Meshawn Maddock
see mich capitol protests [WHITMER 3% WOLVERINE MILITIA] SHIRKEY she claims no toes to militia, did not enter capitol j6?
SEE PARDON TRUMP ED FUCKING MARTIN 11 25
fake elector back 2024
see devos
see amistad /more soc [jenna denies?]
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TIME MAG 11 25
President Donald Trump has ordered “full, complete, and unconditional” pardons for over 70 of his political allies who backed alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to the Department of Justice’s Pardon Attorney, Ed Martin.
In a social media post published in the early hours of Monday morning, Martin shared a signed proclamation of the list of names, which contains high-profile figures such as Trump’s former personal lawyer and one-time Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyers Sidney Powell and John Eastman, and more.
“Thank you, POTUS, for allowing me, as U.S. Pardon Attorney, to work with the White House, along with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy AG Todd Blanche, and Solicitor General John Sauer to achieve your intent,” Martin wrote, crediting the team who worked on the pardons. “Let their healing begin.”
You can see the full list, here:
“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 presidential election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” reads the pardon signed by Trump on Nov. 7.
The pardon applies to those “for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities in, or advocacy for or of any slate of presidential electors… in connection with the 2020 presidential election.”
In a statement to TIME on Monday morning, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said of the pardons: “These great Americans were persecuted and put through hell by the Biden Administration for challenging an election, which is the cornerstone of democracy.”
Read More: *Rudy Giuliani Once Fought Corruption, Now He Is Embroiled in It
Giuliani was held in contempt of court in January for failing to cooperate in the handover of $11 million of personal assets to Georgia poll workers he had falsely accused of helping to steal the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani later reached a settlement in the dispute.
Trump, meanwhile, said in September that he would be awarding his former lawyer with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, days after Giuliani was injured in a New Hampshire car crash.
Trump has repeatedly made false claims that he, not former President Joe Biden, won the 2020 election. Rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, amid the fraught rhetoric.
In January, Trump pardoned almost 1,600 people convicted for their involvement in the Capitol Riots on Jan. 6, 2021, including commuting the sentences of violent offenders from the riots, such as Proud Boys leader Enrique Torrio, who was serving a 22-year sentence.
Former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, called the pardon “an outrageous insult to our justice system and the heroes who suffered physical scars and emotional trauma as they protected the Capitol.”
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beast
Crime & Justice
Former Marine Charged in Riots Hurled ‘Sharpened Pole’ at Capitol Police: Feds
‘CHAOTIC, GRAPHIC, AND BRUTAL’
Prosecutors said Michael Foy’s actions during the Jan. 6 riots “were among the most violent of all participants.”
Pilar Melendez
Senior National Reporter
:{Published Jan. 25 2021
Criminal Complaint
A former Marine charged with assaulting police officers during the Capitol riots with a hockey stick also launched a massive, “sharpened pole” at cops during his attack, authorities revealed.
Michael Joseph Foy, a 30-year-old from Westland, Michigan, was charged Friday with several crimes, including obstruction of law enforcement and forcibly assaulting an officer, after striking cops with a hockey stick “at least 10 times” during the Jan. 6 riots. In a detention memo filed Sunday evening, federal prosecutors also revealed that at one point during the melee, Foy “threw what appears to be a sharpened pole at the officers.”
“Foy’s actions on January 6 were among the most violent of all participants,” prosecutors state in a 15-page detention memo arguing for Foy to be held as he awaits trial. “Foy is both a danger to the community and poses a risk of nonappearance.”
During a Monday hearing, a federal magistrate judge ordered Foy, who served 5 years in the Marine Corps and is trained in combat, to remain behind bars after prosecutors played footage of his violent attack for the court. Foy's court-appointed attorney argued that his client has had a hard time adjusting to civilian life after he was discharged from duty.
Rioter Beat DC Cop With Hockey Stick at Capitol Siege: DOJ
‘LET’S GO’
In the detention memo, prosecutors state that moments after Foy threw the pole at the officers trying to defend the Capitol from thousands of MAGA supporters, rioters rushed officers and knocked one to the ground.
“The scene is chaotic, graphic, and brutal. Rioters hurled projectiles at the officers and physically assaulted them, often using weapons like poles, bottles, and in Foy’s case, a hockey stick,” the detention memo states. “Several officers were dragged into the crowd, stripped of their protective gear, and beaten. Other rioters used crowbars and other tools to knock the windows out of the Capitol so rioters could enter.”
Prosecutors state Foy jumped at the opportunity to attack the cops, “immediately rushing towards the officers with his hockey stick raised.” The memo adds that videos from the insurrection show the former Marine “violently assaulting Capitol Police Officers—including [one] officer on the ground, unable to fully protect himself.”
Video captured from inside the mob shows that Foy “swung (and appears to have struck officers with) his hockey stick no fewer than 10 times.” The assault was captured in a New York Times video and on body-camera footage from one of the officers on the ground who was hit by Foy’s hockey stick, prosecutors state.
Screen_Shot_2021-01-25_at_1.34.22_PM_za05kn
Criminal Complaint
After Foy repeatedly beat officers “in the face, head, neck, and body area,” he took “a leadership role in the chaos” and encouraged the crowd to charge into the Capitol through broken windows, the memo notes. Foy crawled through a broken window into the Capitol with his hockey stick in hand.
“Foy’s actions were some of the most aggressive and violent at the January 6 riot. Far from a mere participant, Foy took a leadership role: he personally attacked officers and appears to have led others into the Capitol,” the memo states.
