boykin, jerry gen'l

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SEE SPLC

SEE FRC TONY PERKINS

SEE CNP Ginni

see groundswell

see kellogg

3 24 breaks w/ trump on seal team 6 kill?

quite a lot of high profile fails WACO?!

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Benghazi poster for bad faith house oversight investigations?

2nd on but the emails --> trump win

aha proto-fake news? also pseudo-event?

fail by issa et al, fail of press to bust them (earlier?); not so much a literal fail, tho the amb was out front, but did ask for more sec?

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ginni groundswell working group: jan 2013

NEED WORKING GROUPS for division of labor for 30 front war (Ginni to seek out/discuss); seek volunteer leaders or team-players on various

fronts. Expectation: Teams should connect once a week before Groundswell meeting.

Guns: Michael James Barton, Gayle Trotter, Rick Manning

Messaging: Dan Bongino,Cherylyn Harley LeBon, Alex Cortes,Anita MonCrief

Groundgame: Peter List

Getting on Offense: Anita MonCrief

Alternative to Rove: Sandy Rios

National Security lane - Frank Gaffney

Energy and Environment lane – Myron Ebell

UN lane - Austin Ruse

9.Shadow Govt teams: Tom Fitton, Mike Farris, Heritage?

10. Benghazi– Boykin, Thomas,Fitton

Others needed: Immigration,

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05/20/2026

Peter Montgomery

At a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol Wednesday morning, Rep. Clay Fuller (R-GA) may have unwittingly revealed a basic truth about recent right-wing attacks on the Southern Poverty Law Center: they are part of a broader authoritarian assault by the Trump regime on civil rights groups and the progressive community, or in Rep. Fuller’s words, “this nonprofit-industrial complex that is seeking to destroy our country each and every day.”

The press conference was a prelude to the House Judiciary Committee hearing in which Republicans accused the SPLC of “manufacturing hate.” Speaking to a handful of right-wing media outlets were representatives of right-wing organizations complaining about having been designated as hate groups or included in extremism reporting by the Southern Poverty Law Center, including the Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, Moms for Liberty, Turning Point USA, and Awake Illinois. Joining them was right-wing journalist Tyler O’Neil, author of an anti-SPLC book.

Before the event started, a correspondent for the Real America’s Voice network could be heard falsely telling listeners that SPLC had “staged” the 2017 Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a claim commonly heard in right-wing propaganda promoting and going well beyond the claims in the Justice Department’s bogus indictment of the SPLC for using paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

Speaking for the Family Research Council was its executive vice president Jerry Boykin, who falsely claimed that SPLC’s hate map is based on “no criteria” except what might help make money for the group. In reality, whether or not you agree with any particular designation SPLC makes, you can find their reasoning on the website—for example, its report on FRC’s demonization of LGBTQ people and more.

While most of the speakers complained that there were dire consequences for being placed on SPLC’s hate map, the representative of TPUSA’s George Washington University chapter was a bit off-message, dismissing it as a “silly little map” and vowing that his group would not be intimidated by the “lunatic left.”

At the hearing itself—the second one focused on the SPLC—Republican members of the Judiciary Committee trotted out expected claims about SPLC’s paid informants being used to “manufacture hate” and to allege that the SPLC smears Christians and “good pro-family organizations,” in Rep. Jim Jordan’s words. Reflecting that level of discourse was Rep. Glenn Grothman, who sighed, “They just hate Christianity, don’t they?” Rep. Michael Baumgartner said he had favorable memories of the SPLC playing a role in helping people in eastern Washington respond to an Aryan Nations compound, but he charged that the group has now become “an almost militant weaponized arm of a progressive Marxist political project.”

Right-wing witnesses also made clear that their goal is broader than taking down a single organization. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins argued that investigations should not stop with the SPLC, which he called a “hub,” but should expand to other organizations and companies that made decisions about groups based on their SPLC designations—the “spokes.” Tyler O’Neil, a reporter at The Daily Signal, which started as the Heritage Foundation’s news and commentary platform, called for a broader investigation of SPLC “and its offshoots,” naming specifically the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which was started by a former SPLC staffer.

Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, portrayed the DOJ prosecution as outrageous political persecution, in the memorable words of Rep. Lucy McBath, “charges so flimsy they would make Bull Connor and George Wallace blush.”

While Republicans suggested that the SPLC was somehow responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, several Democrats noted that before the Unite the Right rally, the SPLC gave the FBI a 45-page dossier warning that violence could erupt, and that SPLC had also shared information from informants that led to the conviction of members of the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division.

Committee Democrats also effectively used some of their time to focus on the scandalous corruption revealed this week: the DOJ’s creation of a nearly two billion dollar slush fund for the president to dole out to insurrectionists and other allies; and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s apparently related agreement in connection to Trump’s bogus lawsuit against the IRS to drop any current audits or investigations and grant a permanent blanket of immunity for any wrongdoing by Trump, his family, or their massive business networks at any time in the past. Rep. Raskin moved for the committee to subpoena administration officials involved in the creation of the slush fund, but Republicans voted to table his motion.

More than one Democratic member of Congress referred to Monday’s shooting at a San Diego mosque, in which teenagers who bonded online over white supremacist hatred killed three people before killing themselves, as evidence that far-right violent extremism deserves more attention from the committee.

Maya Wiley, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, was the witness called by Democrats. She delivered a powerful opening statement calling the campaign against the SPLC part of “a coordinated attack on civil rights non-profits that work to ensure voters can vote, children can learn history, and unions can protect workers,” and she deftly responded to GOP members’ often ridiculous questions. Here’s more from her opening statement:

But this case and today’s hearing aren’t about how to protect people from violent hate and extremist groups or better understand how we can prevent hate and bias. They are about using the powers of prosecution as a weapon, with the sole aim of stopping speech and activities that this administration dislikes and denying the real threats that we should all be concerned about.

In the past year, we have seen countless examples of this weaponization. This administration is coercing law firms, universities, and media companies. It is threatening to brand advocates as “domestic terrorists.” It is cutting off billions in federal grants to non-profits that do important work to track and prevent hate and bias. It is letting law enforcement off the hook for systemic misconduct that violates rights of people who need protection. It is letting violence and even extrajudicial killings by federal agents go unpunished. In all of this and more, the President has not even tried to hide his motives. And for the past year, he has also been open about his willingness to weaponize criminal law. So cases like this were inevitable. And our concern is that no organization seen as dissenting from administration policy, large or small, will ultimately be safe. …

Each year, the SPLC issues a report on hate and extremism in our country. This report is so important because it tracks organizations promoting the ideologies that brought us the Charlottesville riot that left Heather Heyer dead, and the massacres at the Tree of Life synagogue, the Emanuel AME church, and the El Paso Walmart. It is sadly part of the reason SPLC is being targeted. It is uncomfortable for an administration that has backed away from and cut grants for tracking white nationalism, which the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration defined as our greatest domestic threat.

The SPLC is far too busy fighting hate to “manufacture” it. You don’t have to like or agree with all of its strategies for doing so. But the fact that SPLC is now being criminally charged for its work only shows how much more work it has to do.

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RWW

01/16/2026

Peter Montgomery

Rick Joyner, a MAGA-aligned “prophet” and “apostle” associated with the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation movement, used his first “Rick's Rant” video of 2026 to praise President Donald Trump’s authoritarianism as a gift from God, call ICE agents’ actions heroic, and say that public officials who are “fomenting rebellion” should be put in jail.

In the video posted Tuesday, Joyner also predicted that the U.S. is headed for civil war, a regular feature of his “prophetic” messages. This time, he said, the outcome will be “different and better” than the U.S. Civil War, “not because the rebellious side is going to win but because we’re going to fight for higher issues.”

Joyner praised Trump’s “decisive” authoritarianism, saying “we need it desperately” and claiming that “God has given it to us.”

“I’m really, really excited about how things are going,” Joyner said, but he complained about how ICE agents are being treated. He called the killing of Renee Good “tragic,” but said ICE agents are doing their jobs well in the face of “illegal opposition.” Like many right-wing pundits, he claimed without evidence that many of the people protesting ICE brutality are being paid to do so.

And like many right-wing pundits who have spent their careers defending “states’ rights” and decrying federal government “overreach,” Joyner is singing a different tune when it comes to Trump deploying the military against American citizens and cities.

“Every one of those elected officials or appointed officials that are fomenting this rebellion against federal law, declaring it doesn’t apply to them, by obstructing and harboring fugitives, they should all go to jail,” he said. // TREASON

Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries has been plagued with scandal in recent years. In this week’s video he made a vague reference to recent difficulties but said God had told him he would be leading the ministry for a good while yet. Joyner also founded the dominionist Oak Initiative, whose board members include Family Research Council Vice President Jerry Boykin, Seven Mountains promoter Lance Wallnau, and “prophet” Cindy Jacobs.

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trump scotus immunity amicus

DAILY BEAST no lnx $

TRUMPLANDsubvertical orientation badge

The Unhinged Arguments the Supreme Court Is Fielding on Trump Immunity

BUNKER MENTALITY

“Friend of the court” arguments are coming from across the political spectrum—and are showing the potential consequences of siding with Trump on immunity.

Jose Pagliery

Political Investigations Reporter

Published Mar. 30, 2024

Retired American generals vehemently say that no, Donald Trump cannot deploy SEAL Team 6 to kill a political rival. Gun groups howl that the United States is turning into Communist China. And a convicted Jan. 6 rioter warns that President Joe Biden could someday get sued over the death of a jogger in Georgia.

These are among the 18 various groups that shared their wisdom with the Supreme Court earlier this month, filing amicus briefs on the same day that Trump told the high court why he should be able to dodge a federal prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election on false pretenses.

Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case against Trump has finally reached the nation’s highest judicial authority, which will determine whether the business tycoon can be put on trial. The timing of the nine justices’ eventual decision will determine if the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee is to face trial in court before Election Day in November.

But ahead of oral arguments next month, the Supreme Court is already getting inundated with all kinds of opinions about the main question in the case: whether a former president enjoys immunity for actions made while at the White House.

The Daily Beast reviewed the litany of uninvited legal arguments spanning 599 pages, ranging from breathless reiterations of Trump’s claims to head-turning warnings. Yet all bear the signs of a historic case that could determine the fate of the election, if not American democracy.

The most unusual and unexpected amicus brief comes from three former high-ranking military leaders: Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as Trump’s own acting national security adviser; Robert Wilkie, who served as Trump’s Veterans Affairs Department secretary; and retired Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, who once led the Army’s elite commandos in Delta Force and Green Berets.

The three former military men felt it necessary to join together and address—in public and at the national level—one of the crazier Trump legal arguments: that Trump’s immunity from criminal prosecution is so beyond question that it would allow him to order the assassination of his political enemies.

“No—the president cannot order SEAL Team Six to assassinate his political rival and have the military carry out such an order,” they clarified, marking the first time former military leadership has ever had to utter such a phrase in court.

The trio went further, pointing out that a Reagan-era executive order already prohibits anyone acting on behalf of the United States government from taking part in an assassination. They dedicated a significant portion of their 18-page court filing to making clear that military officers would be legally justified in refusing to even carry out an official order from their commander-in-chief, an assertion rarely made by military brass—and one that underlies just how stark their concerns are at this point.

“That a person is a political rival of the president is neither a justification nor an excuse for an unlawful killing. And deliberately carrying out an order to murder such a person would be acting upon a premeditated design to kill or an intent to kill. Therefore, any officer engaged in murder on the orders of a president would be subject to the death penalty or life in prison—and the officer would know it,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the other amici curiae—the so-called “friends of the court” who weighed in to give the Supreme Court their two cents—largely sided with Trump.

The right-wing nonprofit America’s Future—which screened a bonkers QAnon Hollywood conspiracy “documentary” at Mar-a-Lago earlier this week—joined forces with Gun Owners of America and similar firearms associations to warn the high court that Smith’s prosecution was making the United States look more like China, Russia, or Zimbabwe.

“The prosecution of President Trump by the Biden Administration has a parallel to a recent event in Communist China,” they wrote, recalling the way former Chinese President Hu Jintao has vanished from public view ever since he was mysteriously escorted out of a public ceremony where he had been sitting next to his successor, Xi Jinping.

The United States is heading down that same route, they warned, lamenting “the explosion of lawfare” aimed at Trump for doing what they deemed totally sensible political speech—an argument that rests, in part, on the gun-toting petitioners’ continued rejection of the 2020 election results. They referenced Trump’s “supposed” defeat in Arizona and Georgia.

The real danger here, though, is that while Trump is currently polling strong, the gun groups concede that “the effect of a conviction may be very different and could determine the outcome of the election.”

But it wasn’t the conglomeration of Second Amendment enthusiasts that made a veiled threat over the high court decision. That came from an Alabama electrical engineer who’s become a political financier.

In his court filing, Shaun McCutcheon describes himself as “a successful, self-made American businessman and constitutional patriot.” And he warned Supreme Court justices that the country’s MAGA loyalists aren’t going to suddenly start trusting the U.S. court system to select fair-minded jurors.

“The former President’s tens of millions of supporters cannot reasonably be expected to accept the typical legal fictions of voir dire under such extreme circumstances,” his lawyer wrote.

McCutcheon assigns malicious intent to the Special Counsel’s decision to indict Trump in the largely liberal District of Columbia—never mind that the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment ensures that a person will be subjected to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury drawn from the district where his alleged crime was committed, which in this case was the White House.

“A prosecutor appointed by a partisan presidential appointee of the opposing political party may prosecute a former president in a hand-picked venue deeply hostile to that former president, his beliefs, political expression, and legacy,” his lawyer wrote.

While the Supreme Court received various interpretations of presidential immunity that cast the Special Counsel’s investigations as a severe threat to the functions of the commander-in-chief’s job, the sharpest example came from someone who knows a thing or two about Trump’s insurrection.

In his brief, Treniss Evans argued that if Trump can be put on trial for allegedly masterminding a months-long and multi-pronged attack on U.S. democracy, then President Biden could be held personally responsible for the death in February of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, given that an allegedly undocumented Venezuelan man was arrested for her killing.

“If a President doesn’t have immunity from prosecution for his actions, what prevents Georgia murder victim Laken Riley’s family from suing Joe Biden for allowing her illegal migrant murderer into the USA? Or what if hundreds of families all sued, seriatim?” his lawyer wrote, using the Latin phrase that means “one-by-one.”

Evans made the filing through his “legal advocacy group,” which bears the emotionally charged name Condemned USA. He trivialized Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims, but then went on to assert that Trump and his followers can’t possibly be accused of trying to stop certification of the election with a violent riot because technically Jan. 6, 2021, was just the official counting of the already certified votes before Congress.

The Supreme Court justices will get the sense that this topic is deeply personal for Evans. After all, his brief says right up top that “Mr. Evans has been investigating and reporting events of January 6th since January 6th, 2021. He was present at the Capitol on that day.”

In reality, he was in the violent crowd, held a bullhorn, and entered the Capitol—only to be identified by a Facebook tipster, arrested in Texas two months after the insurrection, and eventually sentenced to three years’ probation. To convince the federal judge to go easy on him, his other lawyer wrote that “Mr. Evans is quite self-reproving, sincerely remorseful, and duly contrite. He is embarrassed of this criminal conduct and the shame he has brought upon himself and his family. He has entered his plea of guilty voluntarily.”

But his March 19 brief before the Supreme Court doesn’t exactly hint at that remorse, nor does it morph into any critique of the man who called on him and others to show up that day and march on the Capitol Building.

Yet another legal advocacy firm asked the Supreme Court to give even more deference to Trump for the actions that led up to the disaster at the tail end of his presidency. The Christian Family Coalition Florida, a conservative Miami group that recently lent its support to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crackdown on transgender kids in girls’ sports teams, reduced Trump’s election interference efforts to merely “core political speech.” And it would give future politicians carte blanche to lie—and follow through with those lies—regardless of their claim’s merit.

“For the sake of the presidency and the nation, criminal liability cannot turn on a mere factual dispute over whether an ex-president’s communications in challenging an election were ‘knowingly false,’” a lawyer for the group wrote.

In this Trump case, justices also heard from a favorite villain of the American progressive movement: Citizens United, the nonprofit behind the Supreme Court’s 2010 landmark decision that opened the door to having corporations spend unlimited funds on elections.

The group joined with two former U.S. Attorneys General: the Reagan administration’s Edwin Meese III, and the George W. Bush administration’s Michael B. Mukasey. Together, they tried to strip the current team of federal prosecutors going after Trump from any legitimacy.

They argued that Smith “wields tremendous power, effectively answerable to no one, by design.” And they contend that’s something he can’t do without the Senate’s confirmation. Instead, they say, AG Merrick Garland should have taken the same approach he did with the separate Hunter Biden investigation and tap an existing, Senate-confirmed federal prosecutor in charge of a regional office, like Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.

The two conservative former AGs and the nonprofit also claim that most cabinet officials have the authority to appoint officers—minus the Justice Department, a proposition that would give the heads of Agriculture, Education and Homeland Security departments more leeway than the nation’s attorney general. And they warn that Garland’s actions could “create by regulation an entire shadow Department of Justice.”

But leave it to a consortium of 18 state attorneys general—all pro-Trump Republicans led by Alabama AG Steve Marshall—to make the one point everyone can probably agree on.

“If he had not been president, none of this would be happening,” they wrote.

Political Investigations Reporter

@Jose_Pagliery

jose.pagliery@thedailybeast.com

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-family-research-councils-insurrection-connections/

theFamily Research Council, a major player in the religious-right political movement, was deeply involved in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election—a fact made all the more apparent by revelations during the June 23 public hearing of the House select committee investigating the conspiracy that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

We had already known that FRC publicly supported Trump’s schemes to unlawfully stay in power. FRC President Tony Perkins and other leaders connected with the secretive Council for National Policy had signed a letter in mid-December 2020falsely claiming, “There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election. Joe Biden is not president-elect.” That letter called on state legislatures in six battleground states won by Joe Biden to “appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump.” It urged the House and Senate to reject pro-Biden electors from those states.

FRC Executive Vice President Jerry Boykin also signed that letter, as did Kenneth Blackwell, FRC’s senior fellow for human rights and constitutional governance. Blackwell, a notorious voter suppresser who abused the power of his office when he was Ohio’s secretary of state, was all-in on Trump’s election lies from the earliest days of the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement. Just days after the election, Blackwell used wildly false and inflammatory language in support of Trump’s claims, denouncing Pennsylvania’s governor, who defended his state’s election results from false claims of voter fraud, and “his legion of darkness.”

Blackwelland Perkins signed a second open letter at the end of December 2020 urging Senate Republicans to contest the votes from five battleground states.

Two days before the insurrection at the Capitol, Blackwell tweeted a video message using the “Stop the Steal” hashtag. “This is not a time for sideline sitters or backbenchers,” he said. “You must do what you can with what you have where you are. Our republic demands it.”

It turns out that Blackwell was busy behind the scenes, too.

At the Jan. 6 committee’s June 23 hearing, Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney revealed the contents of a Dec.28, 2020, email from Blackwell that read in part, “As I stated last week, I believe the VP and his staff would benefit greatly from a briefing by John and Ken.”

