Corsi, J

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see bak

merri ok

booktv silent no more book

school corrupt, sue if kid get bad grade; he sued mueller for 350m$?

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OMFG

https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/23/donald-trump-lawsuit-lord-of-the-rings-gondor-election

guk

donald Trump’s diehard supporters are often accused of living in fantasyland, but one court case recently launched to try to reinstall him as president has surprised even the most hardened observers of Trumpian strangeness by citing as evidence a mythological realm from The Lord of the Rings.

The case was launched in Texas, in the name of small conservative groups including Latinos for Trump and Blacks for Trump, and was filed by Paul Davis, an attorney who lost his job after posting Instagram videos of himself at the attack on the Capitol.

The case offers a baseless mix of allegations of electoral fraud common among the Trump base and calls for the voiding of every vote cast in the election – which was won handily by now-President Joe Biden, who was sworn in this week.

But – unusually for a legal strategy – the case cites as evidence to back up its pro-Trump claims the tragic fate of the kingdom of Gondor, one of the central realms of JRR Tolkien’s fantasy classic, whose exiled ruler, Aragorn, was played onscreen by Viggo Mortensen.

“Gondor has no king,” the lawsuit states, a footnote providing an explanation of the woeful fate of Tolkien’s entirely imaginary land populated by dragons, wizards, hobbits and elves, all threatened by a baleful Dark Lord backed up by an army of orcs and with famously little time for due democratic process.

The suit explains how Gondor’s throne was empty and its rightful kings in exile, presumably positing the idea that Trump is the true king of America – a land happily monarch-free since 1776.

“This analogy is applicable since there is now in Washington DC a group of individuals calling themselves the president, vice-president and Congress who have no rightful claim to govern the American people,” the case states.

It adds: “Since only the rightful king could sit on the throne of Gondor, a steward was appointed to manage Gondor until the return of the King, known as ‘Aragorn’, occurred at the end of the story.”

The lawsuit then suggests that America’s version of the stewards of Gondor should be selected from among – surprise, surprise – Trump’s cabinet members, who should run the country.

Legal experts have taken a tough line.

“One thing that Americans learned during the post-election litigation is how little patience courts have for absurd legal arguments,” Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, told Salon in a thorough takedown of the case and its legal merits.

“This legal effort to declare Congress illegitimate will be laughed out of court and could lead to sanctions for the lawyer bringing such a claim.”

[the new abnormal] TDB

Capitol Riots

Oath Keepers Founder Secretly Backed Lawsuit for Government Based on ‘Lord of the Rings’

TRICKSY HOBBITSES

Lawyers for Stewart Rhodes are arguing their client stopped trying to overturn the election after Jan. 6. That’s not exactly true.

Roger Sollenberger

Political Reporter

Updated Feb. 18, 2022  / Published Feb. 18, 2022

After the violent Capitol insurrection failed on Jan. 6, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes had another idea for overturning the election—a truly epic one.

While Rhodes’ lawyers have claimed the leader of the far-right militia group did “precisely nothing” after his insurrection dreams were dashed, new details obtained by The Daily Beast reveal that isn’t quite accurate.

According to a source with inside knowledge of the case, just days after Jan. 6, Rhodes and multiple militia members joined a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

Unfortunately for Rhodes and his compatriots, the lawsuit he signed on to was, in a word, “insane.” It went off the rails almost as soon as it hit the courts, with the lead attorney citing The Lord of the Rings as legal precedent.

Eventually, the case dissolved amid a sea of ridicule. But it didn’t start out that way.

The full scope of the Oath Keeper’s shadow legal effort, largely spearheaded by the group’s then-general counsel Kellye SoRelle, stretched back well before the riot, according to multiple people involved. In fact, it ran on a parallel track alongside the paramilitary-style buildup that has defined the militia’s role, and it roped in a number of key Jan. 6 figures along the way—including people tied to the Proud Boys and First Amendment Praetorians.

Rick Hasen, a nationally recognized election law expert, told The Daily Beast that Rhodes’ connection to this lawsuit didn’t rate highly against other accusations—such as allegedly stockpiling weapons in preparation for a violent coup.

“I don’t know the fact that he was one of many who joined this absurd lawsuit is all that significant compared to the other, more immediately dangerous things that he did,” Hasen said.

But Rhodes, a Yale Law grad, appears to have been hands-on with the lawsuit from the beginning. And the nexus represented in the legal push suggests that members of violent groups—with some such as Rhodes facing conspiracy charges—coordinated to overturn the election in more ways than one.

It also undermines assertions from Rhodes’ attorneys that the Oath Keepers founder discontinued his efforts to overturn the election after Jan. 6—a potentially important legal fact that could hurt Rhodes’ case as he tries to defend himself against “seditious conspiracy” charges.

[Oath Keepers militia founder Stewart Rhodes poses during an interview session in Eureka, Montana, U.S. June 20, 2016.]

Just days after the riot, a group gathered at a house in suburban Dallas to map out a legal path forward. According to a person with knowledge of the meeting, the crew included SoRelle, along with indicted Oath Keeper Joshua James, andTexas attorney Paul Davis,who said in a later court filing he had attended the Jan. 6 rallies to “collect evidence” on behalf of “one or more of the Plaintiffs.”

(Davis later filed a lawsuit against this reporter, which was dismissed with prejudice.)

Other parties to the lawsuit were in attendance, and Rhodes also showed up, the source said.

SoRelle, who had met with a number of right-wing figures ahead of the riot, was recruited after the election to test the waters for a possible legal remedy. When the violence of Jan. 6 failed, a plan went into action. And it was one that Rhodes himself endorsed.

The legal framework stemmed from a pre-riot plan devised by right-wing radio host Jerome Corsi—a former confidant of Roger Stone, who received an Oath Keeper protective detail on Jan. 5 and 6.

Corsi’s proposal hinged on “overwhelming” evidence and a warped understanding of the Help America Vote Act, leading him to declare all of Congress illegitimate and demand an election “redo.”

[Stewart Rhodes mugshot.

Collin County Sheriff's Office]

The plan was astronomically unrealistic on its face, but that didn’t stop Corsi from dubbing it the “invincible argument.”

Still, on Jan. 5, the day before the riot, Rhodes slapped his name on Corsi’s road map. SoRelle, the Oath Keepers general counsel, signed as well. (An archived version with their signatures can be found here.)

Reached for comment, Corsi told The Daily Beast he was “retired from active politics and not giving interviews about the election.”

The initial lawsuit that Davis and SoRelle put together hewed closely to Corsi’s path. It sought to invalidate the 2020 election, declare Joe Biden’s victory “unlawful,” and dissolve Congress. Davis took lead attorney, naming hundreds of defendants, including every member of Congress, all 50 governors and secretaries of state, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

It somehow got weirder. In its most absurd iteration—with Davis, not SoRelle, at the helm—the lawsuit asked a federal judge to put the government into a receivership styled after the mythical kingdom of Gondor from The Lord of The Rings.

“During the course of the epic trilogy, the rightful King of Gondor had abandoned the throne,” the lawsuit explained. “Since only the rightful king could sit on the throne of Gondor, a steward was appointed to manage Gondor until the return of the King, known as ‘Aragorn,’ occurred at the end of the story.”

If that legal explanation wasn’t convincing enough, the lawsuit continued: “This analogy is applicable since there is now in Washington, D.C., a group of individuals calling themselves the President, Vice President, and Congress who have no rightful claim to govern the American People.”

[Enrique Tarrio, Chairman of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, attend a meeting in a garage in Washington, U.S. in a still image taken from video January 5, 2021, the day before the January 6 riot.]

Saboteur Media/Handout via REUTERS

The attorneys then ask the judge to “appoint a group of special masters” that they invented, called “Stewards,” to “check the power of the illegitimate President” until the matter is resolved through a jury trial.

Notably, the original complaint also asked the court to pre-emptively block the Department of Justice, the FBI, and any other federal agency from arresting both of the attorneys filing the case—as well as “any plaintiff or potential witness”—in connection to their attendance at the Jan. 6 riot.

As for those plaintiffs, many of them happened to figure prominently on Jan. 6.

One was Latinos for Trump, a group tied to Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio. The organization’s leader, Bianca Gracia was also a “Gondor” plaintiff. The day before the insurrection, she met with Rhodes, Tarrio, and SoRelle in a D.C. hotel parking garage.

The garage gang featured another Gondor plaintiff—Virginia resident Joshua Macias. Macias was one of two men arrested in Pennsylvania days after the 2020 election when, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, pistols, and a sword, he took a vehicle bearing QAnon propaganda across state lines to the Philadelphia convention center where ballots were being processed.

SoRelle claims that Gracia had invited her to the parking garage to meet Tarrio, and “share information about criminal defense attorneys,” according to Reuters. That same day, SoRelle, Rhodes, Gracia, and Macias all endorsed Corsi’s argument, as did another adviser on the lawsuit.

Most of Corsi’s signatories, however, went unnamed. Likewise, most Gondor plaintiffs were represented only by their initials. But according to a person with inside knowledge of the suit, that list included multiple Oath Keepers.

Two of them stand out: Elmer “Stewart” Rhodes (“E.R.,” a resident of Texas), and Joshua James (“J.J.,” of Alabama), an Oath Keeper and Roger Stone bodyguard.

SoRelle has sought to distance both herself and the Oath Keepers from James, who was hit with conspiracy charges last April for his alleged role in the Capitol attack.

James, SoRelle has claimed, was more closely tied to the First Amendment Praetorians, another far-right armed group. The April indictment cites video footage showing that James “assaulted multiple law enforcement officers after storming inside the building,” screaming, “Get out of my Capitol! This is my fucking building!”

After Davis filed that motion, Rhodes encouraged state chapters to contribute to the case.

A database of hacked Oath Keeper emails shows SoRelle outsourcing legal research around the country, with Rhodes’ blessing.

“Stewart agreed to allow me to send out an email to all the chapters requesting assistance,” SoRelle wrote in a mass communication, one week after asking a federal judge to essentially break the government. She copied Rhodes on the email, using his personal gmail address.

The email also requested, among other things, “documentation for all 50 states regarding their orders/policy changes modifying their absentee ballot process, the use of drop boxes, voter registration changes and certification information for the machines used for elections.”

“We are required to provide additional information to the court by the 10th of February and I need 5 days to compile and draft,” SoRelle wrote. “If anyone is interested in assisting, please let me know. I would like to coordinate teams and divide up the states.”

On Feb. 10, Davis filed an amended complaint. It struck the Gondor proposal, but added Rhodes. Six days later, he filed a second amended complaint.

On Feb. 19, team Gondor shattered under the pressure of competing legal strategies and vague “ethical issues.” Davis withdrew as lead counsel, taking James but leaving SoRelle with Gracia, Latinos for Trump, and Rhodes.

It would be Rhodes’ last legal hurrah for 11 months. He was arrested on Jan. 13, and along with fellowGondor alum Joshua James, faces charges that could yield 20 years in jail.

Just this week, his attorney told the court that Rhodes still believes the election was “illegitimate.” And unlike many of the rioters who received the earliest charges and claimed ignorance, Rhodes is leaning into it.

“There’s plenty of public leaders that are still saying that on a regular basis,” his attorney said.

===

===

11 2 mma

The House of Representatives is opening an investigation into a network of right-wing organizations that have pushed anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine and anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, which have become a right-wing cause célèbre as discredited alternatives to vaccines or conventional treatments for COVID-19.

The Intercept reported Monday that theHouse Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisishas requested documents from the right-wing group America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) and the telemedicine provider SpeakWithAnMD about their business practices. The committee also “wrote to the Federal Trade Commission requesting that the agency investigate whether these companies are in violation of federal laws.”

“Attempts to monetize coronavirus misinformation have eroded public confidence in proven treatments and prevention measures and hindered efforts to control the pandemic,” committee chair Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC)wrote in his letter to AFLDS. “Some Americans who have been influenced by misinformation have chosen not to get vaccinated, delayed receiving evidence-based treatment, and ingested unapproved substances in harmful quantities.”

The Intercept previously reported two months of leaked patient records that showed the partnership between AFLD and SpeakWithAnMD had pulled in millions of dollars from over 70,000 customers. Such proceeds could not have been possible without the long history of right-wing media outlets like Fox News first pushing discredited alternative treatments for COVID-19 such as hydroxychloroquine throughout 2020 and ivermectin in 2021.

Two major fixtures of right-wing media have set up this medial grift: Capitol riot participant Dr. Simone Gold — whose organization AFLDS has multiple links to the QAnon movement — as well as far-right conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi who set up SpeakWithAnMD.

Gold’s long political involvement in the COVID-19 pandemic began with an organization, “A Doctor a Day,” started in May 2020 in coordination between the Trump campaign and the right-wing Council for National Policy to create an astroturf organization of doctors to support the Trump administration’s plans for a premature economic reopening. The was immediately promoted on Fox News, which also gave positive coverage to AFLDS’ continued activities in promoting hydroxychloroquine, which Gold claimed was a “cure” for the virus.

Right-wing media personalities also fervently defended another AFLDS figure, Dr. Stella Immanuel, after videos and online posts surfaced in which she had made various statements “regarding the medical use of alien DNA and the gynecological effects of having sex with demons and witches while sleeping.” More recently, she's pushed QAnon related conspiracy theories while attending a QAnon conference.

Gold also appeared on Newsmax in December 2020, ahead of the wider public vaccine rollout, and discouraged viewers from getting the vaccine: “Do you want to be part of an experimental medical trial? Do you want to be tracked and traced?” (The vaccines, of course, had already undergone rigorous testing.}December 17, 2020, edition of Newsmax's National Report

Gold later participated in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and was seen on video reading a speech from inside the Rotunda in which she denounced the “experimental, biological agent deceptively named a vaccine” and the “massive medical establishment.”She was later arrested and indicted and is currently charged with multiple counts including obstruction of an official proceeding and disorderly conduct. (She told The Washington Post she regrets being there.)

Time reported in August that SpeakWithAnMD had been set up by Corsi, a longtime peddler of far-right conspiracy theories, including the QAnon movement and racist “birther” theories against former President Barack Obama. In 2020, Corsi started making false claims against the development of the COVID-19 vaccines and in favor of discredited alternative drugs.

Time further reported that hundreds of customers had reported paying the $90 fee through America’s Frontline Doctors, only to never actually receive the promised drugs or consultation services. Time also found that while booking a consultation directly through SpeakWithAnMD cost $59.99, the referrals linked through AFLDS cost $90, implying a possibility that Gold’s group could’ve been pocketing $30 per patient. (AFLDS declined to comment to Time on this question.)

And while SpeakWithAnMD claims that it has “Over 20 Years in Business,” NBC News also reported that the site was**“​​created in March 2020.**” The website also appears to have only one purpose in mind — to peddle debunked drugs for COVID-19 instead of the vaccines or other legitimate treatments: “On a SpeakWithAnMD.com intake form viewed by NBC News, prospective patients are asked, ‘What medication do you prefer?’ The user is then presented with three options: ‘Ivermectin,’ ‘Hydroxychloroquine’ or ‘Not sure.’”

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https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ivermectin-demand-drives-trump-telemedicine-website-rcna1791

no lnx

Clamoring for ivermectin, some turn to a pro-Trump telemedicine website

Much as the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine became an unproven remedy for Covid deniers, ivermectin has emerged in recent weeks as a new false cure.

Some Facebook and Reddit groups offer people ways to buy ivermectin, which health professionals warn can be toxic and do little to stop Covid-19.Chelsea Stahl / NBC News; Getty Images

Aug. 26, 2021, 3:09 PM PDT / Updated Aug. 27, 2021,

By Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny

When users visit the telemedicine website SpeakWithAnMD.com, they are immediately hit with a warning: “Due to overwhelming demand, we are experiencing longer than usual wait times.”

The demand is for ivermectin, a drug primarily used to deworm animals that has become the latest false cure for Covid-19. And the website, in partnership with the organization America’s Frontline Doctors, whose founder stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, has become well-known in the Facebook groups and Reddit communities where anti-vaccination sentiment thrives.

In those groups, people trade dosing directions and purchasing advice for ivermectin.

FDA issues warnings about ivermectin amid spread of disinformation

AUG. 27, 202103:29

“Please consider that even if you can get an Rx for IVM, the pharmacy may not fill it for 1-3 days claiming they don’t have it in stock, which is pure bulls---,” a Reddit user wrote in the ivermectin community this month. “HAVE SOME HORSE PASTE ON HAND,” the user added, referring to the tube form that ivermectin meant for horses comes in.

