AAF bak
American Accountability Foundation (AAF) is an American conservative opposition research group founded in 2020 that has opposed nominees to the Joe Biden administration
see buckham
see benghazi BS
see lie pwr any means
see pjt 2025
see jane m slime machine
conf w heritage on oppos benghazi BS; calls itself good gov't group (evil?)
explicit say retaliation for effective dem oversight (j6?)
evil bc attack POC women as racist?!
cleta CPI
bad code see bak 7 23
pics posters
eg lubchenko
https://www.facebook.com/AmericanAccountabilityFoundation/photos/pb.100068224886548.-2207520000./298333809019094/?type=3
https://www.facebook.com/AmericanAccountabilityFoundation/photos
===
10 24 an
A far-right group is not just content with identifying politicians to vote out of office: It's now aiming its sights on career federal employees.
The American Accountability Foundation (AAF) — which is one of the 100 partner organizations in the Heritage Foundation's controversial Project 2025 initiative — has recently launched a website called the "DHS Watchlist," in which it posted the names, headshots and biographical information of 10 government employees working in the Department of Homeland Security in President Joe Biden's administration. Its "Top 10 Targets" list includes senior-level employees in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services along with associate counsels and policy analysts in the department. Two immigration judges are also listed as "targets."
"The DHS Bureaucrat Watch List is dedicated to exposing the career staff who have outsized influence on efforts to secure the southern border," AAF states on its DHS Watchlist website. "While everyone knows who Alejandro Mayorkas and Merrick Garland are, few Americans know who the career bureaucrats are that implement their orders."
READ MORE:**'Nearly all' voters know about Project 2025 and majority have negative view of it: report**
In its write-up of Texas-based immigration judge Noelle Sharp, the AAF said she "made her bones keeping criminal aliens out of jail and away from deportation, and that she "brags on her website that she worked to keep criminal aliens from being deported."
"Our firm specializes in Immigration Law, and we have the flexibility, experience, and technology to work with clients around the world. Whether you wish to visit Disney Land for a week, obtain your permanent residency, or become a United States citizen, we will will help your personal 'American Dream' come true," Sharp's website reads (AAF linked to an archived version of her firm's website on its hit list). "We bring extensive experience and professionalism to every case and customize our support to your individual needs and concerns."
AAF also singled out immigration judge Elizabeth Young as a "target" on its "DHS Watchlist" site. The group accused her of "leading a charge to come up with creative legal maneuvers to keep illegal aliens from being deported" while she led an immigration law clinic at the University of Arkansas.
"The men and women who end up in front of an immigration judge are often some of the worst cases of immigration fraud," the group wrote without a source to back up its claim. "Unfortunately, Judge Young has been dangerously generous handing asylum status at alarming rates."
There are no explicit instructions for readers, though users on the social media platform Bluesky were concerned that the lengthy descriptions of its "targets" could lead to political violence. Journalist Don Moynihan wrote that Tom Jones, who leads AAF, is a Republican-aligned opposition researcher with a history of making spurious claims about Democrats.
"I looked at the site which posts the civil servants name, title & salary. But the actual accusations are weak tea," he wrote. "One praised Fauci in a tweet! Another won an award for excellent performance in her job, which means she can't be trusted. One spoke on a diversity panel! No real scandals there."
Political violence has become especially prevalent in the 2024 cycle. Reuters recently reported that there have been at least 300 instances of politically motivated attacks from both sides since the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Some of the more high-profile examples include the two attempted assassinations of former President Donald Trump, and a Democratic campaign office in Arizona being targeted in three different shootings in as many weeks. That office has since been closed.
READ MORE:'He is on on our side': Org behind Project 2025 boasts repeatedly about close ties to Trump
*Click here to view the DHS Watchlist website.
===
pjt 2025
site under constr
https://www.reformeducation.us/
The institute strives for the outright banning of all public sector employee collective bargaining and thus the ensuing collection of compulsory dues that warp the fabric of government by shutting out taxpayers from decision-making.
Leading the Char
Matt.Buckham@reformeducation.us
Our President, Matt Buckham, recently handled personnel for President Donald Trump where he oversaw cabinet level departments, including Department of Labor, and other independent agencies.
In this role, Matt pushed to place leaders throughout government and coordinate the recapture of Executive Branch agencies that were under career and opposition control. Matt was one of the first staffers for the House Freedom Caucus, helping them navigate their first year as a group. Matt has served on Capitol Hill for over 11 years in various 501c3, government, and Executive Branch roles. He is a follower of Jesus Christ called to bring freedom to the captives.
https://thedemlabs.org/2022/04/19/republican-dark-money-group-smears-reputations-of-women-nominees-of-color/
no lnx pix
Republican group smears reputations of women nominees of color: Follow the dark money.
DEMLABS BLOG
April 19, 2022
Republican Slime Machine targets Biden Nominees - especially women of color.
"The Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees" - Jane Mayer, New Yorker
"The American Accountability Foundation (A.A.F.), which is run by conservative white men, has particularly focussed on blocking women and people of color. As of last month, more than a third of the twenty-nine candidates it had publicly attacked were people of color, and nearly sixty per cent were women."
Who are the people running the 'slime machine'? Who funds them? How is the AAF treated as a nonprofit? Follow the dark money behind the smear campaign with this network map.
Republican group smears reputations of women nominees of color: Follow the dark money.
Share this Power Map freely with this link or as a GIF
Racist, misogynist attacks
"When Ketanji Jackson Brown defended herself on this point during the hearings, the A.A.F. said, on Twitter, that she was “lying.” The group’s allegation—reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that liberal élites are abusing and trafficking children—rippled through conservative circles. Tucker Carlson repeated the accusation on his Fox News program while a chyron declared “jackson lenient in child sex cases.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist representative from Georgia, called Jackson “pro-pedophile.” - New Yorker
Desperately pursuing dirt
"The A.A.F. has taken the practice to extremes, repeatedly spinning negligible tidbits or dubious hearsay into damning narratives. The group recently deployed its unorthodox methods, Politico has reported, while “desperately pursuing dirt” on Lisa Cook, the nominee for the Federal Reserve. Cook, who has been a tenured professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University since 2013, has attracted bipartisan support. Glenn Hubbard, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the George W. Bush Administration, has said, “Cook’s talents as an economic researcher and teacher make her a good nominee for the Fed, adding to diversity of perspectives about policy.”
In college, Cook won a Marshall Scholarship. She subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and served as a staff economist on President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. She also held appointments at the National Bureau of Economic Research and at various regional Federal Reserve banks. The A.A.F., though, has portrayed her as unqualified, and suggested that her tenure at Michigan State is undeserved." - New Yorker
Politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity
"An explicit purpose of the A.A.F.—a politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity that doesn’t disclose its backers—is to prevent the approval of all Biden Administration nominees. When Ketanji Jackson Brown defended herself on this point during the hearings, the A.A.F. said, on Twitter, that she was “lying.” The group’s allegation—reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that liberal élites are abusing and trafficking children—rippled through conservative circles. Tucker Carlson repeated the accusation on his Fox News program while a chyron declared “jackson lenient in child sex cases.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist representative from Georgia, called Jackson “pro-pedophile.” - New Yorker
Relationship map: https://embed.kumu.io/be295fbf0ae354739c97174ddb255144#untitled-map/political-character-assassination
All in the family
"Meadows’s son, Blake, an associate attorney at the Georgia law firm Foster, Foster, & Smith, appears to be involved with C.P.I., too: his name appears in a lawsuit filed last month on behalf of the A.A.F. against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Matthew Buckham, the A.A.F. co-founder, also has a Trump connection: he worked at the White House during his Administration, in the personnel office. (His father, Ed Buckham, is chief of staff to Marjorie Taylor Greene.) New Yorker
Russian connection
"Ed Buckham, the recently appointed chief of staff for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Today, Buckham handles a congresswoman who proudly attends “white supremacist, antisemitic, pro-Putin” rallies, as Congresswoman Liz Cheney characterized them, and has become renowned for touting conspiracy theories about how the California wildfires were started by Jewish space lasers. On Thursday, when the House of Representatives voted to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus, Greene, not surprisingly, was one of eight Republicans who voted against it.
Buckham’s ties to Russian interests date back 25 years to 1997—before Putin came to power—when he served as an aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay. This was the heyday of “Casino Jack” Abramoff, the lobbyist-conman who took on pay-for-play clients ranging from the Choctaw Indian tribe of Mississippi to the Kremlin with a panache made for Hollywood. At the time, Buckham, in addition to his job with DeLay, oversaw a lobbying outfit called the U.S. Family Network, which presented itself as a public advocacy group but was really a vehicle funded largely by clients of Jack Abramoff." - New Republic
TakeAway: Follow the dark money funding Republican smears on highly qualified Biden nominees based on their race and gender. Does such a group deserve nonprofit exempt status?
Deepak
DemLabs
KICKASS WHITEHOUSE
posted by aaf 6 min title "AAF attacked by ...."
KBJ crack and porn too hvy sent
CPI AAF HQ "care of" Am 1st legal
donors trust, bradly jones: radical leftist" soft on sexual pred. [old scam // judge coal baron?]
those who paid jcn 15 17m$ ads kavanagh acb, gorsuch, what biz before scotus disclose act
American Accountability Foundation
219 subscribers
534 views Apr 4, 2022
“The other thing we hear a lot is about how this judge is going to be dangerous for children. And once again we turn to a right wing dark money front group as the source for that concern. On the day of her announcement, February 25th, a group called the American Accountability Foundation came out with an investigative report.”
“Founder Tom Jones said, after calling her a radical leftist – they figured that out the very first day she was announced – Americans want our judicial system to protect children and citizens from sexual predators.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-fY97DsDUo
channel https://www.youtube.com/@americanaccountabilityfoun2471
just the news real am voice davis brody water cooler
dems fight dirty, gop plays nice, senate collegial getalong go along; radical noms
425 views Apr 27, 2021 WASHINGTON
The American Accountability Foundation (AAF) encourages individuals with information about or documents showing the illegal, fraudulent, or unethical operations of our government to share that information with AAF so we can publicize it. As Justice Brandaeis pointed out, sunlight is the best of disinfectants. If you do not let us know about the corruption in government or how bureaucrats and politicians are using the mechanisms of government to destroy the traditional values we all hold dear, then we will have to watch the nation we love slowly destroyed.
jones: biden got more thru than trump b/c our guys not fighting, no party discipline, no leadership
AOC utopia, xavier cecesrra no rxbkgd, pro abortion, exposed PP for selling baby parts
xian clark artl cops = kkk shot cop in face live from eath row college; , vanita gupta...
harry reid simple maj
AAF will protect your anonymity. Send us an email at: AmericanAccountabilityFoundation@protonmail.com.
As a news gathering and publishing organization we will never reveal our sources and will refuse to turn them over to government bureaucrats.
tom Jones from the American Accountability Foundation on The Watercooler with David Brody
425 views
2 years ago
The American Accountability Foundation (AAF) encourages individuals with information about or documents showing the illegal, fraudulent, or unethical operations of our government to share that information with AAF so we can publicize it. As Justice Brandaeis pointed out, sunlight is the best of disinfectants. If you do not let us know about the corruption in government or how bureaucrats and politicians are using the
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Shorts
Biden corrupt nominee JUST attacked ME!
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Darin Latimore's Racist Comments
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Eric Lander Toasts Racist James Watson
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2x?
pow mofo achieved
those who paid jcn 15 17m$ ads kavanagh acb, gorsuch, what biz before scotus disclose act
American Accountability Foundation
219 subscribers
534 views Apr 4, 2022
“The other thing we hear a lot is about how this judge is going to be dangerous for children. And once again we turn to a right wing dark money front group as the source for that concern. On the day of her announcement, February 25th, a group called the American Accountability Foundation came out with an investigative report.”
“Founder Tom Jones said, after calling her a radical leftist – they figured that out the very first day she was announced – Americans want our judicial system to protect children and citizens from sexual predators.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-fY97DsDUo
channel https://www.youtube.com/@americanaccountabilityfoun2471
just the news real am voice davis brody water cooler
dems fight dirty, gop plays nice, senate collegial getalong go along; radical noms
425 views Apr 27, 2021 WASHINGTON
The American Accountability Foundation (AAF) encourages individuals with information about or documents showing the illegal, fraudulent, or unethical operations of our government to share that information with AAF so we can publicize it. As Justice Brandaeis pointed out, sunlight is the best of disinfectants. If you do not let us know about the corruption in government or how bureaucrats and politicians are using the mechanisms of government to destroy the traditional values we all hold dear, then we will have to watch the nation we love slowly destroyed.
biden got more thru than trump b/c our guys not fighting, no party discipline, ni leadership
AOC utopia, xavier cecesrra no rxbkgd, pro abortion, exposed PP for selling baby parts
xian clark artl cops = kkk shot cop in face live from eath row college; , vanita gupta...
harry reid simple maj
AAF will protect your anonymity. Send us an email at: AmericanAccountabilityFoundation@protonmail.com.
As a news gathering and publishing organization we will never reveal our sources and will refuse to turn them over to government bureaucrats.
tom Jones from the American Accountability Foundation on The Watercooler with David Brody
425 views
2 years ago
The American Accountability Foundation (AAF) encourages individuals with information about or documents showing the illegal, fraudulent, or unethical operations of our government to share that information with AAF so we can publicize it. As Justice Brandaeis pointed out, sunlight is the best of disinfectants. If you do not let us know about the corruption in government or how bureaucrats and politicians are using the
3:34
NOW PLAYING
BREAKING: Biden's plans to rig AI have been EXPOSED
4 views
4 hours ago
1:34
NOW PLAYING
Cordray Grilled at Ed & Workforce Hearing
17 views
1 month ago
0:47
NOW PLAYING
WATCH: Biden nominee LYING for almost a minute straight
49 views
3 months ago
1:03
NOW PLAYING
Chuck Schumer is the #1 recipient of this corporation's money: WHAT A COINCIDENCE
83 views
4 months ago
2:35
NOW PLAYING
WATCH: Josh HawleyCATCHES Biden nominee in LIE
1.8K views
4 months ago
WATCH: Senators SHRED Biden's absurdFCC nominee to her face
963 views
4 months ago
Shorts
Biden corrupt nominee JUST attacked ME!
35 views
Darin Latimore's Racist Comments
336 views
Eric Lander Toasts Racist James Watson
103 views
random 7 23
BREAKING! Biden nominee WITHDRAWN after AAF effort
Biden is pulling the nomination of Ann Carlson to lead the National Highway Transportation Administration (NHTSA)
MAY 30, 2023
After weeks of exposing Biden nominee Ann Carlson’sradical statements and questions over her finances, AAF is thrilled that her nomination is now being pulled!
We successfully blocked the appointments of Gigi Sohn and Phil Washington, and are proud to add Carlson to the list!
[twt cruz complain green car mandates]
Carlson shamelessly called for California-style leadership, regulations on Americans’ appliances, more activist lawsuits against energy companies, and demanded higher gas prices for everyday Americans while literally being invested in oil and gas. AAF was proud to show the American people who she really is.
Here were some of our top headlines:
FOX NEWS: Biden climate warrior nominee who argued for higher energy prices has stake in oil and gas firm
FOX BUSINESS: Biden highway safety nominee once praised'scheme' to 'raise energy prices'
Daily Caller: Biden’s Highway Safety Pick Has A Long History Of Pushing To Crack Down On Americans’ Appliances
AAF exists to educate the publicon issues related to personnel, policy, and spending in government but we cannot do it alone! Click below to join our efforts to keep government honest and working for you.
DONATE
For questions and press inquiries please email yitz@americanaccountabilityfoundation.com
Comments
VIDEO: AAF reveals SHOCKING statements by Biden top military pick
Biden nominee to be the new Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff has an obsession with race-based promoting
JUN 28
BOMBSHELL: DeSantis’s fight with Disney is being SABOTAGED by “Glass Lewis”
Bob Iger's election to the board was supported by Florida itself
MAY 9
BREAKING: MLB linked text line sends users to 'sexually perverse' youth LGBTQ chat room
WARNING: Extremely Disturbing Content
JUN 9
off bs
apple comp
aAF is led by Tom Jones. Tom has two decades of political, policy, research, and investigations experience serving in senior legislative and investigatory positions on Capitol Hill as a Senate staffer and as an opposition researcher for campaigns at the local, state-wide, and presidential level.
