Blumenthal, Sidney

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Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz [princeton] present The Court of History. The Court of History Newsletter https://buttondown.com/courtofhistory#subscribe-form

Books: The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln https://a.co/d/1dLTVjG All the Powers of Earth: https://a.co/d/imrGwQx

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pt 2

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Welcome to the Court of History. I'm Sydney Blumenthal. I'm here with my

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uh co-host Sean w alen of Princeton. We are here on Legal AF, subscribe to Legal

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AF. We are um joined by Laura Field, the author of Furious Minds, the making of

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the Maga New Right, discussing not simply the philosophical in um ideas

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behind Trump and Trumpism and the infrastructure, but their real influences

0:31

um on uh people like JD Vance, who is very close to these this group of people

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that Laura presents in her indispensable and um provocative and um

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uh new book here. Um and uh we've discussed some of the thinkers in the

0:52

past uh in part one who have influenced uh this. But I'd like to get on to some

0:59

new uh questions involving uh the dark enlightenment

1:06

of uh Curtis Yarvin, his influence on uh Peter Teal,

1:12

um the hard right, um the rise of the great replacement

1:18

theory, Steven Miller, uh and then to discuss the influence of Victor Orban,

1:26

the illiberal uh ruler of Hungary who holds a great

1:32

fascination as a model for these people. Let's start with the dark enlightenment. Laura, tell us about

1:39

Curtis Yarban, Peter Teal, and what the dark enlightenment is anything but the

1:45

enlightenment is. So, so in the book, I I talk about these

1:52

different camps and we've already spoken quite a bit about the post-liberals. There's also the Claremonters, the

1:58

National Conservatives, and then this group I call the hard right. And sort of spanning these different groups is what

2:06

another author probably would have made their own category for, which is the tech, right? Right. And the kind of the

2:12

the um tech bros who, you know, I didn't I did not anticipate the Elon Musk Doge

2:18

thing. Um that was that was very surprising. But I but certainly Teal and Curtis Yarvin and some of these

2:23

characters are in the book. And the dark enlightenment um is is a a

2:30

sort of phenomenon often associated with Curt Curtis Yarvin and the um

2:36

accelerationist Nick Land I believe who were sort of online for have been online for decades blogging and write about

2:43

writing about different technological futures. And Curtis Yarvin is a is a

2:48

sort of neo monarchist who thinks that the ideal state would have uh a

2:54

basically be operated along the lines of a corporation with a CEO in charge because it would be maximum that would

3:00

be the most efficient meth method of governance. And and throughout all of this writing, you can see just this

3:06

absolute contempt for democratic forms, for everyday politics, for ordinary

3:12

people, and certainly for the principles that animate the American constitution. So Curtis Yarvin is in and Peter Teal.

3:20

So Curtis Yarvin figures in a chapter that I write that I a couple of different chapters but where I try to

3:26

just give a an overview of what I call the hard right because in addition to Curtis Yarvin there are all these other

3:32

figures. Steven Miller and Bannon are the sort of public face of a lot of this. But there are also these other

3:40

people and mostly in my book I'm writing about people with PhDs or who otherwise are somehow important to the movement.

3:46

But there are these people like Darren Beattie who we didn't quite get to last time but who is a Duke PhD who's sort of from

3:52

Straussian circles and so so am I. So that was very interesting to me. And he's he's been one of these conspiracy

3:59

mongers uh on the new right was involved in in sort of the stop the coup January

4:06

6 stuff is hugely racist. And then others like Bronze Age pervert who maybe

4:11

listeners have have heard about because he's very influential. this sort of Niezchtian

4:17

Straussian writer who has a PhD from Yale and then has also written just

4:23

these really outrageous uh pseudonyian texts that are sort of really popular in the manosphere. You

4:29

know, we should say about Darren Bey that um he was involved in something called the HL Mencken Society, which was

4:36

the promotion of white supremacy. And he is incredibly the acting assistant

4:42

secretary of state for cultural affairs right now and the acting head of the Institute for Peace, US Institute for

4:48

Peace. He plays an important role in the Trump administration.

4:55

Yeah, it's astonishing. Just unbelievable. So um but

5:00

and teal and I guess teal is sort of a connective tissue. Yeah, teal has so teal um teal has been

5:09

in. So there's just this network of and and all of these sort of weird guys who have YouTube channels and and you know

5:16

and blogs and stuff that also and also happen to have these political theory PhDs who are all kind of into Trump and

5:22

have been part of all of this. And then Teal has been connected to these move to some of these people mostly I think

5:30

independently to Curtis Yarvin but also he's been sort of a fixture in

5:36

Straussian circles for decades. So people have probably read about his fascination with Rene Gerard who's a

5:42

French philosopher I believe but he's also been obsessed with Leo Strauss or at least a fan of Leo Strauss for many

5:49

many decades. And so I I'll talk to older Straussians and they'll be like, "Oh yeah, I met Peter during a reading

5:55

group in California, you know, 20 years ago." So So he's he's I think he gives

6:00

money to different groups um of these in these sort of Strowian circles and he's friends with with Michael Anton. So to

6:06

make a long story short, he's also friends with Michael Anton. Tell us about Michael Anton for Yeah. And so Michael throwing out a lot of

6:12

terms for people. Straussians refers to Leo Strauss who was a German-born

6:18

philosopher came to the United States and believed in the ancients versus the moderns. I'm giving you the very short

6:25

course in in virtue traditional virtue and but

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tell us tell us now about the role of Michael Anton.

6:36

So, Michael Anton was the very first sort of intellectual to provide this

6:42

this intellectualized defense of Trumpism in this now famous essay called the Flight 93 election. He's he then

6:49

went to work in the first Trump administration and one was one of the first people hired in the second Trump

6:54

administration. I don't I think he's now he's since left or is about to leave. Tell us about that essay.

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Yeah. So this essay which he wrote under a pseudonym was published in the

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Claremont Review of Books in September 2016 and it was very controversial and

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it was kind of explosive because it argued it he wouldn't even put his own name on it. That's how explosive he

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thought it was. And he said, "Listen, the the the status quo is absolute

7:23

garbage. Establishment conservatives have done nothing for conservatism. it's been a failing game for decades and they

7:30

haven't conserved anything as a really angry essay and it says Trump might not be the ideal candidate but Hillary

7:37

Clinton is uh is assured basically death to the republic and he used this image

7:43

of the flight 93 plane crash right on 911 where a hero basically charged the

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cockpit to save um the to save the plane from going into the Pentagon I believe.

7:57

Mhm. Capital. The capital. The capital. Was it at the capital? Okay. So, and then they they crashed right near

8:02

Gettysburg, right? I think is where there's a memorial to it. So, he used that image to say, "Listen, we got to

8:08

take our chances with Trump. It's the equivalent of charge the cockpit and you and you'll die. You might die." But he

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he said something like, "Uh, Hillary Clinton is like playing Russian roulette with a semi-automat."

