“One nation under God.” It’s a familiar phrase for modern Americans, even if it was largely a construct of corporate America during the New Deal to sell the public on the idea the capitalism and Christianity are inseparable. But how about the phrase “One nation under God, and one religion under God”? That was the eyebrow-raising call made by Michael Flynn during an appearance at the “Reawaken America Tour” at John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church back in November. And while it would be nice to dismiss this kind of theocratic language as just the latest unhinged comment from Flynn, it turns out the concept of “One nation under God, and one religion under God” is much more popular than many American’s would like to assume. Popular among the right-wing oligarchy in particular. Theocracy is popular with the powerful. Imagine that.
Yes, it’s theocracy brought to you by the Koch network, with figures like David Barton — long the GOP’s theocrat of choice — leading the way. That’s what we’re going to be looking at in this post. The Koch-ocracy isn’t just a corporatocracy. It’s theocratic too. And long been so, out in the open. For example, recall some of the Barton highlights we’ve seen over the years:
* In 1993, Barton spoke at the Concerned Women for America convention about the Christian Reconstructionist creed. He says that the basis for American laws should be ‘whatever is Christian is legal. Whatever isn’t Christian is illegal.’
* In 2011, Barton and Newt Gingrich created a video that claimed the US Constitution aws based on the Old Testament.
* In 2012, Barton teamed up with Glenn Beck to write a ‘controversial’ book about Thomas Jefferson that argued Jefferson was an orthodox Christian who did not believe in the separation of church and state.
* In early 2013, we learn that Beck and Barton were going to “go Galt” and create an entirely self-sustaining independent community that would provide all its own food and energy. At the center, David Barton will create a giant “national archive”/learning center where people can send their children to be “deprogrammed” and elected officials can come to learn “the truth.” They just needed a cool $2 billion to get it started, which obviously didn’t happen. But that was the plan. Deprogramming centers for children co-founded with Glenn Beck.
* As Ed Kilgore noted in 2014, Barton really is the unofficial historian of the GOP’s “Constitutional Conservative” caucus of elected officials, ranging from Michelle Bachmann to Ted Cruz. Recall that this is a glimpse at the pre-Trump GOP, when Cruz and Bachmann’s in the GOP — led by Ted Cruz before Trump came along and took over the party — fixation on Barton that underscores just how bad faith a caucus it truly it. The caucus literally relies on a historical revisionist. It’s not like Ted Cruz and Glenn Beck don’t realize Barton is peddling garbage. They don’t care. It’s part of what makes this movement so chilling: its a movement intent on capturing and controlling the morality of a society led by people dripping with open bad faith
* In 2016, Barton was brought in to run the “Keep the Promise” pro-Ted Cruz super-PAC. It turns out it was Rebekah Mercer who brought Barton in for that position, as part of a power struggle over the direction of the PAC with fellow mega-donor Tony Neubeauer.
That’s just a sampling of the profound role David Barton has played in facilitating and fostering the worst kinds of theocratic impulses of the GOP. And he’s like a god in the GOP.
But this story isn’t just about the cynical reliance of the GOP and the Koch network of mega-donors on people like Barton to push a merger of church and stage. As we’re going to see, one of the biggest players in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results was the Council for National Policy (CNP), a group literally founded in 1981 as a merger of televangelists, oligarchs, and Republican strategists to capitalize on Ronald Reagan 1980 victory and secure their joint agenda. A joint agenda of reversing advances in civil and political rights for women and minorities, tax cuts for the wealthy, and political power. For four decades this group of hundreds of the most powerful people in DC — including figures like Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway — have been advancing this corporatist theocratic agenda, culminating in a what could only be called preemptive coup plans for 2020. And yes, David Barton is a CNP member.
As we’re going to see, CNP members were some of the most aggressive figures in the efforts to find any excuse they could to force the overturning of the popular vote in the 2020 presidential election. This includes:
* David Barton: You can find an example of Barton pushing the now classic ‘Smartmatic voting machines stole the election’ story on Clay Clark’s Thrivetime show here. Clark organizes the ReAwaken America Tour that Michael Flynn was speaking at when Flynn made his call for ‘One Nation Under One Religion’. In doing so, Barton was giving his blessing to the wildest voter fraud theories to a large audience who trusts him.
* Cleta Mitchell: A Republican lawyer who has long operated as one of the GOP’s long-standing go-to conservative for justifying the worst kind of gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics. Recall how Mitchell was sitting in on the now notorious Jan 2, 2021 phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensburger demanding that they “find” the votes he needed to win the state, resulting in Mitchell’s law firm effectively kicking her out of the firm. Mitchell’s involvement in overturning the 2020 election arguably goes back to August of 2019, when she co-chaired a high-level working group that ended up advocating for radical reading of the constitution that would enable state legislatures to override the popular vote.
* Mark Meckler: A CNP Gold Circle member, Meckler co-founded the Convention of States Action (COS) along with long-time Koch associate Eric O’Keefe. Recall how the Convention of States project is a long-stand Koch-financed effort to trigger an Article V Convention of States that threatens to rewrite the entire US constitution. After the CNP took the lead in organizing anti-COVID-lockdown protests in states around the US, Meckler announced that he was temporarily converting the COS into “clearinghouse where all these guys can find each other.” Oh, and David Barton’s WallBuilders group is part of the COS effort. Yes, it turns out Barton’s historical revisionism comes in handy when one is planning on overhauling the constitution.
* Lisa Nelson: The CEO of the Koch-back American Legislative Exchange Committee (ALEC), Nelson was at a CNP event in February of 2020 — right as the COVID pandemic was getting started — when she informed the group she was already working with GOP attorneys on methods for overturning the popular vote in the upcoming presidential election. One of the GOP lawyers she told them she was working with was Cleta Mitchell.
* Amy Kremer: It was Amy and her daughter Kylie who headed up the Women for America First group that ended up organizing the January 6 rally at the Ellipse. Recall how Amy and Kylie obtained three ‘burner’ cellphones that were reportedly used for some untraceable communications with a range of figures involved with the Trump White House and various ‘Stop the Steal’ efforts.
* Steve Bannon: Nuff said.
* Ali Alexander: Yes, Roger Stone’s acolyte is a CNP member too! Recall how Stone founded StopTheSteal in 2016 to help Trump win the GOP nomination. But Ali Alexander became its public face and leader during the post-2020 election period in the lead up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. And as we saw, the Stop the Steal rally outside the Capitol was seen as the more “wild” rally planned for Jan 6 — as opposed to the Women for America First rally at the Ellipse — and appears to have been the event from which the insurrection actually emerged. Alexander was also making chants of “Victory or Death” at the Jan 5 Stop the Steal rally in DC. Michael Flynn spoke at that same Jan 5 rally.
And that’s just a sampling of the known CNP members who were taking active steps to ensure Donald Trump won the 2020 election through any means necessary. Let’s also recall the critical role CNP members Russell J. Ramsland and J. Keet Lewis played in the lead up to the insurrection. Ramsland’s private intelligence company, Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), was started in June 2017 by Adam T. Kraft, a former senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Starting in 2018, Ramsland became a leading GOP purveyor of mass voter fraud allegations. And in the days leading up to the insurrection, Ramsland was joined by retired Army colonel and psychological warfare expert Phil Waldron as they operated in Steve Bannon’s and Rudy Giuliani’s “war room” operating out of the Willard Hotel.
Also note that while Michael Flynn isn’t listed on any of the leaked CNP membership lists, he did reportedly speak at a 2016 CNP event. And he’s obviously a theocrat who networks with other theocrats. It would be surprising if Flynn was working extremely closely with the CNP. At the same time, his open calls for a theocracy might make him a little to ‘hot’ to have a formal member. But there’s no question Flynn and the CNP share an agenda.
Project Blitz: It’s Like ALEC for Theocracy
But there’s another aspect to this story of the growing theocratic ambitions of this network: Project Blitz. Launched in 2015, Project Blitz is like the ALEC of theocracy, operating as a ‘bill mill’ focused on generating model legislation designed to be used by federal and state legislator to further this same theocratic agenda. A bill mill literally dedicated to getting Christianity enshrined in law as the US’s moral foundation with special legal protections for people acting according to those beliefs.
Run by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, Project Blitz works in concert with David Barton’s WallBuilders. It also turns out the sole employee of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, Lee Carawan, is a CNP member too, along with her husband Rolfe. She sits on the Project Blitz steering committee
Project Blitz is being executed using a three-tiered strategy. The first tier focuses on pushing bills that protect prayer in school and other public spaces. The second tier aims at getting the government involved in actively “Christianizing” America. The third tier then works on laws that “protect” religious beliefs and practices. Specifically bigoted beliefs and practices. It’s literally a vision where conservative Christians get special legally protected rights to be bigots that no other group would get, based on a vision of the US as a divinely founded nation that should be following some form of Biblical law. Extra rights for Christians. Conservative Christians in particular. As we’ll see, David Barton and many of the rest of these figures are followers of Seven Mountain Dominionism — a sect of Christianity that believes it is up to Christians to take political power before Jesus will return — and that’s the kind of Christianity that will demand complete conformity when it takes power. Conformity that will be defined, in part, by the theological whims of prominent religious leaders. A true merger of church and state really is what they have in mind. As researcher Frederick Clarkson put it, the theocratic end they envision is chillingly akin to The Handmaid’s Tale.
And as we’re also going to see, despite some setbacks, like the insurrection not working , Project Blitz is moving ahead. The ‘bill mill’ is active and working. So when we’re forced to ask “what’s next?” following what amounted to an organized attempt to overturn the 2020 election by America’s leading theocrats, part of the sad answer is “more ProjectBlitz-ing”. That’s what’s next. The attempted theft of the election and insurrection is just a once-every-four-years thing. Project Blitz never stops. It’s always what’s next.
It’s that broader story of the longstanding and ongoing theocratic power grab, a corporatist theocratic power grab, that we’re going to cover in this post. A power grab that arguably started with the formation of the CNP on 1981 and culminated in the 2020 push to overturn the election, capped off with the January 6 Capitol insurrection. A power grab that wasn’t actually slowed by the failure of the insurrection. The insurrection was fomented by people so people already they could pull off a coup attempt, fail, and still largely face no repercussions. Project Blitz continues while the CNP pushes new voter suppression initiatives across the US. Onward Christian soldier.
A Look at God’s Plan. A Plan for More Prayer. Specific Prayer. And Lower Taxes
Ok, so here’s a review of our look at this ongoing theocratic network. A network playing a key role in both collapsing the separation of church and state and collapsing the public’s faith in the integrity of US elections.
* November 21, 2021: Michael Flynn and the Christian Right’s Plan to Turn America Into a Theocracy:
Michael Flynn’s call for “One nation under God, and one religion under God,” at the “Reawaken America Tour” visit to John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, TX, wasn’t just the latest example of Flynn transgressing a line of democratic decency. It was Flynn reflecting a growing openness on the Christian right to talk about undemocratic measures. Including violence. It also reflected a notable level of support for viewing the US as a fundamentally Christian nation found across the US populace. As of August 2021, a national Public Discourse and Ethics survey found that 39 percent of Americans agree that the founding documents are divinely inspired, 34 percent believe that the success of America is part of God’s plan, and 25 percent believe that the federal government should go ahead and formally declare the U.S. a Christian nation.
* November 16, 2021: If you’re paying attention to Christian nationalism, you won’t be shocked by Michael Flynn’s call for ‘one religion under God’:
As the Baptist News also observed following Michael Flynn’s call for “One nation under God, and one religion under God,” Flynn wasn’t just echoing the general popularity in the idea for the idea of formally declaring the US a Christian country. Flynn was articulating the rationale behind Project Blitz, the Christian far right’s current political project dedicated to formally making the US a Christian nation, with special Christian protections. Special protections that translate into real political power.
* Sept 28, 2015: Prayer Caucus, funded by taxpayers, defends faith in the public square:
In 2015, USA Today ran a piece on the parent organization operates Project Blitz. The Congressional Prayer Caucus’s non-profit, The Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, launched Project Blitz in 2016. It’s a tiny operation in terms of personnel, with just one paid employee, Lea Carawan, who sits on the Project Blitz steering committee. Both Lea and her husband Rolfe are members of the CNP.
* April 13, 2019: The plot against America: Inside the Christian right plan to “remodel” the nation:
A closer look at Project Blitz and the role ‘historian’ David Barton plays in the project. Project Blitz is more or less a three-part plan to enshrine Barton’s historically warped vision of the founding of the US. And at the heart of that three-part plan is an ALEC-like dedication to operating a ‘bill mill’ of model legislation that can be passed along legislators around the nation. It’s why Project Blitz can be so influential with just a handful of staff. You don’t need a large number of people to run a bill mill.
* August 11, 2012: David Barton, Christian Scholar, Faces a Backlash:
A look back a brief moment when it appeared David Barton’s star may have fallen. He was so popular back in 2011 that Mike Huckabee introduced Barton at an event by declaring, “I almost wish that there would be something like a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced—at gunpoint, no less—to listen to every David Barton message. And I think our country would be better for it.” But in 2012, Barton faced a backlash. This was after a number of conservative historians actually took a look at the garbage content Barton was churning out and publicly scolded him. Now, as time told, Barton’s fall from grace was brief at most. He helped found Project Blitz after this, after all. The whole episode is emblematic of the role Barton has played throughout his career: he’s warmly embraced no matter how much garbage he gets caught spewing out because it’s garbage powerful people want to hear.
* May 5, 2011: David Barton – Extremist ‘Historian’ for the Christian Right:
Another quick look back at the extremist roots of David Barton in this 2011 SPLC Barton profile. Yes, it turns out Barton was giving talks at the events of known Christian Identity groups in the early 90s. That’s where he began his theological career. Today, Barton’s theology is that of the Seven Mountains Dominionism, a strain of Christianity that calls for the church to take political control over seven different spheres of society before Jesus will return. It’s basically a recipe for a full blown theocracy. And also the kind of theology oligarchs love: unions, minimum wage laws, and environmental protections are are biblically prohibited under Barton’s form of Christianity.
* August 23, 2019: Convention of States Fires Up Base for Push to Rewrite U.S. Constitution:
Not limited to providing theological justification for the merger of church and state, David Barton has been working on another project that would destroy the US: the Convention of States (COS) project. As we’ve seen, the Koch network of mega-donors has spent decades investing in triggering an Article V Constitutional Convention, threatening to rewrite the constitution according to the whims of the Koch mega-donor network Barton’s WallBuilders group has been working with COS, co-founded by Mark Meckler. Yes, Meckler is a CNP member.
* Feb 22, 2021: How the CNP, a Republican Powerhouse, Helped Spawn Trumpism, Disrupted the Transfer of Power, and Stoked the Assault on the Capitol:
Almost a year ago, The Washington Spectator gave us a massive profile on one of the most important organization operating in DC, the Council for National Policy (CNP), and the role it played in fomenting a variety of actions and propaganda designed to convince the public the election was stolen from Trump and justify the reversal of the election result. The article describes how the CNP kicked into action as the pandemic go underway, providing the White House with a list of 100 business executives who could help guide the White House through kickstarting the pandemic-stricken economy. Those actions appeared to mostly focus on whipping up public opposition to anti-COVID public health measures. But even before the CNP was running its anti-anti-COVID operation, key CNP figures like Cleta Mitchell and Lisa Nelson were actively planning with groups like ALEC for avenues of overturning the popular vote in the upcoming election.
* July 24, 2021: The Christian nationalist assault on democracy goes stealth — but the pushback is working:
A July 2021 update on Project Blitz, at that point a roughly five year old project. And a much slicker and more ambitious project, with Project Blitz giving ‘bill mill’ advice on how to cloak the intent of the model legislation in secular-sounding language. Project Blitz also discovered the potent political power of fusing its agenda of granting legal protections to conservative Christians with hot-button topics like transgender youth or “critical race theory” (CRT) in schools and libraries. Keep in mind this update came several months before Republican Glenn Younkin’s CRT-fueled victory in the Virginia governor’s race.
* December 14, 2021: The network of election lawyers who are making it harder for Americans to vote:
Finally, we’re look at a report from a few weeks ago about a crack team of GOP lawyers working with ALEC and spearheading voter suppression model legislation for use by state legislator. In other words, a voter suppression bill mill. Of the five lawyers listed as spearheading this effort, three are known members of the CNP: Cleta Mitchell, J Christian Adams, and Kenneth Blackwell. Yes, Mitchell is continuing her voter suppression work despite being kicked out of her law firm for gross malpractice in relation to her baseless voter fraud claims. The other two lawers are Jason Snead and Hans von Spakovksy. As we’ve seen, Snead and Adams have a fairly recent history of working together on voter suppression experts (with both ended up getting chastised by judges for their inaccurate testimonies). And Spakovksy is one of the GOP’s long-stand voter suppression gurus. Mitchell, Adams, and Spakovksy all attended a secret December 1 ALEC meeting where they strategized their voter suppression plans going forward.
Michael Flynn Call for “One nation under God, and one religion under God.”
Ok, first, here’s a Rolling Stone piece written about week after Michael Flynn made his jarring speech at the “Reawaken America Tour” at John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, TX, openly calling for the United States to formally become a Christian nation. As the piece points out, it wasn’t jarring because of the content of Flynn’s speech. It was jarring because Flynn apparently felt comfortable openly making this call, reflecting what is a palpable growing radicalization of Christian nationalist movements. According to a Public Religion Research Institute study published in November, 26 percent of white evangelical Protestants (and 30 percent of Republicans) agree that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence if that’s what it takes to save the country.” That’s paired with polling from August 2021 that found 39 percent of Americans agree that the founding documents are divinely inspired, 34 percent believe that the success of America is part of God’s plan, and 25 percent believe that the federal government should go ahead and formally declare the U.S. a Christian nation. That’s what made Michael Flynn’s speech so jarring. When he called for an official state religion, he was speaking for A LOT of other people:
Rolling Stone
Michael Flynn and the Christian Right’s Plan to Turn America Into a Theocracy
As Alex Jones put it, “We’re gonna win in the end because… God WINS!”
By Alex Morris
November 21, 2021 12:05 PM ETThis past weekend, infamous FBI fibber Michael Flynn stood on a stage at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and spoke his truth: “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.” Christian nationalist mic drop. He’d finally said the quiet part out loud.
Which, to be fair, was maybe not even the craziest thing that happened at Cornerstone last weekend as it hosted podcast host Clay Clark’s “Reawaken America Tour” — a shitshow so very spectacular that Cornerstone, the church of famed end times Christian Zionist John Hagee, had to release a face-saving statement saying that maybe, just maybe, things had gone a little too far even for them (“Cornerstone Church is not associated with this organization and does not endorse their views.”) There was a woman wearing a Jewish-themed prayer shawl and blowing on a ram’s horn, because, as she explained it, “Demons tremble at the sound of the shofar.” There was My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell and disgraced political operative Roger Stone on hand to provide the event with a legitimate dose of illegitimacy. There was Alex Jones growling at attendees that “the devil’s reign on this planet is coming to an end” and that Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama know that “they chose SATAN! AND THEY! ARE GOING! TO FAIL!” There were rousing rounds of the oddly-devised anti-Biden chant “Let’s go, Brandon” and worship music provided by Sean Feucht, graciously in attendance thanks to his failed run for California’s state legislature. There was also, presumably, nary a vaccinated person in the house.
But Flynn’s statements were notable not just because the quiet part was said out loud but because the quiet part has been getting louder and louder, with political and religious leaders calling explicitly for what amounts to a theocracy. Just last month, Ohio GOP Senate candidate Josh Mandel used the debate stage to opine that “we should be instilling faith in the classroom, in the workplace, and everywhere in society” because, as far as he’s concerned, “there’s no such thing as a separation of church and state.” (“We stand with General Flynn,” Mandel tweeted on Saturday.) Last year, Bill Barr informed the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast that, to the extent such a separation does exist, it’s thanks to “militant secularists” who don’t understand that America would be better off if we just let Christians run the show. “It’s been a while since people were willing to say so loudly and so publicly that America is a Christian nation,” says Philip Gorski, a sociologist of religion at Yale. “You didn’t hear George Bush, senior or junior, saying anything like that. Certainly they had a way of alluding to Christian elements of the American experiment, and they could speak to Christians in a language that was a little bit veiled. But they never would have said anything like what Michael Flynn said the other day—surely not in public and probably not even in private.”
Naturally this kind of Christian nationalist talk ruffles major feathers, and with good reason. It sounds crazy because it is crazy. What would a formally Christian America actually look like? How would it be achieved? How would it get around the Constitution? Which version of Christianity would we use? And what would we do with the millions of citizens who happen to disbelieve in that “one religion under God?”
On the surface, such questions may seem like a logical retort to Flynn’s, but they also distort the fundamental issue. In pointing out the impracticalities of the logistics, such questions basically imply that Flynn can’t really mean what he’s saying. “Hell yes, he means it,” says Anthea Butler, professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania and author of White Evangelical Racism. “And whether or not he means it, somebody hearing it will mean it and believe it. What matters is that it’s being said, and somebody is receiving that message.”
More to the point, somebody is out there looking to receive it. The message that America should be a Christian nation, taken quite literally, is foundational to the Christian right. It is not a fringe belief but rather a rallying cry, the principle that animates — and excuses — their foray into the messy political realm, into the lowly things of this world. According to Matthew 25:31–46, when Jesus returns to earth, “All the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” In this so-called Judgment of the Nations, godly countries will be rewarded and ungodly ones punished, which means that in a conservative Christian’s mind, their own fate may in some way be wrapped up in the U.S.’s relation to certain wedge issues like abortion or LGBTQ rights. That, in turn, goes a long way toward explaining why, in 2018, 61 percent of evangelicals said the country was headed in the right direction while 64 percent of everyone else begged to differ.
Though theocratic views range from a desire to simply elect “godly” leaders to a militant call for a nation-state governed entirely by Old Testament law (including a return to the practice of stoning), some form of theocratic thinking now runs through a large swath of the populace. As of August 2021, a national Public Discourse and Ethics survey found that 39 percent of Americans agree that the founding documents are divinely inspired, 34 percent believe that the success of America is part of God’s plan, and 25 percent believe that the federal government should go ahead and formally declare the U.S. a Christian nation.
That desire may be ahistorical—most founders were clear that a theocracy was exactly what they did not want—but it has pervasively peppered American history. One of the Confederacy’s complaints when seceding was that the U.S. Constitution did not sufficiently namecheck God — a concern that was apparently shared by some in the Union. In 1864, a delegation of the National Reform Association (the OG NRA) met with Lincoln to request the addition of a Christian amendment to the document “humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the ruler among nations.” Lincoln politely blew them off, but the idea gained traction again after the school prayer rulings in the 1960s, and again after R.J. Rushdoony published his Institutes of Biblical Law in 1973, advocating not just American theocracy but an even more hardcore theonomy — a nation governed by biblical law.
If there is anything different this time around, it’s in the violence of the rhetoric. Here, there are no genteel delegations or academic tomes. In indiscriminately pulling the fringiest elements of American Christianity into his political coalition, Trump melded theocratic thinking with religious radicalization. The effect? According to a Public Religion Research Institute study published early this month, 26 percent of white evangelical Protestants (and 30 percent of Republicans) agree that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence if that’s what it takes to save the country.” For the attendees of Reawake America, civil war is now a quaint concept; Holy War is more what they’re after these days. Or as Alex Jones put it this weekend, “We’re gonna win in the end because…God WINS!”
Which is why, among religious scholars, there’s a growing frustration with the constant pearl-clutching over what someone like Flynn might say paired with an ostensible lack of belief that he really, literally means it. Likewise, and especially after January 6, there’s a growing frustration with a political faction that believes it is fighting on the side of the angels going up against a political faction that still operates like a compromise can be made. “I mean, I want infrastructure,” says Butler. “I’m sick of the potholes in Philadelphia. But nobody seems to understand the real danger. It’s nice to build bridges, but you’re building bridges for them to come and get you.”
Perhaps the real motives of those like Flynn can be seen when one takes into account the fact that theocracy actually runs counter to the sort of faith these folks profess to espouse. “What confounds me is that undermining the First Amendment, undermining the separation of church and state, really is an attack on religion in American life,” says Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest and historian of American religion at Dartmouth College. “The effect of the First Amendment was to establish a free marketplace for religion that has lent an energy and a dynamism to religion in America unmatched anywhere in the world. Why would those groups that have benefited most from this marketplace—namely evangelicals because they know how to compete better than anyone else—turn around and try to undermine the very system that has given them so much currency in the culture?”
One answer could be that the culture — the marketplace of public opinion — no longer matters to the Christian right. This is no longer a humble competition for souls. This is about power. And, quite possibly, violence. “There needs to be some kind of understanding when this kind of language ramps up that you have to pay attention to that,” says Butler. “Honestly, we’ve got jihadists in this country. They’re just Christian ones.” It’s the threat of violence implicit in Flynn’s words — rather than the explicit absurdity — that we should care about.
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“But Flynn’s statements were notable not just because the quiet part was said out loud but because the quiet part has been getting louder and louder, with political and religious leaders calling explicitly for what amounts to a theocracy. Just last month, Ohio GOP Senate candidate Josh Mandel used the debate stage to opine that “we should be instilling faith in the classroom, in the workplace, and everywhere in society” because, as far as he’s concerned, “there’s no such thing as a separation of church and state.” (“We stand with General Flynn,” Mandel tweeted on Saturday.) Last year, Bill Barr informed the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast that, to the extent such a separation does exist, it’s thanks to “militant secularists” who don’t understand that America would be better off if we just let Christians run the show. “It’s been a while since people were willing to say so loudly and so publicly that America is a Christian nation,” says Philip Gorski, a sociologist of religion at Yale. “You didn’t hear George Bush, senior or junior, saying anything like that. Certainly they had a way of alluding to Christian elements of the American experiment, and they could speak to Christians in a language that was a little bit veiled. But they never would have said anything like what Michael Flynn said the other day—surely not in public and probably not even in private.””
Yes, when Michael Flynn called for “One nation under God, and one religion under God”, he wasn’t just saying the quiet part out loud. He was joining a growing chorus of people making similar calls. Formally ending the separation of Church and State is an increasingly popular idea in the United States.
But it’s not just that a growing number of US conservatives are open to the idea of ending the separation of church and state. It’s that this same demographic is also increasingly open to the idea of using political violence to secure political power permanently. It’s a particularly potent convergence of authoritarian impulses:
...
Though theocratic views range from a desire to simply elect “godly” leaders to a militant call for a nation-state governed entirely by Old Testament law (including a return to the practice of stoning), some form of theocratic thinking now runs through a large swath of the populace. As of August 2021, a national Public Discourse and Ethics survey found that 39 percent of Americans agree that the founding documents are divinely inspired, 34 percent believe that the success of America is part of God’s plan, and 25 percent believe that the federal government should go ahead and formally declare the U.S. a Christian nation.That desire may be ahistorical—most founders were clear that a theocracy was exactly what they did not want—but it has pervasively peppered American history. One of the Confederacy’s complaints when seceding was that the U.S. Constitution did not sufficiently namecheck God — a concern that was apparently shared by some in the Union. In 1864, a delegation of the National Reform Association (the OG NRA) met with Lincoln to request the addition of a Christian amendment to the document “humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the ruler among nations.” Lincoln politely blew them off, but the idea gained traction again after the school prayer rulings in the 1960s, and again after R.J. Rushdoony published his Institutes of Biblical Law in 1973, advocating not just American theocracy but an even more hardcore theonomy — a nation governed by biblical law.
If there is anything different this time around, it’s in the violence of the rhetoric. Here, there are no genteel delegations or academic tomes. In indiscriminately pulling the fringiest elements of American Christianity into his political coalition, Trump melded theocratic thinking with religious radicalization. The effect? According to a Public Religion Research Institute study published early this month, 26 percent of white evangelical Protestants (and 30 percent of Republicans) agree that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence if that’s what it takes to save the country.” For the attendees of Reawake America, civil war is now a quaint concept; Holy War is more what they’re after these days. Or as Alex Jones put it this weekend, “We’re gonna win in the end because…God WINS!”
...
It’s that convergence of authoritarian impulses that we’re going to be focusing on in the rest of this post. A convergence of authoritarian impulses is happening at the highest levels of real political power. And as we’re going to see, while some manifestations of these authoritarian impulses are relatively new, the organizations and networks behind it are so deeply embedded in the US political establishment that you almost can’t distinguish between these movements and the broader Republican Party. A fusion of the Koch mega-donor network with the powerful Council for National Policy (CNP), an organization that itself was formed in 1981 as a coalition of business interests and the religious right. The most powerful networks inside the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement in the US have aligned around and agenda of permanently capturing political power under the banner of preserving Christianity in America. That’s who Michael Flynn was speaking to when he made that call for the US to fall under one religion. The religious of power.
Project Blitz: Stealth Theocracy, ALEC-style, Brought to You by the Congressional Prayer Caucus
And as the following piece in Baptist News points out, when Michael Flynn made that call for “One nation under God and one religion under God”, he wasn’t just echoing a growing general sentiment within the Christian evangelical community. He was articulating the rationale behind Project Blitz, the Christian far right’s current political project dedicated to formally making the US a Christian nation, with special Christian protections. Special protections that translate into real political power. Project Blitz is basically the American Legislative Exchange Counsel (ALEC) for Christian Nationalists: the group operates as a ‘bill mill’, creating template legislation for widespread use by state legislators. And as we’re going to see, it’s not just that Project Blitz is modeled after ALEC. It’s effectively the same network of conservative powerbrokers behind both networks. That’s why Michael Flynn’s target audience for the ‘one religion under God’ comment wasn’t just Christian conservatives. That target audience included the corporate power brokers best positioned to capitalize and profit from a Christian Nationalist revolution:
Baptist News
If you’re paying attention to Christian nationalism, you won’t be shocked by Michael Flynn’s call for ‘one religion under God’
Opinion Amanda Tyler
November 16, 2021At a rally in San Antonio as part of the “ReAwaken America” tour, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn said the quiet part out loud: “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God and one religion under God.”
His weekend statement sent shockwaves over social media, but for those of us who have been watching the acceleration of Christian nationalism over the past several years, the admission was hardly surprising. It echoes explicit efforts that would damage our democracy.
Such language, emphasizing non-specific religious language in official settings, is not simply a misguided appeal to patriotism or national unity. Project Blitz, a project of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, explained the rationale behind a model bill for states to mandate the posting of “In God We Trust” in public schools: “More than just a motto, though, it is our country’s foundation and an important part of our identity as Americans.”
Flynn’s longer speech reveals how much he relies on one of the hallmarks of Christian nationalism — the emphasis of a mythical history of the United States as founded as a “Christian nation,” by God’s providential hand that gives our country a special place in history, the present and a premillennialist future. “There is a time, and you have to believe this: that God Almighty is like involved in this country because this is it. This is it. This is the last place on Earth. This is, this is the shining city on the hill,” he said.
The religious reference of “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance since the 1950s acknowledges religion as part of our country’s history but certainly does not negate our country’s protections for religious freedom or give the government (much less Michael Flynn) authority to define “the country’s religion.”
One main problem with Flynn’s version of “one nation under God” is that no one religious identity or belief ever has united Americans. The idea of a national religion is directly at odds with the promise of the U.S. Constitution that our government stays neutral when it comes to religion. In Flynn’s United States, many Americans are excluded — those who don’t practice whatever the chosen national faith would be, those who are not monotheistic and those who do not affiliate with religion at all.
...
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“Such language, emphasizing non-specific religious language in official settings, is not simply a misguided appeal to patriotism or national unity. Project Blitz, a project of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, explained the rationale behind a model bill for states to mandate the posting of “In God We Trust” in public schools: “More than just a motto, though, it is our country’s foundation and an important part of our identity as Americans.””
It’s Project Blitz, brought to you by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation. Yes, the group behind Project Blitz has close ties to the US congress. In particular, the Republican delegation in the House of Representatives. Created in 2005 by Republican congressman Randy Forbes, the Congressional Prayer Caucus sounds like a generic non-partisan prayer group for members of congress. And to some extent that’s true. The group is paid for with donations from the office accounts of several congressional members. But as the following 2015 USA Today piece makes clear, it’s basically a Republican operation. That year, the Caucus had 90 House members, and one member in the Senate. Nearly all Republicans.
But Project Blitz isn’t technically a project of the Congressional Prayer Caucus. It’s a project of the Congressional Prayer Caucus’s non-profit organization, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation. Operating out of a building Rep Forbes owns in Chesapeake, VA, the foundation has one paid staff member, executive director Lea Carawan. Carawan sits on the Project Blitz steering committee. Importantly, both Lea and her husband Rolfe are members of the Council for National Policy (CNP).
And as we are going to see, you can’t really separate the extensive planning and efforts that went into overturning the 2020 election results — efforts that started early on in 2020 in anticipation of a Trump electoral loss — from the CNP. This is the larger story here: Project Blitz is just one part of a much larger agenda of capturing and permanently securing political power for the Christian Right, and the organization long at the heart of that agenda is the CNP. The same organization that, as we’ll see, was at the heart of the organizational efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. So while Project Blitz is technically a project of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, it’s important to recognize that the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation is just one of the many entities through which Christian nationalist networks operating at the highest levels of power organize their activities. Project Blitz is a group effort with extensive backing by the right-wing oligarchy:
USA TODAY
Prayer Caucus, funded by taxpayers, defends faith in the public square
Paul Singer
Published 3:57 pm ET Sept 28, 2015 | Updated 4:22 pm ET Sept 28, 2015WASHINGTON — When Pope Francis left the Capitol last week, prayer did not leave with him.
One night a week, the taxpayer-funded congressional Prayer Caucus meets in an ornate room in the U.S. Capitol to defend the role of (mostly) Christian faith and prayer in the U.S. government.
The caucus was created by Rep. Randy Forbes, R‑Va., in 2005, and now includes about 90 members of the House, nearly all Republicans, one U.S. senator and one paid staff member.
“In addition to their commitment to putting aside political differences and uniting in prayer for our nation, members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus work together engaging the legislative process to protect free exercise for Americans of every faith or no faith,” Forbes said in a statement. “Some recent issues Prayer Caucus Members have engaged on include reinforcing religious freedom for all faiths in the military, supporting and protecting the autonomy of churches and faith based organizations, and working to ensure every American is free to live according to their beliefs without fear of punishment by the government.”
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Like other congressional caucuses, several members kick in shares from their taxpayer-funded office accounts to cover the approximately $50,000 annual salary of the staff member, Amy Vitale, who tracks legislation, drafts letters and generally supports the work of the caucus.
The Prayer Caucus also has an outside non-profit organization that supports its efforts, as are many other caucuses. The Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation operates out of a Chesapeake, Va., building Forbes owns that also houses his campaign office. His wife, Shirley Forbes, is one of three unpaid directors of the foundation. The foundation has one paid staff member, executive director Lea Carawan, but operates entirely on private funds. Carawan declined a request for an interview.
The caucus is partly about prayer. The members gather in the House majority leader’s ceremonial office and pray for the nation and also pray for constituents who are in distress, signing a card of support that is then sent to them..
But the group also aims to extend the reach of faith and prayer in public life.
“We do what we can to make sure that legislation emerges with what we believe to be American, Christian values,” said caucus member John Fleming, R‑La. “We believe that a democracy is only functional if there is a certain level of virtuousness among the nation. Freedom also requires a certain responsibility and that requires a certain moral code. The moral code that we as Americans have lived by for over 200 years is based on what? The Ten Commandments.”
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The foundation encourages individuals to organize “Room 219” prayer groups — named for the room in the U.S. Capitol where the Prayer Caucus meets — and urges the creation of similar caucuses in state legislatures. There are affiliated Prayer Caucuses in at least a dozen state legislatures.
Forbes and a dozen other Prayer Caucus members traveled to North Carolina in March to launch an initiative called PrayUSA, asking government officials and other to sign a resolution calling for prayer. The initiative is part of “a tactical strategy to effectively challenge the growing anti-faith movement in our Country,” the foundation says.
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Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, said “It’s clear that this entity is pushing to merge church and state when it comes to making prayer — particularly Christian prayer — a part of government responsibility.”
The caucus “is trying to use the power of government to be on the side of a particular religious viewpoint,” he argued. “They are trying to give the appearance that certain types of religious activity and certain types of religious belief are endorsed by the government.”
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“The caucus was created by Rep. Randy Forbes, R‑Va., in 2005, and now includes about 90 members of the House, nearly all Republicans, one U.S. senator and one paid staff member.”
A congressional caucus consisting nearly entirely of House Republicans. That was the composition of the Congressional Prayer Caucus in 2015. But it’s not the caucus itself that’s running Project Blitz. That’s done by the caucus’s non-profit foundation, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation. Which has just one paid employee: Executive director — and CNP member — Lea Carawan:
...
Like other congressional caucuses, several members kick in shares from their taxpayer-funded office accounts to cover the approximately $50,000 annual salary of the staff member, Amy Vitale, who tracks legislation, drafts letters and generally supports the work of the caucus.The Prayer Caucus also has an outside non-profit organization that supports its efforts, as are many other caucuses. The Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation operates out of a Chesapeake, Va., building Forbes owns that also houses his campaign office. His wife, Shirley Forbes, is one of three unpaid directors of the foundation. The foundation has one paid staff member, executive director Lea Carawan, but operates entirely on private funds. Carawan declined a request for an interview.
...
Keep in mind that the above article was written in 2015, a year before Project Blitz was formally started. But it was already clear to observers that a merger of church and state was at the of the group’s agenda. Giving certain religious groups special government endorsements was clearly the goal for the Congressional Prayer Caucus and its non-profit Foundation.
Project Blitz: The Christian Right’s Plan to “Make America Great Again” By Making it Officially Christian for the First Time Ever
It was in 2016, with the creation of Project Blitz, that the Congressional Prayer Caucus’s agenda became undeniable. Launched under the leadership of one of the Republican Party’s favorite ‘historians’, David Barton, Project Blitz started off as both a ‘bill mill’ project but also a project in historical revisionism. The kind of historical revisionism that is David Barton’s specialty: revising our understanding of the Founding Fathers. Revising out of American history all of the ugly truths that might damage the Christian nationalist utopian vision of a divinely-guided nation founded by Founding Fathers with deep Christian beliefs and a sense that the United States was intended to be a nation run by and for conservative Christians. As Frederick Clarkson put it, the theocratic end they envision is chillingly akin to The Handmaid’s Tale. Yes, Project Blitz is essentially an ALEC-like entity that exists to generate the kind of ‘model legislation’ that would remodel the US into The Handmaid’s Tale:
Salon
The plot against America: Inside the Christian right plan to “remodel” the nation
Religious right’s blueprint for theocratic state laws keeps creeping forward. Is the left ready to fight?
By Paul Rosenberg
Published April 13, 2019 12:20PM (EDT)On April 3, USA Today published an array of stories under the banner, “Copy, Paste, Legislate,” exploring the political impact of model bills on state-level legislation — more than 10,000 bills from 2010 to 2018 — based on a two-year joint investigation with the Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. The lead story headline said it all: “You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead.”
OK, it wasn’t quite all. While corporate influence was the strongest, figures revealed that conservative groups weren’t far behind: There were 4,301 bills from industry and 4,012 from conservative groups, far more than the 1,602 from liberal groups or the 248 classified as “other.” The hidden origins of these bills often hides their true intent. The most notorious such group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, for instance combines business interests with movement conservatives.
But within the fold of “conservative groups” there’s a whole other story to be told about the organizing of extremist religious conservatives, whose political mobilization, as I’ve noted in the past, played a crucial role in electing Donald Trump. Indeed, just the day before “Copy, Past, Legislate” was published, the Texas Senate passed SB-17, a bill that would protect anti-LGBTQ discrimination by all licensed professionals who claim to act on a “sincerely held religious belief.”
“It’s time for Americans to wake up to the harsh reality that the religious right, fueled by their fear of loss of power from the changing demographics in our country and their support from the Trump administration, is emboldened and aggressively pursuing all means possible to maintain white Christian power in America,” Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, told Salon. “Project Blitz, for example, has already introduced over 50 bills in at least 23 states this year alone,” she added.
One spin-off story published in the Nashville Tennessean dealt specifically with an anti-LGTBQ adoption model bill. (Simultaneously, NBC reported such bills were “‘snowballing’ in state legislatures.”) The Tennessee bill came from Project Blitz, which was described as “a legislative effort with the stated aim to ‘bring back God to America.’” But as Salon has reported in the past, Project Blitz is much more sinister than that.
Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, was the first to discover its three-tier playbook, produced by a coalition of right-wing activists he’d long been following, including Texas Republican activist and pseudo-historian David Barton, whose book, “Jefferson Lies,” which tried to remake Thomas Jefferson as an evangelical hero, was canceled by its publisher under withering criticism from conservative and evangelical scholars (followup here)..
“The authors of the Project Blitz playbook are savvy purveyors of dominionism,” Clarkson told Salon at the time. “They are in it for the long haul and try not to say things that sound too alarming. But they live an immanent theocratic vision.” Not all their allies would go all the way with them, Clarkson told me, but the theocratic end they envision is chillingly akin to “The Handmaid’s Tale” — reason enough to warrant far more attention than they’ve gotten so far.
The first tier of Project Blitz aims at importing the Christian nationalist worldview into public schools and other aspects of the public sphere, the second tier aims at making government increasingly a partner in “Christianizing” America, and the third tier contains three types of proposed laws that “protect” religious beliefs and practices specifically intended to benefit bigotry.
“Although category three is divided in three parts, you could also see it as having two main underlying intentions,” Clarkson explained. “First to denigrate the LGBTQ community, and second to defend and advance the right to discriminate. This is one way that the agenda of theocratic dominionism is reframed as protecting the right of theocrats to discriminate against those deemed second-class, at best. As the late theocratic theologian R.J. Rushdoony said, ‘Only the right have rights.’ ”
The broader findings revealed in “Copy, Paste, Legislate” help to expand our understanding by highlighting three significant patterns shared in various ways with Project Blitz, which are used to advance their theocratic agenda, often hiding it in plain sight:
1) Misleading Language That Inverts Common Sense Project Blitz does this repeatedly with the most fundamental terms: “religious freedom,” “First Amendment,” and so on. In doing so, it mirrors what corporations and insurance companies did with “transparency” in the “Asbestos Transparency Act,” switching the roles of victims and perpetrators, casting themselves as “victims of litigation filed by people harmed by asbestos,” and requiring mesothelioma victims to seek money from an asbestos trust — a lengthy process many won’t live long enough to benefit from. How’s that for “transparency”?
2) Goalpost Moving The entire Project Blitz concept is premised on moving the goalposts. It’s built into the very structure of its three-tiered playbook, as well as the logic of the supporting arguments. A similar strategy was involved in promoting vouchers in Arizona, beginning with a voucher for students with disabilities, then following up with bill after bill offering vouchers to more and more students, eventually all of them, with no guarantee protecting the first group of recipients from getting lost in the process.
“Every single, little expansion, if you look at who’s behind it, it is the people that want to get that door kicked open for private religious education,” the mother of two children on the autism spectrum said. “All we (families with disabled students) are was the way for them to crack open the door.”
3) Pre-emption Project Blitz doesn’t use the term “pre-emption,” but since state-level law routinely pre-empts local laws — which often protect LGBTQ rights, for example — it’s implicitly integral to their strategy. Model bills tracked by USA Today often focused on such pre-emption:
These laws, in effect, allow state legislators to dictate to city councils and county governing boards what they can and cannot do within their jurisdiction — including preventing them from raising the minimum wage, banning plastic grocery bags, and destroying guns.
North Carolina’s notorious bathroom bill was an example of the kind of bill that Project Blitz could take up in the future, and politicians associated with Project Blitz have already copied it — most notably, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, whose efforts last session ultimately failed. Last month, Texas was at it again, when an ALEC-inspired effort to pre-empt local worker protections was hijacked by Patrick allies to pre-empt LBGTQ protections as well.
With these patterns in mind, let’s first consider how the religious right has attempted to reinvent bigotry as freedom, and then take a look at contemporary state battles in Texas and elsewhere.
Bigot’s Rights: Theocracy’s Foundation
As I noted here in 2016, this new homophobic discriminatory vision exactly echoes the racist discriminatory vision that birthed the religious right in the 1970s. The connection is transparently obvious. When Mississippi passed a “religious freedom” law that year, which only protected the freedom of bigots, the Jackson city council unanimously passed a resolution rebuking the law, and Mayor Tony Yarber explicitly connected bigotry past and present:
As a predominantly black city in Mississippi, the Jackson community has endured racism, discrimination and injustice over the years. We are Mississippi’s capital city, and as part of our declaration of being the “Bold New City,” we will not discriminate against any individual because of race, religious beliefs or sexual orientation, nor do we support legislation that allows for such discrimination.
The battleground Project Blitz has chosen revolves around a falsified history of America as a “Christian nation” — sharply at odds with “The Godless Constitution” we actually have — and a newly-minted definition of “Christianity” as rooted in homophobia. With these twin lies in place, they position themselves as the “true Christians” and “true Americans” suffering from government oppression.
With that false social identity in place, Christian nationalists rationalize the “freedom” to discriminate as a fundamental right, powering a shift from defense to offense, that was perfectly captured by Katherine Stewart in a New York Times op-ed last year, “A Christian Nationalist Blitz.” Stewart described participants in a Project Blitz conference call referring to the above law “in awed tones as ‘the Mississippi missile.’” To understand why, here’s its exact language:
SECTION 2. The sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions protected by this act are the belief or conviction that:
(a) Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman;
(b) Sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage; and
© Male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.
