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enemies list

7 22 sems to broadening out/imitated

MSNBC HAS LIST/GRID, 10 25 REID HOFF

see rhet

see fascism PARDON TRUMP

see traitor EXECUTE FIRING MILES TAYLOR BO

see deep state

death threat VIOLENT RHET

see retaliation ALSO TWO SEE TRUMP LAWFARE

see bondi

see kashyap

BANNON SAID VOUGHT WAS INSTRUMENT OF GOD’S VENGEANCE?! pp 10 25

alan weisman lisa monaco

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sadly primary 12 23

trump threatened to jail Milley, amp since then?

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NEWSWEEK

Who Is on Kash Patel’s ‘Enemies List?’ Pam Bondi Confronted Over FBI Pick

Jan 16, 2025

By Ewan Palmer

News Reporter

Newsweek is a Trust Project member

Pam Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for attorney general, addressed questions about the so-called "enemies list" compiled by the potential next FBI director, Kash Patel, during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

While responding toquestions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bondi assured that the dozens of namesappearing in Patel's 2023 book, Government Gangsters, would not be unfairly targeted by the Department of Justice under the Trump administration.

Newsweek has contacted Bondi, Patel and the Trump transition team for comment via email.

Why It Matters

Trump's decision to tap Patel to replace Christopher Wray as FBI director has raised concerns that the president-elect might use the federal agency to target political opponents as an act of retaliation.

Patel, a former federal prosecutor and staunch Trump supporter, has publicly expressed a desire to confront the "deep state" in government.

VID]

Bondi, the former Florida attorney general,about Patel's "enemies list" during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island asked whether Bondi would have hired someone to the Florida attorney general's office if they had an "enemies list."

Bondi pointed out the senator was referring to the dozens of names compiled by Patel in his 2023 book. Bondi stated she does not believe Patel has an "enemies list" and that such a list would never be enforced in the Department of Justice.

She added that no one will be prosecuted or investigated because they are a political opponent under the new administration.

Patel hasmentioned targeting "conspirators" in government and the media during a December 2023 appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast.

Patel wrote in Government Gangsters that his list of "members of the executive branch deep state" working against Trump was not exhaustive. The list includes longtime political opponents of Trump, such as President Joe Biden, 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton, and former FBI Director and "Russiagate" special counsel Robert Mueller.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who resigned in December 2020 after Trump continued to push false voter fraud claims even after the Department of Justice said there was no evidence, is also included in the list.

The 2023 list resurfaced in December when Trump announced Patel as his pick for FBI director.

On Monday, Democratic Representative Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania called on Biden to issue preemptive blanket pardons to those on Patel's list during his final days in office.

Who Is on Kash Patel 'Enemies List'?

What People Are Saying

Pam Bondi at Wednesday's confirmation hearing: "There will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice."

Democratic Vermont Senator Peter Welchposted on X: "Pam Bondi promised me during our hearing today that 'No one will be prosecuted or investigated because they are a political opponent.' I'm going to hold her to that if she's confirmed.

Kash Patel, during a December 2023 appearance on War Room: "We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media. We're going to come after you whether it's criminally or civilly. We'll figure that out."

Democratic Representative Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania in a January 13 statement:"Donald Trump and Kash Patel have made their intentions unmistakably clear. Patel's so-called 'enemies list,' brazenly published in his own book, is a blueprint for political retribution against those who stood firm in defense of our democracy and the rule of law. This is no hypothetical threat—it's a dangerous roadmap for the abuse of power."

The FBI declined to comment.

What Happens Next

A date for Patel's confirmation hearing for the role of FBI director has yet to be confirmed.

Bondi, who replaced former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz as the attorney general nominee, is not expected to face significant issues securing Senate confirmation to lead the Department of Justice.

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MMA

October 17, 2025, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): We are living in the f-aroundest of times and the find-outingest of times.

And, I personally believe that it is the most entertaining thing that has happened over the past nine months, that those communists who accused Donald Trump of crimes are guilty of the crimes in which they are accusing Donald Trump. It is the iron law of wokeism. It is actually part of Saul Alinsky's plan. It is actually part of the Communist Manifesto. Every Bolshevik that has ever lived practiced this. We're against the bourgeois because they're gonna genocide us, and then the Bolsheviks go on to genocide half the population.

Right? Like, we're against the capitalists because they're here to kill you, and then the communist will go and kill half the population. Right? Mao Zedong kills 60 million people. They will accuse you of the crimes of which they are guilty. Now we found this out with Letitia James. Leticia James accused Donald Trump of real estate mortgage crimes, and it turns out that she has now been caught cold committing those exact same crimes, but far worse than Donald Trump ever committed them. She's been indicted for that. James Comey went after General Flynn, Donald Trump for lying to Congress, for lying under oath, for lying to the federal government and FBI. James Comey indicted for that exact same thing.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Brennan and James Clapper, they're in very hot water because of what they did launching the Russia collusion hoax, raiding Donald Trump's house and so on and so forth. It turns out that they've hoaxed themselves directly into some real legal trouble. And we hear that that's going to be heating up quite quickly. Interesting little birdies tell us this.

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AN 10 25 BADASH

National security, military, legal, and political experts are warning that President Donald Trump crossed a dangerous line in his latest speech — a televised, rally-style address to more than ten thousand U.S. Navy service members in which the Commander in Chief urged the troops to “take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats,” a statement many view as an authoritarian abuse of the military’s apolitical role.

“But we have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder, called the Democrats,” Trump told the cheering Navy crowd in Norfolk, Virginia, that included sailors, SEALs, and Marines. “They want to give all of our money to illegal aliens that pour into the country.”

The late Sunday afternoon event was slated as a celebration of the Navy’s 250th anniversary.

Juliette Kayyem is a senior public policy lecturer and the faculty director of the Homeland Security Project and the Security and Global Health Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as well as a CNN senior national security analyst and a contributor to The Atlantic, according to her bio.

She wrote: “‘Take care of’ is not subtle. This weekend the ground has shifted and no person can deny what the president, unpopular and unfit, intends. To remain silent is to welcome this. They can both sides or claim they didn’t hear, but there is no wiggle room about his plans now.”

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Political and national security analyst, and well-known veterans advocate Paul Rieckhoff called the President’s “gnat” remark “wrong, outrageous, shameful and disgusting.”

“These are lines that should never been crossed,” he warned. “And have never been crossed. But he keeps crossing them.”

“Never let them normalize how wrong it is to attack political opponents when speaking to a military audience,” Rieckhoff added. “This is impeachable behavior. But not a single member of Congress has the courage to make the case. And it’s getting worse fast.”

Stanford Professor of International Studies in Political Science Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, remarked: “In front of this audience, this statement is wrong… and scary. He is supposed to be the president of the United States of ALL Americans, not just his party. Polarization is destroying our country at home and making us weaker abroad.”

Political and communications consultant Jesse C. Lee, a former Biden and Obama official, observed: “Trump is on a tour of speeches to our active military, telling them that the new focus is going to be on wars against the ‘enemy within’ and that Dems are bugs that need to be exterminated, while sending the National Guard to occupy ‘Democrat run cities.’ Textbook fascism.”

U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) wrote: “Donald Trump keeps blurring the line between law enforcement and the military to go after political opponents. It’s unacceptable, and it’s how authoritarians consolidate power. We must name and resist every attempt to use government power to silence dissent.”

Gregg Nunziata is the executive director, Society for the Rule of Law, a Federalist Society member, and a former attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

He wrote: “‘We have to take care of this little gnat on our shoulder called the Democrats,’ says the American President to cheering servicemembers. This is so incredibly repugnant and un-American, on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin.”

Dave Cavell, a former speechwriter for President and First Lady Obama and Vice President Harris, remarked: “I’m a former WH speechwriter who has written many speeches to those who serve. I can barely describe the rage and shock I feel seeing this lunatic spew vile, fascist style garbage at our troops, whose mission is to serve us all, not a party — or this bozo.”

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MMA Jesse Watters calls CNN “treasonous” for reporting on the Pentagon’s Iran bombing damage assessment}:

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June 26, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

JESSE WATTERS: You know, everyone's feeling this huge swelling of patriotism and then CNN comes along and sullies it. Now, CNN says, "We didn't do anything wrong," but CNN spent 48 hours with guests at the top of every single hour saying, "The mission failed," saying, "The bombs didn't work," says, "The Iranians still have a nuclear program." What kind of effect does that have? You're basically taking classified information and using it to undermine the commander-in-chief and cast doubt on the effectiveness of the American military capabilities, and putting the commander-in-chief at a disadvantage when he's trying to maintain a ceasefire. It's treasonous. That's the t-word, Jessica.

And Kash and Bongino are going to be looking at these congressmen now, because I have a suspect list. I feel like I know who this person was, and you could easily find them, there's a limited amount of people that had access to this intelligence. You go and see who got access to it and then you narrow it down and then you get a warrant for their phone. So they better lawyer up, because someone's going to go to prison for a very long time.

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acting Undersecretary of State Darren Beattie is looking to assemble a “Twitter files”-style document trove to “build a blacklist of people who should be frozen out or even targeted by the administration as enemies,” says Atlantic columnist Tom Nichols, who added the move could also “chill any contact between [the government] and people or organizations who have not passed the administration’s political purity tests.”

Beattie, a “self-styled ideological commissar,” left Trump’s first administration in 2018 after CNN revealed he’d attended a conference featuring prominent white nationalists. In 2019, he worked for then-Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) where he argued FBI agents were in the crowd as provocateurs during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” he posted a few months ago on X.

READ MORE: Is the tide really turning against Trump? Expert says 'there's no going back'

But now Beattie is demanding all “staff emails and other records with or about a host of individuals and organizations that track or write about foreign disinformation,” and “all staff communications that merely reference Trump or people in his orbit, like Alex Jones, Glenn Greenwald, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”

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In addition, he is requesting a search of communications for keywords, including ‘Pepe the Frog,’ ‘incel,’ ‘q-anon,’ ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ‘great replacement theory,’ ‘far-right,’ and ‘infodemic,’” according to MIT Technology Review.

Daniel Fried, a career State Department official and former US ambassador to Poland, told MIT the request “approaches the compilation of an enemies list.”