Originally introduced as a veterinary drug for livestock animals in the late-1970s, ivermectin quickly proved useful in combating certain human diseases caused by parasites, a discovery that won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2015. It comes in pills and pastes, in versions meant for humans and for animals.

Ivermectin has been called a “wonder drug” because of its use in treating parasitic diseases, but it has not shown the same results in studies against viruses.

The drug was the subject of research into possible use as a Covid-19 treatment — including a promising non-peer-reviewed study that was later determined to be “flawed” and taken down by the website Research Square, which hosts preprints of research papers that have not yet been published in academic journals.

The groups highlight the challenge public health officials and tech companies face in cracking down on Covid-19 misinformation — and the lengths some people will go to embrace fringe and misleading Covid advice. NBC News obtained access to several groups that are dedicated to ivermectin or have recently embraced the drug. Some groups have tens of thousands of members and can easily be found through Facebook’s search feature.

More than a year and a half into the coronavirus pandemic, various drugs have had their moments in anti-vaccination communities and among some conservatives in the U.S. — and ivermectin is not particularly different. But it comes at a time when parts of the country are in another Covid wave, this one fueled by the delta variant of the virus and with a safe and effective option available: the vaccines.

Oklahoma stores selling out of horse medicine despite FDA plea not to take the drug

AUG. 24, 202101:41

“It’s hard to understand why people would turn down an[FREE]  FDA-approved Covid preventative in favor of a treatment that’s not only unapproved but has a large body of evidence showing it doesn’t work,” said Dr. Nathan Boonstra, a pediatrician at Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa, and co-host of the podcast “Voices for Vaccines.” “But antivax groups will eat up any opportunity to make it seem like a vaccine isn’t needed. This has been true about anti-vaccine groups long before the pandemic.

“There is a lot of shared space between pro-ivermectin and anti-vaccine groups,” he added.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health advisory Thursday warning of a rapid increase in ivermectin prescriptions and reports of severe illness by people using ivermectin products. Data from the National Prescription Audit showed a dramatic spike in ivermectin prescriptions in recent weeks — more than nine times pre-pandemic levels.

Facebook spokesperson Aaron Simpson said in an emailed statement that the company removes any content that "attempts to buy, sell, donate or ask for Ivermectin."

"We also enforce against any account or group that violates our COVID-19 and vaccine policies, including claims that Ivermectin is a guaranteed cure or guaranteed prevention, and we don’t allow ads promoting Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19," he wrote. "Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have removed 20 million pieces of COVID misinformation, labeled more than 190 million pieces of COVID content rated by our fact-checking partners, and connected over 2 billion people with authoritative information through tools like our COVID information center.”

Reddit is reviewing the ivermectin communities,spokesperson Cameron Njaa said in an emailed statement that underscored its commitment to providing accurate information, resources and support to its users.

The groups suggest ways to buy ivermectin and plenty of encouragement to do so. Some commenters push users to online cattle supply companies or pet stores. Others recommend SpeakWithAnMD.com.

The website advertises consultations for $90 and fills prescriptions through Ravkoo Pharmacy, an online pharmacy that America’s Frontline Doctors advertises as “partners,” who provide “the option to have that prescription delivered right to your door, the same day.” On a SpeakWithAnMD.com intake form viewed by NBC News, prospective patients are asked, “What medication do you prefer?” The user is then presented with three options: “Ivermectin,” “Hydroxychloroquine” or “Not sure.”

A user visiting for other reasons may not have much luck. The website makes it clear: “Controlled substances (such as narcotics) will never be prescribed.”

Reached by phone, Ravkoo Pharmacy CEO Alpesh Patel declined to comment about the relationship with America’s Frontline Doctors and hung up. America’s Frontline Doctors and SpeakWithAnMD did not respond to requests for comment.

From hydroxychloroquine to ivermectin

Much as the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine became an unproven remedy for Covid deniers after former President Donald Trump embraced it, ivermectin has emerged in recent weeks as a favorite treatment of some conservatives and anti-vaccination activists.

Ivermectin first drew some attention late last year as a possible Covid treatment, with interest remaining reasonably low until July, according to Google search data.

In recent weeks, a variety of conservative figures and anti-vaccination activists have embraced the drug. Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have mentioned it.

Phil Valentine, the conservative radio host who died from Covid-19 this week, also turned to ivermectin after his diagnosis and urged his listeners to do the same. (He later encouraged listeners to get vaccinated.)

“Have a doctor on speed dial who will write you a prescription for ivermectin,” he wrote on Facebook.

While ivermectin is generally safe in low doses, high doses can be toxic in humans. The Food and Drug Administration warned that ivermectin in large doses can cause side effects including “skin rash, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, facial or limb swelling, neurologic adverse events, sudden drop in blood pressure, severe skin rash potentially requiring hospitalization and liver injury.”

The State Health Department in Mississippi, where at least two people had been hospitalized for ivermectin toxicity, warned residents against taking the medicine this week.

And in perhaps a prime example of the exhaustion with which some public health professionals have confronted ivermectin, the FDA recently tweeted: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

‘Moo juice’

The warnings have done little to stunt enthusiasm for ivermectin in some Facebook groups and Reddit communities. After self-medicating, some community members report back to the group with side effects, like gastrointestinal upset or dizziness, or wonder whether they have overdosed.

The link to the SpeakWithAnMD website has been shared in dozens of public Facebook groups, including Unmask Our Kids, Nevada! It has also been shared by prominent anti-vaccination influencers, including Dr. Christiane Northrup, who posted the link to her 550,000 followers on Facebook with the caption: “To get the right treatment or prevention. No need for fear. Many of us have known this all along.”

America’s Frontline Doctors is not SpeakWithAnMD’s only link to the far right. Conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi also provides his audience with a vanity link to the website, which was created in March 2020 and offers no information about its ownership. 

SpeakWithAnMD is closely tied with America’s Frontline Doctors, a group that went viral last year when its makeshift news conference in Washington got millions of views after one of the physicians, Dr. Stella Immanuel, falsely called hydroxychloroquine a “cure” for Covid-19. Trump retweeted a video of the news conference pushed on social media by the conservative media site Breitbart.

The website for America’s Frontline Doctors directs people to SpeakWithAnMd through a button that reads “Contact A Physician,” and the America’s Frontline Doctors logo is prominent on the SpeakWithAnMD homepage.

Simone Gold, founder of America’s Frontline Doctors, was arrested and charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct after she entered the Capitol during the riot on Jan. 6. She pleaded not guilty to all charges. Gold, who is awaiting trial, spoke at an anti-vaccination protest in Santa Monica, California, last weekend.

Gold has spent the last year barnstorming churches, schools and event spaces throughout the U.S. on “The Uncensored Truth Tour,” in which she gives a presentation sowing doubt about Covid vaccines.

Gold did not respond to requests for comment.

The popularity of the site has sent some Facebook users back to the feed store. Losing patience with SpeakWithAnMD’s wait times, users on Facebook’s ivermectin groups sometimes share anecdotes about other telemedicine apps on which doctors have prescribed the drug prophylactically, or they try to persuade one another to buy it over the counter at pet stores.

The Facebook groups, which have names like Ivermectin MD Team, lead some users to believe they are talking to medical experts and doctors, but any one of the 25,000 members can post advice or suggestions about taking the deworming drug.

The communities are filled with advice for off-label drug cocktails featuring the dewormer. The pages frequently feature ways to make the paste more palatable, such as mixing it with jellies or eating it as a sandwich. The flavor frequently has users wondering how to hide its pungent taste.

“I take it by hiding it in a banana or bread,” a Reddit user wrote. “The flavor sort of bothers me.”

Some users sell what they claim to be ivermectin in the comments sections. Desperate for what they believe is a miracle drug, commenters frequently oblige, often leaving their WhatsApp addresses or phone numbers in replies to complete transactions.

Worried about crackdowns due to increasingly bad publicity, moderators of the Facebook groups are also creating backup channels on smaller social media channels, like MeWe and Telegram, in case they are banned from Facebook. Users have also cut back on the use of the words “vaccine” and “ivermectin,” calling them “v” and “ivm,” respectively.

Some users have begun to call ivermectin more colloquial names, like Moo Juice, because many have been ingesting the gel version. Others ask users how much their “horse” weighs when they dole out advice for dosages.

“I identify as a horse and can report no ill effects from the directed dosage as recommended by professionals, taken on a weekly basis,” a Reddit user wrote. “I like mine with a side of strawberry jam.”

CLARIFICATION (Aug. 26, 2021 9:35 p.m. E.T.): A previous version of this article inadvertently included a quote from a Facebook group about possible side effects from ivermectin that was later determined to be in jest. It has been removed. [understandable ]

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/is-it-a-coincidence-that-moscow-is-peddling-the-same-lies-as-the-trump-campaign/

ana j wa mo

no  journalist has done a better job of fact-checking Donald Trump during his presidency than Daniel Dale. But now the CNN reporter, formerly of the Toronto Star, has done an invaluable service by outlining the nine conspiracy theories the president is continuously peddling. As Dale suggests, “Trump has been a conspiracy theorist for years.” but never before has he pushed so many at one time.

Two of them align completely with disinformation campaigns coming out of Moscow. For example, we learned that the Russian government began promoting the lies about mail-in ballots as early as last March.

Russia has sought to “amplify” concerns over the integrity of U.S. elections by promoting allegations that mail-in voting will lead to widespread fraud, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News, again echoing a frequent and unfounded complaint raised by President Donald Trump.

Analysts with the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence branch issued the warning on Thursday to federal and state law enforcement partners after finding with “high confidence” that “Russian malign influence actors” have targeted the absentee voting process “by spreading disinformation” since at least March.

The timing raises the question of where the conspiracy theory originated—in the Kremlin or the White House.

Similarly, we now know that the Department of Homeland Security hid a report about how Moscow was promoting the idea that Biden is mentally unfit. Their excuse for not sharing that information is that the intelligence report was “poorly written and thinly sourced.” But according to the document that was finally released, their data was incredibly solid.

the report cites posts by Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik about Biden’s mental health between September 2019 and May 2020. In March, a Russian proxy website “refuted media claims that the candidate’s gaffes are the result of a stutter, instead arguing these verbal miscues are symptoms of dementia,” the bulletin said.

Once again, if this disinformation campaign began in September 2019, the attacks on Biden’s mental health seem to have started in Moscow and migrated to the Trump campaign.

This is all reminiscent of the coordinated attack on Hillary Clinton’s physical and mental health in 2016. What we now know is that conservative author Jerome Corsi was in contact with Julian Assange on the release of hacked emails by Wikileaks. He communicated with Roger Stone, who then coordinated with the Trump campaign. Here is what Corsi wrote to Stone on August 2, 2016:

Word is friend in embassy [Assange] plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging…Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke—neither he nor she well.

When it comes to the lies about mail-in voting and Biden, it is clear that both Putin and Trump are drawing on the same playbook. Perhaps that’s just a coincidence. But given this history, that is unlikely.

===

A Close Reading of Trump’s Friday Tweetstorm

The president unleashed a series of charges, complaints, and conspiracy theories aimed at undercutting a forthcoming report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

By Russell Berman

Evan Vucci / AP

December 7, 2018

The first presidential tweets on Friday morning landed nearly an hour before dawn on the East Coast, and they were a doozy—even for Donald Trump.

In the span of five lengthy (for Twitter) posts, the president unleashed a series of charges, complaints, and conspiracy theories aimed at undercutting a forthcoming report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller and directing the nation’s attention, once again, back toward the opponent he defeated two years ago.

Embedded within was a familiar cast of characters (Mueller, James Comey, the Clintons) along with a new face (Andrew Weissmann, a prosecutor on Mueller’s team); an attack on Trump’s current deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein; at least one lie (that Trump did not know Jerome Corsi); a misspelling (bye when it should be by); and the introduction of a surprising new story line presenting the disgraced energy firm Enron as the victim of an overzealous prosecutor.

Let’s unpack these tweets one by one, starting with the first missive, sent at 6:18 a.m. eastern time:

...

===

[### Is WikiLeaks a Russian Front?

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com › archive › 2018/11 › wikil...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/wikileaks-trump-mueller-roger-stone-jerome-corsi/576940/)

Nov 29, 2018 — The idea of WikiLeaks serving as a medium for Russia to boost the Trump campaign seems more and more plausible—even likely.

[### The Case of Jerome Corsi

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com › archive › 2008/08 › the-c...](https://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2008/08/the-case-of-jerome-corsi/55504/)

Aug 19, 2008 — I'm not big on ritual denunciations: I'd rather argue with people than read them out of the conversation, as a general rule, and I hope my ...

[### Jerome Corsi to Publish Birther Book

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com › archive › 2011/03 › jero...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/03/jerome-corsi-to-publish-birther-book/73133/)

Mar 28, 2011 — Conservative writer Jerome Corsi is taking his second swing at President Obama, this time with a book asking questions about Obama's ...

[### The Smoking Guns Are Sitting Out in the Open

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com › archive › 2019/01 › roge...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/roger-stone-trump-campaign-wikileaks-plain-sight/581269/)

Jan 25, 2019 — Roger Stone's indictment would have packed more of a wallop if his ties to WikiLeaks hadn't been obvious since the 2016 campaign.

The Smoking Guns Are Sitting Out in the Open

Roger Stone’s indictment would have packed more of a wallop if his ties to WikiLeaks hadn’t been obvious since the 2016 campaign.

By David A. Graham

Roger Stone

Roger Stone testifies to the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017. (Andrew Harnik / AP)

January 25, 2019

Make no mistake: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of Roger Stone, released early Friday morning, is a big deal. It’s just that it would be a bigger deal if the Trump campaign hadn’t so brazenly conducted its dubious dealings for all the public to see in real time.

The indictment, coinciding with Stone’s early-morning arrest in Florida and a raid of his New York apartment, lays out how Stone, a longtime friend and associate of Trump’s, allegedly served as a conduit between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks. Stone was an early member of Trump’s 2016 team, and had been involved in Trump’s previous flirtations with runs for office, but left the nascent campaign in August 2015.

Yet Stone remained in contact with Trump campaign officials. After WikiLeaks released hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee in July 2016, “a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information [WikiLeaks] had regarding the Clinton Campaign,” the indictment says. It’s not clear who that official was, or who directed him or her....

---

[### A New Indictment Looms in the Mueller Probe

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com › archive › 2018/11 › roge...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/roger-stone-associate-in-mueller-crosshairs-over-wikileaks-ties/576655/)

Nov 26, 2018 — Jerome Corsi, an associate of the Trump confidant Roger Stone, says he's been offered a plea deal on one perjury count—but won't take it.

==

signed 30 bucks w/ certif of a

https://premierecollectibles.com/silent-no-more post hill press = S&S?

420 Jerome Corsi, "Silent No More"  Jerome Corsi detailed the two months he was questioned by the FBI an

===

https://www.conspiracyarchive.com/2020/02/24/the-truther-temptation-the-russiagate-skeptics-the-mueller-report-part-1/

Will Banyan (Copyright © 21 February 2020

TRUMP: Look, Putin…… from everything I see, has no respect for this person.

CLINTON: Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States.

TRUMP: No puppet. No puppet.

CLINTON: And it’s pretty clear…

TRUMP: You’re the puppet!

:{Donald J. Trump & Hillary Clinton,

Third Presidential Debate, October 19, 2016}:

“…I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.”

President Donald J. Trump tweet, :{30 May 2019}:

as anticipated, the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election earlier last year elicited an abundance of earnest commentary from various parties. For President Donald Trump and his supporters the release of the redacted version of the report on 18 April 2019, which had been preceded a few weeks earlier by a carefully crafted letter by Attorney General William Barr summarising its main findings (March 24, 2019), this was a moment to savour. “No Collusion, No Obstruction!”, Trump tweeted; adding in a subsequent posting that Mueller had found “there was NO COLLUSION WITH RUSSIA. The Russia Hoax is dead!”

