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inspired Brevik shooting norway with pipes

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obsolete dino on his way out till revived by trumpism? booted post insurrection?

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NOTE HE NO ~ WACKO

February 4, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Frank, you called this defund the police 2.0. What do you mean by that?

FRANK GAFFNEY (GUEST): Well, as you said earlier, Steve, in 2020 the pretext of the Floyd death was used to mount violent attacks on not just government property and private property but law enforcement personnel. And the result of all of that was this huge effort to blame the police for the problem and say they needed to be defunded.

Well, if that doesn't sound like déjà vu all over again at the moment, I don't know what this is. The law enforcement personnel who are doing their assigned missions as well as they can under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, to say nothing of life threatening circumstances in some cases, are now being told we need to defund them effectively. I mean, whether it's disarming them or simply dismantling any protection that they have from being doxxed and thereby having not only their own lives put at risk but their families.

I mean, the question has to be asked, Steve. Not only is this, you know, defund the police 2.0, who are we thinking are gonna do these jobs under these circumstances? It is just as was the first go round. Predictably the case that you will see people bailing out of ICE, people refusing to work under these job conditions, people making the eminently sensible decision that if they — we don't have their back, they're out of there. And then where are we?

And I just have to say, Steve, I did a commentary this morning, I think you're referring to it, about this being a moment when actually we need ICE more than ever. And it's not just because of the, the so-called worst of the worst, the gang bangers and the drug cartels and this, I'm worried sick about what we are told is multiple divisions worth of Chinese soldiers who were brought in across Joe Biden's open borders.

And what Sam Faddis has just written up at AND magazine, one of his stupendous pieces informed by his own experience in his last duty station at the Central Intelligence Agency where he was responsible for countering weapons of mass destruction terrorism. And he's warning about the second biowarfare laboratory by the same guy who had the first one and possibly they think there may be 20 more of these things.

You put those Chinese soldiers in positions to use bioweapons that, according to Sam, maybe have a mortality rate of 60 to 90%. You're talking about mass destruction of the United States, the population, and that's what the blood of — will be on the hands of these Democrats and some Republicans who are trying to get rid of ICE. We need them more than ever now.

BANNON: They don't care, they'd rather keep the 20 million, that's how they keep power.

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In May 2021, SPLC reported on leaked documents appearing to show Gabriel and other Islamophobic figures as being members of the secretive right-wing coalition Council for National Policy.For 40 years, Council for National Policy has brought together influential right-wing leaders, political operatives, conservative media figures, members of the religious right, free-market fundamentalists and donors.

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch**/2021/05**/27/shadowy-right-wing-strategy-group-embraces-islamophobic-figures-policies-presents-challenge

islamophobia has a presence within the Council for National Policy, a secretive and influential right-wing coalition, according to leaked documents reviewed by Hatewatch.

A cache of documents obtained and published by the investigative research organization Documented appears to show anti-Muslim hate group leaders such as Brigitte Gabriel, Frank Gaffney and others who have stoked Islamophobia are involved with the Council for National Policy, or CNP. The documents also reveal that the coalition has promoted policies championed by the broader anti-Muslim network.

Founded in 1981, CNP is a coalition of influential right-wing leaders, political operatives, conservative media figures, members of the religious right, free-market fundamentalists and donors. The coalition operates on multiple fronts and focuses on political strategy, media and grassroots organizing. The goal of the coalition is to advocate for right-wing and anti-rights policies that favor conservatives and the religious right.

CNP has a habit of cozying up to extreme figures, the coalition’s rosters and associations appear to show. This includes figures known for engaging in anti-Muslim hate.

Journalist and author Anne Nelson researches CNP and is the author of “Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right,” which provides an in-depth look into the coalition and its history.

“The Council for National Policy and its affiliates would be revealed to associate with unsavory characters, and they would be shocked that such nice folk could harbor such nasty ideology,” Nelson writes in the book.

In 2016, Hatewatch published CNP’s 2014 membership directory, a 191-page compendium on its over 400 members, some of whom are deceased, and their interests. The directory shows CNP membership included extremists harboring anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ views. It also revealed so-called “Radical Islam” and “Islamic Fascism” to be among the interests identified by several CNP members. “Radical Islam,” a problematic term as detailed later, continues to be a topic among the group.

While the coalition’s existence and some of its officers are public knowledge, CNP works hard to keep its membership and activities shrouded in secrecy, including reportedly encouraging members to keep quiet about the group. The New York Times once described CNP as “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country.” CNP is invitation-only, with new members being nominated by current ones.

Reports and investigations over the years have sought to expose the coalition’s tactics, membership and influence. The cache of materials obtained by Documented provides further insight into the right-wing coalition’s inner workings in recent years, including its strategies, goals and talking points.

The documents also reveal CNP has only expanded the hate and far-right figures in its ranks. The inclusion of these figures puts Islamophobia among other problematic measures pushed by CNP that pose a threat to inclusive democracy.

CNP did not return Hatewatch’s multiple requests for comment.

Islamophobic figures in the mix

[ pix  Brigitte Gabriel, founder and president of ACT for America, speaks at the 2017 Values Voter Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

One of those listed in CNP’s September 2020 roster is Brigitte Gabriel, an anti-Muslim firebrand who has called Muslims a threat to the civilized world and claimed a practicing Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States.” Gabriel is the founder and head of ACT for America, an anti-Muslim hate group that operates a network of chapters across the U.S. that disparage Islam and promote Islamophobic legislation at the state and national level.

Despite Gabriel’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, she operates freely within mainstream conservative circles and maintains allies in Congress such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Scott Perry, R-Penn.

According to Documented’s cache, Gabriel first appears in the January 2018 CNP membership roster. The cache spans back to 2017. She is listed as a member in subsequent rosters up to September 2020, the last list obtained by Documented. Documented did not return requests for comment by time of publication.

Regular members pay an annual fee of $1,750, according to CNP nomination documents published by Political Research Associates, an organization that researches the far right. There are other membership levels, and the higher the level, the higher the fees, up to several thousands of dollars.

Gabriel appears to be actively involved with CNP. In February 2020, she gave an “Update on the Middle East” at CNP’s meeting in Dana Point, California, according to a leaked copy of the agenda. Details about the presentation are unknown, however, the many other speeches of hers available on the Internet are often tinged with anti-Islam bias. The presence of anti-Muslim figures within CNP does not surprise Nelson.

“Islamophobia has been a core value of the Council for National Policy for a long time, an outgrowth of the Christian fundamentalist roots of the organization,” Nelson told Hatewatch in an interview. She posits CNP’s hardline Christian theology holds other religions, such as Islam, as “invalid.”

Gabriel’s relationship with CNP seems to be reciprocal, with the coalition promoting her brand and products.

“Brigitte Gabriel has been somebody who has been promoting and disseminating hate speech against Muslims,” Nelson said. “She’s a very fiery speaker and recently joined the roster of the Council for National Policy, whose member organizations also promote her books and her speaking engagements. It is a tragic decision because Muslims in the United States already face a great deal of prejudice and these figures just make their lives that much harder.”

Gabriel held a book signing at the CNP event she spoke at in February 2020. ACT for America and Gabriel did not return requests for comment.

According to a leaked 2016 copy of CNP’s media and confidentiality policy, “CNP members should not answer media inquiries about CNP. Only the CNP president or his or her designee is authorized to speak to the media about CNP.” Violation of this, according to the policy, “could result in sanctions, up to and including removal from CNP membership.”

Gabriel’s listed interests within CNP include “Radical Islam,” “Terrorism” and “Immigration,” among others, as revealed by Documented. CNP members’ interests are often listed with their names and affiliations and range from a variety of issues from “Judeo-Christian Values” to “Tax Reform” to “Regulatory Reform” to “Homosexual Issues.”

The term “radical Islam” is itself problematic because the descriptor “radical” is not used to describe any other religion and is often deployed to soften anti-Muslim bigotry. Gabriel herself has claimed that there is no such thing as radical Islam and that terrorism is associated with the “purest form” of the religion. Other CNP members view Islam in a similar way.

Gabriel and her group were some of former President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters. CNP also threw its support behind Trump in 2016 after candidates more aligned with its members’ values, such as Ted Cruz and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, dropped out. As Nelson details in “Shadow Network,” Trump’s willingness to adopt retrograde policies aligned with CNP and appoint conservative judges earned the backing of the coalition and its networks.

Gabriel – like several other CNP members – enjoyed unprecedented access to the White House under Trump, meeting with his staff on numerous occasions. The Trump administration implemented policies long promoted by the anti-Muslim network, such as the Muslim ban and a low cap on refugees. Tony Perkins, an influential figure among the religious right, is also president of the anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council, which also traffics in anti-Muslim ideology and is currently avidly supporting voter suppression bills.He also enjoyed extensive access to the Trump administration.

As Nelson notes in “Shadow Network,” “Perkins – the man who declared ‘Islam is not a religion … it is a comprehensive system which is incompatible with the Constitution’ – was named to the U.S. Commission on International Freedom [under Trump].” Perkins is a longtime CNP member, having been with the coalition for 25 to 30 years, according to the September 2020 roster. He also served as the CNP’s president from 2012 to 2019, except for 2013 and 2014 where he was listed as vice president.

In 2017, Gabriel met with then-White House staffer and CNP member Paul S. Teller to hand-deliver a petition in support of Trump’s Muslim ban. Teller previously served as Ted Cruz’s chief of staff. He is also active within CNP. In 2020 , The Washington Post reported he held weekly meetings of the CNP-affiliated Conservative Action Project.According to the Post, the Conservative Action Project helped “choose loyalists to run federal agencies and coordinate outside messages with nonprofit organizations to support [Trump] administration policies and leaders.” Pages from Documented reveal Teller’s interests at CNP include “Immigration,” “Foreign policy” and “Religious freedom.” Teller now serves as the executive director of Advancing American Freedom, a group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence.

Another anti-Muslim figurehead involved with CNP is Frank Gaffney.A former Ronald Reagan administration staffer, Gaffney has since become one of the most prolific anti-Muslim propagandists in the country. He is gripped by paranoid fantasies of foreign entities such as the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating and supplanting the U.S. from within. Gaffney founded the anti-Muslim hate group Center for Security Policy and now serves in an executive chairmanship role at the group.

[pix Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy,testifies during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2013in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Hatewatch first reported on Gaffney’s CNP membership in the publication of the group’s 2014 roster. He is listed as a “Gold Circle Member” in CNP’s September 2020 membership roster. Gold Circle Members pay a yearly fee of $10,000, as shown by nomination documents. Like Gabriel, Gaffney’s listed interests at CNP include “Radical Islam.”

Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2016, candidate Trump used data from a shoddy survey commissioned by the Center for Security Policy to justify his call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” The survey was done by The Polling Company, Kellyanne Conway’s company. Conway served as Trump’s senior counselor and was a member of CNP’s executive committee from 2014 to 2015, tax records show.

Like other anti-Muslim and far-right actors, CNP has begun to frame China as a new Cold War-style adversary. Gaffney and his group are active in stoking alarmism about the supposed threat from China. At a CNP conference in August 2020 in Arlington, Virginia, the coalition’s sister lobbying arm CNP Action, Inc., hosted a panel titled “Reckoning with China: Action Steps,” according to a leaked copy of the agenda obtained by the watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy. The panel featured Gaffney as a participant.

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a right-wing activist who is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is also a CNP member and counts “Radical Islam” among her interests. In 2013, Mother Jones reported Ginni Thomas and Gaffney were part of another right-wing strategy group known as Groundswell.

CNP has also included Islamophobic figures in its orbit and network. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn,Trump’s former National Security Adviser who was later pardoned by the former president after lying to the FBI, has ties to CNP, though he is not listed as a member. Flynn spoke at a CNP Policy Counsel event in July 2016. His name is also associated with a CNP Zoominfo account, as uncovered by investigative researcher Brent Allpress, suggesting Flynn might be involved more formally with the coalition. Flynn has a history of expressing anti-Islam sentiment, once calling the religion “a cancer.” In 2016, ACT for America advertised Flynn serving on its board of advisers. He was also a keynote speaker at ACT’s 2016 conference in Washington, D.C.

In September 2017, longtime anti-Muslim figurehead David Horowitz (who is not listed as a member) spoke at a CNP conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The theme of the event and Horowitz’s presentation was “Mapping the Left.” Horowitz heads the eponymously named David Horowitz Freedom Center, a hate group known for spreading anti-Muslim sentiment and helping fund other Islamophobic projects such as Jihad Watch and FrontPage Magazine. Once a leftist in the 1960s, Horowitz now tries to smear his former political affiliation as being totalitarian.

Dr. Mark Christian is listed as a member of CNP’s Board of Governors, which carries an annual fee of $6,000. Christian runs the anti-Muslim hate group Global Faith Institute, a group that peddles Islamophobic conspiracy theories while claiming to advocate for “the victims of Islam.” Christian is a former Muslim who converted to Christianity. He joins a cottage industry of former Muslims now disparaging their former faith. Christian is willing to associate with extreme figures in the anti-Muslim network, such as the former FBI agent turned anti-Muslim hate figure John Guandolo. Christian subscribes to the conspiracy theory that Islamic Sharia law is slowly “creeping” into American society.

“Islam has infiltrated all aspects of our life: our schools, churches, media, courts, military and our government,” reads a 2017 Global Faith Institute email to supporters. “Every day we are losing more of our freedom because of creeping sharia law.”

Christian did not answer a request for comment.

CNP’s rosters reveal the membership of other figures known for spreading Islamophobic rhetoric. One isfar-right historian William “Bill” Federer,who treads in Islamophobic and anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theories. According to the watchdog and research group Right Wing Watch, Federer once claimed that an “atheist homosexual gay agenda movement” will “open up” the U.S. “to move into an Islamic future.” Federer has been featured at events such as the Values Voter Summit, an annual conference put on by the Family Research Council. Brigitte Gabriel has also spoken at the Values Voter Summit in recent years, including 2018 and 2019. Family Research Council’s executive vice presidentJerry G. Boykin is also a member of CNP.

Boykin has a track record of making anti-Muslim remarks, once claiming Islam should not be protected by the First Amendment. Boykin used similar rhetoric in a 2014 news briefing for Policy Counsel, a CNP publication and speaker series to inform the public on a “wide range of topics” and “variety of opinions.” Boykin goes heavy on the anti-Islam rhetoric in the article, which touches on the rise and activities of the terrorist group ISIS at the time. Boykin took issue with former President Barack Obama’s attempts to not conflate the terrorist group with a religion of around 1.8 billion people.

“I think most Americans have figured this out,” Boykin said. “When you say Isis [sic] is not Islam the rest doesn’t really matter because if you are laying out a strategy that doesn’t start with an understanding of your enemy and who you are up against and what motivates him to do what he does the rest doesn’t matter.”

Boykin adds elsewhere: “One of the mistakes that we make about Islam is that only 16% of Islam is actually a religion.” He claims the rest is a legal, geopolitical and military system. Claiming Islam is not a religion – or only part one – is a well-tread trope deployed by Islamophobic figures. “But only 16% is an actual religion,” he said. “And we make the mistake of thinking that it’s exactly like Christianity. It is not.”

CNP’s Policy Counsel includes a disclaimer that views expressed in the articles are not always representative of the coalition. “These views should not be construed as the views of the Council for National Policy, as an attempt to aid or hinder the enactment of any legislation, or as an intervention in any political campaign for public office,” the disclaimer reads.

However, as CNP papers brought to light by Documented reveal, the coalition has advocated for policies steeped in Islamophobia.

Turning interest into action

It appears stoking fear of Islam goes beyond merely the interests of CNP members and has manifested into policy recommendations. Documented produced a cache of documents attributed to CNP Action, Inc.

According to Documented:

CNP members meet together in-person three times a year and strategize about their collective goals. A number of the sessions at each meeting are action focussed [sic], and the participants collectively agree on a set of ‘action-steps’ that the members and their organizations (including the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the American Legislative Exchange Council) will carry out before the next meeting.

An action step from a May 2018 session called to “declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.” The session was facilitated by Jerry Boykin and featured Frank Gaffney as a participant. Designating the Muslim Brotherhood has been a longtime goal of Gaffney and the anti-Muslim network. The designation fits into greater paranoia of Muslims being a fifth-column threat in the U.S., or a group that attempts to undermine the country from within.

Prominent Muslim civil rights and advocacy organizations are often accused by Islamophobia peddlers of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Arjun Sethi, a civil rights lawyer and author, noted in a 2017 column for The Washington Post that such a designation could have knock-on effects. “The result is likely to be intimidation, harassment and smears of Muslim and Arab groups here in the United States,” Sethi wrote.

Trump regularly threatened to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group while in office, but never did. Foreign relations experts and government officials have advised against such a designation. But there are still attempts to do so legislatively.

Bills attempting to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist group have been introduced in Congress multiple times in recent years. Sponsors of such bills include Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., and Ted Cruz. Both members of Congress have ties to Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy. Diaz-Balart joined Gaffney on his radio program “Secure Freedom Radio” in 2016 to promote the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation bill. Cruz has longstanding ties to the Center for Security Policy and tapped Gaffney to serve as an adviser during his 2016 presidential run. Cruz also has ties to CNP, having given speeches to the coalition.

Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT for America also lobbies for bills to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, lobbying disclosure forms show. The group also supported Trump to do so. ACT tweeted in 2019: “President Trump should 100% designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group. Past administrations have promised but failed. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!”

CNP supports the effort to halt refugees from Muslim majority countries being resettled in the U.S. Leaked copies of the coalition’s newsletters from 2015 and 2016 reveal this support. Halting refugee resettlement has been a tactic pushed by the anti-Muslim network, since many of those displaced are from Muslim majority countries, with many being ones the U.S. has a presence in. In 2015, ACT for America launched a working group to push back against the resettlement program and “ensure that this broken system is fixed, and that potential terrorists are kept on the outside looking in.”

Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy also launched an anti-refugee project for activists interested in “building resistance” to resettlement programs. The group also published two monographs in 2015 about the program steeped in demographic anxieties about Muslim refugees moving and relocating to the United States.

Anti-refugee sentiment features in a December 2015 newsletter of “Heard Around the Hill,” a publication of CNP Action, Inc. The newsletter promotes legislation aimed at curbing refugee resettlement.

“Intelligence officials have determined that Islamic extremists have explored using the refugee resettlement program to enter the United States,” the newsletter reads. This claim was pushed back on by U.S. officials and refugee advocates at the time.

The newsletter adds that House Republicans introduced H.R. 4218, which would suspend refugees from entering the U.S. The bill was introduced by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and did not make it out of committee. Now serving in the U.S. Senate, Blackburn has connections to such anti-Muslim hate groups as ACT for America and Center for Security Policy, having attended ACT’s annual conference and been a guest on Gaffney’s radio program.

The newsletter notes that the anti-LGTBQ hate group Liberty Counsel produced a petition in support of the bill. “If you would like to sign the petition, click here,” it reads with a hyperlink. The newsletter notes, “Mat Staverserves as Chairman of Liberty Counsel Action.” Staver is on CNP’s board of governors and counts “Radical Islam” among his interests.

Another “Heard Around the Hill” newsletter from April 2016 touched on CNP’s opposition to refugees, with the effort being led by Paul Teller.

