webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Center for Security Policy

see Gaffney

RWW

07/29/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

A seven-figure settlement is announced two days before a scheduled Senate committee vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination to be attorney general.

Months before the governor’s proclamation, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy emailed DPS a report that levies similar evidence against the Muslim civil rights group.

==

pnas exxon koch

The New Yorker reports that in 2010 Thomas, with Kimberly Fletcher, head of a group called Moms for America, co-hosted the “Remember the Ladies Banquet” at the Liberty xpo & Symposium, described as the “largest conservative training event in history.”  Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, was a speaker at the symposium.

The Timesnotes that in 2019, she “joined the nine-member board of C.N.P Action, an arm of the council organized as a 501(c)4 … that allows for direct political action.” The New Yorker’s Meyer describes C.N.P. Action, “behind closed doors, [it] connects wealthy donors with some of the most radical right-wing figures in America.”

The most troubling part of the Timesstory concerns “the extent to which Justice Thomas flouted judicial-ethical guidance by participating in events hosted by conservative organizations with matters before the court.”  It adds, “those organizations showered the couple with accolades and, in at least one case, used their appearance to attract event fees, donations and new members.”

In 2002, Thomas headlined an event for the Council for National Policy and in ’08 he attended one of its meetings and, according to the Times, “was photographed with a gavel behind a lectern bearing the group’s name.”  That same year he offered the keynote address at a special Manhattan Institute event and allegedly attended an all-expenses paid retreat put on by Charles Koch in Palm Springs (CA). (Koch funded a documentary, “Created Equal,” about Thomas.)  In 2017, Thomas made a second appearance at the Eagle Forum when his wife received a special award.

Mrs. Thomas attended the 2016 Republican convention as a Sen. Ted Cruz (R-FL) delegate initially opposed to Trump’s nomination.  However, once he was in office, she became a devoted Trump supporter. Following Kavanaugh’s nomination of the Court in July 2018, Trump invited Justice Thomas to a private dinner at the White House and he brought Mrs. Thomas.  In follow-up, Ginni Thomas sought repeated meetings with Trump, which he apparently obliged.

At one, as The New Yorker reports, “by all accounts it was uncomfortable.”  It then notes:

Thomas opened by saying that she didn’t trust everyone in the room, then pressed Trump to purge his Administration of disloyal members of the “deep state,” handing him an enemies list that she and Groundswell had compiled. Some of the participants prayed, warning that gay marriage, which the Supreme Court legalized in 2015, was undermining morals in America.

The Times notes that a Trump aide told reporters that “she [Thomas] began by leading the prayer.”  It also reported the aide mentioned “talk about ‘the transgender agender’ and parents ‘chopping off their children’s breasts.’”Thomas brought with her Frank Gaffney, head of Center for Security Policy and a leading proponent of banning Muslims, and several other associates. As Mayer notes, “the White House was not informed that Gaffney’s group had been paying Liberty Consulting for the previous two years.”  The Times reports that an ex-Trump aide called the meeting between the former president and Ginni Thomas as the “craziest” meeting he’d ever attended.

splc islamophobe

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 theCenter 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 is far-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 president Jerry 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

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/gop-megadonor-mercer-family-donated-to-nonprofit-that-celebrates-english-speaking-peoples.html

...the  Republican megadonor family led by billionaire Robert Mercer once donated money to a conservative group that bills itself as a promoter of “cultural events for English-speaking peoples.”

The $25,000 donation was quietly made in 2017 through the Mercer Family Trust to the Anglosphere Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group, which has ties to prominent members of the Washington, D.C., power establishment.

The founder of the Anglosphere Society,Amanda Bowman, confirmed in an email and a follow-up interview with CNBC that Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, directed the contribution to her nonprofit in 2017 in support of an event titled “Leadership in Perilous Times.”

“What I was so grateful to Rebekah for was her donations enabled me to invite all these different veterans, and it was just a one-time thing,” Bowman said. She added that the Anglosphere Society did not hear from Mercer again after that donation.

A spokesman for Robert Mercer did not return repeated requests for comment. The attorney listed on the family foundation tax form that shows the donation also did not return an email for comment.

Bowman said the Mercer donation partially funded the gathering, which featured Fox News analyst Gen. Jack Keane and Gen. David Petraeus, a former CIA director. The two retired generals are pictured together on Anglosphere’s website at the event. Keane has said he turned down an offer from President Donald Trump to serve as Defense secretary.

Bowman said the donation came after she and Rebekah Mercer met at a separate meeting for veterans.

The Anglosphere Society identifies itself on its website as an “independent, educational, non-profit, tax-exempt membershiporganization focused on promoting the Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, free market economies, and cultural events for English-Speaking Peoples.” It also says that it promotes “cultural events for sharing ideas based on the historic values of English-Speaking Peoples.”

The group, which was founded in 2012, also promotes itself as having an influential network. Pictures on the group’s website show prominent event attendees such as former Sen. Joe Lieberman, who became an independent after losing a Democratic primary in his state, and Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of State under President Richard Nixon.

Bannon and Cambridge Analytica

The Mercers used to support former White House chief strategist and Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon, who promoted a nationalist, pro-West agenda. He was formerly the executive chairman of conservative news website Breitbart News, which was funded in part by the Mercers.

Trump fired Bannon from the White House in August 2017, which paved the way for Bannon to return to Breitbart. However, in January 2018, Bannon resigned from the media outlet after Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” revealed that he ripped Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son.

The family distanced itself from Bannon, and Robert Mercer said in 2017 that he would be selling his stake in Breitbart to his daughters. The elder Mercer also stepped down as co-CEO of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies last year.

