higbie am first 1st pol
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pow on snap w rob s FREQ MMA
deep state
SEE CRM [BIZ PLAN BE TRUMPIER THAN FOX
see main parscale ORIG POL OP?
SEE CARL BAK HITS EVERY ISSUE
MERRI OK
ALL PHOBES RW
see also am 1st POLICY
SEE NEWSMAX
QATER BRIBE PLANE? 1.8B SLUSH WEAPON FUND
BOSSIE?
CORKERY = LEO?
no content 3/18
seal 2 iraq tours, post hill press no corrob capt butcher of fallujah
EXECUTE NUKE TRAITOR
elim rhet --> rw violence
==
blackwell?
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MMA 10 26
Newsmax host on Fort Hood shooter's execution: “Livestream it. I don't care if my tax dollars go to advertising it and playing it during the next Super Bowl.”
Carl Higbie: “I hope they dip their bullets in bacon before they shoot him”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 10/13/26
Video
Citation
From the October 12, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): I hope they dip their bullets in bacon before they shoot him. I don't care about dignity or honor or anything else in the mechanism to kill this man. I want this guy dead. I don't care if it's by an A-10 gunship, an AC-130, fast movers dropping GBU-85's or 84's on this guy. I don't care if it's a platoon. I don't care if they beat him to death. I certainly don't care that he is in a wheelchair, zero sympathy because he killed my brothers and sisters.
People worried about him being a martyr. He'd be a martyr if we don't kill him. I will send him to hell in the most disrespectful way possible, and then I will turn around and look at any other person who even thinks about doing what he did or any remnants of that and remind them that they have no path to the afterlife because we'll do the same thing.
But we should stop these people in the act. I would have hoped that Hasan didn't even get a trial, but here we are. If you're clutching your pearls or mad at this, you're probably on the wrong side of most things and you probably never defended this country. This guy should be thankful he got to live this long. There should be a new standard for all Americans out there. When there's a shooting like this, you shoot back. Shoot the next would be terrorist until you're out of ammunition. We are the gun-loving capital of the world, let's make it known that if you try to kill Americans for what you claim is the religion of peace, or for any other reason, that we will kill you back. So livestream it. I don't care if my tax dollars go to advertising it and playing it during the next Super Bowl.
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MMA
September 29, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): So Jay, how do you put somebody like Jack Smith in jail? I mean, let's be honest. I think Fani Willis, I think Jack Smith, I think the moron in New York, what's his name?
JESSE BINNALL (GUEST): Alvin Bragg.
HIGBIE: Yeah. Alvin Bragg and all his cabal. They should all be buried under the jail. However, let's start with Jack Smith. He's the head of the snake. How do you put them in jail? What's the path?
JAY TOWN (GUEST): Yeah. It's very tough because of the immunity that is afforded prosecutors. Now the Southern District of Florida does have a grand jury about the grand conspiracy. And look, if you lie to Congress, it doesn't matter if you have immunity. If you've lied to any investigator that has interviewed Jack Smith, you don't have immunity. And so I think that's the maybe the only way we can get him. But the accountability here, Jesse was also right about the damage that's been done to my beloved DOJ, the FBI especially.
//
09/29/26 12:30 PM EDT
09/28/26 3:56 PM EDT
09/23/26
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07/29/26
chyron dems care about pwr not ppl
July 28, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): Nope. I'm — oh, Carl, you seem super — I am so angry about this stuff. Conservatives get the shaft on literally everything because the people we stick our neck out for, that we send to office, that we donate to, we knock on doors for, we make phone calls, and we put the stickers on our car — they don't do a damn thing when they get there.
Republicans have the trifecta of government right now, and we can't pass something that 80% of the nation wants, which is voter ID. Yet when Democrats are charge, they ram through things that we don't want. You — 60% of America didn't want universal health care. By the way, that tripled the price of health care while they lock up grandma for praying silently outside of an abortion clinic.
How many times do we have to sit here and just take this two-tiered system? Because if you people in DC don't start hearing us, you're going to foster a monsoon to water the tree of liberty. I am done sugarcoating this.
You — do you even realize how pissed off we are? They're just like, nope. Taking a 37-day vacation. These people don't care. It's always about the narrative for them. When they're proven to have lied, they will literally just, like, lie to your face. And then when you call them out, they just change the subject or make it about some emotional thing to to try to make you feel bad for them, just like we showed you last night. They get bad polling about, no, abolish ICE is polling bad. What — you — oh, you know what? We'll just say that never happened. Even though there is video of them doing this every single day.
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ELIM RHET: SAVAGE, WANT TO KILL YOU, SO OK TO NUKE THEM
07/09/26
Newsmax host calls for “mass destruction” in Iran, including “a legitimate discussion of the threshold of a nuclear strike”: “That is the attitude we need to have to fight these savages”
Written by Media Matters Staff
:{:{Published 07/09/26}:
Video
Citation
From the July 8, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): But here's got to be the plan. You want to win? This is the cold hard truth. It's mass destruction. And newsflash, we're going to run out of 500 pound JDAMs before Iran runs out of people who hate us. War is hell. But if you're unwilling to be as ruthless as your enemy, you have already lost.
...
HIGBIE: There you go. Mass destruction. You need to hold — and this is what's really going to send the people screaming. Hold a meeting with global nuclear powers and make sure Iran sees you do it so they know what you're talking about. Have a legitimate discussion of the threshold of a nuclear strike. And again, let them — and like, oh, if you're gasping right now — I know. But when you've put friends in bags because of these people in Iran, you have a bit of different perspective on this. Look, if you're a purple-haired barista who's never even so much as had to pay rent because you live with your parents in their basement and you're writing articles for other liberals to read.
Let me see if I can find f's to give less about your opinions. But we have people in this country and even in this administration, believe it or not, who are so risk averse, I — like, it blows my I swear, if we had a zombie apocalypse, they would fund zombie rights groups while they ate their friends right in front of them. That is essentially what, like, gays for Palestine is. Those are the types of people who are opposing dealing with Iran correctly right now, by the way.
Look, if you are a mullah and, you know, floating around somewhere in a bunker and you see Trump talking to China and Russia about wind direction for potential fallout, that's going to deter about half of them. While this is happening end their infrastructure, power plants, bridges, water treatment. Look, they don't care about us. We shouldn't care about them. I don't — annihilate the power grid. And if they can't rebuild it, who cares? That's not our problem. That is the attitude we need to have to fight these savages. Look. I fought these people on an organic ground level. We spent just a ton of time studying their culture and what drives them. They are driven by an ideological takeover that there is no second place in. There's no negotiation. And after desperately trying to negotiate, finally, JD Vance, who was the lead on that, finally realized what's got to be done.
...
HIGBIE: Next, take what's yours.
...
HIGBIE: Yeah. That's the basis for most of their economy. Just take it. Oh, Carl, you're going to steal things from a sovereign country. You bet we are. That's exactly how war has worked for thousands of years. In fact, wars stopped acting like that, and they got softer, and then there were no winners. That's the only language these people speak. You want to know how they feel?
...
HIGBIE: Yeah. That's not going to fly. It's just not. But that's how they feel. And he wouldn't say that to my face, but that what they would do if they had our military. You start seeing, like, all these libs – they have to understand this. I don't know why they don't, but we're in it now. We're in this. Keep in mind, we bombed the ever loving daylight out of the Japanese, and they never gave up. And then we turn two of their cities into six foot thick sheets of glass. And now 80 years later, they're one of our best friends. They need to know, the Iranians need to know that President Trump has not taken that off the table. Now if you're sitting there thinking, oh, because this is a bit over the edge. Well, you go over there. I have, and I'm telling you, there's, like, 30 million people that most of whom want to kill you.
---
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MMA
05/29/26
May 28, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports
GREG KELLY (HOST): So, political enemies, political enemies. What — does that make you special? It really doesn't. It doesn't. The Constitution has a few things to say about all of this stuff, and it has a lot to say about the president's power. And the Department of Justice, they think they're very, very special. Right? The Department of Justice. Have you ever heard them talk about themselves, like, as if they are, I don't know, better than everybody else, as if they're their own branch of government?
...
KELLY: It sounds wholesome in a way. Right? The people's lawyer, the people's lawyer. No. The Department of Justice is a component within the executive branch. The executive branch. You guys are not independent. You're not. You shouldn't be. This is a fiction, post-Watergate fiction, and it's gone into hyperdrive with President Trump. President Trump.
The executive branch is President Trump. 77.3 million votes in the 2024 election makes him the executive branch of government. This is a building. It's the Department of Justice. It's part of the executive branch. The people who work there are employees of the executive branch. And let's pretend they all quit. They all quit. They just walked out. All those career prosecutors, if they quit, and let's say all of the good guys suddenly got sick or the CIA poisoned them and nobody could come to work. President Trump, according to the Constitution, could actually walk in to a courtroom and submit paperwork saying, I believe this guy is guilty, and this is my affidavit. It's — there's nothing wrong with that. It is — now, they have regulations, and they have their customs, and they have their norms, but you can't find norms in the Constitution. It's the Constitution, baby, and he's on solid ground.
And E. Jean Carroll, you're never going see a lick of that money, and I think you're going see prison.
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05/29/26
May 28, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): Well, when Democrats do unprecedented things, you have to counter with unprecedented means. If you take a swing at the king, libs, you better not miss, and you missed in a major way.
:{:{Look, I don't really care. The DOJ buried the little guy with their sham January 6 investigation, and I am totally fine with going tit for tat here. Don't give me the oh, when does it stop? We didn't start this. They did. It stops when we get even. Even. Like, Old Testament even. Because then, they will know that there is a cost for doing the stupid things that they did, especially with this — you can't just lie about somebody raping you and use it as a political talking point to sway a national election.}:
They should be going after Christine Blasey Ford too, if you remember. Her — no specifics lady who accused Brett Kavanaugh of raping her. She had even fewer details than E. Jean Carroll. Three, four decades later, mysteriously just pops out of nowhere when he was up for a Supreme Court seat. He didn't remember who she was. Then he gets confirmed, and now where is she? No charges. Just vanished. Lady, if it was such a big deal that you went wall-to-wall media interviews, Kavanaugh was such a bad guy. She didn't file any charges, not all not only leading up to that for 40 years, but nothing after he got confirmed. She just let it go? OK.}:
I want to see every single one of those people charged, tried, and locked up for this. Because if we don't, years from now, when Trump is gone, they're going to do it all over again to somebody else, and they may not have billions of dollars of their own money to back it up. Democrats will do whatever they want because there's apparently never any consequences. Remember when they use these bogus cases as a justification to literally remove Trump from the ballot in places like Colorado and Maine. You want to talk about unprecedented, Trump's unprecedented. Dude, you guys took the guy off the ballot. Libs couldn't throw him in jail, they couldn't beat him at the ballot box, so they literally removed him from the ballot until SCOTUS stepped in.
:{:{I want to — I want the DOJ to crush these people. I'm fine with my tax — I'll pay more taxes for that. And if you can't find them guilty, no problem. Just do what they did. I don't know. What did they do to the January — oh, that's right. The January 6 people. They locked them all up, and some of them didn't get a trial. They were in solitary confinement for years. They tried to bury those people. You know what? And if you can't do that, just bury him in legal expenses like they did to Mike Flynn. That's right. They charged him with things and things and more things, and then he had to sell his house, and he was out of money and had to plead out of it. Like, I don't care anymore.}:
We the people, reelected Donald Trump despite all the mudslinging by the left because we want it, and I'm just going to call it what it is. I want revenge. I do. OK. Dems violated every norm. Now I want my tax dollars to wreck these people. You can call me petty from whatever ivory tower you sit in, but I don't care. I will tap dance on your political grave with a smile on my face because I am just like probably almost every one of the other 80 million people on the Republican side that is sick and tired of this stuff.}:
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MMA
Newsmax host on alleged hunger strikes in a ICE detention facilities: “If they want to not eat, that's on them. I don't really care. Saves us some taxpayer money, I guess.”
Carl Higbie: “Half of the people in the ICE clink are probably getting better meals and probably getting better health care than they did before they were picked up”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 05/27/26
Video file
Video
Citation
From the May 26, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): I mean, really? We're doing this again? I thought these people had moved on from protesting outside of ICE facilities to, like, the nearest coloring book factory. But after realizing that it didn't change Trump's immigration enforcement strategy at all, and if you've learned anything from Renée Good, they were worried about getting shot, but apparently not. Today and yesterday, actually, started last night in New Jersey, a bunch of jobless non-assets to society gathered outside the same ICE facility that Congresswoman Lamonica McIver, if you remember her, was arrested at for assaulting an ICE officer. She's still pending with that. Like, I don't understand why this is allowed to continue on federal property, but here we are. The new lib governor over there got denied entry, but was just happy to stand out with some of the other Democrats while they gave a super important press conference about how these are just people, not criminals.
...
Mothers, fathers, 18-year-olds, because none of them ever commit crimes. Like, they're breaking the law to be here. Hence why they're locked up in the ICE facility; that is their criminal record, by the way. Maybe besides that, they don't have a criminal record even though many of them probably do and Democrats just lie about that because they lie about everything. These Democrats, they were trying to gain access to this facility to inspect it based on these baseless claims — they had no reason to believe this — but that the conditions were inhumane and that all these people were inside were on hunger strikes.
Look, as far as the hunger strikes, if they want to not eat, that's on them. I don't really care. Saves us some taxpayer money, I guess. But the inhumane conditions is a complete farce. Half of the people in the ICE clink are probably getting better meals and probably getting better health care than they did before they were picked up. And you would think congressmen and governors would know all this since they make or sign into law most of these things.
See, if they were other types of criminals, they would just be in a regular jail. Being in an ICE detention facility means that they were in fact breaking immigrations and customs laws, the first two letters of ICE. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin pretty much went off on this. He said, quote, this is nothing more than a political stunt by New Jersey sanctuary politicians for fundraising clicks. There is no hunger strike at Delaney Hall — that's the ICE facility — there are no subprime conditions. PVT GEO\? I tend to believe him a little bit more. But going to these things has become some sort of, like — I don't know, they get, like, a hall monitor merit badge on their on their banner for Democrats now. They go to these things with a bunch of these, you know, non-showered degenerates at these protests.
---
5 26
korematsu
I've removed some curiously promotional and highly questionable content from this article. Some examples:
- The article said that "Carl Higbie served for nearly a decade as a U.S. Navy SEAL capturing high value targets in Iraq". That is not mentioned in the source cited, which apparently says that he was in Iraq twice, wrote a book, went on WND News Radio to publicise it, called a general a moron and Iraqi soldiers stupid, and made a number of unfounded and unbelievable claims.
- The article said that "Carl Higbie led the Navy SEAL Team which captured the infamous "Butcher of Fallujah" Ahmad Hashim Abd al-Isawi". But the source for that was a book by Carl Higbie, clearly not a WP:reliable source for this statement. None of the three (1, 2, 3) independent sources cited later in the same paragraph has any mention of Higbie. One of them is about a film directed by Clint Eastwood.
---
:{Carlton Milo Higbie IV (born April 23, 1983) is an American conservative political activist, author, and former :{U.S. Navy SEAL. He was director of advocacy for America First Policies,[1] a group that promotes Donald Trump's policy agenda.[2]}:
In August 2017, Higbie was selected to serve as the chief of external affairs for the Corporation for National and Community Service, resigning several months later after his comments denigrating minorities were discovered by media. He served as a spokesperson for Great America PAC, which supported Trump's 2016 presidential candidacy and assisted his transition into office.}:
In April 2023, Newsmax began airing Carl Higbie Frontline, a daily program hosted by Higbie.[3]
Higbie served in the U.S. Navy from 2005 to 2012. He served two tours of duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom, reaching the rank of Special Warfare Operator, First Class. He has written two books about his experiences, and has regularly appeared as a commentator on Fox News, CNN, and Newsmax.
On February 5, 2024, he and two other people filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York challenging New York's laws that ban non-residents from bringing and publicly carrying firearms in the state.[4][5]
Early and personal life
Higbie was born on April 23, 1983, in Greenwich, Connecticut.[6] After graduating Greenwich High School, he attended college at Sacred Heart University before dropping out to join the military as troops were being deployed to Iraq.[7] During his show on October 17, 2024, Higbie revealed that he has ADD, better known as ADHD.[citation ^needed] Higbie is married and has three children, one daughter and two sons. His daughter is from his first marriage and his sons are from his second.
Military service
Higbie enlisted in the United States Navy and became a SEAL in 2005,[8] ultimately reaching the rating of Special Warfare Operator, First Class.[9] He was twice deployed to Iraq to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom,[8] once each under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Higbie is the author a self-published book titled Battle on the Home Front: A Navy SEAL's Mission to Save the American Dream in 2012,[10] after which his security clearance was downgraded from "top secret."[9] He signed out of the SEALs before the end of his term of duty with an honorable discharge. Some two months later, the Navy downgraded his discharge to "general."[9] However, upon appeal his Honorable Discharge was restored. A second book, Enemies, Foreign and Domestic: A SEAL's Story, was published by Post Hill Press in 2016.[11]
Congressional campaign
:{:{In 2014, Higbie announced that he was running to be the Republican Party nominee to challenge Democrat Jim Himes in Connecticut's 4th congressional district, declaring himself to not be "bound by the same conformist rules that most Republicans are bound by."[7] At the time, Higbie was working as a personal trainer at Equinox in Greenwich, Connecticut.[12] The other Republican candidates were former State Senator Dan Debicella[13] and State Representative John Shaban.[14]}:
Higbie described himself as a social conservative with "moral oppositions to abortions and same-sex marriage, but my legislative position is live and let live," and stated that he would vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.[7] On economic issues, Higbie supported "a balanced budget amendment and an across-the-board personal income tax rate of 10 percent, with a maximum annual deduction of $50,000," and he favored eliminating corporate taxes to attract overseas businesses.[7] Higbie had difficulty with fundraising during his candidacy, and sought to force a primary election if he were not endorsed as the candidate.[15] Debicella won the nomination overwhelmingly, with support from 195 of the 210 delegates,[16] but lost the general election to the incumbent, Jim Himes, who won with 53.7% of the vote.[17]}:
Great America PAC
Higbie is a spokesman for Great America PAC, an independent-expenditure only political action committee (Super PAC) which advocates for Donald Trump. In this capacity, he has acted as a Trump surrogate,[18] appearing on news networks including Fox News and CNN. Higbie has discussed a variety of topics including the war in Iraq,[19] the composition of the Trump transition team,[20] the controversy relating to Khizr Khan's appearance at the Democratic National Convention,[21] the proposal for a registry of Muslim immigrants,[22] and the National Policy Institute conference.[23]
Iraq
In a CNN interview with retired-Major General Paul Eaton and Chris Cuomo, Higbie was critical of the use of air power and drone strikes by the Obama administration and argued in support of Trump's promise to address problems in Iraq with "boots on the ground."[19] He was also critical of Eaton, who was the U.S. Army Chief of Infantry and then the Commanding General of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team in Iraq (2003–2004),[24] stating that the leadership "[Eaton's] articulated here today is not conducive to winning a war."[19]
Trump transition team
During the transition following the 2016 presidential election, Higbie defended Steve Bannon from accusations of anti-Semitism, misogyny, and racism.[20] Of Bannon's appointment as chief strategist to President-elect Trump, Higbie said: "Steve Bannon has excelled in every single role he has held dating back to his service in the US Navy. I cannot imagine a better person to be advising an already successful businessman taking on the biggest business in the world, the US Government."[20]
Television
Higbie started hosting Saturday Report on Newsmax TV in 2020 and has also filled in as guest host for other Newsmax hosts. In 2022 he quit Saturday Report to host Wake Up America Weekend. In April 2023 he got his own nightly show Carl Higbie Frontline airing at 5PM ET, replacing Spicer & Co. after Sean Spicer's departure from Newsmax.[25] In September 2025 Newsmax announced Carl Higbie Frontline would air at 6PM ET.
