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~ MAIL IN VOTE

see voter suppression

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Tags: Ali Alexander Gary Bauer Jack Posobiec Jenna Ellis Marjorie Taylor GreeneTom Fitton Capitol Insurrection House select committee on Jan. 6 Jan. 6 Judicial Watch

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5 MILLION ASHI PAYOUT 5 25?! DRISCOLL ESQ?

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On Tuesday, January 14, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 7-3 ruling in Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections. Overturning a 7th Circuit Court decision, the justices found that Rep. Michael Bost (R-Illinois) could challenge a state law that allowed the counting of mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day as long as they were postmarked before Election Day.

The two dissenters were Democrat-appointed Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. However, Justice Elena Kagan, appointed by former President Barack Obama, voted with the six GOP-appointed justices and joined Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a concurring opinion.

Journalist Oriana González examines the decision's possible results in an article for NOTUS, noting Democratic concerns that it could lead to an avalanche of election-related lawsuits ahead of the 2026 midterms.

"In 2022, Bost sued the Illinois State Board of Elections, challenging a law that allowed the counting of mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day," González explains. "Lower federal courts initially dismissed the lawsuit, arguing that because Bost won his election with 75 percent of the vote, he lacked standing to bring the case. But on Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, in a 7-2 decision, that Bost had a right to sue because 'he is a candidate for office. And a candidate has a personal stake in the rules that govern the counting of votes in his election'…. Bost said he feels confident that judges will rule in his favor moving forward."

Rep. Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania Republican, believes the ruling "sets the stage" for more challenges to mail-in ballots.

Tom Fitton, president of the right-wing legal group Judicial Watch, described the Bost decision as "the most important Supreme Court election law ruling in a generation.”

But some Democrats are highly critical of the decision.

In her dissent, Jackson — an appointee of former President Joe Biden — wrote, "Alarmingly, today's ruling also has far-reaching implications beyond Bost's election, since dispensing with our usual standing requirements opens the floodgates to exactly the type of troubling election-related litigation the Court purportedly wants to avoid."

Jackson also wrote that the ruling "complicates and destabilizes both our standing law and America's electoral processes." And Obama appointee Sotomayor concurred.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) was critical of the High Court's decision as well and warned, "We're assuming that Republicans are going to do everything possible to prevent a free and fair election from taking place in November 2026."

*Read the full NOTUS article at this link.

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no lnx

Trump won't need to cancel the midterms if this Republican plot succeeds

Thom Hartmann July 08, 2025

James Carville isn’t a man prone to panic, but when he says, “I would not put it at all past [Trump] to try to call martial law or declare that there’s some kind of national emergency,” around next year’s elections, it’s time to sit up straight.

Speaking to NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo, Carville warned that as Donald Trump sees a political shellacking coming in the 2026 midterms — particularly in states like New Jersey and Virginia — he may try something extreme to hold onto power.

“The hoof prints are coming,” Carville said, and he’s not wrong.

This isn’t hyperbole. This is history — the history of nations that have lost their democracies like Hungary and Russia — threatening to repeat itself.

Trump has already laid the psychological and structural groundwork to undermine or suspend elections; he just may not need to declare martial law if his fixers pull off what’s happening already this year.

Award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast, a committed non-partisan, has laid it out in painful detail. And what he’s uncovered should terrify every American who believes in democracy.

Palast argues that Trump’s GOP doesn’t have to wait for November 2026 to win. They plan to win it in 2025, through something he calls The Great Purge, authorized by five corrupt Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court.

That’s right: before you even cast a vote, millions of names may already be scrubbed from voter rolls. If you’re Black, Latino, a student, a woman who changed her name at marriage, a military service member, or simply someone who moved apartments, you’re already a target.

Let’s break it down:

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission reported over 19 million names purged from voter rolls. While many were valid (deceased or moved), at least 4.47 million were blocked from voting due to bureaucratic tricks like “failure to return confirmation notices,” a tactic voting rights lawyers call “caging.”

In Georgia, Palast’s team working with the ACLU found that 63.3% of voters purged via caging were wrongly removed. Many were African-American.

Georgia’s GOP Secretary of State proudly doubled down in 2023, targeting 875,000 voters, and that’s just one state.

Thirty states now use an error-ridden system called ERIC for voter purging. Not accurate enough? Trump’s legal henchwoman, Cleta Mitchell, is pushing for a new program called EagleAI, the modern version of the GOP’s 1960s “Eagle Eye” voter intimidation operation.

If that wasn’t enough, Republicans have introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would force every newly registered or updated voter to present proof of citizenship in person. And if the name on your birth certificate is different from your passport or driver’s license, you can’t register or vote.

According to Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center, over 21 million Americans don’t have those documents readily available. And 69 million women don’t have their married name on their birth certificate. Many Americans don’t know where their passport or birth certificate is, especially those living in poverty, moving frequently, or serving overseas.

And let’s be clear about the excuse for this law: A racist myth. The Heritage Foundation, pushing the SAVE Act, claims millions of undocumented immigrants vote. But even Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who made it his mission to arrest illegal voters, found exactly zero in court. In fact, his law blocked 36,000 legal Kansas voters and was thrown out for being unconstitutional.

And now they’re bragging that they just purged 5 million new names so far this year, according to Judicial Watch.

Still, these tactics persist. Why? Because they work.

In 2000, George W. Bush won Florida by just 537 votes after tens of thousands of Black voters were falsely labeled as felons and purged by George’s brother, then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Today’s tactics are far more sophisticated and widespread, and with a Trumpified Supreme Court, far harder to stop.

Under Trump, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division — once the bulwark against voter suppression — has become complicit. Don’t expect any help from the feds if your name goes missing from the rolls.

In fact, Georgia’s Secretary of State has already requested access to DHS’s SAVE database — a tool used to track deported immigrants — to cross-reference voters. When Florida tried this in 2012, they removed 172,000 voters but only found one actual non-citizen: an Austrian Republican. But thousands of Hispanic voters were wrongly barred because they had common names like Jose Garcia.

That’s not election security. That’s systemic suppression.

While official channels do their damage, Trump’s allies are also organizing a private MAGA militia of self-appointed “fraud hunters.” In 2024, these vigilantes challenged over one million ballots. In 2026, Palast reports, they’re gearing up to challenge even more, targeting key swing states like Georgia and Pennsylvania.

And if state officials don’t comply with Trump’s purge lists, Mitchell promises her army will go door-to-door, one voter at a time.

Remember, all of this happens before a single vote is cast.

And if that doesn’t work? Now that Congress has funded ICE to become the largest (secret, masked) police agency in America with a network of concentration camps across the country, answerable only to Donald Trump, pretty much anything is possible.

Carville may sound alarmist when he talks about martial law, but let’s remember: Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, summoned a mob to the Capitol, and flirted with using the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against protestors, who he had asked his generals to “shoot in the legs.”

He’s mused to his followers, “You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” That’s not subtle. That’s a warning.

And while right-wing pundits like Bill O’Reilly chuckle and offer “18 muffalettas” in mockery, the groundwork for a democratic backslide is already laid, through legal loopholes, voter suppression, intimidation of Republican legislators like we saw yesterday, misinformation, and judicial capture.

Martial law may not arrive with tanks. It may come in the form of a national emergency declaration, a manufactured riot, or the pretense of mass fraud. Trump doesn’t have to cancel the election; he just has to delegitimize it enough to override it.

So what do we do?

As Palast warns: don’t despair. “They can’t steal all the votes all of the time.” But they sure as hell can steal enough.

We need:

Massive voter education on how to confirm your registration and re-register early.

Lawsuits and court challenges in every state adopting suppression tactics.

Federal action, if not from the Justice Department, then from an organized, relentless citizenry.

Election monitoring from independent and international groups.

And, when Democrats are again in power (G-d willing), a law that explicitly says we have a right to vote. It’s insane that government has to get a court order (thanks, Supreme Court) to take away your gun, but doesn’t even have to notify you when they take away your vote.

If Trump succeeds in today’s massive purge of largely Democratic voters and delegitimizing results, he won’t need martial law. The authoritarian train won’t arrive with a bang; it’ll glide in silently, on rails we failed to see being laid down this year.

So yes, James Carville is right to sound the alarm. And Greg Palast has done the reporting to prove it.

Now it’s up to us to stop it. Pass it along.

NOW READ: The Supreme Court just made it so that you can no longer look away

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Election denial groups and right-wing media figures are talking about their election interference plans as voting begins

Election denial groups have publicly talked about their plans to challenge voter rolls, monitor ballot drop boxes, and recruit and train poll workers to be a “spy in the camp” on Election Day

Written by Payton Armstrong

Research contributions from Media Matters Staff

Published 10/31/24

Election denial groups and some right-wing media figures have been discussing their plans to interfere in the 2024 voting process, building on previous efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and interfere with the 2022 midterm election.

Leading up to the 2024 presidential election, election denial groups and right-wing media figures have discussed their plans to challenge citizens’ right to vote, vowed to monitor drop boxes, claimed to be recruiting and training poll workers, launched apps to track supposed fraud on Election Day, and encouraged activists to monitor for noncitizen voting.

In the 2022 midterm elections, right-wing media supported election denial groups recruiting poll workers and poll watchers and asking for volunteers to monitor ballot drop boxes. These efforts had seemingly grown out of conspiracy theories from former President Donald Trump and right-wing media that the 2020 election was rife with voter fraud and had been stolen, culminating in a violent attempt to overturn the election by storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

As voting begins for the 2024 election, “election officials across the country are ramping up their security measures at polling places,” as reported by NBC News, including “beefing up law enforcement presence to donning bulletproof vests to deploying drones for surveillance amid an increasingly hostile environment.”

Right-wing groups and media figures are encouraging challenges to voter rolls, including asking supporters to flag “suspicious voter[s]” with “Hispanic-sounding last names”

• • Election denial group True the Vote has urged followers to submit voter-eligibility complaints by using an app, resulting in thousands of challenges to voter registrations.True the Vote is run by Catherine Engelbrecht and Greg Phillips, who regularly promote the group’s activities in right-wing media. CNN reported: “One of the main drivers of the fruitless challenges is a conservative Texas-based nonprofit group called True the Vote, an election-monitoring organization that has long peddled debunked voter-fraud theories. The group’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, has called on followers to help clean voter rolls by using an app called IV3 that enables users to research voter data and submit voter-eligibility challenges to local election offices.” CNN, [7/29/24; Media Matters, 1/26/23]

• • Cleta Mitchell — who leads the Election Integrity Network and has appeared frequently in right-wing media to promote the group and its activities, and fearmonger about noncitizen voting — was reportedly involved in helping the development of EagleAI for mass voter challenges in various states.As reported by Documented, “Eagle AI draws from public data sources like voter files and newspaper obituaries to build a dashboard for activists to conduct their own ‘list maintenance’ and generate potentially thousands of challenges to voter eligibility with a few clicks.” Documented, [8/17/23; Media Matters, 6/14/24, 10/2/24]

• • Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, a coalition of election-denying activists, has reportedly been recruiting people at the state level to “target the registrations of potentially left-leaning voters.”The New Republic reported that the coalition “recruits activists at the state level and trains them to target the registrations of potentially left-leaning voters in an effort to tilt the balance of the electorate toward conservative-leaning voters.” The New Republic, [10/16/24]

• • In the last several months, the Ohio chapter of Election Integrity Network has reportedly “mounted a statewide effort to kick thousands of registered voters off the rolls in the runup to the 2024 election.”According to local reporting, at least 13 counties “have received thousands of voter registration challenges, the vast majority of which have been rejected” and that “most of those challenges, the officials say, come from locals identifying themselves as members of the Election Integrity Network.” Cleveland.com, [9/25/24]

• • On CBS News, the head of the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network encouraged people to flag “Hispanic-sounding last names” for potential voter roll challenges. In an interview with the network, James Womack, head of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, discussed creating a “list of suspicious voters” who may be on the voter rolls in North Carolina. CBS also aired a clip of a video in which Womack also said, “If you’ve got folks that you, that were registered and they’re missing information … and they were registered in the last 90 days before the election, and they've got Hispanic-sounding last names, that probably is, is a suspicious voter.” Media Matters, [10/22/24; CBS News, 10/21/24]

• • On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, the founder of Fight Voter Fraud, Linda Szynkowicz, offered the MAGA audience voter data for mass eligibility challenges in Georgia. “Go to our website, download the request data so you can have a list of people in your county that we believe should not be voting in your county, and you can actually hang on to those,” she said, adding, “Do your due diligence. We’ll even teach you how to do it.” Media Matters, [10/7/24]

• ## Right-wing groups and media figures have been recruiting and training poll workers and observers

• • Election Integrity Network claims to have recruited tens of thousands of “election integrity patriots” and holds regular online coordinating calls. The Guardian, [10/21/24]

• • Right-wing group Judicial Watch announced that “as part of its ongoing election integrity efforts, its trained observers will monitor polling sites in Wisconsin on November 5.”Judicial Watch President and podcast host Tom Fitton was quoted in the press release saying, “Judicial Watch’s teams will monitor the election in Wisconsin to expose and deter any fraud.” Per Democracy Docket, Judicial Watch is “a right-wing legal group that’s constantly filing all manner of litigation against the government — Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, challenges to immigration policy, attempts to thwart environmental actions and any other issue that riles up Republicans. ‘Judicial Watch’s strategy is simple: Carpet-bomb the federal courts with Freedom of Information Act lawsuits,’ the New York Times wrote of the organization in a 2016 profile.” Judicial Watch, [10/22/24; Democracy Docket, 6/11/24]

* Tea Party Patriots, which sponsored Trump’s January 6 rally, is apparently doing “poll watcher trainings specifically in Georgia” in collaboration with Election Integrity Network.On War Room, election denial figure and Tea Party Patriots founder Jenny Beth Martin claimed her group is also partnering with Turning Point Action and America First Works on door knocking efforts. Martin also described the groups’ efforts in Georgia in a separate interview, saying they are “making sure that poll watchers are recruited and trained.” Media Matters, [9/9/24, 1/30/24]

• • Right-wing group VoterGA — co-founded by Garland Favorito, who has fundraised for his election denial organization during appearances on a far-right show — collaborated with the Election Integrity Network on poll-watcher training.CNN reported that “VoterGA, a nonprofit led by a computer consultant-turned-activist named Garland Favorito who has a long history of promoting debunked conspiracy theories, has made inroads with some election officials.” In a phone interview with CNN, “Favorito argued that he and his group are fighting for election integrity and that some state and local officials have sought to cover-up elections malfeasance in Georgia. As an example, he cited his inability to review ballots from the 2020 election,” ignoring that state law requires for the ballots to be sealed after the elections. CNN, [10/9/24; Media Matters, 6/14/23]

• • On the Christian nationalist program FlashPoint, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump recruited poll watchers and promoted the RNC’s new “election integrity division” to “ensure that there is no funny business” in the election.During the appearance, Trump said that the RNC is working to stop “3:00 a.m. dumps” and “ballots in suitcases that miraculously appear places,” and she called on the audience to “volunteer to be part of our team, ballot harvest with us where it's legal, you know, be a poll watcher, be a poll worker.” Media Matters, [5/30/24]

• • Christian nationalist “prophet” and podcast host Lance Wallnau has been traveling the country on his “Courage Tour” recruiting conservative Christians as poll workers to be a “spy in the camp” on Election Day.During Wallnau’s tour — which recently got a boost from Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) — attendees were directed to a group called Lion of Judah, which ProPublica reported “offers a free course titled ‘Fight the Fraud,’ with modules detailing poll workers’ basic duties and helping people find their local elections offices so they can apply as well as email templates to streamline the process.” Notably, Wallnau has already declared that “there will be cheating” in the 2024 election. ProPublica, [10/16/24; Media Matters, 9/27/24]

• • A Turning Point Action member used QAnon supporter Melody Jennings’ podcast to recruit poll workers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.The member, Brett Galaszewski, urged Jennings’ audience to become poll workers and get involved with the Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Republican Party’s “Election Integrity Committee.” Jennings is an election denier who participated in election denial efforts during the 2022 elections by coordinating attempts to intimidate voters at ballot drop boxes. Jennings even took credit for armed men who staked out drop boxes in Arizona. Media Matters, [11/15/23; The New York Times, 11/1/22]

• • Right-wing “Stop the Steal” activist Scott Presler, who has previously pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory, called on Donald Trump Jr.'s Rumble podcast audience to become poll workers and to investigate county voter rolls in Pennsylvania.Media Matters, [9/5/24, 1/30/23]

• ## True the Vote is planning to monitor ballot drop boxes for supposed fraud, including partnering with Steven Crowder and “working with sheriffs”

• • True the Vote claims to be planning to monitor ballot drop boxes in Michigan and Wisconsin with “24/7 streaming video” that will be “available for anyone.” On War Room, founder Catherine Engelbrecht declared, “This cycle, we do intend to have eyes on those drop boxes with surveillance footage.” Media Matters, [9/5/24]

• • True the Vote also claims it “is reaching out to sheriffs across the country” to monitor ballot drop boxes.In different media interviews, Engelbrecht claimed to be working with “three very influential sheriffs” in Wisconsin and said the organization is offering local sheriffs “camera equipment” to monitor drop boxes and, in exchange, the public can livestream the footage to “see for themselves what’s happening.” Media Matters, [8/6/24]

• • YouTuber Steven Crowder is apparently “partnering” with True the Vote for “the scoop” from the group’s drop box monitoring.True the Vote claims it has been “setting up teams and schedules for drop boxes” to monitor “with a little handheld camera” in multiple states and says Crowder is “opening up” the organization’s efforts “to a whole new crowd.” Media Matters, [10/19/24]

• ## Right-wing groups have launched apps, hotlines, and websites for people to report supposed voter fraud and issues at the polls on Election Day

• • True the Vote launched a new app for users “to quickly report problems at the polls” and “document and report instances of suspected election fraud” to funnel to local law enforcement.True the Vote claims to be “working with sheriffs” in Wisconsin and plans to funnel reports of supposed “problems at the polls” from users of its new app. Media Matters, [9/12/24, 9/20/24, 8/6/24]

• • Election denial group The America Project launched an app “for people to hop on and report different things that they see that they know are illegal,” as described by the group’s Director of Rights & Freedoms, Amanda Freytes.The America Project was founded by former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who following the 2020 election, became one of the country’s biggest election denial funders. Twitter/X, [10/5/24; Media Matters, 1/26/23]

• • Right-wing group United Sovereign Americans launched a new “election complaint” webpage, where people can submit supposed voter fraud to authorities.Founder Marly Hornik has promoted the webpage on War Room. CNN, [10/23/24; Democracy Docket, 5/29/24]

• • Judicial Watch announced it “will run an Internet hotline for voters in all states to report suspicions of election and voter fraud.”The hotline’s poster asks people to send Judicial Watch a detailed email “if you witness any suspicious activity at your polling place, have issues with your voting machine, or witness voter fraud or intimidation.” Judicial Watch, accessed [10/23/24, 10/23/24]

* YouTuber Steven Crowder touted a plan to have “boots on the ground” on Election Day because “this already is election theft,” saying there will be a “live electoral integrity map” where his audience can “see any shenanigans going on” in real time.Crowder claimed there will be “investigative journalism units and team leaders, managers in every major swing city.” Crowder also said that he would be “partnering” with True the Vote for “Election Night,” and claimed that they “will have tens of thousands of volunteers” combined “watching hundreds of key polling locations and ballot drop boxes around the country.” Media Matters, [9/23/24; Truth Social, 10/28/24]

• ## Right-wing figures are also encouraging people to monitor for noncitizens voting, or registering to vote

• • During a so-called election integrity call, election denier Cleta Mitchell called on MAGA activists to watch their local Department of Motor Vehicles for noncitizen voter registration and distribute her group’s materials on the ground.Mitchell said: “There are things you can do in your local communities. Watching at your DMVs, watching - going to your election board, asking your local election officials what are you doing to ensure that noncitizen are not getting registered to vote and getting — we've got sample resolutions. We've got signs, you can download and leaflets you could hand out.” Media Matters, [10/8/24]

• • On a Rumble live stream, Election Integrity Network leader Kerry Toloczko said that “we don't want noncitizen voting,” and she offered materials for right-wing activists who are planning to monitor for noncitizen voting at the local level.Toloczko, who has also appeared on Newsmax to push baseless claims of noncitizen voting, said that their activists are “everywhere” trying to “suppress the people who are trying to vote unlawfully,” asserting, “We have activists, grassroots activists, so we're handing these [signs] out in churches, in parking lots, in voting centers.” Media Matters, [10/17/24, 10/18/24]

• • Wisconsin-based talk radio host Vicki McKenna urged her listeners to go to polling locations and “stand with very large signs that say in Spanish, ‘Noncitizens are not permitted to vote in the state of Wisconsin.’” McKenna warned of noncitizens voting and complained that “they don’t want you in the field. They don’t want you participating. They don’t want you observing elections.” 1310 WIBA,*The Vicki McKenna Show*, [10/18/24]

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YouTube let right-wing figures undermine the 2024 election results even before any votes were cast

Media Matters found at least 22 right-wing channels on YouTube that pushed election misinformation from May through August, such as baselessly claiming the 2024 contest would be “rigged” against Trump

Written by Payton Armstrong, Jack Winstanley, Noah Dowe, Ben Van Bloem & Kayla Gogarty

Published 10/31/24 mma

After rolling back its election misinformation policy last year, YouTube allowed right-wing media figures to undermine confidence in the 2024 election results even before any votes were cast, with streamers asserting that “the only way this election can be won from the left is if it's stolen,” suggesting that “illegal ballots” might be “slipped in” in Pennsylvania, and claiming that Democrats are trying “to rig and steal the election” including with an “illegal alien push.”

