gooden, lance Rep
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pow mofo pending
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:3 25 sotu
A lawmaker holds a 'This is not normal' sign as
Trump enters, before it is snatched from her hands
Democrat Melanie Stansbury, representative from New Mexico, was seen holding up the sign as Trump was greeting delegates upon arrival in the Congress chamber.
Seconds later, Republican Lance Gooden, representative from Texas, yanked it out of her hands, sending the sign flying up and falling to the ground.
The partisan rancour was reflective of the tumult that has accompanied Trump's first six weeks in office, as he upended U.S. foreign policy, ignited a trade war with close allies and slashed the federal workforce.
..the hill
Stansbury, a New Mexico native, first took national office in 2021, filling a seat vacated when Rep. Deb Haaland was tapped as former President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Interior.
Before joining the House of Representatives, she served in the state legislature as a Senate committee staffer and in the White House Office of Management and Budget. Her platform positions include protecting natural resources, fighting climate change and addressing food insecurity.
Since Trump took office in January, Stansbury has advocated for containing the measles outbreak (which is growing in New Mexico) and protecting programs serving Native American tribes....
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nyp bs
GOP lawmaker rips ‘This is not normal’ sign out of protesting Dem rep’s hands before Trump speech
By
Published March 4, 2025
GOP lawmaker grabs 'This is not normal' sign out of Dem reps hands ahead of Trump's speech
A Republican congressional lawmaker ripped a sign protesting President Trump out of the hands of one of his Democratic colleagues Tuesday in a dramatic scene that played out just moments before the commander in chief’sspeech to a joint session of Congress.
“This is not normal,” read the paper sign held up by Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM).
Stansbury, who has represented New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District since 2021, positioned her handwritten message in the direction of TV cameras as Trump walked down the House chamber aisle to deliver his address.
Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) ripped the small paper sign out of Stansbury’s hands shortly after she displayed it and tossed it into the air. CNN
The sign was only visible for a few seconds before Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) noticed it and ripped the sheet of paper out of Stansbury’s hands.
Gooden, who has represented Texas’ 5th District since 2019, then tossed the sign into the air.
Explore More
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Rep. Al Green threatened with censure for heckling Trump during joint session of Congress
Democrats mercilessly mocked for protesting Trump speech with paddles: ‘It is giving bingo!’
Trump was just feet in front of the disturbance.
It’s not clear whether the president noticed the small commotion behind him.
“This is not normal. We will resist,” Stansbury wrote on X after her demonstration.
Meanwhile, Gooden argued that “Putting the American people FIRST is normal.”
“No one will disrespect President [Trump] in front of me,” he added in an X post.
“It’s not normal for men to play in women’s sports. It’s not normal for children to have gender surgery. It’s not normal for tax dollars to fund trans mice. What today’s Democrat Party stands for is not normal, Melanie,” Gooden wrote in a separate post.
Trump was just feet in front of the disturbance, and it’s not clear whether he noticed it.via REUTERS
Stansbury’s sign wasone of several acts of protest inside the House chamber during the president’s speech.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) repeatedly interrupted Trump early on during his speech – waving around his cane and shouting at the commander in chief.
Initially, Trump tried to speak over the 77-year-old congressman, but Green persisted, shouting, “You don’t have a mandate.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) eventually intervened and directed the sergeant-at-arms to “restore order” and remove Green from the chamber.
Green was eventually escorted out by the House sergeant-at-arms.
Several other Democratic lawmakers shouted at Trump at various points in his speech but none were as disruptive as Green.
Some Democrats in black “Resist” T-shirts left the proceedings early. Many were also spotted on their phones, largely ignoring Trump’s remarks.
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..the hill
Stansbury, a New Mexico native, first took national office in 2021, filling a seat vacated when Rep. Deb Haaland was tapped as former President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Interior.
Before joining the House of Representatives, she served in the state legislature as a Senate committee staffer and in the White House Office of Management and Budget. Her platform positions include protecting natural resources, fighting climate change and addressing food insecurity.
Since Trump took office in January, Stansbury has advocated for containing the measles outbreak (which is growing in New Mexico) and protecting programs serving Native American tribes....
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gOP lawmaker implodes after CNN host corners him on lies about Joe Biden
Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) had a full blown meltdown during a CNN interview on Friday in which he was caught red-handed peddling falsehoods about former Vice President Joe Biden.
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3 no honor cops
Mar 17, 2021 — 6. Republican U.S. Reps. Michael Cloud of Victoria, Louie Gohmertof Tyler and Lance Gooden of Terrell voted against a resolution that awarded ...
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tex trib
Texas congressional members sound off on Paxton impeachment trial
By Grace YarrowSept. 12, 2023
Republicans were not in agreement about whether they supported suspended Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Full Story
A person walks in front of the U.S. Capitol building at dusk, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2022, in Washington, D.C.
Credit: Julia Nikhinson for The Texas Tribune
Texans in Congress lead bipartisan efforts to allow fentanyl test strips
By Matthew ChoiJuly 27, 2023
The legislation comes after a bill to decriminalize the test strips passed the Texas House but died in the Senate despite support from Gov. Greg Abbott. Full Story
Fentanyl Test Strips are made available by the Hamilton County Public Health Department during the A1 Harm Reduction Resource Fair at Living God Church in Avondale, Ohio on Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023.
Credit: Albert Cesare/USA TODAY NETWORK via REUTERS
U.S. House Republicans from Texas target federal funding unless Homeland Security chief is removed
By Matthew Choi and Olivia AlafrizUpdated: July 27, 2023
Escalating their fight over Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ handling of immigration at the southern border, far-right representatives say they will oppose any appropriations for his agency. Full Story
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaks during the opening of the U.S.-Mexico High-Level Security Dialogue at the State Department in Washington on Oct. 13, 2022.
Credit: REUTERS/Michael A. McCoy
Liz Cheney ousted from GOP congressional leadership ranks with no overt resistance from Texas Republicans
By Abby Livingston and Bryan MenaUpdated: May 12, 2021
Two Texas Republicans — U.S. Reps. Lance Gooden and Chip Roy — were vocal about their desire to remove Cheney before Wednesday's closed-door vote. But most members of the delegation kept their cards close to their chests. Full Story
U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, during a House Republican Leadership press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on April 14, 2021.
Credit: Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA via REUTERS
Three Texas Republicans vote against awarding Congressional Gold Medals to police who protected Capitol during insurrection
By Abby LivingstonMarch 17, 2021
U.S. Reps. Michael Cloud of Victoria, Louie Gohmert of Tyler and Lance Gooden of Terrell voted against the resolution. Gohmert reportedly took issue with the characterization of the attack in the resolution as an "insurrection." Full Story
Pro-Trump rioters clashed with Capitol police during a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.
Credit: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
Susan Wright, GOP activist and wife of late U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, moving toward campaign to replace him
By Patrick SvitekFeb. 22, 2021
She could launch a bid as soon as this week, according to sources close to the Wright family. Full Story
Pedestrians walk along the East Front of the U.S. Capitol Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. on Dec. 4, 2020.
Credit: REUTERS/Tom Brenner
Republicans and Democrats both want to repeal part of a digital content law, but experts say that will be extremely tough
By Bryan Mena and Duncan AgnewJan. 21, 2021
Experts say the GOP's rhetoric about Section 230 of a 1996 communications law suggests a deep misunderstanding of how it works. Full Story
Social media icons on an iPhone screen.
Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Some Texas Republicans decried Capitol insurrection — but didn’t connect the violence to their own rhetoric
By Kate McGeeUpdated: Jan. 8, 2021
Texas lawmakers and other officials have taken the lead on baseless lawsuits that sought to dismiss the results of the presidential election and have tried to rally Trump supporters to protest his loss. Full Story
U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, spoke at a Freedom Caucus press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in December of 2020.
Credit: Gripas Yuri/ABACA via REUTERS
Lance Gooden’s biggest donor in the Texas Legislature is now spending big to get him into Congress. The two go way back.