The memo notes that Foy’s conduct has only “escalated” since he participated in a Nov. 6 protest at the TCF Center in Detroit. The rally, where Foy was pictured wrapped in an American flag, was held in support of former President Donald Trump and in outrage over the election results in Michigan—where President Joe Biden won. There is no indication Foy brought a weapon to the Nov. 6 protest—a stark contrast to the violent assault at the Capitol just two months later.
Gym Owner Who Defied Lockdown Attacked Cop at Riots: Feds
‘WHAT PATRIOTS DO?’
Pilar Melendez, Danika Fears
Blank_3000_x_1688_24_ntfmyj
Prosecutors also expressed concern over Foy’s alleged substance abuse, noting the 30-year-old reported drinking “ten beers per day, as recently as January 20—the day before he was arrested.”
Foy has access to two long guns at his home. His mother, who offered to be his “third-party custodian” if he was released, also has about 10 firearms in her home but said she would remove her weapons, prosecutors said.
“Michael Foy poses a demonstrated danger to the community and to himself if released on bond. He stormed the Capitol and assaulted police officers. His conduct was more than violent, it was reckless. The severity of his conduct coupled with his current mental health issues make Foy a danger to the community and to himself,” the memo reads.
Pilar Melendez
Senior National Reporter
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mojo
Earlier this week, hundreds of demonstrators blocked the streets of Lansing, Michigan, and defied an executive order from Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to shelter in place to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
The protest, known as “Operation Gridlock,” featured a fair share of MAGA hats, Trump flags, at least one Confederate flag, chants of “Lock her up!” in reference to Whitmer, and far-right groups from the Proud Boys to the Michigan Liberty Militia. They clogged up the streets outside the state Capitol and defied Whitmer’s ban on public gatherings.
:{:{The whole charade was facilitated by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, a conservative political group that doubles as a front for Michigan Trump Republicans,}:
500 N. Pontiac Trail
Walled Lake, MI 48390
Phone
616.987.1124
_info@michiganconservativecoalition.com_
July 3rd, Back the Blue Rally
Free Press https://www.freep.com/picture-gallery/news/local/michigan/oakland/2020/07/04/operation-back-blue-support-law-enforcement/5374115002/
WDIV TV4 https://www.clickondetroit.com/video/news/2020/07/03/back-the-blue-rally-held-in-bloomfield-township/
Detroit News (with MS photo!) https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2020/07/03/demonstrators-gather-police-bloomfield-township/5373444002/
June 13th, MAGA BOAT PARADE ON THE DETROIT RIVER!
https://www.mlive.com/news/2020/06/maga-boat-parade-to-downtown-detroit-celebrates-trumps-74th-birthday.html
April 16th, Newsmax TV
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p1geu9crpsonbkv/Meshawn%20Maddock%20and%20Matt%20Seely.mp4?dl=0
April 16th, Church Militant
https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/pack-gridlock-gretchens-gotta-go
April 16th Lansing State Journal
https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2020/04/16/sparrow-lansing-fire-department-no-ambulances-issues-during-protest/5145522002/
Although photos spread across social media appeared to show otherwise, there were no major delays or roadblocks for ambulances during Wednesday’s protest of the governor’s stay-home order, officials said.
The rally drew several thousand people to downtown Lansing to protest in their vehicles. Vehicles stopped traffic for several miles around the Capitol, accomplishing organizers’ goal of causing a gridlock downtown.
But both the Lansing Fire Department and Sparrow Health Systems said they didn’t experience any major delays from the protest.
Lansing Fire Department Assistant Chief Mike Tobin said while the ambulances were slowed down because of the congestion, crews told him it was no worse than a heavy day in rush hour.
When an ambulance sped toward Sparrow with lights and sirens on, traffic got out of the way, Tobin said. In one photo that appeared to show an ambulance stuck in traffic on Grand Avenue and Washtenaw Street, Tobin said the ambulance did not have a patient on board.
April 15th, Meshawn Maddock on Neil Cavuto
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6149692235001#sp=show-clips
April 15th FRONT PAGE ON THE BLAZE.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/thousands-surround-michigan-capitol-in-protest-of-gov-gretchen-whitmers-stay-at-home-orders
April 15th. Rosanne Ponkowski on Martha MacCallum show on Fox
https://www.instagram.com/tv/B_BVfi1g6Sg/?igshid=1o8idwodhbigv
April 15th. Matt Seely on Laura Ingraham Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4PfPo-vCRE
April 16th. Meshawn Maddock on WJR with Frank Beckman
http://p.cmlsdet.com/player/?feed=128&id=40609
Bernie Sanders pays a visit to Detroit and is greeted with Michigan Conservative Coalition members and Trump supporters.
https://www.michiganpublic.org/politics-government/2019-10-27/democratic-presidential-candidate-bernie-sanders-rallies-supporters-honors-john-conyers
https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2019/10/pro-trump-protesters-gather-outside-of-detroit-bernie-sanders-rally.html
and promoted by the Michigan Freedom Fund, a conservative group with ties to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a Michigan billionaire philanthropist power broker before she joined the Trump administration. The Detroit Free Press reported that the fund was listed as one of the protest’s hosts on Facebook. The organization also promoted the event on Facebook.}:
The rift between Whitmer and the groups over the protest emerged on Monday when Whitmer criticized the Michigan Freedom Fund, saying the nonprofit “is funded in large part by the DeVos family,” and adding that “it’s really inappropriate for a sitting member of the United States president’s Cabinet to be waging political attacks on any governor, but obviously, on me here at home.” Greg McNeilly, chairman and founder of Michigan Freedom Fund and a longtime adviser to the DeVos family, tweeted that Whitmer was “misinformed and disconnected with reality.”