In Project Blitz’s 2018–19 playbook, this is called the “Marriage Tolerance Act” (aka “First Amendment Defense Act”) and uses the same narrowly-tailored definition. But if “legislators do not have enough support to pass the recommended language,” the playbook offers “a fall-back position,” replacing the explicit language with the vaguely-worded alternative, “regarding lawful marriage in this state.”
This is not advised, however, because of the danger that it will be used by non-bigots. The playbook explains:
We repeat, however, that we advise against this alternative. This language still carries a risk, even if slim, of being abused by an individual or group alleging that their same-sex marriage views are a “sincerely held religious belief.”
Such is the mindset behind the façade of promoting American freedom.
Battlefield Texas
In Texas, as noted above, a Project Blitz bill, SB-17, just passed the State Senate. It would allow anti-LGBTQ discrimination by any licensed professional. (Technically, such a professional could still be sued for discrimination, but could rely on the law at trial.) In rural Texas, this could easily mean a total lack of services. It’s not just health care professionals who could wantonly hold people’s lives in their hands. If passed, an LGBTQ Texan could well die of heatstroke because of an air-conditioning repair person’s “sincerely held religious belief,” as pointed out by Emmett Schelling, executive director of the Transgender Education Network of Texas, in an April 8 press conference call.
“Life as a trans person in Texas is already very difficult,” Schelling said. “Enacting this law would make it even more difficult ... if not impossible, for those of us marginalized within our community.”
“The last legislative session, most of the oxygen was taken up with epic battles over a bathroom bill,” added Samantha Smoot, interim executive director of Equality Texas, on the same call. That push was led by Lt. Gov. Patrick, whose efforts ultimately failed. The election that followed was widely seen as “in large part a referendum on the bathroom bill,” Smoot said. “Twelve new pro-equality legislators were elected here in Texas; four of the top proponents of the bathroom bill were defeated,” she said. “That led us to the beginning of the session, and the lieutenant governor stating publicly that this is going to be a meat-and-potatoes session, that we’re not going to see the types of attacks on LGBTQ people that had characterized the 2017 legislative session.”
Now, in a stark turnaround, SB-17 has renewed the battle, already drawing strong business opposition, in fears of repeating North Carolina’s experience. It isn’t alone. “SB 17 is one of 15 bills that have been filed this session that aim to turn religion into a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people in Texas,” Smoot said.
On the same call, Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, discussed the influence of David Barton and Project Blitz. “It now seems clear that Texas is at the center of the nationwide state-by-state strategy to pass legislation that uses religion to block or roll back nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Texans and LGBTQ Americans,” Miller said. “Make no mistake, what is happening in Texas now will happen in other states as well. In fact, it already has.”
“What’s extraordinary about the Texas bill is its reach,” Clarkson said after the call. We’ve been used to adoption agency bills, for example, he noted, “But this has to do with all state professional licensing agencies. So if you’re a social worker or teacher, as well as a health care worker, you can declare religious exemptions in service to LGBTQ people on a range that’s breathtaking,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve seen that anywhere else.”
What could this portend? “It suggests we’re on a slippery slope, just in terms of the nature and the range of religious exemptions and how broadly they can apply,” Clarkson said. “It’s accelerating and expanding in a way we have not seen elsewhere. Everybody should be rightly concerned about the unambiguous dominionist intentions of Project Blitz generally, and of many of the backers of legislation like this.”
On the other hand, some people’s willingness to go along is limited or conditional, and political circumstances certainly can change —and have done so, as witness the midterm election results.
“On the plus side of this, for 2020, I think that the recent round of elections showed what’s possible,” Clarkson noted. “That shows that there is a vast swath of Americans that, if they decide to act, can make a decisive difference in situations like this.”
To better understand David Barton’s role in particular, I turned to Chris Rodda, author of “Liars for Jesus” and senior research director for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. On the one hand, as an activist, she noted, “Barton has for years encouraged his followers to run for local and state office, from school boards on up, and pushed the importance of local of state and local elections to get the voter turnout.” This local election focus is where evangelical conservatives consistently have an edge over Democrats, she noted.
Barton’s fake version of history is directly connected to political outcomes, Rodda said. “The reason for the history revisionism is to make the followers of people like Barton think that the religious legislation is justified by history,” Rodda said. “Since most Christians aren’t liars, he has to get them to genuinely believe that the legislation that they’re trying to get passed is what the founders intended,” when it’s actually the exact opposite, as I’ve noted repeatedly before (here, here and here).
The Power of Lies
As noted above, the twin lies that America was founded as a Christian nation and that Christianity is defined by homophobia combine to create a powerful social identity, which in turn helps facilitate the spread of Project Blitz’s agenda, whether precisely embodied in model bills or not.
This can be seen in two related stories from Missouri. First, Madison McVan at the Missourian reported on a trio of bills whose intent aligns with Project Blitz — Missouri House Bill 267, whose text resembles the “Bible Literacy Act,” a Senate resolution encouraging schools to offer Bible literacy electives (similar in spirit only), and House Bill 577, which is much shorter than the “National Motto Display Act” from Project Blitz, but with the same end result: “The bill would require public schools to display ‘In God We Trust’ in a prominent location such as a school entryway or cafeteria.”
None of the authors claimed to know about Project Blitz, but its influence was obvious. The textually similar bill came from copying other state laws. Another was written by the chair of the Missouri Prayer Caucus Network, whose national foundation helped creation the Project Blitz handbook. He claimed to have had no involvement. The third author could not remember where the text came from — only that someone had offered it and he liked it.
“Even if some legislators introduce bills that they do not know draws language from Project Blitz model bills, it certainly validates Project Blitz methods, which get their material circulated, even if indirectly from other states that may use it more overtly,” Clarkson said. “Similarly, just because someone is not a member of a state’s legislative prayer caucus doesn’t mean that they are not influenced by those who are.”
In short, the impacts of Project Blitz go well beyond what the textual analysis behind “Cut, Paste, Legislate” can measure.
The role of shaping a social identity is especially noteworthy in the second Missouri story, from the Missouri Times. It concerns House Bill 728, which would prohibit anonymous freedom of religion lawsuits — which are allowed under current law, if the person bringing the lawsuit can show cause. “The Missouri bill that prohibits church-state plaintiffs from being anonymous despite, or perhaps because of, the likelihood that these plaintiffs are harassed and even receive death threats is another example of how emboldened and immoral the religious right is today,” said Laser of Americans United.
But the bill’s author, Rep. Hardy Billington, continued to play the victim. “House Bill 728 would guarantee that no individual or organization will be able to use state courts as a weapon to attack the right of Missouri citizens to display religious symbols in public spaces while hiding behind a cloak of secrecy,” he said.
Of course that “right” only exists in Barton’s mythical history. But myths have tremendous power in Trump’s post-truth America. Which is why political leaders need to step up, Laser argued.
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“The first tier of Project Blitz aims at importing the Christian nationalist worldview into public schools and other aspects of the public sphere, the second tier aims at making government increasingly a partner in “Christianizing” America, and the third tier contains three types of proposed laws that “protect” religious beliefs and practices specifically intended to benefit bigotry.”
A three-tiered plan, with each tier getting us closer and closer to a full blown theocracy. The first tier gets the theocratic foot in the door with seemingly innocuous calls for prayer in public schools and the public sphere. The second tier pushes this agenda a bit further by getting the government to make proclamations about how the US society was built on Christian foundations. Like the first tier, it’s just a seemingly innocuous declaration of particular religious traditions. But then we get to the third tier of the agenda, where particular religious beliefs are then declared “protected” by law. As Frederick Clarkson put it, the theocratic end they envision is chillingly akin to The Handmaid’s Tale. Project Blitz was set up to feed lawmakers cookie-cutter legislation designed to further that agenda. That’s the game being played here, which is why secrecy about the very existence of Project Blitz has also been part of the agenda too.
But it’s not just an agenda for conferring special rights to conservative Christians. Project Blitz has the goal of imposing an ahistorical version of American history. Specifically, David Barton’s ahistorical vision of the Founding Fathers as ardent Christian nationalists who actually sought a merger of Church and State:
...
“It’s time for Americans to wake up to the harsh reality that the religious right, fueled by their fear of loss of power from the changing demographics in our country and their support from the Trump administration, is emboldened and aggressively pursuing all means possible to maintain white Christian power in America,” Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, told Salon. “Project Blitz, for example, has already introduced over 50 bills in at least 23 states this year alone,” she added.One spin-off story published in the Nashville Tennessean dealt specifically with an anti-LGTBQ adoption model bill. (Simultaneously, NBC reported such bills were “‘snowballing’ in state legislatures.”) The Tennessee bill came from Project Blitz, which was described as “a legislative effort with the stated aim to ‘bring back God to America.’” But as Salon has reported in the past, Project Blitz is much more sinister than that.
Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, was the first to discover its three-tier playbook, produced by a coalition of right-wing activists he’d long been following, including Texas Republican activist and pseudo-historian David Barton, whose book, “Jefferson Lies,” which tried to remake Thomas Jefferson as an evangelical hero, was canceled by its publisher under withering criticism from conservative and evangelical scholars (followup here)..
“The authors of the Project Blitz playbook are savvy purveyors of dominionism,” Clarkson told Salon at the time. “They are in it for the long haul and try not to say things that sound too alarming. But they live an immanent theocratic vision.” Not all their allies would go all the way with them, Clarkson told me, but the theocratic end they envision is chillingly akin to “The Handmaid’s Tale” — reason enough to warrant far more attention than they’ve gotten so far.
...
The battleground Project Blitz has chosen revolves around a falsified history of America as a “Christian nation” — sharply at odds with “The Godless Constitution” we actually have — and a newly-minted definition of “Christianity” as rooted in homophobia. With these twin lies in place, they position themselves as the “true Christians” and “true Americans” suffering from government oppression.
...
Barton’s fake version of history is directly connected to political outcomes, Rodda said. “The reason for the history revisionism is to make the followers of people like Barton think that the religious legislation is justified by history,” Rodda said. “Since most Christians aren’t liars, he has to get them to genuinely believe that the legislation that they’re trying to get passed is what the founders intended,” when it’s actually the exact opposite, as I’ve noted repeatedly before (here, here and here).
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So is David Barton just a religious con man who has achieved a disturbing level of influence? Yes and no.
David Barton: The GOP’s Go-To Theocrat
Yes, David Barton is indeed a religious con man. But he’s not just some random con man. A adherent of the “Seven Mountains Dominionism” sect, Barton has for decades been one of the most revered con men in the Republican Party. He was so popular back in 2011 that Mike Huckabee introduced Barton at an event by declaring, “I almost wish that there would be something like a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced—at gunpoint, no less—to listen to every David Barton message. And I think our country would be better for it.” But as the following 2012 Daily Beast excerpt points out, Barton’s relationship with the religious right hasn’t always been smooth. That was the year Barton faced a backlash. Someone finally noticed that Barton’s version of American history was a steaming pile of ahistorical garbage. Not that it mattered in the end. The backlash didn’t last. And that’s part of the story here: David Barton operates in such bad faith that he was called out by fellow conservative Christian historians about a decade ago, and yet Barton continues to be a key figure on the Religious Right, with Project Blitz as just one of his many theocratic projects. Barton was outed as a fraud and it didn’t matter because it was politically convenient fraud:
The Daily Beast
David Barton, Christian Scholar, Faces a Backlash
‘Misleading Claims’The far-right author has claimed the founding fathers wanted a Christian nation—but now conservatives are disowning his work.
Michelle Goldberg
Updated Jul. 13, 2017 10:26PM ET
Published Aug. 11, 2012 4:45AM ETAt the Rediscovering God in America conference in 2011, Mike Huckabee gave an impassioned introduction to David Barton, the religious right’s favorite revisionist historian. “I almost wish that there would be something like a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced—at gunpoint, no less—to listen to every David Barton message,” he said. “And I think our country would be better for it.”
It’s hard to overstate how important Barton has been in shaping the worldview of the Christian right, and of populist conservatives more generally. A self-taught historian with a degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University, he runs a Texas-based organization called WallBuilders, which specializes in books and videos meant to show that the founding fathers were overwhelmingly “orthodox, evangelical” believers who intended for the United States to be a Christian nation. Newt Gingrich has called his work “wonderful” and “most useful.” George W. Bush’s campaign hired him to do clergy outreach in 2004. In 2010, Glenn Beck called him called him “the most important man in America right now.” At the end of the month, he’s slated to serve on the GOP’s platform committee at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
But now, suddenly, Barton’s reputation is in freefall, and not just among the secular historians and journalists who have been denouncing him for ages. (I’m among them; I wrote extensively about Barton in my 2006 book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.) Earlier this week, the evangelical World magazine published a piece about the growing number of conservative Christian scholars questioning his work. Then, on Thursday, Thomas Nelson, the world’s largest Christian publisher, recalled Barton’s most recent book, the bestselling The Jefferson Lies, saying it had “lost confidence in the book’s details.”
For decades, Barton has tried to write enlightenment deism out of American history, but it seems that by attempting to turn the famously freethinking Thomas Jefferson into a pious precursor of the modern Christian right, he finally went too far. “Books like that makes Christian scholarship look bad,” says Warren Throckmorton, an evangelical professor of psychology at Grove City College, a conservative Christian school in Pennsylvania. “If that’s what people are passing off as Christian scholarship, there are claims in there that are easily proved false.”
Throckmorton and another Grove City professor, Michael Coulter, have been so disturbed by Barton’s distortions that they wrote a recent rejoinder to his Jefferson book, titled Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims About Our Third President. Their book appears to have inspired other conservative Christians finally to take a critical look at Barton.
Jay Richards, a senior fellow at the conservative Discovery Institute who spoke alongside Barton at a conference last month, read Getting Jefferson Right and got in touch with Throckmorton. According to World, Richards proceeded to ask 10 conservative Christian scholars to review Barton’s work. When they did, the response was extremely negative, leading Richards to conclude that Barton’s books and videos trafficked in “embarrassing factual errors, suspiciously selective quotes, and highly misleading claims.”
The most serious of Barton’s deceptions involve his efforts to whitewash Jefferson’s racism, part of Barton’s broader project of absolving the founders of the original sin of slavery, which would taint his picture of the country’s divine origins. His book argues, falsely, that Jefferson wanted to free his slaves, but couldn’t do so because of Virginia law. That claim so incensed some Cincinnati-area pastors, both African-American and white, that they threatened a boycott of Thomas Nelson publishers. “You can’t be serious about racial unity in the church, while holding up Jefferson as a hero and champion of freedom,” one of them said in a press release.
Barton’s history around race is complicated. As I’ve previously written, he got his start on the racist far right. In 1991, the Anti-Defamation League has reported, he spoke at a summer gathering of Scriptures for America, a Christian Identity group. A fringe creed, Christian Identity holds that Jews are the Satanic offspring of Eve’s liaison with the serpent in the Garden of Eden, while Africans are a separate species of “mud people.” Other speakers at the meeting were Holocaust denier Malcolm Ross and white supremacist Richard Kelly Hoskins. That fall, Barton was featured at another Christianity Identity gathering, in Oregon.
As Barton went mainstream, however, he distanced himself from outright racism. Instead, he’s sought to prove that liberals have exaggerated the scale of black oppression in early America, and to paint contemporary Republicans as the champions of African-American freedom. In one document on the WallBuilders website, he attributes Strom Thurmond’s 1964 break with the Democrats to the senator’s “dramatic change of heart on civil rights issues,” as if the former Dixiecrat had turned Republican out of outrage at segregation rather than civil rights.
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“It’s hard to overstate how important Barton has been in shaping the worldview of the Christian right, and of populist conservatives more generally. A self-taught historian with a degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University, he runs a Texas-based organization called WallBuilders, which specializes in books and videos meant to show that the founding fathers were overwhelmingly “orthodox, evangelical” believers who intended for the United States to be a Christian nation. Newt Gingrich has called his work “wonderful” and “most useful.” George W. Bush’s campaign hired him to do clergy outreach in 2004. In 2010, Glenn Beck called him called him “the most important man in America right now.” At the end of the month, he’s slated to serve on the GOP’s platform committee at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.”
Yes, it truly is hard to overstate how important David Barton has been in shaping the worldview of the Christian right. When Glenn Beck called Barton “the most important man in America right now”, this was after decades of Barton’s ascendance as the philosophical leader of the movement. A movement dedicated to the erosion of the Separation of Church and State. David Barton’s personal quest to redefine the US’s own sense of history, and ‘prove’ that the Founding Fathers never truly intended to keep church and state separate, had grown into a movement that had already captured the hearts and minds of much of the Republican base. David Barton was arguably the political guiding light for the US Christian right throughout the 90’s and 2000’s.
And then, suddenly in 2012, it seemed like Barton’s star might be dimming. Decades after embracing him, a number of conservative historians appeared to suddenly discover that Barton’s historical scholarship was rather lacking. Lacking in the sense of being grossly fraudulent. A dam of lies was finally breaking. Or at least that’s how it seemed at the time:
...
But now, suddenly, Barton’s reputation is in freefall, and not just among the secular historians and journalists who have been denouncing him for ages. (I’m among them; I wrote extensively about Barton in my 2006 book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.) Earlier this week, the evangelical World magazine published a piece about the growing number of conservative Christian scholars questioning his work. Then, on Thursday, Thomas Nelson, the world’s largest Christian publisher, recalled Barton’s most recent book, the bestselling The Jefferson Lies, saying it had “lost confidence in the book’s details.”For decades, Barton has tried to write enlightenment deism out of American history, but it seems that by attempting to turn the famously freethinking Thomas Jefferson into a pious precursor of the modern Christian right, he finally went too far. “Books like that makes Christian scholarship look bad,” says Warren Throckmorton, an evangelical professor of psychology at Grove City College, a conservative Christian school in Pennsylvania. “If that’s what people are passing off as Christian scholarship, there are claims in there that are easily proved false.”
Throckmorton and another Grove City professor, Michael Coulter, have been so disturbed by Barton’s distortions that they wrote a recent rejoinder to his Jefferson book, titled Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims About Our Third President. Their book appears to have inspired other conservative Christians finally to take a critical look at Barton.
...
The most serious of Barton’s deceptions involve his efforts to whitewash Jefferson’s racism, part of Barton’s broader project of absolving the founders of the original sin of slavery, which would taint his picture of the country’s divine origins. His book argues, falsely, that Jefferson wanted to free his slaves, but couldn’t do so because of Virginia law. That claim so incensed some Cincinnati-area pastors, both African-American and white, that they threatened a boycott of Thomas Nelson publishers. “You can’t be serious about racial unity in the church, while holding up Jefferson as a hero and champion of freedom,” one of them said in a press release.
...
And note how it’s not as if there hadn’t been warning signs about Barton’s intellectual integrity for years. Barton got his start on the far right. He addressed the Christian Identity movement’s Rocky Mountain Bible Retreat of Pastor Pete Peters’ Scriptures for America back in 1991, and then proceeded to build a ‘mainstream’ career as a religious historian who sought to prove that liberals exaggerated the scale of black oppression in early America. The warnings signs were there well before he was embraced by the mainstream conservative movement as some sort of genuine scholar:
...
Barton’s history around race is complicated. As I’ve previously written, he got his start on the racist far right. In 1991, the Anti-Defamation League has reported, he spoke at a summer gathering of Scriptures for America, a Christian Identity group. A fringe creed, Christian Identity holds that Jews are the Satanic offspring of Eve’s liaison with the serpent in the Garden of Eden, while Africans are a separate species of “mud people.” Other speakers at the meeting were Holocaust denier Malcolm Ross and white supremacist Richard Kelly Hoskins. That fall, Barton was featured at another Christianity Identity gathering, in Oregon.As Barton went mainstream, however, he distanced himself from outright racism. Instead, he’s sought to prove that liberals have exaggerated the scale of black oppression in early America, and to paint contemporary Republicans as the champions of African-American freedom. In one document on the WallBuilders website, he attributes Strom Thurmond’s 1964 break with the Democrats to the senator’s “dramatic change of heart on civil rights issues,” as if the former Dixiecrat had turned Republican out of outrage at segregation rather than civil rights.
...
The guy got his start in the Christian Identity movement and went mainstream from there. It’s a truly disturbing career path. And as the following 2011 SPLC profile of Barton makes clear, Barton isn’t just a theocrat. He’s specifically a Seven Mountains Dominionism theocrat. The kind of theocrat who incorporates a divine mandate to seize political power into their theology. And the kind of theocrat whose theology just happens to align with the whims of large corporations. The kind of theocrat who claims Jesus and the Bible oppose minimum wage laws, unions, and protecting the environment. In other words, David Barton was the perfect Republican theocrat, so it’s no wonder the party was willing to look past his ahistorical shortcomings:
Southern Poverty Law Center
David Barton – Extremist ‘Historian’ for the Christian Right
Evelyn Schlatter
May 05, 2011The New York Times today published an article about David Barton, a self-educated, pseudo-historian who advises several prominent right-wing political figures, including Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback. Huckabee, in fact, recently said at a religious-right conference that he wished all Americans could be “forced — forced at gunpoint no less — to listen to every David Barton message, and I think our country would be better for it.”
Named by Time as one of the nation’s 25 most influential evangelical Christians in 2005, Barton is best known for peddling historical distortions promoting his view that America was founded as a Christian, rather than secular, nation. He served as vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party from 1997 to 2006, and he was hired in 2004 by the Republican National Committee to mobilize Christians for President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign. Since then, he has also become Glenn Beck’s unofficial “historian” (Barton and Beck below, recently in Israel).
Times reporter Erik Eckholm noted that Barton “has steadily built a reputation as a guiding spirit of the religious right” even as many historians say he relies on flawed research. What the article didn’t reveal is the depth of Barton’s extremism.
Last month, People for the American Way released a report examining Barton’s role in the religious right and Republican politics. Barton, who often promotes conspiracy theories about elites hiding “the truth” from average Americans, subscribes to beliefs found in Seven Mountains Dominionism. This movement teaches that certain kinds of Christians are meant by God to dominate every sphere of society.
Barton has warned about the dangers of Islam but claimed that “secularism presents a greater threat to American traditions and values than does Islam” and that the Constitution was not meant to be a secular document. He has battled marriage equality and has campaigned for state restrictions on legal equality for LGBT people. He has involved himself in the new war on unions, claiming that Jesus and the Bible oppose minimum wage laws.
He has also been extremely active in the religious right’s campaign against so-called “activist judges.” His 2003 book Restraining Judicial Activism calls for the impeachment of federal judges who don’t interpret the Constitution the way he does. In addition, he says, members of Congress should use the threat of impeachment to intimidate federal judges.
Here are some other notable Barton activities:
* His 2006 DVD, Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black and White is a 90-minute effort to paint the Democratic Party as responsible for problems faced by African Americans, saying that Democrats “bamboozled blacks.” He conveniently leaves out history after 1965 and the rise of the racist “Southern Strategy” within the Republican Party.
* In 2007, Barton wrote an article critical of U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison — the first Muslim sworn into Congress — in which he touted the works of Robert Spencer, a right-wing author of virulently anti-Muslim books. Spencer, along with Pam Geller, founded the vitriolic group Stop the Islamization of America, which is listed by the SPLC as a hate group. In 2010, Barton devoted several of his WallBuilders Live radio broadcasts to critics of the Park51 Project (incorrectly called the “Ground Zero Mosque” by opponents). One of the guests was Walid Shoebat, who calls himself a former PLO terrorist who converted to Christianity. On the show, Shoebat said that the imam leading the Park51 project was trying to implement Shariah law on America and that “liberals always agree with Muslims.” Barton agreed.
* Barton is closely associated with a movement among conservative evangelicals to resist environmental activism in churches and to paint environmentalism as actively anti-Christian. In 2009, he signed the Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, which claims that efforts to reduce carbon dioxide would be economically devastating and are therefore against Biblical requirements of “protecting the poor from harm and oppression.” He is active with “Resisting the Green Dragon,” a project that portrays environmentalism as “deadly” to human prosperity, human life and human freedom.
* Barton has argued against immigration reform, and claimed that God established the borders of nations. He has hosted the viciously anti-immigrant William Gheen of ALIPAC on his radio show. Gheen garnered national attention in the spring of 2010 when he demanded that U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R‑S.C.) come out as gay. His refusal to do so, Gheen claimed, allowed President Obama and others to blackmail him into supporting immigration reform.
* In 2010, Barton was influential in the battle to re-design the Texas state social studies curriculum in public schools to have it conform more closely to a right-wing view of America. Barton supported efforts to remove Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and 1960s labor activist César Chávez from school texts. As noted in Washington Monthly, Barton conceded that people like King deserved a place in history but insisted they shouldn’t be given credit for advancing the rights of minorities, because, as he put it, “Only majorities can expand political rights in American’s constitutional society.” Barton’s involvement with the textbook controversy also demonstrated the partisanship behind much of his work. He claimed that since the founders “hated and feared democracy” — and created a republic instead — textbooks should refer to “republican values” rather than “democratic” ones.
* Barton also believes the government should regulate homosexuality, claiming in one of his radio shows in 2010 that “homosexuals die decades earlier than heterosexuals” and that more than half of all homosexuals have had more than 500 sex partners in their lifetimes. The claims are false.
* Barton’s early activism put him in contact with even more extreme elements. In 1991, according to a 1996 article by Rob Boston, he addressed the Rocky Mountain Bible Retreat of Pastor Pete Peters’ Scriptures for America. Peters promotes the racist and anti-Semitic “Christian Identity” theology, which claims that white Anglo-Saxons are the “true” chosen people of the Bible. According to the Anti-Defamation League, other speakers at that event included James “Bo” Gritz, a leader of the antigovernment militia movement, and Malcolm Ross, a Holocaust denier from Canada. Later that year, Barton addressed another Christian Identity front group — the Kingdom Covenant College in Grants Pass, Oregon, which had ties to Peters. Barton’s assistant at the time, Kit Marshall, claimed they had no idea about Peters’ beliefs, even though Barton addressed the groups twice during the course of a year.
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“Last month, People for the American Way released a report examining Barton’s role in the religious right and Republican politics. Barton, who often promotes conspiracy theories about elites hiding “the truth” from average Americans, subscribes to beliefs found in Seven Mountains Dominionism. This movement teaches that certain kinds of Christians are meant by God to dominate every sphere of society.”
It’s not just a theocracy they’re trying to build. It’s a Dominionist Theocracy along the lines of ‘Seven Mountains’ Dominionism. Recall how Donald Trump’s closest ‘spiritual advisor’ during his presidency was Paula White, a following of the Seven Mountains theology. Trump selected her as chair of his Evangelical Advisory Board and appointed her as special advisor to the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative. Other Seven Mountain evangelical leaders have effectively tied the theology into the QAnon narrative, a narrative that puts Trump at the center of a battle between good and evil. And while the Seven Mountains doctrine my sound like some obscure cult to outsiders, the reality is that David Barton has been one of the most influential and revered Christian leaders inside the Republican Party for decades. And it’s no surprise why. Barton’s version of Christianity is a GOP oligarch’s dream, with declarations like unions and minimum wage laws being in opposition to the Bible:
...
Named by Time as one of the nation’s 25 most influential evangelical Christians in 2005, Barton is best known for peddling historical distortions promoting his view that America was founded as a Christian, rather than secular, nation. He served as vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party from 1997 to 2006, and he was hired in 2004 by the Republican National Committee to mobilize Christians for President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign. Since then, he has also become Glenn Beck’s unofficial “historian” (Barton and Beck below, recently in Israel)....
Barton has warned about the dangers of Islam but claimed that “secularism presents a greater threat to American traditions and values than does Islam” and that the Constitution was not meant to be a secular document. He has battled marriage equality and has campaigned for state restrictions on legal equality for LGBT people. He has involved himself in the new war on unions, claiming that Jesus and the Bible oppose minimum wage laws.
He has also been extremely active in the religious right’s campaign against so-called “activist judges.” His 2003 book Restraining Judicial Activism calls for the impeachment of federal judges who don’t interpret the Constitution the way he does. In addition, he says, members of Congress should use the threat of impeachment to intimidate federal judges.
...
* Barton is closely associated with a movement among conservative evangelicals to resist environmental activism in churches and to paint environmentalism as actively anti-Christian. In 2009, he signed the Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, which claims that efforts to reduce carbon dioxide would be economically devastating and are therefore against Biblical requirements of “protecting the poor from harm and oppression.” He is active with “Resisting the Green Dragon,” a project that portrays environmentalism as “deadly” to human prosperity, human life and human freedom.
...
It’s not hard to see what the backlash Barton experienced in 2012 ended up being little more than a slap on the wrist. Barton is like the living manifestation of fusion of hard right Christian theology with corporate interests. He’ll literally rewrite history to benefit those interests.
David Barton’s Constitutional Overhaul. Which Happens to be the Koch’s Constitutional Overhaul
And as the following 2019 piece from The Center for Media and Democracy describes, Barton doesn’t just work on rewriting American history for the benefit of powerful interests. It turns out WallBuilders group is one of the partners with the Koch-backed Convention of States (COS) effort to overhaul the US constitution. As we’ve seen, the Koch network of mega-donors has spent decades investing in triggering an Article V Constitutional Convention, threatening to rewrite the constitution according to the whims of the Koch mega-donor network. WallBuilders is part of that effort. Because of course it is. This is entirely consistent with David Barton’s work:
The Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch
Convention of States Fires Up Base for Push to Rewrite U.S. Constitution
Submitted by David Armiak on August 23, 2019 — 1:37pm
Convention of States Action (COS) kicked off its first “Leadership Summit” in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia today. COS, a project of Mark Meckler and Eric O’Keefe’s Citizens for Self-Governance, claims that “hundreds” of activists, state directors, and coordinators from all 50 states will attend to get inspired and learn strategies for passing COS resolutions in the states calling for a constitutional convention to rewrite the U.S. Constitution.
Fifteen states have passed the group’s applications so far, with 17 more states considering the resolution this year, according to COS. Wisconsin recently introduced a COS resolution, which would bump the number up to 18.
A constitutional convention has never been held since the Constitution was adopted, and COS will need 34 states to file applications in order for it to occur. If that happens, COS plans to move an array of sweeping amendments to redefine key parts of the Constitution and radically weaken the federal government.
COS has ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the National Rifle Association, the right-wing militia group Three Percenters, and the Christian nationalist group WallBuilders.
More than 200 civil rights and public interest groups, including the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), signed a letter last year denouncing such constitutional convention calls as “a threat to every American’s constitutional rights and civil liberties.”
Right-Wing Extremists to Speak
Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth, from Trump’s beloved Fox & Friends, addressed the crowd this morning, telling them that the Left hates the Constitution, the founding fathers understood that the word of “Jesus Christ our savior” is the guiding force for our country, and that there “is no other freedom-loving bastion in the world that values the individual with God-endowed rights.”
And, referencing the Three Percenters likely in attendance, Hegseth said, “it has always been the one percent or two percent or three percent of people that get it, that are willing to buck the comfiness of their moment and the established norms that everyone is comfortable with, willing to be defiant, willing to stand — be accused of being radical about things that are not radical at all.”
Recently, Hegseth has made some radical comments himself, saying that Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (MI‑D) has a “Hamas agenda,” implying that she works with a U.S. designated terrorist organization.
Hegseth has also publicly defended Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s brother Erik Prince’s Blackwater contractors, who were convicted of murdering Iraqi citizens, and has called climate change a “religion” that Democrats use to “control” people.
David Barton warmed up the crowd with a history lecture on the Constitution’s basis in fixed moral standards based on natural law and scripture, and drew applause with his claim that the federal government has “emasculated the states.”
A Christian nationalist with strong anti-LGBT views. Barton once said,
“There’s a passage that I love in Romans 1. ... [I]t talks about homosexuality and it says that they will receive in their bodies the penalties of their behavior. ... The Bible [is] right every time ... and that’s why AIDS has been something they haven’t discovered a cure for or a vaccine for. ... And that goes to what God says, ‘Hey you’re going to bear in your body the consequences of this homosexual behavior.’ ”
Barton founded the group WallBuilders, which has worked with Focus on the Family and the Family Policy Alliance to influence judicial elections and selection rules in states across the country, the Center for Media and Democracy detailed.
WallBuilders also works with the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation to push out Christian-Right model legislation in the mold of ALEC to state lawmakers under the name Project Blitz.
Also in line to speak at the Summit is one of the NRA’s top attorneys, Charles Cooper. Cooper will speak on, “The Real Threat to Gun Rights.” In an email to COS activists, Cooper is quoted as saying:
“The real threat to our constitutional rights today is posed not by an Article V Convention of States, but by an out-of-control federal government, exercising powers that it does not have and abusing powers that it does.”
COS materials in recent years have argued that a constitutional convention could be used to rewrite the Second Amendment in order to make it Supreme-Court-proof.
Others on the agenda to speak include founding board member Eric O’Keefe, former professor Rob Natelson, former U.S. Senator and COS Senior Advisor Tom Coburn, and the right-wing author of Liberty Amendments Mark Levin.
But the stars of the summit are likely to be the actors COS will have play the founding fathers Patrick Henry, James Madison, and George Washington.
...
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“David Barton warmed up the crowd with a history lecture on the Constitution’s basis in fixed moral standards based on natural law and scripture, and drew applause with his claim that the federal government has “emasculated the states.””
The COS is a shared project of the right-wing oligarchy. It’s arguably their end goal. So of course we find David Barton’s WallBuilders involved with the movement. Overhauling the constitution aligns perfectly with both his theocratic and pro-business agendas:
...
Barton founded the group WallBuilders, which has worked with Focus on the Family and the Family Policy Alliance to influence judicial elections and selection rules in states across the country, the Center for Media and Democracy detailed.WallBuilders also works with the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation to push out Christian-Right model legislation in the mold of ALEC to state lawmakers under the name Project Blitz.
...
And note that, while the COS is technically a project of Mark Meckler and Eric O’Keefe’s Citizens for Self-Governance, it’s really a Koch-backed project. That’s why this group is able to get so many state legislators to buy into this effort. This is a project of the oligarchy.
The Council for National Policy (CNP) and the Capture of the US Government
And as we’re going to see in the next article excerpt, it turns out Meckler is and Gold Circle member of another group: the Council for National Policy. Barton is a member too. Along with a large number of the rest of the figures in the conservative establishment who played important roles in the Trump 2020 reelection efforts. And in some cases key roles in the preparation for the theft of the 2020 election. For example, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway both show up on CNP membership lists.
The fact that the CNP had its hands all over the efforts to reelect Trump isn’t particularly surprising or remarkable. What is remarkable is how extensively the CNP was planning on overturning the popular vote and stealing the election months before the first votes were cast. CNP members Richard Viguerie, Stephen Moore, Jenny Beth Martin, Adam Brandon, and Lisa Nelson, the CEO of ALEC, were all involved in CNP-backed efforts to get Trump reelected in 2020. Dirty efforts. For example, Nelson reportedly informed the CNP in February of 2020 that ALEC was working with Republican lawyers to strategize paths “that legislators can take to question the validity of an election.” And one of those Republican lawyers was none other than CNP-member Cleta Mitchell, who began strategizing in preparation for questioning the 2020 election results as early as August 2019.
And, again, while Project Blitz is not technically a CNP project, it’s basically the same network of people behind it. The CNP is the entity through with Christian theocrats and big business interests formalized their long-standing alliance in American politics. A fascist theocratic alliance that heavily overlaps the Koch network. From ALEC to COS to Project Blitz, all of these entities are operated by roughly the same networks of people and for the same underlying purpose: the capture of power by private interests. Projects like COS and Project Blitz could be seen as cover-stories for that capture of power. And as this network made abundantly clear in 2020, that agenda of capturing power includes overturning the election results. The capture of democracy was on the CNP agenda throughout 2020, leading all the way up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection:
The Washington Spectator
How the CNP, a Republican Powerhouse, Helped Spawn Trumpism, Disrupted the Transfer of Power, and Stoked the Assault on the Capitol
by Anne Nelson
Feb 22, 2021On January 6, 2021, a stunned nation watched as protesters stormed the Capitol to prevent the certification of the electoral votes from the November election. The effort failed, but not without shining a harsh light on the fault lines of American democracy.
In the weeks that followed, analysts have struggled to define how much of the incursion was the spontaneous result of a “riot”—or a “peaceful protest” gone wrong—and how much was the result of a planned operation.
One major player in the events leading up to the assault on the Capitol was the Council for National Policy, an influential coalition of Christian conservatives, free-market fundamentalists, and political activists. Over the previous year the CNP and its members and affiliates organized efforts to challenge the validity of the election, conspired to overturn its results, and tried to derail the orderly transfer of power. This is an account of the measures they took, leading up to the deadly January 6 insurrection.
The Council for National Policy was founded in 1981 by a group of televangelists, Western oligarchs, and Republican strategists to capitalize on Ronald Reagan’s electoral victory the previous year. From the beginning, its goals represented a convergence of the interests of these three groups: a retreat from advances in civil and political rights for women and minorities, tax cuts for the wealthy, and raw political power. Operating from the shadows, its members, who would number some 400, spent the next four decades courting, buying, and bullying fellow Republicans, gradually achieving what was in effect a leveraged buyout of the GOP. Favorite sons, such as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, were groomed, financed, and supported. Apostates, such as John McCain and Jeff Flake, were punished and exiled. The leaders of the CNP tended to favor their conservative Christian co-religionists, but political expedience came first.
In 2016, the CNP put its partners’ money, data, and ground game behind Donald Trump, as the ultimate transactional candidate. Trump promised it retrograde social policies, a favorable tax regime, regulatory retreats, and its choice of federal judges. He delivered in spades. By 2020, the leaders of the CNP were ready to go to extreme lengths to keep him—and themselves—in power.
Over the final year of the Trump presidency, the CNP took center stage. By January 2020, its leading figures had become sought-after guests on talk shows and frequent visitors to the White House. Many of its stated goals had been advanced. By March, the Republican Senate had confirmed more than 185 of Trump’s conservative nominees for the federal bench. All but eight of the judges had ties to the Federalist Society, headed by longtime CNP members Eugene Meyer and Leonard Leo. Two of the CNP’s favored Supreme Court nominees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, had been confirmed. The court was only one justice away from a conservative majority, and the CNP had its eye on the seat held by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. With a second term in office and normal attrition, Trump could decisively tilt the federal courts, opening the door for a massive overhaul of the American legal framework.
Many initiatives that were pending in the courts had been addressed by fiat. Trump rolled back scores of environmental regulations created to protect air quality, potable water supplies, and wildlife, as a quid pro quo for the support he received from CNP’s favored oil and gas interests. His administration decimated the budgets and personnel of federal agencies assigned to protect public health, public safety, and public lands, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the National Park Service, to the benefit of corporations and extractive industries. There was also notable progress on CNP’s social agenda, with the erosion and rollback of the rights of LGBT populations, women, and minorities in the courts and state legislatures.
The CNP’s plutocrats were pleased with what they had wrought. The “tax reform” enacted by Trump and the Republican Senate concentrated ever greater wealth in the hands of America’s most affluent individuals through tax cuts for corporations and the rich, driving income inequality to the highest levels in 50 years. The country’s tax revenues as a share of gross domestic product plummeted, and budget gaps widened, but Republicans—who had made a career of loudly condemning deficit spending—remained mute as long as the measures benefited the moneyed class instead of those who needed help. Donald Trump remained a dependable ally, asking only for an audience for his megalomania and a free pass for the business interests of the “Trump brand.” In return, he delivered his dynamism and his unshakeable base. This state of affairs was so satisfactory that the Republican Party decided not to bother drafting a new party platform for the 2020 election. Instead, it recycled the 2016 platform, which included former CNP President Tony Perkins’s drafts opposing marriage equality and promoting conversion therapy.
Ultimate realization of the CNP’s agenda depended on winning a second term for Trump in November. With another four years, it could enshrine its socially regressive policies on the federal level, further blur the line between church and state, and consolidate huge windfalls for corporations and wealthy individuals. As of January 1, electoral prospects looked sweet. The Republicans’ strongest suit was the economy. Massive tax cuts had flooded corporations with cash, which, as critics of the tax bill had predicted, they used to buy back their stock and drive up share prices 28 percent in 2019. This boosted Trump’s popularity among the 55 percent of Americans who reported owning stocks, but did little to spur the growth Republicans had promised would offset the soaring deficits.
On the tactical front, it seemed as though the Trump team had found a winning formula. Ralph Reed, a member of the CNP’s board of governors (also known as a central figure in the scandal involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff), continued to employ his Faith and Freedom Coalition and its partner, United in Purpose, to get out the vote among conservative white Christians in critical swing states, expanding their targeting from evangelicals to Catholics.
The coalition’s data and app development also advanced. The uCampaign apps developed by Thomas Peters had served their purpose in the 2016 and 2018 elections, but they were due for an upgrade. In late 2019, word began to circulate that Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was preparing to release the Trump 2020 app, a component of what he labeled a “juggernaut campaign.” Parscale had quietly taken over Trump’s digital operations and planned to use the new app as part of a broader strategy. Trump 2020 was designed to leverage uCampaign features such as gamification (awarding points and prizes for participating in campaign activities and sharing contacts). It also expanded the use of geolocation devices to recruit and harvest data from attendees of Trump rallies. The crowds, energized by Trump’s live performances, would be invited to download the app and recruit others across their social networks. The rallies were a crucial component of the campaign. The more outrageous Trump’s rhetoric on the podium, the more earned media coverage he received. In contrast, the Democrats were still in disarray, with a dozen primary candidates competing for fragmented press coverage and no clear front-runner.
Then, on January 20, 2020, doctors diagnosed the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the United States.
The patient was a man who had just returned to Snohomish County, Washington, from a family visit to Wuhan, China. The virus spread across Washington State, then ravaged New York City and New Orleans. The first U.S. Covid death was reported as occurring on February 6. On February 20, the global stock market went into a free fall that didn’t abate until April. Bloomberg News called it the Great Coronavirus Crash.
Trump’s reelection strategy rested on a thriving economy, as well as mass rallies and in-church recruitment. Now public health officials were urging lockdowns that would derail both the economy and the gatherings. Trump’s CNP supporters stepped up to the plate.
The CNP’s meetings had long featured briefings on forthcoming elections by members and allies, followed by a memorandum containing a series of “Action Steps.” The October 2018 meeting’s action steps, for example, called for members to “Volunteer and Contribute to key candidates and organizations (FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots, [anti-abortion group] Susan B. Anthony List) that are engaged in turning out voters” for the midterms.
But by February 2020, the CNP, fearing the erosion of Trump’s support, shifted its strategy from boosting the popular vote to deflecting it. Lisa Nelson, the CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council, told the group, “We’ve been focused on the national vote, and obviously we all want President Trump to win, and win the national vote, but it’s very clear from all the comments and all the suggestions up front that, really, what it comes down to is the states, and the state legislators.” Her organization, she told them, had already drafted a model resolution “to make sure there’s no confusion among conservative legislators around national popular vote and the Electoral College.”
Nelson noted that her group was exploring additional ways to invalidate a potential Trump loss in consultation with three election experts, including CNP board of governors member Cleta Mitchell, “who I know you all know, on trying to identify what are those action items that legislators can take in their states, and I think that they’ve identified a few. They can write a letter to the secretary of state, questioning the validity of an election, and saying, ‘What did happen that night?’ So we are drafting a lot of those things. If you have ideas in that area, let us know, and we’ll get them to the state legislators, and they can start to kind of exercise their political muscle in that area.”
So as early as February 2020, the CNP and its advisers were already anticipating various strategies to overturn the results of the election in the event of the loss of either the popular vote or the Electoral College, or both. At the same time, they adopted a three-pronged approach to enhancing Trump’s chances in November. The first involved expanding their use of data to juice Republican votes and suppress Democratic turnout. The second was to mobilize supporters in swing states to ignite Tea Party–like protests against the virus-related public safety lockdowns. The third was to deploy physicians with dubious credentials to dismiss the dangers of Covid-19 through a massive media blitz. All three initiatives were activated in April. It was a rehash of a familiar formula, concocting groups whose names and URLs changed with dizzying speed and calling them “grassroots” organizations. (Critics preferred the term “astroturf.”)
United in Purpose took the lead. In June 2016, UiP had convened the epic Times Square gathering of 1,000 fundamentalist activists to give Trump their blessing. Now, over the spring of 2020, UiP held a series of conference calls to update its strategy. One call—a recording of which was leaked to The Intercept reporter Lee Fang—took place in mid-April. UiP Chairman Ken Eldred told his associates on the call that the Covid-19 virus was a “gift from God” because it was turning Americans back to Christ and building audiences for religious broadcasts—which had been crucial platforms for political campaigns. But “Satan has been busy too,” Eldred warned. “The virus has messed up many of our plans involving our in-person meetings with voters.” UiP called its 2020 campaign “Operation Ziklag” (named after a Biblical town that served as a base for the Philistines until it was won by David).
The April call featured various movers and shakers from the CNP. Ralph Reed spoke to the “macro political landscape,” explaining that a key component of the Democrats’ strategy was the Black vote in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. The Democrats had experienced a significant drop-off between 2012 and 2016. “There were 47,000 fewer Black votes cast in just Milwaukee County alone,” Reed told the call participants—in Wisconsin, a state Trump had won by fewer than 24,000 votes.
