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Open in TheBrain

lindell 2 my pillow

grifter/ influencer/

see lindellTV 8 26

aha: entrepreneur is god term, spencer neo-libtard survival of fittest ~ racism anybody can make it small indep biz replaces TJ yeoman farmer

see pluto

WACKO WINGNUT

SEE BIG LIE LIE GASLIGHT

FAIL 4 5 COURT ELECTION

major sponsor of fox prime time, bad trinity

defam smartmatic

HAS OWN PLATFORM

XIAN PROPHET

crazy? just PR addict?  wants to be player in GOP? trump posse?

my red pill-ow?

html Broward-Palm

1/22 bak

tag:

https://www.mediamatters.org/mike-lindell

often on bannon?  AN says big part of some rw media revenue/ 30?

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AN 11 26 POST BLU TSU

It has been almost a week since the blue tsunami flooded the United States and MAGA has finally decided that the 2026 midterms were rigged.

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump's allies began sprinkling denialist conspiracy theories across social media. On Monday morning, Trump picked up on it and joined in, claiming that there was no possible way that the elections were accurate since the polls showed him to be beloved.

"Does anybody really believe that this 'Election' was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting 'dumps' were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter! President DJT"

This would mean that two elections Trump oversaw were allegedly "rigged."

The Bulwark's Sam Stein and Will Sommer chatted for "MAGA Monday" about the conspiracy theories that "have been a little slow to get off the ground."

Trump is ranting about the polls, but Stein said that the only thing wrong with the polls is that they severely undercounted the Democratic vote. Even if they weren't undercounting, however, there still would have been a huge blue wave.

Trump citing "the machines," Sommer said, appears to go back to the idea that electronic voting machines are far "more important than voters."

"That's music to Mike Lindell's ears," Sommer said. He noted that Lindell is giving a "national address" at 7 p.m. EST, claiming the election was stolen.

"Jesus Christ, man, I can't believe we're doing this s—— again," Stein grumbled.

They pointed out that some Republicans were trying to take a victory lap over the fact that Republicans didn't throw a fit and claim the election was "rigged." Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer wrote on X, "Tuesday was not a good night for Republicans. It’s been 4 days and no protests, riots and vandalism."

Stephen Richer, the former Republican Maricopa County Recorder, replied, "Congrats on not doing J6 this time! Really impressive!"

It was two days after that post that Trump claimed the election was rigged.

"It's like the lowest bar. You cleared it, Sean. Congrats," Stein said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Except now, apparently, Trump's not accepting."

Sommer quickly pointed out that it isn't January yet. The Jan. 6 attack happened after over a month of Trump's claims that the election was stolen from him.

"So, like, the arc has not finished," he added. "You know, you can't say we didn't do January 6th until they're sworn in."

The swearing-in date is Jan. 3.

So, there is an uptick in claims of voter fraud and Sommer said that it's just now "getting going."

Stein thinks the delay in claiming fraud came from MAGA fans being "lost" since Trump didn't make such claims for a week.

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RWW

08/25/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

Mike Lindell is demanding a recount despite not providing any evidence of election fraud.

The State Department leaked documents to prove that officials were censoring conservative Americans. It outed a secret Pentagon employee instead.

How leaking to a prominent pro-Trump influencer prompted accusations of entrapment and deep-state conspiracy.

Since Watergate, IGs have rooted out corruption, ethical lapses and mismanagement. The White House, however, is rejecting the purpose of these offices.

Almost every year since 2015, Idaho children in a faith-healing sect have died of treatable conditions such as pneumonia and bacterial infections that turned to sepsis. Former members of the Followers of Christ sect say parents are pressured to follow doctrine that forbids medical care. Those who stray risk shunning, they said.

Lindsey Graham voted to certify the 2020 presidential election. His sister isn’t so sure she would have done the same.

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RWW

08/12/2026

by

Peter Montgomery

President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement was not enough to convince Minnesota Republican voters to choose “MyPillow guy” Mike Lindell as their candidate for governor.

Lindell lost by more than 10 percentage points to the state’s House Speaker Lisa Demuth, but true to his status as one of the nation’s preeminent election conspiracy theorists, Lindell has so far refused to concede, vowing instead to investigate supposed “anomalies” in the results.

Lindell, whose early lead in the polls had been cut by Demuth, declared himself “very confident” on Election Day. “We can’t reconcile these,” he said as the results came in. “This is mathematically impossible.”

Lindell reportedly spent tens of millions of dollars in a quixotic quest to prove that Trump’s claims about the 2020 election being stolen were true. He made similar claims about the 2022 midterms.

Rep. Ted Lieu mocked Lindell’s claims in a social media post, writing, “Many people say Venezuela rigged the election against Mike Lindell because they don’t like his pillows. Never seen anything like it.”

Lindell has also been a favorite of religious-right figures like podcaster Eric Metaxas, one of the right-wing media figures that benefitted from MyPillow advertising. Last year, Lindell touted his plans to run for governor on FlashPoint, a platform for Christian nationalist and MAGA propaganda, calling Minnesota “a Trojan Horse for a lot of evil.” He has portrayed his promotion of election conspiracy theories as a spiritual crusade, using a Christian nationalist graphic to raise money to support his efforts.

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close to getting gov nom ?! 8 26

yells threat lumpy pillow depos

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an 8 26

Mike Lindell's tantrum torn apart: Next he'll blame Bigfoot

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mma

On LindellTV, Tina Peters calls on Pete Hegseth and the Department of Defense to “to go in and demand to have these” voting machines “in their custody”

08/10/26

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7 16 26 big speech

englebrecht mtg wh

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'My cyber guys looked at it': Mike Lindell won't quit conspiracy theory after Trump boost

AN 7 26

One of President Donald Trump’s closest allies, MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, got slapped down in a court case by a judge Trump himself appointed.

“After Mike Lindell was held in civil contempt and hit with a $500-per-day fine for 103 days for refusing to pay sanctions he's owed Smartmatic for years, a federal judge has given the MyPillow CEO exactly one month to pay an ‘extra penalty’ for his defiance,” reported Law and Crime’s Matt Naham on Tuesday. Smartmatic is a voting machine company that Lindell falsely accused of engaging in fraud during the 2020 presidential election, which Trump continues to insist he won despite losing more than 99 percent of his court cases making that allegation.

“In late June, Smartmatic asked U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to clarify whether the voting machine conspiracy theorist would pay some of the contempt penalty to the company or if the sum was to be paid directly to the court,” Naham added. “The judge, a Donald Trump appointee, answered that question on Monday by entering a judgment in favor of Smartmatic and giving Lindell until Aug. 21 to ‘pay the total daily contempt penalty of $51,500’ to the ‘Registry of the Court.’

In his decision, Nichols pointed out that “when a sanction is designed to coerce a recalcitrant party to comply, the sanction should be payable to the court, rather than to the opposing party. [T]he Court imposed the daily civil contempt penalty to coerce compliance, not to compensate Smartmatic[.]"

Nichols began fining Lindell in April for saying he could not pay the $56,369 in sanctions even though he had spent $187,037.87 in campaign funds from his 2026 run for Minnesota governor solely to buy copies of his own book "What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO" and give them away.

Lindell’s gubernatorial campaign has also been beset with controversy. Despite being endorsed by Trump, Lindell was recently found to be registered to vote in Texas, indicating he may not be able to cast a ballot in his own campaign. What’s more, Lindell repeatedly tries to characterize himself as an outsider despite his close ties to Trump, such as when he said this to Trump’s former adviser and ongoing friend Steve Bannon.

“They’re having a big GOP endorsement where they’re having a debate and I’m not allowed to come,” Lindell told Bannon on his podcast War Room in May. “They’ve shut me out.”

Lindell continued, “The establishment doesn’t want me, Stephen. The Minnesota media—you wouldn’t even know I’m running.”

He later concluded, “I believe I am the only one that can win, and I believe I’m the only one with the solutions to our problems.”

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AN 5 26

President Donald Trump continues to falsely claim that he won the 2020 presidential election — and now that fabrication is fueling the agendas for a new generation of potential Republican governors.

Michigan Republican strategist Jason Cabel Roe argued that the emphasis on supporting Trump’s election denial is “silly because they know better,” wrote The Washington Post's Dan Merica, Patrick Marley and Clara Ence Morse. The former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party then added “but, you know, it’s still what the base wants to hear.” Despite this obsession, however, Roe added that voters are far more concerned about the economy and the price of gas.

“There’s enough muddying of what everybody’s feelings are about election integrity at this point — and maybe even a little exhaustion with relitigating an election that was six years ago — that I just don’t know that it really matters to voters,” Roe explained. His position was supported by a March NBC News poll which determined voters are mostly concerned with inflation and the cost of living, followed by threats to democracy.

The Republicans running for governor in their respective states on election denier platforms include Minnesota's Mike Lindell, who founded MyPillow; Arizona's Rep. Andy Biggs; Georgia's Lt. Gov. Burt Jones; Pennsylvania’s Republican treasurer's Stacy Garrity; Wisconsin's Rep. Tom Tiffany; Michigan's state Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt and Rep. John James; and California's Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

In addition to demonstrating their fealty to Trump, election denying also means these candidates could try throwing out valid vote counting efforts in the 2028 presidential election if urged by the White House.

“This is an important issue,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, chair of the Democratic Governors Association, a group preparing to make Republicans’ history of election denialism a key issue in 2026, said at a speech. “But it’s not the only issue, and it shouldn’t necessarily be the lead thing. Almost everyone in this economy is struggling because of [Trump] and these folks that are running, these election deniers, were willing to do anything for this president. So, their past attempts to steal an election were to steal it for a guy that’s made life tougher. They’re certainly not going to stand up to him to try to make life easier.”

As conservative columnist George F. Will wrote in February, Trump has thoroughly litigated his claims of election fraud, and they have all been found wanting.

“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will explained in The Washington Post. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

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AN 5 26

One of President Donald Trump’s most outspoken supporters, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, is trying to get out of owing $5 million to an engineer who proved him wrong about his 2020 election conspiracy theories.

Robert “Bob” Zeidman, an engineer who in a 2021 contest successfully proved Lindell relied on junk science to claim China meddled in the 2020 election to steal it from Trump, filed a motion for a rehearing “by the original arbitration” panel that awarded him a $5 million settlement. Although those judges determined that Zeidman had proved Lindell wrong beyond a reasonable doubt and therefore Lindell owed him money, three Republican-appointed judges from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the settlement. The Supreme Court, also controlled by Republicans, refused to intervene.

Despite Zeidman wanting the settlement restored, Lindell’s attorneys are arguing that the decision to throw out his claims should remain final.

“In an April 30 filing, Lindell Management LLC attorney Barbara Podlucky Berens asked Senior U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim, a Bill Clinton appointee, to agree that Zeidman should get no such rehearing because he would have ‘no viable theory’ to collect the $5 million upon a ‘second bite of the apple’ before the arbitration panel,” Law and Crime’s Matt Naham reported on Wednesday.

The filing argued that "Zeidman's alleged successful demonstration regarding the data at issue was based solely on the absence of capture packet data. Thus, in order to succeed, this claim, like the breach of contract claim, is contingent on the validity of the extracontractual data-format requirement imposed by the Pane. And like the breach of contract claim, the Eighth Circuit's express reversal of the Panel's capture packet data requirement defeats this claim as a matter of law."

Lindell’s legal team concluded, "Any rehearing would thus be futile.”

Despite Trump, Lindell and others in the MAGA movement insisting the 2020 election was stolen, conservative columnist George F. Will recently noted that the Republicans’ claims have been thoroughly litigated and debunked.

“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will wrote. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

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CRUZ SOME BS JOKE IN ARCTIC FROST BLATHER 3 26

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2X? GUK

i think this is typo OLSON KURT

an 1 23 maya GUK

Former President Donald Trump made a “secret” $1 million donation to the election audit conducted in Arizona following his false claims that the election was stolen from him, the Guardian reports.

The audit was requested by Arizona GOP senators, and doubted by many of their colleagues due to the “wild conspiracy theories” it mirrored. An assertion “that bamboo fibers found in ballot sheets proved they had been printed in Asia” even caused some local GOP members to deem the probe a “grift disguised as an audit.”

But nevertheless, the audit persisted.

READ MORE:Arizona newspaper exposes all the Republicans rushing into the state to learn about bogus election audit

Although eventually proven baseless and unsuccessful, The Guardian reports that “one of the largest benefactors” behind this attempt to counter the 2020 election results remained a secret for nearly two years.

But watchdog group “Documented” was able to track funding for the failed assessment and eventually landed on Trump’s super PAC, Save America.

First, the group discovered that Cyber Ninjas, the Florida company that conducted the audit, was provided $5.7 million by far-right groups, and then given an additional $1 million from former Trump advisor and attorney Cleta Mitchell.

Still, questions around the origin of the $1 million remained unanswered.

READ MORE:Behind the shady Florida consulting firm trying to upend election results in Arizona and Michigan: 'Such a farce'

TheNew York Timesreports that in September of 2021, “unnamed ‘officials,’” as well as Arizona GOP senators who requested the election audit, adamantly denied Trump’s contribution.

However, with its research on many corporate, tax and campaign finance filings, as well as emails and text messages between Trump allies that were obtained by nonpartisan accountability group American Oversight, "Documented" managed to counter those claims.

The Guardian broke down the process of how the watchdog group traced the donation back to Trump.

Like many incidents surrounding Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020, tracing back Trump’s contribution to the audit starts with the Jan. 6 committee.

READ MORE:Arizona secretary of state urges criminal probe of Trump's efforts to overturn 2020 election results

The committee’s final report mentioned that Trump super PAC, Save America, donated $1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) — led by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows — but did not disclose the origin or the reason for the money.

Further research revealed that Trump’s contribution possibly began around June 2021, as accountability group American Oversighttracked text messages between retired Army officer and “arch election denier” Phil Waldron and Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company that conducted the audit.

Waldron texted Logan, “Kurt is going to talk to 45 today, about $.”

According to the Guardian, “Kurt” likely referred toKurt Olden, an “election denying lawyer.” He continued, “Mike L talking to Corey L,” referring to CEO of MyPillow and devoted Trump supporter Mike Lindelland Trump campaign manager Corey Lewondowski.

READ MORE:How Trump's toxic presence in Republican state party politics is being entirely underestimated

A couple of weeks later, Waldron asked Logan if he had received a $1 million payment from Lewondowski. He texted, “Supposedly Kurt talked to Trump and they got 1 mil for you,” but he noted he “couldn’t verify who sent and received.”

According to The Guardian, the Federal Election Commission reported that less than two weeks later, on July 26, 2021, Save America transferred the $1 million to CPI. Two days later, a new group, American Voting Rights Foundation (AVRF) “registered as a corporation in Delaware.”

CPI donated $1 million to AVRF — the group’s first and only donation — in 2021, and although the date of donation is unknown, the clear relationship between the groups, the “timing and amounts” of the transfers, as well as the revealed text messages between Trump allies all leads to one culprit: Trump.

Furthermore, on the day AVRF registered as a corporation, Trump attorney Mitchell emailed Cyber Ninjas CEo Loganand put him in touch with the audit spokesperson, Randy Pullen as well as AVRF treasurer Tom Datwyler.

READ MORE: GOP lawmaker facing allegations of 'massive violations' after FEC audit reveals he lent money to his own campaign

The Arizona Republic recently confirmed that Trump was notified of the process the whole time

GOP vice-chair of Maricopa County board of supervisors Bill Gates told The Guardian he is “disappointed, but not surprised” by the revelation.

“At the very least, it is highly hypocritical for the Arizona state senate to have allowed the audit to be funded in this fashion,” Gates said.

Ultimately, even after the great lengths Trump and his cohort of election deniers went to assist in the audit, the goal to overturn Arizona's election was never met. The Guardian reports that in 2020, President Joe Biden won Maricopa County, the most populated in Arizona and where the audit took place, by 45,109 votes.

Regarding the morality of the audit, Gates added that Arizona law states, “electoral candidates are not allowed to fund vote recounts which have to be financed with taxpayer dollars.” And although the audit was “technically not a recount,” it’s clear the intent was the same.

READ MORE: Arizona newspaper exposes all the Republicans rushing into the state to learn about bogus election audit

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RWW

03/25/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

If the enormous 21-point swing against Trump in his own hometown was replicated across the country, this would be the Republicans’ worst midterms in 100 years.

‘I’m hopeful that this exposure will help people recognize the signs of Christian nationalism in their own spaces,’ one Moscow resident said.

The Times visited a village where the United States and Ecuador said they destroyed an armed group’s training camp. Residents said it was actually a dairy farm.

The montage, which typically runs for about two minutes, has raised concerns among some of the president’s allies that he may not be receiving the complete picture of the war.

In the first Christian worship service at the Pentagon since the start of the strikes against Iran, Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself the “Secretary of War,” used prayer and several Bible passages to cast the conflict as a holy war against God’s enemies. He prayed that God would pour out righteous wrath by helping “break the teeth” and kill the “wicked” enemies “who deserve no mercy” and should be “delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.”

The New Apostolic Reformation leader's campaign faces collapse after failing to file required tax returns. He's now suing for ballot access.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols held MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in civil contempt of court after he claimed an "inability to pay" voting machine company Smartmatic sanctions over frivolous claims about the 2020 presidential election.

The US government is taking fees from immigrants and US sponsors for services that it has no plans to provide. The government took their money, and now it won’t even adjudicate their applications—in many cases, it refuses even to issue denials.

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rww

Round-up

02/09/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

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MMA

  1. ### LindellTV host Emerald Robinson claims Patrick Byrne “got called in to the White House”

01/16/26

rww 925

Mike Lindell Plots Run For Governor Of Minnesota | People For

AN 8 25

'Love your question': Trump flatters LindellTV reporter who fawns over him during presser

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AN 9 25

'I can bankrupt the state!' Critics lampoon MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's run for governor

Adam Lynch

RWW

MAGA 'Prophet' Hank Kunneman Is Rewriting His Prophecies In Real Time

06/17/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Hank Kunneman is a MAGA pastor and a right-wing conspiracy theorist who also fancies himself to be a prophet of God. Generally, whenever Kunneman issues any sort of prophecy, the prognostications he makes are either so conveniently vague or laughably predictable as to be essentially useless. And that is because whenever Kunneman attempts to make prophecies about tangible, real world events, his predictions inevitably turn out to be completely wrong.

This tendency was on full display earlier this month when Kunneman appeared on the "FlashPoint" television program along with election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell. Lindell was being sued for defamation by Eric Coomer, the former director of product strategy for Dominion Voting Systems, for having called Coomer "treasonous" and a "traitor" while alleging that Dominion had been involved in stealing the 2020 election from President Donald Trump.

When Lindell appeared on "FlashPoint" on June 2 to discuss the lawsuit, Kunneman assured him that he would win and be avenged by God.

"God is the wrong person to pick a fight with, and Mike is standing in a place that the Lord has appointed him," Kunneman declared. "I'm telling you, the fact that it's in court right now is a very good place because now we've been hearing what God has been saying."

"The highest court of all, the court of Heaven, God himself is getting involved and he is going to avenge Mike, MyPillow, and we the people speedily from the garbage and the injustice that we have gone through," Kunneman continued. "They thought they could cover it up, the enemy, but God is revisiting 2020 on purpose. It's not going away because the Lord of the fight is involved and God is going to make sure that the greatest cover up that they tried is going to backfire in their face and God has inserted himself."

"So here's what's going to happen: We're going to see major victories begin to come," Kunneman promised. "God is resting his case. That's why some of these things are coming to court cases because God's resting his case, he's bringing his gavel of justice and we are going to win and you're going to be—I guess, I hate to say it this way—you are being placed as an example of ultimately what is going to be like a domino and it's going to spread across this great country and other great victories will begin to take place as a result of this one."

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On Monday, a jury found Lindell liable for defamation and ordered Lindell to pay Coomer $2.3 million.

On Monday evening, Lindell returned to "FlashPoint" to discuss the loss and Kunneman was there once again to offer words of encouragement, only now his prophecy had changed to fit the developments.

Whereas before, Kunneman had assured Lindell that he would win a major victory in the lawsuit, on Monday Kunneman insisted that Lindell will now be vindicated on appeal.

"I kept hearing when I prayed for Mike something about an appeal," Kunneman claimed. "I heard when I was praying that there has been an appeal that has gone before the Court of Heaven, which is amazing because that's the highest court of all. You cannot mess with God."

"God has said this is the year of his fight and we are going to see the Lord continue to fight for those who are standing like Mike and other great people," he continued. "This is going to go down in history as one of the greatest pillow fights in the history of the world and in our country, but it's going to lead some to something."

"Here's what's gonna happen, Mike, not only for this country, but for you: Without fail, we're gonna recover all," Kunneman declared. "Because this pillow fight is going to yield something: God's rest, which means his justice. Second, we the people are going to rest. We are not going to have this kind of lack of integrity and stealing and killing and destroying. God has come to reset this great country."VIDS

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AN 6 25

Donald Trump’s second term is shaping up to be just as much about the past as the future. Not the past as it unfolded, but the version of events as he wants them remembered.

*This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

There are a few troubling examples of how the president and his allies are actively attempting to reshape public views of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — and how these efforts are starting to affect real people and real institutions.

Take Oklahoma. Teachers there are now facing updated social studies standards that instruct students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results” — not to examine election systems or to discuss voter confidence, but to presume that the election was flawed.This language is a quiet but profound distortion: It accepts Trump’s false narrative of fraud and requires educators to teach that falsehood as fact.

This illustrates the insidious consequences of partisan narratives hardening into policy. Oklahoma’s education chief, Ryan Walters, has aligned himself with efforts to eliminate so-called left-wing indoctrination in schools. But he’s supporting these new standards, which contradict the facts made plain in every credible post-election review, from Trump’s own first-term Department of Justice to GOP-led audits. Courts, including those with Trump-nominated judges, rejected dozens of spurious legal challenges, and officials in every state certified the results.

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These facts have been sidelined in shaping what schoolchildren learn, which has long-term implications for public trust in elections.

Or consider the protests against aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles. Trump has called the demonstrators there “insurrectionists” and is moving military forces into the city.

And what about the convicted insurrectionists who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol? Trump issued them pardons and commutations as one of the first acts of his second term, erasing the crimes and violence of that day — including threats to execute his vice president — from the historical record. (A plaque honoring law enforcement officials who defended the Capitol that day still hasn’t been installed, despite pleas to House Speaker Mike Johnson.)

Trump’s administration is also reportedly developing a plan to pardon the “fake electors” and other Trump allies charged or convicted in connection with attempts to overturn the election, as well as the plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, as part of a broader effort to shield MAGA supporters from legal consequences, and perhaps convey the sense that these events never happened.

That is, the president is using both his immense influence and his constitutional authority to bend justice, public education, and public memory toward a false understanding of the past. And his allies are bending to his will.

What does this tell us about Trump’s capacity to reshape perceptions in the face of actual facts? And can anything stand in his way?

Some answers may come from a federal courtroom in Denver, where one of the more surreal chapters of the 2020 fallout is still playing out. That’s where the defamation trial against Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — brought by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer — is underway.

Lindell, who has claimed that Dominion and Coomer were part of a scheme to steal the election from Trump, once promised that this trial would prove him right. But his lawyers seem to be arguing now that he’s so erratic, so impulsive, that nothing he says could be taken seriously enough to count as defamation.

“It’s just words,” said Lindell’s attorney, according to a Denver reporter covering the trial. “All Mike Lindell did was talk.”

That’s a hell of a defense, and itself a rewriting of history. The problem with it is that millions of people did believe Lindell, and still do.

Coomer may get to clear his name in the case against Lindell, but the broader effort to rewrite the past is gaining ground where it matters most: in classrooms, in Congress, and in the minds of voters. Juries and the judiciary can punish lies, but they can’t reach every classroom or undo every pardon.

With so many institutional guardrails already buckling under pressure, the remaining checks are public memory, a free press, and a willingness — from enough of us — to keep insisting on saying what actually happened.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica atjhuseman@votebeat.org.}:

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

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:{6 25 WIKI

Emerald Robinson is an American broadcaster and conspiracy theorist. She previously worked as the chief White House correspondent for One America News Network from 2017 to 2020 and Newsmax from 2020 to 2022.[1] She was let go by Newsmax after promoting misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.[2][3] She hosts The Absolute Truth, a show on Mike Lindell's Frank platform.[4]

Career

Prior to working as a broadcaster, Robinson worked as an actress and model.[5]

In May 2018, One America News Network appointed Robinson as its chief White House correspondent.[6] In 2019, Robinson posted an Islamophobic tweet calling Ilhan Omar an "al-Qaeda supporting Somali Gangster" and an "Islamist terrorist supporter". Robinson subsequently received an endorsement from the far-right website VDARE.[5][7]

In February 2020, Robinson joined Newsmax as its White House correspondent.[8] In April, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she promoted a conspiracy theory that Bill Gates was planning to use vaccines to track people.[9] After then-president Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, Robinson promoted conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems.[10][8]

In November 2021, Robinson falsely tweeted that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine contained luciferase "so that you can be tracked." This echoed earlier false social media claims that the vaccine supposedly had satanic links due to "lucifer" in luciferase and alleged references to "666." Robinson's tweet began with the salutation "Dear Christians" and referred her over 400,000 followers to the Book of Revelation; in a tweet days earlier, she equated vaccines with the Mark of the Beast.[11][12][13] Twitter removed the tweet that day and suspended Robinson's account for seven days, citing "repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy," as Newsmax sought to distance itself from her remark and removed her from the air pending an inquiry.[14][15] Robinson returned to Twitter after her suspension to continue spreading COVID-19 misinformation, causing Twitter to permanently ban her within hours.[16][17] Newsmax announced the next month that it would not renew Robinson's contract when it ended in January 2022.[18]

In January 2022, Robinson joined LindellTV, an online outlet founded by Mike Lindell.[2][3] In May, she falsely claimed that Brian Kemp receiving 74% of the vote in the Republican primary of the Georgia gubernatorial election was proof of "obvious fraud", saying that "Nobody in any election in America gets 74% of the votes."[19]

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rww

06/04/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Elon Musk may have “left Washington” last week, but the Department of Government Efficiency won’t miss a step. That’s because Musk was never running DOGE in the first place. I’m not suggesting that Amy Gleason was in charge. Gleason, you may recall, is the government official whom the White House last February named as a sort of papier-mâché acting DOGE administrator as part of its legal sleight of hand to shield Musk from litigation. Gleason is a data expert who worked for Musk, not the other way around. No, I’m talking about Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was warned by the judge presiding over his defamation trial to stop discussing the proceedings on social media.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's attorneys have declined to argue that his election-rigging claims are true at a defamation trial in Colorado this week.

"I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there," she said about a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill that the House passed last month.

It’s not quite clear what is happening with former Missouri Congressman Billy Long and his associates at the federal Office of Personnel Management, where he has been a senior advisor to the director since March.

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RWW

06/02/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Five former leaders of groups associated with Sean Feucht have issued a formal statement bringing to light what they call “longstanding and serious moral, ethical, financial, organizational and governance failures” by Feucht and calling for an independent investigation into possible fraud and embezzlement.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said "Satan" was behind allegedly rigged voting machines ahead of his defamation trial.

He is taking self-enrichment to a scale never seen before in America.

Trump advisers tell WIRED that their mutually beneficial arrangements with the notorious right wing influencer may be coming to an end.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought had said he wants government employees “to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

Wilson's expanding infrastructure puts him at the center of a larger debate about the role of faith in public life reaching from small-town Idaho to the highest levels of government.

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an 6 25

:{:{Almost four and one-half months into Donald Trump's second presidency, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is still facing a civil defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for falsely claiming that their equipment was used to help Democrat Joe Biden steal the United States' 2020 election from Trump — a claim that was repeatedly debunked by countless recounts. }:

And the far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist is still angry over claims that his pillows are "lumpy" — so angry that, during an appearance on Steve Bannon's "War Room" vodcast, he threatened to bring one of them to his trial when it gets underway on Monday morning, June 2.}:

Lindell told Bannon, "Yeah, you guys, MyPillow and myself Monday morning, (June 2),the trial starts," Lindell explained. "MyPillow's being sued, everybody. By the way, Steve, this is the same lawyer that, in the deposition, called my pillows lumpy. I told my lawyers, maybe I should bring him one inside. He said: Mike, let's not go there."

Lindell's threat to bring a pillow to his civil defamation trial is getting some reactions on X, formerly Twitter.

READ MORE: 'Mass delusion fueled by charisma': Expert explains why Trump's followers still believe in him

Dinesh D'Souza, another far-right conspiracy theorist who promoted false claims about the 2020 election, is praising Lindell.

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D'Souza tweeted, "Guys! Mike Lindell is fighting a big case involving election fraud. This guy has put his company on the line. Let’s support him big time. All kinds of great deals on the famous pillows, the Giza dream sheets and more! Go to http://mypillow.com and use promo code DSOUZA."

Christian fundamentalist Craig Scoullar posted, "God will give Mike victory."

But other X users are mocking Lindell.

READ MORE:'Disappointed': Musk says Trump's bill 'undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing'

Flatulence Studios' Chris Baldassano posted, " You have to appreciate just how bats--- Mike Lindell is. He's like the neighbor who you go outside and they are sunbathing in a tiny french speedo with not a care in the world..

X user Don Dank referenced Lindell's history of substance abuse problems, noting that he was a "drug addict" in the past.

Boston Democrat Tom Williams posted, "Mike Lindell wants pillows at voting machine trial to prove they aren't 'lumpy.'"

READ MORE:'Beyond the pale': Scarborough rips 'childish' Joni Ernst for 'mocking her constituents'

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rww

10/23/2024

by

Kyle Mantyla

The Republican nominee’s preoccupation with dictators, and his disdain for the American military, is deepening.