In a Wednesday op-ed for the Detroit News, McNeilly followed Trump’s lead in calling for easing restrictions on social distancing and demanded that Whitmer unveil her plan for re-opening the state. Michigan, mind you, is wrestling with more than 30,000 confirmed cases and 2,227 deaths from the coronavirus, with Detroit at the epicenter.
As Mother Jones reported in 2014, McNeilly served as a longtime political adviser to Dick and Betsy DeVos and a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party. He managed a campaign against a ballot measure that would’ve enshrined collective bargaining rights in Michigan’s constitution. Here’s how that played out (the DeVos mentioned below is Dick Devos, scion of the Amway fortune and husband of Betsy):
That summer, a group of GOP lawmakers and business leaders—McNeilly won’t say who—asked DeVos and Weiser (who served as finance chairman for the Republican National Committee in 2012) to lead the charge to defeat Proposition 2. They gladly took on the job—DeVos called Prop. 2 “a head-shot at Michigan’s recovery”—but they had bigger things in mind: With McNeilly, who managed the anti-Prop. 2 campaign, DeVos and Weiser sketched out a strategy to defeat the measure, then use the political momentum to pass right-to-work immediately afterward. They also strategized about every other possible obstacle: defending the law from a possible legal challenge, beating a constitutional amendment to repeal it, and protecting Republican lawmakers from recall elections.
They began the anti-Prop. 2 effort in September. Polls showed that 60 percent of voters supported the measure, but DeVos and Weiser tapped their national donor networks, hauling in millions from Las Vegas gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson, Texas investor Harold Simmons, and a slew of Michigan business groups. Ten DeVos family members pitched in with a combined $2 million. The DeVos-backed campaign ran hundreds of ads in the two months before the vote, claiming the measure would give unions far too much power, cost the state more than $1.6 billion, and imperil student safety by making it impossible to fire negligent teachers.
By Election Day, the two sides had spent a total of $47 million, making it the most expensive ballot measure in Michigan history. Voters defeated Prop. 2 by a 15-point margin. DeVos and Weiser wasted no time moving to the next phase of their plan.
In a series of odd tweets, President Donald Trump called for the liberation of states controlled by Democratic governors in what my colleague Inae Oh described as the “latest signal that social distancing has fully warped into a culture war, one that depicts Democrats as oppressors willing to sabotage the economy and perhaps, in turn, the president’s reelection chances.”
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NO LNX nyt
‘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.
Image
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.”
Image
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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sep 2024
14 fake electors from 2020 are Donald Trump electors again in 2024
Fourteen so-called fake electors who participated in former President Donald Trump’s 2020 scheme to throw the election results into chaos will once again serve as electors for Trump in 2024, including several who currently face criminal charges.
With input from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, Republican state parties in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada have renominated 14 of the 84 fake electors from the 2020 election. Wisconsin's electors aren't publicly available until the first week of October, according to state election officials. A legal settlement bars unauthorized Wisconsin 2020 electors from serving as electors for Trump again.
There are no repeat electors from 2020 on this year’s Republican slates for Arizona and Georgia, the other two states where fake electors signed certificates incorrectly declaring Trump the winner.
The 14 former fake electors who are serving again include the Nevada Republican Party chairman, the Republican National Committeeman from Pennsylvania and several current or former county chairs.
usatoday
"Politically or in terms of the health of our democracy, the idea that people who potentially committed a crime in trying to further a scheme to subvert the results of the 2020 election... the idea that they are in any way involved in politics is troubling," Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law Rick Hasen said.
While some may have acted with the belief that they were just a back up if there was a legal change to the outcome, Hasen noted, "some of them, there have at least been allegations that they knew what they were doing and they knowingly engaged in criminal conduct."
None of the 14 repeat electors responded to USA TODAY's attempts to contact them.
The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump is facing four felony charges in Washington, D.C. related to leading conspiracies to reverse the 2020 results and disenfranchise millions of voters. He has refused to commit to unconditionally accepting the results of the upcoming 2024 election, and while he has sometimes acknowledged that he lost the 2020 race, he has also continued to falsely tell supporters that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.
Pending charges
Charges have been brought against the fake electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, as well as some people working with Trump.
Some of the cases are moving very slowly. In August, a Maricopa County judge set a tentative trial date of Jan. 5, 2026, for Arizona's fake electors case. The state GOP did not renominate any of the 2020 electors. In Nevada, the state has appealed to the state supreme court a lower court decision to reject the fake electors case stating it had been filed in the wrong county.
More:‘Somewhat dicey' and ‘problematic’: Inside Trump's bid to have fake electors overturn 2020 election
Still, electors might think twice about being party to signing such certificates again, Hasen said.
"Anyone who's an elector who's asked to do something shady this time, might think, hmm, last time around, these people were indicted, so maybe I shouldn't do that," Hasen said.
Michigan
The Michigan Republican Party has renominated the most fake electors. Six names that appeared on a certificate falsely claiming that Trump had won the state are on the 2024 list of 15 electors provided by the Michigan Secretary of State's office: Amy Facchinello, John Haggard, Timothy King, Marian Sheridan, Hank Choate and Meshawn Maddock–a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.
Trump lost Michigan in 2020 by about 154,000 votes.
All six of them face criminal charges. The trial has not yet been scheduled but isn't expected to begin this year.