Controversy
Registry of Muslims
In an interview with Megyn Kelly of Fox News,[20] Higbie cited the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the associated Supreme Court decision in Korematsu v. United States as providing legal justification for Trump's campaign promise of a registry for Muslim Americans.[26] Higbie repeated his comments on CNN to Erin Burnett the following day.[18] Kelly replied that Higbie "knows better" than to make such suggestions, as they scare people.[27] Kelly met Higbie's further assertion that he was only noting "there was precedent for it" with the declaration: "You can't be citing Japanese internment camps for anything the President-elect is going to do."[27] Trump's transition team later issued a statement to the Huffington Post that denied that Trump supported a Muslim registry,[28] though he had made comments supporting such an idea in 2015.[29][30]
:{:{George Takei, who was detained in one of the World War II internment camps, described Higbie's comments as "dangerous"[31] and went on to say that "[r]egistration of any group of people, and certainly registration of Muslims, is a prelude to internment."[28] Higbie's comments attracted media criticism,[22] and Representative Judy Chu (D–CA), the first Chinese American woman elected to the U.S. Congress,[32] declared that "[a]ny proposal to force American Muslims to register with the federal government, and to use Japanese imprisonment during World War II as precedent, is abhorrent and has no place in our society. These ideas are based on tactics of fear, division, and hate that we must condemn."[29]}:
Constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein addressed Higbie's suggestion that Korematsu could be used to support a Muslim registry, describing the case as having "joined Dred Scott as an odious and discredited artifact of popular bigotry"[33] even though it has never been overturned.[34] Harvard University's Noah Feldman concurred, declaring that "Korematsu's uniquely bad legal status means it's not precedent even though it hasn't been overturned."[35]}:
Corporation for National and Community Service resignation
In 2018, Higbie was forced to resign as the Chief of External Affairs for the Corporation for National and Community Service (an organization which runs AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve America, Senior Corps, and other national service initiatives), a position to which Trump had appointed him. His ousting occurred after CNN discovered Higbie's racist and inflammatory remarks (on a 2013 radio talk show) about Black Americans, Muslims, women, LGBT people, veterans suffering from PTSD, welfare recipients, and immigrants, which included suggesting withdrawing the right to vote from welfare recipients, and advocating free rein for all to go and shoot undocumented immigrants at the southern USA border.[36][37] Higbie had also repeatedly stated his belief that Barack Obama is Muslim and not a U.S. citizen.[36]
In a 2018 tweet, Higbie apologized for his comments,[36] though later that year he maintained his statements had been taken out of context.[38]
References
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mma
Right-wing media react to Trump's slush fund for allies with unquestioning loyalty — and some vague skepticism
Written by Sophie Lawton
:{:{Published 05/21/26}:
Some right-wing media figures are jumping on board with the Trump administration's newest effort to support MAGA allies despite numerous questions about its legality; a few are voicing light skepticism of the plan.
This week, the Department of Justice announced that the Trump family had agreed to drop a legally questionable $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for the creation of a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” According to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the fund's intended recipients are “victims of lawfare and weaponization” by the federal government. Critics of the move are calling the idea a “slush fund,” and The New York Times called the deal “highly unusual” and wrote that the fund is “a pipeline to funnel taxpayer money to President Trump’s allies.”
Some right-wing media figures have been praising the fund, calling it a great idea and complementing Trump for his “patriotic” use of the number 1776 while ignoring the more problematic details of the fund.
Newsmax host Carl Higbie staunchly defended the fund, claiming that Trump has “dropped — he dropped — his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for a $1.776 — 1776 — billion-dollar fund set up for truth and justice compensation for people who were victims of Biden's weaponization of government” and that “Trump and his family will get $0 in exchange for just simply an apology from the IRS and a fund set up for every other person who Biden targeted.”
:{:{Video}:
Citation
From the May 18, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline
Fox's Sean Hannity said the Department of Justice “rightly agreed to set aside the patriotic amount of $1.76 billion to settle other claims like this.”
:{:{Video}:
Citation
From the May 19, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Trump's former co-deputy director of the FBI Dan Bogino praised the fund and the Trump administration on his podcast, saying that “things are happening all over the place, good, positive things.”
Another right-wing podcaster, Vince Coglianese, said on his show that the fund “sounds like justice” and said, “I think it's perfectly wonderful.”
Coglianese also suggested a few people and groups who could benefit from the fund, including anti-abortion activist Mark Houck, other “conservatives who stood outside of abortion mills” and who faced charges, “parents at school board meetings” complaining about curricula and gender-neutral bathrooms who he said were attacked by the FBI and left-wing groups, and “traditional Catholics” who he claimed were targeted by Biden's FBI.
:{:{Video}:
Citation
From the May 19, 2026, edition of VINCEstreamed on Rumble
Greg Kelly took to his Newsmax show to make specific claims about the legal precedent for the fund, stating, “The US government gets sued all the time, and they make settlements. This is not an outlandish arrangement. It actually makes a lot of sense.”
Kelly also claimed that the announcement of the fund came after he sat down with Trump and proposed a “compensation fund for the January 6ers.”
:{:{Video}:
Citation
From the May 19, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports
The DOJ also claims there is precedent for this type of fund, saying it’s similar to the Obama-era "Keepseagle" case. In reality, the fund seems to have little legal basis.
As Mike Masnick wrote for Techdirt, the fund was created as a settlement offer because “Trump needed to drop that lawsuit in order to end it before a judge called bullshit on the fact that he was negotiating with himself to take $10 billion from American taxpayers.”
Masknick also refuted the DOJ claims of legal precedent, writing, “The Keepseagle settlement was approved by a court in response to a class action lawsuit. Here, this fund, is being created in a manner deliberately to avoid having the court review it.”
A New York Times piece reported that “legal experts struggled to make sense of this week’s developments, saying tentatively that it was unlikely anyone could sue to stop the moves.” The article noted nevertheless that the fund’s creation is a “jarring shock to the conventional understanding of the constitutional system.”
Reuters quoted Tax Law Center policy director Brandon DeBot calling the fund a “breathtaking abuse of the tax and legal system" and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) calling it a “slush fund” that represented “a stunning act of corruption.”
Some Republican lawmakers have spoken out against the fund, such as Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who said he doesn't “see a purpose” for it, and others seem bothered by the lack of details surrounding where the money might go. “I’ve got more questions than I’ve heard answers for,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).
January 6 Capitol Police Officers have sued to block the fund on the grounds that it violates the 14th Amendment's prohibition on using federal funds for “any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
Even a few right-wing media voices have been lightly skeptical of the move.
On Fox's Special Report, guest anchor Trace Gallagher admitted that “who gets the money and where it comes from is a bit unclear.”
Special Report's reporting on the topic also included clips of Sens. John Kennedy (R-LA) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) asking for clarity on where the money is coming from and “the legality of creating a fund that Congress hasn't had anything to say about.”
The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro touched on the matter, saying on his show, “I'm generally against slush funds, to be clear. I do not like them. I think there are other ways of pursuing redress for grievances in this fashion. However, many of the myths that you're hearing about it are overstated.”
Megyn Kelly said on her podcast about the fund, “I don't like it,” explaining that she'd rather see individual suits. But she also made false correlations between this move and Obama's Keepseagle fund, saying, “This was created by Barack Obama,” and, “The same media that's now ripping Trump to shreds for doing it said nothing, nothing when Barack Obama started it. … So I really have no tolerance for their cries and protestations about what Trump is doing.”
Already, January 6 rioters, election deniers, and Trump allies are lining up for a chance at the taxpayer money.
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- ### True the Vote founder hopes “we will see some level of compensation” from Trump's weaponization fund
05/21/26 11:50 AM EDT
05/20/26 5:26 PM EDT
- ### Newsmax's Greg Kelly defends Trump “weaponization” fund: “This is not an outlandish arrangement”
05/20/26
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Newsmax host defends Trump's “weaponization” fund
One senator called the arrangement “a $1.7 billion slush fund for right-wing political violence and subversion”
Written by Media Matters Staff
:{:{Published 05/19/26}:
The New York Times reports:
The Trump administration announced on Monday the creation of a $1.8 billion fund to compensate those who claim they were targeted by the Biden Justice Department and Democrats, forging a pipeline to funnel taxpayer money to President Trump’s allies.
The highly unusual “anti-weaponization” fund was denounced by critics as a slush fund and as a brazen misuse of a once-independent Justice Department to carry out the president’s personal and political agendas.
The announcement provided few details of how the disbursement would work or who would be eligible. But the arrangement raised the possibility that American taxpayers might end up writing checks to those prosecuted for the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021, and others the president has cast as victims of Biden administration actions.
“This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,” said Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit legal watchdog group that has been critical of the administration.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) criticized the arrangement as "a $1.7 billion slush fund for right-wing political violence and subversion.”
Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR) issued a statement calling the arrangement the most serious misuse of taxpayer funds by a sitting president. In his statement, Wyden focused specifically on the Anti-Weaponization Fund, including its apparent purpose of compensating third-party claimants for alleged harms unrelated to the IRS data leak claims at the heart of the dismissed lawsuit.
“Regardless of whether Trump filed this lawsuit with a personal payday or a slush fund in mind, he deserves no credit for dropping it,” Wyden said, adding that the fund represented “a stunning act of corruption.” He described it as “a $1.7 billion slush fund for right-wing political violence and subversion” and said that if Trump follows through, “it will be the most brazen theft and abuse of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history.”
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From the May 18, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): So the latest freak out from the left is because Trump dropped — he dropped — his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for a $1.776 — 1776 — billion dollar fund set up for truth and justice compensation for people who were victims of Biden's weaponization of government, which there are a lot of.
It's apparently, though, a scam according to Democrats. Keep in mind, Trump and his family will get $0 in exchange for just simply an apology from the IRS and a fund set up for every other person who Biden targeted, but not himself. Kinda like the Trump org when they couldn't get any COVID money whatsoever, but everyone else did. But the left is still freaking out. Wow. Trump's enriching himself off the taxpayers. No. Wrong. But here's a US senator saying it anyway.
...
Hey, Chris — my senator, unfortunately — Trump's not making billions of dollars off the government. In fact, he's not even taking a paycheck. So, technically, you, Chris, are taking more money from the government than he is.
But let me explain why Trump was suing the federal government in the first place. And I'll do it like you're five because clearly you aren't winning any IQ tests recently. See, when the federal government was run by idiots and Democrats like you, Senator Murphy, there was this guy named Charles Littlejohn who used to work for the IRS. He had high level access, who is, by the way, now in jail for five years. And why is that? Well, Carl, I'll tell you. Because he accessed secure lock specific need to know information that were in fact Trump's tax returns. Actually, the whole family's tax returns, about a 100 other people from the Trump organization along with 400,000 other people's tax returns. Then he leaked it to the New York Times and ProPublica. Yeah. He was convicted of that. That's not an opinion. That's a proven fact in court. And under US code 26 7431, it's a $1,000 fine per disclosure.
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A tale of two right-wing networks on Joe diGenova
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 04/21/26
While Newsmax hosts celebrate GOP lawyer and conspiracy theorist Joe diGenova’s appointment to a post overseeing investigations of President Donald Trump’s political foes, their counterparts at Fox News — which apparently banned diGenova from appearing years ago — have mentioned the news just one time, in passing, on Sunday afternoon.
Newsmax hosts celebrate as the DOJ hires Joe diGenova}:
News broke over the weekend that Trump’s former personal lawyer and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had appointed diGenova, a figure in numerous right-wing pseudoscandals over the last three decades who represented Trump’s 2020 campaign in election fraud lawsuits, as his counselor and tasked him with overseeing the Justice Department’s “Grand Conspiracy” probe. That investigation unifies a hodgepodge of “deep state” conspiracy theories touted by right-wing media into a single framework seemingly intended to defeat statutes of limitations and target a vast swathe of Democratic politicians and former federal law enforcement officials.
On Newsmax, where diGenova has appeared regularly in recent years, hosts cheered the news.
“We have congratulations to share with Joe diGenova," Newsmax’s Greg Kelly said on the network’s flagship prime-time show. “Good luck, Joe. Did you hear? He's got a big gig at the Department of Justice. One of our favorite guests on this show will be counselor to the attorney general. That is a big-deal role.”
“He knows what they did to President Trump,” Kelly claimed. “And he wants justice. He has said it many, many times right here on this show. I think it's part of the reason why he may have the job now. It's so awesome.”
Kelly also praised diGenova as a “superstar” and someone who “thinks creatively, ethically, honestly, but creatively” and claimed the lawyer “is so fired up for this role."
On-screen text during the segment read, “A regular on the show gets a new job."
Newsmax’s Carl Higbie likewise touted the news, calling diGenova a “friend of this network” who will be overseeing what Higbie called “the DOJ probe into this Russian origin thing.” (Trump and his media allies argue that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was corrupt and its perpetrators should be prosecuted; previous attempts to turn their conspiracy theories into federal cases failed after a three-year special counsel probe by a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney.)
While Newsmax’s stars throw a parade over diGenova’s appointment, their Fox counterparts have been largely silent. Thus far, the entirety of the network’s coverage since the news broke late Friday has been a single passing mention on Sunday afternoon.
“The Trump administration is dismantling the deep state,” host Tomi Lahren said at the top of a segment on The Big Weekend Show. “The DOJ has now tapped former Trump attorney Joe diGenova to spearhead the probe into ex-CIA Director John Brennan and others over the Russian hoax."
The news went unmentioned on Monday, including on the network’s flagship “straight-news” program, Special Report, and the scandal-happy programs hosted by Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity.
- ### Why Fox may have trouble swallowing diGenova’s new post
Fox is in a strained position, because while the network spent years feverishly demanding and supporting the prosecutions of Trump’s enemies over dubious premises, its leaders are seemingly also aware that diGenova is not credible.
DiGenova made more than 100 appearances on Fox News weekday programs in 2018 and 2019, and dozens more on its sister channel, Fox Business — but both networks appear to have banned the GOP lawyer in late 2019. He has not appeared on Fox News weekday programs since October 8, 2019, according to our database.
DiGenova and his wife and legal partner, Victoria Toensing, disappeared from Fox News following a sequence of events that demonstrated their lack of credibility.
- DiGenova used a Fox appearance to call then-Fox senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano “a fool” for suggesting earlier that day that Trump had committed a crime by soliciting campaign aid in a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
- A few days later, diGenova and Toensing lashed out at then-Fox anchor Chris Wallace for reporting that they had been working “off the books” with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, on his effort to smear Joe Biden over Ukraine.
- The day after diGenova’s final Fox interview, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — who had been working alongside diGenova, Toensing, Giuliani, and conservative columnist John Solomon on the Ukraine disinformation plot — were arrested by federal law enforcement en route to Vienna, Austria, to reportedly help set up an interview between Hannity and Viktor Shokin, the corrupt former Ukrainian prosecutor at the heart of the disinformation campaign.
Their appearances on Fox Business, however, continued for a few more weeks — until diGenova used one to utter a widely condemned antisemitic screed, at which point the couple stopped appearing there as well.
Then in February 2020, The Daily Beast reported on a 162-page internal Fox News research briefing book detailing the “unrelenting disinformation campaign originating from Ukraine.” “Notable are the roles of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing in spreading disinformation and their parroting of beneficial narratives while employed by [pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry] Firtash,” the document noted. It also highlighted their “non-disclosure of financial motives and representation of Firtash while spreading false and misleading stories."
DiGenova and Toensing subsequently became Newsmax contributors.
Now someone Fox’s own research division panned for “spreading disinformation” will be running the Trump administration’s latest efforts to criminalize their opponents. The network has spent years feeding the flames of the conspiracy theories that diGenova will now be investigating — but highlighting his new role might force the network to confront what it means that someone it’s apparently deemed unreliable is leading that charge.
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April 15, 2026, edition of Newsmax's *Carl Higbie: Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): Look, Democrats spent years weaponizing the FISA court, this is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They used it to spy on Trump. They used it to push the Russian collusion hoax and try to destroy him. This is what Mike Flynn got caught up in, too.
Well, now, with the program about to expire, Trump's summoning the GOP holdouts to the White House, telling Republicans to, quote, stick together and pass a clean extension our military needs. I'm shocked to hear this.
President Trump posted on Truth Social, in part, while parts of the FISA were illegally and unfortunately used against me in the Democrats' disgraceful witch hunt and attack in the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, and perhaps it would be used against me in the future, I am willing to risk the giving up of my rights and privileges as a citizen for our great military and country.
Respectfully, Mr. President, I am not. And if you recall too, Mike Johnson, our speaker of the House, he campaigned against FISA when he was a congressman because nobody's ever been held accountable for the violations of it. That's why I'm not willing to see this renewed. Newsmax legal analyst Jay Town, and attorney at Judicial Watch, and author of the fantastic book Defiant, Christina Bobb. Christina, you've been in the middle of this for a while. I am — I was like floored by this.