While on Capitol Hill he served as the Legislative Director for Senator Ron Johnson, ran the opposition research program for Cruz for President, and previously as a Senior Policy Advisor to Senator Jim DeMint. During his time with Senator DeMint, he was part of the oversight team that helped Senator DeMint and his colleagues successfully ban Congressional earmarks. As a subcommittee staff director, he conducted on-going agency oversight and regularly investigated waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.His research was crucial in helping Senators defeat flawed presidential nominees and kill wasteful government programs.
The team at AAF is comprised of researchers, analysts, and former legislative and campaign staffers with decades of experience holding policymakers accountable for their actions.Each AAF team member is dedicated to using their professional skills and experiences to promote transparency in governmenton behalf of the American people.
Matt Buckham is a graduate of Grove City College with a degree in economics. Matt came to the Hill in 2011 to fight for freedom after the passage of Obamacare. His first job was working as an intern in the Senate Steering Committee where he quickly learned of the appropriations cycle and reckless government spending. He later joined the legislative staff of Senator Jim DeMint where he worked on domestic policy issues.
In 2013, Buckham left the Senate to work at The Heritage Foundation in a role that would allow him promote conservative policy ideas through the education of Members and their staff.
Matt worked for the House Freedom Caucus in their first year as a policy and communications advisor. In this role he helped define and communicate the Caucus’ position on defunding Planned Parenthood. Matt’s love for preparing the conservative movement for battle led him back to The Heritage Foundation where he spent the last year working to better equip both the Hill and coalition partners. During this time he was able to assist President Trump’s transition team by placing conservatives in key positions within the administration through the personnel team.
==
wiki 11 22
American Accountability Foundation (AAF) is an American conservative opposition research group founded in 2020 that has opposed nominees to the Joe Biden administration.[1]
History
1.1 Campaigns
2 References
3 External links
History[
The AAF's executive director and co-founder, Tom Jones, previously worked for Republican senators Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz (directing opposition research for Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign), Jim DeMint, and John Ensign. Its other co-founder, Matthew Buckham, worked in the White House Presidential Personnel Office during the Trump presidency.[2] The New Yorker described the AAF as a dark money group ("a politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity that doesn’t disclose its backers") that is an offshoot of another such group, the Conservative Partnership Institute, which employed Mark Meadows after he left the Trump administration.[2][3]
The AAF describes itself as a "charitable and educational organization that conducts non-partisan governmental oversight research and fact-checking so Americans can hold their elected leaders accountable".[4] Jones told Fox News in April 2021 that he aimed to "take a big handful of sand and throw it in the gears of the Biden administration".[2][5]
Campaigns[
According to The New Yorker, the AAF "aims to thwart the entire Biden slate", and as of April 2022 had targeted 29 nominees.[2] The AAF acknowledged its role in derailing Biden's nominations of David Chipman to be director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2021;[6] Sarah Bloom Raskin to be vice-chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board in 2022;[3] and David Weil for the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor.[2] The AAF's research was used by Republican opponents of the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.[7]
In September 2021, the AAF filed an ethics complaint against representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for attending the Met Gala. The AAF claimed that her attendance amounted to accepting an illegal gift since her estimated $35,000 ticket was paid for by Conde Nast, a for-profit company, not a charity. The event itself is however a charitable fundraiser.[8][9][10]
References[
^ Wong, Scott (March 24, 2021). "Conservative group escalates earmarks war by infiltrating trainings". The Hill.
^ Jump up to:a b c d e Mayer, Jane (April 16, 2022). "The Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees". The New Yorker.
^ Jump up to:a b Mayer, Jane (March 15, 2022). "Sarah Bloom Raskin Withdraws Her Nomination to the Federal Reserve Board". The New Yorker.
^ "American Accountability Foundation". AAF. Retrieved April 19, 2022.
^ Shaw, Adam (April 11, 2021). "New conservative group wields unorthodox tactics to block Biden agenda, nominees". Fox News. Retrieved April 19, 2022.
^ Markay, Lachlan (September 14, 2021). "Conservative group behind sunk ATF nomination takes a victory lap". Axios. Retrieved April 19, 2022.
^ Pilkington, Ed (March 24, 2022). "Republicans turn Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing into a political circus". The Guardian. Retrieved April 19, 2022.
^ Clark, Dartunorro. "Conservative group files ethics complaint against AOC for attending Met Gala". NBC News.
^ Mishra, Stuti (September 15, 2021). "AOC hit with ethics complaint over Met Gala appearance as she fires back at critics". The Independent.
^ Vakil, Caroline (September 15, 2021). "Conservative group files ethics complaint over Ocasio-Cortez appearance at Met Gala".
External links[
Official website
Categories: 2020 establishments in the United StatesEducational organizations established in 2020Educational charities based in the United StatesConservative organizations in the United States
https://documented.net/investigations/conservative-partnership-institute
Conservative Partnership Institute (“CPI”) is a $45 million “America First” institution boosted with a $1 million donation from former President Trump’s PAC. Led by former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint, CPI is creating the MAGA-oriented political infrastructure that the Trump administration lacked.
CPI is recruiting America First staffers and providing in-depth training for Hill offices, as well as creating legal institutions, opposition research firms, think tanks, and other groups helmed by former Trump officials and allies, including Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, and Cleta Mitchell. Formed in 2017, CPI's fundraising surged to $45 million in 2021.
The group’s ambitions are sprawling, from amplifying conspiracies around stolen elections and “critical race theory,” to tanking Democratic nominees and filing lawsuits against the Biden administration. CPI’s president, Ed Corrigan, helped lead Trump’s 2016 transition team, and the group is positioned to staff and support far-right Congressional offices and the next MAGA administration.
CPI is located blocks from the U.S. Capitol, and serves as a hub for the far-right "America First "movement. The House Freedom Caucus holds weekly meetings at CPI, and texts obtained by the January 6 committee show lawmakers like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Sen. Mike Lee referencing meetings at CPI in the tumultuous period following the 2020 election. Nearly two dozen individuals tied to the January 6 attempted coup are connected to CPI, according to Grid's analysis."CPI is helping to build out the vital infrastructure we need to lead the America First movement to new heights."
Nerve Center for the MAGA Movement
CPI’s Washington D.C. headquarters serve as a hub for the far-right conservative movement. According to CPI, in 2021 the “House Freedom Caucus, the Senate Steering Committee, Congressional Chiefs of Staff, Congressional Communicators, Congressional Legislative Directors, and numerous conservative organizations and activists coalesced regularly at [CPI’s headquarters] to plan their methods and means of attack against the Left to save this country.”
Former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman described CPI as playing a "coordinating function" for the House Freedom Caucus, and said that it serves as "sort of like a bizarre Freedom Caucus HQ."
CPI boasted of holding 600 meetings or events in 2021, served as a "strategy center" to oppose President Biden’s vaccine requirements, and hosted multiple “war rooms” during Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination. CPI is also expanding, and says that it is “in the process of acquiring multiple properties adjacent to our D.C. headquarters in order to create a culture of collaboration and victory for the movement.”
According to CPI, members like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Sen. Rand Paul, Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Andy Biggs, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and Rep. Byron Donalds have made the CPI headquarters “their home away from home.”
At least fifteen members of the House and Senate have disclosed paying membership dues to CPI or its "Conservative Partnership Center" using campaign or leadership PAC funds.
Ties to Trump’s 2020 Coup Attempt
CPI and its affiliate groups “employ or assist at least 20 key operatives reportedly involved in Trump’s failed effort to subvert the 2020 election,” according to Grid, including Cleta Mitchell, the veteran lawyer who supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and joined the infamous call when the president urged Georgia’s Secretary of State to “find” 11,700 votes; Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House chief of staff who was in communication with alleged Jan. 6 plotters and at least tolerated Trump's attempted coup; and Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department lawyer who supported Trump’s desire for DOJ to declare the result fraudulent, and whose home was raided by the FBI in June of 2022.
Texts obtained by the January 6 committee also show Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Sen. Mike Lee referencing meetings at CPI in the tumultuous period after the 2020 election.
Mike Lee to Mark Meadows, Nov. 9 2020:
We had steering executive meeting at CPI tonight, with Sidney Powell as our guest speaker. My purpose in having the meeting was to socialize with Republican senators the fact that POTUS needs to pursue his legal remedies. You have in us a group of ready and loyal advocates who will go to bat for him, but I fear this could prove short-lived unless you hire the right legal team and set them loose immediately.
Marjorie Taylor Greene to Mark Meadows, Dec. 31, 2020:
Good morning Mark, I'm here in DC. We have to get organized for the 6th. I would like to meet with Rudy Giuliani again. We didn't get to speak with him long. Also anyone who can help. We are getting a lot of members on board. And we need to lay out the best case for each state. I'll be over at CPI this afternoon.
CPI hardly shies away from its affiliation with Trump’s failed coup.
Months after the Capitol insurrection, in summer of 2020, CPI hosted a “Hot Gulag Summer” event that served Jan. 6-themed cocktails, including the “Capitol Attaquiri,” “Insurrection on the Beach” and the “Mostly Peaceful Mojito.”<[bad code lots ...] “We gave conservatives on Capitol Hill the right skills, the right people, and the right connections—all for the purpose of making America great again,” CPI described in its annual report. For example, in 2021 CPI held “5-week-long legislative boot camps” taught by Ed Corrigan and Rachel Bovard, where “they armed conservative staffers with every tactic the House and Senate rules gave them: how to force amendment votes, how to work outside the Establishment- dominated committee process, and how to leverage nominations to wage policy fights:”
“You may have seen that conservatives defeated Biden’s gun-grabbing pick to lead the ATF and stopped a communist- sympathizing economist from becoming comptroller of the currency. That didn’t happen by accident.”
According to CPI, “our trainings have become so respected that conservative congressional offices and grassroots advocacy organizations now come to us when they have job openings to fill. They know that we maintain a database of current and prospective congressional staffers who have been through our trainings and are up to the task of putting America first.”
In 2021, CPI purchased a $7.25 million collection of waterfront farms on Maryland's Eastern Shore to hold Congressional staff retreats and trainings. CPI has since held several all-expenses-paid retreats at the property for Congressional staff. Staffers who attend retreats at the CPI-owned property only disclose receiving an estimated $99/night gift of lodging, which helps obscure reveal the actual benefit received.
CPI-Launched Projects, Many Led by former Trump Officials
In 2021, CPI launched eight new projects, as well as entities to provide legal compliance and administrative support for those groups:
Election Integrity Network: Cleta Mitchell, the veteran lawyer who supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, joined CPI and launched the Election Integrity Network (EIN) in early 2021, after resigning as a partner with the international law firm Foley and Lardner. Documented obtained leaked audio describing how CPI’s EIN is working with groups like Tea Party Patriots to create “permanent election integrity coalitions in eight target states,” and hosted Trump coup plotter John Eastman at an October 2022 event.
Center for Renewing America: Trump Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Russ Vought leads the culture war-oriented Center for Renewing America (CRA). “CRA’s strategy is to initiate planned confrontations on major national cultural issues, win those confrontations, and let the resulting political momentum fuel legislative activity at the federal, state, and local levels,” CPI says. CRA has created anti-CRT model legislation, opposed making women eligible for the draft, and opposed Afghan refugee migration. Jeffrey Clark, who Trump wanted to install as Attorney General after the 2020 election and who supported Trump’s desire for the Justice Department to declare the results fraudulent, joined CRA as Senior Fellow in June 2022, shortly before federal authorities searched Clark's home as part of the criminal inquiry into Trump's attempted coup. CRA senior fellows also include former Trump advisor Kash Patel, who appeared before a grand jury in the Mar al Lago documents case.
America First Legal Foundation: Trump’s hardline immigration advisor Stephen Miller co-created the America First Legal Foundation (AFL) with Mark Meadows, which claims to give “the 234 new federal judges appointed by Donald Trump the chance to finally hold Washington accountable to the rule of law.” According to the Washington Post, the group "has weaponized the grievance politics embodied by Trump’s 'Make America Great Again' movement through dozens of federal lawsuits, challenging efforts to remedy racial disparities, support LGBTQ students and expand the pool of early voters." In the final weeks of the 2022 elections, AFL spent $4 million on inflammatory anti-transgender radio ads. Casino magnate Steve Wynn, who resigned as RNC finance chair amid allegations of sexual misconduct in 2018, is among AFL's donors, according to the Post.
American Accountability Foundation: Tom Jones, Ted Cruz’s 2016 oppo research director, leads the group described as the “Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees” by the New Yorker. AAF has taken credit for knocking out President Biden's Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms nominee David Chipman, comptroller nominee Saule Omarova, and Federal Reserve nominee Sarah Bloom Raskin.
American Cornerstone Institute: former Trump cabinet member Ben Carson is founder and chair of American Cornerstone Institute (ACI), where Carson hosts a podcast and creates YouTube videos, and which created the anti-woke "Little Patriots" platform "to teach children about our founding principles."
American Moment: “American Moment’s mission is to identify, educate, and credential young Americans who will implement public policy that supports strong families, a sovereign nation, and prosperity for all,” according to CPI's annual report. In 2021, American Moment claims to have placed ten fellows at aligned organizations and congressional offices and, according to CPI, paid them “a living wage of $3,000 a month.” CPI plans to quadruple the program to 40 fellows in 2022.
State Freedom Caucus Network: In late 2021, CPI launched the "State Freedom Caucus Network" to replicate the far-right Congressional House Freedom Caucus in statehouses. CPI plans to create state freedom caucuses in every state legislature, according to its annual report, with caucuses already assembled in states including Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Illinois, Nevada, South Dakota, and South Carolina. Each state caucus will have an executive director, and CPI boasts that "the State Freedom Caucus Network will identify, place, and pay for legislative staffers year-round," and also create a PAC to "defend current and future state freedom caucus members facing tough reelections." Following the 2022 midterm elections in Arizona, for example, that state's freedom caucus promoted false claims of voter fraud and issued a statement calling Maricopa County election officials "incompetent, alleged criminals" who should "resign in shame."
CPI also helped launch two organizations to support these projects. Compass Professional Services, which is housed within CPI, provides payroll and administrative services to these entities. Compass Legal Services, also located at CPI headquarters, provides legal, campaign finance, and tax compliance services; according to campaign finance records, CPI members like Marjorie Taylor Greene also pay Compass Legal for legal compliance services, as does Trump's Save America PAC.
CPI Pushing Boundaries of Tax-Exempt Charitable Status
As a 501(c)(3) charity, CPI is exempt from taxation, and its donors get a lucrative tax deduction. But in exchange for those tax benefits, CPI is prohibited from supporting candidates or engaging in partisan political activity.
However, as NPR has reported, CPI is putting its tax-exempt status at risk by closely coordinating its activities with Republican political organizations and selectively offering its facilities and services to Republican candidates. In November 2022, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse sent a letter to CPI inquiring into whether CPI has violated its tax-exempt charitable status.
The NPR report and Sen. Whitehouse's letter detailed several CPI activities that may violate tax law. For example, in the 2022 election cycle, CPI's Election Integrity Network worked closely with the Republican National Committee (RNC) as it worked to recruit and train poll workers and watchers in key swing states, as reported by POLITICO based on audio obtained by Documented. RNC officials have been speakers at several CPI summits, and RNC state election integrity directors are taking part in state-wide election integrity efforts spearheaded by CPI. A 501(c)(3) organization may provide an impermissible private benefit to a political party if it provides programs to recruit and train poll watchers and workers in a partisan manner.