Choate's attorney, David Kallman, said the pending 2020 charges shouldn't affect who is picked to be a 2024 elector. Choate has pleaded not guilty.
"This was another election year. This really has nothing to do with the last 2020, election," he said. "I don't think it really impacts the criminal case at all."
Kallman said that Choate didn't know he was doing anything wrong in 2020. He said Trump's attorney's told the electors that the certificate would only be used if Trump's campaign won a court case overturning the results of the election in Michigan or if the state legislature stepped in.
"My client was told by people he trusted, attorneys at this meeting, that this wasn't going to be used unless one of those things happened," Kallman said.
He said electors were only presented with the page to sign their names, not the page that falsely claimed that they voted in the Capitol building and that Trump won.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Republicans submitted a list of presidential electors to the secretary of state’s office with five former fake electors: Bill Bachenberg, Bernadette Comfort, Ash Khare, Pat Poprik and Andy Reilly. The state has 19 electoral votes. Trump lost in 2020 by about 80,000 votes.
Reilly, an attorney, is also the Republican National Committeeman from Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania electors wouldn't sign the fake certificate in 2020 unless the forms specifically said that their votes weren't to be counted until the courts ruled in Trump's favor. Therefore, electors have not been charged with a crime.
Khare, who has been an elector since 1990, told USA TODAY in April that he advocated to include that clause.
"We wanted to make sure that we’re not doing anything illegal," he said.
Nevada
The Nevada Republican Party renominated Michael McDonald, the chair of the state party, and Jesse Law, chairman of the Republican party of Clark County, both of whom signed the 2020 certificate although Trump lost the state by 154,000 votes. The state has six electoral votes.
McDonald, a longtime friend of Trump's who is senior adviser to the 2024 Trump campaign, and Law were among the electors indicted in Nevada. The case, which was dismissed over questions of whether it was filed in the correct county, has been appealed by Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, to the state Supreme Court.
Trump lost Nevada by more than 30,000 votes.
New Mexico
The New Mexico Republican Party renominated Deborah Weh Maestas, the former state party chair. The state has five electoral votes. It's role in the scheme was always considered an outlier. New Mexico is not a swing state and has supported Democrats in every presidential election since 2008. Trump lost there in 2020 but about 100,000 votes.
Like in Pennsylvania, the 2020 New Mexico electors wouldn't sign unless the forms specifically said that their votes weren't to be counted until the courts ruled in Trump's favor. New Mexico electors have not been charged with a crime.
More:Wisconsin is the last state that may prosecute Trump’s fake electors, but AG Josh Kaul is mum
A key legal change since 2020
Electors normally draw little to no attention. In a presidential election year, each party nominates state electors who will vote for their presidential nominee in the Electoral College if their candidate wins. Party leaders such as the county party chairs or local elected officials are normally selected. Their names must be submitted to the state before the election and made publicly available.
But in 2020 GOP officials in seven states that President Joe Biden won sent fake electoral certificates to Congress stating that former President Donald Trump had actually won. The certificates were an effort to baselessly convince lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence that there were substantial questions about the outcome of the election in swing states.
The House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and Trump's efforts to stay in power after losing the election found that the fake electoral certificates were part of a coordinated effort by Trump's allies to block Congress from certifying the election results. They wanted Congress to return th
Pence refused to accept, or even consider, the "alternate" electoral slates.
Jonathan Diaz, Director of Voting Advocacy for advocacy group Campaign Legal Center, said it is unlikely that scheme would be successful again. In 2022, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act, which changed the rules so Congress can only count electoral certificates signed by the governor of the state or another official approved by state law when the House and Senate meet to count the votes on Jan. 6. It also raised the threshold for members of Congress to object to counting a state from one representative and one senator to one-fifth of each chamber. Also, in 2023 the Supreme Court ruled in Moore v. Harper that state legislatures have little power to overturn election results.
"It's really going to be much, much more difficult for a slate of fake electors to try the same kind of shenanigans that they did in 2020," Diaz said. "The [2022 law] was really targeted at plugging the holes that existed in the previous process, because the law was so old, and really making sure that the kind of effort that we saw focused on that joint session of Congress can't occur again."
*USA TODAY reporter Erin Mansfield contributed to this article
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AN 2 24
Prosecution in Michigan fake elector case points to nationwide effort to keep Trump in office
Anna Liz Nichols, Michigan Advance
February 15, 2024
James Renner testified Wednesday that he never believed he and 15 other individuals who signed documents claiming to be Michigan’s state electors with fake electoral votes in 2020 engaged in any illegal activity.
Renner, 77, was charged alongside 15 others by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office with several felonies, accused of fraudulently submitting fake electoral votes for former President Donald Trump to the U.S. Senate and National Archives. However, Renner had his charges dropped in October as part of a cooperation agreement with the Attorney General’s Office, for which he offered testimony in a Lansing court Wednesday.
“The individuals … were all conscientious individuals,” Renner said, clarifying that he never intended any illegal action saying, “We were told this was an appropriate process.”
The 15 individuals facing charges are split into two groups for court proceedings, the Wednesday group includes two high-profile leaders in the Republican Party: Michigan GOP National Committeewoman Kathleen Berden and former Michigan GOP Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock. Other defendants in this group are Mari-Ann Henry, John Haggard, Amy Facchinello and Michele Lundgren.
