A convicted felon became a top organizer of Trump-evangelical meetings.

Evidence

The initiative would prove so valuable to the movement that it catapulted Dallas into the upper echelons of power. His name appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s leaked 2014 membership list for the Council for National Policy. When Donald Trump met privately with evangelical leaders in June of 2016, Bill Dallas organized the event, telling then Time magazine (now New York Times) reporter Elizabeth Dias, “We are trying to seek mutual understanding.” In advance of the meeting, billed as a “conversation,” Fox News host Todd Starnes reported “rumblings” that “evangelical leaders are trying to turn Tuesday’s meeting with Trump into a coronation.” — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 677

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the argument advanced in chapter 4 that power operates through elite insiders rather than purely bottom-up voters.