“This should be a scandal, but instead it will likely be filed away by many Americans … as just the clumsy zealotry of a minor official rather than yet another assault by one of Trump’s servants on American constitutional freedoms,” Nichols writes. “Unfortunately, Trump’s mania for loyalty above all else almost guarantees that Beattie’s disgraceful attempt will not be the last such effort at Soviet-style political policing in the United States government."

READ MORE:'Starting to see cracks': Trump admin scrambling to hire air traffic controllers before 'disaster'

Read the full Atlantic report here.

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no lnx

Is this the moment American democracy finally broke?

Thom Hartmann April 11, 2025

The highest form of freedom in a democracy isn’t just the right to vote or protest — it’s the right to speak truth to power. To call out corruption. To challenge lies. To stand firm when the powerful demand silence. This is the freedom that sustains all others.

And it’s the one Donald Trump tried to crush yesterday with the stroke of a pen.

When he signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to investigate Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor — two public servants whose only crime was telling the truth — Trump didn’t just abuse his office. He weaponized the government against honesty itself.

This wasn’t law enforcement: It was political vengeance. This wasn’t democracy: It was a warning shot from the edge of autocracy.

And if we let this slide — if we treat it as just another Trump headline — we are inviting the next strongman to do the same, only worse.

The freedom to speak truth to power is either sacred, or it’s gone.

Thus, Donald Trump just moved America miles down the road toward our becoming a police state. There’s no other way to describe it.

His Executive Order (EO) signed yesterday demanding criminal investigations into Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor — and his public statement that Taylor is a “traitor” guilty of “treason” — are nothing short of a blatant assault on the rule of law and a perilous step toward turning America into a dictatorship.

This isn't just about settling personal scores; it's a calculated move to instill fear, silence dissent, and dismantle the very foundations of our democratic institutions.

Can you imagine yourself being called a traitor by the president of the United States and thus facing prison? Having to hire expensive attorneys that may well force you to sell your home to pay for, just to defend yourself? Not to mention having to protect yourself and your family from the rightwing enforcers who are probably at this moment doxxing and threatening Krebs and Taylor?

This echoes tactics used by autocrats throughout history: Stalin’s purges, Nixon’s enemies list (though less successfully executed), and more recently, Orbán in Hungary, Duterte in the Philippines, or Putin in Russia. If normalized, it risks further turning the U.S. into an illiberal democracy or autocracy, where elections occur but power is retained through fear, manipulation, and coercion. Or worse, a violent kleptocracy like Russia.

Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), had the audacity to do his job by ensuring the integrity of our elections and debunking Trump’s baseless lies of fraud in the 2020 election. Miles Taylor, who served as Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security, dared to speak out against the administration's reckless policies and wrote a book.

Their “crime”? Upholding their oaths to the Constitution and telling the truth.

By weaponizing the Department of Justice to pursue these individuals, Trump is not only abusing presidential power but also sending a chilling message to current and future whistleblowers: “Cross me, and you’ll pay.” This is the hallmark of a despot, not a democratically elected leader.

But Trump isn’t stopping there. He’s extending his vendetta to the very institutions that safeguard our legal system and might defend Taylor and Krebs.

Law firms like Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block are being targeted with punitive measures — revoked security clearances, terminated federal contracts, and restricted access to federal buildings including courthouses — all because they’ve had the courage to represent clients like these two who have challenged Trump’s overreaches.

In addition to signing an executive order targeting two former employees yesterday, Trump also signed one attacking yet another law firm, this time Susman Godfrey, which helped Dominion Voting Systems get millions from Fox for their 2020 election lies.

This is a direct attack on the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right to legal representation. When the government intimidates law firms into submission, it erodes the adversarial system that is essential for justice.

The implications are dire. If attorneys fear retribution for taking on cases that oppose the administration, who will hold the government accountable? Who will defend people like Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor?

This orchestrated campaign of intimidation is designed to create a chilling effect, deterring legal professionals from defending those who dare to speak truth to power.

This EO is a tactic ripped straight from the playbook of violent, authoritarian regimes like Putin’s, Erdoğan’s, and Orbán’s, where the law becomes a tool of oppression rather than justice.

Moreover, this politicization of the Department of Justice undermines its very mission. The DOJ is meant to operate independently, free from political influence, to uphold the law impartially.

Yet, under Trump’s directive, it is being transformed before our eyes into his personal enforcer, pursuing baseless investigations to settle political scores in ways Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of. This perversion of justice not only delegitimizes the department but also erodes public trust in our legal institutions.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t just about Krebs, Taylor, or the targeted law firms: It’s about the survival of our democracy. When a president can wield power to punish dissent and dismantle checks and balances without consequence, we are treading dangerous waters.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Trump’s actions are a direct assault on these freedoms, aiming to silence opposition and consolidate power.

The legal community is beginning to push back. Over 500 law firms have united to challenge these types of executive orders, recognizing them as a grave threat to our constitutional governance. Former top lawyers from major corporations have also voiced their opposition, understanding that this isn’t just a legal issue but a fundamental attack on the principles that underpin our society.

However, resistance must extend beyond the legal profession: we all must speak out. Every American who values democracy, justice, and freedom should be alarmed by these developments.

This is a moment that demands vigilance and action. We cannot afford to be complacent as the pillars of our democracy are systematically dismantled. The phone number for Congress is 202-224-3121, and another set of demonstrations are scheduled for a week from this coming Saturday, April 19th.

If there was ever any doubt, Trump’s authoritarian ambitions are now laid bare. His actions are not those of a leader who respects the Constitution or the people he serves: They are the actions of a man desperate to exploit and cling to power by any means necessary, even if it means destroying the very fabric of our nation.

This executive order is more than just a scandal — it’s a frontal assault on democracy. It shows Trump’s willingness to use the machinery of state as a weapon against truth and accountability, and underscores the urgent need to safeguard democratic institutions, enforce accountability, and reaffirm the independence of the rule of law in America.

If we fail to hold Trump accountable for turning the justice system into a tool of revenge, we are not just rewriting the rules — we're erasing them.

Democracy doesn’t “die in darkness.” It dies when truth becomes a crime and silence becomes survival. The time to speak up is now—while we still can.

NOW READ: The sickening secret sauce to Trump's political success

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

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

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

...

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

READ MORE: Trump official urging Fox viewers to buy Tesla stock decried as 'abuse of power'

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

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

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

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

READ MORE:'Red flag': Alarm as judges face threats of violence after ruling against Trump

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

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

READ MORE:'Clear and present danger': Experts alarmed at 'insanity' of Musk getting secret war plans

*Read the full Axios article at this link.

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MMA

December 10, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Here's what we're going to turn the page on. We're going to fire everybody in this illegitimate regime on moment one. Everybody, every battlefield commission, every historical society, the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, every person that was put in by this illegitimate regime is going to be shown the door. Shown the door.

And we dare you, if you're listening, we dare you, because we know you are. We dare you to give a blanket preemptive pardon on these criminals. Yep, on Fauci. Yep, on shifty Schiff. Yep, on Milley. Yep, on Liz. Liz had a big long thing yesterday. She came back with President Trump, you know, President Trump said something about that – about J6. No.

We're going to pardon all the J6 people who have been in the prisons and then they can get the civil suits and come after you people personally, which they have to do.

…

I'm sure there'll be a couple of, three, you know, investigations and see where that gets. Maybe a special counsel. Maybe. I think that'd be pretty cool. But, hey, that's all decisions guys are got to make. I'm not - I'm just sitting here in front of a microphone screaming like a madman.

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

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

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

WATTERS: Not a bad place to start.

TARLOV: Sure.

Trump FBI nominee has a full 'enemies list' — Here’s who’s on it - Alternet.org

kash

podesta? deep state

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an 11 24

One of Donald Trump's staunchest supporters — former chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense and conspiracy theorist Kash Patel — has been nominated by the president-elect to direct the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

According to a Sunday, December 1 Rolling Stone report, the ex-Trump administration official might just be the MAGA leader's "scariest hire yet."

Per the report, Patel is aiming to "purge the so-called 'Deep State,' and "recently publicly pledged to investigate and prosecute Trump’s enemies in the media and government."

READ MORE:['Quickly rot from within': Expert reveals 3 traits the US shares with declining empires

The New York Times reports that the Trump ally's "former colleagues have questioned his qualifications," such as federal public defender Michael Caruso, who said "Patel shied away from filing motions that he was likely to lose."

Patel also launched a nonprofit, The Kash Foundation, that he says "offers financial help to a range of recipients, including the families of people charged for their" participation in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

Additionally, Rolling Stone notes, the potential future FBI director "is a hyper-MAGA, vengeance-minded Trump loyalist to the point that even some Trump advisers recognize as an extreme liability — even if those aides and confidants aren’t willing to do much to get in Patel’s way, mostly due to Trump’s protection of the man."

READ MORE:['Literally holding our breath': J6 rioters having 'anxiety' over Trump 'silence' on pardons

*Rolling Stone's full report is available at this link (subscription required). The New York Times' report is here (subscription required).

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lnx

alternet-logo

Biden must use 'preemptive pardons' to protect these 6 people Trump singled out: columnist

President Joe Biden signs an Executive Order on protecting personal data, Wednesday, February 28, 2024, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

Alex HendersonNovember 26, 2024Frontpage news and politics

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) has been warning that Pam Bondi — former Florida attorney general and President-elect Donald Trump's new nominee for U.S. attorney general — will likely be all in on Trump's "revenge" campaign if confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Klobuchar, during a late November interview, told ABC News, "Does it concern me that revenge would be part of her mission? Of course it does."

During an August 2023 appearance on Fox News, Bondi threatened, "The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted... The investigators will be investigated."

READ MORE:'Build your army': Trump’s Pentagon pick wants Christian nationalist 'boot camps' for kids

Journalist Eleanor Clift shares Klobuchar's concerns. Her solution: President Joe Biden must exercise his "preemptive pardon" powers while he still has a chance.

In a November 26 opinion column for the Daily Beast, Clift argues, "Trump knows how the game works, and he's been upfront for months about using every lever of government to seek retribution from those who he believes wronged him. His choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, is an election denier who should be disqualified on that alone. Instead, she is expected to lead the charge purging the DOJ of anyone who worked on prosecuting Trump, while also wasting taxpayer money to dig up alleged fraud from the 2020 election."

Clift continues, "Trump has threatened many of his adversaries, and he will soon have the power to make good on his threats. President Biden must act and use his pardon power to safeguard a lengthening list of people who are on the receiving end of Trump's threats. They will say they've done nothing wrong, and they're right. Preemptive pardons are problematic, a get-out-of jail free card when you haven't committed a crime. But they're needed now that President-elect Trump is gearing up his revenge tour."

