retaliate 2 punish defund

mebbe redumbdent, see retaliation sorta bak?

SEE THREE 4 25

see AAF dox blacklist Jan 6 staff

recall includes INTIMIDATION

SEE LAWFare trump 2

SEE IRS 3

SEE PRESS SUPPRESS DEFAM LEGAL SUPPRESSION abc pULITIZER

SEE RULE OF LAW CONCEPT

SEE DIRTY TRICKS VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD ILLEGAL ALIENS PAXTON MOFO

SEE FASCISM 5

aha/hmmn 8 23 expansion: trump says i am your retribution [// the storm qanon] demonization of enemy evil commie enemy, they must be taken from power and punished

i will be your vengeance see deep state enemies list TRUMP 18 17

AHA DEMONIZATION REQUIRES RETALIATION // reductionism one enemy /answer to complex and various problems

see treason traitor execution BANNON MILLEY

FLIPSIDE OF TRANSACTIONAL, see contractor musk bezos

but gop supermajority b/c of gerry, so punish disobedience w/ power of the purse

SEE LIE PWR ANY MEANS

SEE MALE STRICT FATHER TRANSACTIONAL FORCE VIOLENCE FASCISM

hijack of defund police post BLM?

AHA HIT MEN AT FOX? CHAFFETZ? see enforcer tag // hit man? kirk?

SEE DEFUND THE LEFT ACAD SUPPRESS

https://www.alternet.org/state-and-local-republicans-slammed/ public library

===

an 3 26

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson is being targeted by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), CNN reported Friday.

Loudermilk is known for being the lawmaker who gave tours to Jan. 6 attackers casing the U.S. Capitol ahead of the attack. After years of allegations against him, he was appointed chair of the Republican Party's investigation into the Jan. 6 committee.

Hutchinson was the aide who said that U.S. Secret Service agents faced off against President Donald Trump, lunging at the steering wheelof the security vehicle, trying to get them to take him to the Capitol to march with his MAGA supporters. Normally, the president rides in a limousine, but on that day, he delivered a speech from the White House Ellipse and rode in an SUV.

Hutchinson also witnessed former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows burning documents in his office fireplace. At one point, he was burning so many documents that Meadows' wife noticed a smell in his clothing and said it was costing them a hefty dry cleaning bill.

Loudermilk is demanding that the Justice Department bring charges against Hutchinson for lying to Congress about these incidents. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) signed off on the demand.

It will be a catch-22 for Loudermilk, however, because a trial claiming Hutchinson lied under oath would mean that Hutchinson would have access to information and witnesses who would be forced to answer questions under oath. She could call the Secret Service agents, Meadows and even Trump himself. Thus far, there has never been a trial for Trump on Jan. 6, only an investigation by the Justice Department. While there were charges ultimately filed, they were dropped after Trump won the 2024 election.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has been concerned about Loudermilk's efforts, it was reported last year. He fears that subpoenaing Hutchinson could bring to light "embarrassing information" as well as sexually explicit text messages she allegedly received when she was working in the White House during Trump's first presidency.

For years, Republicans have alleged that Hutchinson lied about her account and in her book about what she experienced on Jan. 6 and beyond. Johnson has been the one worried about the can of worms it might open.

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9 8 25

NIXON PROF = ENEMY

JDV

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AN 525

Some Americans who have vivid memories of Watergate — including former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks and 1970s Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — aren't shy about saying that when it comes to attacking democracy and the rule of law, President Donald Trump is much worse than the late President Richard Nixon. Trump, according to those Watergate-era veterans, has crossed lines that Nixon wouldn't cross.

In an article published by National Public Radio (NPR) on May 12, reporter Scott Horsley describes a parallel between Trump and Nixon: a willingness to use the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) against political adversaries.

"From utilizing tax data to trace immigrants without legal status to threatening Harvard University's tax exemption, President Trump has been trying to use the IRS for his own political purposes, in ways that may seem unprecedented," Horsley explains. "But they're not. Former President Richard Nixon laid the groundwork more than four decades ago, when he tried to use the tax collector to punish his enemies and assist his friends….. Nixon was angry at universities for not cracking down on Vietnam War protesters; Trump has similarly complained about Harvard and other Ivy League schools not doing more to silence protests against the war in Gaza, amid an administration crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses."

Trump, according to Horsley, is "drawing on Nixon's old playbook, despite laws put in place after Watergate to prevent that kind of meddling by the White House."

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Joseph Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts, told NPR, "One of the things that Nixon did consider was threatening the tax-exemptions of universities. And that sounds very familiar if you're reading the paper these days…. Nixon tried very hard to misuse the IRS. Congress certainly saw that as a danger afterwards."

Thorndike continued, "If the president is developing enemies lists and sending them to the IRS and essentially saying, 'I want you to audit all these people I don't like,' that's worrisome. And so, Congress was very interested in preventing that."

Oval Office recordings from 1971, Horsley notes, "reveal how Nixon sought to install a hand-picked enforcer at the IRS to do his political bidding."

Nixon, in 1971, said, "I want to be sure he's a ruthless son of a bitch, that he will do what he's told. That every income tax return I want to see, I see. That he'll go after our enemies and not go after our friends. It's as simple as that."

*Read the full NPR article at this link.

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MMA PIX BIDEN HIDDEN AGENDA

Newsmax host: “People don't like the word revenge. Why not? It's time for that if it's warranted.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 04/11/25

Video

From the April 10, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Finnerty

ROB FINNERTY (HOST): He meant every word of that. For years, we would ask, why would anyone let 15 million criminals into the country illegally? They're here illegally. That makes them criminals. Why would any leader want to do that? Why would anyone want to fundamentally change the racial and ethnic makeup of the greatest country on Earth, America? And now the answer is crystal clear — this was their plan all along. Democrats know that the only way their broken party can win elections in the future is to import voters. So that's exactly what they did. While telling the public that the border was closed — the border was closed, and they said that over and over again for four years. And the other option is simple — Joe Biden has got dementia. He was never in control or in charge. And as a result of that, bad actors were likely running the White House. The answer now is probably a combination of the two.

But America needs answers, and Republicans have to investigate and possibly prosecute whoever perpetrated the greatest single crime in American history, and that's what this is. Fifteen million illegal aliens in this country in a four-year period. These people should not be here. And it's time for Republicans to start doing exactly what Democrats did to them. People don't like the word revenge. Why not? It's time for that if it's warranted. When Donald Trump left office after his first term, Democrats prosecuted everyone. Steve Bannon went to jail, Peter Navarro went to jail, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos. Anyone who did anything related to Donald Trump got indicted because Democrats play dirty and they are much better at it than Republicans.

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MMA

April 9, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports

GREG KELLY (HOST): He may have divulged classified information. It's — you can't have that. It's very hard to govern when you may be surrounded by people who could turn around and write a book or a column that does tremendous damage, especially when it's false.

All right, on to the other guy. CISA, he headed CISA, this strange organization. And right after the 2020 election, which, let's face it, was controversial and a disputed election — like days later, they say, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. Well, it wasn't up to CISA, all right, to put something like that out. And this guy Krebs, who said that, deeply suspect and he should be investigated. I felt at the time I thought he was way out of line. You can't say this kind of stuff when you're a bureaucrat.

...

KELLY: He had a whole other host of responsibilities. He needed to stay the hell out of it. And that gave so many people the excuse. Trump's own administration says that the election was totally solid. There were legitimate disputes about the fairness of the election. And for that guy, a government employee, to use that federal agency to meddle where he shouldn't have been meddling, well, President Trump signed an executive order, and they're going to take a good, strong look at that guy.

...

KELLY: Well, the only downside is this probably helps these guys. They're going to be surrounded by law firms from the left and speaking engagements. Guys like Miles Taylor and Krebs, they'll be hailed as heroes because President Trump has targeted them.

This is totally legitimate, a totally legitimate function of the president. He suspects wrongdoing, and he can direct the Department of Justice to look into it. You know, Joe Biden tried to say he didn't when he did. And that was a big part of the deceit, right? He pretended he had nothing to do with it when he was directing it. That's what we believe. Me, actually.

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an 4 25

Attorney General Pam Bondi just made a significant escalation in the feud between President Donald Trump's administration and the federal judiciary — and she's hoping to enlist the Supreme Court to the White House's side.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Bondi made it clear she didn't appreciate having to abide by a lower court order in a memorandum sent to various heads of federal agencies. The memo was written as part of an order from U.S. District Judge John D. Bates (an appointee of former President George W. Bush) instructing Bondi and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to tell agencies they were prohibited from implementing parts of an executive order Trump handed down targeting the law firm Jenner & Block.

In Trump's initial executive order, he prohibited the firm's attorneys from entering government buildings (a virtual impossibility for lawyers who practice in Washington D.C.), stripped attorneys of security clearances and imposed various other sanctions. The Janner & Block executive order is part of a pattern of other related orders explicitly targeting law firms that worked for Trump's political opponents.

The attorney general didn't mince words for the "unelected" judge who authored the decision, which she said "invaded the policy-making and free speech prerogatives of the executive branch." She also notably expressed hope that the Supreme Court would step in and explicitly allow the administration to sidestep lower courts.

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"Local district judges lack this authority, and the Supreme Court should swiftly constrain these judges’ blatant overstepping of the judicial power," Bondi wrote.

While some law firms cut deals with the administration in order to roll back his orders, other firms — like Janner & Block — sued to prevent the orders from going into effect. Janner & Block was one of three firms that found success in their litigation against the White House. WilmerHale and Perkins Coie were also targeted and successfully fought back in the courts.

Bondi's memo comes as the Trump administration has repeatedly attempted to ignore orders from federal judges striking down Trump's policies and enlist the High Court in its fight. When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the return of an immigrant the administration admitted was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, the administration appealed to the Supreme Court. The 6-3 conservative supermajority halted the deadline imposed by Boasberg to bring the man back to the United States, and allowed the administration to continue deporting immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

NOW READ:Donald Trump's new policies are 'stupid' — according to stupidity researchers

Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).

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4 25 politico

by Adam Cancryn, Maggie Miller, James Romoser and Kyle Cheney

04/09/2025

President Donald Trump is targeting two former first-term appointees over their criticism of his actions, stripping their security clearances and opening federal probes of their tenures.

The directives that Trump signed on Wednesday order the Justice Department to scrutinize Chris Krebs, who ran Trump’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and former senior Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor.

The two critics are the latest to be swept up in Trump’s expansive retribution campaign, where he’s sought to use federal powers in unprecedented ways to punish political opponents, law firms, universities and others that he believes have wronged him.

A president ordering investigations of specific individuals whom he considers to be his political enemies is a remarkable breach of the traditional wall of separation between the White House and the Justice Department. Under that norm of separation, criminal investigations are supposed to be insulated from political pressure, but Trump has repeatedly scorned the notion of DOJ independence. Making Wednesday’s action even more remarkable, and perhaps unprecedented, is that Trump used the formal power of executive orders to effectively brand two individuals as subjects of criminal investigations.

Krebs, who was the administration’s top cybersecurity official responsible for election security, wasfired by Trump via tweet after he had asserted shortly after President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 that “in every case of which we are aware, these claims [of fraud] either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” He had also authorized a joint statementby CISA and other stakeholder groups that said the election was secure and that there was no indication of votes being changed or stolen, which angered Trump.

He was also akey witness for the Jan. 6 select committee, describing his efforts to secure the 2020 election and rebut conspiracy theories about the election and shore up voters’ confidence in the results. In his interview, he lamented that Republican leaders had catered to the false notion that the election was stolen, creating a “self-reinforcing cycle” of doubt. “Republican officials, senior officials, including the former President, lied to the American people about the security of the 2020 election,” he told the panel.

The order signed by Trump labeled Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority.” As he signed the order on Wednesday stripping Krebs’ security clearance and opening an investigation into his activities, Trump repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged.”

“It was proven by so many different ways in so many different forms,” Trump said. “We’re going to find out about this guy too, because this guy is a wise guy.”

Krebs is currently the chief intelligence and public policy officer at cybersecurity company SentinelOne. The order signed by Trump also takes aim at his current colleagues, suspending any security clearances held by individuals at SentinelOne who work with Krebs.

A spokesperson for the company did not immediately respond to request for comment.

In another move stemming from Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, the president on Wednesday signed a separate order imposing new limits on the law firm Susman Godfrey. The firm represented voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani and other Trump associates who falsely claimed the election was rigged.

Taylor authored a high-profile anonymous op-ed in 2018 that criticized Trump and offered a scathing firsthand account of his decision-making. He later authored a book portraying the chaos inside the Trump White House, before revealing his identity and endorsing then-candidate Biden in the days before the 2020 election.

Trump on Wednesday called Taylor a “traitor,” even as he insisted that the former DHS chief of staff played a minimal role in his first administration.

“I barely remember him. Somebody that went out and wrote a book and said all sorts of terrible things that were all lies,” Trump said in the Oval Office Wednesday. “I think he’s guilty of treason.”

Taylor left the Trump administration in 2019. On Wednesday, Taylor said Trump’s decision to target him was a sign the country was headed down “a dark path.”

“I said this would happen,”he posted on X. “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”

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===

FUCKERY

an 4 25

A federal judge ruled today that the Trump administration, including U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, violated his court order to unfreeze Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) relief to at least 19 states. The judge says the administration appears to be making a “covert” effort to punish states who oppose Trump’s oppressive immigration practices.

The New Republic reports U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued an injunction in March on behalf of 23 states suing the White House after the administration moved to pause FEMA aid to states. The Obama era judge ruled the hold-up “fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government.”

The federal reluctance applies only to states with Democratic attorneys general, and McConnell found the Trump administration ignored his March court order, with at least 19 states submitting “undisputed evidence” they were not receiving FEMA funds appropriated by Congress. Hawaii reported that FEMA had yet to respond to its $6 million request and subsequent $500k reimbursement for climate-related wildfires. The state of Oregon, meanwhile, reported that FEMA had yet to respond to a request for $129.4 million in federal funds for wildfires, severe winter storms, flooding, and mudslides.

“The Court’s intervention is necessary,” states wrote in a filing, because they “have continued to experience significant obstacles to accessing federal funds” while the government “reviews” spending.

Federal foot-dragging is not a “pause or a withholding of grants,” they say, “but an internal control” that appears to be used as a brick wall, with FEMA implementing a “manual review process based, covertly, on the President’s Jan. 20, 2025, executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” targeting so-called “sanctuary cities.” McConnell noticed the connection between FEMA’s manual review process and the Invasion EO and ordered FEMA to “immediately cease” the manual review process and comply with his original court March order.

States became suspicious of being targeted as immigrant sanctuaries in January, after the administration released and order describing “the use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and Green New Deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.”

As of today, states have not sought to hold the Trump administration in contempt.

Click here to read the New Republic's article in full.

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an 3 25

One of the most famous lines of Donald Trump's 2024 campaign was "I am your retribution." That line wasn't aimed at swing voters — some of whom were drawn to Trump's economic messaging and were frustrated over inflation — but at hardcore MAGA base voters who had voted for him in 2016 and 2020.

Hardcore MAGA Republicans applauded Trump's message of revenge against political enemies — a theme he continued to embrace after returning to the White House on January 20.

In an article published on March 21, Axios' Zachary Basu details the ways in which Trump — now two months into his second presidency — is trying to get back at those he considers political enemies.

"In the final days of the 2024 campaign," Basu explains, "Axios identified a list of perceived adversaries who fit what Trump ominously described as 'the enemies from within.' As president, he has taken steps to retaliate against virtually all of them…. Trump has revoked security clearances from former President (Joe) Biden, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco."

Basu continues, "The FBI is investigating the Biden Administration's handling of an EPA grant program, after a senior (Department of Justice) official resigned rather than pursue a criminal inquiry that she believed was baseless.… On Monday, (March 17), Trump announced he was terminating Secret Service protection for Biden's son and daughter, Hunter and Ashley, 'effective immediately.'"

The Axios reporter notes that some of Trump's targets are Republicans who served in his first administration. For example, Trump removed U.S. Secret Service protection for former National Security Director John Bolton and ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (who is also a former CIA director) despite threats against them from Iran.

"Trump despises his former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, (Gen. Mark Milley), who called the president 'fascist to the core' in 2023," Basu observes. "Trump yanked both his security clearance and personal security detail…. Trump claimed, this week, that Biden's preemptive pardons of (former Rep. Liz) Cheney and other members of the January 6 Committee are 'void' because of Biden's alleged use of an autopen."

Trump, Basu adds, also "stripped security clearances from New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in retaliation for their investigations into his business practices" and "fired and demoted federal prosecutors and FBI officials involved in the investigation of the January 6 riot, while pardoning thousands of his supporters who were convicted for breaking into the Capitol."

"Trump's plans to accelerate his grudge tour were laid bare in an extraordinary speech last week at the Justice Department, in which he falsely referred to himself as 'the chief law enforcement officer in the country," Basu writes. "That's actually his attorney general, Pam Bondi. Addressing an agency that has long prided itself on its independence, Trump attacked his political enemies as "scum" and called for them to be jailed."

*Read the full Axios article at this link.

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mma

### Steve Bannon: “There's major law firms in Washington, D.C.” and “what we are trying to do is put you out of business and bankrupt you”

03/13/25

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an 3 5

At a campaign rally in 2023, Donald Trump famously told a crowd of supporters, "I am your retribution" — a theme he echoed in many subsequent rallies. And when he gave his 2025 joint address to Congress on Tuesday night, March 4, 2025, Trump prioritized grievance as he angrily railed against former President Joe Biden, Democrats in Congress, and "radical-left lunatics."

The New York Times' Jamelle Bouie, in his March 5 column, describes Trump's second presidency as a "grand tour of retribution" — and that retribution, he warns, is being aimed at political foes as well as the general public.

"Donald Trump rambled, ranted and raved his way through the 2024 presidential campaign," Bouie explains, "but he was clear on one point: When he was elected, he would get revenge. 'I am your retribution,' Trump said to crowds of his supporters throughout the campaign. This was not an abstraction. He had a few targets in mind."

The targets Trump named, Bouie notes, included Biden, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr., and Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"For once in his public career," Bouie observes, "Trump wasn't lying. As president, he has made it a priority to go after his political enemies. One of his first acts once he was back in office was to remove security protections from former officials facing credible death threats, including his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and his former national security adviser John Bolton — both of whom Trump views as disloyal. Not only did he take away their protection, knowing they were under threat from Iran, but he also publicly discussed that he had removed their security, as if to entice their antagonists."

The Times columnist continues, "Trump fired more than a dozen government inspectors general at various federal agencies — most likely in retaliation for the fact that it was an inspector general who informed Congress about Trump's attempt to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden. Trump has also tried to purge the Justice Department of any lawyers and officials who worked on the January 6 investigation or helped to prosecute the January 6 rioters — nearly all of whom, of course, he pardoned or released."

