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Open in TheBrain

hit man

10/19 cat, maybe redumbdent, triggered by peter Schweizer on ukraine impeach.

merri ok

6/20 expanded to include pol ops eg atwater

this started with sleaze/liars for hire by industry Entine (body shop ) and Berman (celebs, al gore) ;

expanded to include schock-jocks beck and limbaugh

then expanded more to alt-rt trolls. soc med makes worse

see targets for pattern: proxy for whatever works on left?

serengetti/ flak increase the closer you get to important topic

how relate to enforcer? Horner?

scalps? eg Biden noms?

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i forgot trump himself with twit lies, nicknames, attacks, plus less effective troll caucus

also see axios on new gop power : don't want tucker or breitbart on your ass"  also influencers shapiro etc, tho maybe not much power outside of the maga base?

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ENFORCER:  how does he have infl on RNC?

an 2 22https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/liz-cheney-censure/

an RNC committee Thursday evening unanimously passed a resolution to censure GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. The resolution will be voted on by the full RNC, all 168 Republican National Committee members, Friday.

That resolution – submitted by Trump "dirty trickster" and GOP "shady partisan hit man" David Bossie – makes false claims about President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats,

"The Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress have embarked on a systematic effort to replace liberty with socialism; eliminate border security in favor of lawless open borders; create record inflation designed to steal the American dream from our children and grandchildren;neuter our national defense and a peace through strength foreign policy; replace President Trump's 'Operation Warp Speed' with incompetence and illegal mandates;and destroy America's economy with the Green New Deal."

The resolution also promotes the lie that participants in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were merely "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."

It calls for the RNC to "immediately cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party for their behavior which has been destructive to the institution of the House of Representatives, the Republican Party and is inconsistent with the position of the Conference."

Read:...

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mofo

AAF is led by Tom Jones, a former legislative director for Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) and was head of opposition research for Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign. According to the Wall Street Journal, AAF has received funding from Leonard Leo’s Marble Freedom Trust, but the Center for Media and Democracy has not been able to document this.

AAF is being investigated by the IRS for violating its tax-exempt status, Politico reported in March 2024.

Operatives

Best Supporting Hatchet Man

The Nominees: Bill Pulte, Housing Henchman, DOJ Weaponization Czar Ed Martin, Perplexed Prosecutor Lindsey Halligan, Trumponomics Enabler Scott Bessent.

The Winner:With 29.8% of the vote, Bill Pulte — “the 37-year-old scion of a major homebuilding family ensconced as the head honcho simultaneously at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, where he’s free to rifle through the personal mortgage records of prominent Democrats,” as David Kurtz put it — wins.

Runners Up:This was the closest category by far. Second place goes to Ed Martin (28%), followed by Scott Bessent (21.5%) with Lindsey Halligan in last (20.7%).

“There’s a kind of respect for the hustle here.”

Kate Riga

The Takes*:

Kate: “It’s just, like, it’s a little bit funny to have this rabid pit bull who — the best assignment he could get is in this random little housing office. And he’s like, ‘don’t worry, sir, I will weaponize everything at my disposal.’ And that involves just having these poor schlubs sift through mortgage paperwork, looking for errors. It’s all a little comical.”*

*Josh: “Right, it’s so striving. … Like you find yourself in different places in life and you do the best you can in your station in life, and you try to do more than people thought you could do.”

“A lot of these Trump appointees, because they have inner darkness, it must make them age prematurely.”

Josh Marshall

chls C

Peter Thiel

Johnson has a long-standing relationship with Silicon Valley financier and Trump backerPeter Thiel,[11] including collaboration on strategy against Gawker and work for the Trump campaign, as outlined in detail in the book The Contrarian.[12]

Bob Menendez

Johnson was involved in the creation of aDaily Caller story that accused U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) of soliciting underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic.[11] A criminal investigation of the case found no evidence, and the women making the allegations later admitted they had been paid by a local lawyer to make the claims.[13][14][15][16]

Cory Booker

On October 14, 2013, Johnson published an article in The Daily Caller claiming that Newark mayor and then senatorial candidate Cory Booker never lived in Newark. The article cited neighbors of Booker's alleged address as evidence. Booker's campaign provided a reporter from BuzzFeed with rental checks and other documents for the address going back several years, and Booker's communication director dismissed Johnson's allegations as "laughable". According to Booker's campaign, he lived there from late 2006 to shortly before he was elected Senator in 2013. Johnson stood by his reporting, claiming that Booker may well have paid rent but did not live in Newark.[17][18]

David D. Kirkpatrick

In January 2014, Johnson published an article reporting that The New York Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick was arrested for exhibitionism and had previously posed for Playgirl. Johnson's source for the Playgirl claim was a January 22, 1990, article in The Daily Princetonian, which was later revealed to be satirical.[19] Johnson apologized to Kirkpatrick.

...

2014 Mississippi Republican primary election

On June 30, 2014, Johnson published a story on GotNews accusing Mississippi senator Thad Cochran of bribing African-Americans to vote for him in the Mississippi Senate Republican primary.[21] The story came days after Cochran had defeated Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel in a run-off election. Johnson claimed that a black pastor named Stevie Fielder had told him he was paid by Cochran's campaign to bribe black Democrats into voting for Cochran. Johnson paid the pastor for his statements, a controversial practice sometimes known as "checkbook journalism".[21] Fielder later partially recanted his story, saying that he had been speaking hypothetically, that he had turned down the offer, and that Johnson's recording of his interview had been selectively edited, a claim Johnson denies.[22]

During the election, Johnson also accused the Cochran campaign of being responsible for Mississippi Tea Party leader Mark Mayfield's suicide and encouraged his Twitter followers to flood a Cochran campaign conference call.[21][23]

Ferguson

During the Ferguson unrest, Johnson published the Instagram account of shooting victim Michael Brown and stated that the account "shows a violent streak that may help explain what led to a violent confrontation with Police officer Darren Wilson".[24] Johnson also filed a lawsuit to have Brown's juvenile records released. In Brown's home state of Missouri, the records of minors are private, but Johnson argued that the matter was of pressing public interest under the state's sunshine law. The county court disagreed.[25] Further appeal attempts by Johnson to unseal the records went as far as the State Supreme Court of Missouri, which denied his request.

In a separate incident during the unrest, Johnson published the addresses of two The New York Times reporters, claiming that they published the known addresses of Darren Wilson.[26] The New York Times has said the reporters only revealed the street on which Wilson once lived.[26]

University of Virginia rape article

In December 2014, Rolling Stone columnist Sabrina Erdely published an article entitled "A Rape on Campus" about the alleged gang rape of a University of Virginia (UVA) student named "Jackie" in 2012 at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at UVA. The article was later found to be fabricated.[26] Johnson publicly identified Jackie, but in the selection of photos he used had the wrong photo of Jackie.[27]

Banning from Twitter

On May 24, 2015, Johnson sent a tweet asking his followers for donations to help him "take out" Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson. McKesson shared the tweet and took the tweet as a threat. Johnson was permanently banned from Twitter after several users reported him for harassment.[3] In 2018, Johnson sued Twitter for banning him on the grounds that Twitter violated his First Amendment right to free speech. The California Superior Court in Fresno struck down Johnson's lawsuit on June 6.[28] In 2022, Johnson reportedly received assurance from Elon Musk associate Jared Birchall that he may be unbanned following the purchase of Twitter by Musk.[29]