The Mercers were also embroiled in the controversy surrounding data-gathering firm Cambridge Analytica, which played a role in attempting to use social media to influence voters during the 2016 campaign. Bannon was once an executive at the firm.

Bowman, the Anglosphere Society founder, said she might not have accepted the Mercer donation if she had known about the Mercers’ funding of the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica.

“It [the contribution] was before the whole Cambridge Analytica thing had broken. I would’ve been more cautious had I known that. Cambridge Analytica was a scandalous thing, and I wouldn’t have wanted to distract from the cause,” she said.

The Mercers spent millions to fund the firm, which harvested the data of millions of Facebook users and then used the information they gathered as a tool to manipulate voters. Cambridge Analytica did some work for the 2016 Trump campaign.

Cambridge Analytica has also been accused of having an impact on the vote for the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, also known as Brexit. Facebook has denied that it had any impact on the vote.

Bowman, who grew up in the U.K. and later become a U.S. citizen, would not commit to giving back or refunding the $25,000 check now that she’s aware of what took place.

She also repeatedly said the Anglosphere Society has no ties to the Trump administration and is nonpartisan. She acknowledged that she has conservative beliefs, but said she does not support Brexit.

The Mercers and the Anglosphere cause

Rebekah Mercer, a prolific GOP donor, manages the family’s trust fund. The family spent more than $15 million backing Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Over the years, the elder Mercer has contributed over $10 million to his family’s trust and has led to their assets having a net worth of approximately $30 million, according to the most recent filing.

The revelation of the Mercers’ donation to the Anglosphere Society comes as they try to publicly distance themselves from Trump and the party as a whole. Behind the scenes, though, the family continues supporting causes that match its often-conservative values.

The tax filing showing the Mercers’ Anglosphere donation was first reported by MapLight, a nonpartisan and nonprofit research center that tracks the influence money has on politics. The report focused on how the Mercers funneled $4 million to various climate skeptic groups.The report did not discuss the contribution to Anglosphere.

Anglosphere’s Bowman is a former New York director of the conservative think tank Center for Security Policy, according to the group’s website. The Center for Security Policy’s executive chairman isFrank Gaffney Jr., who, in 2011, pushed a conspiracy theory claiming that members of President Barack Obama’s administration were affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Gaffney is also pictured at at least one of the events hosted by Anglosphere.

Bowman explained her past ties to the Center for Security Policywas connected to what she describes as a “post-9/11 situation. I felt it was very important to get engaged in the issues that have led to the attacks.” Bowman said Gaffney is not a member of the Anglosphere Society.

Other members of the group’s board include Chair Vicki Downey, who is a lieutenant of Catholic group the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem;Clark Judge, a former speech writer for President Ronald Reagan; and Nina Shea, a director at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

The topics of discussion during Anglosphere’s gatherings, according to its website, range from debating the merits of Brexit, to celebrating Winston Churchill’s birthday as a “celebration of the Anglo-American experience” and “honoring some outstanding Brits who have made a major contribution as American citizens.”

On Brexit, the group’s leadership regularly cheers on current Prime Minister Theresa May. Bowman and Lee Cohen, the society’s New York director, penned a Fox News opinion article in 2017 titled “Britain’s Theresa May is here and Winston (Churchill) is back.” The op-ed praises Trump for a meeting he held with May, saying that the president was signaling “his own reset of the Special Anglo-American Relationship.”

after 1/6 am radio // universe o'keefe cited BS]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/dark-money-gop-fund-funneled-millions-groups-that-pushed-voter-fraud-claims.html

dark-money group used by Republican donors funneled millions of dollars to high-profile conservative organizations that pushed or investigated claims of election fraud before and after Joe Biden defeated President Trump.

Many of these stances matched points that Trump and his team made as they attempted to undermine the election.

Almost all of the groups mentioned in this story denied to CNBC they were attempting to undermine the election with their own claims of fraud and voting irregularities. State and federal officials, including the former attorney general, have said there was no widespread election fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

That funding group, the Donors Trust, is officially labeled as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The designation allows financiers to give to the organization anonymously. That money is then channeled to other dark-money groups.

Among the recent pro-Trump groups that have received money from the Donors Trust are:

“A donor-advised fund account allows you to have charitable dollars ready to put into action on your own schedule. It works like a charitable savings account,” the Donors Trust website says. Such associations are labeled as “dark money” because they do not publicly disclose their donors.

In 2019, the Donors Trust gave over $20 million to at least a dozen organizations that would go on to question the integrity of the election process, according to the group’s 990 tax return. They have supported many of these organizations in prior years, as well. The 2020 filings won’t be made available until later this year, so it is not yet clear whether Donors Trust gave money to these groups last year.

Donors Trust finished 2019 raising over $300 million, just under double the amount they raised the prior year. It gave a total of over $160 million in grants in 2019. The group’s top anonymous donor gave over $150 million. Nonprofits often release their financial information a full year after their coverage dates.

In a lengthy statement to CNBC, Donors Trust CEO Lawson Bader said these organizations represent only a fraction of those seeing their donor funds and he condemns last week’s violence in Washington.

“The grants described were made in 2019 for general operations. These listed organizations are but a few of the many hundreds of different public charities that Donors Trust account holders supported that same year,” Bader said Tuesday. “Contributions made through a DonorsTrust DAF (Donor-Advised Funds) are made only to IRS recognized charitable and educational organizations. Donors Trust, like all donor-advised fund providers, does not make grants to 501(c)(4) organizations. Further, Donors Trust condemns violence of any kind. Espousing violence violates the ideas of personal responsibility and free exchange which we support wholly,” he added.