This was not a coincidence. In September 2020, Britain’s Channel 4 reported that the Trump campaign had used Cambridge Analytica data to profile and target 3.5 million Black voters in 2016, assigning them to a category the campaign called “Deterrence,” with messaging designed to suppress the vote.
Reed told his associates that “his ‘data partners’ had identified 26 million key voters in battleground states, about three-fourths of whom were Facebook users,” The Intercept’s Fang reported. Once again, the 2020 strategy, like the 2016 efforts, would strive to get out the vote for Republicans and suppress the vote of traditional Democrats.
Abortion continued to be a major calling card of the campaign, spearheaded by CNP Gold Circle member Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of the Susan B. Anthony List. Dannenfelser, who had recently joined the UiP alliance, told the callers that her organization had conducted surveys on messaging with pro-life working-class voters in battleground Rust Belt states and found that its “born alive” formulation on abortion, promoted by Trump, “has had a tremendous effect in moving persuadable voters in all those areas in Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.” This would strengthen Trump’s chances in the swing states that comprised the “northern path” to victory: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as well as the “southern path” of North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona. (Georgia, assumed to be solidly in the Republican column, would prove a wild card.)
The CNP’s second stratagem to “reopen the economy” debuted around the same time. On April 13, The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein and Robert Costa reported that White House staff had presented Trump with a list of “100 business executives” who could advise him as to how to jump-start the economy. The piece quoted CNP co-founder Richard Viguerie, who began his career under the tutelage of disgraced radio evangelist Billy James Hargis and went on to pioneer the use of direct mail in political marketing. “Obviously, the sooner we get the economy going and back up, the better it’s going to be for conservatives and Republicans,” Viguerie said. A lot of them, he added, “feel there might be an overreaction to all of this [epidemic].”
According to The Washington Post’s unnamed sources, “The outside effort from conservative groups is expected to be led by Stephen Moore, a conservative at the Heritage Foundation who is close with White House economic officials; Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots; Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy organization; and Lisa Nelson, chief executive of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative pro-business policy and lobbying organization with ties to the Koch brothers.”
This initiative marked a shift in the CNP profile. Going into the 2016 elections, the public faces of the organization had been prominent fundamentalists. Tony Perkins, CNP president from 2016 to 2019, is also an ordained Southern Baptist minister and longtime head of the fundamentalist lobbying group Family Research Council, and he has hosted Christian nationalists Robert Jeffress and David Barton on his radio broadcasts. Almost half of Trump’s original Evangelical Advisory Board—including Perkins—were members of the CNP, and they were in and out of the Oval Office on a regular basis. But in 2019, Perkins was succeeded as CNP president by William Walton, the founder and chairman of Rappahannock Ventures, a private equity firm, with long ties to the Koch Brothers and a limited religious profile. In 2015, Walton chaired a panel at the CNP, stating, “Most of my career has been spent in business and on Wall Street, and I was among the first to attend the Charles Koch seminars.” Other figures connected to the Koch empire ascended in the CNP hierarchy. Jenny Beth Martin, who co-founded the Tea Party Patriots with Koch backing, rose to the office of secretary. Adam Brandon, head of the Koch-founded “grassroots” organization FreedomWorks, took a spot on the board of directors of CNP Action, the organization’s lobbying arm.
David Koch died in August 2019, but his brother Charles carried on. A man with no particular religious profile, Koch embarked on a “charm offensive,” distancing himself from Trump and his fundamentalist allies, presenting himself to the media as a “unifier” (and scrubbing the CNP’s Free Enterprise Award from his profile). But his funding activities told a different story. The Center for Media and Democracy’s Alec Kotch has recorded millions of dollars in grants from Koch and affiliates such as the Donors Trust to organizations run by leading members of the CNP. These include ALEC, as well as the State Policy Network, the Leadership Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Judicial Watch, and Turning Point USA. Some of these groups would play important roles in attempts to disrupt the electoral process in the months ahead.
The Washington Post’s April story on the “100 business leaders” initiative made no mention of the CNP, despite the fact that among the leading figures, Moore was on the CNP board of governors, Nelson was a member, and Martin and Brandon were officers. Moore warned the Post that the disaffection of “the right” presented a growing threat to public order, neglecting to mention the ways the CNP was stoking the flames. “There’s a massive movement on the right now, growing exponentially,” he said. “In the next two weeks, you’ll see protests in the streets by conservatives; you’ll see a big pushback against the lockdown in some states. People are at the boiling point.”
The “boiling point” materialized over the next two weeks, as Moore forecast, with the assistance of another CNP-linked effort called Convention of States, led by Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and CNP Gold Circle member. He told the Post his group would function as a “clearinghouse where all these guys can find each other” and praised “spontaneous citizen groups self-organizing on the Internet and protesting what they perceive to be government overreach.” Earlier that week, The New York Times reported that the coalition’s members were mobilizing their networks for state-level rallies, filing lawsuits, and commissioning polls, all to counter the lockdowns. “Nonprofit groups including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots have used their social media accounts and text and email lists to spread the word about the protests across the country.” The most publicized events occurred at the Michigan statehouse on April 15 and May 1, when armed protesters invaded the state Capitol, but these were far from the only ones.
The new “businessmen’s group,” previewed in The Washington Post as “100 business executives,” officially debuted on April 27, billed as the “Save Our Country Coalition.” It called for a series of measures to reopen the economy, flying in the face of expert medical recommendations for curbing the epidemic, whose U.S. death toll now approached 55,000. The CNP was heavily represented among the group’s leadership, including stalwarts such as Richard Viguerie, Ed Meese, and Kenneth Blackwell, as well as rising stars Adam Brandon, Jenny Beth Martin, and Lisa Nelson.
One notable addition was a California physician named Dr. Simone Gold. Over the summer, she emerged as a key player in the third prong of the CNP’s campaign, the war against public health policy, the result of another set of conference calls between Trump campaign staff and members of CNP Action. On one April call, published by the Center for Media and Democracy, CNP President William Walton told the group, “We need to make not just the economic argument, we need to make the health argument, and we need doctors to make that argument, not us.” Within days, Gold began to appear across right-wing media platforms, promoting the false message that hydroxychloroquine (a medication used to treat autoimmune diseases) was both a prophylactic and a cure for Covid-19 (as reported in the September 2020 Washington Spectator). On June 1, The Guardian quoted Brandon’s report that he had raised $800,000 along the way to a $5 million multiplatform media blitz for the campaign.
On July 27, Jenny Beth Martin, Gold, and a dozen other physicians held a Washington, D.C., press conference to deliver their dangerous message. The video reached millions of viewers on Breitbart and President Trump’s and Donald Trump Jr.’s Twitter feeds. Major social media platforms quickly removed it as a violation of their Covid-19 misinformation policies, but Gold’s message has continued to circulate on alternative platforms.
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Trump and the CNP doubled down. On August 19, the CNP opened its meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City with a panel featuring attorney Sidney Powell. Two days later, Donald Trump addressed the CNP in his single major convention-eve event. Over chants of “USA! USA!” Trump acknowledged key supporters by name, including CNP President William Walton, Executive Director Bob McEwen, and Secretary Jenny Beth Martin. His rambling speech attacked familiar enemies and lauded familiar friends, including evangelicals, extractive industries, and the gun lobby. Photos from the event showed several hundred tightly packed, unmasked guests in the ballroom. That afternoon’s program featured attorney Cleta Mitchell, an Oklahoma native and a longtime CNP board of governors member, on panels called “Election Integrity: Securing the Ballot Box” and “Election Integrity: Action Steps.” Executive committee member Brent Bozell III told his fellow members that the left plans to “steal this election.”
“And if they get away with that, what happens?” Bozell demanded. “Democracy is finished because they usher in totalitarianism.”
Trump’s speech to the CNP was released by the White House and widely covered by the national press, but news organizations gave short shrift to the CNP and the scope of its operations. (The New York Times, for example, identified it as merely “a conservative group.”)
But the CNP was becoming less of a mystery. Over the previous months, a small band of researchers had made significant progress in shining a light on the organization’s agenda. Brent Allpress, an academic in Australia, found a back door into its online archives and began to access records of past meetings, which were used in a British documentary called People You May Know (in which this reporter also appears). Two watchdog organizations stepped up their monitoring of the CNP: The Center for Media and Democracy added new funding streams and strategic initiatives, as well as publishing CNP files sourced from Brent Allpress, and Documented found additional CNP meeting materials. Both groups posted meeting agendas, videos of presentations, and—critically—the updated membership rosters for September 2020 that Allpress had accessed. CNP had intentionally elevated its profile, but now it was in danger of losing its cloak altogether.
The rest of the August CNP meeting was held under the usual conditions of secrecy, but this time its proceedings were leaked to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow Jr., who published an account on October 14. The CNP leaders were sounding notes of alarm. “This is a spiritual battle. This is good versus evil,” CNP president Walton told the group. “We have to do everything possible to win.” Trump’s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 crisis was hurting his chances at the polls, and Democratic voters were newly energized. The old messaging about abortion and unisex bathrooms looked less compelling as the pandemic death toll mounted and millions were thrown out of work.
The CNP went into crisis mode, focusing on the mechanics of the election. Charlie Kirk, head of the right-wing student group Turning Point USA and a relatively new member, took the stage to celebrate the closure of campuses, which could deprive the Democrats of a half-million student votes. “So, please keep the campuses closed,” he said. Executive committee member Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, asked his audience for ideas to foil mail-in voting: “We need to stop those ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do.”
The lawyers in the room were eager to help. One of them, the CNP board member Cleta Mitchell, was a partner in the influential Milwaukee-based law firm Foley and Lardner. She also served on the board of directors of the ultraconservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, run by fellow CNP board member Richard Graber. In 2020, the Bradley Foundation granted hundreds of thousands of dollars to ALEC, FreedomWorks, and the CNP itself.
Cleta Mitchell had worked closely with another leading CNP member on election matters in recent years. This was Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a member of the board of directors of CNP Action. Ginni Thomas was known as the not-so-secret weapon of the CNP and its allies. A longtime supporter of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA, she had spoken at the organization’s student conference and served on its advisory council. She was listed as a contributor at the Daily Caller, the online media platform founded and funded by fellow CNP members. At the May 2019 CNP meeting, Thomas and Mitchell offered a joint presentation on electoral strategies, and at the February 2020 meeting, Heritage Foundation alumna Rachel Bovard praised Thomas as a key liaison to the White House. “She is one of the most powerful and fierce women in Washington,” Bovard said. (Bovard joined Thomas on the board of CNP Action shortly afterward.)
A few weeks later, the CNP received some important news. On September 18, Justice Ginsburg had died, at the age of 87, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. CNP affiliates swung into action, repeating the process that had won them two previous conservative justices under the Trump administration. Kelly Shackelford, CNP vice president and chairman of CNP Action, had described his operation at the meeting the previous February, as reported by The Washington Post: “He bragged about extensive behind-the-scenes coordination by his group and other non-profit organizations to influence the White House selection of federal judges. ‘Some of us literally opened a whole operation on judicial nominations and vetting,’ he said. ‘We poured millions of dollars into this to make sure the president has good information, he picks the right judges.’”
Shackelford’s forces promoted the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, another Federalist Society alum, to fill Ginsburg’s seat. Barrett was a longtime CNP favorite. Investigative journalist Robert Maguire learned that, as of July 2018, the domain name “confirmbarrett.com” had already been reserved by the Judicial Crisis Network, founded and chaired by CNP board of governors member Gary Marx and closely aligned with the Federalist Society. The Judicial Crisis Network went on to spend at least $9.4 million in television spots and $4.3 million in digital ads, direct mail, and text messaging to promote Barrett’s nomination, according to a report by Michael Biesecker and Brian Slodysko of the Associated Press.
September 26 was another red-letter day for the CNP. President Trump hosted a Rose Garden ceremony to announce Barrett’s nomination, and the CNP treated the event as a victory lap. Once confirmed, Barrett would serve as the fulcrum for the most conservative Supreme Court in nearly a century, the fulfillment of decades of hard work by CNP strategists. At least 15 members of the CNP were listed among the attendees at the Rose Garden event—equal to the combined number of White House officials and members of Congress present. Among the crowd were old CNP warhorses Tony Perkins, Ralph Reed, and Marjorie Dannenfelser, as well as newly prominent election wranglers Jenny Beth Martin, Cleta Mitchell, and Tom Fitton. Exactly one month later, on October 26—one week before the election—Amy Coney Barrett would be confirmed as the Supreme Court’s new associate justice, after her nomination sailed through the Republican-controlled Senate.
But the Rose Garden event may have also constituted the CNP’s last hurrah for the Trump era. Defying urgent public health advisories, more than 150 guests sat in tight rows, mostly maskless, engaging in spirited conversation. Two weeks later, Dr. Anthony Fauci decried it as a “superspreader event,” as at least seven attendees tested positive for Covid-19—including Donald and Melania Trump.
On Election Day, November 3, the nation held its breath. Ralph Reed’s massive get-out-the-vote effort had driven up turnout, but so had the Democrats. On November 4, as the results hung in abeyance, a site called StoptheSteal.us was registered. It was discovered the following day by Brent Allpress, who traced its registration to an account called “Vice and Victory,” owned by a curious figure named Ali Alexander. Alexander was sometimes known as “Ali Akbar,” the name he was listed under as a member of the CNP on 2017 and 2018 rosters. He began to use the name “Alexander” after pleading guilty to two counts of felony in 2007 and 2008. As “Ali Alexander,” he announced the launch of #StoptheSteal on Twitter with a list of 15 partners and the text, “Proud to be working with these patriots to Save the Election.” One of them was CNP member Ed Martin, head of the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles Forum Fund.
A new Stop the Steal Facebook group had appeared on November 4 and was banned the following day. The Washington Post quoted the page’s recruitment of “boots on the ground to protect the integrity of the vote” and solicitation of donations to cover “‘flights and hotels to send people’ to battleground states including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.” According to the Post, the “Stop the Steal” group appeared as a co-host on 12 different Facebook protest listings, among them one for a car caravan from California. The group gained 360,000 members before it was removed for violating Facebook’s rules for inflammatory content, as users called for “civil war” and “overthrowing the government.”
According to Allpress, the StoptheSteal.us site provided organizational information for protests on November 6 at counting centers and capitols across six “contested” swing states. CNP member Charlie Kirk was listed as the primary organizational contact for Nevada protests, along with alt-right activist Mike Cernovich. The Center for Media and Democracy reported the state-level involvement of other CNP members and added that FreedomWorks, run by CNP Action board of governors member Adam Brandon, was organizing “Protect the Vote” protests in five states.
On November 6, as Biden pulled ahead, Jenny Beth Martin announced that Tea Party Patriot Action was going to hold “Protect the Vote” rallies in four swing states, “working with FreedomWorks, Turning Points [sic], Heritage”—all run by members of the CNP—“and countless social media influencers to help organize and assemble citizens in various locations around the country to voice our support for transparent and honest ballot counting.”
The election was called for Joe Biden on November 7, based on late-counted ballots in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Attorney Cleta Mitchell made her feelings known on Fox News, stating, “We’re already double-checking and finding dead people having voted,” and tweeted that the Georgia recount was “A FAKE!!!”
The CNP refused to surrender and convened a special meeting November 12 to 14. Mitchell appeared at the meeting on an updated panel, now called “Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?” And CNP Action answered the question with a new set of “Action Steps.”
These directed members to lobby legislators in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada to support litigation challenging the election outcome; to “actively educate your pastor and church” with resources from Charlie Kirk, the Family Research Council, and others; to “reach out” to 10 CNP affiliates engaged in the Georgia runoff election; and (ominously) to “connect with local law enforcement.”
Other measures were being set in motion. A familiar figure resurfaced: Trump’s first national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Flynn, too, had a history with the CNP. In July 2016, Flynn appeared on a CNP panel on “Terrorism and the Condition of the Military.” Academic researcher Allpress found Flynn listed in a Zoominfo database of “email addresses and direct dials for the Council for National Policy employees” with a CNP phone number (first listed on November 26 and still active as of February 11—throughout the period when he was appearing at the Stop the Steal protests, including in the January 6, 2021, WildProtest rally).
Dispelling any possibility of the entry representing another “Mike Flynn,” the listing was linked to his 2016 CNP panel appearance.
Ginni Thomas is listed in the same CNP employee database, also as having an undisclosed staff role.
Flynn’s affiliations underscore a disturbing link between Trump’s team and the far-right conspiracy movement QAnon. On July 7, 2020, the CNN reported that Flynn had tweeted a video of himself taking an oath with a QAnon slogan, accompanied by a QAnon hashtag.
In the weeks following the election, Flynn appeared on a December 4 Red State Talk Radio program called “In the Matrixxx: General Flynn Digital Soldiers.” This was a term Flynn had introduced in a May 2016 speech, as a force to combat the “insurgency” created by the professional news media: “So the American people decided to take over the idea of information . . . and they did it through social media.” In his introduction, Matrixxx host Jeffrey Pederson urged, “Patriots, join us in a Q army. Are you guys ready for some booms?” In a telephone interview, he congratulated Michael Flynn on his November 25 presidential pardon for lying to the FBI in the Russia investigation. “We are your digital soldiers, sir.”
Flynn replied, “The digital army that we have is unstoppable. . . . When I see people that don’t want to fight on the battlefield, the Twitter space, the Facebook space, we don’t necessarily choose the terrain that we want to fight on, but when we get on that terrain, and we’re on it . . . we fight like digital soldiers, and we will overcome everything.”
When host Jeffrey Pederson complained that his program had been taken down from a number of major digital platforms, Flynn answered, “Digital Soldiers is gonna have a capability soon. . . . We need a new platform of truth, it’s gonna happen.”
Concerning “this disastrous election we’ve just had,” Flynn adhered to the CNP party line concentrating on state-level action. “We are going to win. We have to be patient, we have to persevere through this, we have to be committed to fight for the truth in these various swing states where the hearings have been occurring. . . . For the people that are in those states, those affected states, you need to be calling your representatives, you need to be going to these rallies that they’re having at the state capitals, and you need to be putting demands on your state officials, your state political class, to not accept this gross . . . this abuse of our election system.”
On December 10, the CNP’s Conservative Action Project published a letter stating, “There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election.” It stated that “state legislatures in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada and Michigan should exercise their plenary power under the Constitution and appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump.” It further called on conservative leaders and groups to implement the strategy discussed at the previous CNP meeting and pressure their state and national representatives to replace the electors. The letter was signed by over a dozen members of the CNP, including the president, the executive director, and executive committee member Jenny Beth Martin.
Over the course of November, Stop the Steal organizers had summoned their supporters to join a series of pro-Trump “Jericho Marches” and prayer vigils around the country. These included a “March for Trump” 20-city bus tour organized by Women for America First, one of Tea Party activists Amy Kremer’s organizations, culminating in a December 12 rally in Washington D.C. Michael Flynn was a headliner for the event, and his speech was recorded by the Right Side Broadcasting Network and posted on YouTube. Standing over a Women for America First podium before the Supreme Court, Flynn proclaimed, “We are not going to give up!” His words were met by chants of “Stop the Steal!” from the crowd—which included hundreds of Proud Boys and QAnon supporters in combat fatigues and paramilitary gear. Flynn closed his remarks with a blessing for the military, first responders, and the police. “They’re fighting on the front lines of freedom right now—for us.”
Legal efforts to overturn the election results continued, but counts and recounts of the ballots came up with the same results, and the challenges were dismissed by courts across the country. Trump’s circle of trusted advisers was shrinking, and the president considered desperate measures.
On Friday, December 18, an extraordinary meeting took place in the White House with four participants who had not been recorded on the official calendar, among them Michael Flynn and attorney Sidney Powell, both of whom had ties to the CNP. According to a February 6 account of that meeting in The New York Times, Sidney Powell proposed that Trump appoint her special counsel to investigate voter fraud, and Trump considered naming Flynn head of the FBI and chief of staff for the rest of his administration.
The previous day, December 17, the right-wing site Newsmax had posted an interview with Flynn. “The president has to plan for every eventuality because we cannot allow this election and the integrity of our election to go the way it is,” Flynn said. “This is just totally unsatisfactory. There’s no way in the world we’re going to be able to move forward as a nation with this. . . .He could immediately on his order seize every single one of these machines around the country on his order. He could also order, within the swing states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities and he could place them in those states and basically rerun an election in each of those states. It’s not unprecedented.”
Now, in the White House meeting of December 18, witnesses reported that Powell and Flynn urged Trump to consider the National Emergencies Act and “extraordinary measures” to address the electoral outcome. Others in the meeting objected, and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Army Chief of Staff General James McConville quickly issued a statement saying, “There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.”
As the options diminished, CNP members doubled down. On January 2, President Trump held a conference call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he famously ordered Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes—one more than Biden’s margin of victory. The CNP’s Cleta Mitchell, one of three lawyers on the call, was identified by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as one of the “attorneys that represent the president—who is not the attorney of record but has been involved [in the efforts to challenge the electoral results].” Mitchell reinforced Trump’s false claims of fraud and pressed Raffensperger to hand over his investigations of the allegations.
Once again, the effort backfired. The Raffensperger call was leaked to the press, and the Georgia official was lauded as a champion of democracy for resisting Trump’s bullying behavior. Mitchell resigned from her position at Foley and Lardner, based on the firm’s policy that its attorneys would not represent “any parties seeking to contest the results of the election.”
Trump’s paths to victory were diminishing by the day. The next juncture was January 6, when Congress was scheduled to certify the Electoral College vote. Stop the Steal had been mobilizing for weeks, with the support of the president’s Twitter feed.
The CNP connection surfaced on a number of fronts, as reflected in a chronology published by The Washington Post. On December 20, the domain “WildProtest” was registered. The Post’s Philip Bump wrote, “It appears to be the brainchild of Ali Alexander” (the onetime CNP member and former Ali Akbar). On January 2, Amy Kremer of Women for America First tweeted, “We are excited to announce the site of our January 6 event will be the Ellipse in President’s Park, just steps from the White House!” Kremer appeared in the CNP’s 2014 roster on the CNP board of governors, listed as chairman of the Tea Party Express. Her daughter Kylie Kremer took out the National Park Service permit for the “March for Trump,” dated January 5, 2021.
CNP affiliates took action on a local level. Two days before the protest, Charlie Kirk tweeted that his organizations were “sending 80-plus buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president.” (Kirk was indulging in hyperbole. Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet later confirmed to Reuters that Kirk’s organization, Turning Point Action, sent “seven buses carrying 350 students” to the rally, but added that the group “condemns political violence.”) Another tweet from Turning Point Action invited protesters to “ride a bus & receive priority entry” and “stay in a complimentary hotel.” Both tweets were deleted after January 6. In Lynchburg, Virginia, more than 100 protesters boarded buses organized by Liberty Counsel Action, chaired by CNP board of governors member Mat Staver.
CNP member Ginni (Mrs. Clarence) Thomas promoted the protest on her Twitter feed on January 6, tweeting, “Watch MAGA crowd today best with Right Side Broadcasting (https://rsbnetwork.com/), and then C‑Span for what the Congress does starting at 1:00 pm today. LOVE MAGA people!!!!”
On another front, CNP member Scott Magill, a retired military physician who had joined the hydroxychloroquine campaign, summoned “fellow Warriors and Friends” to the protest on behalf of his organization, Veterans in Defense of Liberty. Magill had made a video presentation to a 2017 CNP meeting, which was accessed by Brent Allpress, describing VIDOL as a national organization made up of “battalions” and “companies,” formed to “identify and oppose all who would destroy our freedom, our Judeo-Christian values, our culture, or our morals.” It was expanded, he said, to include a “cavalry division of Veteran motorcycle riders” that could function as a “peaceful rapid response team.”
Jenny Beth Martin claimed a major role in the day’s events. On December 30, she tweeted, “I will be speaking at the #StoptheSteal rally on January 6. We must demand Congress to challenge the Electoral College votes and fight for President Trump!” She indicated that her protégé, Dr. Simone Gold (the mouthpiece for Covid misinformation), would be speaking as well. Martin’s Tea Party Patriots were listed as one of the 11 participating organizations on the March to Save America website (along with Turning Point Action and Phyllis Schlafly Eagles). The site announced, “At 1:00 pm we will march on the US Capitol building to protest the certification of the Electoral College.” (The webpage included an automatic SMS opt-in and a Covid-19 disclaimer waiving any claims against the organizers for “illness or injury.”)
On Tuesday, January 5, Trump supporters gathered at Freedom Plaza in Washington for a Stop the Steal “pre-rally.” Ali Alexander led them in cries of “Victory or Death!” Michael Flynn told them, “We stand at a crucible moment in United States history,” and local CBS affiliate reporter Mike Valerio tweeted from the scene, “We’ve heard General Mike Flynn give a salute / shoutout to QAnon soldiers.”
On January 6, thousands of protesters converged on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. President Trump addressed his followers in strident tones, urging them to “walk down to the Capitol,” “show strength,” and “demand that Congress do the right thing.” Then he departed for the White House to watch the day’s events on television.
The crowd moved toward the Capitol and invaded its halls, attacking Capitol police officers and vandalizing the premises. Simone Gold reprised her speech in the Rotunda, condemning the Covid-19 vaccine as “an experimental biological agent deceptively named a vaccine.” Some members of the mob clutched Bibles and carried signs reading “Jesus Saves.” Americans were stunned by shocking images of men in paramilitary gear snaking up the Capitol steps, of the mob assaulting a prostrate police officer, of extremists brandishing zip-tie handcuffs in the Senate chamber.
On the Senate floor, Brent Bozell IV was recorded entering the chamber, speaking on a cell phone, then repositioning the C‑SPAN camera to point at the floor. Bozell is the son of Brent Bozell III, a 30-year veteran of the CNP and a member of the executive committee.
In the aftermath of the attack, Charlie Kirk and other supporters of the protest deleted their tweets, but many had already been archived. Simone Gold expressed “regret” for her actions, but on January 18 she was arrested by the FBI on charges of violent entry and disorderly conduct. Gold’s sponsor, Jenny Beth Martin—who was scheduled to speak on January 5 but did not—told Robert O’Harrow of The Washington Post that her group had provided no financial support for the rally. “We were shocked, outraged, and saddened at the turn of events Wednesday afternoon,” she said.
On January 6, Brent Bozell III gave an interview to Fox Business describing the riot as “an explosion of pent-up outrage from Middle America.” He said, “Look, they are furious because they believe this election was stolen. . . .I agree with them.” He condemned the breaching of the Capitol, blaming it on “one element that went forward in lawlessness.” His son was charged with participating in the breach by the FBI 10 days later.
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The CNP’s affiliates were by no means acting alone in attempting to overturn the results of the election, or in their support for the Capitol protest on January 6. The evidence shows various networks at work: civilian and military, independent and intersecting, feckless and murderous.
What is irrefutable is that members of the CNP and their circle exerted their influence and manipulated their followers to support Trump’s lies about the stolen election and his effort to derail the electoral process. Many of these people emerged as key players in the efforts to disrupt America’s 220-year-old tradition of the peaceful transfer of power and stoked the fury of insurrectionists who desecrated American democracy on that fateful January afternoon.
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“The Council for National Policy was founded in 1981 by a group of televangelists, Western oligarchs, and Republican strategists to capitalize on Ronald Reagan’s electoral victory the previous year. From the beginning, its goals represented a convergence of the interests of these three groups: a retreat from advances in civil and political rights for women and minorities, tax cuts for the wealthy, and raw political power. Operating from the shadows, its members, who would number some 400, spent the next four decades courting, buying, and bullying fellow Republicans, gradually achieving what was in effect a leveraged buyout of the GOP. Favorite sons, such as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, were groomed, financed, and supported. Apostates, such as John McCain and Jeff Flake, were punished and exiled. The leaders of the CNP tended to favor their conservative Christian co-religionists, but political expedience came first.”
Formed in 1981 by a group of televangelists, Western oligarchs, and Republican strategists to capitalize on Ronald Reagan’s electoral victory. It’s hard to come up with a more troubling origin story for a contemporary political group. Especially a group dedicated to operating in the shadows and barely known to the general public. For four decades the CNP has been operating as a kind of secret umbrella group for the Christian hard right. And then the 2020 election came along and the mask drops entirely. Because as we just saw, it was the CNP that was playing a lead role in organizing the legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election results months before the first votes were cast. By February 2020, with the coronavirus pandemic getting underway threatening Trump’s reelection chances, the CNP began planning to the overturn the election for Trump no matter the outcome of the vote. As we’ve seen, Cleta Mitchell — a member of the CNP board of governors and long-standing go-to conservative for justifying the worst kind of gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics — became the point-person for organizing the legal strategies for overturning election results at the state-level. Recall how Mitchell was sitting in on the now notorious Jan 2, 2021 phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensburger demanding that they “find” the votes he needed to win the state, resulting in Mitchell’s law firm effectively kicking her out of the firm. Mitchell’s involvement in overturning the 2020 election arguably goes back to August of 2019, when she co-chaired a high-level working group that ended up advocating for radical reading of the constitution that would enable state legislatures to override the popular vote. Mitchell has been working on overturning the 2020 election from its inception right up to the insurrection. And she’s just one of the prominent CNP officials who was heavily invested in overturning the election through any means necessary:
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Ultimate realization of the CNP’s agenda depended on winning a second term for Trump in November. With another four years, it could enshrine its socially regressive policies on the federal level, further blur the line between church and state, and consolidate huge windfalls for corporations and wealthy individuals. As of January 1, electoral prospects looked sweet. The Republicans’ strongest suit was the economy. Massive tax cuts had flooded corporations with cash, which, as critics of the tax bill had predicted, they used to buy back their stock and drive up share prices 28 percent in 2019. This boosted Trump’s popularity among the 55 percent of Americans who reported owning stocks, but did little to spur the growth Republicans had promised would offset the soaring deficits....
But by February 2020, the CNP, fearing the erosion of Trump’s support, shifted its strategy from boosting the popular vote to deflecting it. Lisa Nelson, the CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council, told the group, “We’ve been focused on the national vote, and obviously we all want President Trump to win, and win the national vote, but it’s very clear from all the comments and all the suggestions up front that, really, what it comes down to is the states, and the state legislators.” Her organization, she told them, had already drafted a model resolution “to make sure there’s no confusion among conservative legislators around national popular vote and the Electoral College.”
Nelson noted that her group was exploring additional ways to invalidate a potential Trump loss in consultation with three election experts, including CNP board of governors member Cleta Mitchell, “who I know you all know, on trying to identify what are those action items that legislators can take in their states, and I think that they’ve identified a few. They can write a letter to the secretary of state, questioning the validity of an election, and saying, ‘What did happen that night?’ So we are drafting a lot of those things. If you have ideas in that area, let us know, and we’ll get them to the state legislators, and they can start to kind of exercise their political muscle in that area.”
So as early as February 2020, the CNP and its advisers were already anticipating various strategies to overturn the results of the election in the event of the loss of either the popular vote or the Electoral College, or both. At the same time, they adopted a three-pronged approach to enhancing Trump’s chances in November. The first involved expanding their use of data to juice Republican votes and suppress Democratic turnout. The second was to mobilize supporters in swing states to ignite Tea Party–like protests against the virus-related public safety lockdowns. The third was to deploy physicians with dubious credentials to dismiss the dangers of Covid-19 through a massive media blitz. All three initiatives were activated in April. It was a rehash of a familiar formula, concocting groups whose names and URLs changed with dizzying speed and calling them “grassroots” organizations. (Critics preferred the term “astroturf.”)
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Note that one the key figures who was already anticipating the need to overturn the election results at that Feb 2020 CNP event was Lisa Nelson, CNP member and CEO of ALEC, and she informed the group she was already working with GOP attorneys including Cleta Mitchell. It’s the perfect example of how the planning to overturn the election results was a joint Koch/CNP operation from the start.
Then there’s the “100 business executives” that the White House staff presented to Trump back in April 2020, just months into the pandemic, who could give advice on how to jump-start the economy. It turns out this was a CNP-led effort too, with CNP co-founder Richard Viguerie talking to reporters about it. The effort was expected to be led by Stephen Moore, Jenny Beth Martin, Adam Brandon, and Lisa Nelson, the CEO of ALEC. All CNP members. At the same time, the newest president of the CNP, William Walton, isn’t a high profile religious leader like Tony Perkins. Instead, Walton works private equity with close ties to the Kochs (now just Charles) and a limited religious profile. The CNP has been a merger of the Christian right with the business community from the very beginning. But 2020 was the year those ties really shined in the shadows:
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The CNP’s second stratagem to “reopen the economy” debuted around the same time. On April 13, The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein and Robert Costa reported that White House staff had presented Trump with a list of “100 business executives” who could advise him as to how to jump-start the economy. The piece quoted CNP co-founder Richard Viguerie, who began his career under the tutelage of disgraced radio evangelist Billy James Hargis and went on to pioneer the use of direct mail in political marketing. “Obviously, the sooner we get the economy going and back up, the better it’s going to be for conservatives and Republicans,” Viguerie said. A lot of them, he added, “feel there might be an overreaction to all of this [epidemic].”According to The Washington Post’s unnamed sources, “The outside effort from conservative groups is expected to be led by Stephen Moore, a conservative at the Heritage Foundation who is close with White House economic officials; Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots; Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy organization; and Lisa Nelson, chief executive of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative pro-business policy and lobbying organization with ties to the Koch brothers.”
This initiative marked a shift in the CNP profile. Going into the 2016 elections, the public faces of the organization had been prominent fundamentalists. Tony Perkins, CNP president from 2016 to 2019, is also an ordained Southern Baptist minister and longtime head of the fundamentalist lobbying group Family Research Council, and he has hosted Christian nationalists Robert Jeffress and David Barton on his radio broadcasts. Almost half of Trump’s original Evangelical Advisory Board—including Perkins—were members of the CNP, and they were in and out of the Oval Office on a regular basis. But in 2019, Perkins was succeeded as CNP president by William Walton, the founder and chairman of Rappahannock Ventures, a private equity firm, with long ties to the Koch Brothers and a limited religious profile. In 2015, Walton chaired a panel at the CNP, stating, “Most of my career has been spent in business and on Wall Street, and I was among the first to attend the Charles Koch seminars.” Other figures connected to the Koch empire ascended in the CNP hierarchy. Jenny Beth Martin, who co-founded the Tea Party Patriots with Koch backing, rose to the office of secretary. Adam Brandon, head of the Koch-founded “grassroots” organization FreedomWorks, took a spot on the board of directors of CNP Action, the organization’s lobbying arm.
David Koch died in August 2019, but his brother Charles carried on. A man with no particular religious profile, Koch embarked on a “charm offensive,” distancing himself from Trump and his fundamentalist allies, presenting himself to the media as a “unifier” (and scrubbing the CNP’s Free Enterprise Award from his profile). But his funding activities told a different story. The Center for Media and Democracy’s Alec Kotch has recorded millions of dollars in grants from Koch and affiliates such as the Donors Trust to organizations run by leading members of the CNP. These include ALEC, as well as the State Policy Network, the Leadership Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Judicial Watch, and Turning Point USA. Some of these groups would play important roles in attempts to disrupt the electoral process in the months ahead.
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Then there’s the role Mark Meckler, a CNP Gold Circle member. He decided to turn the Convention of States organization into a “clearinghouse where all these guys can find each other” and praised “spontaneous citizen groups self-organizing on the Internet and protesting what they perceive to be government overreach.” In other words, Meckler temporarily refocused COS towards whipping up public opposition to the various anti-COVID measures, in particular at the state level, as part of the larger CNP anti-COVID-measures operation. The COS became a clearinghouse of joint CNP/Koch efforts:
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The “boiling point” materialized over the next two weeks, as Moore forecast, with the assistance of another CNP-linked effort called Convention of States, led by Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and CNP Gold Circle member. He told the Post his group would function as a “clearinghouse where all these guys can find each other” and praised “spontaneous citizen groups self-organizing on the Internet and protesting what they perceive to be government overreach.” Earlier that week, The New York Times reported that the coalition’s members were mobilizing their networks for state-level rallies, filing lawsuits, and commissioning polls, all to counter the lockdowns. “Nonprofit groups including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots have used their social media accounts and text and email lists to spread the word about the protests across the country.” The most publicized events occurred at the Michigan statehouse on April 15 and May 1, when armed protesters invaded the state Capitol, but these were far from the only ones.
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Note the featured panelist who open the August 19, 2020, CNP meeting: Sidney Powell. Followed by an afternoon panel featuring Cleta Mitchell. It was a spiritual battle of good versus evil and in the worlds of CNP president Walton, “We have to do everything possible to win.” And the CNP went into crisis mode, focusing on mechanics. They were getting ready for the big steal. This was August 19, 2020, two and a half months before Election Day:
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Trump and the CNP doubled down. On August 19, the CNP opened its meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City with a panel featuring attorney Sidney Powell. Two days later, Donald Trump addressed the CNP in his single major convention-eve event. Over chants of “USA! USA!” Trump acknowledged key supporters by name, including CNP President William Walton, Executive Director Bob McEwen, and Secretary Jenny Beth Martin. His rambling speech attacked familiar enemies and lauded familiar friends, including evangelicals, extractive industries, and the gun lobby. Photos from the event showed several hundred tightly packed, unmasked guests in the ballroom. That afternoon’s program featured attorney Cleta Mitchell, an Oklahoma native and a longtime CNP board of governors member, on panels called “Election Integrity: Securing the Ballot Box” and “Election Integrity: Action Steps.” Executive committee member Brent Bozell III told his fellow members that the left plans to “steal this election.”“And if they get away with that, what happens?” Bozell demanded. “Democracy is finished because they usher in totalitarianism.”
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The rest of the August CNP meeting was held under the usual conditions of secrecy, but this time its proceedings were leaked to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow Jr., who published an account on October 14. The CNP leaders were sounding notes of alarm. “This is a spiritual battle. This is good versus evil,” CNP president Walton told the group. “We have to do everything possible to win.” Trump’s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 crisis was hurting his chances at the polls, and Democratic voters were newly energized. The old messaging about abortion and unisex bathrooms looked less compelling as the pandemic death toll mounted and millions were thrown out of work.
The CNP went into crisis mode, focusing on the mechanics of the election. Charlie Kirk, head of the right-wing student group Turning Point USA and a relatively new member, took the stage to celebrate the closure of campuses, which could deprive the Democrats of a half-million student votes. “So, please keep the campuses closed,” he said. Executive committee member Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, asked his audience for ideas to foil mail-in voting: “We need to stop those ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do.”
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Also note that with Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, on the board of directors of CNP Action, that’s just one more area of clout the CNP would have if the election outcome was thrown to the Supreme Court. Recall how throwing the election to the Supreme Court was one of the Trump team’s strategies for overturning the election. Not that we wouldn’t already expect Clarence Thomas to vote in line with the CNP’s wishes, but it’s an example of just how deep the CNP’s influence runs in DC:
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The lawyers in the room were eager to help. One of them, the CNP board member Cleta Mitchell, was a partner in the influential Milwaukee-based law firm Foley and Lardner. She also served on the board of directors of the ultraconservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, run by fellow CNP board member Richard Graber. In 2020, the Bradley Foundation granted hundreds of thousands of dollars to ALEC, FreedomWorks, and the CNP itself.Cleta Mitchell had worked closely with another leading CNP member on election matters in recent years. This was Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a member of the board of directors of CNP Action. Ginni Thomas was known as the not-so-secret weapon of the CNP and its allies. A longtime supporter of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA, she had spoken at the organization’s student conference and served on its advisory council. She was listed as a contributor at the Daily Caller, the online media platform founded and funded by fellow CNP members. At the May 2019 CNP meeting, Thomas and Mitchell offered a joint presentation on electoral strategies, and at the February 2020 meeting, Heritage Foundation alumna Rachel Bovard praised Thomas as a key liaison to the White House. “She is one of the most powerful and fierce women in Washington,” Bovard said. (Bovard joined Thomas on the board of CNP Action shortly afterward.)
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But of all the CNP members we know of, perhaps the most surprising is Ali Alexander, the Roger Stone acolyte who was leading the StoptheSteal.us movement. Recall how Stone founded StopTheSteal in 2016 to help Trump win the GOP nomination. But Ali Alexander was its public face and leader during the post-2020 election period in the lead up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. And as we saw, the Stop the Steal rally outside the Capitol was seen as the more “wild” rally planned for Jan 6 — as opposed to the Women for America First rally at the Ellipse — and appears to have been the event from which the insurrection actually emerged. Alexander was also making chants of “Victory or Death” at the Jan 5 Stop the Steal rally in DC. Ali Alexander potentially played one of the most significant roles that day in terms of making the insurrection happen. And now we learn Roger Stone’s acolyte is a CNP member. The fact that Michael Flynn spoke at Ali Alexander’s Jan 5 Stop the Steal isn’t particularly surprising either. The two had a similar ‘wild’ insurrectionary vibe:
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On Election Day, November 3, the nation held its breath. Ralph Reed’s massive get-out-the-vote effort had driven up turnout, but so had the Democrats. On November 4, as the results hung in abeyance, a site called StoptheSteal.us was registered. It was discovered the following day by Brent Allpress, who traced its registration to an account called “Vice and Victory,” owned by a curious figure named Ali Alexander. Alexander was sometimes known as “Ali Akbar,” the name he was listed under as a member of the CNP on 2017 and 2018 rosters. He began to use the name “Alexander” after pleading guilty to two counts of felony in 2007 and 2008. As “Ali Alexander,” he announced the launch of #StoptheSteal on Twitter with a list of 15 partners and the text, “Proud to be working with these patriots to Save the Election.” One of them was CNP member Ed Martin, head of the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles Forum Fund.A new Stop the Steal Facebook group had appeared on November 4 and was banned the following day. The Washington Post quoted the page’s recruitment of “boots on the ground to protect the integrity of the vote” and solicitation of donations to cover “‘flights and hotels to send people’ to battleground states including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.” According to the Post, the “Stop the Steal” group appeared as a co-host on 12 different Facebook protest listings, among them one for a car caravan from California. The group gained 360,000 members before it was removed for violating Facebook’s rules for inflammatory content, as users called for “civil war” and “overthrowing the government.”
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On Tuesday, January 5, Trump supporters gathered at Freedom Plaza in Washington for a Stop the Steal “pre-rally.” Ali Alexander led them in cries of “Victory or Death!” Michael Flynn told them, “We stand at a crucible moment in United States history,” and local CBS affiliate reporter Mike Valerio tweeted from the scene, “We’ve heard General Mike Flynn give a salute / shoutout to QAnon soldiers.”
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“Victory or Death!” That was the on Jan 5 chant from Stop The Steal organizer Ali Alexander, who just happens to be a CNP member too. It’s at a point where we have to start asking which major organizers of the push to overturn the election results weren’t members of CNP. It points towards one of the grim realities of any attempt to investigate and punish those responsible for insurrection: truly holding those responsible to account would require the prosecution of a number of members of one of the most powerful networks operating in the US today.
What’s Next for Project Blitz? A Bigger Project Blitz With an Expanded Sense of Dominion
Given that the CNP is almost certainly going to face no real repercussions for its role in an attempted coup and will be allowed to continue operating in the shadows with impunity the risk of future overturned elections and insurrections is one of the obvious threats looming over the US right now. But as our look at Project Blitz makes clear, the assault on America’s democracy from the CNP and Christian nationalists isn’t limited to literal assaults like the insurrection. The impact of ‘bill mills’ like Project Blitz is a sustained legislative assault that really does erode constitutional safeguards over time. One state at a time.
And as the following 2021 update on Project Blitz describes, the people behind Project Blitz have a growing vision for what the project can accomplish. In addition to producing bills to promote prayer in school, they had moved on to potential more fertile issues: “Critical Race Theory” and anti-Trans youth bills. Beyond that, it appears Project Blitz has become more sophisticated in covering up its agenda, issuing new guidance to state lawmakers on how to use more secular-sounding language to describe their bills. Keep in mind that this update on Project Blitz was written in July of 2021, months before we witnessed the potency of issues like “Critical Race Theory” in animating the electorate of Virginia. So in terms of what to expect next from this Christian nationalist movement that’s currently on the war path to capture democracy, we should probably expect more of the same, but worse because they’re getting better at it:
The Salon
The Christian nationalist assault on democracy goes stealth — but the pushback is working
Salon’s 2018 reporting helped drive the Christian right’s Project Blitz underground. Now it’s back, on the down-lowBy Paul Rosenberg
Published July 24, 2021 12:14PM (EDT)In April 2018, researcher Frederick Clarkson exposed the existence of Project Blitz, a secretive Christian nationalist “bill mill” operating below the radar to shape and enact legislation in dozens of states, using a network of state “prayer caucuses,” many of which had unsuspecting Democratic members. Its plan was to start with innocent-seeming bills, such as requiring public schools to display the national motto, “In God We Trust,” and to culminate with laying the foundations for a “Handmaid’s Tale”-style theocracy, enshrining bigotry in law under the guise of “religious freedom.”
Salon was the first to report and build on Clarkson’s findings, as well as subsequent progressive organizing efforts which eventually drove Project Blitz back underground, following a high-profile USA Today exposé (Salon follow-up here.) Now, three years later, Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, has unearthed the playbooks Project Blitz has used since going dark, and discussed their implications with Salon in an exclusive interview.
“The playbooks advise legislators to cloak their religious mission in the guise of more secular intentions and they’ve renamed several bills to make them sound more appealing,” Clarkson reported at Religion Dispatches. But there’s another, more hopeful message: These playbooks “also tell a story of the resilience of democratic institutions and leaders in the face of movements seeking to undermine or end them.”
