Big Lie steal insurr 3
521 see stop steal and insurrection 2
SEE JAN 6 BIG LIE 4
see LIE any means
see gaslighting
see dirty tricks
see trump
see trump coup
see fraudit
see 2nd civil war
see escalator/echo
several jericho and two million maga precursors?
===
see dominion defam ~ fox
4/17/23 hannity 0'keefe msnbc dominion discovery whole short email redacted, judge nixed, 2ndary JOK evidence "interesting"
===
---
AN 6 24
no lnx
alternet-
‘They could have killed me’: Trump's 2020 'Seattle whistleblower' finally revealed
Michael Flynn (center) leaves a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., with Geoffrey Flohr aka "Yoda" (front) on Dec. 12, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Jordan GreenandRaw Story June 23, 2024
The scene is straight from a discount bin spy novel.
A black SUV arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to collect Sabrina Keliikoa, a QAnon adherent and supervisor at the facility’s FedEx air freight terminal.
Keliikoa was scared out of her wits.
She did not want to go.
But late on this Friday night in early December 2020, Keliikoa felt as if she had no choice: A retired Michigan State Police officer nicknamed “Yoda” had just warned that her life was in danger.
Keliikoa called in another employee to finish her shift. She entered the vehicle driven by a Marine Corps veteran who had provided security for American diplomats in Iraq. They arrived at a hotel where the driver checked her in. There, Keliikoa stayed for the next two days. A rotating set of “guards” occupied the adjacent room in shifts.
What was possibly happening here?
As Keliikoa would later testify in legal deposition, a video of which Raw Story recently reviewed, a man entered her hotel room and asked her to write an affidavit about election ballots she’d seen — and considered suspicious — at the FedEx facility shortly after the 2020 election.
The man was part of a secretive team of Donald Trump supporters, operating without legal authority but under the leadership of former Trump national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, that aimed to obtain information they believed could be used in lawsuits to change the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor.
More generally, they hoped to undermine public confidence that Joe Biden had won the 2020 election.
Keliikoa described the experience as being “detained” and complained she became a “pawn” of people determined to use her.
“So, I got a phone call that said somebody is coming in from another state with illegal ballots, and they were going to be looking for me, and they were going to try to kill me,” Keliikoa testified. “And I started crying because this turned into the biggest s---show when it shouldn’t have been.”
The escapade showcases the absurd lengths Flynn and his team went to concoct evidence that Trump had the 2020 presidential election “stolen” from him.
These and other baseless allegations of election fraud would instill fury in Trump’s supporters, who by the thousands attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while attempting to prevent Congress from certifying the election.
These new revelations about Keliikoa’s ordeal also come at a time when Trump, who is expected to again be the Republican nominee for president, relentlessly claims that the multiple criminal prosecutions against him constitute an effort “to rig the presidential election of 2024.”
Trump’s script is familiar and predictable: He similarly made repeated claims well in advance of the 2020 election that the vote would be rigged. It’s an all-but-foregone conclusion that if Trump loses the 2024 election, he will exclaim, as he did then, that he actually won, and that Democrats, communists, the “deep state” and other perceived bogeymen stole it from him.
And if history is a guide, high-profile Trump surrogates can again be expected to again chase phantom evidence and spin wild tales in service of Trump’s I-can’t-lose approach to campaigning.
‘A plane full of ballots’
Until now, Keliikoa — the woman who held the information so feverishly sought by Trump’s supporters following the 2020 election — was known only as “the Seattle whistleblower.”
Keliikoa’s deposition, taken in March, fills in details about the “stop the steal” escapade and are being reported for the first time by Raw Story.
The seeds of Keliikoa's ordeal began germinating in November 2020. An array of high-profile Trump supporters had initiated a frenzied effort to collect affidavits that they hoped would bolster claims of election fraud, which pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell detailed in a series of lawsuits.
The goal: overturn the presidential election results in tightly contested states such as Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, and more generally, to undermine confidence in the election.
With his charisma and the respect he commanded as a retired lieutenant general, Michael Flynn, who had briefly served as Trump's national security advisor, quickly emerged as a de facto leader among the group of “stop the steal” operatives surrounding Powell.
The 2020 election was “the greatest fraud that our country has ever experienced in our history,” Flynn told far-right broadcaster Brannon Howse during an interview aired on Nov. 28, 2020. “I’m right in the middle of it right now, and I will tell you that, first of all, the president has clear paths to victory.”
Flynn had reason to feel emboldened. Three days earlier, then-President Trump granted Flynn a full pardon, wiping away his guilty plea to charges of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Flynn began to speak at rallies and make media appearances on Trump’s behalf.
Flynn’s interview with Howse was his first interview of any sort since receiving Trump’s pardon. The key to exposing the election fraud, Flynn told the podcaster, was channeling the perceived power of hundreds of Trump supporters who believed they witnessed voting fraud or election irregularities.
“I mean hundreds and hundreds of Americans around the country, not just the swing states, but many, many other states that are coming forward with their stories and putting them down in affidavits,” he said at the time.
Four days later, Powell addressed a “Stop the Steal” rally in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta. There, she angrily told the crowd that there had been “flagrant election fraud,” and said her team had “evidence” of all manner of ballot fraud, including “a plane full of ballots that came in.”
Enter Staci Burk.
Burk was a former school board member and law school student in Arizona who suffers from a medical condition known as pulmonary arterial hypertension.
A man in Burk’s lung condition support group told her about a woman in Seattle who allegedly had information about illegal ballots. That woman was Keliikoa, and Burk’s lung condition buddy arranged to put the two women in touch.
But Burk first attempted to report Keliikoa's information to the FBI and then relayed it to Arizona state Rep. Kelly Townsend, a leading figure in the pro-Trump stop-the-steal effort. The supposed intel eventually filtered up to Sidney Powell’s legal team.
Burk and Keliikoa kept in touch by phone for the next month, but Keliikoa would later say she wouldn’t characterize their relationship as a friendship. Keliikoa didn’t want to give up her anonymity. Burk felt caught in a bind; she didn’t want to associate her own name with information she didn’t know firsthand, but she was feeling pressure from Townsend and others to persuade Keliikoa to come forward.
“I’ve been working on her coming forward for over a month,” Burk told Carissa Keshel, Powell’s assistant, in a Dec. 1, 2020, text message reviewed by Raw Story. “I almost facilitated a call with you, but she just got to work. She will likely let me do a conference call with anyone. But she’s still afraid to come forward.”
“What can we do to make her feel more comfortable?” Keshel asked Burk. “We can facilitate security.”
Attempting to find a way to obtain the information while preserving Keliikoa’s desired anonymity, Keshel suggested that Keliikoa forward her ballot intel to Burk, who, in turn, could include it in her own legal declaration. (Burk never fulfilled the request to provide such a statement.)
“Ok I just spoke with General Flynn,” Keshel told Burk. “He says if nothing else, if she can get us as much evidence as possible: pictures, facts. If she can send that to us (or you) and if she can even just write an email. Then you can do another declaration to cover for that. I hope that makes sense.”
What happened next demonstrates the effort by Flynn, Powell and a gaggle of pro-Trump activists to obtain affidavits supporting claims of election fraud was carefully orchestrated. It stands in stark contrast to the picture painted by Flynn — one of ordinary citizens organically and voluntarily coming forward to tell their stories out of a sense of patriotic duty.
Like Keliikoa, Burk found herself in the middle of conspiratorial talk surrounding supposed illegal ballots transported on planes and various security concerns.
Also — not insignificantly — if Powell's team was going to get access to Keliikoa, they would have to go through Burk, who was the only one who knew Keliikoa’s name or how to get in touch with her.
Flynn’s security team finds the ‘Seattle whistleblower’
On the morning of Dec. 4, 2020, Keshel texted Burk to tell her that she thought they had Burk’s “security issue all ironed out.”
Keshel then texted a photo of a man she identified as “Yoda” and a link to the website for 1st Amendment Praetorian, a volunteer security group linked to Flynn.
“Yoda” was Geoffrey Flohr, the retired Michigan State Police officer.
“Gen Flynn and his brother arranged the security for you, so I trust them,” Keshel told Burk in a text message.
“Yoda” arrived at Burk’s home in Florence, Ariz., later that day.
As previously reported by Raw Story, Burk has said that “Yoda” woke her up in the middle of the night. He told her that he had reliable information that the “Seattle whistleblower” was about to be kidnapped and taken to South Korea. “Yoda” even claimed that Burk’s friend in Seattle could potentially be killed if they didn’t send a security team to protect her, Burk recalled.
Burk called Keliikoa and put her on speaker phone so “Yoda” could speak to her.
Keliikoa would later testify that she was terrified by “Yoda” telling her about threats to her safety because bad actors were supposedly attempting to prevent her from exposing massive election fraud.
Indeed, she was so terrified that she called in another employee to cover for her and complete her work for the shift.
“And then what ended up happening is continuous phone calls back and forth,” Keliikoa testified. “‘Okay, well, somebody’s gonna send somebody to pick you up and take you to a safe place.’ But my name should have never been out there, and that makes me mad.”
At Burk’s insistence, late on that Friday night in early December 2020, “Yoda” provided Burk with a resume and photo of the driver who would pick up Keliikoa at the FedEx facility at the Seattle airport.
At 11:50 p.m., Burk texted the resume to Keliikoa.
Roland Hurrington — described on his resume as a Seattle-area Marine Corps veteran “responsible for the protection of classified material, equipment and U.S. mission personnel” — arrived at the FedEx facility in the black SUV to transport Keliikoa.
Keliikoa testified that Hurrington passed through a security checkpoint at the facility. How he was able to do that remains unclear, but Keliikoa speculated that the security personnel may have let him through based on the assumption that he was a chauffeur.
The pickup took place late at night — roughly 30 minutes after “Yoda” first spoke to her, according to Burk’s account.
“And then I get detained, taken,” Keliikoa recalled in her deposition. “And I don’t know who this person is. I don’t know where I was going. I can’t believe I actually agreed to go with this person, because they could have killed me and threw me on the side of the road, and nobody would have known.”
As it turned out, there never was a plot to kill Keliikoa.
In fact, while the pro-Trump stop-the-stealers involved didn’t know or admit it at the time, their entire ballot fraud enterprise was little more than a house of cards perched on pillars of sand.
And the ground beneath them was about to start quaking.
‘He fabricated everything’
Jim Penrose, a cyber-security expert who had previously worked at the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama, would later acknowledge to Burk that he was the man who showed up at Keliikoa’s hotel room and urged her to write an affidavit. After “Yoda” tracked Keliikoa down, Penrose went to her hotel room to meet her.
Penrose has been identified by the New York Times as being one of three men who joined Flynn and Powell at the South Carolina estate of defamation attorney Lin Wood to “gather and organize election information.” One of the others was Seth Keshel, a former Army military intelligence captain who was married to Carissa Keshel.
“We had a security team dispatched in Seattle,” Penrose told Burk in a phone call that she recorded on Christmas Day of 2020.
“My worst fear was that the people were moving, you know, like a team of people that might want to, you know, even kidnap your friend in Seattle,” he said. “I didn’t want to let that happen, right, because I thought it was a situation that was dangerous. And we didn’t have enough info at the time to make a better decision.”
The reason why it was necessary for Flohr to wake up Burk involved grave concerns about an Arizona-based security company called Mayhem Solutions Group.
Why would Flohr care so much about this security firm?
Penrose had told Flohr a wild story about two Mayhem Solutions Group employees he believed were planning to fly an airplane to Phoenix to Seattle and potentially “kidnap” Keliikoa and take her to South Korea because of information she might have about election fraud.
The idea that Mayhem Solutions Group would be involved in a plot to harm Sabrina Keliikoa for the purpose of preventing her from exposing anti-Trump election fraud was not only bizarre. It was based on an utter fabrication.
Owner Shawn Wilson and his employee, Kenneth Scott Koch — both far-right operatives — were prone to conspiracy theories. Koch was a member of the far-right group the Oath Keepers and an anti-COVID lockdown crusader. Koch had presented himself to Burk as a shadowy agent for a rogue government operation involved in illegal ballot trafficking.
More than two weeks before the Flynn security team was dispatched to Seattle, Koch had come to Burk’s house in Arizona to advise her on home security. During a discussion about a similar theory concerning illegal ballots being unloaded from a plane at Phoenix Sky Harbor, Koch told Burk that a group of men shown in a photo standing next to the plane were “my guys.”
Koch, who had organized an anti-lockdown group in Arizona in response to COVID-19 measures, went on to suggest to Burk that pro-Trump amateur sleuths attempting to uncover election fraud might learn about more than they bargained.
“A lot of these people want to be the center,” he said. “They wanna have the information. The problem is the information they don’t want.” For reasons that remain unclear, Penrose would hire an investigative team that included two former FBI agents to interview Koch about his claims, but not until after the madcap mission in Seattle to obtain the affidavit from Keliikoa.
“We interviewed Koch at length, and he said he fabricated everything,” Penrose told Burk during the Christmas Day phone call.
A one-time ‘hostile actor’ in Flynn’s camp
Patently ridiculous is the notion that a lie told by an anti-COVID lockdown advocate in Arizona, about illegal ballots on a plane, would trigger a weeks-long wild-goose that reached the highest levels of then-President Donald Trump’s inner sanctum, up to and including his former national security adviser.
In the end, the lead that sent Flynn’s associates to the Seattle airport under the pretext of a manufactured election crisis in December 2020 turned out to be little more than a photo of ballots and unexplained beeping from a package scanner that raised the suspicions of Keliikoa, a woman whose imagination was set alight by QAnon conspiracy theories.
One would not be faulted for thinking that nothing about this fake ballot-hunting story seems real.
Except for the fact that it is real.
It’s unclear whether Koch and his boss, Shawn Wilson, knew Flynn prior to the 2020 election. Regardless, Koch’s admitted deception hasn’t prevented Wilson from associating with the Flynn camp since that time.
The America Project, a nonprofit co-founded by Flynn, published a video in late 2023 that presented Wilson as someone who “knows more about what is going on at the border than probably anybody in America.” (Not mentioned in the interview was the fact that Wilson’s company had subcontracted with the state of Texas to operate buses transporting migrants to Democratic-run cities.)
As Election Day 2024 draws nearer, Wilson has only become more public and overt about his support for Trump.
The messaging in Wilson’s interview for Flynn’s nonprofit was a classic appeal to authoritarianism by invoking fear — part of Trump’s playbook since he launched his first presidential campaign in 2015. Wilson claimed that a military assault similar to the one launched against Israel by Hamas is imminent at the U.S southern border.
The remedy, Wilson suggested, is to ensure that Trump wins the 2024 election, adding, “I’ll be leading the charge with him right behind him.”
‘There was no goldmine’
Keliikoa confirmed her QAnon association, which inspired her ballot skepticism, during her deposition earlier this year.
She allowed that she sent Burk a link to a three-hour documentary video series Fall of the Cabal, which is described by the Anti-Defamation League as “a popular recruitment tool for QAnon followers.”
Keliikoa testified that following the November 2020 presidential election, she became suspicious because “we were moving ballots after places were called.” (That wouldn’t have been unusual, considering that the U.S. Postal Service was under a federal court order to locate and deliver mail-in ballots that hadn’t been received by Election Day.) One package that caused a scanner to triple beep — meaning “that it’s not recognized” — also concerned her.
“I believe that something looked wrong,” Keliikoa testified when asked under oath by Burk whether still believes that she witnessed election fraud at the FedEx facility in November 2020.
But Keliikoa admitted that she had nothing of value to share with the ad-hoc security team that sequestered her in a hotel in December 2020.
“They wanted to know if I knew about a plane coming in with these illegal ballots,” Keliikoa recalled. “I told them, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ That didn’t come from me. I don’t know what you’re saying.’ They were asking me if I knew about stuff that was going on outside of my workplace. I don’t. I was working. I don’t go out to other places.”
This didn’t stop Powell, who included a “Jane Doe” witness — Keliikoa presumably — on a witness list filed as part of an Arizona ballot lawsuit in support of Trump’s stop-the-steal effort. “Jane Doe,” Powell said at the time, would “testify about illegal ballots being shipped around the United States including to Arizona on or about before Nov. 3, 2020.”
No one was more disappointed by Keliikoa’s statement than Penrose.
“I thought when we exfil-ed her and we got her to write her affidavit, I thought we were going to have a goldmine of information,” he later told Burk, using the spy-craft term “exfiltrate” that means to furtively remove someone from a hostile area.
“There was no goldmine,” Penrose continued. “She had a picture of two ballot bags, and I asked her: ‘Would you know if ballots came across the tarmac from that Korea Air flight?’ And the answer was, ‘I just know what comes in this bay door from the USPS and what goes out these bay doors to get loaded on FedEx planes.’ So, the answer was there was no smoking gun per se with respect to that.”
The band breaks up
These days, few of the people involved want to discuss the Seattle ballot brouhaha, now revealed as a tangle of conspiracy theories, creative fantasies and outright lies — all in service to Trump’s goal of retaining presidential power that he was about to lose.
Reached by Raw Story earlier this month, Penrose’s lawyer John S. Irving said, “We don’t have anything to add.”
Keliikoa declined to comment to Raw Story for this story.
In an email to Raw Story last week, FedEx Media Relations said, “We do not have any comment at this time.”
Hurrington, the Marine Corps veteran who drove Keliikoa in the SUV, could not be reached for comment. Flohr also could not be reached for comment.
Some of the key players involved have also split up.
Keliikoa said in her deposition that one of the men who met her at the hotel told her it would “be in my best interest not to keep in contact” with Burk because she was a “troublemaker.”
Burk told Raw Story this month that Keliikoa had previously told her that it was Penrose who called her a “troublemaker,” but during her deposition, she claimed that she didn’t remember the names of anyone at the hotel.
“That was clearly projection since he was overseeing and directing a group of heavily armed former law enforcement holding my family and me hostage using fear and deception, who then spent months continuing to use that group to manipulate and malign my character to cover for their bad behavior,” Burk told Raw Story.
Flynn and Powell are both defendants in Burk’s lawsuit, along with former Arizona state Rep. Kelly Townsend. Burk accuses the defendants of civil rights violations, false imprisonment, assault, infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy.
In a filing seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, Flynn’s lawyers wrote that Burk’s claims are “baseless” and “frivolous,” while denying that their client sent the security team to her house or that he intended that they hold her “hostage.”
But Flynn’s efforts to distance himself from Burk are belied by the fact that Flohr — aka “Yoda,” the ex-law enforcement volunteer dispatched to her home in Arizona — flanked Flynn as part of his security detail when he spoke at a pro-Trump rally in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., less than a week after he was at Burk’s house in December 2020.
Flynn is currently promoting a documentary movie that portrays him as a victim of political persecution, and Trump has hinted that he may bring his former national security adviser back to public service — and the taxpayer-funded payroll — should he win election to a second term.
Flynn did not respond to repeated requests for comment made by Raw Story through his lawyers.
Last year, Powell pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties in Georgia.
Burk is suing Koch for fraudulent misrepresentation, invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress in the Arizona state courts, separate from her federal claim against Flynn, Powell and Townsend. Representing herself, Burk deposed Keliikoa for her lawsuit against Koch. Last week, Burk filed a motion to consolidate her case against Koch with her federal lawsuit against Powell and Flynn.
Under cross-examination by Koch’s lawyer in March, Keliikoa downplayed her role in giving life to the “ballots on planes” theory.
“The only relevance I have is a lot of people got involved and it turned into, like I said before, a big s---show where a lot of people were involved that should have never even been there, that should have never been involved,” she said. “And I got thrown into the mix like everybody else. I was used as a pawn. That’s what makes me mad.”
Knowing what she knows now, Keliikoa said, she would have never agreed to write the affidavit.
“I thought people really wanted to help,” she said in her deposition. “And now I know otherwise.”
“Nobody really cares,” she added, “because everybody has their own objective.”
- * * * *
Key players
Staci Burk is a former school board member from Arizona who found herself in the middle of a conspiracy theory concerning illegal ballots and airplanes after the 2020 election.
Roland Hurrington is a Marine Corps veteran enlisted to pick up Sabrina Keliikoa at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport FedEx air freight terminal in December 2020.
Geoffrey Flohr, also known as “Yoda,” is a retired Michigan State Police officer who volunteered for the 1st Amendment Praetorian security group in late 2020 and early 2021. He used Staci Burk to track down Sabrina Keliikoa.
Michael Flynn is a retired lieutenant general who served as national security advisor for President Donald Trump before pleading guilty to lying to the FBI. Trump pardoned Flynn in November 2020, and Flynn emerged alongside Sidney Powell as a key player in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.
Sabrina Keliikoa is a former FedEx supervisor and QAnon adherent who claims to have been detained by a security team linked to Michael Flynn that obtained an affidavit about election ballots observed at her facility shortly around the time of the 2020 election.
Carissa Keshel was a volunteer who served as attorney Sidney Powell’s assistant in late 2020, as Flynn worked with Powell to overturn the 2020 election.
Kenneth Scott Koch is a security contractor formerly employed by Mayhem Solutions Group (now MSG Risk Management & Intelligence) who “fabricated” a story about his involvement in illegal ballot trafficking. Koch organized anti-lockdown protests in Arizona and was a member of the far-right group the Oath Keepers.
Jim Penrose is a cyber-security expert who worked for the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama. He traveled to Washington state to obtain an affidavit from Sabrina Keliikoa.
Sidney Powell is a former federal prosecutor who filed lawsuits in Arizona and other states seeking to overturn the 2020 election based on outlandish claims of voting fraud.
Kelly Townsend is a former Arizona state House member who told Staci Burk it was imperative that the “Seattle whistleblower” (now revealed to be Sabrina Keliikoa) come forward and report her suspicions about illegal ballot trafficking after the 2020 election.
Donald Trump is the former president of the United States who is again running for the presidency in 2024. Many of the actions described in this story were done in Trump’s name.
Shawn Wilson is the president of MSG Risk Management & Intelligence (formerly Mayhem Solutions Group). Jim Penrose told Staci Burk that he was initially concerned that Wilson, along with Kenneth Scott Koch, were “hostile actors” intent on harming Sabrina Keliikoa.
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
Jordan Green on X: "The "Seattle whistleblower" was a legend ... ›
Sabrina L Keliikoa, Age 52 in Tacoma, WA, (951) 247-8057 ›
Michael Flynn's rogue team terrorized a FedEx supervisor, Sabrina ... ›
===
===
PFAW 2 24 YMAIL
Welcome to our weekly “Trumptastrophe” email series that serves to remind us all of the destructive policies, decisions, and actions we encountered during the Trump presidency and the threats that he and others in the MAGA movement still pose – and to keep those moments clear in our memory as we fight to defeat Republican extremists during the upcoming elections.
This week’s Trumptastrophe brings into focus how Trump and his MAGA Republican enablers sow doubt about our elections – especially for those that they lose – and how it undermines our election integrity while fueling right-wing outrage that can sometimes lead to violence:
On February 9, 2017, President Trump told a group of senators that he would have won New Hampshire in the 2016 presidential election if it weren’t for “thousands” of people he claimed were bused in from Massachusetts to vote illegally in the state. Trump offered no evidence to back up his claim.
A few days later, Trump adviser Stephen Miller was asked about the bogus claim by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.” Pressed repeatedly by Stephanopoulos on the lack of evidence for Trump’s claim, Miller doubled down, saying it’s “widely known by anyone who’s worked in New Hampshire politics,” and declaring, “It’s very real; it’s very serious.” Miller went on to claim that there are “massive numbers of noncitizens in this country who are registered to vote.”
Miller’s amplifying of Trump’s false claims led Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire to respond on social media, “As everybody knows, Stephen Miller has no evidence of voter fraud in NH. This has been debunked.” She noted that Trump had not called for a recount in the state.
This wasn’t the first time since his inauguration that Trump made false claims about the election in which he lost the popular vote by about 2.9 million votes while winning an Electoral College majority. A few weeks earlier, he told congressional leaders that he only lost the popular vote because 3 million to 5 million immigrants had voted illegally, a claim the Associated Press noted at the time had previously been debunked.
Here's how Trump’s lies about the election—an election he won—remind us how dangerous a Trump victory this year would be:
- Trump has always been willing to undermine public faith in democracy for his own benefit—sometimes just to soothe his ego. When Trump lost the 2016 Iowa caucus to Ted Cruz, he accused Cruz of winning by fraud. He took to social media demanding that a new election take place or Cruz’s victory be nullified.
- Pro-Trump political operatives were scheming to mobilize opposition to the 2016 election if Trump lost. Political dirty trickster Roger Stone had formed “Stop the Steal” that April as a “force of intimidation” to Republican officials who might try to deny Trump a victory at the Republican convention. Leading up to the 2016 general election, Stop the Steal “used incendiary rhetoric to motivate members to turn up at contested areas” on Election Day. “In court filings, Democrats argue Stop the Steal’s exit polling operation serves no legitimate purpose, but is merely a pretext for harassing and intimidating likely Democratic voters of color,” ABC News reported. Shortly before the election, a federal judge issued an injunction against Stone, Stop the Steal, and the Trump campaign barring them from intimidating voters at the polls.
- Leading up to the 2020 election, Stone urged Trump and his supporters to declare victory on election night no matter what. A few days before the election, Trump operative Steve Bannon said that Trump would declare victory even if he hadn’t won. “When you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a firestorm,” he said.
- MAGA activists, including Ali Alexander and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, reenergized Stop the Steal after Trump refused to accept his 2020 loss, mobilizing Trump supporters enraged by Trump’s lies about a stolen election. The lies, the anger they stoked among Trump die-hards, and the MAGA movement’s organizing to overturn Trump’s loss led directly to the violent Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, an effort to stop the peaceful transfer of power to the winner of the presidential election.
- After Trump’s loss, and the failure of the insurrection, MAGA Republicans in state legislatures used Trump’s false claims about election fraud to justify a wave of restrictive voting laws.
- Trump and his allies continue to lie about the 2020 election, suggesting that President Joe Biden is “illegitimate.” Other MAGA candidates now resort to the same playbook to keep supporters fired up after they lose an election, a strategy that failed 2022 Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is now employing in her race for the U.S. Senate.
Undermining faith in elections is bad for democracy. Thanks to Trump’s dishonesty, one-third of Republicans, and 41 percent of Trump supporters, told pollsters last fall that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”
===
https://www.vox.com/2020/12/13/22172438/trump-stop-steal-march-washington-dc-proud-lindell-fuentes
many linx some twt
Pro-Trump protesters rally for a coup: “We’re not going anywhere”
Pro-Trump protests in Washington, DC, and Washington state turn violent as court defeats pile up.
By Cameron Peters@jcameronpeters Dec 13, 2020,
[A man in a black hoodie with the yellow laurel arch logo of the Proud Boys and a black helmet is illuminated by streetlights. His hands are behind his back; behind him, is a Black woman in the navy uniform of the DC police.
A member of the Proud Boys is detained by police during a protest on December 12, 2020 in Washington, DC. Stephanie ]
Supporters of President Donald Trump demonstrated against the results of the 2020 presidential election on Saturday, in a series of rallies that underscored the hold the president retains on backers both within and outside the Republican Party.
At least two of these protests ultimately became violent — four people were stabbed in Washington, DC, and one person was shot in the city of Olympia, in Washington state.No deaths were reported, though all four stabbing victims are said to be hospitalized in critical condition as of Sunday. As of early Sunday, no information is available about the status of the shooting victim in Washington state.
In addition to the four people who were stabbed, at least five others were hospitalized in DC on Saturday, and more than 20 people were arrested on a variety of charges, including assault. Three people, including the suspected shooter, were arrested in Olympia, according to the Olympian.
Members of the Proud Boys — a violent, neofascist hate group that frequently traffics in white nationalism and misogyny — were also recorded in DC assaulting bystanders and destroying property. Among other incidents, the group tore down Black Lives Matter signs from multiple DC churches, and burned at least one sign.
The Proud Boys were in Washington, DC, for overlapping protests meant to show support for Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him. Members of the religious far right, as well as attendees of a second “Million MAGA March” — a sequel to a November event that saw tens of thousands of Trump supporters protest in the capital — all converged on DC.
Saturday’s event was far smaller than the one in November, featuring a few thousand people, but was nevertheless celebrated by the president.
“Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal,” he tweeted Saturday morning. “Didn’t know about this, but I’ll be seeing them!”
Trump later shared video of the rally on Twitter, which showed a tightly packed crowd of maskless supporters cheering on Marine One as it flew overhead.
pic.twitter.com/4lH5PZRI9C
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020
It was a similar story in Olympia, albeit without any cameos from presidential aircraft, and on a smaller scale. According to the Seattle Times, pro-Trump rallies have become “a regular weekend occurrence at Washington’s Capitol campus,” and Trump supporters clashed with counter-protesters throughout the day Saturday.
Both events came as Trump approaches his sixth week of denying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, which took place on November 3, and as the president continues to spread disinformation about the election’s results. Those results will be further cemented Monday, when the Electoral College votes to formally elect Biden.
The rhetoric of the protesters and their leaders, however, suggests that fact will have little influence on false claims the election was stolen from Trump — and that the president’s supporters will remain loyal to him and his alternate-reality claims.
:{
}:
Trump’s rhetoric is emboldening his supporters — and solidifying their support
The events in Washington, DC, featured not just Proud Boys and grassroots activists but an eclectic parade of well-known Trump allies, conspiracy theorists, and grifters, all of whom echoed Trump’s efforts to spread disinformation, encouraged the crowd to continue to reject the results of the election, and made their loyalty to Trump plain.
Recently pardoned former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn told the crowd how important it was to let Trump know “that we love him.” And MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell joined many of the day’s speakers in placing the president’s struggle to overturn the election’s results in a religious context, saying the world may now be in “end times.”
Lindell also took time during his speech — as the president has done repeatedly in recent days — to call out Republicans who have been insufficiently fervent in their defenses of Trump’s lies about the election, calling them “cowards,” and warning them, “We’re not going anywhere.”
Other prominent figures went further than Lindell; speaking to a crowd of supporters, Nick Fuentes — a white nationalist leader in a far-right movement that views many Trump allies as insufficiently conservative — said, “We are going to destroy the GOP.”
The crowd responded by chanting, “Destroy the GOP,” and with boos when Fuentes brought up Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Both are running in January special elections, and the GOP’s Senate majority rests on both winning.
Other speakers included Alex Jones— a conspiracy theorist known for harassing the families of mass shooting victims and promoting 9/11 trutherism — and US Representative-elect Bob Good of Virginia, who began his speech by describing the coronavirus as a “phony pandemic,” despite the fact that nearly 300,000 people have now died of Covid-19 in the US.
QAnon, the insane pro-Trump conspiracy theory that posits the existence of a global cabal of Satanic pedophiles, was also represented at the rally.
Across the board, however, Saturday’s rallygoers emphasized their dedication to Trump — and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and install himself to an unelected second term in office — above all else.
“If President Trump accepts [his election loss] and Vice President Pence accepts it, then we will accept it,” one attendee, a pastor from California, told the Washington Post. “But right now, this is a Godly protest.”
There’s no end in sight for Trump’s election fraud lies
Despite a rapid-fire string of legal defeats at every level of the federal court system, the energy — and money — that has been generated by the president’s efforts to overturn the election’s results seem to indicate that there’s no end in sight for Trump’s false election fraud rhetoric.
What’s more, the fervent dedication exhibited by rallygoers Saturday underscores an unfortunate reality: Republicans have an electoral incentive to continue their support of Trump’s anti-democratic efforts, in order to escape a primary challenge to the right.
Trump, for his part, has proven completely unwilling to give any ground in his fight to subvert democracy. As recently as Sunday morning, he tweeted without evidence that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost by more than 7 million votes, was the “MOST CORRUPT ELECTION IN U.S. HISTORY!”
These tweets have been backed up by action from the Trump campaign and Republican lawmakers, who have failed time and time again to turn up any evidence of voter fraud or other irregularities. According to Democratic voting-rights lawyer Marc Elias, the president and his supporters are now 1-59 in court, with their most recent loss coming Sunday in Georgia.
The Georgia Supreme Court on Sunday rejected an appeal by the Trump campaign in a case alleging large-scale voter fraud without evidence.
And separately, a Wisconsin state Supreme Court justice told a lawyer for the Trump campaign Saturday that its election lawsuit challenging the results “smacks of racism.”
:{
}:
On Friday, the US Supreme Court also rejected for lack of standing a Texas lawsuit attempting to overturn election results in four key swing states won by Biden. The suit — referred to by Trump as “the big one” — was supported by 17 state attorneys general, as well as more than half of the House Republican conference.
With an Electoral College vote imminent on Monday, both Trump and the Republican establishment are quickly running out of venues to challenge the election results, but as of Sunday, they show few signs of acknowledging reality. On Fox News Sunday, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise — the second most powerful Republican in the chamber — again refused to recognize Biden as the president-elect when pressed by anchor Chris Wallace.
Scalise’s acknowledgement isn’t necessary — the presidential transition has already begun and Biden will be sworn in as president on January 20. But it presages a likely fight in Congress over the official counting of Electoral College votes on January 6 — one that Republicans can’t win, as Vox’s Andrew Prokop explains — and it’s an alarming sign in its own right that leaders of one of the country’s two major political parties are unwilling to accept the results of a free and fair election.
The GOP’s willingness to support Trump in his disinformation campaign could have long-term consequences: In a Saturday Fox News poll, for example, 56 percent of registered voters indicated that Trump’s continued refusal to concede was “weakening American democracy.”
But Trump appears unconcerned about the damage he’s doing to the country. “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!” he tweeted Saturday.