“I was appalled by the actions taken by protestors last week to violate the Capitol building and physically threaten lawmakers. Whether against public or private property, such actions are not only offensive, dangerous and illegal, but damage an already fragile civic discourse and embarrass the reputation of the United States as a place where political transitions happen within the context of the Constitution.”

Aligned with Trump

At least five people, including a Capitol police officer, died in connection to the riot, which happened after Trump and some of his closest allies led a rally urging supporters to fight to prevent Congress’ declaration of Biden’s victory.

Several pro-Trump groups were involved with planning the rally, which was held near the White House. Trump encouraged people who attended the rally to march on the U.S. Capitol. Critics, including several Republicans, accused him of inciting the violence. On Tuesday, Trump said the comments were “totally appropriate.”

Groups with the same 501(c)(3) status as Donors Trust are prohibited under tax regulations from supporting specific candidates. However, they can skirt those rules by supporting and promoting policies that align with a particular politician. In the case of Trump-fueled unrest, several groups historically backed by Donors Trust money aligned themselves with Trump’s false claims about widespread election fraud.

Turning Point USA, a nonprofit founded by staunch Trump ally Charlie Kirk, received over $850,000 from the Donors Trust. Kirk has continued to parrot the president’s attacks on the election, falsely claiming Biden’s victory was fraudulent.

“I will say it very bluntly. This election was stolen from President Trump. And the changes to the election, to the ballot questions, to the voter registration, to the access problems in these states” Kirk said in December.

Kirk’s affiliated 501(c)(4) Turning Point Action was listed as a participant in last week’s “March to Save America” rally, which preceded the attack on Capitol Hill. Prior to the rally, in a tweet he later deleted, Kirk said the group would be involved with sending over 80 buses to the rally. CNBC captured a screenshot of tweet before it was deleted.

Kirk recently said on his podcast that those from Turning Point got back on their buses and left following the conclusion of the rally.

A Turning Point Action spokesperson said the group did not include a march to the Capitol on its itinerary.

“Turning Point Action (TPA) did bus some students to the January 6th rally, which included a speech from the President of the United States. Following the president’s remarks, TPA then bused those students immediately out of the area,” the spokesperson said. “The march to the Capitol Building was never part of TPA’s itinerary,nor did TPA encourage participation in the march. TPA’s leadership condemns political violence and immediately did so as soon as news broke of the incident at the Capitol Building. ”

The New York Times reported that the group ended up sending only seven buses to the rally from New Jersey, North Carolina and other locations. twt]

other connections

The 85 Fund, a group with ties to longtime Trump judicial advisor Leonard Leo, received over $10 million from the Donors Trust in 2019. According to a report by The Guardian and the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, it was once known as The Judicial Education Project. It was run by Carrie Severino, who also is in charge of the Leo-affiliated Judicial Crisis Network. Severino’s Judicial Crisis Network actively campaigned in support of Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court.

The Donors Trust lists an address for the 85 Fund in Washington that matches the address on The Judicial Education Project’s 2018 990 form. Leo also told Axios that the 85 Fund would be one of the groups used to funnel millions of dollars into conservative battles around the country.

The Judicial Education Project, though, has another alias, according to the report: the Honest Elections Project. The organization claims to be nonpartisan and says that “through public engagement, advocacy, and public-interest litigation, the Honest Elections Project will defend the fair, reasonable, common sense measures that voters want in place to protect the integrity of the voting process.”

A review of advertisements and litigation reveals that, in some cases, the group is aligned with claims about election fraud that are similar to Trump’s. The group lists two Michigan-related lawsuits linked to Republicans that took place before the November election.

In September, The Detroit News reported on one of those lawsuits, which featured two former Republican secretaries of state. The former officials challenged Michigan’s plan to count absentee ballots that are postmarked before Election Day but arrive up to 14 days afterward. Biden went on to win Michigan, even though an appeals court did rescind the 14-day extension of mail in ballots.

Fox News reported in June on another suit featuring theHonest Elections Project.In that case, a Republican named Tony Daunt claimed that Michigan voter registration rates in some counties are too high because their voting records have not been updated to remove ineligible voters, such as those who have died or convicted of crimes.

A leader of the Honest Elections Project told CNBC that the group concluded after the election that no widespread voter fraud occurred and they did not get involved with any post-election legal challenges. It also condemned the violence on Capitol Hill.

“HEP was created to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. Before the election, HEP fought to preserve the rule of law as left-wing groups, including the Democratic Party, filed over 200 lawsuits to challenge existing election laws,” Honest Elections Project executive director Jason Snead said in a statement. “After the election, HEP concluded that there was no widespread fraud and did not challenge or support any challenge to the results of the 2020 election. The violent insurrection at the Capitol was a heinous attack against democracy, the rule of law, and the election system HEP was created to defend.”

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in December that the Department of Justice has found no evidence of voter fraud.

the  anti-immigration VDARE Foundation, which the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled a hate group, received just under $2 million from the Donors Trust in 2019. The foundation is run by Peter Brimelow, somebody the Southern Poverty Law Center says is a “leading anti-immigration activist.”

Brimelow did not return a request for comment.

Since the riot last week, VDARE has become a platform for several writers standing with Trump and people who attended the rally.

“I believe Trump won the election and I believe that this matters,” says an article on the foundation’s site. The writer also says he believes the anti-fascist protesters and frequent Trump targets known as antifa were “amongst the crowd.” Ken Kohl, a senior official in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, recently said that investigators saw no indication of antifa being part of the riot.