CHRISTINA BOBB (GUEST): I was floored as well. FISA comes up for renewal every two years and every two years conservatives are saying kill it, kill it, kill it. In April of 2024, exactly two years ago today, President Trump put out on Truth Social, kill FISA. He explained that FISA is bad. MAGA was like kill FISA. And then the first chance he gets in office, he's trying to renew it. So no, this is bad. I think any Republican that tries to renew this needs to either be primaried or just flat out vote Democrat. This is anti-American. This is terrible for our country.
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How right-wing media helped the Trump administration push a “psyop” against Iran's new supreme leader
At least 40 shows within the right-wing media ecosystem ran with unsubstantiated rumors that the new Iranian ayatollah may be gay
Written by Harrison Ray, Noah Dowe & Reed McMaster
Research contributions from Tyler Monroe
Published 03/27/26
At least 40 shows within the right-wing media ecosystem helped the Trump administration push an unsubstantiated narrative that the new Iranian ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, is gay — a move that Zeteo reports was meant to be a “psyop against their Iranian enemies and the new supreme leader.”
- On March 16, the New York Post published an article which claimed that President Donald Trump was told “US intelligence indicates new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may be gay.” The Post suggested that its sources “say the implausible-sounding allegation is viewed as credible by US spy agencies, rather than false information intended to undermine Khamenei.”
Yet according to a March 27 report from Zeteo, there exists “no credible intel” on Khamenei’s sexuality; rather, “the idea was fabricated and pushed behind the scenes in the past several weeks by a cohort of Trump advisers, US government personnel, and MAGAworld associates.” One source told Zeteo that the administration “wanted to mindfuck [the Iranians] with gay shit,” while another suggested, “It’s some 20-year-old frat boy in the federal government’s idea of a good joke.”
- Media Matters found that at least 40 shows within the right-wing media ecosystem — including at least 6 on Fox News, at least 8 on Newsmax, at least 2 on One America News Network, and at least 24 podcasts or radio shows — repeated the administration’s narrative, with some adding their own absurd and bigoted commentary. Following the story's surge of attention on March 16, it has continued to be mentioned daily within the right-wing media sphere as recently as yesterday.
While some within the right-wing media simply highlighted the New York Post story, others added their own takes.
Fox host Greg Gutfeld joked about the rumor on March 16, saying, “Speaking of world leaders, rumors are circulating that the new Iranian supreme leader is gay. They know this because he keeps throwing himself off a building — that’s what they do in Iran.”
Newsmax host Chris Plante made the same joke on his March 17 podcast, saying, “If he became the ayatollah, the first thing he’d have to do as ayatollah is kill himself.” Following a lengthy and graphic fantasy about Khamenei committing suicide, Plante explained, “That’s what they always do when they hang the gay people in Iran, and the Democrats are on the side of the Iranian regime because of their many mental illnesses.”
Referencing the death of the new supreme leader’s father, former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Plante added, “And here’s the headline: Ayatollah disappointed to learn 72 virgins awaiting him in paradise are all women. Oh no, not the women. That is because, you know, it might run in the family, like monkeypox.”
That same day, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles ranted, “The ayatollah might be a homosexual, might be a little light in the loafers. You know what I'm saying? A couple fries away from a Happy Meal. The kind of fella has a long handshake.” While Knowles acknowledged that the story seemed at first “like an op” and “a demoralization tactic from our intelligence services,” he claimed, “There's a little bit of evidence that the ladies are not exactly his type.”
Newsmax host Rob Carson repeated the claim on March 22 and suggested the ayatollah has not been going out in public because “he's been in the closet.” After showing a clip of host Carl Higbie mocking “the Strait of Hormuz and the gay son,” Carson broke out in song, seemingly parodying “It's Raining Men.”
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February 12, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): So the fact of the matter is, this guy, by all available information, Keith Ellison, stifled the investigation until it couldn't be kept quiet. And he said, oh, I cooperated with the investigation. No, you did not. Here, this is from the House's own -- Democrat House, their own report said, look at those two middle ones.
Minnesota Department of Education received 30 complaints involving Feeding Our Future between June 2018 and December 2021. Minnesota Department of Education did not investigate some complaints about Feeding our Future despite their frequency or serious -- this is from 2018 and only after whistleblowers started going public three years later, and the FBI got involved and the IRS got involved. Only then did Keith Ellison's attorney general's office even lift a single finger, just so they wouldn't look like they're trying to cover it up. This case was entirely, entirely driven by whistleblowers, and then it was prosecuted by U.S. federal attorneys, not local attorneys. So don't sit there and lie through your teeth about how you tried to stop your law -- we didn't like this fraud. But here's the part that should probably land him in handcuffs, and I hope this committee refers him for criminal charges.
...
HIGBIE: Dead to rights. Ellison is sitting there denying this whole conversation that he had. But it's on tape. This is worse than Bill Clinton debating what the meaning of the word is is. I mean, is this guy stupid? And Hawley just kept dropping transcripts.
...
HIGBIE: He's just reading it. What did Ellison think was going to happen here? I mean, I've seen enough, and apparently so has the good senator.
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HIGBIE: Yup. Let's do that. In fact, let's bury this guy under the jail. I mean, this is a layup for the DOJ. Josh Hawley just laid everything out. This is what I want, OK? This is what I voted for. All these people in jail. I think this is what basically everybody who voted for Trump wanted. Arrest the people who steal our money and break our laws and think they're above it. Pam Bondi could totally redeem herself from yesterday. I would be her number one cheerleader if she went out there and indicted him tomorrow. You have a politician soliciting and being offered a donation on tape in exchange for dropping a fraud investigation that is the sole responsibility of his office. That turned out to be over $250 million stolen from his people. Not to mention that he let another $9 billion just get lit on fire and thrown out the door. Some of which ended up in Mogadishu. Lock him up.
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Right-wing media attempt to justify baseless conspiracy theories that the attack on Ilhan Omar was staged
Podcaster Tim Pool admitted it “doesn't matter” if it wasn't staged because "the right would never believe her”
Written by Gideon Taaffe & Reed McMaster
Published 01/29/26
Right-wing media reacted to an attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) by a man who sprayed a liquid at her during a January 27 town hall event by suggesting the attack was “suspicious” and “staged.”
President Donald Trump stoked conspiracy theories about the attack, telling ABC News that Omar “probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.” Right-wing media figures spread similar claims, suggesting it is “perfectly reasonable” to question whether Omar's assault was “fake” or “staged.”
- ## Rep. Ilhan Omar, a long-time target of right-wing media and Trump’s ire, was attacked by a man with an alleged history of violent rhetoric and “right-wing extremist” views
- Omar was attacked during a town hall on January 27 by a man who sprayed a liquid at her.Preliminary reports suggest the liquid was apple cider vinegar. The man was tackled and arrested, and Omar continued with the town hall. She later posted on social media, “I’m a survivor so this small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work. I don’t let bullies win. Grateful to my incredible constituents who rallied behind me. Minnesota strong.” The Hill, [1/27/26; Forbes, 1/28/26]
- The alleged attacker’s brother spoke to The Independent, calling him a “right-wing extremist” with a long-standing hatred of Somalis.He told The Independent, “He has had a hatred of the Somali community for probably 20 years,” adding, “There’s a reason I don’t talk to him. … He’s got a lot of anger, I have no idea where it comes from. He’s always been that way. In and out of treatment since he was a kid.” The Independent, [1/28/26]
- According to an affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court of Minnesota, the alleged attacker reportedly told an associate years earlier, “Somebody should kill that bitch,” while referring to Omar.BlueSky, 1/29/26; U.S. District Court of Minnesota, United States of America v. Anthony James Kazmierczak, Affidavit in Support of Criminal Complaint, [1/28/26]
- Asked about the incident by an ABC News reporter, Trump said Omar “probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.” He also said he had not seen the video of the attack, adding, “I don't think about her. I think she's a fraud.” ABC News, [1/28/26]
- Omar has been the target of right-wing media attacks for years, with many pundits suggesting she should return to Somalia.Late Fox News host Lou Dobbs questioned, “Who is she representing? Because it isn't America,” and Fox News contributor Ben Domenech suggested Omar buy a ticket to Somalia. Additionally, Trump ally and self-proclaimed “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer has called for Omar to “leave my country” and accused Omar of “pushing for another 9/11.” Media Matters, [4/17/19, 6/17/25, 8/14/24]
- Trump recently called for an investigation into Omar’s finances after a Fox News host suggested her net worth had increased suspiciously. The representative’s financial disclosure revealed that her net worth increased to $30 million after her marriage to an entrepreneur and political consultant whose assets were estimated to range up to that figure.Trump baselessly claimed, “There is no way such wealth could have been accumulated, legally, while being paid the salary of a politician.” Media Matters, [1/23/26]
- ## Right-wing media figures claimed the attack was “fake” or “staged” — or suggested people had a reason to believe it was
- Daily Wire host Matt Walsh claimed it’s “a perfectly reasonable thing” to think Omar’s assault was staged.He said, “I think that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to worry about.” He then added, “Leftists are constantly using hoaxes. We know that. And we also know that Somalis love to scam and they love to use deception. … In Ilhan’s case, well she’s a Somali and a leftist, so the pattern points in a certain direction.” He then offered a caveat: “Typically if leftists are going to fake a hate crime or fake an attack of this type — which they do all the time — but they do it in a way that, where the culprit is never seen.” The Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*, [1/28/26]
- Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson said there's something “very suspicious” about the attack.Johnson claimed it was “extremely strange” that Omar decided to go back to giving her speech. YouTube, *The Benny Show*, [1/28/26]
- Townhall managing editor Matt Vespa wrote a column justifying people who questioned if the attack was fake, writing, “There are some who are suggesting that this could be another fake attack incident, a hoax worthy of Jussie Smollett’s talents.”Vespa linked to several social media posts alleging the incident was faked, adding, “I can see how there could be questions.” Townhall, [1/28/26]
- Right-wing podcaster Tim Pool claimed “it doesn’t matter” if the attack was real or not because “the right would never believe her.”He claimed, “The funny thing is no one believes her anyway. The right would never believe her. It doesn't matter. And I'm going to say what I always say, guys. It doesn't matter if it's true or not.” YouTube, Timcast, [1/28/26]
- The Daily Caller published an opinion piece titled “Not Many Believe Ilhan Omar And She Only Has Herself To Blame.” The piece justified online speculation from right-wing figures that the attack was fake. The Daily Caller, [1/28/26]
- The Independent reported that Laura Loomer reacted to the attack by writing, “Nobody cares about your staged victim propaganda.”Loomer continued, “Please go back to Somalia. We are getting really tired of people like you taking up space in our country.” The Independent, [1/28/26]
- The Independent also noted right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong’s claim that “nothing about the ‘attack’ on Ilhan Omar is real.” Cheong wrote, “Look at how Ilhan Omar looks at the guy who sprayed her and gives him a little nod right before he springs into action,” as supposed evidence. The Independent, [1/28/26]
- On his live show, right-wing podcaster Jeremy Hambly, known online as The Quartering, claimed, “She knew that it was a harmless liquid, in my opinion, because of the way she reacted.” He continued, “The reason I’m a 100% convinced she knew is because this chick is Muslim. What do they do in Muslim countries? Acid attacks. She was never even concerned for a millisecond about what was sprayed on her.” Rumble, *The Quartering*, [1/28/26; IMDb, accessed 1/29/26]
- Salem News host Mike Gallagher remarked that he’s “never seen such a pushback” on social media, adding, “Nobody believes it’s legit.” He continued, “It’s like Jussie Smollett 2.0, totally staged, a hoax. That’s what people are screaming on social media. And I have to admit, I’ve got a lot of questions. But the problem is, if it’s legit, it needs to be roundly condemned.” Salem News Channel, *The Mike Gallagher Show*, [1/28/26]
- Newsmax host Rob Finnerty questioned, “Do you think maybe this might all be about changing the subject for old Ilhan and not really some violent attack that she was barely able to escape through with her life?”Finnerty also suggested the attacker was a leftist, saying, “We're being told that he is definitely a Republican, Trump-supporting right-winger. And we're being told that with absolutely no evidence, even though he’s got kids with blue hair, he's got an ex-wife who was an Ilhan, AOC supporter.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [1/28/26]
- Newsmax host Carl Higbie said, “I've got plenty of questions” about the attack on Omar and noted the attacker allegedly had a “liberal activist” ex-wife.He stated, “Now they're making Republicans out to be the bad guys for this minor incident right here, which I've plenty of questions about. Apparently, this guy's wife is some big liberal activist — or ex-wife I should say.” Newsmax, *Carl Higbie Frontline*, [1/28/26]
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airbaGs went off, doors locked auto; bystanders had to pull out; baby lAST, NOT BREATHING MOM MOUTH TO MOUTH; ICE BLOCKED EMT?
NOTE PAWN // PAID PROTESTOR: VICTIM NOT OF STATE THUGS BUT DERSERVE HARM BECAUSE DUMB ENOUGH TO BE MANIPULATED BY EXTREME LEFT LUNATICS?
January 15, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): And to counter that, though, the liberal media is trying to go out and tell, like the most insane thing — like, here, about this six-month-old who unfortunately got tear gassed by ICE. Well, like, that sucks. But why was the six-month-old, even exposed or near tear gas in the first place? Huh?
I mean, this has become such a problem that people are using their children as political pawns that DHS had to tweet this out. We told you about this other day. Do not bring your baby to a violent riot. The fact that you have to tell someone that — you should be — your kids should be taken away from you. But that baby was exposed to tear gas because the mob — baby was in the mob in a car — the mob was attacking the ICE agents. They didn't aim the tear gas. They weren't like, hey, check out that six month-old. Let me shoot him in the face. Not at all. That's not at all what happened. They were aiming at the crowd where, for some reason, the car with this six month-old was. Now, if the crowd — I don't know. And I'm just spitballing ideas here — If they listened to law enforcement, no one would have gotten shot with tear gas.
Also showing stuff like this. Kids skipping school to protest ICE turns into violent mosh pits and all this stuff. Here the kids are just piling out of classes like, hey, no, no, they should probably not be in class at all. It's just unbelievable. The only reason that kids would protest ICE because they were taught to protest ICE by liberal teachers in Tim Walz's school districts.
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December 2, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): Nope. Hard pass from the same people that keep telling us, by the way, that illegals are not getting these benefits that they said they wanted to give them, who scream and cry when Republicans try to cut off those benefits for those illegals or the states supporting them who in the same sentence swear are still not getting those benefits.
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HIGBIE: This is how you start solving the problem. I mean, like SNAP benefits — great place to start. And, you know, the 21 blue states who don't want to hand over their data and cooperate, fine. Trump, just cut off all federal funding for everything — roads, schools, health care, all of it. Democrats, oh, Donald Trump's cutting your school funding. No. Wrong Democrats. He stopped giving you money because you're rerouting that money to programs to support people who shouldn't be here.
But if Trump wants to get serious on this, he's going to have to just start doing stuff, OK? Like, get real aggressive. And this might be a tough pill to swallow for a bunch of washy establishment Republicans.
But you got to tell all these judges, hey, guys, look, we're done. We're not listening to you at all anymore because 90 something percent of your stuff gets overturned by the Supreme Court anyway. We're going to listen to the Supreme Court only and drive on, because they ruined it.
And Mr. President, humbly, here's my plan and it will work. But you got to get like all the consultants, all the white shoe law firms and the washy politicians, especially, get the bureaucrats out of the way.
Stay with me here, OK? If they get in the way, too, you got to, like, fire them, prosecute them. Look, I'm looking at you, Pam Bondi, OK? You really actually want to make this omelet? Let's break some eggs. One, the work system, E-Verify or something like that. Trump talked about this like 10 years ago.
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November 24, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): Folks, don't doubt me on this one. I literally did this in other countries.
But this is just the current lever being pulled. They've been prepping this for 10 years. They've been trying to cast Donald Trump as crazy, unconstitutional or whatever else, trying to create the vulnerability to crack his support. And none of it's true. Here from the manual quote, a vulnerability — it's critical when its exploitation will significantly influence the threat's ability, the threat being Trump — ability to conduct support or operations; operations in this case, meaning carefully convinced young service members that striking a drug boat in international waters might be an illegal order without saying it, because it's not.
Oh, Carl, the military can't — the CIA can't actually be using a psy-ops campaign on the American people. You bet they can.
You ever heard of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948? This actually prohibited the US government from disseminating government-funded propaganda or psychological operations materials on American citizens. Well, the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, which was incorporated into the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013, signed by president, then Barack Obama, changed that. Specifically, section 1078 — got the receipts, folks. The primary goal was to remove limits to the United States government's ability to counter foreign propaganda. This basically showed the government the ability to influence US public opinion. I mean, don't even get me started on the Patriot Act and how it allowed it to spy on all Americans, but whatever.
So think about this.
If your opinion has gone negative of Trump, especially in the last few weeks, folks, you are likely a victim of a massive psy-ops.
:{:{Trump hasn't changed in the last three weeks. Your opinion might have because of the psy-ops funneled through all these liberal medias because they're the easiest to convince to toe this line because they hate Donald Trump. That's their vulnerability that I just told you about to exploit by people like these six Democrats. They did this with Russian collusion. Hillary Clinton had them open an investigation to legitimize just the claim of it. And after $50 million dollars, they found nothing. They knew there never was anything, that wasn't the point. }:
The point was to convince half the country before an election it was, though. Hunter Biden's laptop, with the 51 former officials saying that it's Russian disinformation. With the Trump very fine people comment where they literally tried to erase the other half of his sentence that said, quote, and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis. They should be condemned totally. Covid, oh, and the power grab that followed that as a response. That was a test to see how far they could go and what they could get away with. These are all psy-ops on the American people, straight out — literally verbatim out of the Army field manual.}:
This illegal order campaign that they're running, no different. That is why they need to recall these people to active duty and court martial them for sedition, because the US government right now, via those six Democrats, is treating American citizens like our own enemy combatants.
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the MAGA media response to six Democratic members of Congress reminding their former compatriots in the military and intelligence community of their duty to “refuse illegal orders” reached a fever pitch on Thursday. After President Donald Trump suggested earlier that day that the lawmakers should face the death penalty for sedition, his propagandists chimed in, describing the Democrats as “devious and subversive” and their actions as “border[ing] on treason.”