“John” would be John Eastman, the far right-wing lawyer who doggedly pushed illegal schemes to keep Trump in power based on false claims of election fraud and bogus theories about the vice president’s power to single-handedly decide who would become the next president. “Ken” referred to Ken Klukowski, a religious-right lawyer and pundit, longtime associate of Blackwell, and former director of FRC’s Center for Religious Liberty.

Blackwell’s email was sent to Ed Corrigan, a former Heritage Foundation vice president who served as part of the leadership team of Trump’s transition and now heads up the Conservative Partnership Institute, which promotes voter suppression in the name of “election integrity.**”It also went to Rep. Louis Gohmert’s chief of staff Connie Hair,whose promotion of Big Lie conspiracies about the election was quoted by Ginny Thomas in her post-election emails to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. Completing the circle,Meadows is now a “senior partner” at the Conservative Partnership Institute, which received $1 million from Trump’s PACshortly after the Jan. 6 committee was created.

Klukowski had joined the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget in the fall of 2019. After the 2020 election, Klukowski was parachuted into the Justice Department office of Jeffrey Clark, who was scheming to drag the DOJ into Trump’s efforts to overturn the election in key battleground states. Blackwell clearly seemed to recognize the bad optics of Klukowski’s involvement, urging in his email, “As I also mentioned, make sure we don’t overexpose Ken given his new position.”

Clark has unwillingly played a starring role in the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation, which has painstakingly exposed his effort to get Trump to name him acting attorney general. Clark and others had originally planned to send a letter to Georgia legislators—a letter that Klukowski helped Clark write—falsely claiming that the DOJ had identified major election problems in the state and encouraging them to convene a special session to consider naming a pro-Trump Electoral College slate. When Clark’s DOJ superiors blocked his scheme, Trump seriously considered making Clark acting attorney general so he could carry it out, abandoning the plan only after other top Justice Department officials threatened a massive leadership resignation that would swamp news of the letter and define Trump’s legacy.

As Rep. Cheney concluded, “This email suggests that Mr. Klukowski was simultaneously working with Jeffrey Clark to draft the proposed letter to Georgia officials to overturn their certified election and working with Dr. Eastman to help pressure the vice president to overturn the election.”

In other words, while a battle raged between principled White House and Justice Department officials who were committed to upholding the election results and facilitating a peaceful transfer of power and the defeated president and his power-at-all-costs supporters, current and former FRC leaders were in the trenches with Trump and the would-be election overthrowers.

Their collusion on Trump’s attempt to overturn the election is far from the firstBlackwell-Klukowski collaboration.They co-authored numerous partisan diatribes in the form of op-eds and books, including “Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency” and “Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America.” In 2016, Klukowksi guest-hosted FRC’s “Washington Watch” radio program and had Blackwell on as a guest.

At FRC’s October 2021 Pray Vote Stand conference—the rechristened activist gathering known for years as the Values Voter Summit—Blackwell slammed federal voting rights legislation and backed new voting restrictions being put in place by Republican state legislators.

The revelations of the Family Research Council’s all-out effort to help Trump stay in power despite his rejection by voters makes it even more appalling to learn from ProPublica that FRC has successfully petitioned the IRS to change its official classification to that of an association of churches, a tactic that Right Wing Watch has reported has been used by other religious-right groups like Focus on the Family and Liberty Counsel to evade public scrutiny and accountability.

Tags: Connie Hair Ed Corrigan Jeffrey Clark Jerry Boykin Ken Blackwell Ken Klukowski Kenneth Blackwell Mark Meadows Tony Perkins Capitol Insurrection House select committee on Jan. 6 Conservative Partnership Institute Council for National Policy Family Research Council

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splc

...

Another anti-Muslim figurehead involved with CNP is Frank Gaffney. A former Ronald Reagan administration staffer, Gaffney has since become one of the most prolific anti-Muslim propagandists in the country. He is gripped by paranoid fantasies of foreign entities such as the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating and supplanting the U.S. from within. Gaffney founded the anti-Muslim hate group Center for Security Policy and now serves in an executive chairmanship role at the group.

[pix Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, testifies during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2013 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Hatewatch first reported on Gaffney’s CNP membership in the publication of the group’s 2014 roster. He is listed as a “Gold Circle Member” in CNP’s September 2020 membership roster. Gold Circle Members pay a yearly fee of $10,000, as shown by nomination documents. Like Gabriel, Gaffney’s listed interests at CNP include “Radical Islam.”

Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2016, candidate Trump used data from a shoddy survey commissioned by the Center for Security Policy to justify his call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” The survey was done by The Polling Company, Kellyanne Conway’s company. Conway served as Trump’s senior counselor and was a member of CNP’s executive committee from 2014 to 2015, tax records show.

Like other anti-Muslim and far-right actors, CNP has begun to frame China as a new Cold War-style adversary. Gaffney and his group are active in stoking alarmism about the supposed threat from China. At a CNP conference in August 2020 in Arlington, Virginia, the coalition’s sister lobbying arm CNP Action, Inc., hosted a panel titled “Reckoning with China: Action Steps,” according to a leaked copy of the agenda obtained by the watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy. The panel featured Gaffney as a participant.

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a right-wing activist who is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is also a CNP member and counts “Radical Islam” among her interests. In 2013, Mother Jones reported Ginni Thomas and Gaffney were part of another right-wing strategy group known as Groundswell.

CNP has also included Islamophobic figures in its orbit and network. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn,Trump’s former National Security Adviser who was later pardoned by the former president after lying to the FBI, has ties to CNP, though he is not listed as a member. Flynn spoke at a CNP Policy Counsel event in July 2016. His name is also associated with a CNP Zoominfo account, as uncovered by investigative researcher Brent Allpress, suggesting Flynn might be involved more formally with the coalition. Flynn has a history of expressing anti-Islam sentiment, once calling the religion “a cancer.” In 2016, ACT for America advertised Flynn serving on its board of advisers. He was also a keynote speaker at ACT’s 2016 conference in Washington, D.C.

In September 2017, longtime anti-Muslim figurehead David Horowitz (who is not listed as a member) spoke at a CNP conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The theme of the event and Horowitz’s presentation was “Mapping the Left.” Horowitz heads the eponymously named David Horowitz Freedom Center, a hate group known for spreading anti-Muslim sentiment and helping fund other Islamophobic projects such as Jihad Watch and FrontPage Magazine. Once a leftist in the 1960s, Horowitz now tries to smear his former political affiliation as being totalitarian.

Dr. Mark Christian is listed as a member of CNP’s Board of Governors, which carries an annual fee of $6,000. Christian runs the anti-Muslim hate group Global Faith Institute, a group that peddles Islamophobic conspiracy theories while claiming to advocate for “the victims of Islam.” Christian is a former Muslim who converted to Christianity. He joins a cottage industry of former Muslims now disparaging their former faith. Christian is willing to associate with extreme figures in the anti-Muslim network, such as the former FBI agent turned anti-Muslim hate figure John Guandolo. Christian subscribes to the conspiracy theory that Islamic Sharia law is slowly “creeping” into American society.

“Islam has infiltrated all aspects of our life: our schools, churches, media, courts, military and our government,” reads a 2017 Global Faith Institute email to supporters. “Every day we are losing more of our freedom because of creeping sharia law.”

Christian did not answer a request for comment.

CNP’s rosters reveal the membership of other figures known for spreading Islamophobic rhetoric. One isfar-right historian William “Bill” Federer,who treads in Islamophobic and anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theories. According to the watchdog and research group Right Wing Watch, Federer once claimed that an “atheist homosexual gay agenda movement” will “open up” the U.S. “to move into an Islamic future.” Federer has been featured at events such as the Values Voter Summit, an annual conference put on by the Family Research Council. Brigitte Gabriel has also spoken at the Values Voter Summit in recent years, including 2018 and 2019. Family Research Council’s executive vice presidentJerry G. Boykin is also a member of CNP.

Boykin has a track record of making anti-Muslim remarks, once claiming Islam should not be protected by the First Amendment. Boykin used similar rhetoric in a 2014 news briefing for Policy Counsel, a CNP publication and speaker series to inform the public on a “wide range of topics” and “variety of opinions.” Boykin goes heavy on the anti-Islam rhetoric in the article, which touches on the rise and activities of the terrorist group ISIS at the time. Boykin took issue with former President Barack Obama’s attempts to not conflate the terrorist group with a religion of around 1.8 billion people.

“I think most Americans have figured this out,” Boykin said. “When you say Isis [sic] is not Islam the rest doesn’t really matter because if you are laying out a strategy that doesn’t start with an understanding of your enemy and who you are up against and what motivates him to do what he does the rest doesn’t matter.”

Boykin adds elsewhere: “One of the mistakes that we make about Islam is that only 16% of Islam is actually a religion.” He claims the rest is a legal, geopolitical and military system. Claiming Islam is not a religion – or only part one – is a well-tread trope deployed by Islamophobic figures. “But only 16% is an actual religion,” he said. “And we make the mistake of thinking that it’s exactly like Christianity. It is not.”

CNP’s Policy Counsel includes a disclaimer that views expressed in the articles are not always representative of the coalition. “These views should not be construed as the views of the Council for National Policy, as an attempt to aid or hinder the enactment of any legislation, or as an intervention in any political campaign for public office,” the disclaimer reads.

However, as CNP papers brought to light by Documented reveal, the coalition has advocated for policies steeped in Islamophobia.