An audit uncovered 20 non-U.S. citizens out of 8.2 million registered voters in Georgia, according to findings announced by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Wednesday. Nine of those 20 noncitizens cast ballots in the past, while the other 11 were registered but never actually voted, the audit showed. Election officials canceled their voter registrations and reported them to district attorneys for possible prosecution.

Polling by right-leaning firms has exploded this cycle. Maybe they want to be accurate—or maybe they’re trying to create a sense of momentum for Donald Trump.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said his company was giving away "free" commemorative pillows to celebrate the upcoming prison release of right-wing activist Steve Bannon.

The Texas fracking billionaire wants to rewrite the U.S. Constitution to advance climate denial and other far-right priorities.

===

wapo no lnx

Former County Clerk Gets 9 Years in Prison for Tampering With Voting Machines

Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., had tried to prove that the machines had been used to rig the 2020 election against former President Donald J. Trump.

Tina Peters, wearing a red jacket, speaks at a Trump rally in Casper, Wyo., in 2022.

Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., was scolded by the judge for repeatedly advancing false claims about former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.Credit...Natalie Behring for The New York Times

By Alan Feuer

Oct. 3, 2024

Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., was sentenced on Thursday to nine years in prison after being found guilty in August of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against former President Donald J. Trump.

At a hearing in Grand Junction, Colo., Judge Matthew D. Barrett scolded Ms. Peters sternly from the bench, telling her he had imposed the severe penalty because she had repeatedly advanced false claims about Mr. Trump’s defeat and in so doing become a celebrity among those who denied that he lost the race.

“But you are no hero, you abused your position and you are a charlatan,” Judge Barrett said, adding, “You cannot help but lie as easy as you breathe.”

The sentence was the first to be handed down against a local election official found liable for security breaches of voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems. After Mr. Trump’s defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr., pro-Trump activists across the country sought to gain access to Dominion machines, hoping to prove they had been used in a plot to flip votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.

But all of those efforts failed, and local officials in many cases opened investigations like the one into Ms. Peters.

Before Judge Barrett imposed her sentence, Ms. Peters apologized for the seven criminal charges that a jury found her guilty of but also sought to press her case that Dominion’s machines had been used to cheat Mr. Trump out of a victory.

She then went on a muddled tangent about how the district attorney who had filed the charges against her was somehow implicated in a plot to get her ailing husband to divorce her before Judge Barrett, in a burst of annoyance, cut her off.

“I’m convinced you would do it again if you could,” Judge Barrett told her at one point. “You’re as defiant a defendant as I’ve ever seen.”

At trial, Ms. Peters was convicted of helping an outsider — Conan Hayes, a former professional surfer turned technology wizard — to gain unauthorized access to one of Mesa County’s Dominion machines in May 2021.

Once Mr. Hayes got into the machine, he was able to capture county passwords and sensitive data about Dominion’s proprietary software that showed up three months later at an event questioning the results of the election hosted by Mike Lindell, the founder of the bedding company MyPillow, who is a prolific purveyor of election lies.

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump. More about Alan Feuer

See more on: Tina Peters, Donald Trump, President Joe Biden, Dominion Voting Systems Corp

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SENT TO 9 YEARS, JUDGE SOUNDED LIKE HE WAS TALKING TO TRUMP

AP

A judge ripped into a Colorado county clerk for her crimes and lies before sentencing her Thursday to nine years behind bars for a data-breach scheme spawned from the rampant false claims about voting machine fraud in the 2020 presidential race.

District Judge Matthew Barrett told former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters — after earlier sparring with her for continuing to press discredited claims about rigged voting machines — that she never took her job seriously.

“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” Barrett told her in handing down the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”

Jurors found Peters guilty in August for allowing a man to misuse a security card to access to the Mesa County election system and for being deceptive about that person’s identity.

AP AUDIO: Former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters sentenced to 9 years for voting data scheme

AP correspondent Norman Hall reports a former Colorado county clerk has been sentenced to 9 years in a voting data scheme.

The man was affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from former President Donald Trump. The discredited claims trace back to Trump himself, whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol because of them and who still hints at them in his third run for president.

At trial, prosecutors said Peters, a Republican, was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the presidential election results.

A one-time hero to election deniers, Peters has been unapologetic about what happened.

Before being sentenced, Peters insisted that everything she did to try to unroot what she believed was fraud was for the greater good.

“I’ve never done anything with malice to break the law. I’ve only wanted to serve the people of Mesa County,” she told the court.

When Peters pressed on with claims no legal authority has corroborated about “wireless devices” and fraud software in voting machines, however, she drew the judge’s exasperation. Ballot recounts showed no discrepancies, he pointed out.

“I’ve let you go on enough about this,” Judge Barrett said. “The votes are the votes.”

Later, the judge noted that Peters has kept up public appearances in broadcasts to sympathetic audiences for her own benefit.

“It’s just more lies. No objective person believes them. No, at the end of the day, you cared about the jets, the podcasts and people fawning over you,” Barrett said.

Peters had the right to be defiant, he noted, but it was “certainly not helpful for her lot today.”

The breach led by Peters heightened concerns that rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to attack voting processes from within.

It’s impossible to overestimate the damage Peters has done to other election workers in Colorado and elsewhere, Colorado County Clerks Association director Matt Crane told the court.

“In a real and specific way, her actions have led directly to death threats and general threats to the lives and the families of the people who work in our elections,” Crane said. “She has willingly aided individuals in our country who believe that violence is a way to make a point. She has knowingly fueled a fire within others who choose threats as a means to get their way.”

He, his wife and his children have been among those threatened, Crane said.

ads on lara t podcast

===

an 9 24 // NC i am black nazi

alternet-no lnx

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell (Image: Screengrab via MyPillow.com)

Carl Gibson September 21, 2024

Far-right election denier Mike Lindell's MyPillow is now being advertised at a significant discount. One historian is pointing out that the pillow's new price is a reference to a prominent neo-Nazi rallying cry.

On the social media platform Bluesky, Willamette University history professor Seth Cotlar observed that the official @MyPillowUSA X (formerly Twitter) account tweeted an advertisement for its product with a posted price of $14.88. As the Southern Poverty Law Center explained, the number "1488" is a reference to the "14 words" slogan frequently used by neo-Nazis: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." The "88" is a reference to the eighth letter of the alphabet twice, interpreted by neo-Nazis to mean "Heil Hitler."

"This ad is a disturbing wink at Nazis, wrapped in the seemingly innocuous, plausibly deniable form of an advertisement," Cotlar wrote on Bluesky. "I doubt Lindell is behind this or would even get the reference, but that doesn't really matter."

READ MORE: Attorneys ditch Mike Lindell as he fights to avoid paying $5M

"It is undeniable that there are fascists, and even straight up Nazis, working inside the Republican Party. One of them is likely responsible for that winking Lindell ad," he continued. "But such people still have to wink at each other like this. Lindell or other public figures wouldn't openly embrace this."

The MyPillow advertisement — which is still live on the account as of Saturday afternoon — was praised by numerous X users who made Nazi references.

"We will be buying," tweeted an account named "Ohio Groyper" ("Groyper" is the term used for fans of white supremacist influencer and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes). An X user with "groyper" in her bio tweeted: "1488 right on!" Another X user replied to the ad by tweeting "the price is reich."

"We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white pillows," another user tweeted.

READ MORE: 'Flattened like a cheap pillow': Mike Lindell brtually mocked after losing debate with 12-year-old

As Cotlar noted, it's not clear whether Lindell is in on the reference. In a video announcing the discount, Lindell is seen holding up two pillows and announcing the new discounted price as $14.98, even though both the official MyPillow website lists it as $14.88 with the promo code.

"I want to tell you about a current box store that put in an order — a big order — for our famous MyPillows, we made them all and got ready to ship them and they cancelled at the last minute," Lindell said in the video, after lamenting that his company had been "cancelled" by "attacks that just keep coming."

Whether Lindell is aware of the phrase, the ad was widely panned on X for its use of a neo-Nazi slogan. Colorado Political Workers Guild founder Logan Davis called the ad "shocking even for Lindell." Progressive podcaster Jordan Uhl quote-tweeted the ad and simply commented: "Mein Pillow."

Click here to read Cotlar's full thread on Bluesky.

===

rww June 17, 2024

Judging from the first two days of the event, it would be hard to call this a youth movement. Saturday morning, I attended a breakout session headlined by voter registration activist Scott Presler. There were about 50 or 60 people in the room, virtually all well over 40. When Presler opened the floor for a Q&A, the first questioner said he was 77 years old.

Far-right figures Chaya Raichik and Charlie Kirk both said they plan to “outbreed the left” this week by having more children than liberals and raising them to have right-wing views.

Cashing in as a “cancel culture” martyr is getting harder, so attention addicts have to get more extreme.

MyPillow CEO and election-denier Mike Lindell told conservatives this weekend he was going to deputize them as part of “God’s plan” for former President Donald Trump’s Election Day victory.

Burns made the remarks on a show hosted by Jesse Lee Peterson, who has repeatedly said allowing women to vote was a mistake.

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an guard 4 24

tEMPE, Ariz. — At the local discount cinema in this Phoenix suburb this winter, a crowd of about 100 took their seats for something different from the typical Sunday matinee.

The man standing in front of the big screen, Mark Cook, packed up his life months ago to drive around in an RV for a mission he said he was called to by God. Their elections had been stolen from them, he told the crowd, and it was time to take them back. He dubbed his cross-country venture the “hand count road show.”

“Elections belong to us,” he said, emphatically. “Say it!” a woman in the front of the theater yelled out.

The ultimate solution he offered the crowd: Eliminating mail-in voting, counting all ballots cast at polling places on the night of the election, and, most importantly, doing the counting by hand.

Cook is one of several quasi-disciples of Mike Lindell and other big-name election influencers who have been spreading the hand-count gospel around the country since 2020, when Donald Trump began claiming without evidence that ballot tabulating machines were rigged against him.

The push to hand-count ballots is ramping up, albeit with spotty success, as the 2024 election nears, according to a review by The Guardian and Votebeat. If more localities decide to try hand-counting in the November election, results could be inaccurate, untrustworthy, or delayed, fostering more distrust in elections. In places that opt not to hand count, supporters of the practice could use this choice as a reason to question or refuse to sign off on certification.

Either way, it raises the risk of throwing the 2024 election into chaos.

“It just gives additional grounds for calling into question the results of elections when there are no valid grounds,” said Heather Sawyer, executive director at American Oversight. “There’s no good reason to do it. And there’s lots of room for mischief and problems.”

The push hasn’t gained much ground in the large swing counties where Trump claimed votes were stolen from him. It’s been more effective in small or rural counties that voted heavily for Trump, where conservative activists havelined up at public meetings to repeat the conspiracies of Cook, Lindell, and others. There — in Missouri, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin — local officials voted to give hand-counting ballots a try in either their midterm or presidential primary elections.

These attempts have proven what election experts have long understood: Ditching machines and exclusively hand-counting ballots is time-consuming, expensive, and more prone to human error. It’s also unnecessary. Election officials routinely verify that machines are counting votes properly by hand-counting the results on a portion of ballots after each election.

Most recently, in Gillespie County, Texas,errors were discovered in nearly all precincts after the county tried to hand-count its Republican presidential primary election.

Nevertheless, Gillespie County still plans to hand-count its local runoff election in May. In South Dakota, there are efforts to get hand-counting through local initiatives. And in New Hampshire, one town voted to count ballots by hand after a concerted push by local activists.

This seemingly grassroots effort has sometimes been backed by outside funding and promises of financial support, some from Lindell and others from unknown sources, according to public records and statements reviewed by The Guardian and Votebeat.

Before a California county voted to get rid of its tabulation machines, Lindell wrote to a supervisor that if they “have any pushback, including lawsuits against you or your county, I will provide all of the resources necessary (including both financial and legal) for this fight,” according todocuments obtained by American Oversight, a watchdog group that has tracked the hand count movement across the country, and shared with The Guardian and Votebeat.

Lindell told The Guardian he has contributed money to efforts in South Dakota and New Hampshire, but he wasn’t sure how much or how exactly the funds were used. He also features hand-count activists on his online video programs and helps them find donations that way. “Any way I can to get the word out,” he said.

Money wouldn’t come from him personally, but from an affiliated fundraising outfit, the Lindell Offense Fund, he said. His personal financial issues, stemming from lawsuits he faces, are well documented: He couldn’t pay his lawyers in defamation cases brought by voting machine companies.

“I don’t have money to stick in there myself. I’m reaching out to the public. … I’m not a grifter. I’d be the worst grifter that ever lived,” he said.

In Arizona, the push to hand-count ballots has mysterious benefactors, with an unknown source offering money for the legal defense of county supervisors who take on the fight to hand-count ballots, defying state law. Most recently, an elected official in rural Mohave County sued the attorney general, an effort to obtain a court ruling saying that hand-counting ballots is legal. The supervisor, Ron Gould, said in an interview he doesn’t “have permission” to disclose who is paying his legal costs — but so far, it isn’t him.

Mike Lindell influences hand-count push

Inside Pollack Cinemas in Tempe, road show attendees munched on popcorn and sipped sodas as Cook told them about a story he heard from a Texas poll worker. The poll worker told him they watched as a ballot counter on a tabulation machine ticked up one by one, but no one was inserting ballots at the time.

Many in the crowd gasped. “Oh my gosh,” one said.

This claim could have been referencing a viral video which showed an electronic pollbook in Dallas County adding voters after polls closed, which county officials have explained was simply a delay in the system.

Like many who promote hand-counting ballots, Cook subscribes to wide-ranging conspiracy theories about voting, and he told the crowd all about them. Their election officials in Maricopa County, he told them without offering proof, had caused problems during the midterm election so they could “pepper in ballots.” Election officials across the country used messy voter rolls to “inject” “phantom” voters, he said, again without evidence. And COVID-19 was born as a way to increase vote-by-mail across the country, he said falsely, just so the 2020 election could be stolen from Donald Trump.

The solutions he offers are familiar talking points among the Republican leaders who promote hand-counting ballots. They would restrict voting access, such as ending all early and mail-in voting, and purging voter rolls.

Cook credits Lindell with influencing his beliefs. He attended Lindell’s infamous “cyber symposium” in 2021, where Lindell said the “seeds were planted” for people to go back to their states to advocate against machines.

With Lindell’s assistance and coordination, the hand-count pushes have become more systematic.

He tried to rally the troops at a summit in Missouri last August, where he detailed “The Plan,” his step-by-step guide for grassroots groups and activists to convince their local elected officials to ditch machines. He advises them to talk about machine vulnerabilities, voter roll issues, internet connections, and other frequent talking points of the far-right election activist movement. Then, “call for the implementation of hand counts” and prepare to respond to objections.

Cause of America, one of several organizations affiliated with Lindell, says it has “over 300,000 volunteers on the ground going county by county to change laws, remove machines, teach hand count voting and more.” Lindell said he hosts a weekly call with activists across the country to talk about the plan.

Lindell held the 2021 cyber symposium in South Dakota, where activists are now working on gathering petition signatures to put the idea of getting rid of voting machines before voters in two dozen counties. Proponents have so far convinced two counties, Fall River and Gregory, to adopt full hand counts.

Some counties have objected to the petitions, saying the change could violate state and federal law.

“If the voters vote for this ordinance, we will have lawsuits,” McPherson County Auditor Lindley Howard told South Dakota News Watch. “If we illegally deny the petition, then the petitioners will file a lawsuit. I feel like counties were left swimming in an ocean without a lifejacket.”

In New Hampshire, a group used many towns’ “warrant articles” process to try to get rid of machines, filing petitions in nearly two dozen towns to call for a vote on machine tabulation. Activists in the state tried a similar push in 2022, but didn’t get much traction.

Lindell and New Hampshire organizers hoped for a landslide of towns moving to hand counts.

“Imagine the impact for the rest of the state.... Imagine the impact on the rest of our country! God willing, this will be our generation’s ‘shot heard around the world,’” a crowdfunding site for the New Hampshire push says. The crowdfunding page notes that Lindell funded a “digital mobile truck” to advertise for the campaign for six days at $20,000.

But so far just one town, Danville, has approved the petition to hand-count ballots in presidential elections. The town’s attorney told the Associated Press he doesn’t believe the change will stand because it may violate state law.

New Hampshire organizers didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Lindell has featured both the South Dakota and New Hampshire efforts on his online show.

‘No upside’ to hand-counting ballots

There’s a side benefit to the hand count fervor for the broader rightwing election movement: It serves to keep local activists engaged in the leadup to the 2024 election, notes Emma Steiner, who has followed the hand count push for Common Cause.

“It’s basically an objective that they can organize around, that they can lobby their local legislators and officials about, and something that keeps them motivated and their eye on the ball so that they will be available in the game for November,” Steiner said.

In Arizona, far-right lawmakers Sonny Borrelli and Wendy Rogers have traveled the state to spread the word about hand counts. The anti-machine sentiment is still running strong in the swing state, which could decide the 2024 election.

Before Borrelli and Rogers’ tour, Cochise County notably attempted to move to a full hand count, despite a warning from the secretary of state at the time that the move would be illegal. An unnamed source paid a $10,000 legal retainer for two Republican supervisors who had voted for the hand count to happen, according to their statements at public meetings.

Those two supervisors, Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, then later refused to certify the election, which required court intervention. Crosby and Judd were recently charged by the state for their role in delaying certification.

Judd said in an interview that she wanted to hand count ballots only to appease the crowds that had been showing up to board meetings.

“It was just to show them we have good machines, we have a good elections director, we have a good system here, you don’t have to be worried about Cochise county,” she said.

Judd said she didn’t know who paid the $10,000 legal retainer for the related case.

When asked if he paid the Cochise retainer, Lindell said, “I don’t believe so.”

In Cochise and elsewhere, the hand count push has driven out some elections officials, who have found themselves at odds with their county boards over the practice. Cochise’s seasoned elections director, Lisa Marra, left her job after suing the county for harassment. She eventually received a $130,000 settlement.

When Mohave County, a heavily Republican part of the state, was considering a full hand count of ballots cast in 2024 elections, Borrelli told the local supervisors that unnamed hand count supporters had promised him they’d financially support the county if there was any legal pushback.

Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, sent a letter warning the supervisors they could be prosecuted for hand-counting all ballots, and the supervisors voted not to move forward. That spurred Gould’s lawsuit against Mayes, asking the court to rule on whether hand counting is legal in the state. In the suit, Gould says that he faced “potentially losing his liberty and being jailed as a criminal, if Defendant Mayes is correct, for voting according to his conscience.”

Gould said in an interview that he sued so that the state would “stop threatening him.” He believes hand counting ballots is legal and would improve voter confidence.

Supervisor Buster Johnson voted “no” to stop the switch to hand counting. Borrelli is now challenging Johnson for his seat on the board in the July primary election, which could change the makeup of the board. Borrelli said in a text message that his run for the seat has “nothing to do with elections.”

In a phone interview, Johnson said he voted no on hand counting because, along with the legal reasons, he said, it would be expensive and error-prone, and it attempts to fix a non-existent problem.

“There is no upside to it.”

Borrelli didn’t respond to a question about the identity of the unnamed supporter who had promised to pay legal costs in Mohave County. Judd said that Borrelli has not offered to pay legal costs for her pending criminal case.

Beyond Arizona, places that recently tried hand counting have found out the hard way about its challenges.

Osage County, a small Missouri county outside Jefferson City, hand-counted a local election in April 2023 as a test of the practice, spurred by activists who convinced the county clerk to try it. Lindell and other activists now cite the Osage count as one of their successes.

But, County Clerk Nicci Kammerich wrote in a local newspaper, the process took longer and cost more in the end, even with a group of mostly volunteers who helped hand count.

Kammerich sent the article to The Guardian after an interview request, saying the hand count issue has consumed her office: “I do not have the time to talk. I get calls and email requests on the daily about this hand count and it has been really interfering with my day to day tasks.”

After the hand count, Kammerich heard from election judges who said they wouldn’t work again if they had to hand count.

“After considering all factors of this election and comparing it to other elections that are similar, I fear that if we were to continue hand counting it would cost us more in time, money, losing volunteers, and accuracy of votes,” Kammerich wrote, adding that her office intends to go back to tabulation machines for future elections.

How the U.S. counts votes

Most of the U.S. votes on paper ballots, which then are fed into machines that tabulate the results. Some places use touch screens, where people vote by selecting options on a screen and then cast printed receipts of their votes into machines. Machine-tabulated results are then verified with a hand count of a small percentage of ballots, with only tight races receiving a full hand recount. Some jurisdictions, typically very small, still hand count paper ballots, though these instances are rare.

The widespread use of machines is relatively recent: the Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002, allowed many smaller areas to afford tabulation machines, said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Some of the proponents of hand counting may remember when their local elections were counted by hand.

Proponents of the practice often point to other countries, like France, where hand-counting paper ballots is the norm. But local ballots in the U.S. are often much longer and more complex than those in European countries: Americans vote on far more offices, and elections are frequently consolidated, so a voter will weigh in on federal, state, and local elected officials and ballot questions at the same time. Some of these countries don’t use mail-in voting, a more common voting method in the U.S., and they are smaller than the U.S.

“A voter in San Francisco in the presidential election is going to vote on more things in that one election than a citizen of Great Britain will vote on in a lifetime,” Stewart said.

Moving to hand counts brings not only financial and accuracy questions, but also logistical ones: it takes far more people and space than machine counting. In some counties that discussed the idea of hand counts, finding a place to house a big operation to count ballots presented obstacles.

Cook shrugs off these points. If we found a way to do it in years past, he said, we can do it now.

Lindell’s response to the pushback from elections officials: “They’re all wrong. They’re all wrong. … These election officials, they don’t know what they’re talking about. They absolutely don’t. They’re just putting it out there and you media people put it out there as gospel. It’s not true.”

Proponents of hand counting say it’s one way to restore faith in elections, especially among those who don’t trust the results. But whenever people claim an election reform will restore confidence in the process, the evidence typically shows it doesn’t, Stewart, of MIT, said.

“I don’t see any evidence that something like this would be the silver bullet that would restore confidence among the mass public,” Stewart said.

Correction: This story originally misstated who warned Cochise County officials in 2022 that their hand count plan would be illegal. It was the Arizona secretary of state, not the attorney general.*}:

*Votebeat reporter Natalia Contreras contributed to this report.

*Rachel Leingang is a democracy reporter at The Guardian. Contact Rachel atrachel.leingang@theguardian.com. Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen atjfifield@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

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for proving his big lie BS wrong

Computer forensics expert: Mike Lindell has 'no grounds for appeal' of $5M ruling - Alternet.org

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Mike Lindell baffled as Fox News claims non-payment: 'We're well within our credit limits' - Alternet.org

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11 23 rww

pillow salesman turned Trump-supporting election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell is now making baseless insinuations that the recent reelection victory of popular Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was somehow rigged. In an email sent Tuesday to supporters of his “Lindell Offense Fund,” Lindell wrongly claimed that “it makes no sense” that Beshear defeated the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron. In another email sent Wednesday, Lindell falsely claimed, “Kentucky Governor election has an unbelievable outcome. So much so that all hands are on deck to fight the suspicious outcome.”

The truth is that Beshear led in pre-election polls, even though the race tightened at the end. His victory made plenty of sense to anyone paying attention to state politics. As documented by many journalists who wrote about the election, Beshear benefited from his family’s long presence in state politics, competent stewardship of economic development, and effective responses to natural disasters.

And, while the religious-right-aligned Lindell would not be likely to admit that Cameron’s anti-abortion extremism hurt him, Beshear took it on directly. While Cameron supported the no-exceptions-for-rape-or-incest abortion ban passed in 2022 by the state’s Republican-supermajority legislature over Beshear’s veto, Beshear’s campaign ran a devastating ad featuring a young woman who had been raped at age 12 by her stepfather. “This is to you, Daniel Cameron,” the woman says in the ad. “To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable.”

Lindell has been raising money and promoting bogus election conspiracies for the past three years. He has made and refused to deliver on promises that he had acquired evidence to prove that the Chinese government hijacked the election by hacking voting machines. He promoted the widely debunked claims made by Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules” movie and book. Religious-right figure Lance Wallnau has promoted Lindell’s latest scheme—which Lindell says was given to him by God—to use drones that would supposedly expose fraud by detecting WiFi signals. Earlier this month, Lindell declared that giving him money to supposedly secure the 2024 election would be “the best bang for your buck to save your country of any time in history since 1776.”

Lindell’s recent conspiracy-mongering email about the Kentucky focused on numbers, implying that the only explanation for Cameron receiving fewer votes than he did in his election as attorney general, and for Cameron getting 150,000 fewer votes than the Republican secretary of state did in this election, was some kind of systemic fraud:

What gives? And why is the MSM ignoring this massive discrepancy?

This is one of the reasons why LOF is here – and why I continue to call out the LIES OF THE LEFT – the Rigged Machines, the Manipulation of Data, and the Early Voting and Absentee Voting – both easily rigged!

The email’s ridiculous claims are, of course, a prelude to Lindell asking for money to continue his efforts to “SAVE THIS GREAT COUNTRY” by doing away with voting machines, early voting, and mail-in ballots.

Trump’s lies about election fraud fueled the rage of his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The kind of lies Trump and Lindell have relentlessly promoted since then have stoked anger and harassment against election officials, many of whom have left their jobs. As the Brennan Center’s Larry Norden told ABC News this month, Lindell’s relentless promotion of false claims about election fraud are dangerous: “Mike Lindell has gotten away with lying a lot about elections, but it’s not without consequences and not without harms to individuals who work in elections — and more broadly to the functioning of our democratic system.”

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MyPillow huckster Mike Lindell’s defense plan? Binge-watch 'Suits' - Alternet.org

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Right Wing Round-Up: All Is Lost

[Kyle Mantyla | October 12, 2023

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https://www.alternet.org/mike-lindell-lumpy-pillow-claim/

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https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-jan-6-indictment/

no lnx

Why Trump indictments haven’t triggered another Jan. 6 — and why the worst may be yet to come

Jordan Green

and Raw Story

August 21, 2023

A grand jury handed up a 41-count indictment against Donald Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators late Monday night inside a courthouse in Atlanta. Outside, law enforcement prepared for a Jan. 6-esque riot.

But as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced her case against Trump, no right-wing MAGA supporters, equipped with tactical gear and assault rifles, descended on the courthouse.

No one stormed any government buildings.

The scene was quiet — eerily so — and largely replayed the relatively orderly, if not placid scenes outside courthouses in New York City and Washington, D.C., where authorities have also charged Trump with felony crimes.

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Even one of Trump’s most ardent bomb-throwers urged MAGA-ites to restrain themselves.

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“Don’t go to the Fulton County courthouse. Don’t give them an ounce of your flesh. Let them have their empty streets, barricades, and media circus,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) cautioned on Twitter, now X, the morning after the indictments.

ALSO READ: 11 ways Donald Trump doesn’t become president again

But while the arrests of more than 1,100 people for participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and more recently, charges against high-profile Trump allies such as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — appear to have temporarily deterred a broad mobilization of violence, far-right unrest is simmering under the surface as Trump’s legal troubles mount.

It occasionally emerges in the form of one-off violent acts, such as when an Ohio man who attacked the FBI office in Cincinnati in response to federal authorities searching Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago died in a shootout with law enforcement last year.

More recently, a Utah man died in a shootout with the FBI after he posted threats to kill President Joe Biden.

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A Texas woman is accused of threatening the U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal case against Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

And just this week, after the names of the grand jurors were published in the Fulton County indictment against Trump and 18 co-defendants, trolls reportedly posted their names and purported addresses on a fringe website.

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On another site that allows users to post anonymously, users reportedly encouraged one another to shoot members of the grand jury, with one invoking a notorious white supremacist text that provides a blueprint for political terror. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office has announced it is investigating the threats.

And as Trump’s legal troubles mount and his supporters become increasingly desperate going into the winner-takes-all stakes of the 2024 presidential election, analysts who monitor right-wing extremism warn that political violence is only likely to worsen over the next 18 months as 2024 election approaches and the next president is inaugurated in 2025.

The seeds of such a scenario are being planted right now, largely out of view, in some of the darkest corridors of the internet.

Mixed messages: Culture war and vigilance

Just because there wasn’t an instantaneous reaction to the Fulton County indictment doesn’t mean the news didn’t push someone over the edge and cause them to start plotting, security analysts say. Violent plots take time to plan and carry out.

Online reaction among far-right influencers and groups to the indictment has been mixed, with the news jostling for attention alongside other conservative fixations, like the viral right-wing populist folk song “Rich Men North of Richmond” and the apology from the “crazy plane lady.”

Samantha Kutner, an extremism and terrorism analyst with Glitterpill LLC, told Raw Story that the current moment is a “focus-testing period for many extremist groups.”

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“Right now, it might be safe to say their reaction is similar to their reaction to Barbie,” she said. “Culture war fodder with attempts to fundraise.”

On Telegram accounts linked to the Proud Boys, posts about the Maui wildfires — typically suggesting sinister causes or accusing the Biden administration of neglect — appear to outnumber references to the Trump indictment roughly four to one.

Dozens of members of the Proud Boys face criminal charges for their role in the attack on the Capitol, and high-profile leaders, including former national chairman Enrique Tarrio, have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. This potentially dampens enthusiasm for physically rushing to the support of a former president who infamously told them during a 2020 campaign debate to “stand back and stand by.”

But that shouldn’t offer peace-loving Americans comfort.

ALSO READ: Trump maintains trademarks with Russia, China and numerous other U.S. enemies and frenemies

Kutner predicted that as the consequences of Trump’s legal troubles become increasingly tangible, theProud Boys will “martyr him and use the event to organize and they’ll get more and more desperate as the 2024 elections pick up.”

One indication of that line of discourse is evident in a recent commentary posted on Telegram by the Cape Fear Proud Boys, one of the most influential and active chaptersto emerge in the aftermath of Jan. 6.