“At the most recent CNP meeting … CNP member Paul Teller, Chief of Staff for U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), referenced three pieces of immigration-related legislation introduced in the U.S. Congress that conservatives nationwide may want to examine and support,” the newsletter states. “One would suspend the entrance of refugees from terrorist-dominated countries, a second would give states the power to deny the resettling of refugees within their borders, and a third would focus key resources to better enable ICE agents to implement border security.”

The newsletter adds: “Please feel free to contact Paul Teller if you have questions or want to offer support for any or all of these efforts.”

While Islamophobia is at the coalition’s core, its activism and messaging on the issue may ebb and flow with what is politically relevant at the time.

“The political operatives of the Council for National Policy are very strategic,” Nelson said. “They do a great deal of polling, conduct focus groups, and promote inflammatory rhetoric when serves their political purposes. You are likely to see an uptick in their Islamophobic content at moments where the national news environment would favor it, such as periods of tension with Muslim countries or international incidents ascribed to terrorist organizations.”

Nelson says CNP and its network “were instrumental in convincing Trump to institute his infamous Muslim travel ban, which was opposed by foreign policy experts as being counterproductive to our national interests.”

She adds, “But again, this kind of dog whistle is signaling to their base. By lashing out at innocent populations, they are promoting a dangerous form of nationalism.”

‘We could expect a whole raft of measures’

The cache of documents reveals CNP’s willingness to embrace Islamophobic figures, their messaging and policies in its efforts to influence politics in the country. But Islamophobia is only one cog in the CNP machine.

The defeat of Donald Trump and Mike Pence has been a setback for CNP, having lost major allies at the federal level. The coalition continues to operate and reassess its strategy for the future. Nelson notes CNP and its networks will be eyeing the 2022 midterm elections. While the Democrats – who generally lean toward the left ­– narrowly hold both houses of Congress, Nelson notes trends show the party in White House generally does poorly in the midterms. She says the CNP has been active at the state level helping to promote voter suppression measures aiming to suppress “populations that favor the Democrats starting, but not ending with, African Americans.”

A CNP Action, Inc. action step from February 2020 advocated for “government-issued voter ID, including mail-in ballots and verification for residency and citizenship.” Voter ID measures have been criticized by voting rights advocates for disproportionately affecting black voters and other voters of color.

Nelson says that voter suppression efforts can help tip the midterms in favor of Republicans, some of whom have been known to support CNP affiliates’ access to power. A Republican takeover of Congress would derail the Biden administration’s policies and possibly set up a win for another Republican presidency in 2024.

“If the Radical Right of the Republican Party takes Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024, there will be very little standing in their [CNP] way from reshaping the United States from the country as we know it,” Nelson says. “We could expect a whole raft of measures that would include not just depriving Muslims of basic rights, but rollbacks of voting rights, LGBT rights, women’s rights – and the list goes on and on.

“They have made no secret of the vision that they have for the United States, which is reminiscent of a 19th-century religious patriarchy. American voters will have to decide what kind of country they want for their children to inherit, and respond accordingly.”

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Kevin Freeman talks with Frank Gaffney about the landmark court victory known as Jarkesy v. SEC and the Chinese economic warfare in the U.S. Patent and...

We are in an Economic War.

By Kevin Freeman

economic weapons deployed media coverage patriotic investing May 21, 2022

Kevin Freeman talks with Frank Gaffney about the impact of the Economic War we are facing from both domestic and foreign forces.

The Economic War Room

The Economic War Room monitors critical pressure points on an ongoing basis. We report who, what, when, where, and why they will impact you. More importantly, we bring in top experts to help you understand and respond to the threats they pose and how you can respond!

What People Are Saying About Kevin Freeman:

“Kevin Freeman understands the threat of financial terrorism as well as anyone. You’d have to be negligent to ignore his timely advice about protecting your family from the economic attacks that are clearly on the horizon.”

—FRANK KEATING,

Retired President and CEO, American Bankers Association, former governor of Oklahoma

“Along with the Internet our markets, banks, and other financial systems are vital institutions that are far more vulnerable to complete disruption than we would hope, especially to carefully-planned intervenors with the opportunity, motive, and means to, say, bring down the dollar. Freeman explains persuasively and clearly why we may be beginning the third act of a monetary and fiscal tragedy. You don’t care about dark pools, huge Middle-Eastern sovereign wealth funds, naked short selling, and bear runs? I’m afraid you will, and rather soon.”

—R JAMES WOOLSEY

Chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Director of Central Intelligence

Become an Economic Patriot

Get access to top National Security, Cyber, and Investment talent.

Watch Economic War Room and other great BlazeTV content.

https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/trump-transition-adviser-frank-gaffney-heavily-praised-white-nationalist-leader?page=17

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When Ronald Reagan was president during the 1980s, part of his big-tent view of conservatism was what he called “the 11th Commandment” — which was “never speak ill of any fellow Republican.” But Donald Trump, as president, had a totally different approach: insult, belittle, bully and threaten any Republican who dared to disagree with him about anything. And according to Daily Beast reporters Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley, one of Trump’s worst enablers during his four years in the White House was far-right GOP activist and conspiracy theorist Ginni Thomas — who is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

In contrast to Reagan’s view that there was room for a variety of Republicans in his 1980s coalition — from Goldwater Republicans to Rockefeller Republicans, from secular libertarians to theocratic Christian fundamentalists — Trump demanded unquestioning loyalty from fellow Republicans. Ginni Thomas, Suebsaeng and Rawnsley emphasize in an article published by the Beast on April 1, encouraged that type of behavior and offered lists of people she recommended hiring or firing.

The Beast reporters explain, “Years before she became one of then-President Donald Trump’s most prominent coup supporters, Ginni Thomas was already notorious in his West Wing for, among other things, ruining staffers’ afternoons by working Trump into fits of vengeful rage…. Ever since she became a welcome guest at Trump’s residences, Thomas — an influential and long-time conservative activist, and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — had perfected a proven formula of enthralling and manipulating the president’s emotions and mood.”

Suebsaeng and Rawnsley continue, “On multiple occasions throughout the Trump era, Thomas would show up in the White House, sometimes for a private meeting or a luncheon with the president. She often came armed with written memos of who she and her allies believed Trump should hire for plum jobs — and who she thought Trump should promptly purge — that she distributed to Trump and other high-ranking government officials. The fire lists were particularly problematic, as they were frequently based on pure conjecture, rumor, or score-settling, where even steadfastly MAGA aides were targeted for being part of the ‘Deep State’ or some other supposedly anti-Trump coalition, according to people who saw them during the Trump Administration."[TWT]

During his years in the White House, Trump fired a long list of right-wing Republicans who he decided weren’t MAGA enough — from former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to former National Security Adviser John Bolton. And eventually, he even turned against former Vice President Mike Pence and former Attorney General William Barr when they refused to go along with his efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election. Ginni Thomas, according to the Washington Post and CBS News, aggressively promoted the Big Lie, urging former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

// PUTIN UKRAINE FAIL] One of the reasons Trump was a failure as president was the fact that he wanted to be surrounded by yes-men, and according to the Beast’s article, Ginni Thomas did everything she could to encourage him.

A former senior Trump Administration official, presumably interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the Beast, “We all knew that within minutes after Ginni left her meeting with the president, he would start yelling about firing people for being disloyal. When Ginni Thomas showed up, you knew your day was wrecked.”

Trump wasn’t shy about hiring extremists if he thought they would be loyalists, and Thomas had plenty of recommendations. According to Suebsaeng and Rawnsley, her recommendations included “Fox News personality Dan Bongino, and the Trump-adulating Sheriff David Clarke” as well as Frank Gaffney — the former Pentagon official and conspiracy theorist who “accused conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist of being a secret agent for the Muslim Brotherhood.”

A former Trump White House official told the Beast, “These fucking lists were so insane and unworkable. A lot of them were dripping with paranoia and read like they were written by a disturbed person.”

The Beast also interviewed former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, who recalled, “Trump loved talking to Ginni so much because he loved hearing about who was a Never Trumper, or allegedly one. He loved people who would flatter him, (as Ginni would do). But also, his obsession with loyalty aside, he just loved to gossip — all the time. That’s something else he got out of his series of meetings at the White House with Ginni Thomas.”

an recap of nyer

bombshell exposé by an award-winning investigative journalist takes a deep look into lobbyist and far right wing activist and conspiracy theorist **Ginni Thomas**, and the ties she has to people, groups – and money – that have or may have business before the U.S. Supreme Court, on which her conservative husband sits.

“Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court?” The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer asks point-blank. “Behind closed doors, Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife is working with many groups directly involved in controversial cases before the Court.”

Mayer writes that “Ginni Thomas has declared that America is in existential danger because of the ‘deep state’ and the ‘fascist left,’ which includes ‘transsexual fascists.'”

But that’s just a small piece of her massive reporting.

“Ginni Thomas’s political activism has caused controversy for years. For the most part, it has been dismissed as the harmless action of an independent spouse. But now the Court appears likely to secure victories for her allies in a number of highly polarizing cases—on abortion, affirmative action, and gun rights,” Mayer reveals.

How bad and how close are these ties? Thomas, unbeknownst to almost anyone, was “an undisclosed paid consultant at the conservative pressure group the Center for Security Policy, when its founder, Frank Gaffney, submitted an amicus brief to the Court supporting Trump’s Muslim travel ban.” 230K$ ?!

Did Justice Clarence Thomas know? Did the couple discuss the case, or her financial and political ties? No one knows.

And that’s just one example. Mayer notes that Ginni Thomas “has held leadership positions at conservative pressure groups that have either been involved in cases before the [Supreme] Court or have had members engaged in such cases.”

“In 2019, she announced a political project called Crowdsourcers, and said that one of her four partners would be the founder of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe. Project Veritas tries to embarrass progressives by making secret videos of them, and last year petitioned the Court to enjoin Massachusetts from enforcing a state law that bans the surreptitious taping of public officials. Another partner in Crowdsourcers, Ginni Thomas said in her announcement, was Cleta Mitchell, the chairman of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative election-law nonprofit. It, too, has had business before the Court, filing amicus briefs in cases centering on the democratic process. Thomas also currently serves on the advisory board of the National Association of Scholars, a group promoting conservative values in academia, which has filed an amicus brief before the Court in a potentially groundbreaking affirmative-action lawsuit against Harvard.”

Should Americans be concerned? Should Justice Thomas? Should Chief Justice John Roberts?

“If Ginni Thomas is intimately involved—financially or ideologically tied to the litigant—that strikes me as slicing the baloney a little thin,” David Luban, a professor of law and philosophy at Georgetown, who specializes in legal ethics, tells Mayer.

Surely Justice Thomas has the ability to separate his work and home life, right?

“Even before” Clarence Thomas’ controversial and contentious confirmation hearing, which included the accusations – labeled “credible” by many – from Anita Hill, “a friend told the Washington *Post*, the couple was so bonded that‘the one person [Clarence] really listens to is Virginia.'”

In 2019 then-Congressman Mark Meadows, who because White House Chief of Staff to President Donald Trump and now appears to have been intimately involved in aspects of the January 6 insurrection, told members of a “nonprofit that mobilizes conservative evangelical voters” that “Ginni was talking about how we ‘team up,’ and we actually have teamed up. And I’m going to give you something you won’t hear anywhere else—we worked through the first five days of the impeachment hearings.”

Mayer adds, “Ginni Thomas has her own links to the January 6th insurrection.”

The nearly 7000 word deep dive can be read here.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/gop-megadonor-mercer-family-donated-to-nonprofit-that-celebrates-english-speaking-peoples.html

...the  Republican megadonor family led by billionaire Robert Mercer once donated money to a conservative group that bills itself as a promoter of “cultural events for English-speaking peoples.”

The $25,000 donation was quietly made in 2017 through the Mercer Family Trust to the Anglosphere Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit group, which has ties to prominent members of the Washington, D.C., power establishment.

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The founder of the Anglosphere Society, Amanda Bowman, confirmed in an email and a follow-up interview with CNBC that Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, directed the contribution to her nonprofit in 2017 in support of an event titled “Leadership in Perilous Times.”

“What I was so grateful to Rebekah for was her donations enabled me to invite all these different veterans, and it was just a one-time thing,” Bowman said. She added that the Anglosphere Society did not hear from Mercer again after that donation.

A spokesman for Robert Mercer did not return repeated requests for comment. The attorney listed on the family foundation tax form that shows the donation also did not return an email for comment.

Bowman said the Mercer donation partially funded the gathering, which featured Fox News analyst Gen. Jack Keane and Gen. David Petraeus, a former CIA director. The two retired generals are pictured together on Anglosphere’s website at the event. Keane has said he turned down an offer from President Donald Trump to serve as Defense secretary.

Bowman said the donation came after she and Rebekah Mercer met at a separate meeting for veterans.

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The Anglosphere Society identifies itself on its website as an “independent, educational, non-profit, tax-exempt membershiporganization focused on promoting the Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, free market economies, and cultural events for English-Speaking Peoples.” It also says that it promotes “cultural events for sharing ideas based on the historic values of English-Speaking Peoples.”

The group, which was founded in 2012, also promotes itself as having an influential network. Pictures on the group’s website show prominent event attendees such as former Sen. Joe Lieberman, who became an independent after losing a Democratic primary in his state, and Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of State under President Richard Nixon.

Bannon and Cambridge Analytica

The Mercers used to support former White House chief strategist and Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon, who promoted a nationalist, pro-West agenda. He was formerly the executive chairman of conservative news website Breitbart News, which was funded in part by the Mercers.

Trump fired Bannon from the White House in August 2017, which paved the way for Bannon to return to Breitbart. However, in January 2018, Bannon resigned from the media outlet after Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” revealed that he ripped Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son.

The family distanced itself from Bannon, and Robert Mercer said in 2017 that he would be selling his stake in Breitbart to his daughters. The elder Mercer also stepped down as co-CEO of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies last year.

The Mercers were also embroiled in the controversy surrounding data-gathering firm Cambridge Analytica, which played a role in attempting to use social media to influence voters during the 2016 campaign. Bannon was once an executive at the firm.

Bowman, the Anglosphere Society founder, said she might not have accepted the Mercer donation if she had known about the Mercers’ funding of the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica.

“It [the contribution] was before the whole Cambridge Analytica thing had broken. I would’ve been more cautious had I known that. Cambridge Analytica was a scandalous thing, and I wouldn’t have wanted to distract from the cause,” she said.

The Mercers spent millions to fund the firm, which harvested the data of millions of Facebook users and then used the information they gathered as a tool to manipulate voters. Cambridge Analytica did some work for the 2016 Trump campaign.

Cambridge Analytica has also been accused of having an impact on the vote for the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, also known as Brexit. Facebook has denied that it had any impact on the vote.

Bowman, who grew up in the U.K. and later become a U.S. citizen, would not commit to giving back or refunding the $25,000 check now that she’s aware of what took place.

She also repeatedly said the Anglosphere Society has no ties to the Trump administration and is nonpartisan. She acknowledged that she has conservative beliefs, but said she does not support Brexit.

The Mercers and the Anglosphere cause

Rebekah Mercer, a prolific GOP donor, manages the family’s trust fund. The family spent more than $15 million backing Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Over the years, the elder Mercer has contributed over $10 million to his family’s trust and has led to their assets having a net worth of approximately $30 million, according to the most recent filing.

The revelation of the Mercers’ donation to the Anglosphere Society comes as they try to publicly distance themselves from Trump and the party as a whole. Behind the scenes, though, the family continues supporting causes that match its often-conservative values.

The tax filing showing the Mercers’ Anglosphere donation was first reported by MapLight, a nonpartisan and nonprofit research center that tracks the influence money has on politics. The report focused on how the Mercers funneled $4 million to various climate skeptic groups. The report did not discuss the contribution to Anglosphere.

Anglosphere’s Bowman is a former New York director of the conservative think tank Center for Security Policy, according to the group’s website. The Center for Security Policy’s executive chairman is Frank Gaffney Jr., who, in 2011, pushed a conspiracy theory claiming that members of President Barack Obama’s administration were affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Gaffney is also pictured at at least one of the events hosted by Anglosphere.

Bowman explained her past ties to the Center for Security Policy was connected to what she describes as a “post-9/11 situation. I felt it was very important to get engaged in the issues that have led to the attacks.” Bowman said Gaffney is not a member of the Anglosphere Society.

Other members of the group’s board include Chair Vicki Downey, who is a lieutenant of Catholic group the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem;Clark Judge, a former speech writer for President Ronald Reagan; and Nina Shea, a director at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

The topics of discussion during Anglosphere’s gatherings, according to its website, range from debating the merits of Brexit, to celebrating Winston Churchill’s birthday as a “celebration of the Anglo-American experience” and “honoring some outstanding Brits who have made a major contribution as American citizens.”

On Brexit, the group’s leadership regularly cheers on current Prime Minister Theresa May. Bowman and Lee Cohen, the society’s New York director, penned a Fox News opinion article in 2017 titled “Britain’s Theresa May is here and Winston (Churchill) is back.” The op-ed praises Trump for a meeting he held with May, saying that the president was signaling “his own reset of the Special Anglo-American Relationship.”

after 1/6 am radio // universe o'keefe cited BS]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/dark-money-gop-fund-funneled-millions-groups-that-pushed-voter-fraud-claims.html

dark-money group used by Republican donors funneled millions of dollars to high-profile conservative organizations that pushed or investigated claims of election fraud before and after Joe Biden defeated President Trump.

• That group, the Donors Trust, is officially labeled as a nonprofit. The designation allows financiers to give to the organization anonymously. That money is then channeled to other dark-money groups.
• Among the pro-Trump groups that have received money from the Donors Fund are pro-Trump students organization Turning Point USA and an anti-immigration organization that has been called a hate group.
• a dark-money group used by Republican donors funneled millions of dollars toward high-profile conservative organizations that pushed and in some cases investigated claims of election fraud either before or after Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in November.

Many of these stances matched points that Trump and his team made as they attempted to undermine the election.

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Almost all of the groups mentioned in this story denied to CNBC they were attempting to undermine the election with their own claims of fraud and voting irregularities. State and federal officials, including the former attorney general, have said there was no widespread election fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

That funding group, the Donors Trust, is officially labeled as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The designation allows financiers to give to the organization anonymously. That money is then channeled to other dark-money groups.

Among the recent pro-Trump groups that have received money from the Donors Trust are:

• pro-Trump students organization Turning Point USA
• an anti-immigration organization that has been labeled a hate group
• Project Veritas, a conservative outfit that specializes in “sting” videos
• a group founded by a man who pushed false conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama

“A donor-advised fund account allows you to have charitable dollars ready to put into action on your own schedule. It works like a charitable savings account,” the Donors Trust website says. Such associations are labeled as “dark money” because they do not publicly disclose their donors.

In 2019, the Donors Trust gave over $20 million to at least a dozen organizations that would go on to question the integrity of the election process, according to the group’s 990 tax return. They have supported many of these organizations in prior years, as well. The 2020 filings won’t be made available until later this year, so it is not yet clear whether Donors Trust gave money to these groups last year.

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Donors Trust finished 2019 raising over $300 million, just under double the amount they raised the prior year. It gave a total of over $160 million in grants in 2019. The group’s top anonymous donor gave over $150 million. Nonprofits often release their financial information a full year after their coverage dates.

In a lengthy statement to CNBC, Donors Trust CEO Lawson Bader said these organizations represent only a fraction of those seeing their donor funds and he condemns last week’s violence in Washington.

