mike shirkey spker

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dlcc

Michigan Senate Republicans Must Condemn Leader Mike Shirkey or They Stand With Him

Press ReleasesFebruary 12, 2021

WASHINGTON— Michigan Senate Republican Leader Mike Shirkey had yet another scandal-filled week. As one of Michigan’s highest ranking Republican officials, Senator Shirkey faced a deep-dive on his ties to right-wing, extremist militia groups and was caught on videotape spreading wild conspiracy theories and making sexist comments. Even the Republican Michigan House Speaker condemned his comments, but so far there is little sign that Shirkey’s leadership is in jeopardy.

The New York Times released a thorough investigation detailing Shirkey’s embrace of extremist militia groups. In an interview with the paper, he even said he empathized with the violent mob that stormed the Capitol, explaining “I understand where they come from.” Previous reporting revealed his private meeting with militia leaders that came just a month before individuals linked to militia groups were charged in a plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

He was caught on tape calling the riots at the Capitol a “hoax” and said that Mitch McConnell may have been in on the supposed conspiracy. He went on to imply that there are “puppeteers” controlling elected officials.

He also made comments challenging Governor Whitmer to “a fistfight” and used sexist language to describe his interactions with her, bragging about “spanking her” on the state budget.

Shirkey’s office issued a tepid, mealy-mouthed statement apologizing for “the words [he] chose,” but he was later caught on a hot mic saying “I frankly don’t take back any of the points I was trying to make.”

While appalling, Mike Shirkey’s track record during his leadership tenure is hardly an anomaly among elected Republicans. The DLCC has spent the weeks since the violent insurrection of Capitol Hill highlighting the role that GOP officials across the country played in the grievous assault on our democracy. Few, if any, have shown the courage to confront the danger their own party poses to the future of this country. Michigan Senate Republicans voted for Mike Shirkey to represent them as the leader of their caucus and the Senate—do they still stand with him?

“The crisis in our democracy runs much deeper than Donald Trump,” said DLCC President Jessica Post. “Republican leaders like Mike Shirkey have embraced and coddled violent extremists while they spread misinformation that undermines our governing institutions. Our country is not safe while people like Mike Shirkey hold any power, and Michigan Senate Republicans have to decide if they stand with Mike Shirkey and his conspiracy theories or with Michiganders who don’t want extremists running their government.”

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NO LNX

‘Its Own Domestic Army’: How the G.O.P. Allied Itself With Militants

Actions taken by paramilitary groups in Michigan last year, emboldened by President Donald J. Trump, signaled a profound shift in Republican politics and a national crisis in the making.

:{An intrusion by militia groups into the Michigan Statehouse last April now seems a harbinger of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

By David D. Kirkpatrick and Mike McIntire

Feb. 8, 2021

LANSING, Mich. — Dozens of heavily armed militiamen crowded into the Michigan Statehouse last April to protest a stay-at-home order by the Democratic governor to slow the pandemic. Chanting and stomping their feet, they halted legislative business, tried to force their way onto the floor and brandished rifles from the gallery over lawmakers below.

Initially, Republican leaders had some misgivings about their new allies. “The optics weren’t good. Next time tell them not to bring guns,” complained Mike Shirkey, the State Senate majority leader, according to one of the protest organizers. But Michigan’s highest-ranking Republican came around after the planners threatened to return with weapons and “militia guys signing autographs and passing out blow-up AR-15s to the kiddies on the Capitol lawn.”

“To his credit,” Jason Howland, the organizer, wrote in a social media post, Mr. Shirkey agreed to help the cause and “spoke at our next event.”

Following signals from President Donald J. Trump — who had tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” after an earlier show of force in Lansing — Michigan’s Republican Party last year welcomed the support of newly emboldened paramilitary groups and other vigilantes. Prominent party members formed bonds with militias or gave tacit approval to armed activists using intimidation in a series of rallies and confrontations around the state. That intrusion into the Statehouse now looks like a portent of the assault halfway across the country months later at the United States Capitol.

As the Senate on Tuesday begins the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump on charges of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol rioting, what happened in Michigan helps explain how, under his influence, party leaders aligned themselves with a culture of militancy to pursue political goals.

Michigan has a long tradition of tolerating self-described private militias, which are unusually common in the state. But it is also a critical electoral battleground that draws close attention from top party leaders, and the Republican alliance with paramilitary groups shows how difficult it may be for the national party to extricate itself from the shadow of the former president and his appeal to this aggressive segment of its base.

“We knew there would be violence,” said Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, about the Jan. 6 assault. Endorsing tactics like militiamen with assault rifles frightening state lawmakers “normalizes violence,” she told journalists last week, “and Michigan, unfortunately, has seen quite a bit of that.”

Six Trump supporters from Michigan have been arrested in connection with the storming of the Capitol. One, a former Marine accused of beating a Capitol Police officer with a hockey stick, had previously joined armed militiamen in a protest organized by Michigan Republicans to try to disrupt ballot counting in Detroit.

The chief organizer of that protest, Meshawn Maddock, on Saturday was elected co-chair of the state Republican Party — one of four die-hard Trump loyalists who won top posts.

Ms. Maddock helped fill 19 buses to Washington for the Jan. 6 rally and defended the April armed intrusion into the Michigan Capitol. When Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, suggested at the time that Black demonstrators would never be allowed to threaten legislators like that, Ms. Maddock wrote on Twitter, “Please show us the ‘threat’?”

“Oh that’s right you think anyone armed is threatening,” she continued. “It’s a right for a reason and the reason is YOU.”

