Citizens for a Working America

<span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">Citizens for a Working America</span><div><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">
</span></div><div><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><div style="font-size: small;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Powerful Republican Ally</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Jan. 5, Proud Boys and other extremists, including white supremacists on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist, flooded into Washington. Stone was spotted with an Oath Keepers security detail. That morning, Alexander tweeted that he was considering issuing an order to supporters to “occupy DC” until a “negotiated settlement” could be reached. “Stand back & stand by!” he tweeted.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">A robocall went out that day encouraging “patriots” to march to the Capitol at 1 p.m. the following afternoon to “stop the steal.” The recording, unearthed by the watchdog group Documented, was paid for by the <b>Rule of Law Defense Fund,</b> a fundraising arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>RAGA</b>, a national organization for Republican state attorneys general, is financed by big corporations and Republican megadonors, none more significant than Koch Industries, which in 2020 gave the group $375,000, according to IRS 527 filings reviewed by Documented. As a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization</span>, RLDF can hide its donors. But it, too, is funded by Koch-backed organizations and other right-wing dark money groups. One of these donors demanded that the “March to Save America” robocall go out and made a contribution “contingent” upon its release, according to The New York Times.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the months leading up to the Capitol attack,<b> RAGA had also put out a series of propaganda videos that demonized racial justice protesters and liberals. One video used Soviet-style imagery to portray Democratic leaders in Congress as communist subversives.</b> In official statements, RAGA said the political left was on a “mission to burn America down” and that a Biden-Harris administration would “destroy” the country. “JOIN THE FIGHT!” urged the Republican attorneys general.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">It was, perhaps, no coincidence that the RAGA chairman in 2020 was Landry,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> the tea partier whose connection to Alexander went back at least to 2014, and the Black Conservative Fund’s “sting” on Mary Landrieu.</span></b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The two appeared to have stayed in touch. </b>When Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, sued on Dec. 8 to block battleground states won by Biden from submitting their Electoral College votes, Alexander tweeted that “Some of us are hard at work behind the scenes too.” He mentioned only one name.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b>“I just thanked my friend @jefflandry,”</b> he tweeted, using Landry’s personal Twitter handle.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Alexander seemed to have inside knowledge of RAGA’s plans. He noted that no “procedural vehicle” existed yet for other states to join Paxton’s suit but that an amicus brief was on its way. Sure enough, Landry and 16 other Republican attorneys general filed the brief on Dec. 9 in support of Paxton’s sham lawsuit. A day later, Landry signed on to the lawsuit in a motion to intervene that misspelled his own state’s name.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Landry shared some of Alexander’s extreme views.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> In RAGA statements and op-eds, the Louisiana attorney general warned of a “radical takeover” by Biden and Harris ― RAGA’s race-baiting propaganda focused heavily on America’s first Black, Asian and female vice president ― that would leave the nation “lawless, socialist, and jobless.” Landry wrote about “charging to the frontlines in order to save and defend America.”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Landry declined to answer any questions about his connection to Alexander. His spokesman, Cory Dennis, emailed HuffPost a one-line response: “The [Louisiana] Attorney General had no prior knowledge of, nor participated in, the robo call’s planning or execution.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry at a Jan. 22, 2020, news conference where it was announced that Republican attorneys general from 21 states submitted a letter to the Senate to reject the two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. ]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b>But RLDF’s involvement in the violent Jan. 6 protest was undeniable</b>.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> The robocall mentioned a “March to Save America” website that Alexander highlighted in his Twitter profile and that listed 11 participating organizations. Three tied directly to Alexander: Stop the Steal, Wild Protest and the Black Conservatives Fund. The rest belonged to his partners. RAGA was the most troubling participant ― originally listed on the site before the more obscure RLDF was swapped in.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>RAGA’s executive director at the time, Adam Piper, appears to have been acquainted with Alexander for more than a decade</b>. Piper’s Twitter timeline, which is filled with years of anti-Obama rhetoric, shows him replying casually to Alexander and promoting the Republican operative’s account from 2009 to 2020. They both attended CPAC in 2009, when Alexander was making a name for himself as a tea party activist, and perhaps met there. Starting in early 2009, Piper also tweeted rabidly using #tcot, a tea party hashtag that allowed the nativist movement to organize and propagandize on Twitter, a precursor to the authoritarian MAGA network that coalesced around Trump on the platform in 2016.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>At RAGA, Piper issued his own incendiary statements. </b>On Election Day, he promised that a failure to thwart Biden and Harris would result in “complete annihilation.” In a press release two weeks later, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">he relied on selectively edited video of a street fight during Alexander’s November rally in Washington to suggest that “antifa” would run the United States if Harris and New York Democrat Chuck Schumer were allowed to take control of the Senate.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Piper, who did not respond to requests for comment, also “spearheaded” RLDF. After the revelation of the robocall, he insisted that RLDF and RAGA had “no involvement in the planning, sponsoring, or the organization” of the Jan. 6 rally. Five days later, he resigned without explanation.