BANNON 4

see RULE OF LAW SOC

SEE FIVE WAR ROOM

see gt reset

see war room podcast (on real am voice)

html 'rehabilitate'

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contender for Who Broke AM? demonization /polarization war rhet --> violence

Ginni Cleta (CNP?) groundswell

see school bd and CRT, also election officers/ local takeover

aha doh macho strict father? war metaphor, army jacket (navy thus no combat // chickenhawk]

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5 notes not loading? 12 23

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mma 12 23

On Tuesday, Americans for Prosperity, a 501(c)(4) founded by billionaire industrialists Charles and the late David Koch, endorsed former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for president. The endorsement, AFP’s first in a Republican primary, comes amid consistent media chatter that Haley has surpassed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the preeminent GOP challenger to former President Donald Trump.

An array of right-wing media voices took the news as an attempt by Haley to buy her way into the Republican nomination, with a GOP establishment funding her campaign in a last attempt to thwart Trump.

These voices claim that Haley may also be attempting to stay in the race until the GOP convention, maintaining just enough support to broker her way into a vice presidential nomination. In this way, they suggest, Haley could secretly “run” the White House as vice president — a Koch network Trojan horse for a second Trump administration.

On Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast Triggered, Steve Bannon, a major Trump ally, put this theory plainly: Fox News and the Republican establishment want to “consolidate that 15% of Republican voters” who are anti-Trump “around a Nikki Haley-type and drive it all the way through the primary process."

“And then in July of 2024, force Nikki Haley onto the ticket as Trump's running mate and allow her to try to run the administration from number two,” Bannon warned. “Now that’s not going to happen, but that’s their plan.”

Claiming that Fox wants to “clear the field for Nikki Haley,” Bannon told Trump’s adult son, “She's absolutely poisonous, and as you know, she's more ambitious than Lucifer.”

“Imagine how much motherfucking would go on if it was Nikki Haley and her team,” Trump Jr. responded, “What they'd be trying to do to Trump behind his back from literally like first second, like to position herself for 2028? Listen, hey, that would be brutal.”

Video

CitationFrom the November 27, 2023, edition of Triggered, streamed on Rumble

After lamenting that “the better of the two” Koch brothers died in 2019, Westwood One radio host Mark Levin said that “Nikki Haley wants to buy her way into the presidency” with Koch money, even though voters won’t support her because she is “George W. Bush in a dress.”

Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk — seeming to make a point of using the Indian-American Haley’s given first name Nimarata — told his audience that “the Koch network has now officially selected their candidate and declared war on many of you.”

“This is a salvo directed at you — at the populist, nationalist, muscular class movement of everyday Americans that want their country back.” The Koch network, he argued, wants “something else, and Nikki Haley is the vessel that they are going to use to do it. … The globalists, they are mounting their last stand.”

Indignant that “these oligarchs are telling you in the grassroots who has a chance to win,” Kirk declared that AFP’s support “has certainly disqualified Haley from becoming vice president.”

“Invade the world, invite the world, neoconservative extraordinaire,” he said, dismissing her candidacy.

Like other candidates previously hyped as Trump alternatives, there are claims that Haley is being pushed on voters by Fox News. “For some reason Fox has anointed her as their next one,” Newsmax host Eric Bolling told DeSantis in an interview. “I think you were the first one out of the box, and they seem to have moved the program to Nikki Haley.”

Bolling also claimed that Haley will no longer appear on his show “because I did call her out for that censorship,” referencing her walked-back support for a hypothetical law banning anonymous social media accounts.

Later, after JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said that Democrats should help Haley in the GOP primary, Bolling said that the quasi-endorsement “kind of blows me,” because “she ain’t going to win.” Bolling, a former commodities trader, added that “Wall Street has gone with the losers,” referencing the finance industry’s support for 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

On Fox News, in a segment discussing a “huge disconnect” between Republican voters who love Trump and Republican donors who have “moved on” from him, former White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley summarized the mood that some in right-wing media hope to encourage.

“The Koch brothers’ endorsement situation, it used to be powerful. Now it's more painful. Amongst the Republican electorate, it's kind of making her a pariah. They don’t embrace that anymore.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-defends-steve-bannon-blames-his-prosecution-politicizing-fbi

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STEVE BANNON: On November 8th, the American people will [INAUDIBLE] judgment and we will broom -- the Biden administration ends on the evening of the 8th of November. And let me be -- some other thing is that The Department of Justice -- Merrick Garland -- will end up being the first attorney general that's brought up on charges of impeachment and he will be removed from office.

Sean Hannity defends Steve Bannon, blames his prosecution on “politicizing the FBI”

10/21/22

Infowars host on Steve Bannon sentencing: “Our only hope now is a miracle from God”

10/21/22

Moments after being sentenced to 4 months in prison, Steve Bannon returned to his show to sell books

10/21/22

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/infowars-host-steve-bannon-sentencing-our-only-hope-now-miracle-god

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mma 10 22

PETER NAVARRO: Look, in the War Room sometimes there's some surprises. And you know what Dave, I'm going to have to tell you to stand down now because I'm so honored to be sitting by a gentleman who is really the single most driving force in this year's election cycle. He is the signal, the rest of us in many ways are the noise. And I'm going to turn the microphone over to Stephen K. Bannon.

…

STEVE BANNON: Signal not noise, we're going to talk about real news. Right? That was, and is what it is.

NAVARRO: It's just about taking back the House and the Senate.

BANNON: Hey like I said at the courtroom, I was judged today by the judge. I have no complaints. The judge and the whole process was, how they ran it, I thought, very efficiently and very effectively. I've obviously got big issues with the Department of Justice but that's a separate issue.But the judge rendered judgment for me today. But the most important thing is, I told everybody, the American people are going to weigh judgment on this entire process andPelosi's reign of terror in the House and Biden's illegitimate regime. And that's going to come on November 8th and that's why everything is focused, everything is focused.

That's why everybody's got to volunteer, everybody's got to get to the ramparts. We're not going to stop here. We're going to be all over the country and back here and in and out. You're a big part of this, right? Providing our support and platform to those people we believe in and those issues we believe in.

…

What's important here is to focus on the 8th of November. Your book lays out how you take back Trump's America, you can only do it by participating. They keep saying you guys are anti-democratic. In fact, one of the gentlemen outside the courtroom today had the "vote" on it, right? And he is not a fan of the War Room, I would say he was not there to support Stephen K Bannon. But my point is hey that's what we have to do, we have to vote. We're going to beat them by democracy.

…

We’re to take break and sell some ads. I want to thank everybody, I want thank the support, and particularly I want to thank, just tens of thousands of people that have come to me, reached out to me about they’re praying for me.Listen, like I say, pray for our enemies, OK? I appreciate your prayers, but our enemies need your prayers.

…

Dr. Peter Navarro, “Taking Back Trump’s America”, go to Amazon dot com right now.

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10 22 an badash

former top Trump White House advisor turned far-right wing extremist Steve Bannon has been sentenced to four months in prison by a federal judge, for contempt of Congress. The former executive chairman of Breitbart News and former board member of the infamous data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica refused to comply with a valid and legal subpoena from the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

“Others must be deterred from committing similar crimes,” U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee who clerked with Justice Clarence Thomas,said as he passed down the sentence. He also imposed a fine of $6500. The four month sentence is actually two, but to be served concurrently.

The sentence will be delayed to allow Bannon time to appeal, meaning he was not taken into custody and does not have to go to jail immediately. If he chooses to not appeal he is to report to prison on November 15.

Nichols had told the court as he began sentencing, “Mr. Bannon has not provided a single document,” and “has not provided any testimony on any topic.”

“Mr Bannon was a private citizen,” Judge Nichols continued. “Some of the information sought by the subpoena is information under which no conceivable claim of executive privilege could’ve been made.”

“The January 6th committee has every right to investigate what happened that day,” Nichols told Bannon and his attorneys, adding, and “what can be done to prevent similar .. events from happening in the future.”

Prosecutors had asked Judge Nichols to give Bannon the maximum sentence allowed, which would be six months in prison and a fine of $200,000.

Judge Nichols appeared to chastise the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack for not suing Bannon to enforce their subpoena.

CBS News’ Scott Macfarlane was at the D.C. federal courthouse and posted this photo of Bannon.[twt pix]

walking into he courthouse Bannon decreed the Biden administration “illegitimate,” and said it will end on November 8.

“The governemnt further argues that Mr. Bannon has not expressed remorse and has attacked the select committee at every turn. On this point I agree with the government,” Judge Nichols said, according to NBC News’ Daniel Barnes. “He has expressed no remorse for his actions.”

Bannon’s attorney backed up his client’s behavior.

“Quite frankly, Mr. Bannon should make no apology. No American should make an apology for the way Mr. Bannon proceeded in this case,” David Schoent**old the court, even after Judge Nichols noted Bannon’s attacks on the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

Bannon’s attorneys had asked for probation, which DOJ adamantly, in court documents, contested.

“In my view the statute sets out a mandatory minimum of one month and a mandatory maximum of 12 months,” Judge Nichols said.

J.P. Cooney, a prosecutor from the U.S. Attorney’s office, defended the request for fining Bannon $200,000 because “that is exactly what the defendant has asked for.”

Barnes reports that “Bannon refused to comply with the probation office’s financial investigation, Cooney says.”

Bannon reportedly also told the prosecutor’s office, “I am willing and able to pay any fine levied against me.”

Prosecutors, arguing for the six month sentence, told Judge Nichols, “This man, the defendant, a man of means, a public figure … chose, hiding behind the fabricated claim of executive privilege and advice of counsel, to thumb his nose” at Congress, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

Bannon had claimed he was exempt from honoring the subpoena from the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, citing executive privilege, which, as the country later learned, Donald Trump had not invoked in Bannon’s case – not that he would have been able to, as only the sitting U.S. President has that authority.

“DOJ says that if Bannon were genuinely concerned about executive privilege, then he would’ve complied with the Jan. 6 committee subpoena as soon as Trump purported to ‘waive’ it over the summer,” Cheney reports. “But that’s not what he did, DOJ says.”

Bannon’s attorney David Schoen repeatedly delivered caustic attacks about the House Select Committee.

CBS News’ Scott Macfarlane noted that Schoen “is quoting the Federalist Papers (James Madison) about separation of powers… talking about ‘tyranny,'” but added: “Bannon had a hard copy of the Financial Times under his arm as he walked toward courtroom (let’s see if that’s something he wants to show off to cameras as he departs).”

He also was caught “quoting Montesquieu,” and repeatedly accused the January 6 Committee of having a “partisan political agenda.”

Schoen repeatedly told Judge Nichols that Bannon was merely acting on his conscience and understanding of the Constitution, and “acting on principle.” Legal experts say that is not a legitimate defense.

Donald Trump pardoned Bannon from federal charges involving conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering surrounding his We Build the Wall fundraising campaign, but he is now facing similar state charges.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/war-room-election-denial-activist-cleta-mitchell-announces-coup-memo-author-john

10/19/22

STEVE BANNON (GUEST): All progressive Democrats, take your number two pencil out and write this down. All votes don't count, OK? All votes don't count. All your illegal, all your non-chain of custody, all your non-certifiable votes don't count and they're not going to count and this is why you're throwing a fit, because you understand if you can't cheat you can't win.

I don't care if DOJ doesn't like hearing that, I don't care if Joe Biden and his illegitimate group of crooks in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue don't like it, I could care less, Nancy Pelosi or anybody.

...

CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): Tomorrow in Albuquerque, we have a special summit, training, for people in Albuquerque, all over New Mexico, we urge you to come.

...

We'll have training all afternoon about how people can become poll challengers and observers in New Mexico, we need people in New Mexico,John Eastman, Dr. John Eastman will be speaking, Jenny Beth Martin will be speaking, Lynn Taylor who led the charge in Virginia will be saying, giving a speech on if it can happen in Virginia in 2021, it can happen in New Mexico in 2022. So it's not too late but we've got to get out there.

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an raw 10 22

threw atty under bus

Convicted criminal and former Trump campaign chairman Steve Bannon on Monday entered in a plea for leniency just hours after the United States Department of Justice requested that he be given a six-month prison sentence after being found guilty of being in contempt of Congress.

Per CBS News' Scott MacFarlane, Bannon's attorneys filed their own sentencing memo hours after the DOJ in which they argued that they were more to blame for Bannon's criminal conviction than their client.

Specifically, they argued that Bannon was simply following his own counsel's legal advice when he completely refused to cooperate with the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riots.

"Should a person who has spent a lifetime listening to experts – as a naval officer, investment banker, corporate executive, and Presidential advisor – be jailed for relying on the advice of his lawyers?" they argued.

Bannon and his lawyers last year told the House Select Committee that they could not comply with its subpoena because Bannon purportedly feared that doing so would run into issues regarding executive privilege through his interactions with former President Donald Trump.

Of course, by the time of the January 6 Capitol riots, Bannon had not been an employee of the Trump White House for several years, and Bannon could have nonetheless provided a significant amount of information that had nothing to do with any conversations with Trump.

Bannon was found guilty of contempt of Congress this past summer after the jury in the case deliberated for just three hours.

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surrendered to FBI? in NY? grin, not begun to fight BS? since TP usa w/ jnz?

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flynn fla school bd proud boys takeover

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-says-biden-administrations-initiative-cure-cancer-covert-operation

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United States Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) revealed to Real America's Voice talk show host Steve Bannon on Monday that she has drafted articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden over his investments in renewable energy.

"Because they're driving the Green New Deal which is going to plunge America into darkness and that will lead to death and all kinds of issues across America. We simply cannot exist on solar and wind energy at this time. The technology is not there and there's no reason to destroy fossil fuels," Greene said of the Inflation Reduction Act on War Room With Steve Bannon.

"And because of that, Steve, it's such a dangerous threat. No president should be doing that," Greene continued. "I have articles prepared on Joe Biden and we're looking at introducing those possible as early as this week."

Yale University explained last December why such claims are false.

"In reality, it is entirely possible to sustain a reliable electricity system based on renewable energy sources plus a combination of other means, including improved methods of energy management and storage," Yale wrote in its report. "A clearer understanding of how to dependably manage electricity supply is vital because climate threats require a rapid shift to renewable sources like solar and wind power."

Watch below or at this link.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-says-biden-administrations-initiative-cure-cancer-covert-operation

NOTE AS W CONSPIR THE LACK OF EVIDENCE IS PROOF

CHICOM PTY MODEL WEF admin state pol central bank plussate ownd ind converge for totalitarian power; all godless, so want to live forever;

tpusa in person

STEVE BANNON: This is the biggest inflection point in human history. In the lived experience of half of this room, or maybe more, we're going to get to a point where you're going to have human 2.0. Right? They're telling you that. They're funding that. This is not science fiction, this is fact.

They talk about they’re going to save kids, and they’re going to do this -- that’s all crap. They want to be immortal. Right?And they also say there's too many people, the carrying capacity of this planet– there's too many people, right? So we gotta figure out how we're going to do here. You know, they're all over Tucker and the Great Replacement theory and about the thing. Hey, the Great Replacement theory is homo sapiens. That's what they're trying to replace.

They’re going to have their deal and devil catch the hindmost. And people say well hold it I haven't heard about that. Of course you haven't heard about it. They don't want to talk about it. They're just going to do it. And they're going to call it the Cancer Moonshot. This is what we have to stop.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannons-deranged-election-conspiracy-theories-ranked

no lnx vid

Steve Bannon's deranged election conspiracy theories, ranked

WRITTEN BY MADELINE PELTZ

PUBLISHED 11/25/20

I listen to Steve Bannon’s podcast for four hours a day, every day. While its purported focus is the pandemic, at this point the show has devolved into a pro-beheading cesspool of election-related conspiracy theories.

On the show, Bannon frequently brags about the size and diversity of his audience (the show is at the time of publication ranked 55th in Apple Podcast’s rankings). But though he considers himself a leader and a patriot, Bannon has failed his audience by deliberately squandering the opportunity to tell them the truth about urgent matters related to the election and the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, he serves them lies and conspiracy theories about voter fraud and other vague, random Breitbart-style brain worms. In these sputtering sunset hours of the Trump legal defense, he’s live on YouTube for four hours every day repeating some combination of the following rabbit holes and falsehoods.

As such, Media Matters has compiled a nonexhaustive list of his various deranged election conspiracy theories and has ranked them from “extraordinarily” to “completely.”

1. “The Great Reset” conspiracy theory

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Derangement rating: Extraordinarily

Bannon has embraced a conspiracy theory about The Great Reset initiative led by the World Economic Forum, the organization focusing on public-private partnership that hosts the world leaders, billionaires, and business leaders at an annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland. Of all his falsehoods, this one is perhaps the most vague and unhinged.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) describes the Great Reset initiative as a collaborative effort among the organization’s sponsors “to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being” in rebuilding a post-COVID world. The language may be vague and slightly creepy, but the initiative has no governance or enforcement mechanism -- its scope doesn’t extend beyond discourse. The Great Reset is also the title of a book written by Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive director of the World Economic Forum.

In Bannon-land, the great reset is an opportunity for the elite cabal to “depopulate” the earth to 500 million, then genetically engineer humankind using “the convergence of artificial intelligence, advances in chip design and bioengineering.” He explains that the Democrats are attempting to “steal this election” because “if they can thwart the will of the people in this country,” they’ll be able to achieve the great reset by taking down populist movements in other countries as well.

Video Citation From the November 16, 2020, edition of War Room: Pandemic

STEVE BANNON (HOST): You’ve got [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau up there talking about the great reset. This is what the whole deal is. This is what they’re going to try to do. this is globalization on steroids.A system -- I think it’s actually a combination of state capitalism and authoritarian rule that lets your [UNINTELLIGIBLE] betters -- as they depopulate.

…

These oligarchs, and I call them the AI aliens, right, because they’re all on the spectrum, right. They have no human compassion or empathy. They look at the deplorables as just cogs in the machine. They look at lao bai xing as units of production and consumption, and they would like the earth not to have 6 billion people or 7 billion people. They’d like the earth to have 500 million people, which would be all them. And -- I said one time in Italy that the purpose of populism is to make sure that the guys that make the decisions on the world economic system today were not the same people -- that’s why we had to confront it now -- were not the same people making the decisions on the singularity, that convergence -- and that’s what the fourth industrial revolution really is is the convergence of artificial intelligence, advances in chip design and bioengineering. They never want to talk about the bioengineering piece, right. The singularity is on one side homo sapiens, on the other side is something that’s post-homo sapien.

…

That singularity is going to be within the lifetime of our children. Maybe in the next 20, 25, 30, years. They don’t want to talk about that. That’s not conspiracy theory. I don’t have my -- it’s just a Harvard Business School case, right, to be deconstructed. And it’s obvious the direction they’re taking this, the great reset. Listen, we’re winning. But victory begets victory so Jack, I love the speech but hey, if they steal this election, it’s not about Trump. It’s not about Donald Trump as a person. If they steal this election they have basically thwarted the will of the people in the greatest republic in mankind’s history. If they can thwart the will of the people in this country, that’s how they try to break Brazil. That’s how they try to break Italy. That’s how they try to break the lao bai xing, the diaspora of the Chinese.

On November 20, Bannon returned to the conspiracy theory, saying “the deplorables understand” that Democrats are “trying to steal” the election in order to implement the great reset, which will involve “the convergence of advanced chip design, robotics, artificial intelligence with biotechnology.”

Video Citation From the November 20, 2020, edition of War Room: Pandemic

Donald Trump was reelected president

Derangement ranking: Extremely

On November 7, Joe Biden was declared the victor of the 2020 presidential election. But Bannon continues to tell his audience the opposite. On November 19, he claimed President Donald Trump “brought home the greatest victory in the history of this country in a presidential election.” He frequently repeats this talking point.

Video Citation From the November 19, 2020, edition of War Room: Pandemic

Democrats are responsible for widespread voter fraud

Derangement ranking: Utterly

Like his comrade and personal attorney to the president Rudy Giuliani, Bannon is all in on baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud by Democrats. As is the case with most the show, Bannon is light on details, heavy on apocalyptic innuendo. It is difficult to nail down Bannon’s exact allegations, as they often vary from rant to rant, but its essence is as follows: Democrats used fake ballots and manipulated voting processes to steal the presidency from Trump. (This theory fails to account for the fact that Democrats lost ground in the House and failed to flip most available Senate seats held by Republicans.)

Without specifying where this took place or how he got this figure, Bannon said on November 23 that “Donald Trump was up by 800,000 votes before all the illegal ballots came in,” falsely suggesting that all ballots counted after election night were illegal.

Bannon falsely claimed on November 20 that Democrats “got caught cheating in Michigan, massively.” According to MLive, “There are no credible allegations of fraud or irregularities that would change” Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

On November 13, Bannon said ballots need to be thrown out “wholesale” instead of “onesies, twosies” because Democrats have got “the finesse working bigly,” referring to spurious allegations of voter fraud.

On the November 4 show -- as large numbers of mail-in ballots were still being counted and many battleground states had not yet been called -- Bannon suggested that the mail-in votes in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, that had just been counted in the state was evidence of fraud (when in fact it is a normal and expected development) and said “This is the problem, ladies and gentlemen. 50,000 is -- I mean, this is what’s going to drive people crazy. … How does this just kind of materialize?”

Bannon said Democrats are “going to steal this election. You know why they’re going to steal this election? Because they don’t think you’re going to do anything about it.”

The Dominion Voter Systems conspiracy theory

Derangement ranking: Downright

The Dominion Voter Systems conspiracy theory has been at the center of Trump’s legal team’s meltdown. Dominion Voter Systems is a software company used by local and state governments around the country to facilitate voting. Right-wing media and other bad faith actors have been pushing the false notion that Dominion software switched votes from Trump to Biden. Mainstream media outlets have repeatedly debunked the conspiracy theory, which has been a staple of War Room: Pandemic.

Bannon cited former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell on November 23 to claim that based on “evidence” that “hasn’t been provided” by Powell, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp may have been bribed by a former lobbyist from Dominion to contract with the company. He continued: “I’m sure if Sidney Powell is saying that directionally she’s working on something.”

A few days earlier, on November 20, Bannon had a meltdown reacting to Fox News host Dana Perino’s suggestion Dominion Voter Systems should sue Sidney Powell for her false allegations about the company. He said Perino’s comments show her “IQ is room temp” because Dominion would never want to go through a legal discovery process because it would “get down into the details of their criminality.”

On the November 12 edition of Bannon’s show, Giuliani described his contacts with alleged whistleblowers at Dominion to suggest he’ll be able to provide evidence of fraud committed by the company. Giuliani has been a conduit of this conspiracy theory, claiming he’s in contact with “whistle-blowers” at the company who can attest to the scheme.