In addition to working closely with the RNC on training and recruiting election observers and poll workers, CPI has hosted political candidates at its events. For example, Governor Ron DeSantis gave the keynote address at CPI’s Florida summit in March of 2022, which amounted to a campaign speech where DeSantis urged people to vote in the election, and stressed that “We need everybody to come out and really, really have a huge, huge November in the state of Florida.”
A 501(c)(3) organization engages in prohibited political campaign intervention by inviting just one candidate to speak at its event, and where that candidate urged support on election day. [audio]
moreover, since late 2020, dozens of GOP candidates have used campaign funds to rent CPI’s facility and services, including for “campaign events” and "fundraising event fees," according to FEC records. Seventeen Congressional candidates and four senators reported $4,000 payments to CPI or CPC from their campaign committees or leadership PACs, with the majority of those disbursements described as “membership” payments or dues.
A 501(c)(3) charity engages in prohibited political campaign intervention by selectively offering its facilities to political candidates or committees. There is no record of Democratic candidates renting CPI facilities, and CPI's facilities do not appear available to the general public.
CPI's Fundraising
Since forming in 2017, CPI's fundraising has increased dramatically—most recently, jumping from $7.3 million in 2020 to $45 million in 2021, according to CPI's 2021 tax filing. (CPI's 2021 Annual Report, released in early 2022, reported $19.7 million in revenue plus $25 million in "Capital Fund Revenue").
Trump's Save America PAC gave $1 million to CPI in July 2021. CPI also held a fundraiser at Mar al Lago in April 2021, with former President Trump as the keynote speaker.
As a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit, CPI does not publicly disclose its donors.
However, an analysis by Grid identified more than 40 foundations, charities and other organizations that have funded CPI, including $1.25 million from GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein’s foundation in 2020, $500,000 from the late gaming machine mogul Stanley E. Fulton’s private foundation, and $200,000 from the Chicago Community Trust.
Donors Trust, the “dark money” funding hub, donated a total of $1.3 million to CPI in 2021, with $200,000 earmarked for American Moment and $10,000 in support of Cleta Mitchell's Election Integrity Network.
CPI has also identified some financial supporters in its 2021 annual report.
David and Brenda Frecka: CPI thanked the pair for their financial support in its 2021 annual report, and named a "David and Brenda Frecka Boardroom" at CPC. In 2021, David Frecka gave $1M to Jim Jordan's House Freedom Action, and Brenda Frecka gave $1.15M to Debbi Meadows's Right on Women PAC
Mike Rydin: According to CPI’s annual report, Ryden “made a generous gift” so that CPI could purchase a townhouse next door to its headquarters “for additional meeting and event space as well as space to host out-of-town guests.” The property sold for $1.5M in 2020.
Dr. William Amos Jr.: The son of the AFLAC founder “has generously supported the Conservative Partnership Institute. For his incredible contributions to CPI’s growth and mission, in 2021, CPI honored Dr. Amos with CPI’s Lifetime Achievement Award.”
Foster Friess "supported many groups in the movement, including CPI. Foster will always be an important part of the CPI story. With love and purpose, Lynn carries on her late husband’s legacy of helping those in need."
Doug and Charlotte Waikart "made the ultimate commitment to sending American values into the future by supporting CPI in their estate plans."
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last summer, while most of official Washington was still reeling from the historic assault on the Capitol, a clubhouse for Trump White House exiles hosted a bash that all but toasted the insurrectionists and plotters responsible.
“Hot Gulag Summer,” held at the nondescript Capitol Hill town house leased by the Conservative Partnership Institute, advertised Jan. 6, 2021-themed cocktails, including the “Capitol Attaquiri,” “Insurrection on the Beach” and the “Mostly Peaceful Mojito.” ...“We’re all going to be sent to the gulag eventually,” the invitation read. “We might as well party and get to know each other before we are all ‘reeducated.’”[bad code] CPI is structured in part to act as a 21st century megaphone for pro-Trump messaging, including media perpetuating false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, furthering MAGA-friendly culture war battles and pushing back against efforts to hold Trumpworld figures accountable....The offices at 300 Independence boast an in-house podcasting studio, a television studio and a host of employees with large Twitter followings. Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert is a “frequent visitor” to CPI’s television studio, according to CPI’s annual report, and she records her podcast, “Bullet Points,” at CPI, as do Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona (“What’s the Biggs Idea?”) and Matt Gaetz of Florida (“Firebrand”), as well as several other right-wing figures.
CPI also opens its facilities to right-wing outlets who help promote Trump-friendly messaging. The Epoch Times, a far-right media company affiliated with the anti-Chinese Communist Party Falun Gong religious movement, films two shows in the building, according to CPI. Right-wing outlet Newsmax filmed a documentary about Jan. 6 at CPI’s television studio.
“A Rorschach test for your sanity”
“This is a Rorschach test for your sanity,” Miller went on. “If you heard this story, and you thought, ‘Man, I believe every word about this and I’m going to go online and say something about it energetically,’ something is wrong with you. Something is wrong with you if you’re that gullible.”
Later that evening, former Trump Pentagon official Kash Patel, now with CPI’s Center for Renewing America, went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show to join the attacks on Hutchinson. The 26-year-old former Meadows aide, Patel said, was a “junior staffer who is completely, I believe, lying to the Jan. 6 committee for [her] own self-gain.”
On Hannity’s show the day after Hutchinson’s testimony, Freedom Caucus co-founder Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio laid into the committee: “This is not an unbiased finder of fact. These are nine people as you said, Sean, nine people who voted to impeach President Trump, nine people who are out to get President Trump and don’t want him to run. … All we have got from them is lie after lie after lie.”
Miller, Patel and Jordan declined to respond to Grid’s requests for comment.
Where the money comes from
CPI is thriving. In less than five years, it has grown from a newcomer to a $19.7 million organization. Its network likely has raised much more, because separate organizations that are affiliated with CPI raise funds independently of their parent organization.
The group’s success has irked some Republican operatives who feel CPI is acting as a job provider for otherwise out-of-work ex-Trump aides.
“They’re frauds,” said one longtime Republican strategist who has worked for major campaigns and spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person’s job could be at risk for speaking negatively. “They claim to be fiscal conservatives, but they’ve made a living off of generating conservative outrage in order to raise money for themselves.”
Other Republican luminaries who have donated to CPI include the late GOP megadonor Foster Friess, who is known for helping fund the Koch donor network. The late gaming machine mogul Stanley E. Fulton’s private foundation gave $500,000 to CPI, according to its records. The Chicago Community Trust reported $200,000 in contributions to the group.
“They’ve got a lot of money, and they’re willing to use that money in any way to advance their goals,” said Norm Ornstein, election expert and emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “And their goals are radical goals about voter suppression, overturning election results if they don’t like them and trying to keep any Democrat who’s in office from governing.”
A who’s who of Jan. 6
Several of the figures of greatest interest to the Jan. 6 committee are now employed by CPI or its subsidiary groups, including:
Mark Meadows: Meadows, Trump’s fourth chief of staff, was allegedly a key enabler of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He promoted false fraud claims and was a point of contact for election-denying members of Congress, Giuliani and other key operatives. Meadows participated in pivotal meetings and conversations with state and federal officials, according to reports and the Jan. 6 committee. Meadows joined CPI as senior partner just three weeks after Jan. 6.
Cleta Mitchell: Mitchell was a legal adviser to Trump’s campaign. She was on the infamous call between Trump and Georgia election officials, which cost her a job as a partner at the Foley and Lardner law firm. The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Mitchell and deposed her. Mitchell is a senior legal fellow at CPI and runs the CPI-backed Election Integrity Network, which holds “election integrity summits” to train partisan volunteers who want to get involved in election administration. Mitchell records her election-themed podcast, “Who’s Counting?” at CPI.
Jeffrey Clark: A former Department of Justice environmental lawyer, Clark was Trump’s pick for attorney general when William Barr declined to pursue vote fraud claims. Clark allegedly circulated a letter encouraging state officials in Georgia to decertify their election results. Federal agents raided his home on June 23, the same day a committee hearing focused on him. Clark was recently hired by the CPI-founded group, the Center for Renewing America.
Kashyap “Kash” Patel: The former Department of Defense chief of staff was allegedly in contact with Meadows on Jan. 6, and the Jan. 6 committee believed he had “important insight and information” into the Pentagon and White House preparations for and response to the Capitol riot. Patel joined the Center for Renewing America as senior fellow for national security and intelligence in September 2021. Patel also records his Epoch Times TV show, “Kash’s Corner,” at the CPI studio.
Stephen Miller: Trump’s former senior adviser for policy and speechwriter has been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee for his involvement in the day’s events. He may have prepared some of Trump’s remarks at the Stop the Steal event before the riot. He is identified as a founder of America First Legal, a nonprofit legal organization with Meadows and former counsel Gene Hamilton, which is associated with CPI. Miller did not respond to a request for comment from Grid.
Several of these figures work for CPI affiliates, which report operating from the same building as CPI and get support from the organization but have distinct names and legal identities, and at times list addresses other than CPI’s Independence Avenue headquarters. The website for Miller’s America First Legal, for instance, lists the group’s address as a nearby UPS store.
“We try to keep out — we don’t try to take credit,” DeMint said earlier this year to supporters, according to audio reviewed by Grid. “We try to give other people the credit, because that’s how you are going to build the movement and build trust.”
“We’re honored our Trump White House colleagues like Kash Patel and Jeff Clark are on our team to punch back against the Deep State,” Semmel said. “We only hire fighters at Renewing America.”
CPI and several of its other affiliate groups, like Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, did not respond to interview requests or requests for comment for this story.
Freedom Caucus
CPI has forged close ties to the Freedom Caucus, the far-right group of Republican House lawmakers co-founded by Meadows that was deeply involved in the events leading up to Jan. 6, according to reports and sworn testimony.
Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania allegedly connected Trump with little-known DOJ lawyer Clark and participated in planning meetings with Trump prior to Jan. 6;
Founding Freedom Caucus member and former chair Rep. Jim Jordan was being contacted by Meadows from the White House on Jan. 6, according to testimony;
Former caucus chair Rep. Andy Biggs allegedly helped organize the rally that segued into the storming of the Capitol, and pressured Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House speaker, to decertify electors;
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a close associate of the Freedom Caucus, but not an official member, has been one of the former president’s most vocal supporters and has spread conspiracy theories about the “feds” being behind the Capitol riot. According to testimony, Gaetz was one of several members of Congress who requested broad pardons from Trump. Gaetz was a speaker at CPI’s 2022 leadership conference and records his podcast at CPI’s studios;
Jan. 6 committee testimony revealed that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene asked Trump for a pardon, but she denies this. She faced a lawsuit in her home state of Georgia where she was forced to testify on her involvement in the effort to overturn the election. She often said she couldn’t recall key moments and meetings. In its 2021 annual report, CPI listed Greene as a “Hero of 2021,” and she spoke at the organization’s 2022 leadership conference.
Neither Perry, Jordan, Biggs, Gaetz nor Greene responded to requests for comment for this story.
A MAGA institution?
Rather than tarnish the reputation of the burgeoning think tank, having allies like Meadows and Greene have helped CPI burnish its identity, Washington Republicans said.
The group’s focus at the moment may be on deflecting attention from Jan. 6, but its gaze is facing forward, at future elections — and future MAGA administrations.
“Everything we love and care about in this country goes down the drain if the election system continues the way it is,” DeMint told attendees at an event this spring, according to a recording reviewed by Grid.
DeMint warned the crowd they would be unfairly painted by liberals and the media: “What we’re doing today is what the left says is the ‘Big Lie,’” he said. “You’re involved with the ‘Big Lie.’”
“It’s aiming to be more than just a place where former Trump officials can cool their heels until the next administration,” said Fischer, of Documented. “It appears to be taking some pretty serious steps to try to establish itself as an institution in Washington D.C. and create that political infrastructure to support the America First movement.”
DIRTY TRICKS
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/16/democratic-strategists-launch-war-room-00065498
group of top Democratic strategists are launching a multi-million-dollar hub to counter an expected investigative onslaught by the likely incoming House GOP majority — digging into President Joe Biden, his administration and his son, on top of potential Cabinet impeachments.
The newly relaunched Congressional Integrity Project initiative, details of which were shared first with POLITICO, will include rapid response teams, investigative researchers, pollsters and eventually a paid media campaign to put congressional Republicans “squarely on the defense,” founder Kyle Herrig said in an interview.
It’s designed to serve as the party’s “leading war room” to push back on House Republican investigations, Herrig said in an interview. He added that the project would “investigate the investigators, expose their political motivations and the monied special interests supporting their work, and hold them accountable for ignoring the urgent priorities of all Americans in order to smear Joe Biden and do the political bidding of Trump and MAGA Republicans." [vid]
a team of researchers has already begun scouring public records, press clippings and other documents in a bid to immediately undercut House GOP leaders, from Minority Leader — now speakership hopeful — Kevin McCarthy to the likely committee chairs expected to manage probes of Biden and his network.
The House GOP views investigations as a key piece of its agenda for the next Congress once it takes the narrow majority that’s now expected, particularly as much of its legislative wish list is on track to stall thanks to the Senate filibuster and Democratic president. McCarthy has privately talked with committee chairs-in-waiting to coordinate plans, making the swift launch of the outside-group pushback plan a potential godsend to Democrats.
Democratic leadership on the Hill has been briefed about the project’s relaunch, according to a person familiar with its plans.
Brad Woodhouse, a longtime Democratic strategist who is part of the project’s new leadership team, called the House GOP’s looming investigations a “vendetta” after two impeachments of and investigations into former President Donald Trump while Democrats controlled Congress, including the bipartisan select committee probing the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The project “will exploit every tactic available,” Woodhouse said, adding: “It’s not enough to wait and see what they’re going to do and how far they’re going to go.”
Republicans wouldn’t formally take the House until January, but its leaders are already vowing to cut a broad investigative swath. As McCarthy put it during his conference’s recent agenda rollout: “Every committee has responsibilities for oversight.”
“They’ve virtually outlined no substantive agenda for governing,” Herrig said of House Republicans. “This is what they’re going to do ... so you really need a concentrated effort that’s doing this every day.”
In addition to Herrig and Woodhouse, the project’s leadership team will include Leslie Dach, a well-known Democratic communications specialist who has led progressive organizations for decades, served in the Obama administration and advised the Biden administration’s pandemic response.
In a sign of the important role the initiative will play over the next two years — and its proximity to the White House — other senior advisers include Jeff Peck, a former Biden aide during the president’s time in the Senate who served as treasurer and vice chair of the Biden Foundation as well as a senior adviser to the Biden-Harris transition.
The Congressional Integrity Project leadership team will include Leslie Dach, a well-known Democratic communications specialist who has led progressive organizations for decades. | Brian Stukes/Getty Images for Protect Our Care
For the final two years of Biden’s term, Republicans will be aided in their oversight push by a coalition of outside conservative research groups that have already mapped out potential targets and started digging into issues ranging from Hunter Biden’s business dealings to immigration policy.
And GOP lawmakers have left their own investigative breadcrumbs that make it clear where they intend to go. Likely Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) will lead the Hunter Biden investigation, with Republicans already preparing to elevate the probe to Joe Biden although no evidence has publicly emerged that his decisions were affected by his son’s business dealings. Comer recently told POLITICO that he and likely Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) would provide a public update this week.
Jordan, meanwhile, is preparing to use the gavel he’s poised to take for conduct a sweeping investigation into the Justice Department and FBI, two frequent targets of Trump’s ire. That probe is likely to touch on everything from the search at Mar-a-Lago for classified documents to tracking threats against local school officials, which the GOP slams as an effort to target parents despite denials from the bureau. [vid]
other GOP areas of interest include the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Ukraine aid and a coronavirus probe that is likely to sweep up longtime public health adviser Anthony Fauci.
