funes, jason DOI
dustin j6:
1 Virginia -- PA border if any things got really sticky. What's that comment about?
2 A So both Jennifer and I worked for Gun Owners of America for a long time,
3 and it was frankly like braggadocios fluff about knowing a bunch of the patriot groups in
4 Virginia in case, you know -- especially with Cindy and:{ Jason Funes,there was over the
5 top talk about like, Well, what if they come in and start shooting and stuff. So that was
6 kind of my overly braggadocios like, Oh, I know the people in Virginia we could call over if
7 things got sticky.
8 Q Right. And I'm just not familiar with some of the shorthand that you might
9 be using. When you say 3K guys with 2K AR-15s, is that -- what does that mean?
10 A Like the groups -- I mean, the numbers kind of pulled out of thin air, but like
11 Gun Owners of America is headquartered in Virginia. And, so, like I know a bunch of
12 guys with a bunch of guns that we could call if things -- right, if as you're worried about
13 like, you know, the Feds are going to start shooting at us.
So 3K means 3,000 and 2K means 2,000?}:
Correct.
Sorry, real quick. Did you say, was the concern that the Federal
18 government was going to shoot on you?
19 A Correct. Correct. I'm not saying that that was my concern, but I'm saying
20 with some of the other people who were involved, especially surrounding like the 1AP
21 guys,that their frankly paranoias around some of this stuff was often over the top.
22 BY
23 Q Well, I think that raises an interesting question that I'd be interested in
24 getting your perspective on is, the distinction between what you're getting when you
25 have a licensed professional security firm versus a more volunteer, takes on the loo
...
77
1 was: In your professional work at this time, was a $1,000 one-time contribution a
2 notable donation to the cause?
Yes.
And so --
A Well, I won't say it was overly notable, right? We were getting quite a few.
6 But it was that he did a thou -- I remember he did a thousand dollars and a recurring
7 hundred dollars, which is a significant commitment.
8 Q And when you said earlier raising -- correct me if I'm wrong. I think you
9 had said earlier that the fundraising for Women for America First during this time period
10 generated a few hundred thousand dollars?
Which time period are you referring to?
Well, let me actually just ask you: Between this
13 post-election-to-January-6th timeframe, how much, if you had to ballpark it, were they
14 raising?
15 A I believe, in grassroots contributions, I believe we brought in between
16 $700,000 and $800,000.
17 Q And that does not count the $250,000 donation --
18 A That is not including the Lindell donation or any other large donations the
19 Kremers may have got without my knowledge or, you know, have shared with me.
...ion beforehand, which felt like a very tense situation.
2 The -- I'm trying to think if there's anything else that stands out.
3 It felt real -- like, compared to November, it felt like we had done a really good job
4 at adapting, and we felt that we did a vastly superior job with security. And then also
5 that there were vastly less confrontations between the people who -- we see ourselves as
6 representing, like, the Tea Party grandmas, if you will. And, after the November rally, I
7 remember how upset we were to go home and watch -- there were a bunch of viral
8 videos of, like, Trump people walking back to their hotel and getting attacked, like, even
9 old ladies and stuff. And I remember we didn't -:{- the feeling in December was
10 that -- there were a bunch of Proud Boys and antifa people who had, like, clashed; like,
11 both sides were out looking for the same fight. So, like, for us, the crazies are the
12 crazies, but our job was to protect and secure, like, the patriotic Americans who were
13 answering our call to come out and have their voices heard. And December felt like we
14 did a really good job with that.
When you say "the crazies are thecrazies," is that -- you're referring to --
1mean on both sides. So, like, the -- there are elements, right, within the
17 Proud Boys and some of these -- some of the militia groups that are, frankly -- they're like
18 soccer hooligans. They're looking to get into -- like, they get off on battling each other.
19 And you see it play out in, you know, these events all over the country where you
20 see the leftist crazies and the right-wing crazies fight each other with their shields and all
21 the other silliness.}:
22 Q But it was your sense that the security you had put in place for December at
23 least was sufficient toprotect the Tea Party grandmasor the people who were coming...