The Hammer / scorecard system conspiracy theory

Derangement ranking: Severely

On Election Day, Bannon interviewed a well-known right-wing conspiracy theorist, retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, to push a conspiracy theory about an old government-owned supercomputer named “Hammer,” which they claimed would be utilized by Democrats to deduct votes from Trump and turn them into votes for Biden. The thinly veiled conspiracy theory has been debunked by official sources.

Video CitationFrom the November 3, 2020, edition of War Room: Pandemic

“They” canceled Thanksgiving to stop families from talking about “the steal”

Derangement ranking: Completely

Speaks for itself.

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duck bannon 9 22

Bannon`s War Room: Epiode 2075: The Great Reset and the War for the ...

Show Bannon`s War Room, Ep Epiode 2075: The Great Reset and the War for the World part 1 - Aug 13, 2022

https://podcasts.apple.com › us › podcast › episode-2117-alex-jones-the-great-reset-and-the-war › id1485351658?i=1000577824292

Bannon`s War Room: Episode 2117: Alex Jones: The Great Reset And The ...

Show Bannon`s War Room, Ep Episode 2117: Alex Jones: The Great Reset And The War For The World; Testosterone Is Being Given To Girls As Young As 8; Transhumanism Is Just Another Form Of Transgenderism - Aug 30, 2022. Global Nav Open Menu Global Nav Close Menu; Apple; Shopping Bag +

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boing

Biden's speech Thursday night defending democracy really hit a nerve with former Trump strategist (and Trump-pardoned) Steve Bannon, who responded with angry threats to the president and his family.

"We are going to bring it big and hard and loud on 8 November," the MAGA cheerleader said today to Biden in hopes of a GQP takeover after the midterm elections. "And then we're going to investigate your entire family, everything you've done in your administration … your perverted son … and we're going to move to impeach you. We will impeach you, and we are going to remove you from office."

"The battle lines are drawn," the War Room host went on, continuing to push his battle cry, reminiscent of the time he and Matt Gaetz planned a Trumpist takeover using "4,000 shock troops."

"There's no compromise here. We're not only not backing off an inch, we have not yet begun to fight."

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post biden democ sp

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-warns-battle-lines-are-drawn-and-maga-movement-has-not-yet-begun-fight

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quite a lot of RW BS on student loan forgive, bannon called reparations?; mebbe a string of dem wins/bills ~ 2022 red wave;

also try culture/class war BS rich college kids vs hard working real am, socialism

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-rails-against-student-debt-forgiveness-then-brags-about-his-ivy-league

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coulter bails but bannon clings 1776 BS

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-says-fbi-seizing-top-secret-documents-mar-lago-what-we-fought-revolution

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biden democ sp

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-compares-biden-moloch-pagan-god-child-sacrifice

STEVE BANNON (HOST): The paper of record, New York Times, look at the — Moloch right there. That's next level. Here's why. It's a desecration, it's a desecration of Independence Hall. This — where the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Liberty Bell. Goes to Philadelphia, a city that's in chaos and collapsing all around you as crime and anarchy takes over. And he goes there.

That's Moloch. Look at that, they did that on purpose.

...

He'll always be known with that photo of him like Moloch.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/steve-bannon-cia-assassinate-ukraine/

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mma 8 22 no vid

two additional right-wing activists who have been implicated in a wide-ranging scheme to breach election data appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast from late 2020 to mid-2021 to discuss their efforts to overturn the results of the election. The resurfaced video provides a contemporary account of what the two men were saying in their own words during the period now under scrutiny.

The two right-wing figures are former Michigan state senator and election fraud conspiracy theorist Patrick Colbeck and Matthew DePerno, a conservative Michigan lawyer and Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for state attorney general. Both have been active in efforts in Michigan to overturn the results of the election, often describing their work in real time on Bannon’s podcast. A new investigation from The Washington Post partially reveals each of their roles in accessing sensitive electoral data.

DePerno is a frequent guest on War Room – a supposed authority on purported security flaws in Dominion voting systems and other discredited election denialism. Following former President Donald Trump’s loss, DePerno hired a forensics firm called SullivanStrickler to obtain election data from Dominion Voting Systems as part of a lawsuit he had brought seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to the Post. After a judge granted DePerno limited access to the machines in December 2020, he and Trump lawyer Sidney Powell instructed SullivanStrickler to carry out a forensic examination of Dominion’s voting systems, which was successful in gaining access to the data.

Colbeck appears to have downloaded some of data that SullivanStrickler collected as part of the DePerno investigation. An account tied to Colbeck “downloaded six files from the same folder on Jan. 5, 2021, according to the records, including files labeled ‘election management server’ and ‘ThumbDrives,’” according to the Post. The Post also reported that DePerno couldn’t remember if he’d given access to the files to Colbeck and the other election denialists who accessed the data.

Colbeck and DePerno – who is now facing criminal investigation for conspiracy to tamper with voting machines across three counties in Michigan – are two of several election denial activists who have appeared on War Room and subsequently been implicated in the data breach scheme. Brian Kennedy, a senior fellow at a Trump-aligned think tank, also appeared on War Room in late 2020 to discuss his involvement in the failed recount campaign following Trump’s loss, as previously reported by Media Matters. Kennedy was named in an earlier Post investigation as having been in communication with the forensics firm that obtained the data for DePerno. The latest Post story says former War Room guest and right-wing commentator Joe Oltmann also accessed the data.

Matthew DePerno on War Room

On May 5, 2021, DePerno appeared on Bannon’s show to talk about his ongoing lawsuit in Antrim Countyand what he claimed were Dominion security flaws. (The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.) In that interview, he referenced Dominion’s “election management system,” a phrase very similar to the name of one of the files Colbeck allegedly downloaded.

[vid]

We’re the only case in the country that’s been able to look at actual forensic images,” DePerno said. “December 6, 2020, we went into Antrim County and actually collected forensic images of their election management system.” DePerno then claimed that through this work, his team had been able to “just manipulate any database we want.”

Earlier in the interview, he’d claimed that his access to Dominion systems had given his team the capacity, in general, to change the outcome of any election on a hypothetical ballot.

“Looking at this data, looking at the forensic images and conducting our own tests with ballots and the Dominion system, we put out a video this week that shows that we can flip votes in any race, in any election, up ballot, down ballot, from the president's race, all the way down to any school board race,” DePerno said. “We can select certain races to keep clean. We can select certain races to flip votes in from one candidate to another.”

In June, DePerno again referenced Dominion’s election management system on War Room.

“We’ve proved now that there was direct access to the Antrim County election management system,” DePerno said. “We show that on November 5, we can see it in the forensic images, that an anonymous user logged onto the EMS remotely with escalated privileges and made changes to the database when they were trying to retabulate the election.”

Colbeck’s interest in the “election management server” file may have been tied to DePerno’s repeated claims about what access to that system allowed a user to do.

There is no evidence that any votes tabulated by Dominion were changed in the 2020 election. Still, cybersecurity researchers have warned that distributing the kind of data that DePerno and Colbeck had access to could potentially be used in the future to exploit security flaws and engage in precisely the type of activities that Trump supporters are falsely alleging happened in 2020.

Patrick Colbeck on War Room

Colbeck made several appearances on Bannon’s show immediately after Trump’s loss to discuss his efforts to challenge the Michigan election results.

On November 19, 2020, Colbeck described himself as a “bit of a tech geek,” and explained that he wanted to get involved in the recount effort so he could investigate the system’s software.

“I went in there wanting to understand the stuff that people weren't physically seeing or on the ballot,” Colbeck said. “So I wanted to understand the electronic chain of command between vote tallies and and the communications of vote tallies.”

Later the same day, Colbeck again appeared on War Room and falsely claimed that vote counts were not reliable because tabulators had been connected to the internet.

“Then you get to the basics of a vote tally, which is not – there's no chain of custody around that, particularly around paper chain of custody and electronic chain of custody,” Colbeck said. “When you've got the tabulator, it's connected to the internet, there is zero chain of custody around the vote tally.”

“So is it any wonder why we had strange vote flipping happening in the middle of the night?” he added.

[vid]

the following week, Colbeck returned to War Room to again claim, incorrectly, that “the tabulator computers and the adjudicator computers and the local data center … were all networked to each other” and connected to “a cable that connected to the internet.”

“And you could see the proof that they were all connected to the internet,” Colbeck continued. “If you go look in the bottom right hand corner of all your Windows 10-based PCs and you see the little window on the bottom, there is a little icon that if you roll the mouse over there, it says, connected to the internet. But all the Detroit elected officials that I contacted that night refused – they said specifically that it was not connected to the internet. And from my background, I know differently.”

In fact, an audit and report from Michigan Republicans in 2021 found that although some of the machines had been connected to a local area network (LAN), there is no evidence that the tabulators were connected to any outside networks or that any purported internet connection had been exploited to alter any votes. The LAN connection, “which would create the same icon on a computer screen indicating a network connection as is shown by an internet accessible network,” may have accounted for Colbeck’s confusion.

Tracy Wimmer of the Michigan Department of State had previously debunked Colbeck’s false claims as well.

“No ballot tabulation machines were connected to the internet at Detroit’s counting board,” Wimmer told The Associated Press in December 2020. “The machines were networked locally to each other and the adjudication machines by ethernet cable, and so some people suggested they were online. They were not.”

Although it’s not publicly known precisely what information the account linked to Colbeck downloaded, the name of one of the other files he allegedly accessed – “ThumbDrives” – offers a possible clue. In Michigan, when voting is over, officials transfer the final tally generated by the tabulators, which Colbeck incorrectly said were connected to the internet, to the clerk’s office via flash drives. The data Colbeck received could be related to those final vote tallies or other information related to transferring the vote totals.

It’s not clear from the Post’s reporting whether Colbeck or any of the other election deniers who downloaded the Michigan data could face legal exposure. In general, breaching an election system and distributing the data is a serious crime. Colorado county clerk Tina Peters, a hero and repeat guest on War Room: Pandemic, is facing felony charges for allegedly tampering with election equipment and for obstruction following Trump’s loss.

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-and-jim-hoft-claim-**democrats-are-planning-steal-midterm-elections

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fetterman vs dr oz

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/steve-bannon-ridiculed-without-mercy-after-claiming-pennsylvanias-lt-gov-is-satanic/

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promin in jan 6 hearing #7

2 calls to trump jan 6 morning ?, willard night before; footage of war rm podcast tease, you will net believe what will happen? (hmn normal hype i'm on inside you are not?) but he seems pretty confident.

all hell brk loose, strap in"

---

msnbc every time they get what demanded, it gets worse for trump?

https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/john-solomon-representative-trump-national-archives-many-his-claims-about-case-are

no lnx many vids

John Solomon is a representative for Trump to the National Archives. Many of his claims about the case are false.

Trying to gain control of the story, Solomon himself released a May 10 letter from acting National Archivist Debra Wall and immediately misled about what it said

WRITTEN BY JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES

PUBLISHED 08/25/22

John Solomon, former President Donald Trump’s official representative to the National Archives and Records Administration, released a letter that reveals in plain detail that Trump and his legal team did not cooperate with the National Archives, and that the August 8 Mar-a-Lago search occurred only after they repeatedly sought to delay the FBI’s involvement. Despite these facts, Solomon has made numerous appearances in the right-wing media, including on Fox News, to spread misinformation and spin about the letter.

Dated May 10, the letter from acting National Archivist Debra Wall to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran details the back-and-forth between Trump’s lawyers and the National Archives in retrieving over 700 pages of classified material from Mar-a-Lago. It clearly lays out how Trump did not fully cooperate with the National Archives and the Department of Justice, outlining the five-month process to retrieve the documents.

Solomon’s website Just the Newswas the first to publish the damning document late on August 22.The next morning, he appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room:Pandemic to put a confusing pro-Trump spin on the story.

Video

CitationFrom the August 23, 2022, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

In Solomon’s version, the FBI mysteriously heard that the National Archives retrieved documents from Mar-a-Lago and wanted to look through them. The bureau asked President Joe Biden, who told the DOJ and the FBI to go right ahead and look through the documents, completely ignoring that Trump maintains executive privilege over them.

:{:{}:

This is completely false. Here’s a breakdown:

CLAIM: “The White House counsel's office authorized the National Archives to send information they had gotten in the boxes of Trump – voluntarily returned to the archives – and send it to the FBI. That launches a criminal investigation.”

REALITY: Solomon conveniently leaves out that the Presidential Records Act not only allows, but requires this course of action.As Wall details in the letter, the National Archives’ initial review of the documents returned in January found “items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials” – a label given to the most sensitive secrets in government. This prompted the agency to inform the DOJ. The Presidential Records Act empowers the National Archives, the president, and the DOJ to oversee the handling of presidential documents, including the power of “the Archivist and the Attorney General [to] jointly investigate the unlawful removal or destruction of government and presidential records.”

CLAIM: Next, Solomon says that “President Trump would have had the right … to go to court and say, I have executive privilege, I might have declassified these documents,” but “the current president waives the executive privilege of the past president.” He repeated this point again later on in the interview.

REALITY: His argument that Biden and the DOJ should have allowed Trump to take his executive privilege claim to the courts is debunked by the letter itself. Wall consulted the Office of Legal Counsel, which advised her that “there is no precedent for an assertion of executive privilege by a former President against an incumbent President to prevent the latter from obtaining from NARA Presidential records belonging to the Federal Government where ‘such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of current business of the incumbent President’s office and that is not otherwise available.’”

The precedent that Solomon and other Trump allies refer to when they argue this point applies only to congressional or judicial oversights, not executive branch examination and investigation. To be clear, a former president cannot exert executive privilege claims over a current president, the head of the executive branch itself, when the information pertains to the current business of the administration.

Then, referring to the same case as Solomon, Wall laid out what it actually means for Trump:

“To the contrary, the Supreme Court’s decision in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977), strongly suggests that a former President may not successfully assert executive privilege “against the very Executive Branch in whose name the privilege is invoked.” … The Court specifically noted that an “incumbent President should not be dependent on happenstance or the whim of a prior President when he seeks access to records of past decisions that define or channel current governmental obligations.”

The Office of Legal Counsel advised that Trump had no privilege over these documents. There was no need to start a court fight to rehash the same issue; as Wall’s letter noted, “the question in this case is not a close one.”

CLAIM: Solomon claims that on May 8, “the Biden White House says it's over, we're passing privilege. We're giving the documents to the FBI.”

:{:{}:

REALITY: This is false. Biden delegated the decision to Wall; he did not make it himself. From the letter:

The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported “protective assertion of executive privilege.”

As Politico’s Kyle Cheney explains, “there was no way a former president's claim could override an incumbent administration's need for the review. … Trump allies touted portions of this letter that were revealed by Solomon earlier in the evening, saying it showed Biden had been involved in the process. That's a requirement of any NARA matter involving privilege.”

CLAIM: Solomon argues that “there's an escalation driven by the Biden White House against its likely rival in 2024. … I think most Americans are going to be troubled to find out the current president [was] siccing the FBI on the former president,and I think that’s the way these documents read when you look at it. ”

REALITY: The letter makes clear that the “escalation” came only after numerous attempts by the Trump legal team to delay an FBI investigation. After being granted an initial delay until April 29, the Trump team requested an additional delay based on executive privilege claims, which the National Archives and the Office of Legal Counsel found to be legally unfounded. As the letter painstakingly explains, “The Executive Branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the Federal Government itself, not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.’”

CLAIM: Solomon says that “in mid-April, there's a discussion – the FBI hears from the National Archives that they got the boxes. They want to see what's in the boxes.”

:{:{}:

REALITY: Solomon’s word choice is misleading. Rather than implying that a nosy FBI “want[s] to see what’s in the boxes,” it would be more accurate to say that the bureau needed to investigate the documents, as is procedure per the Presidential Records Act. Nonetheless, this is not what the letter says. It says that the National Archives informed the DOJ, “which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them.” The FBI heard “from the National Archives that they got the boxes,” because the National Archives and DOJ needed the bureau to investigate whether the boxes contained classified documents.

Under federal law, “The Archivist is not authorized to independently investigate removal or recover records.” Engaging the FBI was a necessary step.

CLAIM: Solomon claims that Trump’s team asked for time to sort out privileged materials and “within a few days of that, those conversations going on, the National Archives came back and said ‘We don’t care about your privilege claims.’”

REALITY: He is putting a false spin on the timeline here. Trump’s lawyers were advised on April 12 that the National Archives would allow the FBI to examine the returned records. They sought and were granted a delay until April 29.

The rejection he’s referring to is the second request for a delay on April 29, two and a half weeks after Trump’s lawyers were notified that the FBI needed to examine the documents. At the time of writing the May 10 letter, Wall noted, “It has now been four weeks since we first informed you of our intent to provide the FBI access to the boxes so that it and others in the Intelligence Community can conduct their reviews.”

CLAIM: Solomon closes by arguing, “This is a chilling potential fact for not only former presidents, but any future president – if any future president knows that the guy who beats him at the polls or succeeds him at the polls can then turn around and release all the documents that a prior president might have considered privileged because he got important advice to do his job, who's going to put anything on paper? Who's going to want to get that advice knowing that could happen?”

REALITY: Solomon ignores that the documents the FBI was sent to recover still legally belong to the federal government, not Trump. Rather than trying to “turn around and release all the documents that a prior president might have considered privileged,” Wall’s letter said that the classified documents in question would need to be reviewed by national security officials to assess “the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported” by the former president.

Responding to the Trump team’s objections, she explained that “there is no reason to believe such reviews could ‘adversely affect the ability of future Presidents to obtain the candid advice necessary for effective decisionmaking.’ … To the contrary: Ensuring that classified information is appropriately protected, and taking any necessary remedial action if it was not, are steps essential to preserving the ability of future Presidents to “receive the full and frank submissions of facts and opinions upon which effective discharge of [their] duties depends.”

Further, what Solomon complains about has been possible since 1978; any president since the Presidential Records Act was put in place could release such documents. Trump does not hold executive privilege over the executive branch itself.

Nonetheless, Solomon was not the only pro-Trump figure on War Room spinning the National Archives letter.

Former Trump adviser Boris Ephsteyn also appeared on Bannon’s August 23 show and claimed that Politico’s coverage of the letter somehow exonerates Trump:“The only thing that matters in the Politico article is that it proves once and for all, fully proves that A) there was full cooperation and compliance, as we've been saying consistently, and B) that the Biden administration absolutely and fully participated in this plan to raid and attack Mar-A-Lago. There's no two ways about it.”

Video

CitationFrom the August 23, 2022, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

The Trump team was not in “full cooperation and compliance.” They sought to delay the investigation at least twice and submitted challenges with no legal basis. The May 10 letter shows that the Biden administration, as Cheney again points out, was remarkably detached from the investigation: “The language about consultation with the White House shows Biden was *more hands off* with the Mar-a-Lago docs than he was with the Jan. 6 records held by NARA. In both cases, archivist consulted with OLC, but in latter Biden delegated privilege decisions to NARA.”

The previous day, president of the Article III Project and regular War Room guest Mike Davis complained that before ordering the Mar-a-Lago search on August 8, Attorney General Merrick Garland did not “take the time to go to the Office of Legal Counsel within his own Justice Department,” whose opinions “are binding on the executive branch.” Davis asserted this meant that Garland knew the Mar-a-Lago search was “unlawful” and “unnecessary.”

Of course, we now know that the Office of Legal Counsel was consulted by the National Archives before the May 10 letter, and its “binding” legal opinion rejected Trump’s defenses. But these facts haven’t stopped right-wing media from spreading other pro-Trump spin and misinformation around the Mar-a-Lago search.

In an August 23 article, Fox News adopted the same false framework with the headline “Biden signed off on FBI review of Trump records, National Archives letter reveals.”

:{:{}:

And Solomon has introduced a dubious new line of attack blaming former President Barack Obama.

Video

CitationFrom the August 23, 2022, edition of Real America's Voice's Just the News

JOHN SOLOMON (JUST THE NEWS): Joe Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, actually managed to change the rules. After 9/11, George Bush had put a rule into place that a prior president got to protect his own privilege. If he and the president couldn’t – the sitting president – couldn’t agree on the release of records, that the prior president’s claim to executive privilege was predominant. Barack Obama came in in 2009 and he got rid of that and said, I, the incumbent president, I get the only say on this. … Barack Obama actually set in motion the raid that ultimately ended up in a raid at Mar-a-Lago on Donald Trump’s property.

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an 8 22

Countless right-wing media outlets have been jumping to former President Donald Trump’s defense since the FBI, on Monday, August 8, executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in South Florida. Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon is no exception.

On his “War Room” podcast, the far-right MAGA Republican, conspiracy theorist and Trump ally angrily railed against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Bannon told viewers, “DOJ is lying. The FBI is lying. All of them are lying. And we’re going to hold them all accountable. And I’m not going to sit there and listen to Merrick Garland…. Well, listen, pipsqueak, you can come out again andstart crying at the mic, because ‘War Room’ is not going to back off. We smoked you out.”

The “War Room” host continued, “Other conservative media smoked you out of your cave…. We’re not going to back off. You’re a lawless scumbag. How about that?Suck on that. The FBI is a bunch of lawless Gestapo.”

According to

=== zzz

term was sorta fading for WHILE? but bannon used consist (//victor hansen?)< According to a report from Rolling Stone, the speeches thus far at the **Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas have been as the speakers brushed aside any discussion about the Jan 6 Capitol riot.

With Donald Trump --who instigated the Capitol insurrection -- taking the stage on Saturday, Tim Dickinson wrote that in many cases the speeches, "...menaced America with what seemed to be thinly veiled calls for violence."

Case in point, he notes, was a speech given by recently convicted former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon who proclaimed to the crowd, "We are at war."

"Repeating the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump,Bannon insisted that Joe Biden is an 'illegitimate imposter.' Calling on Republicans to send 'shock troops' to Washington, Bannon promised the crowd they had an opportunity to 'shatter the Democratic party as a national political institution'." he wrote. "He alleged that the party has been overrun by 'radical, cultural Marxists' and 'groomers' who 'want to destroy the Republic.'Bannon insisted the GOP must pursue absolute victory over 'power-mad and lawless' Democrats, asserting: 'There can be no half measures anymore'."

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) doubled down on Bannon's heated rhetoric, exhorting the crowd with the claim, "It’s like the old Roman Colosseum where you slam on a breastplate and you grab a battle axe and you go fight the barbarians. As they say in the military world, it is a target-rich environment.”