McCarthy and his allies are under pressure from their base and some members of their own conference to pair their investigations with impeachment articles; some in the party are clearly itching for payback after then-President Trump was impeached twice. Though impeaching Biden is likely a heavy lift — and a step that McCarthy isn’t endorsing for now — Republicans see Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as a more likely target for attempted removal from office.
congressional Democrats and others close to the administration view Republicans’ vows to investigate Mayorkas’ department and the border as the latest sign that they aren’t serious about trying to pass immigration legislation. And they slam Republican investigative plans writ large as thinly veiled attempts to help Trump, pointing to Jordan’s public remarks earlier this year that characterized GOP probes as helping “frame up the 2024 race.”
The Congressional Integrity Project is also aiming to raise funds for a paid media campaign, including dedicated websites, digital ads, mobile billboards, newspaper ads and, occasionally, TV ad buys. Its public opinion research will be shared with like-minded organizations and congressional allies to contrast GOP investigations with issues the American public cares most about, project leaders said.
Their goal is to prevent a repeat of the 2016 presidential campaign when Republicans also controlled the House and created a select committee to investigate the 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans. That GOP select panel ended up zeroing in on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she prepared to ascend to the Democratic nomination, culminating in an 11-hour grilling of Clinton.
Republicans’ two-year Benghazi investigation spent $7 million in taxpayer money and dogged Clinton on the campaign trail before finally producing an 800-page report that didn’t focus on the former secretary of state.
Then-Majority Leader McCarthy quipped in 2015 to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that the Benghazi committee had successfully driven down Clinton’s poll numbers. “He took a lot of crap for it, but in the end, it was true” that the investigation hurt Clinton politically, recalled Woodhouse.
Rather, Democrats hope the flood of investigations will lead to a repeat of the 1998 midterm elections, held amid the GOP push to impeach then-President Bill Clinton. Voter backlash against that move helped Democrats defy historical trends in House races that favor the party that doesn’t occupy the White House gaining seats.
FILED UNDER: KEVIN MCCARTHY, JIM JORDAN, OPPOSITION RESEARCH, OPPO, BENGHAZI, ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS
POLITICO---
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axios
gop Republican congressional aides huddled this month with conservative think-tank leaders on Maryland's Eastern Shore to hone tactics and messaging for Biden administration probes, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: If the GOP wins control in the midterms, leaders want to kick off high-profile investigations as soon as the new Congress is seated. Republicans plan to draw on investigative power from allies across Washington.
Details: The retreat was hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the Conservative Partnership Institute and the American Accountability Foundation, a nonprofit run by Trump administration alumni that's dogged Biden nominees with independent investigative work.
In attendance were aides to the top Republicans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure, Ways and Means and Oversight committees, as well as a senior aide to Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who is considered a leadership contender.
Aides to Senate Banking Committee ranking member Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) also attended.
The big picture: With unified Democratic control in D.C., Republicans have been limited in their efforts to wield Congress' probative powers around high-profile issues such as a southern border immigration surge, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and economic shocks that threaten a U.S. recession.
If they win congressional majorities, Republicans plan to use that power in retrospective fashion to dig into Biden administration conduct going back to his inauguration.
That will mean a congressional microscope on Biden administration policies and spending. It will also bring stepped-up GOP scrutiny of private sector actors such as tech companies that Republicans see as politically adversarial.
Behind the scenes: Over two days, congressional aides at the retreat got briefings from prominent conservative activists and organizations on a host of investigative tactics.
Gene Hamilton, a former senior aide in Trump's Justice Department and a board member of the America First Legal Foundation, briefed staffers on how to use legal experts and the federal court system to conduct research and "advance conservative priorities in the courts."
Alexa Walker, the Banks aide and the Republican Study Committee's coalitions director, and Scott Gast, a former senior aide in the Trump White House counsel's office, discussed strategies for coordinating congressional oversight with outside research and investigative groups.
Mike Howell and Roman Jankowski of the Heritage Foundation led a training on the Freedom of Information Act.
AAF chief Tom Jones briefed attendees on tactics for investigating presidential nominees and appointees.
Phil Reboli of CPI trained staffers on effective communications strategies to sell oversight efforts to outside groups and the press.
What they're saying: "We are pleased we brought together senior staff and leading outside researchers to focus on enhancing oversight skills, particularly since we're expecting increased oversight opportunities in the future," Jones said in an emailed statement.
"The American people are deeply frustrated by the failed policies and lack of leadership of the Biden Administration. They expect good government groups like ours and Congressional leaders to work together to hold this administration accountable."
Howell, who leads Heritage's Oversight Project, t0ld Axios the goal of the event was to ensure congressional staff members are equipped to kick-start investigations as soon as the new Congress is gaveled in.
"What's going to happen next Congress is, you've got to do four years of oversight in two years. That's going to be an immense lift, and it means that they cannot wait to get these committees situated," he said in an interview.
"There are thousands of people who served in the Trump administration, myself included, who experienced what was probably the most intense congressional oversight to date," Howell said. They "are now chomping at the bit to deploy these skills that they've learned back at the Biden administration."
Between the lines: The event provides a glimpse of where Republicans see potentially fruitful oversight avenues.
Senate Banking has been at the center of Biden nomination fights, with committee Republicans successfully sinking two high-profile nominees.
The Oversight Committee, whose chief counsel for oversight attended, has a broad mandate. Its ranking Republican, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), has recently signaled scrutiny of Biden's immigration policies, his son Hunter’s business dealings abroad and tech companies' ostensible political bias.
The Transportation Committee's Republican general counsel wrote in a disclosure filing that the training would help the committee ensure "fiscal stewardship and effective oversight of the recently passed infrastructure bill and other items within T&I's jurisdiction."
The Ways and Means Committee, which sent two Republican aides to the retreat, is a powerful panel with oversight jurisdiction over tax and financial policies at the center of a national furor over inflation.
Republican oversight won't be confined to federal agencies or the White House, Howell said.
"Big Tech is in the crosshairs," he said. "They're going to be subject to document requests and subpoenas and depositions."
Howell pointed to the subpoena power wielded heavily by the Jan. 6 select committee, which has sought private phone and bank records, among other documents.
"It's really a whole new frontier that has been opened with a whole bevy of new tactics and techniques, which were once thought out of bounds. They're now going to be a tool in the hands of the other side."
ref axios lachlan markey
https://www.axios.com/2021/09/14/conservatives-aft-withdrawal-biden-nominee
david chipman nom atf scalp
even before President Biden formally withdrew his nominee to be the nation's top firearm regulator on Monday, a new conservative opposition research group was ready for a victory lap.
Why it matters: Democrats honed a research operation during the Trump era that effectively opposed some of his top nominees. Two veteran Republican operatives behind the American Accountability Foundation didn't see a comparable apparatus for the GOP, so they set out to create one.
AAF co-founder Tom Jones was a senior staffer to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
Matt Buckham, the other co-founder, worked in Donald Trump's White House Office of Presidential Personnel, which oversees nominations to Senate-confirmed posts.
"We know they put [David Chipman] up because he aligned with the Biden administration on guns. ... You know that there's gonna be issue advocacy galore out there," Buckham told Axios. "But is this individual qualified, what is his character, what is his background? Those are the questions that groups weren't digging into."
Driving the news: Chipman, who lobbied for gun safety group Everytown after leaving ATF, was the first high-profile Biden nominee to withdraw from consideration.
His nomination immediately drew opposition from gun rights groups such as the NRA.
In withdrawing the nomination, the president conceded Chipman was unlikely to get the 50 votes in the Senate needed for confirmation.
What's new: During an interview, Jones took credit for helping to unearth and publicize allegations from Chipman's former colleagues at ATF — where he was a special agent until 2012 — that he'd disparaged agents of color who received promotions.
Jones said he learned of the allegations while speaking to some of those former colleagues personally. AAF compiled all they could, he said, then shared its findings with the Daily Caller.
Within a week, another outlet, The Reload, had spoken with other former agents who corroborated the story. After it published additional details, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded a new hearing on Chipman's nomination.
AAF also helped organize a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, from seven retired ATF agents and investigators opposing Chipman's nomination.
Jones shared Chipman research memos with Judiciary Committee Republicans — while also publishing the memos publicly on the AAF's website — and suggested potentially damaging lines of questioning for Chipman's hearings.
Between the lines: AAF's research largely ignored policy. Its strategy more resembled the type of research that political campaigns compile on their opponents: public records digging and research focused on Chipman's background.
The group remains focused on a suite of high-profile Biden nominees, and it has set up a website, BidenNoms.com, as a public repository of its research.
AAF was formed early this year as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, meaning it can't engage in political activity — despite its founders' backgrounds in GOP politics.
It expects to operate on a $750,000 budget this year, a spokesperson told Axios. During the interview, Jones and Buckham declined to identify any of their donors.
aaf mailchimp
breitbart Exclusive — Oversight Group Says DOJ Attorney Handling Voting Integrity Likely Illegally Voted in North Carolina
A nonprofit government oversight group released an investigation, first seen by Breitbart News, which claimed Janie Sitton, an attorney who appears to work on voter integrity at the Department of Justice (DOJ), has likely illegally voted in North Carolina.
American Accountability Foundation (AAF) outlined in its memo that Sitton, who is originally from North Carolina, has been working in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division since 2000. The division she works in frequently takes cases regarding voting rights.
AAF also noted that she previously worked as an adjunct professor of law at William and Mary School of Law, teaching sexuality and the law. In fact, she wrote Introduction to the Symposium, (De)Constructing Sex: Transgenderism, Intersexuality, Gender Identity and the Law for the William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice, published in October 2000.
The memo explained that records showed that Sitton had been a “resident” and “active voter” in Washington, DC, since August 13, 2010 — within days of buying her home on August 17 that year. It was also revealed that Sitton voted in five elections from 2012 to 2018 in Washington, DC, and at least once in North Carolina since 2020.
[Read the FULL story at Breitbart]
aaf newsmakers [i thnk that mean they ref aaf
thefed BS
Report: Wall Street Bigwigs Are Left-Wing Activists Using Your Money To Push Their Politics
A new report out earlier this month shows that Wall Street’s near-religious adherence to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards is an effort run by Democrat political operatives at the nation’s premier financial institutions.
On Aug. 9, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a nonprofit governmental watchdog, published a 47-page report chronicling Wall Street ties at the “Big Three” asset management firms, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, with Democrat politicians who have a history of radical activism.
“The number of liberal staffers that are now serving in influential roles in financial firms raises the question — has a new ‘revolving door’ come to Washington?” researchers wrote in their memorandum of the report. “While traditionally D.C. staffers will go from official positions to K Street — there now seems to be a new trend emerging of D.C. staffers going from official positions to Wall Street.“
[Read the FULL story at The Federalist]
Biden Student Loan Amnesty a Windfall for DC Staffers
Analysis of financial disclosures by the conservative-leaning American Accountability Foundation found that the political staff at the agency that oversees the student loan program stand to benefit. The outstanding student loan debt balance among 41 education staffers evaluated could amount to between $2.8 and $6.5 million. According to the AAF estimate obtained by RealClearPolitics, the president may have wiped away as much as $512,646 of their debt.
More than 45 million Americans owe $1.6 trillion in federal student debt, a balance that the New York Times reports dwarfs what they owe in car loans, credit cards, and other consumer debt. The White House insists that the administration’s plan will target low- to middle-income borrowers in particular, with 90% of relief going to earners who make less than $75,000 a year. As many as 43 million people can benefit, according to an administration infographic, and 20 million people “can have their loans fully cancelled.”
Tom Jones echoed that criticism. The founder of AAF pointed to the “windfall” that political employees at the Education Department were set to receive, calling it “shameful” evidence of “the gap between the people and the ruling class in Washington, D.C.” Press spokesmen for the department did not respond to RCP requests for comment.
[Read the full story at Real Clear Politics]
Follow the Money In The Biden Administration
Anti-fossil fuel appointee should be rejected
Read More
Biden Education Department staff will get $500K from student loan bailout: report
Read More
AAF to File Suit Against New York State Office of the Attorney General if Audit Records Not Released In Political Smear Operation
Read More
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AAF exists to educate the public on issues related to personnel, policy, and spending in government but we cannot do it alone! Click below to join our efforts to keep government honest and working for you.
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no lnx WE
Breitbart Exclusive — Oversight Group Says DOJ Attorney Handling Voting Integrity Likely Illegally Voted in North Carolina
A nonprofit government oversight group released an investigation, first seen by Breitbart News, which claimed Janie Sitton, an attorney who appears to work on voter integrity at the Department of Justice (DOJ), has likely illegally voted in North Carolina.
American Accountability Foundation (AAF) outlined in its memo that Sitton, who is originally from North Carolina, has been working in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division since 2000. The division she works in frequently takes cases regarding voting rights.
AAF also noted that she previously worked as an adjunct professor of law at William and Mary School of Law, teaching sexuality and the law. In fact, she wrote Introduction to the Symposium, (De)Constructing Sex: Transgenderism, Intersexuality, Gender Identity and the Law for the William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice, published in October 2000.
The memo explained that records showed that Sitton had been a “resident” and “active voter” in Washington, DC, since August 13, 2010 — within days of buying her home on August 17 that year. It was also revealed that Sitton voted in five elections from 2012 to 2018 in Washington, DC, and at least once in North Carolina since 2020.
[Read the FULL story at Breitbart]
Social Justice Warriors Pushing ESG On Wall Street Have Deep Ties To Political Left
A standing rule of any organization is that personnel is policy. A new investigative report released by the American Accountability Foundation shines a light on how Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing is not a strategy intended to increase returns, but rather is a tool for global elites who wield their enormous financial power—with other people’s money—to achieve their liberal political ends.
Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street collectively represent 80% of all passive investors, which includes 401(k) investments, IRA and brokerage accounts, and pension and institutional funds. These investment houses use your money to achieve controversial environmental and social goals like “anti-racism” training, fossil energy divestment, and instituting race- or gender-based hiring quotas. While these policies have failed to gain traction in Congress and have been struck down in the courts, they are becoming increasingly popular in the Davos jet-set crowd.
As the report suggests, the driving force behind this trend may be the new revolving door between liberal politics and Wall Street. Leaders of these investment houses, including Larry Fink who is the CEO of BlackRock, have denied that ESG is about politics or any particular social or ideological agenda and emphatically stated that ESG “is not woke.” But the mid- to lower-level staff at these investment houses responsible for the day-to-day implementation of ESG investing suggest otherwise. Many of them have earlier careers as partisan staff for liberal politicians and leftist organizations. Given the alignment between ESG goals and the woke agenda heralded by many Democrats, it’s hard to see past the obvious coordination.
[Read the full story at IWF]
mandy g sept
standing rule of any organization is that personnel is policy. A new investigative report released by the American Accountability Foundation shines a light on how Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing is not a strategy intended to increase returns, but rather is a tool for global elites who wield their enormous financial power—with other people’s money—to achieve their liberal political ends.
Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street collectively represent 80% of all passive investors, which includes 401(k) investments, IRA and brokerage accounts, and pension and institutional funds. These investment houses use your money to achieve controversial environmental and social goals like “anti-racism” training, fossil energy divestment, and instituting race- or gender-based hiring quotas. While these policies have failed to gain traction in Congress and have been struck down in the courts, they are becoming increasingly popular in the Davos jet-set crowd.
As the report suggests, the driving force behind this trend may be the new revolving door between liberal politics and Wall Street. Leaders of these investment houses, including Larry Fink who is the CEO of BlackRock, have denied that ESG is about politics or any particular social or ideological agenda and emphatically stated that ESG “is not woke.” But the mid- to lower-level staff at these investment houses responsible for the day-to-day implementation of ESG investing suggest otherwise. Many of them have earlier careers as partisan staff for liberal politicians and leftist organizations. Given the alignment between ESG goals and the woke agenda heralded by many Democrats, it’s hard to see past the obvious coordination.
The rank and file ESG “stewardship teams” come from the Offices of Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and former President Obama as well as the left-wing non-profits like the Center for American Progress. Others are serving on boards for progressive organizations, including Resource Generation, which “offers programming that encourages members to see capitalism not as a market-based equalizer promising upward mobility, but as a damaging system predicated on, ‘stolen land, stolen labor and stolen lives.’”