“The grants described were made in 2019 for general operations. These listed organizations are but a few of the many hundreds of different public charities that Donors Trust account holders supported that same year,” Bader said Tuesday. “Contributions made through a DonorsTrust DAF (Donor-Advised Funds) are made only to IRS recognized charitable and educational organizations. Donors Trust, like all donor-advised fund providers, does not make grants to 501(c)(4) organizations. Further, Donors Trust condemns violence of any kind. Espousing violence violates the ideas of personal responsibility and free exchange which we support wholly,” he added.

“I was appalled by the actions taken by protestors last week to violate the Capitol building and physically threaten lawmakers. Whether against public or private property, such actions are not only offensive, dangerous and illegal, but damage an already fragile civic discourse and embarrass the reputation of the United States as a place where political transitions happen within the context of the Constitution.”

Aligned with Trump

At least five people, including a Capitol police officer, died in connection to the riot, which happened after Trump and some of his closest allies led a rally urging supporters to fight to prevent Congress’ declaration of Biden’s victory.

Several pro-Trump groups were involved with planning the rally, which was held near the White House. Trump encouraged people who attended the rally to march on the U.S. Capitol. Critics, including several Republicans, accused him of inciting the violence. On Tuesday, Trump said the comments were “totally appropriate.”

Groups with the same 501(c)(3) status as Donors Trust are prohibited under tax regulations from supporting specific candidates. However, they can skirt those rules by supporting and promoting policies that align with a particular politician. In the case of Trump-fueled unrest, several groups historically backed by Donors Trust money aligned themselves with Trump’s false claims about widespread election fraud.

Turning Point USA, a nonprofit founded by staunch Trump ally Charlie Kirk, received over $850,000 from the Donors Trust. Kirk has continued to parrot the president’s attacks on the election, falsely claiming Biden’s victory was fraudulent.

“I will say it very bluntly. This election was stolen from President Trump. And the changes to the election, to the ballot questions, to the voter registration, to the access problems in these states” Kirk said in December.

Kirk’s affiliated 501(c)(4) Turning Point Action was listed as a participant in last week’s “March to Save America” rally, which preceded the attack on Capitol Hill. Prior to the rally, in a tweet he later deleted, Kirk said the group would be involved with sending over 80 buses to the rally. CNBC captured a screenshot of tweet before it was deleted.

Kirk recently said on his podcast that those from Turning Point got back on their buses and left following the conclusion of the rally.

A Turning Point Action spokesperson said the group did not include a march to the Capitol on its itinerary.

“Turning Point Action (TPA) did bus some students to the January 6th rally, which included a speech from the President of the United States. Following the president’s remarks, TPA then bused those students immediately out of the area,” the spokesperson said. “The march to the Capitol Building was never part of TPA’s itinerary,nor did TPA encourage participation in the march. TPA’s leadership condemns political violence and immediately did so as soon as news broke of the incident at the Capitol Building. ”

The New York Times reported that the group ended up sending only seven buses to the rally from New Jersey, North Carolina and other locations. twt]

other connections

The 85 Fund, a group with ties to longtime Trump judicial advisor Leonard Leo, received over $10 million from the Donors Trust in 2019. According to a report by The Guardian and the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, it was once known as The Judicial Education Project. It was run by Carrie Severino, who also is in charge of the Leo-affiliated Judicial Crisis Network. Severino’s Judicial Crisis Network actively campaigned in support of Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court.

The Donors Trust lists an address for the 85 Fund in Washington that matches the address on The Judicial Education Project’s 2018 990 form. Leo also told Axios that the 85 Fund would be one of the groups used to funnel millions of dollars into conservative battles around the country.

The Judicial Education Project, though, has another alias, according to the report: the Honest Elections Project. The organization claims to be nonpartisan and says that “through public engagement, advocacy, and public-interest litigation, the Honest Elections Project will defend the fair, reasonable, common sense measures that voters want in place to protect the integrity of the voting process.”

A review of advertisements and litigation reveals that, in some cases, the group is aligned with claims about election fraud that are similar to Trump’s. The group lists two Michigan-related lawsuits linked to Republicans that took place before the November election.

In September, The Detroit News reported on one of those lawsuits, which featured two former Republican secretaries of state. The former officials challenged Michigan’s plan to count absentee ballots that are postmarked before Election Day but arrive up to 14 days afterward. Biden went on to win Michigan, even though an appeals court did rescind the 14-day extension of mail in ballots.

Fox News reported in June on another suit featuring theHonest Elections Project.In that case, a Republican named Tony Daunt claimed that Michigan voter registration rates in some counties are too high because their voting records have not been updated to remove ineligible voters, such as those who have died or convicted of crimes.

A leader of the Honest Elections Project told CNBC that the group concluded after the election that no widespread voter fraud occurred and they did not get involved with any post-election legal challenges. It also condemned the violence on Capitol Hill.

“HEP was created to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. Before the election, HEP fought to preserve the rule of law as left-wing groups, including the Democratic Party, filed over 200 lawsuits to challenge existing election laws,” Honest Elections Project executive director Jason Snead said in a statement. “After the election, HEP concluded that there was no widespread fraud and did not challenge or support any challenge to the results of the 2020 election. The violent insurrection at the Capitol was a heinous attack against democracy, the rule of law, and the election system HEP was created to defend.”

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in December that the Department of Justice has found no evidence of voter fraud.

the  anti-immigration VDARE Foundation, which the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled a hate group, received just under $2 million from the Donors Trust in 2019. The foundation is run by Peter Brimelow, somebody the Southern Poverty Law Center says is a “leading anti-immigration activist.”

Brimelow did not return a request for comment.

Since the riot last week, VDARE has become a platform for several writers standing with Trump and people who attended the rally.

“I believe Trump won the election and I believe that this matters,” says an article on the foundation’s site. The writer also says he believes the anti-fascist protesters and frequent Trump targets known as antifa were “amongst the crowd.” Ken Kohl, a senior official in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, recently said that investigators saw no indication of antifa being part of the riot.

Another writer on VDARE’s site admitted to cheering on the Capitol invasion. “I’m going to open with a confession here: watching those protestors rampaging through the halls of Congress on Wednesday afternoon, there was a part of me that was cheering them on,” the article says.

Project Veritas, an activist group founded by investigator James O’Keefe, received over $4 million in 2019 from the Donors Trust. In August, The New Republic reported that Project Veritas was secretly moving ahead with sting operations that would “undermine the integrity of absentee and mail-in ballot counts.”

Jered Ede, chief legal officer for Project Veritas, told CNBC that the group condemns the violence at the Capitol and pushed back on the idea their investigations are attempts to undermine the election. He also said Project Veritas has proved at least two instances of fraud and irregularities, including in New Hampshire and Texas.

“Project Veritas has been exposing voter fraud and election integrity stories for nearly a decade. We did so prior to 2020, we did so prior to 2019, we did so prior to Mr. Trump announcing his candidacy, and we will continue to do so for as long as we are around,” Ede said in part of his lengthy responses to CNBC. “Neither our donors nor any politician control or direct what stories we cover. We have and will continue to cover these stories because voters deserve to know the truth and have faith in their electoral system.”

Project Veritas pushed a Pennsylvania postal worker’s claim about mail-in ballots that the Trump campaign would cite in a lawsuit that eventually went nowhere, according to The Washington Post.

The Center for Security Policy received over $800,000 from Donors Trust in 2019.It was founded by Frank Gaffney, who pushed conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama’s administration and the Muslim Brotherhood. In the buildup to the riot, Gaffney questioned the results of the election.

Fred Fleitz, president of the Center for Security Policy, told CNBC late Tuesday that the group acknowledges that Biden is going to be the new president. He said Gaffney was no longer running the organization. The website lists Gaffney as executive chairman.

“Center for Security Policy accepts Joe Biden as the legal President of the United States,” Fleitz said. “It’s time to move on. We are an organization that is going to focus on holding Biden accountable when it comes to national security. Gaffney does not run the organization. He’s not the president of the organization, I am,” Fleitz added.

In a post on the group’s website, Gaffney himself claimed in December the media is pushing a “false narrative” that “there’s no evidence of electoral larceny in the 2020 presidential race — or at least none that would have made a difference,” he said. Gaffney also wrote that “the online resource EveryLegalVote.com makes clear that election integrity was systematically compromised.”

In January, a Center for Security Policy article claimed there are 10 truths about election fraud, including that election fraud has become “more sinister and sophisticated.”

An article on Jan. 5, a day before the riot, is headlined “Exercising your First Amendment rights? How to avoid Antifa violence at the upcoming January 6th protests.” Then article then goes on to give protesters tips on how to avoid fights with antifa.

Gaffney’s own condemnation of the violence after the protest included him calling for a hearing that would show “evidence of electoral grand larceny.”

The Gaffney posts disappeared off the group’s website shortly after CNBC reached out for comment. CNBC has screenshots of the posts.

320 rww

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/anti-muslim-activist-frank-gaffney-is-a-jerk-national-religious-broadcasters-discover/

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Gaffney Suggests China Made Coronavirus to Attack Trump, US, and Hong Kong Protesters

rww 420

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/bannon-schweizer-and-the-mercers-team-up-to-advance-conspiracy-theory-targeting-biden/

When President Donald Trump yesterday urged China to investigate the business dealings of the political opponent Trump apparently fears most—former Vice President Joe Biden—his purpose was likely as much to inject some disinformation into the presidential campaign as it was a request for back-up material for his claim. Which is not to suggest that China might not have some incentive to come up with some disinformation to please Trump; he is, after all, conducting a trade war against the superpower to the East. And besides, it makes for a great diversion from all of that impeachment nonsense.

Trump’s attempts to prove that his opponent (who does not own hotels frequented by foreign leaders looking to do business with the United States) to be corrupt follows a script familiar to those who remember the Uranium One non-scandal with which pro-Trump players sought to tar Trump’s 2016 presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton.In fact, the allegations against Biden and his son, Hunter, are being advanced by the same crew that crafted and pushed the Uranium One narrative: Steve Bannon and Peter Schweizer.

This part of the formula has been tried and tested: Schweizer, employed by the Bannon-founded Government Accountability Institute, writes a book full of cherry-picked facts that, without context, paint a damning portrait of Trump’s opponent.

With such explosive claims made, mainstream outlets feel compelled to report, if not on the claims themselves, then on the fact that the allegations were stated by some person of note.

Bannon has been publicly shunned by his former patrons, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, ever since he turned up in Michael Wolff’s book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” saying unflattering things about the first family. So Bannon found a new source in Miles Kwok (Guo Wengui), a fugitive Chinese billionaire, who is said to have created a $100 million fund for Bannon’s latest enterprise, Committee for the Present Danger: China, which Bannon leads with professional Islam-hater Frank Gaffney.

Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Institute chugs along without Bannon, still receiving millions from the Mercer Family Foundation. (In 2017 alone, the foundation granted GAI $1.7 million.) The non-profit appears to exist solely to support the work of Peter Schweizer, author of the book “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” from which the Uranium One narrative sprang. Last year, Schweizer re-emerged with a new tome, “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” which presents the right’s case against Biden, seeking to implicate the candidate in the business schemes of his son, who doubtlessly enjoyed opportunities granted him by virtue of his famous last name. (The Daily Beast reports that Schweizer apparently lifted some passages for that book from a Wikipedia entry on Patrick Daley, son of the former Chicago mayor, Richard M. Daley.)

But just as Schweizer was never able to prove that Hillary Clinton had any involvement with the investment of a Russian energy firm in U.S. uranium stores, he has not proven any involvement by Biden in the business dealings of his son, Hunter, in either Ukraine or China.

In April, Bannon launched his new “committee” with an event at the St. Regis Hotel in New York. That same day, Biden was kicking off his presidential bid with an event in western Pennsylvania. Speaking at a podium in a ballroom dripping crystal chandeliers, Bannon said to his audience of right-wing hedge-fund operators and business people,“Joe Biden has to answer the question: What did you know, when did you know it, and how much money has your family, and you personally, taken from the most murderous regime of the 21st century?”

Which is a lot like that age-old example of an unfair question: When did you stop beating your wife?

==

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/john-bolton-anti-muslim-enabler/556442/

peter b

Since President Trump chose John Bolton as national-security adviser,

the media has focused largely on Bolton’s calls for war with North Korea and Iran.

And for good reason. But there’s another element of Bolton’s record that’s received less scrutiny

but may also illuminate how he’ll approach his new role, and the compromises he may be prepared to make.

In2016, Bolton played a crucial role in Frank Gaffney’s rehabilitation inside the conservative movement. For close to two decades, Gaffney has been Washington’s most dogged peddler of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. He’s traveled the country testifying against the construction of mosques, arguing that since Islam is a totalitarian political ideology, not a religion, American Muslims don’t deserve the protections of the First Amendment. Bolton’s intervention on his behalf is particularly intriguing because, in his own writing and remarks, he’s largely avoided anti-Muslim bigotry. But in today’s conservative movement, anti-Muslim activists are a legitimate constituency group, like people who support gun rights or oppose abortion. And Bolton has proved, in this case and others, all too willing to empower them.

Gaffney believes in the existence of a vast, secret network, run by the Muslim Brotherhood, to infiltrate the United States government and replace it with Sharia law. At various times, he’s suggested that figures as mainstream as former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, and former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano are dupes of—if not active agents in—this plot. And in the late Bush and early Obama years, Gaffney repeatedly insisted that the conspiracy had infiltrated the conservative movement via two men: anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and former Bush administration official Suhail Khan, both board members of the American Conservative Union (ACU). Norquist and Khan, Gaffney claimed in 2011, were running “an influence operation [that] is contributing materially to the defeat of our country, supporting a stealthy effort to bring Shariah here.”

But in 2011, anti-Muslim sentiment was less mainstream on the American right than it is now. And where Gaffney saw secret agents of jihad, the leaders of the ACU saw longtime conservative activists who simply wanted to bring Muslims into the GOP. So that year, the ACU’s board publicly repudiated Gaffney’s charges. It declared his claims that Norquist and Khan “harbor sympathy with Islamic extremists” to be “false and unfounded” and said the ACU “profoundly regrets and rejects as unwarranted the past and ongoing attacks upon their patriotism and character.” Four people who then served on the board told me that the ACU’s then-chairman, David Keene, also made an informal decision to bar Gaffney from speaking on the main stage at the ACU’s signature event, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In both 2011 and 2012, the Pledge of Allegiance at CPAC was delivered by Suhail Khan.

But by early 2016, the climate in the conservative movement had changed. Donald Trump—having already called for banning Muslims from entering the U.S.—was leading the Republican presidential field.The ACU had a new chairman, Matt Schlapp. And in this more permissive climate, John Bolton moved to overturn the Gaffney ban. At a February 3, 2016, ACU board meeting, according to notes shared with me by someone in the room—the substance of which has been confirmed by someone else in attendance—“Bolton proposed a motion to rescind and repeal the 2011 resolution, and put the decision of whether to allow Gaffney to speak at CPAC back in the hands of ACU management.” After a contentious debate, Bolton prevailed. The board voted to declare that, “No one has been banned from speaking at CPAC.” (When I asked the ACU about Bolton’s role, the organization emailed a statement from its executive director, Dan Schneider, that said: “It is unfortunate that there has been a breach of board protocol about disclosing confidential discussions. But there was no difference of opinion on the board. All agreed that Frank Gaffney and other conservative voices are allowed to speak at CPAC.”)

A month after the board meeting, CPAC rolled around and, sure enough, Gaffney was on the agenda. He moderated a panel that included the Danish activist Lars Hedegaard, who has claimed that Muslims “rape their own children” and that “as a totalitarian system of thought, Islam has remained unchanged for at least 1,200 years.” Gaffney spoke again at CPAC in 2017. In 2018, he began his remarks at the conference by joking that, “everybody says it’s great to be back at CPAC. But nobody means it like I do.”

The striking thing about Bolton’s push for Gaffney’s reinstatement is that Bolton hasn’t generally echoed Gaffney’s conspiracy theories. In fact, Bolton has largely avoided anti-Muslim bigotry in his own public statements. He even publicly opposed Trump’s 2015 proposal to ban Muslim immigration.

What Bolton has done, again and again, is to elevate the anti-Muslim bigotry of others.In 2010, he wrote the foreword to Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America. Bolton’s foreword begins with the words, “Barack Obama is our first post-American president.” But he leaves the meaning of those words vague. It is Geller and Spencer who declare that “Barack Hussein Obama” is pursuing the “implementation of a soft sharia: the quiet and piecemeal implementation of Islamic laws that subjugate non-Muslims.”

In 2010 and 2011, Bolton spoke at rallies against the “Ground Zero” mosquesponsored by Geller and Spencer’s organization, Stop Islamization of America. But Bolton has not echoed Geller’s wilder and uglier theories: among them that Obama is Malcolm X’s love child or that Muslims practice bestiality. He’s never said, as Spencer has, that “there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists.”

Similarly, Bolton in 2012 defended Michelle Bachmann’s inquiry into whether former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin was an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood. “What is wrong with raising the question?” he declared on Gaffney’s radio show. (John McCain, by contrast, called Bachmann’s inquiries “specious and degrading.”) But, as far as I know, Bolton never questioned Abedin’s loyalty himself. As in his push for Gaffney’s reinstatement at CPAC, Bolton doesn’t preach hatred of Muslims. He just aids those who do.

Once upon a time, the American right made room for conservative Muslims. Now it makes room for people who want to deny them equal rights. And John Bolton, America’s next national-security adviser, is part of the reason why.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/07/guo-wengui-chinese-billionaire-1356594

POLITICO

LEGAL

How a renegade Chinese billionaire became a center of D.C. intrigue

Guo Wengui allegedly offered a pair of conservative operatives $9 million for dirt on his enemies’ porn habits and out-of-wedlock children. Now he’s suing.

By BEN SCHRECKINGER 06/07/2019 05:06 AM EDT

A billionaire at the center of U.S.-China tensions is waging a mysterious legal battle against two D.C. conservatives over a private espionage deal gone bad. The fight touches on a pair of think tanks, a senator’s widow and the capital’s tight-knit group of China hardliners, adding a new chapter to an international saga that has divided the Trump administration and the president’s external allies.

It began when a firm tied to the billionaire, real estate magnate Guo Wengui, allegedly hired a private intelligence firm to dig up dirt on Chinese nationals — including their bank records, porn habits and any illegitimate children — then sued, saying the firm failed to deliver. In turn, the intelligence firm has claimed Guo’s side gave it a thumb drive loaded with sophisticated malware and that he sought information on people whose records were deemed sensitive by the U.S. government.

The ongoing suit, the details of which are reported here for the first time, deepens the already considerable mystique surrounding the billionaire businessman. An ally of Steve Bannon’s and a fugitive from Chinese authorities,Guo now lives in New York. His presence in the U.S. has exacerbated tensions between China’s ruling Communist Party and the administration of President Donald Trump.

The case also offers a rare behind-the-curtain glimpse at the tactics of 21st century geopolitical intrigue, where it is increasingly common for deep-pocketed clients with political agendas to pay firms with government contacts and cyber know-how to obtain people’s sensitive private information — and then use it to destroy them.

***

The details of the suit, which is being waged in federal court in the Southern District of New York, read more like a spy novel than a dry legal document.