"The rhetoric of revolution and frontline confrontation went hand-in-hand with other speakers and presenters who cast the American left as demonic, evil, and destructive — in other words the kind of enemies who deserve to be dealt with harshly," the report states before adding, "CPAC has long been a political circus, a relatively harmless sideshow. But its latest incarnation has become manifestly dangerous — more fascist than farce. It is holding up alleged perpetrators of political violence as martyrs. It is demonizing its domestic political opponents as diabolical 'enemies within.' And it is giving MAGA supporters a militaristic frame for their charge to the 'front lines' of America’s culture wars."

"In short it is playing with fire. But it’s the rest of us who may get burned." Rolling Stones' Dickinson concluded.

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===

MMA 8 22 tag jan 6:

https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection

BANNON (HOST): [Steve] Cortes, and he and I didn’t talk, we talked about his segments and how we’re going to go through the economic data. We always talk beforehand about what's the best way to lay that out. But we didn’t talk about what he brought up, which was the Politico piece. I saw it I think at zero six hundred or seven, whenever it popped, and it was their lead story and they meant it as a hit piece. And I’m reading this thing, the RNC is working with these new groups, and it’s Cleta Mitchell, she’s been on the show many times talking about it, but the RNC, and they meant it as a hit piece and Cortes said, hey this thing was like a paid advertisement cause it shows you the quality of training they’re getting and now the RNC is getting involved. I said hey, I think they’re sending it out to the - to make sure the RNC donors see it, that they’re now working with the crazies.

Cleta Mitchell, tell us about the piece and particularly what you guys are doing now in conjunction with the RNC cause every time you have these summits, we send people, I get tremendous feedback of people that now are going to get engaged now and be part of it, it’s changed their lives. The comradery. But most importantly is the technical details, not war stories, you teach them technical details about how to be election officials, how to be poll workers, right? Not just poll watchers. So walk us through why did Politico try to take you out this morning ma’am?

CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): Well, thank you for having me Steve, you’re always so great to help us tell our story. Politico got a tape, an audio tape, from our Arizona summit in which I was presenting to the group there about how the Biden administration is using our tax dollars to turn every federal agency into a Democratic political operation. And I used the language that they use, which is their new Democratic majority, that this is language of the left and I just traced their language showing that that’s what they're doing with our tax dollars.

Biden issued an executive order based on a plan that was put to him by a left-wing organization, Demos, if you want to find out about it just go to Demos dot org and you can look it up. They’re the ones who sold this to him. They’ve got Susan Rice in the White House running the program. And it’s an executive order that orders every federal agency to develop a voter registration and turnout program and then they’re going to give grants to approved groups. Guess who’s going to approve those groups? Susan Rice. Excuse me. And so I talked about this at the Arizona summit, I went through the language and so we’ve decided to put that out there. We’re putting it on our website today, the entire audio.[tucker perm dem maj?]

…

MITCHELL: So, they're going to do with our tax dollars what they did with Zuckerbucks in 2020. And that's what I was teaching. I was giving the presentation in Arizona –[how to gerry?]

BANNON: Yes.

MITCHELL: – showing what they were doing. And they are saying, the Politico article says that I was complaining and I was engaged in voter suppression because I didn’t want these groups to be registered and mobilized. No! If those people are going to be registered and mobilized, let the Democratic Party pay for it. Let the candidates pay for it.Don’t use my tax money to register and turn out people to vote because they’re the most vulnerable in our society.[acorn-y?]

BANNON: K. We're going to have you on to go through actually the presentation.

...

We need the army of the awakened to get this information that Cleta and her team puts out all over the country.

...

BANNON: Democrats, if they can't steal, they can't win. Let me just be blunt.

MITCHELL: That's right.

BANNON: They can't steal, they can't win. They know it. That's why they're so upset aboutMAGA getting to the bottom of this.

...

MITCHELL: Let me tell you what, Steve. It is a real serious problem what's going on with this vote by mail. This avalanche of mail voting. I call it unsupervised voting.

It's happening in Florida, where in Florida they have sent the wrong ballots, they sent out tens of thousands of ballots that have been voted and come back into Broward county, Palm Beach county, Orange county – which is Orlando. And they have the wrong races or they don't have the school board races. And it's happening right now and it's all because of this bad voting.

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===< zzz not 1st fox (strait) brk w/ trump jan 6 hearings? but he goes further (a bit); note that this // WSJ edit ~ trump

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/bret-baier-donald-trump-horrific/

While CNN and MSNBC have been offering in-depth, comprehensive coverage of the bipartisan January 6 select committee’s series of hearings, many of the far-right opinion hosts at Fox News and Fox Business have either ignored the hearings or outright attacked them. But on Sunday, July 24, Fox News’ Bret Baier spoke candidly about the hearing that had been held during prime-time viewing hours on Thursday, July 21 — and acknowledged that the evidence presented made former President Donald Trump “look horrific.”

That night, members of the select committee took a close look at Trump’s actions when the U.S. Capitol Building was being attacked on January 6, 2021. The participants during the hearing included its chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, and the co-chair, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, as well as Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. Although most members of the committee are Democrats, Cheney and Kinzinger are conservative Republicans chosen by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Baier, discussing the 187-minute period the committee examined on July 21, told his colleagues, “Laying out all these 187 minutes makes him look horrific, it really does…. To hear it and see it in that chronological order can be very powerful.”

The 51-year-old Baier, who has been with Fox News since the late 1990s, found the July 21 testimony of former Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger and former Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews especially compelling.

"All of these people who have been testifying at one point or another wanted Trump to win," Baier noted. “They served under his leadership. They wanted him to be a success.”

Business Insider’s Mia Jankowicz, reporting on Baier’s comments, stressed that others at Fox News have a very different view of the hearings — one that is much more negative.

“Baier's criticisms of Trump on the Rupert Murdoch-owned network were not unexpected, despite Fox's strongly conservative leanings,” Jankowicz explains. “But they by no means reflect the network's mainstream view. Fox News' most watched opinion host, Tucker Carlson,invited the Trump strategistSteve Bannon onto his show Friday just hours after Bannon had been found guilty of contempt of Congress for not complying with a subpoena by the House select committee. Bannon called for a ‘real’ hearing, baselessly saying the bipartisan committee was presenting ‘lies and misrepresentations.’”

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rww

steve Bannon, former President Donald Trump’s onetime chief strategist, was convicted of contempt of Congress Friday for defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The federal grand jury deliberated for less than three hours before announcing its verdict. Bannon faces the prospect of monetary fines and jail time. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols scheduled sentencing for Oct. 21.

The House select committee asked Bannon in September of last year to provide documents and to sit for a deposition by Oct. 7, 2021, and Oct. 14, 2021, respectively. The committee did not receive communication from Bannon until after the first deadline had passed at which point Bannon said he would not comply and cited executive privilege, a legal doctrine that can keep certain presidential communications confidential, despite the fact that Bannon had not worked in the White House since 2017.

On the select committee’s recommendation, the Department of Justice decided to pursue charges in November last year. Earlier this month, Bannon said that he would in fact testify to the select committee, claiming that Trump had waived executive privilege. Bannon’s team argued that he should not have to stand trial since he has since agreed to testify—an argument the judge presiding over the case dismissed.

Bannon spent 2020 baselessly alleging voter fraud and working with the so-called Stop the Steal campaign to keep Trump in power. His tireless efforts and outsize influence led former RWW editor Adele Stan to dub him“Insurrectionist in Chief.”

Just days before the 2020 election, Bannon told a group of right-wing activists that Trump would declare victory on election night whether or not the election had been called, according to a recordingunveiled by Mother Jones.

“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory, right?” Bannon told associates in that Oct. 31, 2020, speech. “He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”

“More of our people vote early, that count; theirs vote in mail,” Bannon said. “And so they’re going to have a natural disadvantage. And Trump’s going to take advantage of that. That’s our strategy. He’s going to declare himself a winner.”

The recording revealed that Bannon was aware of not just the president’s plan, but his strategy, raising questions about the extent to which Bannon and Trump coordinated to overturn the election results.

On Jan. 5, 2021, Bannon spoke with Trump twice—once in the morning and once in the afternoon, according to White House call logs that were presented during last week’s Jan. 6 hearing. In between those calls, Bannon hosted his show “The War Room,” where he referenced revolution andtold viewers, “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. Just understand this: All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It’s going to be moving. It’s going to be quick.”

“It’s all converging, and now we’re on the point of attack tomorrow,” Bannon continued. “And all I can say is: Strap in. You have made this happen, and tomorrow it’s game day.”

That same day, Bannon went to the Willard Hotel, a luxury hotel where Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerirk, and Trump lawyer and coup memo author John Eastman, had set up a “war room”—a command center where they worked on plans to overturn the 2020 election. Bannon was an occasional attendee of meetings held there the week before the insurrection and was also at the hotel on the day of the insurrection.

Other Trump allies present at the hotel included Trump confidant Roger Stone and former national security adviser Mike Flynn.Trump had also asked that his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows attend a Jan. 5 meeting at the Willard Hotel with Giuliani, but Meadows instead said he would call into the meeting, his former aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified to the committee.

Bannon has not yet made a statement to the public about his conviction. He hasreferred to the Jan. 6 hearings as a “show trial.”

Tags: Donald J. Trump Stephen K. Bannon Steve Bannon Capitol Insurrection Election 2020 House select committee on Jan. 6 Jan. 6

---

smiling all the way to the bunk?convicted on both cts thus possible 2 yrs? cark clerk let j an 6 guy off, but cut bannon no slack at all?

---

journalist who authored a book on former White House strategist Steve Bannon is suggesting that he "drank his own Kool-Aid” and is now suffering the consequences of doing so, according to HuffPost.

On Friday, July 22, Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Joshua Green, author of “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency," appeared on MSNBC News where he suggested that Bannon is "now struggling to figure out how a judge and jury didn’t swallow his bluster."

“He started this process last October when he was hit with a subpoena” by the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, “vowing to ‘go medieval’ on his enemies — that was his quote,” Green said during the interview.

Green added, “He said he would make it a ‘misdemeanor from hell’ for the Biden administration. But he wound up not even taking the stand in his own defense” — and was subsequently found guilty on two charges of contempt of Congress. “It shows the bubble he’s been living in.”

He continued saying Bannon “drank his own Kool-Aid in the end, and didn’t understand — or didn’t want to face the fact — that he is in a court of law and that sort of thing isn’t going to fly. The judge made that clear, the jury made that clear,” said Green.

The journalist added that the “idea that he would be allowed to skate, or that he wouldn’t have to face any accountability for spurning the subpoena, just defies reason.” To make matters worse, Bannon appeared to believe that notion.

Green also emphasized how Bannon has managed to circumvent accountability for quite some time. However, that has stopped now. Citing Bannon's previous legal debacle and its outcome, Green noted that Bannon was hit with “criminal charges for his alleged involvement in a scheme to build a privately funded border wall. At the last minute, he finagled a pardon from Trump."

“I think he’s gone so far in life, kind of talking his way out of situations, and not really having to face a body like this that has real powers to hold him accountable, that he just didn’t think through what it was he was doing," Green said. "I think we see the consequences of that with the verdict.”

To watch Green's interview, click or watch below.

---

bogus trump ltr releaSED from exec priv when trump has never asserted and can't now?

judge tossed case, liar said i have no defense left (4 parts all) , judge said yup.

an 7 22

If you are tired of waiting for Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict Donald Trump for seditious conspiracy, insurrection, obstruction of Congress, or any other crime involving the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, I have some words of consolation: Steve Bannon’s trial for contempt of Congress has begun. If convicted, he will likely go to jail.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t take pleasure in the prospect of anyone doing time, as our penal institutions are shamelessly overcrowded and do little in the way of rehabilitation or deterrence to lower our outrageously high crime rates. But apart from Trump himself, there might not be any other person more deserving of a stint in the pokey than Bannon, the loud-mouthed propagandist and podcaster who led Trump’s 2016 political campaign to victory, and subsequently served as the disgraced ex-President’s chief strategist and senior counselor for nearly eight months in 2017.

The facts of the case against Bannon are straightforward and, from a legal perspective, devastating.

On September 23, 2021, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol issued a subpoena commanding Bannon to produce documents on October 7 and sit for a sworn deposition on October 14. Bannon defied both requests.

On October 20, the committee voted to hold Bannon in contempt. Three days later, the full House, with the support of nine Republicans and every Democrat, passed a contempt resolution against Bannon and forwarded a request for prosecution to the Department of Justice.

On November 12, a federal grand jury returned a two-count indictment against Bannon for disobeying the subpoena. The first count cites him for refusing to testify, and the second for failing to turn over documents.

Contempt of Congress is a misdemeanor, but a very serious one. Conviction carries a mandatory minimum sentence of thirty days and a maximum of one year in jail. There is no possibility of probation, according to a 2011 federal court ruling interpreting the contempt statute.

The committee set forth its reasons for seeking Bannon’s cooperation in a succinct one-page letter that accompanied the subpoena. The letter reads in part:

“The Select Committee has reason to believe that you have information relevant to understanding important activities that led to and informed the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. For example, you have been identified as present at the Willard Hotel on January 5, 2021, during an effort to persuade Members of Congress to block the certification of the election the next day, and in relation to other activities on January 6....Moreover, you are quoted as stating, on January 5, 2021 [on Bannon’s ‘War Room’ podcast] that ‘[a]ll hell is going to break loose tomorrow.’ Accordingly, the Select Committee seeks both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and multiple other matters…”

The subpoena itself lists seventeen categories of records and communications. In addition to the items highlighted in the letter, the list includes all discussions that Bannon had with Trump about the planning, financing, and staging of the events of January 6, and any communications that Bannon had with Trump between November 3, 2020, and January 20, 2021, “concerning efforts to contest the election results or delay or impede the electoral vote.”

The list also includes communications Bannon may have had with any third parties about the insurrection. The subpoena specifically names attorney Boris Epstein, who worked as a strategic adviser on Trump’s 2020 election campaign; Kash Patel, a one-time aide to former GOP Congressman Devin Nunes of California; and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, an intelligence officer who briefly served as the acting Under-Secretary of Defense in 2020.

Initially, Bannon reacted to the subpoena with tough-guy bravado. Following his first court appearance in November, he told a small crowd of supporters and reporters, “This is going to be the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden. Joe Biden ordered Merrick Garland to prosecute me from the White House lawn when he got off Marine One. And . . . we’re going to go on the offense.We’re tired of playing defense. We’re going to go on the offense on this and stand by.”

Bannon might have been emboldened by the fact that contempt of Congress prosecutions arerelatively rare, and because his case was assigned to Federal District Court Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee who was narrowly confirmed by the Senate in 2019. In March, Nichols dismissed a felony obstruction charge brought against a Texas man accused of storming the Capitol.

Nichols, however, has been anything but lenient with Bannon. On June 15, Nichols deniedBannon’s motion to dismiss the case, rejecting his claims of executive privilege and his contention that the select committee was established illegally in violation of House rules.

As Bannon’s July 18 trial date approached, he apparently had a “come-to-Jesus moment” typical of many criminal defendants faced with imminent defeat. In an email sent to committee chairman Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of South Carolina, by one of his lawyers on July 9, Bannon offered to testify after all. The email also cited a rambling letter written by Trump, waiving claims of executive privilege.

Neither Judge Nichols nor the DOJ was swayed by Bannon’s change of position. On July 11, Nichols denied Bannon’s request to postpone his trial to October.

Nichols also ruled that Bannon will not be permitted to argue executive privilege as a defense at trial, and that he will not be allowed to subpoena House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or other members of the select committee to testify. The rulings left attorney David Schoen—who represented Trump in his second impeachment trial and later joined Bannon’s legal team—so exasperated that he remarked in open court, “What’s the point in going to trial if there are no defenses.”

Unlike seditious conspiracy or obstruction cases, contempt of Congress cases do not involve complex issues of intent. All that the prosecution needs to prove is a willful or deliberate intention not to respond to a Congressional subpoena. Evil motives or corrupt purposes need not be shown.

Bannon’s eleventh-hour offer to testify likely won’t save him, either. As the DOJ noted in a recent court filing, Bannon’s crime was committed and became complete in October, when he dodged the committee’s subpoena.

What this means, bottom line, is that Bannon had best hope he isn’t housed with the general population at the infamous D.C. Central Detention Facility, where he will probably serve his sentence. The same goes for former Trump aide Peter Navarro, who has also been indicted for defying a select committee subpoena. Navarro’s trial is set to begin November 17.

And who knows—a victory in the Bannon and Navarro cases might even encourage Garland to find his spine and prosecute Trump for attempting to overthrow what remains of our damaged democracy.

---

my hero

ActivistBill Christeson managed to get his two-word sign in the same frame as Bannon in numerous photos taken at his press conference. "failed coup"

It’s only the latest sign protest pulled off by Christeson.

He has been photographed behind former President Donald Trump’s short-time campaign manager and felon, Paul Manafort, with a sign that said “Traitor”; long-time Trump ally and felon Roger Stone (“Dirty Traitor”); and former Trump national security adviser and felon Michael Flynn (“Putin’s Puppet?”).

He has also haunted Manafort’s campaign partner Rick Gates (“Blood Money”); campaign adviser George Papadopoulos (“Team Putin”), who admitted lying to the FBI; and Trump confidant and investor Thomas Barrack (“Traitor”), who was charged with illegally lobbying the former president on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.

It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it, Christeson, 67, told HuffPost. It’s harder than the casual observer may realize.

“It’s tricky. You have to figure out where they’re going to be — what entrance they’re going in,” Christeson explained. “You have to position yourself where the sign can easily be read next to them — and where the media can photograph it.”

The only real trouble he’s experienced so far is a “guy who looked like one of the Proud Boys with Roger Stone, who crouched down and drove his shoulder — hard — into my ribs — twice,” recalled Christeson.

---

jbc

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/fbi-interviews-trump-attorney-in-connection-with-steve-bannons-contempt-case/

---

7 22

Eric Swalwell said on Sunday's edition of MSNBC's American Voices with Alicia Menendez that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol should prepare to treat former President Donald Trump's Oval Office adviser Steve Bannon as a loose cannon and a hostile witness.

Host Alicia Menendez asked Swalwell what he believesBannon may have of value to offer to the bipartisan panel, should it accept his offer to testify while a criminal contempt of Congress charge looms over Bannon's head. That proposal was accompanied by a letter from Trump, which painted Bannon as a victim of political malpractice.

“I watched how unfairly you and others have been treated,” Trump complained. “Therefore, if you reach an agreement on a time and place for your testimony, I will waive Executive Privilege for you, which allows for you to go in and testify truthfully and fairly, as per the request of theUnselect committee of political Thugs and Hacks, who have allowed no Due Process, no Cross-Examination, and no real Republican members or witnesses.”

Trump has no authority whatsoever to do that, irrespective of the fact that President Joe Biden has already committed to releasing all of the White House material relating to the insurrection.

Nonetheless, Swalwell's unvarnished response to Menendez's question was comically foreboding.

"I can only tell you I've interviewed Steve Bannon before. I was one of the lead investigators for the Russia prosecution, for Bannon's interview. I would expect zero. Absolutely nothing," Swalwell emphatically stated. "This guy was like interviewing the Joker. He's maniacal. He's insane. And it was a frustrating hours-long interview where we did not learn very much."

Bannon "had actually upset the Republicans. It was one of the only things that united us during the whole Russia investigation, was how much he upsetted the Republicans. He was joking around with his lawyers. They kept trying to get him to take it seriously. I would not expect very much. I don't think, you know, a leopard like Bannon should change its spots. So again, if the commission knows more than I know, that's great, they should proceed. But I would proceed very, very carefully with this guy," Swalwell cautioned.

"And by the way, Alicia, he doesn't have an executive – the president doesn't have an executive privilege to waive with Steve Bannon," Swalwell noted.

"Right. He knows that. Donald Trump knows that. It's just the same argument they have been making for months because they know they have no other argument to make," Menendez remarked.

"I do wonder though why you think that now, again, understanding a lot of this unfortunately with them is theater, why you have Trump saying, 'go ahead?'" she asked.

"Again I think it's a power play by Trump believing that he has, you know, a waiver that he doesn't and that he can release people and no one else can, including the courts," Swalwell replied. "That's – that's what I fear this is."

Watch here.

---

brian cutler spkr/ PA?

https://www.abc27.com/this-week-in-pennsylvania/pennsylvania-politics/jan-6-hearings-pa-speaker-cutler-received-daily-voicemails-from-trumps-lawyers/

Jan. 6 hearings: PA Speaker Cutler received daily voicemails from Trump’s lawyers

by: Lauren Rude

Posted: Jun 21, 2022 /

:{:{}:

(WHTM) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol heard from elections workers and local officials who warded off former President Donald Trump’s pressure to overturn the 2020 presidential election on Tuesday.

It was revealed through Josh Roselman, investigative council, during this hearing that Bryan Cutler, the Republican Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, received daily voicemails from Trump’s lawyers in the last week of November 2020 in relation to how Pennsylvania’s votes turned out in the general election.

“Mr. Speaker, this is Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis. We’re calling you together because we’d like to discuss, obviously the election,” Giuliani said in a Nov. 26, 2020 voicemail.

“Hello Mr. Speaker, this is Jenna Ellis, and I’m here with Mayor Giuliani,” Ellis said in a Nov. 27, 2020 voicemail.

“Hey Bryan, it’s Rudy, I really have something important to call to your attention, that I think really changes things,” Giuliani said in a Nov. 28, 2020 voicemail.

According to Roselman, Rep. Cutler found the outreach by both lawyers to be inappropriate and asked his lawyers to request that Giuliani stop calling him. However, Giuliani continued to call.

Then, in December, Steve Bannon, a former Trump strategist, announced a protest to take place outside of Cutler’s home and district office to “let him know what we think about him.”

Rep. Cutler released a statement on Tuesday afternoon regarding the Jan. 6 committee interview.

“As I’ve confirmed previously, I was in contact with representatives of the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the events leading up to Jan. 6. I was interviewed on two separate occasions in recent months. I was not contacted ahead of today’s proceedings or made aware of what portions of my interview would be included in the public proceedings. As the committee’s investigation is still ongoing, it would be inappropriate for me to provide any additional comments about my testimony at this time.”

The public hearing, the fourth by the panel this month, stemmed from its yearlong investigation into Trump’s unprecedented attempt to remain in power, a sprawling scheme that the chairman of the Jan. 6 committee has likened to an “attempted coup.”

Tuesday’s focus reviewed how Trump was repeatedly told his pressure campaign could potentially cause violence against the local officials and their families but pursued it anyway, according to a committee aide. And it underscored that fallout from Trump’s lies continues, with election officers facing ongoing public harassment and political challengers trying to take over their jobs.