Clift cites special counsel Jack Smith as a likely target of Trump's "revenge" campaign.

READ MORE: 'Appalling': George Conway has a prediction about 'spineless' GOP senators

"Before he leaves office, Biden should pardon Liz Cheney, a profile in courage who we haven’t heard from since the election, and Nancy Pelosi, another unafraid leader and favorite target of Trump," Clift argues. "Then, the two generals deserve pardons: Mark Milley, who said he fears being recalled into service so Trump can court-martial him, and John Kelly, Trump's longest serving chief of staff who said Trump is a fascist."

Clift adds, "Also in the crosshairs are Adam Kinzinger, the former GOP congressman who served on the 1/6 committee, and Senator-elect Adam Schiff, who oversaw Trump's impeachment and is the butt of Trump’s nasty nicknames."

READ MORE: 'Build your army': Trump’s Pentagon pick wants Christian nationalist 'boot camps' for kids

Eleanor Clift's full Daily Beast column is available at this link (subscription required).

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an 11 24

U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz Friday evening revealed the chilling details of an apparent potential assassination plot he says has endangered his life and his family. The Florida Democrat says police arrested a suspect who is a former felon, had body armor, a rifle, an antisemitic manifesto, with “only my name on the ‘target’ list.”

“The day before the election, I was notified by the Margate Police Department, located in my Congressional District, about a potential plot on my life,” Congressman Moskowitz said in a statement. “The individual in question was arrested not far from my home; he is a former felon who was in possession of a rifle, a suppressor, and body armor. Found with him was a manifesto that, among other things, included antisemitic rhetoric and only my name on the ‘target’ list. There are many other details that I will not disclose as I do not want to interfere with an ongoing investigation. I want to thank local law enforcement, the US Marshalls, the FBI, the US Capitol Police, and the US Attorney’s office.”

READ MORE: [‘Chief Shareholder in the Presidency’: Musk on Trump-Zelenskyy Mar-a-Lago Call Fuels Fears]

“As someone who was appointed to the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump, I understand the failures and importance of fixing the protection of our current and future Commander- In-Chief and Vice President.”

Rep. Moskowitz adds that, “At the same time, I am deeply worried about Congressional member security and the significant lack thereof when we are in the district. Regardless of our political affiliations or differences, we all have families we want to keep safe.”

In a post on social media, Moskowitz added, “Serving my constituents is a great honor, but it has put my family in danger.”

READ MORE: ‘Probably Illegal Rumors’: Trump Calls for Investigations — to Protect His Interests

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'Listen here, sweetheart': Possible Trump AG pick threatens NY’s Letitia James with 'prison' - Alternet.org TISH J

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Donald Trump is the first president-elect in U.S. history to win an election while awaiting sentencing on 34 criminal counts.

It remains to be seen what type of sentence Justice Juan Merchan will impose if the sentencing goes ahead as scheduled in late November. Meanwhile, special counsel Jack Smith's two federal cases against Trump were doomed when Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris on Election Night 2024. And Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference/RICO case against Trump and a long list of allies remains in limbo.

During a Thursday, November 7 broadcast of Fox News' "The Five," two of the hosts — Greg Gutfield and Dana Perino — called for "the death penalty" for Trump's prosecutors.

READ MORE:**'Listen here, sweetheart': Possible Trump AG pick threatens NY’s Letitia James with 'prison'**

Gutfield mockingly told his colleagues, "A lot of the people that were on this and wanted it so badly, how are they going to survive? Do you think they need therapy?”

Perino responded, "Yes, they definitely need therapy, and maybe also the death penalty."

Gutfield agreed, saying, "Yes, I think the death penalty."

Some legal experts are recommending that Smith write final reports on both of his cases against Trump, putting them to rest before Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2025.

READ MORE:[Path forward' to Democrats winning may come sooner than you think: analysis

The Daily Beast's Grace Harrington points out that Trump, as president, will have the ability to parDon federal charges but not charges at the state level.

"There are currently ongoing state cases against him in New York, for giving hush money to a porn star, and in Georgia for election interference," Harrington notes. "Trump cannot pardon himself for state crimes. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting Trump's case in Georgia, just won reelection."

READ MORE:[How Garland’s 'truly historic legal missteps' let Trump dodge accountability

Watch the Fox News video and read Grace Harrington's Daily Beast article[at this link.

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alternet-lno lnx

The list of who Donald Trump has 'pledged to punish' — according to one of his targets

David Badash November 06, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris, now the former Democratic presidential nominee, frequently said on the campaign trail: “On day one if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemy’s list. When elected, I will walk in with it to do list.”

Donald Trump is now President-elect and, according to Politico, he has “a lengthy inventory of people he’s pledged to punish.”

“For years, Trump has peppered his speeches and social media posts with vengeful calls for his political opponents, his critics and members of the media to be prosecuted, locked up, deported and even executed. In the waning weeks of the 2024 campaign, he escalated those promises of retaliation to a fever pitch,” Politico reports Wednesday. “Now that he’s won, he has both a popular mandate — and the power — to begin implementing his platform of punishment.”

Trump “will be emboldened by a Supreme Court ruling that grants presidents broad immunity from criminal accountability after they leave office. And he is expected to be surrounded by aides more willing to dispense with norms to carry out his wishes.”

READ MORE: ‘Be the Guardrails of Democracy’: Liz Cheney and Other Never-Trumpers Suggest Path Forward

Back in March of 2023, Trump declared, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”

Who’s on his list? According to Politico, nearly two dozen individuals, largely in the legal and political spectrum, along with dozens of intelligence specialists, and unnamed journalists:

President Joe Biden

Vice President Kamala Harris

Former President Barack Obama

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi

New York Attorney General Letitia James

Manhattan Justice Arthur Engoron

Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney

Special Counsel Jack Smith

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg

Former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley

Former FBI Director James Comey

Hunter Biden and the rest of the Biden family

Former FBI special agent Peter Strzok

Former FBI attorney Lisa Page

Rep. Adam Schiff (Now Senator-elect Schiff)

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

Former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Mark Pomerantz

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen

U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd

Rep. Jamaal Bowman

51 intelligence professionals who signed letter about Hunter Biden laptop

Members of the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack

Unspecified people engaged in election fraud

POLITICO reporters, editors and publisher

It’s not just Politico.

Trump has often called the mainstream media, the “enemy of the people.”

In his victory speech early Wednesday morning, Trump referred to the press as, “the enemy camp,” according to The Guardian.

“Introducing his running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, Trump said: “I told JD to go into the enemy camp. He just goes: OK. Which one? CNN? MSNBC? He’s like the only guy who looks forward to going on, and then just absolutely obliterates them.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The list Raiklin has been circulating since January is extensive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Attack on our democracy’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who is Ivan Raiklin?

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

Raiklin was different.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Operation Pence Card’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whitewashing the crimes of violent J6 rioters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cultivating relationships with House Republicans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Go to the maximum level’

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

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

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

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

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

The response was less than promising.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Mack said Raiklin’s score is currently 0.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Gonna face those guns’

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

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

Trump is as defiant as ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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an 12 23

as part of their Project 2025 agenda, Donald Trump's MAGA allies have — according to reports in the New York Times, the Washington Post and Axios — been thinking long and hard about the type of MAGA Republicans they would like to include in a second Trump Administration if he wins the 2024 GOP presidential nomination and goes on to defeat President Joe Biden in the general election. The idea of Project 2025 is to give the United States' federal government a thorough MAGA makeover and make sure that only devout, unquestioning loyalists are hired.

MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan has been slamming Project 2025 as a dangerous recipe for far-right authoritarianism. During a recent broadcast, the progressive host cited "unhinged" GOP attorney Mike Davis as a troubling example. Donald Trump Jr. and "War Room" host Steve Bannon are among the MAGA Republicans who have been touting Davis as a possible candidate for U.S. attorney general during a second Trump Administration.

To show how extreme Davis is, Hasan showed clips of him on "The Benny Show" promising that as attorney general, he would "put kids in cages" and send political opponents to "the gulag." On October 1, 2023, Davis tweeted, "The violent Black underclass is a danger to America…. We must resume the mass incarceration of these thugs. In the meantime, Americans must arm up. These monsters will kill."

Hasan told viewers, "Mike Davis is on their radar not in spite of, but because of, his unhinged rhetoric…. Mike Davis is something that the Trump Administration lacked the last time around: a skilled, even competent, veteran of Beltway legal politics and right-wing causes — one who seems keen to transform Trump's darkest fascist impulses into an actual policy agenda…. Mike Davis is super-authoritarian and as we've discussed, super competent. That makes him super dangerous."

Hasan added, however, that Davis is only one of the many "authoritarians" Trump and his loyalists would like to hire. The MSNBC host noted that according to Axios, they are hoping to install, in the federal government, a "pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents."

READ MORE:Revealed: Trump's Project 2025 agenda aims for 'total control' of the federal government

*Watch the full video below or at this link.

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fitton trying to get names targets doj fbi retaliate purge

https://www.alternet.org/trump-fani-willis-2660722042/

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holy trickydick Batman!

In a column for MSNBC, the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI claims something stinks about reports that former FBI directorJames Comey and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe were each subjected to a rare and intrusive IRS audits after falling out of favor with Donald Trump.

According to New York Times report, the two high-ranking officials who were ousted by the former president were on the receiving end of rarest of all tax audits jokingly known as "an autopsy without the benefit of death,” and the fact that Trump loathed both men for not buckling to his demands should set off red flags about political manipulation.

In his column Frank Figliuzzi pointed out: "There were almost 153 million individual returns filed for 2017, and the IRS selected only 5,000 for this most comprehensive of audits — that’s about one return out of every 30,600. If that’s not 'random' enough for you: McCabe’s attorney was audited, too."

According to the former FBI man, Trump has often made mention of rogue federal employees doing political dirty work and that should be taken as a clue that something is rotten in the IRS.

"During Trump’s administration, we heard him endlessly rant about a so-called 'deep state' of federal employees buried deep within government agencies and intent on using their positions to do him harm. What we really need to know is the extent to which Trump appointees and loyalists who abused their positions may still be in government and still working on behalf of a former president instead of working for the American people," he wrote before focusing on current IRS commissioner Charles Rettig -- h who happens to be a Trump appointee.