Guo, who goes by Miles Kwok in the U.S., built a sizable fortune in real estate in China before apparently running afoul of the country’s government and fleeing in 2014. A year later, he came to the U.S., where he is seeking asylum while he lives in an opulent Manhattan apartment and publicizes claims of corruption against Chinese government officials. Since Guo fled to the U.S., the Chinese government has accused him of a raft of crimes, and a former assistant has accused him of rape. Guo has denied the allegations against him, calling them politically motivated.

In early 2018, the Guo-linked firm hired Strategic Vision, an obscure company led by Washington-area executive French Wallop, to dig up information on several targets, whom the suit does not name.

According to a court filing by Wallop’s firm, Guo enlisted it, "To perform research and analytics on numerous Chinese Nationals whom Mr. Guo and his undisclosed Chinese associates suspected to be engaged in activities in the United States and elsewhere that are inconsistent with their standing in the Chinese Communist Party and/or the laws of the United States."

Wallop was the third wife of Malcolm Wallop, the late Republican senator from Wyoming. In recent years, she has maintained a low profile in Washington, though in the midst of her divorce from the senator in 2000, the Washington Post’s gossip columnist obtained a sharply worded change-of-address note she sent around to friends stating, “French Wallop regrets to inform you that due to a significant indiscretion on the part of her husband of 16 years, he may now be reached at the following address.” On her LinkedIn profile, Wallop refers to Strategic Vision as a “strategic consulting firm.”

In addition to Wallop, J. Michael Waller acted as a representative of Strategic Vision, according to a letter the firm submitted to the court. Waller is a vice president at the far-right Center for Security Policy, a think tank founded by Frank Gaffney, a national security activist known for his conspiratorial hostility to Islam. Waller also served as the ghostwriter for the memoirs of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, according to his website.

By late 2017, when Guo was allegedly arranging for the contract, he also became something of a political football as Beijing sought his return to China. Earlier that year, China issued an Interpol red notice for his arrest. Then Chinese officials traveling to the U.S. on transit visas, which did not permit them to conduct government business, visited Guo at his apartment. This prompted a standoff, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, between the Justice Department, which wanted to arrest the Chinese officials, and the State Department, which successfully held the DOJ at bay.

Casino magnate Steve Wynn, a longtime Trump confidant with business interests in China, reportedly hand-delivered the president a letter from the Chinese government requesting Guo’s handover, though Wynn’s firm has denied it. Guo’s fate became a subject of heated internal debate within the administration, and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions reportedly threatened to resign if the renegade mogul was turned over to China.

According to one person who knows the people involved, it was in the context of this battle over his fate that Guo sought dirt on Chinese nationals: He wanted, this person said, to ingratiate himself with U.S. authorities by offering them intelligence, financed from his own fortune, in a bid to show he could be useful.

In January 2018, a Hong Kong firm tied to Guo, Eastern Profit, inked a contract with Strategic Vision US. It is rare for the details of private espionage agreements to see the light of day, but Strategic Vision attached its five-page agreement as an exhibit to a counterclaim it lodged in response to the suit. The contract promises $9 million in exchange for a year’s worth of snooping on 10 unnamed individuals — referred to in the document as “fish” — calling for details on everything from their movements to financial records to sensitive personal information. That includes details on a “subject's family, extramarital affairs, children born out of wedlock” as well as their “pornography” and their use of “‘dating’ or sexual services apps.”

According to the Guo-linked firm’s complaint, Strategic Vision said it had a former NSA agent on staff and said it had worked “for Republican politicians, a Middle Eastern prince and a politician belonging to the opposition party in Russia.” Guo’s side also alleged that Strategic Vision provided a “sample report, which appeared to show that Strategic Vision could enter into banking systems and find evidence of money laundering.” But, the complaint alleges, after Guo advanced Strategic Vision an initial $1 million payment, it discovered the firm did not have the capabilities it claimed.

Not long after, Eastern Profit sued Strategic Vision. The case remained under seal for several months, keeping it from public view. Though much of the court record has now been unsealed, parts of the case remain under a protective order that prevents sensitive details from being revealed.

Watch President Trump call trade war with China a 'little squabble']

In a countersuit, Strategic Vision accused Guo and his representatives of a variety of troubling actions. The firm, which denied most of Eastern Profit’s allegations, claimed that when a representative of Guo’s provided a thumb drive with information on his chosen surveillance targets — Chinese officials whom Guo allegedly suspected of wrongdoing — the thumb drive turned out to be loaded with sophisticated malware. After the firm complained, it says it received three new thumb drives from Guo’s side, one of which also contained malware.

According to the counter-claim, which has been dismissed without prejudice, Guo was introduced to Strategic Vision by Lianchao Han, a dissident activist and visiting fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. But, it alleges, Guo later told the firm that Han could not be trusted. Instead, Guo allegedly told the firm to communicate with his assistant, whom Guo “oddly advised was a member of the Chinese Communist Party who also could not be trusted.” Han did not respond to requests for comment.

The firm also alleged that, when it began researching its targets, it discovered they “had been designated by the U.S. Department of State under the Obama administration as ‘Records Protected’ persons, meaning that information concerning their status and activities was not subject to disclosure under any circumstances. Strategic Vision learned that attempting to research subjects known to be 'Records Protected' could be a criminal activity."

It is not clear to what exactly the “Records Protected” designation refers. The State Department did not respond to questions about the term, and several former top legal advisers at State said they were not familiar with it.

“I have never heard of a State Department ‘records protected’ designation per se,” wrote Brian Egan, a partner at the law firm Steptoe who served as the department’s top legal adviser at the end of Barack Obama’s administration. “I am also having a hard time imagining a circumstance in which a private person or company could be prosecuted for merely attempting to research information about a particular individual.”

A lawyer for Eastern Profit, Zachary Grendi, forwarded a request for comment to Daniel Podhaskie, a lawyer for Guo’s family office, who declined to comment. A lawyer for Strategic Vision, Mark Berube, did not respond to requests for comment. Waller declined to comment on the record.

***

The circumstances of the lawsuit are just one of the many mysteries swirling around Guo. Many basic details of his biography, including his exact age, remain hazy.

He was born roughly 50 years ago, reportedly in the coastal Shandong Province in Eastern China — or, he has claimed, in Jilin Province in the country’s north — and made a fortune in real estate, benefiting from the construction boom around the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. There, he developed a reputation for playing hardball. After clashing with a deputy mayor of Beijing, Guo gave the police a video of the official having sex with his mistress, prompting the man’s arrest and political downfall.

Guo appears to owe his rise in part to his relationship with a top official at China’s Ministry of State Security. The official, former vice minister Ma Jian, fell out of favor and was arrested in early 2015 on corruption charges. Two months later, the Chinese outlet Caixin published an expose of Guo, highlighting his ties to the toppled intelligence official.

By that point, Guo had already fled China.

Since arriving in the U.S., Guo has constantly irritated the ruling party, spouting a steady stream of salacious allegations about corruption and other official wrongdoing.

Ensconced in New York, the renegade businessman set up Guo Media to amplify his campaign against the Communist Party and often dispenses his accusations via video livestream while going about his billionaire lifestyle — including from the deck of his $20 million yacht.

Guo accused China’s top anti-corruption official, Wang Qishan, of corruption and of having an affair with a famous actress, Fan Bingbing, whose temporary disappearance became an international mystery of its own last year. He also offered his own theory on the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, claiming the CCP brought down the Beijing-bound plane to get rid of people who could have blown the whistle on an organ-harvesting scheme in Nanjing.

Guo’s bombastic style and real estate background have prompted comparisons to Trump.

He is even a member of Mar-a-Lago, prompting concerns that he might attempt to show up at the club during Xi’s first summit with Trump in the spring of 2017 and cause some sort of international incident.

Donald Trump

LAW AND ORDER

How Trump Could Be Prosecuted After the White House

By RENATO MARIOTTI

“I like because Donald Trump the president talks [about] fake news. This idea is really good,” Guo, whose English is rudimentary, told Vice News. “Everything [said] about me is fake.”

One thing about Guo is clear: Since arriving in the U.S., he has embraced the country’s litigious culture. In addition to the private spying case, he is embroiled in several ongoing legal fights, including a dispute with his former attorneys at Boies Schiller Flexner, the firm founded by politically connected super lawyer David Boies. Guo also sued Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime political adviser, last year for $100 million after Stone claimed the billionaire had illegally donated to Hillary Clinton and was funding a presidential run by Bannon. In December, Stone retracted his statements and apologized.

***

Guo’s lawsuit against Strategic Vision could prove awkward for Washington’s small community of China hardliners.

In March, several prominent China hawks launched Committee on the Present Danger, a new conservative advocacy group aimed at encouraging U.S. confrontation with China. The group, which includes former CIA director Jim Woolsey, has held events in New York and Washington, including an April roundtable on Capitol Hill that featured Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

While members of the committee are united on China, they are divided on Guo.

Both Waller, who is fighting Guo, and Bannon, the billionaire’s closest ally in the U.S., are members of the committee. The group also includes Gaffney, whose think tank employs Waller, and Han, who introduced Guo to Strategic Vision, only to have Guo allegedly turn around and badmouth Han as untrustworthy.

But as the dispute winds its way through court, the committee is presenting a united front. Gaffney said he was not aware of any internal strife the suit had caused within the group.

Bannon declined to comment on the record. He maintains warm relations with Guo, whom he calls “Miles” and has met with dozens of times. The lawsuit has done nothing to slow the pair’s crusade against Beijing.

In recent days, what appears to be the Twitter account for Guo Media has repeatedly posted a photo of Bannon and Guo hugging each other as well as a photo of Bannon photoshopped to show him aiming a double-barreled pistol with flames behind him in the background.

View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter

GUO.MEDIA(GUOWENGUI)

@GGuowengui

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5:28 PM - Jun 4, 2019

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On Sunday, Guo Media’s YouTube page posted a video of a three-hour political discussion between Bannon and Guo, who sat together at a desk in front of a Chinese landscape painting.

"The Chinese people are being suppressed and enslaved,” Bannon, dressed all in black, declared.

Guo, in a tailored blue suit, smiled and gestured expressively. On an iPad, Guo showed Bannon messages he said came from Chinese citizens.

"All of these messages are to express love to Mr. Bannon,” Guo said. “They all tell you that they love you, Mr. Bannon.”

Despite his aggressive campaign against Beijing, Guo remains a puzzle to China-watchers, with some supporting his asylum hopes and others remaining suspicious of his motives.

A Times Magazine profile of Guo last year reported that some Chinese dissidents in New York suspect him of actually being a spy for Beijing.

Others say he has already proven useful to the U.S. “I’ve interviewed him, and he has sensitive knowledge of high-level Chinese Communist politics,” said Michael Pillsbury, a fluent Mandarin speaker who spent decades as a China analyst in the federal government and now serves as a top outside adviser to Trump on the country. “I also don’t think he should be returned to China.”

As Trump and Xi head into an expected meeting later this month at the G-20 summit in Japan to hash out differences over trade policy, Guo remains in the background as a lingering wrinkle in U.S.-China relations — and a lingering mystery.

This article tagged under:

China State Department NSA New York Donald Trump Donald Trump 2020 Stephen Bannon Mar-a-Lago U.S.-China Relations

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===

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ginni-thomas-teams-up-with-james-okeefe-in-dark-money-operation-to-protect-trump/

Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a right-wing political activist, has launched a new set of organizations meant to “protect President Trump” and attack Democrats and left-leaning organizations, according to an article published by The Intercept this week.

The well-connected Thomas, a former Heritage Foundation staffer, presented her plans to build a “robust infrastructure” to a meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy last month. TheCNP is a strategy-development-and-sharing network that includes leaders across the U.S. religious and political Right, including people like neo-Confederate Christian Reconstrucionist Michael Peroutka. CNP members pushed Trump to sign an executive order on religious liberty.

Thomas is planning to build a “robust infrastructure” of affiliated organizations.Among her partners in the new project are longtime right-wing operative Richard Viguerie; undercover videographer and political tricksterJames O’Keefe;Republican campaign lawyer Cleta Mitchell;and Bill Meierling, chief marketing officer for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a matchmaker for corporate lobbyists and conservative legislators willing to do their bidding.

A slide from Thomas’s presentation at Council for National Policy notes, “Long Term teams taking shape will focus on Education, Media, Entertainment/Arts, Faith, Corporate/Economic, Government, Science, and more”—nearly identical to the list of spheres of cultural influence targeted by Religious Right proponents of Seven Mountains Dominionism.

The Intercept also reported that Thomas had spoken at another CNP event last October, at which she declared, “The hard left is in control of the Democrat Party … And they’re controlling the media and corporations and Hollywood and education.”

This January, Thomas organized a White House meeting where she was joined by anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney and others where, among other things, they complained that White House aides were blocking right-wing Trump supporters from getting administration jobs.

Thomas and many of her partners were among conservative activists who mobilized a year ago to try to replace then-House Speaker Paul Ryan with right-wing favorite Rep. Jim Jordan.

Thomas presented United in Purpose “Impact” awards to O’Keefe, Gaffney,and Sean Hannity in 2017. In 2016, TPM reported that Thomas “wanted to ‘target’ the ‘most questionable’ precincts in Virginia with an anti-voter fraud campaign.”

Thomas also interviewed right-wing radio host Jesse Lee Peterson for the Daily Caller in 2016. The two talked about what Thomas called “race hustlers” who she said are “in the business of keeping blacks angry” and about Black Lives Matter, which Peterson called “evil,” “wicked,” and “worse than the KKK.” Last year, Thomas reportedly hired a former Turning Point USA staffer who had resigned after The New Yorker published screenshots of text messages that included a text that said “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE.

==

https://www.vox.com/world/:{2017/2/:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:13/14559822/trump-islam-muslims-islamophobia-sharia

zach b

Last July, a sharply dressed man named Frank Gaffney:{ }:{ }::{onto the stage of a crowded convention center in downtown Denver and proceeded to calmly warn his audience that Muslims were working to conquer America from the inside.}:

:{

}:

Speaking without notes at a glass lectern, Gaffney — who worked, decades ago, as a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration — told the audience that political leaders from both parties had spent years covering up the true threat to the US. It didn’t come from terrorists acting in the name of Islam. It came from Islam itself.

Gaffney said that sharia, the Arabic term for Islamic law, was a “brutally repressive, totalitarian, political, military, and legal program” for gradually subverting Western governments and replacing them with ones that adhere to harsh Islamic dictates. And in the US, those efforts were already well underway.

“This program of subversive, stealthy penetration and takedown is operating. It’s, in fact, been at work for 50 years,”. “Our government has been subverted.”

Gaffney wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He accused “agents of Hillary Clinton” of shredding files about Muslim radicals living both inside and outside the US and said that then–Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was surrounded by “a small echo chamber which is filled by Muslim Brotherhood operatives.”

The notion of senior US officials intentionally weakening American national security or appointing advisers who were literal members of a Middle Eastern Islamist movement is preposterous. But it’s important to take Gaffney seriously: He isn’t some little-known crank pumping out Islamophobic literature on the internet, and the event wasn’t a fringe gathering outside the political mainstream.

It was instead the, a major meeting of thousands of Republican activists in Denver billed as “the largest gathering of conservatives outside of Washington, D.C.” Other featured speakers included then-GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, major conservative media figures like Hugh Hewitt and Erick Erickson, and two sitting US senators.

Gaffney is an important cog in a vast and growing ecosystem that exists just out of sight of most Americans — one that has spent years pushing the notion that there is a creeping, quiet plot to take over America from within. It is a plan that springs from Islamic scripture itself, and is supported by most mainstream Muslim organizations, most mosques, and, in all likelihood, your Muslim neighbor.

The only way to be safe from the threat, according to Gaffney and other self-proclaimed "counter-jihadists," is to slash Muslim immigration, arrest key leaders of the Muslim American community, and shut down huge numbers of mosques. They have not gone so far as to propose outright ethnic cleansing; Gaffney, in his speech, says he has Muslim friends. Their dream, instead, is to destroy the Muslim American community without kicking out Muslims.

The dire warnings are spread through an influential lobby, slick documentaries, and best-selling books with titles like The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion. And now that fearful vision of Islam has found a home in the Trump White House.

Senior strategist Steve Bannon is a devotee of Gaffney’s ideas, as are National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Trump’s political adviser, Kellyanne Conway, has done polling for Gaffney designed to illustrate the scale of the threat Muslims pose to America. And Trump himself has said things that sound like they could have been ripped from counter-jihadist literature.

When the new president announced his ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, it was widely seen as Trump moving to quickly carry out one of his most explicit — and most controversial — campaign promises. Yet it made no sense as a counterterrorism policy: No immigrant from one of the seven targeted countries has ever killed anyone in a terrorist attack on US soil.

That’s because the real motivation was rooted in counter-jihadist logic. The movement’s thinkers have, for years, advocated a similar ban on Muslim immigration. They look to Europe and see Muslim immigrants creating a continent ridden with terrorism and nearly lost to Islamist subversion. The Muslim ban only makes sense when seen as part of their plan to prevent America from going down the same path — by keeping out as many Muslims as possible.

The counter-jihadist influence in the Trump administration appears far from exhausted. They have long wanted to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, because they see major American Muslim organizations as Brotherhood fronts — and now that’s reportedly a major priority inside the Trump White House.

Trump’s policies reflect an even scarier kind of prejudice than his own: one with a plan.

The theory: ISIS represents the soul of Islam

Gaffney is the president of the Center for Security Policy, or CSP, a right-wing think tank located just blocks from the White House. In 2010, it convened a panel to study the Islamic threat to America. The group — which included former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Edward Soyster — called itself “Team B II.”

The original Team B was a working group put together in the ’70s as a kind of devil’s advocate in the Gerald Ford administration. Its goal was to provide a hawkish counterpoint to the softer detente policy toward the Soviet Union favored by the White House. Team B argued that communism was an insatiably aggressive doctrine, one that could not be appeased — a conclusion that would influencing Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy ideology.

Team B II aimed to do something similar, but for radical Islamism and today’s Republican Party. They drew on the arguments of a loose intellectual movement that had coalesced on blogs in the years after 9/11, and had come to refer to itself as the “counter-jihad.”

Counter-jihadists believe that mainstream scholars of Islam, and counterterrorism experts in governments the world over, have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the Islamist threat. Their basic mistake is that they overemphasize differences between Muslims, like the Sunni-Shia split, and assume that ISIS and al-Qaeda are aberrant distortions of Islam.

The truth, counter-jihadists believe, is more like the opposite. They argue that a correct reading of Islamic scripture shows that violence is intrinsic to Islam — that the religious doctrine itself, properly understood, commands Muslims to kill subjugate unbelievers. People who say otherwise — and CSP lumps both George W. Bush and Barack Obama into this category — are either willfully or unintentionally deceiving the American public.

In the years since its publication in 2010, the “Team B II” report — titled “Shariah: The Threat to America” — has become something of a counter-jihadist bible. It’s the clearest and most comprehensive summary of their ideas. To understand what they believe, and why they believe it, you have to understand this report.

The great enemy in the report is something called “sharia.” An Arabic word that literally translates as “law,” it’s the vast body of rules and regulations that guide daily life for believing Muslims — everything from not eating pork to who can lawfully be killed in a time of war to whether to charge interest on bank loans.