By Jay Root and Patrick SvitekMay 16, 2018
Monty Bennett has spent generously to help state Rep. Lance Gooden win a Republican runoff for a seat in Congress. The pair own property together and, as a state legislator, Gooden passed special interest legislation benefiting Bennett. Full Story
In the race to replace retiring U.S. Rep.Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, mail pieces making the rounds don't mince words about the financing behind his would-be successor, Bunni Pounds.
She’s "For Sale," they say, citing her support from a big-spending super PAC. "Don’t let Bunni Pounds sell our seat in Congress."
The clear theme: The former Hensarling fundraiser is a creature of the Washington, D.C., "swamp" who’s trying to buy her way to the halls of Congress.
One small detail you won’t find in the advertisements: All of the disclosed funding from the super PAC behind them can be traced to a single donor who has faced his own accusations of buying influence over the years.
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His name is Monty Bennett, and it’s not even a little surprising that the Dallas hotelier wants to defeat Pounds. Her opponent in the May 22 GOP runoff election is state Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Terrell, who passed special interest legislation benefiting Bennett's East Texas ranch while receiving over $100,000 in campaign donations from him, records show.
Gooden’s personal financial statement on file with the Texas Ethics Commission also shows he owns a small slice of Henderson County property with Bennett. Campaign records show Bennett and his MJB Operating LP have given Gooden at least $140,000 for past legislative races, making him Gooden’s largest individual donor.
With the congressional race, Bennett’s critics are seeing a familiar pattern come to a head. Andy Jones, a small business owner who’s clashed with Bennett over property in Henderson County, said Bennett “throws money at everything” to get his way — and questioned whether he would have disproportionate influence over Gooden if elected to Congress.
"That makes me wary because that’s how he works — he buys folks," Jones, a Pounds supporter, said of Bennett’s history of giving generously to Gooden. "I’m afraid with so much money coming from one person — that those votes won’t be straight-up fair."
Bennett says it is "just silly" to think he uses money to buy politicians — but does not shy away from his support for Gooden.
“I have supported dozens of conservatives across Texas and the U.S.,” Bennett said in a statement. “Lance is right up there among the best of them. My ranch is in this district and I want someone in Washington DC that is from here that fights for us.”
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Bennett has been the driving force so far behind Our Conservative Texas Future, a super PAC that has spent over $388,000 in the 5th District race, roughly half supporting Gooden and half opposing Pounds, according to Federal Election Commission records. Its only disclosed donations to date are $100,000 from Bennett’s Dartmore LP and $5,000 from Bennett himself.
A person familiar with the group said it has also received money from Andy Beal, a billionaire banker from Dallas, and his contributions should show up on its next monthly filing. That report is due Sunday — two days before the election.
In addition to fueling the super PAC, Bennett has given the maximum amounts to Gooden's campaign — $2,700 each for the primary and the runoff — as well as signed off on fundraising appeals and helped host fundraisers.
To be sure, Pounds is also benefiting from an infusion of super PAC money in the race. The Club for Growth, an aggressive player in GOP primaries across the country, has spent over $463,000 in the 5th District race through its super PAC, almost all of it attacking Gooden, according to FEC records.
The Club for Growth endorsed Pounds the day after the March 6 primary, when she finished 8 percentage points behind Gooden in the eight-way race. Pounds has had the endorsement of Hensarling from the start of her campaign and she picked up another high-profile supporter in the runoff: Vice President Mike Pence, Hensarling's longtime friend and former U.S. House colleague.
The solidly red district includes seven counties sprawling southeast from Dallas.
Bennett’s Henderson County ranch in deep East Texas has been at the center of a long-raging controversy pitting Bennett and Gooden against the Tarrant Regional Water District in Fort Worth. Bennett’s 1,000-acre Lazy W Ranch sits in the proposed path of a $2.3 billion, 150-mile pipeline that will carry water from East Texas to Dallas-Fort Worth, according to court documents.
Less than a year after the water district sought to enter Bennett's property to conduct a survey, Gooden quietly pushed a bill through the Legislature that helped Bennett fight the Tarrant Regional Water District's efforts to condemn a piece of his land for its pipeline.
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The 2011 legislation, HB 3864, created the Lazy W District No. 1, a municipal utility district which court records say is comprised entirely of Bennett’s ranch. That has allowed Bennett’s Lazy W to assert “immunity as a governmental entity,” according to a Texas Supreme Court decision that took his side in a procedural fight in 2016.
In an email, Bennett said his and Gooden's joint ownership of an acre in Henderson County had “nothing to do” with the Lazy W District No. 1. Bennett is the president of the board of directors, state records show.
After creating the district, Gooden went to bat for Bennett in his battle to get records from the Tarrant water district, citing his prerogative as a member of the Legislature in 2014 to receive information — including “confidential information“ — as long as it’s used for legislative purposes.
Gooden’s campaign declined to answer a list of questions for this story, including why he owns property with his largest legislative donor and whether he thought Bennett would have undue influence over him if he gets elected to Congress. The campaign instead provided a statement from Gooden.
“I have widespread support from the grassroots and long-standing conservative activists in this district, and I’ve always maintained an open door policy for all of my constituents," Gooden said. "I've always held myself to the highest ethical and moral standards, and I will continue to do this as I fight for conservative Texas values in D.C."
While Bennett's ranch is in Gooden's state House district, Bennett is registered to vote at an address far away in Dallas, according to records from the secretary of state's office. His state representative is Dallas Republican Morgan Meyer.
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The MAGA faithful were not happy with how Democrats in Congress reacted to Donald Trump’s speech Tuesday night.
Democrats protested Trump in different ways, whether it was Representative Melanie Stansbury holding up a protest sign as Trump walked into the chamber (which was quickly snatched away), Representative Al Green shouting at the president that he does not have a mandate to cut Medicaid, before being kicked out, or others leaving the chamber mid-speech, wearing T-shirts reading, “No kings live here” and “RESIST.” This was too much for Trump’s devotees.
White House staffers were quick to show their support for Trump on X.
Others in conservative media also attacked Democrats.
It seems that Republicans have short memories. In the past, the GOP has shouted at Democratic presidents during their addresses to Congress, including Representative Joe Wilson shouting “You lie” at President Obama in 2009 or multiple Republicans, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, repeatedly interrupting President Biden in 2023. Since the GOP kowtows to Trump, they think everyone else should, as well.
3 25
Lance Carter Gooden[1] (born December 1, 1982) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for Texas's 5th congressional district since 2019.[2] His district includes parts of eastern Dallas, as well as a large swath of exurban and rural territory to Dallas's east.
A member of the Republican Party, Gooden served as the Texas State Representative for the 4th district (Henderson County and Kaufman County) from 2011 to 2015. He lost his reelection bid in the 2014 Republican primary election but was returned to office in the 2016 election for a non-consecutive third term in the state legislature before he ran for Congress.
Early life and education
A native of Terrell in Kaufman County, an eastern suburb of Dallas, Gooden graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts in government in 2001 at the age of 19 and a BBA in finance in 2004 at the age of 22.[citation ^needed]
Texas House of Representatives
In the 2010 primary election, Gooden won 50.5% of the vote, upsetting six-term incumbent Republican Representative Betty Brown.[3] Gooden had once been Brown's legislative assistant.[citation ^needed]
Upon taking office in 2011, Gooden worked on the state budget in an attempt to eliminate wasteful spending. He served on the House Appropriations, County Affairs, and House Administration committees, the last of which handles employment by the House. In 2010, Gooden did not have a Democratic opponent in his heavily Republican district.[4][5] In 2011, Gooden assisted hotel mogul Monty Bennett in his fight against the Tarrant Regional Water District, pushing legislation to designate Bennett's 1,000-acre ranch as a municipal utility district and granting immunity from a proposed water pipeline through the property.[6]
Gooden won renomination to a second term in the Republican primary on May 29, 2012. He polled 6,385 votes (53.5%) to his opponent Stuart Spitzer's 5,545 (46.5%).[7][8] Gooden was unopposed for a second term in the November 6 general election. In 2014, Gooden again faced Spitzer for reelection, but this time lost to Spitzer in a close race.[9]
Gooden staged a comeback and unseated Spitzer in the March 1, 2016 Republican primary with 14,500 votes (51.8%) to 13,502 (48.2%). He returned to the State House in January 2017.[10]
U.S. House of Representatives
Elections
2018
See also: 2018 United States House of Representatives elections in Texas § District 5
Gooden won the Republican nomination for the 5th congressional district and the November 6 general election, receiving 62.7% of the vote.[2]
2020
See also: 2020 United States House of Representatives elections in Texas § District 5
Gooden was reelected on November 3, receiving 62% of the vote.