Trump's "grand tour of retribution," according to Bouie, also includes appointing "supplicant Kash Patel" as FBI director and showing his "deep hostility toward Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky."

"Altogether, Trump has done more to actualize his desire for retribution than he has to fulfill his campaign promise to lower the price of groceries or reduce the cost of housing," Bouie observes. "A telling sign, perhaps, of his real priorities in office. This fact of Trump's indifference to most Americans — if not his outright hostility toward them, considering his assault on virtually every government function that helps ordinary people — suggests another dimension to his revenge tour. It is almost as if he wants to inflict pain not just on a specific set of individuals, but on the entire nation."

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DN AN 2 25

:{:{We look at the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on press freedom, and how the media has responded with bended knee in some cases, with Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. The Trump administration has threatened journalists and media outlets for their coverage, and the Federal Communications Commission is investigating PBS and NPR over its funding sources. Meanwhile, a number of major news organizations face accusations of surrendering to Trump’s threats.}:

In December, ABC settled a defamation suit brought by Trump by making a $15 million donation to his future presidential library. CBS’s parent company Paramount is reportedly in talks to settle a multibillion-dollar lawsuit filed by Trump, who accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris. Trump initially sought $10 billion in the lawsuit and is now seeking $20 billion. “What I see here is media organizations that have the power to fight back against Trump but aren’t doing it. I think that’s a failure of courage,” says Jaffer. “Every time one of those media organizations settles a case, the next organization finds it more difficult to resist Trump.}:

IFrame Content

AMY GOODMAN: As a constitutional crisis grows in Washington, we begin today’s show looking at the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on press freedom. Last week, the interim U.S. Attorney in Washington Edward Martin threatened to prosecute anyone, including journalists, who, quote, “target” or, quote, “impede” Elon Musk and DOGE — that’s the Department of Government Efficiency. Martin’s letter came a day after Musk claimed it was a crime to identify the young computer engineers who have helped him gain access to highly sensitive information at agencies across Washington.

Meanwhile, the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, has opened an investigation into San Francisco-based KCBS over the radio station’s reporting on recent immigration raids. The FCC has also opened a broader investigation of NPR and PBS and their practice of airing underwriting announcements.

On Friday, Donald Trump openly called for The Washington Post to fire longtime columnist Eugene Robinson after he accused Trump of trampling the Constitution.

Meanwhile, a number of major news organizations face accusations of already bending a knee to Trump. In December, ABC settled a defamation suit brought by Trump by making a $15 million donation to his future presidential library.

CBS’s parent company Paramount Global is reportedly in talks to settle a multibillion-dollar lawsuit filed by Trump, who accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris. Trump initially sought $10 billion in the lawsuit, but he’s upped it now to $20 billion. Last week, CBS took the unusual step of handing over its unedited tapes to the FCC. While the tapes showed no wrongdoing on CBS’s part, many believe Paramount might still settle the lawsuit. This all is happening as Paramount seeks federal approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.

We’re joined right now by Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. His recent New York Timesopinion piece is headlined “This Is Not a Moment to Settle with Trump.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, we just went through some of the cases, but if you can go through them in depth and explain what is happening here? Is the media obeying in advance?

JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah. I mean, that’s how I see it. I see a kind of failure of courage among the largest and most powerful media organizations in the country. You know, you started with the ABC settlement. This is a case that arose out of George Stephanopoulos saying on TV that President Trump had been found liable for rape, when in fact the jury had found him liable for sexual assault. Trump sued, claiming that he had been defamed. I don’t think that there —

AMY GOODMAN: And let’s be clear: It was the judge who said, in common parlance, this would be rape.

JAMEEL JAFFER: That’s right. That’s right. I don’t think that Trump had any chance of winning that lawsuit. If ABC had contested it, ABC would have been protected by the New York Times v. Sullivan rule. New York Times v. Sullivan is a 60-year-old case that gives citizens broad power to — or, broad latitude to criticize government officials, makes it very difficult for public officials to recover in defamation actions. I don’t think there’s any way that ABC would have lost that case. But they settled the case.

Second one is Meta’s settlement with Trump. This is over Meta’s decision or Facebook and Instagram’s decision to deplatform Trump after January 6th. Trump sued, claiming that his First Amendment rights had been violated. This, I think, is a totally frivolous case. There’s no way that Trump would have won that case against Meta, but Meta settled it, as well, for $25 million — again, all going to Trump’s presidential library.

And then, finally, this reported CBS settlement, or possible CBS settlement, with Trump over the action — over the case that involved the editing of this Kamala Harris interview. I don’t think that CBS edited that interview in any unusual way at all. The kind of editing they did is routine for journalism, for media organizations. Trump knows that. Again, no chance that Trump would have won that case, but CBS is reportedly thinking about settling it.

So, what I see here is media organizations that have the power to fight back against Trump but aren’t doing it. I think that’s a failure of courage, and it has implications for those particular media organizations, because I think it affects their credibility and their prestige. But it has larger press freedom implications, as well, because every time one of those media organizations settles a case, the next organization finds it more difficult to resist Trump. And this is a moment in which we need these organizations to hold the powerful to account, hold Trump to account, and this is exactly what they should not be doing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jameel, what about this latest story this week about the FCC investigating a San Francisco —

JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — radio station, KCBS, for its coverage of immigration enforcement in San Jose?

JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah. I mean, here, too, I think you see the Trump administration trying to use its regulatory authorities in a way that chills press freedom, chills legitimate reporting. No question here that that radio station was within its rights to report what it did. And what Trump is trying to do or what the FCC is trying to do here is chill not just that radio station, but other radio stations and other media organizations, from engaging in reporting that is inconvenient to the administration.

I mean, I mentioned the CBS case. You know, another aspect of that case involves the FCC, with the FCC having demanded from CBS that it turn over unedited transcripts of its interview with Kamala Harris. And I don’t think in another —

AMY GOODMAN: And they released them.

JAMEEL JAFFER: And they released them. And they released them. I don’t think in another — in any other era a news organization would have just turned over those transcripts without at least trying to get a judge to narrow the request or look at the transcripts in camera before turning them over. But CBS just turned them over.

And, you know, I think that there’s a real risk here that, on paper, we’re going to have all the First Amendment rights in the world. The First Amendment is going to look great on paper. But the organizations that we need to assert their First Amendment rights, to defend press freedom, are increasingly just not doing it.

I mean, I’ve named a few of the settlements, but even before we got to the settlements, there were the L.A. Times and The Washington Post, which quashed editorials that would have been — that would have provoked Trump. This happened before the election. Then there were the Big Tech companies that all made million-dollar donations to Trump’s inaugural fund. You know, I think what we’re seeing is media organizations, including social media organizations, lining up to ingratiate themselves with President Trump. And that is an extremely troubling thing at this particular moment.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, of course, it’s not just media organizations. Universities. Talk about the free speech rights that are endangered, increasingly endangered, at universities by the Trump administration, for instance, threatening to deport pro-Palestinian students.

JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah, I mean, I think this is — it’s a larger issue across society. Many of the institutions that we need to serve as checks on government power at a moment like this are not doing their jobs.

Now, this question about, you know, in what circumstances can the government deport noncitizens for exercising their First Amendment rights, I think, is a hugely significant question. And I want people to understand that the First Amendment protects noncitizen students at American universities just like it protects everybody else. The government cannot constitutionally deport people simply because they have exercised their First Amendment rights, simply because they have criticized a war overseas or criticized our government or criticized another government. Those are not constitutionally permissible justifications for deporting somebody.

So, you know — and you don’t have to take my word for it, because a couple years ago, the Knight Institute, my institute, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Biden administration, and we were able to get two memos, two legal memos, in which the Trump administration had considered its authority to engage in these kinds of deportations based on First Amendment activity. And Trump administration lawyers wrote memos that acknowledged that noncitizens at universities in the United States are protected by the First Amendment and that deporting them on the basis of their speech would almost certainly be unconstitutional.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, Jameel Jaffer, talk about what happened Friday night with the casino magnate Steve Wynn asking the Supreme Court to revisit the Times v. Sullivan defamation rule, the Supreme Court decision, one of the two most important press freedom cases.

JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah, so, I mentioned New York Times v. Sullivan already. This has been a campaign by some conservatives over the last few years to try to get the Supreme Court to narrow or overrule New York Times v. Sullivan, which would be a very big deal because it’s The New York Times v. Sullivan, more than any other case, that protects our ability to criticize government officials, which is core to our democracy. And this —

AMY GOODMAN: What was it established under, New York Times v. Sullivan? What case was that?

JAMEEL JAFFER: So, it’s called New York Times v. Sullivan. It’s a case involving — The New York Times was sued by a Southern police official who was concerned about civil rights activism in the South and complained, in particular, about an ad in The New York Times that he said — he said accurately — was inaccurate. The ad included some inaccuracies in it. And he said, because the ad included inaccuracies, The New York Times was liable. I think it was for $500,000, which at the time would have been crushing liability even for The New York Times. And if he had won that case, other news organizations reporting on the civil rights movement would have been crushed, as well. But the Supreme Court said, if you’re criticizing government officials, you have to have broad latitude, even to get things wrong. So, unless the public official can show what’s called actual malice, so unless the public official can show that the newspaper or the writer recklessly published false information or deliberately published false information, there’s no recovery possible. The First Amendment forecloses recovery.

So, now some conservatives are pushing to get the Supreme Court to overrule that decision. I think it’s a misguided campaign, even, you know, if you want the things that these conservatives want. I think this is going to backfire on them. But this cert petition that was filed on Friday night, this request that the Supreme Court hear the case, is another effort in this longer campaign to get the Supreme Court to either scale back or overrule New York Times v. Sullivan.

AMY GOODMAN: Jameel Jaffer, thanks so much for being with us, director of the Knight —

JAMEEL JAFFER: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. We’ll link to your piece in The New York Times, “This Is Not a Moment to Settle with Trump.”

---

AN 125

In late 2022, Donald Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board, which, he claimed, defamed him by refusing to retract prizes it gave the New York Times and the Washington Post for their Russiagate reporting.

Trump, in the lawsuit, alleged that the Times and the Post defamed him in their articles and that the Pulitzer Prize Board, by awarding them, defamed him as well. Many Trump critics attacked the lawsuit as frivolous, pointing out that the Pulitzer Prize Board itself didn't write the articles he claimed were defamatory.

Now, according to CNN and Mediaite, the Pulitzer Prize Board is fighting the lawsuit by "using Trump's own legal arguments against him."

CNN's Hadas Gold reports, "In their motion filed on Monday, (January 27), the Pulitzer Board pointed out that Trump previously sought stays in other civil lawsuits where he was the defendant, saying the suits should be halted while he is in office because of questions of whether the U.S. Constitution bars state courts from exercising jurisdiction over…. a sitting president."

Gold notes that "for years," Trump "demanded the Pulitzer Board rescind the 2018 prize, arguing that he had been exonerated by special counsel Robert Mueller's 2019 report."

"Following Trump’s demands," Gold explains, "the Pulitzer Board commissioned two independent reviews of the awards, issuing a statement in 2022 that read in part: 'No passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.' It was that statement that prompted Trump to file his defamation suit against the (Pulitzer Prize) Board, choosing to file it in Florida because one member of the Board is a Florida resident."

Mediaite's David Gilmour points out that the Pulitzer Prize Board is "flipping President Donald Trump's own legal arguments on their head in an attempt to pause his defamation lawsuit against them."

READ MORE:[Apocalypse Now: Extreme interpretation of Christian nationalism now guides Pentagon policy

"The Pulitzer Board's argument essentially repurposes Trump's own defense tactics to shield themselves from litigation while his case is active," Gilmour observes. "While federal criminal charges against Trump are on hold due to Justice Department policy against prosecuting sitting presidents, several civil suits are moving forward. These include the $500 million fraud judgment secured by New York Attorney General Letitia James and judgments won by E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation."

Gilmour adds, "Whether the legal move will halt Trump’s Pulitzer lawsuit remains to be seen."

mma

Steve Bannon calls for imprisoning Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson

01/27/25 12:45 PM EST

Project 2025 proposed targeting local officials who resist mass deportation. Trump is following through.

01/27/25

---

===

an 1 25

'Not good': Trump proposes 'getting rid of' FEMA and conditioning California aid on voter ID

===

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MMA 1 25

January 23, 2025, edition of The Dan Bongino Show, streamed on Rumble

DAN BONGINO (Host): Okay, I’ve got a couple more for ya. One person again who deserves some special accolades from the legal side. We’ve got a doctor, we’ve got a Vice President, we’ve got a President, we’ve got a member of Congress. Shame on us if we don’t enter the legal profession and start to pull people out of the DOJ.

Folks, if deranged Jack Smith — Jack Smith, of course, the special tyrant investigating Donald Trump for a fake crime he made up for a fake insurrection. If Jack Smith does not drop another L, which he did — remember, this guy has lost before the Supreme Court more than most qualified lawyers will ever see the Supreme Court in their lifetime. If Jack Smith doesn’t do what he did prosecuting Trump, I’m not sure again that we win in the exact same dynamic we won in. Here’s an MSNBC segment quickly, where we note that Jack Smith was not given a pardon. So just, kind of, parlay back to the beginning of the show, I have no problem with Donald Trump investigating Jack Smith either. And you shouldn’t either. Jack Smith doesn’t have a pardon.

===

aha? just calling X deep state obligates you to attack kill it?

mma

January 21, 2025, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

ENRIQUE TARRIO (GUEST): I'd like to thank again President Donald J. Trump for helping us through these difficult times and releasing me, Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola. Right? And all the J6ers. We went through hell, and I'm gonna tell you, it was worth it, because what we stood for and what those guys stood for was what we've been fighting for and what we saw yesterday on the inauguration stage. I can't tell you it's been easy, but I will tell you it's been worth it.

And, Alex, I mean, everything that they concocted. Even you, everything that they concocted against you, I mean, we see how this system could be weaponized, and we need people like Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and the rest of Trump's cabinet to right all these wrongs. I'm happy in my heart. I love what's transpired in the past just couple hours, and there's a couple J6ers that are still in prison, that are waiting to be released.

...

TARRIO: They didn't care about the evidence. They cared about putting Trump supporters in prison. Well, now it's our turn. Now it's our turn. I'm happy that the president's focusing not on retribution and focusing on success, but I will tell you that I'm not gonna play by those rules. The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted. They pardon the J6 committee? Fine. In this country, our case proves that you could be put in prison for anything. They need to be imprisoned. We need to find and put them behind bars for what they did. They need to pay for what they did.

ALEX JONES (HOST): Well, I mean, let's be clear. Trump talked about getting the economy going and success. That's key to keeping his support to do the rest. But to have our success, we have to put the deep state in prison. Fauci, the traitor Milley, the J6 people.

Newsmax host defends Proud Boys and Enrique Tarrio: “They have been so lied about and maligned”

09/06/23 9:46 AM EDT

### Proud Boys founder McInnes calls for “a big memorial for all the whites” and laments “all the whites in history who have suffered from Blacks”

07/19/18 2:58 PM EDT

### Gavin McInnes And Alex Jones Discuss Whether Women “Deserve” To Be Attacked When They Stay Out Late

05/09/1x

===

AN 1 25

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has denied the Department of Justice’s request to share Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with Congress. Her order came just hours after now-President Trump signed an executive order to hold former government officials accountable for “unauthorized disclosure” of “sensitive” information, and “for election interference.”

Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee whose rulings have been highly criticized, refused to allow members of Congress to review Smith’s final report. Trump was investigated for alleged unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return sensitive, classified, and top secret documents, reportedly including nuclear and defense secrets. The FBI executed a lawful search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence to retrieve some of the documents.

Part of her reasoning, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports, is that Congress “hasn’t asked for it and it’s not clear they need it, she says.”

“The ruling will make it easier for Trump to bury the report on the special counsel’s criminal probe,” Politico adds.

Late Monday night, one of the reportedly dozens of executive orders President Trump signed also addressed sensitive and classified information.

In it, he revoked the security clearances of dozens of former federal government officials, including some who had worked in his first administration, like former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, whom he criticized.

The list includes the 51 former U.S. intelligence officials who signed a letter reportedly stating that the disclosure of emails purportedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

“Many of the former officials are long retired and no longer hold active clearances — meaning that the move may have limited practical impact on their careers — but the order nevertheless suggests that Trump intends to act on threats he’s made to penalize national security and intelligence professionals whom he deems to be his enemies,” CNN reported.

“They should be prosecuted for what they did,” Trump had said.

“National security is … damaged by the publication of classified information,” the executive order reads. “Former National Security Advisor John R. Bolton published a memoir for monetary gain after he was terminated from his White House position in 2019. The book was rife with sensitive information drawn from his time in government. The memoir’s reckless treatment of sensitive information undermined the ability of future presidents to request and obtain candid advice on matters of national security from their staff. Publication also created a grave risk that classified material was publicly exposed.”

In 2023, Bolton commented on the classified documents criminal case against Trump, at the time 37 felony charges, most of which were under the Espionage Act.

“Trump appeared to have a ‘pattern’ of wanting to collect materials ‘of interest to him,’ including classified documents,” Bolton said, as The Hill reported. He also “knocked Trump’s behavior as ‘very disturbing.'”

Bolton told MSNBC, “there were some [documents] that we did get back. Others, the most famous, to me, it demonstrates why I don’t need to read the indictment or believe its allegations are true, although I’m pretty confident they are — was the famous tweet that he did after getting an overhead picture of a failed Iranian missile launch, which he was shown during an intelligence briefing. [He] didn’t give [it] back, and it was tweeted before the intelligence officials got back to their office.”

Bolton was “referring to a 2019 tweet from the then-president.”

Trump’s order on Monday also stated: “It is the policy of the United States that individuals who hold government-issued security clearances should not use their clearance status to influence U.S. elections.”

Among the intelligence professionals the order revokes security clearance from are well-known cable news commentators, and political and national security experts.

In addition to Bolton, some on the list include: James Clapper, Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta, John Brennan, Jeremy Bash, and Nada Bakos.

Margaret Brennan, CBS News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and “Face the Nation” moderator noted that Trump revoking “the security clearances of a long list of former intelligence officials … makes it hard for his own team to seek informed counsel from them.”

Mark Zaid, an attorney who specializes in national security issues, including security clearances, noted, “no President has ever done this before.”

Watch video of Trump below or at this link.

===

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an 1 25

Days before he becomes president of the USA — and minutes after the release of a prosecutor’s bombshell report into the Jan. 6 election interference case — Donald Trump took to Truth Socialearly Tuesday to attack a comedian.

“How bad is Seth Meyers on NBC?" the president-elect asked at 1:24 a.m.

It came just minutes after special counsel Jack Smith’s report revealed that he believed he had the evidence to convict Trump.

Trump was reacting to a 10-minute segment on Meyers show Monday in which he mocked infighting in the MAGA movement which has seen allies like Steve Bannon and Elon Musk go head to head.