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The commentary posted on Aug. 1 following Trump’s first Jan. 6-related indictment accused Democrats of “plotting to subvert the 2024 election” while claiming “they will do anything to see Trump in jail.”

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The post included a vague call to action by urging readers to “come to the realization that you have to do more than ‘just vote,’” adding, “See you in the streets.”

Following Trump’s new indictment in Fulton County, Ga., on Monday, the Cape Fear Proud Boys chapter warned, “If he loses this he goes to jail, just like they have been planning all along.”

The Cape Fear Proud Boys’ call to “do more than ‘just vote’ is echoed in the messaging surrounding an “Election Summit” in Springfield, Mo., on Wednesday and Thursday.

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Hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who helped finance a bus tour to fuel protests against the outcome of the 2020 election, the “Election Summit” promised an all-star cast of pro-Trump election deniers.

Businessman and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell talks with reporters outside the club house at the Trump National Golf Club hours ahead of a speech by former U.S. President Donald Trump on June 13, 2023 in Bedminster, N.J. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The MAGA luminaries billed as speaking at the event include Giuliani, who has been ordered to turn himself in for arrest in Fulton County by Aug. 25, Laura Loomer, an anti-Muslim provocateur who recently met with Trump at his Bedminster club in New Jersey; former White House strategist Steve Bannon; retired Lt. General Michael Flynn; and criminally indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Lindell has been promising to unveil a “plan” on Thursday, the second day of the summit. Details of the “plan” have been teased by the Gateway Pundit, a far-right outlet that traffics in conspiracytheories.

ALSO READ: National security at 'high risk' as 'old school' methods degrade government security practices

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A recent article quoted Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who reportedly assisted Paxton with his unsuccessful lawsuit to invalidate Biden’s 2020 electoral victory in Pennsylvania, as being among a select group of Trump allies who have reviewed Lindell’s “plan.”

“We can no longer cast our vote and walk away,” Olsen said in the quote published by the Gateway Pundit. Through exposure to the “plan,” Olsen said viewers of Lindell’s livestreamed event will “learn how to become the watchman for elections — not just to cast a ballot — and you will be equipped for that task in ways we’ve never seen before.”

Lindell’s event has received promotion from Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, along with “The Pete Santilli Show,” whose host pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer in the 2014 armed standoff at Bunkerville, Nev., over rancher Cliven Bundy’s refusal to pay grazing fees for use of federal lands.

Discussing his plans to travel to the “Election Summit” during his show on Aug. 12, Santilli suggested some unspecified “wingnuts” might try to intercept him, before imploring listeners: “Anybody messes with me, everybody get your bulldozers and come get me. Okay? Bulldozer brigade. They do not want what is coming on the 16th and 17th.”

Santilli’s “bulldozer brigade” reference likely resonated with far-right antigovernment listeners who have lionized Marvin Heemeyer, who rampaged through the town of Granby, Colo. in an armored bulldozer in revenge for a zoning dispute before taking his own life.

During the same show, Santilli instructed his listeners: “Any time you see CNN, you smash their cameras, okay?

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“I say ‘smash their cameras,’ figuratively, I don’t know,” Santilli continued. Laughing he added, “Constitutionally.”

Then he showed footage of himself harassing a camera crew at one of Lindell’s previous events.

Radicalized by election disinformation

Trump is continuing to stoke fear and conspiracy theories, just as he did during the 2016 and 2020 elections, with predictable consequences, said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst at the Department of Homeland Security who was pushed out of the agency after authoring a prescient reported that highlighted the threat of right-wing extremism early in the administration of President Obama. Johnson told Raw Story that the “heightened threat environment” can be largely attributed to one man: Donald Trump.

“We’re at the precipice of another national election, and he’s continuing to do the same thing he did in 2016 and 2020,” Johnson said. “He’s talking about how the last election was stolen, and a significant number of people believe it, despite the courts and the media saying otherwise. He continues to perpetuate the lie that the election was stolen. He’s radicalizing his base of supporters, and now that he’s facing all these indictments, unfortunately the hardcore Trump supporters believe this was orchestrated to keep him from becoming president again.”

A key question is whether Trump still has the ability to mobilize mass crowds in the streets, as he did following the 2020 election, when he tweeted, “Be there, will be wild,” summoning his supporters to Washington, D.C. for the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

ALSO READ: Neo-Nazi Marine Corps vet gets break over alleged possession of classified documents

The absence of large-scale extremist mobilization fits a pattern from the 2022 mid-term election, when many election-denialist candidates loyal to Trump were on the ballot, to the previous indictments earlier this year in New York, Miami and Washington, D.C., said Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Holt said a post by Trump on his TruthSocial platform on Election Day 2022 suggests that the former president’s command over his most violence-prone supporters has weakened.

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Trump, for example, attempted to capitalize on a temporary software glitch at one of the city’s polling locations, and urged his supporters to “protest, protest, protest” in Detroit.

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Yet, “there was no major protest beyond a few dozen people,” Holt recalled. “That was a really interesting moment for me, as Trump explicitly saying, ‘I want people to protest here,’ and his supporters didn’t respond.”

More recently, in March, as his arrest in New York City neared, Trump issued a Jan. 6-like charge to supporters.

“PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” Trump’s Truth Social message concluded.

The former president also warned of "potential death and destruction" if he was charged with a crime.

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But few protesters came, and the scene was more comedic than chaotic.

The massive federal crackdown on rank-and-file Trump supporters who took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection has prompted the far-right movement to retreat from mass-scale events, and strategically redirect energy towards small-scale local actions targeting local institutions and marginalized communities.

During the past two years, the targets have included school boards and hospitals over issues such as COVID-19 restrictions, teaching race and gender identity and books that highlight marginalized people.

More recently, drag shows have come to the forefront as a target of far-right harassment.

It's hard to tell how that model might be applied to a presidential election cycle with a sequence of events playing out on a national scale, Holt said.

But he suggested Moms for Liberty, a far-right group at the forefront of battles over COVID restrictions and gender identity that has forged strong ties with Republican officeholders such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as the kind of group that might be able to harness the disparate impulses of the far right.

“There’s a lot of infrastructure on the right to support small, local stuff,” he said. “You can see how Moms for Liberty has exploded into this major force in a couple years after getting money dumped on it.Moms for Liberty is both grassroots and Astro-turfed. It exists in this weird gray area.A lot of organizing is local, but there’s a really strong reward structure on a national scale that gives them talking points and hands out targets.”

The culture war issues pushed by Moms for Liberty, building on the backlash to the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, are all examples of an “activism and organizing muscle that the right is very good at keeping exercised,” Holt said.

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He added that “if someone stepped up and tried to use it in that way” during the election, “in theory it could cause a lot of havoc.”

Holt said he expects that the Republican primaries and the Republican National Convention will be key pivot points in the potential emergence of a far-right movement capable of mass action.

ALSO READ: U.S. Army reservist ran a ‘white nationalist’ training camp and touted KKK ties

“That’s when I’ll be looking to see who can flex the muscle and show that willingness to act on a broader scale,” he said.

Regardless of whether the leadership and organizational infrastructure falls into place to cause major chaos, Johnson observed that the far right now has something it’s been missing since January 2021 — a unifying objective.

“The 2024 election and Trump’s ongoing legal problems begins to create a cohesion and glue for people to rally around,” he said. “What we could see in the coming 12 months is these scattered groups of people coming together under a banner and fighting for a cause again.”

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Given the far-right’s reorientation toward more small-scale actions and localized targets, Johnson said it’s hard to imagine Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol again. But he said it’s not out of the question that something like that might happen at a capitol building in a swing state such as Georgia or Ohio.

The Jan. 6 arrests have had some deterrent effect, Johnson said, while Holt noted that the conspiracy mindset of many of Trump’s supporters causes them to look with suspicion on anyone who proposes large-scale political action, often accusing them of being federal agents intent on setting them up for arrest.

Johnson added that the law enforcement crackdown on Jan. 6 rioters, similar to a previous period after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, drove many of the most violent extremists underground. That increases the likelihood of more incidents like the Ohio man who attacked the FBI office last year, or the two individuals who threatened Biden and Chutkan earlier this month.

“What this boils into is more violence towards Democrats, judges, juries, the FBI and the Justice Department, more plotting assassinations and carrying assassinations,” Johnson said. “It’s very reminiscent of the 1960s, when we saw the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy.”

As Trump and his supporters continue to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen and that Democrats are scheming to steal the next one, while demonizing political opponents and embracing aggressive tactics, the conditions appear ripe for unrest.

Johnson, the former Department of Homeland Security analyst, Trump being convicted or put in jail could be a catalyst for violence. He noted that a few of Trump’s supporters have already been “pushed over the edge,” while others are already mobilizing by training with firearms.

“The catalyst is the event that triggers violence — Trump gets convicted and goes to jail, running for election and losing,” he said. “Even the fact that Trump wants to run and all of a sudden he can’t — that’s another triggering catalyst.”

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https://www.alternet.org/mike-lindell-sees-my-cousin-vinny-as-a-blueprint-for-victory-in-dominion-lawsuit/

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https://www.alternet.org/mypillow-ceo-auction-items-revenue/

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https://www.alternet.org/ceo-offers-stock-40-million/

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co in debt?

https://www.alternet.org/mike-lindell-ordered-to-pay-5m-reward-to-expert-who-debunked-rigged-election-claims-2659886920/

no lnx

Mike Lindell ordered to pay $5 million reward to expert who debunked 'rigged election' claims

Sky Palmaand Raw Story April 20, 2023

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has been ordered to pay $5 million to an expert who debunked his claims about the 2020 election, CNN reported.

Lindell, who pushes mass voter fraud conspiracy theories, vowed to award a multimillion-dollar prize to any cyber security expert who could disprove his claims. An arbitration panel awarded [GOP?]  software developer Robert Zeidman the $5 million payout on Wednesday after he sued Lindell.

“Based on the foregoing analysis, Mr. Zeidman performed under the contract,” the arbitration panel wrote in its decision. “He proved the data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data. Failure to pay Mr. Zeidman the $5 million prized was a breach of the contract, entitling him to recover.”

Brian Glasser, founder of Bailey & Glasser, LLP, who represented Zeidman, said that the decision marks "another important moment in the ongoing proof that the 2020 election was legal and valid, and the role of cybersecurity in ensuring that integrity."

“Lindell’s claim to have 2020 election data has been definitively disproved," he added.

Lindell hosted a so-called “cyber symposium” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 2021, where he announced the “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge," where anyone who could prove his data was wrong could get the payout.

“The symposium was to get the big audience and have all the media there and then they – the cyber guys – saying yes this data is from the 2020 election and you better look at how they intruded into our machines, our computers, and that was the whole purpose,” Lindell said in a deposition obtained by CNN.

“I thought, well what if I put up a $5 million challenge out there, then it would get news, which it did,” Lindell said in the deposition. “So, then you got some attention.”

Zeidman signed up for the challenge and found Lindell’s data to be "largely nonsensical," CNN reported.

“The Contest did not require participants to disprove election interference. Thus, the contestants’ task was to prove the data presented to them was not valid data from the November 2020 election,” the arbitration panel wrote.

“The Panel was not asked to decide whether China interfered in the 2020 election. Nor was the Panel asked to decide whether Lindell LLC possessed data that proved such interference, or even whether Lindell LLC had election data in its possession,” according to the arbitration panel. “The focus of the decision is on the 11 files provided to Mr. Zeidman in the context of the Contest rules.”

Read the full report over at CNN.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/mike-lindell/mike-lindell-funding-numerous-qanon-supporting-figures-and-other-extremists-mypillow

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/mike-lindell-claimed-he-never-said-trump-would-return-to-the-white-this-month-videos-show-otherwise

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borrow 10 mil$ b/c big lie

https://www.alternet.org/mypillow-ceo-10-million-debt/

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cpaC 2023

po mccarthy 40k hrs to tucker?

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not red blue but green?  ""

https://www.mediamatters.org/mike-lindell/after-dominion-filing-mike-lindell-thanks-rupert-murdoch-not-canceling-mypillow-ads

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rww 2 23

schedule and speakers list for this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference make it clear that the gathering will be dominated by the undemocratic and unprincipled power-seeking strategies for which former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are known.

Lying About Elections, Undermining Democracy

The choice of Kari Lake to keynote the event’s gala, the “Ronald Reagan Dinner,” makes it clear that CPAC will continue to promote damaging false claims about voter fraud. Trump’s refusal to admit that voters rejected him in 2020 fueled the violent attempt to stop Congress from affirming President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.

Following in Trump’s footsteps, Lake has refused to accept her defeat by Arizona voters in last year’s governor’s race. Instead, she inflames supporters with bogus claims of election fraud, filing lawsuit after rejected lawsuit seeking to overturn her loss. Right Wing Watch reported that this month Lake took her complaints to two programs hosted by far-right broadcasters who have called for violence against political opponents. On one, when the host claimed that conservative Christians are being provoked to unleash “violence or bloodshed,” Lake responded, “I don’t know how much longer the people can take it.” As we saw on Jan. 6, 2021, this strategy is dangerous for democracy.

In addition to Trump himself, other speakers include Trump family members, right-wing funder and promoter of debunked election conspiracies Mike Lindell, MAGA strategist Steve Bannon, and far-right “Pizzagate” promoter Jack Posobiec.

Previous CPAC gatherings have celebrated authoritarian strongmen leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Brazil’s former president, Jair Balsonaro, whose supporters attacked government buildings after his defeat. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, a right-wing legislator, will speak at CPAC this year.

‘Parents with Pitchforks’: Limiting the Freedom to Learn

Right-wing political leaders are aggressively restricting freedom in the name of attacking “wokeness,” which they have invoked to restrict honest teaching about racism, purge library books that feature Black and LGBTQ characters, and deny access to essential health care for transgender people. This is an expansion of the cynical right-wing strategy launched during the Trump administration to vilify “critical race theory” and then slap the label on anything right-wing activists didn’t like.

One strategy in the war on “wokeness” is stoking racial resentment and grievance among conservative white voters. Before last year’s election, a group run by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller ran digital ads denouncing “anti-white bigotry” and falsely claiming that the Biden administration “put white people last in line for COVID relief funds.” Miller, an architect of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies with a documented affinity for white nationalism, is listed as a CPAC speaker.

One Thursday CPAC segment dubbed “Parents with Pitchforks” includes Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, whose boss Gov. Glenn Youngkin has just launched an investigation of the AP African American Studies class attacked by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Another segment on “Sacking the Woke Playbook” features Sen. Tommy Tuberville and former acting attorney general Matt Whitaker, who once insisted that all judicial nominees should share his “biblical view of justice.”

Christian Nationalism

Also likely to be promoted at CPAC is the increasingly aggressive Christian nationalism espoused by religious-right activists and promoted by far-right politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and North Carolina’s vehemently anti-LGBTQ Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who exclaimed in 2021, “As for this not being a Christian nation, yes, it is! If you don’t like it, I’ll buy your plane, train, or automobile ticket right up out of here.”Both Greene and Robinson are listed as speakers at this year’s gathering. Scholars have documented that white evangelicals are the group most likely to strongly embrace Christian nationalism, and those who do are more likely to support authoritarianism and political violence.

A ‘Principled’ Alternative?

A group of non-Trumpist conservatives has organized an alternative to CPAC, which they call the Principles First Summit. In a Substack column promoting the summit, organizer Heath Mayo denounced the evolution of CPAC in the Trump era, saying “What once set a budding movement’s standards for principles and character is now a showcase of its worst ills.” CPAC, Mayo wrote, “actively applauds a conspiratorial fringe of our politics completely unmoored from ethical constraints and moral commitments.”

Tags: Donald Trump Eduardo Bolsonaro Jack Posobiec Kari Lake Marjorie Taylor Greene Mark Robinson Mike Lindell Stephen Miller Steve Bannon Winsome Sears Censorship Christian Nationalism CPAC CPAC 2023 Critical Race Theory Stop the Steal CPAC

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https://www.alternet.org/send/go-away-mike-lindell-pundits/

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https://www.alternet.org/mike-lindell-dominioin/

cut off by atty

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vote late ~ algo

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/mike-lindell/

Businessman Mike Lindell—aka the MyPillow Guy—poured tens of millions of dollars into spectacularly failed efforts to prove that the 2020 election was stolen from​ former President Donald Trump by fraudulent election machines, while portraying his efforts as a spiritual crusade. The election conspiracy theorist is still at it.

A fundraising email sent Tuesday for the Lindell Legal Offense Fund features a Christian nationalist logo​ (see above) and a familiar claim. “It’s being stolen again,” declares the email, mixing claims about Trump’s 2020 loss and the recently concluded midterm elections. “Great people ran for office across this country, earned your vote and are now being cheated by electronic voting machines!”

Lindell is among the Trumpist conspiracy theorists being sued for defamation by Dominion Voting ​Systems, whose voting machines Lindell singled out. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the lawsuit to proceed.

​Lindell ​spread these claims by funding far-right media outlets and personalitiesduring Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, sometimes through affiliate programs allowing media personalities to give listeners a discount code for MyPillow purchases in return for a percentage of the sales.

Right Wing Watch reported in September that white nationalist Vincent James was among those participating in Lindell’s funding operation. When the New York Times then asked Lindell about the relationship ​in October, Lindell said he was ending the relationship, not because he had a problem with the podcaster​ promoting anti-Semitism or white supremacy, but because he had supposedly “misrepresented the terms of his affiliate deal on his show.”

Tags: Mike Lindell conspiracy theories Election 2020 Election 2022 Stop the Steal Lindell Legal Offense Fund

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/supreme-court-refuses-to-dismiss-dominions-1-3-billion-defamation-suit-against-mike-lindell/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/judge-smacks-down-alan-dershowitz/  phone grab ~

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/mike-lindell-dominion-false-narrative/

defam ct loss

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an 9 22

Federal agents boxed him in as he waited in at Hardee’s drive-thru last week. They handed Mike Lindell a subpoena and confiscated his phone. What does the FBI want with the My Pillow Guy’s mobile?

Lindell is the sugar daddy of the Big Lie. The eccentric pillow peddler claims that the nation’s voting machines hold proof of a stolen 2020 election. Since Trump’s defeat, he’s spent tens of millions of dollars bankrolling grassroots activists who pressure local Republican election officials to leak highly sensitive data from voting machines.

This data, our data, finds its way to Lindell’s “cybersecurity experts” who write bogus reports crying fraud. These false claims are amplified by Trumpworld celebrities like Steve Bannon. Lindell is also spending millions to build his own right-wing media platform so that his credulous acolytes can absorb his lies without contradiction and nobody can deplatform him for spreading misinformation.

READ MORE: How a rural Colorado county became an epicenter of Donald Trump's Big Lie

Lindell’s phone was seized because of his links to Tina Peters, the clerk and recorder of Mesa County, Colorado. Last year, members of a Lindell-backed Big Lie group approached Peters with bogus allegations of voter fraud. An itinerant “cybersecurity” analyst with ties to Lindell further stoked her paranoia that an upcoming software update for Colorado’s voting machines would destroy evidence from 2020. Peters’ phone was also seized by FBI agents last week.

Peters admits that she allowed an unauthorized person to copy Mesa County’s sensitive election data before the software update. The state of Colorado has charged her with multiple felonies in connection with this incident, including identity theft. Mike Lindell’s subpoena reveals that the feds are also investigating allegations of identity theft, intentional damage to a protected computer, and conspiracy stemming from the Mesa County data heist.

Colorado authorities didn’t realize anything was amiss in Mesa County until QAnon luminary Ron Watkins posted the BIOS password for a Dominion voting machine on Telegram. Since these credentials are unique, authorities were able to pinpoint the security breach to Mesa County. A few days later, Watkins purported to “analyze” the stolen data from the Mesa County voting machines in front of an audience at Mike Lindell’s “Cyber Symposium.” Lindell reportedly flew Tina Peters to the conference in his private jet. Afterwards, he helped Peters evade the FBI by putting her up in a safehouse.

The Mesa County breach was not an isolated incident.

READ MORE: FBI grabbing Mike Lindell’s phone may yield info on white supremacist and Christian nationalist allies

Another Colorado county clerk was caught on surveillance cameras copying his county’s voting machine data. Two Lindell associates, Shawn Smith and Mike Cook, talked the clerk of Elbert County through the process over text message.

There are eight documented cases of Trump-linked activists compromising election infrastructure in search of evidence of fraud.

There may be more.

Some of the people involved in those incidents also have ties to Lindell. Lindell denies involvement in any data breach, but the coincidences are beginning to add up.

It’s surprising the FBI waited this long to seize his phone.

READ MORE: Mike Lindell says that he has dumped $30 million into proving Donald Trump's Big Lie

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/mike-lindell/mike-lindell-thanks-fox-news-and-tucker-carlson-talking-more-about-election

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https://www.mediamatters.org/mike-lindell/mypillow-ads-have-spiked-fox-news-2022

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an 9 22

Federal agents Tuesday night executing a search warrant seized the cell phone of **Mike Lindell**, a democracy-denying ultra MAGA activist who had Oval Office access to **Donald Trump** when he was president, promotes wild conspiracy theories, and isnow bankrolling a far-right extremist described as a “fascist,” a “white supremacist,” and “one of the internet’s most rabid white Christian nationalists.”

“We are the Christian Taliban and we will not stop until The Handmaid’s Tale is a reality, and even worse than that,” says Vincent James, who Lindell is financially supporting according to Right Wing Watch and Vice News.

Lindell, of course, is known to millions as the “My Pillow guy,” the founder of the massively successful shredded foam manufacturer who is now using his vast wealth to promote his claims of massive election fraud, claims that have led some television stations, he says, to ban him from appearing in his own commercials.

READ MORE: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Launches Paranoid Rant: ‘Had to Get on My Knees and Pray to God’ US Gov’t. Didn’t Kill Him

Lindell told supporters about the FBI executing a search warrant while he was at a Hardee’s drive-thru in his Mankato, Minnesota hometown, on his streaming show, the Lindell Report.

“Cars pulled up in front of us, to the side of us, and behind us and I said those are either bad guys or the FBI,” Lindell said, The Guardian reports. “Well, it turns out they were the FBI.”

Also on his streaming internet show Lindell told supporters he does not have a computer, which likely means all his electronic communications are stored on the cell phone now in the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

READ MORE: ‘Ultimately Irrelevant’: DOJ Destroys Trump’s Claims as It Tries to Convince Judge of Urgent Need to Use Classified Docs

“I don’t have a computer, everything I do off that phone,” Lindell said, “everything was on there." [twt]

one of the things that likely would be on there are Lindell’s communications with far-right white Christian nationalist **Vincent James**, who promotes vicious anti-LGBTQ, anti-women, and racist rhetoric.

“White nationalist Vincent James has become the latest far-right voice to benefit from Lindell’s largess,announcing during a livestream broadcast last Thursday that Lindell recently offered him just such a personalized code for his Daily Veracity website,” Right Wing Watch reported this week. Vice News on Wednesday also reported Lindell’s support of James.

READ MORE: Lindsey Graham Praised and Pummeled by the Left and the Right After His Nationwide Abortion Ban Bombs

“James currently serves as the treasurer of the white nationalist organization America Firstand is an unapologetic racist, antisemite, misogynist, conspiracy theorist, and fascist who declares that when Christian nationalists such as himself seize power, they intend to ‘dominate without mercy,'” Right Wing Watch reported.

Historian and analyst of far-right wing extremism, Dr. Mark Pitcavage, has been called an “authority on extremism in the United States,” and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, according to his bio on the U.S. Congress’ website.

In response to Right Wing Watch’s report, “Mike Lindell Is Bankrolling White Nationalist Christian Fascist Vincent James,” Dr. Pitcavage tweeted, “You don’t have to load descriptive phraseology like an overstuffed sandwich. He’s a white supremacist; that’s all you need to say.”

===

Jan 6 hearing #7

kylie kremer told lindell march to cap had to be secret

===

===

https://www.azmirror.com/2021/06/02/mark-finchem-was-much-closer-to-the-jan-6-insurrection-than-he-claimed/

Newly discovered footage taken during the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot shows Arizona GOP legislator Mark Finchem was much closer to the day’s violence than he has previously claimed.

Finchem has insisted that he :{never got within 500 yards of the Capitol building}:, but :{Getty footage}: of the failed attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election that was recently :{discovered by activists on Twitter}: shows Finchem walking directly in front of the east steps at the Capitol after pro-Trump rioters had already broken through a series of barricades and police lines, and then smashed their way into the Capitol building.

...

Finchem, who is from Oro Valley and is running to be secretary of state, did not respond to a request for comment confirming if the man in the video was him, but the :{high-resolution video}: clearly shows Finchem wearing the same hat, jacket and VIP lanyard he had been :{seen wearing throughout the day}:.  

In the past, Finchem has refused to speak in detail about the events of the day, and text messages he released to bolster his claims have instead conflicted with :{previous statements he has made}:.  

[twt]

:{:{ Screenshot via Twitter}:

}:

Finchem also posted a photograph of rioters on the east steps on social media, praising the insurrectionists for standing up to Congress. The area in which the photo was likely taken appears to be roughly 100 yards away from the east steps of the Capitol.

There is no way Finchem could have been 500 yards away — more than a quarter of a mile— and taken the photo of the steps that he published on Twitter. The furthest point from the east Capitol steps before one hits the Capitol Reflecting Pool, the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, is approximately 320 yards away.

The Arizona Mirror has analyzed video footage, social media posts and more to create a timeline of where Finchem was that day. 

The day before Trump supporters failed to overthrow Congress, Finchem addressed a crowd of Trump loyalists, joking that the day’s rain storm was God washing away the stench of Washington, D.C. The “pre-rally” held on Jan. 5 at Freedom Plaza contained a who’s who of the political fringe and members of the #StopTheSteal movement.Finchem was introduced by Ali Alexander, a #StopTheSteal leader and the organizer of that day’s rally and the larger one on Jan. 6, at which Trump:{implored his followers to march to the Capitol}: and “show strength” to stop a “rigged” election. 

“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” the ex-president said shortly before the coup attempt.

Alexander praised Finchem, one of his strongest allies in Arizona and a leader in the state’s effort to undermine Joe Biden’s narrow win.

“The storm is here,” Alexander said, referencing the :{QAnon conspiracy theory}:, before :{introducing Finchem}: as his “friend.”

:{In }:{his speech}::{, Finchem baselessly told the crowd that Trump’s electoral loss was fraudulent and that Democrats knew the election was stolen. There is no credible evidence supporting those claims. }:

“I want you to hear a message from Americans,” Finchem said, speaking directly to lawmakers who questioned #StopTheSteal activists. “This ain’t going away.”

The next day, Finchem attended President Donald Trump’s speech at The Ellipse in President’s Park, just south of the White House. He can be seen in one video posted on Facebook :{walking by the front of the stage}: wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a dark jacket with rectangular patches on the shoulders. At 10:48 a.m., his back can be seen :{in a photo posted on Twitter}: by fellow Arizona Republican lawmaker Anthony Kern on Twitter. 

The first skirmishes with police at the Capitol :{would begin at around 1 p.m.}: and Finchem has previously said he arrived at the east side of the Capitol [jnz said prez rendezvous pt?] at around 1:45 p.m. Finchem has continued to :{struggle with his story}: on where he was when that day, and has gone as far as claiming that Democrats — not his fellow Trump supporters who marched alongside him from Trump’s speech — were responsible for the day’s violence. 

At 1:50 p.m., the on-scene Metro Police Department commander :{had declared a riot}:. 

In :{text messages released}: by Finchem, he texted fellow #StopTheSteal advocates :{Michael Coudrey}: and Alexander that he was on his way in a golf cart. 

:{Footage reviewed by the :(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:*:{Mirror}:* appears to show Finchem riding in the back of a golf cart, wearing the same hat and jacket from hours earlier. 

At 3:16 p.m., Finchem tweeted a photo of Capitol rioters saying, “What happens when People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud. #stopthesteal.”

But the Mirror’s analysis indicates that Finchem took the photo some time before he posted it online. Videos posted on the social media platform Parler that were aggregated by ProPublica and organized by the times they were posted and where they were takenmakes it likely that Finchem took his photo at least 40 minutes earlier.

In the :{video posted on Parler}:, protesters can be heard singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The video features awoman in a yellow jacketwho is prominently seen in Finchem’s photo, and many of the same flags being carried by rioters can be seen in both. 

The video was posted at approximately 2:35 p.m. near the east Capitol steps, where conspiracy-peddling media figure Alex Jones and Alexander had led many of the protesters just a few minutes earlier :{leading a chant of “1776.”}: 

In the newly found Getty footage, Finchem can be seen walking through the crowd he had earlier photographed. He is easily identified by his cowboy hat and jacket with shoulder patches. It is unclear exactly what time Finchem is walking through the crowd, but it appears to be after Finchem took his photo, as many of the people and flags are now gone.

At around the same time in nearby parts of the Capitol, police were :{violently clashing with protesters}:, using :{tear gas and pepper spray}: to disperse the crowds and rioters :{had already breached the Capitol}:. Finchem would say that he was unaware of the violence until 5 p.m. that day when he was getting ready for a podcast interview. 

Later that night, Finchem would tweet complaining that the D.C. Police were preventing a GrubHub driver from delivering food to his hotel, blaming the “commie” Mayor of D.C..

Finchem has :{blamed antifa for the violence}: and :{vowed to sue those who try to connect him to the events of Jan. 6}:, going as far as filing a :{cease and desist against a recall campaign}: that has been using his attendance at the day’s events as a reason to remove him from office. 

One point of contention for Finchem in :{the cease-and-desist letter}: is the connection to the extremist Oath Keepers organization that the recall organizers have pointed out. 

Finchem has :{long been tied to the organization}:, but in his cease-and-desist letter, his lawyer states that the Oath Keepers is a “non-partisan” group and called allegations that it is anti-government to be “spurious claims.” The letter also calls the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website “hate-filled.” 