Katie Walsh

In February 2017, Johnson's website GotNews.com claimed that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Katie Walsh was "the source behind a bunch of leaks" in the White House without offering any concrete evidence.[30]

Charlottesville Rally

In August 2017, Johnson's website GotNews was one of several right-wing websites that falsely accused a Michigan man of being responsible for the car attack on August 12, 2017, that killed and injured anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.[31] The Michigan man was subsequently harassed, and was advised by police to flee his home following a slew of death threats.[31][32] Together with his father, the Michigan man filed a defamation lawsuit against 22 corporate and individual defendants, including Johnson.[33][34] On June 1, 2018, Johnson and GotNews agreed to pay a total of $29,900 to settle the lawsuit.[35]

Trump campaign WikiLeaks liaison

In September 2016, Johnson published a story on GotNews about a soon-to-launch anti-Trump website called PutinTrump.org.[36] WikiLeaks forwarded the story in private to Donald Trump Jr. before publicly tweeting it. Business Insider speculated that Johnson's story in September on GotNews may have marked the beginning of Donald Trump Jr.'s—and the Trump campaign's—back-channel contact with Julian Assange and Wikileaks. (Johnson wrote after Wikileaks tweeted the story, "About 2 hours after our original article, Julian Assange's WikiLeaks repeated our discoveries. Guess which big leaks organization reads GotNews & WeSearchr on the downlow! Come on Julian, let's work together. WikiLeaks & WeSearchr is a match made in heaven. We can take down Hillary together.")[37] In August 2017, Johnson brokered and attended a meeting in London between GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Julian Assange to discuss a presidential pardon for Assange.[38]

Fraudulent sexual harassment claim against Senator Charles Schumer

On December 11, 2017, Johnson wrote on his Facebook page, "Michael Cernovich & I are going to end the career of a U.S. Senator." Johnson claimed to have uncovered a sexual harassment lawsuit against Senator Charles Schumer. The lawsuit, however, turned out to be a forgery.Moreover, language in the forged lawsuit was copied verbatim from a real sexual-harassment complaint filed against Rep. John Conyers. Schumer referred the matter to Capitol police for investigation.[39][40]

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CRC HIT TOUTED BY ZINKE: supports tucker benghazi deep state reboot "weaponization"

https://capitalresearch.org/article/arabellas-long-war-part-1

“Keep It in the Ground” | Web of “Pop-Up” Groups

Anatomy of an Arabella Campaign | Harried Until the End

Summary: For years “dark money” activists ran a coordinated campaign to sabotage and undermine the Trump administration from the offices of Arabella Advisors in Washington, DC. The campaign culminated in the most extreme environmentalist regime in American history under President Joseph Biden.This report goes inside that campaign to destroy Trump’s Department of the Interior and promote the Left’s war on affordable energy.

In 2019, the Capital Research Center’s groundbreaking report on Arabella Advisors exposed the half-billion-dollar network for the first time, dragging Arabella into the limelight as the posterchild of the Left’s “dark money.” Since then we’ve continued to uncover this now $730 million **activist empire, tracing its shadowy campaigns on everything from abortion on demand to packing the Supreme Court to its war on the Trump administration.

This report on the Arabella network examines theprofessional Left’s years-long campaign to undermine President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior, laying the groundwork for the Biden administration’s crusade against oil and the most radical environmentalist policies in American history.

“Keep It in the Ground”

The U.S. Department of the Interior is primarily responsible for managing roughly 450 million acres of federal land and conservation of their natural resources, most critically the nation’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas. It manages hundreds of dams and reservoirs, regulates drilling on public lands, runs the National Park Service, and maintains public monuments, including dozens attacked by radical Black Lives Matter activists in 2020.

The department also plays a role in foreign diplomacy and national security. Under President Trump that includedinternational wildlife trafficking bans, encouraging trade of precious metals and rare earths, and promoting his Indo-Pacific security and economic strategy.

But the department’s openness to expanding oil and gas production brought the sharpest attacks from the Left. Since the department is entirely under the president’s purview, halting all drilling on public land is far easier than attempting to halt private oil and gas production nationwide—the radical Left’s ultimate goal.

“The natural place to start phasing out supply is on our public lands and oceans where a ban on new leasing will keep up to 450 billion tons of carbon pollution in the ground,” Center for Biological Diversity director Kieran Suckling said in 2015. Bill McKibben, founder of the ultra-leftist 350.org, has also stated that “public lands are one of the easiest places for us to control the flow of carbon into the atmosphere.”

Unsurprisingly, that’s been the policy of Democratic presidents and their activist allies for years. President Barack Obama canceled lease sales in the Artic and Atlantic offshore sites and banned the leasing of coal on federal lands. Phasing down “extraction of fossil fuels from our public lands” was in the Democratic Party’s 2016 platform. That same year a 350.org activist asked Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton what she meant by “extraction on public lands is a done deal?” Clinton replied, “That’s where [President Obama] is moving: No future extraction. I agree with that.” Her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, later assured another 350.org activist that “I actually am now in that position.”

But even “phasing down” is too conservative for today’s “keep it in the ground” Left. No less than 20 Democratic presidential hopefuls vowed to ban drilling on public lands outright during their party’s 2020 primary. Ever the pawn of the radical Left, on January 27, 2021—exactly one week after his inauguration—President Biden indefinitely suspended development of new oil and gas wells on public lands, which the left-leaning San Francisco Chronicle cheered as “a first step to halting the granting of federal drilling leases permanently.”

Why does this matter? Federal lands account for roughly 24 percent of America’s oil, natural gas, and coal production. In 2019, total crude oil production reached an all-time high of 4.471 billion barrels, with a significant chunk of that growth coming from oil drilled on federal lands. Biden’s ban blocks future development of these key resources, removing them from the supply stream and hampering the energy independence the United States struggled to achieve in recent years. This means higher gasoline and household electricity prices, an estimated $11.3 billion in lost federal royalties and rental fees, and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs across the economy.

With a single executive order, the Left could advance its crusade to “keep it in the ground” for years in the name of global warming. The stakes couldn’t be higher—all that stood in its way was the Trump administration.

In the next installment, watch Arabella Advisors target the Interior Department with two “pop-up” groups.

Tags: 350.org, Accountable.US, Arabella Advisors, Center for American Progress, Center for Biological Diversity, climate change, Department of the Interior, global warming, Hopewell Fund, natural gas, new vent, oil, public lands, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Western Values Project   Hayden Ludwig

Hayden Ludwig is a Senior Investigative Researcher at Capital Research Center. He is also a columnist at the Washington Free Beacon and writes regularly for the American Conservative. Ludwig is…+ MORE BY HAYDEN LUDWIG

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pt 2

Web of “Pop-Up” Groups

Enter Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm based in Washington, DC, that quietly runs arguably the most powerful activist and lobbying network in politics. Arabella manages four in-house nonprofits collectively called the “sisters,” each of which controls a small army of activists and a legion of “pop-up” groups. And each pop-up group is made to look like a slick, stand-alone website. These pop-ups target virtually every issue in politics—control of the courts, abortion access, gun control, and voter registration and mobilization, even the Trump-Russia collusion hoax—pushing left-wing policies in every corner. What makes Arabella so powerful is how these “pop-ups” deceive individuals into believing they represent genuine local grassroots interests, such as one pop-up in Alaska created to oppose creation of the Pebble Mine run from Arabella’s plush offices in DC.