Tenure
2020 election
In December 2020, Gooden was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated[11] incumbent Donald Trump. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of an election held by another state.[12][13][14]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement that called signing the amicus brief an act of "election subversion." She also reprimanded Gooden and the other House members who supported the lawsuit: "The 126 Republican Members that signed onto this lawsuit brought dishonor to the House. Instead of upholding their oath to support and defend the Constitution, they chose to subvert the Constitution and undermine public trust in our sacred democratic institutions."[15][16] New Jersey Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell, called for Pelosi to not seat Gooden and the other Republicans who signed onto the brief supporting the suit, arguing that "the text of the 14th Amendment expressly forbids Members of Congress from engaging in rebellion against the United States. Trying to overturn a democratic election and install a dictator seems like a pretty clear example of that."[17]
Gooden voted against certifying the electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania in the 2020 United States presidential election[18] and voted against the second impeachment of Donald Trump following the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[19]
George Floyd Justice in Policing Act
On March 3, 2021, Gooden was the only House Republican to vote for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed 220–212. Later that evening, he tweeted that he voted for the bill "accidentally", claiming he pushed the wrong button, a mistake he failed to notice in time.[20] Gooden then tweeted that he had "arguably the most conservative/America First voting record in Congress", and "Of course I wouldn't support the radical left's, Anti-Police Act". According to Gooden, he had the official record changed to reflect his opposition.[21]
Iraq
In June 2021, Gooden was one of 49 House Republicans to vote to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.[22][23]
Immigration
Gooden voted against the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020 which authorizes DHS to nearly double the available H-2B visas for the remainder of FY 2020.[24][25]
Israel
Gooden voted to support Israel following the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.[26][27]
LGBT rights
On July 19, 2022, Gooden did not vote for the Respect for Marriage Act, which would codify the right to same-sex marriage in federal law.[28]
In August 2022, he co-sponsored a bill put forth by Marjorie Taylor Greene that would criminalize gender-affirming health care for trans youth.[29]
Hong Kong
In October 2022, Politico reported that Gooden criticized some US-based financial executives for attending the Global Financial Leaders' Investment Summit, saying: "The hypocrisy is staggering and every financial institution enabling China's atrocities should be ashamed."[30]
Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023
Gooden was among the 71 Republicans who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House.[31]
Financial disclosures
In September 2021, nonprofit group Campaign Legal Center filed an ethics complaint against Gooden with the Office of Congressional Ethics, claiming that Gooden appeared to have violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012, a federal transparency and conflict-of-interest law, by failing to properly disclose a dozen purchases of stock worth between $60,019 and $376,000 that he made in 2020.[32] In response, Gooden claimed that all of the transactions in question fell short of the mandatory federal reporting threshold of $1,000.[33]
Ukraine aid
In April 2024, Gooden voted against the $60 billion military aid package for Ukraine, although much of the money would go to his constituency.[34]
2025 Presidential address to Congress
At the presidential address on March 4, 2025, Gooden grabbed a sign out of Representative Melanie Stansbury's hands that read "This is not normal", and threw it behind him in the House Chamber.[35][36][37]
Committee assignments
- Committee on Financial Services
- Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development and Insurance (Vice Ranking Member)
Caucus membership
//
In Targeting Catholic Charities, Republicans Amplify Right-Wing Catholic Fringe
WASHINGTON (RNS) — On Capitol Hill, a handful of Republican lawmakers are threatening to reduce or eliminate funding for Catholic Charities and other faith-based groups who offer aid to immigrants at the Southern border.
The members of Congress, who are echoing the campaigns of deeply conservative Catholic groups that vow to “#defund the bishops,” have already succeeded in inserting their agenda into legislation passed by the House earlier this year. Another attempt to zero-out appropriations for a key Department of Homeland Security program supporting faith-based border efforts is awaiting a vote in Congress.
[Migrants reach through a border wall for clothing handed out by volunteers, as they wait between two border walls to apply for asylum, Friday, May 12, 2023, in San Diego. Hundreds of migrants remain waiting between the two walls, many for days. The U.S. entered a new immigration enforcement era Friday, ending a three-year-old asylum restriction and enacting a set of strict new rules that the Biden administration hopes will stabilize the U.S.-Mexico border and push migrants to apply for protections where they are, skipping the dangerous journey north. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
In December, Republican Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee, penned a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. In the letter, co-signed by Reps. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin and Jake Ellzey of Texas, the lawmakers complained that the Biden administration was “allowing non-governmental organizations … the freedom to aid and abet illegal aliens.” In addition, lawmakers also sent letters to Catholic Charities, Jewish Family Service and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service demanding they preserve documents “related to any expenditures submitted for reimbursement from the federal government related to migrants encountered at the southern border.”
Contacted by Religion News Service at the time, Anthony Granado, vice president of government relations at Catholic Charities USA, said, “We have not seen such a level of direct … attack against Catholic Charities USA.”
In May, when Gooden penned another letter to Mayorkas, this time with Rep. Tom McClintock of California and Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, they accused the NGOs that use federal funds to aid immigrants of creating an “incentive” for illegal immigration and demanded access to a broad swath of records about DHS funding practices.
Days later, Gooden published an open letter to House colleagues that accused NGOs, including faith-based groups, of abusing their tax-exempt status by “play(ing) a disturbing role in the inflow and spread of illegal immigration throughout the country.”
Gooden, who worships at a Church of Christ congregation, expressed particular frustration with FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program — which is transitioning to an effort titled the Shelter and Services Program — that reimburses NGOs and local governments for offering certain aid to migrants. He singled out a number of faith-based groups in his solo letter, such as Jewish Family Services and LIRS, but criticized Catholic Charities at length.
For his part, Tiffany recently called for Catholic Charities USA to testify before the Judiciary Committee to explain “what they’re doing down on the border to facilitate this illegal immigration,” according to Bloomberg Government.
In a phone interview last week, Lee Williams, chief programs officer for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, called the lawmakers’ allegations “preposterous” and “dangerous.” He also pointed out that LIRS aids immigrants after they are processed and released from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, work that is funded by private money.
Catholic Charities, for its part, receives ample government funds annually and operates as a network of local charities. In addition to anti-poverty programs, Catholic Charities also works with immigrants — including efforts to offer humanitarian aid to migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.
It’s work that, not long ago, Republicans in Congress nearly uniformly praised. In 2014, amid a spike in border crossings by unaccompanied minors and mothers traveling with children, a delegation of Republican lawmakers led by talk-show host Glenn Beck visited a Catholic Charities respite center based in a church in McAllen, Texas. Sen. Ted Cruz, East Texas Rep. Randy Weber and then-Rep. Louie Gohmert, among others, toured the center and, in Beck’s case, donated toys to children.
“I want to thank Catholic Charities that are working to care for these children and care for these families,” Cruz told reporters at the time.
Weber was similarly effusive, quoting Scripture while describing the center’s work as a fulfillment of “the church’s role.”
Mistrust of faith groups that work with immigrants, but in particular Catholic Charities, has been growing in right-wing circles since at least February 2022, when CatholicVote, a conservative political group, sued the Biden administration in an effort to acquire copies of “all communications between the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol” and various Catholic bishops and Catholic Charities entities — including the respite center in McAllen.