“UNDER ISLAMIC LAW, LYING IS NOT ONLY PERMISSIBLE, BUT OBLIGATORY”

But because there is no single authority in Islam (like, say, the pope in the Catholic Church), there is no single, official, agreed-upon interpretation of sharia. The thousands of rules and regulations that collectively make up the body of sharia have been deeply contested among Muslim scholars — and even individual Muslims — since the birth of Islam, with no agreement even on many vital issues.

Team B II argues that sharia is different from similar moral codes in other religions, like the Jewish law that governs the rules for keeping kosher. They argue that sharia is fundamentally political; that its aim is to govern the lives of all people, and not just Muslims, by seizing control of the world’s governments.

“There is ultimately but one sharia,” the report holds. “It is totalitarian in character, incompatible with our Constitution, and a threat to freedom here and around the world. Sharia’s adherents are making a determined, sustained, and well-financed effort to impose it on all Muslims and non-Muslims, alike.”

To make this argument, Team B II’s authors rely heavily on something called “abrogation.” This is a complex concept in Islamic legal theory, but it basically boils down to the idea that when trying to determine the “correct” answer to some legal question — say, whether it’s okay to drink alcohol, for instance — later verses in the Quran carry more weight than earlier ones. That is, the later verses abrogate, or override, the earlier ones.

This stems from the fact that the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed not all at once, but rather over a period of 23 years. During that time, the circumstances in which Mohammed and the early Muslim community were living changed quite a bit. The earlier verses of the Quran came down while Mohammad was more of an itinerant preacher in Mecca, whereas the later verses came down during a time when Mohammed controlled the city of Medina and commanded a large Muslim army.

The result is that the later verses tend to be more concerned with real-world administrative rules and military doctrine — including verses about conquering unbelievers — while the earlier verses are more focused on broader, more universal concepts of spirituality.

As a result of the doctrine of abrogation, Team B II claims, all Muslims are obligated to conquer the West and replace its governments with an Islamic theocracy called a caliphate. But one would be hard-pressed to find a single credible Islamic scholar who interprets it this way.

For Islamic legal scholars, abrogation is but one tool used to interpret the Quran, and not an ultimate trump card. And the Quran, like the Bible, contains scriptures that both endorse and reject violence. In the full context of Islamic law, the injunctions to kill and conquer are often interpreted as being specific to that time and place in history, and do not necessarily overrule other, more peaceful verses in the Quran (e.g., “let there be no compulsion in religion”).

Team B II dismisses this as a form of tactical, sharia-sanctioned lying. There is an actual Arabic term for permissible lying in sharia, called taqiyya. It’s an obscure medieval ruling that basically permits Muslims to verbally blaspheme God or renounce their religion without incurring God’s wrath if they are under compulsion to do so.

So, for instance, if a Muslim were traveling in a land where being Muslim could get him killed and is captured by the authorities, he is allowed to say he isn’t Muslim — or even do things like praise pagan gods or slander the Prophet Mohammed — if his survival is on the line, without God getting mad. It’s a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s also a concept generally associated with Shia Islam, as nearly all Sunni Islamic legal scholars reject the concept outright.

But the counter-jihadists have taken this medieval concept and turned it into a devious trick that Muslims are using to hide their true violent intentions.

They assert that the peaceful interpretations of Islam offered by Muslim authorities are a form of taqiyya designed to obscure the true nature of Islam from gullible Westerners. They point to things like the 9/11 hijackers going to strip clubs and drinking alcohol as examples of terrorists using taqiyya to blend in. And while the 9/11 hijackers certainly did those things, and may even have tried to justify their actions by saying they were just trying to blend in, they were all Sunni Muslims and therefore never would’ve used the concept of taqiyya to justify their actions.

“Under Islamic law, lying is not only permissible, but obligatory for Muslims in some situations,” Team B II writes in its report. “What Muslim audiences are required to know about Islam is not the same thing as what non-Muslim Western audiences are allowed to know — or encouraged to think — by Islamic authorities.”

This quickly takes on the character of a conspiracy theory. Any attempt to cite an Islamic authority who takes a different view of the Quran is only proof, to the counter-jihadists, that you are taken in by sharia propaganda. In that sense, arguing with the counter-jihadists is something of an impossible task. It’s a bit like attempting a point-by-point rebuttal of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

How a conspiracy theory goes from the fringes to the White House

...[long]

==

https://www.vox.com/world/:{2018/4:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:/12/17230078/mike-pompeo-secretary-of-state-confirmation-cory-booker

Cory Booker just excoriated Trump’s secretary of state nominee, Mike Pompeo, during his confirmation hearing over Pompeo’s past associations with prominent anti-Muslim ideologues.

For most of his hearing on Thursday morning, Pompeo (who’s currently the CIA director) seemed prepared and capable of handling every question the Senate Foreign Relations Committee threw at him. But the nominee stumbled — badly — under a cleverly prepared series of questions from the New Jersey Democrat.

First, Booker asked Pompeo about a 2013 speech in which Pompeo blasted American Islamic leaders for their “silence” in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings and said that made them “potentially complicit” in terrorism. (American Muslim leaders in fact spoke out forcefully against terrorism and extremism in the wake of the attacks and organized effortsto help victims.)

Pompeo responded by saying that he wasn’t trying to cast aspersions on all Muslims but was simply pointing out that Muslims have more ability to discourage other Muslims from joining militant groups. “For certain forms of violence, there are certain people who are better positioned” to act, he said.

Pompeo added, “Each and every human, not just Americans, each human being has an obligation to push back against this extremist use of violence.”

This seemed like a decent evasion at first — but it soon became clear that Pompeo had walked into a dangerous trap.

Booker said he agreed with Pompeo that “silence in the face of injustice lends strength to that injustice.” Then he sprang the trap: He brought up Pompeo’s long history of association with two of America’s most prominent Islamophobes, Frank Gaffney and Brigitte Gabriel, and asked whether Pompeo had ever used his “position” to denounce their extremist views.

Gaffney, a conspiracy theorist who has accused most American Muslim civic organizations of being fronts for Islamist groups, had hosted Pompeo on his radio show. Gabriel, an anti-Islam activist who has described Islam as “a political movement cloaked in religion,” hosted a dinner in Pompeo’s honor in 2016 — where she gave him an award that he accepted. Did Pompeo ever condemn them in the way he expects all Muslims to condemn terrorists?

Pompeo had no good answer: “Senator, I couldn’t tell you,” he responded. “I don’t recall each statement I’ve made over 54 years.”

Here’s the exchange a transcript, if you prefer reading:

BOOKER: I’m wondering, Sir — do you know Frank Gaffney?

POMPEO: Yes, I do.

BOOKER: And you’ve been on his show dozens of times?

POMPEO: I was on his show some, yes.

BOOKER: I have here over 20 times. And he has talked about [how] Muslims who abide by the adherence of the faith should be considered to be tried for acts of sedition and prosecuted. I have a lot of his statements. Did you remain silent — and, from my notes at least, you’re a friend of his — were you silent in your position of authority in these words that devalue the American constitution?

POMPEO: Sir, my record on this is unambiguous ...

BOOKER: If that’s your response, you did not say anything to call out his remarks. What about Brigitte Gabriel. Do you know her?

POMPEO: I do.

BOOKER: Someone who runs an organization that has been considered a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Were you silent? Did you ever call her out on her remarks that are hateful or bigoted?

ref

https://www.vox.com/world/**2018/3/**27/17157534/john-bolton-mike-pompeo-trump-islam-jihad

National Security Adviser John Bolton is making headlines — and not for good reasons. NBC reported on Monday morning that Bolton had served as the chairman of the Gatestone Institute, a far-right think tank known for publishing anti-Muslim agitprop. Gatestone had published pieces claiming, among other things, that Muslim immigration heralded a “Great White Death” in Europe, and had already turned the UK into a “Islamist colony,”

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Bolton’s links to Gatestone were never hidden; The Intercept had reported on them a month ago. This goes to show just how brazen Bolton has been about his association with anti-Muslim extremists. In fact, both Bolton and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s pick for next secrtary of state, have deep and extensive ties to an organized group of anti-Muslim writers and activists known as the “counter-jihad.”

The members of the counter-jihad movement aren’t exactly household names. But its leading lights — people like Reagan Defense Department official Frank Gaffney,activist Brigitte Gabriel, and blogger Pamela Geller — are surprisingly well-financed and influential.

Their major arguments include the idea that and that most mainstream American Muslim organizations are involved in a secret plot to replace American law with Islamic law. One “study” published by Gaffney’s organization, the Center for Security Policy, argued that 80 percent of mosques in America “are incubators of, at best, subversion and, at worst, violence and should be treated accordingly.”

Neither Bolton nor Pompeo has endorsed views this radical, though both have come relatively close. In February 2015, Pompeo appeared on Gaffney’s radio show and warned darkly of an Islamic conspiracy against America.

“There are organizations and networks here in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental ways,” Pompeo said in a February 2015 interview on Gaffney’s radio program. “They’re not just in places like Libya and Syria and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas, and small towns all throughout America.”

Bolton, for his part, has defended the Islamophobic attacks against Huma Abedin, a Muslim American who spent years as a top aide to Hillary Clinton. Some Republican members of Congress accused Abedin being a secret Islamist operative (which, it goes without saying, is wholly unfounded) in 2012; that July, Bolton went on Gaffney’s show and said there was nothing wrong with that line of attack. “What is wrong with raising the question?” Bolton asked.

These radio appearances aren’t one-offs: Bolton and Pompeo have been on Gaffney’s show dozens of times. The two men have also appeared at counter-jihadist events, accepted the endorsement of prominent counter-jihadists, and (in Bolton’s case) penned a glowing foreword to a counter-jihadist book. Gatestone isn’t the exception; it’s the rule.

There are no signs that either Bolton or Pompeo has cut ties with Gaffney or others like him, or that either is willing to disavow their past affiliations with them. That means that some of the most extreme anti-Muslim voices in the US have friends in some of the Trump administration’s most powerful national security personnel.

Bolton’s ties to the counter-jihad

In 2010, two prominent counter-jihadist writers — Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer — co-wrote a book called *The Post-American Presidency*. In it, they alleged that President Barack Obama took part in the Islamist war on America. Obama, they wrote, was helping with the “implementation of a soft sharia: the quiet and piecemeal implementation of Islamic laws that subjugate non-Muslims.”

Bolton penned the book’s foreword. While he doesn’t explicitly endorse its most inflammatory claims, he praises the book for “[carrying] forward the ongoing and increasingly widespread critique of Barack Obama as our first post-American president.” What The Post-American Presidency “recounts is disturbing, and its broader implications more disturbing still,” Bolton writes.

Praising counter-jihadist work, courting their support, but not outright endorsing their most radical claims: Those are the hallmarks of the Bolton approach to the movement. He advances their priorities without openly committing to their hardest-line positions.

One of the core counter-jihadist arguments is that mainstream American Muslim organizations, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, are fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamic movement that aims to establish Islamist governments in a number of predominantly Muslim countries.

These organizations, they contend, are secretly working on the Brotherhood’s behalf to subvert the United States from within. Their goal is to replace American legal codes with Islamic law (Sharia).

“The majority of Islamic organizations in America are affiliates of or associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in some way,” a report issued by Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (CSP) argues. “Any organization that does not embrace sharia and the MB line has not been able to gain broad recognition as a Muslim-American force.”

Bolton has not explicitly endorsed this view. However, he used an appearance on Gaffney’s show to endorse CSP’s principal policy proposal for dealing with the group, which is to “get on with the business of declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization.”

This may seem unimportant, given that the Brotherhood has not been linked to a terrorist attack in decades. But it takes on much darker tones when you recall that counter-jihadists think the majority of Muslim American groups in the United States are Brotherhood fronts. It’s illegal for any American to provide assistance to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

This policy change would, in the counter-jihadist imagination, set the stage for a massive federal inquisition into America’s major Muslim organizations based on counter-jihadists’ own conspiracy theories.

Bolton is endorsing a core policy idea of the counter-jihad — effectively, serving as their voice without the most extreme baggage.

Another illustrative example: In 2011, Gaffney was banned from CPAC, the country’s premier conservative political conference, on grounds of being too aggressively anti-Muslim. In 2016, the Atlantic’s Peter Beinart reports, Bolton lobbied to get Gaffney back in — and won.

This is Bolton’s role in the movement. He doesn’t endorse their views, explicitly, but he serves as connective tissue between the anti-Muslim right and the mainstream conservative world, in which he’s deeply connected. Now, he’s poised to be national security adviser.

Pompeo and the counter-jihad

Trump’s pick for secretary of state has, like Bolton, aligned himself with the counter-jihad without endorsing their most extreme ideas.

In a 2013 speech, shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing, Pompeo criticized the “silence in the face of extremism coming from the best-funded Islamic advocacy organizations and many mosques across America.” This alleged silence, according to Pompeo, “casts doubt upon the commitment to peace among adherents of the Muslim faith” and “has made these Islamic leaders across America potentially complicit in these acts.”

While in the House of Representatives, Pompeo sponsored a briefing for Republican Congress members from a group called ACT for America. ACT, which bills itself as the NRA of national security, is the activist arm of the counter-jihad. Its president, Brigitte Gabriel, believes Islam is an intrinsically violent religion.

“Islam went from being strictly a spiritual movement, after 12 years, to becoming a political movement cloaked in religion,” she said in one address. “Jihad is mentioned in the Quran 40 times — 36 times out of 40 as a holy war against the infidels, to either kill them or subjugate them.”

Pompeo believed Gabriel’s group was the kind of organization that should be briefing Republicans in Congress. ACT returned his affection: In 2016, Pompeo received the organization’s National Security Eagle Award, its highest honor.

The game that Pompeo and Bolton are playing — use rhetoric that counter-jihadists find appealing, move them closer to the mainstream, all without endorsing their full conspiracy theories — is fairly transparent. It’s anti-Islam dog whistling.

It’s possible that they merely recognize that counter-jihadists are a powerful constituency on the right, and are working with them as a way of building political support. It’s also possible that they share the counter-jihadist view of Islam as a fundamentally evil religion but know that saying so publicly would be risky politically. It’s very hard to tell from their public record, and I’m not going to hazard a guess either way.

But we know that Bolton and Pompeo — Trump’s picks for two of the highest offices in the land — are at very least willing to listen to counter-jihadist arguments, and work to help them reach a larger audience. It’s very plausible they could convey these ideas to President Trump, whose views on Islam are already unfavorable.

There’s a shockingly low level of public outcry about allies of Islamophobic groups taking over US national security infrastructure. The two men have not, to date, renounced their ties to Gaffney, Gabriel, Gatestone, and the rest. It’s time to ask them why.

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eg gaffney

The far-right is using the tragic Notre Dame Cathedral fire to push conspiracy theories and bigotry

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SEPTEMBER 7, 2018 11:29 AM

Frank Gaffney Labels Muslim Candidates ‘Sharia Supremacists’

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/meet-mike-pompeo-far-right-christian-zealot-who-will-lead-trumps-cia

One of the many side stories that has been lost in the chaos of the Trump transition is the fact that far-right Islamophobe Frank Gaffney has been serving as a foreign policy adviser. Considering President-elect Donald Trump’s views about Muslims, this isn’t too surprising.

Trump’s shallow understanding of the issue of Islamist extremism has obviously been gleaned from the right-wing fever swamps and Gaffney owns that end of the bog. (The Southern Poverty Law Center has posted a full Gaffney dossier.)

But with all the excitement over Trump’s various mounting scandals, Gaffney’s influence has flown under the radar, at least until this week. That’s when one of his close associates went to Capitol Hill to testify at his CIA director confirmation hearing. That’s right, Trump’s nominee to run the Central Intelligence Agency, Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, is a Gaffney guy.

Michelle Goldberg in Slate delved into Pompeo’s ultra-conservative religious beliefs, which clearly inform his ideas about Islam. And it led him to an alliance with Gaffney, who is so extreme that he believes Grover Norquist is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who has infiltrated the National Rifle Association. Gaffney is so far out there that he was banned from the Conservative Political Action Conference for insisting that its board was similarly tainted. According to Goldberg, Trump’s CIA director nominee appears frequently on Pompeo’s radio show:

Gaffney once called Pompeo “one of the most intelligent men I know in public life,” and the two see the world similarly. In February 2015, they spoke about President Obama’s use of the term “violent extremism” instead of “radical Islam,” a linguistic choice that some on the right see as a secret message of solidarity with jihad. Gaffney suggested that Obama might be conveying “an affinity” for ISIS’s cause, if not all its tactics: “the raising up of the Muslim Ummah, a grand rebalancing of America’s role in the world.” Pompeo relied, “Frank, every place you stare at the president’s policies and statements, you see what you just described . . .  every policy of this administration has treated America as if we are the problem and not the solution.”

While we have no word on Pompeo’s position about Grover Norquist, Pompeo has told Gaffney on his show that he believes “there are organizations and networks here in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental ways. They’re not just in places like Libya and Syria and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas, and small towns all throughout America.”

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cruz and trump

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/03/28/meet-anti-muslim-leaders-advising-donald-trump-and-ted-cruz

Following the attacks in Brussels on March 22, GOP Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz issued a call for the United States to "immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al-Qaida or ISIS presence."

Surprisingly, he also called for a "need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." Such statements, coming from a leading presidential candidate, are only the latest examples of anti-Muslim rhetoric making the jump from the firing of hate groups to mainstream political discourse. But such jumps are not random and, in fact, have come after years of planning.

The Center for Security Policy, a hate group that serves as the anti-Muslim movement's premier think tank, has worked hard to earn the ear of elected officials and has sadly succeeded in this strategy. Of the eight people appointed as advisors to 2016 candidates Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, all have connections to CSP and half hold ranking positions within the group, including its founder, Frank Gaffney.

Listed below are detailed profiles of the eight anti-Muslim advisors Cruz and Trump have appointed to advisory roles in their campaigns.

Frank Gaffney, president of Center for Security Policy, appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17

Frank Gaffney is the founder of the anti-Muslim movement's preeminent think tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He also is one of the most outspoken anti-Muslim activists in America today, propagating conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating the White House and producing reports calling for a ban on all Muslim immigration to the U.S.

When asked at an event in 2015 about Somali refugees working at meat processing plants in the U.S., for example, Gaffney stated, "I don't know about you, but it kind of creeps me out that they are getting jobs in the food supply of the United States." Gaffney has also made efforts to associate with loud-and-proud racists. In September of 2015, Gaffney invited on his radio show Jared Taylor, one of the most prominent white nationalists in America, to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis. During the interview, Gaffney called Taylor's openly racist American Renaissance website "wonderful."

Despite such ties to known racists, Gaffney does not operate on the political fringe. In recent years, he and his organization have grown closer to Cruz, with whom he has frequently shared a stage at anti-Muslim events.

In February 2014, Gaffney spoke on a panel titled, "American Security and The Iranian Bomb: Analyzing Threats at Home and Abroad" with Cruz. A month later, Cruz spoke at a "National Security Action Summit" organized by Breitbart News, which featured a host of anti-Muslim activists including Gaffney and three other members of Cruz's National Security Coalition. In September 2014, Cruz spoke via video at another CSP co-sponsored Action Summit.

A year later, in February 2015, Cruz spoke at the CSP's "Defeat Jihad Summit." Gaffney also held four "National Security Action Summit" events last year in Nevada, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa, all key primary states. Cruz attended the first, in South Carolina, and submitted a video speech for the other three. The CSP summits featured a number of GOP presidential hopefuls speaking alongside notorious anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant figures.