Arabella’s network is extraordinarily well-funded. In 2019 alone, the four “sisters” reported total revenues exceeding $730 million and poured out $648 million. Between the network’s creation in 2006 and its Form 990 filing for 2019 (the latest available), Arabella’s empire has received more than $3 billion and spent nearly $2.5 billion. Most of that funding was directed to the network’s flagship 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the New Venture Fund, whose largest known donors include the Gates, Ford, Hewlett, Packard, andBuffettFoundations.

Beginning in 2017, Arabella turned its guns on Trump’s Department of the Interior using a pop-up pair: Western Values Project (WVP) and its “sister,” Western Values Project Action (WVPA).

According to their websites, WVP and WVPA were created in 2013 in Helena, Montana, to expose corrupt corporate lobbyists preying on public lands in the West. In reality, WVP is run by the 501(c)(3) New Venture Fund while WVPA is run by the 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund, Arabella’s in-house lobbying shop. Whatever staff the groups actually have would have been paid by one of Arabella’s nonprofits or possibly by Arabella Advisors itself; we’ll likely never know. But in its 2018 Form 990, New Venture Fund revealed that it is the “paymaster” for Sixteen Thirty Fund (which reported zero employees on its own 2018 Form 990) and “pays the salary and immediately invoices Sixteen Thirty Fund, which reimburses the full amount.”

It’s common for groups to use both kinds of nonprofit to maximize their ability to lobby through the 501(c)(4) and raise non-lobbying funds through the 501(c)(3), since donors may deduct donations to the 501(c)(3) from their taxes. But Arabella takes that tactic to another level, using pop-up fronts for its nonprofits that can take advantage of the New Venture and Sixteen Thirty Fund’s respective tax advantages without disclosing their relationship to one another. Donations to WVP and WVPA in fact benefitted the Arabella-run nonprofits behind the projects, as an archived version of WVP’s website from October 2019 reveals.

Until late 2019 the website for WVP and WVPA revealed a handful of staffers, including Chris Saeger, ex-communications director for the Montana Democratic Party and former Service Employees International Union (SEIU)staffer; Jayson O’Neill, a Democratic staffer for Montana’s legislature and Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D); and Yetta Stein, a staffer for the left-wing political action committee End Citizens United and staffer for the 2018 reelection campaign Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT). The archived website also showed a small advisory board consisting of:

WVP’s advisory board also included Caroline Ciccone, who in 2019 was executive director of the New Venture Fund pop-up and anti-Trump “oversight” group Restore Public Trust. Ciccone is a former communications director for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Obama appointee to the U.S. Small Business Administration, and Democratic strategist. From 2014 to 2017 she led Americans United for Change (AUFC), a top left-wing strategy group whose national field director Scott Foval was recorded in late 2016 by undercover journalists from Project Veritasbragging that AUFC had paid mentally ill and homeless people to instigate violence at Trump campaign rallies. “We know that Trump’s people will [tend to] freak the f— out,” Foval said in the video. “It is not hard to get some of these assholes to ‘pop off.’” The scandal ultimately led back to Robert Creamer, co-founder of the powerful consulting firm Democracy Partners and a former general consultant to AUFC who directed parts of a vast network of advocacy groups all aligned in support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. This led to speculation that his firm helped Clinton’s campaign violate collusion laws. Foval described Creamer’s role in the scandal as the “kingpin” who is “diabolical, and I love him for it.” Within days of the video’s release Creamer resigned, and Foval was fired.

Also present was Kyle Herrig, a New Venture Fund board member who sat on the advisory boards of at least five New Venture Fund projects, including American Oversight, a judicial activist and litigation group; Allied Progress, which attacked Trump cabinet officials; and the Ciccone-run Restore Public Trust.

In early 2020 it was announced that Western Values Project and these three Arabella “pop-ups” were being rolled into a new organization: Accountable.US, itself a former New Venture Fund project fully established as an independent nonprofit sometime later that year, headed by president Kyle Herrig and executive director Caroline Ciccone. (It appears that Western Values Project Action remains a project of Sixteen Thirty Fund, but that remains unclear as of writing.)

This reveals that Western Values Project, far from being a grassroots group, is enmeshed in a deeply networked, highly coordinated cabal of professional activists—and it always was.

In the next installment, break down the Arabella campaign against the Interior Department and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

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pt 3 zinke ad cartoon overturned boat

anatomy of anArabella Campaign

From 2017 to 2018, WVP ran an all-out attack against Trump administration Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke,publishing post after post savaging Zinke and his staff. WVP even published a massive website, DepartmentofInfluence.org, which compiled boatloads of data on nearly every appointee to the Trump administration’s Department of the Interior. The group’s goal was clear: Drive Ryan Zinke out of office and undermine the department’s policies. They finally succeeded in December 2018, and Zinke resigned in early January 2019 amid ethics complaints alleging he had misused public funds during official travel and spent large sums on frivolous things.

CRC has counted nine Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases filed by WVP between April 2017 and Zinke’s resignation, all sporting WVP’s supposed address: aUPS store in Whitefish, Montana (704C 13th St. E., #568, Whitefish, MT 59937). As investigative reporter Dave Skinner points out, “‘Suite 568’ is actually a $150-per-year private mail box, snugged next to a sales placard touting a ‘street address, not a P.O. box number.’”

In these complaints WVP describes itself as “a not-for-profit public interest organization” and “a tax-exempt organization within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code,” never mentioning its status as a project of the New Venture Fund or its connection to Arabella Advisors. At least one FOIA request was co-filed with American Oversight, another former New Venture Fund pop-up run by Kyle Herrig that also used a UPS Store address in its filings (1030 15th St., NW, Suite B255, Washington, DC 20005) and describes itself as “a nonpartisan, non-profit section 501(c)(3) organization.”

These FOIA complaints exclusively targeted the Department of the Interior. Highlights include:

On October 22, 2018, the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General released its investigative report into Zinke’s alleged ethics abuses and recommended it to the Department of Justice. The office noted that it “initiated this investigation” in December 2017 “based on information we received while investigating [Zinke’s] use of noncommercial aircraft for U.S. Governmental travel.” The source of that information isn’t named, but it isn’t a stretch to believe it originated with Western Values Project.

Eight days later on October 30, WVP released its statement on the probe calling on Zinke to resign. It launched a website (HasRyanZinkeBeenFiredYet.com) demanding the same. On November 9, WVPA released a $30,000 attack ad in seven Montana newspapers accusing Zinke’s “priorities” of being “upside down” and calling for his resignation—presumably paid for by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which controls WVPA’s finances. One month later Zinke resigned.

INSERT IMAGE: https://www.influencewatch.org/app/uploads/2021/02/Western-Values-Project-Zinke-Attack-Ad-2019.pdf

Big Green’s Campaign Rolls On

Joining WVP and WVPA was the Center for Western Priorities (CWP), a front for the California mega-activist group Resources Legacy Fund—by my count the 16th-largest environmentalist group in the country, spending over $42 million in 2018 alone. CWP painted Zinke as a feckless tool of the oil and gas industry, accusing him of “following President Trump’s marching orders to attack our public lands” and fomenting an “illegal attack on America’s national monuments.” When Zinke resigned in January 2019, CWP labeled him “the most anti-conservation Interior Secretary of all time.”

Almost immediately after Ryan Zinke resigned in December 2018, CWP and WVP turned their guns on undermining Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, who became acting secretary on January 2, 2019, and was officially confirmed in April.