“Trump is caught in the middle between the MAGA diehards and the rich oligarchs who helped him get elected,” Meyers said. “And he doesn’t even really know what the hell they’re talking about.”

Trump hit back that the comedian was a “moron” and that his network, NBC, was “run by a truly bad group of people.”

ALSO READ:Fox News has blood on its hands as Trump twists the knife

“Remember, they also run MSDNC,” he added.

“I got stuck watching Marble Mouth Meyers the other night, the first time in months, and every time I watch this moron I feel an obligation to say how dumb and untalented he is, merely a slot filler for the Scum that runs Comcast.

“These guys should be paying a lot of money for the right to give these “in kind” contributions to the Radical Left Democrat Party. These are not shows or entertainment, they are simply political hits, 100% of the time, to me and the Republican Party. Comcast should pay a BIG price for this!”

Watch the Seth Meyers video below or at this link.

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Steve Bannon threatens DOJ officials: “We are going to torment you and destroy your lives”

01/06/25 mma

January 6, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Matthew Graves. These people are relentless. They are unchained, and Matthew Graves has to understand something. Matthew Graves, write this down. Or if Matthew Graves' family or anybody that knows Matthew Graves, make sure his family knows this.

You're going to prison for a very long time. You're a totally evil person that has broken the law and destroyed lives, and the people whose lives you destroyed may not have the power to do anything about it, but we certainly do, and we are. You are a truly evil individual and you're deranged.

Lisa Monaco, Merrick Garland, the guy Bratt, Matthew Graves, all of you, we are going to torment you and destroy your lives because you deserve to have your lives destroyed like you've destroyed patriots from January 6th. Yes, patriots.

…

Matthew Graves, you think this is funny? You think we take this as funny? We don't take it as funny, brother.

And when you're serving in your 10th year of your 20 year sentence in that - in the cell, in a cell block right at some low security, because you're not going to go to a camp, to a low security prison, I want you to remember this day when we actually committed ourselves body and soul to make sure that you people are hunted down and brought to justice.

Steve Bannon says Mike Johnson should not be speaker: “We don't need partisanship now. We need hyper-partisanship now.”

12/20/24 1:53 PM EST

### Media Matters weekly newsletter, December 20

12/20/24 10:48 AM EST

### Steve Bannon on a government shutdown: “I'd like just to shut it down. Go home.”

12/19/24

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porn star case sentencing

Fox News legal analyst calls for investigation into Jack Smith and his staff

01/03/25

January 3, 2025, edition of Fox News' Hannity

JASON CHAFFETZ (HOST): Gregg, what's the incoming administration -- what can they do to push back not just in this case, but across the country, the lawfare that's been used against the Trump family, quite frankly, and against conservatives and Republicans broadly? What can this administration do to just put justice back where it's supposed to be, with a blindfold and equal to everybody?

GREGG JARRETT (GUEST): Well, Trump already won the lawfare battle. He is essentially prevailed. This is sort of the last case -- and the professor and I agree, it's guaranteed to get reversed because it was such an abomination.

But I do think, to answer your question, that the incoming Department of Justice needs to take a very close look at the conduct of Jack Smith, his entire staff, bringing specious cases in Washington and Florida. And if laws were broken by prosecutors, those prosecutors should be prosecuted. If they didn't break laws, nevertheless, their unscrupulous, unprincipled behavior needs to be exposed, and that's the job for Pam Bondi, assuming she is approved as the next attorney general in charge of the Department of Justice.

Same thing goes for the FBI. I mean, it has -- sad to say, this is not a reflection on the hardworking agents out in the field, but, you know, it is the headquarters that has corrupted itself with an abuse of the law and that needs to be fixed as well.

---

mma 11 24

i will be your vengeance see deep state enemies list

Once Trump captured the GOP and ascended to the presidency in 2017, that bubble served him and his interests. Within it, for example, his supporters were convinced by a sprawling conspiracy theory portraying the then-president as the victim of a shadowy “deep state” cabal that justified vast retribution.

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AN 12 24

any Never Trump conservatives have argued that the Republican Party's Ronald Reagan era officially ended when Donald Trump won the 2016 GOP nomination and went on to defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the general election.

Since then, the GOP has only grown more and more Trumpified. Many conservative Trump critics are no longer in Congress, including former Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Wyoming), ex-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), and ex-Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona). And outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) decided against seeking reelection.

Trump's narrow defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election only tightens his stranglehold on the GOP. The Dispatch's David M. Drucker, in an article published on December 17, stresses that when he returns to the White House on January 20, 2025, he will be "flanked by an army of outside enforcers prepared to squeeze any Republican who resists his agenda."

"Once Trump is inaugurated," Drucker reports, "this MAGA-aligned network will shift to strong-arming obstinate House and Senate Republicans to support the president-elect's agenda, be it executive orders or legislative proposals. Critically, MAGA insiders tell The Dispatch, they won't be sitting around waiting for direction from Trump to join a particular fight."

One of those MAGA insiders is "War Room" host Steve Bannon, who told The Dispatch, "The ecosystem on the right is going to be a force multiplier…. What I think you're seeing now is the institutionalization of what had been a self-organizing effort."

Bannon, according to Drucker, is "describing" what "amounts to the rise of a new Republican establishment, complete with well-funded activist groups and influential media figures."

Bannon, now 71, has been involved in far-right politics for decades. But Trump's MAGA loyalists aren't necessarily Baby Boomers or members of Generation X.

In a New York Times article published on Dec. 16, reporter Shawn McCreesh describes a New York Young Republican Club gathering that took place Sunday, Dec. 15.

Bannon was the keynote speaker, but many of the "true believers" in attendance were much younger. And according to McCreesh, they are fine with "retribution" against Trump's detractors — if unclear about the form it should take.

"This club's members are, by and large, a terminally online, trollish, far-right collective who would consider any sort of tack toward the center by Mr. Trump or those guiding him to be an act of betrayal," McCreesh reports. "They are the prime audience for retribution rattling. And yet, on Sunday, many seemed at odds about just how much retribution they could expect, or who precisely should be targeted, or how.

Preston Parra, a 22-year-old MAGA Republican at the gathering, said of Trump's foes, "We want to throw the book at them because they deserve it. They're godless demoniacs…. The leftist, elitist cabal, whatever you want to call it. Nancy Pelosi. Mitch McConnell."

READ MORE:['How long it’ll be until he sues an economist': Experts blast Trump's lawsuit against pollster

*Read The Dispatch's full article at this linkand the New York Times' reporting here (subscription required).

an 12 24

During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, December 16, President-elect Donald Trump told reporters that he plans to sue pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register because of a poll that turned out be way off.

Seltzer's final Des Moines Register poll before the United States' 2024 presidential election showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump in Iowa by 3 percent. But Trump won Iowa by 13 percent, meaning that the poll was off by 16 percent.

Trump, at Mar-a-Lago, told reporters that Selzer was a "very good pollster" who "got me right all the time" — until that final pre-election poll. And he went on to say, "In my opinion, it was fraud, and it was election interference."

Trump's announcement is receiving a lot of responses on X, formerly Twitter.

When journalist Aaron Rupar tweeted video of Trump announcing his plan to sue Seltzer, conservative Trump critic Gil Loder responded, "I am completely content with Trump wasting his money on frivolous lawsuits as long as he spends his own money on them and not mine. He needs to keep his hands off the government treasury."

Republicans Against Trump tweeted, "Trump just said he plans to sue pollster Ann Selzer and the Iowa newspaper for publishing an inaccurate poll a few days before the election. The most thin-skinned insecure little man on planet Earth."

X user Brian Knotts posted, "Can someone explain the legal theory behind Trump suing the Des Moines Register/Ann Selzer? It seems to me that they are free to publish whatever they want and present it as a poll or whatever. I don't see any law that is broken, even if they make it up 100%.... Is the idea that the allegedly fraudulent (as opposed to merely inaccurate) poll constitutes defamation? That seems like a stretch, to say the least."

PBS reporter Lisa Desjardins wrote, "Trump: I am going to be bringing a defamation lawsuit against the ppl in Iowa, they had a pollster who said I was going to lose by 3-4 points. (He means Ann Selzer, a polling legend whose final poll

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an 12 24

no lnx

alternet-

'Pit bulls of retribution': Swalwell braces for Trump admin after 'gross abuse'

Matt Laslo,Alexandria Jacobson and Raw StoryDecember 11, 2024

A new watchdog report released Tuesday revealed that the Department of Justice under the first Donald Trump administration secretly obtained phone records for members of Congress, journalists, government staffers and incoming FBI director nominee Kash Patel — actions the top House Judiciary Democrat exclusively told Raw Story are a "gross abuse" of power worthy of investigation.

Two Democratic members of Congress. then-Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (R-CA), were targeted in the report, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

"My suspicion alert level is at the highest, considering it was me and another Democrat who the president, President Trump would routinely call out all the time, either in his tweets or his public statements," Swalwell told Raw Story on Tuesday. "That's what he was willing to do in his first administration, where there were guardrails in place and serious [pushback] around him. It's very concerning as to what he'll be willing to do with unserious people around him who are seeking to be pit bulls of retribution."

Swalwell said targeting Congress members and staff is "incredibly concerning" and will be more so with the incoming administration of Trump loyalists as "any guardrails that were in place last time are gone now with this new team," he said.

ALSO READ: Trump allies promise revenge as Dems ram through Biden judges

"Once you start going after like individual members who are critical of the president, you better be damn sure you have the goods, and it was clear that Schiff and I had done nothing wrong, and it was just a way to try and find something on us, to indict or embarrass us," Swalwell said.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the current top Democratic ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, exclusively told Raw Story that the Department of Justice investigation intended to have a "chilling effect."

"It's a gross abuse and ought to be investigated, although with Trump coming in, he's not gonna investigate it," said Nadler, who announced he would drop out of the Democratic House Judiciary race and endorsed Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).

Schiff, who was sworn into the Senate on Monday, joined current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for a press briefing on Tuesday. He said that pre-emptive pardons were not necessary for himself or other members of the January 6 committee, but he did not take questions from reporters about the report.

NOW READ: Trump is taking the mask off after lying to us for more than a year

an 12 24

On November 11, Dr. Tony Pastor — a Houston-based cardiologist who practices at Texas Children's Hospital and teaches at Baylor College of Medicine — posted a video on TikTok addressing an executive order from Gov. Greg Abbott.

The Republican governor ordered public hospitals that accept Medicare or Medicaid to report on the immigration status of undocumented patients. But Pastor, in the video, told patients they don't have to respond to questions about their immigration status.

Abbott, in response, threatened to pull funding from Texas Children's Hospital. And according to Chron.com reporter Faith Bugenhagen, the video has since been removed from TikTok.

READ MORE:[Mehdi Hasan asks why this group isn’t 'demanding McConnell step down from the Senate'

Bugenhagen reports, "It is not clear if either Texas Children's Hospital or Baylor College of Medicine forced Pastor to remove the video or if Pastor took it down on his own. Chron reached out to Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine on Tuesday to ask if either medical institution requested Pastor take the post down and if any disciplinary actions were taken against the physician."

In Texas hospitals, the question "Are you a U.S. Citizen?" now appears on forms for patients. And Pastor, in the video, said, "We were told today that people do not actually have to answer the question. So, my proposal to everyone who's seeing this is: just know that you do not have to answer this question."

In a November 25 post on X, formerly Twitter, Abbott wrote, "Hey Texas Children’s Hospital & Baylor College of Medicine this doctor is putting your Medicaid & Medicare funding at risk. (You) better think twice & have crystal clear records. There will be consequences for failing to follow the law in the Order."

Bugenhagen notes that "before the video was taken offline, it had received over 250,000 likes and 1.3 million views."

*Read Chron.com's full article at this link.

------

an 12 24

During a late November interview with The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell, attorney and Never

Trump conservative George Conway predicted that many GOP senators, in 2025, will be too "spineless" to reject Donald Trump's most "appalling" nominees. Conway, however, noted that Republicans will have only a small U.S. Senate majority next year, and that Trump's nominees could "go down" if a handful of GOP senators have enough of a "spine" to reject them.

Trump's MAGA allies, according to Conway and other Trump critics, won't hesitate to threaten and bully Senate Republicans who refuse to confirm his more controversial nominees.

MAGA Republicans often threaten members of their party with primary challenges if they stand up to the president-elect. And far-right MAGA attorney Mike Davis, during an interview for Politico's Playbook column, threatened non-compliant Senate Republicans withanother tactic: hiring private investigators to probe their backgrounds.

Politico's Adam Wren, in a Playbook column published on December 8, reports that Davis is "mobilizing his Article III Project to become the tip of the spear in building pressure from the base on Republican senators to confirm" former Fox News host Pete Hegseth (Trump's pick for defense secretary).

Davis told Politico, "The Article III Project is very excited about this new standard that drinking and womanizing is disqualifying for public office. I'm very happy to hire investigators for senators and use that standard."

Davis has never shied away from violent or inflammatory rhetoric.

In a November 6 post on X, formerly Twitter, the attorney said of Democrats, "Here's my current mood: I want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. (Legally, politically, and financially, of course."

*Read Adam Wren's full Politico Playbook column at this link.

===

mma 12 24

December 6, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): What are they spending their time on, wait for it, preemptive - blanket preemptive pardons. What is a blanket preemptive pardon? I don't know. I'm not so sure it's constitutional. I'm sure the Supreme Court will have to decide.

We've so rattled these people. We've so rattled them, they know their crimes and they're so rattled because finally somebody in opposition to them is saying, hey, we're coming after you and we're not going to stop, we're not going to stop. We're going to be relentless. We're going to unearth your crimes. We're going to investigate, adjudicate, put you on trial, and then incarcerate.

You're going to go broke. You're going to spend all your money. You're going to be worried nonstop, am I going to prison? Andrew Weissman the entire crowd. We're going to get all the connective tissues of the text messages, all of it. And the vast criminal conspiracy, not simply against President Trump, but what you did to the life movement, the parents movement. There's so much. It's a vertical that will go quite deep.

…

We broke you and now you're going to pay for what you did to the American people. This has nothing to do with President Trump. It has nothing to do with Steve Bannon. It's not vengeance, it's not retribution, it is justice and the administration of justice.

---

kash 50 on enemies list in book, cassidy lots of trump admin

an 12 24

On Thursday, December 4, conservative Republican Olivia Troye — a former national security aide to ex-Vice President Mike Pence who supported Kamala Harris in the 2024 election — reported, on X, that she had received a letter from Kash Patel's attorney threatening her with legal action and demanding that she retract her "comments on MSNBC about his unfitness to serve as FBI director." But Troye declared, "I stand by my statements."

Patel is among the Trump allies journalist Ross Rosenfeld discusses in an article published by The New Republic the following day. From Patel to "War Room" host Steve Bannon to anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Rosenfeld warns, President-elect Donald Trump's second term will have little or no tolerance for dissent.

"Trumpworld stands ready to stamp out dissent," Rosenfeld argues. "Not just the dissent itself, but the dissenters: those heretics who refute the Gospel of Trump and insist that his second coming, and his second administration, stands to deliver nothing but ill to the United States. Those with differing opinions are set to run afoul of those coming to power."

Rosenfeld quotes Patel's own words, noting that during an appearance on Bannon's "War Room," he threatened, "We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections."

But Patel, Rosenfeld stresses, is hardly the only Trump ally who has no tolerance for criticism of "King Donald."

Trump has nominated RFK Jr. to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

"Robert Kennedy Jr. fits snugly within this movement," according to Rosenfeld. "Like Patel, RFK Jr. has promised to clean house when approved for his new position as secretary of health and human services. He's said he'd likely fire around 600 employees at the National Institutes of Health who don't see his vision."

Rosenfeld adds, "He's also promised to fire, on Day One, 'every nutritional scientist at (the Food and Drug Administration) because all of them are corrupt — all of them are complicit in the poisoning of our children."

*Ross Rosenfeld's full article for The New Republic is available at this link.

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lnxno

Alternet

'Cowardly fled the scene of his crime': Sen. Hawley blasted over scathing letter to DOJ and FBI

Maya BoddieDecember 04, 2024

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) published a scathing letter addressed to to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday, warning them that "real justice" is on the way.

"I’m putting DOJ & FBI on notice: Don’t shred a single document," Hawley wrote via X. "Don’t delete a single file. Accountability is coming. The Judiciary Committee WILL investigate - and find out who authorized spying on Christians, attacks on prolifers, the vendettas against Trump - all of it."

The Missouri The letter begins: "Dear Attorney General Garland and Director Wray: I have received reports that, under your leadership, DOJ and FBI employees are destroying records and other documents in an effort to conceal the widespread misconduct that took place under the Biden Administration. You must immediately stop this attempt to evade accountability, and should terminate any employees involved."

READ MORE: Trump lining up billionaire defense investor and megadonor to be number two at Pentagon

Hawley concluded, "The bottom line is this: you must immediately take all necessary steps to preserve all documents, records, and other materials generated by your agencies during your respective tenures in office. You must cease any bad-faith document destruction. And you should prepare for the real justice to come."

American Enterprise Institute Norman Ornstein commented: "Instigator of violent insurrection who cowardly fled the scene of his crime speaks"

Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan replied: As much as I loathe Hawley and his ideology, at least he understands politics and what his role is and how to exercise power. When was the last time you saw Dick Durbin write a letter like this to Republican officials? He rolled over for Justices Roberts, Thomas and Alito.

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December 2, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Five

JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Jessica, how do you see Kash Patel?

JESSICA TARLOV (HOST): The good news is he's not being accused of having sex with a minor, so the bar --we're up here so that's good. He also, in good news, just put his enemies list out there. It's in his book, "Government Gangsters." His vision for reforming the FBI, I guess, is just being angry at people who worked for Barack Obama and Republicans who are mean to Trump.

WATTERS: Not a bad place to start.

TARLOV: Sure.

an 12 24

President-elect Donald Trump has been drawing vehement criticism from both Democrats and Never Trump conservatives over the more extreme picks for his incoming administration, including former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Trump's choice for national intelligence director), anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Trump's pick to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) and Fox News star Pete Hegseth (the Christian nationalist Trump is proposing for defense secretary).

Now, Trump is drawing even more criticism for choosing far-right conspiracy theorist Kash Patel to replace Christopher Wray as FBI director.

But the New York Times' Peter Baker, in an article published on December 2, stresses that Trump has responded to this criticism of nominees with angry "defiance."

"His first selection for attorney general collapsed in spectacular fashion," Baker explains. "His choice for defense secretary is awash in scandal. His picks for intelligence, health and other posts are being panned. But if anyone thought that President-elect Donald J. Trump might be chastened, he has quickly demonstrated otherwise. Even with so many appointees already under fire, Mr. Trump has doubled down on defiance as he assembles his next administration."