“The left’s favorite conspiracy theory is now dead, it is buried,” announced Fox News presenter and Trump confidante,¹ Sean Hannity, “There was no collusion, no conspiracy, no obstruction, nothing.” Pro-Trump intellectual gadfly Victor Davis Hanson, writing on the American Greatness website, took issue with the “Mueller fiasco” for confirming what was “self-evident from the outset of this ill-starred inquest: Donald Trump did not ‘collude’ with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton…” The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway congratulated herself for having successfully “resist[ed] the overwhelming pressure to join the conspiracy theorists…”

Lee Smith over on The Tablet (Mar. 27, 2019), celebrated that the “entire collusion theory” had now been “publicly and definitely proclaimed to be a hoax” by Mueller, the very individual the “elite pundit class” had placed their “hopes of redemption.” Celebrating the downfall of the “Trump-Russia collusion fairy tale”, pro-Trump commentator, Julie Kelly, admonished “Citizen Collusion Truthers” and warned that: “History will not be kind to the Trump-Russia collusion truthers in Congress, the expert class, Hollywood, and the media” (*American Greatness*, Apr. 04, 2019).

Mueller’s report, wrote noted leftist skeptic Glenn Greenwald had “obliterated…in an undeniable and definitive manner” the “conspiracy theory that has dominated U.S. political discourse for almost three years.” According to *Rolling Stone’s* Matt Taibbi, Mueller’s report makes it “crystal clear” that “[t]here was no Trump-Russia conspiracy….” Mueller’s findings, mused another progressive skeptic, Aaron Maté, “should finally put to rest the ‘collusion’ theory that has consumed the mainstream media and the political class for more than two years” (*The Nation*, Mar. 26, 2019).

Indeed, noted Maté in a follow-up piece, Mueller’s report not only refuted the “sinister collusion plot”, but “presents what amounts to an extended indictment of the conspiracy theory itself” (*The Nation*, Apr. 26, 2019). “[T]hose advancing the conspiracy theory that the Kremlin has infiltrated the highest levels of the US government were wrong, and those of us voicing skepticism of this were right,” declared self-styled Australian “rogue journalist” Caitlin Johnstone.

This victory chorus was accompanied by harsh commentary predicting that proponents of the Russia-Trump collusion theory would, like all conspiracists faced with information that debunked their claims, inevitably invent reasons to reject Mueller’s findings. Conspiracy theory researcher and Qanon-watcher Travis View, for example, warned in the Washington Post (Mar. 26, 2019), that people who held “unrealistic expectations” of the Mueller’s investigation “will dig deep into conspiracy theorizing rather than adjust to the new facts.”

He claimed to have already detected a “QAnon-like rejection of reality” amongst some “Russia-gate” pundits. Brian Feldman at New York Magazine, (Mar. 28, 2019) similarly noted that Barr’s letter had “[n]ot been great” for the credibility of the “Russiagate gang.” Feldman portrayed them as grifters who built online brands based on “wild speculation and invented facts” who would, nevertheless, find new ways to continue to theorize:

The Mueller diviners who have seen their predictions and promises go up in flames are now pivoting from knowing everything to pointing out everything we don’t know. We don’t know what’s in sealed indictments, we don’t know what’s in the actual report, we don’t know what other investigations into Trump are uncovering. After making grand promises and failing to sit and wait, the #resistance tweeters would like you to sit and wait, listening to them craft ever more fantastical meta-realities…

The collusion skeptics and Trump sympathizers were also quick to deride the “Russiagate truthers” as grimly hanging onto their now discredited theories, as they desperately tried to ignore or explain away the inconvenient facts uncovered by Mueller. These “Collusion Truthers” needed to be treated with “scorn and ridicule”, tweeted a gloating Donald Trump Jr. Amber Athey at the Daily Caller (Mar. 30, 2019) claimed that “Democrats and the establishment media” were already “floating conspiracy theories” about Mueller’s investigation “in order to discredit his finding of no collusion.”

 National Review columnist Deroy Murdock lambasted “Democratic flat-Earthers” for their refusal to accept the findings of the Special Counsel, and the House and Senate Intelligence Committees “that ‘Trump-Russia collusion’ is a hoax” (*National Review*, Mar. 29, 2019).  On twitter, a magnanimous Glenn Greenwald admitted to feeling “pity” for those people who “still cling to the hope that they were right all along about Trump/Russia conspiracy theory…” After reading Barr’s letter, “Bernhard” of the Moon of Alabama blog confidently concluded:

The case is closed. Neither was there a Trump campaign ‘collusion’ with anything Russia nor was there obstruction by the Trump administration.

Unfortunately Russiagaters will not give up on their conspiracy theories anytime soon.

Such analysis, in the face of Barr’s brief letter summarising the main conclusions of Mueller’s report and the subsequent release of the “lightly” redacted version of that document, which appears to refute the “collusion” accusation at the centre of the “Russia-gate” narrative, seems compelling. But there are good reasons to dispute this narrative of the fact-averse “Collusion Truthers” supposedly rejecting Mueller’s findings for more personally and politically comforting conspiracy theories. On the contrary, the worst outbreak of “Trutherism” has been amongst the “Russia-gate” skeptics who have clung to their “Deep State coup” theories even though Mueller’s findings did little to directly support their claims.

The evidence for this is fourfold: first, in their uncritical embrace of Barr’s highly misleading letter which sought to frame the narrative about Mueller’s findings as unequivocally exonerating Trump; second, following the release of the Special Counsel’s report, in their questioning and rejection of many of Mueller’s more nuanced and troubling findings about the extent of Russian interference and interactions with the Trump campaign; third, their strong support for US Attorney John Durham’s inquiry into the origins of the FBI’s investigation in the clear expectation it would confirm the “Deep State Coup” theory; and finally, in the continuing invocation of the “Deep State coup” conspiracy theory to explain why Trump was (albeit unsuccessfully) impeached over the Ukraine scandal.

The Secret Team

The term “conspiracy theory”, though seemingly neutral, has long served as a term of derision.² As a writer for the *Pacific Standard* once observed, “the term suggests a certain level of looniness, conjuring images of paranoid people struggling to find sinister patterns in random events.”^3 Certainly, when many media commentators and academics describe something as a “conspiracy theory” it is in reference to types of analysis, specifically those positing sinister cabals behind significant events, which they regard as inherently illogical, empirically defective, and ultimately divorced from reality. Controversial commentator Daniel Pipes, in his book Conspiracy (1997), for example, defined “conspiracy theory” as the “fear of a non-existent conspiracy” (p.21).

In his Voodoo Histories (2009), journalist David Aaronovitch describes conspiracy theories as: “the unnecessary assumption of conspiracy when other explanations are more probable” (p.5). According to Professor Robert Brotherton from the University of London, a conspiracy theory is:

…an unverified claim of conspiracy which is not the most plausible account of an event or situation, and with sensationalistic subject matter or implications. In addition, the claim will typically postulate unusually sinister and competent conspirators. Finally, the claim is based on weak kinds of evidence, and is epistemically self-insulating against disconfirmation (PsyPag Quarterly, September 2013, p.9).

The alternate perspective is that “conspiracy theory” is a label applied quite deliberately to discredit and delegitimise analysis that exposes abuses of power. This view is articulated by Professor Lance deHaven-Smith from Florida State University, author of Conspiracy Theory in America (2013). The term “conspiracy theory”, he contends, is in fact a “pejorative put-down” employed by “political elites to suppress mass suspicions” that may arise in response to “shocking political crimes” committed by those same elites (p.9). More recently, Australian academic David Coady argued that,

the net effect of terms such as “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracism” is to silence people who are the victims of conspiracy, or who (rightly or wrongly) suspect conspiracies may be occurring. These terms serve to herd respectable opinion in ways that suit the interests of the powerful (*The Conversation*, Sep. 13, 2018).

In their profligate use of “conspiracy theory”, the champions of “Russiagate” skepticism clearly seek to both discredit the entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative as baseless speculation, andsmear its advocates as irrational and deranged. Of course, there are some “Russiagate” theories, particularly those that paint Trump as a long-term, utterly compliant Russian puppet (now obviously beholden to Putin), that arguably warrant the “conspiracy theory” label.

Proponents of these more extreme collusion scenarios include such luminaries as MSNBC’smuch–maligned Rachel Maddow, Malcolm Nance, journalist Jonathan Chait,^{4 academic Seth Abramson}, and the infamously unhinged Louise Mensch. The lodestar for these theorists (though not all refer to it) is the so-called Steele Dossier, produced by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele on behalf of Fusion GPS, a Washington DC based research and strategic intelligence firm, for the Clinton campaign. The dossier, only small fragments of which have been verified, is filled with lurid claims about Trump’s sexual deviancy, corrupt dealings in Russia, and deep involvement in the hacking of the DNC.

Yet, if we apply the criteria employed by academics to describe and identify conspiracy theories, much of the “Deep State coup” narrative also warrants that same despised label, probably to an even greater extent than the Russia-Trump Collusion narrative. This becomes evident if we consider the salient features of the “Deep State coup” narrative, starting with the description of the alleged conspirators behind the “coup” against Trump.

A key feature of a “conspiracy belief”, according to Professor Michael Barkun in his A Culture of Conspiracy(2003), is that “an organization made up of individuals or groups was or is acting covertly to achieve some sort of malevolent end” (p.3). As the late Richard Hofstadter observed in his classic essay on the “Paranoid Style”:

The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction (the Catholic confessional) (*Harper’s Magazine*, Nov 1964).

The journalist Jonathan Kay in his book, Among the Truthers (2011), for example, noted that 9/11 “Truthers” had a particularly Manichean view of US power structures:

In the Truther vision of America, our elected government is nothing but a smokescreen for Deep State actors—arms dealers, oil companies, neoconservative ideologues, Strangelovian Pentagon warmongers—who pull our elected politicians puppet strings, and control our society at all levels through bribery, murder and extortion(p.xxi; emphasis added).

The “Deep State Coup” counter-narrative also promotes a sinister interpretation of US power structures, claiming that the entire “Russiagate” affair is a devious plot implemented by a cabal of Democrats and the “Deep State”, represented by corrupt law enforcement and intelligence agencies, aided by a compliant and complicit mainstream media, to overthrow Trump with a false “collusion narrative”. This can be seen in the description of the alleged plot by Patrick Henningsen, founder and editor of the 21^st Century Wire website:

…a very real cabal comprised of embedded civil servants, intelligence agents and partisan political operatives in the media – all working to fabricate a grand Russian conspiracy designed to discredit and unseat the 45^th President of the United States of America (New Dawn, May/June 2019, p.16; emphasis added).

A similar combination of conspirators was also identified in Caitlin Johnstone’s post-Barr victory dance. “Russiagate”, she wrote, was in fact:

a pernicious lie advanced by secretive government agencies who’ve been plotting to shove Russia off the world stage since the fall of the Soviet Union, by the Democrats who’ve had a vested interest in avoiding accountability for their failures and malfeasance in the 2016 election, and by the mass media who’ve been reaping extreme profits by peddling the clickbait sensationalist conspiracy theory that the Kremlin has infiltrated the highest levels of the US government [emphasis added].

For the duration of the FBI and Special Counsel investigations into this affair, this conspiratorial counter-narrative has a been a constant theme in countless articles and social media posts on websites and publications as varied as Gateway Pundit, Infowars, RealClearPolitics, World Net Daily, American Greatness, The Federalist, Consortium News and Judicial Watch. Other proponents of note include:

Fox News contributor Sara A. Carter,; some anonymous twitter accounts, particularly Techno Fog and Undercover Huber; and a number of lawyers involved in defending Trump and his associates, specifically Michael Flynn’s current lawyer Sidney Powell, and husband-and-wife team Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing. It has also been promoted by mainstream conservative outlets such as the National Review (by Andrew McCarthy and the recently pardoned Conrad Black), Fox News (specifically Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson), The Hill (in articles by John Solomon), the Wall Street Journal (mainly by Kimberly Strassel), and Tablet (Lee Smith).

Conrad Black, for instance, a former long-time member of the secretive Bilderberg Group,⁵ itself the object of conspiratorial fascination since the 1950s, accused the directors of a number of US intelligence agencies of “trying to rig and then to undo” the result of the 2016 election by promoting the “fraud of collusion” (*American Greatness*, Jul. 18, 2018). At the heart of the “Trump–Russian collusion argument”, according to Black, was the Steele dossier, which was a “pack of lies”; but the Democrats were successful in “subverting high levels of the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department and FBI to pursue this canard with the zeal they did” (*National Review*, Sep. 12, 2018).

This “Deep State” coup conspiracy theory has also been the subject of numerous books, many written by Trump supporters and surrogates, mostly from the Fox News stable. Key examples include: Judge Jeanine Pirro, Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy(2018); Dan Bongino and D.C. McAllister, Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump (2018); Gregg Jarrett’s The Russia Hoax (2018) and Witch Hunt (2019); Lee Smith’s The Plot Against the President(2019); and Andrew McCarthy’s Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig and Election and Destroy a Presidency (2019).

Although claiming not to be endorsing a “conspiracy theory”, Bongino and McAllister nevertheless argue there were “intersections among the Clinton Campaign, the Obama Administration, intelligence agencies and foreign operatives” that created the “false narrative” that nearly cost Trump the presidency (Spygate, p.xii). In his first book Jarrett dismisses the Russia collusion narrative as a “hoax manufactured by unscrupulous high-ranking officials within the FBI and the Department of Justice” (Russia Hoax, pp.87-88). According to Judge Pirro:

This plot against Donald Trump and every American who voted for him goes all the way to the top of the previous administration. It was conceived and planned at the top and executed by like-minded Deep Staters in law enforcement, the intelligence community, and their Swamp Party talking heads in the media (Liars, Leakers and Liberals, p.81).

McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and contributing editor to National Review, offers almost the same formulation of the “real collusion scheme”:

In 2016, President Obama put the awesome powers of the United States government’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus in service of the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, the Democratic party, and the progressive Beltway establishment. This scheme had two parts…

Plan A was to get Mrs. Clinton elected President of the United States…

Plan B was the insurance policy: an investigation that Donald Trump, in the highly unlikely event he were elected, would be powerless to shut down. An investigation that would simultaneously monitor and taint him. An investigation that internalized Clinton campaign-generated opposition research, limning Trump and his campaign as complicit in Russian espionage. An investigation that would hunt for a crime under the guise of counterintelligence, build an impeachment case under the guise of hunting for a crime, and seek to make Trump un-reelectable under the guise of building an impeachment case (Ball of Collusion, pp.vii-viii; emphasis added).

Also advancing this theory in a slew of recent publications and other media are a motley collective of individuals questioned and, in some cases, indicted and convicted by Mueller’s investigation. These include: Jerome Corsi’s Killing the Deep State (2018) and Silent No More (2019); Ted Malloch’s The Plot to Destroy Trump (2018); George Papadopoulos’s Deep State Target (2019); and Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie’s Trump’s Enemies (2018). In his book, Killing the Deep State, for instance, Corsi claimed that:

President Trump is the target of coup d’etat being undertaken by the Deep State, including the CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies that maintain a commitment to a globalist New World Order (Killing the Deep State, p.146).

While Papadopoulos asserted in his book:

The deep state is the movement of anti-Trump operations in America’s three branches of government who have been working against Donald Trump, his campaign, and his administration to strip it of authority (Deep State Target, p.112).

Similar theories have been promoted by the supposedly leftist critics of “Russiagate”. Greenwald, for example, has repeatedly accused the “Deep State”, primarily the CIA, of not only opposing Trump, but actively “subverting” him. Pointing to the implicit endorsement of the Steele dossier by US intelligence agencies, Greenwald claimed that the “military industrial complex” that Eisenhower had warned about, was “engaged in open warfare against a duly elected president” (*The Intercept*, Jan. 12, 2017). As he told Democracy Now in 2017, this was because: “The CIA and the intelligence community were vehemently in support of Clinton and vehemently opposed to Trump, from the beginning.” The CIA opposed Trump, Greenwald wrote in the Intercept, because he had rejected their agenda:

Clinton defended and intended to extend the decades long international military order on which the CIA and Pentagon’s preeminence depends, while Trump — through a still-uncertain mix of instability and extremist conviction — posed a threat to it.⁶

Greenwald repeated this argument in an interview with *Dazed* in December 2018, where he provided his thoughts on the growing attractiveness of conspiracy theories, and why people had lost faith in traditional mainstream sources of information:

Some stem from truth – with the Trump presidency, there is a very powerful faction in Washington, the Deep State, military-industrial complex, the forces of the CIA or FBI, whatever you want to call it, who have been conspiring to subvert the Trump presidency because they dislike the outcome of the election [emphasis added].