Clarkson told Salon, “While most people to the left of the Christian right view the Project Blitz playbook with revulsion, I see it as a gift to democracy. The playbook and their accompanying briefings and events laid bare their intentions and their game plan.” Because of that, he continued, “We were handed a vital tool for the defense of democratic values and, arguably, the wider defense of democracy itself. The things that happened in response, I think, are underappreciated, even by some of those who should be taking great pride in their victories.”
In particular, Clarkson said, “We were fortunate that Rachel Laser, the then-new president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, recognized this right away and made taking on Project Blitz a signature campaign of her presidency.” One highlight of Laser’s work was “organizing dozens of national religious and civil rights organizations to issue a joint letter to state legislators opposing the anti-democratic, Christian nationalist intention” behind Project Blitz.
He also cited the webinars staged for various national groups by Alison Gill of American Atheists, Elizabeth Reiner Platt of Columbia University Law School and Clarkson himself, which “laid out the implications of the Project Blitz campaign,” Clarkson said. (My reporting on that is here.) That in turn led to the formation of Blitz Watch, which focused attention on the continuing threat.
In Clarkson’s article for Religion Dispatches, he writes, “In 2020, depending on how one counts, 92 bills were introduced, 8 of which passed. In 2021, so far, 74 bills have been introduced, 14 of which have passed, according to Blitz Watch.” So Project Blitz is still in action, and still a threat. But it’s not the massive and successful onslaught that its founders intended and hoped for — and the fact that it was forced into stealth mode shows how successful the pushback has been.
At the end of his story, Clarkson offers this summary:
The ongoing exposure and response to Project Blitz has taught us several things. First, that it’s possible to stand up to and prevail against anti-democratic movements and measures, and that our democratic institutions are more resilient than they sometimes seem. Sen. John Marty showed that — when he spoke up for the integrity of his faith and stood down a national smear campaign led by Fox News, as noted earlier. Librarians and their allies showed that, even in the face of demagogic attacks on the competence and integrity of public libraries, state legislators could be made to see reason. Efforts since 2018 by scores of national organizations organized by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Blitz Watch, have also shown that it’s possible to defend democracy and its institutions against a secretive and formidable opponent of democratic values, and of democracy itself. What’s more, journalism has once again shown that sunlight remains the best disinfectant.
Elaborating on this last point, Clarkson told Salon, “Scores of national media outlets covered either Project Blitz directly, or covered the patterns of bills introduced in legislatures across the country, especially the most common, In God We Trust bills…. Thus Project Blitz was exposed as part of wider problem of manipulation of state legislatures, and found itself compared to the tobacco and the pornography industries as corruptors of democratic institutions.”
What’s equally important is that these lessons can also provide tools and strategies to counter the right’s latest culture war offensive — the racist backlash flying under the banner of fighting “critical race theory.” Although the two campaigns are dissimilar in some respects, in both cases the right is defending a founding myth (America as a “Christian nation,” or America as a flawless “beacon of liberty”) and perverting or taking hostage a progressive value to claim it as their own (religious freedom or racial equality). In both cases, the reliance on blatant deception tells us that conservatives themselves understand that progressives hold the stronger hand. The right may be more mobilized now — just as it was before Project Blitz was first exposed — but it won’t win if progressives can learn, and adapt, the lessons of their recent success.
How we got here
As Clarkson first reported, Project Blitz originally divided its bills into three tiers. The first tier aimed at importing the Christian nationalist worldview into public schools and other aspects of the public sphere. A signature example is display of the motto, “In God We Trust,” a Cold War replacement for “E pluribus unum” — out of many, one — which better reflects America’s pragmatic, pluralist foundations.
The second tier, “Resolutions and Proclamations Recognizing the Importance of Religious History and Freedom,” aimed at making government a partner in “Christianizing” America, largely by promoting bogus historical narratives. For example, Clarkson told me, the model “Civic Literacy Act and the Religion in History Acts,” required the study or posting of “the founding documents” in the public schools, but with a twist:
“Curiously, the Mayflower Compact is included as a founding document,” he said, “but there is no mention of the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty [the law Thomas Jefferson wrote which served as the model for the First Amendment] ... because it throws a monkey wrench into the Christian nationalist narrative, which seeks to link Christianity and national identity from the British colonies at Jamestown and Plymouth to the present.”
The third tier contained three types of proposed laws that “protect” religious beliefs and practices specifically intended to benefit bigotry. “Although category three is divided in three parts, you could also see it as having two main underlying intentions,” Clarkson explained in a later story. “First to denigrate the LGBTQ community, and second to defend and advance the right to discriminate. This is one way that the agenda of theocratic dominionism is reframed as protecting the right of theocrats to discriminate against those deemed second-class, at best. As the late theocratic theologian R.J. Rushdoony said, ‘Only the right have rights.’ ”
The basic structure of Project Blitz’s agenda hasn’t changed much, but its presentation has. “The 2020–2021 playbook offers slicker arguments than previous years,” Clarkson notes. “For example, they deny that they seek a theocracy, try not to be overtly Christian, present secular arguments for their legislation and attempt to give the appearance that they respect religious pluralism. But they don’t quite succeed.”
The contradictions he notes are not surprising. Authors of these proposed laws insist, for example, that they’re not out to “change our model of government into a theocracy” and that the bills don’t “mimic or enact any particular religious code.” But the inclusion of “The Ten Commandments Display Act” isn’t very convincing on that score. They further insist that the model bills promote “religious tolerance” and “do not force any religion on anyone,” yet the “National Motto Display Act” calls for the posting of the Christian religious slogan “In God We Trust” in public schools and buildings. Still they allege that “tolerance [is] sorely lacking in those who reject various aspects of religious teaching,” an old talking point that frames rejection of imposed religion in public spaces as “intolerance.”
That last point is another example of how the right attempts to usurp progressive values and turn them on their heads. It also represents an attempt to erase religious liberals, progressives and radicals from the public sphere, by pretending that only “secular humanists” can possibly oppose what they are doing.
The 2019–2020 playbook was more narrowly focused, dealing only with bills related to sexual orientation and gender identity. That made sense, since it was the rapid shift in public attitudes around LGBTQ rights that put the religious right into its current defensive posture, out of which it conceived its counter-offensive: recasting religious bigotry as a defining feature of faith, and claiming a right to discriminate as an essential aspect of “religious freedom.” The fact that the other tiers were dropped from the 2019–2020 playbook is a tell of sorts — but of course the playbook’s authors never expected it to become public.
The 2020–2021 playbook returned to the full three-tier format, under a new rubric of “categories,” adding two additional ones. “Category 4 offers ‘talking points to counter anti-religious freedom legislation,’ which is simply a breakout of the talking points previously included in other sections,” Clarkson notes, while “Category 5 provides four new model policies dealing with prayer in public settings — three for public school settings and one for municipal settings, such as city council meetings.”
One important new ingredient
One new bill that Clarkson draws attention to would criminalize libraries and librarians, and became infamous even before Project Blitz adopted it:
The “Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act,” introduced by then-freshman Missouri State Rep. Ben Baker (R‑Neosho), ignited a state and national controversy in January 2020 shortly after he took office. …
His bill sought to create “parental review boards” with the authority to “convene public hearings” and restrict access to anything they deemed “age-inappropriate sexual materials.” Not only would their decisions be “final,” but the bill also prescribed fines or jail for librarians who “willingly” violated board decrees regarding what is inappropriate, and included the potential state defunding of libraries accused of violating the statute.
This bill is deceptive in two key ways. First, as Clarkson notes, it “feigns a democratic method to achieve an anti-democratic result.” These board members wouldn’t be chosen in a general election, but by voters who show up in person at a scheduled public meeting where the issue is raised. “Thus the boards could be elected by small groups of zealots able to pack an otherwise routine evening meeting of a town council,” Clarkson writes. These boards would then be given powers to overrule existing library boards, which are either democratically elected or appointed by democratically elected officials. In short, this is an attack on local democratic control, the very principle it pretends to embody.
The second deception is over the term “age-inappropriate sexual materials,” since the impetus for the original bill wasn’t about sexual content at all, but rather gender representation:
Baker said he was originally concerned about the popular-but-sometimes-controversial Drag Queen Story Hour in libraries and bookstores around the country.
Drag Queen Story Hour describes its events simply as “drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores … [where] kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real.”
Baker sees something more sinister at work. Any break in rigid gender stereotypes is inherently subversive to his snowflake sensibilities, as he explained to the New York Times: “What inspired this bill is becoming aware of what is taking place at our publicly funded libraries with events like Drag Queen Story Hour, and materials that have a clear agenda of grooming our children for the L.G.B.T.Q. community with adult themes and content that fit the description of a objectionable sexual nature.”
In this worldview, any breakdown in rigid gender stereotypes is associated with “grooming our children” for the LGBTQ community,” a trope used by the right dating back at least to the Eisenhower-era John Birch Society, when scientific knowledge about gender orientation and identity was virtually nonexistent. Not only does this lack any scientific credibility, it’s also a hysterical overreaction, since no one is forced to attend Drag Queen Story Hour. If this law were passed, as an official with American Library Association warned, not just Drag Queen Story Hour could be censored, but also displays relating to Pride Month, Black History Month and other specific commemorations.
This attempted intrusion into local library politics is just one example of how Project Blitz overlaps with the new wave of white backlash under the banner of fighting “critical race theory.” For several decades, the right has repeatedly mobilized to take over nonpartisan school boards, and occasionally library boards, as a way of building grassroots power and grooming candidates for higher office. Such elections usually have low turnout and relatively little campaign organization, which makes them attractive targets for extremists running scare-tactic campaigns. The parental oversight bill takes things one step further by empowering small activist groups who invadie local government meetings, but the organizing principle is the same: Use fear and stealth to seize power, and use simulated democratic legitimacy to advance a divisive, reactionary agenda.
These library-centered battles served to underscore a broader point that Clarkson made to Salon. “When people are invested in democratic institutions like public libraries, or any aspect of government, it is important not to ‘other-ize’ government, which in a democratic society is intended to be an expression and function of what we need and want to do together, and is necessarily an expression of democratic values,” Clarkson said.
“That librarians and allies around the country rallied to the defense of the archives of democratic knowledge, culture and practice is a case example of how we need not be bullied by Christian right demagoguery. Screechy charges may make headlines and bring in ad revenue on right-wing talk radio, but most people, most of the time, do not want their schools and libraries messed with by authoritarian bigots and mobs of the easily led.”
Reflecting on lessons learned
Exposure was the key to success, according to two important figures in this struggle, both mentioned above. Rachel Laser is president of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, and Alison Gill is vice president for legal and policy matters at American Atheists.
“To oppose Project Blitz effectively, we first had to raise awareness about this campaign,” Gill said.
“Project Blitz’s strategy was to start with seemingly less controversial legislation that organizers thought they could slip past the public,” Laser said, “then build to even more harmful, more controversial bills. They had some success early on. But once we exposed that strategy and people became aware of Project Blitz and its agenda of codifying Christian nationalism, the initiative began to unravel, because people don’t want to force religious beliefs on public schoolchildren and they don’t want our laws to license discrimination in the name of religious freedom.”
Gill focused more on exposing the secretive workings behind the Project Blitz operation. “At first, the campaign worked discreetly and without broadcasting their intentions to lure unsuspecting lawmakers into state prayer caucuses,” she said. “These caucuses then provided a structure with which to pursue the Project Blitz legislation. By elevating the campaign to media and lawmakers, highlighting its connection to Christian nationalism and showing that these bills were not organically driven by in-state interest, we succeeded in neutralizing their advantage.”
Gill cited two other lessons as well. “Our work to oppose Project Blitz reinforced the importance of cross-movement collaboration,” she said. “Project Blitz is a campaign that targets civil rights in multiple fields — LGBTQ equality, access to reproductive services and religious equality — and so coordination with organizations across affected movements was required to effectively oppose it.”
That took time and crucial information, Laser added: “It wasn’t until we learned of the Project Blitz playbook and their organizing strategy that we were able to build a coalition of allies to fight this movement at its source, rather than only state by state and bill by bill.”
...
More worrisome than Project Blitz itself, Gill said, are the forces behind it. “The same forces pushing forward Project Blitz have now seized upon new issues, and they are already flooding state legislatures with dangerous model bills,” she said. “There were at least four major waves of harmful legislation propagated in 2021: anti-trans youth legislation, religious exemptions to COVID-related public health protections, broad denial-of-care bills, and bills that undermine abortion access.”
Of those, she says the most dangerous element is a “renewed emphasis on Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) measures at the state level. RFRAs create a limited exemption from state laws whenever religious organizations say that their activities are burdened. RFRAs have been used to attack nondiscrimination protections, access to contraception and abortion, and even child labor laws.”
Such laws were a major focus of conservative activism during Barack Obama’s presidency, although “none were successfully passed after significant public setbacks in 2015 in states like Indiana,” Gill noted. “In the wake of the pandemic and state-imposed public health restrictions,” she said, “activists have rebranded these bills as necessary to protect churches from government overreach.” Three states — Arkansas, Montana and South Dakota — passed RFRAs this year, and we should expect to see many more coming in 2022, she warns.
It’s also important to consider how these lessons can be applied to the racist backlash formulated around the bogeyman term “critical race theory,” which Fox News has repeated thousands of times without ever clearly defining it. This can be seen in the state legislative map as well. repeated thousands of times has tracked efforts in 27 states to “restrict education on racism, bias, the contributions of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history, or related topics,” compared to efforts in 12 states to expand education. Brookings reports that seven states have passed such laws, though only one explicitly mentions “critical race theory.” Brookings lists actions taken by state boards of education, other state actors and local school boards as well. So the scope of right-wing activism is clear, as is the need for an effective response.
For Laser, the parallels are clear. “White Christian nationalism is the belief that America is and must remain a Christian nation founded for its white Christian inhabitants, and that our laws and policies must reflect this premise,” she said. “They completely reject church-state separation. White Christian nationalists oppose equality for people of color, women, LGBTQ people, religious minorities and the nonreligious.
“The same white Christian nationalist ideology that is behind Project Blitz is also driving the backlash against a deliberate caricature of critical race theory,” she continued. “Therefore, a similar strategy to the one that has hamstrung Project Blitz — recapturing the narrative about our nation’s ideals, exposing the real intent of the extremists, making clear how their agenda harms freedom and equality for all of us, and bringing together a diverse coalition of people and groups to speak out against this harmful movement — should be part of the strategy to combat opponents of racial justice.”
Gill sees similarities, but differences as well. “Both campaigns are similar in that they focus on redefining and manipulating language for political advantage — ‘religious freedom’ and ‘critical race theory,’ respectively,” she said. “However, there are also significant differences. The anti-CRT campaigns seem at once better funded and less organized than Project Blitz. Moreover, there is a degree of moral panic associated with the anti-CRT efforts that was not as present for Project Blitz.”
Still, she offered three specific lessons learned from the resistance to Project Blitz:
1. Raise awareness about the anti-CRT campaign and bring to light where it came from, who is funding it and for what purposes.
2. Build collaboration between the various sectors that support diversity education in schools to push back against anti-CRT efforts. Successful coalitions must include educators, experts in diversity education, political leaders, civil rights leaders, parents and students.
3. Ensure that tools and messaging to oppose anti-CRT efforts are effective and widely available.If America’s founding was really “as pristine as the religious myth requires it to be,” Clarkson observed, “it cannot be marked by the racism and genocide that the facts of history reveal. History is thus an existential crisis for Christian nationalist beliefs. That’s why history must be revised and the evils that mark so much of our history be erased, rather than acknowledged and addressed. The attack on the straw man of CRT is of a piece with what we might call the purification of American history in the name of God’s history.”
But history and politics tend to be messy, not pure. “The Christian right, supported in part by the Project Blitz playbooks, is using — and mastering — the tools and institutions of democracy in order to erode or end them,” Clarkson said. “They know that well-organized factions can win elections, beginning with low-turnout party primaries, and that the Christian Right minority can gain the mantle of democratic legitimacy by out-organizing those of us who actually believe in it.” So it’s up to “everyone to the left of the Christian Right,” as Clarkson puts it, to mobilize for democracy.
...
———-
“Salon was the first to report and build on Clarkson’s findings, as well as subsequent progressive organizing efforts which eventually drove Project Blitz back underground, following a high-profile USA Today exposé (Salon follow-up here.) Now, three years later, Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, has unearthed the playbooks Project Blitz has used since going dark, and discussed their implications with Salon in an exclusive interview.”
Launched in 2016, Project Blitz was no longer a secret movement by 2021. It had been exposed in 2018 by people like Frederick Clarkson and was forced to retool and repackage the agenda. Which is exactly what Project Blitz did, reworking the playbook with advice to legislators to cloak the intent of the model legislation with secular-sounding language. The Blitz got a makeover:
...
“The playbooks advise legislators to cloak their religious mission in the guise of more secular intentions and they’ve renamed several bills to make them sound more appealing,” Clarkson reported at Religion Dispatches. But there’s another, more hopeful message: These playbooks “also tell a story of the resilience of democratic institutions and leaders in the face of movements seeking to undermine or end them.”...
As Clarkson first reported, Project Blitz originally divided its bills into three tiers. The first tier aimed at importing the Christian nationalist worldview into public schools and other aspects of the public sphere. A signature example is display of the motto, “In God We Trust,” a Cold War replacement for “E pluribus unum” — out of many, one — which better reflects America’s pragmatic, pluralist foundations.
The second tier, “Resolutions and Proclamations Recognizing the Importance of Religious History and Freedom,” aimed at making government a partner in “Christianizing” America, largely by promoting bogus historical narratives. For example, Clarkson told me, the model “Civic Literacy Act and the Religion in History Acts,” required the study or posting of “the founding documents” in the public schools, but with a twist:
“Curiously, the Mayflower Compact is included as a founding document,” he said, “but there is no mention of the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty [the law Thomas Jefferson wrote which served as the model for the First Amendment] ... because it throws a monkey wrench into the Christian nationalist narrative, which seeks to link Christianity and national identity from the British colonies at Jamestown and Plymouth to the present.”
The third tier contained three types of proposed laws that “protect” religious beliefs and practices specifically intended to benefit bigotry. “Although category three is divided in three parts, you could also see it as having two main underlying intentions,” Clarkson explained in a later story. “First to denigrate the LGBTQ community, and second to defend and advance the right to discriminate. This is one way that the agenda of theocratic dominionism is reframed as protecting the right of theocrats to discriminate against those deemed second-class, at best. As the late theocratic theologian R.J. Rushdoony said, ‘Only the right have rights.’ ”
The basic structure of Project Blitz’s agenda hasn’t changed much, but its presentation has. “The 2020–2021 playbook offers slicker arguments than previous years,” Clarkson notes. “For example, they deny that they seek a theocracy, try not to be overtly Christian, present secular arguments for their legislation and attempt to give the appearance that they respect religious pluralism. But they don’t quite succeed.”
...
But the changes to this agenda weren’t limited to aesthetics. Project Blitz has been expanding into new areas in recent years too with a focus on libraries, “parental review boards”, and “critical race theory”:
...
One new bill that Clarkson draws attention to would criminalize libraries and librarians, and became infamous even before Project Blitz adopted it:The “Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act,” introduced by then-freshman Missouri State Rep. Ben Baker (R‑Neosho), ignited a state and national controversy in January 2020 shortly after he took office. …
His bill sought to create “parental review boards” with the authority to “convene public hearings” and restrict access to anything they deemed “age-inappropriate sexual materials.” Not only would their decisions be “final,” but the bill also prescribed fines or jail for librarians who “willingly” violated board decrees regarding what is inappropriate, and included the potential state defunding of libraries accused of violating the statute.
...
This attempted intrusion into local library politics is just one example of how Project Blitz overlaps with the new wave of white backlash under the banner of fighting “critical race theory.” For several decades, the right has repeatedly mobilized to take over nonpartisan school boards, and occasionally library boards, as a way of building grassroots power and grooming candidates for higher office. Such elections usually have low turnout and relatively little campaign organization, which makes them attractive targets for extremists running scare-tactic campaigns. The parental oversight bill takes things one step further by empowering small activist groups who invadie local government meetings, but the organizing principle is the same: Use fear and stealth to seize power, and use simulated democratic legitimacy to advance a divisive, reactionary agenda.
...
And this expansion into critical race theory and libraries is just a start. With a far right Supreme Court majority poised to give its blessings to all sorts of new Christian nationalist laws, there’s almost no limit to the range of potential issues where Project Blitz could score real legislative and judicial victories. From anti-trans legislation to abortion to anti-COVID-related bills, the range of viable fights for Project Blitz to pick just keeps expanding. Each fight strategically chosen to bring the US one step closer to a theocracy:
...
More worrisome than Project Blitz itself, Gill said, are the forces behind it. “The same forces pushing forward Project Blitz have now seized upon new issues, and they are already flooding state legislatures with dangerous model bills,” she said. “There were at least four major waves of harmful legislation propagated in 2021: anti-trans youth legislation, religious exemptions to COVID-related public health protections, broad denial-of-care bills, and bills that undermine abortion access.”Of those, she says the most dangerous element is a “renewed emphasis on Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) measures at the state level. RFRAs create a limited exemption from state laws whenever religious organizations say that their activities are burdened. RFRAs have been used to attack nondiscrimination protections, access to contraception and abortion, and even child labor laws.”
Such laws were a major focus of conservative activism during Barack Obama’s presidency, although “none were successfully passed after significant public setbacks in 2015 in states like Indiana,” Gill noted. “In the wake of the pandemic and state-imposed public health restrictions,” she said, “activists have rebranded these bills as necessary to protect churches from government overreach.” Three states — Arkansas, Montana and South Dakota — passed RFRAs this year, and we should expect to see many more coming in 2022, she warns.
...
If America’s founding was really “as pristine as the religious myth requires it to be,” Clarkson observed, “it cannot be marked by the racism and genocide that the facts of history reveal. History is thus an existential crisis for Christian nationalist beliefs. That’s why history must be revised and the evils that mark so much of our history be erased, rather than acknowledged and addressed. The attack on the straw man of CRT is of a piece with what we might call the purification of American history in the name of God’s history.”
But history and politics tend to be messy, not pure. “The Christian right, supported in part by the Project Blitz playbooks, is using — and mastering — the tools and institutions of democracy in order to erode or end them,” Clarkson said. “They know that well-organized factions can win elections, beginning with low-turnout party primaries, and that the Christian Right minority can gain the mantle of democratic legitimacy by out-organizing those of us who actually believe in it.” So it’s up to “everyone to the left of the Christian Right,” as Clarkson puts it, to mobilize for democracy.
...
“The Christian right, supported in part by the Project Blitz playbooks, is using — and mastering — the tools and institutions of democracy in order to erode or end them.”
That’s the take home lesson here. The Christian Right — which can’t really be disentangled from the corporate Right — is using its mastery of the tools and institutions of democracy to end democracy. When Michael Flynn called for “One nation under God, and one religion under God,” he wasn’t just talking to the audience in that church. He was talking to this network of theocratic power brokers. Power brokers intent on rewriting laws, the constitution, and history itself. All for the glory of God. Or, well, the glory of something at least...
What’s Next for the CNP? A Nationwide Bill Mill of Voter Suppression Laws
But Project Blitz isn’t the only ongoing theocratic project. The CNP and ALEC have found a new project to go all ‘bill mill’ on: voter suppression laws. A few weeks ago, we learned about a crack team of Republican lawyers who have been secretly meeting with ALEC and working out template voter suppression laws designed for use by state legislators. Three of the five lawyers said to be spearheading this initiative are CNP members. One of them is Cleta Mitchell. Yes, Mitchell is still doing her work on behalf of the GOP despite being kicked out of her law firm for gross malpractice in relation to her baseless voter fraud claims. And she’s joined by fellow CNP members J Christian Adams and Kenneth Blackwell in spearheading this effort.
The two lawyers who aren’t known members CNP members are Jason Snead and Hans von Spakovksy. Snead is heading Honest Elections Project, another GOP ‘election integrity’ outfit that was set up in 2020 and busily opposing any state measures to make it easier to vote during the pandemic. But while Snead may not be a CNP member, the founder of the Honest Elections Project, Leonard Leo, is both a member of the CNP and a member of Opus Dei, which is reminder that CNP members aren’t exclusively members of the CNP. They’re going to be members of all sorts of different theocratic organizations.
And Hans von Spakovksy, one of the GOP’s longstanding voter-suppression gurus, is no stranger to this group. Recall how both Spakovsky and J Christian Adams appeared as neutral expert witnesses in the trial over a Kansas voter ID law in support of the new restrictive law. Spakovsky got called out by the judge for being highly non-neutral and basing his defense of the law on highly misleading examples and assumption. Adams was shot down in a similar way by a judge the year before, calling the expert testimony by Adams’ group “misleading” and “inaccurate”. This is the crew that’s spearheading the GOP’s ongoing voter suppression efforts. Three of them CNP members and the other two CNP fellow travelers. Working side-by-side with ALEC to capture of democracy:
The Guardian
The network of election lawyers who are making it harder for Americans to vote
Voting rights watchdogs have warned of a web of attorneys and groups, some who pushed Donald Trump’s big lie after the 2020 election
Peter Stone in Washington
Tue 14 Dec 2021 03.00 EST
Last modified on Tue 14 Dec 2021 14.10 ESTA powerful network of conservative election lawyers and groups with links to Donald Trump have spent millions of dollars promoting new and onerous voting laws that many battleground states such as Georgia and Texas have enacted.
The moves have prompted election and voting rights watchdogs in the US to warn about the suppression of non-white voters aimed at providing Republicans an edge in coming elections.
The lawyers and groups spearheading self-professed election integrity measures include some figures who pushed Trump’s baseless claims of fraud after the 2020 election. Key advocates include Cleta Mitchell with the Conservative Partnership institute; J Christian Adams of the Public Interest Legal Foundation; Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation; Jason Snead of the Honest Elections Project; and J Kenneth Blackwell with the America First Policy Institute.
These conservative outfits tout their goal as curbing significant voter fraud, despite the fact that numerous courts, the vast majority of voting experts and even former top Trump officials, such as ex-attorney general Bill Barr, concluded the 2020 elections were without serious problems.
Watchdogs say that tightening state voting laws endanger the rights of Black voters and other communities of color who historically back Democrats by creating new rules limiting absentee voting and same day registration, while imposing other voting curbs.
Among the election lawyers and groups advocating tougher voting laws, Mitchell, a veteran conservative lawyer , boasts the highest profile and has sparked the most scrutiny. She took part in the 2 January call where Trump prodded Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find” about 11,780 votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there. After details emerged about Mitchell’s role on the call, Foley & Lardner, where she had worked for nearly 20 years, mounted an internal review, and she resigned.
Trump’s 2 January call also spawned a criminal investigation by Georgia’s Fulton county district attorney that could create problems for Mitchell, say ex-prosecutors, and may bring scrutiny of the lawyer by the House committee looking into the 6 January Capitol attack.
Mitchell, who reportedly raised $1m to help fund a baseless investigation of Arizona’s largest county that Trump pushed aggressively, generated more controversy last month when she was named to an advisory board for the federal Election Assistance Commission with backing from her close legal ally Adams whose foundation Mitchell chairs.
Using her perch at CPI and another post with the libertarian FreedomWorks that early this year announced a seven-state drive to revamp voting laws led by Mitchell, the lawyer has helped spearhead new state election measures and block two congressional bills – the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act – which Democrats have been trying to enact to counter the wave of new state laws.
According to an October update from the Brennan Center for Justice, 19 states had enacted 33 new laws this year that “will make it harder for Americans to vote”.
To press for new state voting laws, Mitchell has worked closely with some influential groups quietly backing new measures, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful and shadowy group of state legislators that historically promotes model bills where she used to be outside counsel.
At an Alec meeting on 1 December in California, Mitchell helped lead a secretive “process working group” session devoted to election and voting law changes and related matters that included several top legal allies such as Adams and Von Spakovsky, according to reports from the Center for Media and Democracy, and Documented.
Adams’ foundation, which in 2020 received about $300,000 from the Bradley Foundation, whose board includes Mitchell, has brought lawsuits to defend some of the tough new voting laws in Texas and other states.
Top funders of the right’s armada include a family foundation tied to billionaire Richard Uihlein, the Bradley Foundation, and two dark money giants, the Concord Fund and Donors Trust, according to public records.
Legal watchdogs raise strong concerns about the new laws promoted by the right in numerous states such as Georgia and Texas, and note that the arguments for changing voting rules seem rife with contradictions.
“During the 2021 legislative session, we saw anti-voter organizations push cookie-cutter legislation restricting the right to vote in legislatures across the country,” said Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.
“The same language appeared in state after state without regard for the state’s particular needs. For example, strict cutbacks on access to vote by mail were introduced in states that had wholly positive vote by mail experiences in 2020,” she added.
Such complaints have not deterred the legislative blitz by Mitchell with allied lawyers and groups nationwide to change voting laws.
Mitchell declined to answer questions from the Guardian about her voting law work or the Georgia investigation, though in an interview early this year with the AP she boasted “I love legislatures and working with legislators”, and revealed that she talks to Trump “fairly frequently”, but provided no details.
Mitchell’s ties to Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, are palpable, too, including post election as a frenzied and baseless drive was under way to overturn Trump’s loss.
On 30 December, according to the Washington Post magazine, Mitchell wrote Meadows and “offered to send some 1,800 pages of documents purporting to support claims of election fraud”.
Meadows, who also has a senior post at CPI, now faces contempt charges for reneging on testifying to the House panel about the 6 January Capitol attack and earlier efforts to block Biden from taking office.
...
———-
“The lawyers and groups spearheading self-professed election integrity measures include some figures who pushed Trump’s baseless claims of fraud after the 2020 election. Key advocates include Cleta Mitchell with the Conservative Partnership institute; J Christian Adams of the Public Interest Legal Foundation; Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation; Jason Snead of the Honest Elections Project; and J Kenneth Blackwell with the America First Policy Institute.”
Let’s see how many CNP members we can find here spearheading this nationwide push for ‘election integrity’ measures. There’s of course Cleta Mitchell. But it also turns out J Christian Adams and J Kenneth Blackwell are CNP members too. So of the five lawyers said to be spearheading this ‘election integrity’ effort nearly a year after the insurrection, we find three of them are CNP members. And one is none other than Cleta Mitchell.
And while Hans von Spakovksy may not show up on the CNP membership list, recall how both Spakovsky and J Christian Adams appeared as neutral expert witnesses in the trial over a Kansas voter ID law in support of the new restrictive law. Spakovsky got called out by the judge for being highly non-neutral and basing his defense of the law on highly misleading examples and assumption. Adams was shot down in a similar way by a judge the year before, calling the expert testimony by Adams’ group “misleading” and “inaccurate”. Spakovsky has been one of the GOP’s voter-suppression and gerrymandering gurus for years and even appears to be involved with the origins of the “ItalyGate” bonkers conspiracy theory about Italy sattelites changing the 2020 vote tallies.
Similarly, while Snead may not be a direct CNP member, the founder of his Honest Elections Project, Leonard Leo, is indeed a CNP member.
And note how Spakovksy, Adams, and Mitchell were all at a secret December 1, 2021, ALEC “process working group” session devoted to election and voting law changes and related matters. These three figures constitute the legal core of the GOP’s fraudulent ‘voter fraud’ campaign, and here they are secretly strategizing with ALEC:
...
Mitchell, who reportedly raised $1m to help fund a baseless investigation of Arizona’s largest county that Trump pushed aggressively, generated more controversy last month when she was named to an advisory board for the federal Election Assistance Commission with backing from her close legal ally Adams whose foundation Mitchell chairs.Using her perch at CPI and another post with the libertarian FreedomWorks that early this year announced a seven-state drive to revamp voting laws led by Mitchell, the lawyer has helped spearhead new state election measures and block two congressional bills – the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act – which Democrats have been trying to enact to counter the wave of new state laws.
...
To press for new state voting laws, Mitchell has worked closely with some influential groups quietly backing new measures, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful and shadowy group of state legislators that historically promotes model bills where she used to be outside counsel.
At an Alec meeting on 1 December in California, Mitchell helped lead a secretive “process working group” session devoted to election and voting law changes and related matters that included several top legal allies such as Adams and Von Spakovsky, according to reports from the Center for Media and Democracy, and Documented.
Adams’ foundation, which in 2020 received about $300,000 from the Bradley Foundation, whose board includes Mitchell, has brought lawsuits to defend some of the tough new voting laws in Texas and other states.
...
That’s what’s next for this movement. More of the same, but worse. More voter suppression laws. More Project Blitz initiatives and gaslighting the public about the threats of CRT and trans youth. And more calls by figures like Michael Flynn for a merger of church and state.
But let’s not kid ourselves. You can’t have a fascist theocratic movement operate in ‘more of the same, but worse’ mode indefinitely. At some point its going to be ‘more of the same, and now we’re a theocracy’. How soon we get there depends on a number of factors. But perhaps the biggest factor is the gross abandonment of faith in democracy as a institution on the part of conservative voters. In other words, how long does it take before all of the right-wing propaganda designed to undermine faith in democracy — whether its disinformation about mass voter fraud or QAnon-style conspiracy theories about Satanic liberal elites — finally takes hold and there’s no longer a conservative appetite for sharing power? How many more years of unyielding gaslighting and disinformation can pass before the American electorate simply doesn’t care anymore if elections are held at all? Don’t forget that climate change and the existential despair of ecological collapse are going to playing out too. The politics of despair is a natural fit for an End Times theology. And when the public does finally reach that state of civic capitulation, what are the odds they won’t run into the arms of charismatic theocrats waiting to channel all of that confusion and angst? These are the kinds of questions the United States is effectively asking itself. How much longer before a large enough chunk of the US electorate is convinced that democracy is doomed and some sort theocracy is the only path to salvation? That’s the question the US is effectively asking itself these days.
But as we’ve seen, when it comes to the right-wing oligarchy, it’s not really a question of whether or not they would prefer a theocracy. The profound influence of the CNP makes that answer abundantly clear...as long as its a corporatist theocracy. Instead, it’s just a question of how much more effort do groups like the CNP and Project Blitz have to invest before their vision is made manifest. Will the oligarchy get a majority of the public to support its theocracy? We’ll see, but let’s not forget that public approval is kind of beside the point under this post-democratic version of Heaven on Earth.
Here’s a pair of articles about the Honest Elections Project that underscore how intertwined the activities of CNP members are with that of the Koch network of mega donors. Recall how we recently learned about ongoing Republican efforts to push for stricter voting laws being spearheaded by five lawyers, including Jason Snead, the head of the Honest Election Project. As we saw, three out of those five lawayers were CNP member (Cleta Mitchell, J Christian Adams, and Ken Blackwell). And while Snead was not one of the CNP members, it was notable that the Honest Elections Project was said to be founded by Leonard Leo, who is both a member of the CNP and Opus Dei.
We’re also going to learn about another CNP member involved with running the Honest Election Project: Carrie Severino.
We’re going to take a closer look at who is actually funding the Honest Election Project. And it turns out, surprise!, we can’t actually say who is ultimately funding it. Because it’s financed through DonorsTrust, the Koch network’s dark money vehicle of choice. So while Leonard Leo is part of the public face of the Honest Election Project, it’s still a mystery who is ultimately financing this activity. The dark money system is working as intended.
As we’re also going to see, it appears that the Honest Election Project is basically trying to play ‘good cop’ in some sort of ‘good cop’/‘bad cop’ voter fraud theatrics. The group is shying away from endorsing the specific voter fraud claims in relation to Donald Trump’s 2020 electoral loss. It’s also branding itself as the Republican establishment’s answer to the questions about voter fraud swirling around the Republican Party’s very core identity at this point. But it’s still fully endorsing the general Republican narratives about voter fraud, busily filing briefs with courts in favor or more restrictive laws. And in that sense it is indeed a fitting establishment response. Toxically deceptive to the end:
“The proposals come as the GOP remains divided by Trump’s false claims. Republicans are wrestling with how far to go in overhauling voting laws without embracing Trump’s conspiracy theories or damaging Republicans’ political prospects. Honest Elections’ push is essentially an establishment Republican answer to some of those questions.”
LOL! Honest Elections’ push is essentially an establishment Republican answer to the question of how far to go in overhauling voting laws without embracing Trump’s conspiracy theories or damaging Republicans’ political prospects. That was the spin we were getting back in March of 2021. So the GOP establishment apparently felt like a couple of months was enough time to wait after the insurrection to resume its support for exactly the kind of mass voter fraud lies that the insurrection was predicated on.
We see Jason Snead interviewed as the group’s executive director and Leonard Leo listed as the founder. Snead was clearly trying to emphasize how the Honest Election Project wasn’t alleging the kind of widespread fraud the Trump team and many of its allies — like Cleta Mitchell — were aggressively alleging. No, the Honest Election Project was focused on more general voter fraud. At the same time, Snead falls back on the favored GOP argument that the US should pass restrictive new voter laws due to voter perceptions that there’s a major problem with voter fraud. It’s like Honest Elections Project is playing the role of ‘good cop’ in a ‘good cop’/‘bad cop’ gaslighting schtick:
And note how the Honest Elections Project was acting in March of 2021 like it had nothing to do with those distasteful attempts to overturn the 2020 vote after the election, a narrative that conveniently ignores the reality that the project spent 2020 acting to make it harder to voter. Whether or not the group backed Trump’s stolen election narrative after the election ignores the reality that the GOP and its allies were preparing to steal the 2020 election for Trump long before the first votes were cast:
Ok, and now here’s a Guardian article from back in May of 2020, covering a previously unknown group that seemed to suddenly pop out of nowhere pushing questionable claims about massive voter fraud and the need for new voting restrictions. But it turns out this group, the Honest Election Project, isn’t quite is independent as it claims. Because it turns out the Honest Election Project goes by another name: The Judicial Education Project, a group that has been almost entirely funded for the last decade from the Kochs’ major dark money vehicle, DonorsTrust.
So weren’t we being told in March of 2021 that the Honest Elections Project was founded by Leonard Leo? Well, it turns out The Judicial Education Project is indeed one of Leo’s projects. So the Honest Elections Project is, in reality, The Judicial Education Project which has been led by Leo but financed by whoever happened to direct that money through DonorsTrust. But we don’t get to know who that ultimately is. It could be Leo himself. Maybe Charles Koch. Or Robert Mercer. Or Betsy DeVos. Or any of the other right-wing mega-donors are use DonorsTrust to anonymous dish out donations.
And in addition to Leonard Leo being an CNP, and we also learn about another CNP member involved with the Honest Elections Project: Carrie Severino. So at this point, two out of the three people we know of who are involved with the Honest Election Project are members of the CNP:
“The organization, which calls itself the Honest Elections Project, seemed to emerge out of nowhere a few months ago and started stoking fears about voter fraud. Backed by a dark money group funded by rightwing stalwarts like the Koch brothers and Betsy DeVos’ family, the Honest Elections Project is part of the network that pushed the US supreme court picks Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, and is quickly becoming a juggernaut in the escalating fight over voting rights.”
The Honest Elections Project just seemed to emerge out of nowhere back in May of 2020. A new darkmoney group that suddenly pops up, stoking fears about voter fraud, and calling voter suppression a “myth” while it wages one legal briefing after another in favor of voting restrictions. The project was acting as a ‘friends-of-the-court’ mill, in keeping with the increasingly popular dark money practice. But it’s the fact that the people behind the Honest Election Project are simultaneously behind the stacking of state and federal courts courts with right-wing judges that makes this a particularly potent lobbying network. They’re effectively lobbying their own plants:
But here’s where we get to see why the US’s dark money laws are so wildly convenient for oligarchs interested in secretly wielding influence: it turns out the Honest Elections Project is just a legal alias for a different entity. The Judicial Education Project, which has long been almost entirely funded by DonorsTrust, the main dark money vehicle favored by not just the Kochs but all sorts of other right-wing mega-donors like Robert Mercers or Betsy DeVos. In 2018, 99% of the Judicial Education Projects funding came from a single $7.8 million donation from DonorsTrust. So the Honest Elections Project is basically just a new anonymous front for an existing anonymous front. Then, in December of 2020, the Judicial Elections Project changed its name to The 85 Fund. As we’ve seen, while they may have changed the name to The 85 Fund, the underlying message was the same, with the group focused on pushing bogus voter fraud claims in the weeks following the January 6 Capitol insurrection. The 85 Fund then registered two new names for itself on the same day, including the Judicial Education Project. In the end, the same entity was legally allowed to operate under four different names:
Finally, note the shared personnel between the Honst Elections Project and the Judicial Crisis Network: both groups share Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network. And, yes, in addition to Leonard Leo, Severino is also a CNP member. You can’t really separate the Honest Elections Project from the Koch network or the CNP. It’s a project of the oligarchy:
Also recall how the BH Group’s mystery donation to the Trump inaugural fund could be a lot more scandalous than presently recognized given the pay-to-play corruption bonanza of that time. It’s a reminder of the extreme flexibility of these dark money laws.
So we’ll see what the Honest Election Project has planned for upcoming election cycles. Although we can be pretty confident that it will involve more deceptive yet reassuring calls for the need for new restrictive voter laws. Presumably along with another name change or two.
Here’s a piece published a few days ago, on the one year anniversary of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, that is the perfect example of the kind of dangers inherent in calls for special bigotry privileges just for conservative Christians. The piece is written by CNP member Daniel Suhr, the Managing Attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, one of the many right-wing ‘think tanks’ financed by the Koch network of meta-donors. Suhr was also the Chief of Staff of Wisconsin’s former Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. Kleefisch is running for the governor’s office in this year’s elections. In other words, Suhr appears to be positioned to become the Chief of Staff of the next governor of Wisconsin, should Kleefisch win.
So check out Suhr’s recent opinion piece published on January 6, 2022. A piece that warns about the dangers of ‘wokism’ in the military. Dangers that were exacerbated by all of the concern aroused by the January 6 Capitol insurrection and the large number of current and former members of the military and law enforcement involved with insurrection. First, Suhr makes the point of distinguishing between the people who actually rushed the Capitol vs those who were merely at the rally at the Ellipse that immediately preceded and complains about the latter group facing punishment for attending a legal protest. This complaint was made despite the fact that no one is being punished purely for attending hte Ellipse rally.
But then Suhr goes on to tie in the renewed focus in the US military on rooting out violent extremists with the danger of punishing punishing Christians merely for upholding Biblical teachings. Yep, that’s the spin. As Suhr puts it, “Jan. 6 is now claimed as the socially acceptable reason to target “extremism” and “domestic terrorism” and “hate,” leading to policies like this new one. But those words, like all others, require definition. Words like “extremist” and “hate” are now applied to some Christians in our culture, merely for upholding Biblical teachings.” Suhr goes on to warn that conservatives are right to worry that the military’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda is not a legitimate exercise in maintaining morale but rather a stalking horse for an ideological agenda creeping into the military. That ideological agenda being critical race theory. He also warns about transgendered troops, just for good measure. Along with warnings about soldiers being forced to take a COVID vaccine despite their religious objections. All the greatest hits.
So that’s the message the likely future chief of staff of the next governor of Wisconsin decided to publish on the one year anniversary of Capitol insurrection: a warning to the public that measures to root out extremism in the military, elevated in response to the insurrection, were actually part of a sinister ideological attempt to oppress Christians and promote critical race theory:
“But Jan. 6 is now claimed as the socially acceptable reason to target “extremism” and “domestic terrorism” and “hate,” leading to policies like this new one. But those words, like all others, require definition. Words like “extremist” and “hate” are now applied to some Christians in our culture, merely for upholding Biblical teachings. The Defense Department’s new guidelines apply to activities like “Advocating widespread unlawful discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex (including pregnancy), gender identity, or sexual orientation” or “Advocating or engaging in unlawful force or violence to achieve goals that are political, religious, discriminatory, or ideological in nature.””
The horror of it all. Jan 6 is being used as the socially acceptable reason to target “extremism” and “domestic terrorism” and “hate”, a moral dragnet that could end up ensnaring innocent Christians merely following Biblical teachings. Sure, you can target Islamic extremists and neo-Nazis. Just be sure to not ensnare any Christians who happen to hold those same extremist beliefs. Because those are protected traditional beliefs, or at least should be protected traditional beliefs. It’s the Project Blitz paradigm — of special protections for conservative Christians alone — applied in the context of government anti-extremism actions:
It’s also worth recalling the personal history of David Barton, who was openly affiliating with white supremacist Christian Identity movement of Pete Peters’ Scriptures for America in the early 90s before Barton was embraced by the GOP. It’s an example of why Suhr’s insistence that we distinguish between the extremist views of a Nazi and a conservative Christian doesn’t make sense. You can be a conservative Christian Nazi. Plenty of such people unfortunately exist. But if we listen to Daniel Suhr, no, we need to carve out a special exception for Christians when carrying out anti-extremism investigations.
And don’t forget: Project Blitz is still going. The drive to confer special protections to Biblically-based extremism isn’t going away. So just keep in mind that should Rebecca Kleefisch end up Wisconsin’s next governor, extremists will presumably be welcome to join her administration, but only as long as they’re also self-professed Christians. So if you’re an extremist in Wisconsin with political ambitions, now would be the right time to find a church that shares your extremist beliefs. Specifically a Christian church, so your hate can get its extra God-given constitutional protections.