===
mike rounds
https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/republicans-big-lie/
ny katko? voted ~ djt will not run, not 1st gop moc
===
===
no lnx twt
2 teams, one looking for peolsi]
A right-wing talking point about Jan. 6 just completely collapsed after indictment of the Oath Keepers
https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/oath-keepers-sedition/
An Oath Keepers billboard in Pine River, Minnesota in July 2015, Wikimedia Commons minuteman]
Alex Henderson January 13, 2022
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers, has been charged with seditious conspiracyas part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s probe of the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Washington Post reporters Spencer S. Hsu and Devlin Barrett have described the 56-year-old Rhodes as “the most high-profile person charged in the investigation so far.” And according to Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter, Rhodes’ arrest explodes a MAGA talking about the violence that occurred during the Capitol riot.
Ten others were charged along with Rhodes.
Carpenter, who is known for her commentary on CNN and her articles for The Bulwark, notes that “Trump defenders” have been claiming that the January 6, 2021 violence wasn’t an insurrection “because people like Rhodes had not been charged yet.”
“That talking point is out the window now,” Carpenter emphasized in a Twitter thread. “Sedition is being charged.”
READ: One sentence from the Supreme Court's ruling against an OSHA vaccine rule reveals its upside-down logic]
Carpenter, who once served as communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz but now criticizes him for being a Trump apologist, observed:
The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel also believes that Rhodes’ arrest totally discredits a flawed MAGA talking point. Weigel tweeted:
Fox News’ Brit Hume has argued, “Let's base our view on whether 1/6 was an ‘insurrection" on whether those arrested are charged with insurrection. So far, none has been.” And blogger Marcy Wheeler explained why Hume’s reasoning doesn’t hold up:
Christian Vanderbrouk likewise noted that the lack of sedition charges had been a popular right-wing, Jan. 6 apologist talking point:
Here are some more reactions to Rhodes’ arrest for seditious conspiracy:[twt]
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
'I fear the next election cycle': Former Oath Keepers spokesman ... ›
Tucker Carlson's effort to divert blame for Jan. 6 away from Trump ... ›
DC attorney general to sue Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militias ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
January 6 committee weighs options to get members of Congress to ... ›
Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, others charged in January 6 ... ›
More Capitol Riot defendants have ties to Oath Keepers, data leak ... ›
===
===
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/maga-or-antifa-the-right-wing-war-for-control-of-the-insurrection-narrative/
no lnx many vids
MAGA or Antifa? The Right-Wing War for Control of the Insurrection Narrative
Kyle MantylaBy Kyle Mantyla | January 4, 2022
In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a battle broke out for control of the narrative regarding the events of that day. The battle was not between the left and the right, but rather between varying factions of the right-wing movement, as a variety of MAGA activists sought to shape the narrative about what had unfolded at the Capitol. Would they take pride in the Trump loyalists storming the Capitol, or would they baselessly blame the insurrection on left-wing insurgents?
To objective outside observers, it was clear that supporters of former President Donald Trump had violently stormed the Capitol in an effort to intimidate members of Congress into refusing to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Threats of violence had filled social media and calls for war and revolution were ubiquitous at right-wing rallies in the days and weeks leading up to Jan. 6. As such, it was no surprise when MAGA activists immediately began praising the “patriots” who stormed the Capitol in the days after Jan. 6.
For example, just two days after the insurrection, radical right-wing anti-Islam activist John Guandolo praised the insurrectionists for showing remarkable “restraint” by not summarily executing the “traitors” in Congress.
A few days later, Guandolo asserted that those who condemned the insurrection were “enemies of the republic” and should be “swinging from a rope because these are traitors to the country.”
QAnon conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine was equally proud of the “patriots” who ransacked the Capitol. Lorraine, who had been covering the Jan. 6 events for radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ InfoWars network, filed a report on her way back to Texas in which she gushed that she had “never felt more pride in my heart and soul than yesterday.”
Lorraine lashed out at those in the MAGA movement who were already trying to distance themselves from the insurrection by falsely blaming the attack on the Capitol on left-wing activists. “No one should be blaming antifa for what happened,” Lorraine said. “American patriots did this. And it’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing.”
Likewise, Brandon Straka, a speaker at the Jan. 5 so-called Stop the Steal rally who has since pleaded guilty to joining the mob storming the Capitol, took to Twitter on Jan. 6 to shame conservatives who weren’t supporting “freedom loving Patriots” storming the Capitol.
“Be embarrassed & hide if you need to- but I was there. It was not Antifa at the Capitol. It was freedom loving Patriots who were DESPERATE to fight for the final hope of our Republic because literally nobody cares about them. Everyone else can denounce them. I will not,” Straka wrote on Twitter, according to a criminal complaint.
Not everyone agreed with Lorraine and Straka’s assessment. Even as Trump loyalists fought Capitol police, right-wing conspiracy theorists like Lin Wood and Mark Burns took to various social media platforms to claim that “antifa”—conservatives’ shorthand for anti-fascist activists—was behind the attack. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham—whom the House select committee revealed to have pleaded with Trump’s chief of staff to get Trump to tell his supporters to go home on Jan. 6—went on her show in the hours following the attack to claim “antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.” Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson echoed similar messages.
Perhaps nobody better illustrates the “blame antifa” camp than former Rep. Michele Bachmann. Just hours after the insurrection, Bachmann was baselessly declaring those who breached security and ran loose through the Capitol were actually left-wing “rabble-rousers paid to put together a coup.”
In the following weeks, Bachmann repeatedly insisted that the attack on the Capitol was actually carried out by “the progressive left.”
“It is my opinion that this was a theatrical event that the progressive left put on,” Bachmann said. “The individuals who were the instigators, who brought this about, these were agitators brought in to create this problem. I believe it was specifically done to rebrand Donald Trump as being an insurrectionist and a leader of a terrorist movement. I also believe that this was done to rebrand the Make America Great agenda—because remember, that was considered extremely popular by about 80 million Americans—so they wanted to rebrand Make America Great as an evil thing and those of us who supported Donald Trump and that agenda as evil and terrorists.”
By July, Bachmann was claiming that MAGA activists had nothing to do with the events of Jan. 6 and that left-wing activists dressed in black clothing had been bused in to attack the Capitol.
“There were some bad actors who had climbed up … and they actually were pounding on the glass,” Bachmann claimed. “Now, a normal person doesn’t do that. A normal person would never think to pound on the glass. I’ve seen the videotape of the first 14 people who went into the building. They were all dressed in black. They look like they’d been trained as warriors, the people who went in. This was clearly a planned event; that was not the Trump supporters who were around the building. What my conclusion was on-site is that this was nothing short of a coup.”
Despite the initial elation experienced by many MAGA activists in the wake of the insurrection and the endless praise for the “patriots” who had carried it out, the right-wing narrative about the events of Jan. 6 eventually solidified once the reality of the situation began to set in. As hundreds of Trump-loving activists began to face arrest and conviction stemming from their actions on that day and the disgrace the insurrection began to stain the MAGA movement, parts of Trump’s base and the former president himself collectively embraced the baseless belief that the entire thing had been a “false flag” orchestrated by left-wing groups.
So complete has the collective brainwashing been that even those who had initially celebrated the attack on the Capitol reversed course.
John Guandolo, who initially praised the insurrectionists for showing remarkable “restraint” by not summarily executing the “traitors” in Congress, now claims that he was outside the Capitol during the events on Jan. 6 and saw “several busloads” of “antifa people and non-patriot hostiles” mixing with the crowd and entering the Capitol.
“It makes you wonder what is actually going on,” Guandolo said. “We know what’s going on. What happened on Jan. 6 was the surrender of the republic and the takeover of the republic.”
John Guandolo | ReAwaken America Tour Dallas
Likewise, DeAnna Lorraine, who was on the ground at the Capitol during the insurrection and initially declared that she could not have been prouder about what happened, completely changed her tune and began insisting that the insurrection was a “false flag” operation set up to “trap” Trump supporters and provide justification for their persecution.
Lorraine eventually so thoroughly repudiated her initial support for the “patriots” who carried out insurrection that she ultimately began spreading a conspiracy theory that police officers who had been in the Capitol that day—several of whom have since died from suicide—were being murdered by the “deep state” to cover up the truth about the events of Jan. 6.
A new NPR/Ipsos poll released Monday shows how deeply this narrative has burrowed its way into the public’s beliefs.. According to the poll, nearly one-third of Republicans falsely say the attack on the Capitol was carried out by “opponents of Donald Trump, including antifa and government agents.”
Of course, this entire narrative shift regarding the events of Jan. 6 raises the question of why MAGA and the GOP have been intractably opposed to the efforts by the House select committee to investigate the attack. After all, if Jan. 6 was nothing but a “false flag” operation carried out by left-wing operatives for the purpose of discrediting Trump and his supporters, wouldn’t Trump and his supporters want that truth to be exposed?
Tags: Brandon StrakaDeAnna LorraineJohn GuandoloMichele BachmannCapitol Insurrection
===
paid 299k$
https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/2020-election/
---
===
https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/jan-6-christian-nationalism/
In the midst of the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Jacob Chansley, the bare-chested man in Viking horns who's come to be known as the QAnon Shaman, stopped his fellow marauders in the Senate chamber to pray. "Thank you Heavenly Father for gracing us with this opportunity … to send a message to all the tyrants, the communists and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs," he said. "Thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love Christ. Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn."
The prayer, caught on video by New Yorker reporter Luke Mogelson, was just one moment among hundreds that day illustrating how deeply the insurrection was intertwined with Christian nationalism. Across the sea of protesters in and outside the building, t-shirt and ball-cap slogans proclaimed it: "Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president"; "God, Guns, Trump"; or, on the sweatshirt of a man helping construct the rough gallows erected on the Capitol lawn, "Faith, Family, Freedom." (The gallows itself was quickly covered in handwritten notes — "as if it were a yearbook," observed lawyer and author Andrew Seidel — reading "Hang them high" and "In God We Trust.")
Elsewhere, protesters carried gigantic portraits of Jesus and replica statues of the Infant of Prague, or chanted about the blood of Jesus washing Congress clean. A long-haired blond man sang praise songs into a microphone plugged into a stack of amplifiers he was wheeling on a hand-truck. A Nebraska priest performed an exorcism on the Capitol building to banish the demon Baphomet, who he
was "dissolving the country" in order to "bring it back as something different." One rioter later indicted for breaking into the Capitol was actually a cast member in a touring production of "Jesus Christ Superstar." Another,Leo Brent Bozell IV, came from a long line of Christian right activists: His father, L. Brent Bozell III, founded the right-wing Media Research Center and his grandfather, L. Brent Bozell Jr., wrote speeches for Joseph McCarthy and a manifesto for Barry Goldwater.
"It was evident to anyone watching that there was this religious character to what was going on, both in the Trump movement writ large but particularly in the leadership of the 'Stop the Steal' movement," said religious studies scholar Jerome Copulsky, co-director of a new website, Uncivil Religion, dedicated to collecting "digital artifacts" of Jan. 6 religiosity and exploring what it means for, say, violent protesters to dress up like Captain Moroni — a legendary warrior from the Book of Mormon — or sing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" alongside fellow protesters carrying Confederate flags. "It wasn't just the Stop the Steal rally, then the assault," Copulsky continued. "People really wanted to display their religious commitments, literally wearing them on their sleeves."
The Uncivil Religion project developed from a Twitter hashtag, #CapitolSiegeReligion, created by author and religious historian Peter Manseau and based on his sense that the religious subtext (and text, and blaring headline) were "*the* story of what happened" on Jan. 6. In Manseau's view, religion wasn't an incidental element, but had been the driving motivation that had brought many people to the Capitol. Much of that had begun much earlier, with Christian right leaders — both official and self-declared — framing the 2020 election, and the rest of America's polarized conflicts, as an all-or-nothing showdown between good and evil.
Some were national names, like Samaritan's Purse president Franklin Graham, who in August 2020 warned in a Christian Broadcasting Network interview that if Trump lost, churches would close down and Christians would be attacked. But that message was echoed so widely, in both religious and secular conservative media and across numerous niche religious right communities, that allegations about the "stolen" election became nearly inseparable from messages of apocalyptic faith.
Much of that was on display on Dec. 12, 2020, in Washington, when a large-scale interfaith prayer protest, the Jericho March — widely seen as a forerunner to Jan. 6 — brought together a number of religious right factions to pantomime the biblical Battle of Jericho in praying to "bring down the walls of the Deep State." The carnivalesque full-day rally — organized, as journalist Sarah Posner reported, by two then-current employees of the federal government — featured an odd fusion of charismatic evangelicalism, Christian Zionism and right-wing Catholicism. There was contemporary Christian praise music and Virgin of Guadalupe iconography; a rendition of "Ave Maria" that concluded with the singer whooping "Giddy up"; and the female pastor of a New England pro-cannabis church wearing Catholic vestments while blowing on a Jewish shofar.
Emceeing the event was evangelical radio host Eric Metaxas, author of a bestselling biography of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a key figure in building an alliance between conservative evangelicals and Roman Catholics. Metaxas had become increasingly extreme throughout the Trump era. The week of the Jericho March rally, he told TurningPoint USA founder Charlie Kirk that the 2020 election was like "somebody is being raped or murdered … times a thousand," and that conservatives would need "to fight to the death, to the last drop of blood" to keep Trump in office.
That December rally featured several notable names on the Catholic right, including a bishop from Texas who refused to acknowledge Biden as president-elect, a nun who had
a fiery pro-Trump address at the 2020 Republican National Convention and, most prominently, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a dissident Catholic figure who had once been the Vatican ambassador to the U.S. but fell into disgrace after calling for Pope Francis' resignation in 2018. Since then, Viganò has turned into a sort of alternative pope for disaffected Catholic traditionalists at odds with their more moderate pope, and in 2020, he published an open letter to Trump warning that a "deep church" was working with the "deep state" to use the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests to undermine his presidency. After Trump tweeted a link to the letter, Viganò attracted so much support on the broader right that when he appeared, via video, at the Jericho March — praying "for the conversion of public officials who have become accomplices in public fraud" — an audience largely composed of evangelical Protestants cheered alongside his Catholic fans.
Evangelical speaker Lance Wallnau, who in 2016 famously compared Trump to the biblical figure of Cyrus — a "heathen" king who nonetheless served as the instrument of God — also sounded the theme of intra-religious conflict. "This is the beginning of a Christian populist uprising. There is a backlash coming," he said. "And you're going to see this wrecking ball of a reformation hit the church as well … because it's going to divide between those who are awake and those that are asleep. … There is a great awakening coming, and this is the spark that is starting it right now."
Not all speakers at the Jericho March were religious leaders in the traditional sense. Stewart Rhodes, the devoutly Christian founder of the militia group the Oath Keepers, was on hand to urge police and military members to prepare to fight Chinese "proxies" in the U.S., who he claimed were working to install Joe Biden as their "puppet."
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, freshly pardoned by Trump for lying to federal investigators, appeared in a flag bandana to talk about spiritual war and lead the crowd in an "Our Father." And conspiracy-theory talk-show host Alex Jones delivered a barn-burning near-sermon, proclaiming, "This is the beginning of the great revival before the Antichrist comes. World government, implantable microchips, Satanism — it's out in the open. The Bible is fulfilled, Revelation is fulfilled."...And there was Ali Alexander, the bombastic founder of the Stop the Steal movement, who appeared frequently on stage alongside Metaxas, vowing that if Biden was installed as president, Alexander and his supporters would return to "occupy D.C. full of patriots," adding, "We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us."
In the following weeks, Alexander repeatedly underscored the religious dimensions of his mission. In late December, he...https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/stop-steal-organizer-ali-alexanders-pre-january-6-calls-violence-weve-got...told the Epoch Times-affiliated NTD television network, "We are in a fight of good versus evil, of light versus the darkness, and a global order over sovereign citizens. … I believe that this is a metaphysical fight and we are channeling all energy in heaven and on earth towards a favorable outcome."
On New Year's Eve in 2020, Alexander announced on Twitter that he was converting to Catholicism,in part, he explained, because he'd become convinced that the Catholic Church had been "infiltrated" by an "earthy [sic] order that works in concert with Satan himself against the Church," and that he had been personally called to join the battle. And when the Jericho March returned to Washington on Jan. 5, for a slate of protest events leading up to the following day's MAGA march, Alexander spoke again, whipping the crowd into a
**That has remained central to the legacy of Jan. 6, as religious leaders have used the rhetoric of faith to minimize and redirect responsibility for the violence of that day: whether it's people like**
or South Carolina televangelist Mark Burns blaming "antifa soldiers" for perpetrating a false-flag operation to smear Trump supporters; Mike Huckabee suggesting, in email newsletters over the last six months, that Nancy Pelosi *may have orchestrated the attack, and casting indicted Jan. 6 protesters as political prisoners; or former Vice President Mike Pence, in a December interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, downplaying the very attack in which an angry mob called for his execution.
The rest of its legacy is more diffuse, but no less troubling: Metaxas
that the creation of COVID-19 vaccines is akin to experimenting "with the bodies of Jews we murdered in the concentration camps," or Viganò writing that COVID exists merely as a "psycho-pandemic"; Wallnau calling "wokeness" the religion of the Antichrist and, on the eve of the Jan. 6 anniversary...that if America is to be one nation under God, it must have only one religion. More systematically, there's the fact that much of the religious organizing energy that went into Stop the Steal has now transferred itself, as Posner , into mobilizing the Christian right on behalf of voter suppression initiatives.
A year later, none of the religious fervor that helped drive Jan. 6 has vanished, says Copulsky. "It's built into the fabric of American life. There's a radicality to it, but this didn't come out of thin air. And it's not going to go away. It's incumbent on religious leaders and organizations to think about what that means....
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/confrontational-christian-nationalists-are-pushing-anti-vaxxer-extremism-report
===
an 1 21
https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/capitol-riot-research/
Slate on Wednesday published an interview with Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who has spent the last year analyzing the demographic background of Capitol rioters.
Slate described his conclusions about the rioters as "sobering" and in particular pointed to his "research that tied rioters’ home counties to the areas that had lost the most white population in recent years."
While speaking with Slate, Pape said that he was surprised that so many of the rioters were doctors, lawyers, and other well paid professionals, and not the kind of people who usually fall in with extremist militas.
"When you look at this, it’s just one category after another after another that shouts outmainstream," he said. "The Jan. 6 insurrectionists really are best understood as a product of the mainstream."
Pape then explained how he and his team of researchers went about trying to learn just how mainstream MAGA rioters' beliefs are among the general population, and found them to be surprisingly widespread.
"21 million American adults agree with two radical beliefs: one, that the use of force to restore Donald Trump to the presidency is justified, and two, that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election and is an illegitimate president," he said. "That is, 21 million don’t hold just one of those beliefs—they hold both of those beliefs.It’s 8 percent of the body politic, but that’s really significant. That really can’t easily be characterized as just the 'fringe.' We normally would think the 'fringe' would be 1 percent or less."
Underlying these two beliefs, Pape said, was the "great replacement" conspiracy theory that claims the American government is systematically trying to replace native-born white Americans with people of color from other countries.
"When you ask questions about their belief in 'the great replacement,' you see that that is head and shoulders the No. 1 belief that’s driving the difference between being in the 21 million versus being in the rest of the body politic," he explained.
===
former police captain was reportedly paid more than $200,000 to “hunt ballots” for a far-right group to help aid former president Donald J. Trump in securing the 2020 election.
New documents reveal that the pro-Trump fringe group Liberty Center for God and Country (LCGC), “led a lucrative fundraising blitz in the run-up to the election and quietly networked with now-notorious election denialists. Their work came to light in October of that year when former Houston Police captain Mark Aguirre, 63, allegedly rammed his SUV into a man’s truck, forced the man onto the ground at gunpoint, and accused him of transporting 750,000 fraudulent ballots,” The Daily Beast reported. The driver of the truck was “an innocent air conditioner technician” named David Lopez-Zuniga.
Aguirre was indicted this week for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
“[Aguirre] crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed. His alleged investigation was backward from the start, first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement.
Aguirre never told police that he had been paid a total of $266,400 by the Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, with $211,400 of that amount being deposited into his account the day after the incident.
The case was investigated by the Houston Police and is being prosecuted by the Public Corruption Division of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
Aguirre’s claims of election fraud were found to be baseless after thorough investigation by Houston Police and by the Office Constable Precinct 1 Alan Rosen, as part of the Harris County Election Security Task Force.
==
ref oath and proud
https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/trump-captiol-riot/
1/6 analysis, sm sample here
12 21 raw an relationship coach kind // life coach?
...Both men overtly invoke the apocalypse, and self-consciously make QAnon references in their respective podcasts.
“What is going on here in America?” Cusick said in the Oct. 19 episode of his podcast. “They have us — we’re enslaved…. When the pilgrims came to America in 1620 — four hundred years from then goes to 2020 — when did this awakening start in the United States? Everyone started realizing what was going on with our elections, with Hollywood, with all these elites. It started in 2020, thanks to our president, Donald Trump.”
Cusick offered an allegory, comparing Americans from the settling of the colonies in the 1600s to the Israelites who, according to the Old Testament, were enslaved in Egypt under the pharaoh. By way of explaining how the United States, which after all, was supposedly “founded on Judeo-Christian principles,” had been “enslaved” since before its founding, Cusick claimed that “it was infiltrated and it became Satanic.”
For Cusick, Trump is to be credited for awakening a sense of nationalism in Americans and helping them define an enemy, which happens to be their fellow citizens.
“Trump’s the one who made people all of a sudden realize we have a country, and we have an opposition, whether you were on the left side or the right side,” Cusick said.
While concerned with something entirely different — helping men have more sex, as opposed to saving souls for Jesus — Stedman offered a similar chronology in his Dec. 9 blog post entitled “Why Your Woman Stops Wanting Sex.”
“We have been experiencing a gradual dark night of soul these past 100 years; as I write this in December 2021 we are near the culmination of it,” he wrote. Then, he went straight to the apocalypse: “In this collapse all that has been hidden is becoming seen. We are living through the apocalypse— the great revealing. The great awakening.”
After invoking apocalypse as a force for a transformation in gender relations, Stedman advised young men that they should strive for “consensual polarity” while making it clear that he was not advocating for equality: In his view, the men are protagonists; women are material to be “forged.”
“Such a relationship is well within your grasp,” Stedman advised. “In spite of all the programming, suitable women are all around; though many do need guidance — you will need to help forge them. But the limiting factor is you. Because you can only take a woman as far as you yourself have gone.”...
===
===
it's just ye now ;) lang rhet interesting/odd
loose end to tidy up == kill?!
https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/kanye-trump-voter-fraud/
grifter/ ideol entre?
publicist for rapper Kanye West is accused of traveling to Georgia in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election and pressuring a poll worker to confess to voter fraud,as alleged by then-President Donald Trump and his allies. Despite their extensive efforts to prove Trump actually won the election, their claims of voter fraud have been consistently debunked and rejected by courts.
According to Reuters, the publicist Trevian Kutti attempted to confront 62-year-old grandmother and poll worker, Ruby Freeman. On Jan. 4, Kutti reportedly arrived at Freeman's home with an unidentified male to discuss the election. Kutti is said to have insisted that she'd come as a representative of a "high-profile individual” to deliver a clear ultimatum: "confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail."
Out of fear, Freeman called 911. “They’re saying that I need help, that it’s just a matter of time that they are going to come out for me and my family,” Freeman said on the call. When a Cobb County police officer arrived at the home, he suggested that they all speak at the station. After going there, Kutti spoke with Freeman as she continued to explain the purpose for her visit.
Audio recordings of Kutti's discussion with Freeman have also come to light in the Reuters article. While she did not detail specific consequences, Kutti did appear to issue a veiled threat to Freeman.
“I cannot say what specifically will take place,” Kutti is reportedly heard saying to Freeman in the audio recording. “I just know that it will disrupt your freedom," she said, "and the freedom of one or more of your family members.”
Kutti continued, “You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up."
According to Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague, the co-authors of the previously-released book, "The Steal,” Kutti went a step further with her remarks suggesting that Freeman and her daughter provide statements to a U.S. attorney.
“What I would like for you to do is consider talking to a U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Georgia who is willing to take a statement from you and your daughter. And who in turn, if you are honest about the course of events that took place at State Farm Arena, will possibly be willing to grant you and your daughter immunity from charges that will imminently be brought,” Kutti told Freeman.
Kutti has not responded to any requests for comments. Watch the video below:
===
Carlson’s ‘baseless conspiracy theory’ about the Jan. 6 rioters has been forcefully debunked
December 10, 2021
January 6, 2021 was among the most horrifying days in U.S. history — a day in which a violent mob of far-right insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol Build in the hope of preventing Congress from certifying now-....
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/capitol-riot-2655791525/
burner phones to WH
no lnx
Jan. 6 rally organizers used anonymous 'burner phones' to communicate with top Trump officials: report
Alex Henderson November 24, 2021
Using a burner phone is much different from using a high-end Apple iPhone or an Android-based smartphone: they're cheap, disposable, designed for temporary use rather than long-term use, and do not require an account. Burner phones also offer anonymity. And according to Rolling Stone's Hunter Walker, they were allegedly used by some Republican activists who helped organize former President Donald Trump's "Save America" rally in Washington, D.C. on January 6.
Walker, in an article published by Rolling Stone on November 23, explains, "Some of the organizers who planned the rally that took place on the White House Ellipse on January 6 allegedly used difficult-to-trace burner phones for their most 'high level' communications with former President Trump's team. Kylie Kremer, a top official in the 'March for Trump' group that helped plan the Ellipse rally, directed an aide to pick up three burner phones days before January 6, according to three sources who were involved in the event. One of the sources, a member of the 'March for Trump' team, says Kremer insisted the phones be purchased using cash and described this as being 'of the utmost importance.'"
:{
}:
Walker writes that according to those three Rolling Stone sources, Kremer "took one of the phones and used it to communicate with top White House and Trump campaign officials" such as the Trump Organization's Eric Trump (a younger brother of Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr.), former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and long-time Donald Trump ally Katrina Pierson. One of the Trump supporters given a burner phone was Amy Kremer, Kylie Kremer's mother and another rally organizer.
Walker reports, "According to the three sources, some of the most crucial planning conversations between top rally organizers and Trump's inner circle took place on those burner phones…. Burner phones — cheap, prepaid cells designed for temporary usage — do not require users to have an account. This makes them hard to trace and ideal for those who are seeking anonymity — particularly if they are purchased with cash. The use of burner phones could make it more difficult for congressional investigators to find evidence of coordination between Trump's team and rally planners."
January 6, 2021 was an incredibly dark day in U.S. history. That day, a violent mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in the hope of stopping Congress from certifying now-President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. The Capitol riot was preceded by the large "Save America" or "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington, D.C. that Kylie and Amy Kremer helped organize. During the March For Trump bus tour, the Kremers promoted the Big Lie: the false, totally debunked claim that Trump was the real winner of the 2020 presidential election but was victimized by widespread voter fraud.
"There was no evidence the Kremers and the other rally organizers encouraged or planned violence in the group text messages reviewed by Rolling Stone," Walker explains. "However, critics have argued Trump and the leaders who encouraged thousands of his supporters to come to Washington as the vote was certified deserve some blame for the violence because of their pre-January 6 rhetoric and the fiery content of the former president's speech at the Ellipse rally."
Walker continues, "The three sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the ongoing investigation into the January 6 Capitol attack, say Kylie asked the aide to buy the three 'burner phones' as the group passed through Palm Springs, California about a week before the Ellipse event. Based on the group's website, which has since been deleted, the tour began on December 27, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada before moving on to California."
===
an 11 21
Infamous "dirty trickster" political operative and decades-long Trump ally Roger Stone, along with far right wing extremist Alex Jones are two of the latest five people subpoenaed by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
CNN describes the five being subpoenaed as "former President Donald Trump's allies directly involved in planning 'Stop the Steal' rallies."
Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich, along with Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence, "key players in the Stop the Steal' movement after the election," were also subpoenaed.
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) in a statement said: "The Select Committee is seeking information about the rallies and subsequent march to the Capitol that escalated into a violent mob attacking the Capitol and threatening our democracy. We need to know who organized, planned, paid for, and received funds related to those events, as well as what communications organizers had with officials in the White House and Congress. We believe the witnesses we subpoenaed today have relevant information and we expect them to cooperate fully with our effort to get answers for the American people about the violence of January 6th."
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/nancy-pelosi-capitol-riot/
trms lists 5 threat to shoot pelosi, one guy attacked a cop, had shitgun handgun
tucker BS ~ jonah goldburg, cnn tapper?
===
===
colo?
READ:Federal judge orders pro-Trump lawyers to pay almost $187,000 for their 'abuse of the legal system'
In December 2020, Colorado-based attorneys Gary D. Fielder and Ernest John Walker filed a class-action lawsuit making the false, totally debunked claim that the presidential election had been stolen from then-President Donald Trump— and now, a federal judge is ordering them to pay almost $187,000 to help offset the legal costs of the groups they sued in a meritless lawsuit.
Judge N. Reid Neureiter, according to Washington Post reporter Rosalind S. Helderman, was vehemently critical of Fielder and Walker, saying, "As officers of the court, these attorneys have a higher duty and calling that requires meaningful investigation before prematurely repeating in court pleadings unverified and uninvestigated defamatory rumors that strike at the heart of our democratic system and were used by others to foment a violent insurrection that threatened our system of government. They are experienced lawyers who should have known better. They need to take responsibility for their misconduct."
Fielder and Walker filed their December 2020 lawsuit on behalf of 160 million Trump voters, who they claimed had been wronged by an elaborate plan to steal the election — and those targeted in the lawsuit included Facebook (including founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan), Dominion Voting Systems and elected officials in four states. And Neureiter declared that they needed to pay a financial price for wasting the court's time with so frivolous a lawsuit. Fielder and Walker, according to Helderman, are appealing Neureiter's ruling.
Helderman notes, "Their case was dismissed in April. In August, Neureiter ruled that the attorneys had violated their ethical obligations by filing it in the first place, arguing that the duo had run afoul of legal rules that prohibit clogging the courts with frivolous motions and lodging information in court that is not true. At the time, he called their suit 'the stuff of which violent insurrections are made,' alleging they made little effort to determine the truth of their conspiratorial claims before filing them in court."
Dominion Voting Systems has filed some lawsuits of its own — only Dominion's lawsuits have actual merit.
Following the 2020 election, pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell made the bogus claim that Dominion's voting technology was used to help now-President Joe Biden steal the election from then-President Donald Trump just as it was used by supporters of the late leftist President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Major problem for Powell: Dominion responded that its voting technology was never even used in Venezuela, thus making it physically impossible for Dominion to have helped the Chavez regime in any way. Dominion has sued Powell, Fox News, pro-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and others for promoting lies and conspiracy theories against the company.
Neureiter declared that Fielder and Walker need to pay a financial price for their frivolous lawsuit, which he described as "an abuse of the legal system and an interference with the machinery of government."
Helderman reports, "Neureiter said the lawyers should pay just over $11,000 to cover the legal fees of the states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, both defendants in the suit, a dollar figure the duo had agreed was fair. The two lawyers had balked, however, at far higher fees requested by three other entities: Facebook, Dominion Voting Systems and the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), an election reform advocacy group that has received funding from Zuckerberg and Chan. In a 21-page order (on November 22), Neureiter ordered that Fielder and Walker pay $50,000 to Facebook and $62,930 each to Dominion and CTCL, arguing that billing records submitted by the group showed the fees were reasonable given the prominence of the lawyers who worked on the case and the amount of time they spent."
===
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/jan-6/
women for maga
===
aha yikes vaxx and big lie twin pillars of 2nd civil war:
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."
===
===
omg yikes
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/trump-2655520362/
no lnx
'Barely concealed bloodlust': Claremont Institute laid out detailed plan for using cops to overturn Trump’s election loss
Travis Gettys and Raw Story November 08, 2021
The right-wing Claremont Institute published a report in mid-October 2020 that gamed out a scenario where Donald Trump would remain in office through an alliance between law enforcement and militant extremists.
The report was prepared by attorney John Eastman, who authored a memo laying out another strategy for keeping Trump in office, and former Trump deputy national security advisor K.T. McFarland, as well as Kevin Roberts, then-executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, alt-right figure Jeff Giesea and right-wing blogger Charles Haywood, reported The Bulwark.
"Despite the authors' pretensions to scholarship and rigor — 'for a simulation to be valuable, the other side gets a vote and actions must be based in realism' — the final document is a frenzied and paranoid piece of work, revealing of the anxieties and aspirations of the authoritarian right," writes columnist Christian Vanderbrouk. "Practically, the report is an instruction manual for how Trump partisans at all levels of government — aided by citizen 'posses' of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers — could, quite literally, round up opposition activists, kill their leaders, and install Donald Trump for a second term in office."
Most of the predictions in the report, titled "79 Days to Inauguration," did not come to fruition, such as the authors' belief that some states' voting results would be fatally tainted by cyber attacks and suspicious fires, and left-wing mobs did not converge on Washington, D.C., to incite violence, and police did not execute antifa/Black Lives Matter leaders as part of a federal operation.
"A barely concealed bloodlust runs through the report," Vanderbrouk writes. "This isn't a serious wargame or a policy study so much as a bowdlerized retelling of The Turner Diaries."
The report was produced in response to the bipartisan Transition Integrity Project's (TIP) exercise on "Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition," which considered the prospect of Trump refusing to concede an election loss and made recommendations for avoiding a crisis -- which seems to be the opposite intent of the Claremont Institute's exercise.
"To the extent that the Claremont-TPPF report offers recommendations, they are mostly focused on how to emerge victorious from the chaos, including preparation 'for destructive urban unrest [with] potential targets includ[ing] ballot counting facilities, government buildings, especially state capitols and city halls, as well as television and radio studios,'" Vanderbrouk writes. "The Claremont task force seems either resigned to—or perhaps energized by—the view that 'prudent steps are likely to be spun as preparations for a military takeover or coup and may result in negative consequences either way.'"
"Either way. It's as if they're steering into the violence instead of trying to avoid it," he adds. "The message is clear:do whatever it takes to crush your opponents and all will be forgiven in the second Trump term."
