oh, if Amy would’ve found out and known — listen, Kylie, maybe, like I said, she’s a little young, ambitious, and maybe just got led along by Dustin and Charles that they had it, right, and there was going to be just kind of their own things or whatever they were doing,” Funes said. “Like, they were going to do it anyway is the f***ing thing, okay? That’s how they f***ing roll. All right?
“But if Amy would’ve found out, she would be pissed that that would be the case, that, we would ever even be trying to coordinate and do some s***,” he added.
Kylie Jane Kremer responded to a Twitter direct message from Raw Story by providing the email for Christopher Barron, Women for America First's publicist. Barron did not respond to multiple voicemails and emails.
Women for America First made a point to hire professional security, but he they agreed to allow 1st Amendment Praetorian to “act as a secondary barrier,” Stockton told the committee.
He emphasized that there was no effort to discourage volunteer security, as long as it didn’t hurt the optics of the rally.
“But it’s what the optics look like from the stage, which is projected out to the world through the cameras, and also to the people who are there,” he said. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing to have those people to discourage, like, possible counter-protester attacks. But it wasn’t the image that we were trying to project.”
Stockton made no mention during his interview with congressional investigators of the fact that the informal security cohort included members of Guardians of Freedom, a group founded by an associate of his friend, Bowman. Bowman told the committee that to the best of his recollection, Jeremy Liggett helped with security on Dec. 12.
Tyler Bensch, a 20-year-old from Casselberry, Fla, who would later be linked to Liggett by the FBI as a member of the so-called “B Squad,” posted a photo on Facebook of himself dressed in a helmet, goggles, body armor, military fatigues and a gas mask standing in the middle of a street in Washington, D.C., with the Capitol in the background, according to a witness.
Guardians of Freedom associate Tyler Bensch in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 12, 2020. U.S. Department of Justice
“Listen, American patriots thought that by dressing up in bulletproof vests and being the militia-type of people, that sent a good message and representation that, you know, the event is safe and secure,” Funes said. “And if that’s all they have to keep us safe and secure, I’m going to use anybody I can to keep people safe and secure. I don’t know who you are.”
Funes complained that he was cut out of security meetings.
“Whatever — fine,” he said. “So go forth and do great things, man. I don’t want to know the details. But if you’re telling me that we’re going to be safer because you’re doing this, fine. I had no idea what it was going to lead up to.”
‘I will have a ton of men with me’
An abiding question surrounding the multiple investigations into the events of Jan. 6 is the degree to which the militant groups — primarily the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, but to a lesser degree Three Percenters also — coordinated among each other in advance of the insurrection.
An exhibit in the government’s seditious conspiracy prosecution of the Oath Keepers last year confirmed all three.
As noted in the January 6th Committee’s full report, Guardians of Freedom founder Jeremy Liggett exchanged texts with Florida Oath Keeper leader Kelly Meggs on Dec. 22, 2020, three days after Meggs spoke by phone with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. (Meggs was recently convicted of seditious conspiracy, and Tarrio is currently on trial for the same charge.)
“He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!!” Meggs told Liggett, sharing his excitement about President Trump’s Dec. 19, 2020 “be there, will be wild” tweet summoning his supporters to D.C. on Jan. 6.
“I will have a ton of men with me,” Liggett responded.
Meggs told Liggett that “we have made Contact with PB and they always have a big group. Force multiplier…. I figure we could splinter off the main group of PB and come up behind them. F***ing crush them for good.”
Liggett said he had encountered Tarrio at rallies in Florida in his deposition for the January 6th Committee.
On Dec. 30, 2020, Liggett posted on Facebook: “3% will show in record numbers in D.C. The gloves are off antifa.”
Reached by phone by Raw Story, Liggett said, “I have nothing to hide,” but referred questions to his lawyer. The lawyer, Kevin C. Maxwell, said he and his client decided they were “not going to give any interviews until the government finishes its investigation and has determined what they’re going to do,” including potentially charging additional defendants.
Guardians of Freedom’s Dec. 24 flyer, headlined “Calling All Patriots!!” and name-dropping Women for America First, announced that the group was “responding to the call from President Donald J. Trump to assist in the security, protection of the people as we all protest the fraudulent election and re-establish liberty for our nation.”
Then-President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk on the south lawn of the White House on December 23, 2020, in Washington, DC. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
The flyer said that “destruction of our Constitutional Republic” was underway, while quoting the so-called “right to revolution” in the Declaration of Independence that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.”
The flyer continued: “That is why YOU are here. For massive change to occur, massive action must be taken.”
The flyer concluded with an appeal for funding and a link to a Cash App account: “For the Guardians of Freedom members to deploy, help secure & defend the people at the January 6th event, it will take tremendous support from all of you to assist with the sharing and contributing to our events, missions, and fundraiser.”
The government alleges that Liggett, identified in the charging documents for six other men as “B Leader,” coordinated the group’s travel from Florida and reserved a block of about 15 rooms at the Hampton Inn Washington-Downtown Convention Center for Jan. 6 around Christmas.
While most of the Guardians of Freedom’s members were from Florida, the group’s social media campaign reached far beyond the state line.
Liggett posted on Facebook: “I will be in DC on January 6th! Patriots I urge you to come with me!”
Joseph Pavlik, a retired firefighter from Chicago, responded on Christmas Day: “I will be there.”
The group’s recruitment drive in the runup to Jan. 6 even reached Stockton.