Another writer on VDARE’s site admitted to cheering on the Capitol invasion. “I’m going to open with a confession here: watching those protestors rampaging through the halls of Congress on Wednesday afternoon, there was a part of me that was cheering them on,” the article says.

Project Veritas, an activist group founded by investigator James O’Keefe, received over $4 million in 2019 from the Donors Trust. In August, The New Republic reported that Project Veritas was secretly moving ahead with sting operations that would “undermine the integrity of absentee and mail-in ballot counts.”

Jered Ede, chief legal officer for Project Veritas, told CNBC that the group condemns the violence at the Capitol and pushed back on the idea their investigations are attempts to undermine the election. He also said Project Veritas has proved at least two instances of fraud and irregularities, including in New Hampshire and Texas.

“Project Veritas has been exposing voter fraud and election integrity stories for nearly a decade. We did so prior to 2020, we did so prior to 2019, we did so prior to Mr. Trump announcing his candidacy, and we will continue to do so for as long as we are around,” Ede said in part of his lengthy responses to CNBC. “Neither our donors nor any politician control or direct what stories we cover. We have and will continue to cover these stories because voters deserve to know the truth and have faith in their electoral system.”

Project Veritas pushed a Pennsylvania postal worker’s claim about mail-in ballots that the Trump campaign would cite in a lawsuit that eventually went nowhere, according to The Washington Post.

The Center for Security Policyreceived over $800,000 from Donors Trust in 2019.It was founded by Frank Gaffney, who pushed conspiracy theoriesabout President Barack Obama’s administration and the Muslim Brotherhood. In the buildup to the riot, Gaffney questioned the results of the election.

Fred Fleitz, president of the Center for Security Policy, told CNBC late Tuesday that the group acknowledges that Biden is going to be the new president. He said Gaffney was no longer running the organization. The website lists Gaffney as executive chairman.

“Center for Security Policy accepts Joe Biden as the legal President of the United States,” Fleitz said. “It’s time to move on. We are an organization that is going to focus on holding Biden accountable when it comes to national security. Gaffney does not run the organization. He’s not the president of the organization, I am,” Fleitz added.

In a post on the group’s website, Gaffney himself claimed in December the media is pushing a “false narrative” that “there’s no evidence of electoral larceny in the 2020 presidential race — or at least none that would have made a difference,” he said. Gaffney also wrote that “the online resource EveryLegalVote.com makes clear that election integrity was systematically compromised.”

In January, a Center for Security Policy article claimed there are 10 truths about election fraud, including that election fraud has become “more sinister and sophisticated.”

An article on Jan. 5, a day before the riot, is headlined “Exercising your First Amendment rights? How to avoid Antifa violence at the upcoming January 6th protests.” Then article then goes on to give protesters tips on how to avoid fights with antifa.

Gaffney’s own condemnation of the violence after the protest included him calling for a hearing that would show “evidence of electoral grand larceny.”

The Gaffney posts disappeared off the group’s website shortly after CNBC reached out for comment. CNBC has screenshots of the posts.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/07/guo-wengui-chinese-billionaire-1356594

POLITICO

LEGAL

How a renegade Chinese billionaire became a center of D.C. intrigue

Guo Wengui allegedly offered a pair of conservative operatives $9 million for dirt on his enemies’ porn habits and out-of-wedlock children. Now he’s suing.

By BEN SCHRECKINGER 06/07/2019 05:06 AM EDT

A billionaire at the center of U.S.-China tensions is waging a mysterious legal battle against two D.C. conservatives over a private espionage deal gone bad. The fight touches on a pair of think tanks, a senator’s widow and the capital’s tight-knit group of China hardliners, adding a new chapter to an international saga that has divided the Trump administration and the president’s external allies.

It began when a firm tied to the billionaire, real estate magnate Guo Wengui, allegedly hired a private intelligence firm to dig up dirt on Chinese nationals — including their bank records, porn habits and any illegitimate children — then sued, saying the firm failed to deliver. In turn, the intelligence firm has claimed Guo’s side gave it a thumb drive loaded with sophisticated malware and that he sought information on people whose records were deemed sensitive by the U.S. government.

The ongoing suit, the details of which are reported here for the first time, deepens the already considerable mystique surrounding the billionaire businessman. An ally of Steve Bannon’s and a fugitive from Chinese authorities,Guo now lives in New York. His presence in the U.S. has exacerbated tensions between China’s ruling Communist Party and the administration of President Donald Trump.

The case also offers a rare behind-the-curtain glimpse at the tactics of 21st century geopolitical intrigue, where it is increasingly common for deep-pocketed clients with political agendas to pay firms with government contacts and cyber know-how to obtain people’s sensitive private information — and then use it to destroy them.

***

The details of the suit, which is being waged in federal court in the Southern District of New York, read more like a spy novel than a dry legal document.

Guo, who goes by Miles Kwok in the U.S., built a sizable fortune in real estate in China before apparently running afoul of the country’s government and fleeing in 2014. A year later, he came to the U.S., where he is seeking asylum while he lives in an opulent Manhattan apartment and publicizes claims of corruption against Chinese government officials. Since Guo fled to the U.S., the Chinese government has accused him of a raft of crimes, and a former assistant has accused him of rape. Guo has denied the allegations against him, calling them politically motivated.

In early 2018, the Guo-linked firm hired Strategic Vision, an obscure company led by Washington-area executive French Wallop, to dig up information on several targets, whom the suit does not name.