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/capitol-riot/?rs=182
tom b raw story
according to a report from theDaily Beast's Roger Sollenberger, a dark money nonprofit with ties to the Koch family has been funneling millions of dollars into organizations promoting white supremacy as well as supporters of Donald Trump linked to the Jan 6th insurrection.
Based upon an IRS filing from Donors Trust, reported upon by CNBC, the Beast explains that the nonprofit took in $360 million last year to disperse as it sees fit.
According to the report, beneficiaries of donations have been linked to the organizers of the Jan 6th rally -- that turned into a riot at the U.S. Capitol -- as well private universities.
Calling Donors Trust the "dark money ATM of the right," the report states the organization that does not have to reveal who gives it money, "... gave more than $2 million to groups linked to white supremacists,including the VDARE Foundation."
Government ethics expert Norm Eisen claimed, after reviewing the IRS filing that it is "profoundly concerning for the future of our democracy."
With the Beast reporting, "the group channeled major support for entities which fought to overturn President Joe Biden's 2020 victory and organized the Jan. 6 rallies in Washington, D.C." Eisen claimed, "The Donors Trust is taking advantage of the dangerous opacity of our tax and related laws and regulations to fund alleged white supremacist and white nationalist associated groups, those who were bad actors in wrongly attempting to spread misinformation about or overturn the legitimate 2020 election results, and even groups that were responsible for the rally that helped trigger the Jan. 6 insurrection."
According to the Beast's Sollenberger, "Donors Trust posted record numbers in 2020.The group, which has hauled in more than $1 billion since 2016, raised more than $360 million last year, while spreading around $182 million across 339 organizations. Donors Trust itself held on to about $174 million in contributions, bringing its total assets to $607 million."
You can read more here.
===
also false flag
https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-promotes-his-revisionist-january-6-special-interviewing-writer-who
:{ Carlson promotes his revisionist January 6 special by interviewing a writer who called a DC police officer a crisis actor:(style="box-sizing:border-box;fill:#ffffff;"):}:
11/02/21
===
===
an 11 21
no lnx
Revealed: Fox's Judge Jeanine orchestrated payments for ‘command centers’ that could blow up Trump’s defense
Travis Gettys and Raw Story November 03, 2021
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro orchestrated campaign payments for 'command centers' at DC hotels that could blow up Donald Trump's executive privilege claims.
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and the city's former police chief Bernie Kerik had been paying for hotel rooms and travel related to their efforts to overturn Trump's election loss, but the pair grew concerned by early December as the bills piled up, reported the Washington Post.
"How do I know I'm gonna get my money back?" Kerik thought at the time, as he recently told the newspaper.
Kerik knew that Giuliani hadn't been reimbursed for his expenses or paid for his services, but their friend Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News host beloved by the twice-impeached one-term president, called Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and asked her to help them out.
McDaniel spoke to Kerik by phone but refused to give him money, and instead recommended that he ask the Trump campaign to reimburse his expenses, according to the former police chief and a GOP official.
The campaign cut its first check to Kerik in mid-December with Trump's approval, according to a former senior campaign official, and eventually paid more than $225,000 for hotel rooms and suites at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., that served as a "command center" for efforts to overturn the election results ahead of Jan. 6 riots.
Those payments, according to legal experts, could undermine Trump's claims of executive privilege over documents and testimony related to the U.S. Capitol riots sought by the House select committee investigating the insurrection.
"[This] further undermines a wildly broad assertion of executive privilege," said Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor. "Executive privilege is typically limited to the protection of communications involving a president's official duties — not to those relating to personal or political campaign matters."
Former Justice Department official John Yoo, who advised former vice president Mike Pence's staff that there was no legal basis to deny the certification of Joe Biden's election win, agreed that the payments could upend Trump's defense.
"If he acts as a president, he gets these things we talk about — executive privilege and immunity," Yoo said. "But if he's acting as a candidate, he's deprived of all of those protections."
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/qanon/
no lnx
'Lost sheep': Conspiracy theory expert says QAnon believers are being swallowed by 'mass radicalization'
Jacob Chansley, dubbed 'The QAnon Shaman'/Channel 4 News screenshot]
Chauncey DeVegaand Salon November 03, 2021
America's mainstream news media has a short attention span [cits have /voters have of golden retriever], which has certainly played to the advantage of the long-running Republican-fascist assault on democracy (and on reality). Of late, the media has grown bored with QAnon, the antisemitic and racist conspiracy cult which claims to believes that a secret cabal of pedophile Democrats and other members of the "deep state" run the world — and gain superpowers from kidnapping and killing children and then ingesting their vital essence. In this demented worldview, only Donald Trump and other "patriots" can save America and the world.
It appears that QAnon followers played a significant role in the attack on the Capitol and coup attempt on Jan. 6. No leaders of that coup plot have been apprehended or punished, and most of the foot soldiers have received relatively lenient punishment to this point. President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland appear reluctant to apply the full power of the law to punish Donald Trump, along with his allies, operatives and followers.
QAnon followers are also attempting to undermine American democracy and civil society by infiltrating such "vulnerable" sites as local school boards, library committees and other ground-level institutions of local and state government. Their purported goal may be to ban the teaching of "critical race theory" (which is not taught in public schools), but the real goal is larger: to enforce punishment of "unpatriotic" thoughtcrimes, and to mainstream right-wing conspiracy theories and other lies about American history.
QAnon followers are also seeking to become election officials, where they are planning to use the fervor around Trump's Big Lie and other conspiracy theories to rig election results, overthrow multiracial democracy and replace it with one-party Republican rule.
In an article posted last June, the National Education Association explored the QAnon-fueled "radicalization" of school boards in communities all over America:
In a small town in Washington State, the newly elected mayor calls QAnon, "a truth movement," and recently fired the town's skeptical city manager. In coastal San Luis Obispo, California, a school board trustee's Facebook posts include a QAnon video, misinformation about COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter, and promotion of the ex-gay, conversion movement. She won, says the town's mayor, who is calling for her resignation, because "people had no idea this was going on," and didn't have the "bandwidth to research the school board election," reports the local newspaper, the Tribune.
Meanwhile, in Florida, a newly elected county sheriff is now explaining why he posed for photos last year with a supporter in a "We are Q" t-shirt.
Across the county, conspiracy theorists and proponents of fake news are winning local elections. And their new positions give them a powerful voice in everything from local law enforcement to libraries, trash pickup to textbook purchases.
QAnon followers are also gaining influence and power within white Christian evangelical churches and other faith communities. This is integral to the worsening radicalization of white Christianity and the threat of a right-wing "holy war" against Democrats, liberals, progressives, Black and brown people and anyone else who believes in the separation of church and state, or who holds values and beliefs deemed "un-American" or "anti-Christian."
Public opinion polls and other research show that a large percentage of Republicans and Trump followers say they believe in at least portions of the outlandish QAnon fantasy and — not coincidentally — are also willing to support right-wing political violence to protect their "traditional way of life" and "save the country." This includes removing President Joe Biden from office by violent means if deemed necessary.
Matthew Rozsa of Salon summarized these findings this week:
New public opinion research from the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute, part of its 12th annual American Values Survey, has returned alarming findings.
Close to one-third of Republicans in the survey, or 30%, agreed with the statement that "true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country." That was more than the combined total of Democrats and independents who say the same thing (at 11% and 17%, respectively).
PRRI CEO and founder Robert Jones said the large proportion of Republicans who appear ready to endorse political violence is "a direct result of former President Trump calling into question the election." Jones noted that according to the same survey, more than two-thirds of Republicans (68%) claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, as opposed to only 26% of independents and 6% of Democrats.
The study also found that 39% of those who believed that Trump had won the 2020 election endorsed potential violence, compared to only 10% of those who rejected election misinformation. There were also signs of a split based on media consumption, with 40% of Republicans who trust far-right news sources agreeing that violence could be necessary, compared to 32% of those who trust Fox News and 22% among those who trust mainstream outlets. In addition, respondents who said violence may be necessary are more likely to report feeling like strangers in their country, to say American culture has mostly worsened since the 1950s and to believe that God has granted America a special role in human history.
Sophia Moskalenko is a social psychologist and expert on conspiracy theories, radicalization and extremism. She is currently a research fellow at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (NC-START) and is the author of several books, including "Friction: How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us" and "The Marvel of Martyrdom: The Power of Self-Sacrifice in the Selfish World." Her new book, with co-author Mia Bloom, is "Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon."
In this conversation Moskalenko discusses the dangers QAnon poses to American democracy and national security. She explains that QAnon is a community where overwhelmingly white and often socially alienated followers find fellowship and meaning as they are radicalized into extremism and other potentially dangerous antisocial behavior. In her view, QAnon functions as a space that nurtures and satisfies white fantasies of right-wing masculinity, femininity, violence and heroism about "protecting" children and reasserting "traditional values".
Toward the end of this conversation, Moskalenko explains what she would tell Joe Biden and other senior members of the administration about the threats posed by right-wing terrorism, as well as about the ways hostile foreign powers are using disinformation and other forms of propaganda to weaken American democracy and society.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
You are an expert on terrorism and other forms of political extremism. You are also an expert on propaganda and disinformation. How are you feeling right now, given America's democracy crisis?
I've been feeling a little bit like Cassandra, the woman in Troy who was yelling as loud as he could about the city falling to ruin, and everybody was laughing at her. Then of course her warnings came true. It doesn't feel good. There was so much attention being paid to Islamic terrorism after 9/11. Unfortunately, there was not enough attention being paid to the trends right here in the United States domestically. This was all very alarming for somebody such as me who is an expert on terrorism and radicalization. These trends pointed to how right-wing groups were attracting more people and carrying out more and more lethal attacks.
There were people in positions of power and influence here in the United States who were beginning to pander increasingly to these groups. And of course, Trump's presidency was a type of pinnacle for that behavior. Those appeals to right-wing extremist groups are now crystallized in congressional representatives who are outspoken supporters of QAnon conspiracy theories.
There was also Trump's line after the riots in Charlottesville about "good people on both sides," which implies that maybe Nazis aren't so bad. This problem has been developing for a long time.
When you looked at the events of Jan. 6, what did you see? What jumped out at you?
I'm a psychologist, so I focused on the emotions that I observed in the faces, the screams and the actions of the Trump followers who were there that day at the Capitol.
It was just striking to me how angry and violent and ready to inflict serious damage a lot of those people were. On Jan. 6, I saw a huge crowd of people who look just like my neighbors but who were acting in a very threatening and menacing way. It was disturbing. I also, of course, saw many QAnon symbols and antisemitic symbols and other references to hate groups.
I was also struck by the composition of the people at the Capitol on Jan. 6. They were very diverse in terms of age and gender. From the Arab Spring to images from the Ukrainian revolution or Georgian revolution, we mostly see men carrying out these mass radical actions. But on Jan. 6 at the Capitol, we saw a lot of women. There were many young people and also people in their 60s and 70s. That is very unusual, in many ways, as far as radical movements go.
There were various right-wing extremist groups and other forces involved in the events of Jan. 6. What role did QAnon conspiracy believers play?
We know that between 10% and 20% of people present at the Jan. 6 insurrection were members of right-wing militia groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and Three Percenters. A sizable proportion of those groups also consisted of active-duty military or veterans. Those militia groups also include active or retired police.
As for QAnon members, after Jan. 6 when the prophecy about Trump's return was unfulfilled, a number of QAnon followers became disenchanted. They went back online looking for answers, like they did before they found QAnon. Now they are looking for something else.
There was a concerted effort by the right-wing extremist groups to bring them in, because they were like lost sheep. The way these groups and individuals talk about the QAnon types is very dismissive. They call them idiots. They call the QAnon prophecy nonsense. But they felt this was an opportunity to recruit a bunch of disenchanted QAnoners into their ranks.
We know that both QAnon and the right-wingers I am discussing here are very antisemitic and racist. Whatever they may say about it, we know from the data we have collected from their own materials that they express clearly antisemitic and racist attitudes. In that aspect there is an overlap, at least psychologically, between QAnon and these right-wing extremists.
"I am Q." We see that language everywhere among the QAnon believers. What is the meaning?
"Q" is a mysterious person, or likely several people. This person or persons has "Q-level" government clearance, which indicates they are supposedly quite high in America's intelligence hierarchy. So while a given person may claim to be "Q," another way of thinking about the meaning of "Q" is that it is an expression of a larger identity.We are in the era of identity politics. Wearing some clothing that announces that one believes in QAnon is a way of projecting that membership and identity.
Wearing that symbol is also a way to connect to other QAnon followers. Because again, especially at these mass rallies or events, people come there for many different reasons, including a shared emotional experience, whether it's rage or hope or even fear. That is the attraction of being together with all these other people who are experiencing the same emotions – even if they are negative emotions. It's a way of establishing your tribe. In a rapidly changing world where we often do not know who our neighbors are, it can be very isolating and very unsettling to not have a tribe.
Carrying something like a big letter "Q" on your chest or over your head is likely an attempt to feel connected with other people who believe similar things.
One key aspect of QAnon is how it is a space forwhite male fantasies of power, home and family, and about using violence to "protect" children, women, faith and community. QAnon is also a space for fantasies about a particular type of white womanhood and femininity.
:{
}:
Much of QAnon behavior and beliefs arerooted in entertainment. In fact, they borrowed many of their tropes from traditional folklore, like vampires and witches, and also from Hollywood movies. Experimental research has shown that people are compelled to conspiracy theories because they are a lot better at eliciting strong emotions. Some people seek out conspiracy theories because they offer a chance to feel fear, like a horror movie, or anger, such as in a revenge movie.
At the same time, QAnon fills a void that was created when single-earner households where the dad goes to work and the mom stays home in her white little apron were increasingly not viable for most Americans. Such an idea, that a lot of white middle-class men and women grew up with, is no longer available to them. What is left behind are feelings of disillusionment, anger, grievance.
Of course, many of these grievances are then redirected by these QAnon or right-wing narratives more broadly towardsimmigrants who are supposedly taking the good jobs or taking money out of the economy that would have been enough to make the American dream possible for "real" Americans. Channeling that anger into a hatred toward minorities or immigrants is one way to make sense of their new reality.
QAnon is also a fantasy of action and about the ability of individuals to have agency in their own lives— albeit in delusional, dangerous and unhealthy ways. For example, this deranged belief that children are being held hostage by evil forces who drink their blood is likely to encourage people to get their weapons and go save them. How do these QAnon fantasies play out on the individual level?
QAnon really grew in power and popularity when the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter protests were also becoming more prominent. For a lot of women, it was an uncomfortable political conversation that they did not feel ready to have. This idea about saving children then became a safe political alternative for white suburban women to discuss. In their minds, who wouldn't want to save the children?
These QAnon "save the children" ads often portray white children who are being held roughly or muzzled by dark hands. It's a man of color holding this child. This is in contrast to the real Save the Children charity's posters, which overwhelmingly depict children from African and Asian countries who are smiling and laughing in the pictures. By comparison, the QAnon pictures show horrified, abused and generally unkempt kids who elicit sympathy and distress by their appearance alone.
These QAnon "save the children" ads are just a kind of placeholder, I believe, to project their racial discomfort and political beliefs with people who feel the same way — and to do without really calling things by their actual name.
How do you assess the Republican Party and the larger right-wing movement's use of stochastic terrorism? Are we at a tipping point where that stochastic terrorism could become direct encouragements to violence against "the enemy"?
I believe that we are past the tipping point. Hate speech has been increasing for a number of years. I published a book in 2018 where I traced trends for hate speech online, including on Facebook and Twitter. There was a very sizable increase since before the 2016 election, with hate speech becoming more and more prevalent.
For example, the rise of Nazism involved the use of dehumanizing language and other propaganda comparing Jewish people and others to vermin and cockroaches. Jews were depicted as being less than human, which makes it easier to call on people to exterminate them.
:{
}:
The language used by the Nazis might sound familiar in the present because it's also what we hear from places like OAN or Fox News about immigrants, especially in the context of COVID. As seen with the increasing number of attacks against the Asian and Asian American communities, we can see how such hate speech has an impact.
The question is now whether we will see more mass events such as the Jan. 6 insurrection, which require coordination, movement across the country, money and other resources. I am really hoping that the authorities who are tasked with preventing another such event are doing their jobs.
Donald Trump and his spokespeople and other agents have created a martyrs out of his follower who was killed by law enforcement in the Capitol on Jan. 6. The Trumpists and right-wing propaganda media are now referring to members of Trump's attack force as "political prisoners," who are by implication innocent and heroic.How do you explain to the public the importance of this narrative and the political work it is doing?
This is a classic move. We saw it in Nazi Germany. We also saw it in the Soviet Union. Mythologized martyrdoms manufactured sometimes literally out of nothing. In Nazi Germany before World War II, they created a fake martyr out of a man named Horst Wessel. He became a huge martyr, and it was completely fabricated.
Martyrdoms in general are a hugely potent mass radicalization weapon. A martyr always inspires followers who will make self-sacrifices of their own. And it always challenges opponents to prove that their values are not morally bankrupt and that they too can pay the cost in blood to support the cause they believe in. There is always conflict in the wake of a martyrdom, including a fake martyrdom.
What Donald Trump and his spokespeople are doing is capitalizing on the potential of right-wing martyrdom. Whether or not this is going to catch on like Horst Wessel's did depends on how ready the public is to carry the banner of fake martyrdom. Because any martyrdom is always a symphony between the individual and the public, even a true martyr will not inspire followers if they are not ready to make sacrifices in the name of the cause.
A fake martyr, on the other hand, can appeal to millions, as in Nazi Germany or in Soviet Union, if they are ready to jump on the bandwagon and express their rage in the name of the martyr.
What are you most concerned about in this crisis and going forward?
I am most concerned about mass radicalization and the related hatred and intolerance.
What advice would you give President Biden and other senior leadership?
Try not to pay attention to red herrings. Things like QAnon are a red herring. Try to not lose the forest for the trees. We have a massive right-wing radicalization problem in the United States where the followers are mobilized and armed and actively training. They have military or police training. They are also actively recruiting from those ranks. The resources should be going to confront that problem.
Do not discount the influence of malicious foreign actors, such as Russia and China. They are a lot more experienced with the weaponization of information and concocting propaganda narratives that are going to spread like wildfire and sow discord and mobilize people. The United States needs to catch up with their capabilities in that regard, and to protect ourselves in a way that we are not doing right now.
We need to do better with the social media giants about holding them accountable for what is taking place on their platforms.That means we need to demand that they become a lot more transparent, such as by sharing how they use algorithms and who they allow to dominate the discourse. At the moment, it's a complete black box. We need to hold those huge business entities responsible. They're like a type of public square — they need to be regulated.
---
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/heres-why-the-twice-impeached-disgraced-loser-trump-is-a-favorite-for-2024-conservative-2655472026/ oops longer versins lists co's?
or decades, Reagan Republicans promoted themselves as the "pro-business party." But former President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement have pushed a pseudo-populist message, dramatically cutting taxes for large corporations while railing against big tech and "woke capitalism." And according to Time's Molly Ball, corporate CEOs panicked when, after the 2020 election, Trump refused to accept the election results and attempted a coup d'état or golpe de estado.
One of the people who sounded the alarm, Ball reports in an article published on November 1, was Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a well-known business professor at the Yale School of Management.
According to Ball, "The CEOs of leading media, financial, pharmaceutical, retail and consulting firms all wanted to talk…. For decades, Sonnenfeld has been bringing business leaders together for well-attended seminars on the challenges of leadership, earning a reputation as a 'CEO whisperer.' A committed capitalist and self-described centrist, he has informally advised presidents of both parties and spoke at Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell's wedding."
Ball goes on to say that a "group of 45 CEOs" got together during a conference call on November 6 — a group that, according to Ball, "represented nearly one-third of Fortune's 100 largest companies: Walmart and Cowen Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Comcast, Blackstone Group [on the fence?] and American Airlines."
"Disney's Bob Iger rolled out of bed at 4 a.m. Pacific time to join, accompanied by a large mug of coffee," Ball reports. "Sonnenfeld, who promised the participants confidentiality, declined to disclose or confirm their names. But Time spoke with more than a dozen people on the call, who confirmed their and others' participation."
Timothy Snyder, a Sonnenfeld colleague at Yale and author of the book "On Tyranny," participated in the call and discussed it with Time — which was, according to Ball, was something he "never previously discussed" with the media.
Snyder told Time, "I went through it point by point, in a methodical way. Historically speaking, democracies are usually overthrown from the inside, and it is very common for an election to be the trigger for a head of state or government to declare some kind of emergency in which the normal rules do not apply. This is a pattern we know, and the name for this is a coup d'état…. If you are going to defeat a coup, you have to move right away. The timing and the clarity of response are very, very important."
===
===
an 11 21
A new report from the Washington Post published on Sunday detailed a deep dive into the extensive warnings the federal government received of potential violence and efforts to interfere with Congress's counting of the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6. Despite this ample foreshadowing, the administration and law enforcement agencies were still unable or unwilling to prepare adequate defenses to keep the mob from storming the Capitol that day.
The FBI, in particular, comes off looking inept — if not driven by politically inspired cowardice or indifference.
"The FBI received numerous warnings about Jan. 6 but felt many of the threatening statements were 'aspirational' and could not be pursued," the report found. "In one tip on Dec. 20, a caller told the bureau that Trump supporters were making plans online for violence against lawmakers in Washington,including a threat against Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). The agency concluded the information did not merit further investigation and closed the case within 48 hours."
Donell Harvin, the head of intelligence at the homeland security office in Washington, D.C., did raise the alarm, according to the report. It explained how he "organized an unusual call for all of the nation's regional homeland security offices" — a call joined by hundreds of officials sharing their concerns. They were reportedly warning of an attack on Jan. 6 at 1 p.m. at the U.S. Capitol, just when the insurrection occurred. The planning was happening all over social media, after all — inspired by then-President Donald Trump's own tweets and rhetoric. Harvin reached out to the FBI and other agencies to warn them of what was coming, the report found.
He feared a "mass casualty event," according to the Post.
"While the public may have been surprised by what happened on Jan. 6, the makings of the insurrection had been spotted at every level, from one side of the country to the other," it said. "The red flags were everywhere."
Despite specific warnings of the exact nature of the attack that was coming — the planning of which would certainly be illegal — it appears the FBI limited itself for fear of infringing on First Amendment-protected activity. The Post also suggested that FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was often under fire from Trump, feared angering the man who appointed him by speaking out about the potential for violence.
"The FBI chief wasn't looking for any more confrontations with the president," the Post found, citing current and former law enforcement officials.
Wray remains in his position to this day.
Meanwhile, the Post reported, the Department of Homeland Security did not put out a security bulletin to alert other agencies of the dangers, despite receiving, "sobering assessments of the risk of possible violence on Jan. 6, including that federal buildings could be targeted by protesters."
As has previously been reported, officials in the U.S. Capitol Police were aware of at least some of the danger posed by Trump supporters still angry about the election in the run-up to Jan. 6. These warnings, however, didn't make it to Chief Steven Sund, and he failed to effectively coordinate with the National Guard to get protection for the Capitol. The Capitol Police itself was woefully under-prepared for the assault, as has been widely reported. Sund resigned following the attack, one of the few officials to face real accountability for the failures that led up to that day.
===
facing so
RAGA leaders were also involved in Texas AG Ken Paxton's lawsuit filed last month in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the presidential election results in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, claiming changes made to accommodate voters in the COVID-19 pandemic were unlawful. Among those signing on to the suit were RAGA's Hunter, Landry, Marshall, Moody, Reyes, Schmitt and Wilson, as well as the Republican AGs of Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
===
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."
===
===
no lnx
Scathing new report sheds light on the most shocking aspect of John Eastman's involvement in the Capitol riots
Meaghan Ellis October 30, 2021
New damning developments pertaining to the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol have come to light. According to Washington Post, the latest investigative update involves former President Donald Trump's lawyer John Eastman.
The report, written by Washington Post reporters Josh Dawsey, Jacqueline Alemany, Jon Swaine, and Emma Brown, explains how Eastman attempted to build a case to persuade former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election. It has been revealed that "even as rioters overran the Capitol and a recalcitrant Pence was forced into hiding, Eastman emailed a Pence aide to actually blame Pence for the scene."
At one point, Pence's aide Greg Jacob also became embroiled in a heated exchange with Eastman telling him that "his 'bullshit legal advice was why Pence's team was 'under siege.' An accusation Eastman replied to with a suggestion pushing the blame off on Pence.
:{
}:
"The 'siege' is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this [election challenge] to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened," Eastman replied.
The reporters also highlighted more damning details that occurred after U.S. Capitol Police managed to clear the breached federal building so lawmakers could reconvene.
Pence allowed other lawmakers to speak before they returned to counting the votes, and said he wasn't counting the time from his speech or the other lawmakers against the time allotted in the Electoral Count Act.
:{
}:
Eastman said that this prompted him to email Jacob to say that Pence should not certify the election because he had already violated the Electoral College Act, which Pence had cited as a reason that he could not send the electors back to the states.
"My point was they had already violated the electoral count act by allowing debate to extend past the allotted two hours, and by not reconvening 'immediately' in joint session after the vote in the objection," Eastman told The Post. "It seemed that had already set the precedent that it was not an impediment."
Based on Eastman's actions and his response to Pence's aide, it appears he was well aware of how they could possibly leverage the angry mob of rioters that stormed the Capitol.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
Coalition of lawyers urge CA bar to probe Trump coup memo ... ›
There was a method to the madness of the Trump coup memos ... ›
GOP operative warns Mike Pence is up to something dangerous ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
The John Eastman Coup Memo Is Not a Joke | The New Republic ›
Chapman professor who spoke at pre-riot Trump rally to retire - Los ... ›
Dr. John Eastman, Chapman Professor Who Spoke At Pro-Trump ... ›
==
===
an 10 21 amanda
wildest thing about Donald Trump's Big Lie is that his own supporters don't actually believe it.
Oh, they say they do to any pollster who will ask them. A recent Morning Consult poll, like so many before it, shows nearly "7 in 10 GOP voters don't believe the 2020 election was free and fair and/or have little to no trust in the U.S. election system, while 49 percent doubt that next year's midterms will be free and fair."
But when pollsters dug a little deeper, they found that Republican voters don't behavelike people who think the elections are rigged. On the contrary, Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to act like people who both believe that they will get a chance to vote and that their vote will be fairly counted.
"A full 92 percent of self-identified Republican voters said that they planned to vote in the 2022 elections, with just 4 percent saying they did not plan to," explains Meredith McGraw at Politico. "By contrast, just 70 percent of self-identified Democrats said they planned to vote, and 29 percent said they did not plan to."
People who think their vote doesn't matter don't get fired up to vote. So Democratic demoralization, for instance, is perfectly explicable in light of both widespread voter suppression and the rapidly dwindling possibility that President Joe Biden's bold economic promises will ever come to pass. Feeling like your vote never changes anything isn't unreasonable for Democratic voters, and they are accordingly less enthused about voting.
Republicans, on the other hand, are acting very much like people who believe their vote matters. Indeed, as the poll reports, GOP voters who espouse faith in the Big Lie are more likely to believe their vote has power[twt stat]
what gives? How can people both "believe" elections are rigged against them, but behave like people who have total faith in the system?
The likeliest answer is also the simplest one: They're lying.
Like their hero, Donald Trump, Trump voters know full well that the 2020 election wasn't stolen. They just repeat the lie, like a bunch of trolls. It's a useful cover for their true agenda, which is seizing power in 2022 and 2024 by any means necessary — even if doing so requires cheating.
As Greg Sargent of the Washington Postnoted on Twitter Thursday morning, "Their collective agreement to pretend the lies about 1/6 and 2020 are true is best understood as a collective unshackling of themselves from any obligation to abide by future election losses -- the precondition to overturning them by whatever means are necessary."
Sargent was responding to reports that Tucker Carlson of Fox News plans to do a "special" to amplify conspiracy theories that the January 6 insurrection was a "false flag" operation. As with the claims that the 2020 election was "rigged," it's important to understand that not only does Carlson not believe this, neither do his viewers — even as they eat up and repeat these conspiracy theories.
We know this for a very simple reason: The same people making claims that January 6 was a "false flag" will, depending on the situation, flip around and make the contradictory claim that the insurrectionists were patriots and martyrs. It's why Carlson will claim one minute that QAnon is a mythliberals made up to smear conservatives, and then the next minute defend the very real QAnon as a bunch of freethinkers resisting liberal hegemony. It's how MyPillow CEO-turned-fascist-propagandist Mike Lindell can keep moving the date for Trump's miraculous reinstallation in the White House without most of his followers starting to ask questions about why his predictions never pan out. It's why Republicans aren't rattled by the failure to turn up any real incidents of "voter fraud" for Biden. It wasn't something they ever believed to begin with.
Contradictions don't faze right-wingers for the same reason they don't change their minds in the face of facts: The truth does not matter. All that matters is power. Trolling through lies and contradictory claims is viewed as a crucial weapon in getting power.
To be certain, there is absolutely nothing new about this observation. On the contrary, it's quite clear that Trumpism is just fascism by another name, and the rhetorical game-playing of fascists is a subject that's been well-scrutinized. Semiotician Umberto Eco wrote in his 1995 analysis of fascist rhetoric, fascism is "a beehive of contradictions," because the point is to destroy rational discourse. To the fascist, Eco writes, "Thinking is a form of emasculation" and should be rejected in favor of a raw will to power. And, of course, there's the popular quote from philosopherJean-Paul Sartreabout how fascists "know that their remarks are frivolous" and they "are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words."
This is why conservatives are so impervious to facts and become more so as the GOP slides further and further down the fascist path. Facts are only persuasive to people who believe that truth and empiricism matter. For the authoritarian right, however, facts are understood as inconveniences and obstacles. In that light, it makes sense why they take so much delight in rejecting facts and driving liberals bonkers by doing so. It's a show of power, to relish how reality itself cannot defeat them.
Like many on the left, I was amused watching perennial GOP troll Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia freaking out at the possibility that her robotic repetition of the Big Lie might actually cause her followers to believe it and choose not to vote. And certainly, there are a small percentage of numpty-heads in the GOP coalition who don't realize it's all a big con and might elect to sit out elections because of it. In close elections, that extremely small percentage of Republicans who aren't in on the joke may matter. But that 92% of Republicans are feeling confident and excited about voting in future elections shows that the faith in the Big Lie is, for the vast majority of them, an act performed for the cameras and not a sincerely held belief.
Republican voters are not misled by Trump's Big Lie. They are empowered by the opportunity to join in. If there's any chance of beating back the rising fascist movement in America, it starts with understanding this crucial difference.
==
===
bannon?
https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/michigan-gop/
ME
members of Michigan's Republican Party are installing conspiracy theorists for election-related positions.Although the individuals currently in position have years of experience, they are being replaced with Trump enthusiasts who have no political experience. It appears their only qualification is adhering to the Trump agenda.
According to The Daily Beast, a former official for the Michigan Republican Party have weighed in to express their concern about the disturbing shift in the political party's leadership. The publication reports that Michigan Republican officials are working to put canvassers in place who will continue to support Trump's election-related conspiracy theories.
Jeff Timmer, who was the former executive director of Michigan's GOP, expressed concern about what can be expected in the coming months as he suggested the political party is heading down a "rabbit-hole."
"There's no resistance within the Republican Party," Timmer said. "They are wholly invested, almost to a person, in the delusional Big Lie that there was some widespread irregularity and malfeasance in the last election, and that they need to take extraordinary steps, either by changing laws or in this case, changing elections personnel in order to fix a non-existent problem."
With an alarming number of individuals still buying into Trump's "big lie," Timmer explained how alarming Republicans' efforts are to strategically put people in place who have no problem hijacking democracy.
"It's kind of scary-looking ahead because the Republicans are making no secret about their plans to create chaos and throw a wrench in the gears of the next election," Timmer said, adding, "trying to put people in place who will go beyond what the law allows and do things in the next election that they didn't feel they had people in place to do in the last one."
However, the issue isn't just concerning for traditional Republicans but also Democratic lawmakers. Speaking to The Beast,David Knezek, a Democratic commissioner for Wayne County, also criticized the origin of the latest conspiracy-driven movement.
"Across the country there is a sad and systematic effort to create an alternate reality in which Donald Trump won the 2020 election," Knezek said. "Part of that effort is to seat canvassers who want to perpetuate this lie and call into question the validity of all elections across the country. Americans of both political parties must come together to put aside partisanship and protect our system of democracy by passionately advocating for the truth."
===
===
1021 an
Michele Carew is the latest casualty in the Trumpist war on voting. The veteran elections administrator tendered her resignation to officials in Hood County, Texas, on Friday after a brutal campaign by Trump loyalists to oust her. Trump won 81 percent of the vote there, but Carew still found herself in the crosshairs of those seeking to entrench the GOP's control over election administration. They want to see Carew's duties reassigned to a county clerk, who is notorious for (what else?) sharing electoral conspiracy theories on social media.
Carew is one of many local election officials across the country who have chosen to quit rather than absorb right-wing abuse.Among 14 southwestern Ohio counties, one in four of election officials has already called it quits. Pennsylvania is grappling with a similar exodus.
"These conspiracy theorists are in it for the long haul," county clerk Barb Byrum told the Associated Press. "They're in it to completely crumble our republic, and they're looking at these election administrator positions. They're playing the long game."
It all keeps coming back to the Big Lie. The Big Lie of voter fraud is a classic stabbed-in-the-back narrative. These fantasies crop up whenever fascists need to reconcile their conviction that they're strong and special with the reality that they've been shut out of power. They convince themselves that they would have won, if it hadn't been for the treacherous Other who denied them their glorious birthright.
In the most famous stabbed-in-the-back narrative, it was the German Army of World War I that supposedly could have triumphed had the craven politicians not betrayed them. Today, Donald Trump's supporters console themselves with the fantasy that they won the 2020 election, but Democrats, unions, Black people and the Chinese Communist Party cheated them out of power.