The :{FBI describes the Oath Keepers}: as a “loosely organized collection of militia who believe that the federal government have been co-opted by a shadowy conspiracy that is trying to strip American citizens of their rights.”

:{Nineteen Oath Keepers have been indicted:(style="box-sizing:border-box;background-color:#ffff66;"):}: thus far in a case that claims they coordinated to conspire to breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, with prosecutors saying that more could be prosecuted in the future.

===

https://www.dailykos.com/stories**/2021/6**/9/2034150/-Defense-fund-started-for-Arizona-Jan-6-lawmakers-while-Pillow-guy-s-movie-prompts-a-wider-audit

as the traitors stormed the Capitol steps on Jan. 6, crashing through windows and doors, Rep. Paul Gosar stood at the mic on the House floor. An Arizona Republican infamous for the political ads his siblings make for his opponents, and too many other shitty things to list (like boycotting the Pope but standing with militias), Gosar was objecting to the Arizona vote. A gelatinous presence, one Ted Cruz, the required Senate vote, hovered lizardlike next to Gosar. Then shit got real.

Gosar’s wet dream had come true: he’s on stage blocking certification while Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and other white supremacists he had found common ground with for years occupied the US Capitol, pledging to stop an election and remove some heads.

...outside on the Capitol steps Arizona State Senator Mark Finchem tweeted a photo of the insurrection with the caption, “What happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud.” Former Arizona State Senator Anthony Kern, who lost his race in November, was also there. The three Arizona lawmakers, Gosar, Finchem, and Kern, are the beneficiaries of a new dark money defense fund, and goobers nationwide are ponying up.

A dark money nonprofit established by an Arizona Republican donor to “fight back” against alleged “malicious, defamatory and fallacious” assertions involving three Republican lawmakers and their ties to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot has received significant, but undisclosed, support from small-dollar donors, its director said.

It’s no surprise the three Arizona Republicans are concerned about potential legal costs, since Gosar, in particular, was identified as one of the architects of the Jan. 6 riot by Ali Alexander, the guy who did the planning. Both Finchem and Kern have been featured in news stories about their QAnon activities, their role in the Stop the Steal movement, and their presence at the Jan. 6 riot. Silly me, but it sounds like establishing a defense fund suggests they know they are in legal peril.

After Jan. 6

Paul Gosar left the insurrection to headline a Feb. 26 white nationalist conference in Florida. The meeting’s organizer, Nick Fuentes, called Jan. 6 “awesome” and urged Gosar to protect the nation’s “white demographic core.” You can believe Gosar’s siblings: that’s about the only thing he’s interested in.

Loser Anthony Kern returned to Arizona and was hired as a ballot counter at the audit—until, that is, the media pointed him out and the obviously compromised trumper was dismissed because of “optics.”

Finchem remains in the State Senate, where he has declared his candidacy for Secretary of State. That’s right, the man who says the Arizona vote was stolen from trump would be in charge of elections.

Apparently the current clusterf*ck of an audit in Phoenix is not enough for Finchem. Based on an online movie produced by the pillow asshole, Finchem is now demanding that the audit expand beyond Maricopa County to include Apache, Pima, Pinal, and Yuma counties.

In an email to supporters of his campaign for secretary of state, Rep. Mark Finchem claimed that Lindell’s recent internet video provided enough “probable cause” to “begin an inquiry” into ballot images from multiple counties across the state. 

Because Lindell’s been right about everything so far, eh? Here’s a two-minute scene from the movie that Finchem called a “revelation,” in that it provedthe Chinese switched trump votes to Biden. See, the anonymous hacker lists numbers! Lindell’s Deep Throat copied some publicly available information, added a lot of 1’s and 0’s to make it look computery, built an Excel spreadsheet with “China” listed a lot, and claims it to be what it is not.   ...[ital sat]

===

===

https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2020/12/08/spindell-conspiracies-political-violence/

no lnx many pix

Elections official stands by at rally as speakers spread conspiracies, promote political violence

BY: HENRY REDMAN - DECEMBER 8, 2020 

Wisconsin Trump election rally

Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Robert Spindell is seen speaking between two people draped in the flags of right wing movements, the Tea Party and Trumpism. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

One of the six officials charged with administering and protecting Wisconsin’s elections system stood on the steps of the State Capitol Monday afternoon as a group of President Donald Trump’s supporters chanted “stop the steal.” 

:{:{}:

}:

Robert Spindell, one of three Republicans on the Wisconsin Elections Commission stood by as speakers spread conspiracy theories about election fraud and COVID-19, compared the 2020 presidential election to Pearl Harbor and advocated for the violent overthrow of the government. 

:{:{}:

}:

Spindell, in his short speech to the flag-waving and MAGA hat wearing crowd of Trump voters, said he was attending the rally as a private citizen, not in his capacity as a government official. He said the election fraud committed in the 1950s and 60s by former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley shows election fraud could have been committed this year.

Wisconsin Trump election rally

Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Robert Spindell speaks at the rally. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

While he did not give any specific examples of voter fraud in Wisconsin, Spindell implied, falsely, that it had happened.

“There’s no evidence vote fraud did not occur,” Spindell said, calling for election officials to prove a negative. 

Spindell also went through a laundry list of grievances about elections this year.

He complained about pre-election lawsuits filed by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Democratic National Committee that attempted to change some election rules to make voting easier during a pandemic. Ultimately these changes were struck down by a federal appellate court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

He complained that the Democrats on the elections commission and the body’s non-partisan staff refused to remove from the voter rolls hundreds of thousands of people who may have moved or died  — a decision that was made to avoid mistakenly disenfranchising people. The status of Wisconsin’s so-called voter purge is still pending an order from the Wisconsin Supreme Court but there’s no evidence dead people voted and people who have moved can update their registration at the polls on Election Day.

Wisconsin Trump election rally]

Evidence of Wisconsin’s year of political protest with pro-Trump protesters stand near anti-police graffiti from Black Lives Matter protests. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)]

Spindell complained that municipal clerks filled in missing addresses on absentee ballots, a practice allowed under guidance provided by the Wisconsin Elections Commission and which has been in place for previous elections.

Finally, he complained that candidates from the Green Party and Kanye West were not allowed on the presidential ballot because of issues with their paperwork. Emails showed Spindell attempted to assist the Green Party in its efforts to get on the ballot despite failing to properly file nomination papers. Spindell has repeatedly complained that not allowing West on the ballot, even though his campaign missed the deadline to file, was disenfranchisement of Black voters. 

Wisconsin Trump election rally

A QAnon flag flies in front of the Wisconsin State Capitol at the Dec. 7 pro-Trump election rally. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

“How about Kenyon (sic.) West?” Spindell said.

At the start of the rally, the largely un-masked crowd gathered closely together to sing “God Bless America,” “The Star Spangled Banner” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The group was outside; still, singing is considered by the CDC to be an especially effective vector of COVID-19 spread.

Near the singers, a group of 15 people carrying Trump flags did laps of the Capitol while praying the rosary.

Appearing alongside Spindell was the rally’s headliner, Minnesota native, MyPillow CEO and Trump ally Michael Lindell. Lindell also recently donated to the bail fund of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager charged with killing two people at a racial justice protest in Kenosha in August.

Wisconsin Trump election rally

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell speaks to the crowd. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)]

Even though other Republicans on the elections commission have definitively announced there were no issues with the state’s election machines, Spindell stood by as Lindell claimed Trump lost Wisconsin because of issues with Dominion voting machines — a disproven conspiracy theory.

“I would like to stay officially on the record that I have complete confidence in the voting equipment in use in Wisconsin, that I think there is no evidence of systemic problems of software problems programming problems hacking, there’s no evidence of switched votes,” Republican commissioner Dean Knudson said last week.

Lindell, as he argued for the Electoral College to be bypassed so the selection of the president could go to state congressional delegations, stated that Trump had actually won in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Lindell’s proof that Trump won these states was that on election night, the odds at the sportsbooks said Trump was the 3-1 favorite to win. Betting odds on presidential elections aren’t an adequate predictor of outcome. For example, PredictIt, a popular political prediction site, gave Hillary Clinton a chance at being elected president for most of 2020. 

[Wisconsin Trump election rally

A rally attendee sits draped in a “Thin Blue Line” pro-police blanket. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)]

The most prominent speaker was Lindell, but the rally featured a number of other right-wing speakers who  spread conspiracy theories and railed against the threats of communism, socialism and Marxism that they believe President-elect Joe Biden represents. 

The rally, which was part of a “March for Trump” bus tour, is stopping in 27 cities across the country in an attempt to somehow overturn the results of the election.

“We’re trying to go through all the corrupt states with all the corruption,” one speaker said.

[Wisconsin Trump election rally

Release the Kraken is catchphrase for right wing conspiracies signifying the dubious legal strategy of conservative lawyer Sidney Powell. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)]

But short of any legal remedies, which appear to be dwindling as the president continues to lose in court, the rally speakers said there are other options to fight the election results.

“The Electoral College is going to fear We the People,” said another speaker. “Learn our 2nd Amendment, we need to know how to fire those handguns, fire those rifles.”

===

===

#8

an 7 22

the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol held its**final hearing** of the summer yesterday, focusing on choices Donald Trump made between concluding his speech on the ellipse at the “Save America” rally and when he finally told the mob to go home in a video posted on Twitter, 187 minutes later.

The July 21 hearing featured several explosive new pieces of information about Trump’s “complete dereliction” of his duty as president of the United States, resisting his entire inner circle’s efforts advice to him that he tell the insurrectionists to stop and go home -- instead, he spent much of his time stewing in the White House dining room, watching Fox News and making calls to GOP senators and Rudy Giuliani telling them to delay the counting of the electoral vote.

Fox News did not carry Thursday’s hearing. Instead, the right-wing network ran its regular prime-time programming, as it did during the first prime-time hearing the committee put on in June.

[twt]

during the hearing, Fox hosts decried women making their own health care choices, undocumented immigrants, a canceled Dave Chappelle show, and the committee that they refused to cover. They also played a Hillary Clinton interview from 2018 and sold some t-shirts.

Between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET, MyPillow -- the pillow company run by coup plotter Mike Lindell -- ran 6 advertisements for its products on Fox. Here’s some of the other companies that decided to advertise on Fox News prime time while it refused to air the January 6 hearing.

Tucker Carlson Tonight

On July 21, 2022, Tucker Carlson Tonight featured advertisements from MyPillow, Boll & Branch, Balance of Nature, Freshpet, and WeatherTech.

Hannity

On July 21, 2022, Hannity featured advertisements from MyPillow, Bayer,**T**rivago, Nutrisystem, and ReputationDefender.

The Ingraham Angle

On July 21, 2022, The Ingraham Angle featured advertisements from MyPillow, ADT, Bausch & Lomb, America’s Best Contacts & Eyeglasses, and Vitrazza.

===

===

11 21 no lnx

https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-funding-new-nationwide-grassroots-election-integrity-group-leader-says-1653642

newsweek

MyPillow CEO and election fraud conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell is an "angel investor" for a new group that says it is focused on upholding "election integrity."

[Lindell, pictured in the forefront wearing a blue suit, is shown listening to former President Donald Trump speak at a rally in Cullman, Alabama, on August 21, 2021.

MyPillow CEO and election fraud conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell is footing the bill for a new national grassroots "election integrity" group, according to the group's leader.

The group Cause of America bills itself as "an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization focused on election integrity," although the group's website features discredited claims about the 2020 election and links to articles only from right-wing news outlets like One America News Network and personalities like Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Shawn Smith, a retired Air Force colonel and president of the group, explained earlier this week that Lindell was funding the grassroots organization, during an appearance on the War Room: Pandemic podcast, hosted by former President Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

"Cause of America is a new nonprofit that's started out," Smith said during the podcast. "Mike Lindell is kind of an angel investor. And the purpose of Cause of America is to enable the grassroots organizations across the country who are doing election integrity."

"Cause of America is standing up as an organization to enable grassroots and help coordinate the election integrity activity of citizens across the country," he added. "We're gonna handle all of them, everything we've got and then bring in best practices."

Last week, Smith warned that there would be violence if the "tyrannical regime" of President Joe Biden "stays in power" during a video call, according to Colorado Newsline. Smith has also been appearing this week during Lindell's 96-hour "Thanks-A-Thon" livestream event.

Lindell praised Smith as a "hero" during the livestream on Friday and explained that Cause of America would be an "information hub" for "great grassroots groups" that had been "suppressed" by social media companies and news organizations.

NEWSWEEK SUBSCRIPTION OFFERS >

"By the way, Shawn's going to be president of everything we're going to tell you about, the Cause of America," Lindell said. "I get to be, like chairman of the board. I've gotten to know Shawn and he's one of the most amazing guys I've ever met and he's going to be on a lot here over the next couple of days."

The "Thanks-A-Thon" was originally billed as a sort of post-filing after-show for an election fraud lawsuit that Lindell said he would file in the Supreme Court by Thanksgiving. Lindell said that the lawsuit would lead to the inexplicable reinstatement of Trump, a legal impossibility that he has falsely predicted would happen on several previous occasions.

READ MORE

Mike Lindell Misses Self-Imposed Deadline to File Lawsuit Proving Trump Won

Mike Lindell's 'Thanks-A-Thon' Viewed by Dozens on YouTube

Lindell Calls for Protest Outside Fox News Despite Advertising on Network]

Although the lawsuit has been discussed and posted to Lindell'sFrank Speech website, the livestream event has been largely used to promote MyPillow products and to rehash baseless claims of massive fraud that Lindell had already presented.

Prior to missing his self-imposed deadline to file the lawsuit, Lindell appeared on Bannon's podcast to complain about "very suspicious" difficulties in getting pro-Trump state attorneys general to back the complaint.

Lindell urged viewers to send a form letter to their state attorney general alongside a copy of the non-filed lawsuit during his livestream, which at one point he claimed was being watched by "millions" despite the YouTube feed of the event having only dozens of viewers.

Newsweek reached out to MyPillow for comment.

https://news.yahoo.com/pro-trump-lawyer-rising-stop-090303115.html

in  late 2020, as then-President Donald Trump was waging a multi-front campaign to cling to power, a little-known attorney and self-described former special ops commander began working on Trump’s behalf, badgering senior Justice Department officials in an effort to rope them into the plot.

In the months since Trump’s failed coup attempt, government documents and emails have further revealed the extent of this attorney Kurt Olsen’s behind-the-scenes crusade to try to keep him in power. The twice-impeached former president had clearly taken a shine to Olsen and his work. But since the fallout from the 2020 presidential election, it appears that Olsen’s former colleagues want to distance themselves from him—to the point where his onetime law firm has effectively disowned him and airbrushed him from its history.

Olsen’s recurring appearances in the ongoing Capitol Hill investigations into what led to the MAGA riot on Jan. 6 raise some glaring questions. How did a virtually unknown private attorney and associate of extreme MAGA personalities stumble his way into influencing the functions of the executive branch—to the degree that the most senior DOJ personnel had to concoct plans to fight off his onslaught?

For 18 years, Olsen worked as a partner at Klafter, Olsen & Lesser, a small New York-based law firm he co-founded.But shortly after he signed on to help Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election at the Supreme Court, the firm changed its name and registered a new website—without Olsen’s name in the URL—on Feb. 24. Now, where Olsen’s bio used to be, a disclaimer says, “Kurt Olsen is not affiliated in any way with Klafter Lesser LLP.”

Partners at Klafter Lesser did not respond to requests from The Daily Beast for comment. Olsen did not provide comment, either.

Emails released by the House Oversight Committee and reporting by Politico show that after the election, the Maryland attorney rose from relative obscurity in conservative politics to capture the ear of then-President Trump. Despite his access, several lawyers and administration officials intimately involved with the anti-democratic effort did not know or simply couldn’t remember Olsen—a reflection of the disjointed and chaotic state of post-election MAGA politics as different factions pushed competing authoritarian ideas and fought amongst themselves

Out of six knowledgeable Trumpworld sources contacted for this story, several said they hadn’t directly dealt at all with Olsen, though they knew Trump was enamored by the ideas he was selling. One former senior Trump aide said they purposely avoided contact or involvement with Olsen, describing his legal theories as pure “nonsense.”

[Rudy Giuliani’s Law License Suspended Over Election Lie Spree

Predictably, none of that trepidation from Trump administration brass prevented the then-president from embracing Olsen or his fringe legal opinions.

Olsen’s ascent to the heights of MAGA activism began in December 2020 when Paxton put together a Supreme Court case to toss out Joe Biden’s electoral victory in Pennsylvania. The Texas attorney general reached outside his office for help and appointed two special counsels to assist in the case: Lawrence Joseph, a conservative attorney with experience filing briefs at the Supreme Court supportive of conservative causes and figures, and Olsen, whose office sat a few floors down from Joseph’s firm in the same Washington, D.C., office building.

The move placed Olsen, who had little-to-no national profile in conservative politics, at the tip of the spear in the Trump-backed effort to overturn the 2020 election in court. Prior to his legal career, the attorney “served as a Naval Special Warfare Officer assigned to SEAL Team Five”who “has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Far East, primarily as a special operations platoon commander,” according to a since-deleted bio at his former firm.

Paxton’s Supreme Court suit ultimately failed when all nine justices unanimously voted to throw it out on the grounds that the state of Texas lacked the standing to bring the case. Despite the suit’s failure, Olsen’s star continued to rise among the increasingly bizarre world of “Stop the Steal” notables.

Emails sent by Olsen to Justice Department officials, obtained by the New York Times and House Oversight Committee, show that after the Supreme Court tossed the Texas suit, Olsen managed to get in touch with Trump himself to brief him on an effort to revive the case.

At some point after the Texas suit’s failure, Olsen managed to get in touch with the president to pitch him on the idea of having the Justice Department bring a suit “modeled after the Texas action,” which would theoretically sidestep the lack of standing that had doomed the state-led effort.

“The President of the United States has seen this complaint, and he directed me last night to brief AG Rosen in person today to discuss bringing this action,” Olsen wrote in an email to the Justice Department. “I have been instructed to report back to the President this afternoon after this meeting.”

Olsen never got his meeting with Rosen, and the acting attorney general never took up Texas’ quixotic attempt to overturn the election. But, as Politico reported this month, the president’s interest in Olsen’s work grew so intense that in December, Trump himself made a point of bothering Rosen about the 54-page draft complaint that Olsen had been pushing to the highest levels of the federal government.

According to Politico, Rosen recently told Senate investigators that he counseled the then-president that the draft complaint was, at best, a waste of time.

Furthermore, Olsen’s name also appeared on a memo that was hand-delivered to Trump in his very last days in office—a memo that also appeared to include a recommendation on resorting to “martial law if necessary.” When pillow magnate and staunch Trump ally Mike Lindell visited the White House to brief Trump and administration officials and attorneys on his wild claims of Chinese hacking efforts in the 2020 election, Olsen’s name even appeared in a photo of documents Lindell brought to Trump, next to figures like Sidney Powell and Kash Patel,as suggestions for who Trump should appoint to senior positions during his quest to stay in power.

Lindell’s fondness for Olsen continued into the post-Trump era. As Lindell’s “cyber symposium” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was ongoing last week, Olsen commented on aWashington Times story and was referred to as a member of the MyPillow CEO’s team of lawyers.

Olsen’s reported presence on Lindell’s legal team shows how he isn’t done associating himself with doomed efforts to overturn the 2020 election results or to reinstall Trump. The Aug. 11 Washington Times article in which Olsen is featured is headlined, “Cyber expert says his team can’t prove Mike Lindell’s claims that China hacked election.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/16/us/politics/trump-olson**-lindell**-election.html

no lnx

Jan. 6 Hearings

Next Hearing

Understand the Hearings

Key Revelations

Jan. 6 Timeline

Democracy Challenged

Little-Known Lawyer Pitched Trump on Extreme Plans to Subvert Election

The role of William J. Olson in advising the president in late 2020, which has not previously been disclosed, shows how fringe figures were influencing him at a critical time.

Maggie HabermanLuke Broadwater

By Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater

July 16, 2022

Around 5 in the afternoon on Christmas Day in 2020, as many Americans were celebrating with family, President Donald J. Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., on the phone with a little-known conservative lawyer who was encouraging his attempts to overturn the election, according to a memo the lawyer later wrote documenting the call.

The lawyer, William J. Olson, was promoting several extreme ideas to the president. Mr. Olson later conceded that part of his plan could be regarded as tantamount to declaring “martial law” and that another aspect could invite comparisons with Watergate. The plan included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the acting attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, according to the Dec. 28 memo by Mr. Olson, titled “Preserving Constitutional Order.”

“Our little band of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do,” Mr. Olson wrote in his memo, obtained by The New York Times, which he marked “privileged and confidential” and sent to the president. “The media will call this martial law,” he wrote, adding that “that is ‘fake news.’”

The document highlights the previously unreported role of Mr. Olson in advising Mr. Trump as the president was increasingly turning to extreme, far-right figures outside the White House to pursue options that many of his official advisers had told him were impossible or unlawful, in an effort to cling to power.

The involvement of a person like Mr. Olson, who now represents the conspiracy theorist and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, underscores how the system that would normally insulate a president from rogue actors operating outside of official channels had broken down within weeks after the 2020 election.

Read William J. Olson’s Memo to Trump

William J. Olson, a right-wing lawyer, sent a memo in December 2020 to President Donald J. Trump on how to seek to overturn the election.

READ DOCUMENT

That left Mr. Trump in direct contact with people who promoted conspiracy theories or questionable legal ideas, telling him not only what he wanted to hear, but also that they — not the public servants advising him — were the only ones he could trust.

“In our long conversation earlier this week, I could hear the shameful and dismissive attitude of the lawyer from White House Counsel’s Office toward you personally — but more importantly toward the Office of the President of the United States itself,” Mr. Olson wrote to Mr. Trump. “This is unacceptable.”

It was not immediately clear how Mr. Olson, who practices law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, arrived in Mr. Trump’s orbit.Mr. Olson previously worked with Republican super PACs and promoted a conspiracy theory that Vice President Kamala Harris is not eligible to be vice president, falsely claiming she is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. He and his firm have long represented Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group.

According to his website, which displays a photograph of him shaking hands with President Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Olson was a White House intern in 1971.

Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings

Card 1 of 8

Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is laying out evidence that could allow prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump, though the path to a criminal trial is uncertain. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far:

An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.

Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.

Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.

Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.

Strong arming the Justice Dept.During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.

The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, ​​a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol.

Planning a march. Mr. Trump planned to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but wanted it to look spontaneous, the committee revealed during its seventh hearing. Representative Liz Cheney also said that Mr. Trump had reached out to a witness in the panel’s investigation, and that the committee had informed the Justice Department of the approach.

His 2020 memo was written 10 days after one of the most dramatic meetings ever held in the Trump White House, during which three of the president’s White House advisers vied — at one point almost physically — with outside actors to influence Mr. Trump. In that meeting, on Dec. 18, the lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, pushed for Mr. Trump to seize voting machines and appoint Ms. Powell special counsel to investigate wild and groundless claims of voter fraud, even as White House lawyers fought back.

But the document suggests that, even after his aides had won that skirmish in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump continued to seek extreme legal advice that ran counter to the recommendations of the Justice Department and the counsel’s office.

And the memo indicates that Mr. Trump was acting on the outside advice. At one point, it refers to the president urging Mr. Olson to contact the acting attorney general about having the Justice Department lend its credibility to Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to invalidate the election results.

A person familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said the committee was aware that Mr. Olson was in contact with Mr. Trump and that it was exploring Mr. Olson’s role in pushing forward plans to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Olson did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment about the former president’s relationship with Mr. Olson.

According to his memo, Mr. Olson was discussing with Mr. Trump the notion that the Justice Department would intercede with the Supreme Court to reverse his electoral defeat.

The court had declined to hear a case that allies of Mr. Trump in Texas had brought challenging the election results in Pennsylvania, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing.

Mr. Olson told Mr. Trump that he believed the Justice Department “will do nothing except continue to run out the clock.”

“While time to act was short when we spoke on Christmas Day, time is about to run out,” he wrote.

It was unclear which White House lawyer Mr. Olson described as dismissive in his memo. At the time, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone; Patrick Philbin, his deputy; and another lawyer who did not work for the counsel’s office, Eric Herschmann, were working in tandem to push back on some of the more outlandish ideas being recommended. Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Herschmann had taken lead roles during the Dec. 18 White House meeting in countering Ms. Powell and Mr. Flynn.

“The feeling I had was that not just was he not offering you any options, but that he was there to make certain you did not consider any,” Mr. Olson wrote, referring to the unnamed White House lawyer. “But you do have options.”

Among those whom Mr. Olson mentioned as speaking to Mr. Trump about the Justice Department getting involved was Mark Martin, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. White House officials believed at the time that Mr. Martin was brought in through Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff.

Mr. Olson urged Mr. Trump to hire another lawyer, Kurt Olsen, who had worked on the Texas case.

“As I emailedMolly Saturday morning,” Mr. Olson wrote, referring to Mr. Trump’s assistant, “we began acting on your question about our team revising the complaint filed by Texas into what could be the first draft of a complaint filed by the United States. The lawyers with whom I have been working took on that task, and we now have a draft that could be presented to you to review, and by you to Mr. Rosen to edit, improve and file.”

In his memo, Mr. Olson recounted that during their discussions, he had told Mr. Trump that he had followed the president’s suggestion to call Mr. Rosen a few hours earlier requesting that the acting attorney general file a lawsuit to try to block Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory.

Mr. Trump, based on Mr. Olson’s memo, was aware that Mr. Rosen was slow-walking his request. The suit was never filed; Mr. Rosen testified last month before the Jan. 6 committee that doing so was out of the bounds of the law.

A spokesman for Mr. Rosen said that he did not recall speaking with Mr. Olson, but that it was accurate that the acting attorney general was against filing any lawsuits to interfere with the election results.

At the time of the memo, Mr. Trump had decamped to Mar-a-Lago, but Mr. Olson encouraged him to return to Washington to fight the election results from his perch in the White House. Mr. Trump did so shortly thereafter, working through the holidays on challenging the election results.

“I do not believe you can do what is required to be done from Florida,” Mr. Olson wrote to the president. “And, it would send a message about your commitment to the task, to leave Mar-a-Lago to take charge at the White House. I urge you to return as soon as it can be arranged.”

Mr. Olson encouraged Mr. Trump to fire or reassign Mr. Rosen should he not go along with the plans to use the Justice Department to challenge the election in court, though Mr. Olson acknowledged such action would draw negative news coverage.

“This step will likely bring on a thousand stories making an analogy to ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ in 1973 when President Nixon ordered AG Elliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox as a special counsel investigating Watergate,” he wrote.

Mr. Olson also urged changes at the White House Counsel’s Office. He wrote that a new White House counsel should take steps to ensure a “fair election count,” though he conceded that would be seen by the news media as “martial law.”

After Mr. Trump left office, Mr. Olson joined the legal team of Mr. Lindell, who has promoted a series of conspiracy theories about the election and has been sued for defamation by a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems. Mr. Lindell, who crashed the Oval Office in the final days of the presidency hoping that Mr. Trump would still take action related to the election, was adamant that Mr. Trump would be reinstated as president in 2021, something that was not possible.

Mr. Lindell sued the Jan. 6 committee, seeking to block the panel’s subpoena to Verizon for his call logs. The suit, which Mr. Olson filed along with other lawyers, argued that Mr. Lindell’s communications about his objections to the 2020 election were protected speech, in part because they were tied to his religious beliefs.

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no lnx grx

Investigations

Election deniers have taken their fraud theories on tour — to nearly every state

June 30, 20223:52 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

    Transcript

Seth Keshel speaks at a New Hampshire election security seminar presented by the New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group in Manchester, N.H., on Nov. 19, 2021. Seth Keshel, a retired U.S. Army captain, has worked to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Brian Snyder/Reuters

On a quiet Tuesday night in Howard County, Md., dozens of people gather in a community center and listen to Seth Keshel's 10-point plan.

"Captain K," as he's known in election fraud circles, is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, and he is walking through his go-to presentation: comparisons of vote totals from the past few election cycles, which he falsely claims prove President Biden's win in 2020 was illegitimate.His 10-point plan to "true election integrity" includes banning all early voting and requiring all American voters to re-register.

The next night, more than a thousand miles away in Minneapolis, in a small building across from a popular garden shop, roughly 60 people wait for David Clements to take the stage.

Clements, professorial in a tan blazer with a graying beard and unruly curly hair, begins his presentation with a prayer. Then he goes to the slideshow.

The audience, which appears to be all white and mostly middle-aged, occasionally gasps as he shows charts and graphs, which he claims contain evidence of widespread election fraud.

Sponsor Message

Clements ends his talk with a request to the people in the audience: Go to the offices of your local officials.

"They respond to fear," he says. "You need to hold these institutions with the contempt they deserve."

An NPR investigation found that since Jan. 6, 2021, the election denial movement has moved from Donald Trump's tweets to hundreds of community events like these — in restaurants, car dealerships and churches — led by a core group of election conspiracy influencers like Keshel and Clements.

These local gatherings may reach fewer people than viral internet posts, but they seem to effectively spur action by regular people, who are motivated by their almost evangelical intimacy.

"It's this constellation of election conspiracy theorists," said Chris Krebs, a former Department of Homeland Security official who oversaw the federal government's election security efforts in 2020. "You can see the complexion of local politics shifting as a result. They have decentralized post-January 6th and are really trying to effect change at the lowest-possible level."

NPR monitored the election-denial influencers through events advertised on their public social media accounts, the websites and social media accounts of local organizations, events NPR attended, video footage and news reports over the past 18 months. Four prominent purveyors of voting misinformation stood out, crisscrossing the country to appear at at least 308 events in 45 states and the District of Columbia.