The lead organizer of the April 30 armed protest, Ryan Kelley, a local Republican official, last week announced a bid for governor. “Becoming too closely aligned with militias — is that a bad thing?” he said in an interview. Londa Gatt, a pro-Trump activist close to him was named last month to a leadership position in a statewide Republican women’s group. She welcomed militias and Proud Boys at protests, posting on the social media site Parler: “While BLM destroy/murder people the Proud Boys are true patriots.” Prosecutors have accused members of the Proud Boys of playing a leading role in the Jan. 6 assault.

Two weeks after the Statehouse protest, Mr. Shirkey, the Republican leader, appeared at a rally by the same organizers, onstage with a militia member who would later be accused of conspiring to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

“Stand up and test that assertion of authority by the government,” Mr. Shirkey told the militiamen. “We need you now more than ever.”

After the riot in Washington, some argue such endorsements endanger the future of the party. “It is like the Republican Party has its own domestic army,” said Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan party and a vocal Trump critic.

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A self-described militia group in Michigan during a training exercise.Credit...Mark Peterson/Corbis, via Getty Images

A Long History

A quarter-century before the mob rampaged through the U.S. Capitol, a paramilitary leader from Michigan sat in the same building and delivered an early warning shot.

Norman Olson, founder of the Michigan Militia, appeared in June 1995 before a Senate committee investigating the growth of the anti-government movement after the Oklahoma City bombing that April. Dressed in military fatigues with a “Commander Olson” patch on his shirt, he spoke with contempt.

“We stand against oppression and tyranny in government,” Mr. Olson said, “and many of us are coming to the conclusion that you best represent that corruption and tyranny.”

For many Americans, it was jarring to listen to self-appointed defenders of the Constitution justify taking up arms in a paranoid vision of government overreach. But back in Michigan they were used to it.

Roughly a dozen to 18 armed groups are scattered across Michigan in mostly rural counties, their membership fluctuating with political and economic currents. Estimates of active members statewide are generally in the hundreds.

The state’s lenient gun laws — it is permissible to openly carry a firearm in public — also make it a welcoming place for other armed extremists. Members of the Proud Boys or Boogaloo movement routinely showed up at protests in Michigan last year and sometimes got into fights with Black Lives Matter activists.

For many of the more traditional militias, however, socializing is often as much a priority as drilling. Firearms training is mixed with camping and family outings — last fall, members of the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia gathered for a picnic in a park where children tossed beanbags, mothers grilled cheeseburgers and AR-15 rifles leaned against lawn chairs. Some have websites where they sell T-shirts and carry ads for gun shops.

But woven through Michigan’s militia timeline is a persistent strand of menace. In the early 20th century, the Black Legion, a paramilitary group that included public officials in Detroit and elsewhere, began as an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan and was linked to numerous acts of murder and terrorism.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing, were reported to have associated with militia members in Michigan, though Mr. Olson said they had been turned away because of their violent rhetoric. In the aftermath, militias were largely exiled to the fringes of conspiracy politics, preparing for imagined threats from the New World Order.

But in recent years, as the Republican Party has drifted further to the right, these groups have gradually found a home there, said JoEllen Vinyard, an emeritus professor of history at Eastern Michigan University who has studied political extremism. Much of their cooperation is centered on defending gun ownership, she said.

“I think there is a fair amount of sympathy in the Republican Party for these people that wasn’t there in the past,” Dr. Vinyard said. “It’s a much closer relationship now.”

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Operation Gridlock jammed the roads around the statehouse in Lansing to protest the governor’s stay-at-home order.Credit...Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal, via Associated Press

The Covid-19 Revolt

If Michigan Republicans and militant groups had increasingly found themselves sharing the same ideological space, their common ground became literal last year, as an escalating series of events drew them together for protests and rallies. They began with objections to the governor’s lockdown orders.

Republicans have controlled both houses of the Michigan Legislature for a decade and held the governor’s mansion for the eight years before Ms. Whitmer took office in 2019. Mr. Trump’s brash nationalism had alienated moderate Republicans and independents while pushing the party to the right.

By last April 1, Covid-19 had killed more than 300 people in Michigan, primarily in Detroit, and Ms. Whitmer ordered all nonessential businesses closed. Ms. Maddock wasted no time rallying opposition, calling for a protest on April 15.

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Meshawn Maddock, a Trump loyalist who was just elected co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

A national advisory board member of the Women for Trump wing of the president’s re-election campaign, she appeared often with Mr. Trump and his surrogates on their many visits to Michigan. Her husband, Matt Maddock, the owner of a bail bond business who has boasted of personally apprehending bail jumpers, is a state lawmaker from a Detroit suburb.

In the first major protest in the country against stay-at-home orders, thousands of cars, trucks and even a few cement mixers jammed the streets around the Statehouse in Lansing, in what Ms. Maddock called Operation Gridlock. About 150 demonstrators left their vehicles to chant “lock her up” from the Capitol lawn — redirecting the 2016 battle cry about Hillary Clinton against Ms. Whitmer. A few waved Confederate flags. About a dozen heavily armed members of the Michigan Liberty Militia turned up as well.

Ms. Maddock declared Michigan a “tyranny” that night on the Fox News Channel, though she later distanced herself from the armed men. “Of course the militia is disappointing to me, the Confederate flag — look, they’re just idiots,” she later told Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit news organization.

Mr. Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” two days later, and Ms. Maddock’s protest inspired a wave of others around the country.