A good stabbed-in-the-back narrative also suggests a target at which to direct resentment and even violence. "Stop the Steal" was the rallying cry that Trump used to sic a mob on the Capitol on Jan 6.
Local elections officials are still bearing the brunt of Trumpist fury. A special investigation by Reuters documented 102 threats of death or violence against 40 local election officials. Those are a fraction of the true number of threats. Milwaukee election official Claire Woodall-Vogg estimated she'd received 150 threats since a Gateway Pundit, a massively popular conspiracy blog, published lies about her.
Election administration skews disproportionately female, like education and public health — two other spheres where GOP radicals have directed their ire. The California Voter Foundation, a watchdog group, estimates that 75 percent of local election officials are women.
"The common thread is that no one has any respect from women […]," Milwaukee elections official Woodall-Vogg said in an interview with CNN in which the mother of two small children recounted how her harassers delight in calling her a cunt and a whore.
In Georgia, Republicans are using a new state law to purge Democrats of color from local elections boards. At least 10 board members have been removed under the new state law or by local ordinances. Of these, at least 5 of the ousted members are people of color.
"I speak out and I know the laws," Ms. Lonnie Hollis, an ousted Black board member told the Times. "The bottom line is they don't like people that have some type of intelligence and know what they're doing, because they know they can't influence them."
Michigan Republicans are busily replacing local election board members with pliant functionaries who, they hope, will refuse to certify future Democratic victories. The state's former elections director warned that it would create "a mess" if 10 or 15 counties refused to certify the election. It would be more than "a mess." It would be yet another procedural coup attempt. The GOP is organizing to steal the next election in plain sight, but the Department of Justice has done little more than convene a task force to study the problem. The Big Lie must not be allowed to cast a shadow over our democracy.
===
===
big iowa rally grassley (scalise?)also gop governor
===
1021 an
no lnx twt
'You’ve admitted to obstruction of justice': A Capitol rioter tried to defend himself in court. He was charged with 2 more felonies
US Capitol Grounds East Plaza off First Street and East Capitol Street, Washington DC on Wednesday afternoon, 6 January 2021 by Elvert Barnes Photography [trump as capt am flAG, FLAMES BKGD?!]
Meaghan Ellis October 13, 2021
When one Capitol rioter decided to self-represent in court, he was forewarned by the judge that testifying on his own behalf could result in additional charges and him being sent back to jail. Unfortunately for the defendant, the judge was correct.
According to WUSA-9, Brandon Fellows was sent back to jail after further incriminating himself when he testified before U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden.
Prior to Fellows' testimony, McFadden made it clear that perjury —and possibly obstruction of justice— could lead to more problems than he was already facing. But despite the warning, Fellows was allowed to proceed. "Most people do not do this," U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden told Fellows. "Obviously your attorney has discouraged this. I do not think this is a good idea… but I'm going to allow you to take the stand if you wish."
At his bond hearing on Tuesday, October 12, Fellows requested to call Cara Halverson, his former public defender, to the stand as a witness so he could explain a so-called legal loophole they discussed to have McFadden disqualified from overseeing the case. When that request was denied by the judge, Fellows rambled on as he detailed the legal advice he requested from Halverson about having McFadden removed; an action Halverson told him was illegal.
"Fellows said he asked Halverson if he should contact McFadden's family as a means of disqualifying him from presiding over his case. He also said he had told Halverson – to her horror – about a previous occasion in which he'd intentionally put the phone number of another judge's wife as his emergency contact in order to get a new judge. In that case, the judge was replaced with another."
For nearly two hours, Fellows reportedly continued rambling as he shared his endless grievances about life behind bars.However, the turning point came when Assistant U.S. Attorney Mona Furst cross-examined Fellows.
WUSA-9 reports that Furst managed to get Fellows to admit – under oath – "that he had climbed into the Capitol through a broken window without police permission, that he had used the previous judge's wife's contact information to try to get him removed from the case and that he had missed court-ordered mental health and drug testing appointments."
Capitol Riot suspect in tears at sentencing
youtu.be
After listening to Fellows' tactless rant, McFadden laid down the law. "You are charged with a federal felony," McFadden said. "This is not a community college where you get pats on the back."
The judge went on to highlight where Fellows' incriminated himself.
"You've admitted to incredible lapses of judgment here on the stand, not least of which was seeking to disqualify a New York state judge," the judge continued. "You've admitted to obstruction of justice in that case, and you've admitted to what was probably obstruction in this case in trying to have me disqualified, and only Ms. Halverson's advice stopped you from doing so. You've engaged in a pattern of behaviors that shows contempt for the criminal justice system, and I just have no confidence that you will follow my orders if I release you."
[DRUG AND OTHER COUNCELING/SCREENING?]
Fellows, a resident of Albany, N.Y., was remanded back to custody at the Washington, D.C. Jail.
===
an ah 1021
former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is among the Republicans who has been subpoenaed to testify before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's select committee on the January 6 insurrection, but former President Donald Trump has urged him to refuse. Meadows discussed the committee Tuesday night during an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, and liberal Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent slammed his comments as exemplifying the anti-democracy mindset that is so common in today's Republican Party.
Sargent, this week in his column, explains, "Meadows…. dismissed the January 6 committee's core mission…. Republicans have broadly renounced any obligation of any kind to hold actors on their side accountable for the effort to overturn U.S. democracy, first through corrupt and possibly illegal procedural means and then through mob violence."
During the interview, Sargent notes,Meadows and Ingraham "sneered at" the idea that extremists on the far right pose a "threat to democracy."
"Just look at that sneering at the very idea that Trumpists would undermine faith in our elections," Sargent observes. "How preposterous! Except just this weekend, Trump reiterated his stolen election lie, and the No. 2 House Republican [scalise?] refused to say the 2020 outcome was legitimate."
Sargent adds, "We just learned that a Trump lawyer authored a coup memo urging Vice President Mike Pence to ignore federal law to throw the election to Trump, and that Pence actually did entertain that scheme. Yet for Meadows, none of this is worth learning more about."
The fact that Meadows doesn't see the need for Pelosi's committee on January 6, Sargent stresses, shows how little Republicans care about the wellbeing of democracy in the United States.
"Meadows, apparently, doesn't want us to learn more about the full insurrectionist intentions of Trump and other co-conspirators — which likely include Republican lawmakers — or about the degree to which Meadows himself might have been one of those co-conspirators," Sargent writes. "Needless to say, a party this deeply committed to the absolute exoneration of Trump by definition does not see this effort to overthrow U.S. democracy as worthy of any national reckoning."
He concluded: "Meadows inadvertently captured an essential truth: The notion that a sustained effort to overthrow U.S. democracy requires a real reckoning and response has indeed become exclusively the Democratic Party position. But what does that say about the GOP?"
===
===
1021
after former President Donald Trump urged supporters Friday to attend a rally on the steps of the Michigan Capitol building in Lansing next week in order to demand an audit of the 2020 election in which Trump was soundly defeated by President Joe Biden, at least one top Democrat in the state warns that the ongoing Republican obsession with what has become known as the "Big Lie" is a threat that cannot be ignored.
In his statement on Friday, Trump declared:
Big Michigan Rally coming up on Oct. 12th, on the Capitol steps in Lansing, where Patriots will demand a Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam. The Voter Fraud is beyond what anyone can believe. Anyone who cares about our Great Country should attend, because unless we look to the past and fix what happened, we won't have a future or a Country.
While Tuesday's rally is being organized by the Election Integrity Fund & Force—a non-profit in the state that claims its goal is to curb "attempts to subvert the integrity of our elections"—Trump's promotion of it and his attendance, says state House Democratic Leader Donna Lasinski (D-Scio Township), is as much about the former president's political future as it is about the GOP effort to sow continued doubt over Biden's victory in 2020.
"This is the same inflammatory rhetoric that brought men armed with assault rifles to these very steps last year and endangered the lives of our lawmakers and staff," warned Lasinski Friday night as she referenced events in April of 2020 when armed right-wing protesters stormed the State House as they objected to Covid-19 public health efforts.
"This childish, petulant behavior is not only embarrassingly unbecoming of a former president, it's downright dangerous," Lasinski added. "Efforts like this to undermine faith in our democracy are no longer just about overturning the 2020 election, they're about eroding trust and laying the groundwork to overturn the next election."
While right-wing extremists and GOP apologists for the former president "are stuck in the past reliving Trump's loss," Lasinksi said her party, both in Lansing and in the nation's capital, remain focused on the nation's future by "beating back Covid-19 and bringing billions in relief funding home from D.C. to deliver support for working families."
===
A well-known Conservative Christian lawyer played a behind-the-scenes role in the December lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
According to The New York Times,Michael P. Farris — the chief executive of the conservative Christian nonprofit advocacy group, Alliance Defending Freedom — was responsible for circulating a comprehensive draft of what became the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) in hopes of overturning the presidential election in favor of former President Donald Trump.
Per the publication:
"Our Country stands at an important crossroads," the complaint filed by Mr. Paxton said in its opening argument. Those words were lifted verbatim from the draft Mr. Farris had sent, as was a subsequent passage asserting that "either the Constitution matters and must be followed, even when some officials consider it inconvenient or out of date, or it is simply a piece of parchment on display at the National Archives. We ask the Court to choose the former."
After making small changes to the draft, Paxton filed the lawsuit on December 7. The Times reports that the lawsuit was also filed in multiple other battleground states including Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In total, 17 Republican attorneys general filed Supreme Court briefs in support of Paxton's lawsuit. However, the lawsuit was tossed out of court in just four days.
Farris' contribution to the legal effort to overturn the presidential election underscores how Christian conservatives also circulated claims of voter fraud perpetuated by Trump.
The chief deputy attorney general in South Carolina, one of several Republicans whom Mr. Farris and a team of other conservative lawyers were trying to convince to file the lawsuit. On November 30, Farris wrote an email addressed to South Carolina's chief deputy attorney general in an effort to convince him to file a lawsuit challenging the election results.
"Please find a much-improved version of the complaint attached," Farris wrote. "I will call you and update you on the alternatives."
Although Farris reportedly declined to be interviewed by the Times,he did respond by email admitting his involvement in the post-election effort to overturn the election.
"While it's true that I care about this issue on a personal level, it is not something that ADF works on in any capacity," he wrote. "As President and CEO, my charge is to focus on ADF's mission, which is to protect Americans' God-given freedoms. I have nothing to say about the details of the way forward on the issue of election integrity other than the hope that all Americans take the issue seriously."
==
trump tells 1st 4 to ~ subpoenas
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/internet-explodes-with-reactions-to-bombshell-senate-judiciary-report-on-trumps-efforts-to-pressure-doj-into-helping-him-overturn-the-election/
ME
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has released a sweeping report detailing how former President Donald Trump and a former high-ranking lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The Democratic-led committee's 394-page document contains intricate details about the former president's actions in the days after the presidential election was called for President Joe Biden. A number of bombshell claims were revealed in the report and — here aresix key takeaways from it.
1. "President Trump repeatedly asked DOJ leadership to endorse his false claims that the election was stolen and to assist his efforts to overturn the election results."
The report reveals Trump asked the Justice Department for assistance in overturning the election a total of nine times. The call history includes details about who Trump spoke with along with dates those calls took place.
- December 15, 2020 – Oval Office meeting including incoming Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue (both men assumed office when William Barr left on Dec. 23)
- December 23, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
- December 24, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
- December 27, 2020 – Trump-Rosen-Donoghue Call
- December 28, 2020 – Trump-Donoghue Call
- December 30, 2020 – Trump-Rosen Call
- December 31, 2020 – Oval Office meeting including Rosen and Donoghue
- January 3, 2021 – Oval Office meeting including Rosen and Donoghue
- January 3, 2021 – Trump-Donoghue Call
2. "White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked Acting Attorney General Rosen to initiate election fraud investigations on multiple occasions, violating longstanding restrictions on White House-DOJ communications about specific law enforcement matters."
Between December 29 and January 1, Meadows pushed for Rosen to open an investigation into "at least four categories of false election fraud claims" being circulated by Trump, his campaign team, legal team and other allies. At the time, no substantial evidence of election fraud had been produced to support any of the claims. The report also breaks down the four key categories Meadows pressed Rosen about:
- "Investigate various discredited claims of election fraud in Georgia that the Trump campaign was simultaneously advancing in a lawsuit that the Georgia Supreme Court had refused to hear on an expedited basis;
- Investigate false claims of 'signature match anomalies' in Fulton County, Georgia, even though Republican state elections officials had made clear "there has been no evidence presented of any issues with the signature matching process."
- Investigate a theory known as 'Italygate,' which was promoted by an ally of the President's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and which held that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and an Italian IT contractor used military satellites to manipulate voting machines and change Trump votes to Biden votes. Meadows also asked DOJ to meet with Giuliani on Italygate and other election fraud claims.
- Investigate a series of claims of election fraud in New Mexico that had been widely refuted and in some cases rejected by the courts, including a claim that Dominion Voting Systems machines caused late-night 'vote dumps' for Democratic candidates."
The report also notes that Meadows' actions are in violation of policies that place limitations on communication between White House and DOJ officials in regards to certain law enforcement matters. This policy was put in place after the Watergate scandal.
3. "After personally meeting with Trump, Jeffrey Bossert Clark[former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division] pushed Rosen and Donoghue to assist Trump's election subversion scheme — and told Rosen he would decline Trump's potential offer to install him as Acting Attorney General if Rosen agreed to aid that scheme."
After having private conversations with Trump, Clark pressed Rosen and Donoghue to announce an investigation into election fraud and have legislatures in key swing states appoint alternate election officials. The report highlights a draft letter Clark sent to Rosen and Donoghue on December 28. The letter, which was addressed to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), the General Assembly Speaker, and Senate President Pro Tempore, included a number of recommended directives, many of which violated election laws.
In fact, Clark's proposed action, which would have had the DOJ override an already-certified popular vote, was described as "a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority," according to the report:
"The letter was titled "Georgia Proof of Concept" and Clark suggested replicating it in "each relevant state." The letter would have informed state officials that DOJ had "taken notice" of election irregularities in their state and recommended calling a special legislative session to evaluate these irregularities, determine who "won the most legal votes," and consider appointing a new slate of Electors. Clark's proposal to wield DOJ's power to override the already-certified popular vote reflected a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority: DOJ protects ballot access and ballot integrity, but has no role in determining which candidate won a particular election."
4. "Trump allies with links to the 'Stop the Steal' movement and the January 6 insurrection participated in the pressure campaign against DOJ."
The report included a brief list of the Trump allies who have been accused of pressuring DOJ officials to do the former president's bidding. Those individuals also had ties to the former president's "Stop the Steal" movement and the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol that followed Trump's rally on January 6.
They are:
- Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.): The report indicates that the Republican lawmaker spoke directly to Donoghue about baseless claims of election fraud in his state.
- Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano (R): As an avid Trump ally, Mastriano reportedly "spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account to provide transportation for Trump supporters to attend the 'Save America Rally' on January 6." The report also indicates that he "was present on the Capitol grounds as the insurrection unfolded." Like Perry, Mastriano also spoke with Donoghue in reference to unfounded claims of election fraud in Pennsylvania.
- Trump campaign legal advisor Cleta Mitchell: Described as one of the earliest advocates for Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, the Senate report also notes Mitchell was a "participant in the January 2, 2021 call where Trump 5 pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to 'find 11,780 votes.'"
5. "Trump forced the resignation of U.S. Attorney Byung Jin ('BJay') Pak, whom he believed was not doing enough to address false claims of election fraud in Georgia. Trump then went outside the line of succession when naming an Acting U.S. Attorney, bypassing First Assistant U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine and instead, appointing Bobby Christine because he believed Christine would 'do something' about his election fraud claims."
When former U.S. Attorney General Pak's investigative results did not align with the outcome Trump was hoping for, the outraged former president publicly berated him and described him as "a "Never Trumper." The former president also bulldozed over protocol and the proper line of succession to appoint someone he believed would produce favorable results to help him overturn the presidential election.
6. "By pursuing false claims of election fraud before votes were certified, DOJ deviated from longstanding practice meant to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election."
On November 9, 2020 the former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr released a memo that "directed prosecutors not to wait until after certification to investigate allegations of voting irregularities that 'could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.'"
In doing this, the report emphasizes Barr "weakened" the DOJ's policy to "avoid taking overt steps in election fraud investigations until after votes were certified, in order to avoid inserting DOJ itself as an issue in the election." His actions before and after the election disregarded the DOJ's longstanding practice.
===
4
…and then they teamed up with an OAN reporter?
Giuliani told attorneys that the Trump legal team effectively deputized a reporter for OAN, the pro-Trump news network, to work for the Big Lie.
:{
}:
That, Giuliani said, involved Christina Bobb working for Trump’s “personal lawyers,” referring to her as “part of the legal team.” In that capacity, Giuliani claimed, she focused on searching for anything that would support the myth that the election had been fraudulent in the key states of Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia.
:{
}:
“My staff said she was terrific, she was very trustworthy and if we could work out an agreement with One America News, it would be very helpful,” Giuliani said. “She was a very good investigator.”
:{
}:
Bobb has used her TV perch at OAN to both promote the Big Lie and fundraise for elements of it. As the reality of Trump’s loss became clearer after the 2020 election, Bobb became increasingly detached from reality in her rhetoric.
Giuliani claimed that over that time period, she agreed to give the Trump legal team veto power over stories.
“The rules that we made with [OAN editor] Charles [Herring] were that he would defer to us to whatever our needs were,that he couldn’t give it to us permanently but he could loosen up her assignments for the next couple of months, therefore she wouldn’t be working all that much for OAN,” Giuliani said.
Herring, in his deposition, denied that he was aware of the arrangement.
Giuliani added that Bobb agreed that “if she did develop a discrete, good story, she would have to run it past us so it didn’t violate any of our rules or whatever.”
“And I was pretty comfortable they would live by it because they had before,” Giuliani remarked.
OAN has produced a string of documentaries that take ideas floating in the Trumpworld ether and give them form.
5
===
mma 1021
On October 6, Reuters published the first part of a special report revealing AT&T’s central role in the creation and continued survival of One America News Network.
According to court records reviewed by Reuters, OAN founder Robert Herring Sr. testified that AT&T “told us they wanted a conservative network. … When they said that, I jumped to it and built one.” Records also indicate that according to an OAN accountant, “ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms.” According to an AT&T filing that cites Herring’s numbers, AT&T has paid OAN “about $57 million” in fees, though an AT&T spokesperson claimed this number is inaccurate.
OAN and all of its lies would not exist, and could not survive, without AT&T’s blessing.
Whatever the figure AT&T has paid to help keep OAN alive, the network has been using the airwaves to push toxic -- and often dangerous -- misinformation.
That includes a deadly TV campaign against COVID-19 vaccines, hateful anti-LGBTQ content, and a network-wide assault on elections meant to hype bogus claims of fraud and overturn the 2020 results. The election attacks include a reporter’s nonprofit seeking to fund fraudulent election “audits” around the country, a demented obsession with the MyPillow CEO and his money, and a correspondent’s call for mass executions of election officials. And that’s to say nothing of the host who used a racial slur on air or another host’s apparent wish to shoot unhoused people.
We now know that AT&T didn’t just choose this; it asked for this. Herring delivered, and we are all worse off for it.
Outside of AT&T, OAN is actively trying to expand its reach by encouraging its audience to pressure both Comcast and Charter Spectrum to carry the network. Its website features a prominent call for readers to call both providers and tell them that “you want OAN added to your channel lineup.”
From the first of two parts of the Reuters special report:
OAN founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives.
“They told us they wanted a conservative network,” Herring said during a 2019 deposition seen by Reuters. “They only had one, which was Fox News, and they had seven others on the other [leftwing] side. When they said that, I jumped to it and built one.”
Since then, AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant.
Herring has testified he was offered $250 million for OAN in 2019. Without the DirecTV deal, the accountant said under oath, the network’s value “would be zero.”
…
In a pivotal moment for the company, the Herrings say in court filings, depositions and sworn statements, unidentified AT&T executives told them there was an audience for another conservative news network. Herring seized the opportunity.
In his 2019 deposition in the labor suit unrelated to AT&T, the elder Herring said he created OAN for two reasons.
“To make money, number one,” Robert Herring said. “But number two, is that AT&T told us … they wanted a conservative network.”
The lawyer questioning Herring, Rodney Diggs, followed up.
“So,” the lawyer said, “AT&T kind of dictated the kind of network that they wanted. Because there was an opportunity, you jumped at it?”
“Yes, sir,” Herring replied.
===
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-trump-feedback-loop-generated-eastmans-presidential-coup-memo
no lnx vids
John Eastman’s coup memo was the result of the Fox-Trump feedback loop
WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ
PUBLISHED 10/04/21 1:59 PM EDT
The prominent conservative lawyer behind a memo explaining how to subvert the 2020 election for President Donald Trump reportedly first caught Trump’s attention while shilling on the president’s behalf during an interview on Fox News.
Trump’s obsession with Fox programming is well-documented. Throughout his presidency, he regularly tweeted in response to shows he was watching; staffed his administration and legal defense teams with Fox regulars; and shaped his decision-making around advice he received from its personalities, both in person and on the air. On issues as diverse as border wall contracting, pandemic response, and pardons, federal policy responded to what the president was seeing on the right-wing propaganda network.
John Eastman, a Claremont Institute senior fellow who spoke to the pro-Trump mob in the hours before the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, apparently put himself on Trump’s radar in similar fashion.
“Trump, who had never met Mr. Eastman, saw him on the Fox News talk show of the far-right commentator Mark Levin railing against the Russia investigation” in mid-2019, The New York Times reported Saturday. “Within two months, Mr. Eastman was sitting in the Oval Office for an hourlong meeting.”
Eastman remained in Trump’s orbit over the next year and a half, according to the Times, and, after Trump lost the 2020 election, the right-wing attorney created a plan by which Vice President Mike Pence and congressional Republicans could use bogus claims of voter fraud to keep Trump in power. Eastman’s six-step scheme to end American democracy, revealed last month by The Washington Post and CNN, was foiled largely because Pence was ultimately unwilling to go through with it.
“Mr. Eastman’s appeal to Mr. Trump,” the Times reported, “rested in large part on his expansive views of presidential power — and his willingness to tell Mr. Trump what he wanted to hear.”
That description matches Eastman’s performance during the Fox interview that initially captured Trump’s attention. That appearance, for the May 12, 2019, edition of Life, Liberty, and Levin, followed the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailing his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump and his supporters tried to spin that document as vindicating him. But it was actually incredibly damning, documenting, among other things, a variety of ways Trump had sought to obstruct the probe.
Over the course of his hour-long sitdown with Levin, who introduced him as a “brilliant” legal scholar, Eastman explained how the Constitution and federal law supported all of Trump’s most corrupt and bigoted impulses, while decrying Mueller’s team as biased political partisans whose probe was itself illegal and perhaps deliberately “set up to create a media frenzy.”
According to Eastman, it is impossible for a president to violate the law by interfering with a federal investigation, even if that investigation’s purpose was to review his activities or those of his associates. “The notion that the president can’t determine the course of an investigation is the most basic violation of separation of powers,” he claimed. Even if Trump had successfully fired Mueller himself it would be legal, according to Eastman, because “the entire executive branch is headed by one guy and the only constitutional check on that is through an impeachment power, not through statutes and not through regulations internal to the Department of Justice, because the president has the authority to change those whenever he wants.”
After Levin described one such incident mentioned in the report, when Trump allegedly ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller, Eastman said that “directing McGahn to fire him is no different than him picking up the phone himself, and even that would not have been obstruction.”
Video file
CitationFrom the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.
Eastman went on to agree with Levin’s claim that the Mueller investigation was itself “fundamentally illegal” because “nobody in the administration itself [was] accused with any evidence of a crime,” which is required under the special counsel statute. In reality, Trump’s 2016 campaign chair and his first White House national security adviser were among the litany of presidential associates who were ultimately convicted or entered guilty pleas through the probe.
When Levin asked later in the program, “This is really a rejection by the Democrat Party and the media and the rest of them, a rejection of the 2016 election, isn't it?” Eastman replied, “I think so. They still can't believe that they lost that election and they're trying to rationalize that there must've been something nefarious in order to produce it.”
He went on to say that “this is really a challenge to the results of the last election, which means it is a challenge to the American people and the very notion that we govern ourselves,” and that the intent is to create a “tyranny of the majority.”
Video file
CitationFrom the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.
Eastman also expressed support for Trump on a variety of other legal issues. He rejected the notion that payments foreign countries make to Trump through his hotel are violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and decried federal judges who blocked versions of Trump’s Muslim travel ban as “part of a resistance movement to undo the results of the 2016 election.”
At the conclusion of the interview, Eastman said that nothing Trump has done rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” required for impeachment under the Constitution.
“I've been stunned at how scrupulous Trump and his team have been in staying within the legal lines that they had,” he said, contrasting to how President Barack Obama “blew through the lines on executive power and constitutional authority on numerous occasions."
Video file
Citation From the May 12, 2019, edition of Fox News' Life, Liberty, and Levin.
Eastman was able to turn an interview on a Sunday night Fox show into a position of real political power because the president himself had been glued to the set. And after Trump and his propagandists at Fox created a web of lies about a “rigged” election, he was there to concoct a legal pretext to keep Trump in office. The coup plot failed -- but it did result in deadly violence when a crowd incited by speeches from Trump, Eastman, and others stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 in hopes of preventing the peaceful transition of power.
Since then, the situation has only grown more dire, as the Republican Party and right-wing disinformation apparatus have institutionalized Trump’s lie that the election was stolen, laying the groundwork to rig future elections in favor of the GOP, through Eastman’s strategy or another one. And Fox was at the root of it all.
Related
Trump lawyer John Eastman touted his plan to overturn the 2020 election in interviews with right-wing media
09/21/21 1:25 PM EDT
Broadcast news shows ignore Trump coup memo
09/22/21 4:32 PM EDT
CNN’s Brian Stelter highlights failure of news broadcasts to cover the Trump coup memo
09/26/21 2:44 PM EDT
===
BS big lie GA amplified by trump and bannon
no lnx twt wonkette
It is September 17, 2021, and former President Babyshits is still whining that he wants back in the White House right now. Just look at this pathetic nonsense.
"Large scale Voter Fraud continues to be reported in Georgia. Enclosed is a report of 43,000 Absentee Ballot Votes Counted in DeKalb County that violated the Chain of Custody rules, making them invalid," begins the letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger under a lightly modified presidential seal.
The "report" is an article from the astroturf news site "Georgia Star News." As multiple legitimate news sites have reported, Georgia Star is part of the Star News Network, a group of pro-Trump websites set up to look like local news outlets in 11 swing states. And while Rupert Murdoch's media empire is (at least theoretically) made up of actual journalists, the Star sites are run by political activists with an avowed MAGA agenda.
:{
}:
Naturally Steve Bannon, everyone's favorite chaos monkey, loves this Star Chamber propaganda shit. NPR reports:
Steve Bannon, a former strategist for former President Donald Trump, described The Georgia Star News in a radio interview as content "you can't get anywhere else."
"We're not Conservative Inc.," he said. "It's very populist, it's very nationalist, it's very MAGA, it's very American First."
Laura Baigert, the author of the piece referenced by the former leader of the free world, describes herself as "a senior reporter at The Star News Network, where she covers stories for The Georgia Star News, The Tennessee Star, The Ohio Star and The Arizona Sun Times."
Here's how Snopesdescribed Baigert, who was a 2016 RNC delegate for Ted Cruz:
Laura Baigert, listed as a Tennessee Star "senior reporter," also serves as the treasurer for a group called the Roving Patriots PAC. Her husband, Kevin Baigert, who was at one point also a writer for the Star, is that PAC's director. On their PAC's website, the couple say they "are a couple of Roving Patriots, and when you get one, you get both of us!" No firewall is apparent between the work of the PAC and the Tennessee Star. For example, on 7 July 2017 the PAC shared an article on their Facebook page written in the Tennessee Star about the PAC's launch. "We are grateful for the work they are doing at The Tennessee Star," the PAC said of the media outlet that both members of the PAC currently or previously worked for.
According to their website, Roving Patriots PAC is "focused on achieving, supporting and maintaining a true conservative majority within the Tennessee House of Representatives."
And if that's not the bio of a trustworthy authority on election law, then what is, right? So when this person tells you that there were chain of custody issues with 46,000 drop box ballots, and the law demands that Georgia simply toss out those votes, you can just take her word for it. Never mind that this is an entirely invented remedy that some blogger from Tennessee just pulled out of her ass. And while we're disregarding objective reality, there's no mechanism to determine who those votes were for, even if we did invalidate ballots 10 months after an election — which we do not.
But back to Trump's lazyass letter!
"I would respectfully request that your department check this and, if true, along with many other claims of voter fraud and voter irregularities, start the process of decertifying the Election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner," he whined from the golf course.
He doesn't know if it's true, but, like, if it is, he wants Raffy to do something. He's not sure what, but it will totally involve him winning. And if it's not true, well, whatever because, "As stated to you previously, the number of false and/or irregular votes is far greater than needed to change the Georgia election result."
He stated it previously, you blockhead! Why didn't you overturn the election already?
The letter ends with some more abuse of Raffensperger and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who "are doing a tremendous disservice to the Great State of Georgia, and to our Nation — which is systematically being destroyed by an illegitimate president and his administration," before signing off with "Thank you for your attention to this matter."
Because he is one polite motherfucker.
Well! No doubt Secretary Raffensperger will get right on that.
:{
}:
Meanwhile, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is still investigating whether Trump and his cronies broke the law with their pressure campaign and the infamous phone call where they tried to get Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have" and warned that he was "taking a big risk" by not prosecuting the "criminal offense" which caused him to lose the election.
"What I can tell you is that the Trump investigation is ongoing. As a district attorney, I do not have the right to look the other way on any crime that may have happened in my jurisdiction," Willis told CNN this week. "We have a team of lawyers that is dedicated to that, but my No. 1 priority is to make sure that we keep violent offenders off the street."
And that is not fake news.
===
===
https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/donald-trump-fringe-right-wing-media-tour-pushing-election-fraud
no lnx vid pix
Donald Trump is on a fringe right-wing media tour pushing election fraud conspiracy theories
The former president is latching onto any newsworthy topic to push his voter fraud lies from the 2020 election
WRITTEN BY JUSTIN HOROWITZ
PUBLISHED 09/29/21
Over the past few weeks, former President Donald Trump has appeared on a number of fringe right-wing media outlets to push election conspiracy theories and other misinformation, using news events to advance his election lies while attacking President Joe Biden and laying the groundwork for another presidential campaign.
Trump has pushed election lies for almost a year now. As he starts to set the stage for a possible 2024 run, the former president is latching onto current events and the Republican-led audits to spread his conspiracy theories and evolve his self-serving narratives.
In some of his appearances, Trump suggests that the QAnon-linked Arizona “audit” should lead to decertification of the 2020 election.In reality, the results of the audit’s draft report indicate that Biden actually received more votes than Trump in Maricopa County than were previously counted, and no fraud occurred.
As recently pointed out by CNN’s Brian Stelter, decertifying an election is not an actual route to reinstating a president. Stelter explained that while Trump “might not believe” his own lies, “his fans do,” suggesting this is a tactic for right-wing media to continue living in their political “fantasy … about the 2020 election, even though it’s almost 2022.”
The former president has also attacked Biden for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan during these media hits while connecting it to his election fraud conspiracy theories. Trump regularly claims that if the election was not “rigged” or “stolen,” the outcome in Afghanistan would be different (although Trump himself negotiated an earlier withdrawal deal with the Taliban in 2020).
Trump’s attempt to tie his election fraud lies to any newsworthy story is embarrassing, but this relentless effort to spread misinformation and conservative grievances seems to be the entire point of his current right-wing media tour.
On September 27, the former president was interviewed by Real America’s Voice host and Trump adviser Gina Loudon.
Trump claimed that “the elections in our country are not fair and free” and there’s been “tremendous voter fraud.” He pointed to the Arizona “audit” as proof of voter fraud and suggested the results were “fantastic” and should lead to decertification of the state’s electors.
Video file
CitationFrom the September 27, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's Dr. Gina Primetime
On September 24, Trump called in to an interview with evangelical media figure and conspiracy theorist David Brody.
During the interview, Trump pushed the same evidence-free election fraud lies that he pushed during his past interviews. He described the election as “so corrupt” and asserted that “possibly many states cheated” and “a lot of bad things happened [in] the so-called swing states.”
Video file
CitationFrom the September 24, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's The Water Cooler
During a September 23 interview with Real America’s Voice anchor and avowed social media ban-evader John Fredericks, Trump pushed more of the same conspiracy theories -- beginning with the lie that he “did not lose” in 2020.
Trump claimed the only way Democrats can win is by “rigging elections” and suggested that the election is “crooked.” He continued, suggesting that simply looking at the lines on election day showed that it was “rigged.”
Video file
CitationFrom the September 23, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's America's Voice AM
During a September 21 interview with Steve Gruber of Real America’s Voice, Trump pushed similar election conspiracy theories and lies. Trump asserted that he “won the election by a lot” and suggested that the Democrats “rigged” and “stole the election.”
Trump also attacked mail-in ballots, claiming that they “lead to fraud.” (They don’t.)
Video file
CitationFrom the September 24, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's Real AM Voice
During a September 14 interview on Newsmax with his former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, Trump complained that the election was “absolutely rigged.”
Video file
CitationFrom the September 14, 2021, edition of Newsmax's Spicer & Co.
On September 10, Trump spoke with brothers Jim and Joe Hoft of The Gateway Pundit;a conspiratorial pro-Trump blog that consistently publishes misinformation.
During the interview, Joe Hoft claimed the 2020 election “was stolen on many counts.” The former president responded, “Absolutely,” and later asserted that Democrats “used COVID and they used mail-in ballots to rig the election. We won the election by a lot and they rigged it.” Trump went on to claim that he believes “they're going to decertify this election.”