[vip mad b/c no badges] p.m.]
2 The Witness. So she tells me that she raised $3 million. She's the one who
3 raised all the money and paid for everything at the Ellipse, and the Kremers paid
4 absolutely nothing, which was news to me because the Kremers had been pressuring me
5 to ramp up fundraising since like Christmas-ish, saying that like we were completely out
6 of money, and we weren't going to be able to continue unless, like, I pulled a rabbit out of
7 the hat. And I was able to go to another guy who's in my business, who was able to do a
8 rev share that was wildly successful in, like, cover stuff.
9 But it was portrayed to me that like we were spending a massive amount of
10 money on this January 6th event.:{ And Caroline told me that she raised the $3 million,
11 and that she parked the money with the Republican Governors Association, TPUSA, and
12 Tea Party Express.}:
13 And I actually clarified with her, because, like, I assumed she meant Tea Party
14 Patriots, but she clarified that it was Tea Party Express, which seemed interesting because
15 both Amy and I have our political roots there.
16 And she tells me that she's not giving -- that she's not giving the VIP badges over
17 to the Kremers to fuck them over, that's her language, because Kylie Kremer is the worst
18 human being she's ever interacted with, ever, and that -- she also says that Kylie is so
19 stupid that she actually fought to make her organization the one on the, like, headlines,
20 which is just a liability nightmare, right.
21 She's like, I don't -- these people are having, like, blowups over something no one
22 else wants anyway. And she tells me that -- so she tells me about the money. She tells
23 me about the badges. She tells me about parking the money at the different
24 organizations. And she gives me a couple of badges for Jen and I.
25 And I immediately -- and I believe I included these, so it's one of these text threads...
ll of it, but I think she was present for almost all of it.
19 Q Did Caroline tell you anything about her contacts or ability to sort of have
20 persuasion with the White House?
21 A Well, I knew beforehand, I knew :{Caroline as, like, Kimberly Guilfoyle's, like,
22 fundraising girl. }:And so, I kind of -- she didn't say it because people who do high-dollar
23 fundraising like that really hoard their like contacts closely. But she was very specific
24 about how much she raised, where she sent it, and what it -- like that she -- that was the
25 money used to pay for everything at the Ellipse even
...
101
1 Q In your professional experience, is it common for fund raisers to, in your
2 words, park money at different organizations?
3 A There is. In the 501{c)4 world, there are these organizations that because
4 of the idiotic way our nonprofit laws are designed, my personal opinion, the (c)4 groups
5 are 51/49, so 51 percent have to be nonpolitical but 49 percent can be political, and you
6 don't have to report the donors in the (c)4 structure.
7 So if you have a big donor who is willing to write you a big political check, you
8 have to have a robust enough percentage, right, to still be 51/49, to stay within the legally
9 mandated, like, percentages of activity. I think I described that pretty well, actually.
10 So there is, on the shadier side of stuff, right, an understanding that there are
11 certain groups that if you have a big political donor who wants to remain anonymous,
12 that, like, they have the extra space to take that money in and spend it politically without
13 it exposing the donor.
16 Express.
17 Q
18 Association?
And you said those three organizations were --
RGA, Republican Governors Association; Turning Point USA; and Tea Party
Did she mention anything about the Republican Attorneys General
I actually may be wrong with the RGA. Maybe it was the -- I actually think
20 you're right, actually. I'm sorry. It was RAG -- the acronyms get mixed sometimes.
21 think it was the Republican Attorneys General. I think I got mixed up with Republican
22 Governors Association.
23 Q :{So the organizations that Caroline Wren told you she parked the $3 million
24 with was the Republican Attorneys General Association, Turning Point USA, and the Tea
25 Party Express?
...[burner phones]}:===
an 8 22
Jason Funes, a Jan. 6 rally organizer and former aide to President Trump who insists that Trump was framed for the insurrection at the Capitol, has been interviewed by the Jan. 6 Committee.