Renner didn’t clarify who told the group that they were engaging in normal lawful behavior at the Dec. 14, 2020, meeting where the individuals charged met up at the Michigan Republican Party headquarters in Lansing. At this meeting, they signed documents saying they, as the rightful electors of Michigan cast the state’s electoral votes for former President Donald Trump. However, lawyers for the defense have argued that potentially individuals didn’t know what they were signing, defeating the intent to commit fraud.
Because President Joe Biden had won Michigan by more than 154,000 votes, the Democratic panel of electors were the rightful group to submit the state’s electoral votes. But conspiracies over election fraud, spearheaded by Trump, led many in the state of Michigan to question and deny the integrity of the 2020 election.
Renner testified that he was told that should the election be overturned and Trump be determined to have won the 2020 presidential election, the paperwork he signed would ensure that the appropriate partisan electors would be counted and Michigan could submit its votes for Trump.
There was zero talk, to his knowledge, on Dec. 14, 2020, at the meeting where the documents were signed that the group was attempting anything illegal or attempting to defraud peoples’ votes, Renner said. If there was, he would have left due to his beliefs as a retired member of law enforcement.
Renner said seven years in law enforcement, including time with the Michigan State Police providing security for the Michigan State Capitol, instilled him with a respect for the law.
“It’s the foundation of this country,” Renner said.
Maddock’s lawyer, Nicholas Somberg, referenced a group photo members of the group took on the same day in Lansing asking Renner if in his experience in enforcement if individuals engaging in criminal activity typically take group photos as crimes are being committed, to the laughter of defendants and the judge. The photo was taken the day Renner and others in a group approached the Michigan State Capitol building to submit false electoral votes while the building was closed due to threats of violence.
Renner said the group had been told that if they presented their documents as the Republican electors, lawmakers had the ability to accept their slate.
Garett Koger, a lawyer on Berden’s defense, said the state’s case will ultimately fail to show any criminal action by members of the charged group, adding that the documents were part of a “larger plan that originated” with Kenneth Chesebro.
Chesebro, former attorney for Trump, pleaded guilty in Fulton County, Ga., Superior Court in October to a felony charge after he admitted to orchestrating a multi-state fake elector plot to present fake elector documents in favor of a Trump presidency.
Although Chesebro pleaded guilty to a crime for his role in the plot, Koger said Chesebro’s testimony in Michigan later in the preliminary exam will show Chesebro had an understanding of a 1960 case out of Hawaii where there was a recount in the presidential election and both party’s electors submitted electoral votes pending the recount which did reverse Hawaii’s pick for president.
For Hawaii, the difference in votes between candidates was around 100 votes, Michigan’s was more than 150,000. The electors in Hawaii acted pending the result of an official statewide recount and there was no official statewide recount in Michigan.
The preliminary exams will continue in the coming weeks as the court schedules with the defense of the various defendants.
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an 8 23
Leaked recording reveals Michigan Trump ally ranting about 'civil war' after fake elector wife is indicted
Matthew Chapmanand Raw Story August 11, 2023
Michigan State Rep. Matt Maddock, the husband of one of the 16 fake electors in that state who were indicted on multiple felonies last month, is warning that MAGA loyalists could escalate their violence to the level of war in an audio recording reported by The Messenger on Friday.
“If the government continues to weaponize these departments against conservatives and the citizens that are then the taxpayers, you know what's going to happen to this country,” Matt Maddock asks, according to the audio obtained by The Messenger.
After attendees at the event shout possibilities, Maddock answers his own question: “Someone's going to get so pissed off, they're going to shoot someone. That's what's going to happen. Or we're going have a civil war or some sort of revolution. That's where this is, where this is going.”
"The comments, which Matt Maddock made days after former President Donald Trump was indicted by the Department of Justice for his actions around the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol, came at what was billed as a 'Free The 16 Electors Poolside Party!' at the Maddock’s home, hosted by Grand New Party PAC, an organization that is 'working to renew the Republican Party from within,'" reported Dan Merica.
The event is intended to raise proceeds for their legal fund to fight "Evil AG Dana Nessel."
The fake electors, including his wife and former Michigan GOP co-chair Meshawn Maddock, are not the only ones facing legal consequences. The fake Trump electors in Georgia, including state party chair David Shafer, are under criminal investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and the false electors in Wisconsin are facing a civil suit brought by two of the real electors and a voter.
The Michigan GOP has descended into chaos in recent months, after failed secretary of state candidate and QAnon conspiracy theorist Kristina Karamo took over as chair. Party officials are now warring with each other over the unclear state of their finances, culminating in a physical brawl at a GOP meeting that put one person in the hospital and has state officials investigating.
GOPer accusing Biden of 'treason' say he’ll file impeachment resolution related to 'drugs an prostitution'
'Very scary': Former RNC staffer dishes on the more terrifying members of GOP's right-wing
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
Ex-Michigan GOP co-chair pleads not guilty to accusations she posed as fake elector for Trump ›
'We did not violate any laws': Michigan GOP leaders charged in 2020 election scheme ›
New leak paints 'alarming financial picture' of Michigan GOP: report ›
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an 1 23 raw tom
A Michigan Republican Party co-chair, who is under the cloud of a possible investigation over attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, is reportedly stepping aside but her GOP colleagues fear she is not done sowing seeds of discontent after she is gone.
According to a report from the Daily Beast's Jon King, avid Donald Trump supporter Meshawn Maddockwill reportedly not run for another term as a co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party in the wake of the "ass-kicking" the party received in the 2022 midterm election that saw Democrats gain a super-majority in the legislature.
However, some Republicans think she is behind pushing her son-in-law, 22-year-old Parker Shonts, as a candidate for youth vice chair where he will continue her work elevating election conspiracies and disrupting plans for the 2024 election.