Baker adds, "Rather than turning to more credentialed and respected choices with easier paths to Senate confirmation, Mr. Trump, in rapid-fire fashion, keeps naming more ideological warriors, conspiracy theorists and now even family members to senior government positions."

The Times reporter notes that Trump's "persistence in advancing unconventional appointments underscores" his desire to "surround himself this time with loyalists he can trust to carry out his agenda, including 'retribution' against his perceived enemies."

Attorney Gregg Nunziata, who formerly served as nominations counsel for Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, believes that Trump is going out of his way to provoke GOP senators.

Nunziata told the Times, "By insisting on highly provocative nominees, short on traditional qualifications but long on personal loyalty and zest for confrontation, he seems to be deliberately testing the Senate's capacity and willingness to play its constitutional role as a check on the president."

Former Deputy National Security Adviser Charles M. Kupperman considers Patel an especially frustrating pick.

Kupperman told the Times, "Kash is totally unqualified for this position. He is the dictionary definition of a sycophant. Appointing Kash as FBI director is Trump's ultimate statement that his second term will be driven by retribution. And it is a gross insult to citizens."

*Read Peter Baker's full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).

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===

MMA

November 25, 2024, edition of Fox News' *The Ingraham Angle

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): I'm telling you if the Democrats somehow manage to take the House in 2026, and they could, it is highly probable that they will do everything in their power, stay with me here, to impeach Donald Trump again. You think I'm kidding? Well, we'll see.

And if Democrats win in 2028, I mean, they are just going to resume the case that we're talking about tonight. And they will probably try to go after Vance as well and anyone else connected to Trump. This is why the DOJ has to be cleaned out.

I think Pam Bondi can do it. The Democrats and their never-Trump poodles have done enormous damage to these institutions. And they will do it all again. They do not care. There should be, however, consequences where appropriate, so that this never happens again.

===

an 11 24

Revenge—it’s a big part of Trump’s life,” Mother Jones‘ David Corn (10/19/16) wrote just before Trump was elected to the presidency the first time:

In speeches and public talks, Trump has repeatedly expressed his fondness for retribution. In 2011, he addressed the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia, to explain how he had achieved his success. He noted there were a couple of lessons not taught in business school that successful people must know. At the top of the list was this piece of advice: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”

Knowing this about Trump, Democrats and liberals worry that he will use the Department of Justice, especially if Matt Gaetz is confirmed as attorney general, as an unrestrained vehicle to pursue the prosecution of political enemies.

But given Trump’s constant attacks on media—“the opposition party,” as his ally Steve Bannon called the fourth estate (New York Times,1/26/17)—journalists fear that he will use the power of the state to intimidate if not destroy the press.

Defunding public broadcasting

Trump called for defunding NPR (Newsweek, 4/10/24) after a long-time editor accused the radio outlet of liberal bias in the conservative journal Free Press (4/9/24). Rep. Claudia Tenney (R–NY) introduced legislation to defund NPR because “taxpayers should not be forced to fund NPR, which has become a partisan propaganda machine” (Office of Claudia Tenney, 4/19/24). With Republicans also holding both houses of congress, bills like Tenney’s become more viable. Trump has previously supported budget proposals that eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Politico, 3/27/19).

The infamous Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda many see as a blueprint for the second Trump term, calls for the end to public broadcasting, because it is viewed as liberal propaganda:

> Every Republican president since Richard Nixon has tried to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) of taxpayer funding. That is significant not just because it means that for half a century, Republican presidents have failed to accomplish what they set out to do, but also because Nixon was the first president in office when National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which the CPB funds, went on air.

In other words, all Republican presidents have recognized that public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake. As a 35-year-old lawyer in the Nixon White House, one Antonin Scalia warned that conservatives were being “confronted with a long-range problem of significant social consequences—that is, the development of a government-funded broadcast system similar to the BBC.”

All of which means that the next conservative president must finally get this done, and do it despite opposition from congressional members of his own party if necessary. To stop public funding is good policy and good politics. The reason is simple: President Lyndon Johnson may have pledged in 1967 that public broadcasting would become “a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families and to provide assistance to our classrooms,” but public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism.

PBS and NPR, as FAIR (10/24/24) has noted, has for decades caved in to right-wing pressures—PBS by adding conservative programming, NPR by trying to rid itself of political commentary altogether. But the right will never let go of its ideological opposition to media outlets not directly owned by the corporate class.

‘Whether criminally or civilly’

Trump also has a well known track record of revoking the credentials of journalists who produce reporting he doesn’t like (Washington Post, 2/24/17, 5/8/19; New Republic, 11/5/24). It is realistic to assume that a lot more reporters will be barred from White House events in the years ahead.

While a bill that would grant the secretary of the treasury broad authority to revoke nonprofit status to any organization the office deems as a “terrorist” organization has so far failed (Al Jazeera, 11/12/24), it is quite possible that it could come up for a vote again. If this bill were to become law, the Treasury Department could use this ax against a great many progressive nonprofit outlets, like Democracy Now! and the American Prospect, as well as investigative outlets like ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The department could even target the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has already said in response to Trump’s victory, “The fundamental right to a free press, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, must not be impaired” (11/6/24).

Margaret Sullivan (Guardian, 10/27/24), an avid media observer, said there is no reason to think Trump will soften his campaign against the free press. She said:

In 2022, he sued the Pulitzer Prize board after they defended their awards to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Both newspapers had won Pulitzer Prizes for investigating Trump’s ties to Russia.

More recently, Trump sued ABC News and George Stephanopoulos for defamation over the way the anchor characterized the verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual misconduct case against him. Each of those cases is wending its way through the courts.

She added:

There is nothing to suggest that Trump would soften his approach in a second term. If anything, we can expect even more aggression.

Consider what one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, Kash Patel, has said.

“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel threatened during a podcast with Steve Bannon. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

Trump has already gone after the New York Times and Penguin Random House since Sullivan wrote this. CJR (11/14/24) said:

The letter, addressed to lawyers at the New York Times and Penguin Random House, arrived a week before the election. Attached was a discursive ten-page legal threat from an attorney for Donald Trump that demanded $10 billion in damages over “false and defamatory statements” contained in articles by Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.

It singles out two stories coauthored by Buettner and Craig that related to their book on Trump and his financial dealings, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, released on September 17. It also highlighted an October 20 story headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment” by Baker and an October 22 piece by Schmidt, “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”

And just before his victory, Trump sued CBS News, alleging the network’s “deceitful” editing of a recent 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris “misled the public and unfairly disadvantaged him” (CBS News, 10/31/24).

Expect more of this, except this time, Trump will have all the levers of the state on his side. And whatever moves the next Trump administration makes to attack the press will surely have a chilling effect, which will only empower his anti-democratic political agenda.

===

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November 13, 2024 edition of *War Room: Battleground

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Weissmann, you were on TV with MSNBC and all the producers at MSNBC, preserve your documents. Ari Melber and all you hosts, preserve your documents. All of it. You better be worried and you better lawyer up. Some of you young producers, better call mom and dad tonight — hey mom and dad, you know a good lawyer? Lawyer up. Lawyer up.

You tried to destroy Trump, you tried to imprison Trump, you tried to break Trump. He’s not breakable. You couldn’t destroy him and now he is turned on you and he’s put a firebrand in charge of main justice, Department of Justice. And you’re going to have to live it with — Andrew Weissmann and all your kind — McCabe and Comey. Oh my lord.

…

The hunted now become the hunters, yep. With the full apparatus — but here’s the difference, here’s the difference, here’s the difference.

It’s going to be totally transparent. It’s going to start with the mass declassification of all this information we've been keeping back from the American people, shouldn’t keep it back.

American people should understand that, should see it, and see what you’ve done. It’s going to be fully transparent, all of it, and all of the interconnections. Norm Eisen and all these NGOs, and you know, and Reid Hoffman is all worried. You better be worried. You big billionaire donors, you better be worried. You better lawyer up. You should be worried.

---

Fox News’ Jason Chaffetz threatens Republicans who refuse to confirm Fox & Friends weekend co-host Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense

11/12/24 MMA

Charlie Kirk threatens to remove Sen. John Thune (R-SD) as majority leader

11/13/24

MMA 11 13 24

Steve Bannon calls for a military tribunal to try retired General Mark Milley for treason

PULL SECURITY CLEARANCE ON ALL NAT SEC PPL WHO SIGNED LETTER, PREVENT WORK IN GOVT OR PVT SECTOR?

MMA Alex Jones calls for “Nuremberg two”: “It's not avengeance, it's justice”

11/08/24

{{{===

an 10 24

With a reported net worth of more than $204 billion (according to Forbes), Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is among the richest men in the world.

Bezos has been drawing a great deal of criticism in response to reports that he blocked an endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris that the Post's editorial board was planning to publish. The Bulwark's Jonathan V. Last believes that Bezos killed the endorsement because he fears the possibility of retaliation from former President Donald Trump if he wins the election on November 5.

But Bezos, reportedly, isn't the only business leader who is worried about being targeted for revenge if Trump returns to the White House.

In an article published by the Post on October 28, reporters Jeff Stein, Jacqueline Alemany and Josh Dawsey stress that some business leaders are toning down their criticism of Trump — as they don't want to risk being targeted for revenge.

"With the White House appearing increasingly up for grabs, and especially as polls have tightened, numerous billionaires and other leading executives have taken steps, in recent months, to stay out of the race — even if they had criticized Trump after the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021, calling his encouragement of the riot a threat to American democracy," the Post reporters explain. "Others who previously backed Democrats have stayed silent this election, which some critics and Trump supporters alike have interpreted as a peace offering to the GOP presidential nominee."

Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, finds it disturbing that Trump is able to "intimidate" business leaders.

Riedl told the Post, "Trump has had no issue calling out political enemies by name and threatening to use the force of government for retribution, and apparently, that is intimidating a lot of wealthy targets. It is a very scary sign that government intimidation works."

READ MORE:[Threatening ‘the enemy within’ with force: Military ethicists explain the danger to important American traditions

Former UBS Chairman Robert Wolf, once an economic adviser to former President Barack Obama, said that some business leaders are "nervous" about what Trump will do if he returns to the White House.

Wolf told the Post, "Public company CEOs want to have it both ways: They want to be viewed as the thought leaders of the country, but when it comes to this highly contentious election, they want to hide behind their titles. Many are nervous that if Trump wins, he's going to respond or even retaliate."

READ MORE:[How LGBTQ+ voters in these 4 states could swing the 2024 presidential election

*Read the full Washington Post article at this link (subscription required).

===

AN 10 24

Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has been drawing widespread criticism following reports that he blocked the publication's editorial board from publishing an endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Bezos reportedly made the decision not because he is pro-Donald Trump, but because he feared retaliation if he published a Harris endorsement and Trump won the election. And Bezos, as he saw it, was protecting his business interests.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on October 28, Never Trumper Jonathan V. Last describes Bezos' decision as a "catastrophic failure of the rule of law."

"What we witnessed on Friday was not a case of censorship or a failure of the media," Last argues. "It had nothing to do with journalism or the Washington Post. It was something much, much more consequential. It was about oligarchy, the rule of law, and the failure of the democratic order."

Bezos, Last laments, was obviously trying to avoid being targeted for revenge by a possible second Trump Administration.

"When Bezos decreed that the newspaper he owned could not endorse Trump' opponent," Last explains, "it was a transparent act of submission born of an intuitive understanding of the differences between the candidates. Bezos understood that if he antagonized Kamala Harris and Harris became president, he would face no consequences. A Harris Administration would not target his businesses because the Harris Administration would — like all presidential administrations not headed by Trump — adhere to the rule of law."

Last continues, "Bezos likewise understood that the inverse was not true. If he continued to antagonize Trump and Trump became president, his businesses very much would be targeted. So bending the knee to Trump was the smart play. All upside, no downside."

According to Last, Bezos' "submission" to Trump is a warning to business owners that they will be targeted for revenge if they openly criticize him.

"What Trump understood was that Bezos' submission would be of limited use if it was kept quiet," Last argues. "Because the point of dominating Bezos wasn't just to dominate Bezos. It was to send a message to every other businessman, entrepreneur, and corporation in America: that these are the rules of the game. If you are nice to Trump, the government will be nice to you. If you criticize Trump, the government will be used against you."

READ MORE:[Harris' closing message: Why it must center on anti-elitist economics

*Jonathan V. Last's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

===

10 24 ymail judd pop info

owner Jeff Bezos spreads his hands after a ceremonial ribbon cutting during dedication ceremonies for the new Washington Post offices on January, 28, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Jeff Bezos is the second-richest person in the world, with a net worth of approximately $211 billion. Most of Bezos' wealth is derived from his 9% stake in Amazon, the company he founded. Bezos also founded and owns Blue Origin, a private space exploration company worth billions.

Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which he purchased in 2013 for $250 million in cash. Is Bezos now making decisions at the Washington Post to protect and enhance the value of his other enterprises? Many current and former employees of the Washington Post believe so.

The business interests of Amazon and Blue Origin — and, therefore, Bezos — are inextricably linked to the federal government. Consider:

In 2021, Amazon was awarded a $10 billion cloud-computing contract with the National Security Agency. It also has a portion of a $9 billion cloud-computing contract inked in 2022 with the Department of Defense and a multi-billion dollar cloud-computing contract with the CIA.

In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, alleging "the online retail and technology company is a monopolist that uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power." The lawsuit seeks "a permanent injunction in federal court that would prohibit Amazon from engaging in its unlawful conduct and pry loose Amazon’s monopolistic control to restore competition."

> In May 2023, Blue Origin was awarded a $3.4 billion contract to build a lunar lander for NASA. Between 2025 and 2029, the company is expected to compete for $5.6 billion in space launch contracts for the Pentagon.

The Washington Post, unlike Amazon and Blue Origin, has been a money loser for Bezos, reportedly running a deficit of $100 million last year. More importantly, Bezos believes that former President Trump's hostility toward the Washington Post, which produced critical coverage of Trump's presidency, cost his companies billions in government contracts. In 2019, Amazon sued the federal government for awarding a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft, alleging that Amazon lost out on the contract based on Bezos' ownership of the Washington Post:

President Trump has made no secret of his personal dislike for Mr. Bezos, Amazon, and the Washington Post, or of his express desire to harm them. The seeds of this animus originate with the Washington Post's coverage of him before he even was elected President. That coverage placed Mr. Bezos, Amazon, and the Washington Post directly in the crosshairs of President Trump's wrath.

…After he assumed office, President Trump grew "obsessed" with Mr. Bezos and determined to "f'*** with him." His new powers expanded his ability to punish Mr. Bezos for the Washington Post's coverage of him

…President Trump has frequently referred to the "Amazon Washington Post" as a single entity, and he has frequently hurled invective against Amazon whenever the Washington Post publishes articles that he believes slight him or his Administration. President Trump has also repeatedly claimed the Washington Post is selling "fake news," and he has called it an "[e]nemy of the [p]eople[.]"

In a few months, it is possible that Trump will be president again. This time, Bezos faces an even more acute threat to his business interests. Elon Musk, who owns Blue Origin's chief rival SpaceX, has aligned himself closely with Trump, spending tens of millions in support of Trump's campaign and making appearances in swing states on Trump's behalf.

On Friday, days before the election, Washington Post publisher William Lewis — installed by Bezos earlier this year — announced that "the Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election." The announcement, less than 2 weeks before Election Day, was a break from decades of precedent. Bezos made the decision, according to the New York Times, after the Washington Post "editorial board had already drafted an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris."

Marty Baron, the former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, slammed Bezos' decision as "cowardice" and linked it to Bezos' desire to appease Trump. Baron said it would backfire, and Trump would "see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner [Bezos]."

Hours after Lewis published the announcement, Trump was seen meeting with Blue Origin CEO David Limp. Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign's chief spokesman, embraced the suggestion that the meeting and the announcement of the non-endorsement were linked.

Robert Kagan, who worked at the Washington Post for two decades and resigned immediately following Lewis' announcement, said the meeting was evidence of a quid pro quo. “Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,” Kagan told The Daily Beast. “Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”

According to CNN, "Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also recently reached out to check in" with Trump.

The apparent capitulation to Trump illustrates the danger of billionaires scooping up major media organizations as a side hustle. For nearly everyone, the price Bezos paid for the Washington Post is an unfathomable amount of money. For Bezos, it's less than half the $575 million he paid for his new 417-foot superyacht, Koru, and its 246-foot support yacht, Abeona, which has a helipad, accommodations for staff, and storage for smaller boats and jet skis.

Bezos did not get to the point where he could afford such yachts through his dedication to journalistic integrity. He became the second-wealthiest person in the world by prioritizing the bottom line. And it appears that continues to be his priority.

The Washington Post's incoherent defense

Lewis claims that the decision not to endorse a presidential candidate was based on principle. Specifically, Lewis says the decision was guided by the belief that the Washington Post's mission "is to provide through the newsroom nonpartisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds."

Lewis doesn't explain why, if that was the case, the Washington Post editorial board endorsed candidates for U.S. Senate and House earlier this month. If it is about the principle that readers should "make up their own minds," why does that principle only apply to presidential candidates?

Further, Lewis tried to insulate Bezos from the fallout. The Washington Post reported that the "decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by The Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to four people who were briefed on the decision."

Lewis attempted to undermine his own paper's reporting, claiming that "[r]eporting around the role of The Washington Post owner and the decision not to publish a presidential endorsement has been inaccurate." But Lewis did not directly dispute that it was Bezos' decision. Instead, he said only that Bezos "was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft" — a claim that no one actually made.

Washington Post staff was not buying it. 17 members of the paper's opinion staff signed onto a statement calling the decision not to endorse a "terrible mistake." The Washington Post Guild, the union that represents the paper's reporters, said in a statement that the decision "undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers’ trust, not losing it." Legendary Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward called the decision "surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process."

One could legitimately conclude that newspaper endorsements have outlived their usefulness. It is the timing and context of the Washington Post's change that is raising alarm bells.

The billionaire owner of the LA Times

Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the LA Times, also abruptly demanded his publication stay neutral in the presidential election. Soon-Shiong bought the paper for $500 million in 2018.

Soon-Shiong is a healthcare and biotech entrepreneur whose companies rely on the federal government. His companies regularly seek FDA approval for new drugs, vaccines and therapies and federal funding for research.

The editorial board had planned to endorse Kamala Harris and publish a series of columns tentatively titled "The Case Against Trump." But in a post on X, Soon-Shiong said he offered the LA Times editorial board "the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation." Soon-Shiong said that "[i]nstead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision."

Soon-Shiong did not explain why he did not demand a similar approach for U.S. House and Senate races, state ballot initiatives, and many other contests facing California voters. Beginning in September, the LA Times has endorsed in dozens of races up and down the ballot.

In response to the spiking of the presidential endorsement, 200 LA Times staff members signed an open letter calling on Soon-Shiong to "provide readers with an explanation for not issuing an endorsement, along with clarity about the broader endorsement process."