Focusing on the leaks of “intercepted communications” supporting the Russiagate theory, Michael Tracey had expressed concern that “unelected spooks [were] arrogating to themselves the power to directly undermine the elected president.” And following Mueller’s indictment of Russian intelligence officers for hacking the DNC, Aaron Maté suggested that “[w]hoever supplied the intelligence that has fueled this thing from the beginning…” and even proposed that US spy agencies were “inventing intelligence…” for this purpose.

Rush to Judgement

On March 24, 2019, Attorney-General Barr wrote to the heads of the Judiciary Committees in the US Senate and House of Representatives, to advise of them of the “principal conclusions” reached by the Special Counsel’s lengthy investigation. On page 2 of his missive, Barr provided this headline finding:

The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

...

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/hiding-in-plain-sight-the-white-nationalist-who-toiled-inside-a-right-wing-media-powerhouse

no lnx pix many

Right Wing Watch

Trending Donald Trump Impeachment Immigration White Nationalism

Hiding in Plain Sight: The White Nationalist Who Toiled Inside a Right-Wing Media Powerhouse

By Jared Holt | February 3, 2020 9:00 am By Angry White Men | February 3, 2020

The following article was reported in collaboration with Angry White Men. It also appears on Angry White Men.

Michael J. Thompson demanded that someone turn down the “horrifying music” so that he could introduce Scott Greer, then editor of The Daily Caller, whose first book Thompson had helped publish. He took nervous pulls from a can of Coors Light beer as he addressed the crowd assembled in the offices of the right-wing publication, mixing self-deprecating jokes about the “Walmart spread” of food offered to guests and seemingly earnest calls to action.

“Do not underestimate the value of your voice in influencing people in the Trump administration. You’ve got to keep fighting, because guess what, no one else is gonna do it. You have to do it,” Thompson told the crowd of people assembled on a March 2017 evening in downtown Washington, D.C., in remarks captured in a Periscope video.

Less than 24 hours before the party, an article appeared on a blog operated by Thompson; the author, writing under the name Paul Kersey, claimed to know why people were supposedly afraid to go travel to Baltimore, Maryland: “Blacks. Nothing more. Nothing less.” The closing kicker of the blog post stated the writer’s prejudice in stark terms: “No blacks, know peace; know blacks, no peace. It’s really this simple.” It is just one of more than 3,500 analogous articles that exist today on Thompson’s blog, “Stuff Black People Don’t Like.”

Thompson is just one of many members of the white nationalist movement in the United States that attempted to reinvent its public image with the “alt-right” moniker and rose to a flash of influence in Republican politics amid the 2016 presidential campaign of? Donald J. Trump. Leading up to that political moment, a clique of the movement’s believers had situated themselves inside GOP-aligned institutions and media outlets in and around Washington, where they used the resources at their disposal to advance their cause. Thompson’s career took him inside the Leadership Institute, a pillar of the conservative movement for more than 40 years, and ultimately to the right-wing tabloid-style website, WorldNetDaily.

The story of Thompson’s career is not one of a random internet blogger; it’s a blueprint that others have followed.

A barely underground member of the white nationalist movement, Thompson has toiled undisturbed, until recently, in conservative spaces, even as a number of his associates have since been exposed for supporting the movement that left blood in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, at the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist gathering.

Right Wing Watch and Angry White Men, a not-for-profit blog tracking figures in the white supremacist movement, can report that Thompson is the previously unknown author of racist material that has appeared on blogs and the best-known white nationalist publications for more than a decade under the Paul Kersey pen name. Angry White Men contributed in-depth research to this article while Right Wing Watch completed the investigative reporting.

Entering the Nucleus of Conservative Media

Michael J. Thompson with friends, including white nationalists Kevin DeAnna and Scott Greer. (Photo courtesy of Katie McHugh)]

The halls of The Leadership Institute’s headquarters are lined with photographs of its distinguished alumni, visual markers of its place in conservative politics. Headshots of notable graduates–figures including Ralph Reed, Rep. Jim Jordan, and even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Mike Pence, among others–are arranged in a single row on each side of a long corridor, all in identical frames.

On any given week, young conservatives can attend events in its offices in Arlington, Virginia, for training in skills like public speaking, creative design, campaigning, and fundraising, and opportunities to hear distinguished guests from Capitol Hill and conservative media. On its website, the Leadership Institute claims to have “trained more than 200,000 conservative activists, leaders, and students” since its founding in 1979. It was there that Michael Thompson appears to have entered conservative politics, working as a member of the organization’sCampus Services Program,according to a 2010 press release.

During his tenure at the Leadership Institute, it also appears Thompson wrote articles for its Campus Reform media outlet.Articles bearing his byline have since been deleted but were cached via Google site-search results. Working at the Leadership Institute, Thompson grew close to white nationalist Kevin DeAnna, who was a leader of the Leadership Institute’s campus leadership program and began writing his blog, “Stuff Black People Don’t Like” (a play on the name of an internet-famous early 2000s satire blog, “Stuff White People Like”). In 2011, Thompson authored his first column for the racist publication VDARE, whose editor, Peter Brimelow, is a regular speaker at far-right conferences and has participated in panel discussions with Jared Taylor, founder of the white supremacist American Renaissance website, and Richard B. Spencer, the alt-right impresario who led the 2017 tiki-torch march at the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville on the eve of a violent gathering of far-right groups in the center of town.

You will barely find a trace of Thompson’s years at the Leadership Institute on its website—or anywhere, really. Neither Leadership Institute Communications Coordinator Sarah Morrison nor Campus Reform Editor-in-Chief Cabot Phillips responded to inquiries from Right Wing Watch seeking basic information on Thompson’s position with the organization.

After he left the Leadership Institute, Thompson joined the staff of WorldNetDaily, a right-wing conspiracy-theory website aligned with the Republican Party, where he worked in the marketing department. The site is helmed by founder Joseph Farah, a Trump associate who helped the then-presidential hopeful advance the false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

Thompson’s name appeared on WorldNetDaily’s masthead as early as Jan. 29, 2012, and as late as Nov. 18, 2018, as preserved in online snapshot archives. Throughout his entire tenure at the digital publication run by one of Trump’s loudest boosters, Thompson was moonlighting under a pseudonym at racist and white nationalist publications run by Brimelow and Taylor. Thompson’s work was scrubbed from the WorldNetDaily site, but some of it ?was archived. WorldNetDaily editors, including Farah, ?failed to respond to Right Wing Watch’s emailed requests for comment.

Thompson found himself at WorldNetDaily during the pinnacle of its ascendance in the Republican Party. In its heyday, Farah sought to expand WorldNetDaily into a conservative media powerhouse, publishing books by? Rep. Devin Nunes?, who is now the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly, ?who died in 2016, not long after she endorsed Trump for president. Farah even launched a documentary filmmaking company? that produced feature-length movies about gun issues, Christianity, and the supposed secret plots to undermine Western civilization. When Thompson was employed there, Farah and his outlet were enjoying a renaissance of sorts, establishing WorldNetDaily as a mill for the “birther movement,” as the racist narrative questioning Obama’s birth certificate came to be known.

Using his WorldNetDaily position for access, Thompson rubbed shoulders with high-profile Republican politicians and publishers. In 2012, Thompson interviewed Joe Arpaio,then the sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, about Barack Obama’s birth certificate and other birtherism theories for WorldNetDaily (the video has since been deleted from WorldNetDaily’s website?).

During an appearance on “The Hagmann Report” in 2017, Thompson boasted that he had been in contact with former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon before Bannon joined the Trump campaign. Bannon did not respond to our request for comment.

“You know, I used to share emails three or four times a week with Steve Bannon before he was invited to become part of the Trump campaign,” Thompson told “The Hagmann Report” hosts Joe Hagmann and Jon Robberson.

In one email provided to Right Wing Watch and Angry White Men by former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh, Thompson can be seen pitching conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsias a potential guest on the SiriusXM radio program produced by Breitbart News, which Bannon hosted at the time. Bannon declined, writing back, “Zero interest,” and “Not a fan.”? However, Bannon also instructed Thompson to send “all your other books” from WorldNetDaily authors, presumably for their radio-guest potential....

===

https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/far-right-trump-defenders-blast-russia-aligned-ukrainian-lawmakers

as  testimony was underway during the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, far-right defenders of the president rapidly spread false and unsubstantiated information in an attempt to bolster a Republican-backed conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden and Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that previously had Biden on its board of directors.

On November 20, Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified before the House Intelligence Committee and provided further support for the central premise of the impeachment inquiry. Sondland confirmed that he believed Trump directed an effort to hold up security assistance to Ukraine unless the country announced an investigation into his political adversaries. Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and others close to the president have repeatedly pushed the evidence-free claim that, as vice president, Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor because that prosecutor was investigating Burisma, where his son worked at the time. (In fact, the prosecutor in question was corrupt, and no Burisma investigation was being carried out at the time when Biden was tasked with advancing the broadly held Western foreign policy goal of pressuring Ukraine to fire the prosecutor.)

While the hearing was underway, conspiracy theory website ZeroHedge published an article claiming that Burisma founder Nikolai Zlochevsky had been indicted by Ukraine’s prosecutor general, and that evidence indicated that Hunter Biden and other Burisma board members had received money embezzled by Burisma from Ukrainian citizens.NBC News reported that the claims in the ZeroHedge article were “incorrect,” as Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky has not been indicted, but that “didn’t stop allies of President Donald Trump from widely disseminating the false account of an indictment, seizing on some truthful elements while wildly extrapolating others.” According to a report from Reuters, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, did announce on November 20 an escalation into his investigation of Zlochevsky to include suspicion of embezzlement, but he “did not provide evidence or details” or mention Biden. Reuters added that the investigation is “is effectively on hold” because “the Ukrainian authorities cannot determine Zlochevsky’s whereabouts.”

According to NBC News, the claim that Burisma’s founder had been indicted was shared by tens of thousands of users on Twitter during the first hour after it was published. Social media analysis tool CrowdTangle showed that by the morning of November 21, the ZeroHedge story had been shared on Facebook pages with a total of nearly 5.5 million followers. The story also began to trend on Reddit’s toxic “r/The_Donald” subreddit. In particular, the story was initially popularized on Twitter by an account purporting to be a news organization, @BreakingNLive, that was suspended from the platform later in the day.

The false story reached Trump’s inner circle on Twitter, with Donald Trump Jr. liking a tweet promoting the ZeroHedge article sent by Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. (Posobiec appears to have subsequently deleted the tweet.) On YouTube, the indictment claim is being promoted by Red Pill News, a channel verified by YouTube that has 176,000 subscribers, and a channel belonging to far-right congressional candidate Joey Saladino, which has 252,000 subscribers.

Beyond Posobiec, the ZeroHedge claims were pushed on social media by other prominent far-right conspiracy theorists includingJerome Corsi, Bill Mitchell, and cartoonist Ben Garrison. Proponents of the far-right pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory were also behind the social media push. As NBC News reported, “One minute before the ZeroHedge article was published, the anonymous account that inspired the QAnon conspiracy theory — generally known as 'Q' — linked to the same” article that formed the basis of the claims promoted at ZeroHedge. Major QAnon accounts, including @Jordan_Sather_ and @EyesOnQ subsequently promoted the ZeroHedge article. NBC’s Ben Collins reported that “Q” later made a post complaining about the suspension of @BreakingNLive.

Beyond social media, the claims first popularized by ZeroHedge were also featured on disreputable right-wing conspiracy theory websites Infowars and The Gateway Pundit as well as smaller such platforms including The Federalist Papers, WayneDupree.com, [your]News, The Daily Coin, and MAGA Daily Report. (*Hannity* and Fox “straight news” program *Fox News @ Night* later covered the Reuters report as well, while featuring pictures and a discussion of Hunter Biden.)

The source of ZeroHedge’s story appears to be an article from Interfax-Ukraine that repeated unsubstantiated claims about illegal payments from Burisma to Biden made by Ukrainian Members of ParliamentAndriy Derkach and Oleksandr Dubinsky at a press conference they held at the news agency, where they did not offer evidence to back their claims. Interfax-Ukraine’s parent company is a Russian business, Interfax, that was recently praised by Vladmir Putin as making “a major contribution to strengthening the authority and prestige of journalism.” Derkach’s claim about the payments isn’t new. As Time reported, in recent months Derkach has repeatedly made public statements alleging improper payments from Burisma to Biden. Those statements failed to catch on in the way the statements made at the press conference on Wednesday did. Other Ukrainian lawmakers have accused Derkach -- who does not belong to a political party and, according to Time, “studied in the early 1990s at Russia’s top intelligence academy” -- of advancing the interests of Russia, which is currently waging a war against Ukraine. According to Kyiv Post, Derkach has made separate accusations about Biden receiving improper payments in an offshore account while providing “no evidence to support these accusations.” According to Ukraine experts interviewed by NBC News, Derkach and Dubinsky are “not credible” and likely held the press conference to boost Trump.

==

wapo

Jerome Corsi

Author

Randy Credico

Radio host

Jason Sullivan

Social media consultant

Stone associates whom Mueller has questioned about a potential WikiLeaks connection.

==

Dan Rather memogate

THE LEGACY

When the panel report finally came out in January 2005, it did not determine whether the documents were real, but it did blame Mapes and three other CBS producers for failing to properly vet them. CBS fired Mapes and asked the three others to resign. All three threatened to sue and were subsequently paid settlements to stay quiet about the story.

Rather was spared (a humiliating forensic examination revealed his virtual absence from the reporting process), but he agreed to resign from the CBS Evening News in the spring. Mapes went home to Dallas and began writing her book-length defense.

But the CBS episode wasn’t quite the end of the Guard story. There was a bizarre postscript: the failed nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005. One year after the fateful 60 Minutes segment aired, two FBI agents paid a visit to the Manhattan apartment of Larry Littwin, the former Lottery Commission executive director. If he were cleared to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the agents asked, what might he say about Miers’s involvement with GTECH during her time as chair of the commission? According to Jerome Corsi, who had resurfaced, post-Kerry, as one of Miers’s fiercest critics, what Littwin proposed to allege was quite a lot: that more than $160,000 in legal fees Miers collected from Bush in the nineties were ade facto payoff for maintaining the quid pro quo agreement with Ben Barnes and GTECH.

Regardless of the legitimacy of these allegations, White House officials were paying attention, in part because they were coming from the right. Miers’s nomination was already in deep trouble by the time Littwin emerged. But Corsi remains convinced to this day that the threat of Littwin’s testimony was the last straw for Miers. According to him, it was the GTECH deal, and not the CBS memos, that could have been the real smoking gun against Bush. “The day after they validated that Littwin was going to be called to the Senate Judiciary Committee, that’s when she pulled her nomination,” Corsi told me.

In 2007 Rather filed his own lawsuit, implicating Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone and CBS president Les Moonves in a vast corporate cover-up to make the Guard story go away, placate the Bush White House, and put a troublesome newsman out to pasture. He asked for $70 million. The money, however, was largely symbolic. More than anything, Rather hoped the lawsuit would finally prove that he had been unfairly hung out to dry.

==

2x? no lnx twt

Updated: A guide to discredited conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi

Research ››› November 13, 2018 ››› ERIC HANANOKI

Special prosecutor Robert Mueller has reportedly been questioning right-wing writer and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi as part of his Russia investigation. Corsi has a long history of producing false research, and he was instrumental in pushing the lie that former President Barack Obama supposedly has a fake birth certificate.

Portions of this guide were originally published in January 2017; it has been revised and updated in light of reported developments in Mueller’s investigation.