In December 2020, after states certified their election results, YouTube began removing content with false claims that widespread fraud had changed the outcome of the election, but the platform reversed that policy in June 2023, saying that it would “stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections.” (The decision was cheered by right-wing media.)

Over the last year, right-wing creators have exploited YouTube’s policy rollback, especially in the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election. In July, for instance, Media Matters reported that after becoming co-chair of the Republican National Committee in March, Lara Trump repeatedly engaged in election denial on her show that streams on YouTube.

Right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder even acknowledged the policy change during an August stream on the platform, saying, “Here’s another way that they try to steal this election from you. And we’re allowed to say that on YouTube now, which is great.”

New Media Matters study finds hundreds of videos on YouTube with election misinformation

• In a new study, Media Matters reviewed YouTube content streamed or uploaded between May 1 and August 31 by 30 right-wing channels or channels that hosted notable right-wing figures. We found 286 videos — totaling at least 44 million views and including at least 93 monetized videos — that contained misinformation about the 2020, 2022, and/or 2024 elections.

According to our study, former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was the most prolific election misinformer, accounting for 77 of the 286 videos, and right-wing streamer Benny Johnson had the most videos that we observed with preroll ads.

We found that in the two months after WABC canceled Giuliani’s radio shows (May 10 through July 12), he relentlessly claimed on YouTube that the 2020 election was “stolen” and Democrats were “going to cheat” in the 2024 election. More details on these findings can be found here.

We also found Johnson pushed election misinformation in dozens of monetized YouTube videos from May through August. These videos — which each included preroll ads, paid promotions, and/or Super Chats — have earned millions of views. More details on these findings can be found here.

• ## On YouTube, right-wing figures are priming their audiences to doubt the 2024 election results if Trump loses

• In the months leading up to the 2024 election, conservative media figures on YouTube have feverishly prepared their audiences to doubt any result other than a Trump victory. Among the 30 channels we examined, we found at least 22 channels that have echoed false claims about the 2024 election, totaling at least 115 videos.

These claims included that the election process is “rigged” against Trump, that the legal cases against him constitute “election interference,” that Democrats want and are enabling noncitizens to vote in order to win the election, and that Kamala Harris was “illegally installed” as the Democratic nominee in a “coup” against Joe Biden.

• ## Right-wing figures portrayed the election process as “rigged” against Trump

• Ahead of the 2024 election, right-wing figures on YouTube have repeatedly suggested that the election will be “compromised” and Democrats will “cheat” and “resort to electoral dirty tricks,” including the use of alleged “illegal ballots.” Some figures, like Rudy Giuliani, have even continued to parrot baseless or debunked claims that the 2020 election was “fixed” and full of “outright cheating,” suggesting that “the fraud in the 2020 election has to be addressed if you don't want it to repeat itself in 2024.”

Some examples Media Matters identified include:

• • Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Jeremy Carl said he hoped Trump “takes no prisoners” because of “this system just being completely rigged against him in the context of the election and everything that’s going on.” On an episode of American Moment’s Moment of Truth podcast, Carl said, “We're going to have to do some incredibly forward things legally. We're going to need brave attorneys to say, ‘Yep, I’m good with that, that’s legal.’” YouTube, [5/13/24]

• • Salem Media’s Eric Metaxas said it was “very clear to me [the left] stole the last election.” Metaxas continued, “We need to be clear about this, that this is a wicked thing, and that they don't need to poll well if they know how to cheat, if they know how to game the system.” YouTube, [6/3/24]

• • Conservative streamer Benny Johnson suggested Democrats are “paying for votes with packs of cigarettes and welfare cards.” Johnson continued, “This is why I love the ‘too big to rig, too big to rig’ nomenclature of the Trump campaign this time around.” YouTube, [6/20/24]
• Video

Share

CitationFrom the June 20, 2024, video streamed on YouTube by Benny Johnson

• • Johnson also complained in June that Democrats can win Illinois only because the “hellscape city” of Chicago is a “rigged system.” Johnson: “There's your rigged system right there. How many of those people are actually voting, right? … How many of those people knew that they voted?” YouTube, [6/7/24]

• • Fox News host Greg Gutfeld suggested Democrats would “resort to electoral dirty tricks” with “the votes, legal or illegal,” admitting that he had “very little evidence on that, but that hasn’t stopped me before.” Co-host Jesse Watters added, “We have to win so big you can't rig.” YouTube, [5/13/24]

• • The Gateway Pundit’s Jordan Conradson interviewed a Trump rally attendee who implied “dead people voted for Biden” in 2020 and claimed Democrats “let all these migrants in to vote.” After Conradson suggested that “illegal immigrants flooding across the border” were “probably going to vote in this next election,” the interviewee responded, “They’re trying to get the Democratic vote, but it’s not going to work.” YouTube, [5/23/24]

• • Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton argued “the 2024 election has already been compromised” and announced plans by his organization to sue states in order to “overcome the election rigging.” In a speech delivered at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference, Fitton — who has repeatedly attempted to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election with baseless allegations of voter fraud tied to Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines — decried “counting votes of ballots that arrive after election day” and said the practice was “illegal.” YouTube, [6/26/24; Media Matters, 2/25/21]

* Donald Trump Jr.: “Democrats to me today could show up on the evening of November 5 with five billion ballots … and with a straight face, tell us it was a landslide in the freest and fairest election in the history of the world.” In an interview conducted at the Republican National Convention, Trump Jr. argued “there’s nothing they won’t do.” YouTube, [7/18/24]

• • Conservative attorney Harmeet Dhillon called on Republicans to “overwhelm the margin of chicanery, shenanigans, and even outright cheating that the Democrats did in 2020.” Dhillon, who leads Trump’s “election integrity” operation in Arizona, continued, “The Democrats are so confident of winning, they could put up any regime puppet and expect to win the election.” YouTube, [7/23/24; Axios, 10/9/24]

• Video

CitationFrom a July 23, 2024, video uploaded to YouTube by Just the News

• • Fox host Mark Levin said Democrats “will do anything for votes — imprison Trump, steal elections.” Speaking on his radio show which is also uploaded on YouTube, Levin alleged that Democrats would “change the electoral process” to get more votes. YouTube, [5/7/24]

• • Daily Wire host Michael Knowles accused “libs” of “doing everything they can to rig the election against Trump.” While discussing a new variant of COVID-19, Knowles asked, “Are the libs once again going to use COVID to shut down at least our country and then change all the election rules and rig the election for Joe Biden — again? Are they going to do that? They’re going to try.” YouTube, [5/14/24]

• • Knowles also claimed that “elections are rigged all the time” and argued “the people who oppose paper ballots want to rig the elections.” After the Baltimore City Council discovered a discrepancy “during a routine double check of results” which led to an overcount of 590 votes in a local race, Knowles stated: “The people who oppose paper ballots want to rig the elections. They want the elections to be riggable.” YouTube, [5/22/24; The Baltimore Sun, 5/17/24]

• • PBD Podcast co-host Vincent Oshana fearmongered that Biden would institute martial law in order to “shut down the election if they can.” Oshana: “I think this is one of their tactics if their cheating doesn't work. … I know they're going to try to do it because, obviously, we're seeing Trump as the frontrunner. Without a shadow of a doubt he's going to win unless something nefarious happens.” YouTube, [7/9/24; Media Matters, 5/13/24]

• • On the PBD Podcast, podcaster Bret Weinstein said Democrats “cheat in every conceivable way” and called to “defeat them so decisively that we get past the cheat margin.” Weinstein also declared, “Frankly, I don’t trust them. They cheat in every conceivable way that we can see, right? … And the question is, how far does that go? Do we really believe the people who would cheat in every conceivable way that we can see won’t cheat in ways that we can’t see? I find that unlikely.” YouTube, [8/23/24]

• • In an apparent attack on the owner of WABC, who canceled Rudy Giuliani’s radio show in May, Giuliani suggested it's “more likely” Democrats “cheat in 2024” if “we are submitted to the dictate of John Catsimatidis.” Giuliani also asked, “Isn't it much more likely they won't cheat if their prior cheating is laid out and they end this protection they're getting for what they did in 2020, which nobody else would get other than crooked Biden Democrats?” YouTube, [5/13/24]

• • Giuliani called on his audience to watch his show on YouTube to “send a message to WABC that you want news that comes out about the 2020 election because it might help prevent cheating in the 2024 election.” Giuliani also listed supposed examples of fraud, including “news like 375,000 ballots are missing in Georgia, news like 3,000 ballots were discovered double-counted.” Notably, these claims have been debunked by elections officials, as well as news outlets. YouTube, [5/20/24; USA Today, 5/23/24; The Associated Press, 11/28/23]

• • Giuliani argued that “if we get cowered into not talking about the 2020 election, they're going to feel much more empowered to cheat heavily in 2024.” Giuliani went on to declare that Democrats are “going to cheat in 2024” because “Democrats have probably cheated in every election since Boss Tweed.” He added, “It's a crooked party; crooked parties cheat.” YouTube, [5/27/24]

• • Giuliani baselessly claimed that “the capacity for cheating is well known” in Arizona. The comments came as Giuliani celebrated that Trump was leading then-candidate Biden in Arizona polls. YouTube, [6/10/24]

• • Giuliani argued that “the fraud in the 2020 election has to be addressed if you don’t want it to repeat itself in 2024.” Giuliani added, “We can’t be stopped from talking about it, as, you know, they try to do with me.” YouTube, [6/12/24]

• • Giuliani baselessly claimed Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro “helped to steal the 2020 election.” Giuliani argued, “It’s Democrat crooked Philadelphia and Pittsburgh where the election was fixed.” YouTube, [7/22/24]

• • Giuliani spokesperson Ted Goodman argued Democrats have “been cheating every election … going back to 1960.” Goodman continued, “Every election we’ve won, we beat the cheat.” YouTube, [8/12/24]

• • Giuliani also said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had “already committed election fraud in the 2024 election … a continuation of what she did in 2020, in trying to fix the election of 2020.” Giuliani argued Benson had “already committed election fraud in the 2024 election with regard to taking Trump off the ballot,” even though Benson herself clearly articulated her opposition to such a measure in 2023. YouTube, [8/29/24; The Washington Post, 9/13/23]

• • Right-wing radio host Steve Deace said Democrats would be “dropping ballots” and “bussing people in … to keep the spigot going until they get what they want” on Election Day. Deace continued, “All they’re trying to do is make her credible enough so they can fortify this thing at the end here.” YouTube, [7/24/24]

• • Deace also alleged that the Democrats’ “game plan” is to get polls “within their narrative margin to justify cheating.” Deace explained, “Biden is not gone, OK, because they couldn't get the votes they wanted, but because no one was going to buy that he could get the votes that they got.” YouTube, [8/28/24]

• • Right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder: “The only way this election can be won from the left is if it's stolen.” He prefaced the claim by saying, “I don't care if we're not on YouTube anymore.” Crowder, who also streams on Rumble, was demonetized on YouTube in 2021, meaning he has seemingly been unable to earn ad revenue from his streams on the platform. YouTube, [7/18/24; The Nation, 7/11/23; The Verge, 3/30/21]

• Video

CitationFrom a July 18, 2024, video streamed on YouTube by StevenCrowder

• • Crowder also announced plans to have “boots on the ground” on Election Day because “this already is election theft.” During the stream, Crowder called on viewers to “help out” if they are in any of several listed cities, stating that they would be “compensated.” YouTube, [8/12/24]

• • While promoting his Election Day plans, Crowder declared that “the steal is already taking place” and said he was “willing to bet that YouTube is going to suspend us.” Crowder also suggested that his “electoral integrity map” would mean “no more Arizonas, no more pipes bursting in the middle of the night with no substantiation and they change the story the next day.” YouTube, [8/14/24]

• • Lara Trump claimed that “as the co-chair” of the Republican National Committee, she was “well aware of all the ways that they are trying to sway the election and rig it in every single state.” Trump continued, “The problem is that the Democrats want to make it easier to cheat and harder to vote for people, and we’re trying to do the opposite.” YouTube, [6/4/24]

• • In another apparent attack on Democrats, Lara Trump declared: “We don't cheat at the ballot box. We don't do crazy things with drop boxes all over the country. We don't allow illegals to vote.” YouTube, [6/5/24]

• • On Tucker Carlson’s show, The Blaze’s Jason Whitlock accused California of “manipulat[ing] voting,” and Carlson claimed Kamala Harris “didn’t win any elections” and was “chosen by the unions in California and installed.” Carlson also said, “There is no democracy in California. It’s fake.” Whitlock added that “they have a system in place to manipulate voting and all that.” YouTube, [8/23/24]

• ## Right-wing figures called the multiple legal cases against Trump “election interference led by Joe Biden”

• Several right-wing pundits made efforts to repeatedly claim that the legal cases against Trump are really “lawfare” or “election interference” intended to tarnish his image and overwhelm his supporters. Mike Davis, a conservative lawyer and frequent guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room, was especially prolific in blaming these cases directly on the supposed political strategy of Biden and other Democrats.

Trump has faced four criminal cases. In May, a jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records after the presentation of extensive dockets of evidence detailing many of his violations of New York law. In the federal election subversion case, special counsel Jack Smith recently released documents revealing some of the evidence against Trump. In the other cases, the evidence related to the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has been well documented, and the Georgia indictment against Trump relied at least partially on public accounts of Trump asking Gov. Brian Kemp to “find 11,780 votes.”

Some examples Media Matters identified include:

• • Appearing on The Benny Show in May, Article III Project founder and Trump ally Mike Davis claimed that Trump’s criminal hush money trial was “obviously Democrat lawfare and election interference.” In another appearance, Davis promised “retribution” if Trump won in November, saying, “We are going to crush you after January 20, 2025, after what you've done. … There is absolutely going to be retribution.” YouTube, [5/13/24, 5/31/24]

• • During an interview uploaded to Article III Project’s YouTube page, Davis called for Trump to “ensure there are severe legal, financial, and political consequences to this Republic ending lawfare and election interference led by Joe Biden.” He later called for revenge for the legal cases against Trump and said “we need to give them retribution.” YouTube, [5/22/24, 7/3/24]

• Video

CitationFrom a May 22, 2024, video uploaded to YouTube by The Article III Project

• • On YouTube, Davis repeatedly attacked the legal cases against Trump, many times asserting that they were “lawfare” and a form of “election interference.” On May 30, Davis complained: “This is lawfare, this is election interference, this is a criminal conspiracy to violate the … constitutional rights of Trump.” In another video, Davis also referenced the cases, criticizing “this Biden Democrat lawfare and election interference on many different fronts, the four criminal indictments” as a “house of cards.” YouTube, [5/30/24, 7/3/24]

• • Davis claimed prosecutions were “blatant lawfare and election interference.” He argued that the cases were “unconstitutional” and “part of the Democrats’ criminal conspiracy against President Trump.” In a later appearance, he said that Democrats had “crossed the Rubicon.” YouTube, [5/20/24, 6/7/24]

• • Davis criticized “unprecedented republic-ending lawfare and election interference by President Biden and his attorney general, Merrick Garland.” Davis again blamed Biden for having “brought our country to the brink with this republic-ending lawfare and election interference” in a later appearance. YouTube, [7/15/24, 7/17/24]

• • Davis also criticized Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing Trump’s hush money case, and directly accused him of election interference. “He set the sentencing hearing for like four days before the Republican National Convention starts,” Davis complained, calling it “obvious election interference by this judge — continued election interference by this judge.” In a later appearance, Davis called Merchan “the Forrest Gump of this Biden-Democrat lawfare against President Trump.” YouTube, [6/4/24, 6/10/24]

• • In one appearance, Davis called for Merchan, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and other “bad actors” to be arrested and charged with “criminal conspiracy,” calling the hush money case against Trump “blatant Biden-Democrat lawfare and election interference.” “Frankly, after January 20, 2025, the Trump 47 Justice Department should arrest and charge Judge Merchan and Alvin Bragg ... and all these bad actors, charge them with criminal conspiracy.” YouTube, [6/14/24]

• Video

CitationFrom a June 14, 2024, video uploaded to YouTube by The Article III Project

• • Davis attacked DOJ officials and claimed they were supporting “republic-ending lawfare and election interference” and “political persecution.”He complained that “all of this unprecedented, republic-ending lawfare and election interference by President Biden and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, and their special counsel, Jack Smith, … this is political persecution.” Davis later said, “This is obviously election interference, continued Biden and Kamala lawfare,” claiming, “Jack Smith once again is ignoring the law.” YouTube, [7/15/24, 8/28/24]

• • On PBD Podcast, Tom Fitton declared that “the election already is compromised” because of Trump’s criminal trials. Fitton added, “If Trump loses, many people are rightly going to say, well, they had their thumb on the scale, so it's no surprise.” YouTube, [6/7/24; Media Matters, 5/13/24]

• • Trump campaign fundraiser and political adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle claimed the cases against Trump are simply “efforts to undermine election integrity.” Guilfoyle added that “all these people are working together in concert to try to undermine American elections, to try to defeat Donald Trump because they don't want to face him at the ballot box, and bankrolling these efforts — this lawfare against him.” YouTube, [5/9/24]

• • On NTD News, former Trump national security adviser Kash Patel said the guilty verdicts in Trump’s hush money trial are part of a “system of rigged election-interfering justice.” “And that is a loss for the world, not just America,” Patel said. “So we’ve got to get behind Donald Trump's movement, and make sure that we can fix this system of rigged, election-interfering justice.” YouTube, [5/30/24]

• • Just the News, No Noise host Amanda Head declared that the prosecutions against Trump were “election interference.” YouTube, [7/10/24]

• • Rudy Giuliani argued that Trump’s New York hush money trial was “a political prosecution intended for the purpose of rigging the 2024 election.” He also claimed “these are the kinds of verdicts that occur in dictatorships and Third World and banana republic governments.” YouTube, [5/30/24]

• • Giuliani directly attacked the courts and prosecutors in Trump’s cases, claiming that “they're working on a massive election interference conspiracy, and they're one part of it.” YouTube, [6/7/24]

• • Gateway Pundit host Elijah Schaffer claimed that the criminal prosecutions against Trump are “lawfare cases” and “the goal is to try to get him removed off the ballot or to put him in a place where he can't run — like, kill him.” YouTube, [6/6/24]

• ## Right-wing figures claimed that Democrats want — or are enabling — noncitizens to vote so they’ll win the election

• Several right-wing media figures and outlets on YouTube peddled baseless claims that the Democratic Party is actively courting noncitizens and allowing them into the country for the purpose of ensuring a “permanent Democrat majority.” Many of these claims, including that Democrats are “fine with the possibility of voter fraud” or that they “just don't want a fair and free election,” were made during discussions of the SAVE Act, which is Republican-championed legislation aimed at making it illegal for noncitizens to vote, even though noncitizen voting is already illegal and extremely rare.