Turning interest into action

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william Gerald "Jerry" Boykin (born April 19, 1948) is a retired American lieutenant general who was the United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence under President George W. Bush from 2002 to 2007. During his 36-year career in the military he spent 13 years in theDelta Force and was involved in numerous high-profile missions, including the 1980 Iran hostage rescue attempt, the 1992 hunt for Pablo Escobar in Colombia, and the Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu, Somalia.^[1] He is an author and visiting professor at Hampden–Sydney College, Virginia.^[2] He is currently executive vice president at the Family Research Council.^[3]

Early life[edit]

William Gerald "Jerry" Boykin was born on April 19, 1948, in Wilson, North Carolina.^[4] He attended New Bern high school and was the captain of the football team. He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) with a bachelor's degree in English in 1971.

Early military career[

As a young officer, he served in the 2nd Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas; with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam, and as a company commander in the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Stewart, Georgia.^[5][6] In 1978, at age 29, Boykin volunteered for and completed a specialized selection course for assignment to the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta, or Delta Force. He would hold numerous leadership positions in the elite unit, including operations officer, troop commander, squadron commander, deputy commander and finally unit commander from July 1992 to July 1994.

Lieutenant Colonel Lewis H. "Bucky" Burruss, who helped with Delta Force selection in early 1978, recalled that Boykin "had a bad knee and I thought he would never make it....I thought, I hate to see this guy busting his [butt], I don't see how he can make it on this bad road wheel, but he surprised us." Burruss wrote at the time that "Jerry Boykin is a Christian gentleman of the highest order." Boykin believed God had a hand in things: "God led me into the Delta Force....And He said to me, 'This is where you ought to be.'"^[5]

Overseas deployments[

In 1980, he was the Delta Force operations officer on the April 24–25 Iranian hostage rescue attempt. Boykin called it "the greatest disappointment of my professional career because we didn't bring home 53 Americans."^[7] Despite this, his "faith was strengthened" believing he had witnessed "a miracle": "Not one man who stood with us in the desert and pleaded for God to go with us was killed or even injured that night."^[5]

In 1983, Major Boykin was in charge of a "special" security detail consisting of OC Delta 9 and one OC CIA SA officer in South Korea to gain intelligence on the troop buildup by North Korea on the DMZ and as additional security for President Reagan's visit.[citation ^needed]

In October 1983, Boykin took part in Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada. He was wounded by anti-aircraft fire during the Delta helicopter assault on Richmond Hill Prison.^[8] In 1989, Boykin participated in the U.S. invasion of Panama as part of the mission to apprehend Manuel Noriega^[5] and participated in Operation Acid Gambit. From 1990 to 1991, Boykin attended the Army War College. In 1992 and early 1993, as a colonel, Boykin was in Colombia leading a mission to hunt for drug lord Pablo Escobar. Seymour Hersh later claimed in The New Yorker that there were suspicions within the Pentagon that Boykin's team was going to help assassinate Escobar with the support of U.S. Embassy officials in Colombia. Hersh refers to Mark Bowden's book Killing Pablo, which alleged that the Pentagon believed Boykin intended to break the law and exceed his authority in the operation. Bowden wrote that "within the special ops community...Pablo's death was regarded as a successful mission for Delta, and legend has it that its operators were in on the kill." Hersh quotes an anonymous retired army general as saying, "That's what those guys did. I've seen pictures of Escobar's body that you don't get from a long-range telescope lens. They were taken by guys on the assault team."^[9]

In April 1993, Boykin helped advise Attorney General Janet Reno regarding the stand-off at Waco, Texas, between the federal government and the Branch Davidians.^[1]

Domestic career[

Some time afterwards, Boykin served at the Central Intelligence Agency as Deputy Director of Special Activities, and was promoted to brigadier general. He was made Deputy Director for Operations, Readiness, and Mobilization when assigned to the Army Staff.^[6]

From 1998 to 2000, he served as the commanding general, U.S. Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. From 2000 to 2003, he was the commanding general, United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, N.C. In June 2003, he was appointed Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence under Dr. Stephen Cambone, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

Boykin retired on August 1, 2007, and began teaching at Hampden–Sydney College.^[2] In May 2016, he wrote on Facebook, "I have been terminated from teaching at Hampden-Sydney College after nine years there," though he and the college later reached agreement on another one-year contract.The college denied it had conducted a campaign to fire Boykin following his recent comments about transgender people using bathrooms, including, "The first man who goes in the restroom with my daughter will not have to worry about surgery."^[10][11]

On July 16, 2012, he was named executive vice president at Family Research Council. He joined because he wanted to "restore the values that made America a great nation" and preserve the future of his grandchildren.^[12] He also stated thatFRC president Tony Perkins "needs some grizzled old people around him who will not be deterred by the criticism of the media.".^[12]

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{2022/03:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{/11/revealed-new-leaders-of-council-for-national-policy-set-extremist-agenda/

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at its first meeting of 2022, the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP) laid out its plans for influencing this year’s midterm elections, abolishing abortion rights, defunding the left, limiting China’s influence, and countering a topic of great concern to Republicans: “wokeness.”

According to an agenda obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the CNP meeting took place the last weekend in February at theposh Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point, California. The agenda reveals changes in leadership and current priorities of the influential group, which is closelytied to Trump and the Republican Party.

Kevin Roberts, a CNP board member and president of the Heritage Foundation, kicked the event off with a speech on “how the Conservative Movement can go on the offense to promote America’s founding principles across the country.”

CNP is known for “connecting the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives,” as Columbia University Professor Anne Nelson describes the group in her definitive book Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.

Leadership Changes Elevate Voter Suppression Advocates

The program for the February meeting offers the first glimpse of the secretive group’s high-level members and leaders since CMDpublished its September 2020 Membership Directory, provided by open source intelligence researcher Brent Allpress.

The group’s Executive Committee is headed by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who has taken over from William Walton as CNP’s president. Judicial Watch’s “Election Integrity Project” has pushed for voter roll purges and promotes the myth that voter fraud is widespread in the U.S.

At the August 2020 CNP meeting, Fitton facilitated two panels on “election integrity,” CMDreported. “We need to stop those [vote-by-mail] ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do,” Fitton told meeting attendees, according to videos obtained by The Washington Post.

Another lifelong advocate of voter suppression now serves as CNP’s vice president: J. Kenneth Blackwell, a former secretary of state in Ohio and member of Trump’s failed voter fraud panel, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. He currently chairs the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a nonprofit spin-off of the Trump administration.

In May 2021, Blackwell facilitated an “Action Session” at CNP’s 40th anniversary meeting on how to combat the national voting rights effort, featuring U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential electoral college results, and GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who has promoted Trump’s Big Lie and advised him on his infamous call pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes for the former president to win the state.

At its February meeting, CNP hosted a screening of the filmCapitol Punishment with director Chris Burgard, which promotes the claim that, “Everything that we are being told [about the insurrection] is a lie and Americans are being persecuted to support that lie.” CNP has extensive ties to #StoptheSteal and the violent insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, CMD reported.

Others joining the CNP executive committee this year include Jerry A. Johnson (treasurer), former president of the National Religious Broadcasters; William G. Boykin, retired Army lieutenant general and executive vice president of theFamily Research Council; Chad Connelly, president of Faith Wins; and Millie Hallow, managing director of executive operations at the National Rifle Association.

Blackwell is also listed as president of the board of directors for CNP Action, and Fitton is a new director of the affiliate.

The Gold Circle Members list is largely similar to the September 2020 directory, with many of the new additions representing shifts from lower membership tiers. Notable new members include Ashland University President Carlos Campo; Lynn Friess, widow of GOP megadonor Foster Friess;and Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center and a vice president at Liberty University.

Politicizing Covid

“The pandemic led to unprecedented government mandates, the erosion of civil liberties, and an outright assault on freedom,” CNP’s agenda booklet argues. “Americans have seen and experienced what unchecked government power can do, and they have had enough.”

CNP has been instrumental in the relentless push from the right to ignore public health guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the deadly Covid-19 pandemic. It played a leading role in the anti-lockdown coalition known as “Save Our Country,” with members making up half of its leadership counciland organizing weekly conference calls to coordinate response tactics.

In May 2020, CMD also revealed that CNP Action, CNP’s 501(c)(4) affiliate, organized a call to discuss a plan for recruiting “extremely pro-Trump” doctors to campaign against Covid public health restrictions.

CNP’s February meeting featured a general session on the state of the pandemic in the U.S. led byDr. Jay Bhattacharya, a leading advocate for herd immunity who has advised Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) on his controversial anti-mask policies.

Focus on Elections

Despite being a tax-exempt organization barred from engaging in electoral politics, CNP is focusing heavily on elections this year, according to the agenda for its February meeting.

Dave Bossie, president of Citizens United, led things off at the Gold Circle Dinner with a presentation on “the most pressing political battles in DC and their impact on the Conservative Movement.”

A general session titled “Virginia 2021: Lessons Learned” featured Chad Connelly, founder and president of Faith Wins; Mark Campbell, campaign manager for Glenn Youngkin, the Republican who won the 2021 governor’s race in Virginia; Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation of Virginia; and Chris Wilson, CEO of WPA Intelligence sharing “their analyses of the Virginia race” and “what it means for 2022.”

After not winning a statewide race in more than a decade, in 2021 Republicans in Virginia won the offices of governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, while also recapturing the majority in the state House.

Former Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Becky Norton Dunlop, a past president of CNP, joined the four “Lessons Learned” panelists for a CNP Action session “to chart the course to success nationwide in November.”

In his capacity as CNP Action chairman, Blackwell also hosted “Candidate Introductions” for attendees. While candidates were not listed on the program, CMD obtained a flier for Drew Montez Clark, a Republican candidate for Florida’s 25th district seat in the U.S. House, that was circulated at the meeting.