When asked by Hoft what happens if “various states become decertified,” Trump responded by claiming that if you “rob” a jewelry store of its diamonds “and you get caught, you’re supposed to return them” -- suggesting to his right-wing audience that if states become “decertified,” he will be reinstated as president. “We caught them cheating -- you’re going to let somebody that cheated stay for three more years? I can’t imagine it.”
Video file
CitationFrom the September 10, 2021, edition of The Gateway Pundit
In another interview with Fredericks on his September 1 radio show, Trump said it was “a terrible, rigged, horrible election and it's a disgrace.” He continued, saying that if the election was not “rigged,” gas and food prices would be lower.
Video file
CitationFrom the September 1, 2021, edition of John Fredericks Radio Station Unplugged
During an August 31 interview with conservative commentators Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, Trump complained to the hosts that it was “a rigged election.”
Clay Travis & Buck Sexton interview Donald Trump
AUGUST 31, 2021
CitationFrom the August 31, 2021, edition of The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show
When Trump was interviewed by radio host and conspiracy theorist Todd Starneson August 30, it was more of the same. Trump said “we had a rigged election” and claimed Democrats “used COVID in order to cheat.”
Video file
CitationFrom the August 30, 2021, edition of The Todd Starnes Show
Also on August 30, Trump sat down with the far-right conspiracy theory broadcaster One America News. In an interview with Real America host Dan Ball, Trump said, “??I think the whole country is running incompetently -- except for stealing elections.” Ball responded that this is “intentional.”
Trump also repeatedly and falsely claimed that “a rigged election” got Biden into the presidency and that Democrats “cheat at elections.”
Video file
CitationFrom the August 30, 2021, edition of One America News' Real America with Dan Ball
Trump's embarrassing efforts on this tour fell on the ears of a very receptive audience, who at best didn't engage and certainly never pushed back.
===
no lnx newsweek
atorney Sidney Powell said the January 6 riot at the Capitol could have caused a delay which would have allowed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito time to stop the certification of Joe Biden's election victory—but that chance was lost when Nancy Pelosi reconvened Congress to complete the process.
Powell, an attorney who has filed numerous lawsuits in a failed bid to overturn former President Donald Trump's 2020 election loss, made the comments during an appearance on the conservative Stew Peters Show on Friday.
She said that as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol that day, her team was seeking an emergency injunction to prevent the certification of Biden's win.
"We were filing a 12th Amendment constitutional challenge to the process that the Congress was about to use under the Electoral Act provisions that simply don't jive with the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution," she said. "And Justice Alito was our circuit justice for that."
She added: "Louie Gohmert was the plaintiff in our lawsuit, and we were suing the vice president to follow the 12th Amendment as opposed to the Electoral College Act."...
===
===
921 ME
Following former President Donald Trump's jaw-dropping remarks during the presidential debate with then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, the far-right group The Proud Boys garnered national attention they'd never experienced before.
However, that spotlight also had its drawbacks because it subsequently became an integral part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) review of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. The investigation led to many members of the organization being charged with insurrection-related crimes. But now, the far-right group is reportedly taking a different approach to politics in hopes of making more subtle progress to bring its agenda to fruition.
Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, spent years following the all-male extremist group, according to NPR. So she was well aware of the adverse effect that would likely come from Trump's words when he told them to "stand back and stand by" during that presidential debate.
The not-so-subliminal order from the president only piqued the interest of more far-right extremists who became interested in learning more about the organization. Speaking to the publication, Miller shed light on the future of the extremist organization and the agenda they reportedly have going forward.
"In the aftermath of that, suddenly everyone was talking about who the Proud Boys were and people were submitting applications to join the group," said Miller.
While the organization is known for its aggressive, violent nature, Miller is warning that changes are coming and the group is strategizing on a different level. According to Miller, they have also shifted their focal points for political rallies.
"They're simply switching up their organizational style," said Miller. "Now they are organizing more at a local level, they're hosting local rallies, or they're joining into other rallies around political flashpoints like critical race theory or anti-masking."
In addition to the structural changes, the group is also hoping to bring its authoritarian values to the forefront. In short, the goal is to normalize fascism and embrace a form of hierarchical society where white males remain the predominant Americans in positions of power.
"What they want to do is normalize their brand of politics, which is one that is authoritarian, that wants to push the creation of a more hierarchical society where men, and white men, in particular, retain the most power," she said.
Miller's remarks follow repeated warnings from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about the possibility of a rise in domestic terrorism. Speaking about the motivational factors behind domestic terrorism bulletin, Michael Chertoff, a former DHS secretary under President George W. Bush's administration, said, "In my view, it is domestic terrorism mounted by right-wing extremists and neo-Nazi groups." He added, "We have to be candid and face what the real risk is."
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/missouri-newspaper-bob-woodward-s-new-paints-a-damning-picture-of-josh-hawley-s-big-role-in-the-big-lie/
===
921 an
At 1:30 PM on January 6, during the growing insurrection, President Donald Trump's Dept. of Homeland Security sent an email to the Pentagon declaring there was nothing to worry about.
"There are no major incidents of illegal activity at this time," the email, from the DHS National Operations Center (NOC), read, according to a just-published report from Politico.
Four minutes earlier, at 1:26 PM, the U.S. Capitol Police had "ordered the evacuation of the Capitol complex," according to the Dept. of Defense timeline, due to the thousands of violent insurrectionists at or on their way to the U.S. Capitol.
37 minutes before that email was sent, "protesters had breached the Capitol Building's outer perimeter, according to The New York Times," Politico adds.
And at 12:58 PM, 32 minutes prior to that email, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund reached out to the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department asking for help.
This was the scene at about 1:05 PM, according to Washington Post reporter Rebecca Tan...
===
omfg
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/biden-trump/
A recent Washington demonstration supporting those charged with crimes for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol fizzled, with no more than 200 demonstrators showing up. The organizers had promised 700 people would turn out – or more.
But the threat from far-right insurrectionists is not over.
For months, my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats have been tracking insurrectionist sentiments in U.S. adults, most recently in surveys in June. We have found that 47 million American adults – nearly 1 in 5 – agree with the statement that “the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president." Of those, 21 million also agree that “use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency."
Our survey found that many of these 21 million people with insurrectionist sentiments have the capacity for violent mobilization. At least 7 million of them already own a gun, and at least 3 million have served in the U.S. military and so have lethal skills. Of those 21 million, 6 million said they supported right-wing militias and extremist groups, and 1 million said they are themselves or personally know a member of such a group, including the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
Only a small percentage of people who hold extremist views ever actually commit acts of violence, but our findings reveal how many Americans hold views that could turn them toward insurrection.
A solid survey
[method grfx]
extreme beliefs
This polling found that 9% of American adults say they agree with the statement that “Use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency." And 25% of adults either strongly or somewhat agree with the statement that “The 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president."
Overall, 8% of the survey participants share both of those views.
The margin of error of this survey was plus or minus 4 percentage points. So when calculating the number of the 258 million adult Americans who hold these views, we looked at the range of between 4% and 12% – which gave us between 10 million and 31 million. The best single figure is the middle of that range, 21 million.
People who said force is justified to restore Trump were consistent in their insurrectionist sentiments: Of them, 90% also see Biden as illegitimate, and 68% also think force may be needed to preserve America's traditional way of life.
The fringe moving into the mainstream
Combined with their military experience, gun ownership and connections to extremist groups and militias, this signals the existence of significant mainstream support in America for a violent insurrection.
This group of 21 million who agree both that force is justified to restore Trump and that Biden is an illegitimate president has two additional views that are also on the fringes of mainstream society:
- 63% agree with the statement that “African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites" – a belief sometimes called “the **Great Replacement**."
- 54% agree that “A secret group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is ruling the US government," which is the key belief in the QAnon movement.
Some people with insurrectionist sentiments hold one of these political views but not the other, suggesting there are multiple ways of thinking that lead a person toward the insurrectionist movement.
Broader support
This latest research reinforces our previous findings, that the Jan. 6 insurrection represents a far more mainstream movement than earlier instances of right-wing extremism across the country. Those events, mostly limited to white supremacist and militia groups, saw more than 100 individuals arrested from 2015 to 2020. But just 14% of those arrested for their actions on Jan. 6 are members of those groups. More than half are business owners or middle-aged white-collar professionals, and only 7% are unemployed.
There is no way to say for sure when – or even whether – these insurrectionists will take action. On Jan. 6, it took clear direction from Donald Trump and other political leaders to turn these dangerous sentiments into a violent reality. But the movement itself is larger and more complex than many people might like to think.
Robert A. Pape, Professor of Political Science, **University of Chicago**
===
===
an 921
Brandon Prenzlin is among the many Donald Trump supporters who is facing charges in connection with the January 6 insurrection. And he has been fired from his position as a grassroots organizer for the right-wing group FreedomWorks because of his arrest, according to HuffPost reporter Ryan J. Reilly.
Prenzlin, Reilly reports, was arrested by the FBI in Arlington, Virginia on September 17, and he is facing four misdemeanor charges — which include disorderly conduct on the grounds of the Capitol, entering a restricted building without authority, disorderly conduct inside a restricted building, and parading inside the Capitol.
Reilly notes that Peter Vicenzi, a FreedomWorks spokesman, confirmed that Prenzlin has been fired but did comment on his case.
According to Reilly, an "FBI affidavit lays out Prenzlin's alleged activities inside the Capitol on January 6, and shows how they were able to build a case against Prenzlin by citing his presence on social media."
"The FBI affidavit doesn't explicitly say it," Reilly reports, "but it suggests that online sleuths known as the 'Sedition Hunters' played a role in the case against Prenzlin. The sprawling community of open-source investigators, often working under the #SeditionHunters hashtag, has been working to identify the hundreds of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6. The Sedition Hunters website, where a photo of Prenzlin was labeled as No. 640 on a list of 'Sedition Insiders,' noted before Prenzlin's arrest that he had been identified."
Reilly adds, "It's unclear precisely when the identification was made, but an image of Prenzlin included in a tweet from the @SeditionHunters Twitter account indicated that Prenzlin had been IDed by early July. That's about the same time, according to the affidavit, that the FBI investigation got underway thanks to a tip."
FreedomWorks has been aggressively promoting voter suppression with its "Election Protection Initiative," which features far-right attorney and Trump ally Cleta Mitchell. In a video posted on FreedomWorks' website, Mitchell falsely claims, "The 2020 election was chaotic and deliberately overwhelmed the elections systems in many places in our country. It's no wonder that people across this country believe that there was really something wrong in the 2020 election. There was."
===
more on coup plan:
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/trump-coup-memos/
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/eastman-memo/
By now, you've read about John Eastman's secret memo outlining six points by which he believed the vice president could overturn the results of the 2020 election on January 6.I defer to legal scholars to explain the memo's legal absurdities. I defer to political scientists to explain why the memo represents forces threatening our republic.
What I want to suggest is so plain I'm surprised that no one else has asked: isn't this evidence of a conspiracy to commit a high crime?
News of Eastman's memo put the debate over democracy reform into overdrive. The hope has been that the Democrats in the United States Congress, especially Senate moderates, will see the light. They must kill off, or seriously change, the filibuster in order to pass election laws that would not only reach or surpass the 1965 Voting Rights Act but also prevent a political party from pulling off a coup in broad daylight.
While the Eastman memo should, for obvious reasons, put that debate into overdrive, I'm wondering if we're misplacing our hopes. It's not that I think the filibuster is good. It needs to go. It's not that I think new election laws would be bad. We need more, in a hurry. It's that laws require enforcement, and enforcement of the law is pretty much the only thing that's going to stop people who have no respect for democracy, principle, the Constitution, tradition or anything else. Without equal treatment under law, in the form of prosecution, I don't see why new laws would stop people who hold themselves above it.
We really need to acknowledge the elephant in the room before we pin our hopes for democracy on changing a Senate rule. We really need to acknowledge the reason it's possible, in a rule-of-law country, for powerful and power-hungry people to hold themselves above the law. The reason is so obvious as to be invisible, and because it's invisible few people are talking about it right now. It's because powerful and power-hungry people are in fact above the law. "No one is above the law"? Pish. Anyone with senses, and sense, can see that's not true.
News of the Eastman memo only adds to what we already know. According to CNN, the plan was for Vice President Mike Pence to throw out "the results in seven states because they allegedly had competing electors. In fact, no state had actually put forward an alternate slate of electors — there were merely Trump allies claiming without any authority to be electors." That didn't matter, though:
Pence would have declared Trump the winner with more Electoral College votes after the seven states were thrown out, at 232 votes to 222. Anticipating "howls" from Democrats protesting the overturning of the election, the memo proposes, Pence wouldinstead say that no candidate had reached 270 votes in the Electoral College. That would throw the election to the House of Representatives, where each state would get one vote. Since Republicans controlled 26 state delegations, a majority could vote for Trump to win the election.
Two important points. One is about recognizing competing slates of electors when there were none. New laws in Georgia, Texas and other states now fill in what was missing in Eastman's memo. They allow for GOP-controlled legislatures to overrule election officials. They make room for assigning competing slate of electors when outcomes are undesirable. A future vice president might do what Mike Pence didn't.
My other point is about the impression made by CNN's reporting, and by the new book all this news comes from by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa — that Donald Trump's GOP allies believed the US Constitution forbade a vice president from recognizing competing slates of electors. The impression is of a founding document that sets the rules. "You might as well make your case to Queen Elizabeth II," Mike Lee reportedly said. "Congress can't do this. You're wasting your time." That's a dangerous impression to have in a rule-of-law country in which powerful and power-hungry people are in fact above it.
The Constitution is many things, but a set of unbreakable rules isn't one of them. It is whatever powerful and power-hungry people want it to be, when they want it to be and why. I don't know why Lee, Lindsay Graham and other high-profile Republicans were not all-in on the Eastman memo, but I do know the Constitution didn't stop them. I am confident, and you should be confident, that if they had reason to believe they could get away with it, they'd have found a way to make a coup by a political party in broad daylight seem "constitutional."
The Eastman memo is putting debate over democracy reform into overdrive. Fine and dandy. But the memo is also why we shouldn't pin our hopes on democracy reform. The incentives to cheat, steal, lie and otherwise commit treason in the pursuit of raw political power will be with us long after we've made all our dreams come true with the death of the filibuster. New laws won't take away corrupt incentives. The only way to do that is prosecuting the laws we already have. The only way to do that is prosecuting the principle of equal treatment under law so that powerful and power-hungry people are not in fact above it.
The Eastman memo is evidence of a conspiracy — a GOP conspiracy — to commit a high crime. And yet no one is being held accountable. No one will be held accountable as long as the Department of Justice is soft on high crime. Amid such lawlessness, why not give treason another go? By then, perhaps Lee, Graham and others will have found what they need to make a coup in broad daylight seem "constitutional."
==
===
mma 921
no lnx vid
The “Justice for J6” rally is a distraction. The attacks on democracy are now happening at the state level – like in Pennsylvania.
Media outlets are allowing a sensationalist story about election conspiracy theories from Trump supporters to crowd out coverage of a much more profound and ongoing threat to American democracy.
WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MEDIA MATTERS STAFF
PUBLISHED 09/17/21 5:04 PM EDT
SHARE
COMMENT
More than eight months after a mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol building while the 2020 presidential election was being ratified, some media outlets are hyping a follow-up rally at the Capitol. But in fact, the real action is happening elsewhere.
Some mainstream media outlets have focused their attention on Saturday’s scheduled “Justice for J6” rally in Washington, D.C., organized by a former Trump 2016 campaign strategist who has resurfaced to contend that people being held in pre-trial detention for their role in the January 6 assault on the Capitol are “political prisoners.” But in doing so, the media are unduly magnifying an event that is widely expected to be a sparsely attended bust — and overlooking a more insidious development in the ongoing attempts to spread further lies about the 2020 election.
Another story developed in Pennsylvania this week, where a committee in the Republican-controlled state Senate has taken a major step in advancing the far-right push for “forensic audits” of the 2020 election results throughout the country.
:{
}:
The state Senate’s Intergovernmental Affairs and Operations Committee voted along party lines Wednesday to issue a subpoena for detailed personal records of every registered voter in the state, including normally non-public information such as driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of people’s Social Security numbers. In addition to the clear dangers for identity theft if such information were to leak into the wrong hands, these tactics are similar to efforts by Arizona Republicans and could lead to voter intimidation.
“There have been questions regarding the validity of people … who have voted, whether or not they exist,” state Republican Sen. Cris Dush, who is also the committee chair, had said in a committee hearing. These statements are similar to former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s discredited claims from last year that great numbers of votes had been cast under dead people’s names in the swing state as it was won by Joe Biden. (There have been just a small handful of cases in Pennsylvania in which votes were cast under dead people’s names — in acts committed by registered Republicans, who now regret having believed Trump’s propaganda about election fraud.)
An analysis by Media Matters found that in cable news coverage since Tuesday, when Pennsylvania Republicans first announced they would be seeking all this private data, CNN has mentioned the rally in at least 69 segments, while MSNBC has included the story in at least 35 segments. (Fox News, by contrast, has given the rally almost no political oxygen, mentioning it only three times during the same time frame.)
Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania story has received only a fraction of the coverage, having been mentioned in at least 13 segments on CNN and at least seven on MSNBC, according to the same analysis. (Fox News has not mentioned the Pennsylvania subpoena at all.)
Atlantic Council fellow Jared Holt, who monitors online extremism, wrote last week that the media have largely overblown the rally in their coverage. (Emphasis in original.)
Take it from me, a guy who spends 40+ hrs a week staring into the extremist abyss: What you’re seeing at this point is largely speculation. To be perfectly honest, I’m a frustrated at what I’ve seen so far from the nation’s leading publishers of journalism. It feels they have learned nothing about covering this space.
This is not to say that the event will not carry an inherent risk of attracting extreme believers, or even some with a violent disposition. For that, the event is worth monitoring and keeping tabs on. I’d also strongly advise people stay away from the rally, given that possibility. But suggestions that organized extremist groups are mobilizing at any major scale around this event are unsupported by current analysis.
The media coverage from the two networks looks even worse for CNN when examining the content itself. The network interviewed the rally’s lead organizer Matt Braynard, and has aired clips from the interview multiple times, where CNN justice correspondent Jessica Schneider debunked Braynard’s assertions that the people being held in detention were nonviolent protesters. One segment from Erin Burnett OutFront contained only a brief mention that Holt has said the rally is expected to fail.
Video file
E
CitationFrom the September 15, 2021, edition of CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront
By contrast, MSNBC has done a much better job of explaining in detail that the event is expected to be a dud. (Though at the same time, this also means the network has given too much attention to a story that amounts to nothing.)
On Friday’s edition of Morning Joe, NBC News senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny bluntly explained that far-right groups are actually discouraging their members from going to this event, that Braynard has been engaged in a “money-making enterprise” surrounding MAGA causes, and that “all of this media attention really helps him to do just that.”
CitationFrom the September 17, 2021, edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe
WILLIE GEIST (CO-HOST): You've been keeping tabs online, on these online forums where these groups who planned and plotted January 6 also organized. What are you seeing this week, what are you seeing this morning, in terms of tomorrow's planned rally?
BRANDY ZADROZNY (NBC NEWS SENIOR REPORTER): Well, it’s some good news, you know. We're not seeing any signs that we might usually see before a large, national-scale political rally, MAGA rally, extremist rally. We're seeing basically, really underwhelming posts, really limited to people nearby. People who are talking about this rally that you’d usually find in these circles — Proud Boys, QAnon, MAGA, anti-vaxxers — actually they're saying to stay away. There’s a conspiracy theory that this is actually a honeypot or some sort of plot by the feds to entrap people to commit crimes. There’s really barely a whimper out there for the real target audience.
I talked to Jared Holt from the Atlantic Council’s DFR lab, and he's just saying really, the local energy is already preoccupied with community issues like in Portland or anti-mask vaccine rallies. So people are just too busy. And it’s really important to note that unlike the January 6 Capitol attack, where it was really a bunch of different factions all sort of coming together under the umbrella of voter fraud, of the stolen election conspiracy theory — and really asked to be there by President Trump — no one is really doing this.
This event is actually just planned by this guy. His name is Matt Braynard, he works for this organization that he founded called Look Ahead America. And you know, he's a former Trump campaign operative. He’s sort of a C-list player who jumps from MAGA cause to MAGA cause. He raised $650,000 last year to investigate the stolen election. So this is a money-making enterprise, and it’s really important to remember that. And all of this media attention really helps him to do just that.
One major difference between the events of January 6 and Saturday’s rally is that last time, the rioters sincerely believed that they were acting on behalf of the sitting president of the United States — and seemingly confirming their belief, Trump refused to immediately deploy the National Guard to defend Congress. No such incentive structure exists anymore, now that Joe Biden is actually in the White House, and any backup support would be sent to the Capitol if it is needed. Furthermore, Congress will not even be in session until next week. Those facts all seriously narrow down the range of people who might show up with violence in mind — though as we have also learned, such individuals could potentially show up on any other day.
To be clear, it is completely appropriate for security officials to prepare for violence just in case, and those preparations can themselves have a deterrent effect on any violence even occurring. But media hyping of the event is only serving to puff up its visibility and the public profiles of its organizers in a way that does not appear to be warranted.
Not only that, the time could be better spent shining a light on how the spirit of the insurrection has continued in state legislatures.
Methodology
Media Matters searched our internal database of all original, weekday programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC (shows airing from 6 a.m. through midnight) for segments that analysts determined to include mention of either the September 18 Justice for J6 rally or the subpoenas for personal information in the Pennsylvania State audit of the 2020 U.S. presidential election from 6 a.m. September 14 through 12 p.m. September 17, 2021.
===
no lnx
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-trump-official-working-on-wisconsin-election-probe/2021/09/15/
Sections
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Politics
Former Trump official working on Wisconsin election probe
By Scott Bauer?|?AP
September 15, 2021
MADISON, Wis. — A Republican attorney who worked in former President Donald Trump’s administration and falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen in Wisconsin appears to have been hired to help with the taxpayer-funded investigation into how the election was run.
Andrew Kloster was listed as the author of a letter signed by lead investigator Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, sent in an email to county election clerks this week. Gableman has a budget of nearly $680,000 to hire whomever he wants to assist with the investigation, which was ordered by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.
Gableman and Kloster did not immediately return messages Tuesday or Wednesday asking about Kloster’s role in the investigation.
Kloster worked as an observer for the Wisconsin Republican Party on election night and was accused of yelling at election workers and police in Green Bay, a claim he disputes.
Kloster’s name showed up as the author of a pdf attachment to an email sent Monday to election clerks and signed by Gableman. That email, sent under the name “john delta,” asked clerks to retain election data, which state and federal law already requires them to do.
Clerks told The Associated Press that the email raised security concerns because it had an attachment and came from a Gmail address rather than a state government account. It was flagged as junk mail in at least eight counties.
Shortly after being contacted for comment Tuesday, Kloster deleted nearly all of the tweets on his Twitter account, where he describes himself as an “ecumenical rightist.”
Gableman’s investigation has already drawn bipartisan criticism and news of Kloster’s involvement was likely to increase skepticism about the legitimacy and fairness of the probe.
Gableman has not announced the names of anyone he has hired for the investigation or submitted any invoices for expenses. Vos has said the probe would be independent and resolve any questions about whether anything irregular or illegal occurred in the election.
Republicans have questioned numerous aspects of the 2020 election, but produced no evidence of widespread fraud. President Joe Biden’s win over Trump by just under 21,000 votes has also withstood recounts in Milwaukee and Dane counties and numerous state and federal lawsuits filed by Trump and his supporters. To date, only two people out of 3.3 million votes cast have been charged with election fraud.
Kloster, who has deep conservative roots, has been outspoken proponent of Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him.
Gableman also told Trump supporters in November that he thought the election had been stolen. After he was hired as special counsel, Gableman said he was committed to conducting an evidence-based investigation that will thoroughly examine the election and ensure that people are confident their vote counts.
:{
}:
Kloster is active with the Federalist Society.A biography on its website says that he has a “long tenure in the conservative legal movement, at the Scalia Law School, the Heritage Foundation, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and elsewhere.”
Kloster served in the Trump administration as deputy general counsel at the Office of Personnel Management and associate director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. In January, just before Trump left office, Kloster was appointed to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
After his work observing the election in Wisconsin, Kloster submitted an affidavit making unsubstantiated claims about wrongdoing in Brown County and in April published a blog post where he said, without evidence, “the 2020 presidential election was stolen, fair and square. No use complaining.”
Amaad Rivera-Wagner, who works as a community liaison in Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich’s office, described a confrontation with Kloster on election night in an email he sent to the city’s attorney in mid-November.
Rivera-Wagner said Kloster verbally accosted him, screamed at election workers who were counting ballots, accused Rivera-Wagner of not working for the city and yelled at police.
“I then turned to him and said ‘Sir, I work for the city and I am talking to Green Bay Police Officers, I need you stop following us,’” according to Rivera-Wagner’s email. “I asked the police to ask him to stop following us.”
Other poll workers gave similar accounts in sworn affidavits.
In his statement, Kloster gives a different version of events, saying Green Bay police were called after he was asking questions of county election officials.
“At some point, I was surrounded by City of Green Bay police and was prevented from observing,” Kloster wrote.
Vos, who hired Gableman to run the investigation, did not immediately return a message Wednesday asking about the apparent hiring of Kloster. Vos consulted with Trump about the probe, promising to give the former president regular updates.
:{
}:
Separately, Republicans have authorized an investigation by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau, which is expected to be done this fall. A handful of Republicans, including the Assembly elections committee chairwoman, are pushing for a broader review similar to the much-derided effort in Arizona led by Cyber Ninjas, a small cybersecurity firm based in Florida picked to lead the review.
===
===
an 921
no lnx twt
Pennsylvania resident and pizzeria owner Pauline Bauer, one of the many far-right Donald Trump supporters facing charges in connection with the January 6 insurrection, has been resorting to over-the-top antics ever since her arrest. And this week, journalist Scott MacFarlane reports in a Twitter thread, a judge became fed up with Bauer and "ordered U.S. Marshals" to take her "into custody."
Bauer, who was arrested by the FBI in rural Kane, Pennsylvania on May 19, is facing charges that include violent entry, disruptive conduct and obstruction of Congress. Prosecutors, journalist Kelly Weill reported in the Daily Beast on July 11, allege that when Bauer broke into the U.S. Capitol Building onJanuary 6, she threatened violence against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and said, "Bring Nancy Pelosi out here now…. We want to hang that fucking bitch."
Nonetheless, Bauer has stayed out of jail — until now. This week, MacFarlane reports, Bauer was "screaming" when the frustrated judge ordered that she be taken into custody. The judge said, "The problem is she's not going to do what I direct her to do…. Ms. Bauer is now going to be incarcerated."
:{
}:
In the courtroom, MacFarlane notes, Bauer refused to surrender her U.S. passport while awaiting trial. The pizzeria owner told the judge, "I have (a) right to my self-determination" and insisted that she was not subject to the court's supervision.
According to MacFarlane, Bauer told the judge, "(The) FBI has been watching me ever since Day One.... They know where I'm at 24 hours a day.... I'm not a danger to society.... I am an asset to my community."
Bauer, MacFarlane explained, will be jailed in Washington, D.C. And because she will be behind bars, she will not be unable to attend the "Justice for January 6" demonstration that is scheduled to take place in D.C. this weekend. Organizers of the demonstration are claiming that the January 6 insurrectionists did nothing wrong when they stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in a failed attempt to prevent Congress from certifying now-President Joe Biden's victory over Trump in the 2020 election.
:{
}:
Bauer has insisted on representing herself in court and refused to work with an attorney. During a June 11 proceeding held online via Zoom, she told the court, "I do not stand under the law. Under Genesis 1, God gave man dominion over the law."
:{
}:
McFarlane said that Bauer had previously claimed to be a "sovereign citizen," part of an ideological movement of people who believe they are not subject to U.S. laws. But on Friday, he reported, she claimed to have never said she was a sovereign citizen.
===
===
921 amanda
The stakes of the California recall election of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom couldn't be higher. Voting, either by mail or in person, ends Tuesday, and if Newsom is recalled, the bluest state in the country will not just have a Republican governor, but Larry Elder, a right-wing talk radio host who is a loon even by the standards of the party that elected Donald Trump.
If Elder wins, he threatens California's fragile recovery from the pandemic, since, like most Republicans these days, he's running interference for the virus. Plus, he would have the power to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is literally 88 years old, if she were to leave office — and one name that's being floated is Elder's protege and white nationalist former Trump advisor Stephen Miller.
In a normal circumstance, someone like Elder — he suggested Women's March participants are too ugly to rape and argued that it's the descendants of slave owners and not slaves that deserve reparations — would never have a chance of winning the governorship of a deep blue state like California. Unable to win in a free and fair election, however, Republicans in the state have turned to dirty tricks and shenanigans. The entire Republican strategy is built around suppressing voter turnout through confusing and demoralizing the public. The recall ballots are confusing, and may lead voters to not understand that voting yes on recalling Newsom automatically means voting yes on his replacement being a Republican. Republicans are also counting on pandemic-induced disillusionment to keep Democratic voters from bothering to mail in ballots at all.
In other words, the California recall is a microcosm of what has become the GOP's national strategy.
Republicans have given up entirely on the basic premise of democracy. They no longer think that politicians should try to appeal to a majority of citizens to win power. Instead, their focus is entirely on finding ways to circumvent public will and gain power anyway. In some states, this manifests as gerrymandering, outright voter suppression and even a new slate of laws meant to allow Republican officials to simply vacate the results of elections they don't like. In California, it's about forcing an off-year election in the most confusing way possible, hoping to hoodwink voters into accidentally giving themselves a Republican governor.
Regardless of the state-specific method, what holds all of this together is a widespread rejection within the Republican Party of the right of the people to choose their own leaders. Republicans feel entitled to rule, no matter what, and therefore feel entitled to lie, cheat, and steal their way to power. The technical legality of the California recall election doesn't change this reality. The spirit of the whole enterprise is driven by a willingness of Republicans to find some backhanded way to force a governor on the state that they know very well the majority of Californians do not want.
Ultimately, it comes down to the increasingly rigid Republican belief that most Americans are not legitimate citizens and therefore have no right to vote Republicans are bound to respect. This belief manifests most commonly in the Big Lie, which is metastasizing beyond Trump's false claims that he lost the 2020 election due to "fraud". Already, right-wing pundits and Republican politicians are prepping their followers for the possibility that Newsom survives the recall with an updated version of the Big Lie, claiming the election is "rigged" and that Newsom will only win through "voter fraud."
No real evidence of actual fraud that could swing an election is ever produced with these relentless Big Lie claims, but then again, it doesn't need to be.
"Voter fraud" is not really a literal belief among Republicans, but more a code phrase to convey the larger belief that most legal voters shouldn't have the right to vote at all. To call these legal voters "frauds" is to contest the legitimacy of their citizenship. It functions in the same way as conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's birth certificate did, as a way for conservatives to signal to each other a belief that the first Black president is not a "real" American. With the Big Lie, the group of people who conservatives refuse to admit are legitimate citizens has grown to encompass pretty much anyone who votes for the Democrats.
This notion that most Americans aren't "real" Americans and therefore are "fraud" voters has become a majority belief among Republican voters. A recent CNN poll, which found that 6 in 10 Republican voters said that affirming the Big Lie — which again, is code for the belief that Democratic votes are inherently illegitimate — is an important part of being a Republican. We see this in the support for the January 6 insurrection that has been quietly solidifying among the GOP base. It all goes back to a belief that if Republicans can't win a fair election, they should be able to cheat their way into power — or, if that fails, use violent force.
As Igor Derysh reported last week for Salon, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is facing down a similarly sleazy power grab by Republicans in Michigan. Republicans in the state legislature are trying to pass an anti-voting bill to keep those voters they see as illegitimate — particularly urban residents and Black voters — from casting ballots. To get around Whitmer's veto, they're using the same tactic that California Republicans used to force a recall, exploiting an ill-advised loophole that allows a shockingly small number of petitioners to force the issue.In this case, it's not a recall, but even worse, the ability simply overrule the decision of a duly elected governor. Democrats in the state are accusing Republicans of using a "playbook of losing, lying, and attempting to cheat their way into office."
It's not just a fair accusation, but such an obvious observation that it's verging on banal. It's the playbook that fueled Trump's failed coup and is currently fueling Elder's attempt to seize the California governor's office through the back door. Elections are increasingly not going to be contests of two candidates trying to appeal to voters, but a Democratic candidate appealing to voters while a Republican candidate tries to find some way to get around that pesky "democracy" problem. Newsom will probably survive this recall effort, but the country is going to have a much harder time surviving the relentless GOP assault on democracy.
===
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/election-deniers/
no lnx
Election deniers organize to seize control of the GOP — and reshape America’s elections
Steve Bannon speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Gage Skidmore]
ProPublica September 05, 2021
by Isaac Arnsdorf, Doug Bock Clark, Alexandra Berzon and Anjeanette Damon
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
One of the loudest voices urging Donald Trump's supporters to push for overturning the presidential election results was Steve Bannon. “We're on the point of attack," Bannon, a former Trump adviser and far-right nationalist, pledged on his popular podcast on Jan. 5. “All hell will break loose tomorrow." The next morning, as thousands massed on the National Mall for a rally that turned into an attack on the Capitol, Bannon fired up his listeners: “It's them against us. Who can impose their will on the other side?"
When the insurrection failed, Bannon continued his campaign for his former boss by other means. On his “War Room" podcast, which has tens of millions of downloads, Bannon said President Trump lost because the Republican Party sold him out. “This is your call to action," Bannon said in February, a few weeks after Trump had pardoned him of federal fraud charges.