NBC News wasfirst to report the development Thursday. Funes does not appear to have been formally subpoenaed. In December, when his mother received a letter from the committee notifying her that it had subpoenaed Verizon for her son’s phone records, Funes told CNN he was outraged. He would have been a “willing witness” and wished investigators contacted him directly, he said.
Funes did not immediately return a request for comment to Daily Kos on Thursday.
Arriving on the 2020 Trump campaign after a stint as a special assistantto Trump’sethics-rules abusing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Funes joined the ranks of ‘Stop the Steal’ and Women for America First organizers that were readying themselves for the pro-Trump events at the Ellipse on Jan. 6.
In November, Funes did an interview with Gail Golec. Golec describes herself as an “all-American Entrepreneur, Christian Conservative, Citizen Journalist, and a Constitutionalist” on her campaign website for the Maricopa County Board Supervisors in Arizona. In their interview, Funes claimed that the rioting at the U.S. Capitol was effectively orchestrated by right-wing activist and ‘Stop the Steal’ movement leader Ali Alexander and InfoWars host Alex Jones.
Alexander and Jones “attracted attention to the U.S. Capitol building, yelling that they had a permitted event and to come to the event but Jones trapped everyone to come to the Capitol building steps and create more chaos to steal the election from Trump as opposed to stopping it,” Funes said in November. “
Posts on his Twitter account, where Funes labels himself as “Latino MAGA Man” are littered with allegations that Jan. 6 was a “staged coup” intended to frame Trump. Funes has outwardly aligned himself on Twitter against other Trump world or supporting figures like Roger Stone, Nick Fuentes, and Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio, to name a few.
In the last week, Funes tagged Republican lawmakers like Reps. Jim Jordan, Jim Banks, and Senator Josh Hawley with messages like, “Not all #J6 prisoners are created equal. Fake Trump supporters created violence, Trump was framed.”
All of the lawmakers voted to overturn the 2020 election results and both Jordan and Banks serve on a Republican-controlled Jan. 6 shadow committee.
Investigators are likely far more interested in having Funes field questions about his role helping to organize pro-Trump rallies rather than his easily-debunked conspiracy theory that Trump was “framed” for the insurrection.
Funes has historically pushed blame for the violence that day on Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist activists despite having no proof of their involvementbeyond backing of the claim from Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. Law enforcement agencies like the FBI have confirmed there was no participation by either BLM or antifa activists in the Capitol attack though that has not stopped the former president or his lackeys from promoting the theory anyway.
In a Twitter post on Thursday after news broke that he met with investigators, Funes wrote: “The first victim of every war is the TRUTH!!” [Emphasis original] and in light of the burgeoning aggression from Russia against Ukraine, he called “foreign wars” a distraction, put the blame on President Joe Biden, and called the Jan. 6 probe crooked.
Funes has also claimed that Jacob Chansley, the so-called “Q-Anon Shaman” who stormed the Capitol, has been unfairly prosecuted.
“Jacob Chansley was the Lee Harvey Oswald of January 6,” Funes said last November.
ref F&WW on api 2 face:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/in-shift-key-climate-denialist-group-heartland-institute-pivots-to-policy/
NOVEMBER 2, 2018
by
Few entities have worked harder to instill doubt in American minds about the science of climate change than the Heartland Institute.
The self-styled “action tank” has published dozens of books and other media amplifying the voices of those who reject the scientific consensus on climate change. Last year, the libertarian organization mailed instructional materials questioning whether global warming is real to science teachers across the nation.
Now, the group is declaring itself victorious in its crusade to convince Americans that climate science is debatable — despite the broad scientific agreement that it is not — and says it is instead pursuing economic and moral arguments to advance policies that bolster domestic fossil fuel production.
“It took a while, but we think we’ve won the battle — Al Gore was wrong,” said Heartland president and CEO Tim Huelskamp, a former Republican Congressman. “Now we’re focusing on implementation.”