When local armed groups in Michigan began discussing more demonstrations, most Republicans shunned them at first. “They were scared of the word ‘militia,’” recalled Phil Robinson, a member of the Liberty Militia.

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Ryan Kelley, the lead organizer of the April 30 armed protest, is now running for governor. “Becoming too closely aligned with militias — is that a bad thing?” he said in an interview.Credit...Elaine Cromie for The New York Times

But his group found eager promoters in Mr. Kelley, a real estate broker and Republican planning commissioner in a suburb of Grand Rapids, and Mr. Howland, a local sales consultant who had been posting online videos minimizing the pandemic. They called the stay-at-home restrictions “unconstitutional” and formed the American Patriot Council “to restore and sustain a constitutional government,” Mr. Kelley said in an interview.

As the Legislature met on April 30 to vote on extending the governor’s restrictions, Mr. Kelley and his militia allies convened hundreds of protesters, including scores of armed men, some with assault weapons. One demonstrator hung a noose from the back of his pickup. Another held a sign warning that “tyrants get the rope.” Dozens entered the Capitol, some angrily demanding entrance to the lower chamber.

“We were harassed and intimidated so that we would not do our jobs,” said Representative Donna Lasinski, leader of the Democratic minority. Lawmakers were terrified, she added.

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Matt Maddock, a Republican state lawmaker.Credit...Seth Herald/Reuters

Mr. Maddock, the Republican legislator and Ms. Maddock’s husband, recognized some of the intruders and left the House floor to confer with them. “I like being around people with guns,” he later told The Detroit News.

Mr. Trump sided with them, too. “The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,” he tweeted. “These are very good people.”

Other Republicans also came to accept the presence of armed activists. Ms. Gatt, who took part in protests organized by Mr. Kelley and Ms. Maddock, said she felt “intimidated by the militia when I first started getting involved,” but soon changed her mind.

“I was able to see that they are patriots that love their country like the rest of us,” she said, adding that they are “all Republicans.”

Mr. Shirkey, the Senate leader, was initially more cautious. The founder of a manufacturing company who is known for singing hymns from the podium, Mr. Shirkey issued a statement on April 30 criticizing “intimidation and the threat of physical harm” and calling the armed protesters “a bunch of jackasses.”

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Mike Shirkey, the State Senate majority leader and Michigan’s highest-ranking Republican.Credit...Junfu Han/Detroit Free Press, via Associated Press

Yet he had mingled with them in the gallery. Surrounded by militiamen about two weeks later in Grand Rapids, at an event also organized by Mr. Howland and Mr. Kelley, the senator said in a speech that they had taken him to task for his “jackasses” comment and he effectively retracted it.

He also met privately in his office that month with a handful of militia leaders — to establish a “code of conduct,” he explained in an interview. “Do you tell your people to make sure that there’s not a live round in a chamber?” he said, recounting the conversation. “That’d be a good start.”

In May, armed men stood watch for days outside a barbershop in Owosso, defending the proprietor from the police so he could cut hair in defiance of the lockdown.

Ms. Maddock, following suit, then arranged for hairdressers to offer their services on the Capitol lawn, again watched over by armed men.

The state G.O.P. quickly jumped into the fight. In June, a nonprofit group linked to the Republican Party began providing more than $600,000 to a new advocacy group run in part by Ms. Maddock that was dedicated to fighting coronavirus restrictions. A charity tied to Mr. Shirkey kicked in $500,000.

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Trump supporters rallying in Allendale in October.Credit...Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times

Racial Tensions Erupt

Critics argued that race was an unstated factor in the battle over the stay-at-home order. The Republicans who rallied against the rules were mostly white residents of rural areas and outer suburbs. But more than 40 percent of the deaths in Michigan early on were among African-Americans, concentrated in Detroit, who made up less than 15 percent of the state’s population.

Those tensions spilled into the open last summer when police killings of African-Americans set off protests around the country.

The Black Lives Matter protests in Michigan were rarely violent or destructive, and the largest took place in Detroit. But Republicans in the rest of the state reacted with alarm to the flashes of violence elsewhere around the country, and President Trump reinforced their fears with his warnings about “antifa.”

Calls to stand up to the feared rioters brought the party and its militant allies even closer together.

“Liberals look for trouble and civil unrest and conservatives PREPARE for it,” Gary Eisen, a Republican state legislator and owner of a concealed-weapon training business, wrote on his Facebook page. “I thought maybe I would load up a few more mags,” he added, later saying he had been joking.

In June, about 50 militiamen called together by Mr. Kelley squared off against a few dozen Black Lives Matter protesters over a statue of a Confederate soldier in his town, Allendale. “There were children there, and militia members were pointing guns at people,” said Ali Bates, 20, an activist with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Mr. Kelley said he feared what was coming to Allendale. “Statues all over the country were getting torn down, people were lighting things on fire, there were riots everywhere,” Mr. Kelley said in an interview, echoing Mr. Trump. “You are not going to come here and destroy public property.”

He accused Democrats of encouraging violence. “The Democrats have got antifa; they have got BLM,” he said. “The Democrats championed all of this stuff from a leadership level.”

More prominent Michigan Republicans portrayed the Black Lives Matter movement as a looming threat, too. Ms. Maddock told the news site MLive.com that the “destruction” caused by the protests was “absolutely devastating” and “inexcusable.”

Armed militiamen responded by turning up at some protests as vigilante guards. In August, dozens of Proud Boys marched in Kalamazoo, Mich., the site of several Black Lives Matter demonstrations, saying they wanted to support the police. They took pepper spray and used it in fist fights with activists.