The solution, Bannon announced, was to seize control of the GOP from the bottom up. Listeners should flood into the lowest rung of the party structure: the precincts. “It's going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won, we don't have an option," Bannon said on his show in May. “We're going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct."
Precinct officers are the worker bees of political parties, typically responsible for routine tasks like making phone calls or knocking on doors. But collectively, they can influence how elections are run. In some states, they have a say in choosing poll workers, and in others they help pick members of boards that oversee elections.
After Bannon's endorsement, the “precinct strategy" rocketed across far-right media. Viral posts promoting the plan racked up millions of views on pro-Trump websites, talk radio, fringe social networks and message boards, and programs aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Suddenly, people who had never before showed interest in party politics started calling the local GOP headquarters or crowding into county conventions, eager to enlist as precinct officers. They showed up in states Trump won and in states he lost, in deep-red rural areas, in swing-voting suburbs and in populous cities.
In Wisconsin, for instance, new GOP recruits are becoming poll workers. County clerks who run elections in the state are required to hire parties' nominees. The parties once passed on suggesting names, but now hardline Republican county chairs are moving to use those powers.
“We're signing up election inspectors like crazy right now," said Outagamie County party chair Matt Albert, using the state's formal term for poll workers. Albert, who held a “Stop the Steal" rally during Wisconsin's November recount, said Bannon's podcast had played a role in the burst of enthusiasm.
ProPublica contacted GOP leaders in 65 key counties, and 41 reported an unusual increase in signups since Bannon's campaign began. At least 8,500 new Republican precinct officers (or equivalent lowest-level officials) joined those county parties. We also looked at equivalent Democratic posts and found no similar surge.
“I've never seen anything like this, people are coming out of the woodwork," said J.C. Martin, the GOP chairman in Polk County, Florida, who has added 50 new committee members since January. Martin had wanted congressional Republicans to overturn the election on Jan. 6, and he welcomed this wave of like-minded newcomers. “The most recent time we saw this type of thing was the tea party, and this is way beyond it."
Bannon, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.
While party officials largely credited Bannon's podcast with driving the surge of new precinct officers, it's impossible to know the motivations of each new recruit. Precinct officers are not centrally tracked anywhere, and it was not possible to examine all 3,000 counties nationwide. ProPublica focused on politically competitive places that were discussed as targets in far-right media.
The tea party backlash to former President Barack Obama's election foreshadowed Republican gains in the 2010 midterm. Presidential losses often energize party activists, and it would not be the first time that a candidate's faction tried to consolidate control over the party apparatus with the aim of winning the next election.
What's different this time is an uncompromising focus on elections themselves. The new movement is built entirely around Trump's insistence that the electoral system failed in 2020 and that Republicans can't let it happen again. The result is a nationwide groundswell of party activists whose central goal is not merely to win elections but to reshape their machinery.
“They feel President Trump was rightfully elected president and it was taken from him," said Michael Barnett, the GOP chairman in Palm Beach County, Florida, who has enthusiastically added 90 executive committee members this year. “They feel their involvement in upcoming elections will prevent something like that from happening again."
It has only been a few months — too soon to say whether the wave of newcomers will ultimately succeed in reshaping the GOP or how they will affect Republican prospects in upcoming elections. But what's already clear is that these up-and-coming party officers have notched early wins.
In Michigan, one of the main organizers recruiting new precinct officers pushed for the ouster of the state party's executive director, who contradicted Trump's claim that the election was stolen and who later resigned.In Las Vegas, a handful of Proud Boys, part of the extremist group whose members have been charged in attacking the Capitol, supported a bid to topple moderates controlling the county party — a dispute that's now in court.
In Phoenix, new precinct officers petitioned to unseat county officials who refused to cooperate with the state Senate Republicans' “forensic audit" of 2020 ballots. Similar audits are now being pursued by new precinct officers in Michigan and the Carolinas. Outside Atlanta, new local party leaders helped elect a state lawmaker who championed Georgia's sweeping new voting restrictions.
And precinct organizers are hoping to advance candidates such as Matthew DePerno, a Michigan attorney general hopeful who Republican state senators said in a report had spread “misleading and irresponsible" misinformation about the election, and Mark Finchem, a member of the Oath Keepers militia who marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6and is now running to be Arizona's top elections official. DePerno did not respond to requests for comment, and Finchem asked for questions to be sent by email and then did not respond. Finchem has said he did not enter the Capitol or have anything to do with the violence. He has also said the Oath Keepers are not anti-government.
When Bannon interviewed Finchem on an April podcast, he wrapped up a segment about Arizona Republicans' efforts to reexamine the 2020 results by asking Finchem how listeners could help. Finchem answered by promoting the precinct strategy. “The only way you're going to see to it this doesn't happen again is if you get involved," Finchem said. “Become a precinct committeeman."
Some of the new precinct officers were in the crowd that marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6, according to interviews and social media posts; one Texas precinct chair was arrested for assaulting police in Washington. He pleaded not guilty. Many of the new activists have said publicly that they support QAnon, the online conspiracy theory that believes Trump was working to root out a global child sex trafficking ring. Organizers of the movement have encouraged supporters to bring weapons to demonstrations. In Las Vegas and Savannah, Georgia, newcomers were so disruptive that they shut down leadership elections.
“They're not going to be welcomed with open arms," Bannon said, addressing the altercations on an April podcast. “But hey, was it nasty at Lexington?" he said, citing the opening battle of the American Revolution. “Was it nasty at Concord? Was it nasty at Bunker Hill?"
Bannon plucked the precinct strategy out of obscurity. For more than a decade, a little-known Arizona tea party activist named Daniel J. Schultz has been preaching the plan. Schultz failed to gain traction, despite winning a $5,000 prize from conservative direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie in 2013 and making a 2015 pitch on Bannon's far-right website, Breitbart. Schultz did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
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, beginning to explain his plan. Bannon cut him off, offering to return to the idea another time.
That time came in February. Schultz returned to Bannon's podcast, immediately preceding Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who spouts baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
“We can take over the party if we invade it," Schultz said. “I can't guarantee you that we'll save the republic, but I can guarantee you this: We'll lose it if we conservatives don't take over the Republican Party."
Bannon endorsed Schultz's plan, telling “all the unwashed masses in the MAGA movement, the deplorables" to take up this cause. Bannon said he had more than 400,000 listeners, a count that could not be independently verified.
Bannon brought Schultz back on the show at least eight more times, alongside guests such as embattled Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, a leading defender of people jailed on Capitol riot charges.
The exposure launched Schultz into a full-blown far-right media tour. In February, Schultz spoke on a podcast with Tracy “Beanz" Diaz, a leading popularizer of QAnon. In an episode titled “THIS Is How We Win," Diaz said of Schultz, “I was waiting, I was wishing and hoping for the universe to deliver someone like him."
Schultz himself calls QAnon “a joke." Nevertheless, he promoted his precinct strategy on at least three more QAnon programs in recent months, according to Media Matters, a Democratic-aligned group tracking right-wing content. “I want to see many of you going and doing this," host Zak Paine said on one of the shows in May.
Schultz's strategy also got a boost from another prominent QAnon promoter: former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to impose martial law and “rerun" the election. On a May online talk show, Flynn told listeners to fill “thousands of positions that are vacant at the local level."
Precinct recruitment is now “the forefront of our mission" for Turning Point Action, according to the right-wing organization's website. The group's parent organization bussed Trump supporters to Washington for Jan. 6, including at least one person who was later charged with assaulting police. He pleaded not guilty. In July, Turning Point brought Trump to speak in Phoenix, where he called the 2020 election “the greatest crime in history." Outside, red-capped volunteers signed people up to become precinct chairs.
Organizers from around the country started huddling with Schultz for weekly Zoom meetings. The meetings' host, far-right blogger Jim Condit Jr. of Cincinnati, kicked off a July call by describing the precinct strategy as the last alternative to violence. “It's the only idea," Condit said, “unless you want to pick up guns like the Founding Fathers did in 1776 and start to try to take back our country by the Second Amendment, which none of us want to do."
:{
}:
By the next week, though, Schultz suggested the new precinct officials might not stay peaceful. Schultz belonged to a mailing list for a group ofmilitary, law enforcement and intelligence veterans called the “1st Amendment Praetorian" that organizes security for Flynn and other pro-Trump figures. Back in the 1990s, Schultz wrote an article defending armed anti-government militias like those involved in that decade's deadly clashes with federal agents in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas.
“Make sure everybody's got a baseball bat," Schultz said on the July strategy conference call, which was posted on YouTube. “I'm serious about this. Make sure you've got people who are armed."
The sudden demand for low-profile precinct positions baffled some party leaders. In Fort Worth, county chair Rick Barnes said numerous callers asked about becoming a “precinct committeeman," quoting the term used on Bannon's podcast. That suggested that out-of-state encouragement played a role in prompting the calls, since Texas's term for the position is “precinct chair." Tarrant County has added 61 precinct chairs this year, about a 24% increase since February. “Those podcasts actually paid off," Barnes said.
For weeks, about five people a day called to become precinct chairs in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, southwest of Green Bay. Albert, the county party chair, said he would explain that Wisconsin has no precinct chairs, but newcomers could join the county party — and then become poll workers. “We're trying to make sure that our voice is now being reinserted into the process," Albert said.
Similarly, the GOP in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, is fielding a surge of volunteers for precinct committee members, but also for election judges or inspectors, which are party-affiliated elected positions in that state. “Who knows what happened on Election Day for real," county chair Lou Capozzi said in an interview. The county GOP sent two busloads of people to Washington for Jan. 6 and Capozzi said they stayed peaceful. “People want to make sure elections remain honest."
Elsewhere, activists inspired by the precinct strategy have targeted local election boards. In DeKalb County, east of Atlanta, the GOP censured a long-serving Republican board member who rejected claims of widespread fraud in 2020. To replace him, new party chair Marci McCarthy tapped a far-right activist known for false, offensive statements. The party nominees to the election board have to be approved by a judge, and the judge in this case rejected McCarthy's pick, citing an “extraordinary" public outcry. McCarthy defended her choice but ultimately settled for someone less controversial.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, more than 1,000 people attended the county GOP convention in March, up from the typical 300 to 400. The chair they elected, Alan Swain, swiftly formed an “election integrity committee" that's lobbying lawmakers to restrict voting and audit the 2020 results. “We're all about voter and election integrity," Swain said in an interview.
In the rural western part of the state, too, a wave of people who heard Bannon's podcast or were furious about perceived election fraud swept into county parties, according to the new district chair, Michele Woodhouse. The district's member of Congress, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, addressed a crowd at one county headquarters on Aug. 29, at an event that included a raffle for a shotgun.
:{
}:
“If our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, it's going to lead to one place, and it's bloodshed," Cawthorn said, in remarks livestreamed on Facebook, shortly after holding the prize shotgun, which he autographed. “That's right," the audience cheered. Cawthorn went on, “As much as I'm willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there's nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American, and the way we can have recourse against that is if we all passionately demand that we have election security in all 50 states."
After Cawthorn referred to people arrested on Jan. 6 charges as “political hostages," someone asked, “When are you going to call us to Washington again?" The crowd laughed and clapped as Cawthorn answered, “We are actively working on that one."
Schultz has offered his own state of Arizona as a proof of concept for how precinct officers can reshape the party.The result, Schultz has said, is actions like the state Senate Republicans' “forensic audit" of Maricopa County's 2020 ballots. The “audit," conducted by a private firm with no experience in elections and whose CEO has spread conspiracy theories, has included efforts to identify fraudulent ballots from Asia by searching for traces of bamboo. Schultz has urged activists demanding similar audits in other states to start by becoming precinct officers.
“Because we've got the audit, there's very heightened and intense public interest in the last campaign, and of course making sure election laws are tightened," said Sandra Dowling, a district chair in northwest Maricopa and northern Yuma County whose precinct roster grew by 63% in less than six months. Though Dowling says some other district chairs screen their applicants, she doesn't. “I don't care," she said.
One chair who does screen applicants is Kathy Petsas, a lifelong Republican whose district spans Phoenix and Paradise Valley. She also saw applications explode earlier this year. Many told her that Schultz had recruited them, and some said they believed in QAnon. “Being motivated by conspiracy theories is no way to go through life, and no way for us to build a high-functioning party," Petsas said. “That attitude can't prevail."
As waves of new precinct officers flooded into the county party, Petsas was dismayed to see some petitioning to recall their own Republican county supervisors for refusing to cooperate with the Senate GOP's audit.
“It is not helpful to our democracy when you have people who stand up and do the right thing and are honest communicators about what's going on, and they get lambasted by our own party," Petsas said. “That's a problem."
This spring, a team of disaffected Republican operatives put Schultz's precinct strategy into action in South Carolina, a state that plays an outsize role in choosing presidents because of its early primaries. The operatives' goal was to secure enough delegates to the party's state convention to elect a new chair: far-right celebrity lawyer Lin Wood.
:{
}:
Wood was involved with some of the lawsuits to overturn the presidential election that courts repeatedly ruled meritless, or even sanctionable. After the election, Wood said on Bannon's podcast, “I think the audience has to do what the people that were our Founding Fathers did in 1776." On Twitter, Wood called for executing Vice President Mike Pence by firing squad. Wood later said it was “rhetorical hyperbole," but that and other incendiary language got him banned from mainstream social media. He switched to Telegram, an encrypted messaging app favored by deplatformed right-wing influencers, amassing roughly 830,000 followers while repeatedly promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory.
:{
}:
Asked for comment about his political efforts, Wood responded, “Most of your 'facts' are either false or misrepresent the truth." He declined to cite specifics.
Typically, precinct meetings were “a yawner," according to Mike Connett, a longtime party member in Horry County, best known for its popular beach towns. But in April, Connett and other establishment Republicans were caught off guard when 369 people, many of them newcomers, showed up for the county convention in North Myrtle Beach. Connett lost a race for a leadership role to Diaz, the prominent QAnon supporter, and Wood's faction captured the county's other executive positions plus 35 of 48 delegate slots, enabling them to cast most of the county's votes for Wood at the state convention. “It seemed like a pretty clean takeover," Connett told ProPublica.
:{
}:
In Greenville, the state's most populous county, Wood campaign organizers Jeff Davis and Pressley Stutts mobilized a surge of supporters at the county convention — about 1,400 delegates, up from roughly 550 in 2019 — and swept almost all of the 79 delegate positions. That gave Wood's faction the vast majority of the votes in two of South Carolina's biggest delegations.
Across the state, the precinct strategy was contributing to an unprecedented surge in local party participation, according to data provided by a state GOP spokeswoman. In 2019, 4,296 people participated. This year, 8,524 did.
“It's a prairie fire down there in Greenville, South Carolina, brought on by the MAGA posse," Bannon said on his podcast.
:{
}:
Establishment party leaders realized they had to take Wood's challenge seriously. The incumbent chair, Drew McKissick, had Trump's endorsement three times over — including twice after Wood entered the race. But Wood fought back by repeatedly implying that McKissick and other prominent state Republicans were corrupt and involved in various conspiracies that seemed related to QAnon. The race became heated enough that after one event, Wood and McKissick exchanged angry words face-to-face.
Wood's rallies were raucous affairs packed with hundreds of people, energized by right-wing celebrities like Flynn and Lindell. In interviews, many attendees described the events as their first foray into politics, sometimes referencing Schultz and always citing Trump's stolen election myth. Some said they'd resort to violence if they felt an election was stolen again.
:{
}:
Wood's campaign wobbled in counties that the precinct strategy had not yet reached. At the state convention in May, Wood won about 30% of the delegates, commanding Horry, Greenville and some surrounding counties, but faltering elsewhere. A triumphant McKissick called Wood's supporters “a fringe, rogue group" and vowed to turn them into a “leper colony" by building parallel Republican organizations in their territory.
But Wood and his partisans did not act defeated. The chairmanship election, they argued, was as rigged as the 2020 presidential race. Wood threw a lavish party at his roughly 2,000-acre low-country estate, secured by armed guards and surveillance cameras. From a stage fit for a rock concert on the lawn of one of his three mansions, Wood promised the fight would continue.
Diaz and her allies in Horry County voted to censure McKissick. The county's longtime Republicans tried, but failed, to oust Diaz and her cohort after one of the people involved in drafting Wood tackled a protester at a Flynn speech in Greenville. (This incident, the details of which are disputed, prompted Schultz to encourage precinct strategy activists to arm themselves.) Wood continued promoting the precinct strategy to his Telegram followers, and scores replied that they were signing up.
In late July, Stutts and Davis forced out Greenville County GOP's few remaining establishment leaders, claiming that they had cheated in the first election. Then Stutts, Davis and an ally won a new election to fill those vacant seats. “They sound like Democrats, right?" Bannon asked Stutts in a podcast interview. Stutts replied, “They taught the Democrats how to cheat, Steve."
Stutts' group quickly pushed for an investigation of the 2020 presidential election, planning a rally featuring Davis and Wood at the end of August, and began campaigning against vaccine and school mask mandates. “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery," Stutts had previously posted on Facebook, quoting Thomas Jefferson. Stutts continued posting messages skeptical of vaccine and mask mandates even after he entered the hospital with a severe case of COVID-19. He died on Aug. 19.
The hubbub got so loud inside the Cobb County, Georgia, Republican headquarters that it took several shouts and whistles to get everyone's attention. It was a full house for Salleigh Grubbs' first meeting as the county's party chair. Grubbs ran on a vow to “clean house" in the election system, highlighting her December testimony to state lawmakers in which she raised unsubstantiated fraud allegations. Supporters praised Grubbs' courage for following a truck she suspected of being used in a plot to shred evidence. She attended Trump's Jan. 6 rally as a VIP. She won the chairmanship decisively at an April county convention packed with an estimated 50% first-time participants.
In May, Grubbs opened her first meeting by asking everyone munching on bacon and eggs to listen to her recite the Gettysburg Address. “Think of the battle for freedom that Americans have before them today," Grubbs said. “Those people fought and died so that you could be the precinct chair." After the reading, first-time precinct officers stood for applause and cheers.
Their work would start right away: putting up signs, making calls and knocking on doors for a special election for the state House. The district had long leaned Republican, but after the GOP's devastating losses up and down the ballot in 2020, they didn't know what to expect.
“There's so many people out there that are scared, they feel like their vote doesn't count," Cooper Guyon, a 17-year-old right-wing podcaster from the Atlanta area who speaks to county parties around the state, told the Cobb Republicans in July. The activists, he said, need to “get out in these communities and tell them that we are fighting to make your vote count by passing the Senate bill, the election-reform bills that are saving our elections in Georgia."
Of the field's two Republicans, Devan Seabaugh took the strongest stance in favor of Georgia's new law restricting ways to vote and giving the Republican-controlled Legislature more power over running elections. “The only people who may be inconvenienced by Senate Bill 202 are those intent on committing fraud," he wrote in response to a local newspaper's candidate questionnaire.
Seabaugh led the June special election and won a July runoff. Grubbs cheered the win as a turning point. “We are awake. We are preparing," she wrote on Facebook. “The conservative citizens of Cobb County are ready to defend our ballots and our county."
Newcomers did not meet such quick success everywhere. In Savannah, a faction crashed the Chatham County convention with their own microphone, inspired by Bannon's podcast to try to depose the incumbent party leaders who they accused of betraying Trump. Party officers blocked the newcomers' candidacies, saying they weren't officially nominated. Shouting erupted, and the meeting adjourned without a vote. Then the party canceled its districtwide convention.
The state party ultimately sided with the incumbent leaders. District chair Carl Smith said the uprising is bound to fail because the insurgents are mistaken in believing that he and other local leaders didn't fight hard enough for Trump.
“You can't build a movement on a lie," Smith said.
In Michigan, activists who identify with a larger movement working against Republicans willing to accept Trump's loss have captured the party leadership in about a dozen counties. They're directly challenging state party leaders, who are trying to harness the grassroots energy without indulging demands to keep fighting over the last election.
Some of the takeovers happened before the rise of the precinct strategy. But the activists are now organizing under the banner “Precinct First" and holding regular events, complete with notaries, to sign people up to run for precinct delegate positions.
“We are reclaiming our party," Debra Ell, one of the organizers, told ProPublica. “We're building an 'America First' army."
Under normal rules, the wave of new precinct delegates could force the party to nominate far-right candidates for key state offices. That's because in Michigan, party nominees for attorney general, secretary of state and lieutenant governor are chosen directly by party delegates rather than in public primaries. But the state party recently voted to hold a special convention earlier next year, which should effectively lock in candidates before the new, more radical delegates are seated.
Activist-led county parties including rural Hillsdale and Detroit-area Macomb are also censuring Republican state legislators for issuing a June report on the 2020 election that found no evidence of systemic fraud and no need for a reexamination of the results like the one in Arizona. (The censures have no enforceable impact beyond being a public rebuke of the politicians.) At the same time, county party leaders in Hillsdale and elsewhere are working on a ballot initiative to force an Arizona-style election review.
Establishment Republicans have their own idea for a ballot initiative — one that could tighten rules for voter ID and provisional ballots while sidestepping the Democratic governor's veto. If the initiative collects hundreds of thousands of valid signatures, it would be put to a vote by the Republican-controlled state Legislature. Under a provision of the state constitution, the state Legislature can adopt the measure and it can't be vetoed.
State party leaders recently reached out to the activists rallying around the rejection of the presidential election results, including Hillsdale Republican Party Secretary Jon Smith, for help. Smith, Ell and others agreed to join the effort, the two activists said.
“This empowers them," Jason Roe, the state party executive director whose ouster the activists demanded because he said Trump was responsible for his own loss, told ProPublica. Roe resigned in July, citing unrelated reasons. “It's important to get them focused on change that can actually impact" future elections, he said, “instead of keeping their feet mired in the conspiracy theories of 2020."
Jesse Law, who ran the Trump campaign's Election Day operations in Nevada, sued the Democratic electors, seeking to declare Trump the winner or annul the results. The judge threw out the case, saying Law's evidence did not meet “any standard of proof," and the Nevada Supreme Court agreed. When the Electoral College met in December, Law stood outside the state capitol to publicly cast mock votes for Trump.
:{
}:
This year, Law set his sights on taking over the Republican Party in the state's largest county, Clark, which encompasses Las Vegas. He campaigned on the precinct strategy, promising 1,000 new recruits. His path to winning the county chairmanship — just like Stutts' team in South Carolina, and Grubbs in Cobb County, Georgia — relied on turning out droves of newcomers to flood the county party and vote for him.
:{
}:
In Law's case, many of those newcomers came through the Proud Boys, the all-male gang affiliated with more than two dozen people charged in the Capitol riot. The Las Vegas chapter boasted about signing up 500 new party members (not all of them belonging to the Proud Boys) to ensure their takeover of the county party. After briefly advancing their own slate of candidates to lead the Clark GOP, the Proud Boys threw their support to Law. They also helped lead a state party censure of Nevada's Republican secretary of state, who rejected the Trump campaign's baseless claims of fraudulent ballots.
Law, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, has declined to distance himself from the Las Vegas Proud Boys, citing Trump's “stand back and stand by" remark at the September 2020 presidential debate. “When the president was asked if he would disavow, he said no," Law told an independent Nevada journalist in July. “If the president is OK with that, I'm going to take the presidential stance."
The outgoing county chair, David Sajdak, canceled the first planned vote for his successor. He said he was worried the Proud Boys would resort to violence if their newly recruited members, who Sajdak considered illegitimate, weren't allowed to vote.
Sajdak tried again to hold a leadership vote in July, with a meeting in a Las Vegas high school theater, secured by police. But the crowd inside descended into shouting, while more people tried to storm past the cops guarding the back entrance, leading to scuffles. “Let us in! Let us in!" some chanted. Riling them up was at least one Proud Boy, according to multiple videos of the meeting.
At the microphone, Sajdak was running out of patience. “I'm done covering for you awful people," he bellowed. Unable to restore order, Sajdak ended the meeting without a vote and resigned a few hours later. He'd had enough.
“They want to create mayhem," Sajdak said.
Soon after, Law's faction held their own meeting at a hotel-casino and overwhelmingly voted for Law as county chairman. Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald, a longtime ally of Law who helped lead Trump's futile effort to overturn the Nevada results, recognized Law as the new county chair and promoted a fundraiser to celebrate. The existing county leaders sued, seeking a court order to block Law's “fraudulent, rogue election." The judge preliminarily sided with the moderates, but told them to hold off on their own election until a court hearing in September.
To Sajdak, agonizing over 2020 is pointless because “there's no mechanism for overturning an election." Asked if Law's allies are determined to create one, Sajdak said: “It's a scary thought, isn't it."
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
Mehdi Hasan slams Kevin McCarthy's hypocrisy on GOP rep's ... ›
How a Los Angeles megachurch became a bastion of evangelical ... ›
Watch: Trump pal Tom Brady mocks former president in front of ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
Election Denier Groups Accused of Profiting Without Results ›
Networks Booking Election-Deniers Helps Keep Trump's Big Lie ... ›
Republicans and others offer tips on how to rebut millions of ... ›
===
...intercept
Take David Gore, an Oregon libertarian and think-tank founder whose family owns Gore-Tex, makers of the ubiquitous waterproofing fabric. Internal data provided to The Intercept reveals that between 2018 and January 2021, Gore donated almost $450,000 to the Tea Party Patriots, who co-sponsored the “March to Save America” rally that turned violent on January 6.
The Intercept also revealed the handful of megadonors behind millions of dollars in secret donations to the Bradley Impact Fund, part of a right-wing network that has channeled support for organizations like the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a leading group seeking to overturn the election in court.
===
===
an 821
Mayer, author of the 2016 New York Times bestseller "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right," is shedding light on how dark money donated by ultrarich conservatives has contributed to the tactics used to magnify former President Donald Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud.
In a piece published by The New Yorker, Mayer dissected the controversial election audit in Maricopa County, Ariz., as she explained why the effort is not as local as it may seem.
"Although the audit in Arizona may appear to be the product of local extremists, it has been fed by sophisticated, well-funded national organizations whose boards of directors include some of the country's wealthiest and highest-profile conservatives," Mayer wrote.
She went on to discuss the uses of dark money and how it has aided in promoting the falsehood of widespread voter fraud.
"Dark-money organizations, sustained by undisclosed donors, have relentlessly promoted the myth that American elections are rife with fraud, and, according to leaked records of their internal deliberations, they have drafted, supported, and in some cases taken credit for state laws that make it harder to vote," she wrote.
Experts are expressing concern about the efforts being made to upend election laws and dismantle the United States' democracyWhile Mayer largely highlighted the election audit in Arizona, there are many different states across the country where Republican lawmakers are taking aim at voting practices and election laws.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
- Dark Money: How the Koch Bros. and billionaire allies funded the ... ›
- How 'dark money' from the Koch network and others is fueling ... ›
- 'Wholly inappropriate': Secret Trump-affiliated 'dark money' groups ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- 'Dark Money' Largely Favors Republicans, Sunlight Analysis Finds ... ›
- Steve Marshall: Dark money group's involvement in pro-Trump rally ... ›
- 'Dark money' topped $1 billion in 2020, largely boosting
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/christian-nationalists-believe-capitol-rioters-as-victims-report/
ME
christian nationalists are attempting to put a different spin on the Jan. 6 insurrection. While most Americans have witnessed some degree of the deadly series of events that have transpired, Christian nationalists believe the rioters who stormed the CApitol are actually the victims, according to Americans United.
"The assault by a pro-Trump crowd should have posed something of a dilemma for Christian nationalists, who often pose as "law and order" conservatives, given that police officers were assaulted by an out-of-control mob," the publication reports. "But the same Christian nationalists who had assailed Black Lives Matter over anti-police-brutality protests just months earlier couldn't bring themselves to condemn the violence at the Capitol."
As a result of their refusal to hold rioters accountable and accept what actually happened, more conspiracies have been birthed.
For example, Jeff Jansen, head of Global Fire Ministries, has repeatedly claimed Trump will rise to power again; a dangerous lie national security experts believe will only infuriate the Trump base more when it does not come to pass.
"The Trump administration is on its way in; the pedophilia Biden administration – the fake administration – Biden's administration is on its way out," Jansen said. "I don't care if you like it or not, it doesn't matter. We all know what took place, and God is going to do something amazing in this nation and through this nation. It's revival time. It's revolution time."
As a result of Christians like Jansen, there is a growing concern that the conspiracy-driven prophetic movement is becoming "one of the fastest-growing corners of Christianity," according to New York Times reporter Ruth Graham.
Offering her perspective of Christian prophets' actions, Graham previously wrote:
"Many are independent evangelists who do not lead churches or other institutions. They operate primarily online and through appearances at conferences or as guest speakers in churches, making money through book sales, donations and speaking fees. And they are part of the rising appeal of conspiracy theories in Christian settings, echoed by the popularity of QAnon among many evangelicals and a resistance to mainstream sources of information."
Although there have been efforts to launch a bipartisan committee to investigate the Capitol insurrection, Christian nationalists have joined Republican lawmakers' plight not to further investigate.
In the normal world, the pushback against the formation of a 1/6 commission also raises questions since Christian nationalists claim to believe rioters were actually victims.
However, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, has praised Republican lawmakers for blocking the effort by way of the filibuster as he described the commission as nothing more than "political theater." He also accused Democratic lawmakers of pushing to change the narrative although footage of the day makes it clear what transpired.
"This is about political theater, plain and simple," Perkins wrote in a column. "It's about creating a narrative, aided by the media, that all Republicans are dangerous extremists. At least GOP leaders are pushing back and insisting that they won't be a part of the Democratic charade."
Christian nationalists' disturbing perspective and continued efforts to support Capitol rioters suggests the movement will not wane anytime soon.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
- 'Vanilla ISIS': Terrorism expert breaks down the nightmarish ... ›
- This PA lawmaker is a Christian zealot, an academic fraud and an ... ›
- History of Christian nationalism played a dominant role in Capitol ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- Evangelical Leaders Raise Alarms About Christian Nationalism In ... ›
- White Christian Nationalism: The Deep Story Behind the Capitol ... ›
- Opinion | 'The Capitol Insurrection Was as Christian Nationalist as...
===
see soc media bias BS
Unhinged' GOP congressman claims Google 'absolutely' changed its algorithm to 'move 15 million votes' to Biden
David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement
July 09, 2021
**U.S. Rep Ken Buck** (R-CO) says Google flipped 15 million votes away from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Buck last year, on tape, as the chair of the Colorado GOP, allegedly tried "pressuring an El Paso County GOP official to falsify election results in the State Senate District 10 race."
"Google, by the way, changed its algorithm, in ...
===
===
1/6 comm
https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/social-media-explodes-with-reactions-to-kevins-mccarthys-jan-6-committee-picks/
before House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made his selections for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's select committee on the January 6 insurrection, Democrats on Capitol Hill were hoping to God that he wouldn't have the bad taste to pick the buffoonish Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. But sure enough, Jordan is one of the five House Republicans McCarthy has picked — along with Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois and Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas. Jordan has been an unapologetic promoter of the Big Lie, the false and debunked conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump because of widespread voter fraud. And Jordan, Nehls and Banks all voted against certifying now-President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory on January 6, although Davis and Armstrong were among the House Republicans who did vote to certify Biden's win.
Twitter has been exploding with reactions to McCarthy's picks. Journalist Seth Abramson devoted an entire thread to the subject:...
===
===
big lie institutionalized (msnbc?) used to justify voter suppression
https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/justice-alito/
===
===
trms trump could not get mil to do coup, so used mob 1/6; flynn bro stand down nat'l guard?!
pentagon "decapitated" sec of def tried to hold on a few more days ~ nunes wackos
experts warn of 'national emergency' after bombshell report reveals top general feared Trump would stage military coup
David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement
July 15, 2021
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Donald Trump, **General Mark Milley**, was so concerned the outgoing president would try to stage a military coup he warned the heads of the U.S. Military branches,...
==
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/trump-election-claims/
ME
Since the 2020 presidential election, conservative news outlets have been popping up in droves to continue circulating former President Donald Trump's big lie about the election.
So how are outlets continuing to do this? According to NPR, it is more of a trick of the eye. The publication https://www.npr.org/2021/07/02/1011916687/how-pro-trump-local-news-sites-keep-pushing-2020-election-misinformation.
While the publication appears to be just a local news outlet, NPR reports that it is actually flagship of a news syndicate, known as The Star News Network, which consists of several pro-Trump sites. Like The Georgia Star News, the network has created similar sites for states like Arizona, Ohio, and Florida.
Per NPR:
"Its part of the Star News Network - an expanding network of pro-Trump sites seeking to influence local politics with conservative opinion by mimicking the look and feel of local newspaper sites. The group operates eight state-focused news sites, including in key Electoral College states such as Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Florida."
By focusing on states where Trump is still heavily favored among voters, the network can continue to circulate misinformation since the audience is still focused on what transpired during and after the election.
During a rally in Ohio Las weekend, Trump also added more fuel to the fire with more dangerous claims of voter fraud.
"The biggest tragedy of all is millions of Americans have lost confidence in their vote," Trump said." We can't let that happen. And that's why I say you have to know what took place in 2020 before you can vote in 2022 or 2024."
To name mafter worse, conservative publisher John Fredericksdefended defended sites and the information they share.
"We work very hard to fund our operation through legitimate advertising of all kinds, people that want to reach our expanding audience," he said. "And if somebody needs to reach informed, motivated readers that want the truth, advertising is a great opportunity for them, is a great [return on investment] potential."
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
- Ivanka Trump distances self from dad's election fraud claims as her ... ›
- Trump rants about 2020 election as MAGA cultist claims the former ... ›
- Revealed: Mitch McConnell begged Bill Barr to 'inject some reality ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- AP FACT CHECK: Yes, Trump lost election despite what he says ›
- Giuliani's law license suspended over false Trump election claims ... ›
- Trump Pressed Rosen to Wield Justice Dept. to Back 2020 Election ... ›
===
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/roger-stone-aide/
roger Stone associate Kristin Davis is behind a new column blaming Women for America First for being behind the organizing of the "Stop the Steal" rally and saying that Stone had nothing to do with it, reporter Nancy Levin discovered Sunday.