The pivot comes at a paradoxical moment: There has never been more evidence that humans are altering the climate; nor has Heartland’s message to the contrary ever enjoyed a more sympathetic ear in the White House. President Donald Trump has in the past described climate change as a “hoax;” last month, days after the United Nations released a report warning that climate change may have catastrophic impact as soon as 2030, Trump said he wasn’t convinced “that it’s man-made.” Trump’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency was**led by a close Heartland associate**. Emails obtained by Freedom of Information Act lawsuits revealed that under Trump, EPA officials have corresponded with Heartland leaders, in some cases to drum up support for policies and events. Trump’sdecision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, his proposal to roll back car fuel economy standards and his plan to support old coal-powered plants are all policies that Heartland has advocated.
Heartland anticipated this bonanza. At the climate conference the organization hosted in Washington, D.C. just weeks after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, the mood was jubilant: “This is a wonderful time to be a global warming realist,” :
In that same speech, Bast — who has since semi-retired — hinted at a change in strategy: “The scientific debate is essentially over,” he :
Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard University professor who examined Heartland and its allies in her book Merchants of Doubt, said there may be anotherreason for the pivot: They may have calculated that the science argument is not as effective as it used to be. “Organizations like Heartland are very effective at shifting tactics in response to whatever is happening in that moment,” she said. “If we were to have an unusually cold spell for three years, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them pick up the science again.”
Since its founding in 1984, Chicago-based Heartland has worked on an array of free-market causes. But the organization, historically backed by the fossil fuel industry, is best known for nurturing the idea that climate science is up for debate.
In 2008, Heartland began hosting what it called “International Conferences on Climate Change,” which gathered the world’s most prominent climate contrarians under one roof. The arguments made there against prevailing climate science were diverse and often conflicting: Some speakers denied the Earth’s atmosphere was changing; others said the Earth was actually cooling; others said it was warming for entirely natural reasons; still others accepted that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was causing the planet to warm, but argued the ensuing changes were good for life on Earth.
Heartland hosted 12 such conferences in 10 years, even as the organization faced setbacks: As its leaders decried global warming a “hoax,” the planet endured year after year of record-breaking global temperatures, and most climate scientists became unwilling to debate with Heartland and its allies, worrying that doing so legitimized their message. Heartland faced widespread criticism in 2012, when it sponsored a billboard showing the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski along with the words, “I still believe in global warming. Do you?”
But the message Heartland has promoted reflects the view of many people in America: In 2008, just 47 percent of Americans agreed there was solid evidence that the Earth was warming due to human causes, according to a Pew study; as of 2016, that percentage had not much budged.
Heartland has not hosted a climate change conference since the weeks after Trump’s election. Instead, in November 2017, the organization held an “America First Energy Conference,” named after and championing the president’s energy policy, and coinciding with the U.N’s annual climate talks. It opened with a video message from then-administrator of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, and featured two mid-level Trump administration officials.
In August, it held a second of these conferences in New Orleans. The conference website stated that 300 to 400 people were expected to attend, but most of the day it had an audience of 100 or fewer. Despite the modest attendance, the conference featured three Trump political appointees: Joe Balash, assistant secretary for land and minerals management at Department of Interior; Jason Funes, special assistant in DOI’s Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs; andBrooke Rollins,who serves as the assistant to the president for strategic innovations and leads the White House Office of American Innovation.
“Despite what the anti-fossil fuel hypocritessay, the everyday American in this country loves fossil fuels,”Funes:
Many other panelists were regulars from Heartland’s climate conferences. One of the day’s panels took direct aim at climate science; others were framed around policy, legal challenges, economic arguments, or moral ones.
According to Oreskes, the economic argument — that climate change is too expensive to fix — have been part of Heartland’s arsenal for years. But the moral argument — the idea that regulating fossil fuels will create “energy poverty” by increasing energy prices so much that people with low incomes can’t afford it — is newer. Oreskes said it’s “one of the most pernicious arguments they’ve ever made.”
“A central truth about climate change is that those of us who have benefited the most from using fossil fuels will suffer the least, while poor people, who have hardly benefited, will bear the brunt of climate change,” she said.