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Mhm. So he uses this really ugly ugly imagery to suggest that Trump is the

8:26

only reasonable option for the country to save the country. And it's it's of a

8:32

piece with the whole mo mood of the Claremont Institute um which is this think tank in

8:38

California. Since then they've it's been quite radicalized. They've all sort of gotten on this Anton

8:44

um train. the institution has changed quite a bit and it's all kind of this counterrevolutionary fervor where it's

8:52

the basic argument is that things have become so bad that any mean it justifies anything. So it's justifies January 6

8:59

justifies what's happening today. Anton went into the administration he didn't do he didn't do very well inside

9:06

government and he's outside now. He was he was on the national security council

9:12

for a while. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. tell us. Yeah, he doesn't I don't know if he just doesn't get along well with people or or

9:18

what's going on with Anton. Um tell us about the influence of um Victor Orban on this whole

9:27

It's very fascinating. They all they all seek Orban's approval and suck up to

9:34

Orban. You can watch videos where they're interviewing him and they kind of um are just absolutely

9:42

in awe of what Orban has done and they constantly minimize and that's I think

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almost I guess that's true across the different uh camps that we've discussed. So the national conservatives are the

9:54

one group we haven't talked about but they they're sort of the organizing big umbrella group and and what they care

10:00

about is nationalism. So preserving the American nation which they view as very

10:05

homogeneous um Christian and so forth. So they and

10:11

they have been organ they they've invited Orban they've they've had Orurban speak at their conferences.

10:17

Chris Demuth, who for a while was he used to be the president of the American Enterprise Institute um for quite for

10:25

maybe two decades and then yeah a pretty mainstream conservative think tank and he left but and then

10:33

years later he was he joined the national conservative movement as the CEO of their conference or something and

10:41

he interviewed Orban I think in 2019 and and and and what you can And then

10:47

Patrick Denine has gone to visit Orabomb. They've kind of all go on these pilgrimages. Gladen Papen, who I

10:52

mentioned in the last uh episode. He he

10:58

works now for a foreign policy think tank that is basically an arm of the

11:03

Hungarian government. So there there's just a lot of overlap. And they use Orban's policies as a model for

11:10

especially academic um policy. everything that's going on in Florida with New College, the crit the

11:17

critical race, um the purging of faculty, closing of gender studies departments, all of that stuff is

11:22

inspired by Orbon and and they and when they when you see them talking with Orban, they never and writing about

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Orbon, they they constantly minimize or never give any they they don't care about what he's doing to democracy.

11:36

Yeah. They they minimize that. They act like it doesn't matter at all. There's a whole attack uh here in the United

11:43

States on civil society across the board uh involving the universities um uh now

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on the foundations and nonprofit groups and non-governmental organizations but

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also law firms and um you know just all

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across the board. Um and um it's not simply Trump's attempt to

12:07

coersse them and use them for his own purposes. There are there are larger

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um pe ideas behind this that have led to

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this further attack involving uh characters like Christopher Rufo and

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also the people influenced by Orban. Rufo is very influenced by Orban. spent

12:29

months in Hungary being paid by them. And uh you've got Curtis Yarvin who was

12:35

uh uh anti- he's opposed to democracy and he he refers to all this as the

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cathedral that needs to be destroyed, the cathedral of liberalism.

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Tell us about all this this attack on civil society and and why

12:54

feel this that it needs to be torn down. It's it to them it's the enemy. Mhm.

13:01

Yeah. They they they use different language the different camps but they are you they're unified by a number of

13:07

different things and anti-pluralism is one but anti- elitism is another. So

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there's just there's a way in which this is just a straightforward populist movement. But they they will talk. Curtis Yarvin talks about the cathedral

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and for him that means academia, the media, uh, and most corporations, right?

13:26

All of the professional zones of our culture that have all this power, he thinks are sort of like one unified blob

13:32

of of basically uh ideology of leftist

13:37

ideology. And and I think it it sort of dovetales with what is commonly called

13:43

wokeism, but they have this idea that it's very monolithic and that it's and it's a very

13:49

conspiratorial kind of idea like it's all controlling and everybody's subject to it and there's no um there's no they

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basically think there isn't civil society because everybody's subject to this regime.

14:02

George Soros among other people. Yeah. to George Soros and and they they will all use you know Patrick Denin

14:07

talks about liberal right um that going back like someone

14:12

like Sam Francis or James Bernon talked about the managerial elites right and so there's all this language that's built

14:18

up and there's all there's a lot of resources they have intellectually to make these arguments but it's and I

14:25

think that we have to grant there's some truth to to some of this right we can see that there's a kind of uh I think

14:30

what toqueville would have called soft desperatism where the public gets caught up in certain ideas and it becomes a

14:37

kind of group think. Like group think is here. It happens. There's no denying it. But that's also just that's that's okay.

14:43

That's part of democracy. You fight it. You you know there are ways around it. You contest each other. I think we could use more of that in our in our culture.

14:51

Like I I'm all for sort of more open contestation, but so much of this is just such bad faith and and so

14:57

inaccurate as to how the world actually operates. So they're they've just got all these bundles of grievances that

15:03

then they project onto professional elites and women, especially some of

15:08

these guys, cuz a lot of the stuff about the managerial elites and the cathedral

15:14

is that it's super feminized. And so and like Bronze Age pervert, this

15:19

other weird character calls it the long house, which is just like these um these middle-aged pecking hens who control

15:27

everything, right? So it's like so it gets really ugly. Um and and so that's

15:33

one of the things they are all pretty united against the what they call the regime and and

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um and and there's some there's some truth to what they're saying. I I certainly am not opposed to Democrats

15:45

and people on the left and and I'm not like anti-woke either, but I just think there are patterns of group think that

15:51

people need to be aware of. Yeah, Laura, I wrote a similar book to yours, but decades ago, called The Rise of the

15:57

Counterstablishment. Okay. And the the people on the right I encountered at that time had a similar

16:05

conception of what they called the liberal establishment. They didn't use these um obscure words that they had

16:13

invented, this new obscurantism. They didn't have Carl Schmidt among other things, but that's Yeah. And then they did not talk about

16:20

Carl Schmidt, the Nazi jurist, uh, and his use of emergency powers that Trump

16:26

has used, which is the basis of his regime. But, um, they also believe that

16:33

they should mimic the liberal establishment and create institution after institution in it shadow. It was a

16:40

kind what I called shadow liberalism and it was based on an illusion of

16:46

coordination. um and um and conspiracism really. Um and this

16:55

is in terms of accelerationism. This is um that view on steroids now gone mad.

17:03

Um absolutely that is exactly what they are trying to do pretty explicitly. Again,

17:09

all the different cohorts have a different way of describing that project of sort of seizing the power of the state or marching through the

17:15

institutions or on the far on the religious right you hear about the seven mountain mandate, right? You hear all

17:20

these there's all these different ways of speaking about it. But I think that's right. I think there's a real they they think that they

17:26

are mirroring what has happened on the left. Um because the left's the left has had

17:32

control of everything. Um, even more empowered left are the are the basic

17:37

institutions of American law. Exactly. Exactly. And they can't say Yeah. American.