Three members of the paper's editorial board have resigned. "I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent," Mariel Garza, the LA Times editorials editor, said. "In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up."

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YiKES OMG SEE FAscism see pluto

an 10 24

Former Washington Post editor-at-large, Robert Kagan, revealed to The Daily Beast on Saturday that the newspaper's owner — Amazon's Jeff Bezos — and 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump, allegedly agreed on a plan to "kill" thePost's endorsement of 2024 Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, the news outlet reports.

The Beast notes:

Bezos knows first hand the consequences of criticizing the former president. The Post’s 2016 endorsement of Hillary Clinton is widely thought to have led to him losing out on a $10 billion cloud computing defense contract awarded by the Trump administration.

Following his Friday resignation from thePost,Kagan told the Beast "that Trump’s meeting with executives of Bezos’ Blue Origin space company the same day that the Amazonfounder killed a plan to support Harris was proof of the backroom deal."

READ MORE:['Bit of a panic': Trump adviser’s attack on bombshell WaPo report fact-checked by expert

The ex-Post editor said, "Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people. Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”

Per the report, Kagan warned that this kind of "alleged collusion between" the billionaire tech founder and Trump "is just the beginning," and emphasized there will be "a lot of self censorship [in the media] and a lot of changing course just to be sure that they’re not going to be punished," if the MAGA leader wins the White House.

"This is what we have to look forward to," Kagan told the Post. "All Trump has to do is threaten the corporate chiefs who run these organizations with real financial loss, and they will bend the knee."

}}}

ALL IN ON FASCIST TO THE CORE ENEMY WITHING

RWW

10/25/2024 RWW

Kyle Mantyla

Alex Griffing @ Mediaite: ‘WHEN I WIN’: Trump Vows Crackdown On ‘Unscrupulous Behavior’ With ‘Prison Sentences’ At ‘Levels Never Seen Before’

Former President Donald Trump posted an ominous threat to Truth Social on Friday, promising prosecutions at “levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

David Gardner @ The Daily Beast: Trump Calls America a ‘Garbage Can for the World’ in Dark Illegal Immigration Rant

Donald Trump likened America to a “garbage can for the world” while ranting about illegal immigration in a doom-laden rally speech in Arizona on Thursday.

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AN NPR? 10 24

'Will absolutely make sure his enemies pay': Trump has made 100+ direct threats during 2024 campaign

Alex Henderson:

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NOTE OUTBREAK FLAiLING AFTER TRUMP CONVICTION DEFUND atf ETC

see this am life spox stephanie g, vindman

Bannon says former AG Bill Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray should be “brought up on charges” related to Hunter Biden laptop

06/05/24

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names schiff; ingraham gives him out, does not take it

// Trump ally Mike Davis: “Retribution is a key component of justice”

10/15/24 10:09 AM EDT

### Trump discussed using the military on “radical left lunatics.” Fox & Friends claims Kamala Harris sounding an alarm about it is “scare tactics.”

10/15/24 mma

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kns

Republican strategist's attempt to minimize former President Donald Trump's threat of "enemies within" spurred a swift fact check and heated debate on CNN Monday morning.

Conservative commentator Shermichael Singleton was checked by CNN anchor Jim Acosta as he tried to claim Trump's threat to sic the military on political enemies was limited only to those who live in the U.S. without citizenship status.

"I think he's talking about immigration," Singleton said. "And when you look at—"

The video player is currently playing an ad.

"No, no, no," interrupted Acosta. "He was talking about what he called radical left people in this country. Americans. Political opponents."

Singleton shrugged off what Acosta described as a "dangerous" threat — arguing Republicans cared more about policy than rhetoric — and in doing so outraged Democratic strategist Julia Roginsky.

"Let me just say something right now," Roginsky said. "This is not Donald Trump saying crazy stuff...he's done this before."

Roginsky argued Trump meant what he said at a Coachella rally over the weekend that he'd bully Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) into supporting his border control policies by threatening to withhold "fire money....for all the forest fires."

She pointed to recent reports from two former staffers who said Trump tried to block wildfire relief from reaching California in 2018 until he was shown voter data proving supporters lived there and raised a crucial concern.

"There were people around him [during his first term] to stop the worst impulses...they're not going to be there this time around," she said. "He's basically letting the voters know that, you know, this is what you're voting for."

When Acosta asked if Democrats needed to do more to call out Trump's authoritarian rhetoric, Roginsky replied with an incredulous shake of the head and a figurative finger pointed at his industry.

"The media has not done enough to call this out," Roginsky snapped back. "Here you have a fascist — and General Milley is right because all of the markers of a fascist exist in Donald Trump — and yet our news media has not done enough, by any stretch of the imagination, to call this out."

As proof, Roginsky pointed to intense media scrutiny of President Joe Biden's age and Gov. Tim Walz' (D-MN) location during the Tiananmen Square protests 35 years ago.

Singleton, given a chance to respond, interestingly did not slap back with a defense of his political party — but of colleagues in the media he argued could not be blamed for focusing more important issues than Trump's rhetoric.

"We have covered it," he said. "i just think there are far more consequential issues that impact people's day-to-day lives."

"With all do respect," Roginsky replied, "Take a look at the ratio. This is an existential problem."

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'Rushing to judgment': AZ speaker punishes GOP rep who voted with Dems to repeal 1864 law

an 10 24

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Trump is facing fierce backlash from a California firefighters union three days after the ex-president threatened to withhold fire rescue aid from the state as the number of wildfires are expected to increase in the coming years, East Bay Times reports.

"As of today, thousands of firefighters are on the front lines responding to wildfires throughout the state, and countless Californians are in harm's way as they heed evacuation orders," California Professional Firefighters President Brian K. Rice wrote in a statement posted to X on Friday, September 13. The union, according to the report, "represents around 35,000 career firefighters and emergency medical service" professionals.

"Nevertheless, former President Trump expressed that he would play with their lives and their homes if he doesn't get what he wants," Rice continued. "He would rather watch our state burn in the name of his political games, than to send help if he were to become president again."

Axios reports that Trump threatened during a Friday press conference to "withhold fire rescue aid from California" if the state’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom refused to back the MAGA leader’s policies.

East Bay Times notes the former president "repeatedly referred to Newsom as 'Newscum'" during the presser.

"If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires," the MAGA leader said, referring to the governor. “And if we don’t give him all the money to put out the fires, he’s got problems."

In response to Trump's comment, Axios reports that Newsom warned via X that the 2024 GOP nominee "admitted he will block emergency disaster funds to settle political vendettas."

It wasn't long before Rice shot back at Trump, writing, "It is shocking that we have a presidential candidate who is threatening our public safety and doesn’t even care what the consequences are to firefighters and the public. This has now become a serious public safety issue for our members and the public we serve."

*The East Bay TImes' full report is available at this link. Axios' report is here. an 9 24

an 8 24

Mike Nellis, a veteran Democratic operative and former senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, on Wednesday shared that he was subpoenaed by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) — which Nellis says is another one of the GOP leader's "a baseless right-wing conspiracy" theories.

"BREAKING: We have just received a subpoena from Jim Jordan and the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee," Nellis wrote via X. "This is yet another abuse of power, aimed at promoting a baseless right-wing conspiracy theory that links our company, Authentic, to Donald Trump’s fraud trial. We are thoroughly reviewing the subpoena with our legal team and will provide updates as soon as we have more information."

He continued, "Let us be clear: these allegations against our company are completely false and purely politically motivated. This is a blatant attempt to intimidate us and divert attention from Donald Trump’s conviction. We refuse to be bullied, and we will not allow House Republicans or MAGA extremists to spread lies about our work. We remain steadfast in our mission and are deeply grateful for the unwavering support of our friends and family during this time."

Jordan's subpoena is connected to his belief that New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan — who presided over Donald Trump's hush money case — faced a conflict of interest due to his daughter's past work with Nellis' firm, Authentic Campaigns Inc.

The Associated Press reported earlier this month, that Loren Merchan "met Harris occasionally in 2019 but never 'developed an individual relationship' with her," according to Nellis.

The news outlet noted that Authentic Campaigns Inc. has not worked for Harris’ campaign during the 2024 election cycle.

MSNBC's Katie Phang replied to Nellis' post, writing: "Jim Jordan IGNORED a Congressional subpoena issued by the January 6th House Select Committee. But Jordan insists that others comply when it’s nothing but a baseless harassment campaign? In Jim Jordan’s world, it’s 'Rules for thee, but not for me.'"

READ MORE:[Merchan’s daughter got 'credible' death threats 'requiring intervention' after Trump attacks

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MCCARTHY JIHAD MULT TRY FALS 8 24?

kevin gaetz 8 7 24 on drugs at rnc an

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trib

The League of United Latin American Citizens plans to request a federal investigation into raids Attorney General Ken Paxton conducted this week as part of what he called an “ongoing election integrity investigation.”

Gabriel Rosales, Texas LULAC’s state director, said in a statement that Paxton carried out the raids 11 weeks before the 2024 elections “to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies.”

Agents raided the home of Cecilia Castellano — the Democrat running to succeed state Rep. Tracy King, D-Uvalde — and confiscated her phone as part of the search, according to Rosales. Republicans see that seat, which Gov. Greg Abbott carried by nearly 6 percentage points, as their best potential state House flip in November.

Law enforcement also searched the homes of at least five other Latino individuals, all of whom were working on Castellano’s campaign and three of whom are members of Texas LULAC, Rosales added. LULAC is a non-partisan, volunteer-based Hispanic civil rights organization headquartered in Washington.

The group is in the dark about the details of any accusations, Rosales said, “but there's none that we’ve been privy to that merits an investigation like this that wastes taxpayers’ money.”

“It is disgraceful and outrageous that the state of Texas, and its highest-ranking law enforcement officer is once again using the power of his office to instill fear in the hearts of community members who volunteer their time to promote civic engagement,” Rosales said in a statement.

Paxton announced on Wednesday that his office executed “multiple” search warrants in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties the day prior as part of an investigation into allegations of “election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections.” A two-year investigation, Paxton said, provided “sufficient evidence” to obtain the search warrants.

“Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic,” Paxton said in a statement. “We are completely committed to protecting the security of the ballot box and the integrity of every legal vote. This means ensuring accountability for anyone committing election crimes.”

Paxton’s office did not reply to a request for additional information. His announcement did not detail the targets of the raids, the number of raids, or the reason specific homes were searched.

“It’s still very vague,” Rosales said in an interview. “That’s what’s really unnerving about the whole situation.”

According to one person whose home was raided, Rosales said, law enforcement suggested that he was accused of possessing “illegal voter information” — a claim that he denied and called politically motivated, saying voter information is publicly available.

“There’s no there, there,” Rosales said. “They’re using every tool in the toolbox to intimidate our people from coming out to the polls.”

The Texas Tribune

Rosales said he was working with the group’s national leaders and attorneys to draft a formal complaint with the U.S. Justice Department requesting a federal investigation into Paxton’s raids.

The attorney general’s office was asked to investigate the allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting during the 2022 elections by 81st Judicial District Attorney Audrey Louis, a Republican whose district includes Frio and Atascosa counties.

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guard

one of the United States’ oldest Latino civil rights organizations is raising alarm after several of its members had their homes raided as part of a voter fraud investigation by the Texas attorney general’s office.

The League of United Latin American Citizens (Lulac) wants the Department of Justice to investigate raids on at least three of its members in Texas. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement last week his office had executed multiple search warrants in Bexar county, which includes San Antonio, as well as neighboring Frio and Atascosa counties as part of an ongoing, two-year investigation. The office did not provide details of the investigation or respond to a request for comment.

No one has been arrested and the exact nature of the investigation remains unclear. But the searches themselves were designed to intimidate, Lulac officials said.

‘A different level than 2020’: Trump’s plan to steal election is taking shape

Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/trump-overturn-result-presidential-election-vote)

“They’re trying to intimidate our folks that are out registering people,” said Lulac’s president, Roman Palomares. “What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to intimidate, and then that has repercussions down the line here, where folks read about that and they go, ‘God, I mean, if they’re doing that to her and I’m a registrar, God, how are they going to go after me?’”

A justice department spokesperson said the agency was aware of the matter and declined to comment further.

Lidia Martinez, 87, said nine officers from the attorney general’s office showed up at her front door at 6am last Tuesday and spent hours searching her home as she watched in her nightgown. She said they told her they were there because she had filed a complaint that senior citizens were not receiving their ballots.

Martinez was taken outside in front of her neighbors while officers searched the house, she said. Eventually, the officers left with her laptop, planner and cellphone.

View image in fullscreen

Lidia Martinez, center, a volunteer and great-grandmother whose home was searched, center, speaks at a news conference for Lulac on Monday. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP

“I asked them why are you all doing this? And he said because there was fraud,” she said. “I said I’m not doing anything illegal. All I do is help the seniors.”

Texas has extremely strict rules around mail-in balloting. Only those who are sick, out of the county on election day, confined in jail, giving birth within three weeks of election day, or aged 65 and older are authorized to request a mail-in ballot. Anyone who assists someone in requesting a ballot must fill out a form indicating they assisted. Anyone who assists the voter in returning the actual ballot, other than a family or household member, must sign the envelope with the ballot noting their assistance.

Texas leans on new voting law to reject thousands of ballot applications

Read more](

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/11/save-act-voting-bill-passes-house)

Paxton’s investigations come as Republicans have sought to fan fears about non-citizen voting, which is extremely rare, ahead of this fall’s election.

A copy of the search warrant for Martinez provided by Lulac showed officers were instructed to collect evidence of violations of the Texas law that prohibits collecting mail-in ballots for compensation or “to deliver votes for a specific candidate or measure”. Officers were also instructed to gather evidence of a Texas law prohibiting the fraudulent use or possession of personal identifying information.

Martinez said the officers asked her about other Lulac members and Manuel Medina, a Democratic political operative and former chair of the Democratic party in Bexar county. Medina’s home was also searched last week, the Texas Tribune reported. An affidavit from Texas attorney general’s office investigator obtained by the outlet says officials have a recording of Medina discussing a scheme to collect votes for Cecilia Castellano, a Democrat running for a competitive state House seat.

Castellano said on Monday that her home had also been searched. Officers showed up at 6am with flashlights while her son was sleeping, she said.

“This is how the Republican party works. They cause confusion, false allegations and wasteful spending of our tax dollars,” she said.

CBS News

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton raids Latino Democrats' homes, including those of LULAC members

21 hours ago

4:15

YouTube · CBS News

LULAC member describes Paxton voter fraud raid

Video21 hours ago

KHOU

87-year-old LULAC volunteer said AG Ken Paxton sent officers to raid her home

21 hours ago

More news

LULAC wants federal investigation of Texas AG over home ...

ABC Chicago

https://abc7chicago.com › post › lulac-wants-federal-in...

22 hours ago — A prominent Latino group is calling on the DOJ to investigate Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for what it calls "voter intimidation."

Texas AG raids homes of Latino civil rights group members ...

NBC News

https://www.nbcnews.com › news › latino › house-raids...

2 days ago — The raids have triggered outrage and cries of voter suppression in Texas, a state with a long history of discrimination against citizens of ...

Texas Republicans accused of intimidation after raiding ...

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com › us-news › article › aug

1 day ago — League of United Latin American Citizens calls on US justice department to look into raids on at least three members.

LULAC member describes Paxton voter fraud raid

CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com › video › lulac-member-desc...

23 hours ago — Lidia Martinez, a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens, describes a raid at her home in Texas where officers searched her ...

LULAC condemns Paxton's election fraud raids as “ ...

The Texas Tribune

https://www.texastribune.org › 2024/08/23 › texas-ken-...

5 days ago — The group said that searches the attorney general's office carried out this week targeted at least six Latinos, including a Democrat running ...

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omfg

an 7 24

Retribution is at the center of Donald Trump’s third presidential election campaign.

“I am your warrior,” Trump proclaimed earlier this year. “I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

Trump’s loyal surrogates have duly embraced the project — perhaps no one more zealously than Ivan Raiklin, a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency employee, who bills himself as the former and would-be president’s “future secretary of retribution.”

Raiklin is seeking to enlist so-called “constitutional” sheriffs in rural, conservative counties across the country to detain Trump’s political enemies. Or, as he says, carry out “live-streamed swatting raids” against individuals on his “Deep State target list.”

“This is a deadly serious report,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story. “A retired U.S. military officer has drawn up a ‘Deep State target list’ of public officials he considers traitors, along with our family members and staff. His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom."

READ:Trump's far-right army is threatening bloodshed — believe them

Raskin called on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to “denounce this dangerous plot and to repudiate threats of, and planning for, political violence from any quarter. Bipartisan opposition to vigilante violence and assassination plots is essential for American government to continue.”

The list Raiklin has been circulating since January is extensive.

It includes numerous Democratic and Republican elected officials; FBI and intelligence officials; members of the House Select January 6 Committee; U.S. Capitol Police officers and civilian employees; witnesses in Trump’s two impeachment trials and the Jan. 6 committee hearings; and journalists from publications ranging from CNN and the Washington Post to Reuters and Raw Story — all considered political enemies of Trump.

Julie Farnam, a former U.S. Capitol Police employee named on the list who as assistant director of intelligence and interagency coordination warned about the potential for violence in advance of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, said she would not be intimidated by the list.

“Any hit list is designed to impart the silence and fear of those named on it,” Farnam told Raw Story. “But silence is victory for those who write such lists. Conversely, speaking the truth without fear will always be the undoing of those who seek to intimidate and spread hate in our world. I can never be silenced.”

In addition to Farnam, the list includes nine current or former U.S. Capitol Police employees. The agency declined to comment for this story.

Raw Story is not publishing the full list given the potential risk posed to people unaware that they’re on it.

One individual named on the list who spoke on condition of anonymity noted that Raiklin is associated with retired Lt. General Michael Flynn.

“And Trump himself has repeated on dozens of occasions calls for revenge, retribution and retaliation,” the person told Raw Story. “This is another example of that broader phenomenon of revenge against political enemies that animates the former president and his entire movement, and for that reason should concern us all.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to emails requesting comment for this story.

‘Attack on our democracy’

The accusations of “treason” and other imagined offenses leveled by Raiklin against these individuals are typically based on fanciful legal theories and outlandish factual claims, if anything at all.

For example: Raiklin, in a podcast, suggested without evidence that the unidentified person responsible for setting pipe bombs outside the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee on Jan. 6, 2021, was “a subordinate-surrogate of the Capitol Police Board,” which oversees the Capitol Police.

But Raiklin is nothing if not self-assured that the “evidence” he’s gathering on anti-Trump “deep state” plotters is real. So real, it seems, that Raiklin claims the material — fully revealed — would establish probable cause for county sheriffs across the nation to issue arrest warrants for various high-ranking officials who have, in one way or another, run afoul of Trump.

Under Raiklin’s objectively bizarre plan, the sympathetic sheriffs would deputize some 75,000 military veterans — veterans he claims have been pushed out of service because they refused to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates — to carry out the arrests.