According to a court filing by Wallop’s firm, Guo enlisted it, "To perform research and analytics on numerous Chinese Nationals whom Mr. Guo and his undisclosed Chinese associates suspected to be engaged in activities in the United States and elsewhere that are inconsistent with their standing in the Chinese Communist Party and/or the laws of the United States."

Wallop was the third wife of Malcolm Wallop, the late Republican senator from Wyoming. In recent years, she has maintained a low profile in Washington, though in the midst of her divorce from the senator in 2000, the Washington Post’s gossip columnist obtained a sharply worded change-of-address note she sent around to friends stating, “French Wallop regrets to inform you that due to a significant indiscretion on the part of her husband of 16 years, he may now be reached at the following address.” On her LinkedIn profile, Wallop refers to Strategic Vision as a “strategic consulting firm.”

In addition to Wallop, J. Michael Waller acted as a representative of Strategic Vision, according to a letter the firm submitted to the court. Waller is a vice president at the far-right Center for Security Policy, a think tank founded by Frank Gaffney, a national security activist known for his conspiratorial hostility to Islam. Waller also served as the ghostwriter for the memoirs of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, according to his website.

By late 2017, when Guo was allegedly arranging for the contract, he also became something of a political football as Beijing sought his return to China. Earlier that year, China issued an Interpol red notice for his arrest. Then Chinese officials traveling to the U.S. on transit visas, which did not permit them to conduct government business, visited Guo at his apartment. This prompted a standoff, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, between the Justice Department, which wanted to arrest the Chinese officials, and the State Department, which successfully held the DOJ at bay.

Casino magnate Steve Wynn, a longtime Trump confidant with business interests in China, reportedly hand-delivered the president a letter from the Chinese government requesting Guo’s handover, though Wynn’s firm has denied it. Guo’s fate became a subject of heated internal debate within the administration, and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions reportedly threatened to resign if the renegade mogul was turned over to China.

According to one person who knows the people involved, it was in the context of this battle over his fate that Guo sought dirt on Chinese nationals: He wanted, this person said, to ingratiate himself with U.S. authorities by offering them intelligence, financed from his own fortune, in a bid to show he could be useful.

In January 2018, a Hong Kong firm tied to Guo, Eastern Profit, inked a contract with Strategic Vision US. It is rare for the details of private espionage agreements to see the light of day, but Strategic Vision attached its five-page agreement as an exhibit to a counterclaim it lodged in response to the suit. The contract promises $9 million in exchange for a year’s worth of snooping on 10 unnamed individuals — referred to in the document as “fish” — calling for details on everything from their movements to financial records to sensitive personal information. That includes details on a “subject's family, extramarital affairs, children born out of wedlock” as well as their “pornography” and their use of “‘dating’ or sexual services apps.”

According to the Guo-linked firm’s complaint, Strategic Vision said it had a former NSA agent on staff and said it had worked “for Republican politicians, a Middle Eastern prince and a politician belonging to the opposition party in Russia.” Guo’s side also alleged that Strategic Vision provided a “sample report, which appeared to show that Strategic Vision could enter into banking systems and find evidence of money laundering.” But, the complaint alleges, after Guo advanced Strategic Vision an initial $1 million payment, it discovered the firm did not have the capabilities it claimed.

Not long after, Eastern Profit sued Strategic Vision. The case remained under seal for several months, keeping it from public view. Though much of the court record has now been unsealed, parts of the case remain under a protective order that prevents sensitive details from being revealed.

Watch President Trump call trade war with China a 'little squabble']

In a countersuit, Strategic Vision accused Guo and his representatives of a variety of troubling actions. The firm, which denied most of Eastern Profit’s allegations, claimed that when a representative of Guo’s provided a thumb drive with information on his chosen surveillance targets — Chinese officials whom Guo allegedly suspected of wrongdoing — the thumb drive turned out to be loaded with sophisticated malware. After the firm complained, it says it received three new thumb drives from Guo’s side, one of which also contained malware.

According to the counter-claim, which has been dismissed without prejudice, Guo was introduced to Strategic Vision by Lianchao Han, a dissident activist and visiting fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. But, it alleges, Guo later told the firm that Han could not be trusted. Instead, Guo allegedly told the firm to communicate with his assistant, whom Guo “oddly advised was a member of the Chinese Communist Party who also could not be trusted.” Han did not respond to requests for comment.

The firm also alleged that, when it began researching its targets, it discovered they “had been designated by the U.S. Department of State under the Obama administration as ‘Records Protected’ persons, meaning that information concerning their status and activities was not subject to disclosure under any circumstances. Strategic Vision learned that attempting to research subjects known to be 'Records Protected' could be a criminal activity."

It is not clear to what exactly the “Records Protected” designation refers. The State Department did not respond to questions about the term, and several former top legal advisers at State said they were not familiar with it.

“I have never heard of a State Department ‘records protected’ designation per se,” wrote Brian Egan, a partner at the law firm Steptoe who served as the department’s top legal adviser at the end of Barack Obama’s administration. “I am also having a hard time imagining a circumstance in which a private person or company could be prosecuted for merely attempting to research information about a particular individual.”

A lawyer for Eastern Profit, Zachary Grendi, forwarded a request for comment to Daniel Podhaskie, a lawyer for Guo’s family office, who declined to comment. A lawyer for Strategic Vision, Mark Berube, did not respond to requests for comment. Waller declined to comment on the record.

***

The circumstances of the lawsuit are just one of the many mysteries swirling around Guo. Many basic details of his biography, including his exact age, remain hazy.