The antipathy for Catholic Charities came up again last summer, when Michael Voris, founder of the conservative Catholic website Church Militant, interviewed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a self-described Christian nationalist and former Catholic who converted to evangelicalism. Voris, whose organization has referred to Catholic Charities as an “enemy of the people,” complained to Greene about the American bishops supporting immigrant aid through religious agencies such as Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities. Greene responded by framing the work as “Satan controlling the church.”
Most recently, in Washington on Thursday (July 20), members of the Deposit of Faith Coalition, a group of activists who object to the direction the U.S. Catholic bishops are taking and accuse them of “standing with Marxists,” called on Congress — and particularly appropriations committees — to stop granting contracts to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Charities.
Addressing the crowd from a podium at the National Press Club that read “#DefundtheBishops,” Sheena Rodriguez, head of Alliance for a Safe Texas, insisted that Catholic Charities was one constellation of groups “incentiviz(ing) mass illegal migration worldwide” and “creating a modern-day slavery scheme.”
The gathering attracted only a small crowd, but their ideas have gained a footing on Capitol Hill. In April, Rodriguez was invited to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on border security, arguing that unaccompanied minors at the border were being mistreated under the Biden administration.
After her testimony, Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat,
that Rodriguez was among the crowd that surrounded the U.S. Capitol when rioters attacked the building on Jan. 6, 2021, although there is no evidence Rodriguez entered the building that day. She had also taken part in the Christian nationalism-themed Jericho March at the Capitol the day before.
The movement to defund Catholic agencies also found its way into the GOP’s signature border security bill passed in May, known as the Secure the Border Act. It included a provision that would cut all funding to the Shelter Services Program.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed the Secure the Border Act for multiple reasons, including how it treats DHS funding streams to NGOs. The bishops sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to vote against it. Sister Donna Markham, a Catholic nun who oversees Catholic Charities USA, also wrote a letter to congressional leadership at the time decrying the proposed cuts, saying they would “dismantle the public-private infrastructure currently in place to manage the humanitarian crisis at the southern border and its impact throughout the country.”
The bill passed the House largely along party lines, with Gooden, Tiffany and Weber all voting in favor.
The bill has little chance of passing the U.S. Senate, where Democrats enjoy a majority, but Gooden’s movement persists: Last month the House Appropriations Committee unveiled a DHS appropriations bill, which, like the border bill, eliminates funding for the Shelter and Services Program.
Markham said in a statement to RNS that the work of respite centers along the U.S.-Mexico border should be uncontroversial and invited members of Congress to tour their facilities.
“This work is humanitarian and motivated by the teachings of the gospels; it is not political, and it should not be controversial,” Markham’s statement read.
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twenty-two House Republicans have signed on to a motion filed in federal court requesting to be allowed to join Governor Greg Abbott in defending the Texas Republican against a federal government lawsuit alleging his 1000 feet of razor wire and floating buoys constructed of circular saw blades, designed to prevent migrants from crossing into the United States from Texas, are illegal.
They have invoked the Bible’s Book of Genesis, including Noah’s Ark, to make their case.
“In a motion filed on behalf of U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, and other GOP members, lawyers for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundationhave asked to be part of the case and targeted how a key law is interpreted in it,” the Houston Chronicle reports.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is the right-wing organization The New York Times last year profiled as “The Texas Group Waging a National Crusade Against Climate Action.”
RELATED: Supreme Court in Hand, Far Right Wing Prepares to ‘Take the Reins of Government’
The buoys, deployed on the Rio Grande river, may have led to the deaths of two migrants, possibly including a child.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas called the buoys “barbaric,” and in video showed they are constructed of circular saw blades. In that video Congressman Castro also points to Governor Abbott’s razor wire fences.
Sawyer Hackett, a senior advisor to former Obama Cabinet Secretary Julián Castro, referred to the floating fences as “razor wire death trap buoys.”
“A key point to the Arrington group’s defense is whether the 1,900-mile Rio Grande should be defined as a navigable waterway despite being used by thousands of boats every year,” The Chronicle explains. “They point to a court case from 1870 that suggested that the term navigable waterway is intended to mean moving commerce from one state to another or to a different country and not just one where any small boat occasionally uses the river.”
READ MORE: Critics Blast Top US Conservative Think Tank President for Applauding Italy’s Election of ‘Neo-Fascist’ Prime Minister
That’s where the Bible and Noah’s Ark come in.
“Indeed, if one takes the Book of Genesis literally, then the entire world was once navigable by boats large enough to carry significant amounts of livestock,” the proposed amicus brief reads. “Under the federal government’s theory, these anecdotes would render any structure built anywhere in Texas an obstruction to navigation subject to federal regulation.”
Governor Abbott has had a long partnership with theTexas Public Policy Foundation.
In 2016, as NCRM reported, Abbott while at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, unveiled a major policy plan toalter the U.S. Constitution, adding nine amendments,the result of which could have lead to same-sex marriage bans and anend of LGBTQ protections.
According to Congressman Arrington, the list of signatories to his amicus brief include: Rep. Jodey Arrington, Dr. Michael Burgess, Rep. August Pfluger, Rep. Brian Babin, Rep. Andy Biggs, Rep. Roger Williams, Rep. Lance Gooden, Rep. Beth Van Duyne, Rep. Jake Ellzey, Rep. Vern Buchanan, Rep.Chip Roy, Rep. Nathaniel Moran, Rep. David Rouzer, Rep. Pete Sessions,Rep. Ronny Jackson, Rep. Sam Graves,Rep. Clay Higgins, Rep. Michael Cloud,Rep. Keith Self, Rep. John Carter, Rep. Jeff Duncan, Rep. Kat Cammack.
Watch the video above or at this link.
'Very scary': Former RNC staffer dishes on the more terrifying members of GOP's right-wing
===
In the aftermath, Congressman Lance Gooden tweeted, ... President Donald Trump finally conceded to an "orderly transition on January 20"
---
foia permit
...SPEAKERS LINEUP
TUESDAY, JANUARY 5TH
TIMING SPEAKER/PROGRAMING LEAD SPEAKERS EMCEE
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM March to Save America
Katrina Pierson, Dr. Gina Loudon, Chris Cox, TBD,
TBD. TBD, TBD (5-7) Katrina Pierson
(b)(6)• (b)(7)(E)
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Stop the Steal TBD (15-20) All Alexander
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM Peaceably Gather Prayer Virgil. TBD (2-3) TBD
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM Eighty Percent Coalition Alex Jones, Roger Stone, TBD (8-10) TBD
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM Eighty Percent Coalition TBD (10-15) TBD
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6TH
TIMING SPEAKER/PROGRAMING POC SPEAKERS EMCEE
8:30 AM - 9:00 AM N/A
Pastor Mark Burns, Julio Gonzalez, Sherriff, Alex
Jones. TBD (5-7) TBD
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Stop the Steal
Ali Alexander. TBD, TBD, TBD, TBD, TBD, TBD (8-
10) Ali Alexander
10:00 AM - 10:45 AM March to Save America Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani. TBD, TBD (4-5) TBD
10:45 AM - 11:00 AM Videos Rule of Law Defense Fund, Turning Point Action N/A
10:55 AM - 11:00 AM Women for America First Amy Kremer Amy Kremer
11:00 AM - 11:08 AM Rule of Law Defense Fund
(b)(6) (b)(7)(C)
Attorney General Ken Paxton Amy Kremer
11:08 AM - 11:15 AM Congressman X Congressman TBD Amy Kremer
11:15 AM - 11:30 AM Senator X Senator TBD Amy Kremer
11:30 AM - 11:40 AM Videos Women for America First, Stop the Steal, TBD N/A
11:40 AM - 12:00 PM Hold Music N/A N/A
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM POTUS N/A N/A
...