Here’s a set of excerpts that underscore how incredible mainstream the CNP is within conservative circles. But also how remarkably secretive the group is about that mainstream influence. The first article, from Jason Wilson at the Guardian, was published in September and based on a newly leaked list of CNP members. The article describes how the group is so secretive it not only instructs members to keep their membership secret but also instructs them to never even name the group. The CNP is like Voldemort. No one dare speak its name. Which all the more remarkable given how many powerful and influential people are members. People in politics and industry.
But as Heidi Beirich puts it, “this new CNP list makes clear that the group still serves as a key venue where mainstream conservatives and extremists mix”, adding that CNP “clearly remains a critical nexus for mainstreaming extremism from the far right into conservative circles”. And that’s the crucial aspect of the CNP’s extreme secrecy that can’t be lost: the CNP’s extreme secrecy covers for fact that it acts as a vehicle for mainstreaming right-wing extremism.
We’re going to get a better sense of the reach of the CNP inside the conservative movement with the second article excerpt, from October 2017, when the Heritage foundation was search for a replacement for then-former president Jim DeMint. Yes, DeMint is a CNP member. As we’re going to see, of the four people Heritage was looking at to replace DeMint, three of them were CNP members. Lisa B. Nelson, David Trulio, and Kay Coles James. The only non-CNP member they were reportedly interested in at the time was Mike Pence’s then-chief of staff Marc Short. In the end, James got the job.
But there’s an interesting twist to all this in the third excerpt below. Heritage has already selected its replacement for Kay Coles James as president. Dr. Kevin Roberts, current the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). Recall how the TPPF was found to be running the “79 Days report” election simulations in the final weeks of the 2020 election in coordination with the Claremont Institute. The Claremont Institute happens to have John Eastman, one of the central figures in developing legal justifications for the events that led up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. So Roberts seems like an appropriate fit for the job. He’s got the relevant experience in trying to overturn elections.
Here’s the twist: while Roberts does NOT show up in the most recently leaked list of CNP members, there’s one place where he is indeed listed as a CNP member. And it’s the kind of place that would appear to violate the CNP rules on not acknowledging either his membership to the CNP or its very existence: Roberts is listed as a CNP member in a September 1, 2021 news post on gov.texas.gov website, where Texas governor Greg Abbott announced that Roberts was appointed to the Texas 1836 Project Advisory Committee. They spell it out clearly in the profile:
Note that the Texas 1836 Project is just the latest right-wing attempt to rewrite history. Started in 2021 by Governor Abbott, the project aims at promoting “patriotic education” to Texas resident, with echos of ProjectBlitz. Roberts is clearly ticking off all the right wedge issues, and it landed him the presidency of the Heritage Foundation.
And yet, what are we to make of the fact that Roberts doesn’t show up in the leaked CNP lists but openly touts his members in his public Texas profile? That’s the weird twist here. Perhaps Roberts is such a new member his membership hasn’t had a chance to get leaked. But if that’s not the case, you have to wonder if the CNP has decided it’s easier to just come out of the shadows. Being a hyper-secretive hyper-powerful group isn’t exactly a great look, after all. Again, it’s a mystery.
Ok, first, here’s a Sept 2021 look at the recently updated leaked list of CNP members. Members that stretch across politics, the media, and business. And members that highlight how the CNP really is an organization dedicated allowing right-wing extremists to cavort with the ‘mainstream’. Cavorting that’s supposed to all be done under the strictest secrecy:
“The CNP is so secretive, according to reports, that its members are instructed not to reveal their affiliation or even name the group.”
Not only can members not reveal their affiliation, they can’t even name the group. It’s hard to get more secretive than that. Understandable secrecy when we learn that one of the primary functions of the CNP has to act as a nexus for the mainstreaming extremism from the far right into the mainstream conservative mix. It’s why we shouldn’t be at all surprised to see names like Jerome Corsi
on the CNP list. Recall how Corsi joined Alex Jone’s InfoWars program in 2017, acting as the head of the InfoWars DC bureau, although his ties to Jones frayed and eventually descended into Corsi suing Jones over defamation of character. Palling around with Alex Jones. These are the kinds of things CNP members have been up to:
And intermingled with the extremists are the high-profile conservative figures, like Lisa Nelson of ALEC or Grover Norquist. Recall how Nelson reportedly informed the CNP in February of 2020 that ALEC was working with Republican lawyers to strategize paths for winning the election by contesting the validity of the election. The CNP is the conservative mainstream. A super-secret mainstream:
And when we see former Wisconsin government Scott Walker, it’s worth noting that fellow Wisconsinite CNP-member Daniuel Suhr also has ties to Walker. Recall how Suhr has served as the chief of staff to former Wisconsin Lt Government Rebecca Kleefisch. Suhr then decided to publish an opinion piece in WORLD this January 6 warning about the investigation into the insurrection and a ‘woke military’ leading to the persecution of Christians in the military who may hold views now deemed to be extremist. Well, it also turns out that Scott Walker made Suhr his Policy Director in Jan of 2018. Interestingly, Warren C. Smith, the associate publisher of WORLD, is also a CNP member. This is what secret networking looks like:
The corporate executives on the CNP are also quite notable. Marc Johansen, vice-president for the satellites and intelligence program for Boeing. There’s Steve Forbes. And then there’s Jeffrey Coors of the Coors family dynasty, one of the most important families in funding the contemporary US conservative movement. And this is just a sample of the powerful people in the world of business:
As another example of how deeply intertwined the CNP is with the Koch network of GOP mega-donors, we we find Lawson Bader, the president of Donor’s Trust and Donors Capital Fund, the most important right-wing Dark Money group operating today. And then we find Richard Graber, the president and chief executive of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Recall that Republican lawyer Cleta Mitchell — who began strategizing in preparation for questioning election results as early as August 2019 — sits on the board of directors of the Bradley Foundation. Mitchell has been at the center of the conservative establishment’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election:
You almost can’t get more mainstream inside the GOP than the CNP. It’s like almost anybody who’s anybody in the movement is a CNP member. To illustrate the point, here’s an October 2017 piece in the Washington Post about the speculation over whether or not Marc Short — then Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff — was going to leave the Trump administration and take a job as the next head of the Heritage Foundation. As we saw, Short did NOT end up taking the job and stuck with Mike Pence until the end...hence the potential interest by House Jan 6 Insurrection investigators in talking to Short.
Notably, Short doesn’t appear to show up on any CNP membership lists. Part of what makes that notable is looking at all the other people who were on the Heritage wish list for the job at the time. Virtually all of them are known CNP members: Lisa B. Nelson, David Trulio, and Kay Coles James. All three show up on the CNP membership list. And that’s to replace the then-former head of Heritage, Jim DeMint, another CNP member.
The article mentions some other CNP members who also affiliated with Heritage. CNP Member Steve Forbes also sits on the Heritage board. And Kay Coles James was, at the time, already a Heritage board member and close to Heritage founder Edwin J. Feulner. Yes, Feulner is a CNP member too. Because of course he is.
So who ultimately got the job? Kay Coles James. The CNP got to keep its hands on the Heritage presidency, solidifying its secret grip on the conservative movement:
“The top job at the influential conservative outpost has been open since May, when Jim DeMint, the Republican firebrand and former South Carolina senator, was pushed out, although Fuelner has been serving as the interim president. The search process is still in flux, and it is not clear whether the leading candidates under consideration have formally been contacted by the Heritage board — or would accept the position.”
CNP member Jim DeMint was out as Heritage’s president and they needed a replacement. Marc Short was one option, along with CNP members Lisa B. Nelson, David Trulio, and Kay Coles James, who ultimately got the job. Who knows whether or not fellow CNP members Ed Feulner and Steve Forbes used their influence to secure her the job. But the fact that all of the candidates, other than Marc Short, for this powerful position inside the conservative movement were CNP members tells us something about the level of influence the CNP wields. It’s like the ultimate club of DC powerbrokers:
And, in the end, Kay Coles James got the job. But her term is almost up and that job went to Dr. Kevin Roberts back in October. The same Kevin Roberts who was publicly outing himself as a CNP member just a month earlier when he got appointed to Abbott’s 1836 project:
Roberts couldn’t be any more clear. He is a member of the Council for National Policy. There it is.
Was Roberts’s membership admission a mistake by a CNP-newbie? Or a sign of things to come? We’ll get our answer eventually. An answer that is either delivered in the form of hundreds of public membership admissions by many of the most powerful people in the US. Or ongoing Voldemort-ing silence.
Rolling Stone magazine has a new piece highlighting the conservative mega-donor networks’ financing the Claremont Institute. As we’ve seen, the Claremont Institute has become one of the key right-wing entities involved with the scheming focused on overturning the 2020 presidential election results. In particular, the key role played by constitutional lawyer John Eastman in developing the legal justifications for the Trump administration’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Recall how it was Eastman who met with the Trump team in the days before the January 6 Capitol insurrection, advocating a plan where Mike Pence would unilaterally assert the power to reject the electoral vote, throwing the issue to the Supreme Court in the hopes of ultimately having the House of Representatives choose the next president under a one-state-one-vote process. As we’ve seen, Eastman has been fully welcomed back into conservative polite society and was event schedule to appear at a Claremont Institute “Election Integrity and the Future of American Republican Government” event last year. Eastman actually gave multiple options for overturning the election, including one scenario where Pence rejected contested states entirely and awarded Trump the presidency based on winning a majority of the remaining uncontested states.
During the insurrection, Eastman was there at Steve Bannon’s and Rudy Giuliani’s “war room” at the Willard Hotel. And Bannon wasn’t the only known CNP member in that “war room”. CNP members Russell J. Ramsland Jr. and J. Keet Lewis were also there. Also recall how it was the evening of Jan 5 when the Trump team learned that Mike Pence was unwilling to go along with any plans of rejecting the electoral vote, meaning the planning that took place in the “war room” that evening was likely planning that included talk of using a mob of supporters to just openly block the vote by raiding the Capitol.
The story about the role John Eastman played in scheming to overturn the election doesn’t end on Jan 6. Recall how the conservative movement’s ongoing defense of Eastman’s actions include an attempt by the Federalist Society to prevent a Stanford law student from graduating after the student made joke flyers that made light of the many Federalist Society members who continue to support the ‘stolen election’ Big Lie, including Eastman.
But the story of Eastman’s role in undermining US elections didn’t start with the 2020 election either. This is a long-standing project. Recall how the Claremont Institute and ALEC held a workshop in 2017 where Eastman argued that the power of the states had been eroded with the direct popular election of Senators and advocated for the repeal of the 17th Amendment. Yep, the guy thinks the direct election of Senators is apparently too populist. As expect. Don’t forget that the repeal of the 17th Amendment is on the Koch mega-donor network’s constitutional overhaul wish list.
So that’s all part of the context of how the support for the Claremont Institute became a topical issue. An entity previously associated with bland conservative politics is at the heart of a coup plot. A coup plot that’s arguably ongoing.
And as we’re going to see, while the Rolling Stone article doesn’t mention the Council for National Policy (CNP), it’s filled with references to CNP members. Because of course it is. That’s the nature of the CNP. It’s like the conservative movement’s fascist meta-lobby. And that’s why why we shouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that the Claremont Institute has long been financed by three of the biggest names in conservative politics: The DeVoses, Scaifes, and Bradleys. All conservative mega-donors. And all families with long-standing Council for National Policy connection:
* The now-deceased Richard Mellon Scaife shows up on the CNP membership list.
* As we’ve seen, a number of The Bradley Foundation board members have CNP ties. Richard Graber, the president and CEO of the foundation, is a CNP member. Bradley Foundation board board member Cleta Mitchell is also a CNP member. Recall how Mitchell has played a central role in orchestrating the conservative efforts to not just overturn the 2020 election results but generally undermine voter protections. Ongoing efforts to undermine voter protections.
* Dick DeVos, Father-in-law of Betsy DeVos, , was the president of the CNP from 1986–88 and 1990–93. Richard’s wife, Helen DeVos, was also a member.
It turns out those three families have been giving heavily to the Claremont Institute in recent years and those donations only appear to be growing. The Claremont Institute’s tax filings show that its revenue rose from 2019 to 2020 by a half-million dollars to $6.2 million, one of the highest sums since the organization was founded in 1979. Revenue for the 2021 fiscal year had increased to $7.5 million according to recent estimates. The donors clearly approve of the institute’s pro-insurrection work.
But it’s also worth noting the other known CNP members with ties to the Claremont Institute:
* Dr. Larry P. Arnn — the President of Hillsdale College, Heritage Foundation trustee, and co-founder of the Claremont Institute — is on the CNP membership list.
* Douglas A. Jeffrey — VP for External Affairs and Hillsdale College, and former executive Vice President of the Claremont Institute — is also on the CNP membership list.
* Elsa Prince — mother of Betsy DeVos and Erik Prince — is another CNP member. It’s worth noting that Elsa also sits on the board of the Acton Institute, which was also heavily patronized by the DeVos family and named for ultra-rightist Lord Acton, a celebrated historian on the right who felt the wrong side won the US civil war. Recall how the Acton Institute published an essay in the weeks following Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory calling for the relaxation of child-labor laws. It was particularly notable at the time due to the fact that Betsy DeVos sat on the Acton Institute’s board for a decade and was poised to join the Trump administration. Also recall how the Acton Institute has been working with Steve Bannon — another CNP member — in attempting to open a “gladiator school for culture warriors” in Italy.
The Rolling Stone article mentions a couple of the more controversial new Claremont Institute members in recent years: ‘Alt Right’ personality Jack Posobiec and Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA. Kirk is a CNP member.
So while the following article is focused on the important role these mega-donor family foundations are playing in the financing of one of the key institutions continuing to threaten what’s left of the US’s democracy, it’s important to keep in mind that any story about the Claremont Institute is also just a subchapter in the larger story of the CNP’s decades-long push to subvert American democracy:
“The biggest right-wing megadonors in America made major contributions to Claremont in 2020 and 2021, according to foundation financial records obtained by Rolling Stone. The high-profile donors include several of the most influential families who fund conservative politics and policy: the DeVoses of West Michigan, the Bradleys of Milwaukee, and the Scaifes of Pittsburgh.”
The DeVoses, Scaifes, and Bradleys. All conservative mega-donors. And all families with long-standing Council for National Policy connections, along with new member Charlie Kirk:
Then there’s the infamous “The Flight 93 Election” essay published on the eve of the 2016 election by Michael Anton, essentially making a kind of ‘red-pilled’ rationale for why the risks of associated with Trump’s open fascism pale in comparison to the dangers of a Hillary Clinton presidency. The Claremont Institute been fascism-friendly for years:
It’s worth noting that Anton published an essay in the Claremont Review of Books in the days following the insurrection where he lamented how the insurrection would be used to curtail civil liberties while making the case that there really were massive election anomalies. In May of 2021, Anton held a two-hour podcast with ‘Alt Right’ personality Curtis Yarvin (a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug) on the topic of whether or not the US should have an ‘American Caesar’.
But it’s John Eastman’s ongoing role as one of the leading ‘constitutional scholars’ backing the ‘stolen election’ narrative that makes this story a warning of what’s to come. John Eastman’s credibility as a constitutional lawyer is rooted in large part with his association with institutions like the Federalist Society and the Claremont Institute. It’ an example of how the attempt to steal the 2020 election was for all practical purposes a Republican establishment plan:
So as we can see, if the Claremont Institute learned anything from the January 6 Capitol insurrection, it’s the lesson that there are no costs to waging an insurrection. Sure, the rabble who stormed the Capitol might end up facing consequences. But the architects and financiers will walk. And not only will they walk, but they’ll be welcomed back into polite society and given shovels of cash to prepare for the next insurrection. Consequences are for the poor. It’s not exactly a new lesson for the oligarchy. Kind of the same lesson they just keep learning over and over.
Great research! The White Christian Nationalist movement was also funded by HL Hunt starting in the 1950s. He was a Nazi sympethizer in WWII.
@Pterrafractyl and Mary Benton–
Not a new concept:
Check out paragraph 10.
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-497-nightmare/
Keep up the great work!
Dave Emory
@Dave: Related to the contents of paragraph 10 on FTR#497 and the warnings about Christian Fundamentalist networking with Nazis before the near of WWII found in Curt Riess 1944 book The Nazis Go Underground, here’s an article from Religions Dispatches about another one of the extremist ties of the network of “Prayer Caucuses” operating around the US. A powerful network that was already operation at the end of WWII: The Fellowship.
First, recall how Project Blitz is a project largely managed by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF). The CPCF, in turn, has a single paid employee, CNP member Lea Carawan. The CPCF has clear CNP ties.
But as the following February 2021 piece points out, the CPCF also has close ties to another powerful institution: The National Prayer Breakfast (NPB). And as we’ve saw in FTR#697, the National Prayer Breakfast is a product of The Fellowship (aka “The Family”). Also recall how the The Fellowship was almost like an earlier iteration of the Council for National Policy, where the leaders in politics, Fundamentalist Christianity, and business created what amounts to a secret cult of power. A secret religious power cult with a number of fascinating socio-theological parallels with the Muslim Brotherhood.
In that sense, it’s not really a stretch to view Project Blitz and the Council for National Policy as just the modern iteration of the same Nazi-loving fascist corporatist religious power cult:
“As reported by The Young Turks, while Trump may be absent from this year’s NPB, Family leaders made campaign donations after Election Day to Trump. Also, Congressional Republicans like Sen. James Lankford (R‑OK), the returning co-chair of this year’s NPB who runs the closely-aligned Congressional Prayer Caucus, continued to support the “Stop the Steal” campaign until protestors stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. ”
Yep, the returning co-chair of the 2021 NPB is Senator James Lankford, the person also running the closely-aligned Congressional Prayer Caucus. We’re looking at the same underlying network. A network that for decades pined for exactly the kind of strong-man authoritarian leader Donald Trump represented:
So while the CNP’s fingerprints are all over the 2020 efforts to overturn the election results, this article is a reminder that the institutional origins of these efforts go, in part, back to the networking between Christian Fundamentalism, corporatism, and fascism that Curt Riess was warning us about back in 1944.
@Pterrafractyl–
Yeah, “Christianity” is one of the most common covers for fascism: Gerald L.K. Smith’s Christian Nationalist Crusade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Nationalist_Crusade
It’s magazine “The Cross and the Flag” and many others.
Charles Willoughby’s International Committee for the Defense of Christian Culture is a real beauty.
Involved in virtually every rotten thing in the second half of the twentieth century.
Best,
Dave
Remember that profoundly disturbing report we got back in 2018 about a Washington State Republican, Matt Shea, who had secretly penned a manifesto calling for the waging of Biblical War to takeover the US in 2016? Recall how Shea’s manifesto called for the execution of any adult males who refused to submit to the new theocracy and he was even plotting with other local militants in coming up with a assassination list of left-wing leaders. The plan to was kill the Antifa leaders in their homes.
Well, here’s a pair of articles that’s a reminder that Shea’s network of militant extremist theocrats is the exact same network behind Project Blitz. Yep, Matt Shea and theocrats in his orbit have been actively working on developing a national network of “Prayer Caucuses”. Shea himself was the founder of the Washington State Prayer Caucus. Recall how the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation operates as the parent organization of Project Blitz.
Shea’s close associate, Tim Taylor, is also involved in these efforts. In keeping with the “Seven Mountains” theme of their shared form of Dominionist theology, Taylor wrote about how he met with members of the Washington Legislative Prayer Caucus where they agree to form an “apostolic/strategic council” for the ‘mountain’ of state government.
Another associate of Shea’s, Ken Peters, recently relocated to Knoxville, TN, to set up a “Patriot Church”, one of a number of “Patriot Churches” being established by this network around the US. As we’re going to see, Peters was not only present at the Capitol on Jan 6, he actually spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally there on Jan 5 thanks to the last-minute generosity of Mike Lindell. After attending a Jan 4 Trump rally in Dalton, Georgia, Peters says he was invited by the rally organizers to speak at the Jan 5 “Stop the Steal” rally in DC. Peters explained how he would have to drive their overnight to make it. That’s when Mike Lindell offered to fly Peters on his private plane and pay for his hotel fees. Shea ended up getting the final speakers slot at that rally, which was described as a speech filled with revolutionary fervor. Following the insurrection, Peters blamed it all on Antifa provocateurs.
And where was Shea on Jan 6? He was at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Northern Idaho, where he exhorted the crowd to “fight back in every single sphere we possibly can,” and to prepare for “total war.”
Oh, and there’s another notable connection between Shea and the perpetrators of the Jan 6 insurrection: Shea is quite close to the movement surrounding the Oath Keepers. It turns out both Shea was at a 2013 founding meeting of the for the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). Recall how the CSPOA is closely associated with the Oath Keepers and was a major backer of the Bundy family armed standoffs, which is why we shouldn’t be at all surprised to find Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — who was recently indicted for his role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection — was at that meeting too.
That’s the sad reality of American politics: Matt Shea, a GOP politicians who was casually dismissed as a militant extremist unrepresentative of his party, turns out to be a key player in the growing theocratic movement that almost pulled off an insurrection. A growing theocratic movement that is increasingly the mainstream inside the Republican Party. In other words, if you thought the GOP couldn’t get any worse after Trump, keep in mind that the era of Matt Shea-style GOP politics is still dawning:
“It’s clear that if the occupation comes, it will be the result of the convergence of far right factions seeking to tear down the established institutions of democracy, what they call “tyranny.” The groups and individuals in this story are best understood less as regional actors and more as epitomizing the developing relationships between elements of the Dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, the Christian Right (as epitomized by Project Blitz), militant antiabortionism, and the insurrectionary Patriot Movement—from Washington State to Washington, DC.”
Matt Shea and the large ‘Patriot Church’ movement aren’t just a regional extremist movement. They are part of a national network of theocratic extremists that is increasingly in control of the GOP at both the state and national level. Matt Shea is just the Washington State leader inside this larger network. Except, as the article notes, Shea is more than just a regional leader. Along with other figures in his orbit like Tim Taylor (Apostle Taylor) and Ken Peters, Matt Shea is operating as a conservative thought-leader. Yeah, he’s fringe. Cutting-edge fringe:
And they aren’t just leaders in this movement. They’re bringing military operational skills. Both Shea and Taylor have retired combat officers. Beyond that, Shea was at a founding meeting in 2013 for the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). Recall how the CSPOA is closely associated with the Oath Keepers and was a major backer of the Bundy family armed standoffs, which is why we shouldn’t be at all surprised to find Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — who was recently indicted for his role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection — also attended that 2013 CSPOA founding meeting with Shea:
But militant organizing is just one facet of this network. There’s also the growing number of Prayer Caucus focused on affecting politics. Recall how the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF) is the parent organization because Project Blitz. It turns out Shea was the founding chairman of the Washington State branch of this network, the Washington Legislative Prayer Caucus. Shea was still listed as the chair of the Washington Legislative Prayer Caucus until 2019, when the CPCF scrubbed all references to Project Blitz-related activities:
So Shea is closely tied to the CPCF national network of Prayer Caucuses at the same time he’s also intimately connected to the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) branch of Christian Dominionism that calls for the church to take over the “Seven Mountains” of society. Because of course he is. As we’ve seen, Project Blitz is deeply motivated by the NAR movement, including key GOP theologian and NAR follower David Barton. It’s part of what makes the roles of figures like Shea and Taylor in the movement difficult to overstate: like David Barton, they are theological leaders and not just political organizers:
And it’s that theological leadership Shea has been providing that’s the most disturbing. Recall the 2018 revelations about a 2016 manifesto authored by Shea laying out a Biblical justification for a Christian Nationalist insurrection. An insurrection that would include the mass killings of all males unwilling to convert to the new official state religion. But it wasn’t just a manifesto. It involved active planning with a group of Republicans on how to surveil members of Antifa with the goal of carrying out a mass murder campaign of leftists. Matt Shea’s thought-leadership in this movement has involved a lot of thinking about blitzkrieg-style civil war scenarios:
It’s that background of organized political militancy that should make it no surprise at all to learn that this network wasn’t just calling for a “revolution” in the lead up to the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection but was actually there. Shea himself exhorted an audience in Idaho at a “Stop the Steal” rally to “fight back in every single sphere we possibly can,” and to prepare for “total war.” And Ken Peters actually spoke at a rally in DC on Jan 5. A rally he was able to attend thanks to the generosity of Mike Lindell, one of the core figures behind the ‘stolen election’ Big Lie:
Next, here’s a look at that Jan 2021 Spokesman Review article covering the strange tale of how Matt Shea’s “Patriot Church” ally, Ken Peters, ended up speaking at a Jan 5 “Stop the Steal” rally in DC thanks to Mike Lindell:
“The speaker was Ken Peters, the former pastor of Spokane’s Covenant Church and organizer of disruptive protests held outside Planned Parenthood over the past couple of years. The conflict over those protests resulted in a judge ordering members of the Church at Planned Parenthood to keep their distance when demonstrating and stop interfering with the operation of the clinic.”
A day before the insurrection, Ken Peters was in DC rallying a crowd at a “Stop the Steal” protest, making a speech filled with revolutionary fervor:
And if it hadn’t been for the seemingly spontaneous generosity of Mike Lindell, who offered to fly Peters up to DC on his private plane and put him up in a hotel in DC. Peters was even given the final speaking slot on the agenda, a sign that the “Stop the Steal” organizers really valued having him there:
Again, don’t forget about the ties between Matt Shea, the CSPOA, and the Oath Keepers. Given the lead role the Oath Keepers played in the insurrection, it’s hard to imagine Shea wasn’t at least aware of what they had in mind.
And that’s all why the investigators of the Jan 6 insurrection should probably be expanding their investigative net to include Matt Shea’s cell of militant Christian Nationalists. Again, Matt Shea may be on the GOP fringe, but it’s cutting-edge fringe. Yes, Shea may have been technically kicked out of the GOP in 2019 over accusations of plotting domestic terrorism, but let’s face it. That was 2019. Someone with Shea’s domestic terrorist pedigree was probably quite popular in certain circles in the months leading up to the Jan 6 insurrection. The GOP has a very different attitude regarding domestic terrorism these days, after all. At least as long as it’s domestic terrorism that somehow leaves fascists in charge.
Did you know that the early battles in the Revolutionary War were almost all “nothing more than pastors leading their churches in the battle.” No? Did you also know that the reason the US was chosen by God as a divinely ordained nation was due to its dedication to free-market capitalism? Well, you would have known about these fun facts if it wasn’t for the erosion of the US public education system that offers AP US History Courses obscuring the inseparable nature of the US Constitution and the Bible.
These are the kinds of lessons that were being shared at a Chantilly, Virginia, Church in Fairfax County last September at the Community Baptist Church. This was months before Republican Glenn Youngkin pulled off an upset victory that relied heavily on exactly the kind of hyperventilating about “Critical Race Theory” and a perceived attack on white people that forms the core of the large “Project Blitz” national strategy for fueling and then weaponizing Christian grievances for political purposes.
But the audience wasn’t regular church goers. It was mostly pastors, who were there to hear a series of speakers share their views on the urgent need for these pastors to do everything they can to ensure all of their members vote if possible. An urgency driven by...wait for it...the looming takeover of the US by the godless Left who stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump and are planning on stealing it again. At least that was part of the message. There were also history lessons, like the one from Tim Barton — son of CNP member and key Republican theocrat David Barton — who shared with the audience the apparent lead role church militias played during the Revolutionary War.
Another speaker at the even was CNP Member Chad Connelly, who is also the Founder & President of Faith Wins, an organization dedicated to organizing conservative pastors to get out the vote for Trump in 2020. Key financing for Faith Wins came from the Lindsey Foundation, the family foundation for Joan Lindsey and her husband, James B. Lindsey, an heir to a Pepsi fortune. Joan is also a CNP Member. Every year over the past decade, the Lindsey Foundation has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations such as the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, David Barton’s WallBuilders, and a faith-based media company called Mastermedia International, and lesser amounts to other groups like the CNP. In other words, a Pepsi heir is a leading financier of contemporary Christian fascism. Watch out Publix, you have competition in the fascist-heir-coup-plotting department.
The last speaker at this event was former deputy press secretary in the Trump White House Hogan Gidley. Gidley proceeded to use his time to reiterate all of the fantasies about how, yes, there really was compelling evidence of a massive stolen election.
It’s just one random political event in Virginia, a couple months before an off-year election. But it wasn’t random. It was part of a larger national strategy financed by groups like the Lindsey Foundation with a mission to radicalize the US’s conservative clergy and fuel them with a righteous rage. The kind of righteous rage that will leave these clergy ready to lead their flock in an battle of Good and Evil. Specifically, the battle to get Trump reelected in 2024 election. Church militias might be needed in this upcoming battle of Good and Evil, apparently:
“As far as can be determined from her sporadic posts and the letters she signs as a member of the Council for National Policy, Joan Lindsey is proud of the movement she has helped to finance. Conservative pastors, she wrote on the website for The Church Finds Its Voice, are “already leading the way back to God’s way for us. A tremendous number of you have led voter registrations and are speaking truth about our duty as men and women of faith to support Godly governance.””
It’s just a Christian-oriented get-out-the-vote effort. That’s the public spin on the political organizing carried out by the Lindsey Foundation. And note that in addition to Joan Lindsey, Kielle C. Horton, the President of The Lindsey Foundation, is also a CNP member. But upon closer examination, we find that these faith-based GOTV groups are little more than just megaphones for the prevailing Stolen Election narrative:
But that message about Stolen Elections is just one part of a broader propaganda effort directly targeting Christians with a message. A dire message that Christianity is facing an existential threat. And that threat doesn’t just come from godless atheism. As fellow CNP member Chad Connelly described to a group of Virginia pastors last fall, part of what makes the US a God-ordained country is a dedication to Capitalism and Free Markets. It’s a reminder of the CNP’s roots going back to The Family and its mission of spreading a fascist form of Christianity to world leaders. It’s also a reminder of the profound philosophical parallels between this network and the Muslim Brotherhood’s economic-theocratic worldview. Because if there’s one thing that unites fascists theocrats of all stripes, it’s the fascism, of course:
Following Connelly at this faith-based ‘get-out-the-vote’ gathering was Tim Barton, son of key Project Blitz figure David Barton. As we should expect, Tim warned the audience that AP US History courses are just propaganda designed to obscure the US’s godly heritage. But it’s the Bartons’ view on the role of churches during the Revolutionary War that’s the most notable: they claim the Revolutionary War was essentially fought with church militias. As Barton put it, “Almost every one of these early battles, it was nothing more than pastors leading their churches in the battle”:
Now, regarding the overt militarism of someone like retired Lt. Gen. William Boykin — who infamously declared in 2003 that “My God is bigger than yours” and that the US was in a battle with Satan — try not to be surprised to learn that Boykin is also a CNP member. The CNP clearly had zero problems with Boykins’s statements. Oh, and Tony Perkins is a member too:
Then there’s the role played directly by religious leaders like Greb Lock and Ken Peters at the Capitol in the lead up to the insurrection, ruling up the crowd with revolutionary rhetoric. Recall how Peters works closely with military Christian nationalist Matt Shea, who advocates for the mass execution of all non-Christian adult males. When Peters was calling upon the crowd at the Jan 5 Stop the Steal rally at the Capital to resist a left-wing coup, he was speaking the language of militant Christian nationalism:
The final speaker at this even was former deputy press secretary in the Trump White House Hogan Gidley, who exemplified one of the core strategies of this movement. A strategy that exemplifies just how bad-faithed it all ultimately is: conscious lying in order to preserve a narrative. Just endlessly repeating what they know to be the opposite of reality. A cynical cunning strategy used by people who realize they are deceiving their audience and simply don’t care about the ethics of it. And all done under the auspices of a moral crusade to renew the country. It’s gross:
Democracy in the US is being buried by a ‘faith-based’ movement led by people of profoundly bad faith who have zero apparent problem with completely lying to their flock. It’s the kind of situation that raises the implicit question of whether or not there’s any line they wouldn’t cross. After all, we’re witnesses an onslaught of lies by a militant movement dedicated to capturing democracy and replacing it with a theocracy. Are there any lines at all that this movement wouldn’t cross? It’s a horrific question to ask, in part because that is literally the mirror image of the same question these horrible leaders are routinely asking their audiences to ask about the their political opponents, only to follow it up with the answer that no, there is nothing the godless atheist amoral Marxist satanic Left wouldn’t do. A deluge of propaganda designed to convinced its audience that Christianity is under assault and on the verge of being extinguished. This is it. Every Christian’s back is up against the wall in the face of this impending threat. Now is the time to fight or all is lost. Vote Trump 2024. And after you vote, get ready to storm the Capitol again to made sure it happens this time. That’s the message from the nation’s leading cryptofascist network of bad-faith ‘faith leaders’.
Are the walls finally closing in on Donald Trump? We’ll see, but it would appear that the walls are at least inching a little closer based on Trump’s open calls for a kind of American Maidan mass-protest movement in cities across the US should he end up facing jail time. And while it’s possible that Trump and perhaps even some of the other key members in his inner circle could face some sort of punishment over the role they played in planning and executing a coup attempt, it’s also just a sad reality that there’s no realistic chance of the broader network of figures who clearly supported the insurrection, and still rationalize it to this day, ever facing any real criminal penalties. This is despite the fact that more and more circumstantial flooding fleshing out the role members of the Council for National Policy (CNP) played in rationalizing and organizing the January 6 Capitol insurrection. In effect, the GOP as a party has endorsed the insurrection and future ones. But beyond that, the dark money networks of super-wealth donors who effectively run the GOP appear to have fully jumped on board the insurrection train. That’s why the story of the role CNP members played in the insurrection is so crucial. The insurrection was a group effort, including the group of super-wealthy cryptofascists who are pulling all the strings.
So if the US is facing a situation where there’s no realistic way to punishing the powerful network behind the insurrection, it’s worth keeping in mind there’s a very obvious form of punishment available: rescind the GOP’s 2017 tax cuts for the super-rich and big corporations. After all, those tax cuts were the one signature legislative accomplishment during Trump’s four years in office. An accomplishment that helped almost no one in the long run other than oligarchs.
And that brings us to an interesting report out of the Guardian from back in October about a certain topic the CNP had started bragging about in recent years: selling Trump on the tax cuts. That was one of the messages delivered during a Feb 2019 CNP conference during a panel discussion that included CNP members Bill Walton (the CNP president) and Trump’s economic advisor Stephen Moore.
Recall how Moore was openly bragging back in 2017 about how the tax cut was designed to specifically harm Democrat-leaning ‘Blue’ states. “It’s death to Democrats...They go after state and local taxes, which weakens public employee unions. They go after university endowments, and universities have become play pens of the left. And getting rid of the mandate is to eventually dismantle Obamacare,” Moore said in an interview, arguing that it would accelerate “a death spiral” in the Obamacare state marketplaces.
Also recall how it was Moore who publicly came to Trump’s defense following reports describing how Trump didn’t personally care at all that his tax cut was triggering exploding deficits because “I won’t be here” when it blows up. And as we saw, while anonymous sources inside the White House were leaking to reporters their concerns that Trump had abandoned the traditional Republican stance of fretting about exploding deficits as an excuse for cutting spending, there was one notable defender in the White House of Trump’s approach of allowing deficits to explode without fear: Stephen Moore, who countered Trump’s critics at the time by arguing high economic growth would alleviate the deficit problems over time. It was a classic cynical supply-side argument that tax-cuts always grow the economy.
According to Moore, it was he and Larry Kudlow who convinced Trump to implement the tax cut. These are the kinds of accolades the CNP gives itself during these secret meetings. And that’s why it’s worth keeping in mind that while direct punishment of the CNP’s role in the insurrection is probably not realistic, there’s a very viable form of punishment that’s just sitting there ready to go: reverse the CNP-engineered 2017 tax cuts for the super-rich and large corporations:
“The cuts have been blamed for widening inequality, and worsening deficits, with a large amount of the savings going to stock buybacks, according to business reporters and economists. The Congressional Research Service pointed out that any positive effects, like wage or GDP growth, were transient, and had petered out by the end of the quarter in which the cuts were put into effect.”
The 2017 GOP tax law is already a disaster. An immediate fiscal pop followed by years growing deficits. Any positive effects felt by the general public have already been spent. It’s like planned national divestment for the exclusive benefit of the international investor class.
And while Trump himself is typically given the credit for the bill, it was CNP members who apparently shepherded the bill through the Trump White House. At least those were the claims made at the CNP’s February 2019 meeting during a panel that included CNP president Bill Walton and CNP member Stephen Moore. Moore in particular seemed to take personal credit, alongside Larry Kudlow, for guiding Trump down the path of extreme cuts:
Now, it’s pretty obvious that Moore and Kudlow can’t take all the credit here. Trump was going to pass a massive tax cut one way or another. But there’s also no question Moore and Kudlow were in two of the best seats for influencing the particulars of the bill. Would Trump have intentionally crafted a tax bill that punished ‘Blue’ states if Moore hadn’t been pushing for exactly that strategy? We don’t know, but it’s hard to imagine Moore wasn’t effectively telling Trump what the bill should look like. It’s not like Trump, a man who doesn’t like the read, was going to design that policy on his own
Also note that, while Larry Kudlow may not appear on the leak CNP member lists, Kudlow appears to be a member of Opus Dei, along with figures like Newt Gingrich and Sam Brownback. Also recall how Brownback himself is also a member of ‘The Family’, which itself is like the parent christofascist crypto-political entity for the CNP.
It’s all one big overlapping network. A network dedicated to seizing political and economic power through any means necessary, from budget-busting tax cuts to insurrections. And as of now, this network is still enjoying its made-to-order tax cut and is pretty much the only part of society still benefiting from it. A tax-cut that was essentially designed to funnel nearly all of the benefits towards a highly targeted, and tiny, audience. A tiny audience who proceeded to organize a coup attempt. A while the coup attempt didn’t work, that tax bill is still very much in effect. Perhaps a highly targeted “insurrection tax” could help rectify the situation.
Input the words “critical race theory” into a news search engine these days and it’s as if there’s a raging pandemic of CRT threatening children across the US:
* Feb 9, 2022: “Education committee votes to limit critical race theory instruction in South Dakota’s public schools”
* Feb 11, 2022: “New documentary says critical race theory is in Utah Schools”
* Feb 11, 2022: “Family that sued East Penn schools over lessons on white privilege, systemic racism, Black Lives Matter could get $45,000 under settlement”
* Feb 13, 2022: “Kentucky lawmakers again take aim at ‘critical race theory’ in new omnibus bill”
It’s the kind of pandemic that definitely isn’t getting addressed with a vaccine. So with this pandemic raging with no end in sight, here’s a reminder that the entire “critical race theory” freakout really was a manufactured crisis. A joint production by the Koch network and the Council for National Policy (CNP). A coordinated effort started seemingly out of nowhere in early 2021, right when the GOP desperately needed to move the national conversation away from the GOP’s support for the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection. It was a group effort. The kind of group effort that demonstrated once again how these influence network have the power to effectively create a crisis at will, effectively in secret, and with virtually no consequences to this network:
“PTA and school board protests have erupted across the country. In Jefferson County, Colorado, longtime school board members are suddenly being called Nazis and child abusers. An Illinois school board member resigned after receiving death threats and deposits of dead rodents on her doorstep. The local events are publicized as protests against mask requirements and school curricula. But they also have a clear political agenda: They are playing an expanding role in electoral politics, leading into next year’s crucial midterm elections.”
It’s quite of remarkable coincidence how school boards all around the US were suddenly inundated with parental complaints about ‘critical race theory’ in early 2021. It was out of the blue. Like someone flipped a switch. But of course it wasn’t just a big coincidence. It was a production of the Koch network and the CNP. It seemingly started in April 2021 when Asra Nomani, a Virginia parent, published a scathing critique describing how her child was being “indoctrinated with critical race theory.” Soon after, two ‘parent advocacy’ groups descended on the school district. One group, “Coalition for TJ” appears to be a local group. But then there’s the other group, DefendingEd. And not only is DefendingEd a product of the CNP and Koch networks, but it turns out Nomani herself served as DefendingEd’s “vice president of strategy and investigation”. This was a CNP/Koch operation from the outset:
Recall how an analysis of the emergence of “Critical Race Theory” as a hot topic on the right in 2021 found it was a network of Koch-financed groups that appears to all suddenly start pushing CRT seemingly simultaneously. It’s a manufactured ‘crisis’ brought to us by the CNP and the Koch network:
And as the article points out, this is kind of organized sustained propaganda/gaslighting is a template of action this network is extremely familiar with. The decades-long fixation on abortion in the US was in many respects the result of the wild success of the far right’s ability to warp the abortion debate into a wedge issue between good and evil:
And as the GOP has made clear, the manufactured hysteria of CNP isn’t going to be limited to Virginia. Following Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial victory this has become a national gaslighting effort. In other words, sometimes the term ‘outside agitators’ is actually an appropriate term. Not usually, but sometimes.
What exactly was the CNP’s “not so secret weapon” up to in the months leading up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection? It’s a question that has long loomed in the background of the investigation that day that became much more topical this week following the revelations that Ginni Thomas — wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and the person previously reported as being the CNP’s “not so secret weapon” during this period and working closely with fellow CNP member Cleta Mitchell — was extensively messaging then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and encouraging the Trump administration to adopt exactly the strategy that ultimately led up to the insurrection. Messages like repeatedly encouraging the Trump White House to make Sidney Powell the ‘face’ of the effort. Thomas even encouraged the White House to ‘release the Kraken’ at one point. And when Meadows eventually told her that Powell never actually presented any real evidence of fraud, Thomas remained resolutely behind the effort, even attending the Jan 6 ‘Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse.
So the wife of one of the most far right judges on the court was not only working closely with Cleta Mitchell and promoting Sidney Powell, but she was also in previously-secret regular communication with Trump’s Chief of Staff. It raises quite a few questions. Questions that include whether or not Ginni Thomas was also in communication with John Eastman, the other ‘respectable’ conservative lawyer who was furiously concocting legal justifications to overturn the election. And as we’re going to see the second article below, while there’s no direct evidence that Ginni Thomas was in communication with Eastman, there’s plenty of indirect evidence pointing in that direction, most notably that Eastman appeared to be confident that Clarence Thomas would rule in their favor if then-Vice President Mike Pence went through the plans to block the certification of the election on Jan 6. Eastman and Pence’s legal counsel, Greg Jacobs, we’re reportedly arguing with each other about the prospects of any such scheme surviving the inevitable legal challenge before the Supreme Court, with Jacobs confident that the court would rule 9–0 against them, while Eastman was apparently convinced that they could get two justices to vote in their favor: Clarence Thomas and, likely, Samuel Alito.
And that brings us to perhaps the biggest open question about the actual plan to legally keep Trump in office? Because it doesn’t actually appear to be the case that Eastman, the champion of this scheme, actually felt like it would win a legal challenge. Two justices isn’t enough. So what was the actual plan to legally keep Trump in office? Create a giant systemic crisis and declare martial law? Who knows, but it remains an open question. An open question that now directly involves the actions and intent of the CNP’s ‘not so secret weapon’ Ginni Thomas:
“The messages, which do not directly reference Justice Thomas or the Supreme Court, show for the first time how Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump’s inner circle to promote and seek to guide the president’s strategy to overturn the election results — and how receptive and grateful Meadows said he was to receive her advice. Among Thomas’s stated goals in the messages was for lawyer Sidney Powell, who promoted incendiary and unsupported claims about the election, to be “the lead and the face” of Trump’s legal team.”
Make Sidney Powell the “face” of Trump’s legal team. That was the big idea Ginni Thomas was pushing almost immediately in the wake of Trump’s loss. Literally the first of the 29 text messages sent to Mark Meadows was a link to a QAnon-friendly video along with rumors that the Biden family and other members of the vast conspiracy to steal the election from Trump were being arrested and sent off to GITMO. It’s the right-wing oligarchic version of ‘getting high on your own supply’, which raises the question of just how many members of the Council for National Policy ended up getting radicalized by QAnon narratives that they genuinely believe over the past few years:
Thomas even stood by Powell after Tucker Carlson, of all people, began distancing himself from the Powell narrative. Thomas was absolutely dedicated to Sidney Powell and the broader QAnon-inspired narrative she was leading. From Thomas’s perspective, they were waging a war. A war with out rules and including the deployment of psychological operations:
Thomas even stood by Powell after the Trump administration formally distanced itself from Powell based in large part on the fact that Powell clearly had no real evidence behind her claims. Thomas continued expressing an exasperated sense that a massive fraud had transpired even after Meadows informed her that Powell never actually provided any evidence for her claims. It’s the kind of behavior that’s so lacking in integrity that it raises questions as to whether or not Thomas ever truly believed the stolen election narrative or was just cynically using it as a convenient excuse to back a coup. Its the class ‘stupid or evil?’ conundrum:
But, of course, Ginni isn’t just an key organizing figure in the conservative movement and member of the CNP. She’s the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice. And despite her absurd claims to the contrary, it’s pretty damn obvious she had a massive conflict of interest when sending those texts to Meadows. A massive conflict of interest that was then passed along to her husband on any rulings involving the election:
And note the other CNP member Thomas was also promoting at this time: Cleta Mitchell, one of the leading figures promoting legal justifications for overturning the election results. As we’re previously seen, Mitchell and Thomas were known to be working closely during this time. It’s just one more piece of evidence pointing towards the CNP playing a key organizational role in devising the strategies for overturning elections:
But as we’ve also seen, Cleta Mitchell was just one of the ‘respectable’ conservative lawyers promoting these schemes, with John Eastman of the Claremont Institute playing a major role. So was there any known contact between Eastman and Ginni Thomas during this same period? No direct evidence has emerged. But as the following article describes, there’s plenty of indirect evidence pointing in that direction.
