The National Park Service approved a permit late Monday evening for a right-wing protest slated to occur in Washington, D.C. midday Tuesday ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, according to documents reviewed by The Daily Beast.
In the permit application—first filed back on February 18 for the “Stage of Freedom” event with the National Park Service and later obtained by The Daily Beast—Kyle Sefcik, the rally organizer, touted that upwards of 3,000 individuals might “hopefully” attend the event.
However, the now-issued park permit has since revised the initial 3,000 attendee prediction downward, with the number now fewer than 500 participants who will gather besides the Washington Monument at the Sylvan Theater.
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“Permittee has amended his application to reduce the expected maximum crowd size to less than 500 attendees,” the approved and edited permit now states.
As for what activities are on the agenda, the organizer listed on the permit that rally-goers during the eight-hour-long gathering will partake in “Peaceful Demonstration/Assembly! Christian Music/Speakers against mandates. Support of Convoys in Canada. Lifting mandates in DC/USA.”
Furthermore, on the original application, Sefcik took the unusual route of responding to questions on the government form with his own questions in extremely messy handwriting.
To one of the questions on the application about what tasks volunteers might perform, the organizer responded, “Do we need them?”
As for responding to questions with more questions, Sefcik told The Daily Beast late Monday that he didn’t see the problem. “Ya, I wanted to see if we needed certain people,” he said while claiming that he has done “events my whole life, huge ones.”
Sefcik—who is an MMA fighter and Maryland gubernatorial hopeful—went on to dodge the question about the number of people who will be attending his gathering ahead of additional trucker convoys slated to arrive in the city later this week.
“Brother, all I can say is that we both know that it was seen by a lot of people in the United States, and I’m not talking numbers, but let’s just say I know that people will be there,” he said. “Let’s just say, I know there will be people there,” he added while proudly claiming his event was making authorities in Washington nervous.
“I have never had to work that hard on a permit before,” he continued. “No, I am serious, man. I spent like 20 hours just in the last two weeks alone having meetings with them [The National Park Service] and every kind of government agency because I was number one on their list.”