Clarkreportedly co-organized two buses carrying 100 Floridians to the Jan. 6 rally in DC that led to the violent insurrection at the Capitol. He also spoke at a far-right “America First” rally in April 2021 headlined by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

Supreme Court Takes Center Stage

“This term of the Supreme Court could be one of the most consequential ever, and CNP Members have been central to some of the landmark cases being decided,” the CNP’s February meeting program notes. Speakers at a general session on the subject included Alan Sears, founder of the Christian right litigation powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom; Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser; and First Liberty President Kelly Shackelford.

“CNP has been strategizing to dominate the Supreme Court for decades,” CNP expert Anne Nelson told the Associated Press in Oct 2020. “They have worked through the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Rifle Association, all run by members of the CNP.”

Dannenfelserwas among 14 other CNP members to attend the Sept. 26, 2020, Rose Garden ceremony at the White House where Amy Coney Barrett accepted the nomination for the Supreme Court, solidifying the far-right’s hold on the nation’s highest court.

The agenda notes that Dannenfelser “will provide an update on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that could result in completely gutting or overturning Roe v. Wade,” the 1973 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing women in America the constitutional right to an abortion.

Mississippi’s Speaker of the House Phillip Gunn (R-Miss.), the 2020 chair of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), touted the Dobbs v. Jacksoncase and its prospects for leading to a decision to overturn Roe v. Wade during a panel at the CNP meeting last May, CMD reported.

“We think that’s going to be a landmark case. All of us know that the United States Supreme Court composition has changed… in a way that is more pro-life,” Gunn told meeting attendees last spring. “They say that Amy Coney Barrett is one of the most active, pro-life people in America, so we believe that she brings a new dynamic to that court. We think our case, our law that we passed in 2018, will be transformative in the arena in abortion. We’re proud of that.”

Dannenfelser then led a CNP Action panel “on how the Conservative Movement can be best equipped for the impending Supreme Court decision on Dobbs” and to “strategize on messaging, state legislation, and more with attendees.”

One of the panelists,Mike Thompson, is a senior vice president with CRC Advisors. Leonard Leo,who played an integral role in Trump’s effort to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing judges, founded CRC Advisors in 2020 with Greg Mueller to “funnel big money and expertise across the conservative movement.” As of September 2020, Leo was aBoard of Governors member of CNP.

Pushing Back Against China, the Left, and a “Woke” Military

Placing China “at the heart of the greatest challenges facing the United States in recent years”—from Covid to currency manipulation, climate policies, and “undue influence over American corporations”—Economic War Room host Kevin Freeman led a discussion titled “The 21st: An American or Chinese Century?”

Freeman was joined in the panel by Beau Brunson, Consumers’ Research Director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs. Consumers’ Research has committed millions in dark money to fight environmental, social, and corporate governance concerns (ESG) and “woke” capitalism, where BlackRock has emerged as a top target of its campaign for its “hypocritical” investments in China.

CMD recently exposed Consumers’ Research as one of the largest sponsors of the State Financial Officers Foundation, a group of Republican treasurers, auditors, and staff from 16 states, which has also prioritized fighting the ESG movement and “woke” capitalism.

Also on the panel were Pete Hoekstra, former ambassador to the Netherlands under Trump, and Steve Milloy, a FoxNews contributor and paid advocate for Phillip Morris, ExxonMobil, and other corporations.

The three also participated in a CNP Action panel on “Countering China,” where they collectively worked “on ways to combat the increasing and pervasive threat China poses to the United States and American life.”

Leading an CNP Action panel discussion on “Defunding the Left,”Buckeye InstitutePresident and CEO Robert Altfacilitated a tutorial on how to cut off contributions to “left-wing causes” by targeting public employee unions, trial lawyers, and investment management firms. O.H. Skinner, executive director of Alliance for Consumers, and Bridgett Wagner, vice president of policy promotion at the Heritage Foundation, joined the discussion.

New CNP Executive Member Boykinled a panel discussion focused on the question: “Can a Woke Military Address Future Threats?” with Mike Berry, First Liberty’s general counsel, and Keith Kellogg, retired Army lieutenant general and co-chair of AFPI’s Center for American Security.The three talked about “extreme policies [that] have been implemented through the Department of Defense” and “how woke ideologies have influenced our armed services.”

Two other CNP meetings are scheduled for this year, May 18–20 in McLean, VA, and September 15–17 in Frisco, TX.

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alex h

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/military-trump/

Half a year after now-President Joe Biden won the 2020 election — picking up 306 electoral votes and defeating former President Donald Trump by more than 7 million in the popular vote — Trump cultists continue to push the debunked conspiracy theory that the election was stolen from him. Some of those believers are veterans of the United States military, and veterans who don't buy into the president's lie are speaking out against those who do.

On Monday, May 10, an open letter from a far-right pro-Trump group called Flag Officers 4 America was released — and the letter, which was signed by 124 retired generals and admirals, promoted the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and that Trump, not Biden, was the real winner. The letter read, "Under a Democrat Congress and the Current Administration, our Country has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government which must be countered now by electing congressional and presidential candidates who will always act to defend our Constitutional Republic." And Politico's Bryan Bender reports that other U.S. military veterans are calling the group out and doing so forcefully.

"As news of the letter spread," Bender reports, "it set off a round of recriminations among current and former military members. One serving Navy officer, who did not want to be identified publicly, called it 'disturbing and reckless.'"

Golby, described by Bender as "an expert in civil-military relations," was vehemently critical of the Flag Officers 4 America letter and denounced it as a "shameful effort to use their rank and the military's reputation for such a gross and blatant partisan attack." And Bender quotes Adm. Mike Mullen, who formerly chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as saying, "I think it hurts the military, and by extension, it hurts the country." Mullen described the letter as being full of "right-wing Republican talking points."

Bender notes that the Flag Officers 4 America letter "was striking for several reasons."

"It is not unusual for retired officers to take sides in electoral politics and endorse candidates," Bender explains. "But its fiery, even angry, language and conspiracy-mongering struck multiple long-time observers as particularly out of bounds and dangerous. Coming outside the campaign season was also seen as rare, if not unprecedented."

The rhetoric in the Flag Officers letter sounds like something that would come from a far-right outlet like WorldNetDaily or One America News. The letter read, "The Current Administration has launched a full-blown assault on our Constitutional rights in a dictatorial manner, bypassing the Congress, with more than 50 Executive Orders quickly signed, many reversing the previous Administration's effective policies and regulations. Moreover, population control actions such as excessive lockdowns, school and business closures, and most alarming, censorship of written and verbal expression are all direct assaults on our fundamental Rights. We must support and hold accountable politicians who will act to counter Socialism, Marxism and Progressivism."

Of course, the notion that the Biden Administration is run by "Marxists" is downright laughable. Biden, a centrist Democrat, is hardly viewed as a role model by actual far-left Marxist groups around the world — and in 2020, he was endorsed by right-wing anti-Trump conservatives who include Carly Fiorina, Cindy McCain, former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, among many others.

The far-right Republicans who signed the Flag Officers letter include retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin — who has been expressing anti-Islam and Christian nationalist views and serves as executive vice president of the theocratic Family Research Council — and retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in New Hampshire in the 2022 election. This isn't the first time Bolduc has run for the U.S. Senate; in 2020, he lost a GOP senatorial primary to Bryant "Corky" Messner, who lost to incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in the general election.

Another veteran who signed the Flag Officers letter is retired Vice Adm. John Poindexter, who served as deputy national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan and was a leading figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Meanwhile, Marybeth Ulrich, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who teaches at the U.S. Air Force Academy as well as the Army War College, has slammed the letter as "anti-democratic."

Ulrich told Politico, "That was way worse than I was expecting. They are perpetuating the big lie about the election. I think it is outrageous. Some of it is very anti-democratic behavior."

Moreover, Ulrich, according to Bender, will be citing the letter as a troubling example of how military veterans should not conduct themselves.

"They are absolutely violating the norm to be apolitical," Ulrich told Politico. "They are being used for partisan purposes. They are going against their constitutional oath."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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Among President Trump’s most ardent Religious Right supporters is a group of self-declared prophets and apostles who make up the POTUS Shield network, which former Trump campaign adviser Frank Amedia says was organized at God’s direction in the wee hours after Trump’s election. Last night, POTUS Shield held a call for its “prayer warriors” to address a series of urgent topics, described in texting shorthand as “SIEGE ON KAVANAUGH ELECTIONS DEEP STATE.”

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On the hour-long call, which Amedia said attracted “thousands” of people, he declared that “Satan himself,” the “commander-in-chief of the evil kingdom,” is orchestrating the opposition to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “It’s evil against good,” he said, with the survival of the nation at stake.

Amedia said he had received a thank-you call that morning from Vice President Pence’s staff. “We’re both a shield and a spear,” he said, that goes on offense as well as defense.

Amedia previously organized 24-hour prayer watches for the Kavanaugh nomination, divided into eight three-hour shifts. He said on Tuesday night’s call that they’ve “seen shifts” in the news based on the assignments given to prayer groups.

The “transformation of the Supreme Court” was one of the “primary assignments” that Amedia says God gave him the morning after the election. He said God told him that there would be three changes on the court “in the first season” of Trump’s presidency. Amedia noted that the group has been praying about Justice Sonya Sotomayor by name—that she would repent or be removed—and, he said, “most of you know throughout this year she’s had a rough year.”

“We are not wishy-washy Christians,” Amedia said. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, “needs healing and deliverance,” he said, but she deserves no pity because “she is a false witness.” All of the witnesses against Kavanaugh, he said, are false.

“Last night the Lord had me praying multiple times that [attorney Michael] Avenatti would step in his own snare, and in his own trap, and he would spew and eat his own vomit,” said Amedia.