He was born roughly 50 years ago, reportedly in the coastal Shandong Province in Eastern China — or, he has claimed, in Jilin Province in the country’s north — and made a fortune in real estate, benefiting from the construction boom around the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. There, he developed a reputation for playing hardball. After clashing with a deputy mayor of Beijing, Guo gave the police a video of the official having sex with his mistress, prompting the man’s arrest and political downfall.

Guo appears to owe his rise in part to his relationship with a top official at China’s Ministry of State Security. The official, former vice minister Ma Jian, fell out of favor and was arrested in early 2015 on corruption charges. Two months later, the Chinese outlet Caixin published an expose of Guo, highlighting his ties to the toppled intelligence official.

By that point, Guo had already fled China.

Since arriving in the U.S., Guo has constantly irritated the ruling party, spouting a steady stream of salacious allegations about corruption and other official wrongdoing.

Ensconced in New York, the renegade businessman set up Guo Media to amplify his campaign against the Communist Party and often dispenses his accusations via video livestream while going about his billionaire lifestyle — including from the deck of his $20 million yacht.

Guo accused China’s top anti-corruption official, Wang Qishan, of corruption and of having an affair with a famous actress, Fan Bingbing, whose temporary disappearance became an international mystery of its own last year. He also offered his own theory on the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, claiming the CCP brought down the Beijing-bound plane to get rid of people who could have blown the whistle on an organ-harvesting scheme in Nanjing.

Guo’s bombastic style and real estate background have prompted comparisons to Trump.

He is even a member of Mar-a-Lago, prompting concerns that he might attempt to show up at the club during Xi’s first summit with Trump in the spring of 2017 and cause some sort of international incident.

Donald Trump

LAW AND ORDER

How Trump Could Be Prosecuted After the White House

By RENATO MARIOTTI

“I like because Donald Trump the president talks [about] fake news. This idea is really good,” Guo, whose English is rudimentary, told Vice News. “Everything [said] about me is fake.”

One thing about Guo is clear: Since arriving in the U.S., he has embraced the country’s litigious culture. In addition to the private spying case, he is embroiled in several ongoing legal fights, including a dispute with his former attorneys at Boies Schiller Flexner, the firm founded by politically connected super lawyer David Boies. Guo also sued Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime political adviser, last year for $100 million after Stone claimed the billionaire had illegally donated to Hillary Clinton and was funding a presidential run by Bannon. In December, Stone retracted his statements and apologized.

***

Guo’s lawsuit against Strategic Vision could prove awkward for Washington’s small community of China hardliners.

In March, several prominent China hawks launched Committee on the Present Danger, a new conservative advocacy group aimed at encouraging U.S. confrontation with China. The group, which includes former CIA director Jim Woolsey, has held events in New York and Washington, including an April roundtable on Capitol Hill that featured Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

While members of the committee are united on China, they are divided on Guo.

Both Waller, who is fighting Guo, and Bannon, the billionaire’s closest ally in the U.S., are members of the committee. The group also includes Gaffney, whose think tank employs Waller, and Han, who introduced Guo to Strategic Vision, only to have Guo allegedly turn around and badmouth Han as untrustworthy.

But as the dispute winds its way through court, the committee is presenting a united front. Gaffney said he was not aware of any internal strife the suit had caused within the group.

Bannon declined to comment on the record. He maintains warm relations with Guo, whom he calls “Miles” and has met with dozens of times. The lawsuit has done nothing to slow the pair’s crusade against Beijing.

In recent days, what appears to be the Twitter account for Guo Media has repeatedly posted a photo of Bannon and Guo hugging each other as well as a photo of Bannon photoshopped to show him aiming a double-barreled pistol with flames behind him in the background.

View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter

GUO.MEDIA(GUOWENGUI)

@GGuowengui

? ????????????????: bitcoin:1TEfAXyeoK1JwCmSCfzbpT51MHGTzZMY7

? ????????????????:

Ether:0x80e618746F6A6eFe6ad0BD26C816B5CCc01b17E5

10

5:28 PM - Jun 4, 2019

34 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

On Sunday, Guo Media’s YouTube page posted a video of a three-hour political discussion between Bannon and Guo, who sat together at a desk in front of a Chinese landscape painting.

"The Chinese people are being suppressed and enslaved,” Bannon, dressed all in black, declared.

Guo, in a tailored blue suit, smiled and gestured expressively. On an iPad, Guo showed Bannon messages he said came from Chinese citizens.

"All of these messages are to express love to Mr. Bannon,” Guo said. “They all tell you that they love you, Mr. Bannon.”

Despite his aggressive campaign against Beijing, Guo remains a puzzle to China-watchers, with some supporting his asylum hopes and others remaining suspicious of his motives.

A Times Magazine profile of Guo last year reported that some Chinese dissidents in New York suspect him of actually being a spy for Beijing.

Others say he has already proven useful to the U.S. “I’ve interviewed him, and he has sensitive knowledge of high-level Chinese Communist politics,” said Michael Pillsbury, a fluent Mandarin speaker who spent decades as a China analyst in the federal government and now serves as a top outside adviser to Trump on the country. “I also don’t think he should be returned to China.”

As Trump and Xi head into an expected meeting later this month at the G-20 summit in Japan to hash out differences over trade policy, Guo remains in the background as a lingering wrinkle in U.S.-China relations — and a lingering mystery.

This article tagged under:

China State Department NSA New York Donald Trump Donald Trump 2020 Stephen Bannon Mar-a-Lago U.S.-China Relations

Missing out on the latest scoops? Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning — in your inbox.