In September 2015, Cruz teamed up with his rival Donald Trump to organize a rally in opposition to the nuclear treaty signed with Iran. CSP co-sponsored the event in D.C.

Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin (Ret.), Executive VP of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17

Boykin works for the anti-LGBT Family Research Council (FRC), but is more known for his activism in the anti-Muslim world.

In the past, Boykin, who brings with him a decorated career in the U.S. Army, has worked closely with the Center for Security Policy and has openly stated that Islam should not be protected under the First Amendment. In 2012, Boykin infamously claimed, "The continent of Europe is dark, it is hopelessly lost and it's going to get worse. Every expert will tell you that by the middle of this century the continent of Europe will be an Islamic continent, and they can't reverse it, they can't stop it. It is because they took Jesus out of their societies and it's been replaced by darkness."

Last month, Boykin endorsed Ted Cruz for president, claiming Cruz was "a man of character integrity and courage." It wasn't a surprise, considering Boykin and Cruz have shared the stage before. In February of 2015, Cruz and Boykin both spoke at the CSP's "Defeat Jihad Summit" in Washington, D.C. In March last year, Boykin participated in Frank Gaffney's National Security Action Summit in South Carolina. A year earlier, both Cruz and Gaffney spoke at the Breitbart-sponsored National Security Action Conference in DC.  Boykin also attended and spoke at the Cruz/Trump anti-Iran nuclear deal rally in D.C. in September of 2015.

Claire Lopez - VP for research and analysis at the anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17

Lopez, a longtime Gaffney ally, is a key figure at CSP, previously serving as a fellow before becoming vice president of the think tank.

Like her boss Frank Gaffney, Lopez peddles anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. She has long claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood has "infiltrated and suborned the U.S. government to actively assist … the mission of its grand jihad." In 2013, she wrote a report linking Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to the Muslim Brotherhood - a favored allegation that has never been proven. Also in 2013, she stated at a speaking engagement,  "When people in other bona fide religions follow their doctrines they become better people - Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Jews. When Muslims follow their doctrine, they become jihadists." In 2014, she said that because Obama's father was Muslim, that "de facto makes him [Obama] a Muslim," which in turn explains why the president "attacks and punishes Israel while allowing the Islamic State to grow and conquer."

Lopez has also participated in a number of events featuring Cruz, including the March 2014 National Security Action summit in Washington, D.C. and the "Defeat Jihad Summit" in February of 2015.

Andy McCarthy - Columnist for National Review, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17

McCarthy, like Boykin, is not employed by an anti-Muslim group, but he is very active in the movement, especially on the anti-Muslim speaking circuit.

McCarthy recently claimed that Islam is not a religion and therefore may not deserve legal protections.

In 2010, McCarthy co-authored a CSP-published report titled, "Shariah: The Threat to America." The report concluded with a number of alarmist recommendations, including a call for U.S. government to halt outreach to Muslim communities "through Muslim Brotherhood fronts whose mission it is to destroy our country from within, as such practices are both reckless and counterproductive." Other recommendations included warning Imams that they will be charged with sedition if they advocate for Shariah in America. The report also called for dismantling so-called "no-go zones"-non-existent neighborhoods where law enforcement are rumored to be unable to police because they're heavily Muslim.

McCarthy praised Cruz in a December 2015 National Review column. "Cruz understands that the most immediate enemy the United States confronts on the world stage is Islamic supremacism, which ignites jihadist violence through its state sponsors, terror networks, and activist organizations." Like Clare Lopez, McCarthy has spoken at anti-Muslim events with Cruz, including the "Defeat Jihad Summit" in 2015 and the second National Security Action Summit in September of 2014.

Fred Fleitz - Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs at the anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy, Appointed to Ted Cruz's National Security Coalition on March 17

Fleitz is another Center for Security Policy staffer appointed to the Cruz team. Like Clare Lopez, Fleitz served as a CSP fellow before moving up the ranks.

Fleitz is a co-author of a 2015 report published by CSP titled, "The Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan for Victory Over the Global Jihad Movement." Other authors of the report include Cruz National Security Coalition members Jerry Boykin, Frank Gaffney and Clare Lopez. The report concludes with a number of radical recommendations including stopping the immigration of "Shariah-adherent" individuals to the U.S.

Fleitz recently attacked President Obama for speaking at a mosque, claiming the mosque had "known terrorist ties."

Sen. Jeff Sessions - key politician in the anti-Muslim movement, Appointed as Chair of Trump's National Security Advisory Committee on March 3

Sen. Jeff Sessions is one of the most outspoken anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim federal officials who, unsurprisingly, endorsed Trump last month.

In 2014, Sessions received the "Daring the Odds" award from anti-Muslim hate group the David Horowitz Freedom Center for his efforts to prevent undocumented youth from receiving temporary status in the United States. Previous winners of the award include Pamela Geller, who heads the anti-Muslim groups American Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop the Islamization of America. The Center for Security Policy awarded Sessions with its "Keeper of the Flame" award in October of 2015.

In September 2015, Sessions attacked President Obama's plan to resettle Syrian refugees in the United States, stating, "It has also been reported that 3 in 4 of those seeking relocation from the Middle East are not refugees but economic migrants from many countries."

Walid Phares - Anti-Muslim activist and former Lebanese Christian Militia member, Trump revealed Phares is on his council of advisors on March 22, 2016

Walid Phares is a Lebanese Christian with a troubled past. After Mitt Romney announced in 2011 that Phares would serve as co-chair for his Middle East advisory group, Mother Jones revealed that Phares, "was a high ranking political official in a sectarian religious militia responsible for massacres during Lebanon's brutal, 15-year civil war." Earlier that year, Phares was scheduled to testify at hearings discussing radical Islam that were organized by U.S. Rep. Peter King, a close friend of a number of anti-Muslim groups. King was forced to drop Phares from the witness list after his militia ties became known.

Phares has spoken at several events organized by the Center for Security Policy, including a National Security Group Lunch on in February 2015, and another similar event in December of that year. He has also been a guest on Frank Gaffney's Secure Freedom Radio show. Phares was also a guest on an ACT! for America series in 2011. ACT! is the largest grassroots anti-Muslim hate group in America, run by Brigitte Gabriel.

Joseph E. Schmitz - Senior Fellow with the anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy, named to Trump's council of advisors on March 22, 2016

Schmitz spent three years as the Pentagon's Inspector General before leaving under a barrage of scrutiny. According to the Los Angles Times, "Schmitz slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects and accepted gifts that may have violated ethics guidelines."

Today, Schmitz is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. He has been a guest on Frank Gaffney's Secure Freedom Radio show and in June of 2013, he spoke at a CSP event. CSP also published a book penned by Schmitz, titled "Inspector General Handbook."

Schmitz is also a co-author of two CSP reports:  "Shariah: The Threat to America," and "The Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan for Victory Over the Global Jihad Movement."

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http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/here-are-five-ted-cruzs-most-fanatical-foreign-policy-advisors

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J. Gaffney, Jr.(born April 5, 1953 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is the founder and president of the American Center for Security Policy, columnist at the Washington Times, blogger at Big Peaceand radio host on Secure Freedom Radio.

Gaffney, who calls Islam “communism with a God” and has suggested that President Obama is a practicing Muslim, wasn’t always such a fringe character. He served in the Pentagon and in 1987 was nominated to serve as an assistant secretary of defense, although the Senate did not confirm him. In 1988, he founded the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a hawkish but once-respectable think tank. As recently as in 2002, a prominent British newspaper listed him with Iraq invasion cheerleaders Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle as one of the men “directing” then-President George W. Bush’s post 9/11 security doctrine. For more…http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/frank-gaffney-jr

https://crookedcrosses.wordpress.com/pulp-fiction-masters/frank-gaffney-jr/

Gaffney, a birther, anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist, is hosting a “National Security Action Summit” this weekend in New Hampshire, where conference organizers say he will be joined by GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum and George Pataki.

At Gaffney’s South Carolina summit in March, Santorum was confronted with a question about Obama’s supposed attempt to nuke Charleston, South Carolina, and his Iowa conference in May was dominated by fears about :{Muslim immigrants, courtesy of:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{ Donald Trump:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:.

One speaker on the schedule of the New Hampshire event is John Guandolo, a disgraced former FBI agent who believes that CIA Director John Brennan is a secret Muslim working for Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood. He also thinks President Obama is working for the Islamist cause.

According to Guandolo, Brennan decided to “convert to Islam” in Saudi Arabia as “the culmination of a counterintelligence operation against him to recruit him.” He alleged that Brennan is now aligned with Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the fact that the Saudi government is one of the region’s chief opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood and bankrolled the Egyptian government’s suppression of the group.

While speaking with conspiracy theorist radio host Rick Wiles, Guandolo said U.S. government officials like Brennan want to “aid and abet the enemy, and that is a criminal act,” adding that Obama is similarly “an individual who is significantly sympathetic to the cause of our enemies.”

Guandolo has repeatedly called for Obama and Brennan to be removed from their offices for their “treasonous” ties to Saudi Arabia, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, Guandolo even believes that Obama is actively aiding Al Qaeda.

Guandolo wants the police to arrest members of Muslim-American affinity groups, claiming that anyone associated with such groups are “terrorists,” and believes Muslims “do not have a First Amendment right to do anything.”

As the myth-busting outlet Snopes said, “Guandolo markets the idea of an imminent, pervasive threat to security in the United States has resulted from a conspiracy by Muslims to infiltrate the government at its highest levels and is paid for his 'expertise' through his being hired to provide lectures and training classes on the subject,”

What was Guandolo doing before he started claiming that the U.S. government is under the control of Islamists who are “having great success of implementing Shariah law”? He was an FBI agent who was forced to resign after he undermined a corruption probe by having sex with a source.

Guandolo was serving as an FBI agent involved in the case against ex-Rep. William Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat convicted of corruption, when he was caught being “inappropriately aggressive” with Lori Modi, a Virginia businesswoman government informant in the case who, later said that they “had consensual sexual intercourse” on “two occasions.”

“At some point, Guandolo's superiors saw the ‘document’ that ‘detailed his affairs’ with female agents and an internal probe was launched by the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility, according to the court filing,” TPM notes. “In the document, which has not been released, Guandolo also says ‘he had had an intimate relationship with a confidential source that he thought could damage an investigation’ -- probably referring to Mody.”

Bruce Alpert of the Times-Picayune reports that Guandolo drove Mody “to all the meetings where she secretly taped and delivered cash to the New Orleans Democrat,” and “after Mody told prosecutors of her relationship with Guandolo, the government announced that they would not call her as a witness and scrambled to have the lead FBI agent in the case provide the testimony to establish the surveillance tapes.”

While Guandolo resigned before an investigation into the sex scandal could be launched (the office can only investigate current employees), he now portrays himself as a victim of Islamists who took over the U.S. intelligence community and purged all dissenters....

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rww

Frank Gaffney

Frank Gaffney Posts Archive

Gaffney: Black Lives Matter-Liberal-Islamist 'Axis Of Evil' Working Together To Destroy America

SUBMITTED BY: Nabi Dressler, Wednesday 06/08/2016, 2:58pm

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Frank Gaffney, the head of the Center for Security Policy and a former adviser to Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, joined conservative radio host Greg Garrison on his show on Friday to discuss recent anti-Trump protests. Gaffney argued that Black Lives Matter, “Occupy types,” liberals and “Islamic supremacists” form an “axis of evil” and that they oppose “the rule of law,” “our government,” “our Constitution” and “freedom more generally.” Gaffney claimed that supporters of liberal investor George... MORE >

Right Wing Bonus Tracks - 5/27/16

SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Friday 05/27/2016, 2:55pm

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Donald Trump can’t stop lying.  David Kupelian of WorldNetDaily says it’s okay to vote for Trump: “Knock it off with ‘the lesser of two evils.’ The lesser of two evils is the greater good.”  Accuracy In Meida’s Cliff Kincaid is happy that Trump is reviving the discredited Vince Foster conspiracy theory. Poor Frank Gaffney is being smeared just for running a smear campaign against Grover Norquist and Muslim leaders. Matt Barber calls for President Obama to be impeached over his administration's support of... MORE >

**Connecting The Dots With Frank Gaffney**

SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Tuesday 05/17/2016, 1:45pm

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For years, we have been covering the attacks that anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney has been leveling against Grover Norquist, a fellow conservative activist who has referred to Gaffney as his “stalker.” Indeed, Gaffney has launched a very personal battle against Norquist, accusing the Americans for Tax Reform leader of helping the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist terrorist groups infiltrate the conservative movement. These attacks, which often invoke the fact that Norquist is married to a Muslim-American woman, have been demonstrated to be completely unfounded.... MORE >

Gaffney: Susan Rice Diversity Speech Example Of 'Racist Assaults On The Common Defense'

SUBMITTED BY: Miranda Blue, Thursday 05/12/2016, 11:22am

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Frank Gaffney, the head of the Center for Security Policy and a former national security adviser to Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, was put off by a speech that White House national security adviser Susan Rice gave in Florida yesterday advocating for greater diversity in national security and foreign policy agencies. “By now, we should all know the dangers of ‘groupthink,’ where folks who are alike often think alike,” Rice said. “By contrast, groups comprised of different people tend to question one another’s assumptions, draw on divergent... MORE >

Right Wing Bonus Tracks - 5/10/16

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Tuesday 05/10/2016, 5:30pm

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According to Armstrong Williams, Ben Carson and Donald Trump "have become very trusted allies; brothers." Anne Graham Lotz will vote for Trump and "hope that he can change and become a man of God like King Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible." Religious Right activists are threatening to sit out the election unless Trump picks a running mate that they can support.Frank Gaffney warns that transgender nondiscrimination policies will force colleges to "create conditions in which rape is virtually inevitable." Dana Loesch is not a fan of pro-... MORE >

**Ted Cruz Adviser: Criminal Justice Reform Aids Democrats And Jihadists**

SUBMITTED BY: Miranda Blue, Tuesday 04/26/2016, 11:36am

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Frank Gaffney, the head of the Center for Security Policy and a national security adviser to Ted Cruz, managed to combine a number of his interests into his “Secure Freedom Minute” broadcast today, warning theGOP against bipartisan efforts to reduce mass incarceration because they will result in the release of people who will likely vote Democratic and who may have converted to Islam in prison. Gaffney criticized Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe for his executive order restoring voting rights to 200,000 people who had served time for felonies but who had previously... MORE >

Frank Gaffney: 'We're Toast' If A Republican Doesn't Win In November

SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Wednesday 04/20/2016, 11:15am

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Today on “Breitbart News Daily,” Ted Cruz’s national security adviser Frank Gaffney warned that if voters elect a president who will continue the Obama administration’s approach to foreign policy, then America is doomed.“If we have four more years of this kind of policy of weakness and emboldening of our enemies and undermining of our allies and diminishing of our country, we’re toast,” Gaffney said. He added: “There is a general recognition, I think, among the Republican contenders that more of the same is a formula for disaster for our...MORE >

Right Wing Bonus Tracks - 4/18/16

SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Monday 04/18/2016, 5:40pm

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David Keene, former president of the National Rifle Association and former chairman of the American Conservative Union, hopes that unhinged "conspiracy nuts" like Frank Gaffney will soon "vanish into the fever swamps from which he came." Bill Muehlenberg explains why he supports Ted Cruz: "Ted Cruz cannot save America. He is incapable of making it great again. But he is the best candidate on offer, and at the very least, he may help defer the judgment of God which America so very much deserves." Judie Brown, founder of American Life League, has some

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https://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/13/14559822/trump-islam-muslims-islamophobia-sharia

zach b

Last July, a sharply dressed man named Frank Gaffney:{ }:{ }::{onto the stage of a crowded convention center in downtown Denver and proceeded to calmly warn his audience that Muslims were working to conquer America from the inside.}:

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Speaking without notes at a glass lectern, Gaffney — who worked, decades ago, as a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration — told the audience that political leaders from both parties had spent years covering up the true threat to the US. It didn’t come from terrorists acting in the name of Islam. It came from Islam itself.

Gaffney said that sharia, the Arabic term for Islamic law, was a “brutally repressive, totalitarian, political, military, and legal program” for gradually subverting Western governments and replacing them with ones that adhere to harsh Islamic dictates. And in the US, those efforts were already well underway.

“This program of subversive, stealthy penetration and takedown is operating. It’s, in fact, been at work for 50 years,”. “Our government has been subverted.”

Gaffney wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He accused “agents of Hillary Clinton” of shredding files about Muslim radicals living both inside and outside the US and said that then–Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was surrounded by “a small echo chamber which is filled by Muslim Brotherhood operatives.”

The notion of senior US officials intentionally weakening American national security or appointing advisers who were literal members of a Middle Eastern Islamist movement is preposterous. But it’s important to take Gaffney seriously: He isn’t some little-known crank pumping out Islamophobic literature on the internet, and the event wasn’t a fringe gathering outside the political mainstream.

It was instead the, a major meeting of thousands of Republican activists in Denver billed as “the largest gathering of conservatives outside of Washington, D.C.” Other featured speakers included then-GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, major conservative media figures like Hugh Hewitt and Erick Erickson, and two sitting US senators.

Gaffney is an important cog in a vast and growing ecosystem that exists just out of sight of most Americans— one that has spent years pushing the notion that there is a creeping, quiet plot to take over America from within. It is a plan that springs from Islamic scripture itself, and is supported by most mainstream Muslim organizations, most mosques, and, in all likelihood, your Muslim neighbor.

The only way to be safe from the threat, according to Gaffney and other self-proclaimed "counter-jihadists," is to slash Muslim immigration, arrest key leaders of the Muslim American community, and shut down huge numbers of mosques. They have not gone so far as to propose outright ethnic cleansing; Gaffney, in his speech, says he has Muslim friends. Their dream, instead, is to destroy the Muslim American community without kicking out Muslims.

The dire warnings are spread through an influential lobby, slick documentaries, and best-selling books with titles like The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion. And now that fearful vision of Islam has found a home in the Trump White House.

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The Truth About Muhammad - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_Muhammad

:{:{The Truth About Muhammad:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:: :{Founder of the World's Most intolerant Religion:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: (2006) is a book by Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

**Author**‎: ‎Robert Spencer

Publisher‎: ‎Regnery Publishing

Response · ‎Reviews · ‎References and notes

The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant ...

https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant-Religion/.../159698528...

:{:{The Truth About Muhammad:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:: :{Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: [Robert Spencer] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

:{]]:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Senior strategist Steve Bannon is a devotee of Gaffney’s ideas, as are National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Trump’s political adviser, Kellyanne Conway, has done polling for Gaffney designed to illustrate the scale of the threat Muslims pose to America. And Trump himself has said things that sound like they could have been ripped from counter-jihadist literature.

When the new president announced his ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, it was widely seen as Trump moving to quickly carry out one of his most explicit — and most controversial — campaign promises. Yet it made no sense as a counterterrorism policy: No immigrant from one of the seven targeted countries has ever killed anyone in a terrorist attack on US soil.

That’s because the real motivation was rooted in counter-jihadist logic. The movement’s thinkers have, for years, advocated a similar ban on Muslim immigration. They look to Europe and see Muslim immigrants creating a continentridden with terrorism and nearly lost to Islamist subversion. The Muslim ban only makes sense when seen as part of their plan to prevent America from going down the same path — by keeping out as many Muslims as possible.