On Wednesday, Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), as well as Reps. Jason Crow (D-CO), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chris Deluzio (D-PA), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) released a video in which they urged current members of the military and intelligence community to disobey “illegal orders.” While they did not provide examples, the release came amid debates over the legality of U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean and domestic troop deployments. The video drew a deranged response from many on the right, who accused the lawmakers of committing “treason” and trying to “trigger a military coup.”
The president himself weighed in Thursday morning with a series of Truth Social posts in which he accused the lawmakers of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR,” described them as “traitors to our Country,” and called for them to be “ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL” for crimes he described as “punishable by DEATH!” The lawmakers in the video and Democratic House leadership both condemned Trump’s posts, while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that Trump did not in fact seek the deaths of the members of Congress.
Trump is currently operating from a position of weakness, with his support in polls in a tailspinand his congressional allies having successfully revolted over the Jeffrey Epstein files. He’s previously responded to such circumstances by seeking to reunify his coalition by pointing them at a common enemy, and that seems to be what has happened this week. To the extent that he’s given his most loyal propagandists someone to attack, it’s working.
Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters claimed on Thursday night that the “Democrats sent a clear message to everybody in the military and CIA: You're free to commit treason.” He described their actions as “devious and subversive,” said they were “planting coup seeds inside the Pentagon and at Langley,” and accused them of “psychological warfare launched by sitting politicians against the American military in peacetime” and “trying to blow up the chain of command.”
Video
Citation
From the November 20, 2025, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
Watters’ colleague Sean Hannity argued the next hour, “The only question tonight [is] will these six Democratic lawmakers be held accountable in a court of law?” He then commented that he’s “not sure” they committed crimes punishable by death because he’s “not a lawyer,” and asked Fox contributor and former Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz to weigh in. Chaffetz assured him that “what they did borders on treason. It really does.” He added that “President Trump was actually exactly right” because “If you do commit treason, guess what? It is punishable by death. That's just the law. He's just reciting the law.”
Their competitors at Newsmax were similarly enraged. Carl Higbie declared that Trump’s posts show he “is done playing around with garbage,” pointed out that “George Washington did hang traitors many times, including Benedict Arnold's British counterpart,” and claimed that the Democrats “should be court-martialed themselves” because “that type of rhetoric from senators and congressmen is sedition.” Greg Kelly commented that “a lot of people” think the lawmakers committed “treason, or mutiny, or something along those lines,” and accused them of “plotting the seeds, I think, of another coup.” And The Right Squad’s Chris Plante said the Democrats were “inciting civil war.”
And Laura Loomer, whose influence in the Oval Office has triggered the firings of numerous administration officials for insufficient loyalty, wrote: “President Trump just re posted a post on Truth Social calling for seditious Democrat Senators to be hung for calling on members of the military to defy President Trump’s orders as Commander in Chief.”
“Trump is right,” she added. “That’s the type of justice Americans want to see.”
//
11/20/25 4:42 PM EST
- ### Fox News hid its brutal Trump job approval number from viewers — while showering him with praise
11/20/25 12:56 PM EST
07/21/25
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November 17, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Frontline with Carl Higbie
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issuing a special message to our country on immigration.
First of all, stay in your lane, guys. This is why we separated the church and the state. After all, the church loves not paying taxes. Second, isn't the Vatican literally protected by wall — oh yes, it is. It has walls all the way around it. Big ones at that. Do you want our country to be open up to everyone? I tell you what, lead by example. You tear down your walls. I mean, why not? Matter of fact, how many immigrants are you offering to house in your churches or even your own home? A few have done it, but not in the rectory. Brianna Lyman, election correspondent at The Federalist, and David Medina, founder of Project Libertas. Brianna?
BRIANNA LYMAN (GUEST): You know, Carl, first and foremost, they're not actually upset or concerned with immigration. They're upset about the fact that President Trump's administration took away all their funding that they got under Biden.
Second of all, it's a little disingenuous for these Catholic bishops to come out and talk about humanity. They say nothing when abortion is running rampant in this country. But they're so-called devout Catholics, aren't they? They said nothing when devout Catholic Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi were over here encouraging abortions and Planned Parenthood, but they speak up as soon as their funding gets threatened.
HIGBIE: That's actually an excellent point.
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batshit
From the October 28, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie Frontline
:{:{CARL HIGBIE (HOST): Yeah, I think every one of those pardons and commutations should be considered void. Just as we said, for the last four years, we were called crazy that there might be even the possibility of a shadow government operating independent of the president — I mean, who appeared to be a vegetable at the time — and all these people said that these investigations were partisan and they were useless and they were a waste of taxpayer — it turns out a so-called conspiracy theorists were right again. These investigations are 100% necessary because why would you wish pardons to people if you didn't think they needed something to be pardoned for?}:
The January 6 committee, at a bare minimum, they deleted the evidence, which is a crime. Worst case scenario, they covered up for the FBI, embedding 274 undercover agents in assets and the crowd that day. Who knows if they were the ones who broke in first, which would make it entrapment, like the FBI did to Gretchen Whitmer's kidnapping case that got thrown out. Covered it up, obviously. They lied about it and then used those investigations to impeach Donald Trump to try to prevent him from running again so that he would never find out about the coup the deep state ran, undermining his entire first presidency.}:
Either way, people should probably go to jail. Doctor Fauci should be buried under the jail for conspiracy against rights. The architect of completely fabricated medical data to remove constitutional rights, like the right to peaceably assemble for, I don't know, church. Oh, and force you to inject an experimental vaccine. Then you got General Mark Milley. Remember, he had discussions with the Chinese counterpart saying that he would warn China if the president was planning any military action. That's like treason to me. Under 18 U.S. Code 2381, reinforcing Article three, Section three of the Constitution. He can be sentenced to death for that. I bet Milley's freaking out right now. And he should be.
:{:{Now, here's a constitutional crisis that this may have actually created, though. Obviously the DOJ should investigate this to the fullest extent of the law. But when these people get hauled in for questioning under oath, how does that go? Because this is unique. Once you've accepted a pardon, you don't have a Fifth Amendment right anymore because that's the right to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination. }:
But if you've accepted that pardon, apparently you can't be incriminated. So what happens if these people — I mean, they have to talk at that point. So what happens if these people disclose information that incriminates themselves in being complicit with a fraudulent pardon? How about did Hunter sell any of those pardons to anyone? Want to ask him that? This has literally never been litigated before. Ever. And the reason it's never been litigated is because no White House was ever arrogant enough to conduct such a fast and loose autopen use procedure.}:
mma
//
09/26/23 12:40 PM EDT
10/14/24 3:01 PM EDT
10/23/24
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The split in the right over SNAP and food stamps: Some attack the program and its recipients, while others try to use cuts as a cudgel against Democrats
Written by Jason Campbell
Research contributions from Helena Hind & Jane Lee
Published 10/29/25
The 42 million Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will not receive assistance in November, and some right-wing media are using the opportunity to attack the program and its recipients while others are using SNAP recipients as a cudgel against Democrats.
The $8 billion in congressional appropriations for the benefits, known as food stamps, lapsed with the October 1 government shutdown, and there is no indication that Congress will appropriate funds for the program. The Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, has further said it will not shift funds around to keep the program operational despite SNAP having having some contingency funds available and the department's own "shutdown-funding plan," which was struck from its own website, that indicated emergency funds could be used.
About 1 in 8 Americans rely on SNAP benefits, receiving an average of $187 a month in food aid. The vast majority of households which receive SNAP benefits include children, an elderly person, or someone with a disability.
Right-wing pundits are calling the program too generous, with some attacking recipients — who now are also being attacked online with fake racist AI-generated videos.
- The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh: “If you look at what food stamp recipients are saying in their own words ... you come away with the impression that many of these people are simply entitled, lazy, barely literate, and, like, some of them are just frankly bad people."
- While discussing SNAP benefits, Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt denied that there is food insecurity in the U.S. and asked, “Why is it that we are subsidizing food for people that weigh 300 pounds?” He also said, “The entitlement of the people on these programs is through the roof."
- Podcaster Steven Crowder insulted SNAP recipients in some pretty ugly ways typical of his program.
- While discussing SNAP, Newsmax host Carl Higbie said that “our welfare programs are out of hand” and “these programs should definitely sunset."
- The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro: “It is insane that there are 42 million Americans on food stamps. That is a wild statistic. And the amount of government dependency in this country is just way too high, period. But they are, in fact, dependent on food stamps."
While some right-wing pundits are claiming that too many people are receiving SNAP benefits, others are arguing that SNAP is an essential benefit and blaming Democrats for taking it away.
- Fox & Friends host Ainsley Eardhardt said if Democrats “really care about families, and people in need, and people who can’t afford to go to the grocery store, then open up the government."
- Turning Point USA’s Alex Clark posted, “So when people claim they’re starving and have no food remember it was the democrats, not Trump, who did this to you."
- And Fox anchor Harris Faulkner said that “we have food insecurity in this country” and blamed Democrats for keeping the government shut down.
During the Obama administration, many right-wing media pundits attacked the SNAP program, often calling for it to be discontinued, while others attacked food assistance recipients.
The gleeful enthusiasm with which some right-wing media personalities suggest food should be taken away from their fellow countrymen is truly disturbing — and ultimately in line with the cruelty which defines so much of the MAGA movement.
//
mma
Matt Walsh: “We need drug testing and weight testing for anyone receiving SNAP”
:{:{10/29/25}:
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MMA
October 20, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): Now here's another one. Mamdani. OK, this guy is at it again. I know, right? We got to deal with him here. You're 3000 miles away and probably a worse place -- but campaigning with this imam who turns out this guy -- and people, we've known this for a while. He's got a guy who is linked to the World Trade Center attacks in 93, but he's also got this imam that's like super anti-gay. He's calling him filthy and sick and all this stuff. This is a Democrat?
SAVAGE: I was in a lawsuit many years ago with one of those groups, and it was not very pretty what we found out. I mean, look, I have thought from the beginning, and I certainly don't have the proof, but the earmarks are there, that this Mamdani is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood --
HIGBIE: Could be.
SAVAGE: It's another footstep into America by the Muslim Brotherhood. You face them in Iraq with machine guns or automatic weapons or whatever you had. This guy is going to be much worse than the one who took over London, if this smiling fraud is allowed to win --
HIGBIE: But here's the thing, Michael --
SAVAGE: And he can be stopped.
HIGBIE: You've got Curtis Sliwa, OK, who's a Republican. I'd love him to win. But he gets endorsed by Rudy Giuliani. The problem is you got Cuomo in there. That's like, in a plurality, this guy's going to win, Mamdani.
SAVAGE: There's a good saying that I learned years ago - do you want to be right or do you want to be smart? That's what I try to say online to the supporters of the Sliwa voters. I watched the debate from the beginning to the end I thought Sliwa was great, I thought he did a great job. But he has no management experience. He could never manage a budget of the size of New York. So that leaves us with one choice only, and that is the corrupt old guard Democrat type of machine politician Cuomo. But at least when guys like Cuomo, when his father ran New York, my mother could walk to the corner grocery store, God bless her soul --
HIGBIE: Didn't have to worry.
SAVAGE: At midnight and buy a loaf of bread. We want that old Democrat machine. The Cuomo machine would be safer for women than anyone else in the city, even though he's just a corrupt old Democrat politician.
HIGBIE: Yep.
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MMA
Newsmax host: “Libs are now pro-autism”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 09/24/25
Video
Citation
From the September 23, 2025 edition of Newsmax'sCarl Higbie Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): It just seems to me like people who don't like Trump will just do anything to oppose him. And now, like you said, it came out yesterday — acetaminophen in Tylenol could lead to risks of autism during pregnancy for women. Now it doesn't affect pregnant men. But —
BENJ IRBY (GUEST): Like Buttigieg.
HIGBIE: Like Buttigieg. But he did say — you know, there are people coming out today that are like, first off, there are groups that are saying like, autism doesn't need to be fixed. Libs are now pro-autism. And then also pregnant women are posting taking acetaminophen products while pregnant.
IRBY: Poor, poor children. I mean, these are going to be our newest next trans children I'm sure, because, I mean, these are the Munchausen syndrome that we have. I mean, look, I think it's great that we're actually attacking autism. Autism is a, you know, it's a scourge. And it doesn't matter whether you have money. Celebrities' children have it, poor children have it. So I'm really glad for this. But for the libs, I just want to let you know that Donald Trump is for breathing water — is for breathing air and drinking water.
HIGBIE: No.
IRBY: You guys have to stop that. You have to stop breathing. Stop drinking water because Trump is for it. Water is racist and air is fascist. So I need you guys to hold your breath for democracy.
HIGBIE: I mean, obviously for democracy, everything's for democracy.
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mma 8 24
republican state officials are investigating ActBlue after right-wing media used inaccurate information to claim the fundraising platform was laundering money
Right-wing media homed in on a Virginia donor, but FEC data shows the vast majority of donations were to WinRed and Republican PACs rather than ActBlue
Written by Kayla Gogarty
Research contributions from Alex Kaplan
:{:{Published 08/07/24}:
Amid Kamala Harris’ surging fundraising, right-wing media are alleging that Democratic PAC ActBlue is laundering money through a Virginia donor, claiming there were more than 22,000 donations listed for that individual, totaling over $800,000. But according to data from the Federal Election Commission, the alleged donor actually gave hundreds of thousands to WinRed and other Republican PACs.
Regardless, the claim spread — including to former President Donald Trump — and right-wing media figures called on attorneys general to investigate. At least two Republican attorneys general have announced they are looking into it.
After President Joe Biden announced that he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, fundraising for her campaign surged. Amid that surge, right-wing personalities accused ActBlue of engaging in a money laundering scheme.
As part of these accusations, some right-wing media figures and social media accounts amplified data from a website for a tax-exempt organization, Election Watch, reportedly founded by serial election denier Peter Bernegger, which provides “smurfing data by state.” (“Smurf” apparently refers to “an individual whose ID may have been used to launder money into political campaigns.”) Users can click on a state to see the so-called “smurf” donors, which are apparently identified by “numbers and patterns of transactions” in FEC data “that indeed appear to be highly questionable.”
Right-wing media have seemingly latched onto the first Virginia entry, which the website claims made 22,619 transactions, totaling $839,466. According to FEC data for an individual of the same name living in the same zip code (or at the affiliated address), that individual has made nearly 25,000 transactions since 2019, totaling more than $765,000. Nearly half of the transactions were with WinRed — totaling nearly $380,000. Additional hundreds of thousands went to other Republican PACs. Only four transactions were apparently made with ActBlue — totaling just $66. (Previously, Republican donors have reportedly been “steered … into unwitting donations,” unknowingly signing up for weekly recurring contributions when contributing through WinRed.)
Despite the FEC data, right-wing media figures and social media accounts alleged that the Virginia donor data showed “money laundering” through ActBlue, urged others to use Election Watch's data to find more “smurfs,” and called for attorneys general to investigate.
- 03/07/24
Republic PAC the Virginia Project claimed there was a “ghost donor problem” and made an allegation about one Virginia donor.
The Virginia Project, which has an “election integrity program,” posted about a “Ghost donor problem,” specifically citing alleged data from Bernegger’s Election Watch site. The PAC claimed, “One Virginia donor. 22,619 transactions totaling $839,466.00. $37.11 average donation.” Virginia Project, accessed [7/30/24; Twitter/X, 3/7/24]
- 07/23/24
Social media account NoVA_Campaigns amplified the Virginia Project’s claims about the Virginia donor multiple times.
NoVA_Campaigns, a social media account which seemingly pushes right-wing narratives and election conspiracy theories, amplified Virginia Project’s March post multiple times, saying, “Massive @actblue fraud. How @TheDemocrats launder💰in billions,” and specifically claiming that the Virginia donor “made 22,619 Fed donations since ‘19, totaling $839,466 in 592 days.” In a second post, the account repeated the claim about the donations, calling on “AGs like @JasonMiyaresVA 🦗.” Twitter/X, [7/23/24, 7/23/24, 7/23/24, accessed 8/5/24]
- 07/23/24
Bernegger amplified the claims about the Virginia donor and called on his followers to use his organization’s website to find “smurfs.”
Bernegger responded to the Virginia Project’s social media post about the Virginia donor and called on people to “Check your state out” on his organization’s website, telling them to “scroll down to the USA map, click on any state, let it load, listing of Smurfs.” Twitter/X, [7/23/24]
- 07/24/24
Newsmax host Carl Higbie amplified Election Watch’s site on his show and claimed “smurfs” or “money mules” are used to funnel money “through the Democrats’ fundraising platform, called ActBlue.”
:{:{During the July 24 edition of his Newsmax show, Higbie claimed that “a bunch of people” found “a bunch of stuff that appears to not add up,” crediting Bernegger’s organization, which he said “compiled millions … of data points from the Federal Election Commission.”}:
According to Higbie, “We were able to find out that in the past few years, over $200 million of political donations have been funneled through the Democrats’ fundraising platform, called ActBlue. … And from our research, it appears that these people, most of them, don't even know these donations are being made in their name. It's not their money. They call these people ‘smurfs’ or ‘money mules.’” Twitter/X, [7/24/24]}:
- 07/26/24
Right-wing personality Charlie Kirk called on state attorneys general to get involved: “When will one of them take action?”
Kirk alleged that there are “massive, repeated donations to ActBlue that use stolen identities and, quite possibly, stolen credit card,” specifically noting that “one person in Virginia has been named in 22,619 separate donations since 2019, totaling more than $800,000.” Kirk went on to claim that “obviously, she's being exploited for some kind of money-laundering operation,” and he called on state AGs to get involved: “ActBlue raises from all fifty states. We have fifty state AGs. When will one of them take action?” Twitter/X, [7/26/24]
- 07/26/24
Right-wing social media personality DC Draino specifically called out Virginia’s Republican AG Jason Miyares, asking if he will “prosecute this ActBlue money laundering and protect VA’s exploited citizens.”
DC Draino amplified Kirk’s social media post, adding, “Didn’t Virginia elect a Republican AG? Will @JasonMiyaresVA prosecute this ActBlue money laundering and protect VA’s exploited citizens? Or will he be a 1 term politician?” Twitter/X, [7/26/24]
- 07/29/24
On Truth Social, Trump amplified Kirk’s and DC Draino’s allegations about ActBlue and their calls for AGs to investigate.