Bernhardt served in the George W. Bush administration’s Department of the Interior, leaving in 2009 as the department’s solicitor. After that he led the Denver firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s natural resources law practice, where his clients included Halliburton Energy Services and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, and he lobbied for Cobalt International Energy and Samson Resources. Before his appointment to the Trump administration, Bernhardt was also registered as a lobbyist for the Westlands Water District in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

On December 17, CWP policy director Jesse Prentice-Dunn published a long hit piece calling Bernhardt a “walking conflict of interest” who would continue “Ryan Zinke’s culture of corruption” and accusing the department of shilling for Big Oil. That same day WVP published the website DavidBernhardt.org, calling Bernhardt “the ultimate DC swamp creature” and an “ex-lobbyist who is too conflicted to be Interior Secretary,” while detailing a laundry list of ethics charges in an attempt to derail his confirmation to the post. Memos about Bernhardt’s background and conflicts of interest and more FOIA requests followed from WVP and CWP, including one from Democracy Forward, a leftist litigation group created by Clinton crony Marc Elias (of Perkins Coie fame) in 2017 to target the Trump administration.

In February, the Campaign for Accountability (CFA), a former “pop-up” of the Arabella-run Hopewell Fund, petitioned the Interior Department inspector general to investigate Bernhardt’s ties to Westlands Water District as a conflict of interest and urged the Senate to reject his confirmation. CFA, which specialized in targeting Trump political appointees, was founded by alumni of another left-wing litigation group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and has been represented by the ex-Arabella pop-up American Oversight in past lawsuits.

The Center for American Progress joined in, labeling Bernhardt “the most conflicted Trump Cabinet nominee.” Greenpeace and the Center for Biological Diversity urged the department’s inspector general to investigate those conflicts of interest, melodramatically declaring him “the most dangerous man in America for endangered species and public lands.” The Sierra Club demanded the Senate reject his confirmation, as did the National Parks Conservation Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

In March, WVPA launched a six-figure television ad buy targeting Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich (NM) and moderate Republican Sens. Cory Gardner (CO) and Martha McSally (AZ) to oppose Bernhardt’s confirmation. The assault continued until the Senate confirmed Bernhardt in April 2019. From then on the group’s crusade against Trump’s Department of the Interior focused on thwarting its agenda.

In the next installment, the professional Left’s years-long campaign culminates in the Biden Administration’s rush toward radical “green” policies.

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pt 4

Harried Until the End

WVP filed another five FOIA requests against the Department of the Interior between 2019 and 2020, almost certainly with the intent of discovering ammo for future ethics complaints. Among its requests were all communications between the department and Bernhardt’s former clients from Brownstein Hyatt and the Westlands Water District as well as copies of “all text messages sent by Secretary David Benhardt from July 1, 2017,” through February 2020. The leftist website Outside Online even set up a “David Bernhardt Scandal Tracker” days after his confirmation.

But much of the Left’s campaign shifted to halting Trump’s supposed war on public lands until he left office in January 2021. “Yes, Trump really is coming to take your public lands,” WVP howled in late 2019, claiming the administration was selling off federal land to oil interests bent on pillaging it. In reality, the Bureau of Land Management (which is part of the Interior Department) continued tolease lands to drilling companies in 5–10 year options, a decades-old practice. As a result, oil and gas production soared in 2019, particularly in New Mexico and Wyoming, which sit atop massive deposits.

The Department of the Interior disbursed a staggering $11.69 billion to the states in 2019 alone from energy production on federal and Indian-owned lands, a $2.76 billion increase over 2018. Gasoline prices dropped from a nationwide average of $2.813 in 2018 to $2.691 in 2019 to $2.258 in 2020. [NO MENTION OF EPIC PANDEMIC FAIL] And the United States achieved energy independence in 2019, with energy production exceeding consumption for thefirst timesince 1957. In a single year, energy production increased by an impressive 5.7 percent, with so-called fossil fuels accounting for 80 percent of all energy production and consumption that year.

WVP harried Trump and his cabinet out of office, blasting “Secretary David Bernhardt’s Wildly Destructive Track Record” in December 2020—which included such silliness as staging Trump’s May 2020 Fox News town hall inside the Lincoln Memorial, allowing national parks to be used as “centerpieces” for his reelection campaign, and holding “expensive military-infused Independence Day rallies on the National Mall” (the horror!).

Targeting Trump’s energy and environmental policies were among Biden’s first moves in office. Biden cancelled a planned expansion to the Keystone oil pipeline (Keystone XL or “export limited”), pledged to protect 30 percent of U.S. land and water by 2030, and froze new leases for oil and gas development on federal land.

Biden’s nominee for the department, Rep. Debra Haaland (D-NM), was confirmed in March 2021 on a nearly party line vote (four Republicans joined with every Democrat in the Senate). Haaland has been criticized by conservatives as a far-left extremist with a perfect 2020 score and 98 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters,which ranks politicians for their fidelity to leftist environmental legislation. (Incidentally, Haaland received a 100 percent score from the pro-abortion groups Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.) While Haaland told Congress during her confirmation process that fossil fuels “will continue to play a major role in America for years to come,” she’s a global warming ideologue who trumpeted “keep fossil fuels in the ground,” voting “against all new fossil fuel infrastructure,” and transitioning to “100% clean energy” in her 2018 reelection campaign.

In May, the Biden administration proposed ramping up the Interior Department’s 2022 budget by $2.5 billion (17 percent) to $17.6 billion in order to “address the climate crisis” and create “good-paying union jobs.” Biden wants to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 (it’s currently about 26 percent), a plan proposed by liberal groups in the states as “30 by 30” largely as a measure to “slow climate change” by storing carbon dioxide in plants and soil. He also wants to spend $86 million on the “Civilian Climate Corps,” a reboot of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal–era Civilian Conservation Corps. He also wants to spend $300 million “plugging orphan oil and gas wells” and $249 million to boost renewable energy production on public lands.

With pressure from the far Left and willing enablers embedded in the executive branch, the Biden administration will undoubtedly continue down the road toward ever more radical “green” policies—with Arabella’s support. Only one question remains: How much does Biden owe to Arabella’s long war against the Trump Department of the Interior?

end

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On the cover of its June 2, 1987 edition,[16] the celebrity tabloid National Enquirer published a photograph of Rice sitting on Hart's lap. The pair were pictured on a dock during a yacht trip to Bimini that Hart, Rice and others took before he announced his campaign for President of the United States.[17] Hart is wearing a T-shirt bearing the words Monkey Business, the name of the yacht. The photo was published alongside the headline "Gary Hart Asked Me to Marry Him".[16] It was published weeks after Hart suspended his campaign, but has been subsequently collectively confused as the reason for Hart's exit.[15][18] There are allegations that the photo was a set up by Republican operative Lee Atwater to discredit Hart.[19]

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is he ideol entre, pol op? grifter? all?  everyone just freelances in their niche and when they score/do some damage to someone's rep, they get paid?! rewarded by clicks? ctt gig? book deal, fox appearance?

is Christie a weak squish target b/c he did not bounce back from covid and told ppl to wear masks?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/steve-bannons-darkest-plot-yet-is-starting-to-implode

alexh

During the final days of President Donald Trump's reelection campaign, former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has been desperately fighting to remain relevant in Trumpworld. Bannon's ideas for getting Trump reelected range from firing FBI Director Christopher Wray to smearing former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. And in his desperation, Bannon has even been attacking major Trump allies like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Attorney General William Barr and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Vice's Emanuel Maiberg is reporting that "a series of videos and photos which appear to show Hunter Biden having sex are going viral on a Chinese-language news and video sharing website" co-founded by Bannon. Maiberg notes that "the videos are often narrated by users in English with a Chinese accent, and claim that the explicit photos andvideos of Hunter Biden are proof that he's compromised by the Chinese government."