17:42

Yeah. There's something that I I'm not sure I've articulated as well as I would like about the way that they all sort of

17:49

they are okay with traditions. They're okay with political orders, right? Hierarchies and orders. But the moment

17:55

you have a liberal tradition or a liberal, you know, Plato would have called it a cave, they get very, you

18:01

know, oh that can't that's very that's that's wrong, you know, that's that's that's a violation of our humanity

18:08

somehow. And it's like, well, there you you you concede that you need a

18:13

political order, you need some political agreement, you need a constitution. Why is it that only this liberal version of

18:19

it wrinkles so much? Um, and I think liberals can do better. There there are ways we can change our politics, but

18:25

right now that's not the the liberals are not really the problem. Yeah. Laura, tell us about um the sort

18:33

of um idea they have about nationalism and what the nation is. This is where

18:38

Steven Miller comes in in his radicalism. He cites the Camp of the

18:44

Saints, which is a French novel about how migrants are going to take over and

18:49

displace white Europeans. um um they have a you know this is the great

18:55

replacement theory um that they believe in and to them this is the this is

19:02

crucial and central to the idea of nationalism and patriotism a new

19:07

patriotism tell us about that

19:12

yeah there's it's kind of unbelievable but the the core because it's it fits so

19:18

badly with the American with American history right which is highly pluralistic and obviously you have

19:23

people in this country from all over the world. Many you know you have this formerly enslaved peoples, black people

19:30

coming here against their will and now you've got these nationalists. It's not exactly that they promote white

19:36

nationalism explicitly all of them but it certainly sidles up next to that very quickly and yeah and some of them do.

19:44

And so the the the nerve center of the of nationalism is national conservative

19:51

movement which again is this organizing group and it's led by an Israeli American named Yoram Hazone who wrote a

19:58

book again this was 2018 published a book called the virtue of nationalism and he was really trying to restore

20:05

nationalism as a and and the idea of the nation state so a state that's organiz organized around a homogeneous nation a

20:13

sort of tribalist it was sort a celebration of tribalism in a way um that was grounded in the Hebrew Bible

20:18

and the tribes of Israel and it's a very weird book for from a political theory

20:24

perspective kind of interesting but also just very strange and and so the idea

20:30

his idea is that to have healthy politics in the world we need diverse we need diverse nation states different

20:37

states that all represent these different traditions and and values and peoples and But domestically, it has to

20:46

be pretty homogeneous. And so he's even advocated for Christian nationalism in America, even though he's Jewish. He's

20:52

Orthodox Jew. And so he he's almost gotten to the point where he advocates for a, you know, well, we might have

20:58

fewer rights, but probably it's like he just thinks it will be okay for Jewish people if there's a rampant Christian

21:04

nationalism taking over the country because that's what you need to preserve the American nation. He's uh he's held

21:11

in high esteem uh by this Maganu right Hazi. He's also he's uh an Israeli. He's

21:19

he also venerated Meer Kahan the you know the fascist um uh you uh

21:29

Israeli leader who was assassinated and he was an adviser to BB Netanyahu.

21:35

Yeah. Um uh interestingly you point out in your book that at uh a national

21:41

conservative convention Josh Holly who is very much part of this um you know

21:49

sort of hilariously recited from a poem Horatio Horatius at the bridge who who

21:56

and was corrected by Hzone for not for citing the Romans as as the inspiration

22:04

of virtue and not locating it in the Old Testament and somehow, you know,

22:11

criticizing Holly is not being biblical enough.

22:16

Yeah. I mean, I I think he was being a little tongue-in-cheek obviously, but it was it is it is Hon's view and I think I

22:22

think others on the new right share this that Rome, they they all like re part of

22:28

what I tried to convey in the book is they all like to reach back to these classic tradition classical traditions. And I I love the ancients, right? I love

22:34

this stuff. I love the I love the poetry. It's I love that stuff, too. I I really am terrified that they're going

22:40

to be able that the right is going to capture that. So, I I want to push back against their uses and abuses of this

22:46

tradition, but but Hone really wants to anchor his political philosophy in the

22:51

biblical traditions. And he writes away the rationalists. He hates he hates John Lockach. Uh he thinks the Greeks

22:58

probably got most things wrong and the Romans are also probably far, you know, just a little dicey. So, so he was

23:04

probably being a bit jokey there with Holly, but overall you do see a kind a really radical desire to reject

23:11

modernity. I mean, Patrick Denine tries to write out all of the early moderns from his education programs. It's it's

23:18

it's very surprising. It's not how I understand liberal education. It's not how I understand the political

23:24

traditions we should be embracing, but that's that's what a lot of them are up to. Yeah. Let's just as a footnote note that

23:30

Thomas Jefferson had um albeit a slaveholder as Lincoln said um was also

23:36

the author of the Declaration of Independence and the portrait of John Lock hangs on by Jefferson at the

23:44

entrance to Manachello. Um so how how do they define this second administration

23:50

Trump regime? You cite Rome. Uh do they uh e exalt Caesarism?

23:58

I don't know how they defend this. Um they they are they are they were

24:03

perfectly but they are happy to make peace. They pretty much at this point they will be they are happy to inform

24:09

policy. So the Doge stuff I think that was that t taps into all this stuff about about trying to have the shrink

24:16

the administrative state which is the Claremont priority going back a long long time. So you have these you have

24:22

these continuities of thinking. So that that I think they could tap they could make fit with their ideology. Um and so

24:30

too with you know US aid and the destruction of a lot of these agencies. Um

24:36

and but I also think a lot of it is just at this point backing whatever Trump

24:42

wants to do or Vance. They're backpatting their priorities postfacto. I I I don't think that

24:50

so we'll see. I don't I don't really I think things are so outrageous a lot of what's happening that um that it's

24:56

really hard to understand what but I don't but what I can say is they don't seem to be speaking out against it.

25:02

There is maybe one guy on the new right so Rabamari who consistently pushes back

25:07

against the worst um of of what's going on but it's crickets as far as I can

25:12

tell from the Going back to something that Sydney just just mentioned about John Lock. I mean, how do these guys square what they're

25:18

talking about with the American founding with, you know, the framers, with the kind of government that actually they

25:24

were not only the kinds of people they were reading philosophically, but actually the institutions that they built? Um, it seems to me as if this is

25:30

an attempt to overthrow the American founding philosophically. But how do they try to square this?

25:36

So, if you if you look at Michael Anton, it's very interesting. and and before he did that flight 93 essay, he wrote this

25:43

he and a few of these other characters including Gladen Papen who's the uh

25:48

post-liberal guy, they had this this blog called the Journal of American

25:53

Greatness and and there and this is probably one of the most shocking things I found in my research. They because the

26:00

Claremont group is are the heirs of Harry Jaffa who loved nothing more than the Declaration of Independence and

26:06

Abraham Lincoln and the founding. I mean, he had his problems, but right um

26:11

and and would get into these epic arguments with other conservatives about this stuff. and Michael Anton in and and

26:19

I think Julius Crin and Gladen Papen, the others involved in that journal of American Greatness was pretty explicit

26:25

that that given I think especially immigration and the changing demographics of America, it was time to

26:34

to to level sort of um

26:39

it was time to let go of that pure um sort of declarationist way of thinking

26:45

and basically em embrace a certain kind of paleoconservatism which is much more nivist and he called himself a

26:52

paleouseian and he and they quoted Sam Francis constantly and I think that might have

26:59

been a bit tongue-in-cheek that was that I really do think for some of those writers it might have been but I don't think it was for Anton so I think there

27:06

was a who Sam Francis was just Sam Francis was a paleoconservative who

27:12

was close to Pat Buchanan and uh white supremacous IST racist. Racist.

27:17

Yeah. Yeah. He he got ousted from the mainstream conservative movement I think in the '9s and then just went fullon

27:23

white supremacist. Um uh but but a sort of smart guy and so

27:29

and so read wrote a lot of interesting things that were kind of precient for for the deeper you know things happening

27:35

in the country. Um but so I thought it was really shocking that someone like

27:40

Michael Anton would would basically turn his back on the declaration. so explicitly and tap into those other

27:47

traditions. Um, I think so. And and he he he you might you probably noticed

27:52

this, Sydney, when you read it cuz I know you I know about your work on Lincoln, but he he he quotes Lincoln in

28:00

that Journal of American Greatness about concerning the Declaration and Equality and he he basically lies about what

28:07

Lincoln says, you know, he says that Lincoln didn't believe that Lincoln even Lincoln admitted that that we weren't

28:13

equals. Um, and he sort of Yeah. Yeah.