Some examples Media Matters identified include:

• • In a June 17 video, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro suggested that Democrats who oppose the SAVE Act are “fine with the possibility of voter fraud.” Shapiro said: “Why Democrats would oppose this is absolutely beyond me. Unless they are very, very much fine with the possibility of people not actually showing ID to vote. Which suggests they are fine with the possibility of voter fraud.” YouTube, [6/17/24]

• • In a video posted in August, Shapiro characterized Democrats’ voting rights initiatives as “full-scale national ballot harvesting.” He stated, “So all of the talk about how, ‘No, don't worry. Illegal immigration, that's never going to be a matter of voting or demography or anything like that.’ Well, then why are Democrats so hellfire bent on actually amnesty-ing 10 to 15 million people? They've already said they're going to do this, by the way. This is their comprehensive immigration reform plan, a pathway to citizenship, by which they mean everybody here illegally gets citizenship in the hopes that they will all vote Democrat.” YouTube, [8/21/24]

• • Benny Johnson claimed opponents of the SAVE Act “want illegal criminal aliens to vote in our election.” YouTube, [7/11/24]

• • Johnson also claimed in a monetized video that “alarming numbers of people” should not be on voter rolls, including “criminal aliens.” Johnson speculated that “the steal is on to actually get people to deliver ballots, early ballots, and they're not American citizens,” and he asked Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump how she would “stop that.” YouTube, [8/19/24, 8/19/24]
• Video

CitationFrom an August 19, 2024, video streamed on YouTube by Benny Johnson

• • In another stream, Johnson claimed that Democrats have a “goal of bringing in 30 million criminal aliens” in order to ensure a Democrat victory. Johnson claimed, “Joe Biden only ‘won’ the election by 40,000-some-odd votes. So if you bring in 30 million new people, you're gonna be able to really scrape off the top the margins that you need forever to beat Republicans forever. Right? And we've already seen this with Kamala Harris, fake crowds, fake support, fake election, fake influencers, and a fake campaign.” YouTube, [8/23/24]

• • Johnson also questioned why Biden and Harris haven’t “closed the border,” saying “it’s obvious” and that “they want to horse trade amnesty through Congress” to ultimately get “30 million new Democrat voters and a permanent Democrat majority forever.” Johnson described a supposed plan to “rachet up the social pressure, rachet up the pain for the actual citizens of the country, until people just give in” to amnesty and ultimately give Democrats 30 million new voters. YouTube, [8/30/24]

• • In an interview streamed on YouTube, Project 2025 adviser and former Trump personal aide John McEntee claimed that Democrats “definitely want” noncitizens to vote. McEntee said: “Democrats will say, ‘Well, illegals can't vote.’ Like, for sure some do and even if they don't know they are, people are filling out the ballots.” YouTube, [5/1/24; Media Matters, 2/16/24]

• • In an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity posted to YouTube, former Trump adviser Stephen Miller claimed that the Biden administration is making “a conscious choice to let illegal aliens vote.” YouTube, [7/11/24]

• • Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich claimed during an appearance on Hannity that was posted to YouTube that Harris wants “to have millions of immigrants come in illegally, vote illegally.” YouTube, [7/25/24]

• • In a video uploaded to Judicial Watch’s account, president Tom Fitton stated that “of course, they're [noncitizens] gonna be voting in elections.” Fitton said that “we have the issue of noncitizens voting — or the potential of noncitizens voting.” He also said that the law prevents it, “but there’s no check. … Of course they’re gonna be voting in elections.” He also called the current voter registration system “fraud waiting to happen,” adding that “that's one danger to our democracy with the presence of tens of millions of foreign nationals here in the United States.” YouTube, [5/15/24]

• • In another video, Fitton claimed that Democrats “want to make it easier for noncitizens to illegally vote in elections, generally, and they want, generally, noncitizens in principle to vote in all elections.” Fitton also claimed that votes from noncitizens are “essentially negating the votes of citizens.” YouTube, [7/17/24]

• • Fitton also stated during an appearance on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria, which was uploaded to YouTube, that “the Democrat-controlled administration is knowingly offering the opportunity to vote to these illegal migrants.” Fitton added that, “if you're registered to vote, even a voter ID isn't gonna stop you from voting because many aliens, both illegal and legal, have the necessary documents to show their ID in order to vote. So the more people you have here who are noncitizens, because we have virtually no effective checks in place, the increased likelihood of them voting. And a major study showed about 80% of aliens who vote tend to vote Democrat.” YouTube, [7/29/24]

• • On Just the News, No Noise, conservative lawyer and former assistant secretary of state Robert Charles, claimed that the Biden administration was “pulling illegals into this country as fast as they can pull them in, dispatching them at night to places like Portland, Maine, and middle of Montana, and trying to turn red states purple and then blue with these illegal votes.” Charles added, “The bottom line is: This is not just a random ‘might be’; this is a real thing. It is happening.” YouTube, [6/13/24]

• • Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform initiative and a Project 2025 contributor, claimed on Just the News, No Noise that “the evidence is clear” that noncitizens are voting. Von Spakovsky added, “It tells you something that, for example, on the alien voting issue, only five Democrats supported a bill to do something as simple as telling states: verify citizenship.” YouTube, [7/11/24; The Guardian, 7/10/24]
• Video

CitationFrom a July 11, 2024, video streamed on YouTube by Just the News

• • Right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec called on Republicans to “start gumming up the works” with lawsuits because of potential “illegal ballots” from noncitizens in Pennsylvania. After Real America’s Voice host Brian Glenn fearmongered about “how many illegals are registered to vote in this election,” Posobiec said, “You need to start gumming up the works because there’s no question that if those illegal ballots are slipped in, once they come out of those envelopes, we know that it is going to be counted as a vote for Joe Biden or, excuse me, Kamala Harris.” YouTube, [7/31/24]

• • Article III Project founder Mike Davis, appearing on Just the News, No Noise, claimed that “the next thing they're going to do is they're going to try to rig and steal the election … by registering illegal immigrants and other noncitizens to vote and make it very hard to get those illegal immigrants and other noncitizens off the rolls before November 5.” YouTube, [8/17/24; Media Matters, 2/29/24]

• • The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles claimed that the Biden administration has “imported tens of millions of illegal aliens” in an attempt to “rig the elections.” Knowles claimed, “We've seen record numbers of them come into the country. They're rolling out the red carpet for them. They're releasing them into the country. They're flying them to the center of the country in some cases, into crucial areas. Why are they doing that? They're doing that to rig the elections.” He also suggested that, short of winning the election, Democrats are “doing that to increase the population in their own states because seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned not by the number of citizens but just by the number of people.” YouTube, [7/11/24]

• • On PBD Podcast, Christina Bobb, who is senior counsel to the Republican National Committee’s election integrity team, claimed that Democrats are making an “illegal alien push” to win the 2024 election. Bobb claimed, “We've got information that leads me to believe that they are trying to register a lot of these people coming across the border to vote in all 50 states.” She also suggested that this was being done to supplement the Democrats supposed election fraud practices from 2020, adding, “I don't think they're shying away from 2020 with the mail-in ballots and, you know, don't go to polls, mail everything in. They're trying to play the same game that they played in 2020, but it's not gonna be as effective, and it's not gonna have near the impact. So they're trying to supplement it.” YouTube, [6/3/24; The Washington Post, 4/26/24; Media Matters, 5/13/24]

• • In a June 4 video posted to YouTube, Giuliani baselessly suggested that there were “ineligible voters” on the rolls in Arizona in 2020 and 2022. Giuliani claimed that “people move and they stay registered there for 10, 12 years. Why? So the crooked Democratic Party can vote them, and they hook them up with a phony registration. And they did it enough to turn around the election of 2020 and get the electoral votes in Arizona.” YouTube, [6/4/24]

• • In a separate July 11 stream, Giuliani suggested that noncitizens would vote in the 2024 election and that some Democrats “believe that noncitizens should vote.” During a monetized stream, Giuliani said: “198 Democrats in the House of Representatives believe that noncitizens should vote in your elections, and you’re going to vote for them? What, do you belong to some other country? I would think, Republican or Democrat, we should all agree that in order to vote you got to have a stake in the country, which is citizen.” YouTube, [7/11/24, accessed 7/24/24]

• • During an episode of Louder with Crowder streamed on YouTube, Steven Crowder claimed that Biden “cannot deport these people because he depends on them for votes.” YouTube, [5/7/24; Mashable, 5/19/23]

• • Without evidence, Lara Trump suggested that Democrats “cheat at the ballot box,” “do crazy things with drop boxes,” and “allow illegals to vote.” YouTube, [6/5/24]
• Video file

Video

CitationFrom a June 5, 2024, video uploaded to YouTube by The Right View with Lara Trump

• • Lara Trump pushed a conspiracy theory that Biden “is obviously banking on illegals voting in this election to get him over the line.” Echoing the white nationalist “great replacement” theory, Trump said it’s “pretty clear” that Biden is allowing migrants to cross the border to vote for him for president, adding, “That’s the whole goal.” YouTube, [5/1/24; Media Matters, 1/12/24]

• • On Timcast IRL, former Trump adviser Kash Patel claimed that Democrats are planning to “inject another rig job into an election by allowing, what is it, 10-plus million people so far. Half of them are getting voter IDs.” YouTube, [5/27/24]

• • In a segment of his show Tucker Carlson Uncensored posted to YouTube, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed that “foreigners” were “a brand-new electorate” for Democrats. Carlson added, “It's illegal, you say, for illegal aliens to vote in a federal election. Well, actually, it's not illegal, it turns out.” YouTube, [5/7/24]

• • Tucker Carlson, while interviewing Ben Carson, who served as secretary of housing and urban development under Trump, asked if “letting in tens of millions of people illegally” will impact the election, to which Carson responded, “That's the whole purpose of it.” Carlson also remarked that, “I don’t think we’re allowed to talk about voter fraud on YouTube, which tells you that it’s real.” YouTube, [7/25/24]

• Video

CitationFrom a July 25, 2024, video uploaded to YouTube by Tucker Carlson

• ## Right-wing personalities said Harris is “illegitimate” as the Democratic nominee over Biden

• Right-wing media figures claimed that Harris is not the legitimate Democratic nominee for president, often using this allegation to suggest that Democrats will “cheat” in the general election. Multiple election law experts have debunked this point — as Biden was not yet the official nominee, his decision to withdraw from the race weeks before he was expected to be nominated at the DNC “does not present any legal or constitutional problems,” according to PolitiFact.

Some examples Media Matters identified include:

• • Benny Johnson insisted that Democrats “cheated” by having Harris “illegally installed” as their presidential nominee, arguing: “They're hoping that the sugar high is enough to, like, get them within the margin of fraud, right? And then shenanigans.” YouTube, [8/13/24]

• • Johnson again claimed that “Democrats cheated” by nominating Harris, calling her “illegitimate.” “We have the candidate that actually has been elected, right?” Johnson said. “That's a real candidate. People actually voted for them. They didn't cheat — we didn't cheat with Trump. Democrats cheated. They knew they were going to lose, so they changed the player in spite of 15 million votes. It's illegitimate. Kamala Harris is illegitimate. Don’t care what you do, that’s the truth.” YouTube, [8/15/24]

• • Mark Levin claimed Democrats “stole the election from their own primary voters and they're going to install somebody who hasn't gotten a single delegate on her own.” YouTube, [7/22/24]

• • Louder with Crowder host Steven Crowder suggested Democrats had planned to “install somebody, coronate Kamala Harris even though she didn’t receive any votes,” and he insisted that Democrats would cheat in the election. Crowder said: “Biden's fine until the polls show Americans don't believe it. Cheat, install somebody, coronate Kamala Harris even though she didn't receive any votes. It's going to be the same thing right now. Lie, lie, lie, lie. ... And when it doesn't work, cheat. That's what they're going to do in the election.” YouTube, [8/30/24]

• • Tucker Carlson called Harris’ nomination a “coup” against Biden. Carlson said: “They just prosecuted a coup against a sitting supposedly elected president who got, like, several billion votes, they've told us for the past four years. And they just took him out because they didn't like his polling.” YouTube, [7/30/24]

===

fitton trying to get names targets doj fbi retaliate purge

https://www.alternet.org/trump-fani-willis-2660722042/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/another-far-right-group-was-posting-conspiracy-theories-about-voter-roll-program-as-red-states-cut-ties

tpm 4 23

as Republican-led states pull out of a multistate voter roll program in response to Gateway Pundit-pushed conspiracy theories about the organization, a conservative nonprofit was apparently also part of fanning the flames.

Judicial Watch, a far-right legal advocacy group, published a white paper in early March boosting erroneous claims about the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a bipartisan program designed to maintain voter rolls across state lines. 

The paper, which the non-profit reupped on their website Friday, sought to legitimize debunked claims made by the far-right website Gateway Pundit last year, which falsely argued that ERIC was founded by “left-leaning attorney David Becker” and funded by George Soros.

Judicial Watch claims that Becker had a “history of left-wing activism and unethical conduct,” and that ERIC “shares the vast amount of sensitive personal data it receives from member states with another liberal non-profit, the Center for Election Innovation and Research,” which they linked to the “Zuckerbucks” controversy, another election-related conspiracy theory.

Becker did help a handful of states launch the non-partisan program with a group called the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2012, but Soros never directly contributed to ERIC.Becker has sat on ERIC’s board as a non-voting ex-officio member since its founding, but on March 14 he announced that he would be vacating the position due to the conspiracy theories about his role that were being pushed by the right-wing media.

The Judicial Watch report was originally published on March 9, three days after Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) announced that his state would be withdrawing from the program alongside Missouri and West Virginia. That afternoon, former president Donald Trump attacked ERIC on Truth Social as well:

“All Republican Governors should immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that ‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up,” he wrote. “It’s a fools game for Republicans…”

On March 10, Texas officials also signaled their interest in leaving the program, and they’ve since drawn up legislation to do so. Ohio and Iowa announced their departures on March 17.

ERIC executive director Shane Hamlin posted an open letter on March 2 trying to bat down misinformation about the program, but it didn’t stop what would become a wave of red state officials cutting ties with the program.

mma 1 23 not twt

Right-wing media just can’t seem to quit old-school climate change denial.

Even as fossil fuel companies moved away from directly questioning established science in their marketing in favor of more subtle forms of climate delay and greenwashing, media influencers on the right repeatedly suggested that climate change is a fake crisis manufactured by global elites, using the energy crisis, extreme weather events, and a general mistrust of our institutions to make the case for climate change denial.

The war in Ukraine was convenient for climate change deniers

As gas prices skyrocketed, in part due to the global energy disruption resulting from the war in Ukraine, and American families started to become frustrated, right-wing media took the opportunity to blame climate policies. They insisted that high prices were being caused by a fake crisis manufactured by the government, arguing that climate change was a hoax from the beginning.

AnOctober 6 Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that “the White House blames the industry for high gas prices while it does everything it can to make drilling more difficult and financially risky.”

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, Donald Trump went on Fox Business’s Mornings with Maria on March 2 and called climate change a hoax while discussing the Biden administration's energy policy, saying that “this climate situation is killing our country.”

He did the same thing in a March 21 segment of Fox Business’s Varney & Co, saying what the left does “is a climate hoax.” When asked by host Stuart Varney whether climate change is caused by human activity, Trump responded: “In my opinion, you have a thing called weather, and you go up and you go down. If you look into the 1920s, they were talking about global freezing. … The climate’s always been changing,” he continued.

Media Matters documented ample disinformation about gas prices and theKeystone XL pipeline extension during that period. Some right-wing media influencers claimed the Biden administration was adding insult to injury by allegedly driving high gas prices and lying to Americans about what could be done to fix the situation in order to carry out its agenda.

Fossil fuel shill Daniel Turner of Power the Future wrote on April 18, “There is no climate crisis and oil is back to $110 because everything@JoeBiden says is a lie.”

Kurt Schlichter, a Townhall columnist and podcast host, alleged that Biden was more committed to “the idiotic members of the climate change hoax cult” than he was to lowering gas prices for families.

Schlichter has been a loud and consistent voice for climate change denial. But for someone who believes it doesn’t exist, he certainly spent a lot of time obsessing over it in 2022. He tweeted “climate change is a hoax” or similar statements at least 145 times in 2022, or an average of nearly three times per week, and penned op-eds like “Don’t Let Them Reset Society To Make You Into a Bug-Eating Serf” and “Climate Hoax Hacks Love Putin” in which he claimed that “you cannot claim to both oppose Putin and fight global warming.”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton was also an influential Twitter climate misinformer in 2022, voicing opposition to climate policy such as the Inflation Reduction Act, and posting climate skeptic and denialist content. “Taxes on energy, subsidies for favored corporations, dangerous drug price controls will increase inflation. And -- Fact check: There is no ‘climate crisis,’” he tweeted onJuly 28.

Judicial Watch is a member of the State Policy Network, which has deep ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Koch-funded lobbying group that has most recently been working to punish fossil fuel divestment. When Biden was considering declaring a climate emergency in July, Fitton wrote, “There obviously is no ‘climate emergency’-- for Biden to dictate otherwise is a desperate abuse of power.”

The right turned reporting on natural disasters into “climate alarmism”

Last year, we clearly saw the impacts of major climate-fueled extreme weather events at home and around the world: Hurricanes Ian and Fiona, a heat wave and drought in Europe, China, and the American West, and massive flooding in Pakistan. As of October, according to insurance broker Aon, there had been 29 billion-dollar disasters in 2022. Additionally, according to the European Union’s statistics office Eurostat, the EU experienced 53,000 more deaths in July compared with that month’s averages for 2016-2019. 

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, which pummeled Florida and South Carolina in late September,Fox News’ Tucker Carlson implied that humans cannot influence weather events because “they’re called natural disasters. … They’re products of nature. God’s in charge.” His guest Candace Owens, who has a history of climate change denial, reiterated that climate change does not exist because “if there was no human beings that walked the face of the planet, there would continue to be hurricanes, like there would continue to be blizzards, and like there would continue to be tornadoes.”

Carlson responded to natural disasters with climate change denial on more than one occasion. On July 20, he devoted a monologue to undermining the existence of climate change, reducing climate predictions to: “It’s gonna be hot and then it’s gonna rain hard.”

“No one really believes in global warming,” he continued, “and that’s why all of the liberals in the United States live on the coasts – because they don’t believe it. That’s why many of them fly private, because the entire theory is absurd and they know it. … The whole thing is a joke.”

The day before, onJuly 19, Fox News host Dan Bongino questioned whether the planet is getting warmer and whether humanity played a role in it, asking: “What kind of a dunce believes that? Come on. Is it [the planet] getting warmer? The answer is maybe. … The question isn’t is it getting warmer; the question is what’s human beings' role in it.”

Even in the absence of an extreme weather event, right-wing media regularly dismissed and challenged the scientific consensus that warming is making these types of events more severe.

On an October 11 segment of The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham brought on climate change denier Tom Harris to falsely claim that the science isn’t settled: “The real underlying thing is that there is no climate crisis. … It's all based on models that don't work. … In fact, we don't even know whether it's going to be warm or cool in the future. … The only sensible approach is to get ready for it, to make our infrastructure hardened, to use solid, dependable sources of energy like coal.”

The “Great Reset” was a magnet for climate skepticism

Also in 2022, some right-wing media framed climate change as a hoax orchestrated by elites to implement the “Great Reset,” using climate policies and other measures to assert dominance and control over the general population.

These ideas got attention in July, when right-wing media attempted to blame a series of complex global conflicts and unrest on climate policy, and in November as the global community gathered in Egypt to negotiate climate action.

Former Australian journalist and key Twitter climate denial amplifier Peter Clackattacked plans made during the conference to provide financial climate support for developing nations, tweeting, “This is the reality of the Great Reset. … COP27 has approved - without dissent - reparations starting at $2 trillion because of climate-caused damage. There is none.”

On a December 12 segment of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson and meteorologist Joe Bastardihad a nearly unintelligible conversation packed with climate change denial, where Bastardi offered that climate advocates might not want to ban private air travel because “they’ve all got climate vaccines. We don't know about them, but unlike the covid vaccine, they actually work.”

Another cockamamie theory, according to Bastardi, is that climate advocates are trying to pollute the air as much as possible so that they can have an excuse to prevent others from using transportation. Bastardi claimed that another option is that “it's a phony climate war, it's fraudulent,” and it “has nothing to do with CO2.”

Though not explicitly mentioned, these accusations are consistent with the Great Reset narrative of elites controlling the masses through climate and public health policy. Carlson posited earlier in the segment, “Could it be that the climate movement is really about creating a permanent caste system where the people at the top of society, the Brahmins, can do literally whatever they want?”

Right-wing journalist Jordan Schachtel mentioned the Great Reset while celebrating Twitter’s change in ownership, tweeting, “Twitter will now become the network through which we utterly destroy the forces of The Great Reset. … This is why the power-drunk covid addicts, climate hoaxers, commies, etc are furious today.”

On the September 12 edition of Eric Bolling The Balance, host Eric Bolling encapsulated the right’s fearmongering about the Great Reset, claiming that climate change is a hoax being used “in order to make people fear the end of the world, convince us to change everything. They want to control us forever and ever.”

Climate contrarians lashed out against so-called censorship

Sometimes, climate change denial was just a drumbeat regardless of current events. Prominent right-wing culture warrior influencers used climate change denial without any context as part of their rotating script attacking different “liberal” beliefs or simply as a protest against what they view as censorship.

For example, after Twitter initially accepted  Elon Musk’s acquisition offer onApril 25, right-wing contrarians and other influencers were seemingly emboldened to “test” the new environment by making statements that might reasonably be labeled as misinformation or hate speech under previous management. This occured in the days following Musk’s takeover of the platform on October 27 as well, with some tweets garnering tens of thousands of engagements.

[twt]

former Daily Wirecontributor Greg Price and right-wing Twitter troll and self-described political commentator Gunther Eagleman repeatedly pushed climate change misinformation on Twitter in 2022, along with a plethora of other uncouth and conspiratorial statements. Eagleman tweeted about climate change being a hoax, scam, or similar statements 48 times this year.

[twt]

despite right-wing media’s repeated claims that climate change is a hoax, it was among the top voter concerns during the recent 2022 midterm elections, suggesting climate change denial is a losing argument.However, as the phenomenon ramps up on Twitter and “free speech” continues to be a major point of contention in the culture wars, right-wing media may be empowered to continue pushing these types of disinformation in 2023.

Methodology ...

rww 12 22

House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection released a 150-page summary of its findings and voted Monday to send the Justice Department criminal referrals for former President Donald Trump and others who assisted his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Right-wing political groups and leaders generally responded either by ignoring the historic action altogether or by dismissing it as a partisan move without engaging substantively with the committee’s extensively documented findings.

Far-right activist Ali Alexander, who was a leader of the so-called “Stop the Steal” effort to overturn the 2020 election and keep Trump in power, called the committee’s criminal referrals “a coup against the voters.” Alexander, who participated in the recent disastrous Kanye West and Nick Fuentes appearance on Alex Jones’ show that turned into a festival of praise for Adolph Hitler, also released a statement purportedly on behalf of “Team Ye,” accusing Democrats and the “Republican Establishment” of working together “to rig our GOP primary or choose which candidates can be in the ballot before the American Voter.”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton took to Twitter to charge that “’January 6’ is all about Biden/Left seeking to suppress/jail political opponents who blow the whistle on their election misconduct — and suppressing political opponents in 2024…” Fitton shared a video of himself claiming that “The left has decided that if you are challenging results they like in elections, you’re breaking the law and you should be jailed and prosecuted.”

Fitton also retweeted Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Jeremy Carl’s suggestion that the threat to democracy was somehow not Trump’s effort to overthrow the election or the violent effort to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, but the committee’s investigation: “A completely partisan House panel is trying to work hand-in-glove with a completely partisan DOJ to bring criminal charges against the previous U.S. President. If you still think we live in a functional democracy you need to wake up and realize what time it is.”

Former Trump attorney and self-styled “America’s lawyer” Jenna Ellis claimed, “It’s all a political pretext with zero basis in fact or law”—a ridiculous statement given the committee’s meticulous gathering of evidence, including testimony from many Trump administration officials.

Not to be outdone, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene dismissed the House committee as “communist.”

Writing in his daily email newsletter, longtime religious-right activist Gary Bauercalled the committee a “kangaroo court” and referred to the criminal referrals as outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “seeking to extract one last act of revenge against Donald Trump.” Bauer was similarly grumpy about the committee referring four Republican congressmen to the House ethics committee for refusing to comply with committee subpoenas. Bauer didn’t defend their defiance of the law but railed against what he called a “despicable precedent established by petulant progressives.”

Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec greeted the conclusion of the committee’s final public meeting with a message on Telegram: “Bring it, demons.” Posobiec didn’t pass up the chance to raise money, urging his readers Monday night to buy Christmas presents from MyPillow using a code that would presumably give Posobiec a cut: “Jan 6 wasn’t an insurrection to overthrow the govt but promocode Poso is an insurrection to overthrow prices this Christmas!”