The select committee also aimed to untangle the elaborate “fake electors” scheme that sought to have representatives in as many as seven battlegrounds — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico — sign certificates falsely stating that Trump, not Biden, had won their states.

how much infl on BB does he have?

anti-estb // TP freedom caucus BS, bannon // conspir victim of dark forces

an 622

no lnx

MAGA v. McConnell: Why Kimberly Guilfoyle is going after the GOP leader

Kimberly Guilfoyle speaking at the 2021 Student Action Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida, Gage Skidmore

Jon Skolnik June 19, 2022

Kimerly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancé, on Thursday accused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., of waging a "smear campaign" against former Missouri governor Eric Greitens, who is running to represent the state in the U.S. Senate.

The attack came this week in an email blast by Guilfoyle, Greitens' campaign chair, who alleged that the Senate Minority Leader "made a backdoor deal to try and have [Greitens] REMOVED."

"[McConnell has] gone to unimaginable lengths to keep a MAGA warriorlike Eric from winning the 1 SEAT we need to take back the 50-50 Senate," she exclaimed. "He even launched a smear campaign targeting Eric's children. When the RINO establishment employs the exact same tactics as the radical Left, enough is enough!"

Guilfoyle's remarks are the latest in a broader response to claims that Greitens subjected his ex-wife, Sheena Greitens, and their kids to physical abuse during their time together. Those abuse allegations were first levelled back in April 2020, shortly after the couple divorced.

Eric Greitens, for his part, has adamantly denied his ex-wife's account, arguing that if he had been abusive, the two would not have arranged a divorce settlement granting him joint physical custody of the children. Greitens has also alleged that his ex-wife's allegations, which were outlined in a signed affidavit, are part of a coordinated smear campaign waged by McConnell and GOP operative Karl Rove.

"I want to tell you directly, Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell," Greitens tweeted back in March. "Hear me now. You are disgusting cowards. And we are coming for you. We are no longer going to allow you to attack me and attack my kids and to destroy this country."

To support that claim, Greitens has cited a report by right-wing news site Breitbart alleging that Rove had forehand knowledge of Sheena Greitens' abuse allegations. The article also reported that Sheena Greitens' sister is employed by McConnell at the three different political consulting firms. Neither of these details clearly suggest that both McConnell and Rove mounted a coordinated attack against Eric Greitens' Senate campaign.

Both Rove and Sheena Greitens have denied conspiring against the former Missouri governor. Still, Breitbart has continued to suggest such involvement, most recently reporting on claims by Missouri Republican Rep. Billy Long that McConnell meddled in the GOP Senate primary by pressuring Long to drop out of the race.

"McConnell's efforts to get Long to drop out of the race could be an attempt to take away votes from former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, the frontrunner in the race," the outlet suggested. "McConnell has a vested interest in stopping Greitens candidacy as the former Missouri governor has campaigned on voting against McConnell as Republican Senate leader."

Eric Greitens is currently coming out on top in the Senate primary, according to a recent poll by The Hill and Emerson College. The Senate candidate is the only one in the race to boast double-digit support.

For the most part, the former governor has attempted to align himself with MAGA values, even though he was reportedly reluctant to back Donald Trump in the 2016 election, according to Politico. Still, Eric Greitens has not yet received an official imprimatur from the former president.

---

6 22 rww

One of the most striking figures in former President Donald Trump’s increasingly desperate effort stay in power after losing the 2020 election was Jeffrey Clark, an environmental lawyer at the Justice Department who urged Trump to make him attorney general days before the insurrection so that he could drag the Justice Department into Trump’s schemes.

Clark’s superiors had resoundingly rejected his planto have the Justice Department send letters to leaders in battleground states Trump lost, letters that would have falsely claimed that the DOJ had “identified significant concerns” about the elections and suggested that legislators send pro-Trump electoral votes to Congress.

But after being rebuffed by DOJ leaders, Clark went around them to meet directly with Trump—multiple times. Three days before the insurrection, Clark urged Trump to name him attorney general. Other DOJ officials who had gotten wind of the meeting told Trump that such a move would lead to mass resignations. In the end, Trump blinked.[SAT NIGHT MASSACRE]

The Washington Post reported this week that Clark also requested an intelligence briefing about “an allegation that the Chinese were controlling US.-based voting machines via internet-connected smart thermostats,” a wild theory even for Trump’s stolen-election conspiracists and, not surprisingly, one that the DOJ did not consider credible.

Clark’s attempted end-run around the Justice Department has been documented by media and the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Clark is expecting more negative attention from the committee, * **he told Steve Bannon’s “War Room**” [podcast](https://youtu.be/uaSSE4miYmA)podcast after the committee’s first public hearing last week.

On Bannon’s June 13 show, Clark falsely claimed that the committee had no right to investigate his actions because, he said, he had nothing to do with the physical attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. In fact, the committee has made it very clear from its inception that its focus is not only on the events of Jan. 6 but also on the related conspiracy to overturn the election that led up to the attack. Clark has reportedly cited the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer committee questions. Bannon told Clark he would have him back on the show to address information about him that comes out in other Jan. 6 committee hearings.

Bannon isn’t the only Trumpworld figure rewarding Clark’s loyalty and apparent willingness to do anything to keep Trump in power. This morning, Center for Renewing America President Russ Vought,a former Trump administration official, announced that his group had hired Clark as a senior fellow to work on “election integrity” and other issues....

---

jan 6 hearing: bannon predicted violence day before

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-defends-proud-boys-ahead-january-6-hearing

---

an 6 22

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon's attempt at a fiery populist speech in front of a federal courthouse was marred by a single protester on Wednesday.

Bannon is asking a Trump-appointed judge to dismiss two contempt of Congress charges against him for refusing to cooperate with the Jan. 6 Committee.

When he arrived at the courthouse Wednesday morning, his team was already waiting and prepared to stream the video to a pro-MAGA social media network.

Bannon spoke from behind a meager assembly of two microphones. He was barely audible on the Gettr stream.

He attacked the Jan. 6 Committee because "their ratings stink and they can't compete with the trial of Bannon." [20 million 1st night]

"That's why they canceled," he said, referring to a Wednesday hearing.

As Bannon ranted, a lone protester with a "Failed Coup" sign strategically flanked him.

One reporter asked Bannon if his goal was authoritarianism.

"We believe in free and fair and transparent elections! And we're winning everywhere!" he exclaimed. "This is going to be a massive blowout like 1932. You're witnessing, right now, a political realignment like 1932. And we will govern for 100 years after we win 100 seats."

"Do you want to govern as a one-party kind of total government?" the reporter wondered. "Do you want to destroy the Democratic Party?"

"Well, I believe that we will destroy the Democratic Party as a national political institution," he replied. "A populist uprising of Hispanics, African-Americans and working-class people is before us!"

Watch the video from GETTR.

---

an no lnx

no lnx

3rd guy going to trial and bannon may be forced to testify?

Two Steve Bannon associates plead guilty to criminal charges in 'We Build the Wall' case

Alex Henderson April 22, 2022

“War Room” host and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon was among the Donald Trump allies who Trump granted a presidential pardon near the end of his presidency. Bannon was facing criminal charges in the We Build the Wall case along with fellow MAGA Republicans Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, who continued to face charges after Trump left the White House — and Kolfage and Badolato, Business Insider reports, have pled guilty to charges that include conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering and making false statements on a tax return.

We Build the Wall was a crowdfunding campaign for a U.S./Mexico border wall, and according to the indictment, it raised $25 million. But federal prosecutors alleged that some of the money was diverted to nonprofits linked to Bannon. Kolfage served as president of the We Build the Wall project, and both Kolfage and Badolato agreed to a plea deal with federal prosecutors in March.

Business Insider’s Rebecca Cohen reports, “Prosecutors said (that) Kolfage paid himself $200,000 a month using donations during the scheme and also used supporters' money on luxuries like jewelry, an SUV, and payments for a boat. Kolfage also admitted to underreporting said donations on his tax returns to avoid paying taxes.”

When Kolfage and Badolato appeared in federal court on Thursday, April 21, Cohen notes, they “apologized for their actions and admitted they knew what they were doing was wrong at the time.”

Although Bannon, thanks to Trump, enjoyed a get-out-of-jail-free card in the We Build the Wall case, he is now facing unrelated charges in another matter. Bannon was charged with contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s select committee on the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

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---

https://www.americanoversight.org/ginni-thomas-republican-connections-raise-ethics-concerns-for-scotus

The activism of prominent conservative Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has for years raised questions about partisan influence on the judicial system and ethics in the Supreme Court. American Oversight is actively investigating Ginni Thomas’ connections and influence in right-wing networks and their potential impact on Justice Thomas’ ethics decisions. Records we have obtained through public records requests reveal Ginni Thomas’ ties to the Trump administration as well as evidence of Justice Thomas’ contact with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

As detailed in a recent update, emails between Ginni Thomas and DeSantis, obtained by American Oversight and reported on by Politico, suggest that Justice Thomas may have been in regular contact with the Republican governor. On June 10, 2021, Ginni Thomas reached out to DeSantis’ scheduling office to invite him to speak to a “coalition” of “conservative patriots.” Thomas explained that the governor would know her because her “husband has been in contact with him … on various things of late.”

Ginni Thomas said the “cone of silence coalition” of “about 83 national leaders” was formerly known asGroundswelland included former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows among its attendees. The group, now called the Third Century Group (TC Group), was focused on “the greatest threats and opportunities to constitutional governance,” Thomas wrote in her email, “and admittedly we are weary about the GOP divisions, lack of courage and lack of leadership.” Thomas also wrote that the group met “through the help of [conservative organization] Judicial Watch.”

DeSantis was eventually scheduled to present during the group’s July 21 virtual meeting. According to an email from a vice president at the Heritage Foundation who was planning to introduce the governor at the meeting, DeSantis was invited to speak “about whatever is on his mind in terms of national politics” and the attendees were “very concerned about [critical race theory], election integrity and immigration.”

:{:{The Coalition Formerly Known as Groundswell}:

Formerly known as Groundswell, TC Group is a secretive right-wing strategy group led by Ginni Thomas and others, which has been bringing together conservative activists for nearly a decade. Members have included former Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannon and former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton, among others. The network was well-connected to the Trump administration — in 2019, Thomas and others compiled lists of anti-Trump officials in executive agencies for the administration to dismiss and replace with Trump allies.}:

Public records obtained by American Oversight show the degree of access Thomas and her coalition had in the Trump administration. A calendar entry from March 5, 2020, showsRuss Vought, then the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, was scheduled to have “Breakfast with Ginni Thomas.”

On Dec. 10, 2018, Thomas, on behalf of her lobbying firm Liberty Consulting,invited a Department of Health and Human Services official — likely Steven Wagner, the director of the Administration for Children and Families — to a “Conversation and Strategic Discussion” with conservative commentatorJordan Peterson. The invitation noted that the event would be “closed to press and off the record” and that “a primary goal of this meeting is to determine specific action steps/solutions for winning back the next generation.” The reception was hosted by Thomas along with conservative Christian activist Bill Dallas and the Heritage Foundation’s Bridgett Wagner. The list of participants included prominent conservatives.

On Aug. 22, 2018, Neomi Rao,then the administrator of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, was scheduled to have a “Groundswell Mtg.” It is not confirmed whether this is Ginni Thomas’ Groundswell. Early in her career, Rao served as a law clerk for Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court, and in 2019, she was appointed by Trump to serve as federal judge in Washington, D.C.

:{:{Thomas’ Activism Raises Judicial Ethics Questions}:

Ginni Thomas’ career as a prominent conservative activist, more heavily involved in politics than any other spouse of a Supreme Court justice in history, has for years raised concerns among legal experts who note that justices typically avoid even being seen as partisan. Through her activism, Ginni Thomas has taken stances on issues that have come before the Supreme Court, such as on abortion, gun rights, and the Affordable Care Act, and recently took on major role in challenging Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Justice Thomas’ repeated failure to recuse himself on multiple matters relevant to his wife’s advocacy, especially as the court hears increasingly politically polarized cases, has been the subject of scrutiny. }:

Recently, Ginni Thomas was among the conservatives who signed a letter criticizing the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A month later, Justice Thomas was the only Supreme Court justice to support Trump’s request to block that committee from accessing White House records.

Ginni Thomas also played a role in challenging the 2020 election results as a leader of the conservative Council for National Policy (CNP), according to the New York Times. Following the November 2020 election, CNP directed its members to spread misinformation about the election and pressured Republican lawmakers in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania to challenge the election results by awarding their states’ electoral votes to Trump. In a newsletter, CNP’s political advocacy arm advised, “There is historical, legal precedent for Congress to count a slate of electors different from that certified by the Governor of the state.” Fake electoral certificates submitted by Trump allies in swing states to Congress to dispute Biden’s victory were obtained by American Oversight last year.

American Oversight continues to investigate Ginni Thomas’ connections and influence. We have filed records requests seeking communications between Thomas and federal agencies during the Trump administration, and in January 2022, we submitted public records requests to attorneys generals and governors across the country for communications with both Ginni Thomas and Justice Thomas.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/this-out-there-billionaire-donor-is-encouraging-the-gops-worst-extremes-conservative/

no lnx

This ‘out there’ billionaire donor is encouraging the GOP’s worst extremes: conservative

Peter Thiel speaking at the 2022 Converge Tech Summit atThe Waste ManagementPhoenix Open at the Skybar at TPC Scottsdale in Scottsdale, Arizona, Gage Skidmore]

Alex Henderson March 19, 2022

In the past, Peter Thiel was often described as a libertarian. But these days, the PayPal founder and billionaire political donor is much more MAGA and only wants Republican candidates who are as Trumpified as possible. Never Trump conservative Tim Miller takes a look at Thiel’s efforts to “remake” the Republican Party in a video posted by The Bulwark on March 17.

“He’s investing tens of millions in candidates who hew to an extreme nationalist agenda,” Miller explains in his video. “Here’s Thiel’s political spiel: crack down on immigration, go after big tech, isolationist foreign policy that’s tough on China but soft on Putin, dismantle big parts of the federal government, support Bitcoin and other alternative currencies, reject climate science. And of course, clamp down on anything he finds too woke.”

One of the far-right MAGA extremists who has been applauding Thiel is Steve Bannon, host of the “War Room” podcast and former White House chief strategist under President Donald Trump. Bannon said of Thiel, “I don’t think it’s just about flipping the Senate. I think Peter wants to change the direction of the country.”

The fact that Bannon likes Thiel so much, Miller warns, says a lot about Thiel’s ideology.

“(The) dude is so out there that even Steve Bannon described his proposals as far more disruptive than what Trump wanted,” Miller observes. “And the frightening part is, this guy does have an eye for predicting the future. He started PayPal and was among the first investors to Facebook. The last time oil prices skyrocketed, he was on it.”

Miller notes that in Wyoming, Thiel would like to see “anti-Trumper” Rep. Liz Cheney unseated — adding, “Still love ya, Liz.”

“He’s planning to finance a future of smart Trumps who share the former guy’s anti-democratic tendencies, but might be more competent when it comes to actually, you know, pulling it off,” Miller warns. “And because Thiel’s vision for the GOP might actually come to pass, you should get a sense for just how out there he can be.”

Miller continues, “Thiel wrote a book arguing that it actively makes things worse when we worry so much about racism and multiculturalism. He said he doesn’t think freedom and democracy are compatible, in part because women and welfare recipients are allowed to vote, and they don’t love their freedoms like White bros do. He’s a climate change truther…. And right now, it’s been the Thiel-backed candidates who have been the most vocal about the U.S. not doing anything to stop Russia’s advances in Ukraine.”

tim miller not my party bulwark

Watch the video below:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM9L3nvyjOM

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no lnx many twt

How ‘Kremlin-friendly’ MAGA Republicans — and Tulsi Gabbard — became propaganda for Russia’s Ukraine invasion

Alex Henderson March 14, 2022

Some conservative Republicans have been unwavering in their disdain for Russian President Vladimir Putin, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah. But in MAGA World, Putin has a long list of apologists — even as thousands of people die during Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. And Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter, in an article published by The Bulwark on March 14, takes a look at some of the “Kremlin-friendly” talking points coming from America’s far right.

:{:{}:

“During the Cold War,” Carpenter explains, “the Soviet Union invested heavily in its global disinformation and propaganda efforts. And back in 2016, the Russians had to go to the trouble of creating a troll farm to push their divisive messages to the American audience. But today, they needn’t go to such lengths: Plenty of prominent right-wing media figures in the United States are pushing out Vladimir Putin’s propaganda for him.”

The media figures and politicians that Carpenter slams as “Kremlin-friendly” in her article include Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, the Daily Wire’s Candace Owens, former President Donald Trump, “War Room” host Steve Bannon and Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina. Carpenter notes that these are the sort of MAGA Republicans Cheney has dubbed “the Putin wing of the GOP.”

“It’s all the same people: fringe internet figures, Fox News hosts, Steve Bannon and his acolytes, Marjorie Tayor Greene caucus members, and the millions of people who love them,” Carpenter observes. “Most of these people claim to be free-thinking contrarians, but their accusations, questions, and conclusions about the United States, Russia and Ukraine always seem to go one way: The United States and Ukraine are somehow wrong, and the Russians have their reasons for waging war. If you don’t believe that, it’s only because all the Democrats are lying to you. Well, all the Democrats except for 2022 CPAC special guest Tulsi Gabbard, anyway.”

Carpenter notes that Carlson’s commentary on Fox News has been “so Kremlin-friendly” that according to a Kremlin memo obtained by Mother Jones, Kremlin officials have asked government-run media outlets to feature more clips of him.

:{:{}:

Mother Jones’ David Corn reported, “On March 3, as Russian military forces bombed Ukrainian cities as part of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of his neighbor, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media outlets with a request: Use more Tucker Carlson.”

Carlson has promoted the conspiracy theory that the Ukrainian government is manufacturing bioweapons in laboratories and that Putin is merely protecting Russia’s safety by invading Ukraine.

Carpenter comments, “One could have guessed that the same people who blamed Dr. Fauci for the coronavirus might try to find some other government bureaucrats to blame for Putin’s war. This time, according to Carlson, ‘Dangerous biological agents remain, thanks to the Biden Administration, unsecured in a chaotic war zone’…. This is the big story in their minds. Not the Russian invasion and the unfolding humanitarian disaster, but the Russian disinformation about bioweapons, which provides a cudgel for whacking the Biden Administration — no matter how bogus the claims.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/russias-invasion-ukraine/right-wing-personalities-promote-kremlin-conspiracy-theory-about

no lnx twt

Right-wing personalities promote Kremlin conspiracy theory about biological research facilities in Ukraine

Conspiracy theorists spin an intelligence hearing about Russian disinformation strategy to help excuse Putin's unprovoked invasion

WRITTEN BY CYDNEY HARGIS

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM ALEX KAPLAN

PUBLISHED 03/09/22

After the State Department reconfirmed the existence of biological research laboratories in Ukraine and expressed concern Russia may seize them, far-right media accused the United States of both controlling the labs for nefarious purposes and orchestrating a false flag operation against Russia. In reality, the idea that these facilities are controversial, much less a threat to Russia, is a Kremlin-backed conspiracy theory.

During a March 8 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland if Ukraine has “chemical or biological weapons.” Nuland responded that Ukraine has “biological research facilities,” adding that the U.S. government was “quite concerned” about the facilities falling into Russian hands. When Rubio noted the existence of a Russian disinformation campaign already in-effect to blame Ukraine for a future release of biological weapons, Nuland replied that “it is classic Russian technique to blame on the other guy what they're planning to do themselves.”

Citation From March 8, 2022, C-SPAN coverage of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing

Russia isn’t the only state actor helping spread this conspiracy theory, which was also promoted by a spokesperson from the Chinese government — following a pattern of Chinese disinformation established during the pandemic.

The conspiracy theory that there are U.S.-funded bioweapons labs in Ukraine, and that they have been directed to destroy whatever pathogens are inside, has been floating around fringe and far-right media for several days since the conflict began. This burgeoning conspiracy theory has followed closely behind what theBritish Ministry of Defense described as “a notable intensification of Russian accusations that Ukraine is developing nuclear or biological weapons,” which the Kremlin hopes could provide “a retrospective justification” for its unprovoked war.

Ukraine does have biological research labs that were modernized as a result of a pact between its Ministry of Health and the U.S. Department of Defense. The U.S. and Ukraine entered into theagreement in 2005 — brokered, in part, by then-Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) – to jointly-prevent the spread of deadly pathogens developed as part of the former Soviet Union’s expansive biological weapons program. As part of the agreement, the U.S. provided funding for security upgrades to the Soviet-era facilities to support the “peaceful research” of infectious diseases.

The DOD’s Biological Threat Reduction Program was designed as part of an arms control program to secure “pathogen strains and sensitive biological knowledge within Ukraine," specifically to prevent those resources from being released or weaponized. In fact, the agreement governing these facilities evolved from the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which assisted Ukraine with the removal and decommissioning of Soviet nuclear weapons.

Some variations of the conspiracy theory go even further to claim that the labs are being run by the U.S. In reality, the labs are funded and operated by the Ukrainian government. But claims to the contrary have existed for years and are part of a Russian disinformation campaign to discredit the U.S. in the eyes of former Soviet republics. Indeed,FactCheck.orgproduced a full article debunking a previous iteration of this conspiracy theory on March 2, nearly a week before Nuland’s testimony.

Despite the abundance of evidence showing that these are not weapons facilities, far-right media personalities pounced on Nuland’s testimony about “research facilities” in Ukraine to hype Russia’s narrative justifying the invasion and to falsely claim she “confirmed every conspiracy theory about the existence of those labs”:

During the March 9 edition of Real America Voice’s War Room: Pandemic, host Steve Bannon claimed that Nuland was let “off the hook” and told all Florida residents to contact Rubio and ask him if the CIA, Defense Department, or DIA gave him the questions to ask. Bannon went on to play a clip of the hearing and said Rubio should have asked, “Is that a lab? What are they creating? Are we involved in any way? Have we financed it? Are we partners? Do we actually know what’s going on?” Bannon later said that “no Republican should vote for any money on Ukraine, zero dollars,” until we know exactly what is going on with the labs.

On March 9, the Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft shared a video that he said was of the “Director of the Information and Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation” telling the U.S. that Russia has “found your biological weapons” after Nuland’s testimony.

In a March 8 Gateway Pundit article, Hoft repeated China’s claim that there are “26 US biological labs in Ukraine alone” before running through the conspiracy theory that there was “biological testing in Ukraine near the Russian border.” Hoft went on to call Nuland’s comments an “explosive development.”