In December, Heartland plans to be in Katowice, Poland during the U.N.’s next major climate conference, where it will release its book “Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels.” The book is the fifth volume Heartland has edited and published by the “Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change” (NIPCC) – a moniker derived from the name of the U.N.’s scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The previous four volumes, published between 2009 and 2014, were all attempts to contradict the climate science reported by the U.N. However, according to talking points that Heartland released earlier this month and distributed to state and federal policymakers, this fifth volume barely touches on climate science. Instead, it focuses on a cost-benefit analysis of reducing fossil fuel usage. The summary concludes that “nearly all the impacts of fossil fuel use on human well-being are net positive.”
Heartland’s support for the fossil fuel industry has not been reciprocated, of late. Heartland once received financial support from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and Alpha Natural Resources, among others, but those and other donations from the industry have largely dried up; Heartland’s website says most of its funding today comes from individual donors and foundations. In August’s conference on the energy sector, just one person employed by that sector spoke: Joe Leimkuhler, vice president of drilling of Louisiana-based deepwater exploration company LLOG Exploration.
Heartland’s president Huelskampblamed the lack of participation on companies not wanting to jeopardize government contracts, or backtrack on their efforts to promote an environmentally friendly image.
“All these folks continue to think Hillary Clinton still runs things,” Huelskamp said. “So we’re not here promoting individual companies, we’re promoting free markets.”
Heartland has also lost organizational allies: The program from its March 2008 climate conference boasted 52 co-sponsors from more than 20 countries, nearly all organizations promoting free-market initiatives. That number dwindled over the years, and the program from its 2017 conference listed only 10 co-sponsors, two of which were international. Heartland spokesman Jim Lakely said the decline was due to a policy that co-sponsors must financially support the conference to be listed. “It is no reflection at all on the view of our allies or friends,” he said.
Heartland’s strident policies on climate change may have strained a relationship with one of its most powerful remaining allies: the American Legislative Exchange Council, an influential organization that unites private interests and conservative politicians to craft legislative proposals. Heartland has long been an instrumental member of ALEC, helping draft model legislation on climate change. But its proposals have alienated some of ALEC’s large corporate members. In 2014, eBay, Facebook, Yelp, Microsoft and Google all left the organization; then-Google chairman Eric Schmidt said the company was leaving because ALEC was “just literally lying” about climate change. The exodus has continued: This December, ExxonMobil took issue with a climate resolution that Heartland had backed in an ALEC meeting. The company chose to step away from ALEC in June.
Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Wisc.), who attends ALEC meetings and then writes about them, said that at a meeting in August, an ALEC task force only barely passed a Heartland-backed proposal to rewrite fuel economy standards. “It almost went down, because there were 10 or 11 private industry people voting against it,” she said. “I’d never seen that before.”
“Heartland is being rebuffed again and again and again,” says Kert Davies, founder of the Climate Investigations Center, which monitors organizations that delay action on climate change. “A lot of companies cannot be caught dead supporting the extremist climate denial rhetoric that Heartland proffers.”
Heartland’s James Taylor dismissed rumors of tension between the two libertarian institutions.
“We have the warmest of relationships with ALEC,” he said. “A rift between us is wishful thinking on behalf of the environmental left.”
When asked about tensions between the organizations, ALEC’s chief marketing officer and executive vice president of external relations and strategic partnerships Bill Meierling said in a statement that “differing perspectives generate substantive debate that results in stronger, better policy models.”
Heartland’s leaders say its new strategy has nothing to do with making itself more palatable to funders or allies, and that they are not abandoning their efforts on science — for example, they are working to publish a new book on climate change aimed at science teachers and their students.
“We’ve convinced the people who matter that there’s profound uncertainty in the science,” said Bast. “So the next step is energy policy.”
—Nicole Einbinder contributed reporting.
Katie Worth is a GroundTruth Fellow and a 2018 O’Brien Fellow in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University’s Diederich College of Communication. Katie Worth, Former Reporter, FRONTLINE