A Dec. 30, 2020, email from Tarra Nicolle Hernandez, an administrator for Guardians of Freedom, noted that Stockton had been approved as a full member of the group. Hernandez would be among the 10 people recommended by Charles Bowman to serve as marshals at the Ellipse on Jan. 6.
“Welcome to the Three Percenters, Guardians of Freedom,” the email read. “It is an honor to have you on our team of patriots.
“Please be advised, per the founder, Jeremy Liggett, you have been moved and assigned as a full active member and not a prospect member,” the email continued. “Please disregard the mandatory meeting attendance mentioned in the attached documents.”
Stockton was not asked about the email during his December 2021 interview with the January 6th Committee, suggesting it had not come to light at that point.
But both Charles Bowman and Amy Kremer both told the committee they didn’t recall Stockton mentioning an invitation to join Guardians of Freedom. Stockton could not be reached for comment for this story.
‘Antifa’s worst nightmare’
Wearing a black tactical vest with a Three Percenter patch and a patch bearing the words “B Squad,” Jeremy Liggett appeared in a video that was posted on Facebook on Jan. 3, 2021.
As court documents note, Liggett stood “in front of a group of individuals wearing military-style gear and face coverings, many of whom appeared to possess assault rifles.”
"We all know in D.C., once the sun goes down, things get a little bit violent and the reason why things get violent is because you have socialist, leftist, Marxist, communist agitators like Black Lives Matter and antifa,” Liggett warned. He described various “defensive tools” including “the strongest pepper spray commercially available to use,” an expandable metal baton, knives with blades less than three inches, a walking cane and a Taser, according to charging documents.
Guardians of Freedom founder Jeremy Liggett posted a video on Jan. 3, 2021 providing instructions on weapons to bring to Washington, D.C. (eyes redacted by DOJ). U.S. Department of Justice
On Jan. 4 and 5, about 40 people checked into 20 rooms on the third floor of the Hampton Inn, according to court documents. Among them: Liggett and Pavlik, the retired Chicago firefighter, along with four other men identified by the government as members of “B Squad.” A hotel employee told investigators that members of the group “were wearing tactical gear such as military style vests, zip ties, pepper spray, and clip-on knives, and had police-type batons, helmets and masks.”
On Jan. 5, Liggett spoke at a raucous pre-rally at Freedom Plaza. The rally was divided into blocks that were apportioned to various factions or organizers, according to Dustin Stockton. The first four hours went to Women for America First and two pastors — Greg Locke and Brian Gibson — who had joined the March for Trump bus tour, with the second half divided between Ali Alexander and another organizer named Cindy Chafian.
Wearing his “March for Trump” jacket, Stockton introduced Liggett as “antifa’s worst nightmare.” Liggett addressed the rally wearing his black tactical vest with the Three Percenter and “B Squad” patches.
“I am a son,” he said. “I am a father. And I am an American patriot. I am a Three Percenter.”
Liggett led a chant: “F*** antifa! F*** antifa! F*** antifa! F*** antifa!”
“Listen guys, this is about your American dream,” he said. “Your American dream is at stake. I’m here with a simple message today. Stand. Stand and fight for America. Fight for your freedom of religion. Fight for the Constitution of the United States of America. Fight for your children. Fight for your grandchildren. Patriots do not comply.
Again, Liggett led the crowd in a chant. This time, it was: “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”
When Stockton reclaimed the microphone, he remarked on “how cool it is hearing ‘fight’ echo off these buildings.” Then he asked the crowd to indulge him in “a little housekeeping,” requesting that they text a number for updates on the rally happening the following day at the Ellipse.
“That’s where the president’s going to be speaking,” Stockton said. “That’s who we’re taking our marching orders from, right?”
Trump’s speech on Jan. 6 was only 18 hours away.
Key figures and groups in this series
1st Amendment Praetorian: Volunteer security group associated with retired Lt. General Michael Flynn that provided personal security details for Ali Alexander and other speakers at pro-Trump rallies leading up to Jan. 6, 2021
Guardians of Freedom: Three Percenter group led by Jeremy Liggett based in Florida whose members joined a mob in the Tunnel at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and tried to break through a line of D.C. Metropolitan Police Officers.
Oath Keepers: Far-right militia group that targets military veterans and former law enforcement for recruitment; dozens of members equipped with military gear entered the Capitol in a column formation
Proud Boys: Neo-fascist street fighting group that served as the engine of the insurrection by leading a mob to the Capitol, including one member who broke out a window, leading to the initial breach of the building
Stop the Steal: Coalition led by Republican operative Ali Alexander that organized protests in battleground states after the Nov. 3, 2020 election, followed by large rallies in Washington, D.C., culminating in Jan. 6
United Constitutional Patriots: Militia group that allegedly detained more than 300 migrants in New Mexico while carrying firearms and fake badges; their spokesman interviewed Dustin Stockton for a Facebook livestream during an event to promote a privately-funded section of the border wall in 2019
Women for America First: Nonprofit led by Tea Party organizer Amy Kremer that hosted the Jan. 6 rally featuring Donald Trump, along with the March for Trump bus tour and two large rallies in Washington, D.C. preceding Jan. 6
This is the second in a three-part series about ties between Women for America First, which held the permit for the rally where Donald Trump spoke on Jan. 6, 2021, and the Three Percenter group Guardians of Freedom. Read part one here.
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