28:18

intellectually dishonest. Lincoln denounced those leading into the Civil War among

28:25

um the southern um um secessionists. They became secessionist who denounced

28:31

the Declaration of Independence particularly the u phrase all men are created equal and he says you know

28:37

they're hawking said Lincoln at the Declaration. Lincoln spoke about this quite often and explicitly and uh anyone

28:46

who wants to read any of his um debates with Douglas in 1858 um uh he speaks

28:57

about that but also in the um uh Cooper Union uh speech of um February of 1860.

29:05

I urge everyone to read that. I've written an essay about that recently in the New Republic, but that is a um that

29:13

it that is a reflection of profound intellectual dishonesty. Yeah. I mean this is comes close to what

29:19

Lincoln was arguing against were those um southerners in particular but not just southerners who were claiming the

29:25

Declaration of Independence was merely a a pack of glittering generalities that it had no you know um actual meaning um

29:32

for our own time and it should not be um admired. Um it it was actually they

29:39

wanted to find out something completely different which was the Confederacy um

29:44

you know and and and and this is what Lincoln saw. So the idea that Lincoln was a person who saw the declaration as

29:50

a bunch of glittering generalities and this is beyond dishonest. This is just Can I um I totally agree. Can I read

29:56

this little section from the speech because because Lincoln gave this speech on the DreadScott decision which dis

30:03

this notorious decision where they decided black people were not equal, right? And

30:08

Lincoln said, and this is the part that I think Matt Anton is quoting from badly. Um, and this is I just so I

30:15

wanted to make sure I got this in the book and I'm going to get it in the interview here too. Okay, so this is um

30:20

Lincoln uh was was expounding upon his understanding of the the declaration and

30:25

saying that it was not a statement of actual reality, right, of what was going on, of course, but it was a beacon of

30:31

hope, right, and and a kind of aspiration. And he says they meaning the founders meant simply to declare the

30:37

right so that the the right of equality that is so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances

30:44

should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all. constantly

30:50

looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby con

30:58

thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all

31:04

people of all colors everywhere. So with that, Laura

31:13

from Abraham Lincoln, a reputation not only of Chief Justice Roger B. Tony in

31:20

the Dread Scott decision, but the MAGA apologist Michael Anton

31:27

um we are going to close um this episode,

31:33

but we are going to urge everybody to read your book further to explore these

31:39

questions in much greater detail because we're going to need to understand this as we go along. A Furious Minds: The

31:46

Making of the Manga New Wright, a new book by Laura Field. Um, thank you Laura

31:52

very much. Um, and on behalf of um Sean Mens and myself, subscribe to Legal AF,

32:00

the Court of History is now adjourned. Can't get your fill of legal AF? Me

32:05

neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a

---

PT 1

trump anti-intell give cover for this new rt intell bs

52,940 views Nov 1, 2025

The Court of History’s Sidney Blumenthal & Sean Wilentz are joined by Laura Field to explore Trump’s fascist elites—the apologists, defenders, and ideologues building the MAGA infrastructure to tear down America’s democratic institutions. Together they uncover the hidden manipulators inside Trump’s circle and behind JD Vance who are shaping an authoritarian movement from within. Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right:https://a.co/d/3Hz8WqX

I'm Sydney Blumenthal. This is the Court

0:02

of History. The court is now in session.

0:06

Sean, I've been reading about the New

0:08

York Young Republicans

0:10

and their astounding

0:14

remarks uh about I love Hitler and all

0:19

sorts of racist anti-semitic comments.

0:22

And then I read in the Times about a

0:27

publication, a conservative publication,

0:30

supposedly conservative at Harvard

0:31

called the Harvard Salient that's been

0:33

around for quite a while.

0:34

I I haven't heard about that. You'll

0:36

have to fil.

0:36

Yeah. And this publication uh decided to

0:39

cease publishing after years of

0:42

existence because

0:44

it it uh published an article by one of

0:48

its leading contributors in which he

0:52

basically quoted Hitler at length and um

0:56

turns out the chairman of the board of

0:58

the Harvard salient is Alex Aosta

1:01

uh who was uh

1:03

sorry I'm sorry I just can't help it.

1:06

No, because you know the Epstein files

1:08

follow us everywhere. He was the

1:10

prosecutor who made the deal with

1:12

Jeffrey Epstein. So, um, Epstein files

1:16

just are are the ghost in the machine.

1:18

They just keep popping up everywhere.

1:20

But what what are we to make of of this

1:23

these kinds of, you know, remarks that

1:27

don't seem to be erratic? They seem, you

1:31

know, they pop they don't just pop up.

1:34

Yeah, they don't. I mean it's in a way

1:36

it's kind of the the it is unleashed. Um

1:39

you know the super ego is gone. Now the

1:41

real stuff is coming out. One thing

1:43

though about the young Republicans thing

1:45

is that you know what JD Vance came out

1:47

and said well basically boys will be

1:49

boys. You shouldn't get them on you know

1:50

for in trouble for having said a few

1:53

offer things. Well in fact first of all

1:55

they're not so young. They're not all so

1:57

young. Some of them are in their their

1:58

30s. Some there's at least one office

2:00

holder in the bunch. I mean this is not

2:02

a bunch of kids playing pranks. um you

2:04

know around the locker room or

2:05

something. Um the these are people who

2:07

are talking to each other seriously. I

2:09

mean seriously in the sense that they

2:11

are using words that they probably use

2:13

off you know in everyday uh exchanges.

2:17

Um this is deeply alarming. Um the thing

2:20

is though where are they getting it

2:22

from? I mean they're getting permission

2:24

to talk about these things but where are

2:26

these getting these ideas? Where are

2:27

they coming from? There's a there's been

2:29

a whole change with the rise of MAGA,

2:32

make America great again movement and uh

2:35

the development of an infrastructure

2:37

that really needs chartering and it

2:40

raises the F-word and by the F-word I

2:44

mean the fascist word, the word fascist.

2:47

Um and

2:50

um you know something that's not

2:52

imported that's uh American and yet um

2:58

someone needs to do a whole taxonomy and

3:02

dissection and philosophical discussion

3:05

about it as and as a matter of fact they

3:07

have and uh there's a new book it's

3:11

about to be published it's called

3:13

furious minds the making of the maga new

3:16

right it's by Laura Field.

3:19

She's a scholar in residence at American

3:22

University, senior adviser with the

3:24

Illiberalism Studies Program at George

3:26

Washington University, and senior fellow

3:29

at the NISCAN Center of the Ko

3:32

Institute, Washington, D.C. She's here

3:35

with us right now. Welcome to the Court

3:38

of History, Laura.

3:40

Thank you both so much for having me.

3:42

I'm very happy to be here. Um why don't

3:45

we start with January 6.

3:48

Um and the reason I raise that Laura is

3:51

you write about how uh you discuss a

3:55

whole new group of um thinkers and

3:59

writers and um projectors as it were uh

4:04

of MAGA

4:06

um who you say reject the core of the

4:08

American political project. Uh, and many

4:11

of them many of this this new cast of

4:14

characters comes together on January 6.