As the Beast's King put it, some of Maddock's colleagues see Shonts as a "poison pill" designed to be forced "down the throat of the party faithful."
According to King, "While the position itself is largely seen as ceremonial, and the vast majority of attention is being paid to the race for the next chair of the party, skeptics see Shonts’ candidacy as a proxy to affirm Maddock’s continued influence. In other words, some Republicans say, Shonts stands for doubling down on the same far-right, election-denying politics that may have doomed the party last fall."
Former county and district chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, Tom Stroup, claims Maddock and her husband, Republican State Rep. Matt Maddock, have been a thorn in the side of the party for years.
“I have known the Maddocks long before they came to power in the Michigan Republican Party, and they have been a problem in our party basically since day one,” he explained before adding, "Meshawn did such a poor job as co-chair of the party.”
He then suggested her son-in-law's bid “is a part of trying a power play to try and stay in power in some form.”
As for Shonts, King reports he ".... has been endorsed by a host of election deniers, including My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell andMichigan GOP District Chair Shane Trejo. The latter—who, as The Daily Beast reported, hosted a podcast with a member of the white supremacist group Identity Evropa—called for the ouster of a fellow Republican who voted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 win."
According to Dennis Lennox, a GOP strategist in Michigan, Shonts bid to be a youth vice chair is not one to be taken lightly.
“Historically, it has been the most contested, the nastiest race,” he pointed out. “I can remember running races for a youth chair at the convention, winning some, losing some, and hating the people because you’re 20 years old and you hate the person who wins. Then, 10 years later, you’re both political professionals and you’re working together.”
You canread more here.
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Matt Maddock is a republican state representative in the Michigan legislature. Matt is one of 15 Michigan legislators who have joined the Amistad Project of the non-partisan Thomas Moore Society in a lawsuit that challenges election results in Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Matt supports a Full Forensic Audit of the 2020 election in Michigan. Rep. Maddock’s policy issue priorities can be seen at https://gophouse.org/member/repmattmaddock/posts
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/politics/michigan-state-capitol.html}:
no lnx
In Michigan, a Dress Rehearsal for the Chaos at the Capitol on Wednesday
In April, armed protesters crowded into the State Capitol in Michigan. Frightened lawmakers saw echoes of that day in Wednesday’s deadly riot at the Capitol in Washington.
A militia group stands in front of the governor’s office after armed protesters occupied the State Capitol building during a vote to approve the extension of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order in Lansing, Mich., in April.
A militia group stands in front of the governor’s office after armed protesters occupied the State Capitol building during a vote to approve the extension of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order in Lansing, Mich., in April.Credit...Seth Herald/Reuters
By Kathleen Gray
Jan. 9, 2021
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.]] END CARD
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, andin 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 ahandful of men armed with weapons, remained peaceful — and pointed. One protester waved a Trump flag that had four bobblehead dolls hangingfrom 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.”
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mark fucking meckler(note ~ lockdown was CNP 3 prong strategy)
wapo no lnx
Politics
The anti-quarantine protests seem spontaneous. But behind the scenes, a powerful network is helping.
Protests with honking horns, anti-shutdown signs and angry Americans continued in Maryland, Texas and Wisconsin on April 18. (The Washington Post)]
By
Isaac Stanley-Becker
and Tony Romm
April 22, 2020
The ads on Facebook sounded populist and passionate: “The people are rising up against these insane shutdowns,” they said. “We’re fighting back to demand that our elected officials reopen America.”
But the posts, funded by an initiative called Convention of States, were not the product of a grass-roots uprising alone. Instead, they represented one salvo in a wide-ranging and well-
financed conservative campaign to undermine restrictions that medical experts say are necessary to contain the coronavirus — but that protesters call overkill and whose economic fallout could damage President Trump’s political prospects.
A network of right-leaning individuals and groups, aided by nimble online outfits, has helped incubate the fervor erupting in state capitals across the country. The activism is often organic and the frustration deeply felt, but it is also being amplified, and in some cases coordinated, by longtime conservative activists, whose robust operations were initially set up with help from Republican megadonors.
Protesters assemble near the Texas State Capitol during a recent demonstration April 18 in Austin.
The Convention of States project launched in 2015 with a high-dollar donation from the family foundation of Robert Mercer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican patron. It boasts past support from two members of the Trump administration — Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Ben Carson, secretary of housing and urban development.
It also trumpets a prior endorsement from Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Floridaand a close Trump ally who is pursuing an aggressive plan to reopen his state’s economy. A spokesman for Carson declined to comment. Cuccinelli and DeSantis did not respond to requests for comment.
The initiative, aimed at curtailing federal power, is now leveraging its sweeping national network and digital arsenal to help stitch together scattered demonstrations across the country, making opposition to stay-at-home orders appear more widespread than is suggested by polling.
“We’re providing a digital platform for people to plan and communicate about what they’re doing,” said Eric O’Keefe, board president of Citizens for Self-Governance, the parent organization of the Convention of States project.
A longtime associate of the conservative activist Koch family, O’Keefe helped manage David Koch’s 1980 bid for the White House when he served as the No. 2 on the Libertarian ticket.
“To shut down our rural counties because of what’s going on in New York City, or in some sense Milwaukee, is draconian,” saidO’Keefe, who lives in Wisconsin.
Polls suggest most Americans support local directives encouraging them to stay at home as covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, ravages the country, killing more than 44,000 people in the United States so far. Public health officials, including epidemiologists advising Trump’s White House, agree that sweeping restrictions represent the most effective mitigation strategy in the absence of a vaccine, which could be more than a year away.