In a March 8 Telegram post, former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn shared a post claiming, “I was told that biolabs in Ukraine was a conspiracy theory yet here we are. They are now admitting it openly.”

Former 8kun administrator, QAnon influencer, and GOP congressional candidate Ron Watkins shared an Epoch Times article in a March 9 Telegram post that questioned whether Vice President Kamala Harris will “negotiate the cover up of the US Biolabs in Ukraine.”

A March 8 post on thefar-right forum TheDonald shared a video of Nuland’s comments and added, “Another win for conspiracy theorists: the biolabs in Ukraine exist! CONFIRMED!”

A March 8 post on theQAnon forum The Great Awakening shared a video of Nuland from theRussian state media outlet RTand called her comments “Narrative Spin 101.”

In a March 8 Gab post, QAnon influencer Anonymous Patriot shared a post about Nuland’s comments and wrote, “And there it is. PANIC.”

Human Events’ Ian Miles Cheong:

Human Events’ Jack Posobiec:

Far-right conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich:

The Epoch Times’ Hans Mahncke:

Big League Politics:

Far-right commentator Chuck Callesto:

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tried to re-run the clinton cash play, ended up in 1st impeachment (russian disinfo on ukraine hack DNC?]

https://www.npr.org/**2019/10**/09/768556474/how-a-political-hit-job-backfired-and-led-to-trumps-impeachment-peril

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The nation's attention is riveted on the drama unfolding in Washington, where House investigators are assembling evidence for their impeachment inquiry, and President Trump is refusing to cooperate. Our guest, Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green, says that, ironically, Trump's impeachment peril is the unintended result of an effort to help him.

Last spring, a book came out called "Secret Empires: How The American Political Class Hides Corruption And Enriches Family And Friends." Its author was Peter Schweizer, the head of the Government Accountability Institute, a think tank founded by Schweizer and Steve Bannon. The book includes information about Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden and his activities in Ukraine when his father was the vice president.

The book raises questions about possible ethical violations and corruption related to Hunter Biden's activities in Ukraine. The book received a lot of attention on Fox News, where it came to the attention of President Trump and led Trump to send Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to pressure the new government there to investigate the claims in Schweizer's book.

Joshua Green notes in a new article how this echoes the playbook that Schweizer and Bannon successfully used with their 2015 book "Clinton Cash," which raised questions about the propriety of Hillary Clinton's financial dealings and those of the Clinton Foundation. It led to investigations by the mainstream media. Joshua Green writes about politics for Bloomberg Businessweek and is the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain." He spoke with FRESH AIR's Dave Davies.

DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Joshua Green, welcome back to FRESH AIR. You write that the allegations of corruption involving Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine were first aired in a book published last year by something called the Government Accountability Institute. What is the Government Accountability Institute?

JOSHUA GREEN: Well, the Government Accountability Institute is registered as a nonpartisan research organization. It was founded in 2012 by Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former chief strategist, and Peter Schweizer, who, I believe, is now the president and still works there. And it bills itself as an investigatory outfit that investigates money and politics, corruption and that sort of thing.

DAVIES: Right. Who funds it?

GREEN: Well, we don't know all the funders, but one of its chief funders is Rebekah Mercer, who is part of the Mercer family, headed by Robert Mercer, the former co-chair of Renaissance Technologies, the big hedge fund. The Mercer family was and still is a major right-wing donor to various different causes, big Trump supporters, and a family that has come into the spotlight since Trump's election - also involved in Cambridge Analytica and some of the outfits that became famous and even notorious after the 2016 election.

DAVIES: The funding certainly comes from partisan sources. You know, the co-founder was Steve Bannon. What's interesting, as you write, is that the work - the research that it produced and the books that it produced weren't intended particularly to reach the conservative media or core Republican voters. What was the purpose?

GREEN: Well, the purpose of GAI originally was to, you know, investigate politicians. But given the conservative band of people like Bannon and Schweizer and their funders, the focus often tended to be Democrats. And in my book, I write about howSchweizer and Bannon resolved to go after Hillary Clinton a couple of years before the 2016 election, knowing that she was likely to emerge as the Democratic nominee.

So through GAI and its investigators, its forensic data scientists, you know, they pored over public records, corporate filings, dark Web scrapings to compile, you know, a damning book about Bill and Hillary Clinton in their work through their nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation, that was published about a month before Hillary launched her presidential campaign. And that book, "Clinton Cash," became an instant New York Times [PARTNERSHIP?!] bestseller and really tarnished Hillary Clinton's image just as she was entering the presidential fray.

DAVIES: And the interesting thing is that, you know, Bannon was not interested in just generating material for the conservative media. It was important that mainstream media draw on this research and, you know, give it their imprimatur tour too.

GREEN: That's exactly right. You know, Bannon's critique of how Republicans deal with the media goes back to the 1990s and Bill Clinton's impeachment, when he thought that Republicans really just wound up talking to themselves in an echo chamber and they chased wild rumors and conspiracy theories and really put off ordinary voters. The media didn't listen to them. Voters didn't listen to them. OPPO RESEARCH

So with "Clinton Cash," he resolved to compile factual information that he wanted the mainstream media to pick up and amplify. And so he explicitly was not looking to reach a conservative audience, which is already going to be predisposed to dislike the Clintons, and was aiming to affect the votes in the views of independents and Democrats and the type of people that Hillary Clinton was counting on.It was important to Bannon that GAI's work be picked up and taken seriously by mainstream media outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg News.

DAVIES: And did those mainstream media organizations publish stories based on the research?

GREEN: Yeah, they did. I mean, famously, there was a New York Times story based on Schweizer's reporting. And it revealed this in the story, looking at a Clinton Foundation deal in a Russian-backed company called Uranium One that really took off and, I think, poisoned the public views of Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. And, as Bannon intended, a whiff of corruption attached itself to Hillary Clinton. Of course, that expanded as the media focused on her missing emails and Republicans pushed these ideas. But the book really succeeded in what Bannon had set out to do. And that was to raise doubts about the ethics and morals and fitness for the presidency of Hillary Clinton.

DAVIES: Right. And we should just note that there is nothing at all unusual about credible reporters getting tips and leads and information from partisan sources. They have to, of course, independently verify the information and assess its credibility. Were the books that the Government Accountability Institute writes generally accurate?

GREEN: Well, they were based on facts. And what these investigators did was go out and turn out examples of foreign donors that hadn't been disclosed and examples of behavior by former President Bill Clinton that seemed to be conducted on behalf of donors to the Clinton Foundation.You know, Schweizer's style is not to fabricate or allege illegality. Instead, he uses his reporting to lay out a suggestive timeline that leads readers to a conclusion that, hey, something is dirty here. This reeks of influence peddling. Something is not right. And it raises doubts about the subjects.

DAVIES: So the new book from Peter Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute is called "Secret Empires: How The American Political Class Hides Corruption And Enriches Family And Friends." And it identified Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden as a target for some of the material. What did it find about Joe and Hunter Biden?

GREEN: Well, what it found was that Hunter Biden, the vice president's son, had become a highly paid director at a Ukrainian natural gas company called Burisma, a position that he didn't have any obvious qualifications for. But he did have a very famous last name, and the owner of the company was interested, I think, in building credibility. Schweizer also took a look at a private equity fund that Hunter Biden became involved in that drew a lot of money from Chinese investors at the same time that Hunter was flying to China on Air Force Two with his father, the vice president.

So in Schweizer's reporting, you know, this is made to look very fishy and possibly illegal and raise doubts about the ethics of Joe Biden and whether or not, you know, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination really belongs in that position or, you know, is in some way corrupt because of his son's business dealings.

DAVIES: No direct evidence that Joe Biden did anything to assist his son in either of those ventures, right? But there's an association.

GREEN: No. No, there isn't. And Bloomberg News, my employer, has done a lot of reporting and has turned up no wrongdoing.Other outlets have taken a look. I mean, what is going on and what Schweizer is good at finding are situations like this where, you know, I think any objective reader would come to the conclusion that, you know, but for Hunter's last name, he would not be in this position. You and I would not be offered a $50,000 a month board seat at a Ukrainian gas company because our father isn't vice president.

So it's the sort of - it's what, you know, Schweizer calls corruption by proxy. There's nothing explicitly illegal, but it's sort of morally corrupt and an indictment of our system in a way that populist Republicans and Democrats like to criticize.

DAVIES: The Clinton book got a ton of mainstream media attention and had an impact on the Clintons themselves. This book, did it get a lot of mainstream attention? Did it hurt harm the Bidens?

GREEN: You know, it really didn't. It came out in 2018, and it kind of came and went. It - you know, it didn't attach itself to Biden. It didn't become - it didn't drive the political news cycle in the way that "Clinton Cash" drove the 2015-2016 presidential news cycle. It got a decent amount of attention in conservative media, but it never really broke out into the mainstream.

You know, and I speculated in my Businessweek piece, a couple of reasons for this - one, Joe Biden wasn't yet a candidate, and so there wasn't that kind of urgency to look into his past. There might have been had the book come out later on. It also didn't focus only on the Biden's; it focused on John Kerry, Barack Obama, the Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.So I think that influenced how it was received. And of course, unlike "Clinton Cash," it wasn't focused on an actual Democratic presidential candidate; it was mainly focused on his son. And so there - it was sort of one degree removed from the primary actors.

I think all these things together help explain why the book didn't really break out until, that is, Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, became infatuated with it, started trying to investigate these things themselves and now has kicked off what has become an entire impeachment proceeding and put the book and the Bidens and Schweizer himself very much in the center of the 2020 presidential news cycle.

DAVIES: So when this book was launched with these stories, what were the ambitions of Peter Schweizer and the Government Accountability Institute?

GREEN: Well, I think the ambition was a reprise of what they'd seen with "Clinton Cash," that the mainstream media would look into this stuff and amplify it in the way that they had with the Clinton charges. You know, Steve Bannon, who kind of pioneered this model, has a phrase he likes to use - anchor left, pivot right. And what that means is you want to anchor this reporting on the left and the mainstream media - what Bannon considers the left - get them writing about it and then use the right-wing media to amplify what it is the mainstream media is saying and to kind of dominate the entire mediasphere.

So I think Schweizer and GAI were hoping that "Secret Empires," the Biden reporting, would be anchored in the mainstream media, and the whole process would repeat itself, but that never really happened with the second book.

DAVIES: So what did happen? Why do we know about it now?

GREEN: Well, we know about it now - it got a decent amount of attention in the right-wing media, onFox News, in the New York Post.And of course, some of - you know, one of the most loyal consumers of right-wing media is the president, Donald Trump, who according to reporting watches hours and hours of Fox News every day. So he was exposed to this reporting, exposed to the charges and the insinuations that Schweizer made. He's tweeted about the book. He's tweeted about Schweizer.

And, you know, based on everything we've heard from the whistleblower report, from the White House call transcript that was released at the end of September, Trump and Giuliani took it upon themselves to pick up the phone and try and advance Schweizer's reporting into the Bidens. I mean, essentially, calling the president of Ukraine and saying, hey,I know about this Biden stuff. I want you to look into this. I want you to investigate my political opponent. And, you know, if you don't, we're going to withhold this military aid - setting off all the alarm bells that have now led to the impeachment inquiry.

DAVIES: So it really was the president and Giuliani that took this and ran with it.

GREEN: It really was. I mean, the remarkable thing - a lot of people watch Fox News, watch right-wing media, get upset about the Clintons and the Bidens, but only one of them had the power to pick up the telephone, call the president of the Ukraine and put pressure on him to investigate the Bidens in hopes that they could turn up more damning information about Joe and Hunter Biden, knowing that Joe Biden was very likely to be his Democratic opponent in 2020.

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we're speaking with Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green about the origins of the story about Joe Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine, which drew interest from President Trump and has now led to an impeachment inquiry. Green is the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain."

So President Trump has said that Joe Biden, when he was vice president - I guess in 2016 - sought to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired, who was, at that time, investigating the company associated with Hunter Biden, his son - in effect, kind of scotching an investigation into his son by getting the prosecutor fired. What's the truth of this?

GREEN: Well, it is true what Trump says, but it is wildly misleading. Vice President Biden played a central role in overseeing U.S. policy in the Ukraine. But Biden, the Obama administration, Republicans in the Senate, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union were all putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to root out corruption and, particularly, to fire the chief prosecutor at the time, Viktor Shokin, who was not - who was essentially beholden to the oligarchs, was not doing the kind of corruption investigations they wanted.

So Biden threatened to withhold up to a billion dollars in aid from Ukraine if Shokin wasn't fired because he was so deeply corrupt. So Biden and the Obama administration were putting pressure on the Ukraine government to do more investigating of corruption not less, as Trump and his allies are insinuating.

And it's also - I mean, just to be clear, they weren't in - Ukrainian prosecutors were never investigating Hunter Biden. They were investigating an oligarch who owned - who is the co-founder of Burisma, the gas company, on whose board Hunter Biden served.

DAVIES: Right. And is it clear whether, at the time that he was fired,this prosecutor, Victor Shokin, was actually investigating the company?

GREEN: You know, it isn't clear.There have been conflicting reports on this. There does seem to have been an investigation into Burisma. But, you know, they paid a fine. That went away. At no point was Hunter Biden ever implicated in any kind of corruption. And part of what, I think, Trump and Giuliani were trying to do was to reopen this investigation and steer it toward Hunter Biden in hopes that they could find or maybe create damaging material around the Bidens.

DAVIES: There is a new chief prosecutor in Ukraine and was quoted as saying that he had opened an audit of a bunch of old investigations, including one into Burisma Holdings, the company that Hunter Biden was associated with. What does this portend?

GREEN: Well, it's not clear. I mean, one of the things, I think, a lot of people don't understand about the whole Ukraine situation is that Hunter Biden was never investigated by Ukrainian prosecutors. What happened was that they were investigating an oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky, who co-founded Burisma.And so reopening investigations would be investigations into Burisma Holdings. But they - from what we know, that wouldn't affect or have anything specifically to do with Hunter Biden or his situation there.

One of the things that Trump and Giuliani are pushing for in these text messages and these - in these meetings and phone calls is for Ukrainian prosecutors to go further and specifically investigate the Bidens in hope that they can turn up dirt that can be used in the 2020 presidential campaign.

And as far as we know, there's no basis for investigating anything. There is no evidence that I'm aware of or that anybody has reported that would suggest that there was wrongdoing there.And Schweizer himself, in fact, in the New York Times today, has an op-ed saying that, you know, what transpired actually wasn't illegal under U.S. law. It was unseemly. It might have been unethical - the idea of putting a politician's son on a board as a way of maybe trying to influence the political process - but there was nothing illegal here. And that's very much Schweizer's style is not to allege illegality but to insinuate that there is something corrupt going on there.

And, I think, part of the way that this entire story went sideways and went crashing into this impeachment inquiry is that Trump is very much susceptible to the insinuation that there is something, you know, perfidious going on here and took it upon himself to, you know, push and amplify and even threaten people in hopes of advancing the story.

DAVIES: You mentioned that Peter Schweizer, the author of this book that was funded by the Government Accountability Institute, has an op-ed in The Times. He's arguing that there's a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for an American company operating in a foreign country to engage in, you know, bribery or nepotism to secure favor from governments in which they operate but that there's a big hole in the law in that there's nothing to prevent a foreign government from hiring the family of U.S. officials or creating relationships in order to, you know, create an appearance which helps their business. Does he have a point?

GREEN: I think he's got a perfectly good point. And that's exactly what seems to be going on with Hunter Biden. He had no traditional, professional qualification for the job that he held with Burisma, you know, and that in itself doesn't seem right. I think that is what Schweizer is pointing to.

Now, Trump and Republicans have taken it a lot further, twisting a lot of the facts about what was investigated, what the Obama administration and Biden were pressuring the Ukrainian government to do in 2016. But the basic fact that Hunter Biden was on this board and was probably there for political reasons, because there weren't really any other good reasons for him to be on the board - what Scheizer has pointed out here and what he says in his New York Times op-ed is that what Hunter Biden did was perfectly legal, but that, in itself, is a problem.

GROSS: Joshua Green is a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek. After a break, he'll talk with Dave Davies about how the controversy is affecting the Biden campaign and how Trump and his allies are fighting back with counter narratives that paint the president as the victim of Democratic attacks.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview FRESH AIR's Dave Davies recorded with Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green. In a recent column, Green argues that President Trump's impeachment worries are actually the unintended result of an effort to help him. He says Trump picked up on research about Joe Biden developed by a conservative think tank and included in a book last year.

The material was intended to harm Biden's presidential campaign. But when Trump saw the story on conservative media and began urging Ukraine to investigate Biden, he created far bigger problems for himself. Trump is now the subject of an impeachment inquiry into whether he abused the authority of his office. When we left off, Green was talking about an op-ed published in The New York Times by Peter Schweizer, the author of the book with the allegations against Biden.

DAVIES: Are you surprised that The New York Times would publish an op-ed by Peter Schweizer, you know, who got funding from, you know, the Mercers and have a very strong political point of view?

GREEN: Yeah. You know, a little bit, given the controversy it kicked up in 2016 when Schweizer's reporting appeared on the front page - in other words, in the news pages. This piece today is in the opinion section, which I think is a little bit more appropriate for the author and the subject and the claims that he's making.

DAVIES: Right. And just going back to 2016, my understanding is that, you know, the author of the Times' reporting on the Clinton Foundations and the Uranium One story is reporting that they stand by, that they independently investigated all of this and found it credible and newsworthy. Do you disagree?

GREEN: No. I don't disagree with that at all. I mean, part of what made the GAI project so effective is that they didn't do what some conservative authors do, which is to, you know, fabricate or publish rumors. I mean, they're - all of this is based in fact. They certainly put their own spin on those facts. They insinuated that there was maybe more going on than was actually going on. But they really did turn up evidence of unreported donations, of relationships that just didn't seem right that, you know, any legitimate investigative reporter, were he or she to come across this information, would want to look into further. And that's exactly what happened.

So the fact that there is a grain of truth in a lot of what is written is one of the things that makes it so effective and that Bannon and Schweizer understood from the outset would get the mainstream media to pay attention and amplify these charges. I think what happened in 2016 that upsets liberals so much is that, you know, as this stuff was being published in the mainstream media, it was also being amplified and distorted in the right-wing media. And that was having a real effect on Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate.

Her reputation was unquestionably tarnished. She was dogged by these charges and allegations. You add in the amplifying voice of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate calling her crooked Hillary and corrupt and I don't think there's any question - but that - it affected voters' views of her in a way that ultimately proved disastrous for Clinton's own candidacy and for Democrats.

DAVIES: One of the things that I think adds to the political potency is that the facts of a lot of these stories are so complicated, that it's really hard for an average reader to sort out what it all means. Was there subsequent reporting on the Uranium One story which cast the Clintons' actions in a different light?

GREEN: Nothing knocked it down. You know, the subsequent reporting - I mean, I think what a lot of Democrats objected to was the fact that this, frankly, partisan outfit and author and right-wing money had produced this information that had made its way onto the front page of The New York Times. And I spoke to the liberal activist David Brock at the time about Schweizer and Bannon. And he shook his head. And he Said, you know, looking at it from their point of view, the Times is the perfect host body for the virus - meaning, you know, the intention all along from these guys was to poison the public image of Hillary Clinton. And by getting these charges onto the front pages of The New York Times, they essentially accomplished that mission. I think everything that happened subsequently with Trump's attacks and Clinton's loss in the 2016 election back that up. And this time around, with Joe and Hunter Biden, they were looking to do the same thing.

DAVIES: In the op-ed, the Times doesn't mention Peter Schweizer's association with the Government Accountability Institute or its funders, you know, the Mercers.What do you think of that?

GREEN: You know, if I were running the op-ed page, I think that's something I would've disclosed based on, you know, his background, the political lineage and what we saw in the 2016 presidential cycle.

DAVIES: So is all of this affecting the Biden campaign?

GREEN: You know, it's not clear that it is. I mean, Biden had been on a bit of a downward trajectory before Trump and the Ukraine charges really came into the news cycle. But, you know, he is - he's starting to slip now. I mean, in the latest averages of polls, Elizabeth Warren has nudged ahead of him. So, you know, it's not clear that this is a deadly development for Joe Biden's candidacy, but it certainly isn't helping.

DAVIES: Since the whistleblower complaint emerged, there's been a lot of information and text and the summary of the phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine, which has led to this impeachment inquiry, which is clearly picking up steam. I mean, we're going to see, you know, testimony from other players in this including the former ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch. The Trump administration says it is not going to cooperate with this because, you know, it's a witch hunt. Where do you see this going?

GREEN: Well, you know, the irony here is that Trump, by involving himself, you know, essentially made this entire project blow up in his face and committed actions that, at the very least, have launched an impeachment inquiry and I think are very likely to lead to his impeachment in the House whether or not the Senate ultimately chooses to remove him.

But what the whistleblower report showed, what the subsequent text messages that have now been revealed between the U.S. ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, and Bill Taylor, a top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, that show that the U.S. apparently was withholding military aid to help a political campaign, as Taylor put it in his text. That is the quid pro quo that Democrats are alleging. And I think if there is a trial in the House, that's what it's likely to show. And the evidence we've seen so far certainly supports that.

So I think, from an impeachment standpoint, Trump is in real trouble. Whether or not he's ultimately removed from office, we'll see. I'm skeptical. But certainly this isn't the outcome that Schweizer and GAI and I think Trump and Giuliani expected to happen when they started making noise about this over the summer.

DAVIES: Right. Well, the president's defenders are aggressively promoting other narratives. I mean, Giuliani, a couple of weeks ago, was on the ABC weekend show waiving an affidavit from Viktor Shokin, you know, the prosecutor that was fired in 2016, in which alleges that, in fact, he was investigating the company Hunter Biden's - was associated with. There are certainly reasons to doubt his credibility in the eyes of a lot of people. And then, you know, last week, Senator Ron Johnson had a heated exchange with Chuck Todd on "Meet The Press" in which he was arguing that there's all this credible evidence that people in the Ukraine were trying to hurt Trump and help Hillary Clinton in 2016. [RUSSIAN DISINFO] It's a very aggressive strategy to - you know, bringing up other stuff. What do you think the effect will be?

GREEN: Well, I think the intention on the part of Republicans is to muddy the waters and to turn the charges of corruption against Trump that we've seen laid out in the whistleblower report and the text messages - turn them back against the Democrats.

What is troubling to a lot of people is that a lot of these charges are based on discredited conspiracy theories. What Ron Johnson was talking about was a conspiracy theory that Trump and Giuliani have propagated that it wasn't Russia that hacked the Democratic National Committee servers in the 2016 election but Ukraine.That's something that's been knocked down by every intelligence official, U.S. and otherwise, who's looked into this. And yet, this is what's being propagated by Trump.