But there’s another mystery raised in the following article involving Eastman’s potential communications with both Ginni and Clarence Thomas: The schemes Eastman was pushing all involving Mike Pence refusing to certify the election results on Jan 6, guaranteeing a Supreme Court challenge. And while Eastman appeared to be confident that Clarence Thomas, and maybe one other Supreme Court Justice, would ultimately side with them, that was it. Even Eastman only expect a maximum of two of the nine Supreme Court justices ruling in their favor. At least that’s the picture that emerges from the communications between Eastman and Pence’s legal counsel, Greg Jacobs, during the days leading up to Jan 6. Jacobs viewed Eastman’s schemes as guaranteed to bring a 9–0 ruling against them, while Eastman felt that it might be a 7–2 ruling, with Clarence Thomas making up one of the two dissenting votes (and Justice Alito likely being the other one). So even the legal ‘scholar’ who devised the scheme at the heart of Jan 6 didn’t believe he could win in the courts. Which raises the obvious question of how exactly Eastman was envisioning Trump ultimately winning:
“Eastman spent the final weeks of Trump’s presidency driving a strategy to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory, a plan that relied on legal theories so extreme the Jan. 6 select committee says they could amount to criminal conspiracy and fraud.”
Eastman’s plan has so little real legal justification behind it that it could amount to a criminal conspiracy and fraud. Did that criminal conspiracy include active collusion with Ginni Thomas? HOw about Clarence Thomas? These are some of the questions raised by the revelations about Ginni Thomas’s extensive communications with Mark Meadows promoting legal strategies that were more or less in line with what Eastman was advising. And while there’s no available evidence indicating that Ginni Thomas was directly communicating with Eastman, the facts are that Eastman has been blocking the release of his communications and Clarence Thomas appears to be the most sympathetic justice towards those efforts to block documents from investigators. It’s more than a little suspicious:
But perhaps the biggest mystery in this story is what exactly was Eastman hoping to accomplish even if he did managed to secure Clarence Thomas’s support in any legal challenges for the court? It would still just be one vote. Not remotely enough to win the case. And yet when we hear about the contentious meeting between Eastman and Mike Pence’s legal counsel, it was an argument over whether or not it was be a 9–0 or 7–2 ruling against Eastman’s side should Pence go along with Eastman’s plans of refusing to certify the election results on Jan 6:
So what was the rest of the plan for overturning the election results if the plan included ultimately losing 7–2 at the Supreme Court? It’s the kind of mystery that suggests far more radical post-Jan 6 plans were already envisioned. Martial law? Oath Keepers and Proud Boys taking to the streets to impose order? Now that we’re learning that even John Eastman didn’t expect his schemes to pass legal muster, it’s clear that Eastman’s scheme to have Mike Pence refuse the certification of the vote on Jan 6 was just one more step in an effort to buy time. But if they had no real legal backing, for what were they trying to buy time? Let’s hope investigators can eventually determine an answer to that question. In the mean time, it’s hard to ignore Ginni Thomas’s Nov 6 text to Meadows: “Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”
How much more blatant will the coverup get? That’s the overarching question raised by a pair of recent reports on the status of the investigation into the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Because each time it seems like it can’t get any more blatant, we get a new report that dumps even more circumstantial evidence in our laps pointing towards a plan to not only White House block records from investigators but prevent the creation of those records in the first place. You almost couldn’t ask for more compelling circumstantial evidence of a premeditated plot:
First, there was a report out the Washington Post about a seven hour gap in the Jan 6 White House call logs. A seven hour gap that starts at 11:17 am and goes until 6:54 pm. So the gap basically covers the period of time right before the start of the insurrection until not long after it was over. It’s about as suspicious a gap in the logs as you could get.
Adding to the suspicions is the fact the 11:17am call was to a still unknown person, which is part of why investigators are taking a closer took at the use of untraceable “burner” phones. Recall how we learned back in December how three burner phones purchased by the two key organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse on January 6: CNP member Amy Kremer and her daughter Kylie Kremer. According to those reports, one phone was used by Kylie to communicate with figures in the White House like Eric Trump, Mark Meadows, and Katrina Pierson. The second phone was used by Amy Kremer and another rally organizer. It’s not known who received the third burner phone. True to form, Trump responded to the report by asserting that he’s never heard of a “burner” phone and has no idea what that even is, a claim John Bolton has already debunked. According to Bolton, Trump has spoken with him personally about how burner phones can be used to avoid having your calls scrutinized.
And then a few days later we got report out of CNN about the White House diarist informing investigators that there was a “dramatic departure” in the White House’s willingness to present the diarist about President Trump’s activities starting on Jan 5. They were effective “iced out” at that point, receiving almost no information about what the president was doing.
We’re also told in this report that Trump started spending much more in the White House residency during this time. This relates back to those earlier reports about secret off-the-books meetings held in the White House residency in the weeks and days leading up to Jan 6, mostly organized by Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Additionally, we’ve learned that the National Archiving service only archived calls make from the White House’s West Wing, but not calls made from the White House residency. And Trump was known to have made calls in the days leading up to the insurrection from both the West West and the residency.
So overall, we’ve learned that the Trump White House apparently took preemptive steps to cover its tracks. Blatant preemptive steps that have now produced call records with an absurd seven hour gap and an “iced out” White House diarist.
There was another interesting wrinkle to pop up in the Washington Post report: While the seven hour gap leaves a mystery as to who Trump spoke with during the insurrection, the available call logs tell us a least a bit about about who he was calling that day. Many of them are figures we would probably expect given the circumstances, like CNP-member Steve Bannon, Fox New host Sean Hannity, and then-Georgia Senator David Perdue. But there was another rather surprising name that comes up: conservative pundit Bill Bennett. It raises the question of why Bennett? Of all the random people to call on that day, of what value is there is contacting someone like Bennett who is best known as a conservative theocrat hyper-focused on the maintaining a dominant role for conservative Christianity in America.
Why would Trump contact Bill Bennett on that day? Was Bennett a conduit of some sort? Given the enormous presence of CNP members in this entire scheme, and the close ideological alignment between Bennett and the CNP, it’s worth noting that while Bennett isn’t on the leaked list of CNP members, Rush Limbaugh claimed during an interview of then-President Trump in August of 2020 to have seen Bennett at a CNP event. And really, given his background, it would be kind of shocking if Bennett wasn’t at least affiliated with the group. But the fact that Trump was speaking with Bennett on Jan 6 really raises the question of why him? Those questions, and the fact that so many other CNP members are involved with this scheme, are part of why Bennett’s affiliation with the CNP are relevant to this investigation and why the broader network of theocrats associated with the CNP should remain a prime suspect in this entire affair.
Ok, first, here’s the Washington Post piece about the mysterious seven hour gap in the White House call logs and the renewed interest in the possible use of “burner” phones. A seven hour gap that starts with the 11:17 am call to a still unknown individual and doesn’t end until after the insurrection is finally over:
“The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes on Jan. 6, 2021 — from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. — means the committee has no record of his phone conversations as his supporters descended on the Capitol, battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, prompting lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety.”
Who did Trump talk to and what were they talking about during that seven hour gap in the White House call records? Those questions are now at the heart of the investigation of what is increasingly looking like a criminal coverup. A coverup staring us all in the face in the form of White House call records with a seven hour gap during time the time that we know Donald Trump was making multiple calls in his last-ditch effort to block the certification of the vote. When Trump absurdly claims he has no idea what a burner phone even is and has never heard of one before, that’s a clue:
But it’s not just the seven hour cap in the White House call records that’s so suspicious. It’s the fact that Trump’s last call to Mike Pence that morning, when he reportedly pleaded with Pence to go along with the scheme to no avail, isn’t even listed on the records while the last call made before the start of that gap was at 11:17 am to an “unidentified person”. So right around the time we know that Trump effectively failed in his last ditch attempt to persuade Mike Pence, there’s a call to an unidentified person and then the start of the seven hour gap:
Who is this mystery person Trump called at 11:17am? We don’t know, but it wouldn’t be surprising if they were in possession of one of burner phones used in this operation. And it’s hard to imagine that the White House would bother not identifying Kylie or Amy Kremer, the two people known to be in possession of the three burner phones. But there was that mystery third person who got one of those phones. Did Trump call that mystery person right before the seven hour gap? If so, based on the circumstantial evidence, we probably shouldn’t be surprised if it turns out this mystery person is an associate of Steve Bannon:
Also note how the one member of the Supreme Court who dissented in the ruling ordering the handover of White House records to House investigators, Clarence Thomas, happens to be the husband CNP-member Ginni Thomas. And as was recently reported, Ginni was in regular communication with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, imploring him to follow Sidney Powell’s lunacy and take steps like ‘releasing the Kraken’. The CNP connection just keeps popping up in this story:
Finally, note the other figures with CNP ties Trump reportedly spoke with that day, beyond CNP member Steve Bannon. There was CNP-member Cleta Mitchell who was deeply involved in the various legal challenges employed in this effort. And then there’s But also conservative personality Bill Bennett. Someone who allegedly attended a 2020 CNP event according to Rush Limbaugh. So why Bennett, of all people? Was it his deep ties to the US’s dominant theocratic power network?
And as we learned a few days after this report, the apparent coverup is even larger and more blatant the previously recognized. Because it turns out that the White House diarist told investigators that they were “iced out” in the days leading up to Jan 6. According to one source, “So, starting the 5th, the diarist didn’t receive the annotated calls and notes. This was a dramatic departure. That is all out of the ordinary.” The timing it quite remarkable.
It’s not know who ordered this dramatic departure from the record-keeping rules, but what is perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that, while the destruction of government documents is a crime, there doesn’t appear to be law against the prevention of the creation of those archives in the first place.
But there’s another legal loophole at work here: the loophole where class made from the White House residency don’t need to be archived. And according to this report, Trump was indeed spending more time ‘working’ out of the White House residency during this period. So at this point in the investigation, it’s not really a question of whether or not there was a coverup. The coverup grows more blatant by the day. It’s a question of whether or not there will be any legal repercussions for this blatant coverup. A question that remains very open at this point:
““The last day that normal information was sent was the 4th,” said another source familiar with the investigation. “So, starting the 5th, the diarist didn’t receive the annotated calls and notes. This was a dramatic departure. That is all out of the ordinary.””
Starting on Jan 5, the White House diarist suddenly got “iced out” in what was described as a “dramatic departure” from what had been the norm. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that no one seems to know who ordered this dramatic shift in the record-keeping policy. But perhaps the most absurd part of this story is that, while the destruction of government documents is a crime, it’s apparently not a crime to prevent the creation of those documents in the first place. So at least that aspect of this coverup might be entirely legal:
And relating back to the archive rules that only require calls from the West Wing to get archives, but not calls from the White House residency, note how we are told that Trump was spending more time in the residency during this period, conducting ‘less official business’:
“Less official business” is one way to describe plotting a coup. How many calls did Trump make to fellow plotters in early January? We’ll presumably never know since it wasn’t archived. And it’s that mystery of how many un-archived calls did Trump make from the White House residency that makes all the other questions swirling around the seven hour call gap and use of burner phones all the more intriguing. Because if Trump had a readily available option for making off-the-record calls by just making them out of the White House residency and he still had to engage in the kind of blatant coverup that produced a seven hour call gap and an “iced out” White House diarist, that suggests Trump was making A LOT of incriminating phone calls from all sorts of different phones during this period. Which of course he was doing. This is Donald Trump we’re talking about. The real question is who was he talking to in these incriminating phone calls and what incriminating details were they discussing. There’s also the growing question of how many of these fellow plotters are members or affiliates of the CNP. Although at this point it’s really more of a question of how many of these fellow plotters aren’t part of that theocratic power network.
That’s cute: Ali Alexander is doing a “I’m totally cooperative (and also totally innocent)!” song and dance with the press following reports that he was just subpoenaed by a grand jury in relation to the congressional investigation into the January 6 Capitol insurrection. He’s letting reporters know that he’s fully cooperating with investigators but doesn’t actually know about any wrongdoing. Lol.
First, recall how Alexander — a somewhat surprising member of the CNP given his background as a far right internet troll — is so close to Roger Stone that his actions in relation to Jan 6 led to speculation that the insurrection was a Roger Stone production. Don’t forget that, beyond Stone’s lead role in the 2000 “Brooks Brothers Riot”, the whole “Stop the Steal” slogan was in fact originally a Roger Stone creation to help Trump win the 2016 GOP primary. The CNP isn’t exclusive to allow professional dirty-tricksters into their ranks.
Also recall how Alexander was working closely with Alex Jones in a joint “Stop the Steal” effort. And as we’ve seen, Alex Jones was publicly claiming in the days following the insurrection that he and Alexander has some sort of arrangement with the White House involving Jones and Alexander leading a march to the second rally at the Capitol “We had a legitimate deal with the White House,” Jones said in an InfoWars show. “‘Hey Jones and Ali,’ literally, they let us out early, we were supposed to lead a peaceful deal.”
Jones went on to double down on the claim that Trump gave him the impression that Trump himself was going to join the second ‘wild’ rally Alexander was organized planned for January 6. A claim that Trump himself appeared to recently validate with his recent statements about how he really did want to join the march to the Capitol but the Secret Service prevented him. Yes, the stories being peddled by Jones and Trump are concurring with each other. And not concurring in a way that absolves any of them of any guilt. Quite the opposite. Instead, the story that’s been emerging over the months, on report at a time, is the story of a second “Stop the Steal” rally that was planned to get extra “wild”. Wild in more or less the exact manner that the insurrection played out.
Another aspect to Ali Alexander’s involvement in Jan 6 that remains an open question is the extent of his coordinating with militia groups like the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys. Open questions that include unresolved questions about the “Quick Reaction Force” (QRF) the Oath Keepers had set up to delivery heavy weapons to the insurrectionists if the call was made. As we saw, one of the most incriminating details in the entire affair is the fact that the group of Oath Keepers who notoriously breached the Capitol in a “stack” formation were led by Jessica Watkins, the same figure who was reportedly providing VIP protection services for Roger Stone backstage at the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse on Jan 6. Watkins claimed she was coordinating her VIP protection services with the Secret Service. Interestingly, one of the Oath Keepers who was acting as Roger Stone’s body guard that day, Joshua James, is now a cooperating witness. As we’re going to see, Alexander now asserts that “Any militia working security at the Ellipse belonged to “Women for America First,” not us,””. The mutual finger-pointing is in full effect.
That attempt to lay the blame for any militia coordinating at the feet of “Women for America First” — led by CNP member Amy Kremer and her daughter Kylie — is also a reminder of the reported tensions between the rally plans at the Ellipse, which the Trump White House was officially coordinating with, and the second rally planned at the Capitol by Alexander and Jones that was ultimately eclipsed by the insurrection. As we saw, these were far from independently-organized affairs. Caroline Wren — the former deputy to Don Jr.‘s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle — had been raising money for the rally specifically from Publix heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli. Fancelli’s financing was reportedly facilitating by Alex Jones. And in the week leading up to the rally, there were a number of changes in the plans. Changes pushed by Wren. We later learned Wren and Guilfoyle unsuccessfully pushed for last minute changes to the schedule of speakers at the Ellipse rally in order to get figures like Roger Stone, Alex Jones and Ali Alexander added to the speakers list. When Jones and Alexander left the rally early (to begin the march to the “Wild Protest”), it was Wren who escorted them away as they prepared to lead the march on the Capitol.
Those questions of the degree of secret coordination between the ‘official’ Stop the Steal rally at the Ellipse being coordinated by the Kremers and the ‘wild’ rally planned afterwards by Alexander and Jones have been further heightened by all the emerging questions about secret meetings at the White House and the Kremers’ use of three known ‘burner’ phones, with two phones going to Amy and Kylie and one of the three having been given to a still unknown person.
But there’s another major angle to the story of the Ali Alexander/Alex Jones schemes: the networking Alexander was doing with a group of far right members of congress — Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorn, Andy Biggs, and Louie Gohmert — who were allegedly peddling blanket pardon offers on behalf of the White House.
That’s all part of the context of the preposterous storyline being fed to the press by Alexander regarding the grand jury subpoena. a storyline about how he’s going to fully cooperate and tell investigators everything he knows. Which is nothing:
“Alexander’s confirmation of a grand jury subpoena is the first public acknowledgment that the Justice Department’s probe of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has expanded to include organizers of the events that preceded the attack, including some figures adjacent to Trump himself. The issuance of a grand jury subpoena suggests prosecutors believe crimes may have been committed in connection with those events.”
Were any crimes committed by Ali Alexander and the figures he was coordinating with in organizing his “Stop the Steal” rallies during the build up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection? If any crimes were committed, the certainly weren’t committed by Alexander, who had hardly anything at all to do with the events of January 6. His “Stop the Steal” rally scheduled outside the Capitol never even happened, after all. The insurrection effectively cancelled it. So any useful information Alexander might provide investigators is really just going to be about what the other groups may have been involved with, like “Women for America First”. At least that’s the narrative Alexander is now pushing following the reports of his grand jury subpoena. He was just an innocent bystander. An innocent bystander who doesn’t actually have any real evidence of criminal wrongdoing to provide to investigators anyway:
Alexander is not only innocent but oblivious of any wrongdoing that may have happened. It’s quite a convenient narrative. A narrative that doesn’t explain why Alexander is simultaneous fighting to block the release of his phone records. Phone records that include phone calls on the morning of January 6 to Don Jr.‘s fiance Kimberly Guilfoyle. Don’t forget that Guilfoyle and her former deputy Caroline Wren unsuccessfully pushed for last minute changes to the schedule of speakers at the Ellipse rally in order to get figures like Roger Stone, Alex Jones and Ali Alexander added to the speakers list. When Jones and Alexander left the rally early (to begin the march to the “Wild Protest”), it was Wren who escorted them away as they prepared to lead the march on the Capitol. And that’s what Alexander revealed in his lawsuit to keep those records sealed. You whave to wonder about the phone records he didn’t disclose in that lawsuit. We also have to wonder how many of those phone records include calls to the militia groups that Alexander is now saying were the sole responsibility of the Kremers’ operation:
But perhaps the biggest fact related to this investigation that makes Alexander’s denials so laughable is the fact that Alexander was openly denounce Congressman Mo Brooks for his traitorous actions just two weeks ago following reports that Donald Trump was withdrawing his endorsement of Brooks after Brooks voiced skepticism about a stolen 2020 election. As the following piece describes, Alexander seemed almost gleeful in now being able to dish on Brooks for be a real traitor to the “Election Integrity” cause. It wasn’t exactly the kind of talk you would expect from someone who knows apparently nothing about any plans to overturn the election:
“On the competing right-wing social media site Gab, Alexander continued, writing, “I’m proud to announce that @realdonaldtrump has WITHDRAWN his endorsement of Mo Brooks. I can now go on the record about him and his office and their attempts to BETRAY the Election Integrity movement.””
Oh the bretrayal. The betrayal of the Election Integrity movement that Mo Brooks apparently committed when he expressed doubts about the stolen election. Ali Alexander sure didn’t sound like someone who know nothing about the efforts to overturn the election when he was trashing Brooks.
And note Brooks’s response to Trump’s endorsement withdrawal: he’s now claiming that Trump had repeatedly asked him to “rescind the 2020 election, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency.” Is this true? Well, don’t forget that Brooks was just one of a group of far right House GOPers who was part of this effort...and working closely with Alexander the whole time. It will be interesting to see if any of those other GOPers end up earning Alexander’s scorn by revealing more tidbits like this:
And note how Brooks has already denied have any substantive communication with Alexander, only to have it revealed that Alexander apparently talked with this group of GOPers “dozens” of times about their plans. It’s presumably part of the reason Alexander is so pissed about Brooks getting chatty about what happened. Brooks knows what Alexander was up to because they were partners in crime:
Finally, note now Alexander appeared to be undergoing some sort of religious conversion in December of 2020 to Catholicism. Given his unexpected membership in the CNP — the guy is a professional troll — and the myriad of other CNP fingerprints we find on the insurrection, you have to wonder what if any role that religious conversion had in cementing Alexander’s status as one of the ring-leaders in a very serious coup attempt involving the most powerful theocratic political force in the US:
And that brings us to a profoundly disturbing Salon article from a few months ago about a new trend on the Christian Right: ‘Alt Right’ converts looking to ‘mainstream’ themselves after flirting too heavily with overt fascism. It’s not just Ali Alexander. Figures like Faith Goldy, Milo Yiannopulous, Jack Posobiec, and Nick Fuentes have all suddenly because Catholic over the year or so. Recall how ‘Alt Right’ personality Nick Fuentes — who spoke at the December 12 “Stop the Steal” rally where Trump did multiple Marine One flyovers — was openly ruminating about killing state legislators who don’t support the efforts to overturn the election for Trump. He was basically partner of the “Stop the Steal” movement. And like Ali Alexander, Nick Fuentes suddenly recently found Jesus in a big way. Along with a bunch of other ‘Alt Right’ personalities pushing the kinds of ideas that would be very appealing to a Christian nationalist authoritarian agenda:
“David Lafferty, a writer at Where Peter Is, a moderate Catholic website that tracks the influence of the Catholic right within the church. offered a similar analysis. “I think there’s a broader pattern here, where a lot of people who are part of the larger populist right, or MAGA movement, or what used to be called the alt-right, are willing to use any opportunity to find a new audience,” he said. “When you tap into the ecosystem of online Catholicism, you’ve got a built-in audience with big traditionalist or ultra-conservative Catholic sites, all of which have very devoted followers and fan bases. If you’re coming from the populist right into the church, you’re going to be able to walk right into that world and become a sort of instant celebrity.””
If you’re looking, the broader pattern is there to see: a bunch of celebrity fascists have suddenly found Jesus. And been warmly welcomed by the Christian community it appears. It’s been such a warm welcome that you could call it a fusion. A Christian nationalist fusion movement:
It’s that broader relationship between far right and Christian nationalism that makes Alexander’s sudden claims about not knowing anything about anything so intriguing within the context of the broader story of what led up to January 6 Capitol insurrection. Ali Alexander really is like the living embodiment of the fusion of fascist politics, GOP dirty tricksterism, and Christian Nationalism. The guy is operating at a nexus of dark politics. He was clearly playing a significant role in the organizing that led up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. He was railing about Mo Brooks’s ‘betrayal’ just two weeks ago. And now he’s playing dumb after being subpoenaed by a grand jury.
But who knows, maybe Ali Alexander really doesn’t know about any of the criminal scheming involved with the Capitol insurrection. It’s possible. About as possible as any of these unrepentant fascists having actually ‘found Jesus’ all of a sudden.
Questions are swirling with growing intensity about the role(s) Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni, played in the events leading up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection following reports that she was in frequent contact with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the days following the 2020 election, pushing all sorts of aggressive nonsense legal strategies. Not only was she coordinating with fellow CNP-member Cleta Mitchell, but also John Eastman. As the following exhaustive piece on Ginni Thomas in the New York Times describes, Eastman was a former clerk of Clarence Thomas and close friends with the couple to this day.
It’s one of the myriad of facts about Ginni and Clarence Thomas in the article that demonstrates their status as a major conservative power couple waging a decades long and profoundly impactful crusade to shape the conservative movement in a hard right direction, with Clarence playing very public if quiet role as the once lone voice for a judicial philosophy that is now cemented as the majority and Ginni playing a highly active behind-the-scenes role. A role that includes teaming up with fellow CNP-member Steve Bannon back in 2013 to create the Groundswell group, designed to compete with Grover Norquist’s ‘Wednesday meetings’ as a key conservative organizing tool. As we’re going to see when we look at the range early Groundswell figures, it was basically a CNP operation.
Groundswell’s influence swelled during the Trump administration after Trump began trying to court Clarence Thomas following rumors Thomas was considering retiring. Trump asked for a private meeting with Thomas, but he showed up with Ginni. That led to her direct relationship with Trump that somehow got her in a role to advise on Trump staffing decisions. She apparently didn’t think the Trump staff was MAGA enough. She also reportedly kept trying to get people who can’t pass a background check hired. And she also would bring in entire groups of Groundswell people to lead these efforts, to the apparent surprise and disgruntlement of White House staff.
In 2019, Ginni joined the advisory board of the C.N.P. Action group, the CNP’s main political action tool. As we’re going to see, C.N.P. Action didn’t waste time getting active following Trump’s November 2020, secretly distributing memos to Republican lawmakers encouraging them to challenge the election results in swings states and elect alternate slates of electors. Which is of course what happened. The CNP really was a key organizing force for the ‘Stop the Steal’ effort from the beginning. They were writing the script!
Oh, and interestingly, it sounds like Ginni was playing important ‘unity’ roles in smoothing over rival ‘Stop the Steal’ factions. Specifically, Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots and Amy Kremer of Women for America First were apparently feuding, but Ginni knows both of them from their time as Tea Party activists. Also, the fact that all three are CNP members may have played a role. And that also raises obvious questions about what possible ‘unifying’ role Ginni may have been playing with the other known rivalry between the ‘Stop the Steal’ factions: the apparent rivalry between the ‘official’ Women for Trump rally at the Ellipse and the ‘wild’ Stop the Steal rally organized by Alex Jones and fellow CNP-member Ali Alexander. Was there any CNP unity between Ali and Ginni? It’s actually a very relevant question in this investigation. Ginni really does appear to have played a key organizing role. As we might expect from the board member of C.N.P. Action. And don’t forget that C.N.P. Action is still active today, working on the next election. That’s all part of why the questions swirling around Ginni Thomas’s role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection are swirling with such intensity. Ginni is like the living embodiment of the CNP’s profound role in the insurrection. And possibly a key player in the whole thing:
““He has charted a very radical approach to judging — it’s surprising, actually, how far the court has moved in his direction,” John Yoo, a law professor at U.C.-Berkeley and former Thomas clerk known for drafting some of the “torture memos” under President George W. Bush, said during a discussion at the Heritage event. (Yoo also advised former Vice President Mike Pence that he did not have the authority to reject electoral votes on Jan. 6.) “What do you think is going to happen in the next 10 years when he might have a workable majority of originalists? I think we’re going to see the fruition of the last 30 years in the next 10.””
As painful as it may be, we have to acknowledge that “torture memos” lawyer has a point: the next decade really is likely going to be a decade of fruition for Clarence Thomas. 30 years later, it’s his court and it’s clear he’s not feeling any reason for restraint at this moment. The US is poised to experience the fruition of Clarence Thomas’s three decades of work in reshaping the courts.
But of course it wasn’t really Thomas who did all that reshaping. It was the wild success of the organized conservative movement over the past three decades in winning the White House — with or without a majority of the national vote — and stacking the court with an unstoppable far right majority comprised of justices all derived from the exact same legal network. A legal network that has the CNP at its organizing core. Clarence Thomas is really just the oldest of the CNP’s Supreme Court justices. Six and counting.
But it’s still quite notable that Thomas was apparently playing a mentor-like role for CNP-member Leonard Leo. As we’ve seen, Donald Trump literally outsourced his Supreme Court nominee to Leo in his role as the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, the organization that has arguably had more influence than anyone else over the Republican presidents’ selections for the Supreme Court over the last four decades. Thomas really has had very real influence both in front of conservative audiences but also behind the scene in building this tight-knit elite conservative movement. A movement that appears to heavily be a product of the CNP’s efforts. Efforts that include years of fixating on voting restrictions — including the CNP-heavy Honest Elections Project led by Leo — all the way up through the CNP’s profound role in the lead up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. The incredible arc of Clarence Thomas’s quiet decades long ascension to the heights of judicial influence really is just part of the this broader CNP ascendance. Its been a joint effort all along:
But as this massive NY Times article made clear, Clarence Thomas role in building this movement is trivial compared to the direct role his wife Ginni has been playing for decades too. A role that has included joining the board of “C.N.P. Action” in 2019. This is the action “C.N.P. Action” that started circulated an “action steps” document back in November of 2020 instructing GOP lawmakers to challenge the election results and appoint alternate slates of electors. Instructions for a coup:
But Ginni’s ties to the CNP clearly started long before that 2019 appointment to the CNP Action board. The ‘Groundswell’ group that she started with fellow CNP-member Steve Bannon back in 2013 as a rival to Grover Norquist’s “Wednesday Meeting” was almost all other CNP people. As we saw back in 2013, the Groundswell attendees included John Bolton, Frank Gaffney, Ken Blackwell, Jerry Boykin, Tom Fitton, and Diana Banister. All of them show up on the leaked CNP membership list. Also listed in this NY Times article are Leonard Leo and Russell J. Ramsland Jr. Recall the critical role CNP members Ramsland and J. Keet Lewis played in the lead up to the insurrection. Ramsland’s private intelligence company, Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), was started in June 2017 by Adam T. Kraft, a former senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Starting in 2018, Ramsland became a leading GOP purveyor of mass voter fraud allegations. And in the days leading up to the insurrection, Ramsland was joined by retired Army colonel and psychological warfare expert Phil Waldron as they operated in Steve Bannon’s and Rudy Giuliani’s “war room” operating out of the Willard Hotel.
Another early Groundswell figure who doesn’t show up on CNP membership lists is Catherine Engelbrecht. Recall how Engelbrecht was making her voter fraud claims back in 2012 at a number of Koch-financed Americans For Prosperity events. It’s a reminder that while the effort leading up to the insurrection very much a CNP effort, it wasn’t exclusively. The Koch network, for example, has been busily at work:
Flash forward to the Trump administration and we learn that Ginni was apparently leading a Groundswell lobbying effort to staff the Trump administration with their preferred people. The only problem was many of them couldn’t pass a security check. Beyond that, she passed herself off as a voice of Trump’s grass-roots base. From elite crypto-theocrat power organizer to ‘voice of the people’, Ginni has worn a lot of hats over the years. Sometimes simultaneously:
But it’s Ginni’s actions in the months following the 2020 election leading up to the Capitol insurrection that are of immediate interest. As we saw, CNP Action immediately sprung into action advising lawmakers to challenge the election results and file alternative electors. Which is basically what happened. CNP member Cleta Mitchel was feverishly working on legal justifications to overturn the election. And as we’ve seen, Ginni was reportedly working closely with Cleta during this period. But it’s quite notable that the other ‘respectable’ conservative lawyer seeking out a legal path to challenge the election was John East, who is a former clerk for Thomas and a close friend of the couple.
Regarding Ginni’s seat on the advisory board of Turning Point USA and its sponsorship of the Jan 6 rally, also recall how Turning Point’s founder and president is CNP member Charlie Kirk.
Now, regarding the shared history as early significant Tea Party activist that Ginni had with Jenny Beth Martin and Amy Kremer, don’t forget that both Jenny Beth Martin and Amy Kremer are listed as CNP members. It wouldn’t be that surprising if Ginni really did bring ‘unity’ to the rally organizers as we are told. She really apparently was acting as kind of CNP fixer in the middle of it all, and well positioned to play that role:
But while the unifying role Ginni may have played between Jenny Beth Martin and Amy Kremer is indeed interesting. Far more interesting is the possible role she may have played in smoothing over the feuds between the “Women for America First” rally at the Ellipse being led by Kremer and the ‘wild’ “Stop the Steal” rally planned by CNP-member Ali Alexander and Alex Jones at the Capitol later that afternoon. A rally that never happened because the insurrection broke out as people were marching on the way there from the Ellipse. Major questions about whether or not that insurrection just ‘spontaneously’ broke out between rallies — leaving neither rally organizer as directly culpable — remain unanswered. Did Ginni Thomas play any addition CNP fixer roles behind the scenes in relation to the alleged tensions between the two rallies? It’s a highly intriguing question given the timeline of how the events of that day played out:
At this point, it’s almost hard to imagine Ginni and Ali weren’t in some kind of secret communication with each other. Did it perhaps involve the mysterious third ‘burner’ phone. Recall how Amy and Kylie Kremer got three burner phones and we still don’t know who got the third. Was it Ginni? She’s a very plausible candidate. She’s a logical candidate from a conspiracy logistics standpoint. Ali Alexander? Also quite plausible, especially given his CNP membership. Who knows, but the CNP’s fingerprints really are all over this entire story. It’s just kind of amazing how many of those CNP fingerprints come from the wife of the leader of the Supreme Court’s CNP Majority.
A lot of swirling questions about all that. Swirling questions that will likely continue swirling for the foreseeable future. At least in most cases. Swirling questions are kind of a CNP specialty.
What has John Eastman been up to? It’s not a hypothetical. The Constitutional lawyer leading the legal battle to justify Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election has been quite busy over the past year being largely welcomed back into ‘polite society’. But as the follow set of articles describes, John Eastman has also been quite busy working on an old project: overturning the 2020 election.
Yep, Eastman is still at it. He attended a closed door meeting with Wisconsin Republicans on March 16 where he encouraged them to decertify the 2020 election results and send a new slate of electors. For real. Soon after the meeting, Donald Trump again publicly implored the Wisconsin GOP to overturn the election results.
But it’s not like this was a purely symbolic gesture. While Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos reiterated his position that the 2020 election can’t be decertified following the meeting, keep in mind that Vos was held in contempt by a judge last month for failing to turn over documents related to the GOP investigation he had launched himself in May 2021 into the 2020 election and has repeatedly alleged widespread voter fraud. So when we learn that Eastman has been lobbying Vos behind closed doors to continue his quest to overturn the 2020 election results, we really do have to ask what Eastman is up to. And what the Wisconsin GOP is up to. They aren’t done trying to overturn the 2020 election. Or rather, they aren’t done trying to invalidate and delegitimize the 2020 election
And that brings us to the other rather odd area of activity for John Eastman lately. It turns out a group he involved with, Constitutional Counsel Group, has a new client: Republican House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG). Recall how Greene was part of that group of House GOPers — Greene, Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorn, Andy Biggs, and Louie Gohmert — who were reportedly involved with “dozens” of meetings with figures like Ali Alexander in the lead up to the Capitol insurrection.
Eastman’s “Constitutional Counsel Group” has apparently been providing a variety of services for Greene. For starters, a joint fundraising committee run by Greene and Rep. Matt Gaetz, Put America First, paid Eastman’s Constitutional Counsel Group $15,000 for services between September and December 2021. Then on January 14, the MTG reelection campaign paid the group another $10k.
What are these MTG entities paying for? That’s another big question about what John Eastman has been up to post-insurrection. Another big question that we don’t really have an answer for. But we do have clues. For starters, a lawsuit was filed against MTG over her support for the January 6 Capitol insurrection to block her from running for reelection. That does actually sound like the kind of legal conundrum a constitutional lawyer like John Eastman might be useful for addressing. Was that the service MTG hired him to provide? Maybe, but let’s not forget that the MTG/Gaetz joint fundraising operation apparently hired his services the month before that lawsuit was filed. There were presumably other services of interest.
And then there’s the incident that took place days before the January 14th $10k payment by MTG’s reelection campaign to Eastman’s Constitutional Counsel Group: MTG went on the radio show of proto-fascist Sebastian Gorka’s radio show and made the following statement:
It was a pretty unambiguous call for a second insurrection. On the radio. And it was made three days before the $10k payment to Eastman’s group. And about three months after a lawsuit was opened against MTG to block her from running for reelection over her support for the insurrection. So was that what MTG’s reelection campaign was paying for? Advice over how to fend off a lawsuit over her suitability for office as a pro-insurrection candidate?
Perhaps. But as we’re going to see in the third article except below from the Daily Beast, there’s another rather interesting quirk in MTG’s recent spending patterns that should kept in mind when parsing this situation: MTG’s spending on personal security jumped more than 10 fold between the last quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, with almost all of the new spending going towards a Knoxville-based executive security firm. Is MTG really suddenly super concerned about her security? If not, why the security surge? And why did MTG’s campaign first hire Eastman’s firm back in September and then double down in January days after her over threat against Democrats?
These are just some of the unsettling questions raised by MTG’s hiring of John Eastman’s services a year after an Eastman-guided insurrection. On top of the questions raised by the Wisconsin GOP’s closed door meeting last month where Eastman implored than to formally delegitimize Wisconsin’s 2020 election results. And on top of the generic question of what the GOP has in mind now that it’s largely aligned itself with the MTG wing of the party and embraced the politics of insurrection:
“On March 16, Eastman and others spent nearly two hours behind closed doors pressuring Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to nullify the 2020 election and reclaim the electors awarded to Biden, the sources said, which legal experts say is impossible.”
A two hour long closed door meeting pressuring the Wisconsin GOP to overturn the 2020 election. That actually happened less than a month ago. The lie cannot be allowed to die:
And this Wisconsin meeting was just one of the states that’s invited Eastman to give them a ‘Stop the Steal’ pep talk. A month earlier, Eastman was in Colorado giving a similar talk:
And Eastman’s ‘Stop the Steal’ effort obviously isn’t some solo effort. Donald Trump has apparently been closely following Wisconsin’s ongoing efforts to overturn the election and literally issued a public statement in support of Eastman’s calls for the Wisconsin GOP to overturn the election right after that closed door meeting:
Eastman clearly hasn’t had trouble keep busy. But don’t assume he’s spending all his timing exclusively focused on still trying to overturn the 2020 election. AS the following Business Insider article describes, Eastman has been involved in another mystery project. And unlike the mystery project in Wisconsin, which wasn’t actually much of a mystery, this latest project is much more of a genuine mystery. It turns out one of Eastman’s groups, the Constitutional Counsel Group, was paid $10,000 by Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (MTG) reelection campaign on January 14 of this year.
For what services was MTG’s reelection campaign paying Eastman’s group $10k? They aren’t saying, but the fact that a lawsuit was started against MTG back in October of 2021 to bar her from running for reelection over her involvement in the January 6 Capitol insurrection gives us a hint. Then again, it also turns out that a joint fundraising group put together by MTG an GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz gave this same group more than $15k between September and December of 2021. So MTG’s payment for services provided by Eastman’s Constitutional Counsel Group actually started in the month before the lawsuit was started to prevent her reelection. In other words, despite all of the clues as to what services MTG hired Eastman to provide, it’s still a real mystery:
“Greene’s reelection committee paid $10,000 in January to the Constitutional Counsel Group, according to a recent federal campaign finance disclosure. Eastman lists the Anaheim, California address of the Constitutional Counsel Group in state bar records.”
Why did Marjorie Taylor Greene’s reelection committee pay John Eastman’s Constitutional Counsel Group $10,000 just three months ago? Her campaign isn’t saying. But the fact that Greene is facing a legal challenge filed in October over whether or not she is even eligible to run for reelection over her support for the same January 6 Capitol insurrection that John Eastman helped mastermind seems like a plausible explanation:
But the situation isn’t that simple. It wasn’t the first payment to Eastman’s group from an MTG-affiliated entity. The Put America First joint fundraising committee run by Green and Matt Gaetz paid $15,000 to Eastman’s group between September and December of 2021. So a month before that lawsuit was filed to prevent MTG from running for reelection, she and Gaetz were already paying Eastman for some sort of services:
It’s a mystery. But as the following Daily Beast article points out, that $10k payment to Eastman’s group on Jan 14 didn’t happen in vacuum. Just three days earlier, MTG went on the radio show of Sebastian Gorka and explained to the audience how Democrats were doing “exactly” the things that the Founding Fathers felt would justify an armed insurrection. Keep in mind that she made these comments three months after the lawsuit over her support for Jan 6 was filed. So three days after MTG goes on a far right radio show to make a pro-insurrection statement, her reelection campaign pays Eastman’s group $10k for mystery services.
But there’s another mystery described in the article: the mystery of MTG’s exploding personal security costs. Costs that were essentially free in 2020 thanks to the Oath Keepers. It doesn’t sound like those free Oath Keeper services were still being offered in 2021, and yet it doesn’t sound like MTG had enormous security needs, having aid just $12k in the fall of 2021. And then, in the first three months of 2022, MTG suddenly started paying Knoxville-based executive security firm KaJor Group $140k. Why the dramatic surge in security? MTG’s campaign suggests it’s related to increased security threats but it’s hard to see why those concerns jumped 10 fold all of a sudden. And that’s why the mystery over that $10k payment to Eastman’s Constitutional Counsel Group is part of a larger mystery of what exactly MTG is up to now that she’s being sued over her insurrectionary activities:
“Three days after her Second Amendment remarks, the Greene campaign hired Trump legal adviser John Eastman, laying down a $10,000 retainer for his firm, the Constitutional Counsel Group, on Jan. 14.”
It’s quite a coincidence: just days after the 1 year anniversary of the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection, MTG goes on Sebastian Gorka’s radio show and alludes to the need to shoot Democrats. And it wasn’t like a roundabout allusion to shooting Democrats. As MTG put it, “they’re doing exactly what our Founders talked about when they gave us the precious rights that we have.” She didn’t mince words. Three days later, she pays $10k to Eastman’s group. And this was all three months after the filing of a lawsuit to stop her reelection bid on the grounds that she supported the insurrection:
And right around this time, MTG’s personal security expenditures suddenly exploded, with nearly $140k spent on the services of a Knoxville-based executive protection company. That’s more than 10 times than the $12k her campaign spent services in the prior quarter. Part of that sudden explosion in security costs can be explained by the fact that MTG was getting protection free of charge from the Oath Keepers during the 2020 election. Recall the apparent central role the Oath Keepers played in the insurrectionary coup plot, with a “Quick Reaction Force” waiting for the orders to deliver heavy weapons to the insurrectionists at the Capitol.
But even if MTG was getting free Oath Keeper protection in 2020, that still doesn’t quite explain the sudden surge in security costs that took place between the last quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022. Based on these reports it sounds like MTG has already lost her free Oath Keeper protection in 2021 and yet was only paying $12k for security services in the last quarter of 2021. So why did the costs of those services suddenly jump for than 10-fold between the last quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022?
An explosion of security spending along with $10k to John Eastman’s group months after MTG is sued over her support of the insurrection. Are they connected? MTG’s campaign isn’t saying. Neither is Eastman. But it’s sure hard to avoid suspicions. Especially now that we know John Eastman is still attempting to foment a new GOP constitutional rebellion in states like Wisconsin at the same time MTG continues to appeal to conservative audiences for a second insurrection. There’s no shortage of questions looming over John Eastman’s activities. Questions like to whom is he advising about the next insurrection and what exactly is that advice? Questions that we might get answer to eventually, whether we like it or not.
Just how slimy is the Council for National Policy’s slime machine? That’s the big question raised by the following pair of articles about two different CNP ‘opposition research’ operations. One reported on a couple of weeks ago and the other a couple years ago. And both with a track record of peddling bogus and rather cruel smears against nominees and current staffers in government positions.
And, intriguingly, both of these CNP-associated ‘opposition research’ operations involve the opposition research teams that were working for the Ted Cruz campaign in 2016. Recall how one of the most mysterious ‘opposition research’ activities during 2015–2016 was all the different GOP-affiliated teams searching for Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails. We were told they believed the emails had already been hacked and were floating around on the dark web, although it was never clear if that was just a pretext for hiring someone to do the hacking.
It turns out one of those teams searching for Hillary’s emails — the team involving Barbara Ledeen, Newt Gingrich, and Judicial Watch — has quite a bit of overlap with one of these CNP-dominated opposition research projects, first reported on back in February of 2020. Recall how Judicial Watch’s President, Tom Fitton, is a member of the CNP. As we’ll see, while Barbara Ledeen and her husband Michael Ledeen aren’t one the CNP’s membership list, Barbara is a member of the Groundswell weekly meeting group and she was very much a part of this Groundswell ‘opposition research’ operation. Recall how Ginni Thomas — conservative activist, CNP member, and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — co-founded the Groundswell group along with fellow CNP member Steve Bannon back in 2013 — and packed it with CNP members — to server as a competitor to Grover Norquist’s influential Wednesday meetings as a key conservative organizing tool.
The February 2020 NY Times report is an example of just how successful those influence peddling efforts ultimately were. The ‘operation research’ project was led by Ginni Thomas and targeting Trump White House staffers the network has identified as needing to be replaced. Trump staffers grumbled in the report that the network seemed to be mostly just interested in getting administration jobs for its members. Thomas had been operating as a kind of vessel for Groundswell throughout the Trump administration, but it was after the first impeachment of Trump in the Senate that Trump started taking Groundswell’s staffing decision very seriously, including sending White House staff to the weekly Groundswell meetings which where hosted by Judicial Watch.
Barbara Ledeen’s role in this operation involved passing ‘opposition research’ on the targeted staffers to the Trump White House. Research that was demonstrably bogus in many cases. This turns out to be a major theme in these reports.
The other CNP-led ‘opposition research’ project was just covered in a recent New Yorker piece by Jane Mayer involving a shadowing new organization called the American Accountability Foundation (AAF). The group claims non-profit charitable status, asserting that it will only engage in non-partisan opposition research in order to keep this status. As a results, the donors are kept anonymous under the US’s dark money laws.
What we do know about the AAF is that it was co-founded by a well known figure in the conservative opposition research community: Tom Jones. Jones’s past work includes serving on the staff of CNP member Jim DeMint. In 2016, Jones worked on opposition research for Ted Cruz’s campaign. Keep in mind that Barbara and Michael Ledeen were Ted Cruz backers in 2016 during the GOP primary. Both were listed on Cruz’s Jewish leadership team back in February 2016. It raising the obvious question: Was Jones aware of the ‘opposition research’ being done by Ledeen and Judicial Watch on the dark web at the time? How about the early Cambridge Analytica work done for the Cruz campaign? That’s certainly opposition-research-related. Was Jones aware of it? It’s just one of the many intriguing questions involving this network that we’ll probably never get answered.