So far, however, efforts by Bannon and Giuliani to smear Hunter Biden haven't made a difference in the presidential election. And even the far-right Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told Axios' Jonathan Swan that the e-mails and videos on a hard drive allegedly belonging to the former vice president's son aren't having an impact. Cruz told Swan, "I don't think it moves a single voter."

Reporter Madeline Peltz describes Bannon's recent attacks on fellow Trump supporters in an article published by Media Matters this week.

"Poor Steve Bannon," Peltz writes. "As the Hunter Biden hard drive story is lowered into the grave of failed October surprises, he's run out of options to insert his 'influence' into the election media cycle. Having failed to recreate his media manipulation successes of 2016, the former White House chief strategist is melting down and attacking his would-be allies."

Peltz notes how obsessed Bannon has been with getting Wray fired as FBI director.On October 25 in Axios, Swan and his colleague Alayna Treene reported that Trump, according to sources, plans to fire Wray as well as CIA Director Gina Haspel and Defense Secretary Mark Esper if he is reelected. But as Bannon sees it, Trumpworld isn't going after Wray aggressively enough — and he wants to see Wray fired right away, not after the election.

"In the past few days," according to Pentz, Bannon has "lambasted Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Attorney General William Barr and even Donald Trump himself — calling them 'weak' for not pushing for, or bringing about, the immediate firing of FBI Director Christopher Wray."

Trump has clearly been increasing angry with Wray in recent months, stemming from disagreements over multiple issues. Most notably, Trump is outraged that Wray hasn't gone after the president's political enemies, has emphasized the serious threats of right-wing violence and white supremacy, diminished the significance of antifa and left-wing violence, and failed to provide support for Republicans' attacks on the integrity of mail-in voting.

The contents of a hard drive that supposedly belonged to Hunter Biden were first reported by the New York Post, and Bannon and Giuliani collaborated on that story. But Bannon, according to Peltz, has lashed out at Giuliani for not being hard enough on Wray.

"On October 29," Peltz reports, "Bannon attacked Giuliani even though they've been working together to launder the bogus story that first appeared in the New York Post, calling him 'one of the weak guys around' Trump."

In a transcript of that October 29 conversation, according to Peltz, Bannon declared, "Wray must be fired this morning" — and Giuliani agreed with firing Wray, but not until after the election. Bannon, in response, told Giuliani, "You're one of the weak guys around him. You're getting weak on me, Rudy. No, you're weak. You sort of sound like Chris; you spent too much time with Chris Christie. You're getting weak."

Bannon also slammed Barr as "another weak link in this chain."

In an October 29 broadcast of "War Room," Bannon ranted against Wray as well as Trump allies who he believes haven't done enough to get him fired.

"Fire him today," Bannon declared. "Do not wait. You show weakness — the president is showing weakness by waiting. There's not one person in this country, not one voter that will not vote for you by firing Wray. And don't let theweakpeople around you convince you of that.Be strong, be who you are, be what your presidency is about."

==

tucker attacks duckworth double amputee vet

https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-doubles-down-on-tammy-duckworth-attacks-calls-her-a-coward-and-fraud

no lnx pix

vid

DB

Tucker Carlson Doubles Down on Duckworth Attacks, Calls Her a ‘Coward’ and ‘Fraud’

CHICKENHAWK

“Keep in mind, she is also described as a hero,” Carlson scoffed, adding: “Yet Duckworth is too afraid to defend her own statements on a TV show, what a coward.”

Justin Baragona

Contributing Editor

Published Jul. 07, 2020 9:30PM ET

A night after saying Iraq War veteran Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) hates America, Fox News host Tucker Carlson doubled down on his attacks, describing the Purple Heart recipient who lost her legs in combat as a “coward” and “fraud.”

During his Monday night broadcast, the primetime conservative star played an abbreviated clip of Duckworth saying there should be a “national dialogue” over the possible removal of statues, touting it as proof that she supposedly wants to “get rid of George Washington” while questioning her patriotism.

“You’re not supposed to criticize Tammy Duckworth in any way because she once served in the military,” he added. “Most people just ignore her. But when Duckworth does speak in public, you’re reminded what a deeply silly and unimpressive person she is.”[// trump put downs]

Duckworth would quickly respond via Twitter, wondering if the longtime TV personality would “want to walk a mile” in her legs and then tell her whether or not she loves America.

On Tuesday night, with Duckworth’s fiery response still gathering tons of attention, Carlson fired back by once again calling her love of country into question.

“Senator Duckworth was asked if we should tear down statues of George Washington,” the Fox host said. “We played that for you last night and we noted how grotesque it was. Only someone who hates the country would suggest ripping down monuments to its founder.”

Claiming that the Democratic lawmaker was unable to disagree with his argument, Carlson then added: “Instead she questioned our right to criticize her at all since she wasonce injured while serving in the Illinois National Guard. That’s what passes for an argument in modern identity politics.”

Repeatedly asserting that Duckworth believes that Washington is a “dead traitor,” he went on to say that she has “contempt” for him despite the fact that he “paid his dues” in the military and was a “combat veteran.”

“George Washington was a genuinely great man,” he sneered. “But to morons like Tammy Duckworth, Washington was just some old white guy who needs to be erased.”

He would go on to note that he reached out to Duckworth’s team to see if she would come on his show for a “vigorous reasonable exchange” of ideas, but they declined unless Carlson was willing to issue a public apology.

“Keep in mind, she is also described as a hero,” Carlson scoffed, adding: “Yet Duckworth is too afraid to defend her own statements on a TV show, what a coward. Tammy Duckworth is also a fraud.”

Carlson wrapped up his segment by calling the Illinois senator a “callous hack,” accusing her of mistreating veterans, and then comparing her to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)—a favorite target of Carlson’s, who he regularly claims hates America.

==

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aha: 620 part of GOP long game is to take out dem up and comers(trending in webodec is mostly gop?]

eg (also clinton, gray davis) turnipseed jumper cables?

ivy meerpol the nation 6/20

EG: How do you think Cohn was affected by the homophobic and anti-Semitic environment of Washington, D.C.?

IM: Do you know the story of Lester Hunt? He was a senator from Wyoming. Around the time that Cohn was in Washington, Hunt was a very popular Democrat. The Republicans, including McCarthy, were always trying to figure out how to get him out of the way, because he was powerful, beloved, and very progressive. At one point, Hunt’s son was arrested for propositioning a male undercover police officer for sex, and this was discovered by McCarthy and some other senators. They confronted Hunt, saying they’d go public with this story if Hunt didn’t pull out of his race for reelection. Hunt tried to stay strong and fight back, but they threatened again, and rather than face that kind of humiliation and the humiliation of his son, Hunt committed suicide.

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aha: this is an extension of oppo, dirty tricks; note that more than a few ppl auditioned on fox for trump admin gigs by attacking trump ememies (or anyone who stood up to him) eg whitaker? joe and toe?

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/the-tale-of-a-right-wing-scam-artists-downward-trajectory

no lnx vid?

tale of a right-wing scam artist’s downward trajectory

Written by Roger Sollenberger / Salon June 5, 2020

I didn’t want to report this in the first person, but here we are.