And I think a lot of Republican politicians, fearful of Trump's wrath and eager to toe the partisan line, have found themselves forced or obligated to repeat these wild charges in a way that bears no relationship to reality but is nonetheless, I think, muddying the waters and shaping public opinion in a way that is intended to mitigate the damage of the charges against Trump.

DAVIES: Is Steve Bannon playing a role in stoking any of these allegations?

GREEN: You know, he really isn't anymore. I mean, Bannon had a very public falling-out with Donald Trump in 2017, where Trump sort of publicly humiliated him and excommunicated him from the Republican Party. He lost his position as the head of Breitbart News, was essentially sent out into the wilderness.

I mean, Bannon is still around on the scene. He is focused more on China these days and trying to, I think, strengthen Trump's resolve to conduct the trade war. Trump did tweet favorably about him a couple of months ago. But there isn't a close relationship there in the way that there was during the presidential campaign.

DAVIES: Yeah. I asked because you wrote a book about Steve Bannon and talked to him a lot. He was also going around Europe trying to kind of build a, you know, nationalist, populist movement. How did that go?

GREEN: Well, it basically failed. I mean, the nationalist movements in Europe weren't really interested in an American political strategist coming in and telling them what to do. They didn't perform nearly as well in the May European parliamentary elections as Bannon and some of the nationalist contingent were hoping for.

And so he's focused mainly these days on kind of beating the war drums against China, going out and publicly defending Trump's aggression against China when it comes to tariffs and the trade war and that sort of thing, and seeking to remain relevant in that way. But so far, there has been no reproach with Trump and the White House, or the Mercer family, for that matter. And so he's off on his own.

DAVIES: You know, looking at the strategy of the Government Accountability Institute with this book, you know, the idea was to kind of repeat the playbook that worked with the Clinton candidacy in 2016, where you develop information, it becomes adopted by the mainstream media and becomes a scandal. And in this case, it seems like another - kind of a different weird thing happened, which is that it turned into a scandal for the president himself when he pursued a theory and then engaged in conduct which has resulted in this impeachment inquiry.

At the same time, Peter Schweizer, the author of the book funded by the Government Accountability Institute, is being quoted. I mean, the story is out there. I wonder how they view this - how it's all worked out.

GREEN:Well, the irony here is that the target was supposed to be the Bidens, not the president. And by the president becoming involved, you know, the original plan has kind of blown up. What may wind up happening - as you say, you know, Biden and these charges are very much in the news. That was part of the intention, even if the negative attention toward Trump wasn't part of the plan. What we could see end up happening is a kind of a murder-suicide where Trump really does take out his strongest Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, only, he winds up, in the process, getting himself impeached.

DAVIES: Well, Joshua Green, thanks so much for speaking with us again.

GREEN: Thank you. It's always a pleasure.

GROSS: Joshua Green is a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek and the author of a book about Steve Bannon called "Devil's Bargain."

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Steve Bannon is not pleased with former Vice President Mike Pence's clear condemnation of former President Donald Trump's endless conspiracy theories and claims of voter fraud regarding the 2020 presidential election.

On Friday, February 4, Bannon, former White House strategist to Trump, shared his reaction to Pence's speech at the Federalist Society's Florida Chapters Conference. During the event, Pence addressed the situation and defended his actions on January 6 when he solidified the Electoral College vote in favor of President Joe Biden. Referencing the U.S. Constitution, the former vice president made it clear he had "no right" to overturn the outcome of the presidential election.

"This week, our former president said I had the right to 'overturn the election.' President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election," Pence said.

He added, "Frankly there is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that anyone person could choose the American president. Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election and Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024."

Apparently, Pence's truth was not what Bannon, and other Trump loyalists, would have liked to hear. So, following Pence's remarks, Bannon decided to rant during Friday's episode of his "War Room: Pandemic" podcast. Describing him as "a stone-cold coward," Bannon delivered a direct message to the former vice president.

"Pence, you're going to carry this thing eventually to your grave, OK?" Bannon said. "Because it is a mark of shame. And you are a stone-cold coward. A stone-cold coward."

Although Pence is accurate regarding the limitations on his Constitutional power to overturn the election, Trump has continued to distort the truth by suggesting otherwise. In a recent statement, Trump leveled yet another attack at Pence, once again falsely claiming that he had the power to overturn the election.

"In other words, I was right and everyone knows it," Trump said in the statement.

The former president's dangerous claims are continuing to undermine the United States' democracy although what he is saying is completely untruthful.

---

an 222

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/the-trumpified-gop-has-a-whole-new-generation-of-power-brokers-and-influencers-report/

no lnx

The Trumpified GOP has a whole new generation of power brokers and 'kingmakers': report

Alex Henderson February 04, 2022

The fact that so many well-known right-wing Republicans endorsed Joe Biden during the United States’ 2020 presidential race —from former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona to former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina to Sen. John McCain’s widow Cindy McCain — speaks volumes about how dramatically former President Donald Trump remade the GOP in his image, and how alienated they fell from the party. The GOP landscape is radically different from what it was during the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama years, and journalists Jonathan Swan and Lachlan Markay describe that landscape in an article published by Axios on February 4.

“Paths to power and winning elections inside the GOP are changing rapidly and radically, spawning a new generation of kingmakers while diminishing the clout of many who lorded over the party for years,” Swan and Markay explain. “Why it matters: 14 of the Republican Party's top consultants and operatives across the country spoke in detail with Axios about how profoundly primary races have changed since 2014 — the last pre-Donald Trump midterm election and the last midterms in which a Democrat occupied the White House.”

The reporters continue, “What we found: Those sources — whose clients range from as Trumpy as they come to establishment Republicans — described a clear shift in the party's power brokers. They spoke of changes to the ecosystem across four categories: institutional upheaval, endorsements, conservative media and donors.”

Swan and Markay go on to list Republicans who “had the power” in the past — a group that includes the National Review, the National Rifle Association, the Drudge Report, Heritage Action and the “Koch network,” among others.

But their “who has the power now” list is much more MAGA.That list includesTrump and his “family and former aides” as well as Breitbart News,Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro’s the Daily Wire, former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and the Susan B. Anthony List.

:{:{}:

Swan and Markay also mention “online influencers, including Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino, Joe Rogan, Jack Posobiec, Charlie Kirk and Marjorie Taylor-Greene.”...

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ayn rand agenda 21 BS biggest damage?

tisch maine timeline:

2017 (June)

President Trump announces that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate

Agreement

Stephen Bannon and the anti-globalist, climate denying contingent of White House advisors

trump the personal entreaties of Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pope Francis, Ivanka Trump, Rex

Tillerson, European Union heads of state and many others. Oblivious to the fact that the

emissions standards under the Agreement are voluntary, subject to revision, and entail no

penalties for noncompliance, the President calls the deal “draconian,” imposing unfair standards

on American companies and employees. “At what point does America get demeaned? At what

point do they start laughing at us as a country?” Trump says. “We don’t want other leaders and

other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be.”

The New York Times observes that

“Mr. Trump’s decision to abandon the agreement for environmental action signed by 195 nations

is a remarkable rebuke to heads of state, climate activists, corporate executives and members of

the president’s own staff, who all failed to change his mind with an intense, last-minute lobbying

blitz. The Paris agreement was intended to bind the world community into battling rising

temperatures in concert, and the departure of the Earth’s second-largest polluter is a major

blow,”* and its editorial board calls the withdrawal “disgraceful.”** Wall Street Journal

headlines declare: “U.S. Climate Pivot Puts a Reluctant China in Driver’s Seat: Trump’s

withdrawal from Paris accord gives China a new opening to exert sway on a big global issue” ***

Some find a May 30 op/ed in the Wall Street Journal by presidential advisors H. R. McMaster

and Gary Cohn as illuminating on the withdrawal decision in: “The president embarked on his

first foreign trip with a cleareyed outlook that theworld is not a ‘global community’ but an arena

where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”

:{:{}:

Writes David Brooks in The New York Times: “That sentence is the epitome of the Trump project.

It asserts that selfishness is the sole driver of human affairs.”**** Al Gore’s statement on the

withdrawal declares that “Removing the United States from the Paris Agreement is a reckless and

indefensible action. It undermines America’s standing in the world and threatens to damage

humanity’s ability to solve the climate crisis in time. But make no mistake: if President Trump

won’t lead, the American people will. Civic leaders, mayors, governors, CEOs, investors and the

majority of the business community will take up this challenge. We are in the middle of a clean

energy revolution that no single person or group can stop. President Trump’s decision is

profoundly in conflict with what the majority of Americans want from our president; but no

matter what he does, we will ensure that our inevitable transition to a clean energy economy

continues.”*****

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers states that “We may have our

first post-rational president,” and that “It is possible that last week will be remembered as a

hinge in history — a moment when the United States and the world started moving on a

path away from the peace, prosperity and stability that have defined the past 75

years.”****** The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reports that US voters favor

staying in the Paris Agreement by a margin of 5 to 1, and that half of Trump voters support staying

in, with fewer than 3 in 10 saying we should not stay in.******* The formal process of

withdrawal will likely take four years, and not be final until after the 2020 presidential election.

[see 2015 (December)]

*Michael Shear, “Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement,” New York Times, June 1, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/trump-paris-climate-agreement.html

**Editorial Board, “Our Disgraceful Exit From the Paris Accord,” New York Times, June 1, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/trump-paris-climate-change-agreement.html

***Brian Spegele and Te-Ping Chen, “U.S. Climate Pivot Puts a Reluctant China in Driver’s Seat,” Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2017,

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-climate-pivot-puts-a-reluctant-china-in-drivers-seat-1496380249

****David Brooks, “Donald Trump Poisons the World,” New York Times, June 2, 2017,

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/opinion/donald-trump-poisons-the-world.html

*****The Climate Reality Project, “Statement by Former Vice President Al Gore on Today’s Decision by the Trump Administration

to Withdraw from the Paris Agreement,” June 1, 2017, https://www.climaterealityproject.org/press/statement-al-gore-us-commitmentparis-agreement

******Lawrence Summers, “After 75 years of progress, was last week a hinge in history?” Washington Post, June 4, 2017,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-75-years-of-progress-was-last-week-a-hinge-in-history/2017/06/04/2085b91e-47cf11e7-bcde-624ad94170ab_story.html?utm_term=.7ccf9ee984ec

*******Jennifer Marlon, Eric Fine, and Anthony Keiserowtiz, “Majorities of Americans in Every State Support Participation in the

Paris Agreement,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, May 8, 2017,

http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/paris_agreement_by_state/

---

interesting that currency based on trust, ~ gubmint, fox raison detre hate dems

no lnx

Steve Bannon is pushing an anti-Biden cryptocurrency — but a new report sounds the alarm about hidden risks

Alex Henderson January 19, 2022

Steve Bannon, host of the “War Room” podcast and former White House chief strategist under President Donald Trump, has been promoting his involvement in $FJB — a new cryptocurrency aimed at MAGA Republicans who hate President Joe Biden. But reporters Ali Breland and David Corn, in an article published by Mother Jones this week, warn that according to tech experts, $FJB could pose risks for investors.

The FJB in $FJB stands for “fuck Joe Biden.” Bannon, on his podcast, has called $FJB a “currency for the MAGA movement” — and his MAGA ally Boris Epshteyn has described it as a way to “let your feelings, your primal disapproval, your primal disgust with Biden be heard.”

Breland and Corn point out that starting a cryptocurrency is “surprisingly easy.” Making it profitable for investors, however, is another matter.

“$FJB buyers might want to beware,” Breland and Corn warn. “Not only does every purchase bolster the value of Bannon’s and Epshteyn’s holdings, crypto experts say the currency is designed in a way that affords its operators an unusual amount of discretion in blocking owners of coins from selling their tokens — a power that could cause problems for investors.”

READ: 'Incredibly dumb': Former federal prosecutor mocks Eric Trump for telling NY AG 'we are prosecuting you'

Mother Jones interviewed tech expert Simon de la Rouvier for the article, and he is advising caution.

“The code for $FJB allows the currency’s operators to manually lock an owner’s token balance, an unusual practice in a space that aims to avoid centralized authority,” Breland and Corn explain. “This would prevent an owner from selling coins, according to Simon de la Rouvier, who reviewed the code for Mother Jones. De la Rouvier is a digital artist and co-author of ERC-20, a coding standard used to program contracts on the Ethereum blockchain — which supports Ether, a cryptocurrency second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization.”

According to de la Rouvier, the owners of $FJB are exempt from its restrictions. De la Rouvier told Mother Jones, “They can transfer as much as they want, whenever.”

In a chat on the messaging app Discord, Breland and Corn report, an $FJB user complained, “My wallet has been locked now for the 4th time. This time it’s locked by the new owners of $FJB. It’s an anxious time. (I’m) waiting for answers.”

---

an ah 1 22

On MSNBC and CNN, coverage of the one-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021 insurrection had a consistently dark tone. That day was portrayed as one of the most disturbing in U.S. history and a full-fledged assault on liberal democracy. But on Steve Bannon’s far-right “War Room” podcast, the mood was totally different; the former White House chief strategist, Never Trump conservative Tim Miller stresses in The Bulwark, was celebrating violent insurrection, not speaking out against it.

“In the week leading up to the first anniversary of January 6, I dove into ‘the War Room’ to see how the OG ‘Stop the Stealers’ were processing the fallout from their botched putsch,” Miller explains in an article published by The Bulwark on January 11. “What I found was that their effort to overthrow the government has been undeterred by the initial setback of Joe Biden being inaugurated. While Republican elites try to minimize the events of January 6, ‘the War Room’ and their minions have continued to take the coup both literally and seriously.”

Miller continues, “In their view, the Biden ‘regime’ is illegitimate, and the regime’s medical establishment has covered up nearly a half a million deaths from the COVID ‘vaccines.’ In 2022, they aim to put so many of their people in positions of power throughout state and local governments that next time, there will be nothing anyone can do to stop their quest for power. And this crusade is infused with an unmistakable religious fervor and appeal to a quasi-Christian nationalism that calls its devotees into action.As crazy as their show may sound on its face — and let me tell you, it seems very crazy — anyone who cares about American democracy should take that prospect very seriously indeed.”

During Bannon’s January 3-6 shows, Miller observes, his guests included awho’s-who of MAGA extremists — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, former Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro and Trump lawyer/former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Miller warns that while Bannon’s show comes across as a theater of the absurd, that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

“If it weren’t for the domestic terrorism and the threat to democracy,” Miller writes, “the whole thing would be an over-the-top laugh riot…. Put it all together, and what you have is a show that offers Trump supporters afascistic MAGA cosplay where they are the main characters, and the aggrieved victims, and also the all-powerful heroes…. From this vantage, the uprising that led to the January 6 riot is not a thing of the past, but an exercise to be learned from in their ongoing effort to ensure that they gain enough power so that next time the Democrats, and the establishment Republicans, and the Never Trumpers won’t be able to deny them total victory — and it’s part and parcel with their broader effort to tear down not just the government, but any American institution that might threaten their ability to control the levers of power.”

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Steve Bannon

On the November 16 edition of OAN’s The Real Story, host Natalie Harp accused the federal “Injustice Department” of prosecuting Bannon as part of “yet another witch hunt.” Harp’s guest, Bannon’s War Room co-host Raheem Kassam, warned Republican officials that “if you don’t think that after they’re done with somebody like Bannon that they’re coming after you, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Bannon attorney David Schoen told Real America that “every American citizen ought to be scared to death by” his client’s prosecution, and OAN host Dan Ball claimed the former Trump strategist was the victim of “a politically motivated witch hunt.” According to Schoen, Bannon did not comply with the subpoena because he thought he had to follow Trump’s invocation of executive privilege. Schoen claimed that the Department of Justice chose to criminally prosecute Bannon “vindictively, out of revenge, to punish” him. Ball concurred that the Biden “regime” is using the Justice Department “to go after political enemies to get payback.”
Tipping Point host Kara McKinney linked the murder conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd to other “prosecutorial attacks” on conservatives like Bannon. McKinney’s disorganized rant, which also touched on O’Keefe, Rittenhouse, and anti-critical race theory parents as victims, posited that these cases are “all related” as examples of “political persecution.” The relation appeared to be that two members of the House January 6 commission, Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Bobby Rush (D-IL), were formerly involved in Black radical politics. “So bring this up anytime someone tries to tell you that what's happening to Bannon, and to really the rest of us, is anything less than political persecution,” McKinney concluded.
On Tipping Point, far-right podcaster Millie Weaver said the Bannon indictment “is the left-wing regime going after their political opponents and weaponizing the American justice system to do so.” Weaver also added O’Keefe to her list of victims, claiming both cases are actually about unnamed enemies seeking “the media hit pieces and the psyops that can result” from their arrests. After extensively lying that left-wing agitators were responsible for January 6, Weaver complained “only the political opponents of the Biden administration” are being subpoenaed for the attack on the Capitol. McKinney complained that the “January 6 political prisoners,” including “military veterans” and “MAGA grandmas,” are being held on “heinous charges” and “force-fed critical race theory,” asking if their plight was “just part of the re-education really that the left is using against you and I, the patriots of America?”

James O’Keefe

In Focus host Stephanie Hamill: “It might be James O’Keefe today, but it could easily be me or somebody else tomorrow.” Hamill was speaking to far-right commentator Dinesh D’Souza, a staunch Trump ally who pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud in 2014 but was pardoned by Trump in 2020. D’Souza dishonestly added that “Republicans would never dream of doing [this] to their critics. It would be unthinkable for example of Trump, or earlier Reagan or Bush, to go after left-wing journalists in this manner,” an obvious omission of Trump’s extensive war on the press.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told OAN the O’Keefe raid “shows the FBI has been weaponized by the Biden administration, and this gives every American reason to fear the government” and signals the rise of communism in the U.S. Greene said the investigation was evidence that “the Democrat Party is the Communist Party of America” because “this is what communists do in many other countries. They want to silence their enemies, anyone that’s going to reveal the truth,” such as O’Keefe. The GOP representative warned viewers that they will “see these tactics over and over and this is why Americans, you need to get ready. You need to be able to stand up firm against these fear tactics from the Democrat Communist Party, and not allow them to rear this head of communism.”
Real America’s Dan Ball on O’Keefe investigation: “If we don’t stand up to the tyrants currently running this administration, it could be you or me they target next.” Ball concluded the segment by telling viewers to “remember what 45 always said. ‘They’re not coming for me, they’re coming for you.’ [O’Keefe] was just in the way.”
Ball: “This is an example of what’s to come. … Like Trump used to say, they’re not coming after him, they’re coming after you.” Ball continued, “Don’t think they won’t come for other journalists, and you, next. They’re willing to literally tear down everything our institutions stand for and use the DOJ and the FBI as a political weapon.” Guest Harmeet Dhillon, who is an attorney for Project Veritas, claimed that “this is an existential threat to the First Amendment and to our liberties and to our future, and every American … should recognize that. It’s loud and clear.”

Kyle Rittenhouse

OAN guest: “Today it's Kyle Rittenhouse. Tomorrow it’s you." Defense witness and Real America’s Voice employee Drew Hernandez warned OAN viewers that “what they're clearly doing, especially in the mainstream media, is not only are they trying to paint responsible gun owners as the villains, but they're probably even trying to discourage future gun owners from even attempting to buy a firearm to defend themselves, because, hey, we did this to Kyle. We can do this to you.” OAN’s Stephanie Hamill agreed, adding that Americans were watching the trial’s outcome to see if they “have the right to defend themselves” from “Black Lives Matter rioters and looters.”
Larry Klayman: The “reverse racism” against Rittenhouse was “maybe a lesson for the American people at large too.” Klayman, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, explained that the apparent lesson was “if somebody shoves a gun in your face, don’t take it lightly. Kyle [Rittenhouse] did not.” Klayman suggested that the Biden administration and the mainstream media would only make society more hostile to gun owners, advising people “to exercise their Second Amendment rights, their right to bear arms, because it’s only going to get worse” under the Biden administration.
Tipping Point’s Kara McKinney: The Rittenhouse trial shows that “the left can set your city on fire” and “have convicted pedos chase you down,” but “if you try to defend yourself against it, you’re still somehow the bad guy.” McKinney continued, complaining to Dinesh D’Souza that “the idea that they can destroy your life and everything with it and you have to sit there and take it and you’re not allowed to have self-defense” is “almost setting the stage” for Black Lives Matter to “destroy our cities and you and I, we’re not allowed to fight back.”
Revolver News’ Darren Beattie asked OAN viewers to “consider the larger context” of a “vindictive and politically motivated” prosecution and “how fragile this justice system is in the United States and how weaponized it is politically,” despite Rittenhouse’s acquittal. Beattie, a former Trump White House aide fired (and later rehired) for his ties to white supremacist groups, claimed that a conviction would have “destroyed” Rittenhouse’s “entire life over nothing for doing something that, frankly, any upstanding citizen would do, and that is protect his community from rioters and looters,” suggesting that any viewer who would do the same could also face a murder trial.
OAN host Stephanie Hamill: According to the media, “if you’re happy about Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal, you’re apparently a white supremacist too.”

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/steve-bannon-2655746168/

In 2016, the British data firm Cambridge Analytic (which supported Donald Trump during that year's presidential election) used Steve Bannon as its director of U.S. operations — and Cambridge had a billionaire backer in Rebekah Mercer. But now, according to the Daily Beast's Roger Sollenberger, Mercer is distancing herself from the far-right MAGA Republican.

"The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center alleges that the Trump campaign and a pro-Trump super PAC run by Bannon illegally coordinated through Cambridge to pump out millions of dollars in political ads for Trump," Sollenberger reports in an article published on November 16. "Brendan Fischer, director of reform at CLC, said the evidence generated in the closed investigation specifically strengthens their case against Bannon, who was named in the foreign national probe but was never questioned."

Bannon and Mercer were allies in 2016. But now, according to Fischer, Mercer appears to be throwing Bannon under the bus.

"Federal election filings show the Trump campaign paid Cambridge Analytica $5.9 million in the 2016 cycle, and MAN1 reported paying another $5 million to the firm after the super PAC began backing Trump," Sollenberger explains. "It isillegal for campaigns and outside groups to coordinateelection-related activity through a common vendor without appropriate firewalls in place. Fischer pointed out that Mercer, Bannon's former business partner and billionaire Cambridge financier, appears to have betrayed Bannon, with the right-wing megadonor pinning the blame for any illicit activity on him."