Robert Mueller has reportedly been scrutinizing Corsi

Corsi reportedly could face charges related to his comments about WikiLeaks and Trump ally Roger Stone. As CNN reported, Corsi has claimed he expects to be indicted by Mueller and he “could face any number of charges -- spanning from perjury to making false claims to obstruction of justice. The potential charges are related to false statements he made about his relationship with WikiLeaks and Stone. … Corsi injected himself into Stone's situation last year when he claimed that one of his own articles for InfoWars inspired Stone to predict in October 2016 that there would be trouble coming for Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Not long after that, WikiLeaks started releasing thousands of Podesta's hacked emails.” While raising the prospect of his indictment, Corsi has asked followers to give him “donations” through his PayPal account. [CNN, 11/12/18; Twitter, 11/12/18]

Corsi previously worked for leading conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ website. Corsi worked for Alex Jones’ Infowars network in early 2017 to 2018. Jones has pushed conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks and the tragedies at Newtown, Columbine, Oklahoma City, Sandy Hook, and the Boston Marathon, among others. He now runs his own website Corsi Nation. [Media Matters, 1/31/17; 5/3/17; Corsi Nation, accessed 11/13/18]

Corsi previously challenged Mueller to a fight. In March, Corsi stated: "I want to say to Mueller, let's go out in the backyard of the Justice Department. ... Let's duke it out." [Genesis Communications Network, The Alex Jones Show, 3/29/18]

Corsi helped lead the birther movement

In 2008, Corsi claimed on Fox that the Obama campaign had "a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website." [Media Matters, 1/24/13]

Corsi suggested in 2008 that Obama got him detained in Kenya because Corsi was investigating his birth certificate. In October 2008, Corsi traveled to Kenya to investigate Obama’s birth certificate and was detained because he didn’t have a work permit. Corsi didn’t believe the reason for his detention, suggesting instead that then-candidate Obama was responsible for his temporary detention. [Media Matters, 1/24/13]

Corsi: "That [Obama's] not a Muslim and that he was born in the United States are both lies." [WND's Taking America Back 2010 Convention, via Media Matters]

Corsi released 2011 book Where's The Birth Certificate?: The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible To Be President. A publisher’s description for Corsi’s book, which was released after President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, claimed that “Corsi assembles the evidence that Barack Obama is constitutionally ineligible for the office of the presidency.” [WND Books, accessed 1/31/17; Media Matters, 5/18/11]

Corsi: “Obama has usurped the office of the presidency by” suppressing “the facts about his actual birth circumstances.” Corsi stated in his Where’s The Birth Certificate book:

I write in the conviction that Obama has usurped the office of the presidency by waging a skillful public relations campaign to suppress the facts about his actual birth circumstances.

If he is not eligible to be president, he is also ineligible to command the armed forces defending this nation - a challenge several brave members of the military have dared to make, putting themselves at risk, and in at least one case actually losing his own liberty - in court-martial proceedings brought against them for refusal to obey orders.

Those of us who believe the Constitution of the United States is worth preserving, protecting, and defending intend to continue pressing the Obama eligibility argument until Barack Obama is either removed from office or forced to reveal the truth. [Media Matters, 5/18/11]

Corsi in December 2016: “Ineligible” Obama should be impeached over birth certificate.

Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D.  ??????

@jerome_corsi

ARPAIO & ZULLO prove OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE FAKE birthers vindicated - LYING MSM busted big http://superstore.wnd.com/Wheres-the-Birth-Certificate-Autographed-Hardcover … BHO ineligible IMPEACH

73

6:44 AM - Dec 19, 2016

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Where's the Birth Certificate (Autographed)(Hardcover)

superstore.wnd.com

77 people are talking about this

[Twitter, 12/19/16]

Corsi in December 2016: “Proved: Obama COLB is a forgery.”

Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D.  ??????

@jerome_corsi

my book WHERE'S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE now historic - ARPAIO vindicates birthers http://superstore.wnd.com/Wheres-the-Birth-Certificate-Autographed-Hardcover … Proved: OBAMA COLB is a FORGERY !!!

6:46 AM - Dec 19, 2016

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Where's the Birth Certificate (Autographed)(Hardcover)

superstore.wnd.com

85 people are talking about this

[Twitter, 12/19/16]

Corsi in December 2016: “Obama forged fake lying birth certificate = biggest fake news story of last 8 years … = high crimes & misdemeanors.”

Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D.  ??????

@jerome_corsi

OBAMA forged FAKE lying BIRTH CERTIFICATE = biggest FAKE NEWS story of last 8 years http://www.wnd.com/2016/12/investigators-find-source-for-obamas-online-birth-certification-image/ … = high crimes & misdemeanors

8:38 AM - Dec 16, 2016

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Sheriff's probe finds Obama birth certificate 'fake' - WND

A years-long forensics investigation into the computer image of the long-form Hawaiian birth certificate image that Barack Obama released during a White House news conference during his first term...

wnd.com

118 people are talking about this

[Twitter, 12/19/16]

For more on Corsi’s birther crusade, go here.

Corsi’s writing is filled with lies

Corsi co-wrote 2004 Swift Boat book Unfit For Command against John Kerry. Corsi co-authored the 2004 book Unfit for Command with John O’Neill, which served as a playbook for attacks on the service record of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. The book was heavily filled with false and baseless attacks. PolitiFact noted in a piece documenting Corsi’s problems with facts that “the verb ‘swiftboat’ has become a catch phrase for launching an unsubstantiated political attack.” [Media Matters, 9/15/04; PolitiFact, 8/20/08]

Corsi published The Obama Nation, which was filled with inaccuracies and errors. A Media Matters review of Corsi’s 2008 book The Obama Nation found numerous falsehoods and errors. Several media outlets reporting on the book also noted that the book contained, as The New York Times noted, “unsubstantiated, misleading or inaccurate” allegations. [Media Matters, 8/4/08; 8/15/08]

Corsi has pushed numerous conspiracy theories over the years

Corsi has repeatedly suggested Obama is secretly gay or bisexual. In 2012, Corsi posted a video to YouTube claiming there's "strong" evidence suggesting that Obama is either gay or bisexual. Corsi’s evidence was that Obama wore a gold ring in law school and appeared in "chummy" pictures with his Pakistani roommate, whom Corsi speculated was Obama’s secret husband. Corsi also published articles on WorldNetDaily speculating that Obama has hidden his previous "gay life" in Chicago. From one such article:

[YouTube, 8/5/12; Media Matters, 1/24/13; WorldNetDaily, 10/2/12]

Corsi claimed Obama’s real father was Indonesian. Corsi claimed in 2011 that he "always thought the father [of President Obama] was Indonesian" because Obama's physical characteristics are supposedly "more Indonesian." According to Corsi, Obama's mother "might have met some Indonesian" at a bar, "and that's how it happened." [Media Matters, 1/24/13]

Corsi pushed QAnon conspiracy theory. Corsi heavily promoted QAnon, a sprawling and nonsensical conspiracy theory which claims that an anonymous government official with “Q” clearance has been leaving clues online about Trump’s actions against the so-called “deep state” and its alleged activities, including child trafficking. Corsi later soured on the legitimacy of QAnon, though he has also attempted to reach “across to the QAnon supporters” and make amends after the conspiracy theory had already got national media attention. [Media Matters, 5/15/18; 8/2/18; Right Wing Watch, 8/17/18]

Corsi claimed that an accident involving a train carrying Republican lawmakers was actually a “false flag terror attack.” [Right Wing Watch, 2/1/18]

Corsi claimed Podesta brothers are tied “to Madeleine McCann child abduction case.” The New York Times wrote of fake Pizzagate rumors that “Another part of the conspiracy theory was a supposed link between the Podesta brothers and the child abduction case of Madeleine McCann on May 3, 2007. Two e-fit (electronic facial identification technique) photos released by British detectives were repeatedly used as evidence. However, the two e-fits were based on descriptions of a single suspect by two witnesses, not two different suspects, a crucial detail that was left out. According to The Guardian, the witnesses described the man as ‘white, aged between 20 and 40, with short brown hair, of medium build, medium height and clean shaven.’ In 2007, Tony Podesta was 64 and John Podesta was 58.” Corsi tweeted in November:

Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D.  ??????

@jerome_corsi

Weaponized Autists have cracked case- tie Podesta to Madeleine McCann child abduction case. Sick. Frightening  https://m.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5bk4er/weaponized_autists_have_cracked_the_fucking/?compact=true …

10:07 PM - Nov 6, 2016

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Weaponized Autists have cracked the fucking Madeleine McCann child...

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120 people are talking about this

[The New York Times, 12/10/16; Twitter, 11/6/16]

Corsi wrote a book claiming Hitler escaped Germany with American help. As the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, Corsi wrote in his book Hunting Hitler that “With help from Hitler’s private secretary Martin Bormann, Argentinian politician Juan Peron, and future CIA director Allen Dulles – who, Corsi insinuates, was motivated by a sinister internationalist agenda – Hitler and his bride escaped to Argentina. There, the happy couple they lived out their days in a 6,000-square-foot mansion ‘designed to echo the distinct feel of Hitler’s Obersalzberg retreat … in the Bavarian Alps.’” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 1/13/14; The Daily Beast, 1/16/14]

Corsi thought Sen. Kaine’s blue star service pin might have been a “Viet Cong” flag. During the 2016 vice presidential debate, Corsi tweeted of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and a pin he was wearing: “What is that PIN Kaine is wearing? Red DOT on White Field, Gold border. Ho Chi Minh? Viet Cong? Can anybody identify Kaine's lapel pin?” In reality, as the Associated Press wrote, “Kaine’s pin honors his son, a U.S. Marine serving overseas. The symbol, a single blue star on a white background ringed in red, is that of ‘Blue Star Families’ who have loved ones in the military who are in harm’s way.”

Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D.  ??????

@jerome_corsi

What is that PIN Kaine is wearing?  Red DOT on White Field, Gold border.  Ho Chi Minh? Viet Cong? Can anybody identify Kaine's lapel pin?

7:02 PM - Oct 4, 2016

Twitter Ads info and privacy

118 people are talking about this

[Crooks and Liars, 10/5/16; The Associated Press, 10/5/16]

Corsi was “main purveyor” of NAFTA “superhighway” conspiracy theory. Newsweek wrote of Corsi in 2007:

Ron Paul wants you to be scared. There's a conspiracy in the land—what he calls a "conspiracy of ideas"—to give up America's sovereignty. It's a shadowy scheme that begins with the NAFTA "superhighway," a road as wide as several football fields that will link Mexico, the United States and Canada. "They don't talk about it and they might not admit it," Paul said at the CNN-YouTube presidential debate last week. He didn't say exactly who "they" are, but perhaps one can guess. "They're planning on [taking] millions of acres … by eminent domain," warned the prickly libertarian. But elected government officials aren't acting alone. There's "an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments" pushing the idea, Paul wrote in October 2006. "The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union—complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union."

Only it's not true. The main purveyor of this broad conspiracy theory is Jerome Corsi, coauthor of "Unfit for Command," the book that helped Swift Boat John Kerry's presidential ambitions. His latest offering is "The Late Great U.S.A.: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada," which became a best seller on The New York Times's business list this summer. Corsi plays on growing nationalist fears. He sees a scenario in which a North American Union is born and shares a currency, the "amero." Even some right-wing standard-bearers regard the fears as over-blown. Jed Babbin, editor of the conservative newspaper Human Events, says: "I guess there are people who believe in [the plan for a North American Union]. But there are people who believe in Bigfoot." "The evidence is out there," says Corsi. [Newsweek, 12/1/07]

Corsi is an anti-Muslim bigot

Corsi: Islam is "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion," Muslims are “RAGHEADS.” Media Matters documented in 2004 that Corsi was a frequent participant on the FreeRepublic.com forum, where he posted numerous bigoted comments.

CORSI: Let's see exactly why it isn't the case that Islam is a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion? Where's the proof to the contrary? (04/24/2004)

CORSI: Islam is like a virus -- it affects the mind -- maybe even better as an analogy -- it is a cancer that destroys the body it infects... No doctor would hesitate to eliminate cancer cells from the body. (11/26/02)

CORSI: Islam is a peaceful religion as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered, and the infidels killed. (11/22/2002)

CORSI: How's this as an analogy -- the Koran is simply the "software" for producing deviant cancer cell political behavior and violence in human beings. (02/15/2002)

CORSI: Think the liberal press will ever let out that these 2 were lovers -- typical Islamic boy-buggering -- older man, younger man -- black Muslims? I doubt it. Not a pretty picture, but one certain to be hidden by PC media. (11/08/2002)

CORSI: Isn't the Democratic Party the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA -- oh, I forgot, it was just an accident that Clintoon's first act in office was to promote "gays in the military." RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together. (11/18/2001)

Corsi also wrote that "Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press." [Media Matters, 8/6/04]

Short Link

http://mm4a.org/4xw

copy link

Person

Jerome Corsi

==

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jerome-corsi-and-larry-klayman-threaten-to-sue-gateway-pundit/

no lnx twit

Jerome Corsi and Larry Klayman Threaten to Sue Gateway Pundit

By Jared Holt | January 31, 2019

t’s worth noting that many in Stone’s orbit—a right-wing media universe that includes Fairbanks—have sought to smear and discredit Corsi, believing that the former Infowars writer is directly responsible for Stone’s ensnarement in the Mueller probe. Stone was indicted last Friday for allegedly lying to federal officials about his communications with senior Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks releases that were published during the summer before the 2016 election. Corsi and Stone are currently threatening to sue each other for defamation.

“All of this is kind of smoke. It means nothing in terms of what Mueller has and Roger should take it seriously,” Klayman said. “Dr. Corsi has been the hero here. He’s actually sued Robert Mueller twice with criminal complaints, with civil complaints. I haven’t seen Roger do that.”

Last year, Corsi filed a lawsuit against Mueller accusing that the special counsel of goading him to provide false testimony and of leaking grand jury secrets.

On Newsmax TV, Fairbanks defended WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, with whom she has a personal relationship, and argued that Corsi could not be considered a credible source on WikiLeaks. She went on to assert that Corsi had made numerous false predictions about WikiLeaks releases, had plagiarized her work to promote QAnon conspiracy theories, and had “no basic understanding” of how WikiLeaks operates. She also pointed out that Corsi once solicited charity donations to pay a cancer doctor that didn’t exist.

“The fact that anybody is taking him seriously at all makes me completely just—it makes me laugh,” Fairbanks said.

Klayman told Cardillo that Corsi wouldn’t hesitate to bring defamation cases and that “we can sort this out in court if she wants to get to the bottom of it.” That was echoed by Corsi on Twitter, where he claimed that Gateway Pundit owner Jim Hoft had been “put on legal notice,” and that he had demanded the outlet issue a retraction of Fairbanks’ claims.

Jerome Corsi and one of his lawyers are waging threats to sue against The Gateway Pundit, an outlet that has been overwhelmingly supportive of Corsi before he began singing to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators in the Justice Department probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Corsi admits that he corroborated evidence that the Mueller team had involving the interactions he had with Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone,who was arraigned on Tuesday, with regard to the WikiLeaks dumps of emails hacked from the Clinton campaign by Russian intelligence operatives.

Larry Klayman, the estranged founder of Judicial Watch who is representing Corsi as he processes through Mueller’s probe, appeared on NewsmaxTV yesterday with host John Cardillo to spar with Gateway Pundit contributor Cassandra Fairbanks, who had taken to Twitter the day before to call Corsi “a deranged old man,” and to criticize Mueller for taking information from him. Corsi is also represented by New Jersey attorney David Gray.

(Screenshot/Twitter)

It’s worth noting that many in Stone’s orbit—a right-wing media universe that includes Fairbanks—have sought to smear and discredit Corsi, believing that the former Infowars writer is directly responsible for Stone’s ensnarement in the Mueller probe. Stone was indicted last Friday for allegedly lying to federal officials about his communications with senior Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks releases that were published during the summer before the 2016 election. Corsi and Stone are currently threatening to sue each other for defamation.

“All of this is kind of smoke. It means nothing in terms of what Mueller has and Roger should take it seriously,” Klayman said. “Dr. Corsi has been the hero here. He’s actually sued Robert Mueller twice with criminal complaints, with civil complaints. I haven’t seen Roger do that.”

Last year, Corsi filed a lawsuit against Mueller accusing that the special counsel of goading him to provide false testimony and of leaking grand jury secrets.

On Newsmax TV, Fairbanks defended WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange,with whom she has a personal relationship, and argued that Corsi could not be considered a credible source on WikiLeaks. She went on to assert that Corsi had made numerous false predictions about WikiLeaks releases, had plagiarized her work to promote QAnon conspiracy theories, and had “no basic understanding” of how WikiLeaks operates. She also pointed out that Corsi once solicited charity donations to pay a cancer doctor that didn’t exist.

“The fact that anybody is taking him seriously at all makes me completely just—it makes me laugh,” Fairbanks said.