==

https://www.vox.com/world/2018/4/12/17230078/mike-pompeo-secretary-of-state-confirmation-cory-booker

Cory Booker just excoriated Trump’s secretary of state nominee, Mike Pompeo, during his confirmation hearing over Pompeo’s past associations with prominent anti-Muslim ideologues.

For most of his hearing on Thursday morning, Pompeo (who’s currently the CIA director) seemed prepared and capable of handling every question the Senate Foreign Relations Committee threw at him. But the nominee stumbled — badly — under a cleverly prepared series of questions from the New Jersey Democrat.

First, Booker asked Pompeo about a 2013 speech in which Pompeo blasted American Islamic leaders for their “silence” in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings and said that made them “potentially complicit” in terrorism. (American Muslim leaders in fact spoke out forcefully against terrorism and extremism in the wake of the attacks and organized effortsto help victims.)

Pompeo responded by saying that he wasn’t trying to cast aspersions on all Muslims but was simply pointing out that Muslims have more ability to discourage other Muslims from joining militant groups. “For certain forms of violence, there are certain people who are better positioned” to act, he said.

Pompeo added, “Each and every human, not just Americans, each human being has an obligation to push back against this extremist use of violence.”

This seemed like a decent evasion at first — but it soon became clear that Pompeo had walked into a dangerous trap.

Booker said he agreed with Pompeo that “silence in the face of injustice lends strength to that injustice.” Then he sprang the trap: He brought up Pompeo’s long history of association with two of America’s most prominent Islamophobes, Frank Gaffney and Brigitte Gabriel, and asked whether Pompeo had ever used his “position” to denounce their extremist views.

Gaffney, a conspiracy theorist who has accused most American Muslim civic organizations of being fronts for Islamist groups, had hosted Pompeo on his radio show. Gabriel, an anti-Islam activist who has described Islam as “a political movement cloaked in religion,” hosted a dinner in Pompeo’s honor in 2016 — where she gave him an award that he accepted. Did Pompeo ever condemn them in the way he expects all Muslims to condemn terrorists?

Pompeo had no good answer: “Senator, I couldn’t tell you,” he responded. “I don’t recall each statement I’ve made over 54 years.”

Here’s the exchangea transcript, if you prefer reading:

BOOKER: I’m wondering, Sir — do you know Frank Gaffney?

POMPEO: Yes, I do.

BOOKER: And you’ve been on his show dozens of times?

POMPEO: I was on his show some, yes.

BOOKER: I have here over 20 times. And he has talked about [how] Muslims who abide by the adherence of the faith should be considered to be tried for acts of sedition and prosecuted. I have a lot of his statements. Did you remain silent — and, from my notes at least, you’re a friend of his — were you silent in your position of authority in these words that devalue the American constitution?

POMPEO: Sir, my record on this is unambiguous ...

BOOKER: If that’s your response, you did not say anything to call out his remarks. What about Brigitte Gabriel. Do you know her?

POMPEO: I do.

BOOKER: Someone who runs an organization that has been considered a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Were you silent? Did you ever call her out on her remarks that are hateful or bigoted?

ref

https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/27/17157534/john-bolton-mike-pompeo-trump-islam-jihad

National Security Adviser John Bolton is making headlines — and not for good reasons.NBC reported on Monday morning that Bolton had served as the chairman of the Gatestone Institute, a far-right think tank known for publishing anti-Muslim agitprop. Gatestone had published pieces claiming, among other things, that Muslim immigration heralded a “Great White Death” in Europe, and had already turned the UK into a “Islamist colony,”

Bolton’s links to Gatestone were never hidden; The Intercept had reported on them a month ago. This goes to show just how brazen Bolton has been about his association with anti-Muslim extremists. In fact, both Bolton and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s pick for next secrtary of state, have deep and extensive ties to an organized group of anti-Muslim writers and activists known as the “counter-jihad.”

The members of the counter-jihad movement aren’t exactly household names. But its leading lights — people like Reagan Defense Department official Frank Gaffney,activist Brigitte Gabriel, and blogger Pamela Geller — are surprisingly well-financed and influential.

Their major arguments include the idea thatIslam is an intrinsically violent religion and that most mainstream American Muslim organizations are involved in a secret plot to replace American law with Islamic law. One “study” published by Gaffney’s organization, the Center for Security Policy, argued that 80 percent of mosques in America “are incubators of, at best, subversion and, at worst, violence and should be treated accordingly.”

Neither Bolton nor Pompeo has endorsed views this radical, though both have come relatively close. In February 2015, Pompeo appeared on Gaffney’s radio show and warned darkly of an Islamic conspiracy against America.

“There are organizations and networks here in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental ways,” Pompeo said in a February 2015 interview on Gaffney’s radio program. “They’re not just in places like Libya and Syria and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas, and small towns all throughout America.”

Bolton, for his part, has defended the Islamophobic attacks against Huma Abedin, a Muslim American who spent years as a top aide to Hillary Clinton. Some Republican members of Congress accused Abedin being a secret Islamist operative (which, it goes without saying, is wholly unfounded) in 2012; that July, Bolton went on Gaffney’s show and said there was nothing wrong with that line of attack. “What is wrong with raising the question?” Bolton asked.

These radio appearances aren’t one-offs: Bolton and Pompeo have been on Gaffney’s show dozens of times. The two men have also appeared at counter-jihadist events, accepted the endorsement of prominent counter-jihadists, and (in Bolton’s case) penned a glowing foreword to a counter-jihadist book. Gatestone isn’t the exception; it’s the rule.