Raiklin has gone so far as to pitch his plan to a group of far-right sheriffs who met in Las Vegas in April.

Public records requests filed by Raw Story with dozens of county sheriff offices reveal that word of Raiklin’s efforts has reached the email inboxes of sheriffs from Wisconsin to Oklahoma.

But Raiklin’s effort to enlist these sheriffs appears to be foundering: Not one has openly signed on, and even some who are sympathetic to his cause publicly warn that his plan violates due process.

Undaunted, Raiklin has attempted to build relationships with conservative members of Congress, and aides to two Republican lawmakers who chair influential House committees confirmed to Raw Story that they are familiar with him.

An overriding reason for why Raiklin hasn’t been entirely marginalized or relegated by fellow conservatives to the realm of kooks and gadflies?

Raiklin uses the kind of hyperbolic language that Trump himself uses — and that Trump’s base eats up.

He gives federal agencies and media outlets Trump-like nicknames such as “FB-Lie,” “Faux-litico” and “National Poison Radio.”

“My nickname is the Deep State marauder, aka the mauler,” Raiklin told a group of election deniers in New Jersey earlier this year. “And I like using ice picks instead of poking the bear.”

In a video posted in May to X, which now accrued more than 10 million views, Raiklin said, “Expect to see live-streamed swatting raids of every single individual on that Deep State target list, because the precedence has already been set.”

Notwithstanding Raiklin’s claim that his plan would be “legal, moral and ethical,” swatting — the false reporting of an emergency to garner a response from law enforcement for the purpose of harassing a target — is illegal.

Raiklin has nevertheless promoted the idea in podcast interviews, multiple posts on X, a press conference and conversations with prominent far-right extremists.

In recent days, Raiklin’s rhetoric has escalated beyond setting out future hypothetical scenarios for retribution.

He mocked one former federal employee blocking him on X while suggesting that the targeted individual “wants me to speak to him in person” and asking him for his “preferred punishment for committing treason.”

And during a podcast, he claimed to be surveilling a U.S. Capitol Police employee, whom he mentioned by name, “both physically and digitally.”

Experts worry that provocative rhetoric from figures such as Raiklin could impose a climate of fear on civil servants simply trying to do their jobs. Even worse, Raiklin’s rhetoric could inspire violence against them.

“The idea that you would target anyone that was there on the basis of allegiance to the rule of law and the Constitution is really scary,” Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told Raw Story.

Stier’s organization promotes professional, merit-based civil service as a pillar of good governance — a notion that he said is being increasingly challenged.

“This represents, in my view, an attack on our democracy,” Stier said. “We have a rule of law. If any civil servants are violating the law, there are mechanisms in place to hold them accountable. Vigilantism is not the way to have a society function.”

Raiklin responded to a phone call requesting comment by posting a recording of the voicemail on his X account on Tuesday, while commenting: “Looks like Elements of the Deep State Target List have asked @jordangreennc of Raw Sewage to try to find out more about my list….”

Later, he acknowledged a set of written questions submitted by Raw Story but didn't answer them, while accusing Raw Story and "domestic terrorist leftists" of hounding him.

"Look at my entire Deep State target list," Raiklin said. "That is the beginning. This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay?"

One prominent media organization named on Raiklin’s “target” list expressed concern for its journalists, five of whom also appear on the list by name.

“The conspiracy theories underpinning this list are baseless, and the calls for targeted harassment are dangerous,” Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the New York Times, told Raw Story. “The Times reporters on the list are simply professional journalists doing their jobs. Swatting is a criminal offense, and in the event of any instances directed at our employees, the Times will work with law enforcement to prosecute those responsible.”

Said Raw Story Publisher Roxanne Cooper: “Purposefully threatening and endangering the safety of working journalists is both reprehensible and illegal, and the American public should reject and denounce anyone who engages in such behavior.”

CNN, Reuters, the Atlantic and American Oversight declined to comment on Raiklin. Emails to the Washington Post, Politico, ABC News, NBC News and MSNBC, whose journalists are also named on the list, went unreturned.

Who is Ivan Raiklin?

As the 2020 election approached, conspiracy minded Trump supporters with active Twitter accounts were in abundance. Most never broke through the incessant MAGA noise, or merely added another note to its election denialism dissonance.

Raiklin was different.

He was a seasoned veteran with a background in military intelligence who wound up playing a small but significant role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election in Trump’s name.

Following a distinguished career in the U.S. Armed Forces in which he served as a military attaché to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and foreign affairs specialist assigned to the Ukraine Crisis Team, Raiklin left the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2017 to run for U.S. Senate in Virginia, according to the Washington Post.

At the time, Raiklin’s candidacy in 2018 provided little indication of the MAGA loyalist relishing the destruction of Trump’s enemies that he would become.

If anything, Raiklin fashioned himself as a force of apolitical positivity.

“The reason I’m running is that we’ve had such a negative political atmosphere the past couple years,” Raiklin told theCourierin Iowa. “I want to inject a ‘positive disruption’ in the political conversation. Being a veteran of 20 years, I’m pretty much a political agnostic.”

But Raiklin didn’t get far: He failed to garner a sufficient number of signatures to make it onto the Republican primary ballot. And when he sued the Virginia GOP and the state Department of Elections, claiming that he was unfairly excluded, a federal judge tossed out the suit.

Following his disappointing foray into electoral politics, Raiklin began his turn toward Trump’s MAGA movement.

In 2019, he appeared at a QAnon-themed fundraiser for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, whom Raiklin met in 2010. (Flynn and Raiklin have become close in recent years, with Raiklin urging Trump to select Flynn as his vice presidential running mate and Flynn featuring Raiklin in his current speaking tour.)

Roughly a week after the 2020 election, when major media outlets had called the election for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, Raiklin went on Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory show InfoWars and confidently predicted that Trump would ultimately obtain the necessary number of electoral votes to secure reelection.

“I absolutely guarantee it,” he said. “One hundred percent. Unequivocally. Full stop. There is no possibility that he does not reach 270.”

It's a classic example of how Trump’s followers often act on Trump’s wishes or anticipate his desires without receiving specific directives.

For months, Trump had been saying that the only way he’d lose the election is if Democrats stole it through fraud. Now, Trump had lost, and Raiklin was arguing that Trump was winning, against all evidence.

Raiklin, in essence, operates as an agent of Trumpism independent of Trump.

And as the 2024 election nears, the same dynamic is apparent: Trump articulates the broad themes, and his supporters scramble to put them into practice.

“Stand back and stand by” set the stage for the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021, and now, “I am your retribution” serves as a solicitation to supporters such as Raiklin to put together specific plans for retribution against Trump’s political enemies.

‘Operation Pence Card’

Raiklin’s primary contribution to the effort to overturn the 2020 election is a memo he drafted for the benefit of Trump’s presidential campaign.

Entitled “Operation Pence Card,” it proffered a novel legal argument that Vice President Mike Pence held the authority to set aside electoral votes from states narrowly carried by Biden.

The plan is widely associated with attorney John Eastman, who now faces charges of racketeering and conspiracy in Georgia, and with conspiracy, fraud and forgery in Arizona.

But Raiklin actually tweeted out his plan one day before Eastman drafted his now-infamous stop-the-steal memo. And Raiklin wielded enough influence that Trump himself, on Dec. 23, 2020, retweeted Raiklin’s “Operation Pence Card” tweet to his tens of millions of followers.

Around the same time, Raiklin dined with then-Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who attended a meeting at the White House along with other House Republicans to discuss plans to object on Jan. 6 to the congressional certification of the presidential election — the final, generally ceremonial step before a presidential inauguration.

On Jan. 4, 2021, Raiklin had told Jerome Corsi, a longtime conspiracy theorist, that with regard to Trump supporters descending on Washington, D.C. en masse: “I am not calling for any violence, but at the same time, I can’t stop people from committing it.”

Raiklin was present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 when a pro-Trump mob breached Congress’ defenses and temporarily stopped lawmakers’ electoral vote certification. Raiklin has not been charged with any crime related to the attack.

Following the Jan. 6 attack, the Army Reserve opened an investigation into whether Raiklin violated its rules against partisan political activity, but by early 2022, the service had cleared him of wrongdoing.

Raiklin has said the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Homeland Security have also investigated him, but those investigations likewise concluded without formal accusations of wrongdoing against Raiklin.

“So what does that trigger me to do?” Raiklin said during a presentation to a group of election deniers in New Jersey in February. “It weaponizes me against them. And so, since they haven’t found anything, and you’re investigating me, sir, I have the capability and capacity to start digging into you, your family, your friends, your associates — every single thing that you do in your life.”

Whitewashing the crimes of violent J6 rioters

While avoiding prosecution himself, Raiklin has eagerly taken up the cause of defendants who claim they were wrongfully prosecuted for their role in the Jan. 6 attack.

In June, Raiklin held a press conference in Detroit to promote his “live-streamed swatting raids” scheme. He did so alongside Treniss Jewell Evans III, who served a 20-day prison sentence for illegally entering the Capitol. Also speaking at the press conference: Sarah McAbee, the wife of a former sheriff’s deputy who is currently serving a 70-month sentence for assaulting a Washington, D.C., metropolitan police officer.

Ronald Colton McAbee, Sarah McAbee’s husband, wore patches with the word “SHERIFF” and the emblem of the anti-government Three Percenter movement on his clothing while taking part in an hours-long battle at the mouth of the Lower West Terrace Tunnel on Jan. 6.

A GiveSendGo campaign to support his wife applauds McAbee for answering “the call to stand up for our nation,” but following his conviction the Department of Justice described him as witnessing rioters knock an officer defending the U.S. Capitol to the ground. McAbee’s response was the opposite of rendering aid, according to the government.

After the officer was kicked and stripped of his baton by rioters, the government contends that “McAbee stepped into the archway, grabbed the officer’s leg, and pulled him further toward the crowd. When a second MPD officer stepped off the police line to assist the downed officer, McAbee stood up, yelled at the officer who had stepped out to assist, and then swung his arms and hands towards the officer’s head and torso. McAbee made contact with the officer and was wearing the reinforced gloves at the time of the assault.”

In the run-up to Jan. 6, Raiklin had baselessly ascribed the legitimate election of Joe Biden to “domestic fraud” committed by people “potentially under foreign actors’ payroll.” Now, at the press conference in Detroit in June 2024, Raiklin was inverting the violent crimes committed by Trump supporters to portray them, not the officers defending the Capitol, as the victims.

“You need to know who is coming after us,” Raiklin said, naming two people who are part of the U.S. Capitol security apparatus. Without presenting any evidence, Raiklin accused one of the men of “weaponizing and working with the DOJ… to criminalize against Sarah’s husband.”

Cultivating relationships with House Republicans

All the while, Raiklin is forging ties with Republican lawmakers who are sympathetic to the Jan. 6 rioters.

While leveling outlandish charges of criminal misconduct at federal civil servants, Raiklin has become a familiar presence at congressional committee hearings controlled by Republican lawmakers eager to downplay the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, or, alternately, shift blame to Democrats for the violence.

Raiklin has sat in the gallery behind the witnesses in at least five House committee hearings over the past year.

Among them: the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), the House Oversight and Accountability Committee chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

“I don’t just sit back behind the witnesses when I’m in the House,” Raiklin said on a podcast in May. “For 15 months, I’ve been grinding day in and day out talking to dozens of members of Congress giving ideas on what needs to be done.”

On another podcast, Raiklin said: “The only person that understands this is a guy by the name of Barry Loudermilk…. Why? Well, because he’s doing the right thing. And I get an opportunity to explain this to him and his staff regularly.”

Nick Petromelis, an aide to Loudermilk, told Raw Story he, Petromelis, is “familiar” with Raiklin.

Loudermilk ignored a request from the now-defunct House Select January 6 Committee to explain a tour he gave to constituents on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. His committee deposed Farnam, the former U.S. Capitol Police intelligence leader who is on Raiklin’s target list, last month.

Austin Hacker, an aide to Comer, likewise said he, Hacker, was aware that Raiklin had attended House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearings.

Despite promising in late May that he would find out whether Comer had personally spoken to Raiklin, Hacker stopped responding to follow-up messages from Raw Story.

Raiklin said on a podcast in May that he has sent his “Deep State target list” to Comer, Jordan and the Administration Oversight Subcommittee chaired by Loudermilk.

Hacker told Raw Story that Comer, his boss, does not have the “target list” document. Aides to Jordan and the House Administration Oversight Committee did not respond to emails from Raw Story seeking confirmation that they received copies of the list.

None of the three House members responded to requests for comment about whether they support Raiklin’s antics.

Raiklin has singled out other members of Congress for praise. Of Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), who filed legislation to hold U.S. Attorney Merrick Garland in “inherent contempt,” Raiklin said she “has exhibited the maximum courage that her position allows.”

Luna’s legislation would hold the attorney general in “inherent contempt” for refusing demands to turn over audio of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with Biden, related to Biden’s retention of classified documents in the garage of his Delaware home. “Inherent contempt” is a tool that would allow the House sergeant-at-arms to take Garland into custody and compel him to sit for a congressional proceeding. Raiklin told one podcaster that he “saw” Luna at a congressional hearing in May.

Luna’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

‘Go to the maximum level’

While cultivating ties with members of Congress, Raiklin has been lobbying sheriffs — with mixed results — to join his effort.

To reach potentially sympathetic sheriffs, Raiklin has focused on an organization called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.

Under the leadership of Richard Mack, a former sheriff from Arizona, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association has promoted the controversial view that county sheriffs are the highest law in the land and are within their rights to ignore any federal and state laws that they deem to be unconstitutional.

But Mack told Raw Story he has severed ties with Raiklin since talking with him in early June, and that he disapproves of Raiklin’s rhetoric.

During the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association’s annual convention during April in Las Vegas, Raiklin asked a panel of sheriffs if they would “be willing to go to the maximum level to create consequences for these federal actors” whom he claimed had committed “seditious conspiracy.”

The response was less than promising.

Still, the potential for violence should not be discounted, according to Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights and someone who has been monitoring the far right for more than three decades.

“It is certainly not out of the realm of possibility to see them using the office of the sheriff and posses they wish to create to start rounding up political opponents,” Burgart told Raw Story. “Right now, in the far right, the promotion of post-election violence and bloody political retribution has become disturbingly commonplace. In that context, the results of the election are almost an afterthought — only important in determining whether their murderous rage will have state sanction.”

While the far-right’s willingness to escalate may increase as the election approaches, at the time of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association convention in April, the two elected sheriffs on the panel were taking a cautious approach.

Sheriff Bob Songer from Klickitat County in Washington state told Raiklin that much as he might want to help, he doubted many prosecutors would be willing to press charges.

Sheriff Dar Leaf from Barry County in Michigan, put it more forcefully.

“We’re not going to be able to just go out and arrest,” he said. “We’ve got to do a grand jury indictment, just like the Constitution says.”

Leaf’s far-right credentials would seem to make him a prime candidate for Raiklin’s project. He gained national notoriety in 2020 when he suggested that members of an anti-government militia accused of attempting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer might have been trying to carry out a citizen’s arrest.

Leaf has falsely claimed that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and a lawyer representing Leaf reportedly sought evidence from an ad hoc group organized by lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn in December 2020 that could be used to justify “issuing probable cause warrants to sequester Dominion voting machines.”

But if Raiklin and his allies were discouraged by Leaf’s response at the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association convention, they haven’t given any indication of it.

During a podcast appearance with Mark Finchem, a former Arizona state representative who took part in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, Raiklin said he was certain that the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association could help “identify which county sheriffs would be clamoring, clamoringto prosecute these scum.”

“I know one,” Finchem replied. “Dar Leaf in Barry County, Michigan.”

Reached by Raw Story earlier this month, Leaf said that despite fielding a question from him at the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association convention, he doesn’t know who Raiklin is.

Leaf reiterated his rejection of Raiklin’s plan by expressing an aversion to politically motivated prosecutions.

Furthermore, Leaf warned that if indictments were obtained through grand juries “stacked” with Trump supporters, any criminal activity uncovered through depositions would be thrown out “because we started out breaking the law.”

Among dozens of other sheriff’s offices across the country contacted for this story, two in Wisconsin — Burnett County and Polk County — confirmed receiving an email with the subject heading: “Ivan Raiklin Requests Deputization of 80K Veterans” that linked to Raiklin’s video and encouraged them to get in contact.

“Please Watch this viral video that has garnered 9.8M views in 5 days,” it reads. “Important you understand. Remember your Oath.”

Raiklin’s name landed in one other sheriff’s inbox through a subscription to the “General Flynn Newsletter,” which is promoting the documentary about the former national security adviser.

The email, received by Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado in Oklahoma, describes Raiklin as a member of a team “hand-selected” by Flynn to provide event attendees “with an informative and unforgettable experience.”

The email describes the “General Flynn was Framed Evidence Wall,” a visual prop that Raiklin uses prior to each film screening that presents “an exhaustive timeline and link analysis of all the major political and government officials at the most senior levels that weaponized against General Flynn to prevent him from exposing their corruption.”

During his months-long campaign, Raiklin has continuously referenced Mack and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association in an effort to build credibility for his plan.

During his press conference with Treniss Evans in Detroit, Raiklin mentioned that the previous evening he’d “had a very long conversation with a guy by the name of Sheriff Mack” on the topic of “vetting and communicating with sheriffs.”

On a livestream of the press conference, Raiklin displayed a photo of the two men huddling over a laptop, suggesting a collaborative effort.

In a recent interview, Mack told Raw Story at the time that he had been “getting all sorts of calls” about Raiklin.

But since that meeting, Mack said he has soured on Raiklin’s plan.

“I’m afraid I don’t approve of some of his language, the hyperbole, the rhetoric,” Mack said.

For the same reason, Mack said, he resigned from the Oath Keepers. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right group that recruited from the ranks of retired law enforcement and military veterans, is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy at a federal prison in Cumberland, Md.

“It’s not where CSPOA can go,” Mack said, adding that he and Raiklin “are not working together at all.”

Since early June, Mack said that the two men have not spoken or exchanged any emails.

“Quite frankly, he talks about that list of 350 people — I’m sure they can afford lawyers,” Mack said. “It reeks of lawsuits, and it doesn’t follow due process.”

During his press conference with Evans, Raiklin said the two men are planning to attend the Sheriffs Association of Texas’ annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas, this month and pitch their plan.

“I would say that my inbox has been interesting lately with the amount of sheriffs that have an interest in seeing Texas uphold the United States Constitution, and preserve the way of life that we’ve come to expect as constitutionally guaranteed,” Evans said during the press conference.

But Mack said Raiklin’s score is currently 0.

“I know a lot of sheriffs, especially in Texas,” Mack told Raw Story. “I do not believe he has a single sheriff aligned with him. He’s never been able to give me a name.”