Klayman told Cardillo that Corsi wouldn’t hesitate to bring defamation cases and that “we can sort this out in court if she wants to get to the bottom of it.” That was echoed by Corsi on Twitter, where he claimed that Gateway Pundit owner Jim Hoft had been “put on legal notice,” and that he had demanded the outlet issue a retraction of Fairbanks’ claims.

(Screenshot/Twitter)

Fairbanks told Right Wing Watch that no legal notice was sent.

“We didn’t receive legal notice. He and his lawyer called my boss ratting on me, threatening lawsuits and saying they were going to Mueller about me,” she wrote to us via email. “I told Jim to tell them to contact my lawyer, as I am only a contributor to Gateway and it doesn’t really concern him. Corsi’s lawyer is just an idiot.”

Klayman did not answer our request for comment via email.

(Article updated at 1:58 p.m.)

Tags: Cassandra Fairbanks Jerome Corsi Larry Klayman Media Russia Investigation Gateway Pundit InfoWars

==

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/who-is-larry-klayman/

==

1/19 roger charged, house raided

TRMS wonders why big risk to lie on credito sp vs corsi, why does it matter?

pbs gop guy wonders why use corsi to connect to russians if direct channel (a cutout?)

===

AN on Hannity picks up hillary sick story

Kurt Eichenwald

@kurteichenwald

2...is August 2, 2016, when Corsi sent an email to Stone. In that email, Corsi says that Assange is planning a document dump on October 2 to cause the most damage possible. (Do you Wikileaks fans FINALLY understand what this fraud is?) In preparation of that, Corsi says that....

==

==

DB

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-target-jerome-corsi-once-wrote-a-trippy-childrens-book

no lnx

Mueller target Jerome Corsi Once Wrote a Trippy Children’s Book

Corsi has gone from cutthroat college debater to one of America’s greatest nuts

Will Sommer

11.30.18

Long before Jerome Corsi became a target for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, or one of the country’s most prominent birthers, or a conduit for the swift boat attacks against John Kerry, he wrote a children’s book. Called The King, the Dragon, and the Witch, the 1972 picture book by Corsi imagined a universe where a king and his friend, a dragon, “devise a plot to rid themselves of a wicked witch.”

It was a whimsical world, one personified by the book’s cover, which shows the king and the dragon holding bouquets of flowers in a forest while the witch jumps in the background. And it reflects a part of Corsi’s biography that many people—especially those just now being acquainted with the man—probably didn’t imagine existed.

For those who have followed his career, Corsi is one of the country’s most enduring conspiracy theorists, forever at the heart of the obscene sagas that often show politics at its most cringe-worthy. He’s found himself there yet again during the Trump era, becoming the latest character to take a leading turn in the special counsel probe into Russia’s election meddling.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER?

Trump and Corsi Have a Defense Agreement, Rudy Says

Asawin Suebsaeng,

Scott Bixby

Corsi is alleged to have been a conduit for Trump confidant Roger Stone and Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign, at the time when the latter was gearing up to publish hacked Clinton campaign emails. Corsi nearly pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with Stone before, apparently, changing his mind about cooperating with Robert Mueller. Instead, this week, he has shared a draft of the charge against him to the media—and, on Wednesday, declared grimly that he’d rather die in prison rather than cut a deal.

If that is, indeed, the outcome, it would be a capstone to a life filled with twists. Among other things, Corsi is almost assuredly the only man who can claim to have both been inspired by Barack Obama’s mentor Laurence Tribeand question Obama’s birthplace.

Corsi declined to comment for this piece.

Corsi grew up in Ohio, the son of a liberal union executive. Despite his father’s politics, he turned to Republican activism when he was still young. In 1967, while still at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University, Corsi agreed to “bird-dog” the mayoral bid of Democrat Carl Stokes. In an early version of today’s campaign trackers, Corsi started attending each of Stokes’s rallies and speeches, counting the crowd and reporting back to his employer on how audiences reacted to Stokes’s speeches.

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At Case Western, Corsi earned a reputation for cutthroat tactics on the college debate circuit. And he brought that with him to Harvard. Tribe, who encountered Corsi on the college debate circuit, told The Daily Beast that Corsi had a reputation for “nasty and unprincipled” tactics in debate tournaments.

“Hearing Corsi’s name always conjured nothing but negatives,” Tribe said, though he couldn’t specify what exactly Corsi did in debates to spark that conjuring.

Corsi also crossed paths on the debate circuit with Bob Shrum, who later became one of the Democratic Party’s most high-profiles campaign strategists. Shrum, who judged some of Corsi’s matches, describes Corsi as an “OK” debater.

“I also had the sense that Corsi went from being a left-wing conspiracy theory person to being a right-wing conspiracy theorist,” Shrum said.

Shortly after he left college, Corsi began to write the first of his many future books. The early material featured little of the conspiracies and paranoia that would mark his later work.

In 1968, he co-wrote Shoot-out in Cleveland, the book-length version of a government study on a Cleveland showdown between black nationalists and police. It presented a nuanced portrayal of race relations, including criticism of the police for their handling of tensions with the public.

At Harvard, Corsi earned a doctorate in political science and, with it, the “Ph.D.” after his name that would prove crucial to his credibility when he began pushing conspiracy theories decades later. In his Harvard dissertation on how governments should handle free speech issues, Corsi mentioned a liberal Harvard professor Michael Walzer, and thanked Tribe.

Tribe told The Daily Beast he had not known that “the deceitful Jerome Corsi” had mentioned him in the dissertation and he didn’t appear particularly moved by the news. “The fellow is a crackpot,” Tribe said, “and a sleazy one to boot.”

In the 1980’s, Corsi moved from teaching into banking and insurance, writing several articles and books about the industry. He appears to have been affiliated with various insurance companies, but mostly as an independent financial adviser. But in 1995, Corsi created the kind of wild-eyed project that foreshadowed his future political hoaxes.

That year, Corsi led a group of investors, mostly from Minnesota, who had collected $1.2 million to create a mutual fund to invest in post-communist Poland. Once Corsi and the other lead investors got to Poland, though, Corsi disappeared from the rest of the group, according to The Boston Globe. The other investors eventually realized that the money they had sent to Poland was gone. The FBI launched an investigation, according to investors who told the Globe they were interviewed by agents, but no charges were filed.

“It was a sad story for a lot of people,” one investor told the Globe.

By that point in time, Corsi had begun developing an interest in foreign affairs and Islam that he said was sparked by 1979’s Iranian revolution. By 2004, Corsi was posting on the conservative web forum Free Republic, a Bush-era hive of right-wing internet activity, and accusing Muslims and Catholics of being pedophiles and, in the case of Muslims, “ragheads.”

"RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters,” Corsi wrote. “It all goes together.”

It’s unclear what precisely prompted Corsi to start involving himself in these communities. But he quickly became deeply versed in the world of right-wing internet commenters, regularly dropping pejorative nicknames for prominent Democrats. After deciding Al Gore was soft of Islamic terror, for example, Corsi dubbed him “Mullah Ali-Gore-ah.”

Corsi truly came to national attention in2004 by co-authoring Unfit for Command, a book filled with inaccurate smears about then-Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s service in the Vietnam War. He tried to leverage the controversy surrounding the book, which he co-authored with a college debate pal who had long been a Kerry foil, into a political career, claiming at one point that he would move from New Jersey to Massachusetts to challenge Kerry for his Senate seat.

But that never happened. Instead, Corsi established himself as a personality on the fringes of right-wing publishing and soon became synonymous with the worst impulses of conservative media.

“‘In the world of putrid right-wing pond scum, Corsi is one of the biggest bottom-feeders of them all,” Democratic strategist James Carville said in 2004.

Corsi secured columnist jobs at right-wing outlets like WorldNetDaily and InfoWars where, among other things, he suggested that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job. He also authored a flurry of books on everything from the Kennedy assassination (surprisingly, he doesn’t believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone) to “new scientific evidence” that Adolf Hitler survived World War II.

Now living in New Jersey, Corsi eagerly attached himself to the birther conspiracy theory surrounding Obama. And as one of the country’s most prominent birthers, Corsi was in contact with Donald Trump, promising him a copy of his book “proving” Obama’s birth certificate was fake and explaining the details of the conspiracy theory to the future president.

With Trump’s election, Corsi has not slowed down. During the past few years he has promoted a wide variety of outlandish conspiracies, including the QAnon conspiracy theory (before theanonymous poster behind QAnon denounced him).

As Corsi faces pressure from Mueller, his one-time allies have turned on him, suggesting that he is obviously too unstable or senile to be believed. Stone dismissed Corsi last week by saying Corsi thinks the 1969 moon landing was staged—an idea that Corsi denies, and that appears to derive from a satirical 2011 Esquire article about Corsi.

Stone and InfoWars boss Alex Jones, who fired Corsi as InfoWars’s Washington bureau chief earlier this year, fumed on air about Corsi on Monday. Jones said Corsi was “senile” and drinking heavily, claiming that he had to call an ambulance for Corsi when they appeared together in Washington in April.

“He didn’t know who he was the next day,” Jones said.

Though he didn’t respond to requests for comment about his background, Corsi did offer up a response to his former boss, saying that—contra Jones’ claims—an ambulance was never called.

“Judge for yourself,” Corsi said.

==

why is he the 1st to not cave? (manafort?)

Monday morning, MSNBC reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has offered a plea deal to Jerome Corsi, a longtime right-wing conspiracy theorist with ties to President Donald Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone. Under the agreement, Corsi would reportedly cop to one count of perjury related to his testimony about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

But CNN promptly reported that Corsi will not sign the agreement, and would rather take it to trial.

"They can put me in prison the rest of my life," he told reporters on a phone call. "I am not going to sign a lie." He added that he does not know what will happen next.

Corsi, who has worked for the right-wing conspiracy theory sites WorldNetDaily and InfoWars, wrote a book that sought to prove President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and was a proponent of the Pizzagate and QAnon theories alleging a massive, secret sex trafficking ring — and worse — at the highest levels of government.

Mueller has reportedly been investigating Corsi in an attempt to ascertain how close Stone was to Assange and WikiLeaks as they distributed stolen emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman — likely obtained from a hacker affiliated with the Russian military. The Justice Department is reportedly considering a charge against Assange in a separate investigation, although the details have not been disclosed.

Stone previously bragged about having a backchannel to WikiLeaks, but has walked that back as his legal liability mounts.

So far, Mueller has been a master at wrangling pleas and cooperation agreements from suspects, including Trump's campaign manager. It remains to be seen what will happen if he takes Corsi to trial. But it is clear that Mueller is closer than ever to getting to the bottom of what really happened between WikiLeaks and Trump's allies.

===

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

Jerome Robert Corsi (born August 31, 1946) is an American author, political commentator, and conspiracy theorist.^[3][4] His two *New York Times* best-selling books, Unfit for Command (2004) and The Obama Nation (2008), attacked Democratic presidential candidates and have been criticized for including numerous inaccuracies.^[5][6][7]

In other books and columns for conservative sites such as WorldNetDaily and Human Events, Corsi has discussed conspiracy theories, such as the alleged plans for a North American government; the theory that President Barack Obama is not a United States citizen;^[8] criticism of the United States government for allegedly covering up information about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001;^[9] and alleged United States support of Iran in its attempts to develop nuclear weapons.^[10][11][12]

In 2017, he became the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for the conspiracy theory website InfoWars, but no longer works for the website.^[13]

• :{1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Early life and education}:
• :{2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Career}:
• :{3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Special Counsel investigation}:
• :{4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Writings and conspiracy theories}:
  • :{4.1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{*Unfit for Command*}:
  • :{4.2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{*The Obama Nation*}:
  • :{4.3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{*Black Gold Stranglehold*}:
  • :{4.4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{*Atomic Iran*}:
  • :{4.5:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{*Where's the Birth Certificate?*}:
  • :{4.6:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{North American Union conspiracy theories}:
  • :{4.7:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{9/11 conspiracy theories}:
  • :{4.8:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{*Hunting Hitler*}:
• :{5:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Private life}:
• :{6:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Bibliography}:
• :{7:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{See also}:
• :{8:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{References}:
• :{9:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{External links}:

Early life and education[

Jerome Corsi was born in East Cleveland, Ohio to Alice, née Hanlon, and Louis E. Corsi, a Democratic Party activist and a leader of the United Transportation Union.^[14] He graduated from St. Ignatius High School in 1964, and graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 1968. He received a PhD in political science from Harvard University in 1972.^[15]

In 1972 Corsi published his doctoral dissertation, Prior Restraint, Prior Punishment, and Political Dissent: A Moral and Legal Evaluation, which discussed the 1968 Democratic National Convention and Vietnam War protests in the context of government tolerance of "internal political activism."^[16]

Career

Corsi began to work in banking and finance in 1981.^[17] In 1995 he helped launch a mutual fund to invest in formerly Communist Poland after the fall of the Soviet Union, which eventually lost $1.2 million, much of it from a group of about 20 Minnesota investors.^[18][19] Some of the investors blamed the organizers, including Corsi, for their investment in the former Communist country. Two investors sued Corsi and his partners, claiming that the organizers had given their personal guarantee backing up the investment, and won judgments against them.^[18] They did not collect from Corsi, because, as one investor claimed, the money "had been moved into his wife's name ... There was nothing to get out of him".^[18] The FBI found no basis for bringing criminal charges.^[18] Until his 2004 book, Corsi was a financial services marketing specialist.^[20]

In January 2005, Corsi told the Boston Herald that he planned to run for John Kerry's Senate seat in Massachusetts in 2008 as a Republican or Independent candidate.^[21] He later said his wife had "vetoed" this plan. Then Corsi stated: "Howard Phillips of the Constitution Party asked me to consider seriously running for president in 2008 and I am doing so."^[22] He then agreed to be nominated at the Constitution Party National Convention,^[23][24] but he dropped out in July 2007.^[25]

In January 2017, Corsi announced that he was leaving his position as a senior staff writer for far right fringe website WorldNetDaily to open and lead the Washington, D.C., bureau for conspiracy theory website InfoWars.^[26] By mid-2018, he was no longer working there.^[13]

Special Counsel investigation

In September 2018, Corsi was subpoenaed to testify in the Special Counsel investigation, reportedly for his contacts with Roger Stone.^[27] Corsi also turned over computer, phone and email records.^[28] The Office of the Special Counsel reportedly has information suggesting Corsi possessed advance knowledge that WikiLeaks had hacked the emails of John Podesta.^[28] Corsi has denied that he had any advance knowledge of the hack, or that he has had any communication with anyone involved in the hack.^[28] Corsi announced on November 12, 2018, that he expected to be indicted for perjury within days.^[29][30] Eleven days later he confirmed he had entered plea negotiations with Mueller prosecutors.^[31]

Writings and conspiracy theories

...

==

rww

Jerome Corsi, former Infowars Washington bureau chief, has been subpoenaed in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between President Trump’s campaign staff and Russian officials.

Maggie Haberman at The New York Times reports that Corsi has been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury on Friday, where he is expected to be asked about his discussions with GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of Trump who served as a campaign adviser. Corsi’s lawyer told Haberman that Corsi “fully intends to comply with the subpoena.” From The Times:

Mr. Corsi, who has worked with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his Infowars operation, has dealt with Mr. Stone on and off for years. Mr. Corsi was also one of the people whom President Trump, before he was a candidate, contacted for information about former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate in pressing the false claim that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States.

Mr. Corsi’s name came up when federal agents stopped and detained a professor and author, Ted Malloch, at a Boston airport last March. Mr. Malloch told NBC at the time that, among other questions, federal investigators asked him about Mr. Stone, whom he had met a handful of times, about WikiLeaks and about Mr. Corsi, who had helped edit one of his books.

In March, we were first to report that Corsi challenged Mueller to a fight behind the Department of Justice. During an episode of “The Alex Jones Show” hosted by his then-boss, Corsi grew increasingly upset at Mueller,telling Jones that he wanted to tell Mueller, “Let’s go out in the backyard of the Justice Department. You’ve got to have some—let’s duke it out. I mean, you want to behave like a thug? You want to behave like that? Well, this is what you deserve. Let’s duke it out. You’re finished. You’re a hack. The whole investigation is a criminal set-up.”[pix]

Corsi’s current narrative—and the subject of his latest book—supposes that covert forces within the Trump administration are systemically destroying the so-called “deep state” in which, Corsi believes, Mueller is a key figure.