The committee is reportedly set to release a massive amount of additional documentation Wednesday.

Tags: Ali Alexander Gary Bauer Jack Posobiec Jenna Ellis Marjorie Taylor Greene Tom Fitton Capitol Insurrection House select committee on Jan. 6 Jan. 6 Judicial Watch

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-jan-6-committee-exposes-how-trump-fomented-the-capitol-insurrection-every-step-of-the-way/

...Lofgen reminded the American public that Trump had been told repeatedly that he should not declare victory, that his election conspiracy theories were baseless, and that he had lost the election.

But she also revealed that the plan to declare premature victory was laid out in advance. The committee revealed that Tom Fitton—the president of Judicial Watch, a right-wing legal outfit known for spreading baseless claims of voter fraud to roll back Americans’ access to the polls—had sent a memo to Trump on Oct. 31, 2020, urging him to simply declare, “We had an election today and I won.”On Nov. 3, Election Day, at 5 p.m., long before all the votes had been counted, Fitton indicated that he had spoken to the president about the draft memo.

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s legal counsel Greg Jacob testified that Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short had also informed him of the president’s plan to prematurely declare victory, and that he had written a memo reflecting that it was imperative that the vice president could “not be perceived by the public as having decided questions concerning disputed electoral votes prior to the full development of all relevant facts.”

The committee also reviewed footage and audio recordings of Roger Stone—a longtime Trump confidant with connections to far-right groups who stormed the Capitol like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers—and Steve Bannon—former Trump campaign chief strategist and White House adviser—who both suggested Trump would declare victory whether or not he had the votes.

“I really do suspect that [the election result] will still be up in the air,” Stone said on Nov. 1, as shown in the video clip provided by Danish documentary filmmakers of “A Storm Foretold.” “When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine tenths of law. ‘No, we won, fuck you. Sorry, you’re wrong, fuck you.’”

Stone also advocated for violence. “I say fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence,” Stone says in another clip a day before the election.

While Trump lied to the American people in public, in private, he admitted that he had lost the election, according to numerous witnesses. White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump was embarrassed to have lost to President Joe Biden and refused to publicly admit his defeat.

Benghazi poster for bad faith house oversight investigations?

2nd on but the emails --> trump win

aha proto-fake news? also pseudo-event?

fail by issa et al, fail of press to bust them (earlier?); not so much a literal fail, tho the amb was out front, but did ask for more sec?

ginni groundswell working group: jan 2013

12. NEED WORKING GROUPS for division of labor for 30 front war (Ginni to seek out/discuss); seek volunteer leaders or team-players on various

fronts. Expectation: Teams should connect once a week before Groundswell meeting.

1. Guns: Michael James Barton, Gayle Trotter, Rick Manning

2. Messaging: Dan Bongino,Cherylyn Harley LeBon, Alex Cortes,Anita MonCrief

3. Groundgame: Peter List

4. Getting on Offense: Anita MonCrief

5. Alternative to Rove: Sandy Rios

6. National Security lane - Frank Gaffney

7. Energy and Environment lane – Myron Ebell

8. UN lane - Austin Ruse

9. Shadow Govt teams: Tom Fitton, Mike Farris, Heritage?

10. Benghazi– Boykin, Thomas, Fitton

11. Others needed: Immigration,

https://www.mediamatters.org/msnbc/msnbcs-chris-hayes-its-tom-fitton-who-ended-putting-donald-trump-arguably-most-acute-legal

// alex clinton sock drawer taylor branch pvt tapes

CHRIS HAYES (HOST): What is sort of remarkable, honestly, is that in most cases, Trump actually has kind of a fine-tuned antenna for just how close he can get to the line without crossing into outright easily provable crimes. That has saved him many times before. But this time, it appears that he stepped right over that line, the crystal clear line that his lawyers told him were there. And to understand why that finally happened, you have to look at who he's actually listening to. Because he was ignoring his highly qualified White House lawyers, Pat Philbin, Pat Cipollone, Eric Herschmann. Instead, he was reportedly taking the advice of this guy.

[...]

So that's a guy named Tom Fitton. He's like a second, third tier conservative activist. Head of the right-wing group, Judicial Watch. They've been around for forever. A somewhat ludicrous figure honestly. I put him in the, like, Ginni Thomas category of the American right. Imagine a more senior James O'Keefe on steroids [literally].

...

Now, I should note here, Tom Fitton is not a lawyer. He's just a dude with some big money right-wing donors, I guess. But he's been giving Donald Trump a lot of legal advice that the ex-president is actually listening to. Since as early as February, Fitton has reportedly been calling Trump, telling him it was a mistake to give the records from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives, that his team should have never let the Archives quote, "strong-arm" him into returning them. Fitton said the records belonged to Trump, citing a 2012 court case involving his organization that he said gave the former president authority to do what he wanted with records from his own term in office. He suggested to Trump that if the Archives came back, he should not give up any additional records. Trump, quote, "began obsessing over Fitton's arguments, complaining to aides about the 15 boxes that were handed over" and "even asked Fitton at one point to brief his attorneys." I'm sure that they loved that one. As one person close to the ex-president put it, quote, "The moment Tom got in the boss' ear, it was downhill from there." You know, it's like the Overstock guy or the Pillow guy. 

So Tom Fitton, professional right-wing scandal monger, appears to have facilitated the kind of black and white commission of an easily provable crime that Donald Trump on his own had so far managed to avoid.It's really an amazing feat, of all people, it's Tom Fitton who ended up putting Donald Trump in arguably the most acute legal peril he has ever been in. Well played.

https://www.mediamatters.org/cnn/cnn-reports-tom-fitton-has-been-advising-trump-he-should-not-have-returned-any-documents-and

no lnx

cNN reports that Tom Fitton has been advising Trump that he should not have returned any documents and should not give back any more

Gabby Orr: Fitton advised Trump “that he never should have returned the documents to the Archives in the first place, and if the Archives came knocking again, that he shouldn’t turn over any more”

WRITTEN BY MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

PUBLISHED 08/25/22

Video

CitationFrom the August 25, 2022, edition of CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper

JAKE TAPPER (HOST): Despite Donald Trump's public claims that he's been cooperating with the National Archives, he's been increasingly listening to outside legal advice to do the exact opposite. And now, Trump allies are becoming increasingly concerned about a potential indictment. CNN's Kristen Holmes and Gabby Orr are part of the team breaking this new reporting. Gabby, tell us about this legal advice Trump is getting about cooperating with the Archives.

GABBY ORR: Well Jake, we know some of the folks who have been helping him navigate these matters for the past couple of months. You know, Christina Bobb, Jim Trusty, Evan Corcoran, those are familiar names but what we now know is thatTrump began taking advice from Tom Fitton, who is the head of a conservative legal activism group, Judicial Watch, earlier this year, shortly after he returned those 15 boxes to the National Archives in January.

And what Fitton was telling Trump behind the scenes is really interesting, because he was essentially saying, in his belief, Trump had full authority over the documents that he brought from the White House to Mar-A-Lago at the end of his presidency, that he never should have returned the documents to the Archives in the first place, and that if the Archives came knocking again, that he shouldn't turn over any more documents.

Now, we know that Trump didn't always listen to Tom Fitton, because in June during that meeting with federal investigators his attorneys did turn over additional documents. But this is -- it really speaks to sort of the behind the scenes advice that he was getting from people outside his legal team.

THE LATEST

CNN reports that Tom Fitton has been advising Trump that he should not have returned any documents and should not give back any more

CNN

Tom Fitton

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02/04/20

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna31750700

week before her Senate hearings, Republicans are floundering in their efforts to trip up Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, unable to find an effective message about why she's not fit to serve.

Blame the tricky politics of opposing the woman who would be the first Hispanic justice, especially for a party struggling to broaden its base and whose chief spokesman on Sotomayor has a troubled history of racism allegations.

Add to that the mathematical impossibility of Republicans' rejecting President Barack Obama's first high court nominee, and it's a recipe for a weak-kneed response.

Conservative activists have noticed, and they're not happy.

"Too many Republicans and conservatives planned to lose instead of planning to win" the debate over Sotomayor, said Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch. His group has mounted strong opposition to the federal appeals court judge.

About half the Senate's Republicans are willing to raise serious questions about Sotomayor and there's "a sizable minority who — partly because she's Hispanic — just want this to go away," said Curt Levey of theCommittee for Justice.

Conservative groups have sought to convince Senate Republicans that they can benefit politically by strongly opposing Sotomayor. But many of their leaders complain the message isn't getting through.

During recent confrontations, some activists have told GOP senators, "Don't throw away yet another conservative agenda item when it's a successful one for you. Your base cares about this and you should, too," said former Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., who's advising some outside groups on Sotomayor's nomination. "It was kind of a blunt message."

There are good reasons for Republicans to be holding back, wondering what their best approach is to opposing a nominee who's broadly acknowledged to be qualified and whose past rulings make it difficult to pigeonhole her as a liberal crusader.

The GOP has just 40 votes in the Senate — well short of the majority they would need to defeat Sotomayor or to sustain a drawn-out effort to block a final vote to confirm her.

Even if they could stall Sotomayor's nomination, though, it's evident that many Republicans don't think it's politically prudent to take on a Hispanic woman, given the GOP's low standing in the polls and its efforts to appeal to women and minorities. Those groups traditionally have shunned the party.

The issue of race and ethnicity has proven a toxic one for the key Republican carrying the party message on Sotomayor: Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the senior GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which begins hearings on Sotomayor on July 13....Sessions' own nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986 was scuttled by allegations that he made racist comments and targeted black civil rights leaders as a federal prosecutor in Alabama....denied those charges. But he did acknowledge making what he called some off-color "jokes," such as calling civil rights groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People "un-American."

Sessions has spoken in similar terms recently about a Puerto Rican legal advocacy group on whose board Sotomayor sat from 1980 until 1992.

"This is a group that has taken some very shocking positions with respect to terrorism," Sessions said of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, citing its defense in 1990 of Puerto Rican nationalists who 36 years earlier had wounded five lawmakers during an attack on the House while it was in session....Sessions said Thursday the group's stances on issues from capital punishment to race were "extreme." His staff raised concern about its ties with the community organizing group ACORN, which Republicans routinely describe as a radical organization.

Democrats said the GOP was grasping at straws.

It's not that Republicans aren't criticizing Sotomayor. Early on, they went out of their way to treat her gently, trying to distinguish themselves from party firebrands such as radio host Rush Limbaugh and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who called her a racist.

In recent days, GOP senators have faulted her for her stance on gun rights, her ruling against white firefighters who alleged reversed discrimination, and her participation in the Puerto Rican legal advocacy group. They've raised questions about her ability to be "colorblind."

Still, they've had to reach to score points against Sotomayor.

For instance, Republicans recently banded together to raise concerns about her position on gun rights. They held a news conference about an appeals court decision Sotomayor joined that said the Second Amendment's protection against curbs on bearing arms applies only to the federal government — not to states.

That was in line with Supreme Court precedent on the issue, Sessions acknowledged, and presumably in keeping with GOP views that judges should be restrained.

But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, criticized Sotomayor for taking a "cramped and restricted view of a basic civil liberty." At the same time, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Sotomayor had been too expansive in her ruling on the right to keep and bear arms. "I wish Judge Sotomayor had been similarly restrained on these issues" as other courts that ruled differently, he said.

The message was as clear as mud.

==

6 22

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/ali-alexander-and-stop-the-steal-were-central-to-jan-6-heres-what-you-need-to-know/

no lnx twt pix

"I was the person that came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and then Congressman Andy Biggs,” GOP operative Ali Alexander said in a Dec. 28, 2020, Periscope video. “We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting, so that who we couldn’t lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside.”

The video, which was captured by investigative reporter Jason Paladino before it was deleted, highlights the role played by Alexander, his so-called “Stop the Steal” campaign, and far-right members of Congress in the failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack launches its first public hearings June 9, and Alexander and “Stop the Steal” are likely to figure prominently in its findings. Alexander sat for eight hours of testimony in front of the committee on Dec. 9, and in April, a lawyer for Alexander said he would cooperate with the Department of Justice’s Jan. 6 investigation—a claim on which Alexander promptly threw cold water.

Right Wing Watch extensively covered Ali Alexander and the so-called Stop the Steal movement ahead of Jan. 6. Here’s what you need to know.

Who is Ali Alexander? What is “Stop the Steal”?

On Nov. 4, 2020, as mail-in ballots began to be counted and shifted the election in favor of Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump falsely declared that the ongoing efforts to count millions of outstanding ballots were an indication of fraud and that he had in fact won.

Hours later, Alexander publicly launched “Stop the Steal,” a campaign to get right-wing activists to discredit mail-in voting, disrupt vote-counting, and ​falsely accuse Democrats of stealing the presidential election. The campaign held its first rally outside Arizona’s state capitol building in Phoenix that evening, featuring Rep. Paul Gosar, who with a bullhorn in hand, addressed the crowd before introducing “Pizzagate” booster Mike Cernovich, who threatened imaginary anti-fascist activists. 

And so began months of “Stop the Steal” rallies featuring far-right members of Congress, QAnon and election conspiracy theorists, Christian nationalists, and far-right anti-government groups, all under the MAGA banner.

Ali Alexander and Roger Stone (Image Source: Twitter)]

Alexander, née Ali Akbar, has long worked in Republican politics, coming up under the tutelage of “dirty trickster” Roger Stone. He has connections to deep pockets, too: ​a PAC advised byAlexander received a $60,000 donation in 2016 from pro-Trump billionaire Robert Mercer​. These Republican connections have persisted despite his habit of noting when members of the media he criticizes are Jewish and despite associating with far-right figures like Unite the Right white supremacist attendee Matt Colligan and members of the neo-fascist Proud Boys.

Alexander’s “Stop the Steal” campaign wasn’t the first to go by that name. Longtime GOP operative and Trump confidant Roger Stone first popularized the phrase “Stop the Steal” during the 2016 presidential election. In 2018, Alexander,  Stone, and far-right commentator Jack Posobiec launched a “Stop the Steal” campaign during a ballot recount for Florida’s Senate race between Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Bill Nelson. Pro-Trump activists from around the country descended on Florida to protest and spread misinformation, insisting that Democrats were trying to “steal” the election from Scott. It served as a dry run for the 2020 presidential election. Sure enough, in September 2020, Posobiec and Alexander discussed rebooting the campaign. 

What was their role in the lead up to Jan. 6?

Alexander served as the lead organizer for “Stop the Steal.” The campaign targeted Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia—battleground states won by Joe Biden and whose cities are home to predominantly Black and brown voters—holding rallies and spreading election disinformation on social media.

He called on figures he knew from his time as a member of the highly secretiveCouncil for National Policy and through his years in Republican politics to join the effort, including activists Amy and Kylie Kremer, Jack Posobiec, Brandon Straka, Scott Presler, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, Ed Martin of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. He brought into the fold Trump’s short-lived national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump team attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood—who have since been disciplined for bringing false lawsuits alleging election fraud. Most joined the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement in a public capacity; others promoted the same messaging through their own organizations and organized behind the scenes.

Ali Alexander and other “Stop the Steal” activists at Dec. 15, 2020 press conference (Image from NTD livestream posted on Epoch Times YouTube channel.)]

Alexander welcomed extremists into the campaign’s ranks. Male supremacist Mike Cernovich, white nationalist Nick Fuentes, and far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones were among the first to answer Alexander’s call. Alongside white nationalist Patrick Casey, Vincent James, and Baked Alaska, Fuentes galvanized crowds of white men to attend “Stop the Steal” rallies across the county, while Jones spread disinformation through his Infowars network, raised funds for the Jan. 6 rally, and brought a caravan of supporters to rallies.

On Nov. 14, “Stop the Steal” came to the nation’s capital. Thousands of Trump loyalists, conspiracy theorists, and members of far-right groups took to the streets. Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, and Madison Cawthorn—all recently elected to Congress—addressed the crowd alongside organizers. Radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones yelled unintelligibly into a bullhorn. Members of the Proud Boys hate group roamed the streets looking for fights and found them late in the evening.Fuentes’ America First group, ​a youth-focused white-nationalist outfit, commanded the crowd’s attention with chants of “America First.”

A second Dec. 12 rally was deeply steeped in Christian nationalist and violent rhetoric. Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law, threatening a “much more bloody war”should he fail to do so.

While rallies brought the whole of the MAGA movement together, Alexander held regular Periscopes to spread disinformation and provide action items to Trump supporters.

:{

}:

Alexander called on “Stop the Steal” activists to lobby the state legislatures of battleground states won by Joe Biden to ignore the election results andsend Republican electors to the electoral collegeto give Trump enough electoral votes.He called on state Republican legislators to declare the election fraudulent and threatened them with a primary challenger should they not.

By mid-December, right-wing activists and lawyers were focused on Jan. 6, the day Congress would certify the electoral votes. More than 100 House members and a dozen Senators committed to voting against certifying the election. Trump and the apparatus around him began to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to use his ceremonial duty to block or delay Biden’s certification. “Stop the Steal” fed into that pressure, with “Stop the Steal” friend Lin Wood going as far as to call for the vice president’s execution.

On Dec. 19, Trump declared it “[s]tatistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election.” [~ his own # guy 1/6 hearing] He encouraged his followers to come to D.C.: “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

Alexander had already planned a Jan. 6 D.C. protest, but he began fighting his one-time fellow activists Kylie and Amy Kremer for control of the big Jan. 6 rally. The Kremers had used the “Stop the Steal” banner for their cross country bus tour and a competing December rally, much to Alexander’s chagrin. ProPublica reported that Katrina Pierson, whom the White House put in charge of the rally planning, “helped arrange a deal where those organizers deemed too extreme to speak at the Ellipse could do so on the night of Jan. 5.” That meant Alexander and his cohort were relegated to speaking on the evening of Jan. 5, while the Kremers took the lead on the Jan. 6 event held at the Ellipse.Alexander held that Jan. 5 rally and planned his own separate “wild” Jan. 6 protest on the east side of the Capitolbuilding to follow the main “Save America” rally.

Alexander spent weeks in the lead up to the Capitol insurrection calling for “rebellion,” starting chants of “victory or death,” and using rhetoric of the American Revolution and spiritual warfare to call for action should Congress certify the election of President Joe Biden. He engaged in violent rhetoric, appearing to even advocate for physical attacks against members of Congress who he said stole the election. 

The Jan. 5 rally served as the penultimate event of those calls. Speakers delivered Christian nationalist messages and veiled threats of violenceif Congress failed to reject Biden electors. Bikers for Trump founder Chris Cox told rally-goers that the United States was on the brink of a revolution and that he would “take the first bullet.” Right Wing Watch reported at the time: 

Standing in front of a sign declaring “MARTIAL LAW NOW,” so-called Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander led the crowd in chants of “Victory or death!” Alexander told activists, “Our government is only our government if it is legitimate” and declared, “1776 is always an option.” [new boogaloo? less racist?] He said Stop the Steal activists were starting “a rebellion against the Deep State.”

What was Ali Alexander and the campaign’s role on Jan. 6?

On the day of the insurrection, Alexander took to Twitter early in the morning to declare it the “First official day of the rebellion.” Alexander was supposed to hold his “wild” protest by the Capitol, but it would never materialize.

Trump loyalists packed into the Ellipse, eager to stop what they saw as a fraudulent election. Speaking from the stage and wearing a bulletproof vest, Rep. Mo Brooks, whom Alexander had recently called a friend, told attendees that Jan. 6 is “the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass. … Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America? Louder! Will you fight for America?”

“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump told the crowd. He urged activists to march to the Capitol to make their voices heard. They did as they were told.

Leaving the rally at the Ellipse after Trump’s speech, where he was a VIP guest with far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Alexander followed Jones through the Capitol grounds, past barricades, and up the Capitol steps. At that point—around 2 p.m.—the Capitol had already been breached.

“Democrats and Media ended the Republic and the people responded. Welcome to ‘duhhh’,” he tweeted an hour later.

Alexander emerged on One America News Network’s terrace overlooking the Capitol to record a video, posted on the “Stop the Steal” Twitter account by his associate Michael Coudrey at 4:26 p.m.—well after the violence had begun.

“I don’t disavow this. I do not denounce this,” Alexander said, gesturing to the scene behind him. Trump loyalists were descending on the Capitol and up the Capitol steps. “This is completely peaceful, looks like, so far. And there are a couple of agitators that I obviously don’t endorse,” he claimed despite having seen what took place on the steps not long before. By the end of the video, Alexander was back to encouraging rebellion. “StoptheSteal.us is going to be the home of the rebellion against an illegitimate government.”

Right Wing Watch captured the video, which was later deleted.

Where is Ali Alexander now?

Ali Alexander went into hiding following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.In February, he briefly reappeared and said he had been plotting to restart rallies in March,abolish the media, and build a separate society for Trump supporters. He declared that “civil war” was the only outcome available to those who opposed Biden’s presidency.

But Alexander was kicked off Twitter and most mainstream social media platforms. He lost access to his Venmo, Cashapp, and Paypal. He turned to alternative social media platforms and briefly became a Bitcoin influencer. 

In October 2021, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack issued three subpoenas to Alexander, the Stop the Steal organization, and Nathan Martin, who worked with Alexander and reserved the Jan. 6 rally space. Alexander accused the government of “gaslighting” and blamed the violence on “agitators dressed in militant outfits.” Jan. 6, he said, was a government “psyop.”

In December 2021, Alexander testified for eight hours in a closed-door hearing andasked the House select committee to suspend reality. In a draft of his opening statement, which was leaked to the New York Times, he denied wrongdoing and passed the buck, placing blame for the violence on Katrina Pierson, Kylie Kremer, and Amy Kremer. 