White House aides, outside groups launch effort to reopen economy
Still, some activists insist that states should lift controls on commercial activity and public assembly, citing the effects of mass closures on businesses. They have been encouraged at times by Trump, whose attorney general, William P. Barr, said in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday that the Justice Department would consider supporting lawsuits against restrictions that go “too far.”
Further afield, the protests have been encouraged by some of the president’s allies outside the White House, including Stephen Moore,once considered for a top post at the Federal Reserve.
The swelling frustration on the right coincides with major policy changes in some states, especially those with Republican governors. Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee have begun relaxing their restrictions in recent days after bowing to pressure and imposing far-reaching guidelines.
The protests are reminiscent in some ways of the tea party movement and the demonstrations against the Affordable Care Act that erupted in 2010, which also involved a mix of homegrown activism and shrewd behind-the-scenes funding.
For the Convention of States, public health is an unusual focus.It was founded to push for a convention that would add a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. That same anti-government impulse is now animating the group’s campaign against coronavirus precautions.
“Heavy-handed government orders that interfere with our most basic liberties will do more harm than good,” read its Facebook ads, which had been viewed as many as 36,000 times as of Tuesday evening.
Asking for a $5 donation “to support our fight,” the paid posts are part of an online blitz called “Open the States,” which also includes newly created websites, a data-collecting petition and an ominous video about the economic effects of the lockdown.
The group’s president, Mark Meckler, said his aim was to act as a “clearinghouse where these guys can all find each other” — a role he learned as co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. FreedomWorks, a libertarian advocacy group also active in the tea party movement, is seeking to play a similar function, creating an online calendar of protests.
“The major need back in 2009 was no different than it is today — some easy centralizing point to list events, to allow people to communicate with each other,” he said.
Meckler, who draws a salary of about $250,000 from the Convention of States parent group, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service, hailed the “spontaneous citizen groups self-organizing on the Internet and protesting what they perceive to be government overreach.”
So far, the protests against stay-at-home orders in states including Washington and Pennsylvania have captured headlines and drawn rebukes from some governors and epidemiologists. Experts say a sudden, widespread reopening of the country is likely to worsen the outbreak, overwhelming hospitals and killing tens of thousands.
The protesters so far have not aimed their ire at Trump, though it is his administration’s experts whose guidelines underlie many of the states’ actions.
Trump’s public comments — including his recent tweets calling for supporters to “liberate” states including Michigan, a coronavirus hot spot — have catalyzed some of the broader public reaction. Following those tweets, tens of thousands of people joined Facebook groups calling for protests in states including Pennsylvania and Ohio, where the efforts are coordinated by a trio of brothers who typically focus their efforts on fighting gun control.
Pro-gun activists using Facebook groups to push anti-quarantine protests
In recent days, conservatives have set their sights on Wisconsin, where a few dozen protesters turned out at the Capitol to air their frustrations with Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, after he extended his state’s stay-at-home order until late May. Ahead of the demonstration, Moore, the Trump ally, revealed on a live stream that he was “working with a group” in the state with the goal of trying “to shut down the capital.”
Moore, who served as a Trump campaign adviser in 2016, said he had located a big donor to aid in the effort, though he never elaborated. “I told him about this, and he said, ‘Steve, I promise to pay the bail and legal fees for anyone who gets arrested,’?” Moore said in the video. He likened his quest to the civil rights movement, adding, “We need to be the Rosa Parks here and protest against these government injustices.”
Moore, who has also worked at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, did not respond to a request for comment.
In Michigan, among those organizing “Operation Gridlock” was Meshawn Maddock, who sits on the Trump campaign’s advisory board and is a prominent figure in the “Women for Trump”coalition. Funds to promote the demonstrations on Facebook came from the Michigan Freedom Fund, which is headed by Greg McNeilly, a longtime adviser to the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
McNeilly said the money used to advance the anti-quarantine protests came from “grass-roots fundraising efforts” and had “nothing to do with any DeVos work.”
Many of the seemingly scattered, spontaneous outbursts of citizen activism reflect deeply interwoven networks of conservative and libertarian nonprofit organizations. One of the most vocal groups opposing the lockdown in Texas is an Austin-based conservative think tank called the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which also hails the demonstrations nationwide.
“Some Americans are angry,” its director wrote in an op-ed promoted on Facebook and placed in the local media, telling readers in Texas about the achievements of protesters in Michigan.
The board vice chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, oil executive Tim Dunn, is also a founding board member of the group promoting the Convention of States initiative. And the foundation’s former president, Brooke Rollins,now works as an assistant to Trump in the Office of American Innovation.
Neither Dunn nor Rollins responded to requests for comment.
The John Hancock Committee for the States — the name used in IRS filings by the group behind the Convention of States — gave more than $100,000 to the Texas Public Policy Foundation in 2011.
The Convention of States project, meanwhile, has received backing from DonorsTrust, a tax-exempt financial conduit for right-wing causes that does not disclose its contributors. The same fund has helped bankroll the Idaho Freedom Foundation,which is encouraging protests of a stay-at-home order imposed by the state’s Republican governor, Brad Little.
“Disobey Idaho,” say its Facebook ads, which use an image of the “Join or Die” snake woodcut emblematic of the Revolutionary War and later adopted by the tea party movement.
In 2014, the year before it launched theConvention of States initiative, Citizens for Self-Governance received $500,000 from the Mercer Family Foundation,a donation Meckler said helped jump-start the campaign. Mercer declined to comment.