NPR tracked Keshel and Clements, as well asDouglas Frank, who misleadingly claims to have discovered a secret algorithm that swings vote totals across the U.S. (his methodology has been widely debunked by voting experts), and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

The scale of their movements paints a portrait of an election denial movement that has evolved into a nationwide force, beyond just swing states — and despite the Jan. 6 Committee's investigation and efforts by voting officials at every level to combat disinformation. NPR's investigation is the first such effort to document the scope of these influencers.

:{:{"It's an existential threat to American democracy," said Franita Tolson, an elections expert at the University of Southern California. "If the numbers get big enough, it's unclear whether we will survive it."}:

The chain reaction}:

Carly Koppes, who runs elections in Weld County, Colo., says she noticed a tone shift in her county after Douglas Frank came to town.

She's reading over an email that just came in from one of her voters.

"Traitors will be exposed. These guys are going down and you have no chance..." She trails off as she scans. "You deserve everything coming your direction."

The Republican county clerk takes a long sigh.

Last summer, a group of suspicious citizens here knocked on thousands of doors looking to uncover evidence of election fraud.

"It started because of Dr. Frank and his really bad data analysis," Koppes said. "Him and his people, unfortunately, just don't know how to read election records correctly."

Douglas Frank, a former high school math and science teacher from Ohio, gives a presentation to about 100 people in the Missouri Capitol rotunda on his theories about election fraud, on Jan. 6, in Jefferson City, Mo. Frank, whose ideas have been debunked, claims to have discovered secret algorithms that were used to rig the 2020 election in favor of President Biden.

David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP

In his former life, Frank was a high school math and science teacher in Ohio. He's moved now into touring the country spreading election fraud conspiracies full time.

He, and the other three men whose movements NPR documented, either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to comment for this story.

In the visit Koppes mentioned, on April 24, 2021, Frank held court in a DoubleTree hotel conference room near Denver. Dozens of people cheered as Frank pointed at graphs that he claimed showed how the 2020 election was marred by fraud (something that's been debunked many times by hand counts, audits and investigative reports across the country).

"Go knock on some doors!" Frank implored.

And many people in this Colorado community listened.

A group popped up there, dedicated to this sort of fraud-motivated canvassing, and they devoted their organizing playbook to Frank.

Jim Gilchrist, a doctor of holistic medicine in Colorado, saw an online posting of Frank's talk and volunteered to canvass with the group. He estimates he spent more than 20 hours last summer knocking on doors.

"I just kind of wished there was some mechanism for there to be a more transparent kind of way of making sure the vote was counted correctly," Gilchrist said in an interview with NPR. "Douglas Frank kind of offered a solution that we could do as citizens."

Influencing policymakers

The election denialists also frequently bump elbows with people in power.

NPR found that over the past year and a half, the men met or appeared with at least 78 elected officials at the federal, state and local levels — many of whom will have a role in how future elections are run and certified.

At least two secretaries of state, two U.S. senators, 10 U.S. representatives, two state attorneys general and two lieutenant governors met or appeared with the figures NPR tracked. More than three dozen members of state legislatures, many of whom have introduced legislation in their states that would affect how Americans cast ballots, have also appeared at events with them.

"Our voices have gotten bigger and bigger every single day since last year and you cannot stop that," said Mike Lindell, at a rally in January of 2022 attended by three members of Arizona's congressional delegation, Debbie Lesko, Andy Biggs, and Paul Gosar, all of whom voted not to certify Arizona's election results at the U.S. Capitol a year earlier. "We will get our country back."

Mike Lindell, political activist and CEO of MyPillow, speaks during a rally hosted by former President Donald Trump at the Delaware County Fairgrounds on April 23 in Delaware, Ohio.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

In some cases, the election denial influencers worked to persuade skeptical officials to embrace their claims.

In May 2021, Frank met with staff from the Ohio secretary of state's office for more than two hours.

:{:{NPR acquired audio of the meeting, which was first reported by The Washington Post, through a public records request.}:

The staffers in the meeting pushed back on Frank's many fraud accusations, and at one point he responded by threatening to send unauthorized people, or "plants" as he put it, into local voting offices.}:

"We have plants everywhere that go into buildings when your machines are on and capture your IP addresses. We have those, not necessarily in Ohio but we can arrange for that," Frank said, his voice rising. "So all I'm trying to point out to you is that this is coming. Be ready. And I'm not trying to fight you — do you see that I'm trying to help you?"

The staffers in that meeting didn't budge. But shortly after that meeting, someone did attempt to breach an elections network in Lake County, Ohio, though a state official told NPR that no sensitive data was ultimately accessed.

The four election denialists also appeared with well over 100 candidates for local, state and federal office in the 2022 primaries. Some, including U.S. Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois and state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who is running to be governor of Pennsylvania, have already won their party's nomination for the general election.

A fraud evolution

The highest profile of the group that NPR tracked is MyPillow CEO Lindell, a prominent and longtime Trump supporter.

:{:{}:

Lindell says he has spent millions of dollars on his crusade, which started almost as soon as ballots were cast on Nov. 3, 2020. Sometime around March of 2021, he brought Frank into the fold and Frank's popularity skyrocketed.}:

"I went from being completely mum to suddenly 10 million people knowing me in about a week," he told a group in Utah last July.

David Clements talks to audience members after speaking to the Surry County board of commissioners during a presentation by several individuals that aimed to cast doubt on election integrity, urging the commission to replace existing voting machines with purely paper ballots in Dobson, N.C., on May 16.

Jonathan Drake/Reuters

Frank often speaks at events with Keshel and Clements. Clements is a lawyer and former professor at the New Mexico State University business school who was fired for not complying with the school's COVID-19 policies. Keshel is a retired Army captain and veteran of Afghanistan.

While those in the group often repeat talking points and appear together, they don't necessarily coordinate appearances or strategy. And other than Lindell, they were mostly unknown before 2020. Now they're influencers in the movement with online followings of hundreds of thousands of people. They even promote merchandise like T-shirts, books and body lotions, along with their election misinformation.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, says they're using election fraud as a vehicle to advance themselves.

"There's no shortage of ability to access the truth about our election system, yet there seems to be a proliferation of people willing to lie about it," Benson said. "I think it's logical to conclude that they know better. And that they're knowingly spreading misinformation ... to win elections, to raise money, to gain attention and celebrity."

Benson says her office has seen a direct correlation between election denier events in Michigan and a rise in harassment toward voting officials.

"Whenever there is an appearance in which the former president or Lindell or others come out attacking our system we know to expect an uptick in threats and add additional security as a result," she said.

But she, and the thousands of other Americans in charge of elections nationwide, have yet to figure out a truly effective way to fight back and break through to the two-thirds of Republican voters who believe voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election.

That's because election denialism has grown from a political movement into something almost religious, said Koppes, the Republican county clerk in Colorado.

Supporters of former President Donald Trump cheer as he speaks at a Save America Rally in Florence, Ariz., on Jan. 15. Mike Lindell and three Arizona lawmakers — Debbie Lesko, Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar — also attended the event.

Ross D. Franklin/AP

"There's just so much that is incorrect that they just keep repeating and repeating and repeating," Koppes said. "And then as soon as I have absolutely blocked off that path with actual correct information, then they just move that goal post. And they keep just moving the goal posts. And moving the goal posts."

Between conversations with voters and research on all the separate false claims that have popped up over the past two years, she estimates she's spent thousands of hours dealing with the fallout of Donald Trump's misinformation campaign.

At this point, she says she's had to stop engaging with voters who are unwilling to listen to her.

"Some of these people really, truly believe they're doing the Lord's work," Koppes said. "But I think at the end of the day, they so desperately want to believe what they're being fed, that they're using all means to justify what they're doing."

Monika Evstatieva, Barbara Van Woerkom, Barrie Hardymon and Meg Anderson of NPR's Investigations team contributed reporting to this story. NPR's Nick Underwood contributed to the data visualizations.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/mike-lindell-:{**walmart-canceled-mypillow/**:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

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db  https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-jan-6-phone-logs-7-hour-gap-might-have-a-stupid-explanation

no lnx

There Might Be a Stupid Explanation for the 7-Hour Gap in Trump’s Phone Logs

THE NEW ABNORMAL

That, plus: Why Colorado’s secretary of state is being forced to take an opponent indicted for compromising voting equipment seriously. (Hint: It has to do with the MyPillow guy.)

The Daily Beast

Published Apr. 01, 2022

The New Abnormal really made it 201 episodes without anyone on the team asking, “Do we need to slap a content warning label on this?” But then Madison Cawthorn had to go and start flapping his gums about orgies.

The freshman Republican congressman has earned the ire of his colleagues after letting slip that he’s borne witness to their sexual bacchanalia, complete with—and why not—“key bumps of cocaine.” That key feature (pun noted) is exactly why New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy takes umbrage with co-host Molly Jong-Fast’s preferred term for the whole debacle: “Orgygate.” Levy simply will not stand for this erasure of the copious amounts of drugs allegedly consumed by the nation’s leaders!

Somebody else probably thinking too hard about this nightmare affair is GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy. As Levy puts it, “This is ‘unacceptable’ to Kevin McCarthy because he’s afraid that people in his district are going to be going around saying, ‘Is Kevin McCarthy participating in orgies and doing key bumps?’ So this directly has the possibility of affecting him—and that’s all he cares about.”

Jong-Fast, meanwhile, is doing her damnedest not to picture the possibility of a raunchy Louie Gohmert getting it on with a debauched Newt Gingrich.

Thankfully, relief descends upon the pod in the form of George Conway, a lawyer and Washington Post contributor. What he offers up is one potential explanation for the suspicious 7-hour-37-minute-sized hole in former President Donald J. Trump’s phone logs: that it wasn’t so much a document destruction conspiracy as it was good old-fashioned incompetence.

“I don’t defend Donald Trump,” Conway says—always a good start. “But I think people may be getting a little ahead of themselves about this story… I think there’s a lot of suggestion out there that there was essentially an erasure or alteration of records. I would not make that accusation at this point. We simply don’t know. And not that Donald Trump would have any moral compunction about it. It’s just that these people were not sufficiently organized or competent to conduct a cover-up that would require that level of concentration and competence.”

Instead, Conway posits, what he thinks Jan. 6 investigators will find is that Trump was sitting in a room, “transfixed,” watching the riot at the Capitol. “He’s sitting there, watching an insurrection. He’s president of the United States and he fomented the insurrection, and he’s sitting there watching gleefully, too busy to talk on the phone using the switchboard at the White House to create a record,” the lawyer theorizes. If the then-president was making calls in a way that didn’t leave a paper trail, it wasn’t deliberate.

“He’s malicious and insidious,” Conway says, “but he’s not that competent.”

[Trump Asked Kid Rock About North Korea & There Is No Bottom]

Later in the episode, the co-hosts call up Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who kindly outlines what it is a secretary of state does all day. (Oversee elections for states, as it turns out.) But that’s not all. Though Griswold has been leading a vanguard to strengthen election security in Colorado, the threat of voter fraud remains terrifyingly real—all the more so because the call is coming from inside the house.

One of Griswold’s more unusual opponents for the secretary of state seat this election cycle is a Mesa County clerk named Tina Peters, who was recently indicted for an election-tampering scheme aided by none other than the MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Why is someone who’s been indicted allowed to run for government office? That’s just the Colorado way, Griswold says. “Colorado is the nation’s gold standard for election access and security,” she explains, “but we’ve also become ground zero for these insider threats and conspiracies.”

To fight that, Griswold is working to tighten election infrastructure. Her first legislative priority, prohibiting open-carry within 100 feet of an election site, was signed into law earlier this week. Now the focus is on a landmark bill to disincentivize bad actors like Peters from compromising or illegally accessing voting equipment. If you do, Griswold says, “you’re going to go to jail. It’s going to be a felony.”

But despite all the optimism, there’s still room for a healthy dose of concern. “I think we’re seeing the groundwork so that the next time an extreme elected official or candidate does not want to accept the results of a free and fair election, it will be easier for them to try to take their seats, no matter the results,” Griswold says, “which is very frightening for the future of this country. And it underscores the need to make sure that election-deniers do not become secretaries of state, in that we continue to have free and fair elections for all Republican, independent, and Democratic voters in this country.”

===

===

new 3 22

Although now-President Joe Biden enjoyed a decisive victory in the United States’ 2020 presidential election — winning 306 electoral votes and defeating then-President Donald Trump by more than 7 million in the popular vote — it certainly wasn’t because of Idaho, a deep red state that Trump won by 30%. But far-right conspiracy theorist and MyPillowCEO Mike Lindell, a tireless promoter of the Big Lie, has claimed that Trump’s margin of victory was even higher than 30% in Idaho but that votes were stolen from Trump there through widespread voter fraud. And Lindell’s false claim, journalist Allan Smith reports for NBC News, has become a divisive issue among Idaho Republicans.

“Last summer, Idaho officials received demand after demand to investigate extraordinary claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election,” journalist Allan Smith reports in an article published by NBC News’ website on March 6. “In a state where former President Donald Trump won by more than 30 points, people claimed a vast conspiracy cheated the former president out of an even greater margin of victory. Almost all the e-mails referred to theories promoted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, DeputySecretary of State Chad Houcksaid. Lindell, people claimed, had proof of major malfeasance — if only someone would look into it.”

Houck and the office of Idaho Secretary of State Lawerence Denney, according to Smith, investigated Lindell’s claims and “found them to be totally without merit.”

According to Smith, “Houck’s office decided to manually count the ballots in two of Idaho’s smallest counties — Camas and Butte — as well as manually recount the ballots in eight of the 32 precincts in Bonner County, a medium-size locale in the state. Between the three counties, it found an error rate of roughly 0.1 percent.”

But Lindell’s supporters in Idaho are not satisfied.

“Idaho’s work combating Lindell only seems to have made supporters of his fraud narrative angrier, Houck said, and has set the stage for midterm battles along fault lines Republicans are contending with nationwide,” Smith reports.

Houck told NBC News, “We’ve received two types of responses back to the office. One has been: ‘How dare you attack a patriot like Mike Lindell.’ On the flip side, (others) said: ‘Thank you for standing up to Lindell’s narratives’…. I’ve had counties that have had individuals come into county commissioner meetings and threatened the entire county commission that they were going to be unseated. And if they couldn’t do it through bureaucratic means, then they’re going to do it through physical means, to a point where I’ve had counties that have requested assistance in funding to put additional security measures into their county buildings, just to secure the election office from physical threat.”

===

no lnx

How Mike Lindell and 'a mysterious dark money organization' pushed a bogus 'snake-oil treatment' for COVID-19

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell speaking at the 2020 Student Action Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, Gage Skidmore

Alex Henderson February 07, 2022

A variety of bogus “treatments” or “cures” for COVID-19 have been promoted in MAGA World, from hydroxychloroquine to oleandrin (an extract from the poisonous oleander plant). According to Daily Beast reporters Roger Sollenberger and William Bredderman, one of the companies that haspromoted oleandrin as a COVID-19 miracle cure is Propter Strategies— which has ties to two major allies of former President Donald Trump: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.

“It’s an all-too-familiar story at this point: A person pushing an unproven COVID-19 cure — and pushing back against the vaccines — pays the ultimate price for their skepticism,” Sollenberger and Bredderman report. “But this time, there’s a new wrinkle. It’s not just one person dabbling in COVID quackery with tragic results; it’s actually a mysterious dark money organization, with ties to influential MAGA figures like Steve Bannon and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.”

The organization, according Sollenberger and Bredderman, was Propter Strategies — and the person who became a “victim” of its “secretive work” was partner Kenneth Happel.

“To this day, Propter Strategies is a black hole, despite its high-profile connections and multi-million-dollar budget,” the Beast reporters explain. “Aside from Happel’s account, there is no evidence of Propter’s activities anywhere in the public record. And that might be with good reason: Those activities included hawking the snake-oil COVID treatment oleandrin at the highest levels of the government, as the pandemic’s lethal second wave peaked across the country.”

Happel, according to Sollenberger and Bredderman, is presently hospitalized with his second COVID-19 infection — and his wife died from COVID-19 in January.

“In a phone interview from his hospital bed, Happel, 72, remained unrepentant and defiant about the numerous baseless theories that quite likely landed him back in the hospital, and killed the wife he loved dearly,” Sollenberger and Bredderman write. “Happel still places hope in the pseudo-science that he, Propter Strategies, and Lindell had pushed so hard — a proprietary compound derived from oleander extract, which the pillow tycoon and at least one Propter official had invested in.”

Registration data, according to Sollenberger and Bredderman, shows that Happel is the owner of Proper’s website, needsp.us, and Happel has “confirmed” to the Beast “that the Propter Strategies cited on his page was, in fact, the same group linked to those leading MAGA figures.”

“Happel, a former Tea Party activist with an entrepreneurial history that intersects with biotechnology, recounted working on oleandrin in 2020 with Propter board member Andrew Whitney,” Sollenberger and Bredderman note. “A serial entrepreneur and former Bain Capital investor, Whitney was actually pulling oleandrin double-duty — he was on the board at the nonprofit Propter, as well as at Texas-based Phoenix Biotechnologies, whose research centered on the product. Happel also acknowledged the connection toLindell, who, it turns out, also holds a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnologies.”

Whitney and Lindell, according to the Beast reporters, “paired up for a MAGA media parade” and promoted oleandrin “as a neglected medical miracle” on right-wing outlets such as Newsmax and Diamond & Silk’s YouTube show. And Lindell “confirmed he still has a financial stake in Phoenix.”

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/mike-lindell-2656413886/

banks cancel him b/c bad PR

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/mike-lindell/

jail 300m for vote fraud?

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/year-after-january-6-one-america-news-has-found-its-insurrectionist

no lnx vid

A year after January 6, One America News has found its insurrectionist footing

OAN spent the last year promoting GOP voter suppression efforts, selling airtime to a demented pillow maven, and priming its audience for political violence -- perhaps even civil war

WRITTEN BY BOBBY LEWIS

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM BEATRICE MOUNT

PUBLISHED 01/06/22

The January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump was a watershed moment for conservative media. The “peaceful transition of power” that has long been a force in the mythologization of American democracy broke down that day, and rather than owning up to the gravity of a violent attack on that tradition, One America News Network stuck to its familiar playbook of lies and deceit – this time in service of increasing voter suppression.

A survey performed inSeptember 2021 found that 68% of Republicans wrongly believed that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Among Republicans who primarily trust far-right outlets like OAN, 97% believed the election was stolen. This correlation is no coincidence, and right-wing media’s continued lies about the 2020 election have provided fuel for nationwide voter suppression efforts by the GOP. In the wake of the Capitol attack, OAN became an important part of the conservative media campaign pushing a whopping 440 bills in state legislatures in 2021 that attempted to restrict voting access.

Voter suppression is nothing new for the conservative movement, but OAN used the aftermath of January 6 to double down on election lies and promote efforts to make voting more difficult for its fellow Americans – while priming its right-wing audience for a potential civil war.

OAN helped drive a frenzy for fraudulent election audits

OAN correspondent Christina Bobb disputed the 2020 election results before a winner was even declared, a moment which was a harbinger for her coverage in 2021. Fueled by a passionate embrace of the Big Lie that the election had been stolen, Bobb essentially became a salesperson for election audits in any state that would entertain the idea.

Bobb provided documents and testimony to get the Arizona audit in motion, and founded a nonprofit to raise money for the audit. Her group Voices & Votes raised $605,000 for the Arizona audit, or about 10% of its cost, undoubtedly in part because of Bobb’s frequent fundraising during her audit coverage on OAN.

The amateurish operation in Arizona appears to be the playbook for other so-called “audits” going forward, even though it confirmed both President Joe Biden’s victory in the state and the oft-asserted fact that there was no significant fraud. But that didn’t stop Bobb or other audit extremists.

Bobb has been concentrating her efforts to spread audits to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan, counting on friendly GOP legislatures to indulge in the Big Lie. Some states, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are making moves toward their own audits. In Texas, which Trump won handily, preliminary results of an audit have once again confirmed earlier counts.

Besides its own correspondent, OAN has helped create a second star of the right-wing election fraud movement. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was already known before the 2020 election to be a prolific, unhinged Trump supporter, but Lindell’s delusions turned into an erratic fusillade of election lies, and -- unprecedented in television news -- the wealthy pillow CEO acquired vast swaths of OAN airtime in 2021 to zealously push his own false claims and conspiracy theories.

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}:

OAN repeatedly aired at least three different Lindell “documentaries” alleging to unravel the conspiratorial web behind the 2020 election.Additionally, OAN ran ads for Lindell’s three-day “cyber symposium” over 150 times in a single week, before devoting more than 30 hours of live coverage to his erratic event. Just before Lindell's symposium began, OAN was sued by Dominion Voting Systems for defamation over spreading other election lies; later the network was hit with another defamation suit from voting technology company Smartmatic.

OAN followed the symposium and defamation suit by letting Lindell take over its evening programming on at least three occasions. In his “The Lindell Report” the businessman aired even more potentially defamatory election lies. 

OAN backed voter suppression attempts nationwide

Pursuant to its whole-of-network embrace of the Big Lie, OAN gave friendly coverage to or expressed outright support of several voter suppression efforts in states all over the country.

OAN’s prime-time shows became important stops for Texas state legislators to promote Senate Bill 7, which “includes provisions to limit early voting hours, curtail local voting options and further tighten voting by mail.” On June 1, OAN’s Natalie Harp hosted GOP state Rep. Kyle Biedermann to raise concerns about “a lot of things going on against the laws” in 2020, like “drive-thru voting” and “ballots that were mailed out that shouldn’t have been mailed out.” OAN’s Dan Ball hosted state Sen. Bob Hall, who claimed that SB 7 would guard against what he called “soft fraud” by “election officials taking advantage of rules to bend them as much as they could in their favor.” According to Media Matters’ data, since December 2020, eight Texas state legislators have made at least 23 appearances on OAN prime time, many of them clustered around the SB 7 debate.

The Georgia omnibus election bill was another focal point of OAN programming, particularly since the network is also interested in fomenting an election audit in Georgia. In ostensible news segments, OAN reports called Senate Bill 202 a “voting rights bill” that is “securing integrity for future elections,” and literally laughed at the notion that anyone would take issue with these “common-sense changes.” The Justice Department filed suit against Georgia over a long list of “racially discriminatory” provisions in the law, including “the prohibition on efforts by churches and civic groups to provide food or water to persons waiting in long lines to vote.”

OAN frequently turns to one guest in particular for Georgia political commentary: former state representative and current gubernatorial candidate Vernon Jones. According to Media Matters' data, Jones has made at least 26 appearances on OAN prime time since December 2020 -- often dedicated to promoting his campaign for governor while pushing election lies and audit attempts.

Video file

CitationFrom the October 5, 2021, edition of OAN's Real America with Dan Ball

OAN primed its audience for more political violence

On June 23, correspondent Pearson Sharp drew widespread condemnation for an OAN segment suggesting mass executions of Democrats for supposedly stealing the election from Trump. 

:{:{}:

}:

Declaring the 2020 election was actually “overthrown,” Sharp told his audience: “Any American involved in these efforts, from those who ran the voting machines to the very highest government officials, is guilty of treason under U.S. Code. 2381, which carries with it the penalty of death.” 

:{:{}:

}:

Despite the unmistakable clarity of Sharp’s words, he told Talking Points Memo, “Neither I, nor OAN, are suggesting anyone should be executed,” but added, “That is for the appropriate law enforcement agencies to determine.” 

:{:{}:

}:

Sharp’s midsummer bloodlust wasn’t much of an aberration for One America News Network. OAN guests have casually gamed out civil war scenarios on-air, and the network has aired reports accusing “retired Democrat generals” of spreading civil war allegations against Republicans, while falsely claiming “evidence indicates that it is actually the left that is at war.” 

Though she did not directly suggest violence, Bobb brought in the new year by strongly denouncing the Biden administration as “fascist” and “illegitimate,” in part for having “faked an insurrection on the Capitol” and stealing the 2020 election. For a conservative steeped in Second Amendment mythology about “the tree of liberty” and “the blood of tyrants,” the dots don’t need to be connected.

Wayne Allyn Root, a radio host and far-right conspiracy theorist, appeared on OAN in December and denounced Biden’s “communist dictatorship” for stealing both the 2020 election and Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats, giving Democrats their current tie-breaking Senate majority “destroying this country.” Root accused Democrats of “looking for a civil war,” which he claimed conservatives like him do not want -- but later in the same rant, Root said that the oppression of conservatives by the Democratic Party “is a lot worse” than the conditions that merited the American Revolution. 

:{:{}:

}:

“The worst is yet to come,” Root warned.

Video file

CitationFrom the December 29, 2021, edition of OAN's The Real Story with Natalie Harp

OAN is headed into 2022 with more of the same lies, and little care for any negative consequences

From OAN’s perspective, 2021 was a good year for “election integrity.” OAN’s Bobb fought for and secured an Arizona election audit, and successfully spun the mundane results into enough fuel to keep pushing for more audits. OAN collected viewers and money from airing MyPillow’s Lindell, even if it did help get the network sued for defamation. Several of the voter suppression initiatives OAN supported became law. OAN’s suggestions of political violence have retained a veneer of plausible deniability while priming the audience with fury and fear to keep pushing for more voter suppression.

Reckless, false commentary about stolen elections and calls for punishing enemies are how we got Trump supporters invading the Capitol, menacing members of Congress, and chanting to execute Trump’s vice president one year ago. But it’s all just good business for OAN.

THE LATEST

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01/07/22 10:49 PM EST

Angelo Carusone: Sean Hannity’s messages prove “stunning deception that he was engaging in to his own audience”

01/07/22 9:17 PM EST

Tucker Carlson unloads on Sesame Street after learning a puppet character has a race

01/07/22 9:03 PM EST

Fox's Gutfeld: “We are a country of fighters, and we will do it again by February 1st. Because, you know what? We can. We've got the Second Amendment. We run this country.”

01/07/22 6:27 PM EST

Fox hosts launch vicious attack on teachers, calling them stupid, “selfish and lazy”

01/07/22 6:13 PM EST

==

===

12 21 mma

myPillow

Proactiv

NordicTrack

ADT

Sanofi

Tivity Health (Nutrisystem & South Beach)

WeatherTech

Sandals Resorts

Visiting Angels

Loan Depot

Omaha Steaks

America's Best

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/mike-lindell/

libel suit loss daily ---

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/fbi-election-breach/

2nd one?

===

bkgd items interest jesus tiger mural?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/mike-lindell-thanksgiving/

myPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Tuesday claimed that the investigation into MAGA Colorado elections clerk Tina Peters was part of a deep state plot to derail his purported Supreme Court lawsuit that he believes will reinstate former President Donald Trump.

During an appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast, Lindell claimed that the government was making moves to discredit his allies because they feared what his lawsuit would unveil.

"This is to put fear into everybody -- look at the timing!" Lindell said. "One week from today, on November 23rd, the states are suing the U.S. government at the Supreme Court! It's over! This is where it's all going!"

Lindell proceeded to claim that some Democratic attorneys general had signed on to his lawsuit in favor of overturning the election results, but then declined to name them publicly.

He then went on a long rant about how all media organizations, including Fox News, were not covering his purported Supreme Court lawsuit as part of a plot to fool the American people into believing that Trump will not be reinstated as president.

"It's propaganda -- Hitler did it!" he said. "Goebbels was the best at it back in Nazi Germany! It's brainwashing! That's what it is! You brainwash and then you pit people against each other!"

Lindell concluded his rant by reassuring viewers that "we are very blessed because we have all the evidence!"

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/mike-lindell-newsmax/

distance

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/mike-lindell-arizona-audit/

turns on az audit

===

an Idaho plans to hit Mike Lindell with a bill for audit that discredited his baseless election conspiracy

Meaghan Ellis

October 08, 2021

When MyPillow CEO contested Idaho's 2020 election results amid false claims of voter fraud, officials conducted an audit for three of the counties that were scrutinized. Now, the state office is sending Lindell ....

===

921 gubmint will kill me

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/mike-lindell/

===

kid pillow ~ satan?

===

mma 921

no lnx many

vids

Steve Bannon regularly hosts a QAnon adherent to push for a Pennsylvania election “audit”

Toni Shuppe and Audit The Vote PA’s connections to QAnon closely mirrors groups associated with the Arizona “audit”

WRITTEN BY JUSTIN HOROWITZ

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM DANIL CUFFE

PUBLISHED 09/17/21

Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been frequently hosting QAnon conspiracy theorist Toni Shuppe on his podcast to push election lies and advocate for a Pennsylvania “audit” of the 2020 election.

Toni Shuppe is a founding member and the director of Public Relations of Audit The Vote PA, an “election integrity” group whose goal is to jumpstart an Arizona-style audit of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. Shuppe and her group have pressured state Senate members repeatedly via social media to advocate for their cause.

With the recent development of Pennsylvania Republicans subpoenaing personal voter information, Audit The Vote PA’s tactics on the ground, connections to QAnon, and relationships with state senators are starting to closely resemble that of the Arizona election audit.

Audit The Vote PA’s organizing work and conspiracy theories even led to an election commissioner in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, to receive death threats after one of the group’s leaders instructed her followers to email the commissioner their “thoughts.” This incident also mirrors incidents in Arizona and other states in which federal officials have faced death threats over election audits.

A June report from Insider detailed Audit The Vote PA’s connection to Pennsylvania Republican state Senator and QAnon adherent Doug Mastriano. Mastriano has appeared at multiple Audit The Vote PA-sponsored events and is listed as the featured speaker on more than one occasion. Insider’s report also described Shuppe’s own history of promoting QAnon hashtags and the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

When asked by Insider if Audit The Vote PA was associated with QAnon, the group stated that none of the organizers “consider themselves followers of QAnon" and are “aware” but “not affiliated” with the conspiracy theory.

However, Shuppe’s history of promoting these conspiracies goes beyond this reporting.