Haberman also reported that Corsi no longer works for Infowars.

Tags: Jerome CorsiRoger Stoneconspiracy theoriesRussia InvestigationInfoWars

==

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/here-are-6-stunning-facts-about-infowars-alt-right-conspiracy-buff-jerome-corsi

Prior to the 2000s, far-right conspiracy theorist and author Jerome Corsi was little known in the publishing world and earned his living in the financial services sector. But in recent years, Corsi (who turned 72 on August 31) has become a prominent figure on the alt-right—and in 2017, he left his position as a staff writer for World Net Daily to become the Washington bureau chief for Alex Jones’ Infowars. World Net Daily is so far to the right that even right-wing journalists for the National Review and the Weekly Standard shy away from it, but it was a good place for Corsi to build his brand and promote way-out conspiracy theories. And at Infowars, conspiracy theories—however outrageous or over the top—are always welcome.

Here are six stunning facts about Corsi’s history.

1. Corsi Was a Leading Pizzagate Proponent in 2016

After becoming an ardent supporter of Trump’s presidential campaign in 2015, Corsi went on to become a leading proponent of Pizzagate—the goofy conspiracy theory that John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager, operated a child sex ring underneath Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, DC. The theory went viral in 2016 after Podesta’s e-mail account was hacked and WikiLeaks made his e-mails public; according to the Pizzagate theory, those e-mails contained coded messages proving that Clinton and other high-ranking Democrats were involved in the ring. Of course, the theory has been totally debunked by Washington, DC’s police department, but that didn’t prevent Corsi from promoting it. And Pizzagate became absolute hell for James Alefantis, Comet Ping Pong’s owner, when an alt-right gunman named Edgar Welch stormed the restaurant with an assault rifle (Welch pled guilty to weapons and assault charges).

2. Corsi Was a War Hawk During the Bush Era

Back in the George W. Bush years—before Corsi allied himself with Alex Jones—Corsi was more of a neocon, pounding the war drums with his 2005 book, “Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb,” and painting 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry as a traitor in “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry” (which Corsi wrote with John O’Neill). Yet Corsi was critical of Bush, accusing him of being a “globalist,” favoring open borders and trying to merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a unified North American state—and in 2008, Corsi called for Bush’s impeachment.

3. Corsi Briefly Ran for President in 2008

When wingnuts decide that the Republican Party and Libertarian Party aren’t right-wing enough, one of their options is the far-right Constitution Party—which Corsi is a member of. According to Corsi, theConstitution Party’s Howard Phillips (who died in 2013 and was a founding member of the party) urged him to run for president in the 2008 election. And Corsi agreed to be nominated at the Constitution Party National Convention but dropped out in July 2007 and endorsed anti-gay theocrat Chuck Baldwin as the nominee.

4. Corsi Accused John McCain of Jihadist Connection

During the 2008 GOP presidential primary debates, Sen. John McCain famously declared that he would follow Osama bin Laden to the depths of hell in order to capture the al-Qaeda leader himself and make him pay for the 9/11 terror attacks. But in 2008, Corsi questioned McCain’s anti-jihadist credentials by claiming that a Kosovo group tied to al-Qaeda was supporting his presidential campaign. Corsi claimed, “Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has enjoyed strong support from a lobbyist group that backs the Kosovo Liberation Army despite allegations the KLA is a Muslim terrorist group with ties to criminal drug networks and al-Qaida.”

5. Corsi Was a Leading Birther During Obama’s Presidency

Corsi devoted two different books to anti-Barack Obama conspiracy theories: first “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality” in 2008, then “Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President” in 2011. While “The Obama Nation” claimed that Obama was a closest Islamist who wanted to undermine the U.S. military, “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” established Corsi as one of the leading voices of the racist birther movement—which insisted that Obama wasn’t really a U.S. citizen and therefore, wasn’t qualified to be president.

6. Corsi Unsuccessfully Tried to Sue Esquire in 2011

Obama’s citizenship has been well-documented, and his official, government-issued birth certificate clearly states that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Bearing that in mind, Esquire ran a satirical article in 2011 shortly after the release of “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” saying that the book had been recalled. It was a joke, but Corsi wasn’t laughing—and Corsi filed a frivolous lawsuit against Esquire, seeking damages of $285 million. But in 2012, Corsi’s lawsuit was thrown out in federal court on the grounds that satire is protected by the First Amendment.

==

humanix bks

“Nobody understands the Deep State like Jerome Corsi. Anyone who wants to see it dismantled, needs this book, because Trump can’t do it alone.”

—JOSEPH FARAH, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, WND.com, WND Books, WND Films

"Jerry Corsi may just be the best investigative journalist working today and this incredible book proves it." .”

—Roger Stone, New York Times Bestselling Author

"Killing the Deep State is an explosive must-read that not only exposes the insidious nature and goals of the shadow government, but also provides a roadmap to ensuring that the will of the people – through President Trump – succeeds.” 

— Ed Klein, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

==

blurb for deweese bk

Special Report: Agenda 21 and How to Stop It

Special Report: Agenda 21 and How to Stop It

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4.7 out of 5 stars 5

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The U.N. 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: A Critique

The U.N. 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: A Critique

Monolith Press

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The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change (The Politically Incorrect Guides)

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change (The Politically Incorrect…

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Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump

Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump

Jerome R. Corsi Ph.D.

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Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends

Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and…

Peter Schweizer

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Now Tell Me I Was Wrong

Now Tell Me I Was Wrong

Tom DeWeese

5.0 out of 5 stars 8

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$14.99 Prime

==

booktv faWN interview by ex cbs

kill the dep state

THE HOLDOVER FROM THEOBAMAADMINISTRATIONAND THEJUSTICEDEPARTMENTHAVE THECOUPD'ETATTHATDONALDTRUMPNEVERCONTINUESIN THE BOOK IS THE STEPS:{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline;background-color:#f5f7f8;"):}:THAT DONALD TRUMPMUSTTAKEIN ORDER TO PRESERVETHECONSTITUTIONAND WHAT I ALLEGE ISBASICALLYTREASON.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?442260-1/after-words-jerome-corsi

===

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/stick-a-fork-in-qanon-alex-jones-and-jerome-corsi-claim-that-qanon-has-been-completely-compromised

===

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jerome-corsi-russian-plane-crash-was-a-cia-hit-to-cover-up-the-uranium-one-scandal

==

Some local talk radio shows and fake news websites are pushing a new conspiracy theory from Infowars that the CIA hacked into a Hawaii state government database to forge former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. One of the radio hosts pushing the conspiracy theory has previously been cited as an analyst on a local ABC affiliate.

On December 12, Jerome Corsi of the conspiracy theory outlet Infowars claimed that investigators for former Maricopa County, AZ, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, headed by his chief investigator Michael Zullo, had found “evidence that theCIA and or other government entities illegally hacked into Hawaii Department of Health records searching for” Obama’s records. (President Donald Trump pardoned Arpaio in August after he was charged with criminal contempt because of his treatment of undocumented immigrants.) Corsi, who has been a chief figure of the birther movement, added that the “evidence” “strongly suggests the CIA played a role in the forgery” of Obama’s birth certificate.

Some local talk radio stations have hyped Infowars’ report. New Orleans talk radio host Jeff Crouere -- a Townhall writer who has been featured as a “political analyst” on ABC’s New Orleans affiliate WGNO -- calledCorsi’s report a “bombshell” on his radio program (which is carried by a station affiliated with Louisiana Public Broadcasting) and said, “I’ve said from the beginning that birth certificate [Obama] released was a fraud.”

[vid]

Some stations have invited Corsi and Zullo as guests on different radio shows and allowed them to push the extremely dubious allegation. Corsi hyped his report on Weekend Wake Up with Chuck and Julie on Denver, CO, radio station KNUS, where Corsi said that the “CIA played a major role in, I believe, creating” Obama’s long-form birth certificate that was released in 2011. Corsi also promoted the conspiracy theory on The Peter Boyles Show, which also airs on KNUS. In response to Corsi’s “report,” Boyles said that Obama’s “social security number is fraudulent” (Boyles has previously allowed guests to push birtherism on his program). Zullo spoke about the article on the showYour Turnon Northwest Florida radio station WEBY, where the host called the report a “bombshell” that’s “shaking the Earth” and lauded Infowars.

Additionally, multiple fake news websites have lauded the report, with some of them also calling it a “bombshell” and claiming that it showed the CIA, “possibly with the help of other government agencies, forged Obama’s documentation.” Some of these fake news websites also used their verified Facebook pages to push the conspiracy theory. The Infowars report was also hyped on the pro-Trump subreddit “/r/The_Donald,” a conduit for conspiracy theories.

This is not the first time this year that an Infowars conspiracy theory citing Arpaio has reverberated in the right-wing echo chamber with the help of fake news websites. In March, the outlet, trying to back Trump’s false claimthat Obama illegally wiretapped Trump Tower, asserted that Arpaio had documents showing that Trump and his family had been surveilled by the National Security Agency (NSA) for years. That report subsequently spreadto other far-right outlets and fake news websites, along with The Drudge Report.

Alex Kaplan is a Research Coordinator at Media Matters.

==

KTMsgr

Chapter 2 How Democrats Got in the Game p.

27

corsi lie book on BO but MSNBC used MMA to derail from git (contessa brewer) 2008

2000 Al smeared as elite liar

===

Corsi flogged book on Fox 74

 :{http://www.}::{sourcewatch.}::{org/index.php/Jerome_Corsi}:

Jerome R. Corsi is best known as the co-author of the book Unfit for Command with John E. O'Neill, which played a key role in the election year attack on the war record of Democratic Presidential hopeful John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In August 2008, he released a book critical of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

A biographical note at :{W}::{orldNetDaily}:, where Corsi is a staff writer, states that he "received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972" and that he "is anexpert on political violence and**terrorism**".^[1]

Corsi also serves as editor of WorldNetDaily's "Red Alert," described as a "weekly online global financial strategies newsletter.^[2]

Activism

After the November 2004 Presidential election, Corsi emerged as one of the leading advocates for the U.S. government to take a hard line with the Iraniangovernment. A January 2005 article in the Financial Times (UK) described Corsi as a "prominent backer" of the Alliance for Democracy in Iran: "He believes the freeze on nuclear development agreed between Iran and the European Union will collapse by March and that Israel, supported by the US, will then launch military strikes," it stated.

In February 2005, Corsi appeared as "spokesman" for the Iran Freedom Foundation (IFF), a newly established 501(c)(3) non-profit group.

During the 2006 election season, Corsi co-wrote a book with J. Kenneth Blackwell, an African American who was running for Ohio governor. In the fall of 2006, Corsi wrote numerous columns for WorldNetDaily attacking Blackwell's opponent, Ted Strickland. Corsi denied coordination with or compensation from Blackwell's campaign for writing the articles.^[3]

Corsi has been a booster of the Minuteman Project, even co-authoring a book with founder Jim Gilchrist, but Corsi has had an apparent falling out with Gilchrist after Gilchrist endorsed Mike Huckabee for president. Corsi used articles he wrote for WorldNetDaily to prod Gilchrist into retracting his endorsement.^[4]

Corsi has also been an activist against the "North American Union", joining a coalition of fellow conservatives to fight against what they argue is a plan to create a free trade zone across North America--without providing credible evidence of such a conspiracy.

Attacks on Barack Obama

In August 2008, Corsi published The Obama Nation, a book highly critical of Barack Obama. Media Matters for America^[5], PolitiFact.com,^[6] and Obama's campaign^[7] found numerous errors in the book. Corsi responded by claiming that critics "failed to prove a single falsehood contained in pages of the book,"^[8]even though at the same time he issued several "corrections to the next printing" of the book.^[9]

In October 2008, Corsi went to Kenya "at the invitation of Christian missionaries" worried about "therise of Islam" there, further claiming that he was going "to investigate Sen. Barack Obama's ties to the prime minister, Raila Odinga."^[10] While in Kenya, Corsi attempted to hold a press conference in which he planned to announce evidence of purported ties between Obama and Odinga,^[11] but "police shut down" the press conference before it was to begin, and Corsi and his publicist were detained for several hours.^[12] The two were released several hours later and allowed to board their previously scheduled flight out of Kenya.^[13]Corsi blamed Obama for his brief detention, telling one radio host to "call Barack's office and ask him why I'm being detained," adding, "[I]t's pretty dangerous to write a critical book of Barack Obama."^[14] Corsi later wrote numerous article for WorldNetDaily touting the evidence he obtained to support his claims of ties between Obama and Odinga.

Corsi cited a pair of emails purportedly written by Obama setting up an Obama aide as a liaison between Obama and Odinga,^[15]but according to the Politico, the emails "appear not to have been written by a native English speaker, unless 'I will kindly wish...' is a phrase I'm just unfamiliar with. They have the unmistakable flavor of solicitations from dying African princes, who need only your bank account details to make you wealthy beyond measure."^[16] Corsi also presented a document to support the claim that Obama donated "nearly $1 million" to the campaign of "foreign thug" Odinga,^[17] but PolitiFact.com debunked the claim months earlier,^[18]and the document that Corsi presented as evidence of the claim is markedly different from the document PolitiFact used, even though both contain the same information.^[19] Corsi's overall claims that Obama had a close relationship with Odinga have also been debunked.^[20]

Published Works

• The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, Threshold Editions, August 2008, ISBN 1416598065.
• The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada, WND Books, July 2007, ISBN 0979045142.
• With Jim Gilchrist (and foreword by Congressman Tom Tancredo), Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders , World Ahead Publishing; 1st edition (Hardcover), July 2006, ISBN 0977898415.
• With :{J.}::{ Kenneth Blackwell}:, Rebuilding America: A Prescription for Creating Strong Families, Building the Wealth of Working People, and Ending Welfare,WND Books, May 2006 (Hardcover) ISBN 1581825013.
• With Craig R. Smith, Black Gold Stranglehold, WND Books, October 2005, ISBN 1581824890.
• Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought The Bomb and American Politicians, WND Books, April 2005. ISBN 1581824580. Amazon.com
• With John E. O'Neill and Jeff Riggenbach, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, Regnery Publishing, August 2004. ISBN 0895260174. Amazon.com
• Other books by Jerome R. Corsi listed at Amazon.com.

Articles by Jerome R. Corsi

Contact Information

• Email: jcorsi AT wintersoldier.com
• Email: jcorsi AT worldnetdaily.com

Related SourceWatch Resources

• Coalition to Block the North American Union
• Iran Freedom Foundation
• Minuteman Project
• North American Union
• North American Competitiveness Council
• Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
• U.S. National Guard Troops along the U.S.-Mexico border

References

1. ↑ Jerome Corsi, "Soros supports mullahs: The left embraces yet another enemy," WorldNetDaily, January 14, 2005; accessed August 7, 2008.
2. ↑ Red Alert newsletter, WorldNetDaily.com, accessed August 7, 2008.
3. ↑ Terry Krepel, Single-Minded Smears", ConWebWatch, October 26, 2006.
4. ↑ Terry Krepel, "In Bed -- And Out of Bed -- With Sources", ConWebWatch, January 24, 2008.
5. ↑ "Unfit for Publication: Corsi's *The Obama Nation* filled with falsehoods," Media Matters for America, August 4, 2008.
6. ↑ "Errors abound in anti-Obama book,", PolitiFact.com, August 20, 2008.
7. ↑ "Unfit for Publication: An Investigative Report on the Lies in Jerome Corsi's 'Obama Nation,'" FightTheSmears.com, August 14, 2008.
8. ↑ Jerome Corsi, "Corsi rebuts Obama's 'Unfit for Publication," WorldNetDaily, September 7, 2008.
9. ↑ "Even as Obama Nation author Corsi claimed Obama campaign didn't "prove a single falsehood," he corrected several of them," Media Matters for America, September 8, 2008.
10. ↑ "WND's Corsi in Kenya to probe Obama ties," WorldNetDaily, October 2, 2008.
11. ↑ "Reports to confirm Obama's ties to ally of Muslims," WorldNetDaily, October 7, 2008.
12. ↑ "Kenya holds Corsi 'incommunicado'", WorldNetDaily, October 7, 2008.
13. ↑ "Sendoff to Corsi: 'See you in hell,'" WorldNetDaily, October 8, 2008.
14. ↑ "Calling in to Quinn & Rose from Kenya, Corsi said of his detention: 'Call Barack's office and ask him why I'm being detained,'" Media Matters for America, October 8, 2008.
15. ↑ Jerome Corsi, Proof Obama backed Odinga," WorldNetDaily, October 10, 2008.
16. ↑ Ben Smith, "Breaking: Obama's native language not actually English," Politico, October 10, 2008.
17. ↑ Jerome Corsi, "Obama raised $1 million for foreign thug's election," WorldNetDaily, October 14, 2008.
18. ↑ "'Not a cent' from unrelated Obama," PolitiFact.com, April 18, 2008.
19. ↑ Terry Krepel, "Jerome Corsi's Bogus Journey," ConWebWatch, October 20, 2008.
20. ↑ "Obama did not take sides in Kenya," PolitiFact.com, August 1, 2008.