There are no signs that either Bolton or Pompeo has cut ties with Gaffney or others like him, or that either is willing to disavow their past affiliations with them. That means that some of the most extreme anti-Muslim voices in the US have friends in some of the Trump administration’s most powerful national security personnel.

Bolton’s ties to the counter-jihad

In 2010, two prominent counter-jihadist writers — Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer — co-wrote a book called *The Post-American Presidency*. In it, they alleged that President Barack Obama took part in the Islamist war on America. Obama, they wrote, was helping with the “implementation of a soft sharia: the quiet and piecemeal implementation of Islamic laws that subjugate non-Muslims.”

Bolton penned the book’s foreword. While he doesn’t explicitly endorse its most inflammatory claims, he praises the book for “[carrying] forward the ongoing and increasingly widespread critique of Barack Obama as our first post-American president.” What The Post-American Presidency “recounts is disturbing, and its broader implications more disturbing still,” Bolton writes.

Praising counter-jihadist work, courting their support, but not outright endorsing their most radical claims: Those are the hallmarks of the Bolton approach to the movement. He advances their priorities without openly committing to their hardest-line positions.

One of the core counter-jihadist arguments is that mainstream American Muslim organizations, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, are fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamic movement that aims to establish Islamist governments in a number of predominantly Muslim countries.

These organizations, they contend, are secretly working on the Brotherhood’s behalf to subvert the United States from within. Their goal is to replace American legal codes with Islamic law (Sharia).

“The majority of Islamic organizations in America are affiliates of or associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in some way,” a report issued by Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (CSP) argues. “Any organization that does not embrace sharia and the MB line has not been able to gain broad recognition as a Muslim-American force.”

Bolton has not explicitly endorsed this view. However, he used an appearance on Gaffney’s show to endorse CSP’s principal policy proposal for dealing with the group, which is to “get on with the business of declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization.”

This may seem unimportant, given that the Brotherhood has not been linked to a terrorist attack in decades. But it takes on much darker tones when you recall that counter-jihadists think the majority of Muslim American groups in the United States are Brotherhood fronts. It’s illegal for any American to provide assistance to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

This policy change would, in the counter-jihadist imagination, set the stage for a massive federal inquisition into America’s major Muslim organizations based on counter-jihadists’ own conspiracy theories.

Bolton is endorsing a core policy idea of the counter-jihad — effectively, serving as their voice without the most extreme baggage.

Another illustrative example: In 2011, Gaffney was banned from CPAC, the country’s premier conservative political conference, on grounds of being too aggressively anti-Muslim. In 2016, the Atlantic’s Peter Beinart reports, Bolton lobbied to get Gaffney back in — and won.

This is Bolton’s role in the movement. He doesn’t endorse their views, explicitly, but he serves as connective tissue between the anti-Muslim right and the mainstream conservative world, in which he’s deeply connected. Now, he’s poised to be national security adviser.

Pompeo and the counter-jihad

Trump’s pick for secretary of state has, like Bolton, aligned himself with the counter-jihad without endorsing their most extreme ideas.

In a 2013 speech, shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing, Pompeo criticized the “silence in the face of extremism coming from the best-funded Islamic advocacy organizations and many mosques across America.” This alleged silence, according to Pompeo, “casts doubt upon the commitment to peace among adherents of the Muslim faith” and “has made these Islamic leaders across America potentially complicit in these acts.”

While in the House of Representatives, Pompeo sponsored a briefing for Republican Congress members from a group called ACT for America. ACT, which bills itself as the NRA of national security, is the activist arm of the counter-jihad. Its president, Brigitte Gabriel, believes Islam is an intrinsically violent religion.

“Islam went from being strictly a spiritual movement, after 12 years, to becoming a political movement cloaked in religion,” she said in one address. “Jihad is mentioned in the Quran 40 times — 36 times out of 40 as a holy war against the infidels, to either kill them or subjugate them.”

Pompeo believed Gabriel’s group was the kind of organization that should be briefing Republicans in Congress. ACT returned his affection: In 2016, Pompeo received the organization’s National Security Eagle Award, its highest honor.

The game that Pompeo and Bolton are playing — use rhetoric that counter-jihadists find appealing, move them closer to the mainstream, all without endorsing their full conspiracy theories — is fairly transparent. It’s anti-Islam dog whistling.

It’s possible that they merely recognize that counter-jihadists are a powerful constituency on the right, and are working with them as a way of building political support. It’s also possible that they share the counter-jihadist view of Islam as a fundamentally evil religion but know that saying so publicly would be risky politically. It’s very hard to tell from their public record, and I’m not going to hazard a guess either way.

But we know that Bolton and Pompeo — Trump’s picks for two of the highest offices in the land — are at very least willing to listen to counter-jihadist arguments, and work to help them reach a larger audience. It’s very plausible they could convey these ideas to President Trump, whose views on Islam are already unfavorable.

There’s a shockingly low level of public outcry about allies of Islamophobic groups taking over US national security infrastructure. The two men have not, to date, renounced their ties to Gaffney, Gabriel, Gatestone, and the rest. It’s time to ask them why.

==

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/03/28/meet-anti-muslim-leaders-advising-donald-trump-and-ted-cruz

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.

TheCenter 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, Gaffneyinvited 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.

Clare 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 awardedSessions 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 Jonesrevealed 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 aNational Security Group Lunch on in February 2015, andanother 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 gueston Frank Gaffney’s Secure Freedom Radio show and in June of 2013, hespoke 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.”