Lauding the IRS announcing an inspector general investigation, Figliuzzi suggested Rettig should be taken off-duty until the inquiry is completed.

"Rettig should be walked out of his office — now. At a minimum, he should be suspended pending the Inspector General inquiry.If the IG determines anyone at IRS violated the law, there should be a criminal referral and a swift prosecution," he wrote. "Congress too must open an investigation into what transpired with these highly invasive audits and plug any gaps identified in a program that may well have been misused to target Americans."

Conceding it might all be an extraordinary coincidence, he added, "...a potential abuse of a system that touches every American’s life is a matter that goes beyond Trump and his own penchant for vengeance. Americans need to trust that their government will not turn its full punitive powers against them simply because they incurred the wrath of a president. If not, this will someday happen again – and we’ll all be wondering how we ignored the lightning strikes that set our democracy ablaze."

You can read more here.

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an 9 22 ah

Republican attorney Geoffrey S. Berman was once an ally of Donald Trump. The former federal prosecutor volunteered on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and he was a law partner of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

But in his forthcoming book, “Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent U.S. Attorney's Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department,” Berman reveals that he was fired from his position with the Southern District of New York in 2020 after refusing to prosecute some Democrats who Trump had it in for.

The New York Times has obtained a copy of Berman’s book, which has a September 13 release date on Amazon. In the book, according to Times reporter Benjamin Weiser, Berman describes himself as a Rockefeller Republican — in other words, a moderate Republican. And that would explain why Berman eventually proved incompatible with Trump and the far-right MAGA movement.

READ MORE: Bill Barr refers to Trump as a lame duck seeking revenge

Berman, now 62, was a Southern District of New York prosecutor from 1990-1994, and he returned to the Southern District in January 2018 — an announcement made by Jeff Sessions, who was U.S. attorney general for the Trump Administration at the time.

Weiser reports, “Mr. Berman’s book says that during Mr. Trump’s presidency, (Justice) Department officials made ‘overtly political’ demands, choosing targets that would directly further Mr. Trump’s desires for revenge and advantage. Mr. Berman wrote that the pressure was clearly inspired by the president’s openly professed wants.”

The Democrats Trump and his allies wanted to prosecute, according to Berman, included formerSecretary of State John Kerry and attorney Gregory Craig (who Trump’s allies accused of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act). But Berman, according to his book, didn’t believe that a prosecution of either Kerry or Craig was warranted.

READ MORE:'Flag-waving' liberal Norman Lear, now 100, warns against the 'threat of authoritarianism' America faces

During his four years in the White House, Trump could turn against fellow Republicans in a hurry. Trump fired Sessions in 2018 for recusing himself from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and Bill Barr became U.S. attorney general in early 2019. Later, both Barr and Trump turned against Berman, according to “Holding the Line.”

In the book, according to The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly, guk Berman writes, “The reason Barr wanted me to resign immediately was so I could be replaced with an outsider he trusted.”

Berman also writes, “Throughout my tenure as U.S. attorney, Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining — in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired…. I walked this tightrope for two and a half years. Eventually, the rope snapped.”

READ MORE:Bill Barr destroys Donald Trump: 'Unprecedented for a president to take all this classified info'

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A right-wing group in Missouri has launched a "woke heat map" documenting instances of "wokeness" in an attempt to fight back against "critical race theory" and alleged "grooming" in schools across the state.

The group, dubbed "Liberty Alliance," says it is "committed to fighting back against the Woke agenda that is permeating all across Missouri."

"The first step in fighting back is uncovering their crazy ideas – from Critical Race Theory to grooming toddlers with sexually explicit books," the organization states on its website. "That is why we have officially launched the Woke Heat Map – an interactive tool designed to expose the insane actions of the radical Left. This map will alert Missourians of craziness happening in their own communities."

"‘Liberty Alliance’ has launched a ‘Woke Interactive Map’ to warn MAGA about instances of woke behavior in a particular community. The site will alert people if either: 1. CRT, 2. Woke Extremism, or 3. ‘Action by a Crazy Leftist’ has taken place," Ron Filipkowski tweeted.

"This is the “Genderbread Person” & the latest example of the insanity that’s in Missouri schools," Eric Schmitt tweeted. "We launched The Students First Initiative to empower parents & bring transparency back to Missouri schools. This was submitted by a Fox C-6 parent We’ll keep exposing the extremism."

Another Twitter user added, "A reminder that on college campuses, anyone that doesn’t fall in line with the left are censored Where are you at @SLU_Official? These actions continued into the night and no one has been punished for vandalizing a peaceful #prolife @SLUSFL display #FreeSpeech [Students for Life]"

Liberty Alliance's map isn't the first of its kind. Over the years, numerous right-wing groups have created rankings, watchlists, and cluster maps to keep track of the left's alleged influence in healthcare and education as well as Corporate America.

Last October, Salon reported on a custom Google map created by trans activist Erin Reed that provides those seeking hormone replacement therapy with the names and locations of nearly 800 informed consent clinics throughout the country.By February of that year, Reed told Salon, her map was repurposed by anti-trans activist Alix Aharon as a resource for organizing protests against doctorswho provide gender-affirming care. That new map, called "The Gender Mapper," was quickly taken down over apparent copyright infringement. However, a new one has since appeared in its place, cataloging roughly 200 clinics in total.

On its website, The Gender Mapper accuses "Big Gender" of testing "experimental medication" on "confused and vulnerable children."

"GenderMapper volunteers work in secret, around the world to collate evidence and document what is occurring," the site adds. "Gendermapper volunteers are unsung [sic] heros- and data is our truth."

Right-wing groups have also sought to crack down on left-wing "indoctrination" on college campuses.

Notable among them is Turning Point USA, a conservative youth advocacy group, which runs a "Professor Watchlist" designed to keep right-wing students abreast of "college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom."

"The project," its website says, "is comprised of published news stories detailing instances of bias, propaganda, or speech infringement on college campuses."

The site allows users to submit tips and search for professors by name or university. Some professors on the list include activist Angela Davis, linguist Noam Chomsky, author Ibram X. Kendi, and former FBI Director James Comey.As of 2016, there were roughly 200 academics on the list.

In the private sector, conservative are similarly hounding companies that engage in "woke" actions, arguing that Corporate America is prioritizing political correctness over profit.

Alliance Defending Freedom has its "Viewpoint Diversity Score," a 50-company index that "evaluates corporate policies, practices, and activities to determine whether companies respect their stakeholders' freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief as a standard part of doing business." The list specifically breaks down each company's support of free speech in the market, the workplace, and the public square, analyzing everything from political giving to DE&I (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies.

On the index, companies like Facebook and Meta – which face baseless accusations of anti-conservative bias – have notably lower scores than most.None of the firms included on the list score higher than a 35 out of 100.

"The results of our inaugural Business Index reveal that there is much work to be done. Company scores ranged between 2% and 35%, with the average overall score an abysmal 12%," wrote Jeremy Tedesco, senior vice president of corporate engagement for ADF, in The Wall Street Journal. "The poor showing confirms that there is an alarming trend among major corporations to favor virtue-signaling even at the expense of fundamental American freedoms."

Corporations have no legal obligation to promote free speech, a constitutional right designed to protect Americans from governorship censorship and coercion.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/john-bolton/

enemies list

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rubber glue?

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trump other gop calling for mass execution of hillary dem staffers?! 2 22

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elsewhere  sharp calls for mass exec of traitor dems

https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-pitches-new-carriers-one-its-top-personalities-pushes-conspiracy

no lnx twt vid

As OAN pitches to new carriers, one of its top personalities pushes conspiracy theories with Alex Jones

WRITTEN BY BOBBY LEWIS

PUBLISHED 02/11/22

On February 9, One America News Network’s Pearson Sharp appeared on Alex Jones’ eponymous show on Infowars for a nearly 40-minute interview with the conspiracy theorist who was recently found liable for defamation in lawsuits brought by some of the families of children murdered in the Sandy Hook school shooting. 

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During the appearance, Sharp suggested pandemic restrictions could lead to a revolution; claimed Democrats might welcome an invasion by China to help fight dissenters; and compared the tracking of unvaccinated Americans to events that preceded the Holocaust.

OAN is currently trying to get picked up by mainstream cable providers like Spectrum and Dish Network after DirecTV announced it would not renew its contract with the network, starving OAN’s parent company of 90% of its income.

Though Jones is most infamous for lying about the Sandy Hook massacre, he has also regularly promoted far-right extremists calling for anti-government violence. He was also involved in funding and fomenting a January 6 event that devolved into the attack on the Capitol, and he has capitalized on his lies about the 2020 election by promoting his line of ineffective supplements.

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During the interview, Sharp praised Jones, saying, “It’s really an honor to be on here. You’re one of the few truth-tellers in our country right now.” Jones also effusively praised Sharp, telling him, “I watch [OAN] hours a day. We have it on here at the office, all over the building. We don’t have Fox on anymore, other than Tucker Carlson occasionally.” Jones also told Sharp that “you have the same views as I do on this crazy world” and at the end, he invited him to come back anytime and guest host The Alex Jones Show. 

Some highlights from Jones and Sharp’s lengthy conversation follow:

Sharp predicted that COVID-19 restrictions could spark a revolution, leading to Democrats inviting a Chinese invasion to keep power

CitationFrom the February 9, 2022, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

PEARSON SHARP (OAN REPORTER): What worries me is we are pushing back, but the American people -- you know, we’re supposed to be the cowboys. We’re supposed to be the rebels and the renegades and the revolutionaries. But throughout the last two years, we have just shown a shocking tolerance for this kind of oppression and this tyranny, and we just go along with it and bend over and accept what they’re saying. And I didn’t expect that. I thought we were going to have more of a backbone and push back.

Now, we’re not like New Zealand. We’re not like England. We haven’t been pushed that far, and I think the only reason that’s happened is because we have guns and they don’t. But they’re doing everything they can to get rid of those as well.

ALEX JONES (HOST): I totally agree with you. So why do you think they’re suddenly claiming, “OK, we’re going to back off the masks, we’re going to back off forced injections for now.” I think that’s because they see that finally people see them, and they’ve pushed too far. They hope people go back to sleep.

SHARP: They do. They absolutely do. They have pushed too far. But I wonder, what is going to be the sparking point? What is going to be the Boston Massacre of our generation? What is going to be the flint stone that sets this off?