‘It’s so easy to learn where they live’

While cultivating relationships with members of Congress, lobbying sheriffs and recruiting volunteers to join posses tasked with detaining political enemies, Raiklin has also forged relationships with other extremists, seeming to cast about for a legal rationale in support of his scheme.

Over the past six months, Raiklin has appeared on at least three podcasts with Dr. Pete Chambers, who helped organize a “Take Our Border Back” convoy earlier this year to support Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s defiance of the federal government.

Like Raiklin, Chambers is a retired lieutenant colonel who formerly served in the Army Special Forces. Following his retirement from the military and later, in 2022, from the National Guard, Chambers joined the “sovereign citizen” group, whose members shot a man and took him hostage in 1997.

Chambers said when he watched Raiklin’s viral video outlining his plan to carry out “live-streamed swatting raids” against his “Deep State target list,” he recalled that he said to himself: “Ivan, you’ve just kicked open the door, and we’re going to have to back your play. And we can. And we’ve got the receipts to do it.”

During the conversation between the two men, Chambers referenced something called “the doctrine of lesser magistrates.” Although the term is rooted in the 16th century Protestant Reformation in Europe, it was more recently popularized by Matthew Trewhella, a Wisconsin pastor who has advocated killing abortion doctors.

Michael Flynn has recommended Trewhella’s 2013 book, The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates: A Proper Resistance to Tyranny and a Repudiation of Unlimited Obedience to Civil Government,as “a masterful blueprint showing Americans how to successfully resist tyranny.”

Trewhella’s book also received a plug at the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association convention where Raiklin attempted to sell the sheriffs on his “live-streamed swatting raids” plan.

Chambers seemed to acknowledge the improvisational nature of applying a 16th century religious doctrine to an ideological battle with Trump’s political adversaries in the United States of America in 2024.

“We’re building a plane and flying it here, I would say,” he said. “However, it is legal, moral and ethical…. If we can get together and develop the alliances of these sheriffs, then we decrease the space that these people can then maneuver.”

‘Gonna face those guns’

Next week, barring something cataclysmic, Trump will officially become the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee.

Trump will become the nominee despite being convicted of 34 felonies in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case in Manhattan, and he still faces dozens of additional federal and state charges despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that granted Trump — and any future president — immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” they took as president.

Trump is as defiant as ever.

“I did nothing wrong. We’d have a system that was rigged and disgusting. I did nothing wrong,” Trump said June 27 in his debate against Biden.

On a parallel track, Raiklin’s embrace of lawlessness appears to be growing stronger.

In June, Raiklin published a 76-minute video of himself speaking with Cliven Bundy, a 78-year-old Nevada rancher who is perhaps the ultimate icon of the far-right anti-government movement. In 2014, Bundy’s refusal to pay grazing fees to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management led to an armed standoff between the FBI and militia members, along with other supporters, including Richard Mack from the CSPOA.

Raiklin flattered Bundy during the exchange as “quite the legend,” while describing the federal government as “the most corrupt institution on the planet.” The two men agreed that “the militia” — a term used to describe armed citizens — “puts a check on the federal government.”

The rhetoric used by the two men became increasingly confrontational, with Bundy accusing the federal government of plotting to kill Americans. Cliven Bundy noted that his son, Ryan Bundy, was wounded, and a friend, LaVoy Finicum, was killed during a traffic stop during the Malheur National Forest occupation in Oregon in 2016.

“They don’t have those bullets to fight our enemy across the border,” Bundy charged. “They’ve got those bullets to kill us in America.”

Raiklin then quoted the Bible to suggest the proper response was “an eye for an eye.”

Bundy lamented that sheriffs across the country did not heed his call in 2014 for them to disarm federal agents in their jurisdictions.

“I said, ‘If you don’t disarm them, one of these days you’re going to face those guns,’” Bundy recounted.

“Now, we’re getting closer,” he quickly added. “Gonna face those guns.”

Raiklin, in response, appeared to advocate for doxing federal agents.

“Oh yeah, we’re not only going to do that,” he said. “Again, they’re going to experience the most peaceful, legal and moral, ethical and patriotic endeavor they’ve ever experienced in their life. Every one of them. Because we have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people that will facilitate them experiencing that.

“Because it’s so easy to learn where they live,” Raiklin continued. “Each one. Where their homes are. Who they’re related to. Where they frequent. What kinds of vehicles they own. What kinds of devices they own and that they emit GPS geo-tracking data. Which social media apps they use. We monitor all their communications.”

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retaliation scalp freedom cock primaried

an 8 24

Bob Good (R-VA) — the far-right House Freedom Caucus chair — lost his reelection bid Thursday after a recount confirmed Virginia state Sen. John McGuire's win, according to Politico.

The Associated Press (AP) reports, "Election officials previously certified a narrow McGuire win in the June 18 primary, by 374 votes out of nearly 63,000 cast. But with the margin of victory at just six-tenths of a percentage point, Good was entitled to a recount."

Veteran Capitol Hill journalist Jamie Dupree on June 19 reported that the top GOP House leaderwas "confident about his chances to maintain his seat, despite being down in a razor-thin vote count in the Republican primary for Virginia's 5th Congressional district."

Good — who supports Donald Trump in his bid for reelection — lost the former president's support when he originally endorsed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' 2024 presidential campaign.

Even traveling to Manhattan to defend the MAGA hopeful in his hush money criminal case did not win back Trump's loyalty, as the former president has made this support for McGuire clear.

Per AP, Good "thanked those who voted for him and supported his reelection campaign" in a Facebook post Thursday night.

"While I am disappointed in the ultimate outcome, it has been my distinct honor to serve as the congressional representative for Virginia’s 5th District over the past 3.5 years," the Virginia lawmaker wrote.

*Politico's report is available at this link. The Associated Press' report is here.

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One senior-level official from former President Donald Trump's administration just made an ominous threat to the immigrant community during a recent gathering of far-right political activists.

On Tuesday, Semafor reporter Dave Weigel reported that during the National Conservatism conference (also known as "NatCon") in Washington, D.C., several of the speakers eagerly expressed how they would help the former president accomplish his goal of pursuing vengeance against his political opponents if elected to a second term. During one panel, Tom Homan – who was director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Trump's Department of Homeland Security – suggested he was already working behind the scenes to make Trump's promise to deport millions of immigrants as draconian as possible.

"Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” Homan said. “They ain’t seen s— yet. Wait until 2025.”

As the New York Times reported last year, one key plank of Trump's second-term policy agenda is the rounding up and detainment of undocumented immigrants on an unprecedented scale. Trump immigration advisor Stephen Miller — an outed white nationalist — previously suggested Trump would deport approximately 10 million immigrants during a second term. Earlier this year, Ronald Brownstein — a senior editor for the Atlantic — tweeted excerpts from a speech Miller gave to National Rifle Association activists about how Trump would create “standing facilities” to detain immigrants by the thousands “where planes are moving off the runway constantly.”

Deporting millions of immigrants in a short number of years would likely be a major blow to the economy and result in significant price hikes for Americans. New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan reported last month that it's likely "production falls and labor costs go up" in the event of mass deportations.

"For example, if farmers could not find enough workers to pick all their crops, there would be a smaller supply of produce and it would get more expensive," they wrote. "And businesses would be forced to offer higher wages to attract or retain workers — passing on some of their higher costs to consumers."

According to Weigel, the NatCon audience that met at the Capital Hilton in D.C. consisted of "Trump administration veterans mingled with conservative writers and think tankers who had conquered the old 'Bush-Romney' Republican Party." Attendees reportedly viewed Trump as "a conquering hero who’d have a confident, well-trained movement behind him next year," and NatCon speakers often echoed Trump's promises to use the force of the federal government to punish Trump's enemies.

In a segment featuring former Trump attorney John Eastman (author of the so-called "Eastman Memo" that outlined the plot to disrupt Congress' certification of the 2020 Electoral College count), the now-disbarred lawyer proposed punishing federal judges who ruled against Trump in his unsuccessful election litigation.

"We’ve got to start impeaching these judges for acting in such an unbelievably partisan way from the bench," Eastman said, just a week after the six conservatives on the Supreme Court ruled that presidents are free to break the law as long as it's deemed an official act.

John Yoo, who was a top DOJ official in former George W. Bush's administration, also encouraged political reprisal under a second Trump administration. He specifically called on Republican prosecutors to be Trump's political foot soldiers should he win in November.

"People who have used this tool against people like John [Eastman] or President Trump have to be prosecuted by Republican or conservative DAs in exactly the same way, for exactly the same kinds of things, until they stop," Yoo said.

READ MORE:[Conservative admits Trump's policies 'would result in price spikes' for most Americans

Click here to read Weigel's full report in Semafor.

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chief Justice John Roberts and his right-wing colleagues on the Supreme Court are projecting their own insecurities and "hurt feelings" onto women who are calling out their flawed and dangerous rulings, wrote Dahlia Lithwick in a scorching analysis for Slate.

This comes after Roberts concluded the court's term with a ruling that gives former President Donald Trump a presumption of absolute immunity for "official acts," without clearly defining what those acts are.

And, in his majority opinion, he put down Justice Sonia Sotomayor's furious dissent as sounding "a tone of chilling doom" — a dismissal many described as condescending.

That was reinforced when former Trump White House attorney Ty Cobb dismissed the dissent on CNN as “a little hysterical, and it really offered no analysis. A lot of screaming, no analysis.”

"Screaming. Insubstantial. Hysterical," wrote Lithwick. "What men call banshees, women call prophecy. And of course if there are any sitting justices on the Roberts court whose entire jurisprudence can be reduced to a soggy skein of hurt feelings and self-pity, they are not females."

On the contrary, she wrote, Sotomayor's dissent, "Added interpolations that were not in her printed text and all but castigated her conservative colleagues. This is what frustration embodied looks like. And the failure to take that respectfully or even seriously? That is a play as old as the hills."

It's hard to swallow this criticism, wrote Lithwick, given that warnings that Roe v. Wade would be overturned were similarly dismissed as “hysterical” including by senators who voted to confirm Trump's Supreme Court Justices, like Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE).

Furthermore, the warnings that Trump will be emboldened by this ruling to defy the law and extrajudicially target opponents with the expectation he'll be immune from prosecution for it is completely founded, she noted — as Trump is already posting about the idea of a "televised military tribunal" for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who voted to impeach him and investigated him over January 6.

"This isn’t hypothetical. This isn’t fearmongering. This is how Trump lives and will continue to live. It is how he governs and how he will continue to govern," Lithwick concluded — and people in power should stop laughing off women whenever they voice real fears about their rights and prospects.

"It’s almost as if the conservative justices’ commitment to originalism requires them to believe that women who raise any objection to their tidy paradigms should be viewed as either empty vessels or scheming witches. It’s almost as if they wish to lay down the tracks for just such a project. It’s almost as if in granting Donald Trump immunity, they may have found their path there."

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Project 2025 partner blog: If Trump wins, “unpleasant things will have to be done to hold people to account”

An article at The Claremont Institute echoes Trump's repeated promises of “retribution” against his enemies if he wins in November

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

PUBLISHED 06/24/24

A media outlet from conservative think tank the Claremont Institute published a blog on June 21 arguing that if former President Donald Trump wins reelection in November, “unpleasant things will have to be done to hold people to account.”

The article didn’t specify its exact targets — beyond saying that they are the “people who attacked our constitutional republic by refusing to recognize limits on their exercise of power over us” — or the consequences they could face. But the author mentions Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith, as well as prosecutors and judges involved in cases investigating Trump, implying that they could all face retaliation under a second Trump term.

The article — published at The American Mind, one of several publications associated with the Claremont Institute — echoed Trump’s own promises of revenge. “I am your retribution,” Trump told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2023, repeating the phrase again later that month.

If Trump is to see his plans through, Claremont will play a major role as one of more than 100 organizations on the advisory board of Project 2025 — a radical right-wing effort organized by The Heritage Foundation to remake the federal government by providing staffing and policy to a second Trump administration.

The Claremont blog is just the latest salvo in pursuit of a key Project 2025 goal: implementing Schedule F, a scheme to remove job protections from tens of thousands of federal workers by reclassifying career staffers as political appointees. That move would allow a Trump administration to purge civil servants from federal agencies and replace them with MAGA activists.

Although the blog’s author doesn’t mention Schedule F explicitly, he makes sweeping claims about “the regime” — a catch-all for any and all anti-Trump forces, with a specific focus on the federal government. “The regime uses its lawless power routinely,” the blog argues in one instance. In another: “The regime has deformed our constitutional order almost beyond recognition.” In yet another case: “If Trump wins, we should expect that some of the worst perpetrators of the regime’s lawlessness will be held to account.” Taken as a whole, they seem to constitute a clear call to gut the federal workforce of employees perceived to be insufficiently dedicated to Trumpism.

Since Trump’s initial “retribution” remarks, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and others in MAGA media have amplified and intensified his threats.

Last August, Fox News host Jesse Watters celebrated Trump's calls for revenge by telling his viewers: “You better believe it’s open season.”

During a December interview with MAGA pundit Kash Patel, Bannon said of Trump’s retribution plans: “This is just not rhetoric. We're absolutely dead serious.”

During an April appearance on Bannon’s show, Article III Project founder Mike Davis threatened to “rain hell on these Biden Democrats” and warned them to “lawyer up”

In May, Bannon described Trump’s political opponents as “enemies and traitors to this country” and said: “The criminals and traitors around Biden, you should be very worried.”

Also in May, Bannon said that a Trump Department of Justice would bring charges against lawyers who prosecuted him after his first term.

On June 17, Bannon touted Project 2025 and pledged: “We are also going to have teams” that can “deconstruct the administrative state” and “go after the criminals and the traitors in the deep state.”

During a June interview with The Heritage Foundation’s Paul Dans, who directs Project 2025, Bannon suggested purging 8 million federal contractors.

The Claremont Institute closely tied itself to the first Trump campaign and administration, providing would-be intellectual scaffolding to the president’s chaotic time in the White House. Claremont is also home to Trump coup plotter John Eastman, who pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results and was later included as an unindicted co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s attempts to stay in power.

Beyond Eastman, Claremont has been a headquarters for a host of right-wing extremists. In 2019, Claremont awarded a fellowship to Pizzagate conspiracy theory peddler and neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec. Other notable fellowship recipients include right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, whose Turning Point USA is a Project 2025 partner with its own extensive ties to extremists; and Pedro Gonzales, who was later exposed for sending antisemitic, racist, and anti-LGBTQ texts in a right-wing group chat.

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alternet no lnx

New plans? How Trump loyalists are out for Biden family blood more than ever

Matt LasloandRaw Story June 15, 2024

WASHINGTON — House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden all but unraveled, but you wouldn’t know that from talking to House Republicans this week.

They’re out for Biden family blood more than ever.

The GOP’s cheering of a damning verdict for presidential son Hunter Biden — found guilty of lying on a federal firearm form and illegally owning a gun — have proven short-lived.

On Capitol Hill, the mood amongst Republicans is mostly anger as the party overflows with complaints about “a two-tiered” system of justice — even after the president’s son was successfully prosecuted by the same Department of Justice they decry for its pursuit of former President Donald Trump.

“No one's taking it seriously, because the Department of Justice, if they were actually a real justice system, they would have charged him for FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act]. They would be charging him for human sex trafficking,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Raw Story while walking to the Capitol to vote Wednesday.

MTG’s far from alone.

On Wednesday, three powerful Republican committee chairs sent the Department of Justice criminal referrals for Hunter and James Biden, the president’s brother.

The two Bidens made false statements to their committees that "implicate Joe Biden’s knowledge and role in his family’s influence peddling schemes and appear to be a calculated effort to shield Joe Biden from the impeachment inquiry," wrote Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY), Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-MO).

Those criminal referrals were sent to Special Counsel David Weiss and Attorney General Merrick Garland on the same day House Republicans voted to hold Garland in contempt for turning over a transcript of President Biden’s interview with the special prosecutor while withholding audio of it.

In the wake of the Hunter Biden guilty verdict, Republicans now say Department of Justice lawyers are complicit in a cover up.

“I think it's just an attempt to try to say, ‘Oh, we're not a two-tier justice system,’” Greene said. “And they [don’t] want to prosecute BLM rioters, Antifa and all these other people that caused $2 billion in damage.”

It’s more than just a different system of justice: the “deep state” is now in the driver’s seat at the DOJ, according to many in the GOP.

“The Hunter Biden trial was a veneer. There wasn't a sincere prosecution,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told Raw Story.

While House Republicans voted along party lines to launch a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden at the end of last year, the effort has gone nowhere in the GOP-controlled House.

That’s in part because their star witness, retired Russian figure skater Alexander Smirnov, went from being an FBI informant to being charged with lying and creating false documents about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

While on a private fundraising call last year, Gaetz dismissed the Biden impeachment effort — “I don’t believe that we are endeavoring upon a legitimate impeachment of Joe Biden” — since then he’s been raising alarms about bribes the Oversight Committee has failed to link to the president.

ALSO READ: ‘MIA MTG’: Why Marjorie Taylor Greene has no publicly listed district offices

Even though his committee has failed to make the case that Biden corruption is a family affair leading all the way to the White House, Gaetz dismisses the Hunter Biden gun case as “dumb.” He says DOJ lawyers need to do more — and broaden their investigation.

“I identify strongly with the statement from the Trump campaign that it was a distraction from the real Biden crimes. These guys are moving around millions of dollars in Chinese bribe money, and what we got him on was lying on a gun form? It’d be like getting Jeffrey Dahmer for littering,” Gaetz said, referencing the convicted serial killer.

Dumb or not, many Republicans are now watching to see whether Hunter Biden gets any jail time for his first time, non-violent felony conviction.

“Well, I think they considered the facts and found him guilty. It’ll be interesting to see what his consequences are,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told Raw Story. “If you’re on drugs, should you really have a gun? It’s either a law or it’s not a law. If they don’t believe in it, it’s like anything else, you gotta change it.”

While Norman’s closely watching the case against the first son, he, too, accuses the Department of Justice of playing politics even after the special prosecutor won a conviction this week.

“I do think it's a smokescreen,” Norman said. “I mean, look at what Hunter Biden’s gotten by with. $8 million in art sales. I don’t think he’s an artist.”

President Biden has said he will not pardon Hunter Biden.

“I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal," President Biden said. "Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today. So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery."

President Biden also reaffirmed his loyalty to his family.

"Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support,” Biden said. “Nothing will ever change that."

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Ex-Trump adviser: 'Republicans need a different talking point' after Hunter Biden conviction ›

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alternet-NO LNX

Republicans are playing a dangerous game by weaponizing ignorance

Sabrina Haake, Raw StoryJune 15, 2024

Donald Trump’s felony convictions are fueling another disinformation campaign, this one equal in destructive force to his Big Lie. Orchestrating a unified response reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s, House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Trump acolytes are weaving Trump’s criminality into a false indictment of the American legal system.