The counter-jihadist influence in the Trump administration appears far from exhausted. They have long wanted to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, because they see major American Muslim organizations as Brotherhood fronts — and now that’s reportedly a major priority inside the Trump White House.

Trump’s policies reflect an even scarier kind of prejudice than his own: one with a plan.

The theory: ISIS represents the soul of Islam

Gaffney is the president of the Center for Security Policy, or CSP, a right-wing think tank located just blocks from the White House. In 2010, it convened a panel to study the Islamic threat to America. The group — which included former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Edward Soyster — called itself “Team B II.”

The original Team B was a working group put together in the ’70s as a kind of devil’s advocate in the Gerald Ford administration. Its goal was to provide a hawkish counterpoint to the softer detente policy toward the Soviet Union favored by the White House. Team B argued that communism was an insatiably aggressive doctrine, one that could not be appeased — a conclusion that would influencing Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy ideology.

Team B II aimed to do something similar, but for radical Islamism and today’s Republican Party. They drew on the arguments of a loose intellectual movement that had coalesced on blogs in the years after 9/11, and had come to refer to itself as the “counter-jihad.”

Counter-jihadists believe that mainstream scholars of Islam, and counterterrorism experts in governments the world over, have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the Islamist threat. Their basic mistake is that they overemphasize differences between Muslims, like the Sunni-Shia split, and assume that ISIS and al-Qaeda are aberrant distortions of Islam.

The truth, counter-jihadists believe, is more like the opposite. They argue that a correct reading of Islamic scripture shows that violence is intrinsic to Islam — that the religious doctrine itself, properly understood, commands Muslims to kill subjugate unbelievers. People who say otherwise — and CSP lumps both George W. Bush and Barack Obama into this category — are either willfully or unintentionally deceiving the American public.

In the years since its publication in 2010, the “Team B II” report — titled “Shariah: The Threat to America” — has become something of a counter-jihadist bible. It’s the clearest and most comprehensive summary of their ideas. To understand what they believe, and why they believe it, you have to understand this report.

The great enemy in the report is something called “sharia.” An Arabic word that literally translates as “law,” it’s the vast body of rules and regulations that guide daily life for believing Muslims — everything from not eating pork to who can lawfully be killed in a time of war to whether to charge interest on bank loans.

“UNDER ISLAMIC LAW, LYING IS NOT ONLY PERMISSIBLE, BUT OBLIGATORY”

But because there is no single authority in Islam (like, say, the pope in the Catholic Church), there is no single, official, agreed-upon interpretation of sharia. The thousands of rules and regulations that collectively make up the body of sharia have been deeply contested among Muslim scholars — and even individual Muslims — since the birth of Islam, with no agreement even on many vital issues.

Team B II argues that sharia is different from similar moral codes in other religions, like the Jewish law that governs the rules for keeping kosher. They argue that sharia is fundamentally political; that its aim is to govern the lives of all people, and not just Muslims, by seizing control of the world’s governments.

“There is ultimately but one sharia,” the report holds. “It is totalitarian in character, incompatible with our Constitution, and a threat to freedom here and around the world. Sharia’s adherents are making a determined, sustained, and well-financed effort to impose it on all Muslims and non-Muslims, alike.”

To make this argument, Team B II’s authors rely heavily on something called “abrogation.” This is a complex concept in Islamic legal theory, but it basically boils down to the idea that when trying to determine the “correct” answer to some legal question — say, whether it’s okay to drink alcohol, for instance — later verses in the Quran carry more weight than earlier ones. That is, the later verses abrogate, or override, the earlier ones.

This stems from the fact that the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammed not all at once, but rather over a period of 23 years. During that time, the circumstances in which Mohammed and the early Muslim community were living changed quite a bit. The earlier verses of the Quran came down while Mohammad was more of an itinerant preacher in Mecca, whereas the later verses came down during a time when Mohammed controlled the city of Medina and commanded a large Muslim army.

The result is that the later verses tend to be more concerned with real-world administrative rules and military doctrine — including verses about conquering unbelievers — while the earlier verses are more focused on broader, more universal concepts of spirituality.

As a result of the doctrine of abrogation, Team B II claims, all Muslims are obligated to conquer the West and replace its governments with an Islamic theocracy called a caliphate. But one would be hard-pressed to find a single credible Islamic scholar who interprets it this way.

For Islamic legal scholars, abrogation is but one tool used to interpret the Quran, and not an ultimate trump card. And the Quran, like the Bible, contains scriptures that both endorse and reject violence. In the full context of Islamic law, the injunctions to kill and conquer are often interpreted as being specific to that time and place in history, and do not necessarily overrule other, more peaceful verses in the Quran (e.g., “let there be no compulsion in religion”).

Team B II dismisses this as a form of tactical, sharia-sanctioned lying. There is an actual Arabic term for permissible lying in sharia, called taqiyya. It’s an obscure medieval ruling that basically permits Muslims to verbally blaspheme God or renounce their religion without incurring God’s wrath if they are under compulsion to do so.

So, for instance, if a Muslim were traveling in a land where being Muslim could get him killed and is captured by the authorities, he is allowed to say he isn’t Muslim — or even do things like praise pagan gods or slander the Prophet Mohammed — if his survival is on the line, without God getting mad. It’s a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s also a concept generally associated with Shia Islam, as nearly all Sunni Islamic legal scholars reject the concept outright.

But the counter-jihadists have taken this medieval concept and turned it into a devious trick that Muslims are using to hide their true violent intentions.

They assert that the peaceful interpretations of Islam offered by Muslim authorities are a form of taqiyya designed to obscure the true nature of Islam from gullible Westerners. They point to things like the 9/11 hijackers going to strip clubs and drinking alcohol as examples of terrorists using taqiyya to blend in. And while the 9/11 hijackers certainly did those things, and may even have tried to justify their actions by saying they were just trying to blend in, they were all Sunni Muslims and therefore never would’ve used the concept of taqiyya to justify their actions.

“Under Islamic law, lying is not only permissible, but obligatory for Muslims in some situations,” Team B II writes in its report. “What Muslim audiences are required to know about Islam is not the same thing as what non-Muslim Western audiences are allowed to know — or encouraged to think — by Islamic authorities.”

This quickly takes on the character of a conspiracy theory. Any attempt to cite an Islamic authority who takes a different view of the Quran is only proof, to the counter-jihadists, that you are taken in by sharia propaganda. In that sense, arguing with the counter-jihadists is something of an impossible task. It’s a bit like attempting a point-by-point rebuttal of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

How a conspiracy theory goes from the fringes to the White House

[vid act for am]

When you ask credentialed experts on Islam and terrorism about counter-jihadist theories today, they usually don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“It's hard to reply without sounding snooty,” Will McCants, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Project on US Relations with the Islamic World, tells me in response to a question about counter-jihadists. “[They] sell a lot of books and scare the hell out of Americans, but their policy recommendations range from vague to downright harmful.”

McCants is not wrong about the books. America Alone, a 2006 book alleging that ”a large majority of Western Muslims support the terrorists’ strategic goals,” cracked the top five of the New York Times’s best-seller list. Several other counter-jihadist books, including The Politically Correct Guide to Islamand Because They Hate, made the best-seller list around the same time.

What few reviews of these books could be found in mainstream publications were not kind. Yale lecturer Daniel Luban wrote that they “can justly be called the new McCarthyism” in a review of the genre published in the Jewish magazine Tablet.

Regardless, the success of counter-jihadist literature spawned a whole mini industry — what author Nathan Lean termed “the Islamophobia Industry.” In 2008, an organization called theClarion Projectdistributed 28 million copies of a documentary titled, which alleged that more than 100 million Muslims were in thrall to “militant Islam.”

Another Clarion video, The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America, was blurbed by former New York City mayor and current White House cybersecurity adviser Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ:{). Clarion’s 2015 mini documentary }:{, starring a Muslim woman named Raheel Raza who alleges a majority of her co-religionists want sharia to set national law, has more than 4 million views on YouTube.}:

These works found a large audience, mostly among conservatives, largely as a result of America’s encounter with Islamic extremism over the course of the 2000s. The 9/11 attacks, interestingly, did not themselves spark an immediate turn against Muslims.

Part of this can be attributed to concerted efforts by the George W. Bush administration to discourage such sentiments. Indeed, just a little over a month after the 9/11 attacks took place, Bush issued a message to commemorate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, stating, "The Islam that we know is a faith devoted to the worship of one God, as revealed through The Holy Qur'an. It teaches the value and the importance of charity, mercy, and peace."

But as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dragged on and more and more American service members died in those countries at the hands of Muslims, and as terrorist attacks in the name of Islam continued to take place around the world, many Americans started to blame Islam in general for the continuing bloodshed.

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Under the Obama administration, this took on an overtly partisan flavor. When Bush defended Islam, few Republicans were interested in attacking him. Barack Hussein Obama got no such dispensation: Republicans attacked him as soft on ISIS and claimed he was more interested in protecting “the image of Islam” than in protecting America. Influential right-wing pundits suggested he was an Islamist sympathizer or even a secret Muslim himself.

All of this, combined with Trump’s much more overt anti-Islam rhetoric, has helped turn the Muslim religion into a partisan issue:

Right-wing media, recognizing the appeal of the counter-jihadist message among their audience, has embraced this extreme anti-Islam narrative the counter-jihadists are peddling. A study published by UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center found that guests with extreme anti-Muslim views made up 11 percent of all guests on prominent conservative talk radio during a period they studied in 2010. Two prominent counter-jihadists appeared on Fox News 15 times between September 2015 and February 2016, according to a count by Media Matters. Prominent televangelists spread the anti-Islam gospel to yet another group of reliable conservatives. Pat Robertson, the host of the widely broadcast 700 Club, once said on air that “Islam is a political system that is bent on world domination.”

All of this is supplemented by a vast grassroots network, centering on a group called ACT for America. Billing itself as the “the NRA of National Security,” it claims to have a membership of 500,000 nationwide, clustered in 1,000 chapters around the country.

Its president, Brigitte Gabriel, is the author of one of those mid-2000s counter-jihadist bestsellers (Because They Hate). A Lebanese Christian immigrant who calls herself “one of the leading terrorism experts in the world,” Gabriel has no formal background in terrorism, either through working in government or academia. According to her book, the highest level of education she received was a one-year course in business administration at a YWCA. Her claim to authority stems, allegedly, from experiences of persecution at the hands of Muslims during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s — a historically dubious story that Lebanese-American journalist Michael Young once labeled a “con act.”

In a speech in at the Oasis Church in Middletown, Ohio, Gabriel delivered an accessible and entertaining speech on the counter-jihadist view of Islam. In her telling, the history of Islam is a history of bloodshed.Between Islam’s founding in the seventh century and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1924, she says, “Islam was responsible for 270 million people across the globe — killed by the sword.”

This violence was not accidental, Gabriel told the rapt crowd. It was the core of Islam itself.

Gabriel believes that for 12 years, Mohammed attempted to peacefully proselytize — and failed, miserably. Only when he turned to violence, to conversion at the point of the sword, did he begin to win success.

“Islam went from being strictly a spiritual movement, after 12 years, to becoming a political movement cloaked in religion,” she says. “Jihad is mentioned in the Quran 40 times — 36 times out of 40 as a holy war against the infidels, to either kill them or subjugate them.”

These are all historically inaccurate claims. Haroon Moghul, a fellow at the New America Foundation, writes that they “play loose and fast with very different eras, places and peoples,” in order to put together a narrative of a uniformly aggressive Islam. Yet Gabriel’s group has been profoundly influential.

[twt mar  lago sec breifing look who i ran into djt]

Her activists have worked tirelessly to pass legislation, based on a template constructed by Gaffney and CSP in-house counsel David Yerushalmi, that would ban state courts from considering sharia a valid source of law.By 2016, they had succeeded in nine states: Alabama, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, South Dakota, Arizona, and Tennessee.

“No court, administrative agency, or other governmental agency may enforce any provisions of any religious code,” the South Dakota version reads, neutral language obscuring the clear intent.

More alarmingly, the ideas pushed by Gabriel and CSP have been embraced by the most important members of the Trump White House.

“Most people in the Middle East, or at least 50 percent, believe in being sharia-compliant,”Bannon said on theBreitbart Daily News radio show in 2015. “Sharia-compliant” is an innocuous phrase commonly used by Muslims to denote that something is in line with Islamic law: For instance, you can find sharia-compliant home mortgage companies in the US that cater primarily (but not exclusively) to Muslims, because Islamic law forbids Muslims from collecting or paying interest on loans.

The Team B II report’s authors sees things like sharia-compliant financial institutions as an insidious threat to the US Constitution (they never really explain how a home mortgage company that doesn’t charge interest threatens the Constitution).

It’s not just Bannon.But the Team B II report also frequently uses the term “sharia-compliant” to describe not institutions or practices, but people: specifically, Muslims with dangerous, anti-American beliefs, anti-constitutional beliefs. And this is exactly the way Bannon is using the term. “If you're sharia-compliant or want to impose sharia law, the United States is the wrong place for you,” Bannon proclaimed.

In his 2016 book*The Field of Fight*, Trump’s new national security adviser, Michael Flynn, wrote that Islamic scholars are attempting to trick the West to obscure the true nature of sharia.

“These so-called Islamic scholars keep their message so complicated so as to create chaos, to confuse in order to control,” Flynn writes. “Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mussolini were more transparent. Sharia is a violent law that is buried in barbaric convictions.”

Trump’s new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said more or less the same thing — in an official Senate press release. “Once again we face a totalitarian threat to the free world. This time it’s from ideological and apocalyptic Islam,” Sessions said.

“Theologically-based sharia law,” Sessions argued, “fundamentally conflicts with our magnificent constitutional order that separates church and state, and that considers free debate and dissent the way to a better world.”

That these individuals all espouse the same weirdly specific interpretation of sharia is not a coincidence. Each one of them is deeply connected to the counter-jihadist world.

Bannon hosted counter-jihadists on his Breitbart radio show 41 times,according to a count by Mother Jones’s Josh Harkinson. Flynn is an adviser to the board of Gabriel’s ACT for America, and local ACT chapters organized many of the stops on the speaking tour for Flynn’s book. In 2015, Sessions received CSP’sKeeper of the Flame award, in honor of “his leadership on issues of great importance to the national security.”

And it goes even deeper than just Trump’s cabinet. Walid Phares, a fringe Lebanese Christian academic who served as Trump’s Middle East policy adviser during the campaign, once said, “It is absolutely constitutional and moral that citizens reject Sharia as a legal system that takes away their rights.”

Sebastian and Katharine Gorka, a married couple who are staples of the counter-jihadist movement, have been given high-level positions on Trump’s staff: Sebastian is now his deputy assistant in the White House, and Katharine was on Trump’s Department of Homeland Security transition team.

Trump himself, at times, has sounded a lot like a counter-jihadist.

“Sharia authorizes such atrocities as murder of non-believers who won’t convert, beheadings, and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to American — especially women,, reading off a prepared statement during a December 2015 televised rally defending his proposal for a Muslim ban. “These are people who believe only in jihad. They don’t want our system.”

Several months prior to the rally, Trump had met with staffers at CSP for an hour-long briefing. The subject was the threat from sharia.

Counter-jihadists see leading American Muslims as part of the problem

The fact that most Muslims are not killers is, for the counter-jihadists, a most inconvenient fact. Over time, counter-jihadists have put less emphasis on the threat from overtly violent groups, like al-Qaeda and ISIS, and focused instead on a more insidious threat: the “stealth” or “civilization jihad.”

The foremost theorist of civilization jihad is a writer named Robert Spencer. “He’s author of so many books, and one of the top two or three experts in the world on this great war we’re fighting against fundamental Islam,” Bannon said, when hosting Spencer onBreitbart Daily News on August 9, 2016. “Trump is listening to people like you,” he told Spencer later in the interview.

Spencer, like Gabriel and Gaffney, has no formal training in Quranic scholarship. He received an MA in 1986 in religious studies from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and wrote his master’s thesis on Catholic history.

He’s run the blog Jihad Watch, a near-obsessive tracker of Islamist activity, since 2003. He is also the author of 16 books, with titles like The Complete Infidels' Guide to the Koran. Many of his books have been published by Regnery, the conservative publishing giant that also put out both Trump’s and Mitt Romney’s most recent books. Two of Spencer’s tomes made the New York Times best-seller list; there’s a decent chance you’ve seen him on Fox News in the wake of a terrorist attack.

In person, Spencer is short and portly, with a neatly trimmed black beard. He’s exceptionally confrontational, constantly trumpeting his willingness to debate all comers on Twitter and on Jihad Watch. When I contacted him for this story, his reply attacked the media — like most counter-jihadists, he sees journalists as some of jihad’s most powerful enablers.

“There you go again, Zack,” he wrote in response to one of my questions. “I know you’re a reporter, and a reporter for Vox, so I know where you stand.”

Spencer’s 2008 book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America Without Guns or Bombs, developed one of the most important ideas of the counter-jihad. Its arguments were cited repeatedly and amplified in the Team B II report and also appear, in a simplified form, in speeches delivered by people like Gabriel in towns around the country. Spencer also regularly gives “counterterrorism” seminars based on these arguments to law enforcement agencies.

The central idea is that terrorists aren’t America’s real Muslim problem.

“Distracted by foreign wars and the prospect of domestic terror attacks, Americans pay little heed to the true agents of intolerance in their midst,” Spencer writes. “The stealth jihad advances largely unopposed because it is largely unrecognized.”

The “agents of intolerance” at the heart of this stealth jihad, Spencer explains, are the Muslim Brotherhood.

It’s a group you’re probably at least passingly familiar with. Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Brotherhood is one of the oldest and most influential Islamist groups in history. The group’s goal has long been the toppling of the Egyptian government and its replacement with a Sunni theocracy.

Its tactics have varied over time, from promoting grassroots social change to fielding candidates for parliament, and some individuals and groups associated with the Brotherhood in the past have advocated violent revolution. The Brotherhood even managed to gain control over the Egyptian government briefly, when Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi won in the country’s first democratic election following the Arab Spring uprising in 2011.

Today, the group’s influence is relatively limited — Egypt’s military dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, overthrew Morsi in 2013 and since then has viciously suppressed Brotherhood activity. According to Human Rights Watch, he has killed more than 1,000 individuals linked to the Brotherhood and arrested many, many more.

In Spencer’s telling, though, the Brotherhood is not defined by its founding chapter in Egypt, or even its various open branches and offshoots (like the Palestinian militant group Hamas or the moderate Islamist Ennahda party in Tunisia). The hidden history of the 20th century, according to Spencer, is a history of the Brotherhood’s stealth penetration of the West.

“Of course the MB still has the resources to act in the US and Europe,” Spencer tells me. “Its organizations here were well-established and handsomely funded before Sisi came along.”

In Stealth Jihad, Spencer rests this claim on a 1991 memo, written by a Muslim Brother named Mohamed Akram. The memo outlines a plan to establish a “global Islamic state,” starting in the United States. This begins, according to Akram, through a “shift from the collision mentality to the absorption mentality” — to move away from open conflict with Western authorities to suborning them from within.

This might seem like a pathetically impossible task, given the minuscule number of Muslim Brothers in the US. But — and this is the absolutely critical part — Akram thinks the Brotherhood has powerful allies who might successfully and quietly mainstream its radical agenda. In the memo, he writes out “a list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends.”