- 07/29/24
Just over an hour after Trump made his post, Virginia’s Jason Miyares said his office was “looking into” the claims about ActBlue and money laundering.
On social media, Miyares responded to Kirk and said, “My office is aware of these allegations and rest assured, we are looking into it.” The same day, Dan Bishops — the Republican candidate for North Carolina AG — suggested he would take action against ActBlue on “January 1” after being elected. Twitter/X, [7/29/24, 7/29/24]
- 07/30/24
Wyoming Republican Secretary of State Chuck Gray announced an “investigation into ActBlue,” citing “nationwide money laundering and identity theft allegations.”
In a press release, which he posted on social media, Gray encouraged “any Wyoming citizen who has reason to believe a political action committee stole their identity or falsely reported a donation using their name” to report it to his office. Wyoming Secretary of State media release, [7/30/24]
- 08/01/24
Right-wing activist James O’Keefe said he would “personally pay” $3,000 to people who confront potential “smurfs” in their neighborhoods.
O’Keefe, the ousted founder of Project Veritas who is now trying to build up O’Keefe Media Group, posted on social media: “Uncover ActBlue Smurfs and get paid like our Citizen Journalists,” urging people to go to Election Watch’s site, “ choose your state, enter your zip code, and start investigating. Not comfortable going door-to-door? … Submit potential Smurfs and links to your FEC findings through our X DMs or Signal.” The post included a video showing how to use Bernegger’s Election Watch site and instructing people to “knock on these people’s doors,” tell them they “seem to be a victim of a money laundering scheme,” and get bank statements from them. Rolling Stone, [6/20/24; Twitter/X, 8/1/24]
Video
CitationFrom an August 1, 2024, video from James O'Keefe
- 08/02/24
Virginia’s Republican AG, Jason Miyares, posted that he sent a letter to ActBlue “demanding answers.”
Miyares posted the letter on social media and said, “The integrity of our election is at stake.” The letter claims that his office “has become aware of multiple serious allegations that ActBlue, ActBlue Civics, Inc., and ActBlue Charities, Inc. (together ‘ActBlue’) have engaged in fraudulent, deceptive, and/or otherwise illegal activities in the Commonwealth of Virginia and/or aided and abetted others in doing so.” Twitter/X, [8/2/24]
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no lnx
Myths and facts: Debunking right-wing lies and misinformation about Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial
As Trump’s first criminal trial begins, right-wing media repeat his lies and push new falsehoods
WRITTEN BY AUDREY MCCABE, REED MCMASTER, PETE TSIPIS & GIDEON TAAFFE
PUBLISHED 04/19/24
Update (last updated 5/1/24): This article has been updated to include additional examples.
On April 15, former President Donald Trump walked into a Manhattan courtroom for the first day of his trial for charges of falsifying business records in order to conceal hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump and right-wing media immediately began spreading lies about the trial.
Right-wing media have wrongly claimed: that a gag order the judge issued on Trump is a violation of his freedom of speech, that the judge has barred Trump from attending his son’s graduation, that Trump should have been charged with misdemeanors rather than felonies, and that Trump should not be prosecuted because Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the Steele dossier is similar and yielded only a fine.
In reality, the case centers on Trump’s attempts to conceal hush money payments to Daniels, who allegedly had an affair with the former president. Trump funneled the payments to Daniels through his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the scheme as well as other crimes. Prosecutors allege that Trump violated election law in paying off Daniels as it was part of a coordinated effort to assist his 2016 campaign and may have also violated state tax law by mischaracterizing Cohen’s reimbursement.
Experts say Merchan’s gag order is consistent with case law. Merchan also declined to answer Trump’s request to be excused from court on May 17 to attend his son’s graduation, stating that it was too early to make a decision but signaling an openness to it.
Myth: Trump’s gag order is unconstitutional and a violation of his freedom of speech
Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett stated that “the gag order is a clear violation of the First Amendment.” He then claimed that “judges get away with it because by the time it’s challenged on appeal the case is over.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/15/24]
Jarrett again criticized Trump’s gag order, saying that especially as the leading candidate for president, Trump has a “constitutional right to speak out to defend himself.” He also claimed that “the judge wants to gag Trump so he can’t respond to some of the accusations against him.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 4/15/24]
Conservative judicial activist Mike Davis claimed that Trump’s gag order is “illegal” and that “gag orders are supposed to protect criminal defendants.” Davis continued, “You don't put a gag order on a criminal defendant to gag him during a criminal trial, especially when that criminal defendant is a candidate.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room with Steve Bannon, 4/15/24]
Trump ally and anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer tweeted that she would “gladly pay the fine for President Trump so he can have free speech.” Trump has amplified Loomer’s content attacking Merchan’s family members, leading Loomer to claim that she would pay Trump’s legal fines “if this asshole named Judge Merchan is really going to target Trump for sharing my videos on Truth Social.” [Twitter/X, 4/15/24; Politico, 4/15/24]
Fact: Experts say the gag order is consistent with New York law and precedent
Merchan has issued a gag order preventing Trump from making public statements that are meant to interfere with the case, including statements about witnesses and their potential testimony, prosecutors, court staff and their family members, and the members of Merchan’s and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s families. Trump has repeatedly disparaged Merchan’s daughter online and has a history of attacking individuals involved in his legal proceedings. [Reuters, 4/12/24; The Washington Post, 4/17/24]
Experts say that Merchan was following case law that goes back decades, that gag orders are rarely found to violate the First Amendment, and that Trump “is free to discuss the criminal justice system but not to make ad hominem attacks on particular people associated with the case.” The gag order does not prevent Trump from speaking about the case, as he can “raise political arguments as he sees fit” as well as comment on Merchan and Bragg. [PolitiFact, 4/11/24; Just Security, 3/27/24; The Associated Press, 4/9/24]
Merchan initially resisted imposing the gag order, urging Trump not to make statements that could incite violence and stating that he was “bending over backwards” to give the former president every opportunity “to speak in furtherance of his candidacy.” After Merchan expanded the initial gag order on April 1, Trump reacted on Truth Social, “They can talk about me but I can’t talk about them???” [The Washington Post, 4/9/24]
Myth: Merchan is blocking Trump from attending Barron’s graduation
After leaving the courtroom on Monday, Trump stated to reporters, “It looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son.” He later reiterated the claim on Truth Social, claiming that he is “being prohibited from attending.” [Associated Press, 4/16/24]
Newsmax host Carl Higbie claimed that Merchan barred Trump from attending Barron’s graduation. Higbie then encouraged Trump to dare Merchan to hold him in contempt, saying, “If I was Trump, I would say, ‘You know what, man? Bring it. Put me in jail. I beg you.’” [Newsmax, Carl Higbie Frontline, 4/15/24]
Fox News personality Rachel Campos-Duffy claimed that Democrats are “trying to demoralize” Trump by not allowing him to attend his son’s graduation. Campos-Duffy added, “This feels super communist.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 4/16/24]
Fox Nation host Piers Morgan, appearing on The Five, also encouraged Trump to get himself arrested by attending Barron’s graduation. Morgan stated, “If you're watching, President Trump, just go to the graduation. Every parent in America, whether they like you or hate you, will go, ‘Yeah. I’d have done that too.’” [Fox News, The Five, 4/15/24]
Right-wing influencer Dom Lucre tweeted that it was “barbaric” to not allow Trump to attend his son’s graduation. [Twitter/X, 4/15/24]
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk urged Trump to risk arrest by attending Barron’s graduation. Kirk stated, “I think Donald Trump should defy the New York judge order and go to Barron's graduation. I think he should just defy the order and go to Barron's graduation. Get arrested. It's just more indictments, not as if you're already not facing 700 years in federal prison.” [Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 4/17/24]
Fact: Merchan has not made a decision yet regarding Barron’s graduation
When asked if Trump would be excused from attending court on May 17 for the high school graduation of his son, Merchan said it was too early in the trial for a decision but signaled an openness to it if the trial proceeds on schedule. [Rolling Stone, 4/16/24]
Myth: Trump should have been charged with misdemeanors, and the charges were filed outside of the statute of limitations
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld cited Fox legal contributor Jonathan Turley to claim Trump’s charges were an elevated misdemeanor. Gutfeld said, “According to legal expert Jonathan Turley, Trump is on trial for allegedly falsifying business records related to payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Turley added that it's 'a misdemeanor and the statute of limitations ran out.' Somehow none of that matters in New York City, where guys who randomly punch kids are given a pat on the back and a key to the city, but when it comes to porn star payments you’d better keep records more detailed than a CVS receipt.” [Fox News, Gutfeld, 4/16/24]
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade claimed that Trump’s felony charges are actually misdemeanor crimes. He stated, “So they have to show that the felony charges, the prosecutors must show that Trump not only falsified or caused business records to be entered falsely, which would be misdemeanor, but they also have to show an intent to commit and conceal a second crime. But so far Alvin Bragg hasn't told us what that second crime is. So when are we going to find out what the second crime is? And don't you think defense needs to know?” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/15/24]
Fox News legal editor Kerri Kupec Urbahn stated that Bragg “has somehow manufactured these very low-level misdemeanor charges into felonies.” Washington Times editor Charles Hurt also called the crime a “paperwork violation” with “no victim.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/15/24]
In an appearance on Fox, Turley called Trump’s hush money trial a “Frankenstein case” made up of a “dead misdemeanor” and “dead alleged federal felony.” According to Turley, “They took a dead misdemeanor, they attached it to a dead alleged federal felony and zapped it back into life. So — many of us are just amazed to watch this actually walk into court because it’s not a recognizable crime that any of us have seen.” [Fox News, America Reports, 4/15/24]
Right-wing radio host Sean Hannity complained on his show that the alleged infraction is a “misdemeanor, unless they can prove it was done with intent to commit or conceal another crime, and this guy has not even brought that up.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 4/16/24]
Fact: Trump was charged with felonies because he allegedly concealed an underlying crime, and the statute of limitations was extended
Under New York state law, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor, but it becomes a felony if the defendant altered the records to conceal an underlying crime. Prosecutors have three theories demonstrating Trump’s violation of federal and state election law and New York tax law. [Politico, 6/13/23]
Forbes: “The timeline for bringing criminal charges was extended by more than a year during the pandemic, and prosecutors could also argue the five-year clock was paused whenever Trump spent extended periods living in Florida.” PBS reported: “In New York, the clock can stop on the statute of limitations when a potential defendant is continuously outside the state. Trump visited New York rarely over the four years of his presidency and now lives mostly in Florida and New Jersey.” [Forbes, 4/15/24; PBS, 3/11/23]
Myth: Trump should not be prosecuted because Hillary Clinton only paid a fine for the Steele dossier misreporting
Turley falsely compared Trump’s charges to Hillary Clinton and the Steele dossier. He wrote in the New York Post, “Once again, the contrast to other controversies is telling. Before the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign denied that it had funded the infamous Steele dossier behind the debunked Russian collusion claims.” [New York Post, 4/14/24]
Far-right troll Jack Posobiec posted, “In 2022, Hillary Clinton quietly settled a campaign finance violation over reporting the Steele Dossier funding as ‘legal services.’ She paid a fine and was never arrested. The same thing Trump is on trial for right now.” [Twitter/X, 4/16/24]
Gregg Jarrett argued Trump’s prosecution was unfair, because Clinton was only fined for the Steele dossier despite also incorrectly booking the expense. He argued, “Hillary Clinton did pretty much the same thing. She too used a lawyer to secretly pay for the phony Steele dossier and booking it as ‘legal expenses.’ She was fined by the FEC but she wasn’t prosecuted.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/15/24]
Roger Stone posted, “Hillary Clinton falsely reported the payments by her campaign for the fabrication of the ‘Steele dossier’ as ‘legal expenses.’ I don't recall her being prosecuted. #TwoTieredJustice.” [Twitter/X, 4/16/24]
The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway promoted Turley’s article and highlighted the Clinton comparison. She wrote, “Excellent point from Turley here. When DNC/Hillary Clinton lied about the 2016 campaign funding of the Steele Dossier, there were no criminal charges or media calls for accountability. But the Trump NDA gets charged?? Rule of law destroyed.” [Twitter/X, 4/15/24]
Fact: Trump’s hush money payments allegedly involved the falsification of business records to conceal a crime, rather than mischaracterizing campaign expenditures
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign hired a firm to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, which led to the compilation of a dossier by former MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The report made salacious allegations about Trump, many of which have since been discredited. [CNN, 11/18/21]
The campaign misreported the spending as legal services rather than opposition research. Under an agreement with the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign paid $105,000 and $8,000 in fines, respectively. [The Associated Press, 3/31/22]
Unlike in Trump’s case, the civil penalty paid by Clinton’s campaign and the DNC “appears to relate to highly technical rules about how campaign spending through an intermediary should be reported.” The DNC and Clinton campaign were fined for improper reporting, while Trump was charged with falsifying business records to allegedly conceal a crime. [Politico, 3/31/22]
The Washington Post reported that “This analogy isn’t terribly strong, given, first, that the campaign and the Democratic National Committee faced punishment for the reporting and, second, that it centered on the mechanics of properly reporting campaign spending to the FEC.” [The Washington Post, 3/21/23]
Myth: All Trump did was use a nondisclosure agreement, which is perfectly legal
On The Faulkner Focus, former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky said, “It would have been perfectly legal … and was legal” for Trump to make a payment for the NDA “to get rid of this nuisance that business people get rid of all the time.” He argued that cases like this end in acquittal “when you have a good jury.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 4/15/24]
Fox News host Mark Levin disregarded the theory of the case and said, “It's not hush money. They're nondisclosure agreements.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Podcast, 4/24/24]
Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy focused on the NDA, saying, “It’s not illegal to bury compromised or politically-damaging information.” He added, “There is nothing criminal about that. Nondisclosure agreements are a staple of civil litigation in the United States.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 4/26/24]
On Fox News, former Trump attorney Jim Trusty claimed Trump's NDA usage “does not actually constitute anything criminal.” He called the case against Trump “tawdry scandalous distasteful stuff” and complained that, “If nondisclosure agreements were criminal, Congress would be in prison right now.” [Fox News, America Reports, 4/25/24]
Fact: The trial is not about the NDA, but whether Trump illegally tried to cover up the payment for the NDA
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has specifically refuted the idea that the NDA was criminal, but asserts that the crime was in how Trump hid that payment. In an interview, Bragg stated, “We would say it's about conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and then lying in New York business records to cover it up.” [USA Today, 4/15/24]
While there is nothing inherently illegal about a nondisclosure agreement, when an NDA is used to cover up a crime or the money paid is an illegal payment, the NDA can become a criminal matter. As Tess Wilkinson-Ryan of the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law explained to Slate: “It’s legally OK if the information being kept confidential is not about a crime, or if keeping it confidential doesn’t otherwise violate the law. If the payment itself is illegal—imagine bribery or blackmail—that’s a matter of criminal law.” [Slate, 3/27/23]
Myth: Prosecutors are charging Trump over killing negative stories, which isn't a crime
Fox News legal editor Kerri Kupec Urbahn said, “It is not a crime to do a catch-and-kill scheme.” She continued, saying, “It is not a crime to suppress bad stories about yourself, whether you are running for president or not. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/26/24]
Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen misleadingly claimed that Trump was “accused of suppressing a negative news story.” He added, “If that was a crime, every campaign press secretary in America would be prosecuted.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 4/26/24]
On The Faulkner Focus, former Assistant District Attorney Phil Holloway claimed David Pecker’s testimony is proof the prosecution is “having a very difficult time finding anything that was actually illegal.” Holloway claimed it is not election interference, but rather “normal campaign conduct.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 4/26/24]
Fox News contributor Sol Wisenberg argued, “The idea that paying for a catch-and-kill story could constitute election interference in a way that lifts this misdemeanor into a felony … is a joke.” [Fox News, Ingraham Angle, 4/26/24]
Fact: The legality of the catch-and-kill scheme is not in question; it is part of the prosecution's argument that Trump was trying to protect his electoral chances
Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified to paying Playboy model Karen McDougal for the rights to her story about having an affair with Trump and then never releasing the story. According to the Associated Press, there had been “some talk of reimbursement from Trump’s orbit, but Pecker was ultimately never paid” for the McDougal story. [Associated Press, 4/25/24]
Pecker testified that he believed Trump wanted the McDougal story killed in order to help protect Trump’s presidential bid. Pecker speculated that Trump’s interest in squashing McDougal’s story was “basically [about] what the impact would be to the campaign and the election.” [The Washington Post, 4/25/24]
The prosecution brought forward the catch-and-kill scheme described by Pecker in part to establish a pattern in which Trump and his associates buried negative news stories close to Election Day, not to question the criminality of the scheme itself. Pecker’s testimony also helps the prosecution introduce other aspects of their argument, including Michael Cohen’s alleged role as an intermediary for Trump. [The Guardian, 4/26/24]
Myth: Legal analysts don’t understand what crime Trump is being accused of committing
Fox News contributor Todd Piro told Laura Ingraham that he can’t say what the crime is, adding, “We’ve read legal scholars say they can't figure out the crime.” He said after watching courtroom testimony he still doesn’t know what the crime is. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 4/25/24]
Fox News legal editor Kerri Kupec Urbahn claimed it is still “unclear what this underlying crime is that Donald Trump is alleged to have concealed.” Summarizing the first part of the trial, Kupec said, “They did not reveal anything that was criminal in nature or that directly related to Donald Trump's payments to Michael Cohen who paid Stormy Daniels.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/25/24]
Fox anchor John Roberts questioned, “Where is the crime?” and emphasized similar comments from Fox News contributors Andy McCarthy and Jonathan Turley, as well as Trump’s argument that the trial should “be over” because there is “no underlying criminal behavior here.” Fox anchor Shannon Bream said prosecutors will have to convince jury members that there is an underlying crime. [Fox News, America Reports, 4/26/24]
Fact: The alleged underlying crime is about Trump committing fraud to better his chances of winning the 2016 presidential election
Trump was charged with 34 felony counts on the basis that business records were allegedly falsified to conceal an underlying crime of violating state and federal election law as well as New York tax code. While New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg still needs to prove that Trump had intent to violate the law, Bragg has extensively explained the underlying crime Trump is accused of committing. [Media Matters, 4/15/24]
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https://www.alternet.org/i-cant-take-this-anymore/
an 5 23 no lnx
right-wing conspiracist Michael Savage honored fallen veterans on Memorial Day by calling President Joe Biden a "terrorist" and railing against social progress during an angry interview on Monday's edition of Newsmax's Eric Bolling: The Balance.