These are just a few examples of the many that the AAF report extensively covers. The liberal aligned goals and the outcomes lay out a clear indication that ESG is a mechanism for advancing a woke agenda that benefits the political left while producing lower returns for investors. Statements suggesting otherwise should be taken with a grain of salt.
The ESG agenda, just like the woke agenda it perpetuates is causing serious harm like lost value for retirees and broader economic degradation. While ESG acolytes will get paid their high dollar fees, either way, the rest of us will be left with the consequences.
This is why many states like Florida, New Hampshire, Texas and West Virginia are pushing back. Congress should take note as well.
Related Stories
Elected Officials Can Be Bulwarks Against ESG
Gabriella Hoffman | September 1, 2022
Wall Street Is Using Your Money to Buy Virtue; Don’t Let Them
Mandy Gunasekara | August 31, 2022
High ESG Scores Foreshadow Economic Decline
Gabriella Hoffman | August 22, 2022
ESG Is Fueling Inflation Woes
Gabriella Hoffman | August 19, 2022
[Read the full report at AAF]
Biden administration staffers benefit from student loan bailout
Biden transition official resigns from nonprofit group given migrant housing contracts
Here’s How Big Tech Plans To Rig The 2022 Midterms
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AAF exists to educate the public on issues related to personnel, policy, and spending in government but we cannot do it alone! Click below to join our efforts to keep government honest and working for you.
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American Accountability Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization launched with the help of the rightwing Conservative Partnership Institute that describes itself as a "government oversight and research organization that uses investigative tools to educate the public on issues related to personnel, policy, and spending".[1]
With a Twitter handle of "@ExposingBiden", the group works to prevent Biden Administration nominees from getting approved.[2] It also hosts a website called BidenNoms.com that tracks how Republican senators vote for President Biden's nominees. The site describes itself as "an effort to ensure that personnel in leadership positions within the federal government reflect the values and concerns of the American people, not the liberal coastal elite or their woke allies in corporate America."[3] The site also includes profiles of each nominee.
Fox News reported that the AAF focuses on the second tier of Biden's nominees, the appointees beneath the Cabinet level. Jones told Fox News, "That second tier are really the folks who are going to do the day-to-day work implementing the agenda...It's obviously severely problematic if there's a radical leftist running an agency, but it's also really problematic if their deputy has worked on leftist issues in the past and is out of step and has deep roots within the progressive movement and is going to implement an agenda out of touch with what the American people care about."[4]
1 News and Controversies
1.1 AAF Attack on Federal Reserve Nominee Lisa Cook
1.2 AAF Spread Misleading Claims about SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson
1.3 AAF Attack on the Raskin Family
1.4 AAF Attack on Comptroller of the Currency Nominee Saule Omarova
1.5 AAF Attack on Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Nominee David Chipman
1.6 AAF Infiltrated Zoom Training Meeting for Congressional Staffers
2 Launched with the Help of the Conservative Partnership Institute
3 AAF Founder Tom Jones
4 Funding
5 Core Financials
6 Personnel
7 Contact Information
8 Articles and Resources
8.1 Articles
8.2 IRS Filings
9 References
News and Controversies
AAF Attack on Federal Reserve Nominee Lisa Cook
Following Biden's nomination of Michigan State University professor Lisa Cook to the Federal Reserve, AAF group sought to discredit Cook's tenure at the school and further qualifications for the position, Politico reported. Cook's nomination garnered bipartisan support and she was endorsed by both conservative and liberal economists.[5] The New Yorker reported that Jones fished for information from about 50 of her colleagues at MSU, asking in an email, "Are any of you concerned that... she's not good enough to sit on the Federal Reserve Board?"[6] He also posted about Cook on "Economics Job Market Rumors", an online forum that the New York Times reports as "a cesspool of misogyny".[7]
AAF Spread Misleading Claims about SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson
In alignment with a widespread misconception[8] popularized by Republicans, AAF released a statement saying Biden's nominee for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson "argued that America's judicial system is 'unfair' to sexual predators".[9]
AAF Attack on the Raskin Family
AAF launched an attack on Sarah Bloom Raskin and her husband Jamie Raskin following Bloom Raskin's nomination to the Vice Chair for Supervision of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Due to her stance on the fossil fuel industry's hand in climate change, AAF pushed the narrative that "Sarah and Jamie Raskin are career politicians who have used the system to enrich themselves"[10] The AAF filed an ethics complaint against Jamie Raskin due to his late disclosure of a stock sale by Sarah Bloom Raskin.[11] While Bloom Raskin told the New Yorker that she did not expect special treatment, she did explain that their son had committed suicide two weeks after the sale and that they "were comatose, barely functioning, so of course Jamie didn't remember to file".[6]
AAF Attack on Comptroller of the Currency Nominee Saule Omarova
AAF bullied President Biden's nominee for Comptroller of the Currency Saule Omarova into withdrawing herself from consideration after launching an investigation into her history and falsely painting her as a Marxist. Omarova told the New Yorker, "There were so many accusations. AAF was at the forefront of making my life extremely and unnecessarily difficult. It was complete absurdity. But people who have no idea who I am jumped in and said, 'Go back to the Soviet Union!'."[6] The AAF's tactics for attacking Omarova primarily involved taking clips of her speaking and reproducing them without context and weaponizing her childhood in Kazakhstan against her.[12]
AAF Attack on Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Nominee David Chipman
The New Yorker reported that the AAF accused Chipman of being both racist and too "woke", exaggerating his belief that Army bases should not be named after Confederate soldiers and his opposition to monuments that celebrate them due to their racial insensitivity. AAF claimed that he wanted to "use fighter jets to bomb" Mount Rushmore. Due to the relentless harassment of AAF, users on Twitter called for his death and his wife, a long-time ATF employee felt too unsafe to continue working and quit her job[6].
AAF Infiltrated Zoom Training Meeting for Congressional Staffers
AAF members posing as congressional aides infiltrated and recorded a Zoom meeting about earmark spending rules in the spring of 2021. The recording was posted online. Appropriations Committee spokesman Evan Hollander wrote in an email, "For a group that purports to concern itself with ethics, using fake identities, misrepresenting themselves as Congressional staff and surreptitiously recording meetings is hypocritical in the extreme."[13] Founder Tom Jones told Fox News, "I'm never doing anything illegal but just because it's impolite to log into an earmark training seminar and offend the morals of Capitol Hill staff, that's not going to stop me from doing it."[4]
Launched with the Help of the Conservative Partnership Institute
AAF lists itself as in care of the Conservative Partnership Institute in its 501(c)(3) application, and in CPI's 2021 annual report, it described that AAF was part of a "new dimension" to the group's work. The report states, "Before the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), conservatives didn't have a group performing research on Biden's woke nominees-- even though plenty of liberal groups were digging up (or manufacturing) dirt on our side."[14]
AAF Founder Tom Jones
Founder and executive director Tomas Jones was the Legislative Director to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Senior Policy Advisor to former Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Opposition Research Director for Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, and served as the President of both the 339 Group and the Cannon Research Group.[15] He also served as legislative director for John Ensign of Nevada.[6] He told Fox News that AAF wants to "take a big handful of sand and throw it in the gears of the Biden Administration" and that, unlike other opposition groups, AAF is based not on individual clients but on "causing trouble for the new administration".[4]
Funding
Funding information for AAF is not publicly available as of July 2022.
Core Financials
Core financials for AAF are not publicly available as of July 2022.
Personnel
Staff Members[16]
Thomas Jones, Founder
Matthew Buckham, Founder
Board Members[17]
Wesley Denton, Secretary
Ed Corrigan, Treasurer
Contact Information
Employer Identification Number (EIN): 85-4391204
American Accountability Foundation
300 Independence Ave, SE
Washington DC 2003
Phone: (202) 495-0720
Email: info@americanaccountabilityfoundation.com
Twitter: @ExposingBiden
Facebook: @AmericanAccountabilityFoundation
YouTube: American Accountability Foundation
Articles and Resources
Articles
Jane Mayer, The Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees, "The New Yorker", April 16, 2022.
[irs doc]
https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/the-slime-machine-targeting-dozens-of-biden-nominees
no lnx many
A Reporter at Large
The Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees
In an escalation of partisan warfare, a little-known dark-money group is trying to thwart the President’s entire slate.
By Jane Mayer
April 16, 2022
The American Accountability Foundation has undermined the likes of Ketanji Brown Jackson, but it’s also gone after relatively obscure political appointees whose public profiles can be easily distorted.]
During the autos-da-fé that now pass for Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate, it’s common for supporters of a nominee to dismiss attacks from the opposing party as mere partisanship. But, during the recent hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, Andrew C. McCarthy—a Republican former federal prosecutor and a prominent legal commentator at National Review—took the unusual step of denouncing an attack from his own side. When Republican senators, including Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn, began accusing Jackson of having been a dangerously lenient judge toward sex offenders, McCarthy wrote a column calling the charge “meritless to the point of demagoguery.” He didn’t like Jackson’s judicial philosophy, but “the implication that she has a soft spot for ‘sex offenders’ who ‘prey on children’ . . . is a smear.”
In the end, the attacks failed to diminish public support for Jackson, and her poised responses to questioning helped secure her nomination, by a vote of 53–47. But the fierce campaign against her was concerning, in part because it was spearheaded by a new conservative dark-money group that was created in 2020: the American Accountability Foundation. An explicit purpose of the A.A.F.—a politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity that doesn’t disclose its backers—is to prevent the approval of all Biden Administration nominees.
While the hearings were taking place, the A.A.F. publicly took credit for uncovering a note in the Harvard Law Review in which, they claimed, Jackson had “argued that America’s judicial system is too hard on sexual offenders.” The group also tweeted that she had a “soft-on-sex-offender” record during her eight years as a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. As the Washington Post and other outlets stated, Jackson’s sentencing history on such cases was well within the judicial mainstream, and in line with a half-dozen judges appointed by the Trump Administration. When Jackson defended herself on this point during the hearings, the A.A.F. said, on Twitter, that she was “lying.” The group’s allegation—reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that liberal élites are abusing and trafficking children—rippled through conservative circles. Tucker Carlson repeated the accusation on his Fox News program while a chyron declared “jackson lenient in child sex cases.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist representative from Georgia, called Jackson “pro-pedophile.”
Mudslinging is hardly new to American politics. In 1800, a campaign surrogate for Thomas Jefferson called Jefferson’s opponent, John Adams, “hermaphroditical”; Adams’s supporters predicted that if Jefferson were elected President he would unleash a reign of “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest.” Neither the Democratic nor Republican Party is above reproach when it comes to engaging in calumny, and since at least 1987, when President Ronald Reagan unsuccessfully nominated Robert Bork to be a Justice, the fights over Supreme Court nominees have been especially nasty. Yet the A.A.F.’s approach represents a new escalation in partisan warfare, and underscores the growing role that secret spending has played in deepening the polarization in Washington.
Rather than attack a single candidate or nominee, the A.A.F. aims to thwart the entire Biden slate. The obstructionism, like the Republican blockade of Biden’s legislative agenda in Congress, is the end in itself. The group hosts a Web site, bidennoms.com, that displays the photographs of Administration nominees it has targeted, as though they were hunting trophies. And the A.A.F. hasn’t just undermined nominees for Cabinet and Court seats—the kinds of prominent people whose records are usually well known and well defended. It’s also gone after relatively obscure, sub-Cabinet-level political appointees, whose public profiles can be easily distorted and who have little entrenched support. The A.A.F., which is run by conservative white men, has particularly focussed on blocking women and people of color. As of last month, more than a third of the twenty-nine candidates it had publicly attacked were people of color, and nearly sixty per cent were women.
Among the nominees the group boasts of having successfully derailed are Saule Omarova, a nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, and Sarah Bloom Raskin, whom Biden named to be the vice-chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board. David Chipman, whom the President wanted to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and David Weil, Biden’s choice for the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor, both saw their nominations founder in the wake of A.A.F. attacks. Currently, the group is waging a negative campaign against Lisa Cook, who, if confirmed, would become the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.
Tom Jones, the A.A.F.’s founder and executive director, is a longtime Beltway operative specializing in opposition research. Records show that over the years he has worked for several of the most conservative Republicans to have served in the Senate, including Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin; Ted Cruz, of Texas; Jim DeMint, of South Carolina; and John Ensign, of Nevada, for whom Jones was briefly a legislative director. In 2016, Jones ran the opposition-research effort for Cruz’s failed Presidential campaign. When I asked Jones for an interview, through the A.A.F.’s online portal, he replied, “Ms. Meyers . . . Go pound sand.” Citing an article that I had written debunking attacks on Bloom Raskin from moneyed interests, including the A.A.F., he said, “You are a liberal hack masquerading as an investigative journalist—and not a very good one.” Jones subsequently posted this comment on his group’s Twitter account, along with my e-mail address and cell-phone number.
A decade ago, Bill Dauster, a Democrat who is now the chief counsel to the Senate Budget Committee, helped Jones organize a bipartisan Torah study group for Jewish congressional staffers. Dauster recalls him as “soft-spoken and cordial,” and finds it hard to reconcile the man he knew with Jones’s current persona. “I find what he appears to have done quite distasteful,” he said.
In interviews with right-wing media outlets, Jones hasn’t been shy about his intentions. Last April, he told Fox News, which called A.A.F.’s tactics “controversial,” that his group wants to “take a big handful of sand and throw it in the gears of the Biden Administration,” making it “as difficult as possible” for the President and his allies on Capitol Hill “to implement their agenda.” When asked why his group was bothering to attack sub-Cabinet-level appointees, he explained that people in “that second tier are really the folks who are going to do the day-to-day work implementing the agenda.”
Last year, an A.A.F. member infiltrated a Zoom training session for congressional staffers about the ethics rules surrounding earmarks—pet spending projects that lawmakers write into the federal budget. The infiltrator asked leading questions during the meeting and then posted a recording of it online. The attempted sting backfired: nothing incriminating was said, and the A.A.F.’s underhanded tactics became the story. Evan Hollander, then the spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, told The Hill that, “for a group that purports to concern itself with ethics, using fake identities, misrepresenting themselves as Congressional staff and surreptitiously recording meetings is hypocritical in the extreme.”
Jones made no apologies. He told Fox News, “I’m never doing anything illegal. But just because it’s impolite to log into an earmark-training seminar and offend the morals of Capitol Hill staff, that’s not going to stop me from doing it.” He added, “If I’ve got to trail someone on the ground to find out what they’re doing, I’m totally going to do it. Because people who are making decisions need to have this information—they need to understand who they are trusting with the reins of government. And sometimes that means we will use unorthodox methods.”
Liberal and conservative political groups habitually scrutinize a prominent nominee’s record or personal life in search of disqualifying faults. But the A.A.F. has taken the practice to extremes, repeatedly spinning negligible tidbits or dubious hearsay into damning narratives. The group recently deployed its unorthodox methods, Politico has reported, while “desperately pursuing dirt” on Lisa Cook, the nominee for the Federal Reserve. Cook, who has been a tenured professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University since 2013, has attracted bipartisan support. Glenn Hubbard, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the George W. Bush Administration, has said, “Cook’s talents as an economic researcher and teacher make her a good nominee for the Fed, adding to diversity of perspectives about policy.” In college, Cook won a Marshall Scholarship. She subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and served as a staff economist on President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. She also held appointments at the National Bureau of Economic Research and at various regional Federal Reserve banks. The A.A.F., though, has portrayed her as unqualified, and suggested that her tenure at Michigan State is undeserved.
On April 13th, Jones sent out the latest of at least three e-mail blasts from the A.A.F. to about fifty of Cook’s colleagues at Michigan State. In the most recent of these messages, which were obtained by The New Yorker, Jones said that Cook “did not warrant” tenure. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, the A.A.F. obtained records showing that the school’s provost had granted Cook full professorship in 2020, overruling a decision not to give her that title the previous year. Jones sent these personnel records to dozens of Cook’s colleagues, and asked, “Are any of you concerned that . . . she’s not good enough to sit on the Federal Reserve Board?” He urged any detractors to “not hesitate to” contact him. Meanwhile, Jones fished for further information by posting a message on an anonymous online gossip forum, Economics Job Market Rumors, which has been decried by one prominent economist as “a cesspool of misogyny.”