In a lawsuit seeking to prevent the select committee from obtaining his phone records, Alexander confirmed to congressional investigators that ahead of Jan. 6, he had communicated with several GOP congressmen—Reps. Paul Gosar, Mo Brooks, and Andy Biggs—as well as with Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend and member of Trump’s inner circle.

In April, a lawyer for Alexander said he would cooperate with the Department of Justice’s Jan. 6 investigation. The following day, Alexander joined Alex Jones’ show to suggest he wouldn’t cooperate.He went on to call the effort to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol a conspiracy to “stop Trump from running in 2024” and “usher in a New World Order.”

A few days later, Alexander joined Alex Jones’ show again. He mused that “there is a time for legitimate violence when there is legitimate tyranny.”

Tags: Alex Jones Ali Alexander Jack Posobiec

mma 122  https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/alex-berensons-antivax-commentary-killing-fox-viewers-because-thats-what-network

Pandemic conspiracy theorist Alex Berenson’s latest turn on Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show, in which he called for the withdrawal of the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 and said that “no one should get them” or “get boosted,” based on the false premises that the vaccines do not work and are “dangerous,” has rightly spurred a wave of revulsion.

As everyone from progressive MSNBC hosts to conservative National Review writers has noted, programming like this is killing Fox’s viewers by discouraging them from taking shots that are incredibly effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths from the virus.

And that’s apparently how the Fox brass likes it.

Berenson’s pattern of spreading coronavirus misinformation is well-documented – he’s been described as “the pandemic’s wrongest man” and banned from Twitter over his constant falsehoods. But his “contrarian” willingness to denounce any and all measures to contain the pandemic, from masks to vaccines, has made him a fixture on Fox: Tuesday marked his 105th appearance since January 2020, 47 of which have come on Carlson’s show.

While Carlson himself is a constant font of anti-vaccine talking points and doubtlessly wants to host people who agree with his lies, the responsibility for Berenson’s ongoing presence on the network’s most-watched programs ultimately rests with Fox’s executives, like Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch and Suzanne Scott. Even if they aren’t willing to part with Carlson for the sake of their viewers, they could dispense with Berenson in a second if they wanted to. Over the years, they have repeatedly – and effectively – banned particular guests from the airwaves based on their off-air behavior or on-air commentary. Carlson has obeyed those diktats when they have come down, just like his fellow prime-time stars.

Fox hosted Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) hundreds of times from August 2017 to March 2021, including at least three dozen hits with Carlson, according to the Media Matters guest database. But on March 30 of the latter year, The New York Times reported that he was under federal investigation for alleged sex trafficking. After one last bizarre appearance on Carlson’s show to respond to the story that night, the network apparently left him for dead.

Fox’s executives were responsible for Gaetz’s disappearance from the network, with The Daily Beast reporting a few weeks later that Fox’s executives had put the congressman “on an informal blacklist” for trying “to rope the Fox News star into the congressman’s scandal.” Gaetz regularly appears on other right-wing networks like Newsmax, but he has not returned to Fox. Carlson, who was reportedly initially “livid” with Gaetz but subsequently suggested on-air that the congressman had been treated unfairly, has not defied that corporate mandate.

Something similar appears to have happened to Republican lawyers Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing,both longtime fixtures at Fox who were apparently banished from its airwaves in fall 2019. Both of them stopped appearing on Fox News amid reporting that they were deeply involved in the genesis of the Ukrainian dirt about Joe Biden that they were often called upon to opine about. The pair continued to appear on Fox Business, vanishing from that outlet as well after diGenova was widely criticized for an odious antisemitic rant about progressive philanthropist George Soros.

Fox refused to respond to reporters’ queries about whether the pair had been formally banned in the months after they disappeared, but they have not returned in the years since – including to Carlson’s show, which had hosted diGenova at least 27 times, according to the Media Matters guest database.

Similarly, in October 2018 a top Fox executive publicly condemned the rhetoric of Judicial Watch’s Chris Farrell, and a spokesperson said he would not be allowed to return to Fox News or Fox Business, following an uproar caused by the conservative political operative using an appearance on the latter network to falsely accuse Soros of masterminding a caravan of migrants headed toward the U.S. border from Central America.

Fox does not have anything resembling a consistent standard for this type of despicable commentary – indeed, Carlson just did an odious anti-Soros special for Fox Nation – but what matters for this discussion is that the ban stuck and Farrell has not been allowed back in subsequent years. Likewise, no Fox program has violated the network’s public bans of Harlan Hill (who tweeted in 2020 that Kamala Harris “comes off as an insufferable lying bitch,” or retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (who said on-air in 2018 that torture “worked” on then-Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

Fox’s executives have proved themselves to be capable of keeping unsavory guests off the air when they chose to do so. But with Berenson, they haven’t bothered trying. The network has made the calculation that keeping its viewers from needlessly dying isn’t worth it. As one Fox insider explained, the network is running anti-vaccine commentary because it is “great for ratings.”

The more than 3 million people who tuned into Carlson’s show on Tuesday heard a kook denounce lifesaving vaccines and urge them not to take them. If they listen to him, they could die. And Fox’s leadership is entirely uninterested in preventing that dire outcome.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/pence-to-speak-to-secretive-council-for-national-policy-friday-cnp-members-involved-in-saturdays-stop-the-steal-rally/

no twt

As the results of the 2020 presidential election came rolling in, Vice President Mike Pence was notably out of sight ​and had even planned a Florida vacation for this week. But with ​the ratcheting up of Trump’s campaign to contest the outcome of the election, CNN reported that Pence canceled his getaway, remaining inside the Beltway ​to address the Council for National Policy, a highly secretive organization that includes some of the most powerful conservatives in the country.

As Pence stands at the podium before marquee names in conservative politics Friday, pro-Trump, far-right activists are making their way to Washington, D.C., for a rally organized and supported by some of the very right-wing leaders likely sitting in that room.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his InfoWars network are leading a caravan of Trump supporters to D.C.,Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers militia has promised to station his armed men outside of the District borders should Trump call on them, and the Proud Boys hate group has encouraged its members to to the nation’s capital, with leader Enrique Tarrio declaring Trump’s “Standby order has been rescinded.” 

They, along with other ​conspiracy theorists, far-right groups and other Trump loyalists, have all promised to go to the Saturday event that goes by three names​: Million MAGA March, March for Trump, and Stop the Steal—to push a false narrative that voter fraud cost Trump the election. The event has been promoted by Fox News personalities Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.

GOP operative Ali Alexander,who organized the gathering, was clear on the rally’s demands in a ​Nov. 10 Periscopepost. “We’re going down to the Supreme Court,​” he said, “and we’re telling our government that this election and the counting will be transparent, or we’ll get a new election. One or another.”

And they wouldn’t be on their way without​ the leadership and support of current and past Council for National Policy members for the Stop the Steal campaign. ​The CNP, which has been around since the Reagan administration, holds closed-door meetings, tells members not to speak to the press about the council, and has tried to keep membership rolls private, but its members’ names have leaked over the years.

Notable CNP members include Ginni Thomas, the influential wife of Clarence Thomas, and Tony Perkins, a former president of the organization and the current president of the Family Research Council, according to a 2020 membership directory published by Documented. CNP has also welcomed far-right figures like neo-Confederate Christian Reconstructionist Michael Peroutka, a major funder of former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s advocacy and political career.

CNP ​also counts among its members Ed Martin of ​Phyllis Schlafly Eagles,Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who has allied himself with dominionists and Christian nationalists in the past year—all of whom have pushed ​Stop the Steal messaging since Alexander launched the campaign and called on them to join it. 

Martin has led sparsely attended D.C. rallies and blasted Phyllis Schlafly Eagles’ email list with Stop the Steal talking points, while Kirk attended a rally in Phoenix and took to conservative media to promote it. Though it does not appear Fitton has used the #StoptheSteal hashtag, he has echoed the campaign’s language, alleged an “electoral coup,” accusedstates of voter fraud, and called for votes to stop being counted in others.

Amy Kremer, who was listed as a member in a 2014 membership directory obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is organizing in the state of Georgia for Stop the Steal events.Even Ali Alexander, who formerly went by Ali Akbar, is listed twice by both names as a signee on a 2017 letter from CNP to Donald Trump obtained by the Christian Post. David Armiak of the Center for Media and Democracy has also reported on some of these connections.

On Nov. 4, as Americans ​awoke to see Trump’s election night lead overtaken by the counting of mail-in ballots, which came in record numbers for Joe Biden, Alexander was expressed dismay. On Twitter, he suggested that the Republican Party should have adopted his 2018 Stop the Steal operation, which he had launched with ​the help of Trump confidant and since convicted felon Roger Stone​ during the recount of Florida’s 2018 U.S. Senate race. 

​On the day after the 2020 election, Alexander said he had no intention of rebooting it, but about an hour later, he suggested the only way he would restart the operation would be if a few key players were on board—among them, Tom Fitton, Amy Kremer, and Ed Martin. By around 2 p.m. that day, he’d added Charlie Kirk and others to the list.

"he’s decided only to do it under certain conditions and those conditions seem to be CNP support,” ​said Stephanie Lamy, a French information warfare researcher with Danaides who flagged the series of tweets​. “That’s very clear from this tweet by the people he mentions.”

And there’s good reason to ​seek CNP support given its power and its expertise in ​advancing unsubstantiated voter fraud narratives.

Last month, The Washington Post’s Robert O’Harrow got ​his hands on videos from an Aug. 21 CNP conference held at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City.Fitton,who Alexander called on to be in charge of the legal aspect of the ​Stop the Steal campaign, zeroed in on mail-in voting.“We need to stop those ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do,” Fitton said. “But this is a crisis that we’re not prepared for. I mean, our side is not prepared for.”

J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, also attacked mail-in voting at that meeting, telling activists, “Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth.” Adams, a known voter suppressor, was also part of Trump administration’s short-lived “Commission on Election Integrity,” which folded after findingno evidence to support claims of widespread voter fraud. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Adams’ legal organization has issued two lawsuits since Nov. 4 claimingvoter fraud.

Current CNP Treasurer Kenneth Blackwell has promoted Stop the Steal on Twitterand Facebook and, as Right Wing Watch’s Peter Montgomery reported, baselessly charged Monday that “the Democrat-run Pennsylvania executive government only wants votes counted that support their agenda and their candidates.”

Trump himself has addressed CNP members—as recently as the Aug. 21 meeting and in the beginning of his campaign in 2015. According to The National Review, of the six Republican presidential candidates who addressed CNP in 2015, Trump was the “star attraction.”

Tags: Ali AkbarAli Alexander Amy Kremer Charlie Kirk Donald Trump Ed Martin Ginni Thomas J Christian Adams Ken Blackwell Michael Peroutka Mike Pence Tom Fitton Tony Perkins Disinformation Stop the Steal  Voter Fraud  Council for National Policy

https://www.mediamatters.org/lou-dobbs/judicial-watchs-tom-fitton-calls-states-appoint-clean-slate-electors-supports-president

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/meet-the-twitter-verified-maga-influencers-spreading-the-qanon-gospel/

no lnx twt pix

Meet the Twitter-verified MAGA Influencers Spreading the QAnon Gospel

By Adele M. Stan | October 26, 2020

In July, Twitter—after years of unheeded warnings—removed from its platform more than 7,000 accounts that were tweeting conspiracy theories from the QAnon universe, a move estimated to have affected more than 150,000 accounts related to those that were purged. National Public Radio called it “the most wide-reaching and aggressive response to the pro-Trump conspiracy theory that any social media platform has ever undertaken.”

And yet, QAnon’s presence remains robust, thanks in part to the work of Trump-enabling hard-right “Twitter verified” influencers who advance QAnon talking points, often minus overt QAnon branding.

To you, James Woods may just be that actor who’s played a bunch of creepy roles. But to people on the hard right, Woods is a digital warrior, and maybe even a friend of Q,the mysterious entity whose cryptic messages on far-right message-board channels form the core of the central QAnon conspiracy theory—the false claim that top Democrats and Hollywood figures are running a Satanic child-sex-trafficking ring, and that President Donald Trump is working behind the scenes to “save the children.” Woods has 2.6 million followers on Twitter, to whom he has tweeted messages remarkably similar to those of QAnon adherents. Consequently, his is the favorite among Twitter-verified accounts of those posting from QAnon-related accounts. The non-profit research group, Advance Democracy, Inc., found that more than 50,000 QAnon-related Twitter accounts either mentioned or retweeted Woods approximately 1.6 million times between Jan. 1 – Aug. 2020. The research organization says that, as of September, all of those 50,000 accounts remained active.

And Woods is not the only Twitter presence with more than a million followers who plays this game. ADI identified five key players in Twitter’s million+ club who are involved in the propulsion of false claims embraced by the QAnon community.Each account bears a blue checkmark badge next to the tweeter’s name—Twitter’s signal to its users that the account is somehow significant. Twitter executives define the blue checkmark in a more understated manner: “The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic.” Twitter users tend to view it a sign of prestige and credibility. After all, by Twitter’s own criteria, the blue-checkmark account is “of public interest.”

In addition to Woods’, the accounts of Donald Trump Jr., Turning Point USA Executive Director Charlie Kirk, radio personality Dan Bongino, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton and BLEXIT Foundation principal officer Candace Owens are all Twitter-verified, have more than 1 million followers and advance QAnon messaging. With the exception of Trump Jr., each has been mentioned or referenced in a “Q drop,” one of the messages left by the enigmatic Q on the 8kun internet message board, a haven for those who wish to post anonymously. (Hence the “Anon” part of the movement’s name.)

Here are some of the public-interest bon mots offered by Woods:

Funny thing about that tweet: It’s a lot like a tweet linked to in a Q drop, and Woods’ tweet was made only an hour after the Q post appeared.

The Twitter link in that Q drop goes to this:

Then there’s Bill Mitchell, the Trump superfan with an online video show who got permanently booted from Twitter for creating a new Twitter identity in order to evade a previous Twitter suspension. He may not have had a million followers, but he had more than half that many, according to The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer, and he regularly regaled them with QAnon conspiracy theories—and, unlike others, freely bandied about the QAnon name. The QAnon community returned the favor, ADI found, yielding Mitchell thousands of retweets from QAnon-related accounts. One tweet featuring disinformation about the coronavirus—which Mitchell dismisses as a hoax—garnered more than 3,100 retweets from accounts in the QAnon community. Another favorite topic of Mitchell’s among QAnon adherents is the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, whom Mitchell tars with the usual tacit anti-Semitic smears one finds elsewhere on the right-wing internet.  In a June 20 tweet no longer available on the internet, Mitchell wrote:

Arrest Soros, seize his records and freeze

his assets and 99% of this chaos you see on

our streets ends tomorrow.

Retweet if you agree.

That one got 1563 retweets from QAnon-related accounts. Until Twitter threw him out, Mitchell was a blue-checkmark tweeter. In July 2019, he was invited to Trump’s White House “social media summit,” which  The New York Times’ Kevin Roose described as a gathering of “right-wing trolls.”

QAnon claims are so easily dismissed as too crazy to be believed that the danger posed by the movement, designated by the FBI as a potential domestic terrorism threat, is often overlooked. To understand the threat, one needs to focus on the second part of the narrative—the part that promises that all of these Democratic and Jewish leaders smeared by Q and Q’s followers will meet with bloody vengeance on the day that the hero Trump rounds them all up in mass arrests and executes them. Consider the impulses of some of the most unhinged of the conspiracy-minded. Remember Pizzagate? That was the internet conspiracy theory that posited a child-sex-trafficking ring involving top Democratic leaders that was ostensibly run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. A man drove up to the nation’s capital from North Carolina to rescue the non-existent victims, having armed himself with an AR-15 assault rifle and a pistol. He shot a round into an interior door as the families who had been eating inside fled for the exits.

And those are just QAnon’s central claims. The QAnon network is a transmitter of all manner of conspiracy theories, many of them part of right-wing lore for years or even decades: The purported war of the “deep state” against Donald Trump, the anti-Semitic trope of Soros as a puppet-master, and of “spygate,” a fantasy about a “deep state” that had it in for Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, the evidence for which is the fact that the FBI was keeping tabs on conversations between agents of the Russian state and Americans; some of those Americans, it turned out, were working with Trump campaign.Another common theme is that America is headed for civil war because of the savagery of the left.

Woods also advanced a phantasmagoric QAnon claim that the liberal Twitter influencer Chrissy Tiegen is linked to Jeffrey Epstein, and is a pedophile. The online assaults consequently endured by Tiegen  made her “worried for my family,” she wrote on Twitter, so she deleted 60,000 of her own tweets, she said, and blocked some 1 million accounts from engaging with hers. (The QAnon spreaders had gone into her Twitter archives and pulled out tweets in which Tiegen stated her disgust with such exploitive television programs as TLC’s “Toddlers and Tiaras” in a sarcastic manner, promoting them as to be taken literally.)

With 2.4 million Twitter followers of his own,Dan Bongino is the fourth-most popular verified Twitteraccount within the QAnon community, according to ADI. (He also claims more than 3 million followers of his public Facebook page.) On Feb. 14, a tweet with a link to his show appeared in a “Q drop.” The research group found that between Jan. 1 – Aug. 1, some 4,700 QAnon-related accounts either mentioned or retweeted (or both) tweets from Bongino’s account.

Bongino, radio personality and coauthor of “Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump,” is a favorite commentator of the president’s, who gifted Bongino with a blurb for his book:

‘Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump,’ is terrific. He’s tough, he’s smart, and he really gets it. His book is on sale now. I highly recommend!

—President of the United States, Donald J. Trump

In 2016, the president took to Twitter to declare his appreciation of Bongino, as chronicled by The Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani, Asawin Suesbsaeng and Lachlan Markay.

With 1.1 million Twitter followers, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton is a top influencer in the hard-right realm. Dating back to 2016, Fitton, who helms a non-profit organization that takes in tens of millions in donations each year, has been flogging the main claim of “Spygate,” with allegations that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign on behalf of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, who is the top target of QAnon adherents. They want to see her executed.

Fitton has a knack for advancing exactly the kind of narrative that QAnon enthusiasts build upon. As far back as November 22, 2016, Fitton was calling on Trump to arrest the candidate who won more of the popular vote than he did. In fact, he claimed on Fox News that the Justice Department was “broken” for not having done so already.

In February 2017, Fitton took to the CPAC stage to claim that Michael Flynn—the retired general and Trump national security adviser who was fired after being accused of lying to Vice President Mike Pence regarding Flynn’s communications during the presidential transition phase with Sergey Kislyak, who was then Russia’s ambassador to the United States—had been done wrong. Flynn, it was learned, had been coaxing Kislyak not to respond to sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration in response to the federation’s intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential race—with the inference that the Trump administration would lift them once Trump was inaugurated.

Flynn himself is a QAnon buff,even recording a video of Flynn family members and the retired general himself reciting the QAnon slogan, “Where We Go One, We Go All.” (Julian Feeld of the investigative QAnon Anonymous podcast tweeted it here; CNN has the full video and some backstory here.)

Travis View, who hosts the QAnon Anonymous podcast, noticed this tweet from Fitton, who accused Facebook of “censoring QAnon” in its purges of QAnon-related accounts.

In the time period studied by ADI (Jan. 1 – Aug. 1, 2020), more than 39,000 QAnon-related accounts either mentioned or retweeted Fitton some 721,000 times. Those accounts, the research group says, remain active (as of September).

The president himself retweets Fitton or @JudicialWatch with some regularity. Tweets by Fitton have also been linked in at least three Q drops.

Charlie Kirk is another favorite of the president’s;Trump gave him a shout-out during a rambling speech he delivered at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference at National Harbor, Md. Kirk is said to be close to Donald Trump Jr., and a 2018 fundraiser Kirk held at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida resort, is reported to have reaped $5 million in a single night with the help of Trump Jr., according to ProPublica’s Mike Spies and Jack Pearson. “Over the last year, the president has delivered remarks at the organization’s conferences three separate times,” they write, also noting that Kirk’s book, “The MAGA Doctrine,” was promoted by both the president and Trump Jr.

Conceived as a right-wing presence on college campuses, Kirk’s Turning Point USA has become a full-on Trump-boosting organization. It is also a tax-exempt non-profit. For Kirk, the Trump train has proven to be a gravy train. At TPUSA’s 2012 founding, his annual salary was $27,000; he’s now paid $300,000, according to ProPublica. Kirk is 27 years old.

Among Twitter accounts that are part of the QAnon infrastructure, Kirk’s is the third most popular Twitter account, according to ADI. And, as of August, his account was following some 557 QAnon-related Twitter accounts. Kirk’s name and image appeared on a flyer for Q Con Live!, a QAnon conference that was to have taken place in Fresno, Calif., this month, but appears to have been canceled.

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> Twitter-verified MAGA Influencers Spreading the QAnon Gospel

October 26, 2020

https://www.mediamatters.org/2020-supreme-court-nomination/right-wing-media-lash-out-after-sen-sheldon-whitehouse-exposes-dark

right-wing media lash out after Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse exposes the dark money network in the courts

Their response is to call him a conspiracy theorist — while trying to connect him to George Soros

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD

PUBLISHED 10/13/20

During Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) delivered a presentation on the undisclosed dark money groups coordinating to push a partisan Republican agenda through the court system, including past and present efforts to throw out the Affordable Care Act. In response, right-wing personalities on Twitter dismissed Whitehouse as a conspiracy theorist — with this critique coming from notorious conspiracy theorists themselves.

Whitehouse described how multiple groups will file amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases — though they are actually funded by the same outlets, including a group called Donors Trust that Whitehouse called “a gigantic identity-scrubbing device for the right wing.”