4:17

There's John Eastman who develops the

4:20

strategy for Trump of Stop the Steel and

4:24

the fake elector scheme. There's Darren

4:28

Bey who you'll tell us about. There

4:31

there people who justify it like Patrick

4:34

Denine, Adrien Vermule.

4:37

Um there's there people from the

4:40

Claremont Institute. Um

4:43

uh and then there's a whole group of

4:46

there are all these different factions

4:48

in names,

4:50

you know, the post liberals, the

4:52

national conservatives, the common good

4:54

constitutionalists, the Straussians, the

4:57

integralists, the bronze age mindset

5:00

people, the Christian nationalists.

5:02

They're all in this conglomeration.

5:06

Let's start at January 6. Tell us about

5:09

this meeting of the minds here of these

5:12

people.

5:13

All right. Thank you, Sydney. Um, yeah,

5:16

I think January 6 is sort of the

5:18

centerpiece of the book because it's

5:20

this point where these people have been

5:22

getting together already through the

5:25

whole first Trump administration, right?

5:27

I'm I the book is solely focused pretty

5:29

much on the intellectual side of MAGA

5:32

and that movement started to coalesque

5:34

before January 6, but it didn't really

5:36

consolidate until after.

5:39

And some of the figures I write about

5:41

were right there at the center. I

5:42

wouldn't want to say that all of the

5:43

people you just listed were on board

5:45

with what happened on January 6th, but

5:47

some of the people that you mentioned

5:49

were instigators and were highly

5:51

involved in it directly. John Eastman

5:53

being the main person uh and then Darren

5:56

Bey and the whole leadership at the

5:58

Claremont Institute, they were sort of

5:59

fueling the flames of this um Biden coup

6:03

narrative. John Eastman wrote the legal

6:05

memos that tried to justify Vance

6:07

delaying the you know um the

6:10

confirmation of the election results.

6:12

And so so you have those people sort of

6:14

really stirring stuff up and really

6:16

pushing the envelope in terms of the

6:18

constitution and just everything you

6:20

know about uh the American political

6:22

system. And my view I thought that

6:25

probably after January 6 because they

6:29

didn't win right they Trump did have to

6:31

leave office. It wasn't especially

6:33

peaceful January 6 obviously but Biden

6:36

was inaugurated. I sort of thought the

6:37

movement, the intellectual side of

6:39

things and Trump himself would fade

6:41

away. They would take the off-ramp. It

6:43

would sort of be over. And so I had

6:46

written about the new right from 2019 on

6:49

and I thought that that would sort of be

6:51

the end of that. And then and then it

6:53

wasn't. So by 2022 they were coming

6:55

together again. They were starting up

6:57

their uh their conferences and they were

7:00

taking over critical institutions. So

7:02

the second half of the book is kind of

7:04

about that, right? all of these efforts

7:05

in the red states to to to work with,

7:09

you know, to pass new laws, the sort of

7:11

MAGA infrastructure,

7:14

these attacks on critical race theory,

7:16

Christopher Rufo, things people would

7:17

have heard of, the takeover of the

7:18

Heritage Foundation um by Kevin Roberts,

7:22

which was a real shift from what they

7:23

had been during the first Trump

7:25

administration. So it really it started

7:28

to ferment again after January 6th and

7:29

then it and then it really got

7:31

consolidated and so it became a much

7:34

more structured movement and you know

7:36

there are schisms within the movement.

7:38

There's a lot of complexity here. Not

7:40

everybody's on exactly the same page but

7:43

you know they were they were able to

7:45

come back together. They were able to

7:46

get pre president um vice president

7:49

Vance on the ticket which was a major

7:51

victory for them. And then this whole

7:52

pro the whole world of project 2025

7:55

which I know you I'm sure you both paid

7:56

a lot of attention to that's kind of

7:59

these guys you know um part of my

8:01

argument in the book is that Trump's

8:04

anti-intellectualism has given cover to

8:08

and sort of hidden all of these other

8:10

things that are going on that are kind

8:11

of hard to believe given Trump's

8:14

character.

8:15

Yeah.

8:15

Yeah. These people are very closely tied

8:18

to Vance and Vance

8:20

Vance is their advance man. It seems

8:22

he's their political conduit, is he not?

8:24

He's the man who's going to bring these

8:25

thoughts into power.

8:27

Yeah. Vance is not uh you know, Trump

8:29

may not have a clue who these people are

8:32

who, you know, are trying to create

8:35

whole world views around him, but Vance

8:38

is personally close to a lot of these

8:40

people, reads them, follows them,

8:43

listen.

8:43

Yeah. He speaks at their events and has

8:45

going back um through before he was a

8:49

senator. They helped him become senator.

8:51

Peter Teal is in these circles, right?

8:53

And he funded JD Vance's run for for the

8:55

Senate. You can spot him. I mean, I was

8:58

very shocked when they chose Vance

9:00

because I thought, "Holy smokes, this

9:01

guy." I had I was writing this book,

9:03

right? I was almost done. And and then

9:05

they selected him and I thought, "Wow,

9:07

they have I was surprised. I thought,

9:09

well, they've got clearly got more clout

9:11

than I would have thought." And and so

9:15

he because he's got his fingers in all

9:16

the different pots. You know, we can

9:18

talk about the complexity in the

9:19

different camps, but he's been there at

9:21

the Claremont Institute. He's been

9:23

honored by the Claremont Institute. They

9:25

were thrilled when he was nominated.

9:27

He's very close with Patrick Denine is

9:29

my impression. He spoke at Patrick Den's

9:31

book launch in 2022. I was there.

9:34

Tell us who Patrick Denin is and what he

9:36

believes.

9:37

Sure. Patrick Den on Vance and on this

9:41

project.

9:42

Sure.

9:43

So, Patrick Denin is a political

9:46

theorist. uh who

9:49

is a he's a professor at the University

9:51

of Notre Dame. He used to be at

9:52

Georgetown and he's kind of got this um

9:57

social

9:59

um communitarian

10:01

aspect to his thought if you kind of go

10:03

back far enough.

10:04

Mhm.

10:05

And so he's he's very critical of

10:07

capitalism and he's there's a kind of

10:09

leftist dimension. He's he's one of the

10:11

main leaders of the post-liberal faction

10:13

of the what I call the Maganu right and

10:16

so this faction is the most

10:18

intellectualized and and the most

10:20

radical and it includes others like

10:22

Adrien Vermule So Rabamari

10:25

um and a man named Gladim Papin are some

10:28

of the key figures they are they tend to

10:31

be Catholic intellectuals and so they're

10:33

drawing on Catholic critiques of

10:35

liberalism and Patrick Denin in 2018

10:37

published this smash hit book called

10:40

well for for an academic especially

10:42

called uh why liberalism failed and

10:45

Barack Obama President Obama recommended

10:47

it on his 2018 book reading list because

10:49

it really captured it offered kind of a

10:52

very um straightforward explanation for

10:56

the turmoil everybody was experiencing

10:58

and sort of the failure of the state the

11:01

nom the election of Donald Trump um it

11:04

Patrick Denine argued well the demise

11:07

that we're seeing around us the crisis

11:08

of democracy is a natural outcome of

11:12

liberalism, right? This is just an

11:13

inevitable

11:15

um this is just an this is just what

11:18

happens with liberalism because

11:19

liberalism exists on really dangerous

11:21

and shaky foundations and is kind of

11:23

self-cannibalizing because of he talks a

11:26

lot about the anthropological excuse me

11:30

the individualist anthropology of

11:32

liberalism. So the fact that liberal

11:34

democracies protect individual rights

11:36

and promote individual autonomy and

11:39

freedom for Denine that's something that

11:42

corrods at our social ties right that

11:44

corrods our social ties breaks down

11:47

traditions and hurts our communities and

11:50

he goes through in that book

11:53

um all of the different ways in which

11:55

our our economics um our economic

11:59

uh systems

12:01

become destructive. our economic world.