Organizers
Stop The Steal (NRID), Million MAGA March (NRID), Women for America First (NRID), March for Trump
(NRID), Proud Boys (RID), and other pro-Trump groups, along with private citizens, have promoted event
pages for the event.
Stop The Stealis a loosely organized group which emerged on November 7, 2020, with the belief the
election is being stolen from President Trump due to election fraud. The group began organizing
demonstrations nationwide called "Stop The Steal." According to the website,invited speakersand
featured guests for the January 6, 2021 event include Rep. Paul Gosar, Ali Alexander, Roger Stone, Rep-Elect Marjorie Greene,
Rep. Lance Gooden, Rep-Elect Lauren Boebert, State Rep. Vernon Jones, State Rep.
Mark Finchem,State Sen. Doug Mastriano, State Rep. Anthony Kern, and several others.
One
spokesperson from Stop The Steal, Ali Alexander (NRID), has encouraged followers to bring tents, sleeping
bags, food, and water. Alexander claimed,"if DC escalates...so do we. Do not wear a mask. Stand with
others bullied by staff." Twitter removed this tweet as it violated the spread of COVID-19 harmful
information.
The Million MAGA March has been involved in organizing both large protests in November and December.
The website was created early November prior to the first Million MAGA March, which spurred several
social media groups and pages supporting this movement.
Women for America First is a pro-Trump, female led group. The group was the center of organization for
both the November and December protests. The group plans to host a "March for Trump" bus tour from
California to Washington, DC, arriving on the January 6, 2021.
Although March for Trump is listed as a group, several different smaller factions are listed under this
name. The group name is considered more of a movement than an organization.
Proud Boys is a right-wing group founded in 2016 by Gavin McInnes as a "pro-Western fraternal
organization." They are of record with USSS for demonstration activity since 2017; no civil disobedience
or arrests have been recorded. For more information on the Proud Boys, please see the Protective
Intelligence Brief Proud Boys Talking Points.
Hotel Harrington, an alleged hangout/hotel for the Proud Boys, made a statement on December 28, 2020,
announcing their closure from January 4-6, 2021, for "safety of visitors and employees." According to
news media, four individuals were stabbed outside the hotel during the protests on December 12, 2020,
when Proud Boys members clashed with counter protesters. Proud Boys' self-proclaimed chairman,
Enrique Tarrio (NRID), made a statement on Parler regarding the closing of Hotel Harrington, claiming the
Proud Boys outgrew the hotel and are planning on protesting during the January 4-6, 2021, time frame
and will be staying at various other locations
https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/January-6-Clearinghouse-US-Secret-Service-FOIA-CREW-June-29-2021-2.pdf
---
rep. Lance Gooden reimbursed himself over $280,000 in campaign funds since 2018,a CQ Roll Call review of Federal Election Commission records shows.
The Texas Republican lists payments from his Lance Gooden for Congress Committee to himself for travel, phone, meal expenses among some of the 68 transactions over a three-year period. Many of these expenditures—40 to be exact—were labeled as “expense reimbursement.” Included in the expenditures was a $7,000 purchase on Dec. 31, 2019 described as for “materials,” as was a $6,000 transaction on Sep. 27, 2019 and one for over $10,000 on Feb. 27, 2019.
Members are prohibited under federal law and House rules from using campaign funds for personal use and must be able to verify that campaign resources have not been misused. The Federal Election Commission states that if a candidate “can reasonably show that the expenses at issue resulted from campaign or officeholder activities, the Commission will not consider the use to be personal use.”
Gooden, who easily won reelection to his second term in November, has also spent campaign money abroad, and in the popular destinations of New Orleans, La., and Las Vegas, Nev.
The lawmaker spent $445 on staff meals at the Kornhaus Cafe in Bern, Switzerland in August of 2019. that same year, Gooden spent over $7,800 in New Orleans on event food, drinks and a hotel room expense. This includes over $3,700 at Antoine’s Restaurant, where “countless celebrities have dined,” including Franklin Roosevelt, Pope John Paul II and Brad Pitt. Further, he spent over $3,000 at the Ritz Carlton New Orleans for event food and drink expenses, and $356 for a stay at the Saint Hotel near Bourbon Street.
In Las Vegas, Gooden’s campaign spent just over $1,700 on event food and beverage at two popular Vegas hotels: the Wynn and the Vdara.
Rob Phillips III, a compliance officer for Gooden, didn’t address the specific purchases, but noted the lawmaker’s spending is aligned with other clients of his.
“Candidate fundraising is expensive and Congressman Gooden’s expenses and accounting are in line with other clients I do compliance work for regardless of whether the cost is a reimbursement to the candidate or paid directly to an event vendor,” Phillips said in an email.
---
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a36741995/tucker-carlson-january-6-fbi-republicans/
...Sedition Caucus within the Republican minority in the House of Representatives. Here is a good place to start if you’re formulating a roster.
Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Andy Harris (Md.),Lance Gooden (Tex.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Louie Gohmert (Tex.), Michael Cloud (Tex.), Andrew S. Clyde (Ga.), Greg Steube (Fla.), Bob Good (Va.) and John Rose (Tenn.). Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Barry Moore (Ala.), Ralph Norman (S.C.), Matthew M. Rosendale (Mont.), Chip Roy (Tex.), Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.), Warren Davidson (Ohio), Scott Perry (Pa.), Jody Hice (Ga.) and Mary Miller (Ill.).
My favorites among the bunch are the 10 Republicans who previously voted for awarding the gold medal who flipped to vote "no" on Wednesday. What a noble clutch of primates they are. And while some of the names are those of familiar space aliens, there are some newbies in there with whom I was not familiar. For example, there's Mary Miller of Illinois, who wasn’t in office for a week before she started quoting Hitler....
---
rep acct
grade F
VERY POOR
Signed Texas amicus brief
Objected to certification of electoral college votes in one or more states
Made false and/or irresponsible public statements against democratic system
Voted against impeachment or conviction of Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection
Voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack
Voted against holding Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress
BIOGRAPHY
Rep. Lance Gooden represents Texas’s 5th congressional district.
Rep. Gooden made many claims that there was merit to election irregularity allegations. Rep. Gooden told his constituents that the election was being stolen, similar rhetoric used by President Trump that led to an insurrection on the Capitol. Rep. Gooden also signed onto the Texas amicus brief that attempted to overturn the election results in multiple states.
Rep. Gooden did not vote in support of the bipartisan commission proposal to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Rep. Gooden has earned an F for his failed attempt at overturning our democracy.
---
corp $ post sedition CREW
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/insurrectionist-members-have-received-2-6-million-from-corporate-interests-since-january-6th/
---
omfg
aug 3
Inside the Project Veritas Plan to Steal the Election
James O’Keefe’s group is part of a sprawling campaign to delegitimize mail-in balloting in the fall—a campaign being led by the White House.
https://newrepublic.com/article/158622/inside-project-veritas-plan-steal-election
https://newrepublic.com/article/158622/inside-project-veritas-plan-steal-election
James O’Keefe had big plans for 2020. The founder of Project Veritas, the conspiratorial right-wing group that specializes in Fox News–friendly “stings” intended to expose supposed liberal bias and corruption in American society, was planning on getting married this past May. The wedding, to a public school teacher, was to be at an exclusive country club in upstate New York. The guest list was packed with Make America Great Again world cognoscenti: Donald Trump Jr., Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and his activist wife Ginni were all invited, as were several of O’Keefe’s most generous conservative donors, including Texas shale oil billionaire George Bishop and Bullpen Capital founder Paul Martino.
The wedding was, per an email blast, “postponed indefinitely” over the coronavirus, as the pandemic swept across the state this spring and early summer. Although O’Keefe himself declined to comment on this and many other details for this story, a well-placed frenemy is “90 percent sure they broke up.” In any event, while the pandemic may have derailed his personal life, it has only heightened the urgency of some of O’Keefe’s most lucratively funded dirty tricks.