The AAF co-founder, Mathew Buckham, worked for the Trump administration. His father, Ed Buckham, is Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Chief of Staff. Yep.
Here’s the CNP connection to the AAF: in its 2021 IRS filings done to get tax exempt status, the AAF states that its existing “in care of” a different organization: The Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI). As we’ve seen, the CPI is not just the employer of Cleta Mitchell — the CNP member who has long played a key role in formulating the GOP’s anti-voting rights legal theories and was instrumental in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — but it’s also now the employer of Trump’s final Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and continues to push anti-voting initiatives along with CNP members J Christian Adams and Kenneth Blackwell. Meadow’s son Blake also has CPI ties. The CPI also listed the AAF on its IRS forms, but when reporters went to the CPI’s address and requested the financial disclosure forms on the AAF that non-profit entities are required to produce, the CPI claimed it knew nothing about the AAF. So it’s just the kind of gaslighting dark money bad faith song and dance we’ve come to expect from this network.
But that gaslighting is being taken to new levels of cruelty in the ‘opposition research’ being leveled against virtually every Biden nominee as part of the AAF mission. It really is every nominee. And we got a big example of the AAF’s power to gin up ‘opposition research’ when the AAF spearheaded the right-wing smear campaign against Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Kitanji Jackson Brown, absurdly portraying her as an ally of child sex offenders. It was gross, and as Jane Meyer reports, it was typical for the kind of smear tactics the AAF has been using against Biden nominees.
And as we’re going to see, while the AAF’s smears may be baseless, they’ve succeeded in blocking a number of nominees, in part by providing a bogus pretext for members of congress to withhold their support. Which is a reminder that the big lesson here is that the CNP keeps constructing these shadowy smear networks that propagate malicious lies with impunity because it works. Fortune favors the shamelessly ruthless in contemporary US politics:
“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.”
Oh look, a ‘new’ conservative group was just created with the mission of smearing all of the Biden Administration’s nominess. Who is funding the American Accountability Foundation (AAF)? We don’t get to know because the AAF claims to be a ‘nonprofit charity’ that pledges not to get involved in politics, giving the group and all its donors the ‘dark money’ shield under US law.
But while the AAF may be allowed to legally shield its donors from the public, that doesn’t mean there are clues. Clues that just keep pointing in the direction of the broader conservative shadow network centered around the CNP. For starters, the AAF told the IRS that its being managed “in care of” the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI). Recall the aggressive work the CPI has done in recent years on the GOP’s voting restriction agenda. A CPI campaign led by CNP member Cleta Mitchell in conjunction with fellow CNP members J Christian Adams and Kenneth Blackwell. The CPI’s own annual report also acknowledged starting the AAF. And yet, when pressed for documents related to the AFF’s financial records that a non-profit organization is legally obligated to provide upon request, the CPI laughably denies having anything to do with the AAF. It’s either consciousness of guilty or gaslighting behavior. Probably a bit of both:
Note that the Paul Teller listed above who is “just in love with these guys!” and collaborating with the AAF is himself a CNP member.
And note how, in addition to his past work for CNP-member Jim DeMint, AAF’s founder and executive director Tom Jones ran the opposition research for Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign. That’s the kind of resume item that raises quite a questions. Don’t forget that the whole Cambridge Analytica project started as part of Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign as part of the effort to help Ted Cruz secure the GOP nomination. It only jumped over to Donald Trump’s campaign after Trump secured the nomination. Did any of Jones’s opposition research activities involve the Cambridge Analytica affair?
Also recall how there were multiple GOP-affiliated teams dedicated to scouring the Dark Web in search of Hillary Clinton’s emails that they allegedly believed were floating around. That sure sounds like opposition research. So were any of those GOP teams working for Ted Cruz’s campaign? Well, it turns out Barbara and Michael Ledeen were both listed in February 2016 as being members of Ted Cruz’s Jewish leadership team. Don’t forget that Barbara was a member of one of those teams, alongside Newt Gingrich and Judicial Watch. Note that Judicial Watch’s long-time president Tom Fitton is also a CNP member. So we have to ask, was Tom Jones aware of Barbara’s extremely interesting opposition research side-project? It’s one of the many highly relevant questions swirling around the GOP’s efforts to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails through any means necessary in 2016 that will presumably remain unanswered:
But while many questions remain unanswered about who exactly is behind the AFF, the question of why this group would want to be so hyper-secretive in the first place is largely answered by the atrociousness of their own behavior. For example, there was their drive to get Biden nominee Lisa Cook’s tenured pulled. They really have set out to absolutely destroy every single one of Biden’s nominees, seemingly without a hint of remorse. No remorse, but a lot of secrecy:
But arguably worse than the AFF’s treatment of Lisa Cook was the utterly ruthless way they smeared Sarah Bloom Raskin for a bureaucratic oversight committee in the wake of her son’s suicide. You can see why the AAF’s donors might want to keep anonymous when this is the service they’re paying for:
And now here’s the February 2020 NY Times article describing an effort to purge the Trump administration. The purge appeared to be led by CNP member Ginni Thomas, who was sending memos to the Trump White House of recommending people to fire and replace them with. Thomas was just the representative of the larger CNP-dominated network of figures associated with the Groundswell weekly meetings and Trump was reportedly sending administration staff to these weekly meetings where the Groundswell folks told them who to hire and fire. The meetings were hosting by Judicial Watch, headed by CNP member Tom Fitton.
But this staffer purge didn’t just involve sending Trump White House staffers to Groundswell. It also involved digging up opposition research on the staffers they wanted to see fired. Opposition research that sounded pretty similar to the kinds of smears peddled by the AAF in that they tended to be both mean and bogus. And it was Groundswell member Barbara Ledeen who was reportedly passing this opposition research to the Trump White House in her capacity as a Senate staffer. While Barbara Ledeen may not show up on the CNP membership lists, she’s pretty clearly a close affiliate to shares its agenda.
So Ledeen and Judicial Watch once again show up engaged in a highly sleazy behind-the-scenes opposition research operation. But unlike the 2015 hunt to find Hillary Clinton’s emails, this 2020 operation was targeting the Trump White House’s own staffers.
It was like a CNP takeover of the Trump White House, reportedly invited by Trump himself following his first Senate impeachment. So when we read about AAF’s malicious shadow ‘opposition research’ smear campaign and all of its ties to the CNP, and all we know about the people behind it are that it’s led by Tom Jones — a well known GOP opposition researcher who worked for Ted Cruz’s campaign in 2016 — it’s hard not to notice that the people behind this Trump White House CNP-led staffer purge were Barbara Ledeen and Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, who were both deeply involved in the pro-Cruz ‘opposition research’ shadow operations back in 2015–2016. It’s all part of the gross context of this shadow ‘opposition research’ CNP-dominated smear machine:
“President Trump has generally treated Ms. Thomas’s suggestions coolly, passing them off to advisers, according to people familiar with Ms. Thomas’s efforts. But since the end of the Senate impeachment trial, the president has become more distrustful of the people filling the ranks of government and has been giving those recommendations a closer look.”
By the time Trump reached his fourth year in office, it was Ginni Thomas and her fellow CNP associates who were apparently making staffing decisions for the White House. Well, not so much making the staffing decisions directly. Instead, they were just launching smear campaigns based on bogus opposition research against anyone they didn’t like. But the fact that Trump was sending White House staffers to attend the weekly Groundswell meetings and then acting on the Groundswell network’s recommendations more or less tells us who was ultimately making these decisions. Trump had farmed out the White House staffing to the same CNP-dominated network he was already using to select his Supreme Court nominees.
And note it those Groundswell meetings were being hosted by Judicial Watch, heading by CNP member Tom Fitton. Again, recall how Judicial Watch was part of one of the right-wing teams that was searching for Hillary Clinton’s emails back in 2015 — teamed up with Barbara Ledeen and Newt Gingrich — which was clearly an opposition research operation. So we can see how the range of opposition research services offered by Judicial Watch range from hunting the dark web for hacked emails to running sleazy smear campaigns against the random people they want replaced with their own network:
And that’s all part of what makes Barbara Ledeen’s involvement in this so fascinating. She’s not on the CNP membership lists. But she’s very clearly been deeply involved in the GOP’;s opposition research efforts for years and a member of Groundswell. She’s clearly been deeply involved with this network. Which makes that email-hunting effort with Judicial Watch and Gingrich back in 2015 even more of a CNP effort. Was Ton Jones aware of their side project? Again, we’ll probably never know but it’s a fascinating question in the context of this story. One of many involving Barbara Ledeen:
Who will the CNP smear next? We’ll see, although maybe not. The CNP has built itself quite a few options for getting its message out without leaving a clear trace. And yet the more we look, the more CNP fingerprints we find. CNP fingerprints especially around where there’s some scummy slime smeared. They just keep showing up.
The general question of ‘what’s next?’ from the religious right in the US looms larger than it has in decades following the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion striking down Roe v Wade in a manner that doesn’t just call into question access to birth control in the US in the future but was written in a way that could allow for the overturning of a number of other progressive court victories of years past.
So given that we just had a number of local elections in towns across the US that included obscure school board elections, here’s a set of articles about a school board takeover that took place back in the fall of last in the Colorado town of Woodland Park. Four out of five of the school board seats were up for election. And as we’ll see, all four were won by candidates recruited and trained by a local minister deeply tied to a national CNP initiative to takeover school boards with Dominionists pushing the Project Blitz agenda of fixating on CRT and the LGBT agenda in schools. As we’re going to see, the political operation founded by this minister, Andrew Wommack, was co-founded by CNP members David Barton and William Federer. A number of other high level CNP members like Tony Perkins attending the group’s events. And boy did these activities pay off. They took over Woodland Park’s school board with 4–1 majority and and are now implementing an agenda that’s sold as ’empowering to the parents’. As we’re going to see, it seems to be designed to empower parents to force the teachers to remove any content they find objectionable if you can get a vocal enough minority of parents to demand it. Introducing the curriculum of the ultra-right-wing Hillsdale College into the public school curriculum is also on the agenda. Along with charter schools. New fast tracked charter schools.
So while we’re going to have to wait and see in terms of ‘what’s next’ from the hard right Christian conservative majority that now has dominant control of the Supreme Court. But we don’t have to wait and see in terms of intent for the the same deeply powerful forces that are on the cusp of winning this decades long mega-fight over abortion in the US. They’re showing us ‘what’s next’ all the time. Especially at the local level, with the next generation of political foots soldiers are being fielded.
Ok, first, here’s an October 2021 story from Frederick Clarkson about Andrew Wommack’s Dominionist Colorado religious political church/Bible college/political training group and the (soon to be very successful) plans to take over the Woodland Park school board and implement the full Project Blitz agenda of purging public schools of anything that deviates from the Dominionist worldview:
“This trend is epitomized by the emergence of the Dominionist empire of the Woodland Park, Colorado-based Andrew Wommack, who has moved beyond his eponymous Andrew Wommack Ministries and built the unaccredited Charis Bible College along with his own political and broadcast operation, the Truth and Liberty Coalition, which he founded in 2017. This year the Coalition has held a series of conferences or “academies” at the College to encourage, recruit and train candidates seeking local office.”
A Dominionist preacher who starts an eponymous ministry, builds an unaccredited Bible college, starts his own political and broadcasting operation, and then has the college host the political group’s courses on how fellow Dominionists can take over school boards and impose a theocratic agenda. There’s something very meta about the story. But it’s also quite real. Andrew Wommack isn’t hiding his agenda. His ministry and college and political organizing activities are all part of the Seven Mountains Dominionist agenda that has been quietly spearheading Project Blitz and much of the rest of the organized national right-wing freakout over LGBT issues. In other words, Wommack is a cog of what is arguably the most serious political machine on the American scene today.
And note the number of known CNP members who co-founded Wommack’s Truth and Liberty Coalition: David Barton and William Federer. CNP members Tony Perkins, William Boykin, and Bob McEwen have all spoken on the Coalition’s week broadcasts. This is basically a CNP operation. An operation that involves a network CNP figures leading a national capture of government at the local level by a national network of conservative Christian churches:
So how did the four candidates fielded by Wommack’s political operation in the Woodland Park School District school board elections go? All four candidates won, giving Wommacks’s church a 4–1 control over the board. Because of course that’s what happened. And now Woodland Park is becoming the latest showcase for CNP-style Dominionist rule.
As you can imagine, they haven’t wasted time with their 4–1 majority. Here’s an example of what’s happening in Woodland Park school district: Back in February, the new school board announced a new set of rules ‘Opt out’ rules intended to ’empower parents’. Which it did do. As Woodland Park’s superintendent points out in the article, the district already had these opt out rules for parents. Just nothing close to this expansive. Parents can now opt their kind out of any lesson plan that includes sexual conduct, graphic violence, profanity, and any ‘material that may be polarizing or likely to divide the community along racial, ethnic, or religious lines.’ ‘Alternative learning’ will be offered instead.
Keep in mind that while these ‘opt out’ rules may seem like they only impact one kid at a time, they are being implemented in the context of these organized political ‘LGBT grooming agenda’ Project Blitz witch hunt led by the CNP. In other words, the school board is creating a system that will allow large groups of conservative parents to effective overrule the curriculum. They may not be able to do that directly by opting their kids out, but if enough parents do it that could effective force the teacher to drop the content. So any lesson in history, literature, and social studies that right-wing evangelical parents dislike can be effectively expunged from the content for all the kids. Mission accomplished.
But there is a loophole under the new rules for allowing the teacher to discuss sensitive content (which is almost everything at this point): they can get permission from the superintendent. Or in some cases the parents. It’s not clear what determines if the superintendent or parents will be the deciders. We’ll find out next year when the rules actually get implemented. Presumably with a wave of stories about how a group of determined parents are panning almost all of the relevant content in one class after another:
“The district plans to adopt a new ‘opt-in/opt out’ plan for parents when controversial topics are included in the curriculum. Woodland Park’s Superintendent Dr. Mathew Neal says the district already had a version of this policy, but it was never this “expansive.””
Parents could already opt their kids out of specific content. They couldn’t opt it out enough, according to the new Dominionist Woodland Park school board:
That’s what the news coming out of the Woodland Park school board at the beginning of February. Two weeks later, and let’s just say the mask was dropped some more when one of the new ultra-right council members, Gary Brovetto, came under scrutiny for going to a school and giving a speech that insulted Middle Eastern and Asian kids and kids with ADD or Autism. Brovetto didn’t making the comments but explained that he grew up in the tough neighborhood in the Bronx just blocks from Donald Trump and that’s just the kind of non-PC guy he is. And aside from insulting kinds, he also wants to get the content of the ultra-right Hillsdale College injected into the public schools and fast track the setup of charter schools which will presumably have even crazier content:
“Several parents asserted that earlier in the month, while Brovetto was supposed to be talking to middle school students about government and the U.S. Constitution, he spent most of his time talking about the district’s Summit Learning Platform. They also accused him of making derogatory remarks about students who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, are on the Autism Spectrum or are from the Middle East and Asia.”
He showed up and insulted kids, and made a reference to Trump and Bronx toughness while making his ‘sorry, not sorry’ response to the outrage. Gary Brovetto didn’t waste any time showing the voters of Woodland Park just who they voted for:
And note how one of Brovetto’s goals is for parents to receive an ‘academic road map’ from teachers about the content they’re going to be teaching. This will of course be playing directly into the newly expanded ‘opt out’ system. An academic road map is turned into a Rorschach test, with parents scrying for potential controversy and opting their kids of of this or that lesson plan. If enough parents do it, a teacher is effectively forced to switch to the ‘less controversial’ alternative lesson plan:
But the ‘opt out’ expansion is only one part of the big curriculum overhaul plans. The other part is all the content this movement is trying to get incorporated into public school’s official content. Content like Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum, which is about what you can expect from a tiny super-right-wing college deeply intertwined with this movement. Recall how the president and VP for External Affairs at Hillsdale College, Dr. Larry P. Arnn and Douglas A. Jeffrey, were both on the CNP membership list. Deep institutional networking is at work here:
But, of course, it’s not just the censoring and replacing of public school content that’s on the agenda. Charter schools are suddenly getting rushed through. Again, the Dominionists from the Wommack school of politics didn’t waste any time showing the voters of Woodland Park just who they voted for. They voted for a Dominionist wrecking ball to small local school system, whether they realized it or not:
So how many more kids to Brovetto insult since that incident? Well, he resigned last month, so the kids are safe from verbal assault from their school board for now. But they aren’t safe from Brovetto’s policies. The there’s still a 3–1 Dominionist majority ready to let the wrecking ball go for another swing.
Capturing control of government and imposing a deeply unpopular agenda can be a tricky feat to sustain in a democracy. And yet there’s no denying that at least one branch of the US government, the Judiciary Branch, has been thoroughly captured by the Council for National Policy. The CNP can more or less do what it wants right now in the realm of judicial rulings and it’s not afraid of the consequences of using that power. That much is clear from the leaked draft ruling that promises to overturn Roe v Wade next month. After all, overturning Roe is opposed 2–1 by US voters. Politically speaking it’s madness. Not only that, but overturning Roe is clearly just the first step in what is expected to be a wave of far right rulings in coming years. We’re in store for a far right era of the Supreme Court thanks to the overwhelming 6–3 hard right majority. The US’s judiciary is going to be a CNP tool for decades to come. Overturning Roe is just the appetizer.
So given that the CNP has long played the role of formulating the Republican Party’s long-term political strategies — wildly successful long-term political strategies — we have to ask: so what’s the long-term strategy for dealing wit the inevitable political blowback that’s going to emerge from an extended period of one deeply unpopular Supreme Court decision after another? Of course, we already have the answer to that question. We got that answer during the January 6 Capitol insurrection, an event that was heavily orchestrated by the CNP and which the CNP continues to defend.
So with that context in mind, here’s a post by the Center for Media Democracy from back in March about the leaked notes from the CNP’s February 2022 meeting. A meeting where the upcoming overturning of Roe was predicted and celebrated. But the CNP wasn’t predicting Roe would be the only upcoming ruling to rattle the US’s judicial foundations. As the meeting notes put it, “This term of the Supreme Court could be one of the most consequential ever, and CNP Members have been central to some of the landmark cases being decided.” In other words, while we don’t know what exactly the CNP has in mind for enduring the inevitable political blowback that’s going to come from its control of the Supreme Court, we can be confident the CNP is working on those plans. Plans that will presumably be centered around the further erosion of the US’s democratic institutions:
““This term of the Supreme Court could be one of the most consequential ever, and CNP Members have been central to some of the landmark cases being decided,” the CNP’s February meeting program notes. Speakers at a general session on the subject included Alan Sears, founder of the Christian right litigation powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom; Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser; and First Liberty President Kelly Shackelford.”
One of the most consequential Supreme Court terms ever. Those were the CNP’s expectations back in February for this year’s Supreme Court rulings. And the CNP should know. It’s had more influence over the shape of the Supreme Court than any other organizations. The CNP’s influence runs so deep it works through other organizations like the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Rifle Association, all run by members of the CNP. So when the CNP informed its members that this was shaping up to be one of the most consequential terms in history, it’s not just expressing the group’s aspirations. This is effectively the CNP-run Supreme Court right now. And the CNP has clearly given the Supreme Court majority the green light to proceed with an array of political toxic rulings. The overturning of Roe is just the warm up act:
So how is this powerful organization planning on navigating the political fallout of this planned wave of toxic Supreme Court rulings that threaten to erode the public’s confident in US institutions even more than they’ve already been eroded? We got out answer an Jan 6, 2021. Well, not just on Jan 6. The central role played by the CNP in the months leading up to the insurrection and coverup role it’s played ever since given us our answer. The CNP’s long-term plans for this CNP-run Supreme Court majority is quite simply going to be completing insurrection and solidifying permanent far right rule. So it should be no surprise to find two of the figures who have been leading the CNP’s anti-voting efforts assuming the top leadership roles in the organization: Again, overturning Roe is just the warm up act. Just like Jan 6:
“Everything that we are being told [about the insurrection] is a lie and Americans are being persecuted to support that lie.” Spoken like an organization that fully intends on fomenting more insurrections in the future. And if those insurrectionary plans involve the scheming of a compliant CNP-controlled Supreme Court, all the better.
As questions continue to grow around Ginni Thomas’s “Not So Secret” role in the CNP’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the biggest question around Thomas at this point is the question of what aspect of the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results was she not involved with? Although maybe a bigger question is whether or not it will ever be taken seriously from a legal perspective that a Supreme Court Justice’s spouse was leading the efforts to overturn the election. Either way, big questions continue to loom ever larger around Ginni. Questions about culpability and impunity. So it should come as no surprise that Ginni Thomas was just implicated in another aspect of the CNP’s post-election efforts:
It turns out Ginni Thomas was emailing state legislators in swing states in the period between the November election and Jan 6, encouraging them to select their own slates of electors. Thomas’s emails were sent to Russell “Rusty” Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House, and Shawnna Bolick, who served on the Arizona House Elections Committee during the 2020 session. Importantly, Shawnna Bolick is also the wife of Clint Bolick, a justice of the Arizona Supreme Court who previously worked with Clarence Thomas and has stated he considers Thomas a mentor. So when Ginni just happened to reach out to Shawnna Bolick with a letter seemingly providing legal guidance suggesting that its fine for state legislators to select their own slates of electors, she wasn’t just sending that Shawnna. Her husband Clint sitting on Arizona’s Supreme Court implicitly got the message.
And in case it wasn’t clear that Shawnna saw the message, it’s clear. Shawnna responded directly to Ginni’s email saying “I hope you and Clarence are doing great!” and gave guidance on how to submit complaints about any of her experiences with voter fraud in Arizona.
Ginni’s emails arguing that it is right for state legislators to select pro-Trump electors were sent using the form letters created at the freeroots.com website. And while that might make it seem like Thomas was just filling out a generic political form letter, it turns out freeroots.com has multiple CNP connections. For starters, it appears to be owned by Eric Berger who is described as a CNP operative. It also ran a campaign by Act for America, which was founded and chaired by CNP member Brigitte Gabriel. Also recall how Christofascist Matt Shea — who has plotted for the violent overthrow of the government and imposition of strict Christian Dominionsm — is the founder of the Spokane chapter of ACT for America.
On November 13, 2020, the CNP’s political action committee (PAC), CNP Action, held a workshop on how to deal with the election results. Recall how Ginni Thomas sat on the board of CNP Action during this period. After the workshop, CNP Action issued guidance,which included visiting the website everylegalvote.com “to report fraud and take action.” That website, everlegalvote.com, links back to a page on freeroots.com to email state legislators.
That website, everylegalvote.com, is no longer online. But based on internet archives, it initially claimed to be produced in partnership with United in Purpose, a nonprofit group known for gathering and deploying data to galvanize conservative Christian voters and has hosted the luncheons where Thomas presents her “Impact Awards.” But within days, the website dropped its association with United with Purpose and added a “Founding Sponsors” sections with three sponsors: the Texas nonprofit group Liberty Center for God and Country, the online talk show “Economic War Room”, and Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG). Recall the critical role CNP members Russell J. Ramsland and J. Keet Lewis played in the lead up to the insurrection. Ramsland’s private intelligence company, ASOG, was started in June 2017 by Adam T. Kraft, a former senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Starting in 2018, Ramsland became a leading GOP purveyor of mass voter fraud allegations. And in the days leading up to the insurrection, Ramsland was joined by retired Army colonel and psychological warfare expert Phil Waldron as they operated in Steve Bannon’s and Rudy Giuliani’s “war room” operating out of the Willard Hotel. So given the available evidence it sure looks like both everylegalvote.com and freeroots.com are part of the same CNP efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Thomas’s first freeroots.com emails imploring Bolick and Bowers to select a pro-Trump slate of electors were sent on November 9, 2020, days after the election. A second round of emails were sent on December 13, 2020, also using freeroots.com. The election results were certified by Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Republican Gov. Doug Ducey the next day. On that day, Bolick was among dozens of Arizona lawmakers who signed a letter to Congress calling for the state’s electoral votes to go to Trump or “be nullified completely until a full forensic audit can be conducted.”
So on one level, this is just a story about Ginni Thomas sending a couple of blah form letters. But on another level, its the story of Ginni Thomas — longtime conservative organizer, CNP Action board member, and wife of a Supreme Court Justice — sending a letter from a CNP front group giving legal advice to close family friends in a positions to challenge the Arizona election results that doing so is legally justified. Conflicts of interest are rarely this palpable.
Now, it’s important to point out that it’s not clear if Ginni Thomas sent that freeroots.com form letter to a much larger number of elected officials in swing states or if it was just Bowers and Bolick. If it was just those two that would obviously look awful given the family connections between the Bolicks and Thomases. But if she sent that letter to all the Republican legislators in Arizona that’s not exactly great either. She is Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. We don’t know how many other people received Ginni Thomas’s emails crafted by CNP-affiliated entities in the days and weeks following the 2020 election filled with instructions to hand Trump the victory. But we know she at least sent it to Bowers and Bolick, which is scandalous enough:
“The messages show that Thomas, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, was more deeply involved in the effort to overturn Biden’s win than has been previously reported. In sending the emails, Thomas played a role in the extraordinary scheme to keep Trump in office by substituting the will of legislatures for the will of voters.”
The more we look, the more evidence of Ginni Thomas’s involvement in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election that we discover. But, of course, as we’ve seen, Ginni Thomas isn’t just Clarence Thomas’s political active wife. She’s been a CNP member and crucial organizer for the conservative movement over the past decade, having co-founded the Groundswell meetings with Steve Bannon back in 2013. So when we’re talking about the potential role Ginni Thomas played in these matters, it’s not really just about Ginni Thomas. Or just about Ginni and Clarence Thomas. It’s about the broader hyper-influential network Ginni Thomas was acting on behalf of as she was engaged in these efforts:
It’s also rather notable that Thomas’s email outreach to these swing state legislators first happened in the days following the 2020 election, and then was followed up on December 13 echoing the exact message that CNP member John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani were pushing: that state legislator has the power to chooser their own slates of electors. It’s part of the context of Thomas’s efforts. Ginni Thomas’s efforts can’t really be separated from John Eastman’s. So when we learn that Thomas sent out her second round of emails appealing to state legislators that basically echoes the guidance that Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman were already giving, that should be entirely expected. This was a group effort:
It’s also important to note how Thomas’s entreaties to these Arizona legislators basically worked, at least when it came to Shawnna Bolick, who was among the dozens of Arizona lawmakers who signed a letter calling for Congress to flip the state’s vote to Trump. It raises the question of how many of these other legislator were the target of Thomas’s behind-the-scenes lobbying. But, again, this was a group effort. So we shouldn’t just be asking how many of these other legislator were the target of Thomas’s behind-the-scenes lobbying. We also have to ask who else was lobbying these legislators as part of this larger organized group effort:
So who else in this CNP-centric network was working with Thomas on this lobbying effort? Well, we have clues: around a week and a half after the election, the CNP’s PAC, CNP Action, circulated “guidance” to swing state legislators. That guidance advised visiting a particular website “to report fraud and take action.” The site, everylegalvote.com, in turn took visitors to the freeroots.com webpage, which is the same site Ginni used to send her emails to no longer online. So who’s behind everylegalvote.com? We don’t know for sure, but the website initially claimed it was produced in partnership with United in Purpose, an organization that has hosted the luncheon were Ginni Thomas presents her “Impact Awards”. But that claimed partnership with United in Purpose only seemed to last a few days based on internet archives, to be replaced with a “Founders” section listing three entities. And one of those entities just happens to be CNP member Russell Ramsland’s Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), which was ultimately central to the organizational efforts that resulted in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Yes, everylegalvote.com initially claimed to be affiliated with United in Purpose, which appears to be affiliated with CNP member Ginni Thomas but then decided to affiliate itself with CNP member Russell Ramsland’s ASOG. And both Thomas and Ramsland were central to the CNP’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. So while it’s not entirely clear who exactly is behind everylegalvote.com, it’s pretty clear which shadow network is behind it:
Similarly, note the CNP ties to the freeroots.com site that everylegalvote.com directed people to: FreeRoots.com appears to be owned by Eric Berger who is described as a CNP operative. Plus, its email campaign was organized by Act for America. Recall how ACT for America found and Chairman Brigitte Gabriel is a CNP member. Also recall how Christian nationalist extremist Matt Shea — who has a track record of plotting for mass violence against Democrats and the imposition of a Dominionist theocracy — is the founder of the Spokane chapter of ACT for America. All signs are pointing towards everylegalvote.com being just another extension of the CNP’s extensive efforts to overturn the 2020 election:
Yes, while it is true that Ginni Thomas simply sent a pair of Arizona lawmakers a pair of form letters about the election results, it’s also true that the form letters were created the same CNP shadow network that Ginni Thomas held a leadership role it. It’s also true that she was speaking as the wife of sitting Supreme Court justice. And it’s also true that Ginni Thomas will likely experience absolutely no serious repercussions for her serious conflicts of interest or anything else associated with her extensive efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. So if there’s repeat of a ‘stolen election’ in 2024, watch out for Ginni Thomas and the anti-democratic CNP form letters designed to persuade officials to overturn the results. She clearly knows how to use those things.
The annual convention of the National Rifle Association (NRA) is generally a gross affair. But this year’s gathering in Houston took on an extra gross flavor coming just days after the elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, carried out by an 18 year old gunman who rushed out to buy the weapons used in the attack on his 18th birthday, in accordance with Texas state law where 18 year olds can purchase an AR-15 with basically no restrictions or training. Questions about the NRA’s moral compass and whose agenda it serves have long been part of the US’s post-mass shooting ritual, along with all the ‘thoughts and prayers’ from the victims. Questions that happened to coincide with this year’s NRA convention.
So in light of the many questions raised about what is motivating the NRA’s agenda, here’s a pair of article excerpts that help answer that question. Surprise! It’s the CNP behind the scenes. Again. As always.
Yes, that’s the undeniable picture that emerges when we make a few simple observations about the remarkable number of CNP members and affiliates involved with the NRA. And in particular the religious leaders who actively cultivate a kind of warped form of Christianity that has effectively turned the gun in the new Golden Calf. A form of Christianity that is put on display for the public at every NRA conference in the form of a prayer breakfast. As we’ll see, having a CNP member speak at this NRA prayer breakfast appears to have been part of this annual ritual too.
For example:
* Jonathan Falwell, son of founding CNP member Jerry Falwell, spoke at the prayer breakfast in 2010 and 2015.
* CNP member Oliver North spoke in 2011 and 2018.
* CNP member General Jerry Boykin spoke in 2012.
* Christian Leader and former CNP excecutive director Bob Reccord spoke in 2013.
* Franklin Graham spoke in 2014. While Franklin Graham, who spoke in 2014, isn’t listed as a CNP member, the VP of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Tom Phillips, is on the list.
* James Dobson, is another longstanding CNP member, spoke in 2016.
* CNP member Ken Blackwell spoke in 2019.
As we can see, the NRA’s annual prayer breakfast is a CNP-blessed event. But there’s another major CNP connection to the NRA: Long-time NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre is also a leading CNP member. The NRA really is an extension of the CNP. So when we’re forced to once against question the basic moral compass of the people running the NRA, it’s worth keeping in mind that this is effectively the same as question the moral compass of the people behind the shadow network that brought us the January 6 Capitol insurrection and is still dedicated to achieving power through any means necessary. Including violence, obviously:
“In a macabre coincidence, the NRA will hold its annual convention this weekend in Houston, just hours from Uvalde. While some politicians may decide not to participate and more protesters than normal might gather outside, the show will go on. The festivities include a prayer breakfast, an annual part of meetings for more than two decades.”
Macabre indeed. The NRA’s Memorial Day weekend convention just happened to be held in Houston, hours from the site of the Uvalde massacre. And it’s even going to include an annual prayer breakfast. Like a macabre cherry on top, where we find one major conservative Christian figure after another giving speeches over the years. Figures with extensive ties to the CNP. For example, there’s Jonathan Falwell, who spoke in 2010 and 2015. His father Jerry Falwell was a founding CNP member. James Dobson is another longstanding CNP member, spoke in 2016. And while Franklin Graham, who spoke in 2014, isn’t listed as a CNP member, the VP of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Tom Phillips, is on the list. And then there’s Christian leader Bob Reccord, the former CNP Executive Director (2010) who spoke a the 2013 prayer breakfast. The NRA’s prayer breakfast really is a CNP event too. A CNP sanctioned prayer-focused event designed to give the NRA’s amoral agenda a patina of decency:
And then there’s all the political and military figures with CNP ties who have also spoken at the NRA prayer breakfast in recent years. CNP member Ken Blackwell spoke in 2019. Oliver North spoke in 2011 and 2018. And General Jerry Boykin spoke in 2012. All CNP members. Again, it’s like there’s been a CNP figure speaking at the prayer breakfast basically every year over the last decade at least. Because this isn’t just an NRA prayer breakfast. It’s an NRA/CNP joint prayer breakfast:
Finally, note how the radicalization of the NRA is really a phenomena of the last four decades. It’s worth keeping in mind that the CNP itself is a phenomena of the last four decades too, as the manifestation of the merger of corporate, political, and economic right-wing movements. In other words, fascism. The modern radicalized NRA is just another manifestation of that larger fascist trend:
But there’s one more major CNP tie that we have to mention: Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s CEO since 1991. As the following article describes, LaPierre has another role as a leading member of the CNP:
“Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the National Rifle Association, is a leading member of the Council for National Policy. The NRA claims some 5 million members and mobilizes them in the interests of the CNP’s agenda. The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action is the organization’s lobbying arm. Its cellphone app uses the Koch brothers’ data platform i360 to mobilize and equip members to conduct Get Out the Vote campaigns for gun rights supporters, to lobby local and national government officials, and conduct door-to-door canvassing in electoral campaigns. The app’s geofencing capability convenes NRA supporters for social interactions in gun shops and other locales.”
The more we look, the more CNP ties we find. At what point can we consider the NRA to be an arm of the CNP? But, of course, the CNP is just the umbrella organization for the oligarchs and fellow travelers whose agenda it serves. An agenda that included fomenting an insurrection following the 2020 election. And that’s why we shouldn’t at all be surprised to find that this same CNP network that has been pulling the strings of the NRA for years has also been directing the mass media right-wing disinformation campaigns that have come to define political talk radio in America. It’s all driven by the same shadow network:
And this shadow network clearly knows demographics and social changes aren’t on its side. In other words, democracy isn’t on its side. That’s all part of the grim context of the CNP’s capture of the NRA: the shadow umbrella group that’s turned the NRA into a radicalized extremist group that threatens the foundation of US society is the same shadow umbrella group behind the January 6 Capitol insurrection. It’s a ‘power at any cost’ agenda, including taking power by violent force. The NRA is just one of the public faces of that ‘power through any means necessary’ agenda.
We got another update on the CNP’s ‘election integrity’ plans for the 2022 and 2024 elections. It’s mostly an update on Cleta Mitchell’s efforts. But, of course, Mitchell is just a leading figure in a much larger effort involving the CNP, groups like the Republican National Committee (RNC), establishment conservative institutions like Heritage Foundation, and the broader Koch network of mega-donors. ‘Election integrity’ and crying foul is a group effort across the conservative movement these days. But as we’ve seen, in that broader group effort, few stand out in their importance more than Cleta Mitchell. Don’t forget that Mitchell’s involvement in overturning the 2020 election arguably goes back to August of 2019 , when she co-chaired a high-level working group that ended up advocating for a radical reading of the constitution that would enable state legislatures to override the popular vote She’s not only been conceiving the legal theories behind the GOP’s efforts to cry foul on any lost close election but also played a lead role in the broader organizational efforts to train conservatives in how to all read from the same page in this nationwide strategy of crying foul at lost elections. So when we get an update on Cleta Mitchell’s plans for ‘election integrity’, we’re really hearing about the broader organized conservative movement’s plans for contesting elections.
Plans that are as awful as we should expect at this point. The apparent goal of Mitchell’s effort, dubbed the Election Integrity Network, is to build a national volunteer army of thousands of poll watchers and election workers who will be closely observing all elections for any signs of Democratic cheating. The general position of the group is that election workers have a Democratic bias and Democrats only win by cheating.
Here’s where it gets extra sleazy: the assumptions about corrupt Democratic bias of election officials go deep enough that this network is planning on running opposition research on basically every election official. That’s part of the training that this army of election volunteers now gets: training in how to conduct opposition research on random local election officials, along with ‘education’ telling them that these officials should be assumed to be corrupt Democrats. It’s basically a recipe to unleash a right-wing troll army upon random elections officials. Members of this network will be the only people who even want to take those positions if this this kind of campaign works.
And it sounds like it did work somewhat in the trial run of this strategy in Virginia last fall. As we’ll see, the registrar of Fairfax County described abuse and harassment like he’s never experienced in decades of work as an election official. He just retired. Mission accomplished.
Mitchell is apparently channeling her ‘election integrity’ efforts through the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI). As we’ve seen, the CPI is not just the employer of Cleta Mitchell — the CNP member who has long played a key role in formulating the GOP’s anti-voting rights legal theories and was instrumental in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — but it’s also now the employer of Trump’s final Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and continues to push anti-voting initiatives along with CNP members J Christian Adams and Kenneth Blackwell. Also recall how the CPI was acting as a kind of parent entity for a new CNP-led ‘opposition research’ project call the American Accountability Foundation (AAF). At least a front group when it comes to the IRS. The CPI disavowed any knowledge of the AFF when confronted by reporters. Which isn’t surprising. It sounded the AFF was engaged is extremely bad-faithed smearing of virtually ALL of the Biden administration’s nominees to any positions. And now an army of thousands of volunteers in every state are being trained in how to apply those bad faith techniques and unleash them on random election officials.
So as we can see, Cleta Mitchell has been busy. Busy building an army trained in her dark arts and ready to use them at every available opportunity:
“Now Ms. Mitchell is prepping for the next election. Working with a well-funded network of organizations on the right, including the Republican National Committee, she is recruiting election conspiracists into an organized cavalry of activists monitoring elections.”
As we can see, CNP member Cleta Mitchell has big plans for challenging the results of upcoming elections. Nationwide plans. And as we also saw, these are far from just Cleta Mitchell’s plans. She’s acting as key cog in a larger organizational network that includes the RNC and establishment mega-donor groups like Heritage Action. It’s this broader network of leading conservative organizations that’s really building this army of ‘election integrity’ activists.
Mitchell is apparently channeling her ‘election integrity’ efforts through the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI). As we’ve seen, the CPI is not just the employer of Cleta Mitchell — the CNP member who has long played a key role in formulating the GOP’s anti-voting rights legal theories and was instrumental in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — but it’s also now the employer of Trump’s final Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and continues to push anti-voting initiatives along with CNP members J Christian Adams and Kenneth Blackwell. Also recall how the CPI was acting as a kind of parent entity for a new CNP-led ‘opposition research’ project call the American Accountability Foundation (AAF). At least a front group when it comes to the IRS. The CPI disavowed any knowledge of the AFF when confronted by reporters. Which isn’t surprising. It sounded the AFF was engaged is extremely bad-faithed smearing of virtually ALL of the Biden administration’s nominees to any positions.
And that’s part of what makes Cleta Mitchell’s efforts at building an army of ‘election integrity’ volunteers so disturbing. They aren’t just going to be watching polling stations on Election Day or observing the counting of the vote. They’re engaging in opposition research on basically every random local election official. In other words, that giant smear machine is going to be targeting all sorts of random people in an effort to intimidate or drive them out of their positions. Cleta Mitchell is building and army of hostile stalkers who are going to be tasked with making the lives of election workers who aren’t die hard Republicans unlivable:
Don’t forget that Jenny Beth Martin is also a CNP member. Her presence at the Harrisburg ‘training event’ is a reminder that we should expect a large number of CNP members to be involved with kind of ‘election integrity’ scheme. The CNP’s purpose is organizing conservative leaders, after all. Crying election fraud is clearly priority number one for the GOP at this point. The CNP is probably demanding all their members be as involved as possible in this.
Another hint at how dirty this is going to get comes from the fact that the RNC clearly doesn’t want to acknowledge its clear involvement. The fact that groups like LaRouchePAC are participating in this ‘election integrity army’ is another reason the RNC probably doesn’t want to talk about this:
Finally, note how the ‘national model’ of how this scheme is supposed to work really was successfully test in last year’s Virginia elections. 4,500 poll watchers and election workers were trained. But perhaps more importantly, Scott Konopasek, the Fairfax County registrar, ended up resigning largely because of how difficult that army made his job. The strategy of intimidation worked. That’s part of this Virginia ‘national model’ for ‘election integrity’:
Of course, fall all the successes of that Virginian trial run for this CNP-led ‘election integrity’ army last year, there was one obvious part of the strategy that couldn’t really be tested last year: contesting the results. Glenn Youngkin won. So that whole ‘election integrity’ smear machine extravaganza didn’t really get its trial run. We’ll just have to wait for the national trial run this fall. We kind of already had that national trial run in 2020. It’s just going to be much bigger and more organized this time. In anticipation of what Cleta has in mind for 2024.
Things obviously didn’t go as planned for Donald Trump on January 6. But what was the actual plan on that day? How was fomenting an insurrection going to result in Trump retaining the White House?
We’re getting greater clarity on that question with some new reporting this week. For starters, we’ve now learned that Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, had a rather remarkable conversation with Tim Giebels, the head of Pence’s Secret Service detail, on Jan 5. During this conversation, Short expressed his concerns that Pence faced a very real security risk during the upcoming electoral vote count the following day.
It’s not known what exactly the Secret Service did in response to Short’s warnings, but as we’re going to see, it appears that creating a threat to Mike Pence’s security wasn’t just an inevitable side effect of all of the various public pronouncements Trump had been making about Pence’s powers to overturn the election results. Instead, it appears that creating a security threat that forced Pence out the Capitol on Jan 6 was the plan. At least Plan B, following Pence’s refusals to go along with the preferred plan of having Pence himself declare the results needs to be sent back to the states for ‘review’. According to this apparent back up plan, once Pence is forced to flee the Capitol someone else will have to take his place in certifying the electoral count. In particular, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who was the next in line to take Pence’s spot as the longest serving senator. Grassley, in turn, would do what Pence couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
Now, as we learned last July, Pence was asked by his Secret Service detail to indeed flee the Capitol during the insurrection, but Pence refused, telling Giebels “I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.” In other words, Pence seemed to know replacing him by forcing him to flee was the plan. And to his credit, Pence refused to go along with it. And based on the available evidence, it looks like that decision to refuse to leave the Capitol really was the pivotal moment that thwarted Trump’s scheme. Had Pence left in the face of the insurrection, all of the other pieces in this scheme could have fallen into place.
And as we’re also going to see from additional new reporting this week, we can be confident that this was the plan because a Dec 13, 2020, memo written by one of the attorney’s working for Trump basically described this kind of scenario. Except under the plan in the memo, Pence himself would declare on Jan 6 that he had the power to count the electoral votes and decide how to deal with issues, but he also has a “conflict of interest” and therefore the President pro tempore, Chuck Grassley, would take his place.
We learned about the memo laying out this plan only because a U.S. District Court Judge described the memo as having “likely furthered the crimes of obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States,” and ordered it released to the select committee under the “crime-fraud” exception to attorney client privilege. Yep, the memo is so incriminating it could no longer be protected by attorney client privilege.
So it appears that the initial plan was to have Pence voluntarily hand his constitutional powers over to Grassley, but that plan had to get modified after Pence refused to go along with it. Plan B was to just force Pence to flee. And it almost worked.
And what about Senator Grassley. Was he willing to go along with this? Yep. That’s more or less what Grassley himself told reports on Jan 5. “Well, first of all, I will be — if the Vice President isn’t there and we don’t expect him to be there, I will be presiding over the Senate,” according to a transcript of his remarks. It was only after he made those remarks that Grassley’s staff told reporters that they misinterpreted his comments and Pence was actually expected the next day.
Keep in mind that Grassley made those comments on Jan 5, when Trump was reportedly still trying to convince Pence to go along with the scheme. And it certainly looked like Grassley knew about plans to have Pence’s power handed to him. So you have to wonder if Grassley initially made those comments under the assumption that Pence was going to voluntarily go along with the plan. Either way, it’s pretty clear Grassley was fully on board with the scheme.
That’s all part of the context of the seemingly spontaneous, yet planned, violence on Jan 6. The violence really was a necessary component of the plan. But that was Plan B. The violence wouldn’t have been necessary had Pence been willing to go with Plan A. So when we’re trying to understand the forces behind that insurrection, it’s crucial to keep in mind that the plan the Trump team had going into that day really did require a threat large enough to force Mike Pence to flee the Capitol:
“The chief of staff, Marc Short, had a message for the agent, Tim Giebels: The president was going to turn publicly against the vice president, and there could be a security risk to Mr. Pence because of it.”