Writing in a conspiracy theory publication, Davis explained that all Stone did was stand outside his hotel with an entourage waiting for a car to pick them up.
"I booked Roger to speak at the Rally to Save America the night prior and was led to believe by Women for America First that he was supposed to speak the following afternoon on January 6th, at a rally they organized which featured President Donald J. Trump. After a completely peaceful rally on January 5th, which attracted thousands of brave American patriots, we woke up the next morning expecting to attend the rally at the Ellipse," the column read.
"However, despite Women for America First promoting Stone as a speaker and insisting that they were sending a transport for Mr. Stone and our team to the Willard Hotel, the escort never came," the piece continued. "As we were waiting, the staff at the Hotel Willard asked anyone congregating in the lobby to stay out of the cold to step outside in order to adhere to COVID-19 guidelines set forth by the Mayor of Washington, D.C. A simple walk outside, which lasted mere minutes, is the first part of the dishonest conspiracy theory by the mainstream media and Democrat (sic) elected officials that Mr. Stone was somehow organizing the insurrection, or had some sort of advance knowledge of what was going to happen later that day."
Raw Story has never reported that Stone was part of the organizing of the event, but those members of the Oath Keepers militia who were working as the security for Stoneare accused of being linked to the plotting of violence.
Justice Department filings showed Jessica Watkins saying to allies that the task "sounds like a sweet gig," meaning the guarding of Stone.
"Looks like we might be security for Roger Stone, if we end up rolling with the Oath keepers(sic)," Watkins texted Donovan Ray Crowl on Jan. 1. Crowl texted back later that day saying, it "should be fun."
Crowl was cited for believing that there would be a "literal war" in the United States on Jan. 6.
Crowl's lawyer said in the court documents that his client wasn't doing anything other than security on Jan. 6, but other messages prosecutors got showed that the Oath Keepers were coordinating with "30-40" people during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Watkins and Crowl were both indicted on charges of conspiracy, conspiracy to injure an officer and destruction of government property.
Stone appears to be denying that he and the security had discussed anything outside of their work for him.
Women for America First was behind the rally, according to permits requested from the Parks Service.
See the screen capture of the excerpt from Nancy Levin:
===
===
1st 2 trials, mjr and minor but DA got what asked for
June 23, 2021
During the sentencing hearing of a Capitol attacker, the judge invoked Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) for what he said are lies being spread by Republicans in office.
Anna Morgan-Lloyd is the first Capitol attacker to be...
===
an me 621
Conservatives are still pushing wildly bizarre claims about the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol in an effort to avoid accountability for the deadly encounter. On Friday, June 18, CNN offered a quick rundown of the latest myths about the Capitol riots as hosts Brianna Keilar and John Berman debunked all of the theories.
While rolling footage of the most harrowing moments that captured the mob attacking U.S. Capitol police officers, Berman noted that "some Republicans and some deranged entertainers keep developing new and provably false ways to say the insurrection did not happen," according to HuffPost.
From the claims suggesting the insurrection was actually nothing more than a normal tourist visit to the U.S. Capitol to Fox News' Tucker Carlson's latest conspiracy theory suggesting members of the (FBI) were co-conspirators in the Capitol insurrection, the myths just continue to grow....
===
an 621 coverup 1/6 leak cnn
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/fox-news-capitol/
===
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/jim-jordan-2653413213/
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/alex-jones/
sez coord w/ WH 1/6
===
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gop-doesnt-care-that-trump-planned-a-coup-do-democrats
no lnx
mich AG scheuette #2 got promoted? GA AG? quit b/c he got headsup he was about to tweet trumped?]
CAPITOL RIOTS
The GOP Doesn’t Care That Trump Planned a Coup. Do Democrats?
‘PURE INSANITY’
OPINION
Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
New emails show Jan. 6 was just a preview. The GOP and its allies in Congress, law enforcement, and conservative media will attempt another coup when they lose another election.
Wajahat Ali
Updated Jun. 16, 2021 9:26AM ET / Published Jun. 15, 2021 10:58PM ET
Thanks to the bombshell documents the House Oversight and Reform Committee released just ahead of Tuesday’s hearing on the Jan. 6 insurrection, Americans have a clear and unmistakable view of just how far former President Donald Trump went in trying to corrupt our democratic institutions, engage in a violent coup, and overturn our free and fair election.
“These documents show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost,” said Democratic committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney. She’s absolutely correct. I would add one simple edit: It’s Trump and the GOP. He attempted a coup—and, yes, we should all use the word—and he’s still trying, with ample help from Republicans.
If you consider that hyperbole, I direct you to those bombshell documents revealing how the Trump administration, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, attempted to pressure the Department of Justice to advance dangerous conspiracy theories of election fraud and influence courts to nullify the election results so Trump could stay in power.
Trump Pushed Barr’s Successor to Probe Big Lie: New Emails
‘BRAZEN CORRUPTION’
Justin Rohrlich
An hour before announcing his Attorney General Bill Barr would be stepping down, no doubt because he refused to promote “the Big Lie,” Trump’s assistant sent an email to Jeffrey Rosen, his incoming attorney general, showing evidence of alleged “election fraud” innorthern Michiganand “talking points” to advance the obvious lie. Two weeks later, Trump’s White House sent a draft brief to Rosen for the DOJ to submit to the Supreme Court intended to effectively nullify the 2020 election and help Trump usurp power.Transcribed interviews with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reveal he directly pressured DOJ officials at least five times to investigate batshit conspiracy theories, including one suggesting that satellite technology from Europe was used to tamper with US voting equipment.
It appears Rosen, and other senior members of the DOJ, were not willing to pledge allegiance to Trump over the United States. “Pure insanity” is how Rosen and Richard Donoghue, who was the acting deputy attorney general, described Meadows’ emails. Trump then considered replacing Rosen with a sympathetic sycophant, Jeffrey Clark, who was then acting head of the civil division, to continue influencing the DOJ to help him succeed in his criminal, authoritarian coup.
These revelations, which are shocking and should be thoroughly investigated, come on the heels of the equally jaw-dropping but totally unsurprising news that the Justice Department, acting as Trump’s Luca Brasi, decided to retaliate against Democrats and the media.Specifically, prosecutors subpoenaed Apple for phone records of Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, their aides and family members, including a minor. The Justice Department also sought to retaliate against reporters and media outlets for “leaks” and attempted to seize thousands of emails and phone records of news outlets’ reporters.
If this sounds like the thuggish tactics used by strongmen and corrupt rulers in authoritarian regimes, well, it is. Let’s not forget Trump continues to praise Putin, and was friendly with Hungary’s Orban, who was “Trump before Trump,” Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Turkey’s Erdogan, Saudi Arabia’s Muhammad bin Salman, Israel’s Netanyahu, who is desperately copying Trump’s tactics to remain relevant, Egypt’s Sisi, and the Philippines’ Dutarte. None of them is particularly celebrated as champions of human rights, the free press, an independent judiciary or the small inconvenience known as a democracy by and for the people.
Thankfully, Trump lost and his efforts to erase his loss fell short, but his corrupting presence has contaminated not only the GOP but also the Department of Justice and law enforcement. We still don’t know the extent of how Trump and his allies pressured, corrupted and manipulated our democratic institutions from within to advance their perverse schemes for power and profit. What I do know after watching this hearing is that Jan. 6 was simply a sneak preview. The GOP and its right-wing allies in Congress, law enforcement, and conservative media are going to attempt another coup when they lose another election.
At Tuesday’s hearing, the committee wanted to investigate why it took the National Guard nearly four hours to respond to the U.S. Capitol breach even though top officials at the Defense Department received 12 urgent requests for help[said flynn bro gen'l not involved, then 180]
from the Capitol police chief and mayor. Meanwhile, Army leaders told the National Guard to “stand by” five times even as violence escalated, which eventually claimed five lives. Pipe bombs were also found near the U.S. Capitol and some of the protesters came with weapons, intending to assassinate Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We also know that officers are being investigated for their alleged role in the insurrection and that white supremacist groups, sympathetic to Trump and the GOP, have tried to infiltrate law enforcement agencies across the country.
The committee had the opportunity to question FBI director Christopher Wray, Gen. Charles Flynn—the brother of Michael Flynn, who was Trump’s disgraced national security adviser and is a prominent promoter of both the QAnon conspiracy and “the Big Lie”—and Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, director of the Army Staff. It was revealed that Gen. Charles Flynn and Gen. Piatt were both involved in a phone call in which Army leaders were worried about the “optics” of sending in the National Guard. That’s the same National Guard that quickly responded with massive force to peaceful BLM protesters and cleared others out of Lafayette Square with tear gas and violence last summer. No such concerns for “optics” were present then.
One would assume Republicans, who are allegedly so committed to law and order and national security that they held hearings on Benghazi and Clinton’s emails for years and have focused on antifa as a fake terrorist threat, would take the opportunity to dig deep into this massive failure of intelligence and law enforcement that allowed hundreds of armed, violent insurrections to take over the U.S. Capitol for the first time in 200 years. Or, they could ask FBI director Wray to do more to investigate and prosecute members of armed militias and white supremacist groups, some of whom participated in the violent insurrection, and are also the number one domestic terror threat in America.
Nope.
Instead, they used their time to whine, deflect and obstruct. They performed for their base and said the House should be spending its time and powers to investigate Dr. Fauci’s emails, the Wuhan lab theory, the border crisis, the threat of inflation and Biden’s economic policies. They also found time to whine about masking policies at the U.S. Capitol and to urge Americans to move on from the insurrection that Republican Rep. Clyde recently referred to as a “normal tourist visit.”
It’s time for them to behave like Republicans and finally bring a bazooka to this knife fight.
If you were the party that was actively aiding and abetting a violent insurrection, you’d want to “move on” as well. It was a grotesque spectacle seeing Rep. Paul Gosar grill Wray on who “executed Ashli Babbitt,” and suggesting, without evidence, that the officer who shot her was hiding and waiting to kill her. Gosar didn’t spend time worrying about Officer Sicknick, who died trying to protect his colleagues from Babbitt and the violent mob. Neither did 21 Republicans in the House who just opposed a bill to award congressional gold medals for Capitol Police officers who defended them against a violent mob during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Like some other House Republicans, Gosar actively supports white supremacist conspiracy theories, has ties to armed militia movements, and cheered on many of the events of Jan. 6. Wray said the FBI has arrested 500 people so far and is currently overseeing hundreds of investigations. They could start by talking to some Republicans like Gosar as members of his party have blocked a bipartisan commission to investigate the insurrection and acquitted Trump twice, with a majority of them even voting to cancel the election. Their conservative media ecosystem is actively gaslighting America and their base with dangerous conspiracy theories, as a majority of Republicans believe “the Big Lie” that Biden lost the 2020 election.
Thankfully, Democrats are in power. However, they retain a slim majority before the 2022 midterms that are stacked against them due to GOP gerrymandering and voter suppression. The question is whether this latest revelation of Trump and the GOP’s attempt to subvert democracy will force enough Democrats to finally abandon the dangerous illusion of “bipartisanship” and flex their power to fight for accountability and justice. One piece of good news is that Pelosi said Tuesday that the House committees will continue their investigations after Republicans blocked the Senate commission. Also, the House Oversight Committee said it will request Rosen, Meadows, and top Trump officials to appear for interviews in light of the latest revelations. Judging from what we’ve seen, Republicans won’t be forthcoming.
If they don’t comply, will Democrats finally flex their subpoena power, do a media blitz, and unite on messaging that Republicans are actively aiding and abetting the destruction of our democracy? One can only hope. It’s time for Democrats to unleash hell, as I’ve discussed before both here and here.
Our democracy is worth it. It’s time for them to behave like Republicans and finally bring a bazooka to this knife fight. If they forfeit their power and principle for “bipartisanship” then they might as well acknowledge they are actively complicit with a counter-majoritarian, extremist GOP that is actively trying to subvert democracy in front of our eyes.
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trump-election/
tom b raw
According to a report from the Guardian's Sam Levine, Republicans who have always dabbled in playing to the red meat crowd are now ramping up their efforts to use that voting bloc to remain in power by disrupting and questioning election results.
Faced with changing demographics and states -- - notably Arizona and Georgia --- that were once reliably Republican but are now sending Democrats to Congress, Republicans are looking for ways to stop the bleeding as their power melts away.
According to Levine, Donald Trump just gave them the roadmap by blatantly saying the election was stolen from him -- which has been well-received by more than just conservative extremists.
As his Guardian report notes, "... fanned repeatedly by Donald Trump throughout 2020, the myth of a stolen American election has shifted from a fringe idea to one being embraced by the Republican party. The so-called big lie – the idea that the election was stolen from Trump - has transformed from a tactical strategy to a guiding ideology."
According to UC Irvine law professor Richard Hasen, Republicans embracing Trump's "Big Lie" is a sign of an emerging trend that doesn't bode well for future elections.
"Voter suppression is not new, the battle lines have been drawn over that for quite some time. But this new concern about election subversion is really worrisome," he explained.
Edward Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University, concurred, adding, "I do think it's a relatively new phenomenon, unfortunately, and disturbing. We've had disputed elections in the past, but we've never had the denial of the basic mathematical reality of counting votes."
With the Guardian's Levine noting polls show that a majority of Republicans still believe that Trump is the "true president," he spoke with a former GOP operative from Florida who made a very candid admission that Republicans are seeing their position of power wither away and are being forced to embrace Trump's tactics .
"In the past, party elders, party leaders … exploited the crazies in order to win elections and then largely ignored them after the elections," explained Mac Stipanovich. "What has happened since then is that Trump opened Pandora's box and let them out. He not only let them out, he affirmed them and provoked them. And so now they're running wild and they are legitimatizing these delusions."
You can read more here.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
- Conservative slams 'propaganda princess' Maria Bartiromo for ... ›
- Trump's election lies may cost Republicans the House in 2022 ... ›
- How Trump's Presidency Is Fueling Right-Wing Nationalist & Anti ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- Republicans who embraced Trump's big lie run to become election ... ›
- US Supreme Court rejects Trump-backed bid to overturn election ... ›
- U.S. Supreme Court dumps last of Trump's election appeals | Reuters ›
===
fox caught shit for AZ ELECTION CALL, TRYING TO RECOVER?
https://www.mediamatters.org/liz-cheney/obscuring-what-liz-cheney-debate-about-fox-news-choosing-trumpian-authoritarianism-over
===
no lnx https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/republicans-trump-reinstated/
A disturbing number of Republicans actually think Trump will likely be 'reinstated' soon: poll
New analysis finds Trump’s support among white voters is slipping
Aldous J. Pennyfarthing
and Daily Kos
June 10, 2021
I'll never understand why anyone listens to Donald Trump on any subject. He wanted to nuke hurricanes. He wanted to put alligator-filled moats along the southern border. He thinks windmills cause cancer, asbestos is swell, and exercise is bad for you. He seriously suggested pumping our bodies full of UV light and disinfectant. He thinks we have planes that are literally invisible, for God's sake!
Nevertheless, millions of Trump fans have bent their brains into pretzels trying to make his doofus proclamations sound presidential—or even marginally nonsimian (see also: hydroxychloroquine).
We've pretty well established that Trump's brain is, at best, masticated circus peanut and, at worst, Lucifer's molten boom-booms, and yet when he dry-heaves utter batshit nonsense, plenty of his fans seem all too ready to lick it up like feral purse poodles.
Case in point: Fully 29% of Republicans think Donald Trump is returning before the year is out—possibly riding in on a cloud or a flaming chariot or (more likely) a golf cart with a cupholder and custom-installed deep fryer.
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll asked survey respondents this straightforward question: "How likely do you think it is that former President Donald Trump will be reinstated as U.S. President this year, if at all?" The question was no doubt included in the poll because Trump himself has been telling insiders that he thinks he'll be back in office by August. (Narrator: He won't.)
The results? (You still have time to bail if you've had your yearly quota of frothing insanity. You're still here? Okay, gird your loins.)
Among Republicans surveyed, 17% think it's "very likely" that Trump will return to the White House this year, 12% think it's "somewhat likely," and 10% don't know or have no opinion. Taken together, this shows that two-fifths of Republicans have not yet accepted that Joe Biden won the presidency.
Of course, that wasn't the only eye-opening result. Asked whether things are going in the right direction in the U.S. or on the wrong track, only 15% of Republicans thought things were going in a positive direction, while 85% said we're veering off course. Guess 85% of Republicans prefer raging pandemics and collapsing economies to Democratic presidents.
Is this what it's like to lick hallucinogenic toads for breakfast in lieu of frosted Pop-Tarts? At some point, do you just surrender to the unreality of your environment?
Over at Civiqs, even more Republicans report they're worried; a stunning 93% of card-carrying GOPers think we're all gonna die.
If you enjoy watching Donald Trump eat the Republican Party from within, like a genetically modified tropical eyeball worm, you'll be happy to know that the Politico/Morning Consultpoll found that 80% of Republicans want to stick around so they can see him play either a major (59%) or a minor role (21%) in the party going forward. If you'd prefer he stay in Florida chucking oyster shells at flamingos from his balcony, you'll likely be disappointed by the 13% of Republicans who want him to slink away.
There's also some good news, of course. President Biden's approval rating is at 53% among all registered voters, with 28% of respondents "strongly" approving of the job he's doing, 25% "somewhat" approving, 43% disapproving, and the rest offering no opinion.
Meanwhile, 66% of registered voters want Congress to pass an infrastructure bill—so maybe we should get that done, huh?
There's still some sanity left in the world, so long as you look in the right place. And that right place is clearly nowhere in the vicinity of the right wing. I invite Republicans to hurry on back to planet Earth. The water's fine. At least it is for now—unfortunately, only 12% of Republicans consider passing a bill to address climate change a "top priority."
Go figure.
From Your Site Articles
Republicans' chaotic audit of Arizona ballots for Trump may blow up ... ›
'He's a madman': Conservative confirms Trump believes the ... ›
Trump's 'insane lies' called out by top Arizona Republican election ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
29% of Republicans Say It's Likely Trump Will Be 'Reinstated' in ... ›
Trump Likely to Be Reinstated This Year, 30 Percent of Republicans ... ›
A Disturbing Number of Republicans Believe Trump's Batshit Claim ... ›
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trump-insurrection/
ah
In the 2020 presidential election, then-President Donald Trump ran on a fear-mongering "law and order" platform — insisting that the United States would be overwhelmed by violent crime, looting, chaos and anarchy if now-President Joe Biden were elected and warning that any "insurrectionists" would be dealt with harshly. But Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter, in an article published by The Bulwark on June 7, finds it ironic that the same Trump who ranted against insurrection encouraged the insurrectionist Oath Keepers — one of the far-right groups that attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6.
"On January 6, 2021, members of the Oath Keepers, high on conspiracies and disinformation, went to Washington, D.C. to support then-President Donald Trump," explains Carpenter, who is often featured as a conservative pundit on CNN. "They anticipated that they would be providing 'security' for 'patriots' attending his Stop the Steal rally — and should the need present itself, that they would put down an insurrection. In reality, their group, which explicitly recruits former military service members and law enforcement officers, helped spur an insurrection of its own. And today, some of the Oath Keepers are defendants at the center of the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history."
Carpenter recalls Trump's emphasis on "law and order" following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. On June 1, 2020, she notes, Trump "delivered a terse Rose Garden speech threatening to deploy the U.S. military to any city or state that 'refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents.'"
Carpenter notes, "Trump's staff argued that the threatened military deployment would have been permitted under the Insurrection Act of 1807, which empowers the president to deploy federal troops for domestic law enforcement under certain circumstances…. As summer changed into fall, talk on the right of an 'insurrection' that might be met with a military response shifted from the George Floyd protests and civil unrest to the 2020 election — the same terms and the same proposed action, just a new target."
You might be surprised how much June 1, 2020 had to do with January 6, 2021. Come with me as I seek to understand w… https://t.co/N9nWy3NgYv
— Amanda Carpenter (@Amanda Carpenter) 1623069890.0
When Trump appeared on Fox News in September 2020, Carpenter recalls, host Jeanine Pirro asked him how he would respond if he won the election and Democrats rioted. And the then-president responded, "We'll put them down very quickly if they do that. We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that if we want. Look, it's called 'insurrection.' We just send in, and we do it, very easy. I mean, it's very easy."
Carpenter goes on to say, however, that Oath Keepers founder and Trump supporter Stewart Rhodes "has been talking about insurrection for years." In an August 2020 Facebook post, Rhodes wrote, "Civil war is here, right now." And after Trump lost the election, Rhodes and Kelly Meggs (who heads the Oath Keepers' Florida chapter) declared that they would do whatever it took to keep him in the White House in 2021. In a December 19, 2020 Facebook post, Meggs wrote that he had formed an "alliance between Oath Keepers, Florida 3%ers (Three Percenters), and Proud Boys."
"We have decided to work together and shut this shit down," Meggs posted — and what he wanted to "shut down" was the certification of Biden's Electoral College victory over Trump in a joint session of Congress on January 6.
Trump, Carpenter stresses, railed against insurrection but had no problem with it when his "own supporters" were the insurrectionists.
"The fight that the self-appointed militia of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers apparently expected to have with Antifa on January 6 never materialized," Carpenter writes. "Ironically, their actions as part of the mob attack on the Capitol offered a defensible reason for invoking the Insurrection Act — but Donald Trump didn't invoke it against his own supporters…. Sixteen Oath Keepers have been charged with federal conspiracy, among other offenses, for their actions that day. Prosecutors have started discussing plea deals with some Oath Keeper members, which will presumably lead to more information about who else was involved in their activities."
From Your Site Articles
- Trump aide with top secret clearance beat officers with riot shield at ... ›
- Legal expert: Trump's 'liberate' Tweets 'incite insurrection' – and ... ›
- Mike Pence stuns audience by breaking his silence about Trump ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
- Donald Trump bears some of the blame for Jan. 6 insurrection, John ... ›
- Trump: Rioters in deadly Capitol insurrection posed 'zero threat ... ›
- John Boehner lays blame for 'that bloody insurrection' at Trump's ... ›
===
===
sounds like TP ~ BO?
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/demographics-of-trump-supporters/
cdv
Five months ago, supporters of Donald Trump attempted a coup to nullify the results of the 2020 presidential election, launching a lethal attack on the U.S. Capitol. Since then, the Republican Party has chosen to try to erase or rewrite the story of what happened that day, in order to conceal its culpability. Public opinion polls and other research show that the Republican Party's war on the truth about Jan. 6 — and reality more generally — is working. A majority of Republicans actually believe that the election was "stolen". A not insignificant number of Republicans also believe that the events of Jan. 6 either did not occur or were somehow crimes committed by antifa or Black Lives Matter activists as part of a plot to "discredit" Donald Trump.
In the months since Trump's supporters attacked the Capitol, what have we learned about them? To this point, 510 people have been charged with crimes for their participation in the Capitol attack, and 130 of those have been charged with assaulting, or otherwise causing harm to police or employees at the Capitol. Out of those 130 defendants, 40 have been charged with using deadly or dangerous weapons or causing serious bodily harm. Several dozen of those who raided the Capitol that day have been charged with conspiracy, and three defendants have also been charged with terrorism.
At least 62 members of right-wing paramilitary organizations and street gangs were among Trump's attack force on Jan. 6. Some of those present that day did in fact have serious plans to capture and kill Vice President Mike Pence and prominent Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Many of Trump's foot soldiers believe that they are "patriots" who were following his direct commands to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and keep him in power. Dozens of active-duty and retired military and police also participated in the attack on the Capitol.
Right-wing propaganda media, the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy cult, and white right-wing churches and other extremist groups played an outsized role in radicalizing Trump's supporters — which in turn led to the Capitol attack.
Trump's attack force was not exclusively "working class." It also included middle- and upper-class white people from all parts of the country — not just "red states" — who have been radicalized by racist fears of somehow being "replaced" by nonwhites.
Robert Pape, a political scientist and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, recently discussed the demographics of the Capitol assault in the Washington Post:
The charges have, so far, been generally in proportion to state and county populations as a whole. Only Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and Montana appear to have sent more protesters to D.C. suspected of crimes than their populations would suggest.
Nor were these insurrectionists typically from deep-red counties. Some 52 percent are from blue counties that Biden comfortably won. But by far the most interesting characteristic common to the insurrectionists' backgrounds has to do with changes in their local demographics: Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic White population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists who now face charges.
In an article for the Atlantic, Pape provides further context:
[T]he demographic profile of the suspected Capitol rioters is different from that of past right-wing extremists. The average age of the arrestees we studied is 40. Two-thirds are 35 or older, and 40 percent are business owners or hold white-collar jobs. Unlike the stereotypical extremist, many of the alleged participants in the Capitol riot have a lot to lose. They work as CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants. Strikingly, court documents indicate that only 9 percent are unemployed. Of the earlier far-right-extremist suspects we studied, 61 percent were under 35, 25 percent were unemployed, and almost none worked in white-collar occupations.
One dominant narrative about the rise of Trumpism is that it reflects a type of "working class" revolt, in which the feeling (and the reality) of economic precarity made Trump's fake populism seem like a viable solution to the country's problems. But such claims often obscure as much as they reveal about the rise of American neofascism and Trump's enduring power over his political cult members.
Research shows that the median household income of Trump's voters is around $72,000 a year — significantly higher than the median household income in the United States as a whole.Other research shows that white supremacy, racial resentment and a desire to protect white privilege are the central or perhaps principal values and beliefs that motivate Trump's followers.
Many members of the white upper class and rich voted for Donald Trump for reasons of personal financial self-interest (i.e., greed). Other Trumpists were attracted to his movement for ideological reasons such as a belief that America's secular democracy should be replaced by a Christian fascist autocracy.
One of the main rebuttals against a simple claim that working-class angst and rage was the swamp that birthed Trumpism is the fact that Black and brown members of the working class (and poor) overwhelmingly rejected Trump in both 2016 and 2020.
In an attempt to better understand these complex relationships between race, class, Trumpism and the events of Jan. 6, I recently spoke with Arlie Russell Hochschild. She is a professor emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of nine books, of which the most recent is ":{Strangers in Their Own Land:}: Anger and Mourning on the American Right."
In this conversation, Hochschild explains how a group she describes as "the elite of the left behind" are Donald Trump's real base of support.She discusses how Trump exploited feelings of shame, failure, entitlement and fear among the white working class to win them over to his fake populist movement. Hochschild also shares her thoughts on the Jan. 6 attack, which she sees not merely as an attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election but an attack on the idea of democracy itself.
Given the Age of Trump, his coup attempt and the Capitol attack, along with the myriad of other things he has wrought, how are you feeling?
I'm anxious. Was Jan. 6 a planned coup? Yes, I see it as definitely planned. But was it intended to kill people? I feel like it was a mixed event in that regard. Part of what happened that day was Donald Trump putting on a type of reality TV show. People were dressed in horns, for example. It was entertainment. The events of Jan. 6 were a type of assault — not just on people and property but on the very seriousness of democracy itself. So I had a double reaction. It was killing something, but what was it killing? It was killing a culture of faith in government and respect for civil servants.
You are absolutely right that there were mixed elements at work among Trump's attackers. But they did have a core group of people who were screaming that they wanted to kill Mike Pence, senior Democrats and others they targeted as enemies. If Trump's attack force had been successful and killed enough congresspeople, a quorum would have been impossible. I believe that was Trump and his co-conspirators' plan, to create enough death and chaos to declare martial law. How did you make sense of the obvious rage shown by that mob?
The people who voted for Donald Trump did so for a variety of reasons. There were those who voted for him because of taxes or social issues, guns or being "pro-life." Others because they liked Trump's bravado. Some because they feel a generalized sense of decline. Some Trump people supported him because of racism. I think that the dominant group of Trump voters are people I would call "the elite of the left behind." These are not the abject poor. However, they are not rich either.
They're rural or small-town and white. They sense themselves as being part of a declining part of society. I believe such feelings are also global with right-wing populism, as seen in response to such issues as race and immigration. Fear and anger is displaced onto scapegoated groups.
But the group that's doing such things here in the United States specifically are the "elite of the left behind." Going back to 1970, there are winners and losers to globalization and the winners are generally coastal and more cosmopolitan and better educated. They can have jobs that are not as vulnerable to being automated or off-shored.
These losers from globalization consist of different kinds of people. But the people who are mobilized are the elites of that group. I remember going to a Trump rally in a bus. This was in New Orleans, with a member of the Tea Party who I had gotten to know and who I was following around for my research. On the bus, people were saying, "Oh! Look how many of us there are! We're all for Trump!" Trump has mobilized them. He's pulled them together. He's gotten them to see each other.
And here is how I believe race is operative. The white Trump supporters I met actually see themselves as some type of minority group: "We're being put down. We are being prejudiced against. They call us rednecks and hillbillies."
The Age of Trump is a story of emotions. One of the main emotional beats is that Trumpism is a response to a declining sense of social capital on the part of his followers.
The folks that I got to know around Lake Charles, Louisiana, go to church once or twice a week and they know each other. They are the ones who stayed. Black people have left the community. The highly educated entrepreneurs and other change-makers have left too.
We see lots of rage on the television from these communities. But there are other emotions at play as well. We need to discuss shame. This is a group that is ashamed of itself. This is partly the fault of American Individualism. If you're doing well, you take credit for it. If you're failing, that's your fault and you feel ashamed. That is connected to being part of the economy and community that is vulnerable to offshoring, which is part of a more general story of the American Rust Belt.
These people are not doing as well as their fathers, which is the classic male comparison to make in terms of the American Dream. They are supposed to be doing better than their parents did, but they are not.
In many ways the data shows that class differences cut deeper than they did 20 or 30 years ago. In 1970, if you had a B.A. or you did not, it didn't make too much difference in terms of the likelihood that you're married, that you're staying married, that you're living with the mother of your children, that you're coaching basketball, that you're going to church, and that you're employed. Those things were pretty similar whether a person had a B.A. degree or not.
But now a B.A. degree has an entire biography attached to it in terms of what it means and represents. Now a person without a B.A. may have a narrative where they are living with their third partner. They lost custody of the kids. Their grandparents or parents are taking care of them.
Another version of this story sees you having a hard time kicking an addiction. You're out of the labor force. You're selling drugs. You've got a little bit of jail time. You're ashamed. This isn't a story just of deprivation or whining about deprivation; it is a story of loss and shame.
Many of these people I spoke to are feeling a sense of loss. They're feeling shame because they are not doing as good as their father and grandfather and the era they harken back to. Donald Trump has brilliantly exploited such feelings and presented himself as an answer to that shame.
Here is how Trump accomplishes it. Trump does something outrageous. For example, he says, "Mexicans are rapists." Then the press and punditry will say, "You can't say that! It is outrageous!" The mainstream news media shames Trump and then he rages at the shamers.
I believe that there is something cathartic there for the "elite of the left behind," a group that is right-leaning. It is about getting rid of shame, almost like going to confession at Catholic church. Trump's followers love him for that. They are proud to "make America great again," and that includes "Make you and your class and your race great again" as well.
The "elite of the left behind," as you describe them are not poor people. As we know from research Trump's supporters have a median household income of about $73,000 a year. These are not poor people. How and why do they believe they have been "left behind"?
Among the 47 percent of people who voted for Trump, some of them are just really rich and wanted to cut their taxes more. They want to get richer. But the people that I talked to, who I consider "the elite of the left behind," are not rich. They're not even upper middle class. These people are middle and lower middle class.
With these intersections of whiteness, class and social capital there is also a deep anxiety that somehow they will "slip down" America's hierarchy and be equal with or perhaps (in their minds) below Black people.
I believe that is correct. They feel very similar to how they imagine poor Black people to be, and they are afraid of that: "Now it's our turn. This is going to happen to us." In one of the chapters of my book, I examined the position of poor whites as being wedged between rich whites and black people. They think the only way out is to identify up to the other white people. That is the psychology at work. It happened in the plantation South and it is still here in the 21st century.
What are your thoughts about the book "Hillbilly Elegy"? I have heard many people speak about your book "Strangers in Their Own Land" with "Hillbilly Elegy" literally in the same conversation. I found the praise for "Hillbilly Elegy" very much unwarranted.
I didn't have that response to the book. I took "Hillbilly Elegy" to be a type of fairy tale. It's a kind of a rags-to-riches narrative. It has the structure of "I was a born of an addict, which means I was born psychologically poor, I had one dad after another." That means there was no steady male figure in the picture. That is the "rags" part of the narrative. Then the narrative becomes "I had a steady partner who was a Supreme Court law clerk, and I will be a better person than I came from." At its heart, "Hillbilly Elegy" really is a psychological rags-to-riches story.
There remains so much superficial writing and other coverage of and about the so-called white working class in the mainstream news media, especially among the pundit class and political reporters. To your eyes, what did they get wrong?
They're listening through a hardened shell. It takes emotional labor to disarm your deep moral and political alarm system and permit yourself a great deal of genuine curiosity about people who you see as some type of Other. That's hard work to do. You have to do it purposefully. That's what I think many people can't do. If one feels like the person in front of you would attack you under normal circumstances, it is not a natural act to open up to them.
From Your Site Articles
- Republican 'base is vanishing': These figures show why the GOP is ... ›
- Is Trump's advantage in the Electoral College slipping away ... ›
- Republican Voters Are the Only Demographic Group to Support ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
- US election 2020: Why Trump gained support among minorities ... ›
- Election results: White people make up the majority of Trump voters ... ›
- US voter demographics: election 2020 ended up looking a lot like ... ›
===
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/capitol-rioter/
violence
an 621 ah
On December 21, 2020, far-right extremists — including members of the group Patriot Prayer — breached security when they entered the Oregon State Capitol Building in Salem in order to voice their opposition to COVID-19 restrictions in the Pacific Northwest state. And according to an investigative report released on Wednesday, June 2, Oregon **State Sen. Mike Nearman**"more likely than not" helped them get into the building, which was closed to the public and locked.