12:04

I I mean, excuse me, our educational

12:06

forms are destroyed by this. I mean,

12:08

it's quite a dark book, but he's saying,

12:10

well, you can't have you can't have

12:13

liberal democracy and individualism and

12:15

not expect it to kind of go in this

12:18

direction. And because it has this

12:20

solvent effect on society and on

12:22

politics and on everything, what happens

12:25

then is people start yearning for a

12:27

strong man, right, to to come in, fill

12:30

that vacuum

12:32

and and do something different. And so

12:35

his 2018 book articulated a lot of that.

12:38

A lot of other people got on board with,

12:39

you know, were thinking, "Yeah, this is

12:40

right." And that's those arguments go

12:42

back to all kind, you know, to mainly

12:45

Catholic Catholic counterrevolutionary

12:48

thinkers or

12:49

Joseph Destra. I mean, this goes back

12:52

these kind of Yeah. anti-revolution

12:55

monarchical and also, you know, it

12:57

reminds me of Pope Pius the 9th and his

13:01

syllabus of errors of 1864 in which he

13:04

explicitly denounces the United States

13:06

as an expressence of liberalism. uses

13:10

really the same rhetoric as Denine and

13:14

Adrien Vermule who is what is what he

13:18

calls

13:20

an integralist. Um and they um they also

13:24

are engaged in a uh tell us about Adrien

13:27

Vermule who teaches at Harvard Law

13:29

School and his influence and his

13:31

attempted rehabilitation

13:34

of somebody known as Carl Schmidt who

13:37

was the crown jurist of Nazi Germany.

13:44

Yeah. So I think that it's just a couple

13:47

things. I want to be clear that there

13:49

are plenty of Catholic scholars in the

13:51

American tradition who reject this way

13:53

of thinking. Absolutely.

13:54

Right. And and who think that there's

13:55

And so that's it's important to know

13:57

that just so you can see how radical

13:58

these guys are.

14:00

That's very important to state.

14:02

Yeah. Um and so when just for a bit of

14:06

background,

14:08

Denine published his book in 2018.

14:10

Adrien Vermile wrote this really

14:12

interesting review of it where he said,

14:14

"You know, this could have been a

14:15

masterpiece, but at the end of the book,

14:18

Patrick, you you got you were too tame.

14:21

You what we really need to do is sear

14:23

the liberal order with hot irons and

14:25

like and really do something far more

14:27

radical because Denine's view was at the

14:30

end of that first book or that 2018 book

14:32

was to say we need to preserve our

14:35

communities locally and just sort of buy

14:37

at our time until something new

14:38

emerges." and and Adrien Vermile said,

14:40

"No, now's the time. Like, let's get

14:42

let's get going on this new vision."

14:45

And at the time, Adrienne was also

14:47

involved in other I don't know exactly

14:50

how this if Patrick was part of this

14:52

also, but he was involved in something

14:54

called neoint neointegralism, which is

14:56

kind of a revival of Catholic

14:59

integralism.

15:01

And this is sort of an in the weeds

15:03

thing that was going on with this um a

15:07

priest in Austria and a a kind of way of

15:12

basically trying to get rid of this

15:14

separation of church and state or

15:15

reintegrate um the Catholic social

15:18

teaching and religious teaching into

15:20

state the um liberal democratic state.

15:24

And so this is very very controversial

15:27

within the church, very radical and and

15:30

um and Adrian was sort of at the

15:32

foreground of this and writing quite you

15:34

know writing on blogs about it and with

15:37

an explicit sort of anti-liberal

15:40

uh

15:42

just a very explicit anti-liberal

15:43

thrust. And so then so he was part of

15:46

that and that was a lot there was a lot

15:48

of ferment there and they went very

15:51

Trumpy too. So, so anyway, by 2022, he

15:56

had written this book called Common Good

15:58

Constitutionalism. And that was based on

16:00

an article that probably many people

16:02

have read that was in the Atlantic

16:04

called, I think, against originalism

16:06

originally. And it was this idea. It was

16:09

basically a new mode of judicial

16:11

interpretation

16:13

uh that was that he framed as sort of

16:15

the original true juristprudence and the

16:19

the classical legal tradition that he

16:21

says the American constitution and

16:24

founders and all of everybody has all

16:26

originally that's how they thought about

16:28

the law and that it's and that his his

16:32

effort was to revive that tradition

16:35

against as an alternative to originalism

16:38

and to living constitutionalism. So both

16:40

to conservative and progressive

16:43

modes of constitutional interpretation.

16:46

What's unique about common good

16:47

constitutionalism is that it sort of

16:49

provides all this substantive content to

16:53

um to legal interpretation. So

16:57

traditionally in a liberal democracy you

16:59

don't impose you don't legislate

17:00

morality. But I think one way of putting

17:02

it is that vermule says no we can.

17:05

Classical legal the classical legal

17:07

tradition says we can. Here's how we do

17:09

it. This is and and and by the way the

17:11

tradition also says you impose the

17:13

values that I think are important.

17:15

Yeah. Well this is where Carl Schmidt

17:17

comes in. I mean, you quote Vermeule

17:20

who says that the legally constituted

17:24

executive is now a historical

17:28

uh the legally uh constrained executive

17:31

is now a historical curiosity. And he

17:33

also says the Msonian separation of

17:35

powers is obsolete. and he wants to

17:38

impose his version of morality which is

17:41

also

17:42

um highly um not simply anti-feminist

17:45

but u believes that uh in a hype kind of

17:49

hyper masculinity which also Denine

17:51

believes in and all of these others um

17:55

assert it's and they talked about the

17:57

gyocray and

18:00

these guys probably don't use that

18:01

language Sydney but they're certainly

18:03

homophobic I mean they don't they they

18:05

are explicit about wanting to overturn

18:07

Turn Bergafell and I think would and are

18:09

certainly anti-feminist. I just don't

18:11

want to conflate them with some of the

18:12

other people I recommen.

18:13

Yeah. The the common you know the crude

18:16

language is really the vulgar version of

18:20

all of this.

18:21

Yeah, that's fair.

---

// breitbart wkly st'd?

---

From universities to museums, President Donald Trump is making a concerted effort to purge institutions of what MAGA Republicans call a "woke" version of U.S. history.

But historians and Trump opponents are pushing back, stressing that discussing the darker side of U.S. history is not bashing the United States but rather, is an effort to learn from mistakes of the past and avoid repeating them. Presidential historian Jon Meacham, a frequent guest on MSNBC, often describes frank discussions as part of the journey toward a "more perfect union."

In an opinion column published by The Guardian on September 4, Sidney Blumenthal — a former adviser to ex-President Bill Clinton and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — argues that Trump is trying to whitewash U.S. history even though he has a painfully limited knowledge of it.