Guest anchor Carl Higbie introduced Savage, who after thanking Higbie for being a Navy Seal launched into a diatribe against tolerance in the United States Armed Forces LGBTQIA+ rights, and theAmericans for Civil Liberties Union, which he proclaimed is "destroying" civilization.
Savage:
Your outrage is correct, but it's so deep. It's hard for people to understand that it's not about woke this, woke that. These are suicidal individuals who are trying to make the rest of us commit suicide along with them. And let me remind all of you out there who are listening - Rome did not pass away — I'm a student of history — Rome was assassinated from within and by the invasion of the barbarians. Those two elements are occurring in America today. And for Memorial Day, I've studied what they have done to the military. We all know — Carl, this will strike a chord with you — we all know the recruitment goals are in the toilet. Why would a young man enlist in the military other than to prove himself, to prove he's tougher than the other guy, that he can beat the other guy, that could beat the enemy, that he wants to protect America, he wants to protect our women and children. That's what a man goes into the military for.
Well, now let's look at what's going on, Carl. Fitness standards. After finding that women were not scoring as highly as men and under tremendous pressure from advocacy groups, the Army has thrown out all fitness tests. And so, now any soldier can meet any fitness requirement for combat specialties without a test. Number two. January 2021, the terrorist Biden signs an executive order, opens military service to all transgender individuals. We hear that's a good thing because all the transgenders, as you well know, are the best warriors on the battlefield. And then it gets worse. Biden decrees that active members of the military can take time off from their duties to get free sex change surgeries, Carl, and all related expensive hormones, Carl, and all expensive drugs, Carl, at our expense. That's what they went in the military, for free sex change surgery.
Carl, you've got time for a few more or do you want to get sick or you want to stay healthy today?
READ MORE: 'Homophobia always will be' a key part of 'MAGA populism': journalist
Higbie:
Oh, keep going, keep going.
Savage:
I'll give you two more. Alright, I did some research for you. The Biden administration, which is a terrorist administration tearing the country apart, ends its support for long-standing signed policies prohibiting individuals who are HIV-positive from serving in combat zones. That was based on sound science. It was tied to the need for HIV medications, which are very costly, and the danger of cross-infection through shared blood in a foxhole. Thrown out the door. Gets worse. The Biden's chief of naval operations,so-called Admiral Michael Gilday — I don't know who the hell he is — decided to add a book how to be an antichrist, one of the leading source books on so-called critical race theory, which is an anti-white hatefest. And, in the book given to our naval men and women now, are reading saying, 'capitalism is, essentially, racist and that to be truly anti-racist, you also have to be fully anti-capitalist.'
One more piece of information for those of you out there who want to know why I say Rome did not pass away, it was assassinated, and we are committing suicide because of the LGBTQ and other far-left maniacs. They're looking at readings that are required at West Point right now. There are now slides labeled 'white power' at West Point, Carl.Can you believe this? Now, if this goes on, I predicted twenty years ago in a not-so-joking way, like a Jonathan Swift, that if we don't stop these psychopathic haters, they will snap the crosses off the graves of our war memorials. How far away are we from someone saying,'all those crosses make me uncomfortable,and I want them snapped off the graves of dead soldiers.' Who's gonna stop them, Carl?
Higbie:
Me. I'll stop them, Mike. And that's the issue. You've got a lot of people just like me.
Savage:
I'll stop them. Know this, Carl. I've had enough. I've had enough. I'm an old man. But I'll tell you something,I'm willing to pick up arms. I can't take it anymore. I can't take this anymore!
Higbie:
Well, I, I, I see your frustration. I mean, look, you want to mess with, with the headstones of Arlington National Cemetery, we're gonna have a big problem, But on that, it's like all these people, they do this stuff in schools.Oh, we're going to trans your kids without yourself — what, just hear me out, Michael. What happens if I just started going, or we started going around as conservatives — baptizing people in elementary school [1 COMMANDMENTS] without parental consent? The libs would lose their mind. [FALSE EQUIV, PARENT CONSWENT]
READ MORE: Iowa GOP Governor passes bill 'loosening child labor laws' after banning LGBTQ+ books from schools
Savage:
Why not do it? You know, the real problem here are the lawyers. Let's not forget it's the lawyers, the lawyers, the lawyers. Shakespeare had it right. But it's the ACLU. People don't understand. I've been onto these people for twenty-five years. Theanti-Christian libertines union are run by the most — the sickest people with law degrees imaginable, and they're rolling in big money. The ACLU is the head of the snake, as I declared the year 2002. It's the ACLU that stands behind all of this insanity and any administration that comes along that has the power should arrest all of them and try them for sedition and deport them if possible.Those are big words. I'm nothing but a podcast host, but I have a way of putting things in concrete form. It's the ACLU that's the head of the snake that's destroying America. It's the lawyers, the lawyers, the lawyers. They're killing the country. I could go on and on and on. As you know, I don't want to write a book here as a guest — fill in guy here — but Carl, it's Memorial Day. I look at those graves and I know I wouldn't be here if it were not for them. I wouldn't be here if it were not for them.
Higbie — a forty-year-old Millennial — then concluded the conversation:
Unfortunately, Michael, we have an entire generation that just is not appreciative of a lot of the things that are going on.
Watch below via Media Matters for America or at this link.
READ MORE: How small towns weaponize Memorial Day
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2x?
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/11/trump-inauguration-money-links-secretive-dark-money/
Notorious “dark money” conduit Wellspring Committeegave $14.8 million to the primary spender on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation and paid $919,900 to the mysterious LLC that made a $1 million donation to President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, according to a new tax return obtained Nov. 27 by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Wellspring has acted as a conduit for large contributions from secretive donors since it was set up, effectively laundering multi-million dollar donations with no substantive disclosure or accountability.
Despite operating behind the scenes with a name unknown to most of the American public, Wellspring is at the crux of Ann and Neil Corkery’s network of politically active dark money groups, funneling millions from anonymous financiers to political causes they don’t want their names attached to — and doing ostensibly little else.
Wellspring has continued to be the chief financier of the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), with a $14,814,998 contribution last year.
JCN is another nondisclosing politically active nonprofit linked to the Corkerys’ network of conservative dark money groups. It has become the predominant dark money spender in Supreme Court confirmation fights as a vehicle for deep-pocketed donors to funnel millions of dollars behind or against judicial nominees.
Since 2010, Wellspring has funneled more than $54.2 million to JCN, according to tax returns obtained by CRP.
The bulk of Wellspring’s funds that came from three multi-million dollar secret donors in 2017, a shift from prior years in which the biggest amount the group received from a single mystery donor increased with each passing year. The largest donor accounted for $8.9 million, another gave $5.5 million and a third secret donor provided $2 million — but all of their identities remain hidden from the public.
The biggest anonymous contribution to Wellspring in 2016 was nearly $28.5 million, a jump from $8.5 million in 2015 and $6.96 million in 2014. That one secret donor accounted for around 90 percent of Wellspring’s funding in 2016, a year it gave $23 million to JCN.
As a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, JCN is not required to report its donors to the IRS — and chooses not to disclose its funders’ identities to the public — so its only discoverable donors are other entities like Wellspring that act as conduits for the anonymous money directed at JCN.
JCN was back in the limelight this year as the biggest spender in support of Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. Following its tried and true playbook, JCN launched its first ad about Kavanaugh before Trump even finished announcing his nomination and soon after announced plans to spend $10 million on his confirmation. JCN pledged $10 million to support the successful confirmation of Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, the prior year and reported spending $7 million to block the confirmation of Merrick Garland before President Barack Obama left office.
JCN has also spent substantial sums on lobbyists, including Jon Kyl, who lobbied to help JCN marshall in Gorsuch’s nomination before becoming the official White House “sherpa” guiding Kavanaugh through that same process. He was later appointed to fill the late Sen. John McCain’s seat — ultimately enabling him to vote for the confirmation he was once tasked with helping Kavanaugh secure.
JCN spent $483,246 in total on Facebook ads and just $1,900 on Google platforms around the fight to confirm Kavanaugh with an estimated reach of potentially millions of Facebook users.
TV advertising made up the bulk of JCN’s reported spending on Kavanaugh with around $3.9 million going TV ads, according to Kantar Media/CMAG estimates — leaving millions of dollars JCN had pledged to spend unaccounted for.
The puzzle of Trump’s mysterious inaugural gift
The only contractor paid by Wellspring last year wasBH Group, the mysterious LLC created four months to the day before it made a $1 million donation to the Trump inaugural committee on Dec. 22, 2016.
The newly discovered payment for “public relations” follows a $750,000 payment to the newly minted BH Group the prior year as well as $947,000 from JCN to the BH Group around when the LLC made its inaugural donation.
While it initially appeared that BH Group was merely a shell company created solely for the purpose of laundering money into the Trump inaugural committee, more information about the LLC has only added to its mystery.
New tax returnsreviewed by CRP reveal that Judicial Education Project, JCN’s sister 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, also paid an additional $1.3 million to BH Group LLC last year. Judicial Education Fund keeps its donors anonymous but CRP tracked the bulk of the group’s recent funding to DonorsTrust, which accounted for more than 99 percent of its money last year. Like JCN, Judicial Education Fund has also been funded by Wellspring in prior years.
One name that CRP has tiedto the mysterious LLC is Leonard Leo,the executive vice president at the Federalist Society, an influential conservative and libertarian legal organization, who listed “BH Group” as his employer in a campaign finance filing reported to the Federal Election Commission.
Leo’s more widely known affiliation with the Federalist Society has gained attention after reports that it played a substantial role guiding the hand of Trump’s White House in its judicial nomination process, including in the selection of Supreme Court justices.
Ann Corkery, the Wellspring Committee’s former president and wife of current president Neil Corkery, has reportedly worked closely with him in this process and Leo has been “directly involved” in raising much of the anonymous money the Wellspring Committee brings in every year.
A public records request revealed that Leo and another Federalist Society vice president have also been involved in a nonprofit called the BH Fund, which was set up to enforce a donor agreement between an anonymous $20 million donor and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, whose president came under fire for allowing donors to dictate conditions in return for financial gifts.
:{Incorporation records list BH Group’s address as a virtual office in Arlington, Va. and the only identified point of contact is Donna Smith, whose name matches that of a longtime paralegal at Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky, the law firm that shared a Warrenton, Va. office with the address the :{Trump inaugural committee on its tax return.}::{}:
}:
Continuing the money churn
Staying the course from prior years, Wellspring also gave $400,000 to the Catholic Association, $48,000 to the Annual Fund and $350,000 to the Foundation for Government Accountability’s 501(c)(4) arm, FGA Action.
Another appendage of the Corkerys’ dark money web is theFoundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), a nonprofit run by acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker before he became Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff, as CRP first reported in 2016. Like Wellspring, JCN and the Judicial Education Project, Neil Corkery is also the treasurer of FACT. Nearly 100 percent of FACT’s funding came from a single anonymous donor each year since the group was created in 2014, which CRP discovered came entirely from a donor-advised fund called DonorsTrust.
In addition to longstanding dark money stalwarts that have realigned their priorities for the Trump era, new groups spending heavily in support of Trump’s agenda also weighed in on Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation battle but are not entirely isolated from the Washington swamp Trump pledged to drain.
:{:{Wellspring was one of the early donors of 45Committee, another 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit that primarily exists to support Trump’s agenda which spent on ads supporting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation this year.}::{}:
}:
Another spender was America First Policies, the 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization staffed by former Trump campaign and White House personnel that has become the main dark money group supporting Trump’s agenda.
Although America First Policies itself does not reveal donors’ identities, CRP traced over a quarter of its funding to major corporate players, including Reynolds American and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a trade group representing the drug company industry’s lobbying interests.
New tax documents filed by another pro-Trump nonprofit, Great America Alliance, show it raised and spent around $3.4 million during that period. Unlike America First Policies, which reported millions more in previously undisclosed political spending it its new tax return, Great America Alliance claimed that it “educated voters through direct and indirect political advocacy messaging nationwide within the scope of applicable laws and regulations.”
This highlights one of the many legal grey areas emerging in the wake of Trump’s unprecedented move to register as a candidate for the 2020 presidential election on his first day in office — leaving the vast majority of financiers behind the growing network of dark money groups spending on his agenda a mystery.
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//NRA expose?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/jan-6-committee-zeroes-in-on-trump-e2-80-99s-big-lie-fundraising
zoe takes lead;
no lnx
the Jan. 6 committee spent most of its second hearing Monday picking apart Trump’s relentless lies about the 2020 election outcome — lies he pursued despite findings from both his campaign staff and government investigators that the election results were legitimate.
But Monday’s hearing ended with an interesting change of topic: The panel zeroed in on Trump’s fundraising. Specifically, the committee found, Trump lied to his base in order to raise millions of dollars, and then used that money to pursue his own political and personal ends.
According to the committee’s senior investigative counsel Amanda Wick, it went like this: After Trump lost the 2020 election — and even after the “safe harbor date” that usually spells the end of election lawsuits —Trump and his campaign pursued a fundraising strategy based around a so-called “Election Integrity Fund”: A fund that they told donors would help “PROTECT THE INTEGRITY OF OUR ELECTION” in dozens of emails over several weeks.
But the Election Integrity Fund didn’t exist: Gary Coby, the campaign’s former digital director, agreed during a deposition that it was a “marketing tactic.” And the tactic worked: The committee found that Trump and his allies raised nearly $100 million in the first week after the election.
On Nov. 9, Trump created the “Save America PAC.” Wick said most of the money for the “Election Defense Fund” went to that account. And that PAC, in turn, made millions in donations to Trump-aligned groups: $1 million to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ charitable foundation, $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, which employed several former Trump administration officials, $204,857 to the Trump Hotel Collection, and over $5 million to Event Strategies Inc., the company that ran Trump’s White House Ellipse rally — the event that preceded the Capitol attack.
The campaign sent fundraising emails regularly, including one about 30 minutes before the Capitol was breached, Wick said.
...
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-dark-money-machine-america-first-policies-gets-a-makeoverand-new-owners
no lnx
Trump’s Dark-Money Machine Gets a Makeover—and New Owners
BILL OF GOODS
The dark-money machine that has funded Donald Trump’s political operation for years has almost completely turned over and was “sold.” Experts say that doesn’t really make sense.
Roger Sollenberger
Political Reporter
Updated Dec. 13, 2021 6:00AM ET / Published Dec. 12, 2021
EXCLUSIVE
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
While ex-President Donald Trump spent the last year licking his election wounds and consolidating power in the Republican Party, his allies were busy reconfiguring a constellation of outside spending groups that have helped bankroll his political movement for years.
Trump’s influential “dark money” machine appears to have almost entirely turned over, capping the overhaul off with the apparent sale of a pro-Trump nonprofit earlier this year, The Daily Beast has learned.
The changing of the guard at the nonprofit, formerly known as America First Policies, illustrates how difficult it is to get a clear picture of the outside money fueling Trump’s movement. It reflects a turbulent year within the circle of Trump’s top advisers and fundraising chiefs, but also casts another layer of opacity over millions of dollars in already obscured donations the group made to controversial far-right causes in 2020, as Trump fought to cling to the White House.
“Whatever your views of so-called ‘dark money’ may be, these groups are further obscuring money flows.”
— Lloyd Mayer, University of Notre Dame
Lloyd Mayer, an expert in nonprofit law at the University of Notre Dame, cast these anti-transparency developments as “troubling,” saying they strike at the heart of federal sunshine laws.
“Whatever your views of so-called ‘dark money’ may be, these groups are further obscuring money flows,” he said.
How the money flows was already in little danger of becoming too clear.
America First Policies, a nonprofit which does not have to disclose its donors, was the core of a pro-Trump dark money network, with an organizational scheme that seems confusing by design.
If you were looking for an illustration of how difficult it is to track how these groups operate, America First Policies offers a prime example.
According to IRS records first obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, America First Policies filed to change its name to America First Works in October. But on Friday, a spokesperson for America First Works told The Daily Beast it wasn’t a name change—America First Policies had been “sold” to America First Works “in a private deal” earlier this year, he said.
“This is a different organization, under completely new ownership,” the spokesperson said. He declined to reveal the selling price.
Asked about the sale, Mayer said he did not understand exactly what the spokesperson was trying to say.
“Nonprofits generally do not have owners as a matter of state law, so I am not sure what they mean by ‘sold,’” Mayer said. “Nonprofits can sell their assets, including their name, as long as they do so for fair market value,” he explained, but pointed out that in this instance, “the nonprofit itself would have received the proceeds.”
“Control of a nonprofit can change, but the persons originally in control generally cannot sell control, as they do not own an equity interest,” he continued, noting that the rules would also depend on where the nonprofit was incorporated and what its governing documents provide.
The sale also shows that the byzantine pro-Trump dark money machine is reconfiguring itself ahead of the 2022 midterms, as well as Trump’s possible candidacy in 2024.
[The GOP Dark Money Group Giving Big to White Supremacists
UNWORTHY CAUSES
Roger Sollenberger]
According to tax records, Ashley Hayek is president of America First Works. Hayek’s LinkedIn page says she is also the “chief engagement officer” for the America First Policy Institute—another Trump-aligned group that sprung up earlier this year, and boasts a number of former administration and campaign officials on its roster.
It appears that the walls between the groups are thin. Last month, CNBC reported that America First Works has joined forces with AFPI, which is backing Trump’s lawsuit against social media companies.
Over the course of the year, these groups appear to have fully replaced the old infrastructure.
America First Policies was co-founded in 2017 by some of Trump’s top administration and campaign officials. It soon gave rise to a sister super PAC called America First Action, and the two entities were so close that they shared office space and even employees.
But in August, The Daily Beast reported that America First Action was also winding down, throwing its resources to the new Make America Great Again Action super PAC—a move which appears to have reflected the changing allegiances among Trump’s inner circle at the time.
All the confusion has one immediate upshot: It makes it even more difficult to understand who exactly is responsible for millions of dollars in shady grants that America First Policies doled out last year.
