Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence are exactly the type of colourful characters needed to rile a crowd, spread a message and garner a movement.
From barnstorming bus tours across the country to political rallies in Washington DC, the pair surfed the populist tide of far-right politics in the United States for a decade.
Their efforts pre-dated election conspiracies, QAnon and even Donald Trump's political career before they earned a reputation as the "Bonnie and Clyde" of the former president's MAGA brand.
January 6 was meant to be the culmination of their work.
Instead, it all unravelled.
That day, the depths of the election conspiracy and the lengths some Americans were willing to go to, were laid bare.
To Dustin and Jennifer, the angry mob behind the deadly armed insurrection at the Capitol hijacked a legitimate movement they had helped steer for years.
In response, the once-loyal Trump supporters have abandoned their leader and are spilling secrets to the very people they once sought to take down.
Tearing down the establishment
The pair represent the story of US politics since the Global Financial Crisis, when the lives of average Americans were up-ended as their hard-earned savings disappeared overnight along with the value of their homes and their jobs.
It sparked a wave of anger against existing institutions, and social media was the currency of the era that gave Dustin and Jennifer the platform to launch.
As the establishment bailed out the powerbrokers that caused the mess, populist sentiment grew, triggering the re-birth of the Tea Party.
Only this time it was characterised by distrust of business in general and bankers in particular. Donald Trump and his political operatives like Steve Bannon exploited it, and rode the wave into power.
Dustin, who was born and raised in Nevada, and Jennifer, a brash New Yorker, became deeply involved.
The couple were drawn together by a similar underlying resentment towards those in power, and a desire to "drain the swamp".
When the pair met in 2012, Dustin was working for Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign and Jennifer for Republican Herman Cain. The couple had dedicated their lives to tearing down the establishment.
Cain's presidential run didn't even reach the opening primary election. But the basis for his campaign — which involved little policy, sexual harassment controversies and an ability to excite the don't-give-a-damn portion of the Republican base — can now be seen as a preview of Trump.
Jennifer and Dustin were politically connected to the nerve centre of far-right politics.
From 2014, the pair worked for Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's key strategist, who managed to run a campaign which won his boss the White House.
They reported directly to Bannon and honed their skills making mischief and headlines for his conservative website Breitbart.
In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential campaign, they became heavily involved in derailing Hillary Clinton's presidential bid.
And then came their next challenge.
Answering the call of the President
When the 2020 election rolled around, Dustin and Jennifer firmly believed Donald Trump would be returned to power.
So once the shock of his loss wore off, they got down to doing what they do best: organising.
The pair had built a career around finding far-right politics a microphone.
As fundraisers, rally organisers and consultants they engineered a media platform to reach an online audience thirsty for change.
They existed on what seemed to be the margins of conservative politics, until it wasn't the margins anymore.
In the weeks between the election and January 6, Jennifer and Dustin climbed into a bus and toured the country, drumming up a following to challenge Joe Biden's election victory.
Organised alongside Women for America First, a Trump-aligned political action committee, their bus rolled through conservative heartland across the country, spreading outlandish claims of a stolen election.
"There was a plan, within the legal limits provided to us via the Constitution, to try and present our case to the world about why we were so passionate to put these rallies together, to put the bus tours together and to answer the call of the President," Dustin said.
"There was a disconnect at the time of the people, including ourselves, who showed up peacefully, multiple times, to DC after the election.
"We were listening to the President of the United States."
The tour was to culminate in the final rally at the Ellipse in Washington DC on the day Joe Biden was to be certified as president by Congress.
How January 6 turned these Trump loyalists against him
Dustin and Jennifer were chief in organising the massive crowd that hit Washington DC on January 6.
The life stories of those who descended on the capital that day were many and varied.
The crowd included millionaires who flew in on private jets, militia members spoiling for a fight, QAnon conspiracy theorists and tens of thousands of ordinary middle-class Americans who had been quietly radicalised over the years.
They were the fringes of American society, pulled together by the gravity of a single, explosive moment, and were prepared to take the law into their own hands.
But as the events of that day turned violent, Jennifer and Dustin say a decade of work was undone in front of their eyes.
"It was incredibly disheartening because our anticipation for what was going to happen that day, was going to happen inside the Congress," Dustin told the ABC.
He and his comrade-in-arms Jennifer had arrived there that day expecting evidence of electoral fraud.
They had expected the battle to play out on the floor of Congress, where documentation would show, once and for all, that votes were stolen from Trump.
"When he told us he had the evidence and the receipts, our expectation on January 6 was that not only were we going to see it, but the whole world was going to see it," Dustin said.
As armed citizens stormed the US Capitol, Jennifer and Dustin say they were already back at the Willard Hotel.
While Trump was still finishing his speech, they had left the Ellipse, disappointed.
"To have it devolve into such a horrific, horrendous act, it was so disheartening," Jennifer said.
"It was a tremendous moment where he [Donald Trump] could have stood up and been one of the great leaders in that moment, and I feel like there was a failure of leadership that day on many levels.
"We were willing to go on the bus tours because [Trump] said [he] had the receipts. And for [Trump] to just give the same old speech and not present the hard facts for us, it was, I don't even know the words."
'The fallout's been terrible'
Almost a year since the insurrection, the pair have followed a low-profile life, living part-time in their RV and between Florida and Las Vegas.
They claim to have never bought into the wildest of the claims circulating about ballots being switched by Dominion voting machines and dead people voting.
"It's been used to discredit the very real issues that we should be talking about, like censorship and political disruption and how money influences all of our elections and all of our politics," Dustin said.
Their main concern, even to this day, remains censorship of certain political views and leaders on social media, and how the election was forfeited.
Having said that, they accept and agree Joe Biden secured the votes to win the 2020 election based on the current voting system.
The pair tell how in the aftermath of the insurrection they wanted to speak publicly to denounce the violence and express their guilt, but their fellow organisers decided a statement was enough.
"The fallout's been terrible. The lives ruined, the people injured, the deaths that day," Dustin said.
"The unwillingness for people to talk and confront what happened that day and be real about it is why it's still such a festering wound.
"If we can help open the dialogue that lowers the temperature and the hatred and the division, if we don't do that, the country is going to be ripped asunder, violently."
The House Committee investigation subpoenaed them late last year to hand over documents that reveal their involvement and their communications with Donald Trump.
They complied, turning over everything — including emails and text messages that indicate extensive involvement of members of Congress and the Trump administration in planning the House challenge to certifying Biden's election win.
The couple also provided conversations they had with staffers and members of Congress as they planned the rally that day.
While other key confidants of Trump — including Steve Bannon and Mark Meadows — have declined to cooperate, Jennifer and Dustin are keenly aware they don't have the resources to fight federal contempt charges they were slapped with.
"We have a responsibility on our side too to recognise what happened on January 6 for what it was," Jennifer said.
"The people who are trying to downplay it, saying they were just there as tourists, no, something really bad happened that day, police officers were beat, people lost their lives.
"We need to recognise it for what it was. Sometimes being a leader is calling out your side when they deserve it, and not trying to shift blame."
Disappointed by what they have described as Trump's personal failings towards the end of his presidency, Jennifer and Dustin have committed themselves to ensuring the committee investigation gets the information it needs.
They may have distanced themselves from the undercurrent of America's far-right extremist politics, but the pulse is still beating strong.
The movement hasn't disappeared in the wake of January 6, it's simply morphed into a new form that's likely to rear its head as the 2022 mid-term elections draw near.