Fischer told the Beast, "The response from Mercer's attorney was that Bannon was running the show, so the idea that he'd also been running both the super PAC and the Trump campaign — and that both of them were contracting with the firm Bannon had also been running just boggles the mind. These are not novel issues. It's anticipated in the law that a shared vendor might act illegally as a conduit between campaigns, but this is something we haven't really seen before."

According to Mercer's attorney, Mark Hansen, any problematic activity with Cambridge could not be blamed on her, but would lie with Bannon or Cambridge CEO Alexander Nix.

"While Hansen acknowledged that Mercer worked at 'a high level' in the organization," Sollenberger writes, "she had been 'simply swept in' with Bannon and Nix, he said. As the company's top executives, Hansen continued, it was Bannon and Nix who 'directed what CA employees did or did not do in their U.S. campaign work for US political campaigns.'"

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11 21 an

On January 2, Trump lawyer John Eastman called into Steve Bannon's War Room podcast to explain how to steal the election. Eastman told Bannon that Vice President Mike Pence could still overturn Biden's victory. The interview was part of an extremely public campaign by Trump and his closest allies to lobby Pence to steal the election during the certification ceremony.

One of Eastman's crackpot theories was that the vice president has the unilateral power to accept or reject electoral votes at his whim, or failing that, to somehow "send the election back" to Republican-controlled swing state legislatures that would disregard the will of their people and replace Biden's electors with Trump's.

Eastman was Trump's master of self-serving constitutional bafflegab. His job was to spin elaborate pseudo-legal theories to justify Trump's assault on democracy. It was Eastman who wrote the notorious memos outlining his fanciful legal arguments for why the vice president has the power to unilaterally reelect himself. Eastman also co-wrote a blueprint for how Trump could use the military, the police, and criminal gangs to hold onto power after a disputed election. Eastman even spoke at Trump's rally on the Ellipse, making wild allegations of election fraud before Trump set the mob on the Capitol.

To understand January 6, you have to think in terms of an inside game and an outside game. The inside game was to steal the election procedurally. The outside game was to gather a mob to terrorize officials into going along with it. Eastman was a conceptual architect of both the paper coup attempt and of the plan for the political repression that Trumpists expected to follow in the wake of the theft.

READ:A growing threat is emerging from the theocratic wing of the GOP — but many liberals are missing it

It all comes back to the Big Lie of massive Democratic voter fraud in the swing states. Trump used the fantasy of a stolen election to gather his supporters in Washington for a "wild protest" on January 6, whip them into a rage and set them on the Capitol. Eastman used the same lie to justify his schemes to overturn the election procedurally.

In his various memos and public appearances, Eastman presented several paths to overrule the will of the people, but his ultimate justification was always the same: Democratic "fraud" in the swing states invalidated their certified slates of Biden electors.

Therefore, he maintained, Mike Pence was entitled to unilaterally cast aside the electoral votes and count alternate slates of fake electors in their place or discard the votes from those states altogether, denying either candidate the necessary 270 votes and throwing the election to the state delegations in the House.

As Eastman wrote in his second memo, Trump would prevail, "if the Republicans in the State Delegations stand firm." At the time, the GOP caucus was deeply divided over whether to back Trump's paper coup, and Pence was signalling he was not willing to play his assigned role.

READ:'Whole case is a mess': Internet stunned as judge lets Rittenhouse choose final jurors in raffle system

Hence the need for extra muscle on the outside.

This fits with what another key conspirator has said about his reason for gathering a mob on January 6. "We […] schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting," said Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, regarding his motives. He wanted to "change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside."

After an extended rant about the cowardice of Mike Pence, the last order Trump gave the mob before sending them down Pennsylvania Avenue was that they must give "boldness" to "weak Republicans."

Trump's command echoed Eastman's language in the longer of the two memos in which he described his own scheme as "BOLD, certainly."

Read:'Conspiracy nuts': DeSantis is in the hot seat after his aide gets caught pushing anti-Semitic theory

The label "coup" conjures up images of a military takeover, but a procedural coup under the threat of violence is still a coup.

Denialists try to mislead by pointing to the insurgents' relatively light weaponry and saying: "You don't think they meant to overthrow the US government with that, do you?" But the plan was never to physically seize control of the government. Insurgents just had to bully Pence and House Republicans into reversing the election for Trump.

Trump's advisors were well aware that reversing a free and fair election would provoke national outrage and widespread protests. Eastman's blueprint for leveraging the military, the police, and criminal gangs to hold onto power would work as well or better after a procedural coup as it would after an uncertain Election Night (the scenario nominally entertained in the report). A stolen election would putBiden supporters in the streets where the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers would be waiting for them, prepared to start or escalate violence wherever they could. This kind of unrest was exactly what Eastman warned local officials to be prepared to suppress.[see war game bs?]

We eagerly await what Bannon and Eastman will tell the January 6 committee, but what they've already said is utterly damning.

READ:Ocasio-Cortez gives an impassioned speech blasting Kevin McCarthy after Gosar's 'incitement of violence'

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mma 11 21

many lnx

Steve Bannon’s erosion of American democracy: A year since the 2020 election

Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and ViacomCBS’ Pluto TV are complicit in spreading Bannon’s lies and hateful rhetoric

WRITTEN BY JUSTIN HOROWITZ

PUBLISHED 11/03/21

Approaching the one-year anniversary of the 2020 presidential election, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is continuing his campaign to undermine American democracy through his conspiratorial podcast, War Room: Pandemic.

Bannon’s falsehoods about the 2020 election results, involvement in the planning of the January 6 insurrection, advocacy of election audits across the country, and promotion of QAnon-aligned grassroots movements are all part of his attempt to corrode his audience's trust in the American electoral system. What’s more, the major platforms that feature Bannon’s show – including Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts – are complicit in spreading his lies and hateful rhetoric.

Here are the topics Bannon and his cronies have used over the past year to dismiss the truth about the 2020 election and further their attacks on American democracy:

Election lies

Bannon: In 2020, Donald Trump “brought home the greatest victory in the history of this country in a presidential election.”

On the day of the election, Bannon and his associates suggested that Donald Trump should declare victory “as early as possible” – and Bannon did just that on November 5, during a Fox Business segment while votes were still being counted.

Video file

CitationFrom the November 5, 2020, edition of Fox News' Mornings With Maria Bartiromo

After Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Bannon spent nearly every episode of his show spewing deranged election fraud conspiracy theories and frequently pushing the lie that Trump had actually won reelection instead.

Bannon and his guests repeatedly lied about the election, often suggesting that Democrats were responsible for widespread voter fraud and cheating. He described the election as “illegal,” suggested political institutions should not count votes, claimed that there may yet be a “contingent election,” and encouraged Americans to fight and die for a second Trump term.

Pro-Trump lawyer and serial liar Sidney Powell was one of the many dishonest War Room guests during this period who used Bannon’s show to push debunked election fraud claims. Shortly after the election, Powell appeared on Bannon’s program to discuss her bogus lawsuits over “deliberate criminal fraud.”

The former Trump adviser even went so far in promoting bizarre election lies as to host right-wing conspiracy theorist and retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney to baselessly claim that a U.S. government supercomputer named “Hammer” was used by Democrats to take votes from Trump and assign them to Biden.

The January 6 insurrectionist-in-chief

Bannon: Trump’s “second term is going to start with a bang, OK? That we can guarantee you. And so the fight’s in.”

Lies about the election contributed directly to the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

Preceding the deadly attack, Bannon spent weeks bragging on-air about his behind-the-scenes role in pushing fraud misinformation and undermining the election results. According to reports from The Washington Post, Bannon was part of the Trump team’s “war room” at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., where legal discussions were being held on how to overturn the election results before January 6.

In the week leading up to the insurrection, Bannon hosted members of the Trump “war room,” including conservative lawyer John Eastman, to discuss his legal strategy to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence to delay the certification of the election results. This framework was outlined by Eastman in a memo that was “circulated to the White House in the days before the certification.”

In the months since the attack, Bannon has often hosted Revolver News’ Darren Beattie to push conspiracy theories about the insurrection. The two baselessly claimed the Capitol attack was a “failed intelligence operation” and the FBI was involved with militia groups who participated in the riot.

By late September, the House select committee investigating the events of January 6 issued subpoenas to Trump officials and aides – including Bannon – seeking more information on the attack. In October, Bannon cited “executive privilege” as a reason he would not comply with the subpoena and ignored the threat of criminal contempt charges while hawking holiday gifts to his viewers.

Video file

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

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Even as we speak, my response, my letter that responded to the committee basically saying President Trump had — is telling the committee he is exerting executive privilege and until we hear how that plays out we are not going to comply. So, there you have it, pretty straightforward, right?

Bannon’s “executive privilege” reasoning landed flat and the House select committee voted to hold him in criminal contempt of Congress. Now, the prosecution will be determined by the Department of Justice.

Election “Audits”

Bannon: “The American people are going to demand full forensic audits of three November 2020 in every state. That’s what they fear.”

As an extension of his extremist election lies, Bannon spends much of his shows discussing election “audits” in battleground states with the intended goal to “decertify” election results or flip electoral votes to Trump. In reality, there is no legal pathway to decertify or change the results of a presidential election.

The discussion around election audits began with the partisan, QAnon-linked Arizona audit in Maricopa County. Bannon dove in immediately, driving narratives and backing up claims from extremists working in state legislatures who supported the audit. Bannon spent months hyping the results of the Arizona audit while simultaneously advocating for similar ventures in all 50 states and platforming various GOP extremist state representatives.

In mid-August, Bannon spoke at MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s “cyber symposium” in which the pillow magnate spent three days regurgitating his own baseless conspiracy theories that China had interfered with the 2020 election. Lindell attempted to lay out election fraud claims in all 50 states, so that GOP assembly persons could bring his “evidence” home and advocate for election audits in their respective states.

As Bannon spoke to the crowd, he proclaimed, “The American people are going to demand full forensic audits of three November 2020 in every state. That’s what they fear.”

Video file

CitationFrom Mike Lindell's Cyber Symposium

Whilst focusing on bringing audits to battleground states including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, Bannon seemingly invited any conspiratorial figure he could find on to his show to spread election fraud conspiracy theories and advocate for local audits in the guest’s state.

Some of Bannon’s guests, including Lindell, promoted “canvassing” efforts in which individuals knock on doors to ask residents about their voting history. The Department of Justice warned that these sorts of efforts could violate laws against voter intimidation.

In late September, the Arizona senate released the results of its audit, concluding that President Biden actually received more votes than originally reported in Maricopa County. Bannon, with nowhere to turn, grasped at straws as he attempted to point to a vague table in the draft report to claim massive voter fraud had occurred. It hadn’t.

Recently, Bannon and his lackeys began touting another forensic audit in Arizona, this time in Pima County. Bannon’s pipe dream to decertify the election in Arizona doesn’t seem as though it will be ending anytime soon.

QAnon-aligned Grassroots Movements

Bannon: “We control this country. We've got to start acting like it.”

In December 2020, Bannon began hosting local Arizona tea party activist and attorney Dan Schultz to discuss nullifying the election results. By February, Bannon’s discussions with Schultz had pivoted away from overturning the election to instead concocting an operation to “invade” the Republican party.

Schultz’s plan – dubbed the Precinct Strategy – was simple enough: Schultz and Bannon encouraged listeners to pursue local election positions that are often left open due to lack of public knowledge. As explained by ProPublica, precinct officers are the “worker bees of political parties” that have a surprising amount of influence over how local elections are run. These positions play a role in deciding poll workers, choosing how elections are conducted, and even help determine who supervises elections, among other critical responsibilities. Bannon used his platform to promote his guest’s claims that by filling these positions, his followers could “take over” elections in counties that may otherwise not have strong far-right strongholds.

Soon after Schultz appeared on Bannon’s show, his precinct strategy made its way to far-right message boards that are often safe havens for white nationalism, hate speech, and conspiracy theories. Schultz himself appeared on a number of QAnon-connected shows to tout his plan and encourage extremist listeners to get involved in their local precincts.

In October, Schultz began hawking a QAnon-linked website for his precinct committee members to connect state by state. At this point, Bannon repeatedly advocates for the strategy and has made it clear that he believes his audience is destined to “control this country.”

Unfortunately, their plan appears to be working. Various QAnon-connected groups and individuals are continuing to push for fellow believers to become precinct committee members and advocating for election audits across the U.S.

Impact

Bannon was banned from Twitter and YouTube after repeatedly calling for violence and suggesting live on air that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray be beheaded. Now, Bannon listeners can turn to Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts to listen to his show and watch his broadcast on the QAnon-linked channel Real America’s Voice, which is platformed by ViacomCBS’ Pluto TV.

Bannon is not the loudest voice on the far-right, but his connections to GOP politicians showcase his outsized influence on Republican politics. Bannon platforms a wide range of GOP politicians who have leverage over national and state-specific policies. Appearing on Bannon’s show seems to be a “litmus test” for leading Republicans to agree with Bannon’s lies and extremist claims about the 2020 election. They always do.

Republican politicians who have appeared on Bannon’s show over the past year include: Sen. Josh Hawley, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Tim Burchett , Lauren Boebert, Claudia Tenney, Elise Stefanik, Alabama Senate candidate Rep. Mo Brooks, Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann, Arizona secretary of state candidate and state Rep. Mark Finchem, Arizona state Sens. Wendy Rogers andSonny Borelli, Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania state Rep. Dawn Keefer, Georgia state Sen. Brandon Beach, Georgia lieutenant governor candidate and state Sen. Burt Jones, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Mayor of McAllen, Texas, Javier Villalobos.

Bannon’s extremism and calls for revolution and violence are overtly dangerous. The platforms that continue to carry his show after a year of nonstop election lies are all culpable for his erosion of American democracy.

---

yes but hype/prediction/ teaser par for course? he wants to demo he's on inside?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/steve-bannon-jan-6/

on October 21, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to hold former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from Speaker Nancy Pelosi's select committee on the January 6 insurrection. Many far-right MAGA Republicans view Bannon as a martyr, but critics view him as an insurrectionist. And an article by Media Matters' Madeline Peltz this week takes a damning and in-depth look at what Bannon had to say on his "War Room" podcast in the days leading up to January 6.

"In the days before the January 6 insurrection, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon bragged on his podcast about his behind-the-scenes efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election," Peltz explains. "These claims include calls and meetings he joined with conservative lawyer John Eastman and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who were then running the Trump legal team's 'war room' out of the Willard Hotel in Downtown Washington, D.C., where allies conspired to advance crackpot legal theories and misinformation campaigns aimed at stealing the 2020 presidential election from Joe Biden."

According to Peltz, "A Media Matters review has found that in addition to repeatedly boasting about his involvement with and insider knowledge of the Trump legal team's strategy to overturn the election results in Congress on January 6, Bannon previewed the events in dramatic and violent historical context and singled out then-Vice President Mike Pence as the figure who could steal the election for Trump. He also used the language of war to describe how Trump supporters should view the events of January 6 and encouraged them to travel to Washington, D.C. to participate in the rallies taking place that day."

Media Matters' timeline of things Bannon said on his "War Room" podcast spans December 28, 2020-January 5, 2021. In late December on his podcast, Bannon claimed that then-Vice President Mike Pence had "many alternatives" to certifying the Electoral College results on January 6. And on his January 2 show, Bannon featured Giuliani and Eastman and said that Giuliani was "working in the Senate" to stop the election's certification[vid]

On January 4, Bannon told listeners, "We're hurtling towards a constitutional crisis…. (that is) going to be complicated, and it's going to be nasty." And he predicted that Trump's "first term is ending with action, and his second term is going to start with a bang."

Then, on January 5, Bannon had a lot to say about what he thought would be happening the following day. Bannon told listeners, "It's not going to happen like you think it's going to happen, OK. It's going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can say is: Strap in, the 'War Room' posse. You have made this happen, and tomorrow, it's game day."

Bannon predicted that a constitutional crisis was "about to go up, I think, five orders of magnitude tomorrow" and said, "We're going to go through a couple of three very turbulent 24-hour periods."

It was also on January 5 that Bannon, according to Peltz, said that Trump's allies had "put calls out last night trying to put bail up" for the Proud Boys' Enrique Tarrio, who had been arrested after tearing a Black Lives Matter banner down from an African-American church and burning it.

"At least two dozen members of Proud Boys, a violent neo-fascist street gang, face federal charges in connection with the attack on the Capitol, including four who were charged with conspiracy," Peltz notes. "Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola was among the first of the insurrectionists to break into the Capitol by smashing a window with a riot shield he stole from a police officer."

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real am's voice qanon

mma 10 21 grab:

### Steve Bannon says Democrats are trying to “steal” the Virginia governor's race

10/22/21 1:28 PM EDT

### On Steve Bannon's podcast, Mike Lindell says he is “canvassing” for voter fraud in 20 states

10/22/21 1:07 PM EDT

### Newsmax host defends “patriot” Steve Bannon: “Reject squish establishment Republicans”

10/22/21 10:34 AM EDT

---

ref bannon

ok but melds w/ vaxx?

wapo no lnx

Opinion: Conservatives think they’ve found their new tea party

Parents and community members protest after a Loudoun County School Board meeting in Ashburn on Tuesday was halted by the board because the crowd refused to quiet down. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Opinion by Paul Waldman

Columnist

June 24, 2021

The early days of the Biden presidency have been unsettling for many on the right, not only because a Democrat is in the White House making policy but also because conservatives have struggled to find a unifying theme to their opposition. They’ve failed to persuade even their own people to loathe Joe Biden with the boiling intensity they felt for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama; their preferred insult is that President Biden is a doddering old man controlled by others, which doesn’t exactly stir one to heights of terror and rage.

But now they think they’ve found the key, the controversy that will bring them back to the glorious days of the tea party, as Politico reports:

Former top aides to President Donald Trump have begun an aggressive push to combat the teaching of critical race theory and capitalize on the issue politically, confident that a backlash will vault them back into power. [...]

“This is the Tea Party to the 10th power,” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser who has zeroed in on local school board fights over critical race theory, said in an interview. “This isn’t Q, this is mainstream suburban moms — and a lot of these people aren’t Trump voters.”

Bannon is blowing smoke; there’s no evidence that “mainstream suburban moms” are the ones screaming at their local school boards in protest of an imaginary curriculum their children are not actually being taught.But the comparison with the tea party is instructive, not so much for what the conservatives’ con over critical race theory actually is, but what they’re hoping to turn it into.

The tea party erupted after the election of Obama, and one of its most important purposes was to give paper-thin cover to a mass right-wing panic over a Black man getting elected president. It presented itself as worried about government spending (though it was strangely unconcerned when George W. Bush was ballooning the deficit) and devoted to the principles of the nation’s founding. Substantively, the latter consisted mostly of a bunch of absurd Founding Father cosplay, often in the form of nincompoops running around in tricorn hats.

In contrast, the anti-CRT eruption (it’s far too early to call it a movement) has race right up front; there’s no pretension to a policy agenda other than passing laws forbidding teachers from discussing the existence of racism. In some ways it’s the natural landing point for the right after the Trump presidency: After four years spent worshiping someone who barely tried to hide his bigotry, conservatism has now devoted itself entirely to White grievance, at least for the moment.

One way the anti-CRT effort is definitely like the tea party is that elite Republicans are dashing to the front of the parade. It’s not just semi-fringe white nationalists like Bannon; everyone on the right is getting in on the act. The website of the Heritage Foundation now features a whole section devoted to critical race theory fear-mongering.

And, of course, Fox News was central to both. The network relentlessly promoted the tea party in 2009 when it began, pounding home the message to conservatives across the country that they should get on board; at one point management had to tell Sean Hannity that for him to literally headline tea party rallies was probably going too far. Today Fox has set aside a good portion of its schedule to decrying CRT; according to the liberal group Media Matters, the network mentioned it no fewer than 1,300 times in the past few months. Then as now, GOP elites saw the rage of the party faithful as a tool they could wield for their own benefit, even if keeping it under control might not always be easy.

What particularly excited the tea party’s adherents was the association with righteous principles and rebellion against power; by embracing it you could imagine yourself the heir to a noble tradition dating back to the country’s founding. But if you say the same about opposition to any discussion of the way racism operates in institutions, you’d pretty much be making the critical race theorists’ point for them. Oh, the irony!

That brings us to a critical point of divergence. The tea party was relentlessly focused on Obama, and just as Democrats found eight years later, opposition to the president as an individual can be incredibly powerful. He’s in the news every day, doing things you don’t like; it’s easy to stay mad at him.

That anger sustained itself for two years, which is why Republicans managed a huge wave election that gave them control of the House in 2010. Democrats did the same in 2018, fed by their anger at Donald Trump.

But try to imagine that a year and a half from now, the Republican base will still be so mad about critical race theory that it will swamp the polls and deliver yet another wave election for Republicans. It seems unlikely.

Not that Republicans may not get their wave election; they well could. But it’ll be built on other things the base is mad about. There’s only so long they’ll be able to sustain the rage at critical race theory before it peters out and they have to find a new target.

So this probably won’t be the new tea party, though it might resemble it in some ways. But don’t worry: Right-wing rage is always ready to reignite. Republicans just have to keep finding new sparks.

ok but melds w/ vaxx? or is that his pt?

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willard war room? rudy, eastman, woman? trms

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/watergate/

no vid

veteran journalist Bob Woodward pointed out seven conspiratorial actions taken by Donald Trump and Steve Bannon to conduct a "Watergate-style" subversion of the election process, which he said should fall under investigation by a special counsel.

Woodward said he and Washington Post colleague Robert Costa uncovered those actions while reporting on their book, "Peril," but he told CNN's "New Day" that he only recently understood how those potential crimes set in motion the violent attempt to overturn Trump's election loss on Jan. 6.

"I just looked back at what we have in the book, and quite directly have we have the dots [but] we didn't connect them, though they're there," Woodward said, "and they're seven conspiratorial actions by Trump and Bannon, essentially, to subvert and destroy the process of certifying who the next president is going to be, and when you think about it, it's just like Watergate. It's a destruction of the process that we want to trust, and the -- I'm sorry, my memory is not great on this -- can I go through some of those conspiratorial actions?"

"First of all, on Dec. 30, Bannon talks to Trump and says, 'You've got to make a dramatic return to Washington,'" Woodward continued. "Trump is in Mar-A-Lago, he's going to have the New Year's Eve party down there, but he comes back, and Bannon says to Trump, 'You've got to call Vice President Pence off the ski slopes where they, Pence's staff and advisers, have stashed him away because they know in a week he's going to have to certify or decide what he's going to do about who the next president is, and then Bannon says to Trump, Jan. 6 is the moment of reckoning here, and if we can challenge the legitimacy of Biden, it casts a shadow over the Biden presidency, and then he says, 'We are going to kill the Biden presidency in the crib.'The violent language, of course, it was manifest, the violence itself, on Jan. 6."