Last week I received a press release from right-wing internet troll Jacob Wohl and his decades-older partner, conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman, announcing a stunt so outlandish it did not come close to the level of publication. I could track down only one other journalist who received the press release, and no one wrote about it.

Is there a common denominator? There is. In recent weeks, that other journalist, Jared Holt, and I have both published articles about Wohl’s looming trial for criminal securities fraud in California, as well as his liability for non-payment on a 2017 judgment in Arizona, which also involved securities violations.

Wohl and a former business partner pleaded not guilty to two counts of securities fraud this February in front of a judge in Riverside, California. Their trial has been extensively delayed, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

Additionally, the Arizona Corporation Commission — in conjunction with the Arizona attorney general’s office and legal counsel in California — is actively pursuing Wohl with regards to the $43,000 he still owes the state.

After I posted the second story to Twitter, a user comment pointed me to a since-deleted tweet from a woman named Kristin, who claimed to have worked with Wohl and Burkman on some of their infamously hapless public defamation stunts in the past.

For those unfamiliar with this sordid history, Wohl and Burkman have convinced, coerced and/or paid a number of real people to accuse their political enemies du jour of wrongdoing, most often in the form of absurd acts of sexual impropriety or assault in hotel rooms.

For instance, they accused former special counsel Robert Mueller of raping a woman in a New York hotel room in 2010. They claimed that Sen. Elizabeth Warren had carried on a BDSM-flavored extramarital affair with a young Marine in a Massachusetts Hilton in August 2018. They tricked a young man into signing an affidavit claiming that former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg sexually assaulted him at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington in 2019, an allegation the young man immediately recanted, saying that Wohl and Burkman had deceived him.

Most recently the duo appears to have paid a young woman thousands of dollars to accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci, the 79-year-old head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of sexually assaulting her in a Baltimore hotel room in 2014.

Fabrications not confined to hotel rooms include Nancy Pelosi’s Percocet addiction and Sen. Ted Cruz’s “swinger” lifestyle.

None of those accusations, or any of the others, bear any known relationship to reality. Here’s a detailed rundown.link

But “Kristin,” the Twitter account, claimed that this rolling smear campaign was just a reality show. What’s more, they had actually recruited her, Kristin said, though she did not actually participate in any Wohl-Burkman scams.

In one tweet, Kristin wrote, “I have nothing but good things to say about them (and everything was platonic and I was treated well). People shouldn’t judge this girl for backing out because it’s a scary thing to do, nor should they make assumptions about Wohl and Burkman’s intentions.”

Kristin’s Twitter bio described her as a “Model, mom and paralegal. Marylander for life:)”. She had only one follower, and followed about 50 accounts, mostly right-wing media and political figures, including Jacob Wohl’s father, David.

Lo and behold, she had left her direct messages open, allowing anyone to contact her.

At this point I was already about 110% sure that Kristin was actually Jacob Wohl. I reached out.

“Can I get back to you on this?” Kristin replied.

“Sure,” I said. “When’s a good time, do you think?”

“As soon as I figure out how I’m going to handle everything,” she said.

“OK,” I responded. “Let me know.”

I didn’t hear anything until the next day, when Kristin returned to say, “OK, I’ll talk with you. Do you have a number? I had to talk with my lawyers first and decide if I should come out with everything.”

Kristin gave me her number, but I hadn’t seen the new messages. She found my phone number online and called me that night — definitely a woman’s voice. I couldn’t talk, but we set another time.

My wife is a politics hound who also follows Wohl, so I thought she’d get a kick out of this strange tale. I assumed, egotistically, that the whole thing was some weird Wohlian attempt to sting me or weave me into their next farce.

When she saw Kristin’s profile picture, though, her mouth dropped: My wife knew Kristin, who was a real person. They both went to suburban Maryland high schools and had 53 Facebook friends in common, including her closest friends.

Kristin’s full name is Kristin Spealman, and her Twitter bio is accurate: She’s a single mom, a model and paralegal living in Maryland. At various points, she has also been Nancy Pelosi’s drug dealer and Ted Cruz’s concubine.

Spealman told me in a phone call that Burkman cold-called her last September, havingfound her through a local modeling agency.

“He said he worked with Spike TV,” she said. “He said he wanted to meet me. He wanted to talk about this reality show.”

Spealman said she agreed to meet Burkman and Wohl for dinner and drinks at Morton’s Steakhouse in Bethesda, Maryland. Burkman sent a limo. Spealman said she had filet mignon, Burkman had salmon, and Jacob, at the time on a carnivore diet he has since abandoned, had a porterhouse steak — “and gave me his asparagus.”

“We all drank a bit,” she added. Burkman paid with an American Express “Black” card, she said.

At that dinner, Burkman seemed in charge. “I thought Jacob was Jack’s intern at first,” she said. “Just the way he was ordering the limos, stuff like that.” (Spealman shared pictures of what she characterized as her contemporaneous notes, with a ? under the name “Jacob.”)

“There are only like four good-looking girls in D.C.,” she recalls Burkman saying to her. “They were saying they wanted to make me the star of season one of their new reality show.”

The show, she said, would be called“Project 1599,” the street number of Burkman’s home in Arlington, Virginia.The moniker is also his apparently now-prohibited Twitter handle. Burkman was suspended from the site earlier this year for spreading harmful misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. Wohl’s official account was suspended what feels like ages ago.

“Project 1599,” she said, was to be billed as something like a sensationalized political version of the celebrity prank show “Punk’d.” They told her it would air on Spike TV, a network that no longer existed at the time — it had disappeared the year before and re-emerged as the Paramount Network.

(Project 1599 was also the name of the entity that emailed me the recent press release.)

Spealman recalled that Burkman told her she stood to make between $200,000 and $300,000 for season one of Project 1599, which would be released in January 2020. She pointed out that if she became a big star, she would be useless as an incognito prankster. They told her they’d film everything beforehand.

It isn’t insane to entertain the idea that Wohl and Burkman at one point might have had something going at some level with someone at the Paramount Network. They made this same pitch about Spike TV to another recruit. Their accusations against political figures are so ridiculous, and their press conferences so clownish and cheekily scripted, that it seems like reality TV already. They’re clearly in on the joke, on some level.

On another level, of course, there’s no joke for anybody to be “in on.”

At any rate, Spealman signed on. The trio met a few more times, always in the D.C. area and, perhaps in keeping — consciously or otherwise — with a running theme of the smears, always in hotel rooms. Wohl, she said, had a room that he liked at the W. But there were no more meals, she says, only vodka drinks, which were always provided at those afternoon meet-ups.

“Jacob did more of the talking after that,” she said. “And the story soon became that I would come out and say that I was selling painkillers to Nancy Pelosi.”

“I was shocked,” Spealman said. “I was like, ‘Look, I thought this was a different kind of show.’ They asked me to lose weight, to get down to 96 pounds — I’m 103, but they wanted me down to 96, to do talk shows like Ellen DeGeneres.”

Spealman’s idea of stardom was not to appear at a press conference falsely claiming to have sold lethal doses of opioids to the 79-year-old speaker of the House. Burkman offered to talk to any judges for her, should any lawsuits ensue, but she declined.

“That’s when they changed it to the affair with Ted Cruz,” she said. “Which I was also supposed to do.”

They picked Cruz, she said, because the purported reality show’s purported producers wanted to make sure the attacks were not all against Democrats.

“I have lawyers,” Spealman said. “My friends are lawyers, I am a part-time paralegal. I was worried about lawsuits, you know? I expressed that to them and they said ‘This is political satire. If you really feel uncomfortable, in a few weeks you can just come out and say this was all a fake thing.'”