And the other thing that worries me, and I’d like to get your take on this, is when we do push back, and we push back hard enough, I’m concerned that whether it’s Biden or Kamala, or whoever it is -- someone in Washington is going to say, “Look, this is too much for us to handle. Hey China, you want to help us out here? You’re good at putting down riots and oppressing people. Why don’t you come on over?”

…

SHARP: I’m legitimately concerned that it could be a very real possibility that we have an initially soft invasion from China — where Washington rolls out the welcome mat and we have Chinese peacekeepers coming over and filling our streets — to a hard invasion where there is no rebellion against Washington anymore, but we’re just fighting an outright war against China on our doorstep.

…

SHARP: Where we’re at now, how bad things have gotten, do you think that we can have -- can we recover from where we are? Can we have a peaceful recovery from where we are? Because everything I’ve seen, it looks like the democratic process has failed. Negotiations have failed. And I hate to think that a revolution is the only answer, but I don’t see these people ever giving up power or backing down.

Sharp argued that the “globalists” want to turn America into China, where “everyone is just totally controlled and cowed into submission”

CitationFrom the February 9, 2022, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

PEARSON SHARP (OAN REPORTER): China -- astonishingly, China is the end goal for these globalists. They want everything to be like that, where everyone is just totally controlled and cowed into submission.

When I was over there, I was a teacher at Xuchang University, which is in central China, about 12 hours west of Beijing, and it was a town of about 4 million people, which is considered small over there. And my students were really nice. But I have never met a more indoctrinated group of people in my life. And it was everybody.

Everybody you would run into was just -- it’s difficult to explain to someone in the West, the difference in behavior between a Chinese national and an American. And this is a total cultural thing, before anyone jumps to racism, because you talk to people from Hong Kong, and it’s night and day. They’re like Americans. You talk to people from Taiwan, they’re like Americans. They understand what freedom is --

ALEX JONES (HOST): This is three generations under communism and they’re like Martians.

SHARP: Yeah. They are. They absolutely are like Martians. They’re totally obedient, they don’t question anything. And they have a concept over there called “saving face,” where you know the person you’re talking to is lying, they know you know that they’re lying, but you both continue with it because you want to preserve face. And that interaction happens in everything that you do.

…

ALEX JONES (HOST):So all they do is just gaslight and just go on. That’s why they have so many disasters, so many plants melt down [japan?], because no one will tell anybody they’re wrong.

SHARP: Exactly. Yep. It’s endemic to their culture. And that, I’m afraid, is what’s going to happen here. People are just going to buy what’s being fed to them.

Sharp compared federal agencies’ alleged tracking of unvaccinated employees to the beginning of the Holocaust: They are “curating a list of enemies of the state”

CitationFrom the February 9, 2022, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

PEARSON SHARP (OAN REPORTER): We just found out a couple days ago that there are 55 federal agencies, including five cabinet-level agencies, who are now tracking Americans and employees -- specifically of them, Treasury Department, even the military -- tracking employees who have objections to the vaccine, who apply for an exemption or something, who don’t want to get it. They’re tracking these people. And you’d better believe they’re watching them closely.

They’re basically, what this is is curating a list of enemies of the state. And what’s terrifying is, we’ve seen this before. All of this has happened before. In 1930s Germany, IBM created a database of Jewish people in Europe, which really greatly facilitated the Nazi Germany government going after the Jews in their country.

And now, I feel like that’s what we’re seeing here. They’re going after red-blooded Americans who are standing up for their country and don’t want to be a part of this genocide. They’re tracking them. And we know where this leads.

ALEX JONES (HOST): That’s right, this is all -- if you had a list of like a hundred things that tyrants would do, and like Hitler did 60, and Stalin did 50, and Mao did 75, they’ve done like a hundred. They’re going down everything a tyrant would do, and they’re checking the box off.

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enemies list, who is disloyal to Dear Leader

Power The Future Works With The Same Public Relations Firm That That Had To Drop A No-Bid Contract With The EPA After Its Ties To A Controversial Group That Harassed EPA Staff

Power The Future’s Website Uses A Web Domain Registered By Defitecn Public Affairs. “In other examples, environmental causes have been attacked by astroturf websites, linked to Definers Public Affairs:{ by common Google analytics codes. The They Cap You Pay website attacked proposed cap and trade (climate change-related) legislation in Oregon.  Meanwhile, the Power the Future website – which again shares the same tracking code and was also registered using a Definers email address – claims that ‘We are the voice of energy workers pushing back on radical green groups and the ideologues who fund them.’” Global Witness, :(style="background-color:#faf8f5ff"):}:[06/11/19:{]}:

Definers Public Affairs Had To Drop Its No-Bid EPA Contract After Its Ties To A Republican Group That Sought To Identify EPA Staff Critical Of Donald Trump. “A consulting firm has pulled out of a federal contract to provide media monitoring services to the Environmental Protection Agency after it was disclosed that a lawyer among its top executives had been investigating agency employees critical of the Trump administration. Joe Pounder, the president of Definers Public Affairs, said in a statement on Twitter that his company’s $120,000 contract with the E.P.A., which it was awarded this month, had become a ‘distraction.’ The contract came under scrutiny because of the company’s links toAmerica Rising, a Virginia-based corporation and Republican political operation with several offshoots that have investigated E.P.A. officials. One lawyer on the company’s staff, Allan Blutstein, sent a series of Freedom of Information Act requests to the E.P.A. asking for email correspondence by employees who had been publicly critical of the Trump administration’s management of the agency.[FREEEEEEEDDDDOOOOOMMMMM!][…] But agency employees — particularly those who had been targeted by America Rising after they raised questions about the management of Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. — said they were fearful the new contract might translate into increased surveillance of agency staff.” *New York Times*:{, :(style="background-color:#faf8f5ff"):}:[12/19/17]

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no lnx many pix twt

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/blog/behind-trumps-border-wall-political-operatives-a-controversial-pr-firm-and-an-alleged-fake-news-site/

Global Witness exposes the link between a controversial right-leaning public affairs firm and President Trump’s reportedly favored company to build the southern border wall.

Summary

President Trump is boosting a particular firm, Fisher Sand & Gravel, whose owner is a donor to the Republican party, to build the border wall, which seems to go against the spirit of US federal procurement rules;

Fisher Sand & Gravel have a previously unreported link with Definers Public Affairs, a DC communications firm which employs controversial tactics such as setting up anonymous attack websites on behalf of their commercial and political clients;

Definers Public Affairs shares offices and staff with America Rising Corp and the America Rising PAC, Republican attack vehicles;

Definers Public Affairs are known for paid-for attacks on environmentalists and commercial opponents of their clients – which led to Facebook severing its contract with them;

Individuals inDefiners Public Affairs have recently launched a new company, Crier Media Group, active in ‘media monitoring’ in both the US and the UK.

United States President Donald Trump is accused of attempting to influence the procurement process for building the controversial border wall between Mexico and the US. According to the Washington Post, Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have repeatedly pushed the option of awarding the contract to Fisher Sand & Gravel, a family-owned construction firm from North Dakota that has a checkered past.

WaPo_Fisher_headline_cropped.png

The story of how Fisher Sand & Gravel Co, and its subsidiary, Fisher Industries, grabbed the President’s attention is partly a very modern one of publicity stunts and media frenzies, and partly an old tale of money and politics. Recent reporting has revealed Fisher Sand & Gravel’s past environmental violations and legal problems – although the company points out that these matters were resolved years ago.

Global Witness exposes a previously unreported link between Fisher Sand & Gravel and Definers Public Affairs, a controversial communications firm linked to Republican political operatives. From alleged smear campaigns to attack ads, Definers has been accused of devious and questionable methods to support their clients and negatively influence public opinion.

The best way to reach the President

Tommy Fisher, the CEO of Fisher Industries, has repeatedly appeared on Fox News, trumpeting his plans for a wall that he claims is faster and cheaper to build than rival designs by other companies. When interviewed by the Washington Post for his thoughts on why Trump supports the Fisher bid, the Republican Senator for North Dakota, Kevin Cramer, said of Tommy Fisher “He’s been very aggressive on TV,” and then asked “You know who else watches Fox News?”

It may come as no surprise that both Tommy Fisher and his wife donated money to Senator Cramer’s Senate election campaign. The Senator has also boosted Fisher Industries on social media.  CNN reported that:

“According to an administration official familiar with the situation, Cramer sent information about Fisher to the President's son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, who then passed it along to the Army Corps of Engineers for their consideration. The source tells CNN that Kushner was not familiar with the company prior to getting information about them from Cramer.”

Senator Cramer denied in his interview with the Washington Post that the donation has influenced his actions, stating that his support had occurred before any donation and was because Tommy Fisher is “a constituent of mine”.

Other publicity grabbing moves have included Fisher Sand & Gravel building part of the border wall on private land, crowdfunded by a GoFundMe campaign for We Build The Wall, a non-profit organization that features well-known conservative personalities like Steve Bannon and Erik Prince on its advisory board.

Kyle Ehmke Tweet]

Tommy Fisher seems a capable self-publicist.  But it is possible that Fishers also worked with a controversial communications firm based in Washington, D.C., Definers Public Affairs to grab the President’s attention.

The link between the two was spotted by Kyle Ehmke, a ‘threat intelligence researcher’ with ThreatConnect, a cybersecurity company.

When an individual or company sets up or is involved with several different websites, they sometimes use a common Google analytics account to monitor web traffic of the various sites.  Each Google analytics account has a unique ID number which can be found in the coding of the website.

In this case, the person who set up and monitors web traffic at Definers Public Affairs also appears to have set up the website analytics for Fishers Sand & Gravel. Google analytics codes are unique – there cannot be two separate Google accounts that use the same code – nor can codes be added to a website by an outsider with no access to the source code of the website.

Therefore, since both sites use the same analytics code, it’s evident that, at a minimum, both the website analytics for the Definers’ website and the Fishers Sand & Gravel website were set up by the same person.

It is also possible that the relationship between the two companies went further than just website monitoring. As we will see below, the same tracking code was used for numerous other websites set up on behalf of Definers clients. These included an anonymous website attacking Qatar and another supporting the point of view of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

[Trump_Fisher_meeting.png

SOURCE: TWITTER, @SENKEVINCRAMER]

Foreign Agent Registration Act disclosures reveal that Definers staff members provided strategic communications guidance to the UAE, including one-on-one interactions with American news media. It is likely that the Qatar-related websites were part of the same package. While it is probable that Definers played some role in the new Fisher website, it is also possible that Definers provided a wider set of services to Fisher Sand & Gravel also.