Those grants appeared in the tax report covering America First Policies’ activity last year, which was filed by America First Works and first obtained by the Center for Public Integrity. Some of the listed recipients have been tied to voter-suppression activity, and one of them is a hotbed for bigoted anti-LGTBQ rhetoric.
But paper trails vanish almost immediately, with some entities appearing to have evaded scrutiny after failing to file tax reports for several years—a pattern which raised concerns among experts in nonprofit law.
Robert Maguire, who tracks outside spending groups at government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the filing illustrates how political machines like the Trump network can shield controversial affiliations from public view.
“The nature of what they’re doing is legal, but they’re also absorbing the expenses and establishing distance from the actions of groups that could be seen as controversial. It gives the party and the campaign plausible deniability,” Maguire told The Daily Beast.
[Dark-Money Group Paid Former Trump AG to Ask for Pardons
BEG YOUR PARDON
Roger Sollenberger]
Take one recipient—Vision America Mobilized, a nonprofit which got half a million dollars from America First Policies last year, according to its tax filing.
Despite that donation, no group called “Vision Mobilized America” appears in the IRS database. That’s because the entity changed its name several years ago, to Million Voices Inc, a faith-based organization headquartered in Texas which does not appear to have filed with the IRS since 2016, according to the agency’s public database.
Mayer explained that groups sometimes change names to slough off negative publicity, allowing them “to distance themselves from bad press.” He noted that white supremacist groups—such as Identity Evropa—have tried this strategy.
And it turns out that Vision America Mobilized does indeed carry a dark past. But by listing the wrong name, America First Works blew the group’s cover—and possibly its own.
Vision America’s founder, Texas-based pastor Rick Scarborough, has a history of bigoted anti-LGBTQ statements. In 2013, he floated the idea of a class-action lawsuit against the gay community for “subjecting people to becoming AIDS sufferers.” Two years later, Scarborough—who once threatened to light himself on fire if the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage (spoiler: he did not)—called AIDS “God’s judgment on a sinful generation,” according to video posted by Right Wing Watch.
Scarborough is listed as a board member on the disclosure that Million Voices filed in 2016. He’s also a director for another nonprofit at the same address, called Vision America Action, whose last available tax return is from 2018.
However, Million Voices hasn’t filed a tax return since 2016. The IRS automatically revokes a group’s tax status if they fail to file returns for three years. Still, the disclaimer on its donations portal claims the group is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.
“I don’t know why this organization hasn’t had their status revoked,” Mayer said, upon reviewing the filings. “The IRS has over the years revoked hundreds of thousands of groups based on the three-year statute. The only speculation is that the IRS is so overwhelmed and under-resourced that, together with the demands of getting money out the door for COVID relief last year, it has fallen behind on this task.”
The America First Works spokesperson declined to comment on the grants, and, upon divulging the recent sale, referred questions back to America First Policies.
The Daily Beast reached out to Brian Walsh, former head of America First Policies, who declined comment. Million Voices did not respond to a request for comment.
“The IRS is terrible at keeping track of entities supposed to be filing tax returns,” Maguire said. “You can have these shell groups where, if the IRS did conduct some analysis, they might find they’re in violation. But when they do go after them, the IRS often gets accused of some sort of political witch hunt, so it shies away from that activity.”
The group’s largest gift, about $4.8 million, went to a conservative dark-money clearinghouse called Donors Trust. It appears to have been earmarked for something called the “Honest Elections Project,” a dark-money group which has been tied to voter suppression efforts. (Its website domain was at one point apparently quite open about this goal: hardtovote.honestelections.org.)
Last year, the Honest Elections Project also filed an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court laying out a scheme in which state legislatures could unilaterally overturn election results.
[How Right-Wing Dark Money Is Trying to Kneecap the Biden DOJ
TIME TO FIGHT
Sheldon Whitehouse]
However, the Donors Trust filing does not show contributions adding up to anything like America First’s $4.8 million—the Honest Elections Project only got $170,000, per the filing.
Asked about this discrepancy, the America First Works spokesperson replied, “Huh.”
But this trail twists again. Donors Trust reported that all its grants to the Honest Election Project had actually gone through another group first, The 85 Fund. But even that relationship is misleading—documents obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics show that The 85 Fund actually is the Honest Elections Project.
That relationship is a cakewalk compared to another voter-suppression group America First Policies supported last year—a flat $2 million contribution to an “election integrity” group calledBe Counted, with almost no public footprint whatsoever.
Outside of a CREW report from 2016, which details a voter-shaming campaign which individuals and local officials described at the time as “creepy” and “a form of intimidation,” Be Counted appears in hardly any press. The group appears tied to the Republican Governors Association, according to its most recent IRS filing, from 2019, which lists a slate of directors affiliated with the RGA.
But it turns out that, like Million Voices, Be Counted also appears to have changed its name. In 2019, it became Be Registered LLC, but with no 2020 tax filing on the books for either group, it’s unclear whether America First Policies contributed yet again to a group under an incorrect name.
Yet another beneficiary, Ohio-basedMoms for America, has also not filed a return since 2018. Moms for America held Trump rallies ahead of the election, and helped organize the “Save the Republic” rally by the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 5. It got $100,000 from America First last year.
Of course, the Trump money machine has never been easy to follow. But the connections appear even blurrier now that Trump is out of office. And thanks to IRS filing deadlines, voters may not know what these groups are currently up to until next November, after the midterms.
“Timing matters,” Mayer said. “The longer it takes for the information to come out, the less it’s on the public’s mind. And by delaying flings and obscuring who these groups are, that information only gets older and colder and staler. Even if it all comes out accurately and on time in 2022, it still may not make the news.”
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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/11/16/alec-academy-featured-a-whos-who-of-voter-suppression-leaders/
an “Academy” for state lawmakers on voter suppression strategies run by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in July featured a veritable who’s who of the right-wing leaders behind this year’s disinformation campaign about voter fraud and assaults on voting rights across the country, documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) show.
While the July 26-28 session was ostensibly led by the dark money group Honest Elections Project, it was organized, hosted, and bankrolled by ALEC, despite repeated claims by its CEO, Lisa Nelson, that the group does not work on voting issues.
Nelson provided the formal welcome at the conference’s opening session, ALEC staff organized turnout, and ALEC provided two nights of accommodations at the five-star Grand America Hotel, five meals, and a $450 travel reimbursement for attendees. ALEC’s annual meeting was held at the same hotel immediately after the Academy.
An invite published by CMD in July stated that “13 legislators from across the country” would be in attendance, but the materials acquired by CMD do not include an attendance list.
Rather than email materials to ALEC lawmakers that may be subject to open records laws, ALEC distributed hard copies of the agenda at registration along with a “zip drive containing a resources document and a one-pager on your state’s election policies,” according to an email from Sarah Wall, ALEC’s manager of legislative outreach and coalitions, obtained by CMD. Wall’s email also lists Michael Bowman, president of ALEC Action, as a key contact for the event.
Nelson tipped her hand about ALEC’s voter suppression subterfuge in May at a meeting of the far-right Council for National Policy. Video of the event obtained by CMD shows Nelson speaking frankly about ALEC’s work on voting and revealing its plans to outsource model policy on the controversial topic to avert the spotlight. “We don’t have model policy. We will be developing that at the Honest Elections Project [Academy], through them,” Nelson said.
Honest Elections Project, the group ALEC chose to carry the ball on its voting agenda, is a dark money operation formed in February 2020 to push for voting restrictions and spread baseless and dangerous claims about election fraud, laying the groundwork for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. It is a project of The 85 Fund, the new legal name for the Judicial Education Project, a group linked to Leonard Leo that played a central role in Trump’s effort to pack the federal judiciary with right-wing judges.
Speakers at the Academy featured many of the key strategists and leaders on the Right spreading misinformation around voter fraud, promoting Trump’s lies around the 2020 election, and pushing sweeping new voting restrictions.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita gave the keynote address. A proponent of Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen, Rokita recently testified in front of the U.S. Senate against strengthening the federal Voting Rights Act.
Rokita was one of only four state attorneys general to not sign a National Association of Attorneys General letter condemning the Jan. 6 violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and is a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). RAGA was a member of the “March to Save America” coalition that organized the Jan. 6 rally, and its policy arm, Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent out robocalls urging supporters to “march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal.”
Agenda Focused on Election Legislation
Most of the Academy sessions focused on legislation, giving legislators a chance to discuss bills to restrict voting that have already been introduced and passed in their states this year and hear from Republican-aligned leaders about what more they think needs to be done.
By the time ALEC held its voter suppression Academy in July, 18 states had already passed 30 laws this year making it harder to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
The Honest Elections Project’s Executive Director Jason Snead, who worked with ALEC to organize the event, laid out “priorities for election integrity across the states” and polling results in a breakfast session and appeared on another panel on how to “shore up” legislative control over election processes with Jason Torchinsky and Lee Goodman.
The Honest Elections Project has aggressively promoted a radical legal theory called the “independent state legislatures doctrine,” which holds that state courts don’t have the authority to review state election laws and would empower heavily gerrymandered state legislatures to determine election outcomes.
Republican legislators have already introduced and passed bills in 2021 “interfering with nonpartisan local election administration and consolidating power to administer and determine elections results themselves,” the Voting Rights Lab reported.
Snead is a former senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation where he developed its Election Fraud Database, which the Brennan Center for Justice says “grossly exaggerated” the extent of voter fraud.
Torchinsky is general counsel for the National Republican Redistricting Trust and has been defending ALEC against CMD’s state complaints alleging that ALEC illegally gave sophisticated voter management campaign software linked to the Republican National Committee to its legislative members.
Goodman is an elections attorney and a former Republican chairman and commissioner of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) between 2013 and 2018.
Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action, and Ken Blackwell, executive director of the MAGA voter suppression center at America First Policy Institute led another legislative session on “securing absentee ballots.”
Anderson bragged to Heritage donors in April that policies, “severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes” and “preventing election officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters” were among recommendations Heritage gave Georgia for its massive voter suppression bill.
Blackwell’s Center for Election Integrityrecently published a “Top 25 Common-Sense State Election Integrity Reforms” fact sheet that includes these Heritage recommendations alongside other extreme voter suppression wish-list items, such as eliminating no-excuse absentee ballots and requiring an affidavit for absentee applications.
Blackwell also moderated a panel at the Academy with state legislators “discussing election challenges they’ve faced in their own states.”
Another panel over breakfast covered “things to consider with implementation of laws” related to election day voter registration, “election observer protections,” and organizing seniors to work the polls. Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Donald Palmer, a Trump appointee, and Cleta Mitchell, chair of the Conservative Partnership Institute’s Election Integrity Network, led the session.
Mitchell is a Big Lie fueler and Trump legal advisor who lost her job at Foley & Lardner following news that she participated in a January call in which Trump asked Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to make him the winner of the state’s electoral votes.
“On Dec. 30, Cleta Mitchell wrote to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and offered to send some 1,800 pages of documents purporting to support claims of election fraud,” The Washington Post Magazine reported. Meadows is now a colleague of Mitchell’s at the Conservative Partnership Institute.
Three Republican secretaries of state, Tennessee’s Tre Hargett, Kentucky’s Michael Adams, and West Virginia’s Mac Warner, spoke on a panel about “what policies the states need to employ to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”
“Easier to vote and harder to cheat” has been a favored talking point of Republicans in recent years.
All three are active in the Republican Secretaries of State Committee (RSSC), with Hargett serving as chair and Adams as vice chair. Republican secretaries of state produced a report on “Best Practices for Making It Easier to Vote and Harder to Cheat” for the Republican State Leadership Committee, obtained by CMD.
The RSSC holds monthly calls that Commissioner Palmer often attends. Secretary Warner and Palmer also participated in an “off-the-record” Election University session on June 21 as part of the U.S. House GOP’s “Faith in Elections Project,” as first reported by CMD.
ALEC Lawmakers Consider Litigation
ALEC’s Academy featured two panels on litigation. The first dealt with “anticipating challenges to the Voting Rights Act in Arizona,” legal challenges mounted by Democratic voting rights attorney Marc Elias, and redistricting fights, and was led by with Republican lawyers Torchinsky, Michael Thielen, and Brian Barnes.
Thielen is the executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association and served on the national board of Lawyers for Trump in 2020. Barnes was involved in legal challenges to changes in voting procedures in North Carolina and Pennsylvania last fall.
Goodman and Utah’s former Solicitor General Tyler Green led the second panel on “operationalizing litigation challenges.” Noted in the description of the panel are “ways to challenge the scope of litigation attacks on new election integrity legislation (defense) as well as advance the ball on election integrity (offense).”
As of Oct. 3, “at least 43 voting cases have been filed in 12 states, and Georgia and Texas lead the way with ten new lawsuits each in 2021,” the Brennan Center reports.
Training Sessions on “the Left”
Two trainings focused on “the Left” filled out the remaining agenda at the ALEC Academy. Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow and manager of the Heritage Foundation’s “Election Reform Initiative,” and Ken Cuccinelli, former Trump staffer and chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, led a session focused on “the Left’s attack on our election system” through “state-level attacks on election integrity legislation” and HR 1, the sweeping voting rights and campaign reform bill pending in Congress....Spakovsky, who was appointed by Trump to his voter fraud myth from the Right for well over a decade.president of the Scott Walter gave the keynote for a “Mapping the Left Lunch.” Walter and CRC received funding from the Bradley Foundation... ;inspired by CMD’s SourceWatch, called “Influence Watch.” The site was “constructed in partnership with Berman and Company,” run by PR spin doctor Richard Berman, and in collaboration with ALEC.
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https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/11/trump-inauguration-money-links-secretive-dark-money/
Notorious “dark money” conduit Wellspring Committeegave $14.8 million to the primary spender on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation and paid $919,900 to the mysterious LLC that made a $1 million donation to President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, according to a new tax return obtained Nov. 27 by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Wellspring has acted as a conduit for large contributions from secretive donors since it was set up, effectively laundering multi-million dollar donations with no substantive disclosure or accountability.
Despite operating behind the scenes with a name unknown to most of the American public, Wellspring is at the crux of Ann and Neil Corkery’s network of politically active dark money groups, funneling millions from anonymous financiers to political causes they don’t want their names attached to — and doing ostensibly little else.
Wellspring has continued to be the chief financier of the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), with a $14,814,998 contribution last year.
JCN is another nondisclosing politically active nonprofit linked to the Corkerys’ network of conservative dark money groups. It has become the predominant dark money spender in Supreme Court confirmation fights as a vehicle for deep-pocketed donors to funnel millions of dollars behind or against judicial nominees.
Since 2010, Wellspring has funneled more than $54.2 million to JCN, according to tax returns obtained by CRP.
The bulk of Wellspring’s funds that came from three multi-million dollar secret donors in 2017, a shift from prior years in which the biggest amount the group received from a single mystery donor increased with each passing year. The largest donor accounted for $8.9 million, another gave $5.5 million and a third secret donor provided $2 million — but all of their identities remain hidden from the public.
The biggest anonymous contribution to Wellspring in 2016 was nearly $28.5 million, a jump from $8.5 million in 2015 and $6.96 million in 2014. That one secret donor accounted for around 90 percent of Wellspring’s funding in 2016, a year it gave $23 million to JCN.
As a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, JCN is not required to report its donors to the IRS — and chooses not to disclose its funders’ identities to the public — so its only discoverable donors are other entities like Wellspring that act as conduits for the anonymous money directed at JCN.
JCN was back in the limelight this year as the biggest spender in support of Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. Following its tried and true playbook, JCN launched its first ad about Kavanaugh before Trump even finished announcing his nomination and soon after announced plans to spend $10 million on his confirmation. JCN pledged $10 million to support the successful confirmation of Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, the prior year and reported spending $7 million to block the confirmation of Merrick Garland before President Barack Obama left office.
JCN has also spent substantial sums on lobbyists, including Jon Kyl,who lobbied to help JCN marshall in Gorsuch’s nomination before becoming the official White House “sherpa” guiding Kavanaugh through that same process.He was later appointed to fill the late Sen. John McCain’s seat — ultimately enabling him to vote for the confirmation he was once tasked with helping Kavanaugh secure.
JCN spent $483,246 in total on Facebook ads and just $1,900 on Google platforms around the fight to confirm Kavanaugh with an estimated reach of potentially millions of Facebook users.
TV advertising made up the bulk of JCN’s reported spending on Kavanaugh with around $3.9 million going TV ads, according to Kantar Media/CMAG estimates — leaving millions of dollars JCN had pledged to spend unaccounted for.
The puzzle of Trump’s mysterious inaugural gift
The only contractor paid by Wellspring last year was BH Group, the mysterious LLC created four months to the day before it made a $1 million donation to the Trump inaugural committee on Dec. 22, 2016.
The newly discovered payment for “public relations” follows a $750,000 payment to the newly minted BH Group the prior year as well as $947,000 from JCN to the BH Group around when the LLC made its inaugural donation.
While it initially appeared that BH Group was merely a shell company created solely for the purpose of laundering money into the Trump inaugural committee, more information about the LLC has only added to its mystery.
New tax returns reviewed by CRP reveal thatJudicial Education Project, JCN’s sister 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization,also paid an additional $1.3 million to BH Group LLC last year. Judicial Education Fund keeps its donors anonymous but CRP tracked the bulk of the group’s recent funding to DonorsTrust, which accounted for more than 99 percent of its money last year. Like JCN, Judicial Education Fund has also been funded by Wellspring in prior years.
One name that CRP has tied to the mysterious LLC is Leonard Leo, the executive vice president at the Federalist Society, an influential conservative and libertarian legal organization, who listed “BH Group” as his employer in a campaign finance filing reported to the Federal Election Commission.
Leo’s more widely known affiliation with the Federalist Society has gained attention after reports that it played a substantial role guiding the hand of Trump’s White House in its judicial nomination process, including in the selection of Supreme Court justices.
Ann Corkery,the Wellspring Committee’s former president and wife of current president Neil Corkery, has reportedly worked closely with him in this process and Leo has been “directly involved” in raising much of the anonymous money the Wellspring Committee brings in every year.
A public records request revealed that Leo and another Federalist Society vice president have also been involved in a nonprofit called the BH Fund, which was set up to enforce a donor agreement between an anonymous $20 million donor and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, whose president came under fire for allowing donors to dictate conditions in return for financial gifts.