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Members of the Proud Boys clashed with Black Lives Matter activists in Kalamazoo in August.Credit...MLive Media Group, via Associated Press

At the peak of the protests against police violence, though, Mr. Kelley’s American Patriot Council still aimed its sharpest attacks at Governor Whitmer and her stay-at-home order. It released public letters urging the federal authorities to arrest her for violating the Constitution by issuing a stay-at-home order. “Whitmer needs to go to prison,” Mr. Kelley declared in a video he posted on Facebook in early October that was later taken down. “She is a threat to our Republic.”

A few days later, federal agents arrested more than a dozen Michigan militiamen, charging them in a plot to kidnap the governor, put her on trial and possibly execute her.

At least two of the suspects had participated in the April 30 protest at the Capitol, as well as the gathering with Mr. Shirkey in Grand Rapids. Prosecutors said that the men had tried to recruit other conspirators at an American Patriot Council rally. (Mr. Kelley and Mr. Shirkey denied any knowledge of the plot.)

It was the culmination of months of mobilization by armed groups, accompanied by increasingly threatening language, and Mr. Trump declined to condemn the plotters. “People are entitled to say, ‘Maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn’t,’” he declared at a rally in Michigan.

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Trump supporters outside a ballot-counting facility in Detroit the day after the election.Credit...Jeff Kowalsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

‘Stop the Steal’

Hours after the Nov. 3 election, Ms. Maddock wrote on Facebook: “35k ballots showed up out of nowhere at 3 AM. Need help.” She urged Trump supporters to rush to “monitor the vote” at a ballot-counting center in Detroit. “Report to room 260 STAT.”

As the counting showed Mr. Trump had lost the pivotal state, Michigan Republicans began a two-month campaign to overturn the result and keep him in power, channeling the momentum of the previous year’s battles over Black Lives Matter and Covid-19.

Mr. Kelley, with Mr. Howland and their armed militia allies, showed up for a rowdy protest outside the ballot counting. Later that month Mr. Kelley told a rally outside the Statehouse that the coronavirus was a ruse to persuade the public to “believe Joe Biden won the election,” The Lansing State Journal reported. One woman held a sign saying “ARREST THE VOTE COUNTERS.”

When attempts to stop the counting failed, Ms. Maddock in December led 16 Republican electors trying to push into the Michigan Capitol to disrupt the casting of Democratic votes in the Electoral College. During a “Stop the Steal” news conference in Washington the next day, she vowed to “keep fighting.”

Marching toward the Capitol on Jan. 6, she tweeted that the throngs were “the most incredible crowd and sea of people I have ever walked with.”

She also pushed back on Twitter against an observer urging Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, to take control of his party. “That’s where you’re very wrong,” she said. “It’s Trump’s party now.”

Ms. Maddock has condemned the violence and said she took no part. “When it comes to militias or the Proud Boys, I have no connection whatsoever to them,” she wrote in an email.

Mr. Kelley and Mr. Howland were filmed outside the U.S. Capitol during the riot. Both men said they did not break any laws, and argued that the event was not “an insurrection” because the participants were patriots. “I was there to support the sitting president,” Mr. Kelley said.

Ms. Gatt, the Republican activist, had posted a video on Facebook of herself in Washington for a rally in December talking with members of the Proud Boys, saying: “I hang out with the Michigan Proud Boys.”

During the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, she climbed scaffolding set up for the inauguration: “I made it to the top of the Capitol,” she bragged on Facebook.

Mr. Shirkey, the Michigan Senate leader who came around to work with the militias, declined to follow the movement behind Mr. Trump all the way to the end. Summoned to the White House in November, Mr. Shirkey refused the president’s entreaties to try to annul his Michigan defeat.

But in an interview last week, the lawmaker said he nonetheless empathized with the mob that attacked Congress.

“It was people feeling oppressed, and depressed, responding to what they thought was government just stealing their lives from them,” he said. “And I’m not endorsing and supporting their actions, but I understand where they come from.”

David D. Kirkpatrick is an international correspondent based in London and the author of "Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East." In 2020 he shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on covert Russian interference in other governments and as the Cairo bureau chief from 2011 to 2015 he led coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings.

Mike McIntire is a reporter with the investigations unit. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and has written in depth on campaign finance, gun violence and corruption in college sports.

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 9, 2021, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: G.O.P.’s Embrace of Michigan Militias Set Up Stark Political Shift.

See more on: Republican Party, Gretchen Whitmer, Donald Trump

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/michigan-republicans-struggle-with-recognition-of-their-own-roles-in-fueling-militia-kidnap-plot}:

david n kos

discovering that terrorists can look like the guys next door is a jarring thing, especially if that's not how you've been conditioned to think of such matters. In Michigan this week, cognitive dissonance has been thick on the ground—especially as public officials who came too close to the plotters and their incendiary rhetoric have tried to wrestle with the consequences of last week's arrests of 13 Michigan militiamen who schemed to kidnap and assassinate Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

A local sheriff who had appeared onstage at an anti-Whitmer rally this spring suggested to a TV interviewer that maybe the plotters—some of whom he knows personally—were just trying to make a citizens arrest. A Republican state legislative candidate opined that the arrests were "a totally bogus sham." And the state's Republican Speaker of the House, who has helped stoke the incendiary "tyranny" rhetoric that fueled the plotters, chastised Whitmer for pointing out the connection between the plotters' actions and the rhetoric used by Donald Trump and Michigan Republicans. [vid rally w. da bois and dar]

Dar Leaf, the sheriff of Barry County—where two of the accused domestic terrorists, William and Michael Null, reside and were arrested by the FBI Thursday—told a Grand Rapids interviewer that he believed the men might have been within their rights.