The Brotherhood, and its present-day allies and friends, [are] really working to forward the ‘grand jihad,’” Spencer writes. “When we scratch the ‘moderate’ surface of groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), we find links to terrorist organizations and exhortations to Islamic supremacism.”It reads like a who’s who of Muslim civic organizations in the United States, including the Islamic Society of North America (the continent’s largest Muslim civic group) and the Muslim Students’ Association (the organization that represents Muslim students on virtually every college campus in the United States). This one memo, for Spencer and Gaffney, is solid proof that these organizations are Brotherhood fronts.

The Team B II report, two years later, put the point even more clearly.

“The majority of Islamic organizations in America are affiliates of or associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in some way,” its authors explain. “Any organization that does not embrace sharia and the MB line has not been able to gain broad recognition as a Muslim-American force.”

The evidentiary basis for this claim is extremely thin. For one thing, scholars of the Brotherhood have found no evidence that Akram’s memo was an accurate representation of the Brotherhood’s reach.

“Nobody has ever produced any evidence that the document was more than something produced by the daydream of one enthusiast,” Nathan Brown, a George Washington University professor who studies the Brotherhood, told Religion Dispatches’ Sarah Posner in 2011. “Nothing in anything that I have heard has ever struck me as similar in tone or content to the ‘master plan.’”

Beyond that, the organizations themselves flatly deny being agents of the Muslim Brotherhood. Of course, as Spencer and his ilk would say, this could just be taqiyya. Except that the groups don’t just deny these affiliations — they openly advocate policies and interpretations of Islam that directly contradict this supposed grand Muslim Brotherhood plot against American values.

That does not stop Spencer, Team B II, and the rest of the counter-jihadists from citing Akram’s memo as gospel. Gaffney still tells audiences to download it (it’s available for free on CSP’s site).

The idea that the Brotherhood dominates Muslim American life serves a critical bridging point in counter-jihadist ideology. It is the only possible explanation for why, despite sharia’s supposed mandate to violence and domination, Muslim Americans are not all that violent. It’s not that they don’t believe in “Islamic supremacism” (a favored counter-jihadist term); it’s that they’re more strategic about it than the dummies in al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Militant groups can be bombed and killed. But stealth jihadists cannot: They wield Western commitments to free speech and political tolerance as a shield, allowing them to build up Muslim strength in the West without meaningful opposition.

Counter-jihadists latch onto any evidence of links between Muslim civic society and the Muslim Brotherhood to buttress this theory, wrenching quotes from Muslim leaders out of context and casting fringe figures as leading Muslim authorities.

Take their strongest and most commonly cited piece of evidence: a 2007 Justice Department case against the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim charity in the Dallas area that was diverting some of its donations to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

This is the most significant and largest case of a terror-funding operation using an American Muslim civic group as a front. The Akram memo was uncovered during the HLF investigation.

But in addition to the five leaders of the HLF who were actually convicted in the case, more than 246 individuals and Muslim groups, including ISNA and CAIR, were named as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the indictment — meaning the prosecutors believed they were linked to HLF’s scheme but couldn’t prove it.

They couldn’t prove it because they had no real evidence for this claim. ISNA and CAIR later filed a suit alleging that the prosecutors had unjustifiably damaged their reputation by mentioning them in the indictment. Their evidence was that counter-jihadists were using it to smear them, and the court agreed.

“There is no real dispute that CAIR suffered injury to its reputational interest by being listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in this terrorism case. Press accounts and blog entries have reported, based on this case, that CAIR is a criminal organization that supports terrorism,”the presiding judge ruled. “The government has not argued or established any legitimate government interest that warrants publicly identifying CAIR and 245 other individuals and entities as unindicted co-conspirators.”

Now a faction in the Trump administration,reportedly led by Flynn, is pushing to do the same thing by executive fiat — to add the Muslim Brotherhood to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.But, as with the Akram memo, the counter-jihadists have not stopped using the HLF case as proof that America’s largest Muslim organizations are part of a stealth jihad. Multiple Republican members of Congress have parroted these accusations, most notably when they accused Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin of having ties tothe Muslim Brotherhood. Sen. Ted Cruz, a frequent speaker at CSP events, has repeatedly pushed legislation labelingthe Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group — a key recommendation in both Spencer’s book and the Team B II report.

The State Department reportedly opposes this move as illegal. A new CIA memo, reported by Politico, warns that it would boost ISIS and al-Qaeda recruiting. Virtually every expert on the Muslim Brotherhood thinks it would be unworkable and unwise.

Despite all this, the New York Times reports that the move has broad support in the White House. This should be no surprise: Both Attorney General Sessions and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, while in Congress, co-sponsored Cruz’s bill.

“There are organizations and networks here in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental ways,” Pompeo told Gaffney in a February 2015 interview on the latter’s radio program. “They’re not just in places like Libya and Syria and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas, and small towns all throughout America.”

Bannon has long been warning of the threat from the Muslim Brotherhood and stealth jihad; in 2007, he wrote a documentary script proposal specifically calling CAIR and ISNA "cultural jihadists" secretly working to build “an Islamic Republic in the United States.” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, in a2016 interview with Bannon, warned of “an explanatory memorandum” uncovered in the Holy Land Foundation trial telling Muslims “to infiltrate, to multiply, to gain positions of power, and to commit what they call ‘civilization jihad.’”

Officially labeling the Brotherhood a terrorist group, an odd step given that the Brotherhood has not been linked to a terrorist attack in decades, takes on much darker tones when viewed through a counter-jihadist light. Remember, counter-jihadists think the majority of Muslim American groups in the United States are Brotherhood fronts. It’s illegal for any American to provide assistance to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

This, then, could set the stage for a massive federal inquisition into America’s major Muslim organizations based on counter-jihadist conspiracy theories. The text of the Cruz-Sessions-Pompeo bill refers to CAIR and ISNA as “United States-Muslim Brotherhood affiliates,” citing the Holy Land case. Gaffney toldBloomberg View’s Eli Lake that "CAIR is one of the organizations [prosecutors] would have to look at” if the Brotherhood were designated a terrorist group.

Spencer told me that the solution to the stealth jihad was to “enforce existing laws regarding sedition and subversion,” adding that “Muslim organizations in the West should be called upon to back up their pro-forma condemnations of al-Qaeda and ISIS with transparent, inspectable, honest programs teaching young Muslims why they should reject the understanding of Islam offered by jihad terror groups.”

Investigations into, and perhaps prosecutions of, Muslim civic organizations. “Inspectable” programs ensuring that Muslim organizations toe a religious line that counter-jihadists find acceptable. That’s what the counter-jihadists really want from Trump.

Europe will soon be “Eurabia” — a fate America might share

In July of last year, I went to Cleveland to report on the Republican National Convention. It was a weird event by any metric, but the high point of strangeness had to be the evening I spent at a party for queer counter-jihadists.

The event, organized by Breitbart’s gay firebrandMilo Yiannopoulos, was called “Wake Up!” — as in, “wake up” to the threat of jihadism. Held in a dark ballroom adorned with pictures of mostly naked, extremely young-looking men posing in red “Make America Great Again” hats, the party attracted afairly infamous crowd.

I bumped into Pamela Geller, who co-founded (alongside Spencer) a counter-jihadist group calledStop the Islamization of America, since renamed the American Freedom Defense Initiative, wearing a rainbow sequin shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Love Will Win.” Geller is a regular on Fox News and conservative talk radio; she’s one of the most widely known counter-jihadists due to her assuming a leadership role in the fight against the “ground zero mosque” in 2010. She also has a tendency to embrace the most outlandish of conspiracy theories, once publishing a piece on her website suggesting that Barack Obama is the secret love child of Malcolm X.

When I ran into her, she was warning a partygoer of the imminent threat from Syrian refugees.

“ISIS said they were going to send a jihad army into Europe via migration in 2015. Then two months later, the migration started,” Geller said. The implication — that the refugee crisis was an ISIS plot — wasn’t especially subtle.

The ostensibly perilous state of Europe was something of a motif at the party. The featured speaker was Geert Wilders, the virulently anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant leader of the Netherlands’ far-right Party for Freedom (PVV). Wilders, an extremely tall man with slicked-back, Trumpesque hair, gave a fiery speech denouncing the influence of Islam in his homeland.

“There is only one Islam, and that Islam has no place in a free society,” Wilders told the crowd. “We should de-Islamize our societies. It’s a matter of our existence.”

One could not have hoped for a better summary of the counter-jihadist view of Europe. Proponents see the continent as a dark twin of America, a “there but for the grace of God” dystopia the Islamists are on the verge of conquering.

The key culprit, in their minds, is immigration. Prior to World War II, the Muslim population in Europe was negligible. After the war, a need to rebuild the continent led Europe to bring in a lot of people from the nearby Middle East and North Africa as guest workers. Many of these guest workers stayed, and eventually brought over their families. These people formed Muslim communities, which continue to be a draw for new Muslim immigrants today, at the same time that birthrates among white Europeans were slowing down.

The result was a rapidly growing Muslim minority in Western Europe. In 1950, 2 percent of Europeans were Muslim. That figure was 4 percent by 1990, and 6 percent by 2010.

In 2005, a Cairo-born woman named Gisèle Littman published a book warning of the dangers of this demographic shift, titled*Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis*. Littman, who publishes under the name Bat Ye’or (Hebrew for “daughter of the Nile”), dropped out of a master’s program at the University of Geneva in the 1960s. Nevertheless, she spent much of her life publishing “academic” tomes on Islam and Europe, arguing that the history of Islam is an unbroken history of theologically driven conquest.

In Eurabia, Ye’or posited that Muslim immigration to Europe was not the benign economic migration it seemed. It was, instead, a dark plot — a plan, dating back to 1973, “superimposed on Europe by powerful governmental lobbies.” The goal was to Islamize Europe, to reduce European whites to “dhimmitude” — a term she uses for second-class citizenship granted to non-Muslims in an Islamic society.

In the pages of Jihad Watch and CSP publications, the notion that Muslim immigrants are imposing their rule on a hapless and clueless European majority is simply common sense. Every crime or terrorist attack committed by a Muslim, every law granting religious accommodations to Muslims, is cast as proof of the coming of Eurabia.Eurabia has gotten scant mention in the American press; mainstream historians have scorned it. Yet the book’s thesis has risen to the level of dogma among American counter-jihadists; Geller has called Ye’or “the world's leading scholar and historian on Islamic expansionism in Europe, the Middle East and the West.”

At the 2015 Values Voter Summit, the big annual gathering for right-wing evangelicals, Bannon sat down with ACT’s Gabriel to talk about the European refugee crisis. He referred to it as a Muslim “invasion,” and asked Gabriel if that was an overstatement.

“It is not,” she replied. “Europe will no longer be Europe by 2050. Europe has already become Eurabia. Europe is Eurabia right now.”

For this reason, immigration occupies a central role in the counter-jihadist imagination. If Muslim immigration turned Europe into a terror-ridden nightmare on the brink of sharia rule, then the first priority in the United States needs to be making sure the same thing can’t happen here. The Muslim Brotherhood is most easily defeated when you deny it foot soldiers.

One of the key recommendations of CSP’s Team B II report is that “immigration of those who adhere to sharia must be precluded.” More recently, CSP and ACT for America have been out front in opposing the resettlement of Syrian refugees. CSP has teamed up with longtime anti-refugee activistAnn Corcoran, who got her start in 2006 opposing the resettlement of African refugees in her area of rural Maryland. A CSP video starring her has racked up nearly 3 million views on YouTube.

“This process of Muslim colonization is called the hijra,” Corcoran says in the video, using the Arabic word for migration. “Mohammed told his followers to migrate and spread Islam, in order to dominate all the lands of the world ... and that’s exactly what they’re doing now.”

The “Muslim ban” and the counter-jihad

When Trump initially announced his plan for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” way back in December 2015, his campaign statement cited a poll conducted by CSP as the key piece of justification.

“A poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing ‘25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad,’”the statement read. “51% of those polled, ‘agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to sharia.’”

This poll was, unsurprisingly, shot full of methodological problems. It was anonline opt-in poll, meaning that it was not a random sample of American Muslims, and several questions were written in such a way that the answers would end up sounding extremist no matter what.

More interestingly, though, is the person who conducted the poll on CSP’s behalf. It was none other than Kellyanne Conway, who would go on to become Trump’s campaign manager and chief press surrogate. According toMother Jones’s Pema Levy, who first reported the link, Conway’s firm had a relationship with CSP that dated back to 1998.

"It's very alarming to me that such a high number of individuals, Muslims living in the US, would say, 'Well, we can have a choice' [to follow sharia]," Conway said during a June 2015 appearance on a CSP podcast. “The Muslims living in the US themselves — 27 percent of them, anyway — say that this is what the purpose of jihad is, to either punish nonbelievers (16 percent) or, the other 11 percent, to undermine non-Muslim states."

This is the way in which the “Muslim ban” makes sense. Not as something Trump dreamed up by accident, but as a direct product of the counter-jihad’s influence on the president of the United States. You can even see the counter-jihadist influence in the text of the executive order itself.

“In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles,” the order reads. “The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.”

When the Trump administration talked about the Muslim ban to press, they warned that unfettered Muslim entry into the country would bring about a constant drumbeat of low-level terrorism — a warning that sounded a lot like some counter-jihadists’ descriptions of contemporary Europe.

“We don't want a situation where 20, 30 years from now, it's just like a given thing that on a fairly regular basis that there's domestic terror strikes, that stores are shut up or that airports have explosive devices planted or people are mowed down in the street by cars and automobiles and things of that nature,” an unnamed senior administration official told the Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson. “These are the realities that we're living in today.”

How counter-jihadists want to change America — if Trump will let them

There is a counter-jihadist master plan.

In 2015, CSP issued a follow-up report to the Team B II report. Titled “The Secure Freedom Strategy,” and authored by “the Tiger Team,” it fleshed out a broad slate of specific policy actions that could be taken to act on Team B’s diagnosis of the problem. Something like Trump’s ban on refugees entering the country is in there, as is the Flynn-Sessions-Pompeo plan for listing the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

Those aren’t the only two examples. The report spends a great deal of time lambasting the Obama administration for failing to openly name Islamism as our enemy.

“The Obama administration’s increasingly institutionalized secularist — if not actively pro-Islamic — policies have largely prevented the U.S. government from engaging in strategic information operations aimed at exposing and undermining the supremacist doctrine of shariah and the terrorism it commands,” its authors write. “Public clarity about that threat has also been compromised by the distortion of intelligence analysis and terminology used to describe Islam, jihad, and shariah.”

This has obvious resonances with the Republican attacks on Obama for failing to call terrorists “radical Islamists.” But it also targets, specifically, President Obama’s “Countering Violent Extremism” initiative — a program that focuses on preventing Americans from being attracted to violent political movements, Islamist and non-Islamist alike. This, the Tiger Team argues, is a way of downplaying the threat from the more dangerous stealth jihad.

Now bothReuters andCNN have reported that the Trump team is planning to revamp the CVE program to focus solely on Islamism. Its new name? “Countering Islamic Extremism,” nomenclature that a) is focused exclusively on Islam, and b) deemphasizes the threat from violence specifically.

News of the Trump team’s plans delighted counter-jihadists, who have long attacked US government counterterrorism training for downplaying the threat from sharia. Spencer told me the revamp of the CVE program was the Trump initiative that he was most excited about.

Spencer is being a bit premature — as of right now, the reports about the program still aren’t confirmed. But his glee points to something important, something missed in taking these things in isolation.

The Trump team is incredibly disorganized: According to one New York Times account, Trump staffers still haven’t figured out how to turn on the lights in the White House Cabinet room. They also have an insurgent ideology, one that’s in many ways at odds with what you hear from mainstream Republicans — especially on foreign policy. There just isn’t a clear sense of what they want to do on a lot of issues, or what specific tools they could use to do it.

The counter-jihadists, by contrast, are extremely organized. They have a think tank that has put out detailed policy proposals, intellectuals with fairly large megaphones who can argue for the think tank’s ideas, and a large activist network that’s surprisingly well-connected inside the Republican Party.

And, of course, they have a lot of like-minded sympathizers in the White House. So if the Trump team needs policy ideas on national security and terrorism, it’s entirely likely that they’d turn to CSP for help. Indeed, the explicit point of the Tiger Team’s Secure Freedom Strategy was to provide a comprehensive blueprint for a “war” on sharia to a White House that’s willing to listen.

So what are their actual policy proposals?

The report advocates reorienting training for counterterrorism staff around “the threat doctrine — sharia,” essentially meaning that the US should teach its spies and law enforcement officials that Islam is their enemy. It proposes “rolling up and shutting down [Muslim Brotherhood] front groups in the United States,” by which it means the main Muslim organizations in America. It suggests ending university programs that promote “Muslim-Christian dialogue,” and replacing them with “corresponding educational activities exposing the true nature of sharia and the Muslim Brotherhood’s operations.”

Some recommendations are even more jarring. The report calls on the US government to use “sharia adherent advocacy and practices as legal premises for deportation and stripping of American citizenship” — in other words, kicking out Muslims who publicly announce that they live by Islamic moral codes. Former Speaker of the House and staunch Trump supporter Newt Gingrich has fervently embraced this idea, telling Sean Hannity in June 2016 that the US government should deport all Muslims who believe in sharia.

The CSP report further states that “over eighty percent of U.S. mosques have been shown to be sharia-adherent and promoting jihad,” and that “they are incubators of, at best, subversion and, at worst, violence and should be treated accordingly.” The clear implication is that the US government should shut down 80 percent of American mosques and arrest their imams on charges of promoting terrorism.

This isn’t just a blueprint for war on sharia — it’s a blueprint for war on the Muslim American community. For using the power of the state to shut down Muslim organizations, arrest believing Muslims, and close the vast majority of mosques.

Prominent politicians have endorsed this plan (though it’s not clear if they’ve read it all the way through). At a 2015 CSP conference, the entirety of which is uploaded to YouTube, both Gingrich and Cruz labeled the Secure Freedom plan a sound strategy for fighting jihadism — a move that garnered very little attention at the time. The document is too obscure, and too boring, for most people to root through it.

But these ideas in it cannot be seen as obscure anymore.

“I definitely see individuals with this [counter-jihadist] network having a huge influence within this administration,” Yasmine Taeb, a lobbyist at the Friends Committee on National Legislation who focuses on terrorism and civil liberties, tells me. “[Trump’s] policies are ones that they’ve been advocating for ... which is scary.”

According to McCants, the Brookings scholar on Islam, “national security professionals on both sides of the aisle are freaking out” about the influence of counter-jihadists on Trump.

Would Trump be able to implement all of the policies in the Secure Freedom Strategy by executive fiat? Almost certainly not. More to the point, it’s not clear that he’d want to: Shutting down 80 percent of America’s mosques is extreme even for him, well beyond anything he’s said publicly.

The point, rather, is that this is where the people who are advising the president are coming from. Their repeated public statements, and the administration’s policy alignment with some key counter-jihadist priorities, cannot be ignored. These ideas, ideas which when taken to their logical conclusion end in a mass campaign of persecution targeting Muslim Americans, are now the dominant approach to terrorism among the president’s closest advisers.

Watching the video of Gaffney’s speech at the Western Conservative Summit no longer feels like watching the ramblings of a coot. It feels like peering through a window into the way the Trump White House sees the world.

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