“They said it was performance art,” she said. “So it’s free speech.”

To assure her, she said, Wohl and Burkman offered to make an audio recording of her agreeing to “do something” for money. That way, they said, she’d have evidence it was fake.

It’s unclear whether Wohl and Burkman still have that recording. Neither would comment.

“Jacob was the main manipulator,” Spealman said. “But both were very aggressive.”

She feels intimidated by the duo to this day, and would not readily talk about anything beyond the events of last fall.

Burkman and Wohl scheduled a press conference for mid-October, and on Oct. 16 Spealman went to Burkman’s duplex-style house in Arlington to go over the script.

“When I got there to work on the script, it said at the top, ‘Affidavit of Kristin Spealman.’ That threw me off because I thought it was supposed to be a script,” she said. “I took pics of it, and that made them uncomfortable but I said I needed them to rehearse.”

She later showed those photos to her lawyers, she said, who “freaked out.”

At the rehearsal, Spealman said, Wohl showed her a check for $150,000, which he said would be hers if she went through with the lie as scripted — a claim corroborated by what she said were contemporaneous notes, which she shared in another picture.

Spealman said it appeared to be a business check, not a personal check, but Wohl only briefly allowed her to look at it.

She also shared her photos of the “script,” which is labeled “statement of fact and belief” and, except for the name, is identical to the one they later distributed at the press conference.

In an aside, Spealman noted that Burkman’s dog — a chocolate-colored dachshund named Jack Jr. — took a shine to her.

“Jack said that Jack Jr. doesn’t like many people,” said Spealman, who is blonde. “He told me it must be my Aryan blood.”

“It was weird,” she added. (Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who claims to be half-Jewish and who made an appearance at the Cruz-themed press event staged by Wohl and Burkman — both Jewish — had threatened to kill Jack Jr. earlier this year; Spealman says she never met him.)

Spealman says she told Burkman via text that she was backing out. He called her dozens of times, she said, saying, “This is your big shot.”

“But I never said I wanted a big shot,” she told me.

They rescheduled the press conference, Spealman said — disappointing a gaggle of bored and cynical journalists — swapping her out for “another model in Virginia,” from her same agency, who read the same script, though she used an assumed name.

But then there’s this observation from that same Wohl press event, as noted by journalist Molly Jong-Fast: “Across the street was a documentary film crew who wouldn’t tell me anything about themselves. They were probably just following some sort of Prime Directive where they didn’t want to tarnish the art by becoming part of it. Who can say.”

Spealman saw Wohl again after that, she says, at the Nov. 7 opening for a club called Pandora, which Spealman had brought Wohl in to promote. That’s documented in an Instagram photo.

At the end of that conversation, Kristin leveled with me: She had known we had friends in common, and yes, she knew my wife, though not very well.

Here is why I wanted to write this in the first person.

When Wohl and Burkman accused Robert Mueller of raping a woman in New York, Brett Kavanaugh and Roy Moore were in the headlines. Wohl went to great lengths to try to bait reporters into covering his bogus claims about Mueller, which appeared to be a media honey-trap as much as anything else.

In other words, I’m reluctant to give these guys attention, but at the same time I couldn’t be sure this wasn’t worth writing about, because, as I learned, another smear might be in the works. Allegedly.

Of course the existence of a smear doesn’t mean it is worth covering. But the credible prospect of a possible unlawful future action is another matter.

Still, I wondered if Wohl was setting me up — a thought I relished, until I learned Kristin and my wife had so many connections, which turned my eagerness to a combination of concern and confusion.

Around the same time I contacted Kristin, I received Twitter messages from an account calling itself “Blackbird Consulting,” which had two followers and claimed to be enforcing collection actions against Wohl.

That account has since been suspended. A Twitter spokesperson did not immediately reply to questions about the circumstances.

As for that “model in Virginia” — I found her. Her name is Kylie Garcia-Andrews. She told me in a phone call that Wohl and Burkman had paid her $700 cash to sing the national anthem at an Oct. 9, 2019, press event where Wohl and Burkman trotted out a young man to accuse Sen. Kamala Harris of adultery.

Garcia-Andrews deleted an old Instagram post that linked to that performance — and hashtagged Spike TV.

But despite looking exactly like the woman who took Spealman’s place at the Cruz event, Garcia-Andrews says she was not that woman. Spealman says she was, and here is a video of Wohl calling that woman “Kylie.”

Ford Fischer, an independent journalist and prolific Wohl watcher whose video was linked in the above Instagram post, told me that Garcia-Andrews had friended him last October on Facebook.

“I didn’t know who she was relative to Facebook, but from the bit we talked it seems she was actually at Wohl’s pressers twice: once to sing the anthem, and once as a ‘Ted Cruz accuser,'” he told me, sharing a screenshot that showed they became Facebook friends on Oct. 15, smack in the middle of the Kamala Harris and Ted Cruz events.

“Kylie is a more common name than you may realize,” Kylie told me in a text message denying her involvement in the Cruz stunt. “I mean kylie Jenner has her name on literally everything. It still doesn’t prove its me.” [sic]

The rest of this gets even muddier than what you’ve read already. I feel obligated to report what I was told on the record because it regards potential unlawful conduct involving a public figure. Or so I’m told. But here it is, deconflicted as best as possible.

Spealman, who shared a text-message conversation showing she had been in touch with Wohl as recently as this spring, told me that Wohl and Burkman had been planning “an ongoing thing” with Garcia-Andrews.

“She still does stuff with them,” Spealman said.

Spealman did not feel comfortable detailing what she knew, she said, in part because “it would ruin something they’re doing in the future.” She says she decided to come forward because she wants to distance herself from Wohl and Burkman after experiencing harassment online, while making clear she holds no bad feelings against them

She said she had originally been “asked to be involved” in Wohl and Burkman’s new stunt, adding, “What’s to come is even worse.”

“There’s something ongoing with that doctor at the White House,” Spealman said, evidently meaning Fauci. Wohl and Burkman’s attempted smear of Fauci, earlier this year drew press coverage from only one outlet, and was almost immediately debunked by the woman they paid to carry it out.

Or so it seemed: Spealman told me the whole confession was fake, a setup for a journalist.

After our phone conversation last week, Spealman called Burkman. She says she also tried Wohl, who did not answer.

Following her conversation with Burkman, Spealman told me that Garcia-Andrews said she didn’t want me to write about her because, she claimed, a murderer was after her.

For her part, Garcia-Andrews rejected Spealman’s claim that she was involved in a new “project” with Burkman and Wohl. “They seem shady,” Garcia-Andrews said. “They don’t seem like the best types of guys, so I don’t want to be associated with them.”

Spealman echoed those concerns. “I’m worried about them blackmailing me,” she said. “Jacob created an audio recording of us in a conversation when they offered me $25,000 to do something — I don’t remember what.” She’s worried he may leak that recording to smear her in the press. She also claims to have received ominous phone calls after we began talking — “People breathing into the phone and hanging up” — and believes her computer was hacked.

All things considered, though, there is something strikingly unfair about the position these two women find themselves in, it seems to me. The targets of Wohl and Burkman’s defamatory attacks can afford to ignore them. But the men and women coerced or conscripted to do their dirty work are almost powerless.

But as another Wohl pawn Diane Andrade recently made clear, even if fraudulently, as Spealman claims, they do hold an ace: information.