"It's just a charge, and they say a 'plot to kidnap' and you got to remember that. Are they trying to kidnap? Because a lot of people are angry with the governor, and they want her arrested. So are they trying to arrest or was it a kidnap attempt? Because you can still in Michigan if it's a felony, make a felony arrest," Leaf told Fox17 reporter Aaron Parshegian.

He added: "The two gentlemen that I know of from my county, were they involved in that? I don't know. They're innocent till proven guilty. And we really, really should be careful, trying to try them in the media."

The evidence unveiled by the FBI included multiple instances of surveillance of Whitmer's summer home, where the militiamen—who called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen—planned to abduct her, as well as multiple instances in which the men discussed killing her. The evidence also showed that not only had the men originally planned a paramilitary assault on the state Capitol, they also made plans to kill law-enforcement officers. The discussion of a "citizens arrest" of Whitmer was largely rhetorical.

Leaf's comments created an uproar. Shortly after the interview aired, Michigan's attorney general, Dana Nessel, ripped into him on Twitter:

As Michigan's top law enforcement official, let me make this abundantly clear-Persons who are not sworn, licensed members of a law enforcement agency cannot and should not "arrest" government offficials with whom they have disagreements. These comments are dangerous.

Leaf tried to defend the remarks subsequently by insisting that he only wanted to ensure that men weren't being "tried in the media."

"I don't want anybody to think I'm sympathetic towards these charges, right, these are very, very serious charges," he said. "What I don't want is I don't want us to be trying it in the media and we mess it up in the justice system somewhere, 'cause they can't get a fair trial."

Leaf told MLive: "The governor has the right to govern and also the right to be safe." Yet he went on to criticize officials like Whitmer and Nessel for blaming people like Trump and himself for creating an atmosphere empowering fringe groups.Leaf said the militia movement "has been brewing for quite some time" over what he described as "a gradual and growing loss of rights."

In fact, as Jen Hayden explored earlier, Leaf is a member of a law-enforcement organization closely aligned with the "Patriot" militia movement with which the plotters identified. He also was an outspoken critic of Whitmer's anti-COVID-19 pandemic orders.

At a May 18 "Michigan Patriots Rally" held at Rosa Parks Circle in Grand Rapids, Leaf had appeared onstage with several militiamen, including Michael Null. In his speech, he compared Whitmer's stay-at-home orders to being held unlawfully under house arrest. Leaf had also described Owosso barber Karl Manke—who had defied the governor's order by opening his shop—a "little version of Rosa Parks."

Meanwhile, Republican legislative candidate Paul Smith of Sterling Heights angrily denounced the arrests on Twitter.

"What a totally bogus sham," Smith commented. "These citizens never did anything illegal. Law enforcement is employed to punish people who COMMIT crimes, not people The Governess simply HATES. You can legally hurt Whitmer by voting out her minions."

State Republican leaders were appalled, and announced they had withdrawn financial and other support for Smith's candidacy, calling the remarks "conspiracy theories and hateful remarks."

"If you can't denounce the evil plans and actions of these white nationalists, we don't want you in our caucus," Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield said. "In fact, if there's any 'Republican' who thinks like this guy, we don't want your vote either. We don't support domestic terrorism."

Chatfield, however, also chastised Whitmer for her remarks laying some of the blame at Trump's feet that week: "Just last week, the president of the United States stood before the American people and refused to condemn white supremacists and hate groups like these two Michigan militia groups," Whitmer said, adding that extremists had "heard the president's words not as a rebuke but as a rallying cry—as a call to action."

In a Twitter thread, Chatfield criticized Whitmer, claiming she had kept the investigation under wraps: "Why weren't we warned of the plot to take hostages at the Capitol? The plot by these terrorists was against us too. Why weren't House sergeants warned? You knew and we weren't even given a warning. We had people working in the building and their lives matter too." However, it was the FBI, and not Whitmer, who had overseen the sharing of information with potential victims.

Chatfield also suggested that she shared in the blame: "Hatred and violence are wrong, and that's why I've continually denounced it," he wrote. "And I agree, it's time to tone the partisan rhetoric and 'the heat down.' Will you do the same for President Trump? Will the [lieutenant governor] do it to the entire GOP? We have to make this decision together."

However, Chatfield and other leading Michigan Republicans, had played their own not-insignificant roles in whipping up anti-Whitmer hysteria, as Michigan journalist Joshua Pugh pointed out on Twitter. When "Patriot" protesters had locked down Lansing with an anti-Whitmer protest on April 15 that featured Confederate flags and incendiary rhetoric, Chatfield had greeted them by waving a flag out his window and tweeting out encouragement.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey had been even more incendiary. On the floor of the Senate during a subsequent Lansing protest—during which armed militia members were watching from the gallery above—Shirkey had called the governor a tyrant: "If she does not recognize the end of the emergency declaration, we have no other choice but to act," he said, not clarifying what kind of action he intended.

After Thursday's arrests, Shirkey was defiant: "This is no time to be weak in our commitment to freedom," Shirkey told a "Let MI People Go" rally at the Capitol. "We need to be strong…and not be afraid of those who are taking our freedoms away from us."

Shirkey also told the crowd at Thursday's rally that they were not the same people involved in the plot to kill the governor. However, the *Detroit Free Press*identified several of the arrestees as participants at the earlier protests against Whitmer's orders.