Next up wasCindy Jacobs, who said her “prayer generals” are currently gathered at her Dallas “prayer mountain.” She said she has been surprised at the number of young people having dreams, including one which featured a monster with blood dripping out of its mouth over the Supreme Court. Jacobs identified the monster as Moloch, an ancient God associated in the Bible with child sacrifice.

She referred to Rise Up, a rally on the national mall that Jacobs hosted with Lou Engle in 2017, at which anti-abortion leaders prayed that God would open more vacancies on the Supreme Court. On the POTUS Shield call, Jacobs agreed that there would soon be a third new Supreme Court justice, and that “God is preparing a woman” to fill the vacancy.

She prayed to break curses against the Supreme Court. “We bind, muzzle and gag anyone” who is not of God from testifying against Kavanaugh. Then she declared, “Oh! I just felt something break in the heavens.”

Amedia then turned to Herman Martir, who organized Asian Americans for Trumpduring the presidential campaign. Martir said that Asian Americans can become a swing vote in key races in 2018, which he said “can determine the future of America.” Martir led prayer for Senate and House races; among those he prayed for by name were Ted Cruz and Corey Stewart, the Republicans’ neo-Confederate Senate candidate in Virginia. Martir prayed that God would influence the hearts of voters, that there will be “an army that will mobilize millions and millions of voters that they will vote this coming November elections for righteousness and justice.”

Getting back to the Kavanaugh nomination, Martir prayed that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley would “not be intimidated.”

Amedia echoed Martir, asking God to galvanize Grassley and Senate Majority Mitch McConnell so that they would not be moved from their steadfast support for Kavanaugh, and to strengthen Susan Collins “not to let her cave in,” along with Sens. Flake and Murkowski. He asked God to “put upon [the] hearts” of Democratic senators Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Manchin to break ranks with other Democrats and “join Your ranks.”

Next up was Jerry Boykin, executive vice president of the Family Research Council, who mentioned having dinner with McConnell last Thursday night, the day before McConnell spoke at FRC’s Values Voter Summit. He said McConnell promised that Kavanaugh will be confirmed; Boykin warned that Republicans will lose the House and Senate if Kavanaugh is not confirmed. Conservatives, he said, should insist that the burden of proof is on Kavanaugh’s accusers.

Boykin slammed the “deep state” and “resistance movement”—“a diabolical movement as far as I’m concerned”—that is “motivated by the forces of evil” and is “melting down” after having had their way for eight years. He went on to call Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein a “classical example of the deep state” and predicted that he will be fired after the election. He also said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a mistake in saying that there is no deep state in the State Department, which Boykin said may in fact be the worst place of all.

“We need to quit worrying about God being displeased with us praying against our enemies,” said Boykin. There are “an awful a lot of Christians that think we oughta just love our enemies,” he said. “Well, there comes a point where we need to take ‘em on. We need to be aggressive.” We need to pray, he said, “that God will humiliate them, because they are guided by evil.”

Boykin prayed that former FBI Director James Comey and special counsel Robert Mueller “will absolutely be exposed as the phonies they are.”

Amedia asked someone he referred to as “Prophet Patty” to lead a prayer on the points Boykin made. She prayed that God would remove the protection around Mueller that, she said, “is coming from a hierarchy and from a principality,” and prayed that God would “strip him of his power.”

“We thank you that this witch hunt is over,” she prayed. “We bind every form of witchcraft, every sorcery spirit, every powerful force that would try, of spiritual wickedness in high places. … We hold this shield up, we clean out the deep state, and we call for this thing to come to an end, in Jesus’ name.”

Mark Gonzales, founder of the U.S. Hispanic Prayer Network and the U.S. Hispanic Action Network, then prayed for key Senate races, saying he’s doing six to eight presentations a day to mobilize pastors and churches.

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5) Obama Will Create A Personal Brownshirt Army

Ret. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who now serves as the executive vice president of the Family Research Council, repeatedly predicted that Obama planned to “establish a constabulary force” through the Affordable Care Act that would “control the population in America” much in the same way that Adolf Hitler used the Brownshirts to consolidate power, basing his accusation on a debunked myth about the health care law.

Boykin wasn’t alone in predicting that Obama would create such an army.

Another former military official, Ret. Army Major General Jerry Curry, warned that the Obama administration might “arm illegal immigrants” to begin killing Americans, with a focus on assassinating members of the armed forces.

Then-Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia similarly warned in 2008 that Obama’s proposed expansion of national service programs was “exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany” and “exactly what the Soviet Union did.” Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, claimed in 2013 that Obama’s “secret security force” was already in existence.

Lawrence C. Mackin, a conservative writer, warned that Obama was bent on creating a “private internal army” including “illegal aliens” and Middle Eastern terrorists, and William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC said Obama would give immigrants “a badge and a gun” in order to target the “Christian, heterosexual male” population. Far-right activist Jim Garrow thought Obama would fake contact with aliens in order to justify the creation of his own army.

Convinced that President Obama was set to wage an anti-white race war, radio host Michael Savage said that Obama intended to arm and “deputize” members of the Crips and Bloods gangs and turn them into his “shock troops.” He also claimed that Black Lives Matter supporters would be “Obama’s shock troops” and “secret private army” much like “the Brownshirts that Hitler had.”

nother name on Trump’s list that leaps out is General Jerry Boykin, last heard from claiming that the U.S. is leading a holy war of Christians vs Muslims and being blasted by the Pentagon for writing a book full of classified information. The list of weirdness from this fellow, now an executive with the family Research Council is a mile long. My personal favorite is his contention that “Jesus, who was a real “man’s man,” will return to earth carrying an AR-15.”

Like Trump, he also believes that President Obama is a secret Muslim working on behalf of terrorists. In that he would be in the good company of another signatory Lt. General Thomas G. McInerney, who challenged the president’s eligibility for office in a court of law, asserting that he couldn’t prove he was a US citizen.

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/7/headlines/88_retired_military_leaders_endorse_donald_trump

In news from the campaign trail, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will both speak at a public forum on national security this evening. This comes as Donald Trump’s campaign has released a list of 88 retired military leaders who have endorsed Trump. The list includes Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the right-wing leader of the anti-LGBTQ group the Family Research Council. He served as undersecretary of defense for intelligence under the George W. Bush administration. He’s described the U.S. war on terror as a "spiritual battle" between a "Christian nation" and Satan—rhetoric that sparked widespread outrage and a rebuke from President George W. Bush.

Following the attacks in Brussels on March 22, GOP Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz issued a call for the United States to "immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al-Qaida or ISIS presence."

Surprisingly, he also called for a "need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." Such statements, coming from a leading presidential candidate, are only the latest examples of anti-Muslim rhetoric making the jump from the firing of hate groups to mainstream political discourse. But such jumps are not random and, in fact, have come after years of planning.

The Center for Security Policy, a hate group that serves as the anti-Muslim movement's premier think tank, has worked hard to earn the ear of elected officials and has sadly succeeded in this strategy. Of the eight people appointed as advisors to 2016 candidates Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, all have connections to CSP and half hold ranking positions within the group, including its founder, Frank Gaffney.

Listed below are detailed profiles of the eight anti-Muslim advisors Cruz and Trump have appointed to advisory roles in their campaigns.

Frank Gaffney, president of Center for Security Policy, appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17

Frank Gaffney is the founder of the anti-Muslim movement's preeminent think tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He also is one of the most outspoken anti-Muslim activists in America today, propagating conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating the White House and producing reports calling for a ban on all Muslim immigration to the U.S.

When asked at an event in 2015 about Somali refugees working at meat processing plants in the U.S., for example, Gaffney stated, "I don't know about you, but it kind of creeps me out that they are getting jobs in the food supply of the United States." Gaffney has also made efforts to associate with loud-and-proud racists. In September of 2015, Gaffney invited on his radio show Jared Taylor, one of the most prominent white nationalists in America, to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis. During the interview, Gaffney called Taylor's openly racist American Renaissance website "wonderful."

Despite such ties to known racists, Gaffney does not operate on the political fringe. In recent years, he and his organization have grown closer to Cruz, with whom he has frequently shared a stage at anti-Muslim events.

In February 2014, Gaffney spoke on a panel titled, "American Security and The Iranian Bomb: Analyzing Threats at Home and Abroad" with Cruz. A month later, Cruz spoke at a "National Security Action Summit" organized by Breitbart News, which featured a host of anti-Muslim activists including Gaffney and three other members of Cruz's National Security Coalition. In September 2014, Cruz spoke via video at another CSP co-sponsored Action Summit.

A year later, in February 2015, Cruz spoke at the CSP's "Defeat Jihad Summit." Gaffney also held four "National Security Action Summit" events last year in Nevada, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa, all key primary states. Cruz attended the first, in South Carolina, and submitted a video speech for the other three. The CSP summits featured a number of GOP presidential hopefuls speaking alongside notorious anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant figures.

In September 2015, Cruz teamed up with his rival Donald Trump to organize a rally in opposition to the nuclear treaty signed with Iran. CSP co-sponsored the event in D.C.

Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin (Ret.), Executive VP of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17

Boykin works for the anti-LGBT Family Research Council (FRC), but is more known for his activism in the anti-Muslim world.

In the past, Boykin, who brings with him a decorated career in the U.S. Army, has worked closely with the Center for Security Policy and has openly stated that Islam should not be protected under the First Amendment. In 2012, Boykin infamously claimed, "The continent of Europe is dark, it is hopelessly lost and it's going to get worse. Every expert will tell you that by the middle of this century the continent of Europe will be an Islamic continent, and they can't reverse it, they can't stop it. It is because they took Jesus out of their societies and it's been replaced by darkness."