READ MORE: 'Trump takes this snub personally': Conservative mocks 'saddest little dictator'

"Of all the presidents, Donald Trump — the man who would remake the Smithsonian and alter its presentation of 'how bad slavery was,' as he put it — is surely the most ignorant of American history itself," Blumenthal laments. "What Trump doesn't know fills the Library of Congress, whose chief librarian he has fired, along with driving out the heads of the National Archives and the National Portrait Gallery, as well as dissolving programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities and defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which as a result, has paused the acclaimed 'American Experience' documentary series."

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The former Clintons adviser adds, "Trump claims he is tearing down the entire federal support for history in order to reveal the true story."

A Trump White House aide, Blumenthal notes, bragged that one of Trump's goals is to "get the woke out of the Smithsonian."

"But this gospel of positive-thinking twaddle aside, Trump, proudly ignorant though he is, has for years articulated a vision of American history," Blumenthal warns. "That vision does not emphasize the strides the nation has made through tumultuous struggle since the abolition of slavery. Instead, it honors those who defended slavery, committed treason to preserve it and claim it to be a worthy American 'heritage.' Trump has repeatedly sought to shield the Confederate statues and symbols erected as tribute to the 'lost cause' myth."

READ MORE:Economist Paul Krugman says Trump 'telling the truth' on this issue — but there's a catch

Blumenthal continues, "He has expressed and unqualified admiration for Robert E. Lee as a quintessential American hero almost always coupled with belittling remarks about (President Abraham) Lincoln. His view of history squarely aligns him with neo-Confederates, not least those who carried the Confederate flag at the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection on 6 January 2021 and whom he subsequently pardoned. Trump's version of history is not, however, simply reactionary nostalgia, or treacly kitsch for the restoration of 'Uncle Herschel,' the 'Old-Timer' to the Cracker Barrel logo. His use of the culture war is a key element to advance his policy agenda."

READ MORE:'Sound familiar?' Mitch McConnell lobs parting shot at 'America First' Republicans

Sidney Blumenthal's full column for The Guardian is available at this link.

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gawker (long)

Did Clinton's Backdoor Adviser Illegally Lobby for Putin Ally?

37,594 19

Sam Biddle

Filed to: HILLARY CLINTON 3/30/15

Did Clinton's Backdoor Adviser Illegally Lobby for Putin Ally?

Hillary Clinton says there is nothing to hide in her scandalous personal email account, now apparently half-deleted. But leaked emails from her longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthalshow that he and another former official from Bill Clinton's administration were secretly lobbying the secretary of state on behalf of a billionaire in the former Soviet state of Georgia who was seeking closer ties with Putin's Russia—seemingly in violation of a federal law designed to prevent foreign powers from covertly wielding influence within the United States.

As Gawker reported last week in collaboration with ProPublica, emails from Blumenthal's hacked account revealed that he was running what amounts to a private, off-the-books intelligence operation for Clinton, sending her detailed reports on goings-on in Libya, Europe, and elsewhere. Among these memos is one urging Clinton to consider re-examining the State Department's posture toward the opposition in Georgia.

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In 2012, Georgia was gearing up to elect a new prime minister. Oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvililed the opposition Georgian Dream party, which called for closer relations with Russia—a state that had invaded Georgia only four years earlier. He was opposing the incumbent President Mikheil Saakashvili, who had enjoyed U.S. support.

Ivanishvili was eager to meet with then-Secretary of State Clinton, but found himself snubbed during a state visit in June 2012. In September 2012, Blumenthal prepared a long, official-looking memo for Clinton on the subject of the Georgian election. It passed along a note from John Kornblum, an international lawyer who had served as ambassador to Germany under Bill Clinton. According to Blumenthal's memo, Kornblum was "working with the political party in Georgia opposing Saakashvili"; contemporaneous press accounts corroborate the fact that Kornblum was formally acting as an adviser to Georgian Dream.

Blumenthal's preamble to the memo warned that Georgia "could be a potential hot spot a month before the U.S. election" if Saakashvili decided to "ratchet up tensions with Russia" as a political maneuver. Though he wrote that he was passing on Kornblum's memo "without comment," it is clear that Blumenthal thought the ideas should be taken seriously.

Did Clinton's Backdoor Adviser Illegally Lobby for Putin Ally?

Kornblum's memo was a full-throated plea for Clinton to warn Saakashvili not to crack down on Georgian Dream before the elections. Continued support for Saakashvili, he wrote, "would turn Georgia into a Caucasian Cuba and make sure we never had a reasonable security relationship with Russia." Kornblum also passed along a personal letter to Clinton from Ivanishvili himself, in which Ivanishvili accused Saakashvili of undemocratically attacking his party and asking for Clinton's support: "The Georgian people are waiting for a clear signal that America understands and supports their dreams for democracy."

Kornblum wasn't just a geopolitical hobbyist. He was a lobbyist for a pro-Putin politician who was exploiting a connection to the secretary of state. Blumenthal, perhaps eager to get a chance to play diplomat after being rejected for an official State gig, happily played middle-man. The memo clearly constitutes evidence that Kornblum sought to influence U.S. policy on behalf of a foreign political leader, and that he enlisted Blumenthal for help in that project.

Generally speaking, it's fine to lobby U.S. officials on behalf of a foreign power, as long as you register with the U.S. Department of Justice. If you don't register, it's a crime.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, known as FARA, is designed to prevent undisclosed meddling in American politics by foreign interests. At its heart, FARA is a transparency law—if you're working for a Chinese bank or a Turkish minister while inside the U.S., you're required to disclose your affiliation along with some financial details about the relationship. According to the statute, anyone who attempts to "influence any agency or official of the Government of the United States...with reference to formulating, adopting, or changing the domestic or foreign policies of the United States or with reference to the political or public interests, policies, or relations of a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party" must register with the Justice Department within 10 days of doing so.

Neither Kornblum nor Blumenthal filed reports with the Justice Department disclosing their efforts to lobby Clinton on behalf of Georgian Dream, according to a search of the FARA online database. Other U.S. citizens who did register as operatives of Georgian Dream include Al Gordon, CEO of D.C.-based lobbying firm National Strategies, LLC, and Romano Romani, CEO of the public relations firm Parry and Romani Associates Inc.

Gawker spoke to four attorneys who specialize in FARA to ask whether Kornblum and Blumenthal were required by the law to report their activities on behalf of Ivanishvili. One, who spoke on the record, said it sounded like an apparent attempt to short-circuit the normal legal process by routing the contact through Blumenthal, who was not a government official, rather than Kornblum directly reaching out to the State Department. The three others, all of whom insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject matter, said in no uncertain terms that Blumenthal and Kornblum both should have registered before lobbying Clinton.

Amos Jones, a Washington, D.C., attorney and FARA expert and Assistant Professor at Campbell Law School, said the contact was a "legal-loophole-laundering dynamic"—a way to dodge FARA. "If they were clients of my firm, I would be looking very closely," he said. "[Their behavior] raises questions of compliance with the statute."

Another FARA attorney who spoke only on background said that both men should have registered for their attempts to influence Clinton. Even Blumenthal's single email to Clinton relaying Kornblum's concerns, the attorney said, obligated him to register under the law. "Technically, there's no minimum," he said. All that matters is "if you are acting at the request of a foreign government in an attempt to influence American political interests." A second FARA attorney who also spoke on background agreed with this assessment.