Global Witness repeatedly approached both Fishers Sand & Gravel and its media representatives and Definers Public Affairs for comment on the extent of any relationship but did not receive a reply from either firm.

Fisher Industries already had an existing website at www.fisherind.com, but a new, professional looking website – specifically focused on the border wall (www.fishersandandgravel.com) was registered on January 4, 2018, around the same time that a new Twitter account was set up. Events then moved quickly. A new Facebook account was set up on January 5, the same day that Tommy Fisher was interviewed on Fox and Friends, a Fox News program known to be watched by President Trump.

By March 13, 2018 Tommy Fisher had met President Trump in person.

The controversy surrounding Definers Public Affairs

Definers Public Affairs is best known for having its contract cancelled by Facebook in late 2018 after revelations in the New York Times about its aggressive tactics.

The communications firm is closely related to America Rising Corp, a Republican opposition researchand attack firm which provides services to political clients, which has also set up America Rising PAC. America Rising PAC happily quotes a description of itself as “The rabid pit bull of the Republican Party.” Operatives associated with the groups follow Democratic Presidential candidates, filming all their public appearances. They also conduct background research on opponents. For example, their specialist lawyer, Allan Blutstein, submitted freedom of information (FOIA) requests for the military and NASA discharge papers for Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and potential candidate in the 2020 Arizona Senate elections.

Both Definers and America Rising are closely linked to NTK (Need to Know) Network, which claims to be a news website “without the liberal bias”.

All three entities share staff and office space in Arlington, Virginia. Joe Pounder, Chief Executive of America Rising Corp, also describes himself as a co-founder of Definers Corp, and NTK Network lists him as their Editor-in-Chief; while Allan Blutstein has submitted FOIA requests for Definers, America Rising, America Rising Squared, and the NTK Network.

Newly filed corporate documents in the United Kingdom show that Definers staff, including the CEO Joe Pounder, and the Definers’ Chief Financial Officer, have set up a new entity – Crier Media Group - in both the UK and the US. Similar to Definers, Crier Media provides media monitoring services. (Definers have also set up UK Policy Group in the UK - claiming it was “bringing campaign-style research to corporate clients”.)  According to LinkedIn records several Definers and UK Policy Group staff moved simultaneously to Crier Media Group.

So, what’s the problem?

First, their working methods raise eyebrows, particularly in an era when Americans and others must wade through “fake news” infiltrating their social media feeds and news consumption on a daily basis. Starting with revelations of the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-affiliated troll farm and fake news network, sowing discord and undermining faith in American democratic institutions in the 2016 elections, Americans, big tech, and US officials are now constantly battling the influx of misinformation campaigns.

[NTK_Network_Apple.png SOURCE: FACEBOOK, NEED TO KNOW NETWORK]

NTK Network purports to be a conservative news website. However, one former employee interviewed by NBC News described NTK as an “in-house fake news shop”.  One pitch given to a potential client and leaked to the New York Times described NTK News as “a Digital Platform Echo Chamber.”

NTK also has articles written by America Rising and Definers staff, according a former employee interviewed by the New York Times. Articles attacking the commercial rivals of Definers’ clients appear on the NTK website without any declarations of potential conflicts of interest. For example, NTK News published dozens of articles attacking Apple, without declaring that a closely related party, Definers, reportedly had a contract with chipmaker Qualcomm, with whom Apple was engaged in a legal battle.

NTK also ran an extensive series of adverts on Facebook,without declaring whether commercial clients were behind them. This demonstrates a loophole in Facebook’s advert disclosure program, whereby intermediaries can potentially declare themselves, and not their end clients, as the funder of the advertisement.

Common Google analytics tracking codes suggest that Definers are linked to a series of astro-turf websites for their clients, sometimes without declaring who had set them up or was funding them. In one example, common Google analytics codes suggest that Definers had set up www.qatarcrisisnews.com and www.partnershipforpeace.org. The funder was later identified by K. Louise Neufeld, when Joe Pounder and other Definers staff registered as Foreign Agents to represent the United Arab Emirates, focusing in particular on “issues relating to client's termination of relations with Qatar and accuracy and transparency of Qatar government-owned media.”

In other examples, environmental causes have been attacked by astro-turf websites, linked to Definers Public Affairs by common Google analytics codes. The They Cap You Pay website attacked proposed cap and trade (climate change-related) legislation in Oregon.Meanwhile, the Power the Future website – which again shares the same tracking code and was also registered using a Definers email address  – claims that “We are the voice of energy workers pushing back on radical green groups and the ideologues who fund them.” Power the Future is led by Daniel Turner, who hasn’t worked in the energy industry, but rather was a former Director of Strategic Communications at the Koch Institute.

The second problem is that the shift from political mud-slinging to widely reported attacks on commercial targets and environmentalists raises questions about both propriety and the transparency of funding of those seeking to shape the public debate.

[Draft_Tim_Cook.jpg SOURCE: DRAFTTIMCOOK.ORG]

The aggressive political methods of the self-declared ‘rabid pit bulls’ of America Rising PAC are applied not only to declared candidates for public office. America Rising Squared, a not-for-profit entity, also apparently conducts media monitoring and attacks liberal and environmental causes. They followedBill McKibben, a prominent environmentalist, for months, filming his every move. They aim to “hold the Environmentalist Left accountable by highlighting their hypocrisy and exposing their extreme rhetoric and agenda.”

During the attacks on Apple, which featured frequently on NTK network in late 2017, a website appeared suggesting that Apple’s CEO Tim Cook should be drafted as a Presidential candidate for 2020.  The website gave no clue as to who was behind the initiative. This was covered, albeit somewhat skeptically, in the Free Beacon, a conservative leaning news outlet. Kyle Ehmke, of the ThreatConnect cybersecurity firm, spotted that the website shared the same Google analytics code as that for Definers Public Affairs. Reporters guess that the purpose is to make Tim Cook appear like a potential rival to President Trump and thus, presumably, lessen Apple’s political influence with the White House. If true, this can only be described as a tactic which is both inspired – but also devious. As mentioned previously, Definers reportedly had a contract with chipmaker Qualcomm, a competitor of Apple with whom they were also engaged in a legal battle.  There is no suggestion that Qualcomm knew of such methods being used on their behalf.

Definers also gained an apparent no-bid contract with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to provide media monitoring – or ‘news analysis’ – service. This came during a period of intense controversy after Scott Pruitt, who still describes himself as “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda”, was appointed by President Trump as EPA Administrator. However, Allan Blutstein, the Definers Public Affair’s FOIA specialist, seems to have gone further than ‘news analysis’.  He began submitting FOIA requests about EPA employees suspected of being critical of Scott Pruitt and President Trump, requesting copies of emails which mentioned Pruitt or Trump. These FOIA requests were denounced by EPA staff as intimidation.  When interviewed by the New York Times, Mr Blutstein said that the purpose of the FOIA requests were simply to find out if any of the EPA employees had used agency email inappropriately, or had violated agency rules in some other way.

When criticized in the past in relation to their work for Facebook, Definers have denied being partisan, and stated that they only do communications not lobbying.  They also clarified that the nature of work for commercial clients is usually media monitoring services and that their opposition research forms a small part of work. Definers also state that, in any case, opposition research for commercial clients is entirely legitimate, usually drawing from public records. They vehemently deny smearing commercial opponents of their clients, and specifically say that it is wrong to suggest that NTK Network is used to attack commercial opponents.

Opacity

As both Definers and Fisher Sand & Gravel failed to respond to repeated requests to comment, it is impossible to determine the precise extent of their relationship. It could be that that they have an extensive relationship; including DC based communication and media booking services to get Tommy Fisher on conservative broadcast outlets like Fox and Friends.  Or it could be that they have a minimal relationship – perhaps even just having had a shared Google analytics tracking account set up for them by a third party.

[NTK_wall_ad_cropped.png SOURCE: FACEBOOK: NEED TO KNOW NETWORK]

This opacity, however, is a problem. Take this Facebook advert ran by NTK Network in April 2019. Its main message chimes perfectly with the Fisher Sand & Gravel messaging that its proposed wall design is quicker and cheaper than its rivals.  However, we don’t know whether it was run by NTK Network on behalf of a commercial client, or had nothing to do with Fisher and simply tapped into current conservative media priorities in order to drive traffic into its own website.  The distinction is important if we’re to untangle the role of money in shaping the public sphere.

The activities of Definers and associated entities illustrate a wider challenge. The current blend of money, politics, ideology, the fragmentation of public discourse by social media, and the deliberate shaping of national debates through alleged fakes or shills is toxic to democracy. We do not pretend to know all of the answers, but a first step is greater transparency over who is paying who to publish what.

Disclosure:

Definers Public Affairs also faced criticism over an attempt to discredit campaigners asking for Facebook reforms by linking these campaigners to George Soros.A Definers consultant said that “Definers shared a narrow document about an anti-Facebook group's funding. It was entirely factual...” and clarified the nature of the work carried out for Facebook. Global Witness is an independent, non-partisan organization that works to expose corruption to protect human rights and the environment. No donor —large or small— has editorial control over our work or the choices we make regarding the subjects of our investigations or campaigns. George Soros does not fund Global Witness directly. Global Witness receives funding from the Open Society Foundation for our general funds.

Author Nick Donovan Campaign Director

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building on gubmint base?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-cult/

kos

while the arrival of vaccine doses is finally bringing some hopeful news about the pandemic, the state of U.S. democracy continues to be at an historic low point fueled by the complicity of the Republican Party.

The past week has included a rash of threats against public servants trying to fulfill their duties and uphold their oaths of office. Nowhere was that more evident on Monday than in Michigan where the Capitol building was shut down to everyone but the 16 electors and others essential to certifying the state's Electoral College vote after credible threats of violence emerged. Each elector was provided with a police escort, but the atmosphere was so toxic, one elector ultimately decided to wear a bullet-proof vest to faithfully cast her vote for the state's rightful winner, Joe Biden.