Some of the A.A.F.’s attacks on Cook carried racial overtones. Cook had made donations to bail funds for impoverished criminal defendants, including racial-justice protesters who had been arrested; she was following a tradition of activist lawyers in her family, and considered it a form of charity. The A.A.F. argued on Twitter that she had made “racist comments” and “even bailed out rioters who burned down American cities.” Cook’s reputation was sullied enough that the Senate Banking Committee vote on her nomination resulted in a tie, with no Republicans supporting her. Cook’s nomination can still proceed to the Senate floor, but her confirmation remains in limbo, as one conservative news outlet after another repeats the A.A.F.’s talking points. A writer for the Daily Caller, Chris Brunet, said in a Substack column that Cook is a “random economist at Michigan State University who has shamelessly leveraged her skin color and genitalia into gaining the backing of several key White House officials.” Brunet tweeted proudly that his critique had been promoted on Fox News by Tucker Carlson.
The A.A.F.’s treatment of Cook has been mild compared with what several other Biden nominees have gone through. Late last year, Saule Omarova—a leading academic in the field of financial regulation, who is a law professor at Cornell and holds doctorates in law and political science—withdrew her name from consideration as Biden’s Comptroller of the Currency. She did so, she told me, because an opposition-research campaign against her, which the A.A.F. took credit for, had, among other things, falsely portrayed her as a secret communist.
Born in Kazakhstan, in what was then the Soviet Union, Omarova received an undergraduate degree from Moscow State University, but she became a naturalized American citizen in 2005. Yet, during her confirmation hearing, in a moment reminiscent of the Joseph McCarthy era, the Republican Senator John Kennedy, of Louisiana, declared that he didn’t know whether to call her “professor or comrade.” Omarova replied, “Senator, I am not a communist. I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born.” Omarova’s résumé is hardly anti-capitalist: she worked at the corporate law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell and served in George W. Bush’s Treasury Department.
Omarova told me, “There were so many accusations. A.A.F. was at the forefront of making my life extremely and unnecessarily difficult.” The group discovered that Omarova, after she’d read an article in The Economist about potatoes, had tweeted fondly about a time she helped farmers harvest potatoes outside Moscow. The A.A.F. proclaimed that the Biden Administration had “nominated a woman who waxes nostalgic for the good ole days of poverty, hunger, and forced labor in communist Russia.” Conservative outlets pounced on similar tweets about her past. “The A.A.F. made it into this big deal,” she told me. “They said, ‘She wants to make America into the Soviet Union.’ It was a complete absurdity. But people who have no idea who I am jumped in and said, ‘Go back to the Soviet Union!’ ”
Digging into a person’s past—especially someone who isn’t that well known—takes time and money. “Somebody must have paid them a lot,” Omarova said, of the A.A.F. “They went through all my public speeches and academic writings to find any kind of phrase they could use against me.” She’d been featured, along with other professors, in an obscure 2019 documentary based on “Assholes: A Theory,” a whimsical treatise by Aaron James, a philosophy professor at the University of California, Irvine. The A.A.F., without acknowledging the film’s satirical tone, promoted a snippet of Omarova calling the financial-services industry “the quintessential asshole industry.” She told me, “They didn’t cite the film. It made me sound unhinged, nasty, and, like, a rude person.” A compilation of clips from the documentary had been taken off YouTube owing to copyright violations; during the pre-hearing process for Omarova’s nomination, Republican staffers insinuated that she’d personally concealed the footage. “I don’t know what kind of relationship those senators had with A.A.F.,” she told me. “But clearly they knew of that clip.”
Omarova told me that someone went to Moscow to “try to dig up” an undergraduate paper that she’d written on Karl Marx. Opponents also circulated an elementary-school photograph of her wearing the obligatory red kerchief of the Young Pioneers. “They used it to say ‘Look at her, she’s such a devout Communist!’ They were going through my whole life, looking for anything they could smear or frighten me with.”
Omarova disclosed reams of personal information to the Senate, including her compensation as a law professor. Jones then e-mailed her colleagues at Cornell about what he portrayed as her annual salary—but the figure he cited represented nearly two years of pay. In the e-mail, which was obtained by The New Yorker, Jones asks, “Do you think it is appropriate for the university to provide such a large salary to Dr. Omarova?” He invited her colleagues “to share” their “thoughts” with him.
While the hearings were ongoing, the A.A.F. trumpeted a dismissed shoplifting charge against Omarova—omitting the fact that she’d disclosed it herself. She told me that the incident, which came about from a misunderstanding with a security guard, had occurred not long after she had emigrated from Russia—and had led her to become a lawyer. The A.A.F. also accused her of belonging to a Marxist group on Facebook that she was unaware of and had never participated in, and misleadingly edited a comment she’d made about the need to insure economic security for laid-off fossil-fuel workers so that it sounded like an attack on those workers and the industry. “They were saying that I wanted to kill oil-and-gas workers,” she told me. “That’s exactly the opposite of what I was saying.”
Omarova had suggested that it would be good for the environment if America transitioned away from fossil fuels, even if some companies ended up going out of business. She had also called for tougher regulations on banks. These two points likely constituted the true motivation for the opposition she encountered from the Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee. Omarova was soon opposed by every Republican senator, and also five Democrats—led by Jon Tester, of Montana, who has been a major recipient of banking-industry donations. Her nomination was doomed. The A.A.F.’s Web site celebrated the news with the headline “a.a.f. research tanks saule omarova.”
Omarova described the confirmation experience as “soul-crushing.” She went on, “You feel stripped down. You feel your house has been destroyed, and you are standing there in front of everyone looking at you, and they have distorted and twisted everything.” She expressed surprise that, in the United States, spurious controversies could be so easily “manufactured out of nothing.” She added, “I’m a naturalized citizen. I put so much effort to be here, and I embraced this country with all my heart. I came from a place that didn’t have freedom of speech or thought. But this made so personally clear to me how fragile our democracy is.”
Three months after Omarova withdrew her nomination, Sarah Bloom Raskin endured a similar character assassination. Bloom Raskin, a law professor at Duke University, was not a new or untested figure. After graduating from Harvard Law School, she worked as a staffer on the Senate Banking Committee, and she twice won confirmation from the Senate to top economic positions: between 2010 and 2014, she was a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, and during the Obama Administration she served as the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury—becoming, at the time, the highest-ranking woman in the department’s history. Her husband, Representative Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, is a progressive firebrand, but Bloom Raskin is regarded as a moderate in business circles, and has wide support from the banking industry. But, like Omarova, Bloom Raskin offended fossil-fuel companies—in her case, by suggesting that climate change posed a potential economic risk that the Federal Reserve needed to consider.
Rather than debating the merits of such views, the A.A.F. questioned Bloom Raskin’s probity. In February, it filed a complaint to the Office of Congressional Ethics against Jamie Raskin, accusing him of being late in filing a financial report disclosing one and a half million dollars in income that he and his wife had received from her sale of stock. In 2017, Bloom Raskin had been granted stock in a small Colorado trust company founded by a friend; she served on its board after leaving the Obama Administration. Three years later, after Bloom Raskin had left the board, she sold her stock at market price.
Congressional rules require such sales to be disclosed within thirty to forty-five days. The Raskins took eight months. Nonetheless, they had voluntarily disclosed the transaction months before Biden nominated Bloom Raskin to the Fed. And they had explained that in December, 2020, two weeks after the stock sale, their son had died, by suicide. “We were comatose, barely functioning, so of course Jamie didn’t remember to file,” Bloom Raskin told me. “I don’t ask for special treatment, but do these people have no heart?”
Bloom Raskin was taken aback by an A.A.F. statement that cast her and her husband as “career politicians who have used the system to enrich themselves” with “shady” deals. She told me, “When these smears started, they seemed so inconsequential. It didn’t occur to me they’d start manufacturing things.” But, Bloom Raskin said, “I began to get calls from people saying, ‘Someone named Tom Jones, who represented himself as working for a good-government group, was clearly looking for dirt.’ ”
A source knowledgeable about the A.A.F.’s outreach, who asked not to be identified, told me Jones was pushing the baseless narrative that Bloom Raskin had abused her access as a former Fed governor to obtain a special “master account” for the Colorado trust company. The source debunked the claim: all trusts in Colorado that meet certain criteria are eligible for master accounts, which enable speedier financial transactions. “While it’s often true that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, in this case there was an arsonist,” the source told me. Dennis Gingold, a lawyer who co-founded the Colorado trust company, agreed. He called the attacks on Bloom Raskin’s ethics “a pretext,” adding, “It’s one thing to oppose Sarah. It’s another thing to slander her. But they didn’t care.”
The A.A.F. had pipelines to the Republicans on the Banking Committee, and also to conservative media outlets, where attacks on Bloom Raskin began to appear. Senator Pat Toomey, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, demanded that she answer more than a hundred questions in writing, many of them about whether she’d made a phone call to Fed officials to push for the “master account” for the Colorado trust company. If she had made such a call, it would have been mundane, but she couldn’t remember if she had, and said so. Toomey proclaimed that her answer was “evasive.” Bloom Raskin told me, “I was telling the truth at all times. I could have lied and said that I did—the call wouldn’t have been anything wrong. But I just couldn’t remember.” (Though Toomey’s attacks echoed A.A.F. research, a spokesperson for the senator said that any suggestion of coördination was “paranoid conjecture.”)
Bloom Raskin offered to sit down with the Republicans on the Banking Committee, so that she could defuse any outstanding questions. The Democrats also offered to bring in banking regulators who had dealt with the Colorado trust, to clear up any misconceptions. But the Republicans refused to meet with her or the banking regulators. “They wouldn’t let me explain,” Bloom Raskin said. “I realized they wanted me to seem evasive.” At that point, the Republicans had staged a boycott of committee meetings, so that there could be no votes on Bloom Raskin or on Biden’s other nominees to the Fed—including its chair, Jerome Powell—leaving vacancies at the top of the most powerful central bank in the world.
Just as the Democrats on the Banking Committee were preparing to confront the A.A.F.’s claims about Bloom Raskin, West Virginia’s Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, announced that he, too, would not vote for her, effectively capsizing her nomination. In a phone call, Manchin—who has grown rich from the coal industry, and who during the current election cycle has taken more donations from fossil-fuel interests than any other senator—admitted to Bloom Raskin that her position on climate change had turned him against her. She recalls Manchin telling her, “Don’t take it personally—it’s the industry.” (A spokesperson for Manchin declined to comment on the senator’s “private discussions.”) President Biden called Bloom Raskin, too, and described the attacks on her as unfair.
Bloom Raskin told me, “When something like this first happens, you wonder, Did I do something wrong? And then you realize, Of course, you didn’t. But you wonder, Do other people think I did? It’s so disgusting.” She continued, “I think they were afraid I could be effective. I definitely was going to hit the ground running. I knew what I was doing.”
The A.A.F. also claims to have sabotaged the nomination of David Chipman, Biden’s choice to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In the face of strong opposition from gun-rights activists, he withdrew his nomination last September, leaving the agency that regulates guns without a director. (The position has been unfilled for all but two years since 2006, when Senate confirmation for the position became a requirement.)
The A.A.F. compiled for the Senate a twenty-four-page dossier that incoherently accused Chipman, a twenty-five-year veteran of the A.T.F., of being both a racist and a radical social-justice warrior consumed by “wokeness.” The allegations came from anonymous sources. According to Jones, an unidentified A.T.F. agent had reported hearing Chipman say that so many Black candidates had passed an A.T.F. exam that they must have cheated.
Ted Cruz—Jones’s former boss—took up the campaign against Chipman. He and the A.A.F. demanded to see two complaints that had been filed against Chipman with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, even though both had been resolved without disciplinary action. At the same time, the A.A.F.’s dossier contained anonymous allegations claiming that Chipman was a radical “anti-racist” who favored destroying Confederate memorials and wanted to “use fighter jets to bomb” Mount Rushmore and Stone Mountain “into rubble,” because they offended people of color. The A.A.F. even contacted Chipman’s ex-wife in search of evidence against him, but she declined to coöperate.
Chipman told me that the A.A.F.’s modus operandi is to make claims that are “adjacent” to the facts and then “turn them around completely.” Although he had once accused a Black candidate of cheating on an A.T.F. exam that he had proctored, Chipman raised no questions about several other Black candidates who’d passed the same exam. The two dismissed E.E.O.C. complaints were the only ones that had ever been filed against him, he said, and in both cases he’d merely insisted that two subordinates be present for their regular work hours. He did say, on Facebook, that he opposed naming Army bases after Confederate soldiers, and he believes that monuments celebrating them are inappropriate and racially insensitive. But “it was characterized as if I was calling for violence,” he told me, adding, “I never advocated violence or called for anyone to blow up anything. I spent twenty-five years investigating bombings!” Chipman said, “The racial things they used were hugely ugly,” and noted that “the facts don’t matter to these people—they’re just used as weapons.” A protester appeared outside his house; on Twitter, users called for his death. Chipman’s wife, who had worked at the A.T.F. for decades, felt so unsafe at her job that she quit.
Race is also a theme of attacks that the A.A.F. has directed at Carlton Waterhouse, a Black environmental lawyer whom Biden has nominated to become an assistant administrator in the Environmental Protection Agency, overseeing environmental-justice efforts for underserved communities. Waterhouse’s résumé is strong: he studied engineering at Penn State, and has a doctorate in ethics from Emory and a law degree from Howard University, where he helped develop the school’s Environmental Justice Center. On Fox News, however, Jones dismissed Waterhouse as “a racist” who is “obsessed with pushing racially divisive rhetoric and policies into every aspect of public life.”
A dossier that the A.A.F. compiled on Waterhouse states that he “wants to resegregate America’s schools . . . by establishing schools explicitly for Black students.” Yet, in an article the dossier cites as evidence, Waterhouse actually writes that such schools should be “open to all children.” The A.A.F.’s dossier also claims that Waterhouse was “so radical he opposes the Civil Rights Legislation of the 1960’s and 1970’s.” Waterhouse told me that this was a distortion “intended to stir up disapproval.” His criticism of the civil-rights movement was only that it hadn’t gone far enough to establish a framework for reparations. “It’s hateful, and a gross misrepresentation,” he said. Waterhouse has yet to be confirmed, leaving a top environmental-justice job at the agency vacant. The blocking of so many Biden nominees has made it significantly harder for the President and his Administration to enact policies that they were elected to implement. Waterhouse said that he was hopeful and excited about the prospect of getting to work, but added that the A.A.F.’s campaigns were having a chilling effect: “People won’t want to serve, because your name will be dragged through the mud.”
As Jones has portrayed it, his group is merely catching up with the sleazy tactics of progressive dark-money groups—which, he claims, went to great lengths to try to block Cabinet nominees during the Trump Administration, not to mention conservative Supreme Court nominees such as Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. Of course, neither Thomas nor Kavanaugh were felled by anonymous slurs during their nomination hearings; they were credibly and directly confronted by female victims who accused them, in sworn testimony, of sexual misconduct.
Nan Aron, the former head of Alliance for Justice, a progressive group that led the charge against both Thomas and Kavanaugh, acknowledged that, over the years, her group had scoured the records, finances, and personal lives of nominees it opposed. The crucial difference, she said, was that “it wasn’t the groups that were manufacturing” the scandals which plagued the nominees. As she put it, “None of the groups were looking for Christine Blasey Ford—no one made phone calls to find her.”
Ford, who maintains that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school, reached out directly to Democrats in Congress. The ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, Dianne Feinstein, sent an emissary to evaluate Ford’s claims and declined to make them public, but by then Ford had voiced her complaints to enough people that the word spread to reporters, including to me and Ronan Farrow, another writer at this magazine. Some conservatives have tried to establish a false equivalence between conventional reporting and the mudslinging directed at Ketanji Brown Jackson. But Ford testified in Congress against Kavanaugh. A second woman who accused him of sexual misconduct on the record, Deborah Ramirez, offered to speak to the F.B.I. (Kavanaugh strongly denied the allegations against him during his own congressional testimony.)