External links

General

• Jerome Corsi postings Postings and Replies, Free Republic, accessed July 2006. Jerome R. Corsi = jrlc on Free Republic.
• Jerome Corsi news archive, WorldNetDaily.
• Jerome Corsi column archive, WorldNetDaily.

2004

• "MMFA investigates: Who is Jerome Corsi, co-author of Swift Boat Vets attack book?" Media Matters for America, August 6, 2004.
• "Carville: 'In the world of putrid right-wing pond scum, Corsi is one of the biggest bottom-feeders of them all'" and "Corsi apologized 'if anybody was offended' by slurs; vanished from *Hannity & Colmes* lineup," Media Matters for America, August 11, 2004.
• "*Unfit* book materials show Corsi more than just an 'editor'" and "Savage on Corsi's bigotry: 'Is that racist? ... Is that offensive to you? ... I don't see a problem ....'," Media Matters for America, August 12, 2004.
• "Corsi attempted to defend *Unfit for Command* after Kerry called book 'a pack of lies'," Media Matters for America, September 14, 2004.
• "Discredited *Unfit* co-author Corsi now a WorldNetDaily columnist," Media Matters for America, October 1, 2004.
• "Corsi distorted Kerry's Iran plan; suggested Kerry accepted bribes," Media Matters for America, October 22, 2004.

2005

• Guy Dinmore, "Neocons turn their attention to Iran", Financial Times, January 18, 2005.
• "UPI reported that discredited *Unfit for Command* co-author Jerome Corsi is pondering Senate run against Kerry, but left out key facts," Media Matters for America, January 25, 2005.
• "Carpetbagger Corsi wrong about Massachusetts voters," Media Matters for America, January 28, 2005.
• "'The Point' peddled discredited anti-Kerry author Corsi's new book," Media Matters for America, February 9, 2005.

2006

• Terry Krepel, "Swiftly False Revisionism", ConWebWatch, February 15, 2006.
• Chuck Baldwin, "My radio interview with Jerome Corsi," RenewAmerica, June 23, 2006.

2007

• Alex Koppelman, "U.S. to merge with Mexico and Canada?", Salon.com, July 16, 2007.
• Alex Koppelman, "The ballad of Ramos and Compean", Salon.com, September 5, 2007.

2008

• Terry Krepel, "In Bed -- And Out of Bed -- With Sources," ConWebWatch, January 24, 2008.
• "Obama did not take sides in Kenya," PolitiFact.com, August 1, 2008.
• "Unfit for Publication: Corsi's *The Obama Nation* filled with falsehoods," Media Matters for America, August 4, 2008.
• "Confronted by Brewer over falsehood, Corsi responds with two more," Media Matters for America, August 6, 2008.
• Jim Rutenberg and Julie Bosman, "Book Attacking Obama Hopes to Repeat ’04 Anti-Kerry Feat," The New York Times, August 13, 2008.
• Kenneth P. Vogel, "Wild theories of 'Obama Nation' author," Politico, August 13, 2008.
• John K. Wilson, "Jerome Corsi's Lies: Inside The Deceptions Of The Best-Selling Anti-Obama Book," Huffington Post, August 14, 2008.
• "Unfit for Publication: An Investigative Report on the Lies in Jerome Corsi's 'Obama Nation,'" BarackObama.com, August 14, 2008.
• Andrew Romano (August 15, 2008). "Sheridan: Can Obama be 'Swiftboated'?", Newsweek.
• "'The Nation's Deathbed' documentary on SPP ... + *CORSI*?," "ThisCanadian," August 6, 2008.
• "Errors abound in anti-Obama book,", PolitiFact.com, August 20, 2008.
• Brian C. Mooney, "Failed venture follows anti-Obama author," The Boston Globe, August 20, 2008.
• Terry Krepel, "Jerome Corsi's Bogus Journey," ConWebWatch, October 20, 2008.

2009

• Terry Krepel, "Jerome Corsi, Badly Trained Economist," ConWebWatch, March 4, 2009.

Categories: 

• United States
• Politics (US)
• Immigration

splc: 

Other notable conspiracy theorists put in an appearance at Freedom 21. Jerome Corsi — a man who has made a career of Catholic and Islam-bashing and is best known for co-authoring the error-ridden Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out that attacked John Kerry's war record — laid out several conspiracies during his keynote speech.

Corsi, who recently made headlines for his appearances on the racist radio show "The Political Cesspool," was also there to hawk his latest (and, once again, error-filled) book, Obama Nation. Corsi warned that the North American Union is imminent and that the Trans-Texas Corridor (TCC), a superhighway linking Mexico, the U.S., and Canada, must be stopped.Corsi described Washington, D.C., as "a day at the circus" and opined that Congress should be "put on a barge and sent out to sea." "It's time to make the U.N. into a parking lot," Corsi added.

---

http://www.alternet.org/election08/95820/jerome_corsi:_how_a_racist,_conspiratorial_crank_became_a_top_gop_anti-obama_point_man/

ELECTION 2008  

The Nation / By *Max Blumenthal*

Jerome Corsi: How a Racist, Conspiratorial Crank Became a Top GOP Anti-Obama Point Man

Corsi's success represents the apotheosis of a long, strange trip from the furthest shores of the right into the national spotlight.

August 23, 2008  |  

These are good times for Jerome Corsi. Already notorious for his factually challenged book-length takedown of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, Unfit For Command, the 61-year-old Corsi has another hit on his hands. His new book, Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality has made Corsi a hot commodity again on theright-wing radio circuit, the bane of the Obama campaign and catapulted to the top slot on the New York Times bestseller list. With his newfound notoriety, Corsi has brought his pathographic anti-Obama narrative to hundreds of thousands of readers -- and millions on radio and TV -- just as he did with Kerry. Corsi has become the court bard of the conservative movement. "The goal is to defeat Obama," Corsi told the New York Times. "I don't want Obama to be in office."

Corsi's success represents the apotheosis of a long, strange trip from the furthest shores of the right into the national spotlight. During George W. Bush's first term, Corsi was a little-known financial services marketing specialist. In 1995, according to the Boston Globe, he coaxed twenty people into a shadowy investment venture in Poland that ultimately lost them a total of $1.2 million. "It ruined my career in the brokerage business, and it was a sad story for a lot of people," said Bradley Amundson, one of those enlisted into Corsi's bungled scheme. The FBI opened an investigation but never filed any charges.

Corsi had dabbled off-and-on the fringes of conservative backlash politics for nearly three decades. In his spare time, which he appeared to have lots of, Corsi busied himself at his computer, firing off opinions on the far-right websiteFree Republic, marked by their sexual and racial obsessions.

In a comment typical of the dozens he posted under the handle "jrlc," Corsi wrote, "Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?" In another, he ranted, "Isn't the Democratic Party the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA -- oh, I forgot, it was just an accident that Clintoon's [sic] first act in office was to promote 'gays in the military.' RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together."

Then he composed Unfit For Command, suddenly vaulting into best-sellerdom. Surrounded by the media buzz of talk radio and Fox News, Corsi no longer plied the seamy troll-zones of the right-wing blogosphere.Overnight, he had become a conservative folk hero. But as Bush's popularity waned during his second term, Corsi's star dimmed. He tried to reignite it by co-authoring a book with "prophecy expert" Michael Evans, Showdown with Nuclear Iran, calling on the United States and Israel to attack Iran "before it's too late," and another, Black Gold Stranglehold, claiming to expose the Big Lie that will "enslave" Americans: "the belief that oil is a fossil fuel and a finite resource." Corsi's conspiracy theories consolidated his cult status, but he did not revive the brightness of his Swiftboating campaign. As another presidential election approached, however, Corsi followed his well-trod path back to renown.

In early 2007, Corsi huddled with anold friend, Howard Phillips, a veteran conservative operative who had attempted to organize the anti-government militia movement into a cohesive political bloc during the 1990s. Corsi emerged from their discussion convinced of his destiny. He would declare his campaign for the presidential nomination of the ultra-right Constitution Party, enthusiastically embrace the party's call for a complete halt on immigration, banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and upholding its official platform that the "U.S. Constitution established a Republic under God, rather than a democracy." With this momentous announcement, Corsi hoped to cast himself as the last, best hope to save America from the godless, globalist duocracy conspiring to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada into a "North American Union." (His latest flop, published in 2007, was a screed entitled, The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada.)

In July 2007, Corsi spoke before the Texas Constitution Party. At the time, he remained focused on foiling the ambitions of Hillary and Bill Clinton. "I don't want Bill Clinton anywhere near the White House," Corsi proclaimed. "We had enough serial rape going on when he was president." But Corsi didn't want a Republican in the White House either, especially not SenatorJohn McCain. The war-scarred McCain, Corsi wrote in a column for the far-right webzine WorldNetDaily, is a possible jihadist dupe who "has enjoyed strong support from a lobbying group that backs ... a Muslim terrorist group with ties to criminal drug networks and Al Qaeda." Even George W. Bush was now treasonous. "Bush," he told the Texas Constitution Party, "is post-America and post-God," a figure so indebted to foreign interests that he had allowed "communist China" to "run its gunboats up the Mississippi." In Corsi's mind, both parties were fronts for the money-masters, the Trilateralists, the plotters of Bohemian Grove -- the "elitists who want to destroy the nation-state."

"They don't want to offend anybody. They don't want to offend Mexico. They don't want to offend God," he railed, accidentally inverting what he meant to say. "They take God out of my money. I think we ought to offend Mexico! I think we ought to offend the sexual abusers! I think we ought to respect God."

Corsi's audience went wild with applause, cheering almost as loudly as they did when he recounted a self-congratulatory tale of hanging up on a telemarketer because he was from India. Despite the mounting enthusiasm for his candidacy, Corsi unaccountably withdrew from the race just days after his Texas address. He promptly endorsed Chuck Baldwin, a theocratic Baptist pastor who had left the Republican Party in 2000 to protest what he viewed as Bush's extreme liberalism. Bush, according to Baldwin, was "in bed with homosexuals" (or "sodomites" as he likes to call them) and had gone soft on abortion providers, whom Baldwin believed should be marched en masse to the gallows.

"Chuck [Baldwin], I know personally. He's a man of God," Corsi told the Constitution Party's national convention in May. "He believes in the Constitution and he believes in the United States of America."

Baldwin also believes that "moneychangers" of a certain Chosen People are "Destroying America -- and Christians Don't See It." That is the title of a commentary he wrote in February of 2008. In it, he wrote: "The moneychangers of Jesus' day were the equivalent of the international bankers of our day. With the consent and approbation of the Jewish leaders, these bankers set up shop in the Temple. Their purpose was to exchange whatever currency the Jewish worshipper brought with him or her into Jewish currency, which would then be used to purchase whatever sacrifice the worshipper required." For proof, Baldwin cited the investigations of his associate, "Dr. Jerry Corsi," who had bravely "exposed the moneychangers who are the driving force behind the burgeoning North American Union."

Backed by Corsi, Baldwin seized the Constitution Party's nomination this May. Then he unfurled a, calling for "an independent investigative committee to analyze" whether the attacks of 9/11 were an inside government job.

Corsi, for his part, shared Baldwin's skepticism. "The government's explanation of the jet fuel fire is not a sufficient explanation," Corsi in January on the radio show hosted by Alex Jones, a fellow Baldwin supporter who promotes himself as "the grandfather of what has come to be known as the 9/11 Truth Movement."

"With people like you starting to question 9/11 with the science," Jones marveled, "boy that's really gonna ... "

"That's what rattles the cage," said Corsi in a self-satisfied tone.

In late 2007, with Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Corsi gleaned a new opportunity to "rattle the cage." He punched out a proposal for an anti-Obama attack book, Obama Nation, and floated it to right-wing publishers. Mary Matalin, the longtime Republican consultant and former senior adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, was hunting for titles for her two-year-old publishing imprint, Threshold, a conservative division of Simon and Schuster.When Corsi's proposal landed on her desk, she was thrilled.

Matalin promptly signed Corsi to a lucrative deal, positioning Obama Nation as Threshold's premier release of the summer season. In anticipation of heavy sales, Matalin ordered the printing of 475,000 copies. When the book was released in early August, conservative foundations and think tanks ensured its early success with a massive bulk buy, propelling it to number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

Like Unfit For Command, which wrongly claimed that Kerry had falsified combat reports in order to earn medals in Vietnam, Obama Nation was larded with crackpot smears cobbled together from assorted right-wing blog posts. Corsi asserted, for example, that Obama had "extensive connections to Islam," that he may have snorted cocaine in the Senate, and that he has staffed his campaign with card-carrying communists (including the former youth politics reporter at The Nation, Sam Graham-Felsen, an official Obama blogger and self-described progressive Democrat).

But even as Media Matters for America documented an extensive litany of falsehoods and misrepresentations in Obama Nation, and a nearly unanimous chorus of reviewers panned the book -- "poisonous crap," according to Time columnist Joe Klein -- the Obama campaign could not afford to repeat Kerry's fatal mistake of ignoring Corsi and leaving the debunking to the press. On August 14, the Obama campaign released a forty-one-page "investigative report on the lies in Jerome Corsi's Obama Nation, entitled, Unfit For Publication. While the booklet systematically undermined the credibility of Corsi's writing, it also underlined the pivotal role Corsi played in the Republican attack machine.

Thrown on the defensive by the revelation of Corsi's myriad factual errors, Matalin rushed to her author's defense. Obama Nation, she told the New York Times, "was not designed to be, and does not set out to be a political book. Instead, it is "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that." Following Matalin's lead, the conservative movement rallied to Corsi's side. Rush Limbaugh hailed Obama Nation as a "pretty damn good" book; Fox News host Sean Hannity hosted Corsi twice on his top-rated Hannity and Colmes, asking him during his second appearance whether Obama was ever a drug dealer. Meanwhile, the National Review's Mark Levin assailed the media for "wanting to know about anything [Corsi] has ever said or written and his associations." Even John McCain refused to condemn Corsi's work. When asked by a reporter about Obama Nation, McCain responded simply, "Gotta keep your sense of humor."

Though the conservative movement's most influential media personalities are clamoring for interviews, Corsi still found time to visit the fringe figures that had promoted his conspiratorial tracts during his lean years between campaigns. On August 4, Corsi reunited with Alex Jones, the 9/11 "Truther," to claim that Obama "really" was a Muslim. "We should not have anybody as president who -- both their parents aren't Americans," Jones barked. "Bottom line, that's always been the way it is." Two weeks later, Corsi scheduled a spot on something called "James Edwards' Political Cesspool," a show he had already appeared on in July.

Who is James Edwards? A 28-year-old self-described "white nationalist," he has leveraged sponsorship from neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial groups to become America's most popular white supremacist radio host. On his website, Edwards has boasted of his friendship with neo-Nazi activist David Duke, and written "slavery is the greatest thing that ever happened to" African-Americans.

He also warned "Hollywood promotes white genocide." For Edwards, Corsi's anti-Obama attacks were only a slight detour from the racialist ranting his show usually entertains.

However, when the Southern Poverty Law Center and Media Matters reported on Corsi's planned appearance on Edwards' show, Corsi quietly withdrew, claiming through his publicist that "travel plans have changed." Bigger venues, in any case, await him. Once again, he's a star -- the crank acclaimed by conservatives as the greatest investigative journalist of the day.

Max Blumenthalis a Puffin Foundation writing fellow at the Nation Institute based in Washington, DC. Read his blog at maxblumenthal.blogspot.com