Whitehouse’s speech relied heavily on a 2019 Washington Post report which outlined the links between right-wing legal organization the Federalist Society and the right-wing political organization Judicial Crisis Network via fundraiser Leonard Leo — with the nominally separate organizations actually based out of the same hallway of a building in downtown Washington, D.C.

“This more and more looks like it's not three schemes — but it's one scheme,” said Whitehouse, ”with the same funders selecting judges, funding campaigns for the judges, and then showing up in court in these orchestrated amicus flotillas to tell the judges what to do."

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one  of the most prominent right-wing media figures to criticize Whitehouse was Mollie Hemingway, a Fox News contributor and senior editor at the right-wing online outlet The Federalist — an organization which is itself famously opaque on its own funding.

Hemingway is hardly the ideal person, however, to be calling somebody else a conspiracy theorist. When multiple sources corroborate a story damaging to President Donald Trump, she has a pattern of often declaring that this corroboration is really the result of a coordinated conspiracy by those sources to be lying in synchronization with each other.

Hemingway thus saw a conspiratorial connection of her own, connecting Whitehouse’s speech to a recent opinion piece in The Washington Post that was critical of the Federalist Society:

Hemingway also sought to turn the rhetorical tables, posting an image that alleged a nefarious web of connection between Whitehouse, as a progressive U.S. senator, and activist groups that promote issues such as women’s health care, environmental conservation, and LGBTQ rights. However, Hemingway missed a major point that publicly disclosed campaign donations to an elected U.S. senator are not the same as a network of financial support that pushes for lawsuits and judicial appointments designed to achieve policy aims in the courts on behalf of its undisclosed donors.

And while Hemingway’s featured illustration also contained passing mention of liberal philanthropist George Soros — a Holocaust survivor who is often the target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories — Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) just went straight to the point:

Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, which also has a record of making conspiratorial smears against Soros, similarly skipped the middle man:

The Daily Wire founderBen Shapiro, himself no stranger to Soros conspiracy theories, talk of Trojan horses inside of Trojan horses, or killer progressives just around the corner, also mocked Whitehouse’s presentation:

ref

one page of many jud watch on soros

CORRUPTION CHRONICLES

Three Soros Campaigns to Further Advance the Left’s Radical Agenda

MARCH 28, 2019 | JUDICIAL WATCH

TOM FITTON'S WEEKLY UPDATE

Weekly Update: Big Court Victory on Clinton Emails

DECEMBER 07, 2018 | JUDICIAL WATCH

CORRUPTION CHRONICLES

SOROS: U.S. Subsidizes Soros Radical Leftist Agenda Worldwide, New Judicial Watch Special Report Shows

DECEMBER 06, 2018 | JUDICIAL WATCH

TOM FITTON'S WEEKLY UPDATE

Weekly Update: New Soros Docs!

NOVEMBER 02, 2018 | JUDICIAL WATCH

PRESS RELEASES

Judicial Watch: Documents Show State Department Links to George Soros’ Open Society Foundation -…

OCTOBER 30, 2018 | JUDICIAL WATCH

TOM FITTON'S WEEKLY UPDATE

Weekly Update: Urgent Kavanaugh News

OCTOBER 05, 2018 | JUDICIAL WATCH

PRESS RELEASES

Judicial Watch: New Documents Show State Department and USAID Working with Soros Group to…

OCTOBER 03, 2018 | JUDICIAL WATCH

PRESS RELEASES

Judicial Watch Uncovers Five More Clinton Emails Containing Classified Material on Her Unsecure, Non-‘State.gov’…

AUGUST 16, 2018 | JUDICIAL WATCH

CORRUPTION CHRONICLES

U.S./Soros-Funded Colombian Group Blasts JW for Exposing Ties to Violent Marxist Guerrillas

JULY 17, 2018 | JUDICIAL WATCH

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/judicial-watchs-tom-fitton-instructs-trump-form-transparency-strike-teams-storm-government

1020

https://www.nationalreview.com/**2017/04/**judicial-watch-lawsuit-seeks-obama-white-house-records-controversial-global-warming/

 former scientist at the NOAA has exposed a shoddy report on global warming. Judicial Watch is suing to learn more.

:{

}:following allegations of impropriety over the handling of a controversial climate change report, a government watchdog group now wants to know whether there was any collaboration between the report’s lead author and a key Obama adviser. On March 27, Judicial Watchfiled a lawsuit seeking “all records of communications between a pair of federal scientists who heavily influenced the Obama administration’s climate change policy and its backing of the Paris Agreement.”

The FOIA specifically requests correspondence between Tom Karl, the former head of the climate-data program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and John Holdren, the director of Obama’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. Holdren is from that species of Baby Boomer global catastrophists who make changing predictions each decade about how we will all die. He also happens to be the science guy who had the president’s ear for eight years.

Holdren’s buddy, Tom Karl, authored a report in 2015 attempting to disprove the hiatus in global warming that had been widely acknowledged by many scientific groups, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The warming pause threatened to undermine the justification for a costly climate-change pact that was being negotiated at the time: How could world leaders commit trillions in tax dollars to stop global warming if it wasn’t actually happening?

Karl’s report came to the rescue just months before the Paris Climate Conference.In announcing his findings, Karl said the “new analysis suggests that the apparent hiatus may have been largely the result of limitations in past datasets, and that the rate of warming over the first 15 years of this century has, in fact, been as fast or faster than that seen over the last half of the 20th century.” How convenient. His analysis was eagerly accepted by the international science community, but others were leery about its timing; the House Science Committee has been leading an inquiry into the report for nearly two years.

But a retired top official at NOAA has now confirmed suspicions about the veracity of Karl’s research and about whether politics — not science — were at play. In February, John Bates, the former head of NOAA’s climate-data archive, wrote a lengthy exposé detailing misconduct at NOAA related to the report. The allegations included using inappropriately “corrected” datasets, violating agency protocol on data review, and failing to archive the data. In the most damning allegation, Bates said: “In every aspect of the preparation and release of the datasets . . . we find Tom Karl’s thumb on the scale pushing for, and often insisting on, decisions that maximize warming and minimize documentation.” (You can read more about Bates’s allegations here and a subsequent smear campaign by the scientific establishment here.)

“It was more of a political document than a scientific document,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told me. “People need to know how the [climate] alarmists have taken over agencies like NOAA and NASA. This is about trying to get the truth out.” Judicial Watch also filed a separate lawsuit against NOAA in 2015 attempting to get the datasets used in Karl’s paper.

There’s plenty of reason to suspect collaboration between Karl and Holdren. Both are professionally invested in anthropogenic global warming and have advanced their careers promoting a catastrophic view of humanity’s fate due to our carbon-fueled rape of Mother Nature. In 2010, Holdren appointed Karl to serve as chairman of the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, which oversees how 13 federal agencies “advance climate science and improve the understanding of how global change is impacting society, both today and into the future.” In a review for Karl’s 2009 book, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, Holdren says he hopes the book will “make people think about specific legislative proposals, and the need to move ahead, after many years of dithering and delay.” (In his book, Karl states: “Observations show the warming of the planet is unequivocal. . . . Warming over this century is projected to be considerably greater than the last century.”)

Both Karl and Holdren understood the stakes of the Paris climate conference, a last-ditch effort to forceworld leaders to impose drastic measures that would allegedly ease climate change. In an interview with National Geographicwhile attending the event, Holdren said the climate pact was needed because “it is urgent that the nations of the world act now, both to reduce their emissions and to increase their preparedness and resilience against ongoing climate change.”He believes that the world should be completely decarbonized by the end of the century, a wholly ridiculous, untenable, and pointless idea. But then again, this is the same guy who thought we would all be dead by the start of the 21st century because of one ecocatastrophe or another. When we managed to survive, he said carbon-induced famine would kill 1 billion people by 2020. (I guess it would no fun to calculate how many billions of people are fed every day thanks to carbon.)

It might take months or even years, according to Fitton, to find out whether Karl and Holdren colluded to push a dubious but favorable climate report before the Paris confab: “It depends on how fast the administration can turn it around. The default position of the bureaucracy is always secrecy.” Regardless, Fitton said, the climate-change movement is suffering from serious problems. “They’ve lost their credibility. The public is starting to see this as a scam. That’s why the language of the climate alarmists has been intensified.” [CLIMATEGATE?]I’ll bet career suicide was never in the mix of catastrophic ends for the climate movement.

— Julie Kelly is a writer in Orland Park, Ill.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/the-far-right-extremists-who-hate-hillary-clinton-are-now-turning-their-venom-on-dr-anthony-fauci-report/

no lnx

far-right extremists who hate Hillary Clinton are now turning their venom on Dr. Anthony Fauci: report

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony S. Fauci addresses his remarks and urges citizens to continue to follow the President’s coronavirus guidelines during a coronavirus (COVID-19) briefing Wednesday, April 22, 2020, in the James S. Brady White House Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Written by Alex Henderson May 15, 2020

As the coronavirus pandemic went from bad to worse in the United States — where, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the COVID-19 death count has passed 85,900 — millions of Americans turned to Dr. Anthony Fauci as a valuable source of information. But the expert immunologist, who is part of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force, has his share of unhinged critics on the far right. And journalists Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng, in an article for the Daily Beast, report that many Trumpistas are showing Fauci the type of hatred they typically reserve for Hillary Clinton.

“A cadre of influential conservatives is growing increasingly convinced that the nation’s foremost infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is recklessly driving the nation to financial ruin — possibly even in a concerted attempt to undermine President Donald Trump,” Markay and Suebsaeng explain. “And in an effort to stop him, they’re resorting to tried and true methods, from public shaming to online conspiracy theories to lawsuits meant to unearth e-mails pertaining to his work.”

The article is headlined “Team ‘Lock Her Up’ Is Now Going After Fauci” — a reference to the “lock her up, lock her up” chants aimed at Clinton at MAGA rallies. In fact, Markay and Suebsaeng note, some of the Trumpistas who despise Fauci are “key figures who helped spearhead the campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 elections” — for example, formerBreitbart News Chairman Steve Bannon, who served in Trump’s administration in 2017.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/team-lock-her-up-is-now-going-after-anthony-fauci

This week on his podcast, Bannon claimed that Fauci “set up President Trump for failure in the fall and asserted, “Understand this: Tony Fauci has not been around from 1984 because he doesn’t know how to play the game. He is a master game-player.”

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Another Fauci critic, Markay and Suebsaeng add, is Tom Fitton, who serves as president of the right-wing Judicial Watch and “announced this week that his organization would be suing the National Institutes of Health in an effort to obtain Fauci’s communications about the coronavirus with the World Health Organization.”

Fitton described Fauci as part of the “medical establishment,” claiming that people of his ilk are “probably more liberal in their world view.”

A White House official, quoted anonymously, told the Beast, “The president knows how much the liberal media loves Dr. Fauci. There are times he thinks that can be played to (Trump’s) advantage. There are other moments when he finds it irritating.”

It should be noted that the far-right wingnuts who hate Clinton and Fauci typically hate former President Barack Obama as well. The same pro-Trump media outlets that have been bashing Fauci this week have also been promoting the wacky “Obamagate” conspiracy theory.

Markay and Suebsaeng point out that althoughRep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is among the “conservative stalwarts” who has “rushed to Fauci’s defense,” there are many Trumpistas who don’t share her high opinion of him — and the Beast reporters noted that a recent CBS News poll found a lot more support for him among Democrats than among Republicans.

Liz Cheney

@Liz_Cheney

Dr. Fauci is one of the finest public servants we have ever had. He is not a partisan. His only interest is saving lives. We need his expertise and his judgment to defeat this virus.   All Americans should be thanking him. Every day.

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5:54 PM - May 12, 2020

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“Among Democrats,” Markay and Suebsaeng write, “Fauci’s standing borders on that of a folk hero.”

“For some influential conservative pundits,” they explain, “Fauci is seen as, at best, misguided and, at worst, a malicious obstacle to Trump’s agenda and his political prospects in November. And for that reason, he has found himself on the receiving end of a host of fringy conspiracy theories blaming him for the damage ostensibly done by White House-backed policies to limit public gatherings and commercial activity in response to the virus.”

Markay and Suebsaeng cite Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade and Lou Dobbs as some of the far-right pundits at Fox News or Fox Business who have been bashing Fauci.

“Rare is the case where a leading scientist becomes a boogeyman in national politics,” Markay and Suebsaeng note. “But the country finds itself in rare times. Fauci has served Republican and Democratic presidents alike, but none like Trump — who has been as keen on monitoring Fauci’s media hits as he is at consuming his public-health policy advice.”

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/01/politics/anthony-fauci-security-detail/index.html

dr Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's top medical expert on the coronavirus pandemic and a member of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, is facing threats to his personal safety and now requires personal security from law enforcement at all times, including at his home, a source confirms to CNN.

A law enforcement official told CNN that the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General, the agency's law enforcement arm, asked the US Marshals Service for assistance following threats to Fauci. The Marshals then deputized HHS officers to act as personal security for the doctor.

The Washington Post first reportedthe threats to Fauci and the increased security.

A source also confirmed to CNN last week the presence of several members of the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department stationed at all times around Fauci's home in the district. The source added the stepped up visible police presence was a response to growing threats to Fauci's safety, though the source of the threats was not identified....

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ref nyt

After Threats, Anthony Fauci to Receive Enhanced Personal Security

Dr. Fauci has become a target of online conspiracy theorists after advocating social distancing rules.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, 79, is a longtime scientist and civil servant who has served presidents of both parties.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, 79, is a longtime scientist and civil servant who has served presidents of both parties.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Katie BennerMichael D. Shear

By Katie Benner and Michael D. Shear

April 1, 2020

WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, who has become a regular at President Trump’s coronavirus briefings, will receive enhanced personal security after receiving threats following his repeated pleas for Americans to help slow the spread of the deadly pandemic, officials said on Wednesday.

Dr. Fauci has been the Trump administration’s most outspoken advocate of social distancing rules that have shuttered the nation’s schools, forced businesses to close, kept people in their homes and battered the United States economy.

That has made him a target of online conspiracy theorists who have accused Dr. Fauci, a longtime scientist and civil servant who has served presidents of both parties, of trying to undermine Mr. Trump during a year in which the president is fighting for re-election.

The Department of Health and Human Services granted the enhanced personal security for Dr. Fauci, 79, after the Justice Department signed off on a request for extra agents to guard him, officials said. Alex M. Azar II, the health and human services secretary, had grown worried that the threats against the doctor were increasing as more of the country shut down in response to the coronavirus.

“Yesterday, upon the recommendation of the U.S. Marshals Service, the department approved the special deputization request from H.H.S. for nine H.H.S.-O.I.G. special agents to provide protective services for Dr. Fauci,” the Justice Department said in a statement, referring to the Office of the Inspector General at the health department. The Washington Post first reported the news of the enhanced security.

Caitlin Oakley, a spokeswoman for the health department, would not confirm Dr. Fauci’s enhanced security but called him “an integral part of the U.S. government’s response against Covid-19,” referring to the disease caused by the coronavirus.

“Among other efforts,” she added, “he is leading the development of a Covid-19 vaccine and he regularly appears at White House press briefings and media interviews.”

The coronavirus could kill 100,000 to more than 200,000 Americans in the coming weeks. Dr. Fauci, along with a fellow task force member, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, encouraged Mr. Trump to extend the amount of time that the country would remain shuttered through the end of this month. Some states, like Virginia, have issued stay-at-home orders that do not expire until further into the spring.

The idea that Dr. Fauci is responsible for the country’s hardship — and for whatever political damage Mr. Trump might suffer as a result — was fueled in part by a moment during a news briefing in which Dr. Fauci dropped his head and touched his forehead as the president was speaking. The image went viral online and right-wing supporters of Mr. Trump cited it as evidence that Dr. Fauci sought to undercut the president.

One anti-Fauci Twitter post last week said, “Sorry liberals but we don’t trust Dr. Anthony Fauci.”

The hashtag #FauciFraud has been used by more than 70 Twitter accounts, some posting hundreds of times a day, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Criticism of Dr. Fauci has also come from leading conservative voices and supporters of Mr. Trump, including Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group; Bill Mitchell, the host of the far-right online talk show “YourVoice America”; and Shiva Ayyadurai, who has falsely claimed to be the inventor of email.

But Mr. Trump himself has praised the doctor. During Wednesday’s briefing, when a reporter asked about Dr. Fauci’s personal security, the president said: “He doesn’t need security. Everybody loves him.”

In fact, Dr. Fauci has earned plaudits from many medical experts and public health officials for his often grim assessment of the threats facing the United States from the coronavirus — even sometimes contradicting the president’s rosier outlook.

For weeks, Dr. Fauci’s remarks on television and at the White House stood in sharp contrast to the commentary from Mr. Trump’s fiercest supporters on Fox News, whose leading hosts repeatedly claimed that Democrats, the news media and public health experts were inflating the threat of the virus.

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After the viral video of Dr. Fauci lowering his head, online attacks against him increased. A seven-year-old email that he wrote to an aide of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s was posted online by The American Thinker, a conservative blog. In the email, Dr. Fauci praised Mrs. Clinton for her stamina during hearings into the 2012 attacks on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya. The blog suggested falsely that the email proved that Dr. Fauci was part of a secret group who opposed Mr. Trump.

Ironically, in the past several days, the president has largely adopted Dr. Fauci’s more dire warnings about the dangers of the rapidly spreading virus. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump called it a “great national trial unlike any we have ever faced before” and echoed Dr. Fauci’s language about the need to minimize its spread.

“It’s a matter of life and death, frankly,” Mr. Trump said, offering a sober assessment of the pandemic’s effect. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: A Conversation With Dr. Anthony Fauci

“We are in a war. I mean, I actually think this is exactly what generals or leaders in real, you know, violent combat wars feel.”

==

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https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/its-own-precedent-fox-should-ban-joe-digenova

after a year that has seen Fox News battered by advertiser boycotts over the bigoted language common to its programming, the network's parent company held Thursday’s annual shareholder meetings embroiled in a new controversy over over the regurgitation of vile anti-Semitic tropes on its airwaves.

If Fox had actual standards like a normal news outlet, it would already have announced a permanent ban on future appearances by Joe diGenova, a Republican lawyer and frequent guest on pro-Trump Fox programs, in light of his Wednesday night interview.

During an appearance on Fox Business’Lou Dobbs Tonight alongside his wife and legal partner Victoria Toensing, diGenova downplayed impeachment inquiry testimony that day from State Department diplomat George Kent by arguing that Kent is a pawn of George Soros, a Jewish billionaire whose support of U.S. progressive causes and foreign anti-corruption, pro-democracy efforts has made him the frequent target of conspiracy theories steeped in**anti-Semitic trope**s.

According to diGenova’s bonkers, evidence-free theory, “Soros controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department,” has “corrupted FBI officials,” and is seeking to “run Ukraine” using that influence over the U.S. government to benefit his business interests.

DiGenova’s comments, suggesting that the Jewish financier is a shadowy puppet master controlling vast swaths of the federal government for his own dark purposes, are “right out of the propaganda mills of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and other rightist anti-Semitic movements in Eastern Europe,” as Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall noted. Indeed, they are so reprehensible that Fox has previously ruled that such remarks earn a lifetime ban from the network’s platform.

When Judicial Watch research director Chris Farrell said the “Soros-occupied State Department” had funded caravans of Central American migrants during an October 2018 appearance on Dobbs’ program, the network condemned his “rhetoric” and said he would not be invited back. (Dobbs himself did not react to Farrell’s statement and in fact undermined the network’s response; he has his own record of anti-Semitic Soros smears.) 

In the wake of diGenova’s comments, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called on Fox to “hold the same standard” on diGenova as on Farrell.

But Fox has done no such thing. That may reflect how Fox punishments tend to be based on a sliding scale reflecting both the level of criticism the network is receiving and the relative importance of the perpetrator. And diGenova’s role as a key player in the Sean Hannity Extended Universe of pro-Trump conspiracy theorists grants him a great deal of protection.

Farrell’s comments caused a firestorm for Fox because they drew attention in the wake of a murderous rampage at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a white supremacist who was obsessed with the idea that Jews were behind the caravans.

Farrell’s relatively low status as a sometimes guest made the calculus easy for Fox: By cutting him loose, the network’s PR team could head off the subject and forestall niggling questions about the Soros conspiracy theory’s pervasiveness on its airwaves.Meanwhile, pro-Trump hosts like Dobbs and Hannity could simply slot in Farrell’s Judicial Watch boss, Fox regular Tom Fitton, for future segments.

By contrast, diGenova is essential to Fox’s conspiracy theory machine. He and Toensing were deeply enmeshed in Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s scheme to help Trump’s reelection by running a shadow foreign policy effort in Ukraine. They have employed or been employed by leading players in the plot to smear Joe Biden and undermine the intelligence community's findings that Russia interfered in our 2016 election, all while making dozens of appearances on Fox News and Fox Business to detail the ins and outs of the twisted narrative they helped assemble (diGenova alone has made at least 65 appearances this year, according to Media Matters research).

Indeed, the best argument that diGenova didn’t engage in anti-Jewish animus on Wednesday is that he was simply acting in the interests of his client Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch with ties to Russian organized crime. Firtash, who retained diGenova and Toensing to prevent his extradition to the United States on bribery charges, has clashed with Ukrainian anti-corruption organizations supported by Soros.

Of course, that’s simply another reason Fox shouldn’t allow diGenova on its airwaves: He has an irreconcilable conflict of interest on the topics he discusses -- one that he hid from the network’s audience.

The network’s latest failure to take action hammers home the reality that there are no real rules at Fox.

==

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/at-american-priority-conference-speakers-sowed-distrust-peddled-conspiracy-theories-and-called-for-civil-war

Joshua Feuerstein took the main stage at the American Priorities Festival and Conference at the Trump Doral National Miami resort to deliver a message: the Civil War was here.