While groups and individual activists associated with the Koch brothers have boosted this far-flung network, Emily Seidel, the chief executive of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity advocacy group, sought to distance the organization from the protest activity, which she said was “not the best way” to “get people back to work.”
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/michigan-anti-vax-leader-ron-armstrong-turned-lockdown-rage-into-money-maker
no lnx
CORONAVIRUS
Anti-Vax Leader Turned Lockdown Rage Into Money Maker
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
Ron Armstrong’s business raked in tens of thousands of dollars from his battle with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He’s not done yet.
William Bredderman
Researcher
Updated Nov. 23, 2021 1:00AM ET / Published Nov. 22, 2021
Ron Armstrong’s battle against COVID-19 restrictions has made him one of the best-known anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-quarantine figures in Michigan. It’s also turned into a financial bonanza for his company, which makes tabletop displays and has taken in tens of thousands of dollars from the activist groups he created.
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In addition, two political candidates who were endorsed by his organizations have paid Armstrong’s company thousands more. Armstrong’s spokesman noted he’s broken no laws, but a good-government watchdog says the whole thing stinks.
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“This speaks to the gaping holes in Michigan's campaign finance law,” said Simon Schuster, executive director of the nonpartisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network. “As a result we see people can use their positions of power or place in political movements to benefit themselves.”
Through his groups Unlock Michigan and Stand Up Michigan,Armstrong is spearheading another effort to curtail the state’s capacity to react to epidemics just as it faces the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the country and a glut of patients threatens to overwhelm hospitals from the Upper Peninsula to Detroit. And a spokesman for Unlock Michigan signaled the flow of cash to Armstrong has just begun.
“It’ll show up in campaign finance reports whenever that’s publicly available,” said GOP operative Fred Wszolek. "It’ll be disclosed when it needs to be disclosed.”
[Anti-Vaxxers’ $1M in Forgiven PPP Loans Spark Dem Questions
SHOTS FIRED
William Bredderman]
As the fight over Michigan’s COVID-19 lockdown measures turned increasingly bitter last summer and fall, distinctive maroon and white signs sprouted on lawns and grassy strips across the Midwestern state.
“End Whitmer’s Endless Shutdown!” they cried. They bore the insignia of Unlock Michigan, a petition campaign aimed at curtailing Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s emergency powers that collected more than half a million signatures.
State campaign finance filings reveal the provenance of the signs, along with Unlock Michigan flags and tabletop displays that clustered last year at public events and near government buildings: the initiative paid just shy of $38,000 to Armstrong Display Concepts in the tiny town of Newaygo.
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The firm—which obtained a Paycheck Protection Program loan in January to cover 12 employees—raked in an additional $7,578.58 from the campaigns of Judge Brock Swartzle and Mary Kelly, candidates for state Supreme Court who received endorsements from Unlock Michigan and from Stand Up Michigan.
These expenditures came despite records showing no history of Armstrong Display Concepts ever providing services to any other state or federal campaign. The company website shows it manufactures a product called the “Ultralight X,” a presentation board that folds up to look like a briefcase.
Stand Up Michigan also blanketed the state in yard signs for the past year and a half, but its financial disclosures to the Internal Revenue Service are not yet available to view, and so it is impossible to see whether it too has done business with Armstrong. However, the trademark application for the group’s Paul Revere-style logo is in Armstrong’s name, and he is the only publicly listed contact.
[This Fave Mainstream Media Source Is Funded by Anti-Vaxxers
FIT TO PRINT?
William Bredderman]
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Neither Armstrong nor his company responded to requests for comment. Neither did retired prosecutor Mary Kelly, one of the two failed contenders for Michigan’s highest bench whose campaigns pumped cash into Armstrong’s business.
But Wszolek, who also worked on the election of Appeals Court Judge Brock Swartzle, the other unsuccessful state Supreme Court aspirant, said Armstrong’s company was a “competitive low-bidder”—though he refused to say how many bids the campaigns received.
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” Wszolek said. “He delivered fantastic product at a fantastic price.”
Schuster called the payments from the judicial candidates to a firm with no experience in politics prior to last year “damning.”
“This reads like something that is too much of a coincidence,” he told The Daily Beast. “It risks besmirching the intent and reputation of these organizations when central figures in these movements are benefiting from these activities.”
Unlock Michigan has now embarked on its “2.0” effort: a new petition drive to change state laws so as to prevent any epidemic order from lasting more than 28 days, a proposal that has public health authorities panicked.
Earlier this year, Armstrong headlined a mask-burning event in Grand Rapids, as well as a “Freedom Festival” in Livingston County in June and an anti-vaccine mandate rally in Lansing in August. Each locality—and Grand Rapids in particular—has seen its COVID-19 caseload spike in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, hisUnlock Michigan co-chair, Meshawn Maddock, ascended into the leadership of the state Republican Party in January, weeks after she personally spearheaded a bus trip from the state to violent pro-Trump protests in Washington, D.C.
Also in April, Armstrong’s Stand Up Michigan co-founder Garrett Soldano launched a campaign for governor.
Schuster complained that the COVID-19 policy wars have turned the state into a warzone where such right-wing dark money groups like Armstrong’s battle similarly opaque organizations aligned with Whitmer.
“These are matters that have consequence in people’s everyday lives,” he said. “And because we don’t know who is fueling these fights, we don’t have transparency.”
William Bredderman
Researcher
@WillBredderman
william.bredderman@thedailybeast.com
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