Notably, the A.A.F.’s campaigns against Biden nominees have produced no witnesses or alleged victims who have testified before Congress. And some of the group’s accusations have been summarily rejected by outside authorities. The New York Attorney Grievance Committees curtly declined a demand by the A.A.F. that they investigate Biden’s nominee for general counsel of the Navy, John P. (Sean) Coffey, whom the A.A.F. had accused of engaging in “an unethical pay-to-play scheme” when his law firm represented pension funds. In a four-paragraph response to Jones, obtained by The New Yorker, the chief attorney for the legal group declined to take action, noting, “You provide no evidence.”
Brian Fallon, the co-founder and executive director of Demand Justice—a progressive nonprofit dark-money group that has become a target of conservative critics, because it scrutinizes the records of right-leaning judicial nominees—told me, “It sounds as if this group is reverse-engineering the process. It’s almost like they’re trying to create the story line as opposed to finding a dry fact”—and then “trying to get people to give voice to the narrative.” His group conducts opposition research, too, but he said that it was “ham-fisted and sloppy” to post requests for dirt on anonymous message boards or to send mass e-mails to a nominee’s colleagues. “Most opposition researchers on our side would worry about using such tactics,” he said. “Because people are so quick to play the victim, they’d worry about becoming the story.”
Fallon said that crumbs of negative information about high-profile nominees can always be found, but unless the facts pass “the smell test of being in good faith,” and can hold up under the scrutiny of experts and the press, they aren’t worth much. During the closely watched confirmation hearings of Jackson, he argued, the mud stained mainly those who threw it; the senators who lobbed the sex-offender accusations “oozed bad faith, and were lambasted” to the point that the critique “wasn’t adopted by the Republican Party at large.” In the end, Jackson secured three Republican votes and “emerged from the hearings with higher approval ratings.” He said, of the A.A.F., “They may be taking a victory lap, but their opposition research backfired.” The A.A.F.’s strategy, however, has proved more damaging when deployed on nominees whose hearings receive less attention. Such people are easier to smear because charges against them are often not properly scrutinized.
The A.A.F. describes itself as a champion of transparency, but it declines to reveal the sources of its funding. Its official mailing address is a handsome historic building a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. But when I stopped by there recently, to ask for the group’s basic financial records—which all tax-exempt nonprofits are legally required to produce—a woman at the lobby’s front desk said there was no such group at that address. Instead, the building is occupied by a different nonprofit group: the Conservative Partnership Institute, which serves as a kind of Isle of Elba for Trump loyalists in exile. It has become the employer of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and of Trump’s former ad-hoc legal adviser Cleta Mitchell, both of whom are fighting subpoenas from the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Cameron Seward, the general counsel of the Conservative Partnership Institute, appeared in the lobby and assured me that there was no relationship between his group and the A.A.F. Yet documents that the A.A.F. filed with the I.R.S. in 2021, to secure its tax-exempt status, describe the group as existing “in care of” C.P.I. Moreover, C.P.I.’s 2021 annual report notes that it launched the A.A.F. because “conservatives didn’t have a group performing research on Biden’s woke nominees—even though plenty of liberal groups were digging up (or manufacturing) dirt on our side.” The groups have several overlapping directors, including Jones, who sits on both boards. The A.A.F. told the I.R.S. that its mission is to conduct nonpartisan research, but it is curious that the largest contribution by far to its parent group, C.P.I., is a million-dollar “charitable contribution” from Save America—Trump’s political-action committee. Trump reportedly raised much of the pac’s money from supporters after his 2020 defeat, and his campaign has called the group an “election defense fund.”
Save America made its contribution to C.P.I. a few months after Meadows joined the group. Meadows’s son, Blake, an associate attorney at the Georgia law firm Foster, Foster, & Smith, appears to be involved with C.P.I., too: his name appears in a lawsuit filed last month on behalf of the A.A.F. against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Matthew Buckham, the A.A.F. co-founder, also has a Trump connection: he worked at the White House during his Administration, in the personnel office. (His father, Ed Buckham, is chief of staff to Marjorie Taylor Greene.)
It’s a great advantage to be able to treat opposition research as a tax-exempt charitable expense rather than as, say, a campaign cost. On March 21st, Paul Teller, the executive director of an advocacy group that serves as former Vice-President Mike Pence’s political operation, gave a lecture to Christian pastors in which he said, of the A.A.F., “I’m just in love with these guys!” Teller enthused, “They are just taking it to every Biden-Harris nominee that comes across to Congress,” adding, “Some of the stuff that we’re fighting with the Supreme Court nominee Jackson came from our friends at the American Accountability Foundation.” He went on, “We’re partnering, we’re collaborating.” Teller’s group is widely seen as promoting a potential Pence campaign for President in 2024.
When the A.A.F. applied for its tax-exempt status, it portrayed itself, under penalty of perjury, as a nonpartisan charity that would neither participate in political campaigns nor try to influence legislation. As a tax-exempt nonprofit dark-money organization, Jones’s group isn’t required to publicly disclose its donors, so it’s impossible to know all the sources of its funding. Clearly, though, it has big ambitions. In its I.R.S. filing, the A.A.F. submitted revenue projections that predict its budget as six hundred thousand dollars in 2021, a million dollars in 2022, and one and a half million dollars in 2023.
Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and Trump critic at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, believes that the A.A.F. is doing “frightening, sleazy stuff” with serious implications. Not only is the group creating needless vacancies in important Administration positions; it is intimidating well-qualified people from wanting to undergo the nomination process. “It’s tough enough to get top-flight people in government,” Ornstein said. “But, if you also have to go through a well-funded, well-oiled slime machine, it’s really an attack on government.”
oops but interesting swamp contrast?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/aftermath-sixteen-writers-on-trumps-america
During the Presidential primaries, Donald Trump mocked his Republican rivals as “puppets” for flocking to a secretive fund-raising session sponsored by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire co-owners of the energy conglomerate Koch Industries. Affronted, the Koch brothers, whose political spending has made their name a shorthand for special-interest clout, withheld their financial support from Trump. But on Tuesday night David Koch was reportedly among the revellers at Trump’s victory party in a Hilton Hotel in New York.
Trump campaigned by attacking the big donors, corporate lobbyists, and political-action committees as “very corrupt.” In a tweet on October 18th, he promised, “I will Make Our Government Honest Again—believe me. But first I’m going to have to #DrainTheSwamp.” His DrainTheSwamp hashtag became a rallying cry for supporters intent on ridding Washington of corruption. But Ann Ravel, a Democratic member of the Federal Elections Commission who has championed reform of political money, says that “the alligators are multiplying.”
Many of Trump’s transition-team members are the corporate insiders he vowed to disempower. On Friday, Vice-President-elect Mike Pence, the new transition-team chair, announced that Marc Short, who until recently ran Freedom Partners, the Kochs’ political-donors group, would serve as a “senior adviser.” The influence of the Kochs and their allies is particularly clear in the areas of energy and the environment. The few remarks Trump made on these issues during the campaign reflected the fondest hopes of the oil, gas, and coal producers. He vowed to withdraw from the international climate treaty negotiated last year in Paris, remove regulations that curb carbon emissions, legalize oil drilling and mining on federal lands and in seas, approve the Keystone XL pipeline, and weaken the Environmental Protection Agency.
For policy and personnel advice regarding the Department of Energy, Trump is relying on Michael McKenna, the president of the lobbying firm MWR Strategies. McKenna’s clients include Koch Companies Public Sector, a division of Koch Industries. According to Politico, McKenna also has ties to the American Energy Alliance and its affiliate, the Institute for Energy Research. These nonprofit groups purport to be grassroots organizations, but they run ads advocating corporate-friendly energy policies, without disclosing their financial backers. In 2012, Freedom Partners gave $1.5 million to the American Energy Alliance.
Michael Catanzaro, a partner at the lobbying firm CGCN Group, is the head of Trump’s energy transition team, and has been mentioned as a possible energy czar. Among his clients are Koch Industries and Devon Energy Corporation, a gas-and-oil company that has made a fortune from vertical drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Another widely discussed candidate is Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of the shale-oil company Continental Resources, who is a major contributor to the Kochs’ fund-raising network. Wenona Hauter, of Food and Water Watch, says that Hamm has “done all he can to subvert the existing rules and regulations.”
Myron Ebell, an outspoken climate-change skeptic, heads Trump’s transition team for the E.P.A. Ebell runs the energy-and-environmental program at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an anti-regulatory Washington think tank that hides its sources of financial support but has been funded by fossil-fuel companies, including Exxon-Mobil and Koch Industries. David Schnare, a self-described “free-market environmentalist” who has accused the E.P.A. of having “blood on its hands,” is a member of the E.P.A. working group. Schnare is the director of the Center for Energy and the Environment at the Thomas Jefferson Institute, part of a nationwide consortium of anti-government, pro-industry think tanks. He is also the general counsel at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, which has received funding from coal companies. In 2011, Schnare started hounding the climate scientist Michael Mann, who had been a professor at the University of Virginia, by filing public-records requests demanding to see his unpublished research and his private e-mails. The legal wrangling tied up Mann’s work until 2014, when the Virginia Supreme Court ordered Schnare to desist. The Union of Concerned Scientists has described these actions against climate scientists as “harassment.”
Norman Eisen, who devised strict conflict-of-interest rules while acting as Obama’s ethics czar, says, “If you have people on the transition team with deep financial ties to the industries to be regulated, it raises questions about whether they are serving the public interest or their own interests.” He ruled out Obama transition-team members who would have had a conflict of interest in their assigned areas, or even the appearance of one. “We weren’t perfect,” he said. “But we tried to level the playing field because, let’s face it, in the Beltway nexus of corporations and dark money, lobbyists are the delivery mechanism for special-interest influence. ”
Questions to Trump’s transition team about its conflict-of-interest rules went unanswered, as did questions to the lobbyists and industry heads involved. But the composition of the group runs counter to a set of anti-lobbyist proposals that Trump released in October, to be enacted in his first hundred days. It called for a five-year ban on White House and congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave public office, and a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying for a foreign government.
The tenth item on the list of proposals is the Clean Up Corruption in Washington Act, which would implement “new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.” Trevor Potter, who served as the commissioner of the F.E.C. under George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and is now the president of the Campaign Legal Center, described Trump’s ethics proposals as “quite interesting, and quite helpful.” He was puzzled, though, by the vagueness of the “Drain the Swamp” act. “It’s a complete black box so far,” Potter said.
Potter wondered if Trump’s lack of specificity reflected internal divisions. He noted that Don McGahn, who served as the Trump campaign’s attorney, is an opponent of almost all campaign-finance restrictions. “Many on the transition team are registered lobbyists who are deeply invested in the system Trump says he wants to change,” Potter said. “It looks like the lobbyists and special interests are already taking over.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/in-the-mueller-report-erik-prince-funds-a-covert-effort-to-obtain-clintons-e-mails-from-a-foreign-state
erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater, a former private-security company embroiled in controversy surrounding its use of lethal force against civilians in Iraq, makes a strange cameo appearance in the redacted version of the Mueller report, which was released on Thursday morning. Prince, who is the brother of Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education, is described as having provided some funding for a secretive effort to obtain Hillary Clinton’s private e-mails from shadowy operatives working on the so-called dark Web.
According to the report, Prince “provided funding to hire a tech advisor to ascertain the authenticity” of e-mails that conservative activists had obtained. Prince, who was interviewed by the special counsel’s team, said that the cache of e-mails in question turned out to be fakes.
The report, however, details a strange effort by Trump-campaign associates to hack into Clinton and the Democrats’ e-mail accounts that paralleled the Russian plot. According to Mueller, the effort began as early as December, 2015, and ramped up after Trump publicly declared, on July 27, 2016, that he hoped Russia would “find the thirty thousand e-mails that are missing” from Clinton’s private e-mail server. Mueller and his team never interviewed Trump, but the retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn, the campaign aide whom Trump later appointed his national-security adviser, told them that Trump repeatedly asked to get Clinton’s e-mails. According to the report, Flynn tried to do this by contacting multiple people who might be able to supply them, including two well-placed conservative operatives, Peter Smith and Barbara Ledeen.
Smith, an investment banker and Republican donor, had helped finance an investigation of Bill Clinton’s sexual relationships in Arkansas, leading to the 1993 Troopergate scandal. Ledeen, a Republican Senate staffer, worked for Chuck Grassley. Grassley was then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and one of the fiercest defenders of Trump and critics of the Russia investigation. Barbara Ledeen’s husband, Michael Ledeen, had co-authored a book with Flynn. A spokesman for Grassley’s office described Barbara Ledeen’s efforts as her private pursuit, rather than an official effort undertaken by the senator’s office.
In December, 2015, Ledeen e-mailed Smith a proposal to obtain Clinton’s private e-mails, which, she claimed, “were classified” and had been “purloined by our enemies.” According to Mueller’s report, the proposal claimed that the “Clinton email server was, in all likelihood, breached long ago,’ and that the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian intelligence services could ‘re-assemble the server’s email content.’ ” In an account of Ledeen’s efforts, the Guardian cited notes by federal investigators that said her motive was concern for the well-being of her children, who have served in the U.S. military, and whose safety, she suggested, could have been undermined if Clinton’s e-mails had fallen into hostile governments’ hands. But, in her e-mails to Smith, as revealed by the Mueller report, Ledeen appears more focussed on partisan politics. She writes, “if even a single email was recovered and the providence [sic] of the email was a foreign service, it would be catastrophic to the Clinton campaign.”
The report shows that, though Smith declined to participate in the project at first, Ledeen went ahead and obtained a cache of e-mails. After Trump publicly called for help in getting Clinton’s e-mails, Smith initiated his own effort and circulated information about it to members of Trump’s campaign. According to Mueller’s report, in August, 2016, “Smith sent an email from an encrypted account with the subject ‘Sec Clinton’s unsecured private email server’ ” to recipients including the Trump-campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis. Smith reported that he was involved in efforts “to poke and probe on the above,” and that the Clinton’s server had been “hacked with ease by both State-related players and private mercenaries.”
Smith set up an L.L.C. for the project and structured it as an “independent expenditure group” that, under campaign law, could not coördinate with the Trump campaign, yet Smith circulated e-mails saying that his initiative was “in coordination with” the Trump campaign “to the extent permitted” by the law. The New Yorker obtained a document from Smith, from September, 2016, in which he claimed that he was working with the Trump-campaign representatives Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sam Clovis, and Michael Flynn, and also with the Republican National Committee, Judicial Watch, Citizens United, and the conservative activist James O’Keefe. There is no evidence that any of these individuals were, in fact, working with Smith. But the Mueller report’s depiction of Smith, Ledeen, Flynn, and Prince’s efforts suggests that Trump and his immediate campaign orbit were deeply intent on obtaining Clinton’s private e-mails during the period when Russia was hacking into them.
In September, 2016, Smith and Ledeen rejoined forces, at which point Prince provided some of the funding for the operation. Mueller’s team obtained files from Smith’s computer showing that Smith had documents that WikiLeaks had stolen from the computer of the Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta, though Mueller found no conclusive evidence that Smith had obtained the stolen files prior to WikiLeaks’s public release of them. (Smith died in May, 2017, in what was ruled a suicide.)
In his remarks prior to releasing the report, Attorney General William Barr stressed that it is not criminal to disseminate stolen information, such as the e-mails that the Russians hacked from the Democrats during the 2016 campaign, so long as those spreading the stolen information were not involved in the initial theft. It appears that the Attorney General’s definition of the criminal law was narrow and careful for a reason—many Trump-campaign supporters were involved in tiptoeing right up to the line.
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Meet the Team - American Accountability Foundationhttps://www.americanaccountabilityfoundation.com › m...