:{Incorporation records list BH Group’s address as a virtual office in Arlington, Va. and the only identified point of contact is Donna Smith, whose name matches that of a longtime paralegal at Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky, the law firm that shared a Warrenton, Va. office with the address the Trump inaugural committee on its tax return.:{}:
}:
Continuing the money churn
Staying the course from prior years, Wellspring also gave $400,000 to the Catholic Association, $48,000 to the Annual Fund and $350,000 to the Foundation for Government Accountability’s 501(c)(4) arm, FGA Action.
Another appendage of the Corkerys’ dark money web is the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT),a nonprofit run by acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker before he became Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff, as CRP first reported in 2016. Like Wellspring, JCN and the Judicial Education Project, Neil Corkery is also the treasurer of FACT. Nearly 100 percent of FACT’s funding came from a single anonymous donor each year since the group was created in 2014, which CRP discovered came entirely from a donor-advised fund called DonorsTrust.
In addition to longstanding dark money stalwarts that have realigned their priorities for the Trump era, new groups spending heavily in support of Trump’s agenda also weighed in on Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation battle but are not entirely isolated from the Washington swamp Trump pledged to drain.
:{Wellspring was one of the early donors of 45Committee, another 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit that primarily exists to support Trump’s agenda which spent on ads supporting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation this year.:{}:
}:
Another spender was America First Policies, the 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization staffed by former Trump campaign and White House personnelthat has become the main dark money group supporting Trump’s agenda.
Although America First Policies itself does not reveal donors’ identities, CRP traced over a quarter of its funding to major corporate players, including Reynolds American and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a trade group representing the drug company industry’s lobbying interests.
New tax documents filed by another pro-Trump nonprofit, Great America Alliance, show it raised and spent around $3.4 million during that period. Unlike America First Policies, which reported millions more in previously undisclosed political spending it its new tax return, Great America Alliance claimed that it “educated voters through direct and indirect political advocacy messaging nationwide within the scope of applicable laws and regulations.”
This highlights one of the many legal grey areas emerging in the wake of Trump’s unprecedented move to register as a candidate for the 2020 presidential election on his first day in office — leaving the vast majority of financiers behind the growing network of dark money groups spending on his agenda a mystery.
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https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/18/politics/kfile-carl-higbie-on-the-radio/index.html
no lnx audio
CNN)WARNING: This story contains graphic language.
Trump administration appointee Carl Higbie resigned Thursday as chief of external affairs for the federal government's volunteer service organization after a CNN KFile review of racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT comments he made on the radio.
"Effective immediately, Carl Higbie has resigned as Chief of External Affairs at CNCS," Samantha Jo Warfield, a spokesperson for CNCS, said in a statement.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Higbie's resignation. Higbie did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Thursday.
In a tweet Friday morning, Higbie apologized for his comments.
"I'm sorry. I'm not sorry that my words were published, I am sorry that I said them in 2013," he wrote. "Those words do not reflect who I am or what I stand for, I regret saying them. Last night I informed the WH that I was resigning so as not to distract from POTUS' many success. #noexcuses"
Higbie, a former Navy SEAL and conservative media personality, was a surrogate for Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, appearing on cable news and serving as the spokesman for the Trump-alignedGreat America PAC.He was appointed to the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) in 2017 to direct the public image and messaging of the federal department that manages millions of Americans in volunteer services like AmeriCorps and Senior Corps.
CNCS, formed in 1993, connects volunteers with service opportunities, often in the neediest areas across the country.
According to the organization's website, the projects are mainly focused on six priority areas: disaster services, economic opportunity, education, environmental stewardship, healthy futures, and veterans and military families.
In one of the comments unearthed by KFile, Higbie said you could "guess the color" of a family he described that lived in his condo association.
"I told this story the other day on my show. Somebody who lives in my condo association that has five kids, and it's her and her husband with the five kids and the mother, the grandmother of the kids, and they don't have jobs, they're there all the time -- I bet you can guess what color they are -- and they have no job," he said.
The remark is just one of several racist and inflammatory comments the KFile review found. As host of the radio program "Sound of Freedom," on Internet talk radio, Higbie made shocking comments about black Americans, Muslims, women, LGBT people, veterans suffering from PTSD and immigrants.
On race:
Speaking on 'Sound of Freedom' in December 2013, Higbie, while recounting a time he placed an advertisement to give away free firewood, said "the black race" had "lax" morals. He added that black women think "breeding is a form of government employment."
"Only one person was actually cordial to me," Higbie said. "Every other black person was rude. They wanted me to either load the wood, completely split it for them or some sort of you know assistance in labor. Now, mind you the ad was for free firewood, come take it all you want. And I believe that this translates directly into the culture that is breeding this welfare and the high percentage of people on welfare in the black race. It's a lax of morality."
He added later, "We're promoting birth control to a black woman because of the incredibly high rate of children born out of wedlock that are under-cared for or not cared for at all. The taxpayers are tired of supporting government checks going to these people who think that breeding is a form of employment. I'm sorry if black people are the majority of the targeted audience. They are, statistically they are."
In January 2013, on Sound of Freedom, Higbie said he was bothered that black Americans call themselves African-Americans when they had never been to Africa.
"The whole African-American thing gets me whipped up because it's like 99% -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- of people who write down African-American have never been to Africa," Higbie said. "So barring dual citizenship, you're American or you're African, but you're not both. I don't care what you think. That's another thing that just sets me off."
In February 2013, one of Higbie's guests spoke about teaching in an urban area.
"An urban area, you mean the ghetto?" interjected Higbie.
On Muslims:
Higbie repeatedly said on the radio that he did not like Muslims.
"People say, 'you know, you're so harsh,'" Higbie said on Warrior Talk Radio in August 2014. "I was called an Islamophobe and I was like, 'no, no, no, no, no, I'm not afraid of them. I don't like them. Big difference.' And they were like, 'well, you're racist.' I was like, fine if that's the definition of it, then I guess I am.'"
Speaking on "Sound of Freedom" in June 2013, Higbie said he didn't like Muslims because he hated their religious ideology.
"Go back to your Muslim shithole and go crap in your hands and bang little boys on Thursday nights," Higbie said. "I just don't like Muslim people. People always rip me a new one for that. Carl, you're racist, you can't, you're sexist. I'm like Jesus Christ. I just don't like Muslim people because their ideology sucks."
"Well people are like, 'well, you can't hate somebody just for being Muslim,'" Higbie added. "It's like, yeah, I can. Do you hate people who rape little boys? They say, 'oh, of course. They're just terrible people.' Well, yeah, most Muslims believe that to have sex with men is OK, which I don't like it all. But second off, it's the ideology of a child molester. The ideology of a Muslim is what I don't like. They are screwed up in the head and it makes, pisses me off."
On soldiers with PTSD:
Higbie derided members of the military suffering from severe PTSD as having "a weak mind" and said 75% of those afflicted were either lying or milking it for federal money.
"Yeah I'm a gonna go out on limb here and say, a lot of people are going to disagree with this comment," Higbie said on Sound of Freedom in February 2013. "But severe PTSD, where guys are bugging out and doing violent acts, is a trait of a weak mind. Now things like (military member) Brandon, where he was legitimately blown up and a loud noise makes him on edge -- completely understandable, but when someone performs an act of violence that is a, it is a weak mind. That is a crazy person, and the fact that they're trying to hide it behind PTSD makes me want to vomit."
"I'd say 75% of people with PTSD don't actually have it, and they're either milking something for a little extra money in disability or they're just, they honestly are just lying," Higbie said in August 2014, as a guest on an Internet radio show. "Twenty-five percent legitimately do have problems. They have bad dreams. They can't cope. They have problems with noises and things like that. And I really think there are people that cannot deal with the stress of combat and some people can."
Shooting undocumented immigrants:
In a February 2013 episode of "Sound of Freedom," Higbie said American citizens with guns should be allowed to go to the border to shoot undocumented immigrants crossing into the US.
"What's so wrong with wanting to put up a fence and saying, 'hey, everybody with a gun, if you want to go shoot people coming across our border illegally, you can do it fo' free,'" Higbie said. "And you can do it on your own, and you'll be under the command of the, you know, National Guard unit or a Border Patrol, I think stick a fence six feet high with signs on it in both English and Spanish and it says 'if you cross this border, this is the American border, you cross it, we're going to shoot you.'"
"You cross my border, I will shoot you in the face," Higbie added. "I will go down there. I'll volunteer to go down there and stand on that border for, I don't know, a week or so at a time and that'll be my civil duty. I'll volunteer to do it."
Smeared Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi:
In June 2013 on Sound of Freedom, Higbie called California Sen. Dianne Feinstein a "bitch" whose head he would like to smack into House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's.
"Nothing gets me going like Ted Cruz, when he went off on the Feinstein Bitch about the Second Amendment and he put her in her place," Higbie said. "That was just fantastic. I can't stand that woman. She's another one. Her and Pelosi. I'd love to just take both their heads and smack them together a couple of times."
On gay people:
In May 2013 on Sound of Freedom, Higbie said he did not like gay people.
"Rhode Island, land of more liberals, has just OK'ed, gay marriage," Higbie said. "Congratuf'in'lations, you suck, Rhode Island. Why would you do that? Go ahead and twist the knife a little, little bit more. I mean, you are breaking the morals, the moral fiber of our country. You know, I don't like gay people. I just don't."
Later in the show, Higbie elaborated on his views.
"I talk about this in my book, you know, I was, I was molested by a gay guy when I was a young kid and that kind of set the precedence for me. So I, I just, I really don't care for them. You know what, you want to be gay? Fine. Do it over in your own corner," he said. "If I was president of the United States, I wouldn't make laws saying you can't be gay because I believe that's your right. So go over there, be gay, don't march down in the middle of the street and your drag outfit being fairies and things like that. Don't throw it in my face. Don't make me like it because I don't -- do it on your own. Do it over there and let it be your thing."
Birther comments:
Higbie frequently questioned the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.
In 2015, Higbie spoke for nearly an hour with "Where's Obama's Birth Certificate" radio.
"This birth certificate thing," Higbie said. "Sure, absolutely legitimate claim. You want to know if this, where was this guy born. That's a legitimate question." Higbie added later that Obama's birth certificate was "pixelated."
In March 2013 on Sound of Freedom, Higbe called Obama "the Muslim who was born in Kenya -- don't even get me started on that."
He later added, "Harvard, up in Boston, he put on his fricking application that he was born in Kenya."
Claims that Obama was born in Kenya or that he forged his documents are false.
Said people on government assistance shouldn't be able to vote:
In June 2016, while appearing as a guest on Global Patriot Radio, Higbie said people who receive government assistance shouldn't be allowed to vote in the subsequent election.
"If you have taken any benefit, if you have elected to take any benefit from the government at any given time during any election cycle, you do not get to vote at the subsequent election," he said. "Because now you have people voting for a living. They don't have to work, and if you want to solve them now -- it's very hard to get something like this past, I'll be honest -- but if you pass something like that, what you would see is, you would see people who aren't contributing to the system, not voting for the system and you'll have a massive slide to the right in this country."
---
AN 5/18
Carl Higbie, a former Trump administration official who now works as a high-ranking staffer at a super PAC connected to the president’s agenda distanced himself from racist comments he made on the radio that led to his resignation in January. Now, however, he is doubling down on his claim that black people are “statistically” lazier than whites and claiming the comments were taken out of context.
CNN’s KFILE, the blog that originally revealed the America First Policies’ staffer’s numerous bigoted comments, reported Tuesday that Higbie has since recanted his apology for the remarks he made on his radio show in 2013 and 2014. During those shows, Higbie said he believes “wholeheartedly” that the “black race as a whole” are lazier than white people. He also claimed black women use welfare “as a form of employment,” and that he doesn’t like Muslims because their “ideology sucks.”
When resigning from his position leading the government program that sponsors Americorps, Higbie said that his comments from years prior “do not reflect who I am or what I stand for” and claimed to “regret saying them.”
During a radio appearance on Friday, however, the former Trump administration official said he stands by his comments.
“They dig up a couple things, a couple. Look, I had a radio show,” Higbie told Virginia talk radio DJ John Fredericks. “How many times have you said something on radio that could possibly be construed as very controversial when taken completely out of context? What, daily?”
Higbie went on to tout his time spent “in low-income, urban minority communities” as well as his “mission trips in high school to Dominican Republic, Central America [and] South America” before saying he made a “statistical observation” about black people as a race.
“It fit their narrative,” he said of KFILE’s reporting that led to his resignation. “And because I made a statistical observation, they think that’s racist.”
CNN noted that America First Policies, Higbie’s employer, has hosted a number of events that have been attended by President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who is scheduled to attend another such event tonight where the staffer will reportedly be. The super PAC also used to employ Pence’s chief of staff before he took his job in the White Hous
---
wiki
America First Policies is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, incorporated on January 27, 2017,[1] to promote the policy agenda of the Donald Trump presidential campaign.[2][3][4][5] On March 30, 2017, Katie Walsh, formerly White House Deputy Chief of Staff, left that position to join America First Policies.[6]^
Formation:
America First Policies was founded by several people, including Nick Ayers, a Republican consultant who is regarded as Mike Pence's top political adviser,[7] and Rick Gates.
Trump Presidential Campaign donor Rebekah Mercer disagreed with Brad Parscale about the direction of America First Policies. Mercer wanted America First Policies' data engine to be Cambridge Analytica, which would have effectively given her organizational control and potentially influence over the Republican Party. If Mercer had control over the organization's database and the money, Mercer could have led the organization to sway President's supporters against the President.[8]^
:{:{Targeted campaigns}:
On June 23, 2017, Republican Senator Dean Heller was targeted with an advertising campaign over his opposition to the Obamacare repeal bill. Heller is considered vulnerable in the 2018 election.[9]^
:{:{References}:
- Jump up "America First Policies - Initial File Number: N00005573092". Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. Government of the District of Columbia. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
- Jump up Zarroli, Jim (January 31, 2017). "Trump Political Advisers Now Raising Money For His 'America First' Agenda". Npr.org. Retrieved 22 May2017.
- Jump up Bykowicz, Julie (January 30, 2017). "Trump advisers start 'America First Policies' nonprofit". Usnews.com. Associated Press. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
- Jump up Bykowicz, Julie (January 30, 2017). "Trump advisers start 'America First Policies' nonprofit". Businessinsider.com. Associated Press. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
- Jump up Bykowicz, Julie (January 30, 2017). "Trump Advisers Start 'America First Policies' Nonprofit". Nbcnewyork.com. Associated Press. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
- Jump up Miller, Zeke J.; Elliott, Philip (March 30, 2017). "White House Deputy Chief of Staff Leaves for Pro-Trump Group". time.com. Retrieved 30 March 2017.
- Jump up Thrush, Glenn; Martin, Jonathan (June 27, 2017). "On Senate Health Bill, Trump Falters in the Closer's Role". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
- Jump up Ward, Vicky (March 17, 2017). "The Blow-It-All-Up Billionaires". Huffington Post. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
- Jump up Nussbaum, Matthew; Isenstadt, Alex (June 23, 2017). "Pro-Trump group to target GOP Sen. Heller over health care bill". Politico. Retrieved 23 December 2017.
:{:{External links}:
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ggl 5 26
[### Carl Higbie
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Carl_Higbie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Higbie)
Carlton Milo Higbie IV (born April 23, 1983) is an American conservative political activist, author, and former U.S. Navy SEAL. He was director of advocacy ...Read more
[### Carl Higbie to Join CPAC USA 2026
cpac.org
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Mar 12, 2026 — Higbie served as a senior Presidential appointee during the Trump administration, holding the position of Chief of External Affairs for the ...Read more
[### NAPABA Outraged by Trump PAC Spokesman Japanese ...
National Asian Pacific American Bar Association
https://www.napaba.org › page › trump_pac_comments](https://www.napaba.org/page/trump_pac_comments)
Nov 17, 2016 — NAPABA condemns the comments about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II made by Carl Higbie, a spokesman for the pro- ...Read more
[### With liberals losing it over President Trump's "Truth and ...
Facebook · NEWSMAX
3.6K+ reactions · 2 days ago](https://www.facebook.com/NEWSMAX/posts/with-liberals-losing-it-over-president-trumps-truth-and-justice-fund-carl-higbie/1518079900364607/)
With liberals losing it over President Trump's "Truth and Justice" fund, Carl Higbie recalls the endless list of taxpayer-funded Democrat ...
[### Great America PAC
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Great_America_PAC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_America_PAC)
Great America PAC is a former super PAC (political action committee) that supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. It was founded in 2016 ...Read more
[### Hardcore Trumpy Host Warns President He's Facing ' ...
Yahoo
https://www.yahoo.com › news › articles › hardcore-tru...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/hardcore-trumpy-host-warns-president-153402303.html)
Mar 17, 2026 — A top MAGA news anchor has warned President Donald Trump that his new war with Iran risks making a right mess of his second administration.
[### Carl Higbie Books & Clubs - Fable
fable.co
https://fable.co › author › carl-higbie](https://fable.co/author/carl-higbie)
In 2003 Carl dropped out of college, leaving behind a promising wrestling career and enlisted to become a US Navy SEAL. He completed 2 combat deployments to ...Read more
[### Senior adviser who worked for disgraced Trump appointee ...
WRAL
https://www.wral.com › senior-adviser-who-worked-for...](https://www.wral.com/senior-adviser-who-worked-for-disgraced-trump-appointee-at-federal-volunteer-agency-was-banned-by-uber-over-allegations-of-racia/17301129/)
Jan 30, 2018 — A senior adviser who worked for disgraced Trump appointee Carl Higbie was banned from using Uber after an incident early last year in which ...
[### Carl Higbie and the Bizarre Theatrics of Late-Stage ...
Substack · Battle Borne
5 likes · 5 years ago](https://battleborne.substack.com/p/carl-higbie-conservative-veterans)
Faced with ascendant militarism from Democrats, Republicans have embraced an evermore extreme cadre of veterans.
[### Our next board member is Carl Higbie 🇺🇸 ... - Facebook
Facebook · Pipe Hitter Foundation
20+ reactions · 5 years ago](https://www.facebook.com/pipehitterfoundation/photos/our-next-board-member-is-carl-higbie-carl-was-born-in-1983-in-southwestern-conne/150517829988442/)
... Great America Super PAC. He currently sits on the advisory board of “Heartbeat for Warriors” as well as “Heroes to Heroes” Higbie is quickly ...Read more