Feuerstein, a former evangelical pastor, used his sermon voice to recall the original Civil War, which he called the “turning point of America,” the battle of Gettysburg, which he deemed the “turning point of the war,” and the men who fought in Pickett’s Charge, which he labeled “the turning point of Gettysburg.” He paced the stage in his navy blue suit, passing by the large red “AMP” letters on the screen behind him, and painted a picture of heroic men and hand-to-hand combat during Pickett’s Charge. “Those men did not think it anything special,” he said.

“I need you to know that 2020 is a civil war that will change the face of America forever,” Feurestein said, his voice rising, as the crowd began to applaud. “And it’s God, ladies and gentlemen, it’s God that calls the qualified, that qualifies those that are called, that are willing to step up in the moment that matters, that has greatness thrust upon them. And tonight, together here in this place to say that we are willing to fight, we may think ourselves insignificant, but that we will stand together in 2020, and we will win the war that will change the face of America.”

Feurestein’s declaration of war wasn’t the only one at the conference. Earlier in the evening, evangelicalPastor Mark Burns had called for war; “We’ve come to declare war!” he said, and attendees in the back of the ballroom replied with “War! War!” 

Over three days, speakers at the pro-Trump conference sowed seeds of distrust in nearly every American institution imaginable and cited conspiracy theories to bolster their case for the use of such civil war rhetoric, as they perpetuated sentiments of victimization and loathing. The conference could have been dismissed as a meeting of the fringe, but big-ticket speakers like Don Trump Jr. and Sarah Huckabee Sanders lent legitimacy to the conference,as did more respectable Republican groups like the Leadership Institute, which held a series of trainings in side rooms. By the time Don Trump Jr. took the stage on Friday evening, he simply invoked themes hammered into the audience throughout the day using subtler language, and it worked the crowd into a frenzy.

In this Trumpian, upside-down world, it’s hard to understand where one has landed until you take one conspiracy at face value: the “deep state.” The so-called deep state is supposedly comprised of supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in high-rank positions in different government agencies who aim to sabotage Trump at every opportunity and eventually overthrow him. Originating on the fringe, the conspiracy theory has now entered the mainstream GOP and has become a staple of right-wing media messaging. At the American Priority Conference, the speakers legitimized the deep state, and layered more conspiracy theories on top. 

Perhaps most telling was the “Unmasking the Russian Hoax” panel with Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, a right-wing “investigative” organization, conservative activist Ned Ryun, George Papadopolous, who went to federal prison for making false statements to FBI agents about the timing of his contact with Russian intermediaries in 2016, and Corey Lewandowski, former Trump campaign manager and author ofTrump’s Enemies: How the Deep State Is Undermining the Presidency. Tracy Beanz, abooster of the QAnon conspiracy theory, moderated the panel.

In Fitton’s world, bad actors had been planning a coup before Trump was even elected.

“Anytime you heard the word impeachment, you can substitute the word coup, because that’s what’s going on here,” Fitton said. “It began during the campaign, when they weaponized intelligence agency against Trump, people like George [Papadopoulos], and who knows who else, to protect Hillary Clinton, to protect Barack Obama, and as Mr. Strzok said, to have an insurance policy if Mr. Trump won.”

The “insurance policy” Fitton references isa conspiracy theorybirthed on 4chan message boards that Democrats had a ready-to-go scheme to impeach Trump if he won.Amplified by right-wing media, the conspiracy theory has reached the White House and influenced the president’s policy making.

“They [Congress] weren’t getting the traction they needed, so the intelligence agencies, it looks like, that were targeting him to begin with, came up with another smear operation,” Fitton continued. “They had a leak they wanted to get out on this Ukrainian conversation, but they recognized doing it would be illegal, so they gussied it up in a whistleblower complaint and illegally communicated classified information, it looks like, with Adam Schiff and lied about it. And now it’s led to the coup operation of President Trump.“

Papadopoulos floated the deep state theory as well. “Some of the same spies that went after Michael Flynn in 2015 were after me in 2016,” he said. As for the whistleblower report, Papadopoulos noted that it came out when WIlliam Barr was, he said, trying to investigate the previous administration. “This was a preemptive strike by the deep state,” Papadopoulos said, suggesting that it was an effort by deep state actors to protect themselves.

Lewandowski focused on the FBI.“I look at the fact that they spied on American citizens who were participating in the political process, because they didn’t like our politics,” Lewandowski said.  “What we know see over the course of the last three and a half years is that Jim Comey, and Andy McCabe, and the lovers, Dr. Page, which Trump talked about last night, James Baker who is the general counsel at the FBI, they use their badges and guns to go after American citizens because they don’t like our politics.” 

The bad actors need to punished, the panelists agreed. “People have to go to jail,” Ryun said, to which an audience member yelled: “Barack Obama!” 

According to the panelists, the media was among the bad actors, conspiring with Democrats. “The media intentionally wanted to brainwash all of you. They wanted to create chaos and division, and attempt a silent coup,” Papadopoulos said.

Later that evening, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA  warmed up the stage for Don Trump Jr.He zoomed in on the Jussie Smollett story, an actor who apparentlystaged a hate crime against himself, claiming it was indicative of the Democratic situation and “Democratic privilege,” where Democrats, like Smollett, are never prosecuted for wrongdoings. Kirk used the Smollett story to sow doubt—if Smollett fabricated a hate crime, what else could they lie to you about?—and bolster another debunked conspiracy theory that Adam Schiff changed the whistleblower laws just before the whistleblower filed his complaint.

“Guess what happens when we don’t hold them accountable? What happens is Congressman Adam Schiff then flies his staffer up to Ukraine, changes the whistleblower laws, uses a friend that he has in the CIA, and then do it all over again, just with a different country,” Kirk said. 

Kirk then moved on to other supposed deep state actors. “If [Trump] would’ve won and did the typical Republican thing … maybe the deep state actors would’ve just stayed at bay. But the fact that they’re relentlessly going after him should give you renewal and confidence that this president actually doing what he said he was going to do,” Kirk said.

When Don Trump Jr. walked out onto the stage Friday night following Kirk, he wasted no time in getting to the Smollett story and attacking Schiff and the media.“Adam Schiff is the Jussie Smollett of Congress on steroids,” he said as his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, stared at him adoringly from her chair on stage. “And he gets away with it because people in the media protect him.”

“On paper, 2020 should be over, but it’s not, because we’re not in a fair fight,” Trump Jr. said, claiming that “the mainstream media has made a conscious decision to be the marketing team of the opposing party.”

While Trump Jr. didn’t go as far as to call for civil war or double down on the deep state, he didn’t need to. His presence lent legitimacy the conspiracy theories floated all day.  It’s this very type of environment that civil war rhetoric on the right has grown. In early October, it appeared to reach Trump himself, who went as far as toquote Fox News contributor Pastor Robert Jeffress on Twitter saying, “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” 

In an upside-down world, where a deep state is conniving to imprison administration officials just doing their jobs, continues to get away with spying and crimes, and stages a coup against a democratically elected president, calling for a civil war doesn’t seem like that big of a leap.

https://www.mediamatters.org/judicial-watch/right-wing-media-tries-smear-former-ukraine-ambassador-marie-yovanovitch

no lnx vid many

Right-wing media tries to smear former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch

Despite grave Judicial Watch allegations about a “surveillance” campaign from right-wing figures, the facts so far point to mere tracking of a pro-Trump disinformation campaign

WRITTEN BY COURTNEY HAGLE

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM BRENDAN KARET & ANDREW LAWRENCE

PUBLISHED 10/17/19 10:31 AM EDT

Representatives of right-wing group Judicial Watch have been claiming during appearances on conservative media shows that former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was “spying” on media figures close to President Donald Trump by monitoring public statements they made on social media regarding Ukraine.

Judicial Watch is alleging that Yovanovitch -- who recently testified to House impeachment investigators that Trump pressured the State Department to remove her over baseless allegations -- was “basically running a war room” by monitoring public statements regarding Ukraine made by figures in right-wing media like Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump, Jr. The list also includes former Obama ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. Judicial Watch also claims that the searches were looking for the following keywords: “Biden,” “Giuliani,” “Soros,” and “Yovanovitch.”

That Yovanovich would monitor public statements made by public figures is unsurprising given her recent testimony claiming that Giuliani had been criticizing her in the months before her ousting, and the people she allegedly monitored are connected to the smear campaign Giuliani was waging. He had accused her of privately criticizing the president and trying to protect the interests of Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The smear included accusations that Soros was funding a conspiracy to hurt Trump’s presidency and elect Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Yovanovich said she was “incredulous” about her removal and that it was based on “unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives” -- claims that have been promoted publicly by conservative media figures.

The Washington Post reported that George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state responsible for Ukraine, became concerned around October 2018 that Yovanovitch was the target of a “classic disinformation operation.” NBC News indicated that the State Department was concerned over the effort to oust Yovanovich, reporting that the agency “attempted to ring alarm bells” regarding Giuliani’s efforts to smear her:

The documents also show that Giuliani, through conservative writer John Solomon’s columns in The Hill, attempted to tie former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to the liberal donor George Soros as part of a massive conspiracy to take down Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.

...

When State Department officials saw the disinformation campaign, they attempted to ring alarm bells and strategized to correct the record, the documents show.

Yovanovitch, who has over 30 years of experience in foreign diplomacy, further testified that, as The Washington Post put it, “under Trump’s leadership, U.S. foreign policy has been compromised by self-interested actors who have badly demoralized and depleted America’s diplomatic corps.” The testimony of White House aide Fiona Hill confirmed Yovanovitch’s depiction of foreign policy under the Trump administration.

Still, Judicial Watch is attempting to push the narrative that Yovanovitch nefariously spied on Trump allies among right-wing media, appearing on the radio shows of Sebastian Gorka and Sean Hannity and Fox Business host Lou Dobbs’ prime-time show to spread the message. Some Fox News figures responded with paranoia regarding their own conversations.

Judicial Watch also shared its report on Twitter, announcing that it is “investigating if prominent conservative figures/journalists & persons [with ties] to @realDonaldTrump were unlawfully monitored by the State Dept in Ukraine at the request of ousted U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, an Obama appointee.”

Fox & Friends hosted Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who repeated that his “sourcing tells us that she was asking that folks like Rudy Giuliani, Don Trump Jr., a whole list of your colleagues there at Fox, be monitored on certain phrases.” Co-host Steve Doocy invited Fitton to “go ahead and speculate for a second” about Yovanovitch’s motives, to which Fitton replied, “It looks an awful lot like an enemy’s list to me.” Doocy noted that Yovanovitch is “keeping an eye on television, of all things,” and he called it “particularly disturbing that, you know, somebody in the federal government would be tracking people on TV.”

Video file

CitationFrom the October 16 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): So what are you thinking [Yovanovitch] may have done?

TOM FITTON (PRESIDENT, JUDICIAL WATCH): Well, our sourcing tells us that she was asking that folks like Rudy Giuliani, Don Trump Jr., a whole list of your colleagues there at Fox, be monitored on certain phrases. And this is around March of this year. Biden, Giuliani, Soros and her own name, Yovanovitch. So the problem is that it's not legal for the State Department to do that type of monitoring, certainly overseas, of American citizens. And it may have been only social media posts but they still can't be tracking American citizens' activities like that. The project was so big, they sought help from D.C. and that's when someone in D.C. said hold on a sec. You can't be doing this. It's not legal.

DOOCY: And of course she testified behind closed doors, and the way they have set it up is that's all supposed to be confidential. It's supposed to be secret. And yet somehow not so secret to some newspapers.

FITTON: Yeah. The selective leaks of the secret star chamber type testimony is really deplorable, to use a turn of phrase. And I would like to see her full transcript so we can figure out whether members of Congress questioned her about this issue. You know, the State Department is aware of this, guys. And it's about time we get a fuller explanation as to why this ambassador, a career civil service person who had been placed as ambassador by President Obama, was so concerned about Biden and Ukraine and George Soros, who controversially was involved in Ukraine as well through his Open Society funding and foundations. Why were they monitoring the president's lawyer and his son?

DOOCY: Sure. And keeping an eye on people on television of all things. And I know you filed a Freedom of Information Act request so perhaps you will get the answer to it. But just, you know, go ahead and speculate for a second. Connect some dots. Why would she want to do that?

FITTON: Well, you know, it looks an awful lot like an enemy's list to me. And when you are concerned about an issue, you start searching on the terms you are concerned about. Biden, Ukraine, Soros. What was going on in March? What was it about those subjects that our ambassador was tasking her staff with tracking the social media postings of these figures, contrary to law and in a way such that people in Washington said you can't do it and you have to stop. There are issues here that are not just about why they were tracking it, but whether the rights of those being targeted were violated as a result.

DOOCY: And it's particularly disturbing that, you know, somebody in the federal government would be tracking people on TV.

FITTON: Well yeah I mean, it is social media posts. But look, you know, any of your viewers and you, Steve, do you want the government creating a file on you based on what your social media postings are? No, you don't. And sure enough the law doesn't allow it.

DOOCY: It does not.

On America First with Sebastian Gorka, Judicial Watch’s Chris Farrell described Yovanovitch as an “absolute Obama partisan.” Farrell claimed that Judicial Watch has “very reliable information” that the State Department was “basically running a war room” by “documenting, capturing, archiving all the statements, publications, tweets, social media, anything that those folks put out was ordered to be compiled and monitored.” Farrell did not reveal what the reliable information was. He then claimed Yovanovitch’s action amounted to an “abuse of power” and he described it as a “political operative using their government position as leverage against their political opponents.”

On Gorka's radio show, Chris Farrell claims Yovanovitch was monitoring journalists

OCTOBER 11, 2019

Audio file

CitationFrom the October 11 edition of Salem Radio Networks' America First with Sebastian Gorka:

CHRIS FARRELL (JUDICIAL WATCH): Well, this is an ambassador, Maria -- I'm going to get her name incorrect -- Yovanovitch, I believe it is pronounced, although I am subject to Ukrainian slash Russian checks -- the -- who the -- an absolute Obama partisan, she's unabashedly so. She's complicit in this Schiff show trial, and the reason I say that is because her secret testimony is already in the hands of The New York Times and that of the internet all over, so, so much for the highly classified, confidential, behind closed doors testimony.

SEBASTIAN GORKA (HOST): Right.

FARRELL: When the New York Times is out peddling it five minutes after she goes in the door. Look, she had the Obama administration's back. She had Joe Biden's back, because we have very reliable information that she was conducting a, or had directed elements, bureaus within the State Department, to conduct a monitoring mission of about a dozen or so people that -- who were either close to the president or were reporters, editorial writers, perhaps even television and radio hosts who were identified as being close to President Trump.

And they were basically running a war room. They were documenting, capturing, archiving all the statements, publications, tweets, social media, anything that those folks put out was ordered to be compiled and monitored.

And at some point, somebody in the State Department said, “Hey wait a minute, those are US persons, you can't do that.” The State Department can't run a monitoring mission, a media war room on U.S. persons, particularly when they're targeting those persons and then using key words like “Biden" and “Soros" and “Ukraine" and “Giuliani" of all names.

And so, we're very interested in this, and yesterday, as we are wont to do, we filed a Freedom Of Information Act request with the State Department with some very specific language, looking for what the dear ambassador was up to and what those bureaus and departments and agencies within the State Department were doing with respect to this monitoring mission.

GORKA: So Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, recalled by President Trump, who tasked the State Department to monitor U.S. persons, journalists, that handful of names she asked to be monitored, did any of those include radio hosts that you've worked with in the past, Chris Farrell?

FARRELL: I have reason to believe that that's so, and, you know, when we nail down some additional details -- of course, when we also nail down some of the documentation from the State Department, your listening audience can rest assured that we will make it widely known across the land that this sort of unlawful activity, once we document it, that it was going on -- because you want to talk about an abuse of power, and a political operative using their government position as leverage against their political opponents, you're talking about the definition of corruption.

GORKA: So, let's be clear here, I don't want to sound didactic and like a pedant, but an ambassador running a foreign mission is there with a very specific job to do. They are the president's representative, an ambassador is the president's representative to that government, and runs that mission to establish and maintain the bilateral relations between the United States and that country, as long as they are running that embassy. Have you ever seen, in your professional history, the national security establishment or at Judicial Watch, an ambassador ever -- ever task Foggy Bottom, ever task the State Department to monitor the work, to monitor the statements, to monitor the activities of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, Chris Farrell?

FARRELL: No, it's -- in fact, it's the polar opposite of what they should be doing. I mean, normally they're very busy checking the foreign press, and certainly the nation they're representative of, for anything that may be of interest in the, you know, to the United States, to our national interest, to our defense, to our political advantage. The lens of the telescope, or the microscope, is supposed to be turned around the other way.

But in this case, you know, it appears that bureaus in the State Department, like the Global Engagement Center, which has a kind of a weird Orwellian title --

GORKA: the GEC.

FARRELL: -- that they were running this sort of information operation, this -- but a collection one, not a -- not putting forth the position of the U.S. and advancing our goals and objectives, but instead, flipping it around and carefully tracking the comments, the tweets, the writings, the reporting of U.S. persons -- but in particular, not just with respect to Ukraine, but on this very controversial hornet's nest we've found ourselves in now, with respect to the Bidens, Mr. Giuliani's investigations, and the other thing I found curious was the involvement of Mr. Soros --

GORKA: Chris, can -- Chris, can you hold it right there on that cliffhanger? Can you stay with us for one more segment?

FARRELL: Sure. Certainly.

GORKA: Alright, the name has been mentioned. Media Matters, are you watching? Are you typing away? We mentioned George Soros, so wake up, because I want to see that transcript when we're done with the next segment, with Judicial Watch's Chris Farrell.

On Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox correspondent Trace Gallagher reported on Judicial Watch's story, who claimed that the reporting comes after “news reports that Yovanovitch had an anti-Trump bias.”

Video file

CitationFrom the October 16 edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight:

TUCKER CARLSON(HOST): America's former ambassador to Ukraine may have ordered government personnel to monitor journalists and allies of President Trump. Our chief breaking news correspondent Trace Gallagher has the latest on this breaking story.

TRACE GALLAGHER: Hi, Tucker. Yeah, at the center of this is Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine appointed by Obama and ousted by President Trump. Yovanovitch made headlines last week when she testified before the House Intel committee as part of the Democrats impeachment inquiry. Now, two sources with close knowledge of the situation confirmed to Tucker Carlson Tonight that in the spring of 2019 the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine requested that several journalists and people close to President Trump have their social media accounts monitored.

This happened following news reports that Yovanovitch had an anti-Trump bias. The list includes 13 people including our own Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, as well as Fox News contributor's Sara Carter and Dan Bongino along with Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump Jr. According to the sources, the monitoring lasted for at least a few days before stopping, because the State Department is not allowed to conduct this sort of monitoring of U.S. citizens obviously.

The conservative government watchdog Judicial Watch has now filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department. seeking, quoting here, "Any and all records regarding, concerning, or related to the monitoring of any U.S.-based journalists, reporter, or media commentator by any employee or office of the Department of State between January 1, 2019, and the present." Judicial Watch says they have information that indicated Yovanovitch directly ordered subordinates to target this list of people, Tucker.

CARLSON: Shocking story, I would say. Trace Gallagher, thank you.

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs listed a string of conservative media figures Judicial Watch claims were being monitored, noting that “yours truly” was included. Dobbs concluded that the monitoring is “unlawful.”

Video file

CitationFrom the October 14 edition of Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight

LOU DOBBS (HOST):A number of journalists, including myself have, well, when they asked the -- one ambassador to Ukraine, the ousted U.S. ambassador, Marie Yovanovich, had asked that we be monitored. Judicial Watch discovering all of that and uncovering our names today, including Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Fox News contributors John Solomon, Sara Carter, Dan Bongino, and yours truly. Others may have been targeted, including Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, Sebastian Gorka.

The list goes on, and the -- well, the entire extent we don't know, but we do know this -- it would be unlawful to have done so, and we can't wait to hear which of my fascinating conversations may have been heard as a result. Not really that fascinating, but I had to say that.

Later in the same show, Dobbs repeated that Yovanovitch was “talking about monitoring me and surveilling me.” He asserted that he “take[s] that sort of as a badge of honor honestly” but expressed concern for his colleagues “who are less courageous than me.” His guest Ed Rollins agreed that the story is “absolutely unbelievable.”

Video file

CitationFrom the October 14 edition of Fox Business' Lou Dobbs Tonight

ED ROLLINS(FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): I’ve watched all day today people saying the president fired this ambassador, how outrageous. Every ambassador can be fired by the president. They are hired by the president, they are appointed by a president. If she was bad-mouthing the president as people said she was, she should be fired.

LOU DOBBS (HOST): You know what she was doing is -- as terrible as that is -- I mean, she was talking about monitoring me and surveilling me? I mean, I take that sort of as a badge of honor honestly, but my colleagues who are less courageous than me, you know, I feel badly for Sean Hannity, for example, who might be intimidated by such a thing. I'm kidding. I’m kidding.

ED ROLLINS: Certainly you are not intimidated, and if they wanted to know what you want to think, you have five hours a week on here and three times a day on Salem Radio. So, anybody who wants to know what you are thinking, saying, it's right there out in the public, and it's always very smart.

...

DOBBS: It's just amazing. Sean Hannity, John Solomon, I mean, the foremost reporting on this spygate has been coming from John Solomon, and Sean Hannity, and Sara Carter. It's crazy what she was doing.

ROLLINS: Unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable, and the public is going to know, and at the end of the day here, this thing is going to -- you know, again, they may put the 218 votes up tomorrow and impeach him, but they’re not going to basically put any evidence forward that he should get -- put out of office.

On his radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity claimed that if true, the monitoring is a “constitutional violation” that “would be something that you would expect in a third-world banana republic.” He added that Judicial Watch’s reporting shows Yovanovitch may have “violated laws and government regulations by ordering subordinates to target certain U.S. persons,” suggesting at times that the State Department was listening in on personal conversations.