Spealman said that, depending on what happens after this article is published, she and Kylie might decide to start talking about the other things they know, which, she assures me, are much worse.

She shared some text messages with Wohl about the press release I mentioned above, which I will not be reporting on. She says the subject of that press release is not the same as the alleged new plot they tried to convince her to join.

I find Spealman more credible than Wohl or Burkman, but am also wary of giving them more oxygen for any reason, or playing even a small role in furthering their game.

In 2019, the Daily Beast obtained a document from January of that year showing thatWohl had created a group called the Arlington Center for Political Intelligence, whose purpose, he said, would be to “make shit up” about candidates and public figures in order to manipulate political betting markets and seek to suppress Democratic turnout in 2020.

First Amendment attorney Anne Champion told me, “It would appear that the premise of this company amounts to wire fraud.”

Wohl was soliciting $1 million to fund the project. His smears — and promises of major payouts — kicked into high gear that fall. As his trial date for defrauding investors now approaches, they might kick in again. It is unclear what returns any Arlington Center investors might see or expect at this point, several months ahead of a presidential election.

As for the alleged plot looming on the horizon, Spealman and Garcia-Andrews seem to agree on one thing: The new project, whatever it is — if it ever existed — is now, thanks apparently to my one week of investigation, moribund. So there’s no need to worry about it, whatever it was.

Spokespeople for Dr. Fauci, Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Harris, Sen. Warren and Sen. Cruz all declined to comment, as did a former spokesperson for Robert Mueller’s office, the FBI, and multiple spokespeople for Paramount Networks.

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman declined to comment, and would not acknowledge that they knew the women.

==

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/these-documents-are-a-likely-source-of-jacob-wohls-legal-troubles/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/arizona-may-jail-right-wing-fraudster-who-accused-democrats-of-sexual-assault/

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/the-terrifying-return-of-karl-rove-a-republican-character-assassin-joins-trumps-team/

digby

There have been many rumors in recent weeks that the Trump campaign is starting to disintegrate. This is not surprising. All you have to do is read Trump’s Twitter feed to see that the president does not like bad news and he will kill any messenger who brings it to him. Lately, there has been a whole lot of bad campaign news.

The New York Times has reported that Trump has been getting so angry at the decaying poll numbers that he yelled at campaign manager Brad Parscale and threatened to sue him during a heated phone call. (Parscale reportedly replied, “I love you too,” and flew up to Washingon right away to mend fences.)

Indeed, the polls have not been looking good for Trump, but then they haven’t looked very good his entire term. An impeached president whose approval rating has always hovered around 42% doesn’t have a lot of room for error to begin with. Now that he’s shown what a disastrous leader he is in a crisis, there very little prospect that it’s going to improve.

Naturally, Trump blames his campaign operatives for this because he will never accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong. Parscale has been just a bit too high-profile recently, even getting celebrity treatment from the New York Times, which is the sort of thing that makes the boss very angry. He doesn’t like to share the spotlight, particularly with someone who seems to be making buckets of money while working for him.

AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER

The Never Trumper PAC known as The Lincoln Project yanked Trump’s chain with that information this week, running another one of its ads pointedly designed to get under the president’s thin skin.[vids death star ]

setting aside the macabre tastelessness of calling your campaign operation the “Death Star” while your candidate is recklessly mismanaging a runaway epidemic that has killed close to 100,000 of his own people, even as a pop-culture reference it’s absurdly off-base. Does Parscale know that things didn’t end well for the Death Star?

Parscale has cultivated a close relationship with Jared Kushner, the son Trump never had, so he’s probably safe. But you never know with Trump. His 2016 campaign cycled through a number of campaign operatives, some of whom are now either in prison or awaiting sentencing. There have been whispers that Trump might bring back Corey Lewandowski or Steve Bannon, but Javanka never cared for either of them so they’re probably off the table. If things get really desperate, I suppose he can always pardon Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and bring them back on board.

The sad fact is that Trump’s options are limited. While the entire Republican establishment has not just capitulated to Trump but now eagerly supports him, it’s interesting to note that so many high-profile GOP campaign strategists have gone the other way. There simply aren’t very many experienced people Trump can call for help.

But there is one guy: Karl Rove, the man they used to call “Bush’s Brain,” whom George W. Bush affectionately dubbed “Turd Blossom.” Rove has backed away from active campaigning in recent years, preferring to drop his pearls of wisdom on Fox News and advise the dark-money super PAC American Crossroads, which he founded back in 2010. But reports this week suggest that despite Trump’s antipathy for the Bush family, Turd Blossom may be back in the saddle, advising Trump on how to salvage those swing states he sees slipping away.

According to NBC News, Rove has been quietly worming his way into the campaign for some time:

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has consulted Rove since the 2018 midterm elections, per three people familiar with the discussions. Before the pandemic, Rove had advised the Trump campaign it could be modeled, in some ways, after the Bush 2004 re-election race.

Of course he did. He certainly wouldn’t want to remind anyone of his total meltdown on Fox News on election night in 2012, when he refused to accept that Republican nominee Mitt Romney had lost Ohio, and with it the election, insisting that his own numbers were more reliable. Romney’s family had to call and tell Rove to back down so the candidate could concede with some measure of dignity.

In fact, Rove is a perfect addition to the Trump team. For all his reputation as a “data guy” and number-cruncher,he’s really just an old-fashioned Republican character assassin. The New York Times has reported that Rove had a recent meeting with Trump and warned him “that he had fallen behind in the task of damaging [Joe] Biden, people familiar with the meeting said.” That’s the kind of tactic in which Rove specializes.

Rove first came to national attention as George W. Bush’s campaign manager in 2000. According to James Moore and Wayne Slater’s book “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” Rove was personally behind one of the most scurrilous episodes in GOP campaign history. He allegedly came up with the infamous push poll used in South Carolina to undermine support for Sen. John McCain with outright racist innuendo: “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?”

But then, Rove was a Lee Atwater protégé, so what else would one expect?

Crudely tearing down the opponent isn’t the only way in which Rove is particularly suited to be a Trump adviser. He was always exalted among the Beltway press for his supposed genius in figuring out that you should attack your opponents on their perceived strengths. For instance, the Bush campaign attacked John Kerry over his Vietnam War record in the 2004 election, when that was considered Kerry’s ace in the hole. In reality, Rove was always projecting his own candidate’s weaknesses onto his opponent. In that election, Bush had had to contend with the fact that he had started a useless war in Iraq and had himself dodged the draft, so the campaign’s best recourse was to make Kerry look like a liar and a coward.

I hardly have to tell you how Trumpian that is. If Rove can get Trump to actually listen to him — which he probably won’t, since Trump won’t listen to anyone — it could be a formidable partnership.

Karl Rove won elections through the clever manipulation of the media with lots of talk about “the math,” the supposed inevitability of Republican victory and his own inflated mystique. In that regard, he mirrors Parscale, the high-living Trump campaign manager who has snookered the press into believing he’s a high-tech genius possessed of secret knowledge and endless resources. Both of them managed to slip their clients into a first term with a dubious Electoral College victory and a popular-vote defeat. It remains to be seen if Parscale can replicate Rove’s second-term victory in 2004, in which Bush won the popular vote, but almost lost the Electoral College.

Bush’s Brain and Trump’s ego are going to ride Brad Parscale’s Death Star into November. Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy flight.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/peter-schweizer/fabricated-and-wildly-inaccurate-peter-schweizers-new-book-gets-bankruptcy-law

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