For well over a year, Project Veritas has been secretly producing undercover stings designed to undermine the integrity of absentee and mail-in ballot counts—an endeavor codenamed “Diamond Dog,” according to documents we have obtained. Diamond Dog began as only one facet of Project Veritas’s 2020 rat-fucking strategy, but with the onset of the pandemic, which has made in-person voting a dicey proposition, it has since become one of the group’s top-line action items.
The shift reflects the Republican Party’s near-existential concerns about mail-in voting in November. Donald Trump has disingenuously railed against the practice numerous times over the past few months, betraying a deep anxiety. “Mail in ballots substantially increases the risk of crime and VOTER FRAUD!” he has tweeted. At other times he has claimed: “It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history”; “IT WILL ALSO LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY”; and “SCAM!” Last week, he went so far as to suggest that the election should be delayed, saying that because of “Universal Mail-in Voting,” the vote would be “INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT.”
The purpose of Diamond Dog, as one source close to the organization put it, is “literally to get Trump reelected.” This source, like other past and present Project Veritas employees who have talked to us for this article,expressed fear of reprisals from the group and would only speak under the condition of anonymity.
Last year, Project Veritas’s donor development team solicited big-ticket funders with a pitch deck—frequently tailored to a given patron’s pet ideological grievances and personal hang-ups—offering tantalizing details about the group’s undercover operations for the 2020 campaign cycle. One iteration of this Apple Keynote file was prepared for an ask meeting with a person who appears to beCognex Corporation founder Robert Shillman, a devoted funder of Islamophobic causes who was also one of O’Keefe’s would-be wedding guests. (Shillman ended up pledging to donate $50,000 to the group.) The slate of investigations in the “Dr. Bob” pitch included schemes to procure evidence of “illegal aliens voting,” mail-in ballot tampering at “nursing homes,” and “the sale of absentee ballots and voter profiles on the ‘Dark Web.’”
By the end of summer 2019, Diamond Dog had already grown to be a cross-country effort, based on internal Project Veritas memos, research notes, and other documents that we have obtained. InCalifornia and Texas, Project Veritas has tasked its operatives with unearthing supposed evidence of widespread mail-in ballot forgery. In both states, Project Veritas has worked toinfiltrate the groups of volunteers and paid canvassers who collect absentee and mail-in voter applications from low-income, elderly, and minority groups—a perfectly legal practice in most states that conservatives have tried to label as nefarious “ballot harvesting.”
In Texas, Project Veritas has also coordinated in secret with a local Republican operative named Aaron Harris, codenamed “Dragon,” currently chief of staff to Republican congressman Lance Gooden. In turn, through the activist group he founded, Direct Action Texas, Harris has helped Project Veritas covertly strategize with a staffer working for the office of the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton is leading the state’s “election integrity initiative,” one of many Republican efforts nationwide to suppress the vote under the guise of rooting out the nearly non-existent threat of voter fraud.
Granted, Project Veritas, whose fervor to own the libs is matched only by its comical incompetence, is hardly likely to tip the election in Donald Trump’s favor all by itself. But it is at the vanguard of a larger underhanded approach that Republicans, starting at the very top, are taking to the 2020 cycle. If they want to win, they really have no other choice but to undermine the vote: Trump’s poll numbers are in the basement, and he appears constitutionally incapable of making appeals beyond his hardcore supporters on the right.
Republicans have all but admitted that this is their strategy. In coordination with the Republican National Committee and a raft of independent conservative groups, Trump has staked the success of his entire reelection campaign to a widespread voter suppression effort built on the pretext of preserving election integrity.The project, led by his campaign’s senior counsel Justin Clark, has worked to place operatives in at least 10 battleground states to challenge voter rolls and procedures. Between lawsuits and local advertising blitzes—all regularly relayed to Trump in the Oval Office—the effort could cost “well over $20 million,” as the RNC told The Washington Post.
Project Veritas has been among the on-the-ground organizations at the forefront of these efforts and has benefited substantially as a result. According to internal Project Veritas documents, the group’s fundraising total for 2019 leaped up to more than$13.44 million, $4.58 million more than their 2018 returns and the group’s largest reported annual revenue figure to date. The group may be comically incompetent, but in these cursed times, we all know how dangerous comical incompetence can be once enough money and clout line up behind it.
For an operation premised on conspiracy theories and fueled by raging paranoia, it will come as no surprise that the agents helping to spearhead Project Veritas’s election mischief are oddballs on the fringes of American political life. In one slide prepared for Dr. Bob, a 69-year-old Florida resident, a registered Republican named Joseph Vancheri notifies O’Keefe of his soon-to-be status as apoll worker in Broward County, likely for undercoverElection Day snooping on Project Veritas’s behalf. Vancheri, an ex-cop and die-hard Trump supporter, has routinely taken to Facebook to lash out against “all the Trump haters” and “SHEEP,” including “SHIFTY SCHIFF” and “the Idiot Warren,” using Trump’s preferred epithet “Pocohontas [sic].” A first-generation immigrant himself, Vancheri has nevertheless long harbored hardline views on immigration that echo his anxieties over the potential for illicit enfranchisement of foreigners.
In another slide, Project Veritas boasts of receiving a tip from a former broadcast meteorologist named Arch Kennedy, who found it suspicious that 300 people were all registered to vote at the address for Emory University’s Emory Muslim Student Association in Atlanta. (In all likelihood these voters, who constitute 2 percent of Emory’s total student population and .0028 percent of Georgia’s population, have their mail forwarded there.) In 2017, Arch organized one of the anti-Muslim group ACT! For America’s 28 nationwide “March Against Sharia” rallies. Held in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park, it was a sparsely attended affair but still managed to include Republican Georgia State Senator Michael Williams, then mounting a doomed primary campaign for governor. [graf]
Iit’s unclear if either Vancheri or Kennedy’s offerings matured into full-fledged stings banked for the 2020 election. Neither they nor Project Veritas responded for comment, while the Project Veritas source who supplied the “Dr. Bob” pitch deck admitted that “a lot of it was kinda BS,” another example of the group “hyping themselves up to make themselves look better” and squeeze more money out of donors.Project Veritas went back to the well this weekend, soliciting donors in a mass email Saturday afternoon that promised a major ballot harvesting investigation that needs to be “completed as soon as possible.”
But other stings outlined in the Keynote file did materialize. The presentation, forexample, teased an inside man at Pinterestwho was “increasingly worried” about the platform’s “expanding community safety restrictions.” Sure enough, two months later, an ex-Pinterest Android app developer named Eric Cochran came forward with (later debunked) allegations in a series of Project Veritas
and a *Newsweek*op-ed claiming that the platform was censoring anti-abortion Christian advertisers. The pitch deck also promised an exposé from a “CNN Insider” named Cary Poarch, a bombshell that fizzled in October 2019 when Poarch’s hidden recordings, taken while working as a freelance satellite truck operator for the news network, failed to expose more than the personal opinions of a few random employees.
Well before the pandemic drew national attention to mail-in voting, these documents show a discernible focus on “ballot harvesting” as part of the larger Republican effort to paint voting by mail as a threat to democracy. The concern stems from the party’s entrenched belief that, as Trump has tweeted, vote-by-mail “doesn’t work out well for Republicans,” since it often helps low-income people and minorities.
By late August 2019, the “Story Objective” for Diamond Dog had expanded, per one internal meeting document, to exposing “corruption within CA ballot harvesting companies and other states (TX) based on intel gains.” A Project Veritas undercover operative codenamed “Magnum” had been busy “attending local Democratic events in CA to find discussions of harvesting.” Another operative codenamed “GDog” was creating anentrapment scheme by posting “ads online looking for people to join his ballot harvesting.”
Texas has been a major theater for Project Veritas’s Diamond Dog operations, in no small measure because raw demographics have been threatening to turn the state blue for years. The sense of crisis comes from the state GOP’s failure to bring Latinos into their voting bloc. The legacy of such botched strategizing has been an assault on the state’s Latino electorate itself, with right-wing officials and political operatives raising suspicions about their very legitimacy as legal participants in the voting process.