The situation in Michigan followed on a week in which a so-called "enemies" list of state and federal officials who weren't sufficiently loyal to Donald Trumpsurfaced on the internet, according to the Washington Post. The list included the officials' home addresses along with photos of them covered by red targets and hashtags such as #remembertheirfaces and #NoQuarterForTraitors.

That sentiment bled into a weekend of protests turned violent from Washington State to Washington D.C., with four people stabbed and another shot in Olympia while a series of altercations broke out in D.C.

And it's not just public officials who are being targeted. The Georgia GOP election official who warned earlier this month that someone would wind up getting killed if Republicans didn't speak up outlined instances in which random citizens are getting caught in the crossfire.

"We have people stalking outside of our elections offices in Cobb County," said Gabriel Sterling last Thursday. "We've had a warehouse manager, he was simply taking trash out to the dumpster, and he had somebody follow him with a camera telling him he's going to prison."

Hate crimes spiked across the country following Trump's 2017 defense of white supremacists in Charlottesville as "very fine people." But Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino, told the Post threats targeting government officials increased last year and were then exacerbated by the onset of coronavirus restrictions.

"The direction of the threats and intimidation against state and local officials took an eerie turn in the last couple of years and accelerated during the pandemic because aggrieved people are interacting with their government at the local level — in public health and elections," Levin said. "And those officials are the very ones labeled as legitimate targets for aggressions on cable news, social media and particularly by the president."

Following the spate of violent threats, the question becomes who will even want to serve in these positions anymore?

"There is an ugliness and cruelty in our national rhetoric that is reaching a fevered pitch here at home, and that should worry us all," said Diana Lachiondo, a local Idaho health official who was forced to flee a meeting last week about pandemic restrictions when menacing protesters showed up at her home [12 yo kid?] . Lachiondo, who recently lost reelection, added, "I'm out. ... I've got a light at the end of the tunnel here. But who is going to want to run in the future? Do you need to live in a gated community to feel like you're safe? That is my concern going forward . . . what does this mean for our democracy?"

One of her colleagues, physician Ted Epperly, agreed the problem isn't going away anytime soon. "I think it'll take a lot of healing, quite frankly, to get us back to working together as a society," he told the Post. "I'm sure people will write about this for years to come," he added. "What happened? What happened here in this country? Who are we as people?"

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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interesting morphing backstory:

attacking enemies (using gov't?) is key in totalitiarian, neutralize balance: press, legis, courts, the opposition party)

nixonused power of exec branch to target/ neutralize/intimidate political opposition (or any [perceived] threat to power):

plan to kill jack anderson, blow up think tank, burgle Dem ellsberg psychitrist office to get info for character assassination

interesting when Obama called out Floyd Brown Lacy, they declared themselves victims

Now trump has an actual list again:

https://www.alternet.org/people-trumps-list-arent-enemies-they-are-witnesses

Have a gander at Trump’s enemies list:

John Brennan – 25 years in the CIA. Director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, 2003-2004. Director of Central Intelligence, 2013-2017.

James Clapper – 32 years in the Air Force, retired as a three-star general with three Legions of Merit, two Bronze Stars, and two Air Medals. Flew 73 combat support missions over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, 1991-1995. Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, 2007-2010. Director of National Intelligence, 2010-2017.

Michael Hayden – 41 years in the Air Force, retired as a four-star general with three Defense Distinguished Service Medals, two Defense Superior Service Medals, one Legion of Merit, and one Bronze Star. Director National Security Agency, 1999-2005. Deputy Director National Intelligence, 2005-2006. Director of Central Intelligence Agency, 2006-2009.

READ MORE: Did left-wing Hillary hate put Trump in the White House? A toxic question with bad answers

Susan Rice – Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, 1997-2001. United States Ambassador to the United Nations, 2009-2013. White House National Security Adviser, 2013-2017.

James Comey – United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, 2002-2003. Deputy Attorney General, 2003-2005. Director Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2013-2017.

Sally Yates – United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, 2010-2015. Deputy Attorney General, 2015-2017. Acting Attorney General, 2017.

Andrew McCabe – 22 years in the FBI. Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2016-2018. Acting Director FBI, 2017.

Peter Strzok – 22 years in the FBI. Deputy Assistant Director, Counterintelligence Division. Section Chief, Counterespionage Section.

Lisa Page – FBI attorney serving under FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and FBI Director James Comey.

Bruce G. Ohr – Former Associate Deputy Attorney General. Former Director Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.

You want to know what these people have in common? With the sole exception of Bruce Ohr, they’ve all be questioned by either the House or Senate Intelligence committees, and most of them have testified before the grand jury in Washington D.C. empaneled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In other words, they are all witnesses in the investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with elements of the Russian government during and after the election of 2016.

What Trump is doing by yanking their security clearances or threatening to do so isn’t punishing them. He’s cutting them loose, and it’s going to backfire on him.

Rachel Maddow did a brilliant job on her show on Thursday night showing several of those on Trump’s enemies list testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee in May of 2017. She was making another point, that pulling their security clearances will end the ability of any of Trump’s enemies to consult their personal papers and notes from their time in government service when preparing to give testimony before either congress or Mueller’s grand jury because their notes and papers contain secrets.

But the tape of those hearings also showed something else. It showed that the “secrets” Brennan, and Comey, and Yates and Clapper and the rest of them learned were actually knowledge of crimes that were committed by the Trump campaign. They were secrets only because of their official positions and security clearances. But the knowledge they had was real.

For example, at the hearing on May 23 of last year, James Comey was asked by one of the senators, “Do you believe Donald Trump colluded with Russia?”

“I don’t believe I can answer that question in an open setting,” Comey answered. His answer clearly indicated that he had classified information about collusion between Trump and the Russians, because if he didn’t, he would have simply answered, “no.”

Sally Yates was asked, “Do you have any evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government or intelligence services in an improper fashion?”

“My answer would require me to reveal classified information, Senator,” Yates replied. Her answer indicated the same thing, that she had such information, but it was classified. If she didn’t have any information, she would have answered, “no.”

Comey was asked, “Was the FBI able to confirm any criminal allegations contained in the Steele document?”

“That’s not a question I can answer in an open setting,” Comey answered, indicating that the FBI indeed had confirmed such allegations and had done so using classified information, or he would have answered, “no.”

Comey was asked a question about why Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the Russia investigation: “What was it about the Attorney General’s actions with the Russians” that led to Sessions’ recusal?

“We were aware of facts I can’t discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a Russia investigation problematic,” Comey answered, obviously referring to classified information damaging to Sessions.

Sally Yates and James Clapper were both asked a long, complicated question about whether they knew of British and other intelligence agencies sharing intelligence in 2015 and 2016 with American intelligence officials about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians.

Yates simply replied, “I can’t answer that,” indicating her knowledge of these contacts was classified. Clapper said, “Yes, and it’s also quite sensitive,” indicating the same thing. Both were admitting that they knew of the intelligence sharing, or they would have answered, “no.”

John Brennan was asked if he knew of any Trump campaign officials making false statements about contacts with Russians, or who failed to disclose those contacts to United States officials.

“I think that’s something we can pursue in closed session,” Brennan answered, indicating that he had knowledge of the Trump campaign having contacts with Russians, but it was classified.

Here is why going back over this old testimony by these former American intelligence and justice officials is important.

They were testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 23, 2017. The FBI had opened its investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians in July of 2016 while Comey was FBI Director. By May of 2017, he had knowledge of Flynn’s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the Trump Tower meeting between Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner and four Russians, and the contacts between Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and Russians and Russian spies in Rome and London. Papadopoulos was questioned by the FBI on January 27, 2017. None of this was known to you or me, but it was known to Comey, and probably to Brennan, Clapper and Yates. We wouldn’t even hear the name “Papadopoulos” until he was arraigned and pled guilty on October 5, 2017.

They knew about Papadopoulos, and they knew about Flynn in May of 2017. That’s why they couldn’t talk about what they knew. It was still a secret.

But what Trump’s enemies knew in May of last year isn’t secret any longer. Mueller has already indicted or secured guilty please from 32 people and three Russian companies. He indicted 25 Russian citizens for breaking our election laws and conspiring to defraud the United States. He’s got multiple American citizens cooperating with his investigation into the contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

The secrets that the people on Trump’s enemies list were keeping as they testified before the Senate Intelligence Committees were secrets about crimes being committed during and after the 2016 election, and they’re not secrets anymore.

Their security clearances are being yanked or threatened for the petty, venal reason that they’ve been critical of Donald Trump, and he wants to retaliate against them.

Trump is making a very big mistake. By creating his enemies list, he’s confirming what they know is accurate, because their knowledge is a threat to him. By lashing out, he’s unleashing them. What motivates any person on Trump’s enemies list to keep secrets that aren’t secret anymore?

If I were Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Hayden, Yates, Rice, McCabe, Strzok, Page, and Ohr, I’d get together in Washington D.C. and compare notes and hold a press conference and tell the world everything they know. Because what they know about are crimes, and having knowledge of crimes isn’t a secret, it’s evidence.

That’s why Trump’s enemies list will backfire on him. He’s not shutting them up. He’s cutting them loose, and what they know is going to put people in jail and possibly drive him from office.

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https://www.alternet.org/incredibly-problematic-ex-chair-joint-chiefs-staff-warns-trumps-political-enemies-list-reminiscent

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...James D. Zirin: He has continued and I think he will continue. And I think the rule of law has been seriously undermined.

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Our democracy has been seriously compromised because the framers of the Constitution never thought the system would work this way. Republican senators deserve part of the blame because of their need to retain power or whatever, they did not respect the oath they took to be fair and impartial judges of the facts and the law, but instead voted along party lines to acquit him.

Robin Lindley: Trump said sometime in the 90s, as you note in your book, that “I love to have enemies.” I think most of us wouldn’t feel that way and it seems pathological to me. What did you think when you found that quote from him? 

James D. Zirin: Most politicians are controversial and have political enemies. I think Trump relishes that perhaps more than others and he loves to attack them personally. We know Biden is “Sleepy Joe” and Elizabeth Warren is “Pocahontas” and Bernie Sanders is “Crazy Bernie.” He has nicknames for everyone and he revels in trashing them rather than addressing the merits of anything they propose.

Robin Lindley: The mentality of an eight-year-old bully, it seems. You write that Trump’s experience in lawsuits reflects “his inmost ulterior motivation.” This comes out in your responses, but could you sum up your sense of his character, motivation, and morality based on your extensive research?