Based on a Media Matters review, there are multiple online instances of Shuppe using the QAnon hashtag “WWG1WGA,” promoting QAnon literature, posting a 9/11 conspiracy theory meme (claiming the terrorist attack was a distraction from a “gold heist”), and advertising her group’s interview with QAnon influencer RedPill78. (Zak Paine, who uses the pseudonym RedPill78, participated in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol).

During a Facebook live on January 8, Shuppe admitted to being “outside” of the Capitol during the insurrection. She claimed she didn’t see any of the “horrific things” because there are “lots of angles” of the building. During her live, Shuppe also pushed the QAnon-linked conspiracy theory that Italy meddled in the 2020 election (they didn't).

Toni Shuppe's Facebook Page

Shuppe and her lackeys were also present at MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s “cyber symposium" where he spent three days spewing election conspiracy theories claiming that China rigged the 2020 election. After the event, Audit The Vote PA wrote on Telegram that one of its “biggest takeaways from the Symposium” was that “the deep state is 100% real.” 

Now, Shuppe is a regular on Bannon’s podcast where she constantly updates his listeners on a Pennsylvania election “audit.”

During one of Shuppe’s podcast appearances on September 3, Bannon promoted her audit “petition” of the Pennsylvania results and asked her to talk more about it. In her response, Shuppe suggested that voter fraud evidence “has been swept under the rug.” She continued, stating that she was “clueless about politics as of March 1, 2020” and said she believes that her effort to start an audit is “evidence of God working through me” to find someone “to be held accountable” for election “anomalies.”

Shuppe also claimed during this appearance that she “personally knocked on doors" and found “proof" that ballots were "messed with.”

CitationFrom the September 3, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

During another appearance on September 8, Shuppe promoted Audit The Vote PA’s canvass of voters in Pennsylvania. She shared that her group knocked on resident’s doors to question them about “how they voted in 2020” and “how many people are registered to vote at their house and how many people from that house actually voted.” Shuppe claimed her group is finding “massive discrepancies” and that even as far back as November and December, the group had found “78,000 phantom votes” — a number her group had extrapolated after surveying just 1,600 households. She admitted that there are people saying that Audit The Vote PA is “intimidating people, but they are completely lying.”

Bannon also brought up  a canvass report linked with Liz Harris — another QAnon adherent who played a large role in bringing an audit to Arizona and conducted a voter canvass with results that were eventually debunked.

In May 2020, the Department of Justice sent a letter to the Arizona Senate stating that a voter canvass in Arizona could possibly violate federal law against voter intimidation. It is unclear whether Shuppe’s canvass violates federal law because of the accusations of intimidation by Pennsylvania residents.

CitationFrom the September 8, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

Similarly to the QAnon groups associated with the Arizona audit, Audit The Vote PA’s pressure campaigns and groundwork seemingly appear to be helping to advance the push for a Pennsylvania audit. Shuppe has applied continued pressure on Pennsylvania state Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, a Republican, on Bannon’s show.

Just days before the Pennsylvania state Senate approved subpoenas for personal voter information from the 2020 election, Shuppe appeared on War Room to blast Corman for not asking “the right questions,” and instructed her followers to “go on their social media pages and comment” because “it's the equivalent of calling them out in the public square, if you will.” Shuppe also suggested that the state Senate “remove” Corman from the president pro tempore position when it goes back in session.

Toward the end of the interview, Bannon implied that “confrontation at the Senate level” is the right move because it’s “not moving quickly enough.”

CitationFrom the September 9, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

For months, Bannon has had an obsession with bringing election “audits” to all 50 states and sees Pennsylvania as a particularly attractive place to spread his election fraud conspiracy theories. During the September 15 edition of his podcast, he explained that Pennsylvania is “different” because it is one of the “big industrial states that have been controlled by Democrats” and a grassroot movement pursuing an audit there will force “the establishment to respond.”

CitationFrom the September 15, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

Bannon will not stop until he has undermined election integrity across the entire nation, and he will continue to bring conspiracy theorists and wackjobs along for the ride.

===

===

omg

https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/08/23/conservative-think-tank-end-wisconsin-elections-commission/

looks legit

 conservative think tank — run by a former staffer for then-Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and connected to former Gov. Scott Walker — has called for abolishing the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) and moving the administration of state elections to the elected secretary of state. 

The think tank, the Institute for Reforming Government, called for the change to state election law in a news release Monday morning. 

“It is time to abolish WEC and implement good government accountability when it comes to Wisconsin’s elections and work to restore confidence among Wisconsin residents,” Chris Reader, executive vice president of IRG, said in a statement. “When unelected bureaucrats oversee Wisconsin’s elections it can lead to the erosion of faith and confidence in our electoral system. Thirty-three other states have elected officials overseeing the election process, providing a good measure of accountability by empowering people across ideological spectrums to provide a check on who manages elections. This is a good government measure that will benefit all Wisconsinites.”

The think tank’s president is CJ Szafir, who previously worked on Fitzgerald’s staff and served as the executive vice president for the right wing legal outfit, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. Walker is named on the think tank’s website as its former national honorary chairman. 

According to the think tank’s most recently available :{tax records}:, it paid Walker’s consulting firm, the Walker Group, more than $164,000 in 2019. 

The call comes as Republicans continue an effort to delegitimize state election administration in the wake of the 2020 presidential election and former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen. 

This weekend, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) :{met with Trump}:to discuss an ongoing investigation into the election led by former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman. Gableman recently traveled to South Dakota for a conspiracy theory-laden convention, run by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, where lies were spread about  the 2020 election. 

Gableman was joined by a state lawmaker and Robert Spindell, a member of the Elections Commission who has frequently spread conspiracy theories about last year’s election as well. 

The conservative group’s call to disband the Wisconsin Elections Commission — made up of six members, three appointed by Democrats and three by Republicans — comes just six years after Republicans themselves created the commission.  Rep. Janel Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls), who chairs the Assembly Campaigns and Elections Commission, has continued an effort to hold a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election — similar to the widely derided audit held in Arizona. 

Fitzgerald, now a member of Congress, and Walker were behind the creation of the WEC in 2015 after they disbanded the Government Accountability Board (GAB) over some similar complaints to the present complaints about the WEC. The GAB was made up of members appointed by a panel of appellate judges and was responsible for administration of the state’s election, ethics and campaign finance laws. 

Republicans disbanded the GAB after it began investigating Walker for violations of campaign finance laws through so-called John Doe investigations. 

GOP leaders, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, :{directly cited}: those investigations as the reason for the disbanding of the GAB and the creation of two new commissions to take its place — the Wisconsin Elections Commission and Wisconsin Ethics Commission. 

:{:{}:

The legislation that created the WEC was introduced by then-Rep. Dean Knudson (R-Hudson). Knudson is now a member of the WEC and its former chair. 

The current Wisconsin secretary of state is Democrat Doug La Follette. The office is largely responsible for maintaining government records, as Republicans took nearly all of the other responsibilities — and most of the staff — away from the office they now want to run elections under Walker, moving La Follette to a storage room in the Capitol basement. In 2015, a different right wing think tank, the MacIver Institute, called for :{abolishing the position:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:.

The Institute for Reforming Government did not respond to a request for comment.

}:

https://tyt.com/stories/7K5fbfFNXj9lcqTMpHEVRS

inside the family larsen

For nearly 70 years, and even in this moment of surging Christian nationalism, Democrats and Republicans have set aside their differences once a year to join in an event for fellowship and reconciliation: The National Prayer Breakfast.

The breakfast and the secretive religious group behind the scenes, popularly known as The Family, have been the subject of scandal over the years. Most notably, journalist Jeff Sharlet exposed the group’s theocratic, anti-labor origins, and revealed The Family’s role in Ugandan capital punishment legislation for gay people. More recently, the FBI caught Russian operatives using the breakfast to pursue back-channel connections with U.S. politicians.

But despite its dealings with international powers, The Family still enjoys the invisibility to which it attributes its influence. We’ve never had a full accounting of who works for The Family or even just who gets to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, let alone who decides. Until now.

Earlier this year, The Young Turks obtained a list of the 4465 people invited to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast.The document identifies guest connections to The Family and names virtually everyone who works for The Family, as well as numerous volunteers and allies. It also identifies which Family insiders submitted each invitee’s name.

Since then, TYT has been researching individuals named in that document and in others (including a list of 2018 breakfast attendees obtained last month). With assistance from organizations including the international journalism collective Bellingcat, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, TYT is assembling what amounts to an x-ray of The Family, and a map of its connections and endeavors around the world.

Although more remains to be learned, we can now draw some conclusions and begin reporting on what we are finding. (This is an ongoing project and we invite journalists and advocacy groups to contact us if they are interested in conducting research of their own.)

The prayer breakfast is, we’ve been told, an ecumenical, nonpartisan event for leaders of every stripe, run by prayer groups in the House and Senate. None of that is true.

The National Prayer Breakfast (NPB) is not run by Congress. The Family controls it, uses the breakfast for its own ends, and can do so thanks to the bipartisan fiction maintained by its remaining Democratic allies. (Democratic protectiveness of the breakfast may have its roots in the weekly congressional prayer meetings, which appear, like the breakfast, to offer members moments of genuine bonding and connection.)

Only a few congressional Democrats are even tangentially involved in the NPB. A handful of congressional Republicans play significant roles. But the breakfast itself is overwhelmingly a production of The Family. The event’s only significant financial backer is a well-known, right-wing theocrat.

The Family’s congressional defenders have served up portraits of the NPB that could never be refuted because they wouldn’t release the invitation list. (It has never been clear why an event ostensibly produced by Congress would be shrouded in such profound secrecy.)

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), The Family’s most prominent Democrat, said earlier this year that the breakfast “has brought together religious, political, and cultural leaders from all over the world.” But many attendees are not leaders at all; they are fellow travelers and friends of The Family. Others springboard off the breakfast to build anti-LGBTQ, anti-democratic networks in their home countries. International media portray the breakfast invitations as coming from Congress or the president, boosting the standing of the Family-allied politicians who get invited.

It’s not just Democrats perpetuating this. The Family operates in a penumbra of secrecy formed by the overlap of lax IRS disclosure laws and law-enforcement squeamishness about scrutinizing organizations appearing remotely religious.

And Coons’ implied diversity doesn’t apply to the delegations of guests from multiple countries. The breakfast is neither nonpartisan, nor ecumenical. The politics of the breakfast – its attendees and those who choose them – are a far cry from Coons’ claim. For instance, of the 20 individuals who invited the most guests in 2016, TYT was able to assess the politics of 13 – using voter registrations and political donations as gauges. Of those 13, only one was a Democrat: Grace Nelson, a former Family board member and wife of former Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL). The top five inviters whose politics could be ascertained were all Republicans.

The Republicans who got to pick the most attendees are overwhelmingly Trump supporters. Their ranks range from a Chick-fil-A franchisee (who invited 38 guests) to former Gov. David Beasley (R-SC), a Trump supporter later appointed by Trump to run the UN’s World Food Programme. Many Family insiders are now actively supporting Trump’s election lies, the Christian nationalist movement undergirding those lies, and the movement’s leaders.

Two of the top inviters had no U.S. political footprint because they don’t live in America. One of them has ties to theocratic, anti-LGBTQ organizations. He got to invite 30 people to the 2016 breakfast.

The invitation list categorizes 253 invitees as non-entertainment media. Those invitees include a lot of local Washington, DC, on-air people -- even for traffic and weather. But the political media are overwhelmingly conservative: The Daily Caller, The Blaze, the Washington Times, Newsmax, the Weekly Standard, the Washington Examiner CEO’s assistant, Rush and David Limbaugh, Stephen Hayes, Laura Ingraham, etc.

Five media people are specifically noted on the list as Fox News (TYT identified at least 22 others connected to Fox News). Democratic media figures invited are likely to have appeared on Fox. CNN is mentioned in connection to one guest; MSNBC not at all.

Invited writers from mainstream outlets are often conservative pundits or cover a religion beat. Liberal and progressive names seldom appear, even from major outlets, let alone progressive media counterparts to the Daily Caller or the Blaze.

Sitting members of Congress are automatically invited, but of former members, The Family invited 20 Democrats and 38 Republicans, almost twice as many, plus former Democrat Joe Lieberman.

The invitation list reflects recurring religious discrimination, too. In nations TYT has looked at, a clear pattern emerges among who gets to choose the guests and, not surprisingly, among the guests they invite.

Christianity is favored over non-Christianity, Protestantism over Catholicism, and evangelicalism over non-evangelicalism. Non-evangelical leaders are vastly outnumbered by evangelical non-leaders.

What the documents do not show is intentional discrimination. If anything, The Family appears un-strategic in its operations, at times to its own detriment. The autonomy its associates enjoy mirrors the laissez-faire economic philosophies that helped give rise to The Family.

This makes it difficult to infer intent or to apply sweeping generalities to The Family or the breakfast. The organization is relational; if you’re friends with a Family insider, you might get an invite. Disparities in who gets invited arise less from a conscious plan and more from the vagaries of who becomes friends with someone inside The Family. Which, of course, is a textbook recipe for systemic bias. In some cases, invitations also appear to be tied to whether invitees might provide financial support for Family associates (who raise their own funds that are then administered by The Family).

It can be startling at times to come across the online ministries of Family associates. In blog posts and videos, they project inclusivity, joy, and distinctly un-Trumpian gentleness, humor, and even vulnerability.

They seldom resemble servants of an angry God or the cartoons of televangelism. The modest fundraising conducted by Family associates appears largely untouched by modern marketing. By any measure, they appear genuine in their compassion and desire to do good. They “have a heart for Africa,” many say. Some literally spend their lives overseas in conditions materially wanting but spiritually rewarding. They dedicate themselves to helping others.

But their compassion is intuitive, not strategic. Few are experts or rely on experts to determine the best way to do the most good. God leads them.

As it turns out, God seldom leads them to assist the elderly or the sick. More often, Family missionaries are led to help those whose responses happen to be the most rewarding.

So you will find Family associates working with impoverished children or remote villages in Africa, southeast Asia, or Latin America. They build schools and they teach. Typically they teach lessons premised on belief in Jesus. If you believe Jesus is the answer to all problems, after all, what solution would not include Jesus?

Kids are taught English, for instance, by learning songs about how Jesus loves them. They learn the language, but also the love…as The Family sees it. It’s a love based on surrender, accepting God’s will and Biblical authority – including condemnation of homosexuality and even, for some, the subordination of women. The Family’s students learn to speak that language, too, overseas and at Christian schools where scholarships take them here in the U.S.

Because how unsatisfying would it be to make the world a better place by doing volunteer accounting in the back office of some bureaucratic (but effective and professionally run) monolith with exacting, quantitative standards? Family associates can be found instead at the low-profile, sometimes one-person nonprofits that proliferate on the IRS website like weeds in a vast orchard of Christian charities.

Some Family members have anonymous benefactors, wealthy enough to support mission work that jibes with their political inclinations. The politics matter, because The Family tasks its missionaries to bond with the leaders of their host nations – leaders who know full well, as Sharlet documented, that these bright-eyed missionaries have the ears of the Americans who hold the wallets and bombs of the U.S. government. These missionaries use their access to local leaders to help stand up miniature versions of both the prayer breakfast and The Family – iterations that share or even exceed the homophobic or theocratic leanings of their model.

Ironically, one could argue that The Family does not use its influence enough. In accordance with their famous slogan of “Jesus Plus Nothing,” The Family asks little of the leaders they minister. As we’ll report, The Family enjoys proximity to local and national leaders that entails virtually no accountability for their political decisions and accepts virtually any policy that can be seen as Jesus-based.

To The Family, accountability starts with Jesus; they seldom champion the checks-and-balances accountability that transparency brings. As one source close to The Family told me, its leaders might counsel a senator to work on his marriage, but remain silent on matters such as encouraging violent upheaval of American democracy. During a conversation with notorious Republican operative Lee Atwater, Doug Coe, the late Family leader, reportedly condemned adultery only when pressed.

And so these smiling missionaries, even those preaching inclusivity and love for sinners and enemies, end up arm in arm with unsmiling politicians feverish to squeeze voting rights, or reproductive rights. A smaller group inside the ranks of The Family flares with anger when LGBTQ rights are framed as an affront to religious freedom.

Historically, The Family’s rationale for serving leaders unconditionally is that reducing evil means engaging with it. Who needs prayer more, after all, than the worst among us?

As Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-NY), another Family ally, said this year, “the Prayer Breakfast reminds us to both love our neighbors and even the more challenging love our enemies.” It was an irrefutable defense right up until we could check whether The Family engages its own enemies as fervently as it engages the enemies of others.

Now, however, Suozzi’s high-minded aspirations are hard to reconcile with the 2016 invitation list. The names present, and those omitted, suggest that enemies of human rights may come and break bread, but enemies of Republicans get left out in the cold.

The Revs. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and William Barber – some of America’s top religious leaders on the left – are all absent from the 2016 invitation list. Business leaders, however, appear in abundance (although yesteryear’s captains of industry have been replaced by today’s regional managers of industry).

Non-religious leaders who advocate for the disenfranchised are hard to come by. The late AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka, invited by Beasley, was one of the rare labor leaders on the list.

Still, participating Democrats claim the breakfast somehow can foster reconciliation, regardless of the short supply there of LGBTQ people, socialists, and baby-killers with whom to reconcile. “After a very divisive time in our nation’s history,” Coons said in February, “it’s my hope that this year’s breakfast offers Americans of all faiths and backgrounds the strength and courage to unite as a nation and tackle the challenges we face together.”

Except now we know that Americans of all faiths and backgrounds aren’t at the breakfast. In fact, as our first report will show, the breakfast – and some Family leaders – helped fuel our current divisions. And their secret work today is at the heart of the challenges we now face.

Jonathan Larsen is TYT’s managing editor. You can find him on Twitter @JTLarsen.

With additional research and reporting by TYT Investigates News Assistant Zoltan Lucas and Intern Jamia Zarzuela, and assistance from members of the TYT Army.

If you have tips on this subject or others you can contact us using Proton Mail at TheYoungTurks@ProtonMail.com. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to stay on top of exclusive news stories from The Young Turks.

===

9/21

Salon.com

How MyPillow guy Mike Lindell came to Jesus — and to ...

The year before Baldwin met Lindell, the Christian actor and movie producer started his own religious endeavor: Friends of Stephen Baldwin ...

https://www.salon.com/2021/09/03/how-mypillow-guy-mike-lindell-came-to-jesus--and-to-donald-trump_partner/

no lnx many

How MyPillow guy Mike Lindell came to Jesus — and to Donald Trump

Mike Lindell was just a guy who sold pillows on TV — until he met Dr. Ben Carson at the National Prayer Breakfast

By JONATHAN LARSEN

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

Michael Lindell, with My Pillow, laughs with President Donald Trump during a "Made in America," roundtable event in the East Room at the White House in Washington, DC on Wednesday, July 19, 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)]

This article originally appeared at The Young Turks. Used by permission.

One of a series about the Fellowship Foundation, the secretive religious group that runs the National Prayer Breakfast and is popularly known as The Family. This series is based on Family documents obtained by TYT, including lists of breakfast guests and who invited them.

Perhaps as much as former President Trump himself, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has become the public face of the Big Lie. Like the Jan. 6 Capitol attackers, Lindell is brandishing openly theocratic, Christian beliefs to secure a Biblically based autocracy led by a man he sees as divinely anointed.

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Lindell wasn't always this way. But over the past several years, people with ties to The Family have played key roles behind the scenes in Lindell's radicalization, religiously and politically.

Family insiders and allies, for instance, have dominated the boards of Lindell's nonprofits. One man associated with The Family was part of Lindell's "legal offense fund" to challenge election results.

Lindell's faith journey often features in his speeches. As he tells it, God orchestrated a series of events that changed him from a casual Christian into the hardcore, autocratic evangelical who called for the U.S. military to install Trump in a second term.

"What gave [Lindell] the certainty he was looking for was evangelical Christianity," one Republican operative told Politico. "He was born again."

That religious certitude has proved infectious. A MyPillow employee told Politico, "There's a lot of people calling and saying Mike is a disciple of God."

Lindell's certainty rests on his conviction that God had a hand in key moments in his life. That conviction, he explains, arose from his inability to see any other explanation for those events. He called his memoir, "What Are the Odds?"

What Lindell appears not to know, however, is the full extent of Family involvement in the events that so profoundly changed him.

Publicly, Lindell has only addressed his Family ties in relation to one incident: The 2016 National Prayer Breakfast. And even there, he elides important details that we can now fill in. He has never said, for instance, who invited him or why.

Cue Stephen Baldwin

Lindell met actor Stephen Baldwin at a New York radio station. "I'd felt led to visit the station in early 2014, though at the time I wasn't sure why," Lindell wrote in his book. "Now I know it was to meet Stephen, who became like a brother to me."

In a brief call this week, Lindell told TYT how he came to attend the 2016 prayer breakfast: "I was invited at the last minute by my friend Stephen Baldwin." The Christian actor also attended that year's breakfast.

Baldwin, a Trump supporter, would be at Lindell's side for a number of important events. But, according to an internal Family document, it was not Baldwin who invited Lindell to the breakfast; at least, not directly. (Baldwin and others with ties to The Family did not respond to requests for comment, unless noted otherwise.)

The year before Baldwin met Lindell, the Christian actor and movie producer started his own religious endeavor: Friends of Stephen Baldwin Ministry. All three principals of Baldwin's nonprofit have had ties to The Family.

One of the three principals was Margie Frank, connected by court records to a Texas oil inheritance. A six-figure donor to conservative causes, including reducing reproductive rights, Frank more recently has backed Republicans pushing the Big Lie.

Frank's husband, Jonathan, was quoted in Philippine media as a spokesperson for the National Prayer Breakfast, in relation to boxer Manny Pacquiao's attendance in 2015. The religious, right-wing fighter ostensibly was invited by Congress, but the invitation reportedly was delivered by a Texas pastor named Wilfred Job.

Job, whose church had a significant Filipino population, was the second Family affiliate running Baldwin's ministry. The third principal at Baldwin's ministry was a Pennsylvania real-estate developer named Todd Hendricks. Both Job and Hendricks are connected to The Family.

A source close to The Family told TYT that Job did virtually nothing without Hendricks. Internal Family documents support this: The two men are listed as collaborating to invite 29 people in 2016. Job invited no one on his own.

(Job's nine other invitations were submitted in conjunction with two then-leaders of The Family: Doug Coe, now deceased, and former South Carolina governor David Beasley, now head of the UN World Food Programme.)

By contrast, Hendricks appears to have had more autonomy. Hendricks submitted names on his own for both 2016 and 2018. Aside from Coe, no individual submitted more guest names for the 2016 event than Hendricks did: 109. He had at least 59 people attend in 2018.

Three years after joining Baldwin's ministry, it was Job, with Coe's sign-off, who invited Baldwin's new friend, Lindell — best known back then as TV's pillow pitchman — to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast, along with his girlfriend. According to the same internal Family document, Hendricks invited Baldwin and Pacquiao.

Asked about Job, Lindell said, "I don't know who you're talking about." Asked whether he was aware that the Lindell Foundation listed Job as its president on its 2017 tax filing, Lindell said, "No." Pressed for details, Lindell said, "Go to jail. Go somewhere and find yourself a nice jail cell because that's where you're going to end up. Goodbye."

Whether or not Lindell knows Job and Hendricks, that's how TV's pillow guy — not yet very religious, let alone political — ended up at the National Prayer Breakfast. It was at the breakfast where he would meet Dr. Ben Carson, and hear a prophecy that would change everything.

The prophecy

Although the president's Thursday morning speech is the public highlight, the National Prayer Breakfast is actually a four-day event. It's in breakout rooms and prayer sessions where the real work gets done.

The night before the breakfast, Lindell metretired Army Maj. Gen. Bob Dees.Dees told TYT he has attended a number of breakfasts over the last decade and "various other events with Fellowship members," but has "no direct association with the Fellowship Foundation."

A source close to The Family agreed with that characterization, saying Dees had ties to The Family, but was nowhere near the inner circle. Dees had, however, just started working very closely with someone who was in the inner circle.

Carson, a future Trump cabinet member, was already a Family star — having ripped into then-President Obama during a speech at the 2013 breakfast. Now, Carson himself was running for president. Dees was running Carson's campaign. And the campaign had just brought on a Family board member to head up communications.

Dees declined to reveal some specifics about his discussions with Lindell, but did share a few. "I can offer that we had a far-ranging discussion in a breakout room the day prior to the prayer breakfast," Dees said.

Lindell is only slightly more expansive in his book. "I talked with [Dees] for over an hour," Lindell writes, "in a discussion about the direction of the country."

Now the president of Resilience Consulting, Dees has worked with a wide range of conservative Christian organizations, including Liberty University and Military Ministry, which strives to convert members of the armed forces. He has also drawn scrutiny for his LGBTQ positions and views on Islam.

After the breakfast, Lindell says, he and Baldwin were "randomly" invited to a breakout room where a dozen would gather for prayer, including Ben Carson. Lindell doesn't say who picked him.

And it's not clear how random it was. Dees told TYT, "After the prayer breakfast, the NPB leadership asked me to bring Dr. Ben Carson to a small room for follow-up prayer with a small group of perhaps 15 individuals, including Mike Lindell."

Dees wouldn't say who asked him to bring Carson to meet Lindell and the others. "From my perspective," Dees said, "it was simply a courtesy to put a man of Dr. Carson's prominence together with a seemingly randomly selected group of NPB attendees."

Baldwin, however, apparently already knew Carson, because Lindell says it was Baldwin who introduced him to Carson in the breakout room. And Carson's communications director, A. Larry Ross, was also at the breakfast.

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Whether Lindell knew it or not, Ross is also The Family's spokesperson and a key leader. A Texas public relations man who long worked for Billy Graham, Ross has been on the board of the Fellowship Foundation, The Family's legal entity, since 2011. If Job and Hendricks brought Lindell to the starting gate, it would be Ross who eventually got Lindell to the finish line.

It's in the breakout room after the breakfast that Lindell hears the prophecy. He loves the story enough to have told it many times since, but not enough to tell it consistently.

In June, Lindell told it this way:

[I]n that room we were praying, the, a guy in there prophesied in there. He said, "Two of you in this room are gonna become great friends and change the course of history." And Ben and I are great friends! And he said, and I'm sitting there, though, as they're praying and he's saying that, I go, I go, "If one of them's me, who would the other one be?" and this, things started happening to me.

In his 2019 book, he tells the story differently. It's not just two of them, and the prophecy isn't directed specifically at him. "Two or three of you in this room are going to become great friends," the unnamed prophet says. "And you will be part of a great change in our nation."

Either way, the prophecy hit Lindell like a thunderbolt with his name on it. What he may not have known was that The Family throws the exact same thunderbolt at pretty much everyone, even printing it on breakfast literature.

It's based on Matthew 18:20: Where two or three of you gather in my name, there am I with them. As Coe put it to journalist Jeff Sharlet, "Two, or three, agree? They can do anything."

What they would do was also a topic of discussion at the breakfast breakout room. And it wasn't just faith.

"I suddenly found myself surrounded by people talking about God and politics," Lindell says in his book.

The dozen people in the room gathered in a circle and began talking about the critical importance of the 2016 election. We agreed it was going to be a real spiritual turning point for the country. One path could lead us toward national renewal. The other could lead us down a dark path from which there might be no return, a path that had begun with the removal of God from the public square.

Lindell's discussion in the breakout room — with Carson, Dees, Baldwin and others — he writes, "opened my eyes to the impact of politics on ordinary people."

After dropping out of the Republican presidential race in March 2016, Carson tells Trump about Lindell, who then gets invited to meet with Trump on Aug. 15. The day before their meeting, Lindell donates $2,700 to Trump's campaign, $17,300 to the Republican National Committee, and $20,000 to Trump Victory. (Trump Victory was later accused along with state party committees of circumventing donation limits. The first federal donation of Lindell's life had been $527.27 to the Republican Party of Virginia on May 25, the day Trump Victory was formed.)

The Family had helped to open Lindell's eyes to Trump, but his soul still needed work. Within a year, though, Lindell would be on his knees.

The operation

In the months after bringing Baldwin and Lindell to the prayer breakfast, Family insiders expanded their sphere beyond Baldwin and his nonprofits to Lindell's.

Why the interest in Lindell — who wasn't yet an evangelical?

The source close to The Family said they weren't aware of the relationships with Baldwin and Lindell, but had heard of tensions between Hendricks and Job and the internal team, including Beasley, that oversaw much of the breakfast logistics.

Referring to Hendricks and Job specifically, the source told TYT, "Those guys were always hunting a big fish like a Mike Lindell that would support their stuff."

The source said, "If you can convince him, 'Oh, we're doing this amazing work,' he might just be the kind of guy that gives you $10 million. Or he might be the kind of guy that puts you on his charitable foundation board and gives you a salary."

Baldwin's ministry never filed any federal tax forms, so it's not clear whether anyone got paid. The Lindell Foundation, however, is another story.

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Tax filings for the Lindell Foundation don't list any board members for 2016, but Lindell writes that Ross joined the board that year. The following year, the Lindell Foundation lists six people as officers or directors — half of them tied to The Family.

In addition to Lindell's niece and a lawyer from Texas (where Ross and Job are based), the four other people named are three board members — Lindell, Ross and Dees — and a new president: Wilfred Job, who takes home $55,385 that year.

Asked about Job by TYT, Lindell said, "I don't know who you're talking about."

In 2018, Lindell brings on a right-wing Republican from his home state, Doug Wardlow — a former intern of Family friend Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — who soon becomes MyPillow's general counsel and is now enmeshed in the company's Big Lie legal battles. Job doesn't appear on the filings anymore.

Ross, however, the Family board member and former Carson spokesperson, expands his role in the Lindell-verse.

How much Ross's communications company makes from his work we don't know, but Ross ends up serving as a spokesperson for Baldwin, Lindell, the Lindell Foundation and MyPillow. And helping Lindell get Trump elected.