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Prior to the rally, Alexander had been in direct contact with Trump insider Caroline Wren, a top Republican fundraiser and former deputy to Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump Jr.’s girlfriend and the former national chair of Trump Victory</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, the joint fundraising committee for Trump’s reelection campaign. Wren had previously served as the national finance director of Trump Victory and the finance director for Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.). She had access to a deep pool of Republican dark money, bushels of which had flowed to hard-right candidates and organizations. To cite one example,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> <b>Citizens for a Working America,</b> a mysterious PAC, had paid Wren’s fundraising business handsomely in the past and, in 2012, spent almost $165,000 on behalf of Landry’s unsuccessful House reelection effort. In fiscal year 2018, the same PAC gave $930,000 to RAGA.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Wren “played a central role in bringing together the disparate group of activists planning events on Jan. 6,</b>” according to The Wall Street Journal. She reportedly even suggested to Alexander that he reschedule his Wild Protest at the Capitol for 1 p.m. When contacted by HuffPost on Feb. 27, Wren requested that questions be emailed to her. She never responded to them.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an appearance on Alex Jones’ show, however, Alexander offered a narrative about how the Jan. 6 megarally came together that supported The Wall Street Journal’s account.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We were going to start at 9 or 10 a.m., and we were going to have 30 members of Congress with us. When the Trump campaign called and said, ‘Let’s combine all the events,’” Alexander said on the show. “They were like, ‘The president doesn’t want to stomp on your grassroots effort. What can we do for you?’”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the morning of the insurrection, Alexander went on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily show to promote his Wild Protest one last time. The guest host that day was his Stop the Steal partner, Ed Martin. Alexander told Martin about another, more recent, call he said he’d received from the Trump inner circle.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“[Trump]’s in fighter mode, and today will determine which Republicans are going to suffer his wrath going forward,” Alexander explained. “I got a call last night from Kimberly Guilfoyle, and none of us are stopping. I know you’re not stopping, Ed. I’m not stopping. StoptheSteal.us is not stopping. The family is not stopping.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guilfoyle did not respond to a request for comment left via a cellphone linked to her name, or to questions HuffPost emailed to her through Alexandra Preate, a public relations executive and longtime friend who has also served as Steve Bannon’s spokeswoman.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Aftermath</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>After the Capitol riot, the Stop the Steal team came undone.</b> Martin, Posobiec and Gaetz spread disinformation about antifa causing the violence. Arizona Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar reportedly solicited preemptive presidential pardons. Charlie Kirk, who’d talked about “building up the infantry” and bringing in 80 busloads of protesters to “fight for this president,” held an excuse-laden press conference, his voice cracking. Numerous members of the Proud Boys were arrested, and the neo-fascist gang landed on Canada’s list of designated terrorist entities.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alexander’s movement had helped upend the peaceful transfer of power for the first time since the Civil War. He reportedly went into hiding, claiming antifa was after him. Tech companies had finally started to deplatform him, which he likened to dying. “They got this close to having Ali Alexander commit suicide,” he said. But he managed to keep squeezing out livestreams. Four days after the insurrection, he broadcast from inside a vehicle rolling through the dark toward an undisclosed location. The next day, wearing the same clothes, he streamed from inside a building.<b> He was the true victim here, he insisted. He compared himself to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. He compared himself to Jesus Christ.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I had to be crucified from social media in order for social media to end,” he said. “And I will fucking end social media.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Alexander barely acknowledged the Trump supporters who died in the Capitol attack. His soliloquies focused on him, his plight, his need for money. He claimed his life was in danger and that he required funds to pay his security team ― the same apparent ruse he’d used with Loomer and Wohl in Minneapolis. Over and over, he promoted his page on GiveSendGo.com,</span> a Christian crowdfunding platform used by many far-right extremists. <b>At first, Alexander wanted $40,000. The next day, he demanded $100,000, so he could “open Pandora’s box.” If he didn’t get the money, he said, “we’ll all die.” (He raised over $30,000 on GiveSendGo.)</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When HuffPost contacted Alexander on Jan. 19 with an interview request, he refused to talk and accused this reporter of stalking, harassing and bullying him. “Find God,” he said. “God bless.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A few hours later, he posted a new video on his Stop the Steal site asking for money. “Stop the Steal will not stop!” he vowed on Gab, a social media network favored by neo-Nazis.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alexander had more rallies planned for March. He was targeting indoor venues in Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Texas. He talked about creating a new society exclusively for Trump supporters, about building MAGA megacities in the U.S. and South America, places where liberals would not be welcome.<b> He wanted to “make lists” of his enemies. The only outcome left, he said, was “Civil War.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“I’ve been licking my wounds but I’ve been plotting. I’ve been planning. I’ve been scheming,” Alexander told his followers. “Because we have to do away with this whole system.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He craved revenge.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“The government outta be deathly afraid of us,” he said. “When I am ready … I will unleash a legion of angels to bring hell to our enemies. So rest assured in this, you know, the Lord says vengeance is his. And I pray that I am the tool to stab these motherfuckers.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fifteen years of activism ― of radicalization ― had honed him into a weapon. He was still a party man. It just happened to be Trump’s party now.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This piece has been updated to provide further clarity about O’Keefe’s illegal entry into Sen. Landrieu’s office in 2010.</font></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">===</font></div></span></div>