"Then on Jan. 5, as Liz Cheney was pointing out, Bannon meets with others, including Rudy Giuliani and their phony Republicans, to block the certification of Biden, and then you put all this in and Trump put out a phony statement at the time -- this is on the public record -- saying he and Pence agreed that Pence has the power to walk away and essentially get Trump certified as president," Woodward added. "But that's totally untrue. So, anyway, we have a very clear-cut case, I would suspect it is quite possible that Attorney General Merrick Garland will appoint a special counsel to look at this, because the evidence is so clear for a massive Watergate-style attempt to destroy the process of electing a president."

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an ah 1021

Bannon, former White House chief strategist under President Donald Trump and one of the most prominent agitators in the MAGA movement, is still refusing to testify before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's select committee on the January 6 insurrection. He claims through his attorneys that he cannot do so because Trump still enjoyed executive privilege during his final weeks in office. But in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark this week, historians Thomas Lecaque and J.L. Tomlins stress that even without testimony, there will be plentiful evidence of Bannon's anti-democracy agenda**.

Lecaque is a history professor at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, while Tomlins teaches history at the University of North Texas. And the historians explain why Pelosi's select committee is so interested in talking to Bannon: the Trump ally "was involved in the 'Stop the Steal' efforts during the post-election period," and "remarks on his podcasts on January 5 suggest possible foreknowledge of the next day's disruptions."

On his January 5 podcast, Bannon told listeners, "You made this happen, and tomorrow, it's game day. So, strap in. Let's get ready. All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It's all converging, and now, we're on the point of attack tomorrow."

Bannon, the historians note, was heavily involved in the Trump campaign's attempted coup and efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

"Bannon's troubling activities did not stop after January 6," Lecaque and Tomlins write. "Far from it. He is still out in the streets, at rallies, on conference calls, and on his podcast trumpeting it to the heavens: The insurrection isn't over, it's only just begun."

The historians note that Bannon calls himself a "Leninist." That doesn't mean that he actually embraces communist or Marxist-Leninist beliefs; Bannon is on the far right, not the far left. Rather, when Bannon calls himself a "Leninist," that's his rhetorical way of saying that he wants to totally obliterate the old GOP establishment and purge the GOP of all non-MAGA conservatives. Soviet Union dictator Vladimir Lenin famously believed that it's necessary to destroy in order to build and create; similarly, Bannon wants to burn the remnants of the old pre-MAGA Republican Party to the ground.

"On his podcast, in his speeches, and in his interviews, Steve Bannon combines anti-democratic claims: the election was stolen, the insurrection was peaceful, we will build a centennial dynasty that cannot be shaken," Lecaque and Tomlins explain. "This fascistic message is not new: Bannon has had a clear mission for years, both before, during and after his time working with Trump. His vision is ultra-nationalist, deeply racist and aggressively linked to far-right Christian ideologies."

The historians continue, "Bannon has called himself a Leninist, specifically in his desire to destroy the state, and we should take him at his word. He was apparently one of the architects of the January 6 coup attempt, and he remains a continuing threat to our democracy. If the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection are becoming the 'new lost cause' of the GOP, Bannon wants to organize its new fascist apparatus."

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same one as cspan booktv?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/this-is-american-fascism-a-disturbing-event-will-bring-together-gun-nuts-trumpians-and-doomsday-christianists-report/

Freedom Festival is a far-right event held in Greenley, Pennsylvania and organized by a combination of Moonies and gun manufacturers. The speakers at this year's event will include former National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, and according to Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery, their presence at Freedom Festival underscores the ever-increasing radicalization of the Republican Party.

"Few Americans are even aware that the gun company Kahr and a rural Pennsylvania doomsday church — both run by the same ultra-rich Korean family — hold an annual 'Freedom Festival'that attracts gun enthusiasts and the type of people who attach 'Don't Tread on Me' flags to the back of their trucks," Pagliery explains in an article published on October 8. "But in the wake of the failed January 6 insurrection, the event'samalgamation of sovereign citizens and alt-truthers has taken on a new meaning. And now, it's even got an all-star lineup."

Ryan Busse, a former gun industry executive, warns that the presence of a former NRA spokesperson at Freedom Festival is "legitimizing" extremism.

Busse told the Beast, "It's going to send a message across the country that this is normal, that this is OK. This is American fascism being developed right before our eyes. This is like 1936 Germany in a symposium."

Busse went on to say, "The one that concerns me the most is Dana Loesch. She's treated by gun consumers like royalty, and here she is legitimizing this insanity. That scares me."

Pagliery notes thatKahr Firearms Group,which manufactures semi-automatic weapons, is run by a family of Moonies. Founded by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon during the 1950s, the Moonies are a Christianist cult known for conspiracy theories, End Times themes and a far-right ideology.

"While Sun Myung Moon became a prominent figure in the American conservative movement — founding the Washington Times newspaper — one of his sons, Justin Moon, founded the Kahr gun company in 1995," Pagliery explains. "And another son, Hyung Jin Sean Moon, inherited an offshoot of the church that goes by the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary and warns about 'the End of Times.' With the patriarch now deceased, his sons have largely merged their worlds."

Pagliery continues,"The reverend son now refers to his church with a more militant name — Rod of Iron Ministries— an allusion to his unification of disparate ideas: faith and guns. And churchgoers wear metal crowns on their heads, signifying individuals' ultimate sovereign authority over themselves. They also carry semi-automatic rifles like AR-15s and AK-47s, fashioning their guns like pious medieval knights would a sword."

The Moonies are not white supremacists; Rev. Sun Myung Moon was Korean. But according to J.J. MacNab of George Washington University's Program on Extremism, that doesn't make them any less dangerous.

MacNab told the Beast, "They've never really gotten the attention I think they should, because they're not a White supremacy group. Anybody that's pushing such a hearty mix of guns and religion are problematic to me. And the doomsday element is there. It's effectively talking about death."

Busse finds Freedom Festival's combination of religious extremism, guns, conspiracy theories and Trumpism to be incredibly toxic.

The former NRA member told the Beast, "It's what I fear: anything that will gin up people to buy more guns, hate people more, and vote for people like Trump. It's all of that on steroids. Doesn't the Klan meet in the dark out back behind uncle's barn? This is right out in the open."

---

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Welcome. You're in the, I guess, the headquarters for the shock troop army. Right? The deployment of strike force.

:{:{}:

Regular Fox News guest to Steve Bannon: “We're all going to die. Die for something that's meaningful”

10/05/21

BANNON (HOST): Dr. Swain, tell us -- we got a few minutes, tell us about the book. What inspired you to write it? You're one of the intellectual leaders of the Constitution, the republic, our history, what inspired you to write this and why did you write it right now, in this time?

CAROL SWAIN (GUEST): The American people. There were so many parents, teachers, policymakers coming to me trying to understand critical race theory and what was happening around them. And so, the book was written to equip people, but also to inform them, remind them that in America, we do have civil rights laws. They protect white people too. We do have a Constitution with an equal protection clause that protects all persons and we also have at one time had decency. We did not shame or bully people because of the color of their skin. And whenever that took place decent people stood up to condemn it. And so the book was written for the American people.

It has a glossary, an index, resources, and also two chapters on strategies for how to fight back and if that makes me a domestic terrorist, then I am a domestic terrorist and I embrace that label. And I think more of us need to stand up and fight the people that are trying to destroy America. They've handed it over to our foreign enemies, and we need to stand up today or find yourself under the rule of foreign powers because our leaders have sold us out.

...

BANNON: Dr. Carol Swain is not going to back down one inch, okay, she's not going to back down one inch.

SWAIN: That's because of my faith. That's because of my faith. We're all going to die -- die for something that's meaningful and this is the time to stand up and not be coward by fear of enemies, America's enemies. It's now or never for our nation.

---

Sean Hannity praises Steve Bannon: He’s “very smart”

10/04/21 5:17 PM EDT

Steve Bannon: “We control this country. We've got to start acting like it.”

:{:{}:

1021 digby

One of the morememorable quotes from the 2020 post-election period was the one in which a Republican insider blithely told a reporter for the Washington Post that there was no harm in letting Trump cry himself out:

"What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change," the official said. "He went golfing this weekend. It's not like he's plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He's tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he'll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he'll leave."

We all know how that turned out, don't we?

Today, the congressional Jan. 6 commission continues to subpoena witnesses and demand documents from various players in the post-election saga, and the press keeps reporting new information on exactly what went down during that bizarre period weekly. Last month, the new book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, "Peril," revealed the existence of a full-blown coup plot based upon a legal theory advanced byconservative constitutional lawyer John Eastman, formerly of Chapman College and a founder of the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank. They actually memorialized what they planned to do in writing.

The idea was to have Mike Pence refuse to acknowledge the electoral votes of certain states whose legislatures might be persuaded to send an alternate slate of electors and then declare Trump the winner based upon the remaining electoral votes. It was a cockamamie scheme, but the concept of Republican state legislatures declaring that the vote was rigged and sending an alternate slate to declare Trump the winner did not come from nowhere. I wrote this in November 2020, just a couple of weeks after the election:

Having lost over and over again in court, Trump and his team have switched to their Plan B, which, as longtime Democratic strategist Chris Marshall spelled out in detail in Salon on Thursday, is to delay the certification of the vote in certain states and try to get Republican legislatures to assign electors to vote for Donald Trump instead of the actual winner, Joe Biden. This is based on the theory that if they can create enough chaos around the election results, Republican loyalists will rise to the occasion and "save democracy" from the Democrats, who are allegedly stealing the election.

Trump's behavior with all these phony "audits," even in places like Texas where he won, is explained as an extension of that plan. They are attempting to create so much distrust in the electoral process that in the case of a semi-close election, the default "solution" will be for the (Republican) state legislatures to take over the process and decide the winner. Lest you think the courts would automatically reject such a clearly unconstitutional move, don't count on it. As the New Yorker's Jane Mayer noted:

Few people noticed at the time, but in … Bush v. Gore, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, along with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, hinted at a radical reading of the Constitution that, two decades later, undergirds many of the court challenges on behalf of Trump. In a concurring opinion, the Justices argued that state legislatures have the plenary power to run elections and can even pass laws giving themselves the right to appoint electors.

Today, the so-called Independent Legislature Doctrine has informed Trump and the right's attempts to use Republican-dominated state legislatures to overrule the popular will. Nathaniel Persily, an election-law expert at Stanford, told me, "It's giving intellectual respectability to an otherwise insane, anti-democratic argument."

That's the legal argument. The implementation will require provocateurs to help foment the chaos and distrust on the ground. Enter Trump's former campaign chairman (and pardoned accused felon) Steve Bannon. You may recall that Bannon was heavily involved in the Jan. 6 planning, urging Trump to "kill the Biden presidency in its crib" and promising listeners of his wildly popular podcast the night before that "all hell will break loose tomorrow. It's them against us. Who can impose their will on the other side?"

ProPublica did extensive reporting last month showing that since then Bannon has been pushing a "precinct strategy," whereby MAGA followers take over the Republican apparatus at the precinct level, which in many states means they have influence over how elections are run, including the choice of poll workers and members of election boards. When Bannon announced this strategy, it "rocketed across far-right media" and suddenly people who had never before been involved in politics were volunteering all over the country, in blue states as well as red states, cities and suburbs and rural areas alike.

This strategy is the brainchild of Arizona activist Daniel J. Schultz, who has been pushing it for several years:

In December, Schultz appeared on Bannon's podcast to argue that Republican-controlled state legislatures should nullify the election results and throw their state's Electoral College votes to Trump. If lawmakers failed to do that, Bannon asked, would it be the end of the Republican Party? Not if Trump supporters took over the party by seizing precinct posts, Schultz answered.

Schultz is now a huge right-wing celebrity, has been on Bannon's show at least eight times and holds weekly Zoom calls with activists around the country. Last July he told his audience, "Make sure everybody's got a baseball bat. I'm serious about this. Make sure you've got people who are armed."

Bannon isn't confining himself to trying to destroy the democratic electoral system. NBC News' Jonathan Allen reported that he's also planning an assault on the government once he gets Trump back in the White House, as a continuation of his "deconstruction of the administrative state." To that end, Bannon held a meeting last week with "scores of former Trump political appointees" at the Capitol Hill Club and gave them their marching orders for the hypothetical day when Trump returns to power.

He was invited by a new group called the Association of Republican Presidential Appointees,which has the goal of having non-confirmable executive branch appointees ready on Day 1 to go in and take over. In practice, that means they would immediately set about systematically dismantling everything put in place under a Democratic president and deregulating everything in sight. Bannon aptly calls them his "shock troops."

Now maybe all this is just the lunatic fringe acting out and nothing will come of it. Bannon has been flogging this kind of anti-democratic strategy for a long time. But considering how radical the GOP establishment itself has become, it seems foolhardy to make that assumption. Inviting Bannon to address this ambitious new Republican group sends a clear signal that his previously outlandish ideas and strategies have become mainstream conservative thinking.

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an 921

When it comes to events surrounding the January 6 insurrection, there are some whose involvement remains unclear. Did Rep. Lauren Boebert lead future insurgents on a tour of the Capitol in order to help them identify the shortest route to the people they wanted to hang? Not certain. There are others who will pretend that their calls to storming the Capitol and spilling a swimming pool of patriotic blood were purely metaphorical. Right, Rep. Mo Brooks?

And then there's Steve Bannon.

The Trump campaign chair, shining with the glow of his last-minute pardon from thefraud he definitely committed, didn't just assist a few would-be Mike Pence-hangers. He didn't just get up there and sound the horn to get out there and fight like there was nothing but a commie-filled America-free tomorrow. He worked to create both the political crisis and the maddened crowd that placed the United States within a few seconds, and a handful of steps, of seeing members of Congress marched to a gallows on the Capitol lawn.

On Friday, Bannon was the undoubtedly proud recipient of one of the first four subpoenashanded out by the House Select Committee. However, giving the head of a Brussels-based fascist movement—tastefully called "The Movement"—a couple of weeks to decide whether he wants to make an appearance before a Congress he dismisses, or a court system he sneers about, seems like far too mild an approach.

Here's a checklist of "fun" Steve Bannon moments, over just the last couple of years.

There was the time when Bannon coached Jeffrey Epstein on on how to look less threatening in a television interview.
:{:{The time he explained to right-wing leaders in Europe that }:the Pope is the enemy:{ and insisted that they attack him "frontally," an effort to be helped along by a }::{documentary the supposedly Catholic Bannon hopes will bring down the Catholic church.}:

:{:{His ongoing effort to start a literal school for fascists in the literal home of fascism, an academy where Bannon plans on producing the nationalist leaders of the future.}:

His efforts to unify nationalist candidates from Marine LePen to Nigel Farage under the banner of a single fascist movement—with help from pal Vladimir Putin.
That time he hooked up with a Chinese businessman in an attempt tosell a non-existent television network and ended up charged with multiple counts of fraud.
His warning that Donald Trump, Jr. and Jared Kushner are involved in a money laundering scheme that could easily be sniffed out by investigators.
And, of course, his indictment for fraud and money laundering in connection with a fake effort to "build the wall"—an indictment that got neatly cleaned up when Donald Trump added Bannon to his big list of friends who don't have to obey the law.

But that's just the small stuff. Because Bannon's involvement in the events around January 6 easily trumps (yes, pun intended) even trying to abscond with an 800-year-old monastery as a base for bringing down the Catholic church and creating baby Hitlers.

To a large extent, the whole idea of using January. 6 as a lever to tip over democracy came from Bannon. As the recent book Peril reported, Bannon called up Trump on December 30 and told him, "'You've got to call Pence off the f**king ski slopes and get him back here today. This is a crisis."

The point of dragging Pence back—which happened—was to explain how January 6 could be turned into "a reckoning." Bannon explained to Trump how upsetting the prescribed process on January 6 could "cast enough of a shadow over Biden's victory" that it would cause millions of Americans to consider Biden an illegitimate president. They didn't actually have to prove any election fraud. They only had to create a spectacle that would destroy faith in the system.

"People are going to go, 'What the f**k is going on here?'" said Bannon. "We're going to bury Biden on January 6th, f**king bury him."

But it doesn't take going to the pages of a book to discover Bannon's involvement in the attempted overthrow, because Bannon himself just keeps talking about it.

Wow — Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon says on his War Room podcast he met with Trump and Giuliani the night befor… https://t.co/banOqVFaJu

— Hugo Lowell (@Hugo Lowell)1632417930.0

Bannon met with Trump and Rudy Giuliani in advance of the insurgency, with an open goal of destroying the American government.

As Newsweekreports, Bannon's open admission is that he told the others "it's time to kill the Biden presidency in the crib." On his podcast platform, Bannon went on to brag about the success of his plan, claiming that "42% of the American people think that Biden did not win the presidency legitimately"—a belief supported by the actions on Jan. 6 to deliberately undermine that presidency.

As Professor Lawrence Tribe points out. "It'd be hard to justify DOJ inaction in the face of this rapidly mounting evidence of a criminal conspiracy to commit sedition against the US Government and to give aid and comfort to an insurrection. See 18 USC secs. 2383 & 2384."

Tribe's name has recently been in the news because Trump attorney John Eastman distorted Tribe's past statements in his attemptto declare Trump the "winner"by simply leaving off as many Biden states as it took to get the numbers they wanted. But there's no misinterpreting what Tribe is saying here:

18 U.S. Code § 2383 - Rebellion or insurrection

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

Bannon, Trump, Giuliani, Eastman … they all engaged in a seditious conspiracy, a plan that Bannon spelled out with the declared intent of destroying the lawful government of the United States.

It's worth noting that, in their schemes, neither Bannon nor Eastman even attempted to make a case that Trump had actually won, or that there had been anything like the level of fraud Giuliani was claiming. Both plans were simply to cripple the United States by creating confusion and distrust.

It's almost what you might expect from someone who said this:

"Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today's establishment."

It's past time to stop sending Steve Bannon subpoenas and start sending him to jail. Let Eastman fight with Giuliani over who has be his cellmate.

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mma 921

no lnx many

vids

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

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

WRITTEN BY JUSTIN HOROWITZ

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM DANIL CUFFE

PUBLISHED 09/17/21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Toni Shuppe's Facebook Page

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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salon

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon coached convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for a "60 Minutes" interview months before he was arrested on child sex trafficking charges, according to a passage from a new book by Michael Wolff first reported by The New York Times' Ben Smith.

Bannon conducted more than a dozen hours of practice interviews with Epstein in 2019, aimed at making the latter appear less "creepy" ahead of the interview — which ultimately never happened — according to Wolff's forthcoming book "Too Famous." Wolff is best known for his recent trilogy of books on the Trump administration, "Fire and Fury," "Siege" and "Landslide."

Bannon, who led former President Donald Trump's first campaign and briefly served as his chief White House strategist before being fired, in part because of critical comments he made to Wolff, encouraged Epstein to speak to "60 Minutes" and recorded more than 15 hours of practice interviews with him at his Manhattan estate, according to Wolff.

Bannon interviewed Epstein while giving him tips, such as urging him to avoid looking at the camera so he doesn't come across as "stupid" and "advising him not to share his racist theories on how Black people learn," according to the report. Bannon reportedly also told Epstein to "stick to his message, which is that he is not a pedophile."

"You're engaging, you're not threatening, you're natural, you're friendly, you don't look at all creepy, you're a sympathetic figure," Bannon told Epstein toward the end of the session, according to interview transcripts obtained by Wolff.

Bannon confirmed to the Times that he had encouraged Epstein to talk to "60 Minutes" and had recorded more than 15 hours of interview footage with the deceased financier, but insisted he had "never trained anyone." Bannon told the Times he had recorded the interviews for an "previously unannounced eight- to 10-hour documentary" that was intended to show how Epstein's "perversions and depravity toward young women were part of a life that was systematically supported, encouraged and rewarded by a global establishment that dined off his money and his influence."

It's unclear how Wolff obtained the transcripts, though the author told the Times that Epstein wanted him to write a book about him.

"He wanted me to write something about him — a kind of a book — it wasn't clear why," Wolff said.

It's also unclear how Bannon and Epstein connected. Epstein, a millionaire financier who regularly socialized with wealthy businessmen, academics and even former presidents, was arrested months later on federal child sex trafficking charges. He had previously pleaded guilty to soliciting a person under 18 for prostitution in a controversial and remarkably lenient plea deal involving infamous attorneys Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr and future Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who ultimately resigned after new details of the Epstein deal were reported. Epstein later died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial. His alleged accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, has pleaded not guilty to charges that she recruited and groomed underage girls for him to sexually abuse and sometimes participated in the abuse.

It's not the first time Bannon has been linked to Epstein, a longtime friend of Trump's that the former president touted as a "terrific guy" who enjoys women "on the younger side." Page Six reported in 2018 that Bannon was seen entering Epstein's Manhattan mansion, where Epstein and Maxwell are accused of repeatedly abusing underage girls.

"Bannon needs money to bankroll his political agenda," a source told Page Six at the time, just months after Bannon had left the White House. "Epstein has plenty of money, and craves power and access."

Epstein's former butler at his Paris estate also claimed in 2019 that Bannon had stayed at Epstein's apartment in the fall of 2018, which a spokesperson for Bannon denied at the time.

New York Times columnist James Stewart also wrote in 2019 that Epstein invited him, Bannon and Wolff to a dinner in 2018 but it's unclear whether the dinner ever happened and Bannon has denied that he attended.

Wolff, who regularly writes about disgraced powerful figures, has his own extensive ties to Epstein. In 2003, the Times reported that Wolff organized a bid to buy New York magazine with investors that included Epstein as well as disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. Wolff later continued to see Epstein at his office, New York reported in 2007. Wolff told the outlet at the time that he had first met Epstein in the late '90s, recalling how the millionaire was followed around by "three teenage girls" who were "not his daughters." In fact, it appears that Wolff coached Epstein himself when the millionaire first faced charges before his 2005 guilty plea.

"He has never been secretive about the girls," Wolff told New York. "At one point, when his troubles began, he was talking to me and said, 'What can I say, I like young girls.' I said, 'Maybe you should say, 'I like young women.'"

Even after Epstein's 2005 conviction, Wolff continued to try to help Epstein.

"A few years ago the journalist Michael Wolff wrote a profile of him for New York magazine that was meant to 'rehabilitate' Epstein's image and would tell of all the billionaires who still, secretly, hung out with Epstein," The Daily Beast's Vicky Ward reported in 2019. "The piece had 'fact-checking' issues and never ran."

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