Republicans are falsely blaming Joe Biden for outcomes over which a sitting U.S. president has no control: convictions of Trump on 34 felony counts, pursued by an independently elected DA, pursuant to a state criminal code, as determined by 12 independent jurors, selected with the help of Trump’s own trial team.

The GOP’s target? Low-information voters.

Their weapon? Blatant disinformation.

Their allies? Fox News and the right-wing propaganda machine.

Their illiberal objective tracks the geopolitical strategies of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and strongman dictators adversarial to democratic systems in general: Weakening institutions through chaos that exhausts voters, allowing oligarch-backed extremists to seize power, peacefully or otherwise, amid the mayhem.

Feigned outrage to entertain the masses

The performative outrage in this week’s program includes eight Republican senators vowing retaliation for Trump’s convictions by opposing any legislation authored by Democrats; they also promise to withhold Senate confirmations.

Meanwhile, Johnson revealed his “three-pronged approach” to retaliation, including withholding congressional appropriations for the Department of Justice. Declaring that Republicans would “do everything we can” to exact revenge for Trump, Johnson and his Republican colleagues are currently pursuing legislation that would allow Trump to pardon himself of state crimes if he retakes the presidency.

Johnson has also suggested the "Trump-ed up" Supreme Court would “step in” to overturn Trump’s state convictions, the irony of simultaneously claiming that Biden controls the judiciary apparently over his head.

Advocating illegal acts is itself illegal.

Trump strategists Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon — the latter headed to prison soon himself — are openly urging Republican officeholders to use their offices to attack Democrats. They clearly need reminding — almost as much as they need fast, effective counsel — that using public resources for partisan purposes violates federal law.

Demanding that Republican district attorneys open investigations into Democrats, they urge attorneys general in Republican-controlled states to target Democrats for unspecified crimes.

Jeff Clark, the former Trump Justice Department official indicted in the Georgia election case, has broadened the call, urging “brave” district attorneys in conservative areas to file lawsuits in federal court against anyone involved in criminal cases against Trump.

Openly advocating illegal acts, and doing so in writing no less, suggests these fools have themselves for clients.

Republicans’ gaslighting campaign is reckless

Trump, for his part, is priming Fox News viewers for violence in the event he is sentenced to serve time in prison, saying, "I'm not sure the public would stand for (my potential prison sentence) ... You know, at a certain point, there's a breaking point."

The right’s gaslighting-of-the-uninformed campaign is working, as evidenced by online demands for bloody revenge. In trying to dox the jurors in Trump’s Manhattan hush money case, one of Trump’s supporters posted, “Hang everyone. 1,000,000 men (armed) need to go to Washington and hang everyone. That's the only solution.”

A Proud Boys writer chimed in, “Now you understand. To save your nation, you must fight. The time to respond is now. Franco Friday has begun.”

Without considering what comes next when the rule of law is hobbled — paramilitary hillbillies rounding up foreigners come to mind, as do drug cartels dropping roadside bombs from drones — Republicans are defending Trump by viciously attacking the judge, jurors, prosecutor, evidentiary rulings, jury instructions, the attorney general, the Department of Justice and mainstream media; they have also threatened to end the career of any GOP candidate who dares to voice respect for the American legal system.

So much for “law and order.”

Like a man blaming his wife as he kicks her down the stairs, Trump tells anyone who will listen — which apparently includes most media outlets — that Democrats have “forced” him to “take revenge” against government adversaries. Salivating over the possibility that he will finally get to imprison his political foes, brandishing his prison shiv, Trump told Newsmax, “It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them…”

One is almost tempted to have compassion for Melania.

From whence does the GOP’s amnesia come?

Republican outrage is overplayed, as if everyone has forgotten about Trump’s well-documented criminality, played out over decades.

In 1998, the Treasury Department imposed the then-largest fine of $477,000 on Trump Taj Mahal casino for money laundering; Trump admitted that he pocketed millions of dollars raised from charity; he was ordered to pay $2 million for diverting donations from a televised fundraiser for veterans; in 2023, a civil jury adjudicated him a rapist; he was previously found to have engaged in business fraud to the tune of $354 million dollars.

When his niece Mary Trump sued him for allegedly defrauding her out of tens of millions of dollars — she said Trump extorted her by threatening to withhold medical coverage from a severely disabled nephew — she declared “Fraud was not just the family business — it was a way of life.”

Despite his consistent criminality and organized crime connections, Trump’s felony convictions hit differently, triggering the GOP’s kamikaze declaration of war as three more criminal trials and 54 combined felony counts loom.

Democrats must punch back harder

Republicans are using disinformation as a weapon against uninformed voters to keep them aligned with Trump. Their ploy seems to be working, as Trump informally reported a $52.8 million haul in online donations in the first 24 hours after the verdict was announced.

Instead of confessing to the obvious that Trump’s criminality is driving his legal woes — not Biden, not the “Deep State,” not rigged justice — MAGA Republicans would prefer to round up Trump’s adversaries as political prisoners.

After Trump’s deadly mob wanted to hang Vice President Mike Pence to block Trump’s 2020 loss, they are lusting for another fight; historically, coups are regularly attempted more than once.

It is clear that the United States is under siege by illiberal forces, aided by a relentless propaganda machine committed to fomenting violence. My money is on the justice system — and on voters being smart enough to detect the ruse.

The politically moderate sports announcer Colin Cowherd recently summed it up: “If everybody in your circle is a felon, maybe it’s not rigged. Maybe the world isn’t against you… Trump’s campaign chairman was a felon. So is his deputy campaign manager, his personal lawyer, his chief strategist, his national security adviser, his trade adviser, his foreign policy adviser, his campaign fixer, and his company CFO. They’re all felons… It’s a cabal of convicts.”

Here's to slapping back.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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Conservative faux-outrage over Kyrsten Sinema’s thigh-high boots is just the latest in GOP culture war stupidity ›

It's science: Trump voters are dumb - Alternet.org ›

'Stupid, ridiculous self-righteous crap': Iowa grandma scorches Republicans’ six-week abortion ban ›

GOP senators slam House Republicans for 'ridiculous' antics at Trump hush money trial ›

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Bannon: “We're going to take power and then there's going to be a season of accountability”

06/13/24

mma

Bannon: A Trump administration will launch investigations of journalists: “You tried to destroy the American republic and you came very close”}:

:{06/12/24

an 2 24

So far this year, state Rep. Mazzie Christensen has filed 11 bills, ranging from changes to statewide education and public health policy to narrow legislation designed to help a small county in her district.

State Rep. Adam Schwadron has filed 12 bills, including his top priority to create a state fund to defray costs of security enhancements for nonprofits at elevated risk of terrorist attacks in Missouri.

Up until Thursday, more than a month into the legislative session, Christensen and Schwadron were the only Republican lawmakers who filed legislation this year who had not had any bills referred to committee by House Speaker Dean Plocher.

The pair also share one other thing in common: They were among the loudest voices within the House Republican caucus calling for Plocher to step down from leadership amid a litany of scandals.

With Plocher’s future still uncertain as he remains under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, Christensen believes he’s using his power as speaker to retaliate against those who spoke out...

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maccarthy primaries/flanks gaetz 8? 2 24

'Kevin wants payback': Nancy Mace faces 'potent challenges' in tough GOP primary battle - Alternet.org

8 Republicans lose donor support over McCarthy disloyalty — Mace gets most 'blowback': report - Alternet.org

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an 2 24

When 2024 arrived, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) was gone from Congress. McCarthy was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2006 midterms, but after being ousted as speaker in October 2023, he obviously lost his desire to remain a congressman. And instead of serving out the rest of his term, McCarthy made December 31 his final day in the House.

According to Politico reporters Ally Mutnick and Olivia Beavers, McCarthy and his allies are planning revenge against the Republicans who are responsible for him being ousted as speaker.

Far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) triggered a "motion to vacate" that led to a full House vote on McCarthy, and seven Republicans joined Gaetz in voting to oust him as speaker. Collectively, they are known as the "Gaetz Eight" on Capitol Hill, and Mutnick and Beavers report that McCarthy ally Brian O. Walsh is "overseeing an attempt to recruit primary challengers" against them.

"Behind the scenes," the Politico journalists report in an article published on February 1, "McCarthy allies have identified three of the Gaetz Eight as the most vulnerable in primaries — and thus, the ripest targets: Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Bob Good (R-Va.) and Eli Crane (R-Ariz.). Mace and Good already have strong challengers, but Crane still lacks a compelling prospective candidate to take him on. That quiet work shows McCarthy's appetite for payback remains intense, even months after his October ouster as speaker and December departure from Congress."

Mutnick and Olivia Beavers continue, "It also illustrates that even out of office, the former speaker and his supporters can make life miserable for his detractors — a further sign that the House GOP power struggle between burn-it-down hardliners and more establishment conservatives is alive and well."

Walsh's thirst for revenge was evident in a statement to Politico.

The McCarthy ally said of the Gaetz Eight, "These traitors chose to side with Nancy Pelosi, AOC and over 200 Democrats to undermine the institution, their fellow Republicans and a duly elected speaker. There must be consequences for that decision.”

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Pastors threaten 'retribution' under second Trump term in their prayers — although it does get 'awkward' - Alternet.org

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mma 1 24 mg

After decisions in two states ruled that Donald Trump was disqualified from the presidential ballot because he “engaged in insurrection” on January 6, 2021, right-wing influencers called for Republican officials to retaliate in kind by dropping President Joe Biden from the ballot. It took only days for them to find someone willing to play the part: Jay Ashcroft, Missouri’s secretary of state and a candidate for governor.

Ashcroft said last week that he would enforce “the new legal standard” against Biden in his state if the Supreme Court sustains Trump’s removal in Colorado. He probably won’t be the last to make such a pitch given the incentives GOP officeholders have to follow the lead of the party’s media propagandists.

Colorado’s Supreme Court generated a legal firestorm when it ruled in December that Trump is ineligible for office under the 14th Amendment’s ban on officials who “engaged in insurrection,” for his “overt, voluntary, and direct participation” in the storming of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows subsequently removed Trump from the primary ballot on similar grounds. Trump has appealed both decisions, and the Supreme Court said Friday it would review the Colorado ruling.

Prominent conservative legal scholars have argued in favor of Trump’s removal on 14th Amendment grounds. As conservative former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote with liberal Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe, “any disinterested observer who witnessed that bloody assault on the temple of our democracy, and anyone who learns about the many failed schemes to bloodlessly overturn the election before that” would agree that January 6 was “an insurrection for which Trump bore responsibility.”

But Trumpist propagandists have spent the last three years crafting a bogus alternate narrative of January 6 in which the rioters were victims of a government conspiracy and the then-president who incited them based on lies did nothing wrong. And so they’ve responded to the rulings in Colorado and Maine by urging Republican officials to bump Biden from the ballot in retaliation.

“Due process is not taken into account any more in America in 2023 and certainly going into 2024, so Republicans should say Joe Biden is off the ballot in all the Republican-controlled-AG states because of his links, clearly, to bribery schemes,” Donald Trump Jr. offered on his Triggered podcast on December 28, 2023. “There's far more evidence of that than an actual insurrection.”

“I want to see a secretary of state in the next couple of days just put out the press release,” Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk said Wednesday. “Joe Biden's not going to be on the primary ballot. He's not going to be on the general election ballot.”

Like Trump Jr., Kirk made clear that any explanation for why a secretary of state would do such a thing would be a pretext, saying, “Shot across the bow. Power dynamics. Fight power with power.”

“We need a red state secretary of state to kick Biden off the ballot now,” Daily Wire podcaster Michael Knowles added Friday morning. “And they can come up with some explanation. It will probably be a more credible explanation than the one that the Democrats have come up with for kicking Donald Trump off the ballot.”

Knowles went on to say that a GOP secretary of state could cite a 2020 tweet by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign asking supporters to donate to a Minnesota bail fund to “help post bail for those protesting on the ground” there following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.

“Certainly we can say Kamala Harris led an insurrection. She personally fundraised for rioters and criminals who were insurrecting against cities around the country during the George Floyd riots,” he explained. “So OK. Make it Kamala Harris, and then Kamala can't appear on the ticket, and you don't even need to go after Joe Biden.”

The incentive structure on the right is such that once major players like Kirk and Knowles start creating a demand for action, Republican officials will supply it. Ashcroft, who is seeking a promotion to governor but faces a competitive GOP primary against candidates including the state’s lieutenant governor, answered the call later on Friday.

“What has happened in Colorado & Maine is disgraceful & undermines our republic,” the Missouri secretary of state wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “While I expect the Supreme Court to overturn this, if not, Secretaries of State will step in & ensure the new legal standard for @realDonaldTrump applies equally to @JoeBiden!”

He subsequently used the story to direct people to his campaign website, saying on X, “Its time to stand and be counted. The future depends on it.”

It can be difficult to tell whether GOP officials are acting in response to right-wing media figures or if they’re converging on the same idea independently because they’re all swimming in the same milieu of Republican base voters. But notably, when Ashcroft discussed the potential rationale he would use to remove Biden from the ballot in an interview with NBC News, it sounded an awful lot like Knowles’ idea from earlier in the day:

Asked how he would disqualify Biden from the ballot for insurrection, Ashcroft said that he's “let an invasion unstopped into our country from the border.” Vice President Kamala Harris, he added, “supported people that were rebelling against the U.S. government during the riots in 2020,” referring to racial justice protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder.

“If this is the standard, does that suddenly mean she's not allowed to run? None of us can say, because there is no standard,” he said.

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Trump-allied group wants J6 committee staffers blacklisted - POLITICO

2/23/2023

A conservative non-profit group allied with former President Donald Trump urged “Hill staffers and their colleagues” to cut off meetings with any former Jan. 6 committee staffers who have since joined firms that lobby.

In a letter sent to hundreds of recipients on the Hill, the dark money group American Accountability Foundation listed the names of the former committee staffers and their titles — along with their new employers and links to their firms’ clients — all of whom they urged to blacklist.

“AAF has put together a cheat-sheet below outlining their new firms and the firm’s clients so you can be sure you (and your staff) aren’t inadvertently taking a meeting with a company that hires staff that hates your boss,” says the memo sent by Thomas Jones, the group’s president and founder. In his letter, Jones noted recent reporting by POLITICO on the January 6 committee staffers being hired by law and lobbying shops.

“It is important to remember that even if one of these former J6 investigators is not listed as a lobbyist on this specific account, the billings brought in by the clients listed below benefit all staff at the J6 investigator’s new firm,” he added.

It remains to be seen how effective the gambit will be, as the letter was sent only this past Wednesday. K Street firms have a major presence on Capitol Hill and their hires include figures on all sides of the political spectrum. But the group’s play illustrates the intense desire that exists among some conservatives to exact political retribution for those staffers who helped unearth extraordinary evidence of Donald Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election.

Jones confirmed the authenticity of the memo in an email to POLITICO. He railed against the January 6 committee’s use of investigative power, claiming that the committee and the F.B.I. forced some to “spend tens — sometimes hundreds — of thousands of dollars defending themselves from an overreaching and weaponized government.” He argued that conservatives should not be taking meetings with these lobbyists’ clients.

“My email was just a short list of people and companies they should stop working with,” he said.

“Until conservatives are willing to fight back against the swamp — in this case cutting off the lifeblood of lobbyist access — the swamp will never be drained,” he contended.

:{Among those listed on the memo include Casey Lucier, former investigative counsel for the committee, who was hired at McGuireWoods, a firm that represents Hertz Global, Perdue Foods, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and others.

:{Other names listed were Kevin Elliker, another former investigative counsel, who was hired by Hunton Andrews Kurth. That firm represents Koch Companies Public Sector, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, and Southern Company Services.

Former committee staffers Marcus Childress, Heather Connelly, and Michelle Kallen had all been hired by Jenner & Block, the email noted, which represents T-Mobile and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

In his message, Jones also noted that the memo’s recipients were free to send over additional names.

Led by Jones, an alumnus of Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Tex.) presidential campaign, and Matt Buckham, a veteran of the Trump White House, the American Accountability Foundation has taken on controversial tactics to undermine Biden’s nominees. The New Yorker reported links between the American Accountability Foundation and the Conservative Partnership Institute, which has been affiliated with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and attorney Cleta Mitchell. Notably, Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger works for McGuireWoods, one of the firms listed in the memo.

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Republicans propose $1 salary for Pete Buttigieg: report - Alternet.org

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aha/hmmn 8 23 expansion: trump says i am your retribution [// the storm qanon] demonization of enemy evil commie enemy, they must be taken from power and punished

see treason traitor execution

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/extreme-accountability-stew-peters-delivers-a-bloodthirsty-rant-at-the-latest-reawaken-america-event/

no vid rww 8 23

stew Peters is a far-right virulently anti-LGBTQ bigot who regularly uses his nightly “The Stew Peters Show” program, speeches, and social media accounts to promote white nationalists and antisemites and to spread wild conspiracy theories, bigotry, and calls for violence.

:{:{}:

Lately, those calls for violence have become increasingly explicit, as just last week Peters used his program to urge Americans to begin exploring “extra-legal options” to remove “enemy combatants” like Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs from office.

Over the weekend, Peters joined members of former President Donald Trump’s family and inner circle and a cavalcade of far-right conspiracy theorists for a ReAwaken America event in Las Vegas, where he delivered a bloodthirsty rant that was alarming even by Peters’ already unhinged standards.

Speaking on the same stage as the likes of Donald Trump Jr., Lara Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Michael Flynn, Peters repeatedly called for his perceived political enemies to be executed.

Peters vowed to arrest former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci and prosecute him for the COVID-19 pandemic, after which Peters said Fauci “will hang from a length of thick rope until he is dead.”

Hunter Biden, Peters then pledged, will be tried fortreason and “when he is convicted of those crimes, he will get the punishment that traitors like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg received before him: Death!”

Peters proceeded to declare that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is “atreasonous traitor, and in the world that we are going to build, traitors will hang.”

On top of that, Peters warned that any medical professional who provides treatment to transgender youth will be charged with “child mutilation.”

“Child mutilation will be a capital offense,” Peters proclaimed. “And those who commit it will receive the death penalty without exception.”

“We are going to see extreme accountability,” Peters asserted. “Maximum accountability. We are going to have permanent accountability, with extreme prejudice!”

Every one of Peters’ violent threats was met by wild cheers from the audience[vid]

despite Peters well-documented history of using extremely bigoted and increasingly dangerous rhetoric, he nevertheless regularly manages to get Republican leaders, elected officials, and candidates for office to appear on his program.

The ReAwaken America touris the brainchild of right-wing conspiracy theorist Clay Clark, who has openly bragged that the participation by Michael Flynn and members of the Trump family in these events is “legitimizing what we are doing in the minds of many people” and allowing him to get various conspiracy theorists and self-proclaimed “prophets” directly into “Trump’s inner circle.”

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hostage fail

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-close-your-checkbooks-republican-party

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