In Barry County, Leaf's remarks sparked calls for his resignation. Local residents organized a protest demanding he step down or face a recall movement—but that protest was called off when organizers became concerned about the safety of participants amid the likelihood of armed right-wing counter-protesters.

"Whereas I truly believe in the statement we were trying to make, I cannot in good conscience compromise the safety of my fellow Barry County residents," organizer Olivia Bennett wrote on the event's Facebook page.

"I have come to this conclusion for a couple reasons. First, there were many concerns about confrontational counter protesters. Second, this protest garnered enough attention this weekend that crowd size was a concern given short notice, security, and capacity at the commissioners' meeting."

Bennett tried to clarify that she and other protesters aren't suggesting the sheriff was a participant. "We are not accusing him of having known about the kidnapping plot and we are not accusing him of being a part of it at all," Bennett told MLive. "What I am suggesting is his actions and his words embolden people who would attempt to do such things."

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6 25 nOt much talk

Michael J. Shirkey^[1] (born December 5, 1954) is an American politician who served as a Republican member of the Michigan State Senate and as a member of the Michigan House of Representatives. He was first elected to the House in 2010 and to the Senate in 2014. His district, the 16th, covered all of Branch, Hillsdale, and Jackson Counties. From 2019 to 2023, Shirkey was the majority leader of the Michigan State Senate.^[2]

Early life and education

He has a bachelor's degree from Kettering University and a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Shirkey worked for General Motors for 13 years before starting his own engineering company. Shirkey founded the Jackson-based assembly machine manufacturing company, Orbitform.^[3][4]

Tenure

In May 2020, Shirkey appeared onstage at an American Patriot Council rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan with William Null and Adam Fox.^[5] In October 2020, William Null, his twin brother, Michael Null, Adam Fox, and 10 other men were charged in a plot to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.^[⁶]

In early April 2020, Shirkey criticized Governor Gretchen Whitmer for extending a "stay home" order until the end of April.^[7] Shirkey opposed face mask requirements in Michigan.^[8]

In November 2020, Shirkey stated that he would not attempt to appoint a slate of electors in the Electoral College that would vote for President Donald Trump, following Trump's loss in the 2020 United States presidential election.^[4] Trump invited Shirkey and several of his Republican colleagues to the White House following Shirkey's statement.^[4] Shirkey and several of his colleagues in the Michigan Legislature met with Trump on November 20, 2020. Shirkey and others issued a statement following the meeting in which they stated that they would "follow the normal process" of certifying the state's election results.^[9]

On December 23, 2020, Shirkey tested positive for COVID-19. He believed he was exposed to the coronavirus on December 19. On December 21, Shirkey attended Lee Chatfield's farewell speech at the Michigan State Capitol.^[8] Shirkey characterized his COVID-19 illness as him having fought against the "Chinese flu army"; his remarks were criticized as xenophobic.^[10][11]

In April 2020, Shirkey's business, Orbitform, received $1.8 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. In January 2021, Orbitform received another $1.7 million in PPP loans, for a total of $3.5 million. During this time, Shirkey led the Michigan Senate to block allocation of $4 billion in federal COVID reliefs funds for food and rental assistance.^[12] Although Shirkey claims to not be involved in the day-to-day management of his company, several of his family members (including son David Shirkey, grandson Karter Fannin, and Mark Shirkey) are employed at Orbitform in management positions.^[13]

In February 2021, Shirkey alleged that the storming of the U.S. Capitol was a "hoax", that it was "staged", and that supporters of Donald Trump did not carry it out.^[14][15]

In a February interview with radio station WKHM, Shirkey alleged that dead people voted in Michigan in the 2020 elections, a claim that has been denied by others.^[16][17] In 2021, Shirkey led efforts in the Michigan Senate by Republicans which according to the GOP are aimed at securing elections in Michigan, Democrats and other critics have called these efforts by Republicans a push to restrict voting rights.^[18]

In April 2021, Shirkey accepted an invitation to meet with militia leaders. During the meeting in Grand Rapids, Shirkey told the militias, "We need you now more than ever to continue to train" and "to stand up and test that assertion of authority by government". The Associated Press described the event "Michigan’s GOP leadership has for the first time in memory bestowed legitimacy on its state’s militia, long relegated to the shadows" and indicative of the rightward shift of the Michigan GOP after the 2020 elections.^[19]

Shirkey was ineligible for re-election in 2022 due to term limits.^[4]

In his farewell address to the Senate, Shirkey claimed that "the surprise attack of an insidious virus" was "one that we were not prepared for, but one that was most certainly planned," embracing the unproven theory that COVID was a designed attack by China. He also suggested a series of "little-g gods" like climate change, gun control, digital currency, child sacrifice, and "trans-whatever" are part of a broader push to "achieve a one-world government" and "one-world religion."

He also took aim at the World Economic Forum, arguing the non-governmental lobbying organization is behind a push for “the elimination of sovereignty,” and that, "It's becoming glaringly apparent COVID was just the beginning of the forces that will test the very fabric of our freedoms, independence, our sovereignty, our values, and even our God-given rights." According to the Anti-Defamation League, adherents of the "Great Reset" conspiracy theory "warn that 'global elites' will use the pandemic to advance their interests and push forward a globalist plot to destroy American sovereignty and prosperity."^[20] He also shared an anecdote about noticing warmth in a Senate bathroom and reaching his hand into a Senate toilet to test the water temperature. He said, "I put my hand in it, and it was hot water. So I went back to the office and said, 'Please, get a hold of maintenance staff around here and ask them why taxpayers are paying for hot water in our toilets."^[21]

LANSING, Mich. — First came the “Unlock Michigan” protest. More than 1,000 cars, many draped with flags supporting President Trump, drove around the Michigan State Capitol, blaring their horns and decrying Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s coronavirus lockdown orders. Hundreds of others, many armed with military-style weapons, milled about on the lawn.