Three days before the Trump/Clinton matchup, Manny Pacquiao stepped into the ring with Jessie Vargas for the WBO welterweight championship. Lindell was ringside, along with The Family.

Lindell and Baldwin had flown to Las Vegas for the fight at the invitation of a "group of [Baldwin's] friends," Lindell writes. He doesn't name these friends, but says, "One of the men in our party was a prominent Democrat I'd met at the National Prayer Breakfast."

Wilfred Job — who had delivered Pacquiao's 2015 breakfast invite — reportedly traveled with Baldwin on at least two occasions. Ross was also in town and joined Lindell for a big group dinner.

During the meal, the Trump campaign called: They wanted Lindell back in Minnesota the next day to join Trump for a rally two days before the vote. The only problem: No flights.

The group — apparently all Trump supporters — start hunting online for tickets. "Suddenly," Lindell writes, "Larry called out, 'Got it!' ... Larry hustled me out of the restaurant, and we jumped in a car for McCarran."

At a meeting of the Lindell Foundation board that same month, Ross comes to Lindell's aid again. He encourages Lindell to attend a program for military veterans. The program, Lindell writes, had helped hundreds of veterans "come to a place of freedom by locating primary points of pain in their pasts, and inviting God in to heal them."

Operation Restored Warrior (ORW) has multiple connections to The Family. Ross had participated in the program, as had retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, now a vice president at the Family Research Council.

The man who ran Operation Restored Warrior was Paul Lavelle, who had met Lindell at the 2016 breakfast. Like Dees, the source described Lavelle as well outside the inner circle, but having ties to The Family.

One of ORW's funders had invited Lavelle to the breakfast (along with six people from Compassion International, a Ross client that has been accused of trying to proselytize the vulnerable children it serves). At the breakfast, Lindell later wrote in his book, Lavelle "felt led" to invite Lindell to ORW.

Pressed by both Ross and Kendra, his girlfriend, Lindell agrees to go to ORW, but he's still reluctant about it. That changes at his second National Prayer Breakfast. 

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There, he writes, he was inspired by the "powerful, jaw-dropping message" of Senate Chaplain Barry Black. Lindell doesn't give specifics, but in his speech, Black argued for the existence of an interventionist God, still active in the matters of humanity, who takes action in response to prayers.

Three months after Ross's suggestion and just weeks after Black's speech, Lindell flies to Colorado and delivers himself up first to Lavelle, and then to Jesus.

"I went in there with hope," Lindell later told the Christian Broadcasting Network. "I said, 'God please, show me you're real, show me, you know? I want that personal relationship,' And on the second day, on Feb. 18, 2017, I did a full surrender on my knees."

"I can now," Lindell says later, "talk about Jesus Christ in the same way I used to talk about a pillow."

Today

As TYT reported earlier this year, a number of known Family leaders and backers have donated to Trump and other Republicans after they began telling Americans the election was stolen. Future reports will identify others, in addition to those named here.

Much as many Family leaders reject separation of church and state, Lindell observes few distinctions between his personal, commercial, philanthropic, religious and political pursuits. Ross has continued to represent not just the Lindell Foundation but Lindell himself and MyPillow, which has been an active participant in Lindell's Big Lie crusade..

On March 17 of this year, Lindell created a new nonprofit: The Lindell Legal Offense Fund. Its purpose: "Advancing legal efforts regarding election integrity issues …"

The three-man board includes Lindell and lawyer Kurt Olsen, a lawyer and special ops veteran whose assistance to Lindell included last month's disastrous election-security summit. The third man is Paul Lavelle.

Despite the summit's outcome — which Lindell blamed on outside forces — his faith remains steady, his political convictions unshaken.

A report this summer by the conservative outlet The Dispatch says that Lindell starts most of his days on the phone with his prayer group. But it doesn't say who they are.

With additional research and reporting by TYT Investigates News Assistant Zoltan Lucas and Intern Jamia Zarzuella.

JONATHAN LARSEN

Jonathan Larsen is the managing editor and executive producer of TYT Investigates.

MORE FROM JONATHAN LARSEN • FOLLOW @JTLARSEN

Related Topics

Ben Carson Christianity Donald Trump Mike Lindell National Prayer Breakfast Religion Reporting Stephen Baldwin The Family The Young Turks

https://tyt.com/stories/2E4lb3zIDV37rdUAwsh1zn/5uRUGSqLjaM9cyUhYRuhzy

One of a series about the Fellowship Foundation, the secretive religious group that runs the National Prayer Breakfast and is popularly known as The Family. This series is based on Family documents obtained by TYT, including lists of breakfast guests and who invited them.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell started his charity, the Lindell Foundation, in 2012, to help addicts and substance abusers.

It was dissolved and then born again in 2013. It relaunched in 2015. In January 2018, Lindell told Don Imus that he was getting ready to start to launch and in October 2018 told Laura Loomer, “We’re not completely launched.”

This week, Lindell told TYT he hasn’t done anything with the Lindell Foundation in four years. The Lindell Foundation URL redirects to his personal site. But tax records show it was still taking in money -- and distributing it to evangelical causes -- as of 2019, its most recent filing.

As TYT reported, insiders from The Family have been involved with the Lindell Foundation since 2016, the year Lindell attended his first National Prayer Breakfast.As his connections with The Family deepened that year, traditional lines between Lindell’s politics, religion, commerce, and philanthropy began to fade.

Related story: How Mike Lindell Found Jesus Christ…and Donald Trump]

Against internal advice, Lindell turned MyPillow explicitly political. He began to see his company as a platform to do what he believed to be God’s work -- including supporting Donald Trump. Then, after Trump won, Lindell writes,

“I began to understand what God might intend for the ‘platform’ He had provided, and that the Lindell Foundation and our focus on helping people might be a vessel for that. Throughout 2016, I had asked myself why a guy like me would be invited to participate in high-profile, nationally watched events. Now I was beginning to think that maybe God had opened those doors in order to expand whatever good the Lindell Foundation might do.”

Tax filings show that, after The Family got involved with the Lindell Foundation, the charity’s focus shifted from addiction toward evangelism. When Imus asked him in 2018 about helping addicts, Lindellresponded, “No, no. That was originally what I was gonna do.”

(Lindell has maintained some focus on addiction elsewhere. Another philanthropy, the Lindell Recovery Network, allows addicts to view videos pertinent to both their age and substance use.)

In Lindell’s media appearances, however, the Lindell Foundation has provided him with valuable publicity. Christian actor Stephen Baldwin got Lindell an award for the Lindell Foundation’s work.

Related story: Stephen Baldwin’s Other Family

Lindelltells interviewers he’s put $6 million of his own money into the foundation, to cover overhead, so that every dime donated goes to the beneficiaries. In 2017, Lindell’s niece told the city of Chaska, MN, MyPillow’s headquarters, that the foundation had committed $2 million for housing.

But Lindell Foundation filings show no sign of any such expenditure. And the charity’s total revenues since it was formed add up to only $2.6 million, well below the $6 million Lindell says he donated. Its total expenses, including employee salaries, grants, and charitable distributions, total only $2.6 million.

In 2017, the charity reported having 12 employees -- but only disclosed $201,211 in salaries and compensation. Subtracting the $55,385 paid to its president, that would leave the remaining 11 staffers making an average salary of $13,257.

Lindell has said he wanted donors to select their recipients. In 2018, Lindell told Imus, “You’re gonna go on [the site] and you’re basically gonna be able to pick your need, like pick your square. You’ll hear a story about whatever it is, and then whatever you wanna give, even if it’s five dollars…you’ll hear back from them online the difference you made.”

As Lindell told TYT, however, he hasn’t done anything with the Lindell Foundation in four years. Someone apparently has, though. Because although the foundation’s footprint shrank, it has continued funding evangelical causes under the leadership of Family insiders and friends.

Family Values

By 2017, three Family insiders or allies were helping to run Lindell’s charity: Lindell Foundation Pres. Wilfred Job and board members Bob Dees and A. Larry Ross. With The Family’s hands on the wheel, Lindell’s charity went in a new direction, that included the Philippines.

Ross is both a board member of The Family’s legal entity, the Fellowship Foundation, and its spokesperson. In December 2016, Ross and Lindell flew to the Philippines on “matters related to the Lindell Foundation,” according to Lindell’s book.

The foundation’s filings indicate having no one working outside the United States, and Lindell says only they were “invited” to go, not by whom. But The Family had connections in the Philippines. While they were there, Lindell and Ross met with Pres. Rodrigo Duterte, who had been invited to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast prior to becoming president.

Just a mayor at the time, Duterte had been invited to the breakfast by a Pennsylvania real estate developer named Todd Hendricks, a Family insider who has invited scores of people to the breakfast. Hendricks had his own Philippines connections -- he attended a 2015 meeting there with Family members and Filipino leaders. And although Americans are told that it’s Congress that invites foreign leaders, Filipino politicians knew to thank Hendricks and Job by name for their invitations. Job, the Lindell Foundation’s new president, also had connections to the Philippines.

Lindell, however, told TYT he “had no idea” who Wilfred Job was. Asked about the salary the Lindell Foundation reported paying Job, Lindell said he was not aware of that. Lindell added, “Go to jail. Go somewhere and find yourself a nice jail cell, because that’s where you’re going to end up. Goodbye.”

During the brief call, Lindell several times referred to the reporter as a “scumbag” and at one point said, “Where do you get these lies?”

Job’s position and his salary are listed on the Lindell Foundation’s 2017 tax filing. According to the filing, Job worked five hours a week for the foundation, and received $55,385 in compensation.

Lindell, Job, and Ross are also listed in Texas business filings as directors of two other charities. Giving Grace Church was formed in July 2016, while Encircle was formed in March 2017. It’s not clear whether Lindell is even aware of these entities, as he denied knowing Job, the filings have Texas addresses for Lindell, and both entities were short-lived.

Although Lindell’s book says Ross was on the board of the Lindell Foundation in 2016, the first time the foundation discloses the existence of a board is 2017, the first year Family involvement is documented. That same year, the filing says, the Lindell Foundation’s mission expanded beyond addicts to include the “homeless, poor, [and] veterans.” The foundation would do this, in part, by funding evangelical organizations.

The Lindell Foundation’s 2017 beneficiaries included:

Like most charities, the evangelical organizations funded by the Lindell Foundation do good work, helping people who need it. Many, however, view a personal relationship with Jesus as a fundamental need, and incorporate proselytization into their work to meet that need.

One Mission, for instance, builds homes in Mexico, but has also supported missionaries. Somebody Cares America, a part of Turning Points Ministries, also proselytizes. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) has been banned from some schools for coercive proselytizing -- “illegal,” according to the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The FCA also reportedly prohibits same-sex relationships among its staff and volunteers.

Detroit Blight Busters builds and renovates homes, but also razes homes seen as blights on their neighborhoods. “Get the city safe, get the city clean,” its founder told The Guardian. “The capitalists will take care of the rest.”

Then there’s Togetherworks. The Georgia charity got $25,000 from the Lindell Foundation in 2017. Bob Dees, the Lindell Foundation board member and Family friend, joined the Togetherworks board that same year.

Lindell met Dees and Ben Carson -- who had recently made Dees his campaign manager -- through The Family, at the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast. Dees, a retired Army major general, was active across a constellation of right-wing Christian organizations.

Dees is also the founder of Resilience God Style (RGS), a program to build individual and national resilience through the communication of “Biblical truth.” RGS endorsers include Franklin Graham, Col. Oliver North (Ret.), and former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR), who compares Dees to Robert E. Lee.

When Dees joined the board in 2017, Togetherworks reported that he did 25 hours of work per week, and received compensation of $9000. Dees told TYT that the money was “reimbursement for goods and services provided in conduct of the Resilience God Style (RGS) conference and speaking ministry.” Togetherworks had also started funding RGS directly in 2016 and continued to do so, before drastically cutting its funding for Dees’ program in 2019.

The Lindell Foundation, however, appears to have begun funding RGS directly. In 2018, the Lindell Foundation reported a $10,000 “scholarship” for something called RGS Emmanuel. The tax ID number for RGS Emmanuel is the same as the tax ID for Emmanuel College, a small, Christian college in Georgia that made Campus Pride’s list of “absolute worst” colleges for LGBTQ students.

Dees, however, said Emmanuel College had nothing to do with it. (A spokesperson for Emmanuel College said the college had no such scholarship.)

Instead, Dees explained, the money was part of a scholarship funded by the Lindell Foundation in 2018 and 2019 to send a Liberian student named Emmanuel to study atLiberty University.

The Lindell Foundation filing does say that the nonprofit “donated toward education through Liberia 2 Liberty, an approved 501(c)3.” The IRS, however, has no record of a charity called Liberia 2 Liberty. No such entity appears in Virginia state records.

In an email, Dees said, “The flow of the Lindell donation went to Together Works (501c3)- Resilience God Style (RGS) Project Liberia2Liberty (or what [the] Lindell 990 calls ‘RGS Emmanuel’). Subsequently, Together Works used the donation proceeds to sen[d] to Liberty University for academic costs for [the student],” who “has now returned to serve in her home country.”

The Lindell Foundation did not disclose why it donated to bring a student from Liberia to attend Liberty University, the second-largest online school in the country, with 85 percent of its students remote in 2017. Liberty University did not respond to a request for comment, but awardedLindell an honorary doctorate in 2019. Liberty, another school on Campus Pride’s worst list, wassued earlier this summer for policies that allegedly make sexual assault more likely.

And it wasn’t just evangelical charities now getting Lindell money. In 2017, the Lindell Foundation paid $18,000 to Development Services Group -- a Christian, anti-abortion company -- for fundraising consulting (Lindell Foundation revenues went from $950,125 that year to $497,801 in 2018).

By 2019, the Lindell Foundation’s board had changed somewhat. Wilfred Job isn’t listed on any filings after his first year there. Dees and Ross, by now a Lindell spokesperson, remain, however, and they’ve been joined by another Family friend.

Paul Lavelle was a military veteran who ran a Christian program to help troubled veterans. It was Lavelle’s program, Operation Restored Warrior, that got Mike Lindell to drop to his knees and surrender to Jesus in 2017. In 2019, Lavelle became the treasurer of the Lindell Foundation.

Other foundation leaders at this point include Lindell, his niece, and a Minnesota Republican named Doug Wardlow. Wardlow, also general counsel for MyPillow, who reportedly had worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is known for its opposition to LGBTQ rights, including banning trans children from using the restrooms where they feel most comfortable.

Wardlow, Lindell said, “worked for this Christian organization that backs my Christian beliefs.” Wardlow also reportedly once bullied a gay classmate to the point of attempting suicide.

By this point, the MyPillow executives who once sat atop the Lindell Foundation were long gone -- although it appears MyPillow employees continued to perform administrative duties for the nonprofit.

Today

Lindell’s claim that his foundation hasn’t done anything for four years has some truth to it. It reported having fewer employees in 2018, just five, and none in 2019. Nevertheless, even in 2019, with zero employees, the Lindell Foundation still reported $60,000 in expenses. And somehow, whether Lindell knew it or not, money kept flowing, miraculously, to evangelical organizations.

Until its 2021 tax filings are released, we won’t know what the Lindell Foundation spent its money on, if anything, during Lindell’s post-election crusade to restore Trump to the White House. Nonprofit expenditures in political areas can potentially violate the law, but Lindell has frequently blurred the lines between his various endeavors.

Like much of The Family, Lindell dismisses the separation of church and state as an absurdity. When God’s will is clear, checks and balances are literally against God. Lindell has applied that same thinking to virtually all of his endeavors, including the Lindell Foundation.

Of the three board members of the Lindell Legal Offense Fund, the nonprofit entity for his “election integrity” efforts, two also sit on the Lindell Foundation board: Lindell himself and Lavelle.

Another Lindell Foundation board member, Doug Wardlow, is also very much engaged in the election issues. In his capacity as MyPilow general counsel, Wardlow must fight the legal battle that arose from Lindell’s false election claims -- because MyPillow pushed them. And Ross, the Family board member, doesn’t just represent Lindell and his foundation, he also represents MyPillow.

As TYT reported earlier this year, a number of Family leaders and financial backers were early supporters of the Big Lie -- donating after Election Day to Trump and other Republicans actively trying to convince millions of Americans that Joe Biden had stolen the election. Three weeks after that report, Biden delivered the traditional presidential speech at the breakfast anyway

Just a month after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Biden said in a video address to the breakfast’s remote attendees, “We know now we must confront and defeat political extremism, white supremacy and domestic terrorism.”

Calling this “a dark, dark time,” Biden asked, “So where do we turn?” His answer: “Faith.”

===

Religion News Service

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721

last of the kraken? hype

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/lindell-elvis/

===

an 621

Ivanka and Jared are distancing themselves from Trump as he has 'frequent contact With Lindell: report

David Badash The New Civil Rights Move

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===

not grift gov't apprently just ingnorant of regs?

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's botched mask venture has become a bottomless pit of losses that he still has not yet recovered from. During a phone interview with The Daily Beast, the controversial CEO and Trump ally detailed the financial strain he is now facing as a result of the failed venture which has cost him millions.

Back in March of 2020, Lindell announced plans to create and donate cloth masks to frontline workers. However, that plan quickly hit a wall as cloth masks did not meet the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) criteria for face coverings. The issues did not stop there. As the months progressed, Lindell was faced with an even bigger problem.

Now, the CEO is stuck will millions of face coverings his company cannot get rid of. With many states becoming more lenient where face coverings are concerned, the demand for masks has slightly decreased since the onset of the pandemic. "I can't give them away," Lindell said during the interview this week "I tried to. No one wants the things anymore."

The controversial CEO reportedly claims to have reconstructed his company's manufacturing line so it could produce cloth masks. Now, the equipment and machinery acquired for mask-making just sit in a corner collecting dust and serving no purpose. Since Lindell was only able to dump a meager 5% of the mask inventory, he is still stuck with more than $7 million in useless inventory.

"All of a sudden, there was masks everywhere, almost as if the industry knew it was coming and waited for prices to go up," Lindell said. "Now I probably got $7 million out of my pocket that we're just stuck with."

As a devout MAGA supporter who devolved into an anti-masker, Lindell's decision to speak with the publication does come as a bit of a surprise.

He also admitted that he believed the publication would "unfairly spin his mask enterprise as a 'failure.'" But despite the botched venture and his abrupt about-face on masks, he attempted to defend his mask products as he insisted "it helped so many people back then."

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===

travis raw AN 621

Trump has reportedly been telling people that he'll somehow be reinstated as president in August, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is taking credit for that notion.

The Trump-loving businessman claims he's been filling the twice-impeached one-term president with ideas about returning to the White House through means that aren't laid down in the U.S. Constitution, although it's not clear what justification Lindell has offered for that scenario, reported The Daily Beast.

"If Trump is saying August," Lindell told the website, "that is probably because he heard me say it publicly."

Two sources close to Trump told The Beast the ex-president has been increasingly asking confidants about possibly returning to the White House by the end of summer, claiming that "highly respected" people have been saying that's possible.

Both sources said they decided not to tell Trump they don't believe that's possible, and even Lindell seems more hopeful than confident.

"The month of August, for this, is subjective," Lindell said. "It is my hope that Donald Trump is reinstated, after all the proof comes out, by the end of August, but I don't know if it'll be that month, specifically. I started saying August…about four weeks ago. That was my estimation. I spoke about it with my lawyers who said that they should have something ready for us to bring before the U.S. Supreme Court by July. So, in my mind, I hope that means that we could have Donald Trump back in the White House by August. That's how I landed on August, and I'm hopeful that that is correct."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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jenna attacked for saying trump can't be re-install in aug b/c you know lAW/REALITY?

621  MAGA heads go berserk over 'incompetent failure' Jenna Ellis after ... ›

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trump-reinstated/

NO LNX TWT

On June 1, the New York Times' Maggie Haberman reported, on Twitter, that former President Donald Trump still believes that the 2020 election results will be overturned and that he will be "reinstated" to the White House by August. Haberman discussed her reporting during a June 2 appearance on CNN's "New Day," stressing to hosts John Berman and Brianna Keilar that Trump is "echoing" the false claims he is hearing from attorney Sidney Powell and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

"There is no mechanism by which this can happen," Haberman said of Trump's delusional claim that he will be returning to the Oval Office by August. But Trump's delusions, Haberman added, are being encouraged by Powell and Lindell — and he is "regurgitating" their bogus claims.

Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August (no… https://t.co/0gUGozPQQR

— Maggie Haberman (@Maggie Haberman) 1622551318.0

Haberman told Berman and Keilar, "What he's doing is echoing things that are being said by Sidney Powell, who was his lawyer — although he distanced himself from her at certain points over the final months of the administration. But she was helping advise him on these efforts to overturn the election last year. This is being said my Michael Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow — who has been pushing this for some time. (Trump) is echoing what they're saying. The difference between them saying it and Donald Trump saying it is that one is the former president — one is a possible future (Republican) Party nominee…. There are people telling him things are possible that are not possible."

Powell and Lindell have been relentless far-right promoters of the Big Lie, falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump — who, Haberman said, has been "so laser-focused" on the recent election "audits" taking place in Arizona and other states because he "thinks they are going to overturn" the 2020 election results.

JUST NOW: "“There is a dangerous component about this conversation that's going on.” @maggieNYT on her reporting t… https://t.co/u3fuzgsHhr

— John Berman (@John Berman) 1622632941.0

Trump, Haberman warned, is trying to use the "conservative media ecosystem" to promote his fantasies of being "reinstated" to the White House this summer.

"People are in their own media ecosystems," Haberman observed.

Berman pointed out that some Trump opponents are upset with Haberman for tweeting about the former president's delusions, and the Times reporter responded that "ignoring" Trump will not make him go away in 2021 any more than it did in 2015 and 2016.

Haberman told Berman and Keilar that Trump "is in control of the Republican Party, to a big extent…. Ignoring him was not the answer in 2015."

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===

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https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/qanon-followers-are-working-arizona-senators-audit-officials-overturn-2020

great pix

As Arizona conducts an audit of ballots in Maricopa County rooted in baseless conspiracy theories about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, it appears the evidence underpinning that effort and much of the work to generate support for it has come from two QAnon followers, Liz Harris and Bobby Piton.

Both Harris and Piton have frequently bragged about working with Arizona senators and audit officials -- in one case, even livestreaming a supposed meeting with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) to discuss their findings -- but their support of the election audit is grounded in widely debunked claims of voter fraud, many of which stem from the same “Stop the Steal” allegations that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

Simply put: Arizona’s election audit has a QAnon problem.

Harris and Piton’s role in the Arizona election audit 

Harris and Piton have both managed to place themselves in roles of influence as two of the main promoters of the Arizona election fraud conspiracy theory, working behind the scenes with state senators and audit officials. The Arizona Republic recently reported on Harris and Piton as some of the key figures involved in the election audit.

Harris is head of a “non-partisan” “grassroots canvass effort” to prove that rampant voter fraud exists in the state’s most populous county (it doesn't). The group claims, using data tabulated by Piton, to have uncovered mass voter fraud during the 2020 election.

Harris ran for the Arizona House of Representatives’s District 17 seat in 2020 but lost the general election. Much of her time is now dedicated to voter fraud canvassing efforts, while she commonly livestreams multiple videos per day related to the Arizona audit on YouTube and Facebook.

Piton is a managing partner at a financial planning and investment advisory firm in Illinois, whose website claims he “has read well in excess of a million pages over his career and has extensively studied physics, quantum mechanics, mathematics, economics, trading, portfolio construction, model development, asset valuation, and alpha generation to develop and refine his methodology.”

It seems that Harris and Piton have a relationship with Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the company conducting the audit. Logan recently came under fire for peddling “Stop the Steal” and other election fraud conspiracy theories on his personal Twitter account before it was deleted.

On April 11, Piton posted on the far-right platform Gab promising to provide his supposed Maricopa election fraud findings“to the person who won the bid to perform the audit,” which would be Logan and Cyber Ninjas. Piton later confirmed to The Daily Beast that Logan “asked him for his assistance” in the election audit, where he was working “in an unofficial capacity.” Piton also prayed a rosary on YouTube for Harris, Logan, and all Arizona “patriots.”

Harris claimed to have met Logan “multiple times,” and there is additional evidence to suggest that Harris and Logan have been in communication about the audit. According to a May 12 newsletter from Arizona Capitol Reports, Logan boosted Harris’ campaign with the hashtag “#PhantomSleeperVoters,” a reference to conspiracy theories about fraudulent ballots cast by nonexistent voters, before the deactivation of his Twitter account.

On February 28, Harris uploaded photos of herself with former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, two of the right-wing, pro-Trump millionaires funding the Arizona election audit, as well as Sidney Powell, the former Trump campaign attorney and conspiracy theorist who attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In the comments under the photos, Harris wrote, “Arizona hold on to your hats… The storm has just begun!” (“The storm” is a key phrase in the QAnon conspiracy theory.) Harris noted that this meeting occurred in Arizona but did not provide other specifics[pix

harris has bragged in an April 25 livestream about sharing her canvassing data with Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann, who has been supportive of the audit. She also said senators were lauding her canvassing efforts and relayed that audit officials were supposedly going to incorporate her work “into this deep-dive forensic audit.”

At one point, Piton livestreamed what appears to be a private Zoom meeting about the election audit between Harris, Rep. Andy Biggs, members of the Arizona Senate, and himself. This means that state Senate members and a sitting U.S. congressman were seemingly consulting with Harris and Piton about the audit and baseless allegations of election fraud. In the same livestream, Piton told his viewers that he had been asked to help with the election audit.

“One of the individuals that may be winning this bid to do the work has contacted me a few weeks back,” Piton said. “I did tell Liz I thought they would be contacting me, or somebody would. And they asked me if I would look at the data and I said that I would definitely be helping in one way, shape, or form.”

Given Piton’s other claims about contact with audit officials, this is most likely another reference to Logan.

On January 19, Piton posted what appears to be a birthday card from Trump and “two Patriots” working in the White House, at least one of whom appears to be from the National Security Council. This is particularly significant given Piton’s unofficial role in the Arizona election audit; the post also claims that Piton has been “communicating some of my findings with” those administration officials. [img]

in an April 2 Facebook post, Piton bragged about signing affidavits for “both Lin Wood and Sidney Powell regarding PA data back in mid December.”

Piton and Harris worked together to attempt to prove potential voter fraud abnormalities. According to Piton, he provided Harris with “a sample size of over 95,000 voter registrations that he forecast would have problems of the approximately 4,300,000 registered voters who are on the voter rolls”; Harris then “randomly selected names on those lists and had volunteers go to work in determining how many of these registered voters had issues.” This formed the basis for their election fraud claims.

Harris’ group started the “Crime of the Century” project, a website dedicated to exposing supposed voter fraud in Arizona. It includes an “Election Integrity Arizona” page that contains Harris’ “initial findings and analysis of the 2020 General Election in Maricopa and Pima counties conducted by a citizens’ non-partisan grassroots project.” The Arizona Republic reported that Harris’ initially claimed her “group was helping with the Senate’s audit, but she couldn’t say on what part because of a nondisclosure agreement. Harris later said she doesn’t know what her involvement may or may not be.”

The Arizona audit isn’t the first brush Harris and Piton have had with promoting misinformation about election integrity. Harris also testified at Rudy Giuliani’s Arizona election fraud “hearing” in November, with Piton appearing as an expert witness to claim “that his opinion, from reviewing Arizona voter data, was that between 120,000 and 306,000 ballots were cast by ‘fake people.’”

Both Harris and Piton appear to follow or support the QAnon conspiracy theory

Both Harris and Piton have posted content and slogans affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. Followers of QAnon led the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and believe that Trump will conduct mass arrests and secret military tribunals to prosecute “deep state” elites.

Harris’ social media presence suggests that she subscribes to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Her Facebook account contains QAnon videos, a “WWG1WGA” shirt (an abbreviation of the QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all”), and QAnon-affiliated posts.

As for Piton, when The Daily Beast first reported on his unofficial involvement in the Arizona audit in late April, he said that “he didn’t know much about QAnon.” But his social media tells a different story. Posts explicitly supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory, and even a Q “drop” -- the term for messages from the anonymous figure at the center of the conspiracy theory -- are scattered throughout his public Facebook page. [pix]

for example, on August 2020, Piton wrote a post in support of the “#SaveTheChildren” QAnon movement, calling the Democratic Party the “DemoNcrat Party.” “This party is PURE EVIL,” wrote Piton. The image he shared with this post also contained the QAnon slogan “WWG1WGA.[img

in a post following the January 6 insurrection, Piton claimed to have never “been part of any ‘Q movement’” and downplayed his support as merely liking “some of their phrases.”

Less than a month later, Piton posted a photo of former National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael S. Rogers along with references to QAnon. “Admiral Rogers… come on down… you are the lucky number 1… 7 on the Truth is Right!!!” wrote Piton. (Q is the 17th letter in the alphabet and is popularly used to refer to “Q.”)

“Q...uestion for you,” he continued, once again referencing Q.

In November 2019, Piton shared a QAnon primer video on Facebook, writing: “Keep an open mind… even if all of this isn’t 100% accurate, it is something worth thinking about!" [pix]

on April 25, Piton and Harris were both interviewed on the QAnon outlet Patriots’ Soapbox. During the livestream, Josh Barnett, a QAnon House candidate who lost a race to represent Arizona’s 7th Congressional District in 2020 and is running again for the state’s 6th district in 2022, bragged that Arizona senators “saw Liz’s numbers” and “saw Bobby’s data” and “that’s when things started changing” and they began backing the audit.

Harris and Piton’s involvement in the Arizona election audit is more than concerning -- if their claims of working with audit officials and Arizona senators are true, it means that an attempt to overturn Arizona’s election results has been quietly influenced by two QAnon followers working from within.

