Amy Kremer

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Kremer speaking at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference

Amy Kremer (born 1970 or 1971)

U.S. House of Representatives in a special election in Georgia's 6th congressional district as a Republican
.

In January 2021, Kremer's organization Women for America First hosted a

U.S. Capitol attack by Trump's supporters. She and ten others affiliated with the group were subpoenaed by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack
in September 2021.

Early life and career

Kremer attended

Kylie Jane Kremer became increasingly involved in her mother's political activism.[4]

Tea Party Express (2009–2014)

2012 U.S. Senate election in Texas

Soon after joining Tea Party Express, Kremer urged the organization to support

governor of Colorado.[9] In October 2010, The Daily Telegraph named her the "most influential" person in the Tea Party movement.[7]

In a 2011 appearance on

mandatory programs.[10] In June 2011 Kremer said TPE would support Mitt Romney if he became the Republican nominee in the 2012 presidential election.[11] A co-founder of Tea Party Patriots rejected Kremer's remarks, saying "a pledge of allegiance to the Republican Party, or any other party, violates what the Tea Party movement is all about and is completely out of touch with grassroots Americans".[12] In the 2012 elections TPE endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock in Indiana; in September 2011 Kremer described Mourdock as a "true conservative."[13]

During a September 2012 appearance on CNN's

Kremer resigned from Tea Party Express in April 2014. She described the split as amicable and attributed her departure to a desire to focus on

2016 presidential election

As of February 2016, Kremer was the chair of TrumPAC, a

campaign in the 2016 presidential election.[18] TrumPAC later changed its name to Great America PAC.[19] Great America PAC was founded by Kremer and William Doddridge, the CEO of The Jewelry Exchange.[20] Kremer resigned from Great America PAC in May 2016, shortly after Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, due to decisions which she claimed had been made without her input.[21]

In June 2016 Kremer, along with Kathryn Serkes and Ann Stone, founded Women Vote Trump, a new super PAC that aimed to raise at least $30 million to support Trump's campaign.[22] Stone said the group would organize volunteers and advertise across the United States.[23] At an event the following month Kremer said "People assume that just because [Democratic presidential nominee] Hillary Clinton is a woman that I'm going to support her. That's an insult to my intelligence. I have the ability to think on my own."[24] Kremer made appearances on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC to promote the PAC.[25] In August 2016 Kremer claimed on CNN that Clinton was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease found in people who have suffered repeated blows to the head.[26] Federal Election Commission records showed that Women Vote Trump, which changed its name to Women Vote Smart in order to comply with regulations that prohibit the use of candidates' names, had only raised $26,813, had spent $20,000, and was nearly $20,000 in debt as of March 2017. Kremer said the group "had commitments from people and then people didn't come through," but that it was "definitely out there being active with the grassroots and engaging people."[25]

2017 congressional campaign

Georgia's 6th congressional district

In 2017, Kremer ran as a Republican in the

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and taking care of veterans.[28] Kremer said she should be elected because she had "carried the values of the 6th District" with her as she "worked tirelessly to preserve freedom and liberty through electing conservatives like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and many others".[29] The radio and television host Sean Hannity and the Tea Party activist Katrina Pierson endorsed Kremer's campaign.[30]

In March 2017 Kremer offered supporters who donated to her campaign the opportunity to win an

2nd Amendment not only in Georgia but in the south."[32] In an email to supporters, Kremer criticized a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that affirmed Maryland's ban on military-style "assault weapons" (see Gun laws in Maryland) and called on supporters to "show these progressive judges that we will not surrender the rights granted by God and preserved in the U.S. Constitution".[31]

Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution observed in March 2017 that Kremer's campaign had "struggled to gain traction" against better-known and better-funded Republican candidates.[33] In March 2017 Kremer's entire campaign staff resigned after she allegedly only raised around $2,500 and was unable to pay her campaign manager and at least six other staff members.[33] One member of staff who resigned had been staying at Kremer's house and contacted police after Kremer allegedly changed the locks and prevented him from retrieving his belongings.[33] The staff members who resigned were subsequently hired by the campaign of Bob Gray, another Republican candidate in the special election.[34]

In the primary election on April 18, 2017, Kremer received 351 votes, or 0.18 percent of the total vote tally, and did not advance to the

runoff election.[35]

Women for Trump, Women for America First and Women Vote Smart

In June 2018, Kremer, who by then was a co-founder of

U.S.–Mexico border were occurring at the same level for both the Obama administration and the Trump administration. She claimed that Jeh Johnson, the Obama administration's United States Secretary of Homeland Security, said that "they were separating families". However, CNN played the actual quote from Johnson, who had said: "There's no policy or practice, at least on my watch, to separate women, parents from their children", although he was sure there still were "individual cases for reasons of health or safety" of such happenings. Kremer's on-the-spot reaction was to insist that her quote of Johnson "happened", although later she tweeted that she had "conflated 2 different articles with quotes from 2 different Obama" administration officials.[36][37]

In 2019, Kremer and her daughter Kylie founded Women for America First, which organized a protest against the

Kremer became treasurer of Women Vote Smart in February 2019. As of October 2021, Women Vote Smart had failed to submit six required reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) since February 2019, resulting in the organization owing $20,000 to the FEC.[40] As of February 2022, Kremer and Women Vote Smart owed at least $49,000 in past-due fines to the FEC.[41]

2020 presidential election

During the counting of votes following the

storming of the U.S. Capitol. This tour ended December 14, 2020.[45]

Women for America First then organized a new bus tour to encourage the attendance at a rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6 which preceded the

storming of the U.S. Capitol. As part of this bus tour, Kremer visited the Tactical Response marksman training center in Nashville, Tennessee, owned by James Yeager, where she and others taped an episode of Yeager's YouTube show "Tactical Response".[46]

On January 6, 2021, Women for America First hosted an event in Washington, D.C. referred to as "March to Save America." The executive director of Women for Trump, Kylie Jane Kremer, was listed as the person in charge on the rally's permit.

storming of the United States Capitol.[49] Following the riot, Women for America First issued a statement by Kremer which condemned the violence, saying it had been instigated by a "handful of bad actors".[4]

Kremer said in July 2021 that she would "gladly" testify before a commission on the events of January 6.

U.S. Department of Justice's investigation into the Capitol attack.[53]

2022–present

Following Mo Brooks' loss to Katie Britt in the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Alabama in June 2022, Kremer said Trump's endorsement of Britt indicated he was "disconnected from the [Republican] base".[54]

In the October 2023 election for Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Kremer supported Jim Jordan's campaign and called on supporters to contact members of Congress to ask them to support Jordan.[55][56]

In November 2023, Kremer testified in support of Trump in a Colorado lawsuit brought by voters who argued that Trump was ineligible to hold office under the

14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution due to his role in the January 2021 Capitol attack. In her testimony, Kremer called those in attendance at the January 6 rally "freedom-loving citizens", and said she had seen nothing indicating that they were likely to become violent.[57]

References

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External links