Last month, Boykin endorsed Ted Cruz for president, claiming Cruz was "a man of character integrity and courage." It wasn't a surprise, considering Boykin and Cruz have shared the stage before. In February of 2015, Cruz and Boykin both spoke at the CSP's "Defeat Jihad Summit" in Washington, D.C. In March last year, Boykin participated in Frank Gaffney's National Security Action Summit in South Carolina. A year earlier, both Cruz and Gaffney spoke at the Breitbart-sponsored National Security Action Conference in DC. Boykin also attended and spoke at the Cruz/Trump anti-Iran nuclear deal rally in D.C. in September of 2015.

Claire Lopez - VP for research and analysis at the anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17

Lopez, a longtime Gaffney ally, is a key figure at CSP, previously serving as a fellow before becoming vice president of the think tank.

Like her boss Frank Gaffney, Lopez peddles anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. She has long claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood has "infiltrated and suborned the U.S. government to actively assist … the mission of its grand jihad." In 2013, she wrote a report linking Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to the Muslim Brotherhood - a favored allegation that has never been proven. Also in 2013, she stated at a speaking engagement, "When people in other bona fide religions follow their doctrines they become better people - Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Jews. When Muslims follow their doctrine, they become jihadists." In 2014, she said that because Obama's father was Muslim, that "de facto makes him [Obama] a Muslim," which in turn explains why the president "attacks and punishes Israel while allowing the Islamic State to grow and conquer."

Lopez has also participated in a number of events featuring Cruz, including the March 2014 National Security Action summit in Washington, D.C. and the "Defeat Jihad Summit" in February of 2015.

Andy McCarthy - Columnist for National Review, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17

McCarthy, like Boykin, is not employed by an anti-Muslim group, but he is very active in the movement, especially on the anti-Muslim speaking circuit.

McCarthy recently claimed that Islam is not a religion and therefore may not deserve legal protections.

In 2010, McCarthy co-authored a CSP-published report titled, "Shariah: The Threat to America." The report concluded with a number of alarmist recommendations, including a call for U.S. government to halt outreach to Muslim communities "through Muslim Brotherhood fronts whose mission it is to destroy our country from within, as such practices are both reckless and counterproductive." Other recommendations included warning Imams that they will be charged with sedition if they advocate for Shariah in America. The report also called for dismantling so-called "no-go zones"-non-existent neighborhoods where law enforcement are rumored to be unable to police because they're heavily Muslim.

McCarthy praised Cruz in a December 2015 National Review column. "Cruz understands that the most immediate enemy the United States confronts on the world stage is Islamic supremacism, which ignites jihadist violence through its state sponsors, terror networks, and activist organizations." Like Clare Lopez, McCarthy has spoken at anti-Muslim events with Cruz, including the "Defeat Jihad Summit" in 2015 and the second National Security Action Summit in September of 2014.

Fred Fleitz - Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs at the anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17

Fleitz is another Center for Security Policy staffer appointed to the Cruz team. Like Clare Lopez, Fleitz served as a CSP fellow before moving up the ranks.

Fleitz is a co-author of a 2015 report published by CSP titled, "The Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan for Victory Over the Global Jihad Movement." Other authors of the report include Cruz National Security Coalition members Jerry Boykin, Frank Gaffney and Clare Lopez. The report concludes with a number of radical recommendations including stopping the immigration of "Shariah-adherent" individuals to the U.S.

Fleitz recently attacked President Obama for speaking at a mosque, claiming the mosque had "known terrorist ties."

Sen. Jeff Sessions - key politician in the anti-Muslim movement, Appointed as Chair of Trump's National Security Advisory Committee on March 3

Sen. Jeff Sessions is one of the most outspoken anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim federal officials who, unsurprisingly, endorsed Trump last month.

In 2014, Sessions received the "Daring the Odds" award from anti-Muslim hate group the David Horowitz Freedom Center for his efforts to prevent undocumented youth from receiving temporary status in the United States. Previous winners of the award include Pamela Geller, who heads the anti-Muslim groups American Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop the Islamization of America. The Center for Security Policy awarded Sessions with its "Keeper of the Flame" award in October of 2015.

In September 2015, Sessions attacked President Obama's plan to resettle Syrian refugees in the United States, stating, "It has also been reported that 3 in 4 of those seeking relocation from the Middle East are not refugees but economic migrants from many countries."

Walid Phares - Anti-Muslim activist and former Lebanese Christian Militia member, Trump revealed Phares is on his council of advisors on March 22, 2016

Walid Phares is a Lebanese Christian with a troubled past. After Mitt Romney announced in 2011 that Phares would serve as co-chair for his Middle East advisory group, Mother Jones revealed that Phares, "was a high ranking political official in a sectarian religious militia responsible for massacres during Lebanon's brutal, 15-year civil war." Earlier that year, Phares was scheduled to testify at hearings discussing radical Islam that were organized by U.S. Rep. Peter King, a close friend of a number of anti-Muslim groups. King was forced to drop Phares from the witness list after his militia ties became known.

Phares has spoken at several events organized by the Center for Security Policy, including a National Security Group Lunch on in February 2015, and another similar event in December of that year. He has also been a guest on Frank Gaffney's Secure Freedom Radio show. Phares was also a guest on an ACT! for America series in 2011. ACT! is the largest grassroots anti-Muslim hate group in America, run by Brigitte Gabriel.

Joseph E. Schmitz - Senior Fellow with the anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy, named to Trump's council of advisors on March 22, 2016

Schmitz spent three years as the Pentagon's Inspector General before leaving under a barrage of scrutiny. According to the Los Angles Times, "Schmitz slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects and accepted gifts that may have violated ethics guidelines."

Today, Schmitz is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. He has been a guest on Frank Gaffney's Secure Freedom Radio show and in June of 2013, he spoke at a CSP event. CSP also published a book penned by Schmitz, titled "Inspector General Handbook."

Schmitz is also a co-author of two CSP reports: "Shariah: The Threat to America," and "The Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan for Victory Over the Global Jihad Movement."

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Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin (Ret.)

He served two years as a commander of Delta and participated in some of its most high-profile missions, including the Iran hostage crisis in 1980 and the “Black Hawk Down” firefight in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. That same year, Boykin consulted then-Attorney General Janet Reno on the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas. In 2003, President Bush publicly distanced himself from Boykin when it was revealed that he had made anti-Islamic statements and cast the “War on Terror” as a religious conflict while giving speeches at churches in full dress uniform, a violation of regulations. Since his retirement from the military in 2007, Boykin has involved himself fully as a Christian far-right activist and anti-Muslim propagandist. He is currently executive vice president of the Family Research Council, which is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In his own words:

“Well, if you understand anything about Islam, there are subliminal messages, and [Obama’s] message, really, I believe, was …‘I understand you and I support you.’”

—During a break at the anti-Islamic National Security Action Summit, about President Obama’s first appearance in Cairo, March 6, 2014

“Our government is so infiltrated and the Muslim Brotherhood has so much influence in this country, it is incredible.”

–WND Radio America, Sept. 21, 2012

“One of the most disgusting things I hear is for people to call Hitler the extreme right. The absolute opposite was true. It was the National Socialist Party. He was an extraordinarily off the scale leftist. But many Jews in America, for example, can’t identify with the Republican Party because they’re called the party of the right, and they equate that to Hitler when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.”

–April 2011 video for Rick Joyner’s Oak Initiative

“The continent of Europe is dark, it is hopelessly lost and it’s going to get worse. Every expert will tell you that by the middle of this century the continent of Europe will be an Islamic continent, and they can’t reverse it, they can’t stop it. It is because they took Jesus out of their societies and it’s been replaced by darkness.”

–Address to Family Research Council’s Watchmen on the Wall conference, May 2012

“So we love the Muslim people but we have to be very careful to understand that Islam — in a pure sense and an authoritative sense — Islam is evil. Islam is an evil concept because it does call for innocent blood. It calls for the subjugation of women, it calls for brutality that is alien to us as Christians. So we do love the Muslim people, but the Bible also speaks of a time when men will call good evil and evil good, and we have to be sure that we are in fact calling Islam what it is, and in reality, it’s evil.”

–Speaking with Rick Joyner and self-proclaimed ex-terrorist Kamal Saleem, Feb. 27, 2012

“We are at war. And I think that until Americans are willing to find out what Islam is and to find out the truth about what the Muslim Brotherhood is doing in our country, we’re going to continue to live in darkness.”

– 2011, speaking to James Dobson on his radio program

“There is a cabal, a group of very nefarious people, who very much want to create a global government. In order to create a global government, you essentially have to make everybody the same, so there’s not a superpower. Inside America, the foundations of that are the billions of dollars of a guy named George Soros, who has been, really for the last four or five decades, working very hard to bring us to a point where he can make us — lead us into a Marxist government. But there is an entity within the Council of Foreign Relations that is very much focused on global governments — one world government.”

—Answering questions at the Oak Initiative Summit, 2011

“[Islam] should not be protected under the First Amendment, particularly given that those following the dictates of the Quran are under an obligation to destroy our Constitution and replace it with sharia law.”

—Video for Rick Joyner’s Oak Initiative, 2010

Background

William G. “Jerry” Boykin was born in North Carolina, where he worked on his grandparents’ tobacco farm. According to his memoir, Never Surrender, his father was a World War II veteran who was wounded at Normandy. Boykin’s own long and decorated military career began after he graduated from Virginia Tech (which he attended on a football scholarship) in the last weeks of 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in English. He was sworn in as a soldier in the United States Army on Dec. 26, 1970, and the next year made the cut as an officer in the elite 1st Ranger Battalion. In 1972, he was sent to Vietnam, but his combat tour ended after three months with the ceasefire.