Tom Jones previously ran the opposition research program for Cruz for President, served as Legislative Director to Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), Senior Policy ...
About - American Accountability Foundationhttps://www.americanaccountabilityfoundation.com › a...
AAF is led by Tom Jones and Matt Buckham. Tom has two decades of political, policy, research, and investigations experience serving in senior legislative ...
American Accountability Foundation - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › American_Accountabil...
The American Accountability Foundation (AAF) is an American conservative opposition research group founded in 2020 that has opposed nominees to the Joe ...
American Accountability Foundation Shows How Right-Wing ...https://www.esquire.com › news-politics › politics › dar...
Apr 20, 2022 — The American Accountability Foundation is a dark-money operation founded by the former oppo guy for the presidential campaign of Tailgunner ...
Stephen Klebs on Twitter: "@FoxNews Tom Jones, founder of ...https://twitter.com › stephenklebs › status
Tom Jones, founder of the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), told Fox News in an interview. "Our goal is to take a big handful of sand and throw it ...
The Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nomineeshttps://www.newyorker.com › News › Politics
Apr 16, 2022 — During the autos-da-fé that now pass for Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate, it's common for supporters of a nominee to ...
American Accountability Foundation - SourceWatchhttps://www.sourcewatch.org › title=American_Account...
AAF Spread Misleading Claims about SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. In alignment with a widespread misconception popularized by Republicans, AAF released a ...
Conservatives crow over ATF withdrawal - Axioshttps://www.axios.com › Politics & Policy
Sep 13, 2021 — Even before President Biden formally withdrew his nominee to be the nation's top firearm regulator on Monday, a new conservative opposition ...
New conservative group wields unorthodox tactics to block ...https://www.foxnews.com › politics › new-conservative-g...
Apr 13, 2021 — Former Speaker of the House and Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich analyzes the Democrats' nearly $2T coronavirus stimulus package. A new ...
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American Accountability Foundation
October 7 ·
ICYMI: AAF Files Bar Complaints Against DOJ Attorney - https://mailchi.mp/americanaccoun.../big-week-at-aaf-9446141
American Accountability Foundation
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American Accountability Foundation
Exposing BidenNoms.com
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American Accountability Foundation
September 23 ·
Elon Musk took notice of us! - https://mailchi.mp/americanaccoun.../big-week-at-aaf-9441809
American Accountability Foundation
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American Accountability Foundation
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Norman Finkle
MAGAt Hide Out
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American Accountability Foundation
September 16 ·
Did Biden DOJ Voting Attorney... VOTE ILLEGALLY?! - https://mailchi.mp/americanaccoun.../big-week-at-aaf-9374781
American Accountability Foundation
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American Accountability Foundation
Exposing BidenNoms.com
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Norman Finkle
MAGAt Hide Out
YOUTUBE.COM
MAGAt Hide Out
MAGAt Hide Out
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American Accountability Foundation
September 2 ·
Your Investment Portfolio is Probably Funding Wacko Climate Policies - https://mailchi.mp/americanaccoun.../big-week-at-aaf-9371733
American Accountability Foundation
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American Accountability Foundation
Exposing BidenNoms.com
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American Accountability Foundation
August 29 ·
ALERT: AAF to File Suit Against New York State Office of the Attorney General If Audit Records Not Released - https://mailchi.mp/americanaccoun.../big-week-at-aaf-9370689
American Accountability Foundation
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American Accountability Foundation
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American Accountability Foundation
August 19 ·
She should be fired! - https://mailchi.mp/americanaccoun.../big-week-at-aaf-8930473
American Accountability Foundation
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American Accountability Foundation
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Desiree Martinez
Great job on petition and sanction!!! TY
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American Accountability Foundation
July 29 ·
No silly Congressman, you can't pay for that with campaign funds! - https://mailchi.mp/americanaccoun.../big-week-at-aaf-8926741
American Accountability Foundation
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American Accountability Foundation
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American Accountability Foundation
April 8 ·
Dara Lindenbaum was responsible for "campaign finance" for now convicted felon and former Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh. She would shift the FEC in a radically progressive direction.
How is someone entangled in so much fraud eligible for safeguarding our nation's election system?
'It Depends': Biden's FEC Pick Won't Say If Stolen Election Claims Undermine Democracy - Washington Free Beacon
FREEBEACON.COM
'It Depends': Biden's FEC Pick Won't Say If Stolen Election Claims Undermine Democracy - Washington Free Beacon
President Joe Biden's pick to serve on the Federal Election Commission refused to say on Wednesday afternoon whether "stolen election" claims undermine faith in democracy, saying "it depends on the context."
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Linda McMillan
This organization is a “slime machine” to spread Trump lies
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American Accountability Foundation
April 8 ·
ICYMI → Our team recently discovered 6 nominees who made sizable donations to then-candidate Joe Biden.
This begs the question: did these nominees buy their ambassadorship? AAF is committed to holding the Biden Administration accountable.
Biden ambassador nominees made substantial political donations, escalating decades-long bipartisan trend
FOXNEWS.COM
Biden ambassador nominees made substantial political donations, escalating decades-long bipartisan trend
Government watchdog American Accountability Foundation has published data showing contributions to various political campaigns from multiple ambassador nominees totaling in the millions.
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Richard Saltonstall
U.S. citizens who subscribe to dis information are being manipulated. American Accountability, Fox, One America among others are not news.
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American Accountability Foundation
March 31 ·
BREAKING: The Senate formally REJECTED David Weil's nomination for DOL's Wage and Hour Division administrator.
AAF was proud to be a part of the effort to keep an anti-small business, unethical hypocrite out of our federal government.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/.../senate-turns-back-david...
Senate Turns Back David Weil as Labor’s Top Wage-Hour Enforcer
NEWS.BLOOMBERGLAW.COM
Senate Turns Back David Weil as Labor’s Top Wage-Hour Enforcer
The Senate Wednesday turned back President Joe Biden’s nomination of David Weil as the U.S. Department of Labor’s top wage-hour regulator.
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Paul Williamson
The AAC smeared David Weil with made up stories . They are Putin's best asset in the US.
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American Accountability Foundation
March 22 ·
“Any repeated criminal behavior or repeated attacks bother me."
Did Ketanji Brown Jackson say the same thing while trying to keep repeat offender and murderer, Vaughn Kosh, on the streets?
22 Comments
Kathy Backlund
Ketanji Jackson should not be any kind of judge, especially a Supreme Court Judge!! She is obviously biased and is going to be another activist judge.
We need judges who will follow and believe in the Constitution!
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American Accountability Foundation
March 21 ·
Anyone who supports Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination is condoning her record of representing murderers like Vaughn Kosh and letting sex predators off the hook.
Sen. Hawley warns of Biden SCOTUS pick's 'long record' of letting child porn offenders 'off the hook'
FOXNEWS.COM
Sen. Hawley warns of Biden SCOTUS pick's 'long record' of letting child porn offenders 'off the hook'
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley posted a lengthy Twitter thread Wednesday containing several examples that he says demonstrates an “alarming” pattern of lenient treatment of sex offenders who prey on children from Biden Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
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Kathy Backlund
If only these close minded people, who obviously only watch the DemocRats mainstream media, would watch many channels...then decide who you think is telling the truth and who is trying to ruin our beautiful country! At the same time they are ruining ou… See more
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American Accountability Foundation
March 21 ·
BREAKING: AAF research uncovers Ketanji Brown Jackson's previous representation of longtime criminal and murderer, Vaughn Kosh.
Between her soft-on-crime approach and partisan politics, it is clear that Judge Brown Jackson is the wrong choice for SCOTUS.
https://townhall.com/.../the-way-scotus-nominee-ketanji...
The Way SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Handled Her Role as Public Defender Also Raises Questions
TOWNHALL.COM
The Way SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Handled Her Role as Public Defender Also Raises Questions
This week, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of her confirmation hearings to decide if she will serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Part
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Gary Davis
The A.A.F. describes itself as a champion of transparency, but it declines to reveal the sources of its funding. Its official mailing address is a handsome historic building a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. But when I stopped by there recently, to a… See more
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Democrats need to get serious about combatting and evading slime
This edition of the Revolving Door Project newsletter was originally published on our Substack. View and subscribe here.
Here at Revolving Door Project, we spend a significant portion of our time working to explain how and why executive branch positions matter. Our team members have collectively published tens of thousands of words detailing the tools executive agencies have to help regular people and insisting that this administration make full use of them.
And yet, one of the clearest illustrations of our case to date came in the form of a New Yorker profile on the American Accountability Foundation published over the weekend. AAF is the right-wing “slime machine” that “aims to thwart the entire Biden slate” of nominees. Although most likely hadn’t heard of the group prior to this weekend, anyone who follows politics will be familiar with its work which has included driving some of the ugliest attacks against nominees such as Saule Omarova, Lisa Cook, and Sarah Bloom Raskin. For AAF, attacking nominees is a way to “‘take a big handful of sand and throw it in the gears of the Biden Administration,’ making it ‘as difficult as possible’ for the President and his allies on Capitol Hill “to implement their agenda.” And it hasn’t just targeted the highest profile roles because, as founder and director Tom Jones told Fox News last spring, “that second tier are really the folks who are going to do the day-to-day work implementing the agenda.”
This is a point that we’ve sought to emphasize throughout our work: while Democrats and progressives have all too often ignored the potential of executive branch action, corporations and those working on their behalf devote significant resources to shaping executive policy and appointments in their favor. It would appear, however, that the Biden administration failed to take that lesson to heart. By all accounts, the White House was ill-prepared to combat the slime that AAF has unleashed. Its defense of nominees like Omarova, for example, was famously pitiful. Its biggest mistake, however, arguably came much earlier. The President should have followed our repeated advice and moved with urgency to name all critical nominees right out of the gate, when they could still benefit from his post-inauguration momentum. With each passing month, the White House’s position has only grown weaker, making each nominee’s path to confirmation steeper.
But, unfortunately, there’s no turning back the clock now, so the administration will have to do its best with the reality as it is now. That means mounting a more formidable defense for nominees who are currently being subjected to horrendous right wing attacks (see: Gigi Sohn, nominee to the Federal Communications Commission). It also means recommitting to filling all remaining non-Senate-confirmed vacancies with the best possible candidates.
Senate Democratic leadership could also help relieve the pressure on existing nominees. The glacial pace of Senate confirmation proceedings has provided AAF ample time to generate and propagate bogus narratives. As we’ve written before, Senate Majority Leader Schumer could reduce the time AAF has to, to paraphrase, throw sand in the administration’s gears by moving to reduce the amount of floor time the Senate must allocate for each nominee.
Personnel
In a series of back and forth reporting volleys that left heads spinning, White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy has confirmed that she is not, in fact, stepping down from her role as Joe Biden’s climate advisor…for now. News of McCarthy’s departure and her attempts to downplay an eleventh hour exit marked the beginning of the end for many of the advisors who weathered a tumultuous freshman year in Biden’s White House. A major shake up is on the way, with Democrats in competitive House districts retiring in waves and Biden officials wary of a GOP-controlled congress lining up an exodus of their own.
With future Biden cabinet officials likely facing a confirmation blockade by the imminent Republican Senate majority, non-Senate confirmed appointments like McCarthy’s will take on even greater importance, serving as the few roles Biden has full control over seating in his administration.
As November approaches, the Beltway press has picked up on the conservative consensus rearing its head in the Biden White House that elevating moderate policy positions and personnel are critical to wooing swing voters in the upcoming elections. But positioning centrists like Michael Barr, Gina Raimondo, and predicted McCarthy successor Ali Zaidi to assume ever more control in the post-midterm administration will do little to help the Biden administration succeed. In fact, such appointments are likely only to move the administration further from enacting popular policies that have a shot at extricating Biden from dismal approval ratings, especially given his break from campaign promises on fossil fuel leasing and student debt cancellation. As Elizabeth Warren wrote in the New York Times, there is still a narrowing path for Democrats To Avoid Disaster in November, but only if Biden uses his executive authority to lead the charge.
Governance
Some agencies are working hard to ensure their impact is felt quickly. Just last week, for example, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) lawyer filed a brief asking the Board to reverse a number of anti-labor precedents. If the board obliges, workers will face many fewer obstacles on the path to union formation and recognition. Or, as Harold Meyerson wrote for The American Prospect, “Should the Board vote to uphold these arguments, the legal playing field for employer-employee relations, which has tilted steeply toward management for the past 50 years, would be considerably evened out.”
Other agencies, however, have been far less zealous advocates for the public interest. The White House should focus its energy on deploying these untapped tools over the coming months. Over the weekend, the New York Times Editorial Board laid out some of the steps that the new Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office can take to combat widespread abuse in the patent system and, in the process, bring down inflated drug prices. As many environmental advocates have pointed out, the administration also has numerous options to genuinely begin providing relief from rising fuel prices in the short and long-term. Instead, it has opted to unnecessarily provide concessions to the fossil fuel industry by reopening oil and gas lease sales on public lands, a change that is likely to have zero impact on supply.
The administration should undoubtedly target problems like these that are inflicting the most pain on working families, but it also need not limit itself to them. Taking on persistent nuisances, like robocalls or airline cancellations, could also pay political dividends.
Corporate Crackdown
Think tanks, policy councils, formal advisors, informal advisors, congressional committees, and entire government research offices are some of the plausible resources Joe Biden has at his disposal for measured and effective policy advice on subjects ranging from climate change to tax policy. It is striking then that despite the glut of anointed policy experts and life-time government officials, Biden has turned at regular intervals to big businesses and its respective influence networks to set policy that can only work if it regulates the very corporations now producing it.
As Time wrote last week, “Across the Biden Administration, and around the world, government officials have increasingly focused their attention on the private sector—treating companies not just as entities to regulate but also as core partners.” This high order public private partnership has seen Brian Deese, once the dedicated greenwasher at the multinational investment leviathan BlackRock, assume the helm of the National Economic Council, pharmaceutical firms like Pfizer and Moderna reap billions in tax-payer subsidies only to advise against critical pandemic-ending patent sharing with developing nations, and even a Secretary of Commerce more intent on taking advice from big tech monopolies than trust busting them.
As our team at RDP detailed in the latest Industry Agenda Report, corporate “solutions” like carbon offsets have emerged concurrently with the energy industry polluting faster and stronger than ever before, while at the same time offering a convenient cover for politicians taking fossil fuel cash, and executives adapting to a greenwashed media landscape. In the past month, Biden has signaled a massive push to increase rare earth metal extraction while also changing the rules that regulate mining (they haven’t been updated since the 1800’s), giving electric car manufacturers and all those involved in their production prime seats at the planning table. The dash to convert to EV’s is better than nothing on the climate front, but car manufacturers and mining companies shouldn’t dictate the pace and policy of the forward charge.
At RDP, we are continuing to track the Biden administrations successful efforts to crackdown on corporate crimes, whether through toughened regulatory agencies like the SEC and FTC, or with sweeping executive actions like those released last summer to spur competition and reel in corporations failing to address the supply chain breakdowns swelling their profits while leaving consumers in the lurch. You can read more about hits and misses in our corporate crackdown series here.
Thanks to Dan Boguslaw for his contributions to this edition.
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
Michael Barr is the Wrong Man to Stop the Next Financial Crisis
How The Department Of Commerce Can Combat Economic Malaise
The Return of Michael Barr
After Progressive Pick Forced Out, Biden Taps Crypto-Linked Michael Barr for Top Bank Regulator Job
Biden to Nominate Michael Barr as Fed Vice Chair for Supervision
Amazon’s Union-Buster Consultants Are Also Consultants for Major Labor Unions
Biden Plays It Safe With Pick For Fed Supervision Chief
The good news about the worst CPI since Volcker
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RDP Meets Its Evil Twin
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AAF is the right-wing “slime machine” that “aims to thwart the entire Biden ... as founder and director Tom Jones told Fox News last spring, “that second ...
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Jul 10, 2022 — Trump: "CPI is helping to build out the vital infrastructure we need ... American Accountability Foundation: Tom Jones, Ted Cruz's 2016 oppo ...
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