Aaron Harris, a son of white evangelical missionaries who picked up Portuguese while growing up in Brazil and went on to become fluent in Spanish, has been relentlessly stoking paranoia over mail-in ballots since his first failed foray as a paid political consultant in 2014. Despite a sizable war chest from Dallas hotel magnate and Tea Party financier Monty Bennett, Harris’s candidates in the 2015 local election for the Tarrant Regional Water District lost. He quickly became fixated on the idea that thousands of forged mail-in ballot applications had been responsible for their defeat.
Unlike some Project Veritas associates, Harris has already managed to stir up some public alarm about alleged balloting fraud in cooperation with elected officials from the Republican Party. He has made repeated open records requests for “applications for ballot by mail” and copies of signed “ballot carrier envelopes” in Tarrant County and elsewhere in Texas, eyeballing the signatures on each for signs of fraud. (Emily J. Will, the board-certified forensic document examiner who tried to warn 60 Minutes about the dubious provenance of President George W. Bush’s supposedly doctored Air National Guard records in 2004, told us that a non-expert like Harris couldn’t be relied upon to discern a forged signature.)
In 2016, Harris sent the fruits of that labor to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, leading to four conspicuously timed indictments two years later on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections. Paxton described the four Hispanic women, paid canvassers soliciting mail-in ballot applications door-to-door, as an “organized voter fraud ring.” He named (but did not charge) a former local Democratic Party leader, Stuart Clegg, as the ringleader in the court filings.
That case, which is still ongoing, reveals the ways in which the official GOP subtly coordinates with its army of right-wing irregulars in the field. Paxton stridently enforces one of the strictest voter I.D. laws in the nation, while Harris and his political allies at Direct Action Texas and Empower Texans work to independently legitimize the attorney general’s partisan vendettas. Harris and local Republican lawyer Alex Kim, for example, inserted themselves into the prosecution’s caseby independently visiting one of the charged canvassers in prison, seemingly on their own initiative, in an effort to coerce the woman into flipping on Clegg.(A month after helping Harris sneak into the Tarrant County Jail to harass the canvasser, Kim won a local race to preside over the entire county as a judge for Texas’s 323rd District Court.)
Paxton’s office has often pursued these voter fraud cases through a prosecutorial diversion program, allowing them to juke their stats with “de minimis” cases without ever having to prove their arguments in open court or subject their methods to independent review. Their biggest confirmed conviction to date: sending a 37-year-old Mexican citizen and mother of four, Rosa Maria Ortega, to prison for eight years for the high crime of being confused that her status as a legal resident in Texas did not actually confer unto her the voting privileges of full United States citizenship. Ortega voted in five elections between 2004 and her 2017 sentencing, casting ballots for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012—and, tragically, for Ken Paxton himself in the 2014 Texas attorney general’s race.
All signs point toward Paxton getting even more aggressive in 2020, thanks to a wrecked-up and paralyzed response to the pandemic by both Trump and TexasGovernor Greg Abbott. Republicans are nervous that even blood-red Texas might be in play come November. Last April, Paxton threatened felony charges for anyone who requests or advocates for mail-in ballots “based solely on fear of contracting Covid-19”—a move that was upheld by the Texas Supreme Court in May, then by the Trump-stacked U.S. Supreme Court in June. It’s now sure to set the stage for many of the alleged mail-in schemes that Project Veritas will purport to expose later this year.
---
One local Project Veritas operative assigned to coordinate with Aaron Harris in Texas is also a former undercover volunteer: Cassandra Spencer, codenamed “Foxtrot” and sometimes “Foxtrot Smith” internally. In 2017, Spencer became O’Keefe’s “Facebook Insider” after leaving a public information officer post with the Pflugerville, Texas, police department to join Facebook’s contingent workforce operations at BCForward in Austin as a social media content moderator.
Spencer has positioned herself at the extremely online intersection of gaming culture and the alt-right. She has described herself as a “Proud Boy’s Girl” on Medium and attended “Austin’s premier anime convention” IKKiCON in Final Fantasy X cosplay. She traveled to Washington, D.C., for the inaugural DeploraBall and operates her own Twitch stream, which she dubbed “a First Amendment zone” for her conservative followers, “not like many others.”For the 2020 Democratic primary in Iowa, Spencer posed as a volunteer for presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as part of a Project Veritas sting then-codenamed “Gold Mine."
[graf doc]
al?ready staked out on the Texas ballot-harvesting vanguard, Aaron Harris “met with Foxtrot” in person and “gave her a lead with someone to follow,” per internal Project Veritas research notes. As Diamond Dog progressed, Harris’s ties to Project Veritas deepened to include longtime employee and recruiting director Spencer Meads, codenamed “Brady,” and possibly an undercover journalist (UCJ[)](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MEd6N_I-P1Tt3XHXvOlDgskd6AbsOtuA/view?usp=sharing) codenamed “Peter Pan.” Project Veritas’s expanding pool of Texas sources was meant to be a state secret, but the document offered a huge clue about who might be involved in an all-caps and highlighted portion that read: “CANNOT MENTION ATTORNEY GENERAL.” In the same document, after listing a series of major metropolitan areas in Texas as potential sites for their “ballot harvesting” investigation,a question is proposed: “Where does the AG’s guy suggest they go?”
When pressed for comment on his apparent role in facilitating communications between the Texas attorney general’s office and Project Veritas, Harris responded via his congressional email, “Do not contact me about my previous employment on official channels. Learn to be competent at your job.” After it was pointed out to Harris that the internal Project Veritas documents were sourced in the early fall of 2019, approximately 10 months after he became Congressman Gooden’s chief of staff,Harris became belligerent. To questions reiterated via personal text message, he responded, “I’ve asked you to stop harassing me and you want to argue about it? You are an idiot. You just keep proving it.”
Spencer did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Only two principal targets, old Harris foes, were mentioned by name in the Project Veritas strategy document: Texas-based personal injury attorney Domingo Garcia, a former state representative and the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC; and the Harvest Project Food Rescue of Dallas, a community group that Harris seems to believe is an insidious front through which the state’s left-wing operatives entice immigrant communities, with the lure of unsold fresh produce donated by local distributors, into filling out their own mail-in ballots and thus enfranchising themselves. (“I wake up usually at 4:30 in the morning, I have to go pick up the food by six,” Harvest Project co-founder Danaë Gutiérrez-Martínez said when asked about Harris’s allegations. “I don’t get home ’til eight at night, nine at night, sometimes, to get up the next day and do it again, especially right now with everything that’s happening. You know, I must be Superwoman if I have time to do anything else.”)
A long-since-ousted co-founder of the Harvest Project, Jose Barrientos was very publicly implicated in a mail-in ballot forgery scheme in 2017. But Paxton and the local district attorney ultimately indicted someone else entirely, 27-year-old Miguel Hernandez, for the felony offense. After 180 days stewing in jail, Hernandez was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor with the understanding that his sentence would be limited to time served.
The beef between Harris’s groups and LULAC has been considerably more fraught. In the fall of 2016, Garcia publicly offered a $25,000 reward, funded through LULAC, for any information leading to the conviction of individuals “trying to intimidate a senior in Fort Worth or anywhere in Texas.” The target of their bounty was pretty clear, teed-up as it was by a Texas state representative, Ramón Romero, who had called out Harris by name for his door-to-door inquisition of seniors in Fort Worth’s predominantly Hispanic north side. Later at that same press conference, a related community service nonprofit, the United Hispanic Council of Tarrant County, announced that it had filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice against Harris’s Direct Action Texas for creating “an atmosphere of fear and intimidation” in local Hispanic neighborhoods.
In January 2019, LULAC filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Paxton and the secretary of state in Texas, David Whitley, accusing them both of violating the Voting Rights Act in their haphazard attempt to purge the state’s voter rolls of non-citizens.