In 1978, as a young captain, Boykin was asked to “volunteer” for a new, secret unit being formed called Delta Force. But first he would have to undergo a rigorous 30-day training and screening process for what would come to be considered the United States’ toughest counter-terrorism and hostage rescue squad. Lt. Col. L.H. “Bucky” Burress helped make Delta Force selections, and he was not convinced that Boykin would physically make the grade because of bad knees. Boykin also claimed in his memoir that a psychologist at Fort Bragg wanted to exclude him from Delta Force because “you rely too much on your faith and not enough on yourself.” But Boykin persevered, and joined Delta Force at age 29. Burress would write at the time that Boykin was a “Christian gentleman of the highest order.” Boykin believed that God had spoken to him and told him to join Delta Force.

By 1980, Boykin was the Delta Force operations officer during the Iranian hostage rescue attempt, Delta Force’s inaugural mission and a catastrophic failure. The mission was aborted after a crash in the Iranian desert killed eight American soldiers. In 1983, Major Boykin was tapped for Operation Urgent Fury in the Caribbean island of Grenada, but only because “he begged” to go on the combat assault, according to Burress. Boykin was mostly riding a desk as an operations officer by then and Burress later told the Washington Post that “[i]t was probably a mistake” that he put Boykin on the mission, though he said that “a soldier who wants to get stuck in combat is a good soldier.” On that mission, a bullet that hit the radio Boykin was operating also went through his armpit and out his shoulder. Boykin regained use of his arm later because, he claimed, God had healed him.

He continued to be selected for various missions, including gathering intelligence on troop buildups in North Korea. He spent 1990-1991 at the Army War College and 1992-1993 hunting Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. By then, Boykin was a colonel. In 1993, he and Gen. Peter Schoomaker (one of Boykin’s closest friends) advised then-Attorney General Janet Reno during the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas. He would also serve as the CIA’s Deputy Director of Special Activities and would be promoted to brigadier general.

Also in 1993, Boykin was embroiled in Mogadishu, an operation in Somalia against self-proclaimed president Mohamed Farrah Aidid. What was originally intended as a quick, in-and-out raid turned into an overnight standoff after two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and the mission shifted to a desperate and bloody attempt to extract the downed American crewmen from the city. Hundreds of Somali militiamen were killed in the firefight. Out of an air and ground assault force of about 150 American troops, 18 were killed and 84 wounded. Boykin was hit by shrapnel in his legs and feet two days later, when a mortar round landed in the airfield, killing a Delta Force sergeant and critically wounding the unit’s surgeon. In person and in print, Boykin claims to have prayed over the dying surgeon, and now that surgeon is alive and practicing medicine in the Shenandoah Valley.

Following Mogadishu, the Senate Armed Services Committee looked into tactical and policy decisions that might have contributed to the American casualties. Boykin claimed that he saw a copy of an anonymous letter circulating through the Pentagon that blamed his alleged incompetence for the deaths of the servicemen. Committee investigators interviewed Boykin, but Maj. Gen. William Garrison took full responsibility for the battle’s outcome, thus removing Boykin from further inquiries.

Boykin earned his third star in the summer of 2003, which made him a lieutenant general, and he was appointed to undersecretary of defense of intelligence in the Bush administration. There, he headed anew office that was focused on hunting down Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other “high-value targets.” It was during his tenure in the Bush administration that his religiosity almost cost him his career.

In 2003, he came under fire for remarks he made at several churches where he appeared in full dress uniform. During those presentations, Boykin referred to the United States as a “Christian nation” joined in “spiritual battle” against Satan, couching Islam as the enemy and casting the war on terror in religious terms, which, detractors noted, could put troops in danger. He told a religious group in Oregon that Islamic extremists hate the United States “because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian.”

In another speech in which he discussed Mogadishu, he said of a captured Somali warlord that, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.” In photos Boykin had taken from a helicopter, flying over Mogadishu, he said strange marks appeared on the film and he claimed that the photos demonstrated that “a demonic spirit” possessed the city. In yet another of his appearances, he said that the enemy in the antiterrorism fight was Satan, and that God had put Bush in the White House.

Following an outcry about his comments, President Bush publicly distanced himself from Boykin and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) and the committee’s senior Democrat, Carl Levin (Mich.), called for an inquiry and for Boykin to step down while the inquiry was under way.

But then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld kept him at his post, although the Defense Department investigated his remarks and determined that Boykin had violated three internal regulations: He had failed to obtain clearance for his remarks, failed to clarify that his remarks were personal, and failed to report reimbursement of travel expenses from participating religious groups. The investigation also determined that Boykin had spoken at 23 religiously oriented events (mostly Baptist and Pentecostal) since 2002, and that he wore his uniform at all but two.

The investigation and its findings amounted to a slap on the wrist.

Boykin’s religiosity has created problems for him professionally and personally over the years, including a divorce from his first wife after Mogadishu, who, he said, called him a “religious fanatic” as she was leaving him.

Boykin retired from active military service in 2007 and ever since has immersed himself in far-right Christian activist circles. He was ordained as a minister and got involved with Kingdom Warriors Ministry, whose home page claims, “the LORD is a warrior, the LORD is his name.” On that site is a 2011 video in which Boykin and anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney discuss the supposed threat to America of Sharia, or Islamic religious law, with Christian Broadcasting Network host Erick Stackelbeck.

Boykin also sits on the board of the Christian Dominionist-leaning Oak Initiative, which works to create a grassroots movement of likeminded Dominionists who will “mobilize and organize a cohesive force of activated Christians.” The website states, the Christian activists then “will be called to work on every level where government is found.” Dominion theology calls for Christians to implement a nation governed by Christians or a nation governed by a conservative Christian understanding of biblical law. Boykin has also done videos for the Oak Initiative. In one, he claims that President Obama is developing his own “brownshirt army” to enforce healthcare and Marxism.

The Oak Initiative’s board includes a few well-known personalities on the radical Christian right, including its president, Rick Joyner of Morningstar Ministries, who has claimed that Hurricane Katrina was God’s judgment for homosexuality, that Islam is also God’s judgment on America for allowing abortion and “other perversions,” and the Japanese earthquake of 2011 that resulted in a massive tsunami opened the doors to the same demonic forces that caused Nazism. Cindy Jacobs of the Generals International ministry also sits on the board. She’s perhaps best known for claiming that the mass bird die-offs in Arkansas in 2011 were caused because God was displeased about the repeal of the military’s anti-LGBT “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Lou Sheldon, the founder of the anti-LGBT hate group Traditional Values Coalition, is also on the board, as is Janet Folger (Porter) of Faith2Action Ministries, who peddles anti-LGBT myths about the “homosexual agenda” and has claimed that Obamacare would create “death panels” that would target Tea Party members.

In 2010, Boykin gave an interview to Dan Wooding, founder of ASSIST Ministries, in which he expounded on his apocalyptic beliefs and his work with Kingdom Warriors Ministries. He told Wooding that Christians are persecuted in America at an unprecedented level and that Russia would eventually invade Israel, both predictions that Boykin claims are found in Scriptures.

For the most part, however, Boykin is now known publicly for his involvement on the anti-Islamic front. He helped author what’s known as the “Team B II report,” (2010) titled “Shariah: The Threat to America,” published by the anti-Islamic Center for Security Policy, headed by Frank Gaffney. The name “Team B II” is a nod to the original “Team B” report, in which conservative analysts were commissioned by the CIA in 1976 to assess the threat the Soviet Union posed. That report has been declassified, and determined to be mostly wrong on nearly every count, and it also grossly exaggerated the threat the Soviet Union then posed to the United States. A Senate investigative committee found in 1978 that the members of the original Team B had “yielded a flawed composition of political views and biases.”

The Team B II contributors are a list of anti-Islamic notables like Frank Gaffney, David Yerushalmi, and discredited FBI agent John Guandolo. Boykin was one of the “team leaders” in the Team B II report, along with his fellow retired military colleague Lt. Gen. Harry Soyster. The report is a 170-page compendium of conspiracy theories and anti-Islamic claims, including the notion that “many of the most prominent Muslim organizations in America are front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood,” which is trying to implement Shariah law all over America and the rest of the world. Gaffney, who has claimed that President Obama is a “secret Muslim,” admitted to a reporter in 2010 that he couldn’t name an actual Muslim or Islamic scholar who was consulted in the writing of the report.

In 2012, Boykin was hired by the anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council, where he is currently an executive vice president. He is tasked with, among other things, highlighting conservative opposition to Obama’s military policies, especially the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which allows gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces.

Boykin continues to insist that he is not anti-Muslim, though he has said that Islam is “evil” and should not be protected under the First Amendment. He also claimed there is a nefarious cabal at work that will implement a “one-world government,” a standard conspiracy theory among antigovernment “Patriot” groups.

In 2012, Boykin was scheduled to speak at a prayer breakfast at West Point. But his remarks were abruptly canceled after several Muslim organizations and liberal veterans’ groups protested his appearance at the event. VoteVets, a coalition of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, released a letter to the president of West Point requesting that Boykin’s speaking invitation be rescinded because his “incendiary rhetoric regarding Islam” would put “our troops in danger.”

Incidents like that have not moderated Boykin’s views and Islam continues to be one of his main issues. Speaking to reporters during a break at the rightist and anti-Islamic National Security Action Summit (held to highlight speakers who were not invited to speak at CPAC) in Washington, D.C., in March 2014, Boykin claimed that Islam is full of subliminal messages, and that President Obama engaged in them as a way to encourage Muslims. Boykin added that “Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and everybody else” are taking advantage of this support and of a president who is “unwilling to go against them.”