Two weeks later, on April 30, the dissent escalated. Gun-toting protesters rushed the State Capitol, not long after Mr. Trump tweeted “Liberate Michigan.” They demanded entry into the House of Representatives’ chamber, chanting “Let Us In.”

A handful of them, wearing camouflage fatigues with semiautomatic rifles slung over their shoulders, watched ominously from the gallery above the Senate chamber as the elected officials did their work. The lawmakers passed bills and resolutions and gave angry floor speeches about the extraordinary show of force looking down at them. At least two of the protesters were among 14 people later charged in a failed plot to kidnap Ms. Whitmer and bomb the state Capitol.

On Wednesday, as a mob of pro-Trump loyalists breached the U.S. Capitol in Washington after an angry rally focused on overturning the election President Trump had lost, Michigan State Senator Sylvia Santana watched in stunned — but not surprised — horror.

She had worn a bulletproof vest onto the state’s Senate floor back in April, and now was watching a similarly frightening episode unfold in Washington.

“Michigan was the precursor for what happened,” she said in an interview on Thursday. “The same feeling that I had Wednesday was the same feeling I had back in April, when I feared that I might not make it back home to my family. Those are the same feelings I felt on the Senate floor that day with those men up in the gallery with large weapons looming over us and knowing that they could get trigger happy at any time.”

She was not alone.

State Senator Erika Geiss, a Democrat from Taylor, Mich., who now keeps a bulletproof vest at her desk, watched the events in Washington with the same sense of recognition and dread.

“What I saw on Wednesday really made me feel like what happened here this past spring and summer was a dress rehearsal for what happened” in Washington, she said. “It was the same energy that was present at the Capitol in Michigan. It was just palpable coming through the television screen.”

Amy Cooter, an expert on domestic terror groups and a lecturer at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said it was not difficult to draw a line straight from those early rallies in Michigan to Washington — and even earlier, to Charlottesville, Va., when white supremacists marched through the streets in 2017, chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans and clashing with counter protesters. And “given the general lack of consequences” in Michigan last spring, “this becomes normalized and legitimate and made it easier to scale up” to what unfolded in Washington.

But State Representative Beau LaFave, a Republican from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, said it’s a stretch to connect those dots. “There were a lot of angry people at both things, but nobody did any damage or hurt anyone in Michigan,” he said. “They were angry and yelling, but they didn’t punch any cops, and they didn’t do any damage inside the building.”

[[Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings

Card 1 of 9

Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is laying out a comprehensive narrative of President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far from eight public hearings:

An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.

Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.

Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.

Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.

Strong arming the Justice Dept. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.

The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol.

Planning a march. Mr. Trump planned to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but wanted it to look spontaneous, the committee revealed during its seventh hearing. Representative Liz Cheney also said that Mr. Trump had reached out to a witness in the panel’s investigation, and that the committee had informed the Justice Department of the approach.

A “complete dereliction” of duty. In the final public hearing of the summer, the panel accused the former president of dereliction of duty for failing to act to stop the Capitol assault. The committee documented how, over 187 minutes, Mr. Trump had ignored pleas to call off the mob and then refused to say the election was over even a day after the attack.]]

Indeed, while the protest in April was loud and tense, it did not get violent, although one person was arrested after an altercation between two men outside. But the rhetoric in the crowds at protests in April and May was heated. One protester carried a sign that read, “Tyrants Get the Rope,” and another carried an American flag that had a doll made to look like Ms. Whitmer hanging from it.

Meshawn Maddock, head of the national organization, Women for Trump, and in line to become the vice-chair of the state’s Republican Party, helped organize that “Unlock Michigan” rally in April and recently organized busloads of Michiganders to travel to Washington. Photos and videos from the rally in the nation’s capital filled her social media pages and, while walking toward the U.S. Capitol, she praised the “most incredible crowd and sea of people I’ve ever worked with.”

While she attended the rally outside the Ellipse, she said she was not at the Capitol when the mob of Trump supporters stormed the building, and she later condemned the violence.

On Wednesday, while Ms. Maddock was in Washington, several hundred people gathered outside Michigan’s statehouse to protest the election certification happening nearly 600 miles away. The statehouse was closed, though, to comply with Covid rules that it be shuttered when the Legislature is not in session. The rally, which featured Trump flags and hats and a handful of men armed with weapons, remained peaceful — and pointed. One protester waved a Trump flag that had four bobblehead dolls hanging from it: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Michigan is an open carry state, so it is not unusual to see armed individuals walking the halls of the state Capitol. The Capitol Commission, the body that sets rules and approves maintenance projects for the building, debated banning guns in the Capitol after that April protest, but no action has been taken.

[Image

Militia members wait inside the Senate chamber at the Capitol building during the “American Patriot Rally on Capitol Lawn” protest in Lansing, Mich., in April.

John Truscott, a member of the commission, recalled an incident in the early 1990s, when some welfare rights advocates stormed the Capitol and burned flags in the building’s Rotunda to protest budget cuts during former Gov. John Engler’s State of the State speech.

“It seems so quaint now,” he said of the 1990s protest. “That group had spotlights and bullhorns and were throwing snowballs at the windows. I don’t think anyone was prepared for what we saw [in Washington.] We’ll be discussing these things going forward.”