Sean Hannity Tom Fitton surveillance claim

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Sean Hannity

Audio file

CitationFrom the October 15 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show:

SEAN HANNITY (HOST):Well everybody starts sending me this tweet by our friend Tom Fitton over at Judicial Watch, and then I'm looking at the piece that they put out, an investigation that they're involved in, to find out if this Ukraine ambassador ordered State Department officials to monitor journalists and friends of the president, or people that are outspoken in terms of the president. In other words, illegal surveillance perhaps took place, I can't say for sure that this did. Certain figures in the media and elsewhere, private conversations that are being held between private citizens were being monitored, in an effort to find out information that could hurt Donald Trump -- that would be a constitutional violation. That would be something that you would expect in a third-world banana republic.

…

Judicial Watch has obtained some information indicating that this ambassador may have violated laws and government regulations by ordering subordinates to target certain U.S. persons, using State Department resources, and apparently, reportedly ordered the monitoring keyed to the following terms: “Biden," “Giuliani," “Soros," “Yovanovitch." And Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom Of Information Act request with the State Department, and continue to gather facts. All right, I want to stay very clear of anything that is not factual here, Tom Fitton.

TOM FITTON (PRESIDENT, JUDICIAL WATCH): That's right.

HANNITY: I've read the piece. Do we know this happened for a certainty? We don't know yet.

FITTON: Well, our sources say it did, and so the concern is, and this is the process, is that the government, and certainly the government abroad, our representatives abroad, can't use government resources to track even the public communications, like tweets or public comments by American citizens. And so, evidently that was going on in the Ukrainian embassy, using the search terms that you highlighted, "Biden," "Giuliani," "Soros" and "Yovanovitch." They then sought additional help to do that process, that project, from the State Department here in Washington, D.C., and that's when someone said "Well, hold on a second. You can't be doing this at all, you got to stop it. It's illegal."

And so, we don't know if they actually stopped it, we're not sure how long it went on for, but we do know that this target list is pretty darn accurate. I don't know if it's complete, but it included you, other Fox News personalities, and contributors associated with Fox, and other conservatives who are known for taking strong stances on social media, certainly allied with President Trump generally.

So, it's very curious that they would be concerned about these issues, Biden, Soros and Yovanovitch, way back at -- it looks like the date timeframe is back in March of this year, so it was before she was removed.

…

HANNITY: But this wasn't even really an issue at the time, was it? I mean, we were focused on many other things at that time, if I recall, and, you know, not the least of which I guess was the pending Mueller report. When did the Mueller report come out?

FITTON: The Mueller report came out around the same time, but the noises about Biden and Ukraine began around that same timeframe. I should go back and check. So, you have to wonder why it is -- we don't know why these individuals such as you made it onto that list.

...

FITTON: This is why the coup's taking place against President Trump, because they want to freeze any investigation of these issues, both in Ukraine and in China. They're targeting Trump, they're targeting president -- his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani now, and you can see that they were nervous about what others were saying about it. It looks like, according to our reporting, from -- from you on down, and it's just an incredible list, and you know, the idea that you would have illegal monitoring of not only all these Fox News journalists, I'm sure all the other media are rushing to your defense, Sean -- but the president's lawyer and the president's son, it ought to be concerning that this abuse was taking place. This is -- to me, this is just another extension of spygate.

HANNITY: It is -- if we have the powerful tools of intelligence, and by the way, this is not the first time in all of this process, in all of our coverage that I have been told -- you know, I have to go about my daily life, what am I supposed to do -- that this type of thing has happened to me, and I know to others. So, then the question becomes at what point do the American people step up and say we can't live in a country that denies fundamental constitutional rights to people, like is happening here. Because to me, we lose the country if the powerful tools of intelligence are turned on the American people.

We saw that with the General Flynn case. I mean, what happened in his case is they knew the whole conversation that had taken place, because they had raw intelligence, he had been unmasked, and they had the information when McCabe's -- and Comey, Comey bragging about taking advantage of the chaos, which he'd never do in the Obama or Bush administration, sending his FBI guys in, and his partner, the deputy director of the FBI, McCabe, is saying you don't need a lawyer. Well, that would deny him his Miranda rights, on that issue alone the case should be thrown out. But then, they went into his office knowing the full conversation, because they had unmasked and surveilled him, and they had raw intelligence on the whole conversation. So, they were setting him up, and he was immediately in a perjury trap, without even the benefit of a lawyer to tell him "Maybe you should clam up, here."

FITTON: Well, it's -- Sean, they're trying to remove a president based on allegations from an anonymous source, who it looks like may have illicitly shared classified information with the investigator, Adam Schiff. It's -- it's -- it's just another -- it's another variation of the theme, of the civil rights of those who are targeted taking a backseat to this power politics where they abuse the rule of law to change political results. It's a constitutional crisis we're in, and it's not because of any misconduct by President Trump. It's because of the misconduct of those investigating him, who were purporting to be concerned about his activities.

HANNITY: Yeah. What do you think -- I know you work with a lot of lawyers, I know you're not a lawyer yourself, but what do you think is the legal recourse if in fact such illegality happens, to citizens, even people like myself as a public figure, do I have a right to -- for recourse, or a path for recourse, in something like this?

FITTON: Well, there could be potential violations of the privacy act, that's -- that's an easy call. The other law that covers this is the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibits the US government from propagandizing Americans or targeting, and, or targeting them, the State Department especially. So, you know, talk to any civil rights lawyer. They'll probably provide you all sorts of other claims you could pursue, when the government is illegally targeting you with a spy operation, even if they are just tracking your public comments.

And, you know, I guarantee you, all your listeners will be very nervous to know if this -- that -- if the government was tracking what they were doing, and keeping a file on them, which is what purportedly may have been going on here, and we're just trying to figure out what the scope of it was and how far it went, but it's just disturbing it took place at all, because the government's not allowed to do that. It -- because obviously, it's a chilling effect, and the law doesn't allow it because it's a chilling effect.

One America News Network’s Jack Posobiec, who pushed the Pizzagate and Seth Rich conspiracy theories and has ties to white nationalists, covered Judicial Watch’s reporting on the network, highlighting his inclusion. Reporter Stephanie Myers commented that Posobiec now has his “guard up” because it’s “like Big Brother watching you” and called on Yovanovitch to be “held accountable for this unlawful monitoring.”

Video file

CitationFrom the October 16 edition of One America News Networks' OAN News

STEPHANIE MYERS (OAN ANCHOR): But first, Judicial Watch takes a look into former Ukrainian ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who allegedly ordered the monitoring of journalists and those tied to the Trump administration. One of those people named was One America's Jack Posobiec. Jack is live in Washington, D.C. to give us the details on the probe. Good morning, Jack.

JACK POSOBIEC (OANN):Hey, good morning Stephanie. So we're now learning of course from Judicial Watch and our own One American News sources at the White House and within the administration about this list. Now Maria Yovanovitch, she's the former ambassador, in terms of contacts, the former ambassador to the Ukraine that had been recalled by President Trump. She herself had been appointed by Barack Obama and was seen as a holdover from her administration. Now just last week she testified against President Trump behind closed doors as part of this impeachment inquiry with the Democrats, so we're not really hearing very much what came out of that. However just days later, we see this report from Judicial Watch naming a list, apparently a watch list, that she put together at the embassy but then also reached back to her colleagues at State Department headquarters asking for more resources into what the report describes as monitoring of the people on this list which include myself, a number of other journalists, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and the list goes on. I found my name to be right at the very top of it and so we're not sure exactly yet what exactly the scope of this monitoring was, whether or not it was simply following on their on-air reports and tweets or whether or not it included something further with government resources.

MYERS: Right, and you mentioned some of the other people, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Guiliani, and again it's believed that Yovanovitch ordered the State Department to monitor those employees, including yourself, who may be allies of the president. What can you tell us about the investigation conducted by Judicial Watch?

POSOBIEC: So Judicial Watch so far has filed a Freedom of Information Act request. And we are gonna be following up as well with the privacy act requests -- for myself it's a privacy act request because it's actually records pertaining to myself that the government is holding. From sources that have reported back to Judicial Watch, they have essentially said that Marie Yovanovitch was looking for certain key words in reports or in tweets that she was tracking through the State Department, and having her own employees and members of the State Department track one of which, believe it or not was the word "Biden," which is very interesting because apparently this list may have been done as early as a year ago. So those of us who are covering this story, so One American News, we were certainly covering the story. I know I was making it certainly a highlight of my coverage. They've been noting that Joe Biden has had an issue, Hunter Biden has had an issue, for well over a year at this point. And that's something that even members of our own State Department were tracking it, certainly doesn't seem like something that was done in the course of official duties and unfortunately it smacks of the type of partisan political targeting that was done by members of the Barack Obama administration and now we're seeing hauled over into the Trump administration.

MYERS: I can only imagine, especially someone like you who was targeted, that you may have your guard up at this point and it's essentially like Big Brother watching you but can we expect Yovanovitch and other State Department officials who may have been involved in this to be held accountable for this unlawful monitoring?

JACK POSOBIEC: Well she's already been pulled from her State Department -- her at least ambassadorship post. She's still at the State Department but we would like to see -- I mean once the Freedom of Information Act request comes back out, I would certainly like to go to the House intelligence committee ,to the Senate intelligence committee to see if the lawmakers there -- and by the way in a bipartisan fashion because this shouldn't be something that's a partisan issue. The United States government should not be using state resources, national security resources for use against partisan political opponents. I myself was a former member of the intelligence community and believe me Stephanie, I would not dream of using any of those assets for my own personal gain.

MYERS: Yeah, we'll have to see if this is just the tip of the iceberg as more information unfollows. It almost seems like an onion and you're peeling back the layers so it's definitely an interesting development, especially since you were one of those names.

On The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham invited Fitton on to discuss his report. Ingraham claimed that Democrats' efforts to “note [Yovanitch's] deep integrity” were “a bit premature.” Fitton insisted he has it on “solid gold authority” that Yovanovitch “illegally” monitored conservative personalities.

Video file

CitationFrom the October 16 edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle:

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): And last week, ousted US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified behind closed doors for ten hours. It was part of the impeachment star chamber against President Trump.

Now, most people didn't even know who she even was, but since she was there to hit Trump, the media and the Democrats were quick to note her deep integrity.

...

INGRAHAM: Well, it turns out that praise may be a bit premature. The group Judicial Watch is investigating whether prominent conservatives, including yours truly, were unlawfully monitored by the State Department in Ukraine.

Now, this was reportedly all done at the request of Yovanovitch herself. Joining me now, the man who first uncovered this, was Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. He is here with us now.

Tom, what's going on, what have you uncovered, what do we know?

TOM FITTON: Well, we understand that she had directed that a list of people, including you, Donald Trump Jr., the president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani --

INGRAHAM: I feel so special.

FITTON: Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, other Fox News contributors --

INGRAHAM: Okay, all the cool kids.

FITTON: -- Be tracked. She wanted to know, the staff wanted to know, the social media postings of what you were saying about Biden, Soros, Giuliani, and her.

INGRAHAM: Why so defensive, you think?

FITTON: Well, because this supposedly happened back in March when noise started happening about whether she was a never-Trumper, and whether she was improperly protecting that crowd.

INGRAHAM: So, people have to understand this, this is a U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine at the State Department, and you have it on -- is this solid gold authority, Tommy? Solid gold?

FITTON: Is sure is. I wouldn't be here if it weren't.

INGRAHAM: So, so we were -- I mean, I completely trust, you know -- make sure that she was ordering or requesting that we be tracked. Now, who did the tracking? Do we know?

FITTON: Well, the staff was doing it and evidently it was a big project and they asked the help of the State Department here in Washington, D.C., someone took the request in, looked at what was going on and said, "Wait, you can't be doing this."

...

INGRAHAM:  I want to show the comment from March that might have triggered this on this show, from me, troublemaker always. Watch.

...

INGRAHAM: Well, she did get -- that was the first time I mentioned her.

FITTON: And around the same time, this list was generated, and it's an -- The concern is it is in violation of the law. The government can't be tracking people like this.

INGRAHAM: The liberals used to care about this. Going back to what I said in The Angle, liberals used to care about government police state-like behavior, deep state, endless wars. Do you see how they really are turned into these political pretzels by just their opposition to Trump. Like, nothing he does you could ever agree with, even a smidgen of it.

FITTON: And, you know, you are acting as a journalist, and your fellow journalists were also on this list. So, the left doesn't care that journalists were being targeted, according to our source, illegally, because you were critical of a U.S. official abroad.

INGRAHAM: What's the recourse? What's the recourse here? Any recourse?

FITTON: Well, the Privacy Act, you know, there are civil remedies, and frankly -- you know, look -- look who's being investigated. Wall Street Journal reports that Sessions gets a subpoena, the man who was sent a letter, Giuliani is being targeted. Violating the Privacy Act carries criminal penalties if you're found to have done it.

INGRAHAM:  I think my D.C. bar license is still pretty active. Get a little pro bono, I will represent myself, so, no problem.

FITTON: Well, maybe we can do it, too. But we're suing, we're asking under FOIA, we want the -- more information, and I want to know whether Congress is going to look at this.

INGRAHAM: Spit out the email, we want the emails. They don't like turning over their emails. They hide the emails. Alright Tom, thank you for doing this, and thank you for finding out about the surveillance.

==

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/tom-fitton/

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==

wiki

Thomas J. Fitton is an American conservative activist. He is the President of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group ^[1] He has worked for America's Voice and National Empowerment Television, the International Policy Forum, the Leadership Institute, and Accuracy in Media. He has been a talk radio and television host.^[2]

Fitton was born in Nyack, New York. He has a bachelors degree in English from George Washington University.^[3] Fitton's father was a manager at a supermarket and his mother was a nurse.^[4]

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Judicial Watch:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

Fitton has been President of Judicial Watch since August 1998. The group primarily seeks access to government records, filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public records act lawsuits, engaging in other forms of civil litigation, and pursuing various other actions designed to generate public pressure on government agencies and public officials.^[5]

In 2006, Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch's former Chairman, attempted to reclaim control of Judicial Watch by suing Fitton, the organization, and the organization's other officers and directors. Most of Klayman's claims, including all of the claims against Fitton and Judicial Watch's other officers and directors, were dismissed in 2009.^[6]

Groundswell:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

In July 2013, Fitton was identified as a key member of Groundswell, a coalition of right-wing activists and journalists attempting to enable radical political change, whose members met in the offices of Judicial Watch.^[7][8]

Views

Trayvon Martin killing:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

In July 2013, Fitton gained widespread attention for Judicial Watch in conservative media after a jury found George Zimmerman not guilty in the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, when Fitton appeared in numerous interviews to claim that the Obama administration's Department of Justice had sent representatives to Sanford in the wake of Martin’s death "to help organize and manage rallies and protests against George Zimmerman."^[9] PolitiFact rated Fitton's claim "mostly false."^[9]

Climate change

Fitton rejects the scientific consensus on climate change.^[10] He has said "There has been scandal after scandal involving climate data and we are skeptical of government agencies that won’t tell people what they are up to... I’m sure scientists are concerned that funding for dubious research will be cut, but the truth will win out in the end."^[10] Judicial Watch, which has claimed that climate science is "fraud science", has filed lawsuits seeking to force the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to release the correspondence of climate scientists who published a 2015 study in the journal Science.^[11][12] The study had debunked one of the common claims made by those who reject the scientific consensus on climate change, namely that there existed global warming "hiatus" between 1998-2012.^[11] The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF), American Meteorological Society and Union of Concerned Scientists condemned Judicial Watch, saying that the disclosure of private communications between scientists "would harm (or halt altogether) government scientists' ability to collaborate with colleagues, damage the government's ability to recruit or retain top scientists, and deter critically important research into politically charged fields like climate change".^[11] The Judicial Watch lawsuit was inspired by Rep. Lamar Smith, who had accused the authors of the study of "alter[ing] data" to "get the politically correct results they want."^[11]

Support for Breitbart News:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

Judicial Watch has for a number of years advertised on Breitbart News, the alt-right website formerly run by Steve Bannon.^[13] Fitton said "Liberal activists want to destroy Breitbart, but we won’t be cowed".^[13]

Voter fraud:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

Fitton has made claims about voter fraud, saying "We have all heard about voter fraud and the attempts by liberal media organs like the New York Times and Ivory Tower academics to dismiss it as a nonexistent problem. But it is real, widespread, and substantial to the point that it can decide elections".^[14]

Russian interference in the 2016 election:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

In 2017, Judicial Watch helped to stoke Republican attacks against Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.^[15] Tom Fitton has called for the Special Counsel investigation to be shut down, arguing that prosecutors in the probe were too biased against President Trump to conduct a credible investigation.^[16] Fitton furthermore called for shutting down the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) "because it was turned into a KGB-type operation by the Obama administration."^[17][18] Newsweek rated the claim "false", noting that "there is no comparison between the FBI and KGB."^[19]

Awards:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

Fitton received the American Conservative Union's Defender of the Constitution Award' during its annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2015.^[20]

Works:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

• Fitton, Tom (2014). The Corruption Chronicles: Obama's Big Secrecy, Big Corruption, and Big Government. New York: Threshold Editions. ISBN 978-1-4767-6705-5.
• Fitton, Tom Clean House: Exposing Our Government's Secrets and Lies (New York: Threshold Editions, 2016). ISBN 978-1-5011-3704-4

References:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

1. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Lepro, Sara (15 May 2009). "First nine banks were forced to take bailouts". Boston.com. Associated Press; The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 21 April 2016. Retrieved 29 March 2017. ...Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan educational foundation...
2. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Tom Fitton biography at Judicial Watch web site.
3. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Thomas Fitton, Judicial Watch Inc: Profile & Biography". Bloomberg.
4. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Neil NcCabe Washington Examiner
5. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ About Judicial Watch at its web site.
6. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Klayman v. Judicial Watch, Inc., 628 F. Supp.2d 112, 118 (D.D.C. 2009).
7. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Wemple, Erik (2013-07-25). "Breitbart News cited for 'colluding' with conservative coalition". Washington Post. Retrieved 2017-12-26.
8. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Inside the New Strategy Group Where Right-Wing Activists and Journalists Coordinate Messaging".
9. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Fitton#cite_ref-:1_9-1) "Judicial Watch says Department of Justice unit organized protests against George Zimmerman".
10. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Fitton#cite_ref-:0_10-1) Milman, Oliver (2017-02-22). "Climate scientists face harassment, threats and fears of 'McCarthyist attacks:{':(style="padding-right:0.2em"):}:". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-12-25.
11. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Fitton#cite_ref-:5_11-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Fitton#cite_ref-:5_11-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Fitton#cite_ref-:5_11-3) "Climate scientists battle attacks on their research from conservatives, brace for more under Trump". InsideClimate News. 2017-02-06. Retrieved 2017-12-25.
12. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Kurtz, Lauren (2016-07-07). "Climate scientists are under attack from frivolous lawsuits | Lauren Kurtz". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-12-25.
13. ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Fitton#cite_ref-:2_13-1) Bhattarai, Abha (2017-06-08). "Breitbart lost 90 percent of its advertisers in two months: Who's still there?". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2017-12-25.
14. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Fitton, Tom (2016). Clean House: Exposing Our Government's Secrets and Lies. New York: Threshold Editions. p. 117. ISBN 978-1501137051.
15. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Kranish, Michael; Barrett, Devlin; Demirjian, Karoun (2017-12-24). "No longer a 'lonely battle': How the campaign against the Mueller probe has taken hold". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
16. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Barrett, Devlin; Sullivan, Sean (2017-12-06). "Republicans hammer Mueller, FBI as Russia investigation intensifies". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
17. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Anapol, Avery (December 14, 2017). "Conservative watchdog head: Do we need to shut down the FBI?". The Hill.
18. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Davis, Julie Hirschfeld (2018-02-02). "Trump Calls Justice Department and F.B.I. Conduct 'a Disgrace:{':(style="padding-right:0.2em"):}:". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
19. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "We fact-checked a Fox News guest's claim that Obama turned the FBI into the KGB". Newsweek. 2017-12-14. Retrieved 2017-12-17.
20. :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Ross Hemminger (February 28, 2015). "Tom Fitton Presented with the Defender of the Constitution Award" (Press release). National Harbor, MD: American Conservative Union.

External links:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

• Judicial Watch homepage
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Q & A with Tom Fitton, May 19, 2009

Categories: 

• Living people
• American activists
• George Washington University alumni
• People from Nyack, New York

DOBBS (HOST): Our first guest tonight says the Manafort indictment is overkill, another example of Mueller abusing his power, and an investigation that's become disastrous. Joining us tonight, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. Tom, good to have you with us.

I mean, how many -- I mean, Manafort's going to set some sort of record as the most indicted man in political history. What in the world is -- what is gained by the Special Counsel adding to these charges, and making these extraordinary charges that have really nothing to do with the Trump campaign, that have nothing to do even with the modern era in American politics?

[...]

FITTON: If I were the president, I would look at this investigation as something requiring a pardon analysis, because I don't know whether Manafort did anything wrong or not, but I don't trust Mueller to figure it out. And I know that if he did anything wrong or not, he would never have been indicted but for his relationship with then-candidate Trump. So, if -- in those circumstances a pardon may be warranted.

Previously:

Lou Dobbs and Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton call on Trump to "just pardon everybody, you know, just have a field day"

Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton tells Hannity "It's fair to ask whether" Rod Rosenstein should "be fired, or in the least have to recuse himself"

Tom Fitton tells Tucker Carlson that Jeff Sessions should order U.S. Marshals to raid FBI offices

On Fox Business, Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton says Jeff Sessions can "unrecuse" himself from Trump/Russia probe

endit1