===

===

myPillow guy bares false witness — says 'Trump will be back in office in August'

===

dominion defam

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/my-pillow-lawsuit/

===

221 mma

Friday, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell released a two-hour disinformation film chock full of lies about the 2020 presidential election. Pro-Trump disinformation network OAN aired it in full multiple times, led by an absurd disclaimer noting that Lindell paid the network for the airtime. Pro-Trump outlet Right-Side Broadcasting and pro-Trump platform Rumble streamed it as well; it was swiftly removed from Vimeo and YouTube for promoting disinformation and obvious lies about the election. Nevertheless, Lindell the next day bragged to Steve Bannon about how many views it had received.

Lindell's zealotry has led right-wing media networks to compete for his affection -- and his cash. This is complicated by the fact that Lindell's zealotry has led him to advocate completely deranged positions, including conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems; he's also pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory about Italy . This has been only heightened since Lindell was permanently suspended from Twitter.

Tucker Carlson gave Lindell a friendly interview, and allowed Lindell to push more Dominion conspiracy theories (you may recall Carlson lashing out at Sidney Powell over the exact same conspiracy theories). Lindell's My Pillow is the major sponsor of Carlson's show.

When Lindell appeared on Newsmax on Tuesday, he again pushed Dominion conspiracy theories. But in lieu of a prior legal threat from Dominion to Newsmax, the host muted Lindell to read a disclaimer and eventually walked off set as Lindell kept talking about election fraud. A different Newsmax host welcomed Lindell later in the evening, but they did not discuss election conspiracy theories.

OAN used that incident to attack Newsmax for being insufficiently pro-Trump; The network also used the incident to promote that it was airing Lindell's "documentary" about the election -- while trying to protect itself by running a massive disclaimer.

Also: Lindell pushed this conspiracy theory in appearances at two rallies the day before the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He also visited the White House nine days after the insurrection to reportedly encourage then-President Donald Trump to consider enacting martial law. Now, as Olivia Little reports, several of Lindell’s public social media posts appear to reveal additional information about his activities in the lead-up to the events that day -- and could implicate other prominent figures like former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).

Finally: Lindell told Bannon on Saturday that the COVID-19 vaccines are "the mark of the beast stuff."

Legal details: You can find our research on right-wing media promoting Smartmatic conspiracy theories here; our research on Fox figures promoting Dominion conspiracy theories is here. Rush Limbaugh also was a heavy promoter of Dominion conspiracy theories.

==

anchor later apologized for walking off?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/mike-lindell/

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/my-pillow/

no lnx pix twt

Internet explodes as Trump meets with 'My Pillow Guy' whose notes reportedly mention 'Insurrection Act' and 'martial law'

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell expands from manufacturing masks to sourcing them after call with Trump

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement January 16, 2021

The internet exploded late Friday afternoon when a highly-respected Washington Post photographer captured on camera notes held by Mike Lindell, the founder and CEO of My Pillow, one of the top advertisers on Fox News and a close confidant of President Donald Trump.

Lindell, according to the White House press pool, "was spotted outside the West Wing at 3 pm. He was on his cell phone at one point as he waited outside. The Marine let him inside at 3:05 pm."

There is always a Marine stationed outside the Oval Office when the President is inside the Oval Office, but not when the President is not there.

The notes appear to mention "martial law," a suggestion to move a dangerous Trump loyalist to the CIA as acting Director, the “Insurrection Act," and something about “foreign interference in the election," as Talking Points Memo reported.

Understandably, the Internet lit up like a Christmas tree, but with countless rumors, jokes, and concern.

All those aside, the question really is, would President Trump, who has less than five days left in office, actually fire the head of the CIA, and why? What would he hope to accomplish, do, or get away with if Gina Haspel were gone?

The other question of course is why would Trump listen to Lindell, a far right conspiracy theorist and religious extremist, but that question is unanswerable.

Here's what some are saying.

CNN analyst, attorney, and former FBI Special Agent:

CNN White House correspondent:

On Mike Lindell's notes: “…TAKEN IMMEDIATELY TO SAVE THE…CONSTITUTION” Names Sidney Powell and Kurt Olsen Says Kash Patel should be moved to “CIA Acting…”

Public advocacy firm:

Media Matters Senior Fellow:

Religion News Service national reporter:

Research director at CREW:

Economist and professor:

NBC News Reporter, "dystopia beat":

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===

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mypillow-ceo-spotted-bringing-notes-to-wh-that-appear-to-reference-martial-law-installing-new-cia-director

myPillow CEO Michael Lindell brought notes with him to a meeting in the West Wing Friday that zoomed-in photographs appear to show contained the phrases “martial law,” “Insurrection Act” and “foreign interference in the election.”

The paper also included a line reading “move Kash Patel to CIA Acting,” a seeming suggestion for President Donald Trump to fire CIA Director Gina Haspel and move Patel, a Trump loyalist recently installed at the Pentagon amid a purge of senior civilian officials, to fill the role.

It also included the names of Sidney Powell, Bill Olsen and Kurt Olsen, though the beginning of the sentence involving them is cut off by a fold in the paper.

@MyPillowUSA CEO Michael Lindell shows off his notes before going into the West Wing at the White House on Friday, Jan 15, 2021 in Washington, DC. pic.twitter.com/AY6AyJNSyE

— Jabin Botsford (@jabinbotsford) January 15, 2021

Powell, a lawyer who hovered around the fringes of the Trump campaign’s attempt to overturn the election after being formally axed from the team, has become a vociferous purveyor of conspiracy theories and a hero to adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory. It’s unclear which Olsens Lindell was referring to; the attorney Kurt Olsen was among those representing the state of Texas in its unsuccessful effort to throw out several other states’ election results, according to multiple reports.

The document appeared to reference other aspects of QAnon as well.The conspiracy theory holds as a central premise that the President is waging a behind-the-scenes war against the “deep state.” In some tellings, the battle will culminate with mass arrests and executions of his political enemies.

Some in the QAnon community — including Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser and a client of Powell’s — have :{called}: for Trump to enforce martial law in his attempts to overturn the November election.

Another line, cut off by a fold in the paper, appears to read “Insurrection Act now,” referring to a law which allows the President to deploy federal troops in extraordinary circumstances. It’s a measure Powell in particular has amplified calls for on her Twitter feed, as the MAGA-verse brainstormed mechanisms Trump could use to nullify the election results and hold a new vote.

More broadly, Lindell’s invitation to the White House indicates that even a week after the President invited a crowd to the nation’s capital and then directed them to march on Congress — leading to a riot and breach of the building that resulted in five deaths and his second impeachment — Trump is unwilling to let go of conspiratorial fantasies.

Lindell was among the pro-Trump celebrities that spoke at the “Stop the Steal” event in D.C. last week, at a rally the night before Trump’s fateful speech. His company was listed as a “coalition partner” for the event.

“I can tell you, 100 percent Donald Trump is going to be your President for four more years,” Lindell said, before mentioning a recent discussion he’d had with Flynn that involved even more evidence of massive election fraud. “Donald Trump was picked for eight years by God, not four,” he added later.

===

huh?

Watch right winger give out 'Kraken' offer code for MyPillow during ‘StopTheSteal’ rally in DC

Walter EinenkelDailyKos

===

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lindell

michael James Lindell[3] (born June 28, 1961) is an American businessman. He is the founder and CEO of My Pillow, Inc.,[4][2][5] and is sometimes referred to as "the My Pillow guy".[6]^

Early life and career

Lindell was born on June 28, 1961, in Mankato, Minnesota. He was raised in Chaska and Carver, Minnesota.[4]^

Lindell launched and operated a number of small businesses in the 1980s including carpet cleaning, lunch wagons, and a few bars and restaurants in Carver County, Minnesota.[4][2] During the 1980s and 1990s, Lindell was addicted to cocaine, crack cocaine, and alcohol, leading to foreclosure of his house, and his wife filing for divorce. Lindell stated that he achieved sobriety through prayer in 2009, and, since then, has been clean.[4][7][8]^

MyPillow

Lindell invented the MyPillow pillow in 2004 and grew the business into a major Minnesota manufacturing company.[9][10] The company laid off 150 employees in 2019.[11] Citing possible future political ambitions, Lindell named his son Darren as the company's chief operating officer.[11]^

In 2016, Lindell's My Pillow company was sued in Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland, California for running ads with false claims of the pillow helping with snoring, fibromyalgia, migraines and other medical conditions. Prosecutors in nine California counties brought the charges against the misleading infomercials.[12] MyPillow settled for about $1 million, while admitting no wrongdoing.[12]^

In 2017, the Better Business Bureau revoked accreditation of MyPillow, lowering its rating to an F based on a pattern of complaints by consumers. The BBB cited a Buy One, Get One offer that became a continuous offer and therefore the normal price of the product, not a sale price or free offer.[13] In a statement, Lindell said, "Naturally, I am terribly disappointed by the BBB's decision."[13]^

Foundations, memoirs, and autobiography

Lindell created the Lindell Foundation, a faith-based foundation. The company and foundation donated goods to victims of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.[14][15] The foundation's focus was then broadened to help people with addictions, cancer victims, and veterans.[7][16]^

Lindell also founded the Lindell Recovery Network to "bring hope, recovery, and mentorship" to those struggling with drug addictions; the network shares stories from recovered addicts and provides information on Christian recovery organizations.[17][18]^

In March 2017, Lindell produced The Mike Lindell Story: An American Dream, about having overcome drug addiction and building a business. The autobiography was filmed at the Pantages Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota.[19] In January 2020, Lindell released his memoir, What Are the Odds?From Crack Addict to CEO.[20][21]^

Political activities

In August 2016, Lindell met with then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump,[4][22][23] and became an avid supporter, calling Trump "the most amazing president this country has ever seen in history", following his 2016 election.[24] In a speech at Liberty University in August 2019, Lindell said "When I met with Donald Trump, it felt like a divine appointment, and when I walked out of that office I decided I was going to go all in."[25][26]^

On October 19, 2016, Lindell attended the final presidential debate in Las Vegas.[27] He spoke at a Trump campaign rally in Minneapolis on November 6, 2016, and attended the Official Donald Watch Party on November 8. He attended Trump's inauguration, and Trump gave him an inauguration lapel pin as a personal gift.[24][28][22]^

In 2017, Lindell sat next to Trump at an industry roundtable event at the White House.[29][30][4][23]^

At a rally in Fargo, North Dakota on June 27, 2018, Trump commended Lindell's business acumen.[31] Lindell spoke at a Trump rally on October 4, 2018, in Rochester, Minnesota.[32] Lindell spoke at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference, in which he promoted Trump as "the greatest president in history"[33] and "chosen by God."[11]^

In a March 2020 appearance on Fox News, Lindell said that his company's bedding factories had been refocused on face mask production at the behest of the Trump administration. Later that month, Lindell appeared with Trump at a White House coronavirus press conference, at which Lindell praised Trump: "God gave us grace on November 8, 2016, to change the course we were on. God had been taken out of our schools and lives, a nation had turned its back on God. I encourage you to use this time at home to get back in the word. Read our Bible and spend time with our families."[34]^

Lindell has publicly considered running for governor of Minnesota in 2022 against Democratic incumbent Tim Walz.[11][35] reportedly at Trump's urging.[11] He attended a Republican Governors Association meeting, at which he was encouraged to run.[11] In May 2020, he became the campaign chair for Trump's reelection campaign in Minnesota.[35] A few hours before Trump spoke at a 2020 Mount Rushmore Independence Day celebration, in response to an audience question at a small rally nearby, Lindell said he's "99% sure" about running for Minnesota governor.[36]^

In November 2020, Lindell was identified as among those who paid for the bail of Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse.[37]^

Promotion of unproven coronavirus "cure"

In White House meetings with Trump and public appearances, Lindell has promoted a plant extract, oleandrin, as a "cure" for COVID-19, saying "This thing works — it's the miracle of all time."[38] In a television appearance, Lindell made a misleading statement about the testing of the substance.[38] Lindell has a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology, a company that makes oleandrin, and sits on its board.[38] Lindell's unsubstantiated claims alarmed scientists, since there is no scientific evidence that oleandrin is a safe or effective coronavirus treatment, and since the plant is poisonous at low doses.[38][39][40][41] After the efforts by Lindell and HUD Secretary Ben Carson to promote oleandrin, Trump said his administration would "look at" the substance.[38]^

Personal life

Lindell has been married twice. His first marriage was for about 20 years.[42] He married second wife Dallas Yocum in June 2013 and filed for divorce in mid-July 2013 after she left him. Lindell stated that they had a prenuptial agreement.[43][44]^

Lindell is an evangelical Christian[7] and received an honorary Doctor of Business from Liberty University in 2019.[45]^

Works

References

  1. ^ Bond, Paul (November 21, 2018). "Multimillionaire Trump Fan and Fox News Advertiser Jumps Into Film Financing". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved March 30, 2020.
  2. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b ^c Dean, Josh (January 11, 2017). "The Preposterous Success Story of America's Pillow King". Bloomberg Businessweek. Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved September 28, 2017.
  3. ^ "My Pillow, Inc". Dun & Bradstreet. Retrieved March 30, 2020.
  4. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Wells, Jane (September 20, 2017). "How this entrepreneur went from a crack addict to a self-made multimillionaire". CNBC. Retrieved September 28,2017.
  5. ^ Betsy Klein (November 4, 2018). "How the MyPillow guy became a midterm messenger". CNN. Retrieved May 10, 2019.
  6. ^ Martin, Jeffery (March 30, 2020). ":{'}:My Pillow' trends after MyPillow founder urges Americans to focus on religion during White House coronavirus briefing". Newsweek. Retrieved May 1, 2020.
  7. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b ^c ":{'}:My Pillow' founder opens up about addiction". Salvation Army. December 29, 2015. Retrieved September 28, 2017.
  8. ^ Roosevelt, Ava (Fall 2017). "The Most Seen Man on TV and His Novel Notion on Giving". Philanthropy. International Opulence. pp. 126–127. Retrieved September 29, 2017.[dead ^link]
  9. ^ Hutton, Rachel (September 2, 2018). "Mike Lindell's fitful journey from crack addict to MyPillow magnate". StarTribune. Star Tribune. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
  10. ^ "The story of the My Pillow king". CBS News. July 29, 2018. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
  11. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Daniel Lippman & Tina Nguyen (March 30, 2020). "Trump has been nudging MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to run for office". Politico.
  12. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b NBC Los Angeles (November 4, 2016). "MyPillow Fined $1M for Phony Ads". NBCLosAngeles.com. KNBC. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
  13. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b KARE-TV (January 4, 2017). "MyPillow accreditation revoked by the Better Business Bureau". USA Today. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
  14. ^ "Special Projects Donation Update: Hurricane Harvey". Lindell Foundation. Lindell Foundation. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved November 20, 2017.
  15. ^ Winter, Deena (August 31, 2017). "MyPillow to donate 60,000 pillows to Hurricane Harvey victims". Shakopee Valley News. SWNewsMedia.com. Retrieved November 30, 2017.
  16. ^ Strode, Tom (March 2, 2018). "MyPillow Inventor Mike Lindell Shares Testimony at NRB Media Leadership Dinner". National Religious Broadcasters. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
  17. ^ "A Year of Historic Action to Combat the Opioid Crisis". WhiteHouse.gov. October 24, 2018. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
  18. ^ Ord, Rich (October 23, 2018). "MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and His Story of Hope". WebProNews. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
  19. ^ ":{'}:The Mike Lindell Story: An American Dream' Exclusively on RFD-TV". RFDTV. Frankly, Inc. December 28, 2016. Retrieved November 30, 2017.
  20. ^ DeBilzan, Maddie (June 21, 2019). "MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to be on TV show, launch online help for addicts". SWNewsMedia. Retrieved July 26, 2019.
  21. ^ "What are the Odds? | Mike Lindell's Story". www.mikelindellsbook.com. Retrieved July 26, 2019.
  22. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b Williams, Nick (January 20, 2017). "What MyPillow's CEO got from Donald Trump at the inauguration". Minneapolis/St Paul Business Journal. Minneapolis, Minnesota: American City Business Journals. Retrieved January 9, 2019.
  23. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b Lindell, Michael J. (July 24, 2017). "Mike Lindell: Here's why Made in America really will help make America great again". Fox News. New York City: News Corp. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
  24. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b "Web Extra: Mike Lindell Speaks At Trump Rally". CBS Minnesota. CBS Broadcasting Inc. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
  25. ^ Klinker, Ryan. "MyPillow founder Mike Lindell gifts students with pillows and message of God's grace". Liberty University. Liberty University News Service. Retrieved May 13, 2020.
  26. ^ Mehta, Hemant. "Liberty University Students Just Got $600,000 Worth of MyPillow Products". Friendly Atheist. Patheos. Retrieved May 13, 2020.
  27. ^ "Live Reaction to Pres Debate". Facebook - Fox Business. Facebook. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
  28. ^ "MyPillow CEO on attending 'surreal' Trump party". KARE 11. KARE-TV. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
  29. ^ "Made in America Roundtable". Whitehouse.gov. United States Government. Retrieved January 3, 2018.
  30. ^ "MyPillow CEO Featured In White House Event With Trump, Paulsen". CBS Minnesota. Minneapolis, Minnesota: CBS Broadcasting Inc. July 19, 2017. Retrieved January 3, 2018.
  31. ^ Fernandez, Henry (June 27, 2018). "Trump: 'MyPillow guy' should be my ad buyer". FOXBusiness. New York City: News Corp. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
  32. ^ "Live: Thousands gather for President Trump's Rochester rally". Star-Tribune. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Star Tribune Media Company. October 4, 2018. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
  33. ^ "My Pillow founder Mike Lindell: Donald Trump was 'chosen by God' to run for president". Washington Times. March 1, 2019.
  34. ^ Casiano, Louis (March 30, 2020). "MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, at White House coronavirus briefing, tells people to pray during crisis". Fox News. Retrieved March 30, 2020.
  35. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b ^c Terris, Ben (May 27, 2020). "Is the MyPillow guy the future of the Republican Party, or is he just dreaming?". The Washington Post.
  36. ^ Tupper, Seth (July 4, 2020). "In Rapid City, My Pillow CEO Says He's '99 Percent Sure' About Running For Minnesota Governor". South Dakota Public Broadcasting.
  37. ^ Casiano, Louis (November 20, 2020). "Attorney: My Pillow founder Mike Lindell paid part of bail for teen charged in Kenosha shooting". KMSP-TV.
  38. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Heather Murphy, Drug Pitched to Trump for Covid-19 Comes From a Deadly Plant, New York Times (August 20, 2020).
  39. ^ Oleandrin: Trump allies pitch extract from poisonous plant to fight Covid, The Guardian (August 25, 2020).
  40. ^ Jonathan Swan (August 17, 2020). "Trump eyes new unproven coronavirus "cure:{"}:". Axios. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  41. ^ Lauren Frias (August 17, 2020). "Trump reportedly pushing new unproven coronavirus treatment that is also embraced by HUD Sec. Ben Carson and MyPillow's Mike Lindell". Business Insider. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  42. ^ Levin, Mark; Lindell, Mike (April 14, 2019). "MyPillow's Mike Lindell opens up on his battle with addiction". Fox News. Retrieved November 18, 2020. I lost a 20-year marriage
  43. ^ "C.J.: Bride leaves, says MyPillow CEO is a snooze". Star Tribune. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  44. ^ Keogh, Joey (June 8, 2020). "Inside the MyPillow guy's relationship with his ex-wife". TheList.com. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  45. ^ Klinker, Ryan (August 21, 2019). "MyPillow founder Mike Lindell gifts students with pillows and message of God's grace". Liberty University. Retrieved August 26,2019.

External links

Authority control

Categories: 

===

an 1220

In his column for the Daily Beast, conservative commentator Matt Lewis expressed exasperation with evangelical leaders who are set to lead what has been dubbed the "Jericho March" in Washington D.C. on Saturday under the belief they can pray God into helping Donald Trump remain in the Oval Office for four more years.

Lewis, who wears his faith on his sleeve, has long condemned members of the Christian community who have attached them to the president who, by his actions and his deeds, has never exemplified any Christian values other than giving them occasional lip service.

As the Daily Beast columnist sees it, the group scheduled to appear are a motley crew who do not exemplify the best the evangelical community has to offer.

Writing that "some prominent members of the Christian church are undermining the church's witness," Lewis added, "For evidence, look no further than this Saturday, when former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn (who recently shared a message calling on Trump to declare 'limited martial law' and hold a new election) will give his first post-pardon speech at something called the Jericho March in Washington, D.C. Aside from Flynn, the roster includes other prominent MAGA names like Mike **Lindell**(the MyPillow guy), Eric Metaxas (a radio host who punched a protester and recently said, 'I'd be happy to die in this fight'), Ali Alexander (formerly Ali Akbar), and C.J. Pearson. Afterwards, the crowd will converge on the National Mall for the 'ROAR' prayer rally."

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/rittenhouse/

no lnx twt

The headline was jarring: "Black Man Who Spent 25 Years Incarcerated for a Murder He Didn't Commit Has Been Exonerated," The Root's homepage shouted at me. The story of 62-year-old Jaythan Kendrick, who was arrested for a crime he did not commit on Thanksgiving Day 1994—when he was just 36—is a familiar one to anyone who's paid attention to the chronic miscarriage of justice Black people face: Had law enforcement and or prosecutors actually done their job, Kendrick could have been home in time for Christmas, or maybe never arrested at all. The evidence was thin—at best. It also was manipulated.

But this story is not about Jaythan Kendrick.

With a quick click of the Back button, and I was back to The Root's homepage; just below the Kendrick story I'd just read was the face of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old high schooler who definitely murdered two—almost three—Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisc. with an illegally obtained AR-15 rifle back in August. Rittenhouse was released Friday on a cash bail of $2 million, paid in part by Mike Lindell—the Trump fanatic usually referred to as the My Pillow Guy—and Rick Schroder, an ex-child actor best known for the vapid 1980s sitcom Silver Spoons.

While both Kendrick and Rittenhouse will be home just in time for Thanksgiving, the justice system journeys for these two men—one guilty, and one innocent, one white, and one Black—couldn't be more different. And so I rage.

Lin Wood, attorney for the newly-freed yet wholly unrepentant Rittenhouse, posted a photo of the grinning (and maskless) homicidal teenager to Twitter Friday evening.

Rabid militia enthusiasts, endorsers of white supremacy, and lovers of Donald Trump have all latched on to the murderous teen, elevating him to hero status in their hateful white power fantasies;over half a million dollars has been raised for Rittenhouse beyond the bail money, according to the local CBS affiliate.

Most of the money came from small donations, and Rittenhouse's attorney took to Twitter thanking donors and saying,"We the peopledid not let him down."

Rittenhouse, who again, absolutely killed two people, has a fucking fan base. A rabid one, with deep pockets.

The murderer, who has admitted to two murders and one attempted murder, told police "No, I don't regret it" at the time of his arrest, and is currently enjoying some surreal hero's life, admired by the sort of folks who vicariously watched cell phone footage of his cold killings and opened their wallets in support. These folks know exactly what Rittenhouse did and respect it. They consider his actions right and just, even as they smear his victims—all white men—to help justify their cold-blooded murders....

:{:{}:

}:

===

From crack cocaine to Mar-a-Lago: The unusual journey of the MyPillow man

By

Kyle Swenson

April 6, 2018 at 2:38 a.m. PDT

The pillow salesman had so much crack cocaine pounding through his bloodstream he hadn’t slept for two weeks, he would later say. Even the drug dealers were counseling Mike Lindell to slow down.

It was March 2008, and the Minneapolis-area entrepreneur’s life was in free fall. Marriage broken. House lost. Business — a company he started four years earlier called MyPillow — struggling. Two weeks into this particular hot-wired bender, Lindell went to his usual drug dealers for a fix. But the guys had already put word out on the street: No one sell to Lindell until he sleeps.

“They were three of the biggest dealers in the cities,” Lindell recounted to the Salvation Army in 2015. “They refused to sell to me again. One of them tried babysitting me until I fell asleep.”

Instead, he sneaked outside to score elsewhere. But no one wanted his business. Lindell waved around a $100 bill for $5 worth of crack. Nothing. He tried to hide his distinct mustache behind his hand. No luck.

AD

“I get back to the apartment, and [the dealer] is sitting there, and he goes, ‘How’d that work out for you?’ ” Lindell said to CNBC last September. His dealer picked up Lindell’s phone and snapped a photo of the addict’s face — walking-dead skin tone, disheveled hair, mug shot scowl. It was a memento of what it looked like at rock bottom.

Lindell got clean the next year and powered ahead with MyPillow, turning an idea plucked from a dream into a successful international business claiming nearly 30 million sales. For years he struggled against addiction and long business odds. Today, Lindell finds himself up against a political backlash.

Last week, Fox News host Laura Ingraham hopped on Twitter to blast David Hogg, the Parkland massacre survivor and gun-control advocate. The comments — a cheap shot about Hogg’s college rejection — quickly sparked outcry, with at least 18 advertisers pulling their spots from the host’s show, according to Media Matters.

:{:{}:

}:

Not the MyPillow frontman. Lindell, an avid backer of President Trump, proclaimed on Twitter this week: “I did not take my advertising down from @IngrahamAngle and @FoxNews, nor do I intend to.”

“Advertising decisions are based on what’s best for MyPillow, my employees and my customers,” Lindell added in a statement to the Shakopee Valley News. In response, there has been a call online to boycott Lindell’s own business. The Minnesota businessman, whose mustachioed face is familiar from MyPillow infomercials and ads, has now found himself in the national debate.

It’s the latest stop in a quintessentially American wild ride, a journey that has run from pig pens and Las Vegas card tables to QVC and the gold-plated halls of Mar-a-Lago.

As Lindell tells it, his success has the classic Horatio Alger shape — with cocaine and infomercials and divine inspiration.

Raised in Chaska, Minn., Lindell attended the University of Minnesota before dropping out, CNBC reported. He jumped from one business idea to the next in the following years, often pulling ideas from his experience. After his sister’s apartment flooded, he started a carpet cleaning company. He heard about the success of lunch wagon businesses in California, and he tried the same concept in the Twin Cities.

:{:{}:

}:

Lindell also tried to fill his pockets counting cards at Las Vegas casinos and raising pigs. Eventually, he started pouring drinks behind a bar and eventually purchased the business. “Probably wasn’t a real good idea, because I was an addict at the time, a pretty hardcore cocaine addict,” he told CNBC.

He started using cocaine in 1982, Lindell told the Salvation Army, switching to crack in the 1990s. He was still deep into his addiction when a lifelong sleeping problem pointed him to his million-dollar idea.

Lindell never could find a comfortable pillow all his life. Then in 2004 he woke from a dream in the middle of the night with an idea for a pillow that would hold its shape. He jumped into the project, cutting up foam and material, learning to sew the pillows himself. When he finally had a finished model, he unsuccessfully pitched the items to chain stores.

While struggling to keep MyPillow going, Lindell finally bottomed out on Jan. 16, 2009. A Christian — today Lindell can always be seen with a cross dangling from his neck — he believed the MyPillow idea had come directly from God. He asked for the same intervention from above to end his addiction.

“I had one prayer that night,” he told CNBC. “God, I want to wake up in the morning and never have the desire again. … I woke up the next day — and you’ve got to realize this is years of crack addiction — I go, ‘Wow, something’s different.’ ”

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Lindell says his desire to get high was gone.

Infomercials would prove the key to ballooning the business. The 30-minute spots featured Lindell himself singing his product’s praises.

“I want to come across as an average guy, talking to his neighbor,” he told the Star Tribune in 2014. Business picked up after the spots started running in 2011. “By the end of the year, we went from five employees to 500,” Lindell told CNBC. In 2017, MyPillow’s founder estimated the company had spent $100 million on infomercials, with 30 million pillows sold to $300 million in annual revenue.

But the company has run into controversy. Prosecutors from nine California counties hit MyPillow with a lawsuit for running deceptive ads about the health and healing properties of the products. In 2016, the company settled the claims with $1 million in civil penalties, NBC News reported.

In January 2017, Better Business Bureau of Minnesota and North Dakota downgraded MyPillow’s rating from an “A+” to an “F.”

“Among other issues, BBB has attempted to persuade MyPillow to discontinue their ‘buy one get one free’ (BOGO)/other discount offers without success,” Dana Badgerow, president and chief executive of BBB of Minnesota and North Dakota, said at the time in a news release. “Continuous BOGO offers, which can then be construed as an item’s regular, everyday price, violate not only BBB’s Code of Advertising — which all BBB Accredited Businesses agree to abide by — but also other state and national organizations’ rules.”

Lindell has since said he believes the downgrade could have been motivated by his vocal support of Trump.

The pillow entrepreneur first met Trump in the summer of 2016 when the then-candidate had a 30-minute meeting with Lindell about his business and all-American manufacturing process. Lindell told the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal that Melania Trump asked for a pair of his pillows. “I overnighted him pillows from my Minnesota factory,” Lindell said. “I got a personal email from him saying he and his wife really liked MyPillow.”

Lindell was also invited to Trump’s 2017 inauguration, where he hobnobbed with other high-profile Trump backers like Stephen Baldwin and Scott Baio.

The relationship has continued. Last weekend, Lindell was invited to dinner at Mar-a-Lago for dinner with the Trumps during the Easter holiday.

“The President shook my hand and told me, ‘You are doing a great job, Michael.’ He also said he is sleeping great on his MyPillow,” Lindell told the Star Tribune.

Despite millions in the bank and proximity to the Trump inner circle, Lindell still regularly talks about his crack cocaine days. As he told CNBC last year, he still has the photo his protective drug dealers snapped — walking-dead skin tone, disheveled hair, mug shot scowl — as a warning.

Lindell plans to use the photo as the cover of an upcoming autobiography.

More from Morning Mix:

Jared Leto’s really quick ‘hitchhike’ across America

Kyle Swenson

Kyle Swenson is a reporter with The Washington Post's social issues team. He previously worked at the New Times Broward-Palm Beach and Cleveland Scene.

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