The need for a discussion was heightened Thursday when a bomb threat was called into the Capitol shortly before 7 a.m. Though closed to the public, state employees who were in the building were evacuated while it was swept by Michigan State Police, who found no bomb but later charged a 48-year-old man with making the threat.

Senate majority leader Mike Shirkey, a Republican from Clarklake, Mich., said he is amenable to banning open carry in the Capitol, but would not want to prohibit all guns there.

Michigan is not the only state where guns are welcome at the Statehouse.

In Texas, where the embrace of guns dates back to the state’s frontier culture, firearms are often visible in protests and other public gatherings. Texans with a state-issued permit can carry handguns either concealed or openly and no licenses are required to openly carry shotguns or rifles.

Several pistols and rifles, including at least one AR-15,were visible among more than 200 protesters, predominantly supporters of Mr. Trump, who converged in a largely peaceful demonstration near the State Capitol in Austin on Wednesday as the chaos unfolded in Washington.

State law enforcement officers ultimately banned the protesters from the State Capitol grounds out of concern that the Texas demonstrations would turn ugly. Anyone licensed to carry guns in Texas can tote them anywhere inside the Texas Capitol by showing their permit to a Department of Public Safety trooper at the Capitol entrance.

But the combination of the April incident and the invasion of the Capitol in Washington has left nerves particularly raw for many Michigan legislators.

State Senator Dayna Polehanki, asuburban Detroit Democrat, bought extra work supplies during the Christmas break — a police helmet, gas mask and can of macethat she said she will store along with her bulletproof vest at her desk in the Senate chamber. She posted pictures of the armed men in the Senate gallery in April that went viral and has been calling for more substantive gun bans and safety policies in the building ever since. Her resolve only grew after Wednesday’s riot in Washington.

She said that after seeing what happened in Washington, “I can’t say with certainty that it wouldn’t happen here too. Those insurrectionists won the day. The difference here is that guns are welcome in our Capitol.”

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/republican-paramilitaries/

no lnx

ron Johnson said recently that he wasn't scared when, on January 6, armed insurgents sacked and looted the United States Capitol. They "love this country," the Wisconsin Republican said. But "had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa [stormed the seat of government], I might have been a little concerned."

That statement was disturbing not only for the implicit racism it carried, but for the stunning confirmation of what's becoming clear to those of us who are paying attention. The Republican Party has a paramilitary problem, and it isn't new.

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump alleged, without proof, that the electoral system was fraudulent, raising concerns about the impact that his false accusations would have in the event of his defeat. His unexpected victory opened the door to the far-right fringe and legitimized efforts that contributed to strengthening the ties between them. Many feared that this close relationship would be critical in the 2020 presidential election cycle, with rising domestic tensions and the role that paramilitaries would play in addition to Trump's false claims about the election.

It has been clear for some time now that the Republican Party had a more-than-welcoming attitude toward certain paramilitary groups.The deadly events in Charlottesville in 2017, although fundamentally led by white supremacists called by the former president "very fine people," also had protection services provided by paramilitaries. The following year, more signs of backing for their man in the White House came from Trump-supporting paramilitary groups targeting Muslims. In Oregon, a walkout staged by Republican state senators, in 2019, gained support from paramilitary groups that made credible threats against a planned rally.

For almost three decades, these paramilitaries (thought to be in the hundreds across the country) have viewed the government as the adversary. With a friend residing in the White House, however, these groups experienced an identity crisis. This need for an enemy explains the shift into targeting immigrants and religious minorities. It wasn't just to please their man. It was to embrace a cause allowing them to grow.

After Trump won, there was an increase in the number of paramilitary groups, but the GOP has been no stranger to them. In 2017, a local chapter of the Republican Party in Oregon passed a resolution allowing paramilitaries (the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, for instance) to provide security at the local party events. These groups are part of the Patriot Movement, a loose far-right network affiliated with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and armed confrontations in Nevada and Oregon in 2016.

The Republican Party seems to be very comfortable with these groups around, as we have seen in Nevada, Oregon, Michigan, and other states. However, this is not a recent venture, since the accounts of strengthening ties can be traced back even before Trump won the election in 2016. The openness about their common interests is perhaps new, but it's not surprising. Alarms were sounded when state Senate Majority Leader, Republican Mike Shirkey of Michigan, participated in a rally organized by paramilitaries that stormed the Michigan Capitol back in April 2020 alongside a member of a group involved in the planned kidnapping of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Though Michigan has a history of paramilitaries, the state GOP had tied itself to them, especially since the election as party co-chair of Meshawn Maddock. She organized a protest to interrupt ballot counting in Detroit, where paramilitaries were present.

Johnson's statement is outrageous, not only for the racism, but also for the approval of white armed groups as opposed to unarmed groups as well as the acknowledgement that he didn't feel threatened by them since they were exercising their freedom. Compare that to his comments about BLM and Antifa, but that's another discussion.

The connections the Republican Party has with paramilitaries are not ambiguous, yet the ongoing investigation into the Capitol attack will likely provide more evidence of the extremely disturbing behavior of the formerly conservative party. Ties between not only Trump and his associates, like Roger Stone, whose security detail included members of the Oath Keepers, but the GOP at state and local levels, should bring into the discussion how one of the major parties in the country is going to stand for democracy while leading a double-life with paramilitaries bent on racial supremacy.

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Michigan Senate Republicans Must Condemn Leader Mike Shirkey or They Stand With Him

Early life and education

Tenure

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