James D. Zirin: His virulent combination of anti-science, anti-law, ignorance, irrational conspiracy theorizing, instability, narcissism and vindictiveness has led us to national catastrophe. If he is re-elected, I fear for the republic and the American people.

Robin Lindley: As you demonstrate, Trump is an anomaly in terms of the adversarial system. Do you have anything to add on his abuse of legal process?

James D. Zirin: Look, the adversary system is the crown jewel of our legal system. We got it from the British. The idea is that you had lawyers on both sides who were partisan, who were like the Knights Templar who rode into battle on behalf of somebody or other in the Middle Ages. That has been the best way of getting at the truth. In contrast, in civil law countries like France or Germany, the judge conducts the inquiry. The judge might ask questions of the lawyers, but the lawyers don’t develop the evidence on both sides.

But adversary doesn’t mean enemy. What Trump has demonstrated is that we have a great legal system and we all have the benefit of it. But there are also limitations for the law and those limitations can be exploited by someone determined to beat the system, and that’s what Trump has done.

Robin Lindley. Thank you, Mr. Zirin and congratulations on your groundbreaking and compelling book on the life of Donald Trump through the perspective of his thousands of lawsuits. It’s been an honor to talk with you.

This article was originally published at History News Network

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-is-working-behind-the-scenes-to-cripple-any-investigations-before-the-november-election-columnist

no lnx

Trump is working behind the scenes to cripple any investigations before the November election: columnist

President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a "Keep America Great" rally at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Arizona.

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story April 11, 2020

According to columnist David Lurie, writing for the Daily Beast, Donald Trump’s purge of inspector generals in the government is an attempt to make sure that he is not be subjected to any embarrassing reports or investigations before the November election.

As Lurie notes, the president has enlisted former bodyman John McEntee, who was previously booted from the White House by former Chief of Staff John Kelly, to purge critics and those considered not loyal to Trump from their posts, and that inspector generals are at the top of the list.

“In the midst of a deadly pandemic, Donald Trump has expanded his war on oversight by attacking the governments’ inspectors general, compounding the damage already done by his unprecedented stonewalling of congressional oversight investigations,” Lurie wrote, before adding that Trump and McEntee are dead set on “targeting IGs as part of a broader effort to purge officials who aren’t sufficiently personally loyal to Trump.”

“That effort might help Trump delay any formal reviews of his failed leadership during the pandemic, or of his administrations’ disbursement of trillions in coronavirus-related spending, until after the November election,” he continued before highlighting the firing of Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general for turning over to Congress the whistleblower report on Trump’s attempts to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.

Adding that Trump’s “attacks on the government’s IG infrastructure have been so audacious that they have raised questions among at least some GOP legislators,” Lurie reports, “Additionally, Trump has taken a uniquely recalcitrant approach to congressional investigations. In the Ukraine matter, Trump defied long-standing precedent by refusing to voluntarily comply with nearly all congressional requests for information, and instructed current and former government officials to do the same.”

“In sum, it seems increasingly likely that Trump’s effort to stonewall and otherwise undermine institutional oversight of his own conduct, as well as that of the government officials that report to him, may well largely succeed, at least until after the election,”Lurie warned. ” Even without the ability to force the president’s loyal soldiers to comply with congressional subpoenas, a small number of courageous truth tellers were willing to come forward to tell the truth about Trump’s Ukraine misconduct.”

“Similarly, Trump’s efforts to fully obfuscate and deny the catastrophic nature of his response to the pandemic do appear to be failing,” he added. “Journalists, health-care workers, and state and local officials are seeking to ensure that many of the critical facts come to light. Hopefully, their efforts to inform the public will continue to bear fruit, and Trump will not succeed in hiding the truth. It is crucial that, when voters go to the ballot box (or mailbox) in November, the scope of Trump’s catastrophic failure is known, even if all of the relevant information has yet to be exposed.”

You can read more here (subscription required).

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Fox News, led by Sean Hannity, has been begging Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate or arrest a list of government officials

WRITTEN BY COURTNEY HAGLE

PUBLISHED 02/19/20 10:54 AM EST

President Donald Trump triggered turmoil in the Department of Justice (DOJ) last week after he tweeted public complaints about the sentencing recommendations for his longtime associate Roger Stone, after which Attorney General Bill Barr appeared to step in and interfere in the case. The incident rattled the legal community as fears escalated that an emboldened Trump -- with Barr’s help -- is politicizing the Justice Department for personal gain, prompting more than 2,000 former Department of Justice officials to sign a letter calling for Barr’s resignation and the Federal Judges Association to call an unprecedented emergency meeting.

Additional reporting revealed that Stone’s case was not the first time Barr’s Justice Department has intervened in legal matters close to Trump; NBC News reported on February 11 that Barr also intervened in the criminal investigations into former acting FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. On February 14, the Justice Department announced that McCabe would not be charged with lying to investigators, which Stone’s right-wing media defenders angrily insisted was an example of DOJ hypocrisy and further evidence of the “deep state” conspiracy theory against Trump.

Fox News host Sean Hannity, along with a slew of his network cohorts, has spent years advancing that conspiracy theory while relentlessly calling on Barr and the Justice Department to investigate and arrest Trump’s political opponents. Some of these Fox News figures calling for new investigations were implicated in Trump’s Ukraine scandal, such as contributor John Solomon and the GOP legal duo Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova. Others include Fox regulars Gregg Jarrett, Sara Carter, Dan Bongino, and Tom Fitton. The details among these calls vary, but they all carry the same theme: “Investigate the investigators,” or anyone else who has dared look into Trump’s misconduct over the last several years.

At the core of Hannity’s grievance is an overwhelming obsession with the idea that a bureaucratic “deep state” has been seeking to undermine Trump’s presidency since before the 2016 election. Every attempt to hold Trump accountable since then -- the Mueller report, the Ukraine scandal that led to impeachment, and any other inconvenient fact about Trump that surfaces -- has supposedly been evidence of the “deep state” trying to take down the president.

Given Trump’s long history of taking cues from Fox News and widespread concerns about the attorney general’s recent politicization of the Justice Department, it's worth documenting the list of people whom Fox News has been relentlessly calling on Barr to investigate, arrest, or convict as part of this “deep state” conspiracy theory:

And here is more on the supposed reasons for investigating them, from Hannity himself.

Fox News on Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and officials in the “deep state”

Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has long served as a boogeyman for right-wing circles to attack, but Trump’s 2016 election brought a newfound desire to “lock her up,” as evidenced in Trump supporters’ infamous rally chant. Specifically, Hannity now wants her arrested for the “phony dossier that was full of Russian lies” -- commonly known as the Steele dossier -- that her 2016 campaign obtained from opposition research firm Fusion GPS. Hannity claims this was the basis of the FISA warrant to monitor Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. (It wasn’t.) Nellie Ohr worked as a contractor for Fusion GPS; many on the right point to the fact that her husband, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, is a high-ranking DOJ official as further evidence of the “deep state,” and Hannity has called for retaliatory investigations against both.

Fox News’ grievances against Clinton also include complaints that the Uranium One and email server scandals -- flimsy right-wing conspiracy theories that have already been investigated and resulted in Clinton’s exoneration -- were looked into by sham investigations led by former FBI Director James Comey. Hannity has called for Barr to reopen these investigations, often claiming that it’s hypocritical that Clinton hasn’t been treated as badly as he feels Trump has.

Hannity’s obsession with the “deep state” has led to his fixation on seeing punishment for the FBI investigators and anyone involved in Mueller’s investigation or in the events leading up to it. Hannity’s show spent months hyping up the DOJ’s internal inspector general report that looked into the investigators of the Mueller probe, compiled by Inspector General Michael Horowitz, in hopes that he would punish the people they’re hoping for. While the IG report did find some evidence of wrongdoing in the Mueller investigation, the conclusions were nowhere near the dramatic, nefarious conspiracy theory Hannity spent months weaving for his viewers. Refusing to falter, Hannity then turned his hopes to Barr, in his new role as attorney general, and federal prosecutor John Durham, who is currently leading a criminal inquiry into the origins of the Mueller investigation.

Hannity’s accusations are muddled and flimsy, but the core idea is that former and current officials associated with the FBI colluded with Clinton’s campaign to help her win, and when that didn’t succeed, they launched a sham investigation (the Mueller investigation) into Trump to undermine his presidency. In Hannity’s view, former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former Deputy Attorneys General Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein knowingly lied to the FISA court by using Clinton’s “phony dossier that was full of Russian lies” to illegally target Carter Page without informing the court that it was unverified and came from Clinton.

Fox figures have also accused Comey of leaking classified information, which has since been disproven. Hannity also claims Comey, McCabe, Bruce Ohr, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page used their positions to “persecute those they disagreed with politically, all trying to get Hillary Clinton elected.” Hannity also claims McCabe lied to the inspector general and committed perjury.

According to Fox News personalities, former FBI lawyer James Baker, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former national security adviser Susan Rice, former Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and possibly former President Barack Obama himself also supposedly played a role in illegally leaking information toward the end of Obama’s presidency.

Here is just a small sample of the times Fox News figures have called for Barr to investigate individuals associated with the FBI, the Clintons, and the Obama administration:

For more than a year, various Fox News personalities have assured viewers that there is one man who is capable of taking down everyone who they feel has wronged Trump: Bill Barr.

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this is the inverse of mueller as savior?

Following the confirmation of William Barr to the position of attorney general in February, Sean Hannity pushed one message: Investigate the president’s political enemies, or suffer the consequences. It appears Hannity got his wish.

This week, Trump’s campaign press secretary Kayleigh McEnany gave up the game. In an interview on his radio show, Hannity stated that Trump is opposed by “pretty much everybody except for like me” and subsequently asked McEnany to assess the impact that “the media mob” would have on the 2020 election. McEnany responded, “Yeah, the work that you do every night, Sean, is going to go a long way. It already has. We now have the Justice Department looking into the misdeeds of the Obama administration."

Hannity and Fox have long shilled for the president, attacking his enemies and shielding him from criticism at every turn. However, attributing a federal investigation to Hannity takes the network’s influence to a new level.

As Media Matters’ Matt Gertz pointed out this week, “It was inevitable for Hannity’s pro-Trump commentary to become the foundation of the president’s reelection campaign. That the campaign acknowledges that messaging might come via a federal investigation is an ominous sign.”

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recall pipe bomb in mail/in person van stickers guy had a list, tho not an official one

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