Whitley’s offices would quietly walk back their initial list of 95,000 suspicious voters, many of whom were discovered to be, in fact, naturalized citizens. Shortly thereafter, San Antonio federal district court Judge Fred Biery put a stop to the purge, declaring that state Republicans were trying “to ferret the infinitesimal needles out of the haystack of 15 million Texas voters.” Harris, for his part, was unrepentant, telling the*Texas Observer*, “We are changing the entire discussion on voter fraud in Texas.” He was not wrong. While Harris is now planning to run for a House seat himself, his tireless efforts there have laid the groundwork for Project Veritas and its GOP partners this election season.
---
When mainstream Americans think about James O’Keefe, if they think about James O’Keefe at all, it’s usually in reference to his most hilarious failures: ruining his own sting on George Soros’s Open Society Foundation by leaving a self-incriminating voicemail; failing to lure a CNN reporter onto his yacht for a detailed “faux seducing” prank; revealing his unseemly ties to the billionaire mercenary Erik Prince by posting his own vanity spy training photos on social media. If Diamond Dog follows the Project Veritas playbook, it will likely focus on goosing a few unguarded comments out of canvassers and other volunteers in the hope of netting an inflammatory sound bite or two.
A modest, practically harmless October Surprise. But it’s typically down ballot where the average Project Veritas video tends to have its most pernicious effects. Less well known than O’Keefe’s blunders on the national stage are the numerous documented instances in which his stings have been cited to justify new and more onerous voter I.D. laws or other election integrity legislation in state legislatures across the country.
In April 2012, Chris McDaniel, then Mississippi’s Senate elections committee chairman, cited a Project Veritas voter fraud video as evidence justifying the passage of the state’s “photo identification requirement” bill, which the state’s Republican Governor Phil Bryant signed that May. Despite legal challenges, this law is still on the books today.
Also that year, a Republican Minnesota state representative, Steve Drazkowski, praised a locally shot O’Keefe video—in which Project Veritas undercover operatives requested ballot applications for their friends “Timothy Tebow and Thomas Brady”—during a floor debate for his party’s own draconian voter I.D. bill. While Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Mark Dayton vetoed a strict version of that voter I.D. legislation, and Minnesota voters backed his decision in a ballot initiative later that year, the state’s Republican Party still plans to revisit the issue again this year. (“We have had a number of studies that have been completed, there’s a lot of new data on this topic, and there are court cases that have been decided,” as Minnesota GOP State Senator Scott Newman ominously put it, “none of which we had in 2012.”)
O’Keefe’s “Primary of the Living Dead” stunts during the
and
primaries in 2012—in which his operatives requested but crucially did not actually attempt to use, the ballots of deceased primary voters—aided the passage of stringent voter I.D. laws in those states. After New Hampshire enacted a law in 2018 tightening the state’s voting statutes, partly in response to a new series of Project Veritas videos, Democratic legislators made repeated attempts to repeal them, only to be thwarted by Republican Governor Chris Sununu’s veto.
O’Keefe’s wealthy donors surely remember these and other victories in vivid detail, in no small measure because they are reiterated tirelessly during O’Keefe’s paid speaking engagements and fundraising conclaves. Among Project Veritas’s 2019 contributors were several wealthy political groups, charitable foundations, and conservative billionaires with apparent interests in the outcome of Diamond Dog.
From California, a donation of at least $10,000 from a pledged $100,000 came to Veritas from Susan Groff, president of the Los Angeles-area construction equipment rental company Northwest Excavating. A prolific Republican donor along with her husband Howard, both Groffs were praised as “good friends, entrepreneurs and patriots” in a loving tribute entered into the Congressional Record by their longtime beneficiary, former GOP House Rep. Elton Gallegly.(Another $50,000 came into Project Veritas from a donor listed only as “Arnott”; the Orange County-based investment guru Robert D. Arnott, a Koch network ally and prolific Republican donor, denied responsibility when reached via email.)
In Texas, another $50,000 was passed on to Project Veritas from the Texas Free Market Fund through the group Donors Trust, the dark money “donor-advised fund” that has helped make contributions from the Kochs, the DeVos family, and others untraceable in future IRS filings. The charitable foundation of late Texas oilman Ken W. “Stinky” Davis, based like Project Veritas ally Aaron Harris in Tarrant County, also kicked in $5,000 to the group, the latest in the foundation’s influential spending spree on Republican politics in the Lone Star State and across the country.
In Florida, another donation of $50,000 came to the group through Donors Trust, this time from the free market defenders at the Thomas W. Smith Foundation.
There was also a whopping $261,000 donation from the “Smith Family.” Could it be the Smith family that has monopolized local network TV affiliates through Sinclair Broadcasting? Or is it Randall and Barbara Smith, Palm Beach residents whose vulture fund Alden Global Capital was once described by Joshua Benton, the founder of Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, as “the gelatinous cube scouring the news industry’s dungeon”? Neither Smith families responded to requests for clarification on this issue.
Many additional hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of contributions to Project Veritas were attributed solely to “DT” on the group’s quarterly financial meeting documents. The initials may refer to Donors Trust or to the constellation of corporate and (ostensibly) philanthropic organizations tied to President DonaldTrump himself. While Trump is a well-known past donor to Project Veritas—a framed photo of him and O’Keefe rests prominently on a bookshelf at Project Veritas headquarters in Mamaroneck, New York—many other donors were evidently so secret that they were listed simply as “anonymous” even on the group’s own internal documents.
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Cash matters, but O’Keefe’s personal connectionsare where the depth and seamlessness of this coordination with the Republican Party become truly apparent. They also offer a glimpse into the vast network that has formed to suppress the vote this fall—a network years in the making, of which Project Veritas is but a humble node.
Take litigator William Consovoy, the legal point man on many of the conservative-funded election integrity cases pursued during the Trump era. He is, like O’Keefe, a New Jersey native with a long history in local Republican politics. A former law clerk for Clarence Thomas, Consovoy is also reportedly a friend of Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo, whose nephew David Maxham has been a friend of O’Keefe’s since their undergraduate years at Rutgers. (Maxham, naturally, was also invited to O’Keefe’s wedding.)
This year, Leonard Leo has stepped aside from day-to-day management of the Federalist Society to run a new conservative donor group, CRC Advisors, that is pouring money into Consovoy’s legal challenges in key battleground states across the country. CRC has been steering money into something called the “Honest Elections Project,” a fictitious name filed in Virginia for Leo’s old group the Judicial Education Project,now officially called the 85 Fund. As The Guardian reported, 99 percent of the Judicial Education Project’s funding in 2018 was a single $7.8 million donation funneled through Donors Trust.guk?
With generous assistance from the Honest Elections Project and the RNC, Consovoy’s firm Consovoy McCarthy PLLC has recently brought cases against the re-enfranchising of felons in Florida and sued to block California’s plans to deliver absentee ballots to all of the state’s registered voters. Consovoy has contributed to related motions filed in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, and Texas, where Ken Paxton’s victory against mail-in voting in May earned praise from President Trump on Twitter.
If you strain to look beyond the lonely partisan kitsch of James O’Keefe’s bungled scams and harebrained hoaxes, it’s plain to see the march of a whole battalion of Diamond Dog operatives and lawyers turned loose on the integrity of the ballot in key battleground states.
Liz Farkas, a New York state–licensed private investigator, provided additional reporting and research for this article.
Matthew Phelan has written for Chemical Engineering, New York, Jacobin, and Gawker, where he founded the conspiracy vertical Black Bag in 2014.
Jesse Hicks is a journalist whose work has appeared in Vice, Politico, Harper’s, and elsewhere.
Read More:
The Soapbox, Politics, Election 2020, Donald Trump, Project Veritas, James O'Keefe, Clarence Thomas, Donald Trump Jr., Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, FOX News, Texas, California, Republican Party, Federalist Society, Ken Paxton, Greg Abbott, Aaron Harris, George Soros, Erik Prince, Voting Rights
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