The seven-page report was authored by Melissa Healy, a private attorney, and it came about as a result of complaints against Nearman — a far-right Republican from Polk County. The report reads, "The evidence supports a conclusion that it is more likely than not that Rep. Nearman intentionally aided demonstrators in breaching Capitol security and entering the building on December 21, 2020, when it was closed to the public."
Although Oregon is a deep blue state — the last Republican to carry Oregon in a presidential election was Ronald Reagan in 1984 — it isn't without its far-right wingnuts and extremists. And the militant Patriot Prayer, which violently clashed with antifa supporters during the George Floyd protests in Portland in 2020, has been bitterly opposed to COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing measures enacted in Oregon in response to the pandemic. Patriot Prayer are allies of the Proud Boys — another group with a history of violence — and were strong supporters of former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election.
Democrats in the Oregon State Legislature believe that Nearman endangered their safety by helping members of Patriot Prayer and other groups get into the Oregon Capitol Building on December 21, 2020. Some of the demonstrators, according to the report Healy authored, were armed.
Dirk VanderHart, a reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting, explains, "As lawmakers met in a special legislative session to take up COVID-19 relief that day, surveillance footage showed Nearman exiting the locked Capitol Building into a throng of protesters who were trying to get inside the statehouse. In doing so, he appeared to purposely grant entrance to far-right groups demanding an end to ongoing restrictions related to COVID-19."
According to VanderHart, "Shortly after that breach, demonstrators scuffled with state troopers and Salem police. One man is accused of spraying officers with bear mace, allowing the crowd to make its way further into the building. Several people were arrested before the Capitol was cleared, and members of the crowd went on to shatter glass doors and assault journalists outside the building. Nearman, meanwhile, promptly walked around the building and entered on the opposite side less than six minutes after he exited, the report says."
The assault on the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6 made Democratic state lawmakers in Oregon even more troubled by the events of December 21, 2020.
"More than two-dozen Democratic state representatives filed a workplace complaint against Nearman on January 12," VanderHart notes. "The investigation says that David Hartsfeld, the facility services manager at the Capitol, filed a complaint against Nearman on February 23."
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
- The Proud Boys mark their threatening return in Oregon - Alternet.org ›
- Republican lawmaker charged for role in Oregon Capitol riot ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- Representative Mike Nearman of Oregon, Who Let in Protesters, Is ... ›
- Groups call for lawmakers to oust state Rep. Mike Nearman | KATU ›
- Oregon Lawmaker Who Opened State Capitol To Far-Right ... ›
new inauguration date is set': Inside the latest QAnon conspiracy theory to 'reinstate' Trump
Zachary Petrizzo Salon June 02, 2021
"No reason," Flynn answered. "I mean, it should happen here."
QAnon and evangelicals: Republicans baptized in crazy - Alternet.org ›
'An idiocracy based on a digital prophet': QAnon longs for a fascist ... ›
QAnon cultist businessman goes on Newsmax to say 'Trump is ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
QAnon: What is it and where did it come from? - BBC News ›
What Is QAnon, the Viral Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory? - The New ... ›
Ex-Trump Lawyer Sidney Powell Tells QAnon Crowd Trump Can Be ... ›
jenna attacked for saying trump can't be re-install in aug b/c you know lAW/REALITY?
621 MAGA heads go berserk over 'incompetent failure' Jenna Ellis after ... ›
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trump-reinstated/
NO LNX TWT
On June 1, the New York Times' Maggie Haberman reported, on Twitter, that former President Donald Trump still believes that the 2020 election results will be overturned and that he will be "reinstated" to the White House by August. Haberman discussed her reporting during a June 2 appearance on CNN's "New Day," stressing to hosts John Berman and Brianna Keilar that Trump is "echoing" the false claims he is hearing from attorney Sidney Powell and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
"There is no mechanism by which this can happen," Haberman said of Trump's delusional claim that he will be returning to the Oval Office by August. But Trump's delusions, Haberman added, are being encouraged by Powell and Lindell — and he is "regurgitating" their bogus claims.
Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August (no… https://t.co/0gUGozPQQR
— Maggie Haberman (@Maggie Haberman) 1622551318.0
Haberman told Berman and Keilar, "What he's doing is echoing things that are being said by Sidney Powell, who was his lawyer — although he distanced himself from her at certain points over the final months of the administration. But she was helping advise him on these efforts to overturn the election last year. This is being said my Michael Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow — who has been pushing this for some time. (Trump) is echoing what they're saying. The difference between them saying it and Donald Trump saying it is that one is the former president — one is a possible future (Republican) Party nominee…. There are people telling him things are possible that are not possible."
Powell and Lindell have been relentless far-right promoters of the Big Lie, falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump — who, Haberman said, has been "so laser-focused" on the recent election "audits" taking place in Arizona and other states because he "thinks they are going to overturn" the 2020 election results.
JUST NOW: "“There is a dangerous component about this conversation that's going on.” @maggieNYT on her reporting t… https://t.co/u3fuzgsHhr
— John Berman (@John Berman) 1622632941.0
Trump, Haberman warned, is trying to use the "conservative media ecosystem" to promote his fantasies of being "reinstated" to the White House this summer.
"People are in their own media ecosystems," Haberman observed.
Berman pointed out that some Trump opponents are upset with Haberman for tweeting about the former president's delusions, and the Times reporter responded that "ignoring" Trump will not make him go away in 2021 any more than it did in 2015 and 2016.
Haberman told Berman and Keilar that Trump "is in control of the Republican Party, to a big extent…. Ignoring him was not the answer in 2015."
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
MAGA heads go berserk over 'incompetent failure' Jenna Ellis after ... ›
'A new inauguration date is set': Inside the latest QAnon conspiracy ... ›
Trump tells followers he 'expects to be reinstated' in August as ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
Trump's Facebook account should never be reinstated because we ... ›
Today Is The Day QAnon Believes Donald Trump Will Be Reinstated ... ›
QAnon Believes Donald Trump Will Be Reinstated As President ... ›
===
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/paul-gosar/
raw reed
Messages leaked to the *Washington Post* implicate Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) in a plot to create a so-called "Brooks Brothers Riot" in his home state to block President Joe Biden's victory.
Woodrow Johnston, the vice president of political consultancy McShane LLC, told an undercover liberal activist posing as a Trump supporter that Gosar wanted to use the far-right Proud Boys gang to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election in Arizona.
"We might need to do the same here in Nevada," Johnston added in his message.
The protests that Johnston organized remained peaceful and did not actually disrupt vote counting.
Even so, Johnston's boss, Rory McShane, distanced his consulting firm from efforts to organize protests against certifying the election.
"I was unaware of these texts, but I know Mr. Johnston was not working on behalf of any client or organization," he said. "Our management team has met with Mr. Johnston. I'm confident he sees the error of what he did."
Gosar's office claimed that the Trump-loving Arizona congressman was not in contact with Johnston and denied coordinating any election-related protests.
The original "Brooks Brothers Riot," which took place in Florida more than two decades ago, was organized by Republican campaign operatives who successfully disrupted the vote recount in the Miami-Dade County election office after the 2000 presidential election.
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
- 'You've lost your mind': GOP Rep. repurposes MLK tribute — in ... ›
- A GOP congressman just tweeted a white nationalist slogan in a ... ›
- Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar launch 'America First ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- Rep. Paul Gosar thinks Capitol rioters are the victims here? ›
- Six Siblings of a Republican Congressman Endorse His Opponent ... ›
===
===
an 521 R Reich
At the risk of being the skunk at the picnic, I feel compelled to warn you that if we forget and move on from the tragedies of this past year, we're setting ourselves on a dangerous path. Of course I understand the desire to forget all the unpleasantness and start a new chapter. But if we do, we're inviting greater tragedies in the future.
Let me remind you: Donald Trump lied about the results of the last election. And then – you remember, don't you? – he tried to overturn the results.
Trump twisted the arms of state election officials. He held a rally to stop Congress from certifying the election, followed by the violent attack on the Capitol. Five people died. Senators and representatives could have been slaughtered.
Several Republican members of Congress encouraged the attempted coup by joining him in the big lie and refusing to certify the election — even after the mob desecrated the halls of our democracy.
This was in January of this year, yet we seem to be doing everything we can to blot it out of our memory. Meanwhile, those responsible for instigating the attack haven't been held accountable in any respect — including by the media.
The Washington Post hosted a live video chat with Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley, a ringleader in the attempt to overturn the results of the election. Hawley had even made a fist-pump gesture toward the mob at the Capitol before the attack.
But the Post billed the interview as being about Hawley's new book on big tech. It even posted a biography of Hawley that made no mention of Hawley's sedition,referring instead to his supposed reputation "for taking on the big and the powerful to protect Missouri workers" and as "a fierce defender of the Constitution."
CBS This Morning interviewed Florida Republican Rick Scott, another senator who tried to overturn the election by not certifying the results. But there was no mention of his sedition, either. The CBS interviewer confined his questions to Biden's spending plans, which Scott unsurprisingly opposed.
Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also repeatedly appear on major news programs without being questioned about their attempts to undo the results of the election, or their continued promotion of Trump's lies.
The media is supposed to serve as a crucial check on those in power. But in its breathless desire to cover the "news" it is failing to remind us of our recent past.
The consequences of this failure are dire.
Trump's big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and that President Biden is not legitimate, is not disappearing. A majority of Republican voters believe him.
That big lie is being used by Republican state legislatures to justify an all-out assault on the right to vote.
Hours after Florida enacted new voting restrictions, Texas's Republican-led legislature pushed ahead with its own bill that would make it one of the hardest states in which to cast a ballot.
The Republican-controlled Arizona Senate launched a private recount of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County – farming out 2.1 million ballots to GOP partisans with no experience in ballot counting or election monitoring. At least one person involved in the recount participated in the Capitol attack.
The Republican Party even purged one of its leaders, Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, for telling the truth about the election.
Meanwhile, Republican state legislatures are muscling their way into election administration, as they attempt to dislodge or bully local election officials who have always run our voting systems.
Trump's big lie will continue to flourish unless the lawmakers who went along with it and have failed to renounce it face real consequences.
That means no book promotions, no cushy interviews, no guest op-eds in the Sunday paper.
What possible excuse is there for booking them if they have not publicly retracted their election lies? If they must appear, they should be asked if they continue to deny the election results and precisely why.
It also means a thorough independent 9-11 type inquiry into what happened, whether members of Congress were involved, how Donald Trump and others were involved.
Republican leaders must not duck this. History is watching.
They must be held accountable to the truth. Otherwise the trauma of 2020 will return — perhaps in even more terrifying form.
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/ammon-bundy/
david n kos
One of the consequences of the GOP's sidelong embrace of its extremist elements—from the insurrection denialists and Big Lie gaslighters to the QAnon cultists like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert—is that far-right extremists are now perfectly comfortable identifying as Republicans. In some cases, they're demanding the overthrow of the party's establishment—which can't seem to decide whether to fight back or just succumb willingly to the incoming far-right tide.
Establishment Republicans in Western states are particularly under siege from extremist elements among their voting base. I**n Idaho**, for instance, armed-standoff-guru-turned-pandemic-denialist Ammon Bundy filed paperwork to run for governor, in a race already featuring another leading state "Patriot" movement figure. InNevada, an insurgent far-right group organized on social media and led by Proud Boys members are attempting an open hostile takeover of the Clark County GOP, the state's largest county-level Republican organization.
Bundy's filing is rich in irony. For starters, he is currently banned from the Idaho Statehouse in Boise after his two ejections and arrests for defying masking requirements, for which he is currently standing trial. For another, as KTVB notes, Bundy himself is not even registered to vote in Idaho, and has apparently never done so in the five years or so that he has lived in Emmett.
He also named himself the treasurer of his campaign, which means that he will have to refile the paperwork, according to the Idaho Secretary of State's office, which tweeted out an explanation: "Because a treasurer must be a registered Idaho voter, Ammon Bundy will either need to register and refile or name a new treasurer by refiling. IDSOS staff have notified him as such."
The Republican field to replace incumbent Governor Brad Little (who has not announced whether he will seek re-election) is already large, and Bundy's competition in the primary already features another leading "Patriot" movement figure, Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin,who announced her candidacy last week. While Bundy was probably the earliest far-right figure in Idaho to take up the cause of opposing COVID-19-related public-health restrictions, McGeachin—who has supported Bundy and his fellow standoff-loving "Patriots" steadfastly from her office in Boise—has also been on the pandemic-denialist bandwagon.
McGeachin appeared alongside Bundy at one anti-restriction rally in Boise. More notoriously, she appeared in a video in which she brandished a handgun and a Bible while sitting in the driver's seat of a pickup, railing against coronavirus restrictions.
The political insurgency inside Clark County's GOP was reported Friday by Rory Appleton at the *Las Vegas Review-Journal*,who explained that a group of far-right activists with deep ties to the Proud Boys are positioning themselves to take over the county Republican leadership. Some of its members, meanwhile, are alleged to have threatened a number of prominent Republicans.
The group, Appleton reported, organized online—primarily using the encrypted chat app Telegram—while reveling in anti-Semitic and white-nationalist memes and rhetoric. "Two Republican women in public office told the Review-Journal they've been threatened by leaders of the fringe movement, as did the current board of the Clark County party, which is hiring security for a crucial meeting Tuesday," the story reads.
Calling itself the "Republican Chamber of Commerce" (despite lacking ties to any known GOP organization), the far-right group first made its presence felt last month when it organized a late surge in votes favoring the censure of Barbara Cegavske, the state's Republican Secretary of State, for refusing to play along with attempts to overturn the 2020 election results based on Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud.
Since then, it has been preparing to provide a similar wave of votes to sweep three of their three leading figures—Rudy Clai, Matt Anthony and Paul Laramie—into the leadership of the Clark County GOP. The group has no record of doing business anywhere in the state of Nevada, and has no connection to any of the known chamber or Republican groups already established in Nevada.
Yet its website appears to be a nominally mainstream GOP group. Its primary emblem resembles the Republican National Committee's logo but inverted, with a red elephant on a white background encircled in red with the letters "RCC" and "Republican Chamber of Commerce" within.
Anthony has achieved a level of media notoriety as one of Las Vegas' most prominent Proud Boys, though he insists the local chapter is nonviolent and nonracist. After the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, he defended the people arrested and warned against a law-enforcement crackdown on "Patriots": "They're basically going all in on tyranny, guys. … They're watching. It's to be expected. They're the enemy. They're going to shut down our ability to communicate."
As it happens, Anthony is also a fugitive: He is the subject of an arrest warrant from the state of Michigan after he broke probation by moving to Nevada and then refusing to return after Nevada declined to oversee his probation, all stemming from his 2012 arrest on a drug charge.
The group's Telegram channel—owned by Anthony, and administered by Clai—is titled "Keep Nevada Open," apparently an offshoot of a Facebook group with the same name that boasted 17,000 members and organized anti-masking and other pandemic-related protests. Appleton describes a review of the channel's contents by the Clark County GOP executive board, led by chief of staff Richard MacLean:
MacLean showed his fellow board members several pictures and videos posted within the group, though not specifically by Anthony and Clai.
One photo blamed the 9/11 terrorist bombings on Jews. Another video featured a long clip of an Adolf Hitler speech and Nazi soldier marches. Some featured cartoon characters with negative Jewish stereotypes, and one photo featured messages written on dollar bills.
A post even poked fun at Republicans, claiming they seemed to be shocked at certain current events while white nationalists were thrilled by them.
The board promptly ejected the three men from the party. However, on Thursday, 10 people including Anthony and Clai filed a lawsuitagainst both the county and state party central committees, accusing them of illegally boxing them out of Clark County GOP meetings. They claim Clai and Anthony are heading up an alternative leadership slate, and are running against a mainstream ticket headed up by state Sen. Carrie Buck.
Despite the pushback by local Republican officials, the extremist elements remain emboldened in no small part because national-level Republicans have shown their eagerness to ignore the radicalism and even embrace it. Certainly, the local far-right leaders are confident that the party's base supports them, and not the establishment players.
"We have the numbers, and they don't, so they have to play dirty," Anthony said in an interview Thursday. "It's that simple."
McGeachin's campaign signs feature the hashtag #IAmIdaho. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are at a pivotal moment in history, not just for Idaho but for our nation," McGeachin said.
Bundy told NBC News on Monday that, despite the filings, he hasn't formally announced his candidacy, but is preparing to build a campaign organization.
"The people of Idaho are very freedom-minded," Bundy said. "I had never desired (to run for office), but I knew as early as 2017 that I would run for governor of Idaho."
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
- How a 'constitutionalist' Oregon sheriff rules his rural county like a ... ›
- Fox News 'Hero' Cliven Bundy Is a Pampered Millionaire, Not a ... ›
- The theology of Ammon Bundy: A historian explains how the 'White ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- Ammon Bundy to run for Idaho governor | ktvb.com ›
- Ammon Bundy files paperwork to run for Idaho governor, but ... ›
- Anti-government activist Bundy arrested at Idaho Statehouse ›
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gop-big-lie/
ah
After the 2020 presidential election, then-President Donald Trump had no shortage of Republican allies — from members of Congress to attorneys — who were anxious to help him promote his conspiracies and join him in making the false claim that the election had been stolen from him because of widespread voter fraud. And some of those Republicans, according to journalist Zach Montellaro, are now trying to become election officials in their states.
In an article published by Politico this week, Montellaro reports, "Republicans who sought to undercut or overturn President Joe Biden's election win are launching campaigns to become their states' top election officials next year, alarming local officeholders and opponents who are warning about pro-Trump, 'ends justify the means' candidates taking big roles in running the vote. The candidates include Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, a leader of the congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results; Arizona State Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the top proponents of the conspiracy-tinged vote audit in Arizona's largest county; Nevada's Jim Marchant, who sued to have his 5-point congressional loss last year overturned; and Michigan's Kristina Karamo, who made dozens of appearances in conservative media to claim fraud in the election."
Hice, Finchem and Marchant, Montellaro notes, are all running for secretary of state "in key battlegrounds that could decide control of Congress in 2022 — and who wins the White House in 2024."
"Their candidacies come with former President Donald Trump still fixated on spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election, insisting he won and lying about widespread and systemic fraud," Montellaro explains. "Each of their states has swung between the two parties over the last decade, though it is too early to tell how competitive their elections will be. The campaigns set up the possibility that politicians who have taken steps to undermine faith in the American democratic system could soon be the ones running it."
In Maricopa County, Arizona, Trump supporters have been conducting a bogus "audit" of the 2020 presidential election — and Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, is one Republican who has been vehemently critical of that farce. Gates told Politico, "Someone who is running for an election administration position, whose focus is not the rule of law but instead, 'the ends justify the means,' that's very dangerous in a democracy. This is someone who is trying to tear at the foundations of democracy."
Hice is challenging in Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a conservative Republican who angered Trump when he declared that now-President Joe Biden won the Peach State fair and square and pushed back against Trump's bogus voter fraud claims.
In Arizona, Finchem has been a vocal supporter of the Maricopa County "audit," and Stephen Richer, a Republican who serves as Maricopa County recorder in Arizona, is among his outspoken critics on the right.
At a recent press conference, Finchem said, "Mark Finchem is running for secretary of state. Process that," he said. "If the election was completely fraudulent, as he says, why would you run for secretary of state?
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
- Here's the insidious reason Liz Cheney angers Republicans ... ›
- The decades of deceit behind the 'Big Lie' - Alternet.org ›
- A new GOP 'big lie' plot is in the works - Alternet.org ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- Opinion | Trump's Big Lie Devoured the G.O.P. and Now Eyes Our ... ›
- Why Republicans are keeping Trump's Big Lie alive | Salon.com ›
- Why Republicans won't walk away from the 'Big Lie' - CNNPolitics ›
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/end-of-enlightenment/
common dr robt freeman
The Enlightenment was a time of intellectual ferment in the Western world following the Middle Ages. Its ideas gave birth to the modern world.
We know the Enlightenment from the names of its most brilliant expositors: Francis Bacon, John Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and others. We know its ideas as the foundation of our social world: the social contract, the rule of reason, the rule of law, consent of the governed, natural rights, constitutionalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and others.
The Republican agenda is a direct assault on all of that. It literally aims to return America to the pre-modern, pre-Enlightened darkness of the Middle Ages. If it succeeds, it will reverse more than three hundred years of human progress.
The most egregious of Republican assaults on the modern world is its rejection of Reason. Reason is the way we know what we know. It is not through revelations from God, or the pronouncements of priests or monarchs as had been the case before the Enlightenment.
Reason as a process for discovering Truth started in the Scientific Revolution around 1550. It was so powerful a way of knowing the physical world, the philosophers of the Enlightenment adopted it for knowing—and improving—the social world. It became the foundation of all subsequent Enlightenment thought, and all modern institutions.
The Republican broadside against Reason was on display in the first days of the Trump administration when Trump asserted that his inauguration crowd size was the largest in history. Presented with facts to the contrary, in photographic evidence, his assistant, Kellyanne Conway, proclaimed the existence of "alternative facts." It's been downhill since.
Republican discourse is a never-ending torrent of lies, idiocies, and absurdities—the very antithesis of Reason. The Muslim invasion. The caravan bringing murderers, rapists, drugs, and disease. Democrats eating babies. A satanic cult of pedophiles running the "Deep State." A pandemic that would "disappear, like a miracle." The greatest economy in the history of the world. Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head being canceled. Biden's hamburger ban. A rigged election. Massive voter fraud. Terrorists who were really just tourists handing out hugs and kisses. It never ends.
The Republican assault on Reason is an attack not just on truth itself, but on our very capacity to think at all. With their base, Republicans address not the neo-cortex—the thinking part of the brain—but the amygdala—the lizard-brain seat of fight-or-flight. The amygdala subordinates logic, facts, reason, and deliberation to deceit, conspiracy, hysteria, and fear.
It's easier to trigger hatred and fear than thinking and logic. That's why Republicans do it. That's why their base—and increasingly, their "leaders"—sound like zombies, like robots, like members of a cult when they're interviewed for the evening news. They are. They've been programmed to fear and hate and blame, and the reinforcement is unending, [feedback? amplif?] because, to work, it has to be. Otherwise, they become unprogrammed.
It doesn't matter that none of the endless effusion of lies ever turn out to be true or that they are routinely, repeatedly abandoned in favor of newer lies for the next news cycle. What matters is that the lies incite indignation, and that the dopamine high that follows gets its constant, programmed, ever-increasing reinforcement.
Trump's 35,000 documented lies are the embodiment of it all.It is a leprous, insidious disease, an inability to deal with reality, but literally the one by which Republicans define themselves. Glandular excretions are the Republican formula for generating voter turnout: inciting Pavlovian rage based on a torrential fantasmia of lurid lies. It works, but it is the living, suppurating antithesis of Reason.
Another Republican assault on the legacy of the Enlightenment is the attack on Democracy. It was John Locke who, in 1689, wrote that people who were able to think could not be bullied like ignorant people could. If government wanted thinking people's cooperation it could no longer rely on the medieval divine right of kings. It needed to obtain "the consent of the governed." This, of course, became a sacrament of the American political order.
The opening words of the Constitution are, "We the people of the United States…" That is not a paean to monarchy, or to dictatorship. It is a statement that the consent of the people—and only that consent—provides a government its legitimacy. But Republicans are working feverishly to overturn the consent of the governed, to destroy Democracy.
Their assault on the Capitol on January 6th was the most conspicuous effort to overthrow the legitimately elected government of the United States but it was not the first and will certainly not be the last.Republicans insist that their reason-denying mobs, their goons, their Brownshirts will tell the rest of us how we will be governed. No consent involved, only submission: ours. You can see this in their fevered efforts at voter suppression, explicitly preventing majority rule and the consent of the governed.
Republicans cannot win power on the strength of their ideas and policies. They lost the presidency, the Senate, and the House. Large majorities favor policies backed by Democrats. So, they need to destroy Democracy itself to gain power. To do that, they need to destroy Reason as the way we know what we know. That is the core, the essence, the modus operandi of the Republican enterprise.
Constitutionalism is a third Enlightenment ideal that Republicans are intent on destroying. A constitution defines how a country is to be governed. Before constitutions, it was autocracy that called the shots. Think of Louis XIV's notorious declaration: "I am the state." Decisions were made by caprice, by the rich and powerful, in their own interests, everyone else be damned. Constitutionalism embeds the Rule of Law—another Enlightenment ideal—into a society, making "equal treatment under the law" a modern treasure, however badly it may be realized.
Besides losing all of the branches of the federal government, Republicans failed over and over and over to persuade the judicial branch to sanction their usurpation of the Constitution. So, they resort to performative charades like the farcical ballot laundering farrago in Arizona to try to undo the Constitutionally-ordained process for the peaceful transfer of power. Now, they're taking it to other states. It will not end.
We could go on. Republicans want to destroy the social contract—another Enlightenment ideal—that says you get ahead on the basis of hard work. They insist, instead, that privilege should be based on race, with the best spots reserved for whites. This violates the Enlightenment ideal of equality for all.
Remember the opening words of the Declaration of Independence? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Pure Enlightenment. In the Republican world, however, like in Orwell's Animal Farm which was an allegory of the degradation of Soviet totalitarianism, all men are created equal, but some—whites—are more equal than others.
We should be clear. This is not about peripheral protests over policy preferences. It is a broadside against the foundation, the institutional undergirding of our civilization. It is an attempt to destroy the conceptual milieu that has survived for centuries and that, however flawed it may be, has delivered the greatest freedom, expansion of rights, material progress, and human opportunity the world has ever known.
The measure of our alarm should be that Republicans, with the help of a complicit media, have managed to normalize rampant public lying, the unrestrained desecration of Reason, are carrying out an open, unabashed attack on our democracy, are carrying out notorious, savage assaults on Constitutionalism, the Rule of Law, Equality, and more. Our nation is literally under attack by anti-Enlightenment zealots determined to tear it down and it's not at all clear that they will not succeed.
It is indicative that the Republican party's highest priest is a thrice-married pathological liar, an admitted sexual assaulter, a draft dodger, a six-time filer for bankruptcy, a man who inflicted hundreds of thousands of excess deaths on the country, was twice impeached, who lost two successive popular vote counts, and who then attempted to overthrow the government. Read that sentence again and think about its implication.
The Republican hero, the man they model themselves on, the one they want us to bow down to, is a failed business man, a failed reality TV star, a failed president, a career con man who is the most corrupt, certainly the most craven and creepy individual ever known to American politics. This is the best Republicans have to offer. That is who they are, and what they insist on inflicting on all the rest of us, our consent be damned.
The Enlightenment helped the world replace monarchy with republicanism, a world ruled by theology with a world of science, autocracy with the rule of law, aristocratic privilege with the equality of all men, and feudalism with capitalism. No matter how imperfectly it may have been realized, it was as noble a vision as human beings have ever devised. The two worlds are the difference between the "Dark Ages" that went before and the modern world. That is the Republicans' promise to America.
More regression. More destruction of beautiful ideals and noble institutions. More degradation of deserving people. More humiliation of undignified people, themselves being the examples. More carnage. More chaos. More slime spewed on everyone.
There's not a syllable of inspiring vision in anything they have to say, not a word of uplifting ideals in any of it. It is all pathetic self-victimization and a lust for vengeance against those who refuse to respect them. We must all be dragged into the sewer that spawned, that is, and that sustains Donald Trump. That is his and Republicans' retaliation against a people who once had the temerity to believe in majestic ideals, the audacity to strive for them, and who once imagined that they might even be worthy of them.
===
https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/carlos-gimenez/
ME
a Republican congressman is at the center of controversy for his latest remarks suggesting he was aware of planning for the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
During an appearance on CNN, Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) explained why he did not vote in favor of former President Donald Trump's impeachment following the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. But as he offered his explanation, he also said something else that caught the attention of viewers and flagged by Vox reporter Aaron Rupar.
Gimenez admitted that he did not believe Trump incited the insurrection saying, "I didn't think [Trump] incited the events that happened."
However, he also revealed people inside his hotel room were discussing plans to "do something" at the federal building which suggests he may been aware of what was to come. He added, "I know for a fact that I saw people in my hotel room that were saying they were gonna do something at 2 o'clock, and that happened at 9 o'clock in the morning."
Host Erin Burnett seemed to just let this bizarre remark go by.
But the comment led to tons of questions from Twitter users in response to the video. Many wondered if Gimenez alerted authorities prior to the insurrection since he was in the presence of people discussing plans for later that day. One user wrote, "So, did Carlos Gimenez report these insurrectionists to the Capitol Police or other authorities that morning?"
@atrupar @jeffpearlman So, did Carlos Gimenez report these insurrectionists to the Capitol Police or other authorit… https://t.co/0SYvJ39mDP
— Norman Ornstein (@Norman Ornstein)1621539773.0
Another user also noted Gimenez's remarks about the people in his hotel room. That person wrote, "Gimenez said: 'I saw people in my hotel ROOM that were saying they were gonna do something at 2 o'clock…' What were these people doing in his hotel room?"
@NormOrnstein @atrupar @jeffpearlman Gimenez said: “I saw people in my hotel ROOM that were saying they were gonna… https://t.co/vLa6k8c02W
— Roland Kausen (@Roland Kausen)1621540561.0
Based on Gimenez's remarks, some users think he should be interviewed to determine whether or not he may have had prior knowledge about the insurrection. "Did Rep. Gimenez notify the Capitol Police, the FBI, the Secret Service - anyone in a position to defend the Capitol?" one Twitter user asked, adding, "I think Rep. Gimenez needs to be interviewed by the FBI."
@atrupar Did Rep. Gimenez notify the Capitol Police, the FBI, the Secret Service - anyone in a position to defend t… https://t.co/rzEafj8rHA
— Cathy Coleman (@Cathy Coleman)1621536631.0
@atrupar Wait. Is @RepCarlos suggesting he had advance knowledge of the events of January 6? @FBIWFO
— MoreSkyPlease (@MoreSkyPlease)1621536284.0
@atrupar Assuming he was completely clueless about it, as he would have us believe... after an actual insurrection… https://t.co/eyZCQ0FCh4
— ClearingTheFog (@ClearingTheFog)1621591729.0
@atrupar Interesting what Insurrectionist Republican was in his hotel room? Reminder that the incitement start lo… https://t.co/4JWHd04SYw
— Respectful Dialogue (@Respectful Dialogue)1621566751.0
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
- Alaska's bipartisan state House coalition is imperiled following GOP ... ›
- DeSantis takes legal action against the CDC -- but some legal ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- Carlos Gimenez Ousts Incumbent Democrat in South Florida House ... ›
- GOP's Carlos Gimenez defeats Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell ... ›
===
Rep. Jody Hice, Rep. Andrew Clyde and other far-right Trumpistas in the Republican Party have been claiming that the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol Building was "not an...
https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/capitol-riot-2653051980/
Corporations have sent $2.6 million to ‘Sedition Caucus’ Republicans who promoted the January 6 sinsurrection': report
ah 521
A common talking point among far-right Trumpistas — from Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri to Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida — is that Corporate America, especially big tech, has it in for Republicans and is using "cancel culture" in an effort to bully them into silence. Hawley, in his fundraising e-mails, has claimed that "woke" corporations are "canceling" him for promoting election security. But according to a new report by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, corporate dollars have been flowing, in a big way, to Republican "insurrectionists" in Congress who voted against certifying President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory over former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
CREW members Robert Maguire and Caitlin Moniz, in an article published by its website this week, explain, "In just the first few months since the (January 6) insurrection, corporate and industry PACs have contributed more than $2.6 million to campaigns, leadership PACs, and party committees allied with the 147 members of Congress who fed the Big Lie that led to the deadly attack on the Capitol. In all, 170 business PACs — some of which had previously committed to stop giving — have donated to political committees that support and defend the members who voted not to certify the election results."
The many Senate and House Republicans who voted against Biden's Electoral College certification have been slammed as "the Sedition Caucus" by Democrats as well as by some Never Trump conservatives. And Corporate America, according to CREW, has been generous with Republicans who promoted the Big Lie.
"So far, at least 103 of the 147 members of the so-called Sedition Caucus, along with the two main GOP congressional party committees, the (National Republican Senatorial Committee) and (National Republican Congressional Committee), have benefited from corporate giving after January 6," Maguire and Moniz note. "The ten members with the most corporate donations as of the end of March, which is the latest date for which data is available, have nettedmore than $22,000 each from an average of ten business PACs per member."
Maguire and Moniz cite Rep. Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania as a member of the GOP "Sedition Caucus" who received "$44,000 from 17 corporations and industry groups." Another Republican they mention is Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri.
"The NRCC and NRSC — the two main party committees backing Republicans in the House and Senate — have brought in a combined $1.7 million from PACs tied to more than 57 companies and industry groups," Maguire and Moniz note. "The list includes household names likePfizer, Intel, T-Mobile, and CVS, as well as PACs tied to trade groups that represent industries as varied as real estate, mortgage banking, and insurance agents."
Another company mentioned in CREW's report is Cigna.
According to Maguire and Moniz, "The health insurer Cigna…. released a statement after the insurrection saying that it would "discontinue support of any elected official who encouraged or supported violence, or otherwise hindered a peaceful transition of power." But within a month, its PAC was back to making contributions, starting with a $15,000 contribution to the NRSC — soon followed by another $15,000 to the NRCC."
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
- Inside the Capitol riot: What more than 500 Parler videos reveal ... ›
- Capitol riot suspect from Florida claims he was breaking into the ... ›
- Democrats move to censure GOP House members who downplay ... ›
RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB
- U.S. House approves Capitol riot probe; many Republicans buck ... ›
- McCarthy Opposes Commission to Investigate Capitol Riot - The ... ›
- What we know about the Capitol riot arrests - CBS News ›
https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/ron-johnson-2653047519/ agitators, rest peaceful
===