A third attorney deeply versed in the FARA statute said Kornblum and Blumenthal's efforts were precisely "the type of activity that is meant to be captured" by the law, even if the lobbying is done on an informal basis: FARA covers "anybody who's [lobbying] directly or indirectly," he added. "If you could just hire a middle man to get out of registration, it would be a giant loophole in the law," he said. If a foreign entity tried to launder influence through unregistered individuals, he said, "the Department of Justice would have a problem with that."

The purpose of FARA is narrow and clear. The Department of Justice website points out specifically that "in 1966, FARA was significantly amended to focus on the integrity of the United States Government decision-making process, and to emphasize agents seeking economic or political advantage for their clients." Ivanishvili's consultants in America with duties as lightweight as mailing out DVDs and tweeting links were compelled to register and document their activities to the Justice Department, as D.C.-based firm National Strategies, LLC, did:

Did Clinton's Backdoor Adviser Illegally Lobby for Putin Ally?

It's hard to imagine how someone with a direct line to the State Department would feel exempt from the law when SEO jockeys were not.

Kornblum did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Reached by Gawker on his cell phone, Blumenthal hung up when asked about the memo.

Gawker attempted to reach Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon to ask whether the department intended to launch an investigation into Blumenthal and Kornblum's failure to register. The maximum penalty for willfully violating FARA is up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Fallon did not return repeated phone calls or emails. On April 1, he will leave the Justice Department to join Clinton's presidential campaign as press secretary.

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  latest chapter in the anti-Hillary Clinton vendetta known as the House Select Committee on Benghazi showed its hand this past week with its surreal questioning of Sidney Blumenthal. The longtime Clinton confidante spent nine hours answering more than 549 questions, fewer than 20 of them concerning the fate of American diplomats killed in a terrorist attack.   

“They have been operating for months like this. I think this is probably the most visible example," said James Cole, a former deputy U.S. attorney general under Eric Holder who is Blumenthal’s attorney. “Here’s a guy who know nothing about Benghazi whatsoever, and he’s there for almost nine hours. And they’re asking him questions mostly about things that have nothing to do with Benghazi.”

Both Cole and the committee’s Democrats have asked that a transcript of the session be released. As their ranking member, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-MD, said Friday, “Over the past week, the Select Committee has become a sieve, with anonymous ‘sources’ repeatedly leaking selected excerpts of Mr. Blumenthal’s e-mails out of context. It’s time to end this circus. The Committee should immediately release all of Mr. Blumenthal’s emails and his full deposition transcript together.”

In preparing that transcript for release—which will not happen if the Committee’s GOP Chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-SC, refuses—Cummings' staff compiled extraordinary statistics revealing how this supposedly serious committee looking into a diplomatic tragedy has instead became the latest version of an anti-Clinton inquistion on the Hill. They counted and categorized the questions put to Blumenthal, finding that less than 3 percent of the 549 queries concerned “security in Benghazi.” Their statement said:

“The transcript of Blumenthal’s deposition includes hundreds of questions posed by Republicans during the day-long session, including the following:

• Blumenthal’s relationship/communications with the Clintons—more than 160
• Benghazi attacks—less than 20

• The Clinton Foundation—more than 50
• Security in Benghazi—4

• The U.S. presence in Benghazi—0

• David Brock, Media Matters and affiliated entities—more than 45
• Ambassador Stevens and other U.S. personnel in Benghazi—0

Blumenthal’s attorney Cole sat through the charade and said Republicans did not start asking questions about Benghazi until more than seven hours into the process.

“He started testifying at 10:30 in the morning and it wasn’t until six o’clock at night that the Republican side asked him the first question about Benghazi,” he said. “It is truly just a political maneuver on their part. If Sidney was not a friend of Hillary Clinton’s, he would have no reason to be in front of the committee.”

Cole and the committee’s Democrats both noted how Blumenthal was intentionally given a rough treatment by the Republicans, saying they did not ask him to come in and testify, but instead treated him like a witness in a criminal trial.

“They never had a deposition before,” Cole said. “Sidney is the first person ever to be subpoenaed and deposed. He was never offered the opportunity to appear voluntarily, which he would have. The first encounter that he had with the committee was when two marshalls came to his door and served his wife with a subpoena for him... In the past, the chairman of the committee has said he sees no reason to subpoena people if they’re willing to be cooperative. They never even asked him.”

To date, according to the committee’s Democrats, House Republicans have spent more than $3.5 million on this inquisition, which has gone on longer “than the investigations of Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, Iran-Contra and Hurricane Katrina.”

“The Select Committee on Benghazi continues to squander millions of dollars and has nothing to show for it other than a partisan attack against Secretary Clinton and her campaign for president,” the Democrats’ webpage said. “This calculation does not include the costs of: the independent Accountability Review Board; the eight previous reports by seven congressional committees; the time, money, and resources consumed by federal agencies to comply with Select Committee requests; or the opportunity cost of not spending this money elsewhere, like improving security for our diplomatic officers abroad.”

“It’s a vehicle to attack Hillary Clinton,” Cole said. “There’s nothing to restrain them.”

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).

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The Greatest Power Grab

Beginning in the early 1970s, a new conservative establishment set a counter-movement in motion to replace the institutions and expunge the ideas of American liberalism, which had dominated public thought and social policy since the New Deal. A new breed of conservatives sought to roll back a set of social gains going back to FDR, Truman, Johnson, and Kennedy.

They shifted the nation rightward; tilted the distribution of the nation's assets away from the middle class and the poor, the elderly, and the young; they red-penciled laws and legal precedents at the heart of American justice. They aimed to corporatize Medicare and Social Security. They marketed class values while accusing their opponents of "class warfare." They loosened or repealed the rights and protections of organized labor and the poor, voters, and minorities. They slashed the taxes of corporations and the rich, and rolled back the economic gains of the rest. They came to dominate or heavily influence centers of scholarship, law, and politics, education, and governance - or put new ones in their place. Their litigation teams nearly overthrew an elected President. And, to maintain power, proclaimed Constitutionalists on the right, to this day, wage a concerted counter- revolution against such Constitutional guarantees as free speech and separation of church and state.

Movement conservatism was a power tool formulated by scholars such as Irving Kristol, political organizers like the late Treasury Secretary William Simon, opinion molders and popularizers such as William F. Buckley, and a phalanx of think-tank operatives including Edwin Feulner and Paul Weyrich. A highly integrated front of activist organizations has been generously funded by the banking and oil money of the Mellon-Scaifes of Pittsburgh, the manufacturing fortunes of Lynde and Harry Bradley of Milwaukee, the energy revenues of the Koch family of Kansas, the chemical profits of John M. Olin of New York, the Vicks patent-medicine empire of the Smith Richardson family of Greensboro, N.C., and the brewing assets of the Coors dynasty of Colorado, and others.

Their grants have paid for a veritable constellation of think tanks, pressure groups, special-interest foundations, litigation centers, scholarly research and funding endowments, publishing and TV production houses, media attack operations, political consultancies, polling mills, and public-relations operations. The concerted campaigns they run, also underwritten by such self-interested corporations as those in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and finance, have weakened the AARP, the Food and Drug Administration, Head Start, Medicare, and welfare programs.

This has amounted to the greatest organized power grab in American political history. Astonishingly, it goes largely unreported on television, radio, and most newspapers because of the applied political muscle of what Sidney Blumenthal,in his important history of the movement, has dubbed the "counter-establishment."

Its media-attack tactics have largely silenced the critical attention of the mainstream press. Americans, therefore, remain largely unaware of the sweeping changes movement conservatism has wrought.

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