Marc Short could read the writing on the wall. His boss was in trouble. Very real physical trouble that Donald Trump was going to trigger when Trump decides to publicly turn against Pence for not going along with the plan. This wasn’t paranoia. Short’s prediction proved to be absolutely correct. As we’ve now learned, Trump was literally supportive of the “Hang Mike Pence” chants errupting from the violent mob that day. Because as we’ll see, violent threats to Mike Pence’s physical safety was crucial to the success of the plan on that day. At last Plan B, in case Pence didn’t go along with Plan A voluntarily:
Also note part of the context of the pressure campaign Trump was putting on Pence in the final days leading upt to Januarry: during a Jan 4 meeting with John Eastman — the figure spearheading Trump’s legal efforts and taking the lead in devising legal justifications for overturning the election results — acknowledged that Pence didn’t have the power to arbitrarily settle the election, but he still insisted Pence has the power to send the results back to the states for a 10-day review. Recall how, by eary December 2020, Eastman and Rudy Giuliani were reportedly arguing to lawmakers in key swing states won by Biden that they had the authority and even the obligation to desisregard the vote and select their own slates of electors. Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was also involved in this lobbying campaign. So when we learn that Eastman was selling Pence on a plan to send the results back to the states for a 10-day ‘review’, it’s important to keep in mind that they had already been working on rigging the ‘review’ process for over a month. And it was the day after that meeting, in Jan 5, when Marc Short informed the head of Pence’s Secret Service detail about his security concerns:
And then we get to what could ultimately be the deciding factor in whether or not this scheme was going to work: Pence’s refusal to flee with his Secret Service detail out of Capitol on Jan 6 after the mob already started storming the Capitol, chanting about hanging Pence:
So given the security concerns Marc Short expressed to the head of Pence’s Secret Service detail the day before, why was Pence so adamant about not taking the Secret Service’s advice on getting out of the Capitol when a crowd was threatening to hang him? Well, that brings us back to following details about Pence’s interactions with the Secret Service that were first reported back in July: Pence appeared to refused to leave the Capitol because he was convinced he would be taken so far away that someone else would have to take his place when the electoral vote is eventually counted and certified. In other words, Pence knew that getting him out of the Capitol under the threat of violence was Plan B after Pence refused to go along with Plan A:
“We talk a lot about this in the abstract, but, again, consider Pence in that moment. He knows how mad and frustrated Trump is. He hears Trump obsessing over the vice president’s purported abilities. He endures Trump pushing on it over and over again. And as Jan. 6 nears, that cajoling becomes public.”
The behind-the-scenes cajoling had turned into public threats in the days leading up to January 6. Public threats issued by Trump directly at Pence with an unmistakable message: if Pence go along with the plan he’s a traitor. There were public threats on the day Marc Short warned the Secret Service about his concerns and more public threats to follow, culminating in Trump’s bitter denouncement of Pence on Jan 6 and the cries of “hang Mike Pence” that followed as the insurrectionists rampaged through the capitol:
And then we get to that fascinating detail that was first report last July: Pence refused to go with the Secret Service over apparent fears that he was going to be whisked away far from the Capitol. And Pence and Short clearly knew what the implications of that move would be: once Pence refused to go along with Plan A, Plan B was to get him out of the Capitol and install someone else in his place willing to do it. A plan that was first reported on this week:
So what exactly what the rest of ‘Plan B’ after Pence was forced to flee? Well, as the Politico report this week revealed, the plan was quick simple: replace Pence with a Republican who would be willing to go along with the plan. Specifically, Chuck Grassley, the longest-serving Senator and therefore the next in line should Mike Pence become indisposed for some reason. Plan B was really Plan C(huck):
“Jan. 6: Chesebro suggested that Pence should immediately recuse from running the electoral vote count, citing a “conflict of interest” and hand the gavel to Sen. Chuck Grassley or another senior Republican senator. Then, that senator would lead the count but refuse to accept any electors in the states Trump was contesting. Instead, the senator would contend that if those states wanted to be counted, they had to rerun their elections, engage in more litigation or have their legislatures appoint new electors.”
Hand the gavel to Chuck Grassley, citing an apparent “conflict of interest” of Pence. That was the plan. A plan that was described in a memo. A memo so criminal in nature that U.S. District Court Judge David Carter described it as having “likely furthered the crimes of obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States” and ordered it released to the select committee under the “crime-fraud” exception to attorney client privilege. It was that incriminating, according to this judge. And this incriminating memo basically describes the plan Mike Pence and Marc Short barely thwarted:
You know your plan was illegal when a memo describing the plan is so incriminating that it triggers a “crime-fraud” exception to the attorney client privilege. And this highly incriminating memo raises an obvious question: So was Chuck Grassley ready to go along with this plan?
Yes, according to Chuck Grassley. At least that’s the obvious conclusion we can arrive at thanks to a highly incriminating public statement made by Grassley a day before the insurrection. Yes, during a Jan 5 exchange with reports, Grassley explicitly said he did not expect Mike Pence to be performing his duties the next day and that Grassley would instead stand in his place.
Yep, he actually just came out and admitted this a day before the insurrection. And then his staff later told reporters that they had “misintepreted” Grassley and Pence was expected to be there. So it sure looks like Grassley knew what the plan was, and only later realized it was the kind of plan that looks extremely incriminating if publicly you share it:
“He suggested Pence was not expected to attend but Grassley’s staff later said that was a “misinterpretation” and that Pence was expected to be there.”
As we can see, Plan B wasn’t just Trump’s back up plan. Chuck Grassley was clearly in on it too. Well, at least least it sure sounded like Grassley was in on the plan when he told reports on Jan 5 that Pence wasn’t expected to be at the Electoral Count ceremony and that Grassley would instead be presiding over the Senate. Yes, Grassley’s staff later backtracked on that prediction. But he was very explicit at the time:
Isn’t that a remarkable coincidence: at the same press conference where all these reporters apparently “misinterpreted” Grassley’s remarks about Pence, Grassley also goes on to make the point that any moves to challenge the election results the next day would be “legitimate”. It’s obvious what he had in mind. Even if he won’t now admit it.
And that’s also part of the context of this entire investigation: the more we learn about what was planned, the more apparent it’s becoming as to what an outlier Mike Pence really was. It wasn’t just a Trump team scheme. This was a GOP-wide scheme that included the party’s most senior senator and likely would have worked if Pence had been willing to play ball. It’s a reminder that one of the major challenges facing this investigation is the fact that it’s not just an investigation into the Trump administration. This was a GOP-wide plot, with a handful of exceptions. Including one very important exception who needed to be scared out of the Capitol with a violent mob for the plan to work.
It begins. The much anticipated prime time January 6 Capitol insurrection congressional hearings just had their first night. And by all accounts it was a pretty moving opening night featuring a number of members of the Capitol police who were directly involved in the open combat that took place that day.
We also got hints about where the hearings would eventually lead as the case is made to the public in coming weeks, including the ‘seven-part plan’ referenced by Liz Cheney. Specifically, Donald Trump’s seven-part plan. As we should expect, the focus of the hearings is indeed on Trump and establishing his direct culpability in the events that played out.
But as we’re going to see when we look at that seven-part plan, the focus on Trump also poses a rather significant challenge in truly getting to the bottom of what happened. Because this wasn’t just a Trump White House operation. The bulk of the Republican Party establishment was fully on board, along with the powerful conservative mega-donor institutions like the Council for National Policy. And as we’ve seen, much of the groundwork that went into the efforts the culminated in the insurrection was done by these outside groups. Most notably, key conservative organizer Ginni Thomas — wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas — turned out to be a central player in these organizing efforts. And in that organizing, Thomas was focused on lobbying swing state lawmakers in states lost by Trump with the idea that they should go ahead and elect their own pro-Trump slates of electors.
Beyond that, there’s the preponderance of evidence that the insurrection was ultimately needed as the triggering event that would get the votes sent back to the states for a ‘review’, with the idea that these pro-Trump electors would be sent back following the review as Ginni Thomas lobbied state lawmakers to do. So why was the insurrection needed? Because Mike Pence wasn’t going along with the plan. That resulted in Plan B: foment an insurrection that poses a direct threat to Mike Pence, forcing Pence to flee the Capitol. At that point, the pro tempore of the Senate, Chuck Grassley, would step in take take Pence’s place. Grassley would then send the votes back to the states for ‘review’. Grassley even publicly hinted at this kind of scenario of Jan 5!
And that all points towards what could be the greatest challenge facing lawmakers trying to convince a skeptical public that the January 6 Capitol insurrection was major historic crime: you can’t really tell the story of what happened by focusing on Trump alone. This really was a massive right-wing conspiracy to destroy democracy:
“President Trump oversaw a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the 2020 election and prevent the transition of presidential power.”
It was indeed a sophisticated plan. And Donald Trump was undoubtedly deeply involved with devising and orchestrating this plan. But he also obviously wasn’t alone in these efforts. The same trail of evidence that points towards Trump’s direct culpability in the plot is pointing in a lot of other directions too. This was a joint project fomented by the Republican Party as a whole. But not just the party. The actual plan was executed by the broader network of conservative power brokers and organizers operating through groups like the CNP. Figures like Ginni Thomas.
As we’ve seen, Thomas was already caught sending form letters encouraging state lawmakers to choose their own slates of electors. The letters were sent to two key Arizona law makers: Russell “Rusty” Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House, and Shawnna Bolick, who served on the Arizona House Elections Committee during the 2020 session. Thomas sent the letters using the freeroots.com website. And while it might seem like Thomas just used generic internet form when contacting these lawmakers, Thomas was no ordinary user of the freeroots.com system. For starters, the group behind freeroot.com appears to be another CNP front group. But beyond that, Shawnna Bolick wasn’t just serving on the Arizona House Elections Committee. She’s also the wife of Arizona Supreme Court justice Clint Bolick, who previously worked for Clarence Thomas and has stated he considers Thomas a mentor. Additionally, we learned that Shawnna Bolick actually personally replied to one of Ginni’s form emails, writing “I hope you and Clarence are doing great!” So the assumption that Thomas’s name was just one on a long list of people signing these forms and wouldn’t ever be noticed was demonstrably not true. These lawmakers knew who Ginni was and what she was asking them to do.
So the more we learned about these form emails Ginni sent to these Arizona legislators, the more it appeared to be just an extension of the CNP’s broader efforts to overturn the election results.
But we’re now learning that Ginni didn’t just send these form emails to those two Arizona lawmakers. At least 27 other Republican Arizona legislators also received these freeroots.com letters, which was more than half of the Republican members of the state legislature at the time.
And, again, keep in mind how this aspect fits into the broader scheme that actually played out on Jan 6: the plan to create such a large security disturbance at the Capitol directed at Mike Pence that he would be forced to flee the area, allowing for the then-pro tempore of the Senate, Republican Chuck Grassley, to step in and take Pence’s place. At that point, Grassley would send the vote back to the states for ‘review’. As we saw, Grassley was openly predicting on Jan 5 that Pence was not going to be attending the Capitol the next day. He was in on it.
So when we’re learning that Ginni Thomas’s lobbying campaign of state legislators in swing states was far more extensive than we previously understood, it’s important to keep in mind that this lobbying campaign was just part of a much broader plan to force the vote back to the states for a corrupt ‘review’. A plan that required the person playing Pence’s role to go along with the plan. And when Pence refused, the next option was to get rid of him and replace him with Grassley. That’s why they needed insurrection: to put Grassley in Pence’s place so the vote could get sent back to the states. At which point Ginni’s lobbying campaign would hopefully yield results:
“New documents show that Thomas indeed used the platform to reach many lawmakers simultaneously. On Nov. 9, she sent identical emails to 20 members of the Arizona House and seven Arizona state senators. That represents more than half of the Republican members of the state legislature at the time.”
Given that we’ve already learned that Shawnna Bolick personally replied to Ginni’s email, you have to wonder how many of the 27 Arizona lawmakers did the same.
And, again, don’t forget that while freeroots.com appears to be a generic political form letter site, circumstantial evidence strongly suggests it’s a CNP front group. So when Ginni, a major figure herself in the CNP, was using the freeroots.com forms, it was like the CNP was personally reaching out to these legislators:
Finally, note that we only learned about Ginni’s letter writing campaign because Arizona has a law allowing the public to access these kinds of communications. In other words, we’re likely never going to learn about how extensive Thomas’s lobbying efforts were in the other states:
But whether or not we’re ever allowed to learn how many other state legislators received these kinds of emails from Thomas, the evidence already abundantly clear. Ginni Thomas was deeply involved in this. As deeply involved as Trump himself. She was all in. But also just one of a myriad of key figures inside the conservative movement who was all in on this effort. Again, it points towards one of the biggest challenges facing the investigators trying to communicate the scope of this plot. Because the grand temptation is to place Donald Trump at the center of these organizing efforts. And he surely was a central figure. But it’s also clear he wasn’t the only central figure. Donald Trump wasn’t the only person willing to burn down what it left of the US’s democracy in order to keep Donald Trump in office. So if the public is having a hard time grasping the idea that Trump consciously fomented Jan 6 insurrection, what are the odds of the public ever coming to grips with the far larger plot that was actually playing out?
How do you educate the public about something that isn’t just complex but wildly outside the realm of what most people think is even feasible. It’s a major challenge. And a recurrent theme.
With the prime time congressional hearings for the January 6 Capitol insurrection schedules to continue next week, one of the big questions we’re going to get answered soon is the scope of the that investigation. Is it focused almost entirely on Donald Trump’s involvement in this vast scheme or will it be including the much larger network of right-wing forces that ultimately organized and executed the attack on the Capitol. Most notably, the Council for National Policy’s role, which appears to have been absolutely central to the scheme based on available evidence.
As we’ve seen, part of the reason Pence appears to have refuse to go along with the plan is due to the advice he was getting from figures like John Yoo who told him that, no, he didn’t actually have the constitutional authority to just refuse to certify the votes. But still, it’s not like Pence is the kind of political figure we would normally associate with a close adherence to the law. He was Trump’s VP, after all. Breaking legal norms was one of the consistent themes of his administration. So why didn’t Pence just go along with the plan? There’s a good chance we’ll never truly know.
So it’s worth underscoring one of the aspects of this situation that makes Pence’s decision all the more remarkable given the reality that the insurrection was largely as CNP-run operation: Pence himself is a member of the CNP. Beyond that, he even spoke at a CNP meeting on November 13, 2020, a week and a half after the election, where he was met with chants “Four More Years!” by the crowd. Pence is almost an archetypal CNP politician. And as we’re going to see in the following article, the CNP was holding weekly meetings in the Trump White House throughout his term. There’s no way Pence could have avoided regular contact with the group.
And yet, in the end, Pence refused to go along with the CNP’s plan, which appears to have been the decision that triggered the insurrection as a kind of Plan B to force Pence out of the Capitol before he could certify the vote. But regardless of how the prime time hearings play out, that key question is highly unlikely to be answered by the end of it: why did Mike Pence decide not to go along with the plan? Did he feel it had no shot at working? Or did he actually fear it might work, having the consequence of destroying what’s left of the US’s democratic norms? We have no idea which of those two diametrically opposed scenarios Pence was fearing when he made the fateful choice to refuse to play along. But it sure would be nice to know. After all, the former scenario would suggest we don’t necessarily have to fear the GOP trying a replay of this scheme in the future. But the latter scenario makes it a near certainty they’re going to try this again. Because whether or not Donald Trump runs for office and wins again, the CNP isn’t going anywhere. Which, again, is part of what made Pence’s decision so remarkable. By refusing to go along with the plan to refuse to certify the vote, Pence put himself in direct opposition to the power network that largely runs the GOP:
“Enmeshed in these efforts was the Council for National Policy. CNP may be the most unusual, least understood conservative organization in the nation’s capital. A registered charity, it has served for 40 years as a social, planning and communications hub for conservative activists in Washington and nationwide. One of its defining features is its confidentiality. In a town where people and groups constantly angle for publicity, CNP bars the press and uninvited outsiders from its events. All members — even such luminaries as former vice president Mike Pence, Ralph Reed and Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — agree to remain silent about its activities.”
It’s not really a surprise to learn that Mike Pence is a member of the Council for National Policy. If anything it would be surprising to learn he’s not a member. So given that Pence is a member of the organization that appeared to playing a key organizing role in the efforts that led up to the insurrection, we have to ask: just what kind of pressure was Pence experience from the broader CNP network to go along with the plan? As the article points out, the CNP was basically holding weekly secret meetings in the Trump White House, a likely a reference to the Groundswell group formed in 2013 by CNP members Ginni Thomas and Steve Bannon. It’s not like Pence could somehow avoid the pressure of his fellow CNP members. The Trump administration was operating as an extension of the CNP:
And note the kind of rhetoric that was getting spewed out at the CNP’s closed-door meetings throughout the Trump administration: as David Horowitz but it in 2018, “For all of Donald’s faults, and everybody knows them, he stood on the right side. We are in a civil war.” It’s part of what makes Pence’s ultimate decision to go against the CNP’s plans so significant. The CNP views the US as being in a state of civil war. Of course it’s more than happy to break democracy. And that’s the group that was undoubtedly intensely lobbying Pence throughout the entire post-election period leading up to the insurrection:
We don’t have to speculate as to whether or not Pence was actively coordinated with the CNP during this period. As the following November 14, 2020, Forbes report notes, Pence actually spoke at a CNP meeting the previous day. And according to reports on the speech, Pence was met with chants of “Four More Year!” during his speech. Pence responded, “that’s the plan”. Yes, a week and a half after the election, when it was already clear to everyone that Trump lost, Pence had his speech before CNP members interrupted with cries to overturn the election results. It’s part of what makes Pence’s ultimately refused to go along with the scheme to overturn the election so remarkable: He wasn’t just betraying Trump. He was betraying the CNP:
“During a speech to the Council for National Policy, a conservative think tank, Pence was met with chants of “Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!” according to a transcript of the speech put out by the White House.”
This was a week and a half following the election when Pence gave this defiant speech to the CNP. It was already quite clear Trump lost at that point. But Pence sure sounded like he was on board with the general plan to somehow ensure Trump stays in office. Of course, it may not have been clear at that point that Pence himself was going to the leading figure in this plan. Still, we see signs of Pence endorsing the idea that the election was stolen from Trump. In a speech given at the CNP. Why did Pence resist what the CNP’s demands? Did he fear the plan wouldn’t possibly work? Or it just might work, with all of the expected historic consequences?
It started with questions of whether or not Ginni Thomas was involved with the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. But we’re well past that by now. At this point the questions swirling around Ginni Thomas are focused on just how central she was to the broader conservative effort to help the Trump White House’s win through any means necessary. A leadership role that involved both her status as a key conservative organizer but also the wife of a Supreme Court justice. And a leading figure in the Council for National Policy who co-founded with Steve Bannon in 2013 the now influential Groundswell weekly meetings that played a powerful role in shaping the Trump White House’s staffing and policies.
As we’ve seen, there also all the questions around her outreach to state legislators lobbying them to overturn the election results using a CNP-affiliated ‘grass roots’ email tool.
The questions around Ginni Thomas’s role in the lead up to the insurrection have also increasingly involved her coordination with John Eastman, who was leading the Trump White House’s legal strategy. Questions that include just what their plan was since even Eastman only thought 2 out of the 9 Supreme Court justices (one of which was Clarence Thomas) would support them if their case went to the Supreme Court. And that brings us to the latest remarkable about about Ginni Thomas and John Eastman’s pre-insurrection coordination.
First, recall how a federal judge recently ordered the release of those documents to the House investigators under the “crime-fraud” exception to attorney client privilege. As we’re going to see, it sounds judge Carter specifically references emails between Eastman and Ginni Thomas when he made that ruling. On December 4, Ginn Thomas emailed Eastman, inviting him to speak to one of the groups she leads, Frontliners for Liberty, at a December 8 meeting to give them an update on the Trump White House’s strategy. Frontliners was formed in August 2020 and appears to be partnered with the Koch network’s FreedomWorks.
According to agenda notes from the December 8 meeting turned over to the committee, Eastman discussed state-level strategies for overturning the election results. Recall that Ginni Thomas’s lobbying efforts of state legislators had two rounds of emails. The first was on November 9 and the second on December 13. Was that lobbying discussed with Eastman during this December 8 meeting? That’s unclear. What we can say with certainty is that both Eastman didn’t want to talk about it. But thanks to that judge he had to share that info with the investigators and now we’re getting reports they want to talk to Ginni Thomas directly. It’s all in keeping with one of the enduring trends of the January 6 investigation: the more we learn, the worse it looks for Ginni Thomas. And Clarence Thomas, of course:
“The emails show that Thomas’s efforts to overturn the election were more extensive than previously known, two of the people said. The three declined to provide details and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.”
It’s worse than it initially looked. It’s one of the enduring themes of this entire story, which is kind of amazing given how bad everything looked on Jan 6th. But the more evidence we see, the worse it gets. Worse for both John Eastman and Ginni Thomas in this case with the court order for Eastman to turn over to investigators hundreds of documents and emails Eastman sought to shield under attorney-client privilege. Presumably criminally worse. Recall how Judge Carter ordered the release of those documents under the “crime-fraud” exception to attorney client privilege. There’s criminal activity/intent described in those emails:
And things are looking worse the unidentified group of “civic minded citizens of a conservative viewpoint,” who invited Eastman to speak to on December 8, 2020:
Who was the “high-profile leader” of this group? We weren’t told, but we didn’t have to speculate very long. John Eastman just identified the group and the high-profile leader. It’s exactly who we should have guessed, although not necessarily the group we should have expected: Ginni Thomas was indeed the high-profile leader of this ‘civic group’. And while “civic minded citizens of a conservative viewpoint” sure sounds like a description of the Groundswell group, it turns out the group was a different Thomas-led group: Frontliners for Liberty, newly formed in August of 2020.
As we’re going to see, Frontliners for Liberty appears to be closely associated with the Koch network’s key front group FreedomWorks. Of course, as the following article notes, FreedomWorks has placed none other than key CNP member Cleta Mitchell to lead its ‘voting integrity’ efforts, which is just one example of the deep overlap been the Koch network and the CNP. Don’t forget that Mitchell has also been leading the CNP’s ‘voting integrity’ efforts too. And figures like FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon sit on the board of CNP Action. So when we see another key CNP member like Ginni Thomas working closely with this newly created FreedomWorks group, that’s to be expected. It’s a pattern.
Interestingly, it also sounds like it’s specifically these emails between Ginni Thomas and Eastman inviting him to attend that December 8 Frontliners meeting that has been at the heart of the legal disputes between congressional investigators and Eastman’s legal team over whether or not he has to turn over emails. Why all the sensitivity over this specific meeting? That’s unclear, but there’s another aspect to Frontliners for Liberty that would make Ginni Thomas’s invitation wildly scandalous: the group has a weird fixation with Clarence Thomas. Not only is Ginni Thomas its high-profile leader, but its administrator is Stephanie Coleman, the wife of the late Gregory Coleman who was Texas’ solicitor general. Greg Coleman was once a clerk for Justice Thomas and Coleman and Justice Thomas are repeated pictured together on Coleman’s personal Facebook page. So a group that was formed in August of 2020 had Ginni Thomas as its leader and a Thomas family friend as the administrator. It sure feels like a group this was a joint Koch/CNP group dedicated to doing whatever it takes to ensuring Trump won reelection, including overturning the election when it came to that. And Ginni Thomas was its leader. Which is pretty damn scandalous if you think about it:
“Thomas’ email to Eastman appears to be at issue in his legal dispute with congressional investigators looking into the Jan. 6 attack. A federal judge recently ruled against Eastman, who was trying to assert attorney-client privilege to withhold emails about the 2020 election. The judge ordered Eastman to turn over ten documents, including four that pertained to a meeting on Dec. 8, 2020, which was the same date Ginni Thomas asked him to speak to Frontliners. “Two emails are the group’s high-profile leader inviting Dr. Eastman to speak at the meeting, and two contain the meeting’s agenda,” U.S. District Judge David Carter wrote in his June. 7 order.”
John Eastman sure didn’t want to turn over the House investigators that invitation from Ginni Thomas. Why is that if it was just an innocuous meeting like Eastman suggest? Might it have something to do with the fact that this group was formed in August of 2020 and led by Thomas and family friend? That would be an understandable source of Eastman’s sensitivity on the matter. Because it sure looks bad for the Thomases:
But it doesn’t just look bad for the Thomases. Ginni Thomas is a key conservative organizer and this group didn’t just represent her personal whims. It was a partnership with FreedomWorks, which has long been appointing CNP members like Cleta Mitchell to lead their ‘voting integrity’ efforts. So when we learn that Frontliners for Liberty invited Eastman to talk about the efforts at the state-level to reverse election results, that was effectively a meeting for the broader the CNP/FreedomWorks audience which was looking to find any reason to overturn the election:
And note how the turned over records for that Dec 8 Frontliners event agenda state that Eastman discussed “State legislative actions that can reverse the media-called election for Joe Biden.” So we don’t really have to wonder what was being discussed. They were talking about overturning the election results. It’s in the agenda notes:
Keep in mind that the questions swirling around John Eastman now include the revelation that he asked to be put on the pardon list following the insurrection, possibly due to his advocating legal strategies he knew to be unconstitutional. So we have to ask: did Ginni Thomas feel the need for a pardon too? Because based on the available evidence we have every reason to believe she was very on board with the same unconstitutional efforts Eastman was legally worried about. And perhaps a few extra efforts of her own.
Welp, it happened. Roe v Wade is overturned. And as we’ve seen, the CNP itself was not only preemptively celebrating this ruling months ago but the group expects it to be just one in a string of historic rulings by the current Supreme Court that rattles the foundations of what were assumed by many US citizens to be secured rights.
So with question of “What’s next?” looming large, here’s a pair of articles that serve as a grim reminder that banning abortion isn’t actually very high on the list of priorities for groups like the Council for National Policy and the other right-wing political entities that spent decades building a conservative political machine and stacking the courts with far right justices. Power is the top priority. Abortion politics is just a means to that end. And an important point to keep in mind as the right-wing lock on political and judicial power in the US plays out in coming decades: the forces that brought about the overturning of Roe don’t actually care if their agenda has broad popular support because the overturning of Roe is happening in the larger context of a decades-long subversion of democracy and slide into authoritarianism. The popularity of this agenda is beside the point. Or rather, making the popularity of policies beside the point is the point of this broader agenda.
And that brings us to the following pair of stories about dutiful CNP member Mike Pence. You almost couldn’t find a politician who better embodied the fusion of the interests of theocracy and oligarchs than Mike Pence. Until he refused to ‘cross the Rubicon’ for Donald Trump. Of course, the plot to overturn the 2020 election wasn’t just Trump’s plan. That was a CNP-directed effort through and through. When Mike Pence refused to go along with the scheme, he was effectively betraying the network of powerful conservative evangelical leaders who long constituted his core base of support. Flash forward to today with the GOP’s full embrace of the insurrection and we find that Mike Pence’s political appeal has evaporated.
So with the overturning of Roe representing the culmination of the decades of organizing by the conservative religious political forces that had long been Mike Pence’s base at the same time Pence is increasingly persona non grata in the conservative movement, it’s worth looking back on one of the more remarkable chapters in Pence’s political career. It’s the kind of story that should be a clue in terms of how far the Right is will to go with abortion restrictions: In March of 2016, then-Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed an abortion restriction bill that was so strict it required women to hand the remains of miscarriages over to the state for funeral services. And then four months later Donald Trump tapped Pence to be his running mate:
“The idea of women reporting their periods as a legal precaution sounds absurd and Orwellian. But it’s also what happens when you take a law as bizarre and medically incoherent as Indiana’s to its logical conclusion.”
That’s right, in March of 2016, Mike Pence signed into law a bill that forced the women of Indian to provide burials for miscarried fetuses. As a result, any woman’s period was a potential crime scene. This actually happened. And then four months later Donald Trump selected Pence to be his VP, and the rest of history. It’s a major clue as to how far the conservative movement is willing to take these laws. Don’t forget that the selection of Pence by Trump was seen as Trump’s way of reaching out to this crucial base of evangelical support. Pence was the movement’s standard bearer in 2016:
So now that the US is slated to see a wave of state-level laws like the one Mike Pence signed into law in 2016, it seems like now would be a time for some like Pence to shine within the GOP caucus. Instead, we find that not only is Mike Pence no longer in the good grace of Donald Trump, but he’s been unperson-ed by the Evangelical right-wing. That was the sad state of Pence’s political status on display at last week’s Faith & Freedom Conference of evangelical conservative leaders (founded by CNP member Ralph Reed). Or, rather, not on display: Normally a regular attendee, Pence was a no show. Which is probably for the best because Donald Trump did attend and had some rather nasty things to say about Pence:
“At a time when Pence’s main ideological causes are on the cusp of historic success — with the Supreme Court set to overturn the landmark abortion rights case, Roe v. Wade — he finds himself in the thick of intra-party drama. This week, the House select committee investigating the riots on Capitol Hill zeroed in on Pence’s decision to resist Donald Trump’s pressure for him to block certification of the Electoral College vote count.”
This should be a political high point for Mike Pence. And yet, as his absence from the Faith & Freedom conference makes clear, Pence is literally persona non grata in the conservative Evangelical world. For the sole sin of not supporting the plot to overturn the 2020 election. So when we’re wondering just how far the far right is planning on going now that it has a lock of the Supreme Court, the unperson-ing of Mike Pence by the conservative Evangelical movement is a big hint. Holding onto power at all cost is the top priority. Pence’s refusal to go along with the plot was a major betrayal of the movement:
That’s all part of the disturbing context of this disturbing Supreme Court ruling. The political figure who acted as the Evangelical Right’s standard- bearer in 2016 is no longer even welcome at Evangelical political events because he wasn’t willing to whatever it took to secure the movement’s grip on power. It’s why questions about “What’s next?” following the overturning of Roe should continue to include questions about when the movement behind this ruling is planning its next attempt to break what’s left of the US’s democracy.
With the sun slated to set on the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans as the far right Supreme Court majority ‘drops the mask’ with the overturning of Roe v Wade as a prelude to growing wave of lost rights, here’s a set of articles that should serve as a reminder that you can’t separate the decades-long successful drive to take control of the Supreme Court and impose a theocratic agenda from the Council for National Policy. The Supreme Court conservative majority’s agenda is the CNP’s agenda, after all. Don’t forget that the Federalist Society — which basically picked all of the current Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices — is deeply overlapped with the CNP. In addition to Federalist Society president Eugene Mayer being a CNP member, Leonard Leo — the figure who has long led that judicial nominee selection process — is also a member. The CNP and Federalist Society serve the same masters. Who also happen to be masters of the GOP.
It’s one of the features of the US’s political power structure that’s underscored in the following articles from back in 2004, 2007, and 2008 about the CNP’s influence in Republican president politics. The kind of influence that requires even relatively ‘moderate’ presidential candidates like John McCain in 2008 to completely bend the knee to the CNP. As we’re going to see, when John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate in the fall of 2008, the McCain campaign wasn’t just attempted to placate the CNP. The campaign was also responding to an overt threat made by the CNP itself to the Republican Party and all potential GOP nominees back in 2007. That would be the threat to lead the GOP’s evangelical core into a third party if the GOP didn’t nominate someone who was staunchly anti-abortion and who pledged to nominate strictly conservative judges to the Supreme Court. The Court was clearly the group’s top priority. That was the threat that quietly, but significantly, issued from a special meeting of CNP leaders held during the group’s September 2007 gathering. The kind of threat John McCain couldn’t ignore. And while McCain ultimately lost, it’s clear the CNP didn’t lose any of its influence within the party, as all three of Donald Trump’s arch-right selections for the court made abundantly clear last week.
It’s all part of context of the overturning of Roe: the ruling signified the ultimate victory of the CNP’s decades of organizing going back to its formation in 1981. But it also signified just the beginning of the implementation of the CNP’s agenda. An agenda that goes far beyond just whims of theocrats and includes all of the economic and other ‘reforms’ the oligarchic side of the CNP has long wanted to see put in place. To put it another way, the kind of libertarian-oriented oligarchs who care little about religiosity but deeply about deregulations and tax cuts are going to be feel very at home in the upcoming American Handmaid’s Tale. It’s going to be the oligarchs’ tale too. A tale of how they teamed up with the theocrats to win it all together after decades of working together under the umbrella of the CNP:
“The meeting of about 50 leaders, including Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, who called in by phone, took place at the Grand America Hotel during a gathering of the Council for National Policy, a powerful shadow group of mostly religious conservatives. James Clymer, the chairman of the U.S. Constitution Party, was also present at the meeting, according to a person familiar with the proceedings.”
The threats were clear to the Republican Party leadership: nominate a staunchly anti-abortion candidate for the 2008 election or else. That was the message delivered at a private meeting held at one of the CNP’s secretive annual gatherings. So a secret meeting inside a secret meeting. That was where the GOP was delivered the CNP’s ultimatum: nominate someone who will appoint ‘pro-life’ justices to the Supreme Court or face a third party revolt from the party’s evangelical base. It’s the kind of ultimatum that party leaders couldn’t casually ignore. Especially since those threats didn’t just include Rudy Giuliani but also John McCain, the guy who ultimately got the nomination:
Also note how the first reporting on this meeting showed up in World Net Daily of all places. Keep in mind that World Net Daily’s editor, Joseph Farah, is himself on the CNP membership. So when this meeting was leaked to the world, it was effectively being leaked by the CNP itself:
So given that John McCain was ultimately nominated, what does that say about the CNP’s grip on the GOP? Well, here’s an article from September of 2008, shortly after McCain selected far right evangelical Sarah Palin as his VP candidate. As the article makes clear, when McCain’s campaign made the decision to select Sarah Palin, The CNP was the main part of the electorate McCain was trying to please with that decision. But the McCain campaign’s fealty to the CNP wasn’t just established with the selection of a staunchly anti-abortion evangelical like Sarah Palin. As the article describes, the campaign endorsed the CNP’s push to force the GOP to adopt the most anti-choice platform in the party’s history up to that point. Despite John McCain winning the nomination, the CNP ultimately won the party’s platform:
“To make up for a history of conflict with the Christian conservative wing of his party, Mr. McCain has in some ways gone further than Mr. Bush to reassure the right of his intentions, even at the risk of spooking more moderate voters.”
It’s pretty clear who held the real power. John McCain was basically forced to jettison the ‘moderate maverick’ brand that got in the nomination in the first place and turn himself into a CNP stooge. So it’s not surprise to read that his campaign was continuing to make fealty pledges to the CNP immediately following the selection of Sarah Palin as his VP. The selection of Palin was done for the CNP:
And because this is a story about the CNP’s secretive influence, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that a number of the people quoted in this article show up on the leaked CNP membership lists, including Richard Land, who was one of the figures pushing McCain to ultimately pick Palin:
Also note how this pressure campaign from the CNP was going on throughout the 2008 nomination process and McCain apparently didn’t make a great earlier impression on the group. And in the end, we see who won: McCain ultimately had to bend the knee:
And then there’s the fact that one of the CNP’s early objections to McCain included is long-standing opposition to the influence of Dark Money on the US political system. It’s a reflection of the CNP’s function as a joint venture between the theocratic and oligarchic and business forces on the Right and a reminder that you can’t separate the CNP from the network of conservative mega-donors:
And just as you can’t separate the CNP from the conservative mega-donor class, you also can’t really separate their agenda. That’s part of the context of the historic overturning of Roe: it’s not just a harbinger of more theocratic rulings to come. The entire GOP mega-donor agenda is slated to ‘judicial review’, not just the theocratic parts. And that brings us to the following August 2004 NY Times pieces about the CNP’s influence over the Republican Party. As we’ll see, Phil Burress is referenced in the article as a CNP member, along with figures like Wayne LaPierre and Grover Norquist. On one level, it almost seems odd finding someone like Norquist — who doesn’t generally seem to be very focused on religious issues — as a member of this groupNo matter how many high profile news articles are written about this group. But that just underscores the CNP’s role as the group where theocatic and business interests intersect. Don’t forget how the CNP membership includes other figures who, like Norquist, are tasked with primarily economic agendas, like ALEC CEO Lisa B. Nelson. The CNP’s agenda isn’t just a product of America’s leading theocrats. It’s a joint production of the most powerful forces in the US. Forces that obviously run the GOP too:
“The secrecy that surrounds the meeting and attendees like the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly and the head of the National Rifle Association, among others, makes it a subject of suspicion, at least in the minds of the few liberals aware of it.”
It’s one of the grand ironies of the CNP: those who know about it realize it’s basically the power behind the throne. And yet barely anyone actually knows about it. Secrecy works. But if you know, you know. Like Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who identified the CNP as hidden leaders of the GOP back in 2004.
And yet the group clearly remained largely hidden despite this exposure in the NY Times. It’s another one of the CNP’s grand ironies: no matter how much coverage its given, somehow the public never actually learns about the existence of this group. Even after it foments an insurrection. It’s like the CNP has an invisibility cloak:
Also note how James Dobson’s 2007 third party threat wasn’t the first time he made those kinds of third-party threats. When Dobson told CNP members that he voted for a third party in 1996, a year the GOP lost, that was a serious threat. The kind of serious threat that the McCain campaign clearly knew to take seriously 10 years later:
Finally, regarding the CNP’s role as a kind of merger between right-wing theocrats and right-wing business interests, note we don’t just find notorious figures like NRA president Wayne LaPierre, but also figures like Grover Norquist. When Barry Lynn described the CNP as the secret leaders of the GOP he wasn’t exaggerating:
It’s quite a club: theocrats, oligarchs, gun manufacturers, and cynical political strategists. For Jesus, allegedly. And that’s the club that’s effectively installed the Supreme Court’s far right majority. Yes, technically the justices are technically independent once they’re installed on the bench. But as decades of reporting on the CNP makes clear, the group knows how to wield its influence quietly. Even when its out in the open and at the highest echelons of power.
With the Supreme Court’s far right majority poised to uphold the “Independent State Legislature” (ISL) right-wing legal theory in the upcoming Moore v. Harper case set for next year, here’s a set of articles that are reminder of how central the ISL theory was to the whole scheme at the center of the Trump team’s effort’s to overturn the 2020 election.
Efforts that included a last minute attempted handoff of an alternative slate of fake electors for the states of Wisconsin and Michigan that was attempted by a top aide to Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson minutes before Mike Pence started the electoral count on Jan 6. Yes, Ron Johnson’s office that made the literal last minute attempt to keep Pence on board with the plan. In other words, Johnson was deeply in on the plot and actively working for it on that day right up to the insurrection.
That’s all why the senator has been downplaying and running from questions about his role in the plot for the last couple of weeks following the Politico report about that last-minute memo sent by top Johnson aide Sean Riley to Pence’s legislative director Chris Hodgson. As we’re going to see, Johnson is dismissing it as both a non-story about something he knew nothing about that was also the right thing to do.
As we’re also going to see, the reason Pence’s office ultimately refused to go along with the scheme had to do with the conclusion in a Jan 5 memo written by his top lawyer, Greg Jacobs, concluding the scheme was criminal in nature. Here’s the utterly terrifying part that relates to the Supreme Court’s likely upholding of the ISL theory: Jacobs wrote that he would have likely advised Pence he could have gone ahead with the scheme had any of the state legislatures actually voted to send their own slates of alternate electors. Yep. They almost had all the required pieces but not quite.
Don’t forget the efforts by Ginni Thomas to lobby dozens state legislators to do exactly that and nominate their own slates of electors. As we’re going to see, legislative leaders from the targeted states — all Republicans — describe a lobbying campaign by the Trump White House for precisely this too. Alternate slates of electors creating a cloud of constitutional confusion was intended to create the opening for the Trump administration to secure a second term. It wasn’t intended to be legal. It was intended to be constitutional stressful in a manner that could be exploited.
Also recall how we’ve learned how the insurrection itself appears to have been a last ditch plot to create large enough security threat to Mike Pence that he was forced to flee the Capitol, allowing Senator Chuck Grassley to step in for Pence and do what Pence wouldn’t do and send the votes back to the states for ‘review’ by the legislators. Getting the state legislators to create their own alternate slates of electors was at the core of this scheme. A scheme that will presumably be much more viable after the Supreme Court upholds the ISL theory next year.
But there’s another interest facet to this story we’re going to look at: In March of this year it was reported that an obscure right-wing super PAC, the National Victory Action Fund (NVAF), spent $100,000 on digital ads for Senator Johnson’s reelection campaign. A reelection campaign where he faces no real opposition in the GOP primary which isn’t held until August. As we’ll also see, NVAF’s biggest funder in this election cycle is an obscure right-wing dark money 501c4 called Stand Up To China. Guess who founded the the group: none other than Cleta Mitchell, the CNP Governing Board member who is not just the architect of the GOP’s long-standing ‘election integrity’ campaign to invalidate election results through mass voter fraud claims, but also appears to be the figure who initial devised the Trump White House’s whole alternate slate of electors strategy. As we’re going to see, it was Mitchell who initially emailed John Eastman on November 5, 2020, on behalf of Trump asking Eastman to come up with the alternate slate of electors scheme. The plot arguably started with with Mitchell and ended with Johnson’s staff’s last-minute handoff attempt right before the insurrection. So when we see an obscure super-PAC fueled with dark money for another obscure group founded by Mitchell spending $100k supporting Johnson right when congressional investigators are furiously looking into this plot, you have to wonder to what extent NVAF’s $100k ad campaign represented a kind of ongoing payoff from the same dark money forces who helped finance and support the entire plot.
It’s also worth noting another interesting CNP-related tie between Cleta Mitchell and Ron Johnson: Recall the story about the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), the CNP-fueled ‘non-partisan non-profit charity’ slime machine that was pumping out dangerous disinformation about virtually every Biden administration nominee. As we saw, the AAF was co-founded by Tom Jones, a well-known figured in the conservative opposition research community whose past work includes serving on the staff of CNP member Jim DeMint. Jones worked on opposition research for Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign and also worked as a senior staffer for Ron Johnson.
Then there was the AAF’s other ties to the CNP’s ‘election integrity’ network: in its 2021 IRS filings done to get tax exempt status, the AAF states that its existing “in care of” a different organization: The Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI). As we’ve seen, the CPI is not just the employer of Cleta Mitchell — the CNP member who has long played a key role in formulating the GOP’s anti-voting rights legal theories and was instrumental in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — but it’s also now the employer of Trump’s final Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and continues to push anti-voting initiatives along with CNP members J Christian Adams and Kenneth Blackwell. Meadow’s son Blake also has CPI ties. The CPI also listed the AAF on its IRS forms, but when reporters went to the CPI’s address and requested the financial disclosure forms on the AAF that non-profit entities are required to produce, the CPI claimed it knew nothing about the AAF. So the AAF is basically a shell of the CPI, one of the CNP’s main organs for promoting ‘election integrity’ schemes like false claims of mass voter fraud.
So when we see Ron Johnson play a leading role in the GOP’s broader disinformation campaign surrounding the events around Jan 6, it’s important to keep in mind that one of his senior staffers was Tom Jones, who co-founded the CNP’s ‘opposition research’ slime machine run out of the CPI. That’s all part of what makes Johnson’s dismissals of the story of the last ditch fake elector handoff as a ‘non-story’ he knew nothing about so laughable. Circumstantial evidence doesn’t just suggest Ron Johnson likely knew about the handoff attempt. The evidence points towards him being an active and eager participant in the plot and the ongoing cover-up:
“In video and live testimony, state legislative leaders in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan — all Republicans — described repeated, sometimes daily pressure from Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Michigan State Senate leader Mike Shirkey recalled in video testimony how, after Trump tweeted out his phone number, he received thousands of messages from Trump supporters asking him to appoint Michigan’s electors through the legislature.”
It was a multi-state lobbying campaign and states with Republican-controlled legislatures that Trump lost were the target. Repeated overtures to state legislators, sometimes daily, by the Trump campaign to appoint their own alternate slates of electors. That’s what the Republican state legislative leaders of Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan all described to congressional investigators. Trump apparently even had RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel listen to John Eastman request that the RNC identify and coordinate false slates of electors when the state legislators refused to go along with the scheme. The idea was that Pence would be presented to competing slates of electors and assert the power to decide which is the valid one. It was a scheme that relied on the assertion that the Vice President has the power to choose between competing slates of electors, but also relied on a legal theory that state legislatures have the power to just declare a different slate of electors if they want to. In other words, it was scheme that relied on the Independent State Legislature (ISL) theory to create the alternate slate of electors combined with some additional powers for the Vice President choose between competing slates.
That’s the context of the now notorious handoff of a list of false electors from Ron Johnson’s aide, Sean Riley, to Mike Pence’s legislative director Chris Hodgson. But another part of what makes the handoff so scandalous is the timing. It took place on Jan 6, just minutes before Pence was set to certify the votes. It was the last ditch effort. It’s pretty hard to imagine Ron Johnson’s office would have be central to the last ditch effort if it wasn’t already deeply involved the whole effort:
And note how Ron Johnson doesn’t actually deny that his aide tried to pass along that fake elector list to Pence’s office. Instead, Johnson was just playing dumb and acting like he didn’t really understand what’s going on it was no big deal and “the right thing” to do:
Also note now the idea of relying on state legislators to overturn the election results was in the initial November 5, 2020, memo CNP Board Member Cleta Mitchell sent to John Eastman on Trump’s behalf to get this whole effort started. It’s one of those details that underscores Cleta Mitchell status as the GOP’s mastermind for contemporary efforts to overturn elections based on bogus claims of voter fraud. When Trump needed to overturn the election, Cleta Mitchell was there ready with a plan. A plan that relies on the ISL legal theory the Supreme Court is poised to validate next year with Moore v. Harper. In other words, while the plan may have been illegal in 2020, that may not be the case in 2024:
And as that Politico report last month describes, when Pence’s aides refused to accept the alternate slate of Wisconsin and Michigan electors at the very last minute on Jan 6, that refusal was based on a Jan 5 memo written by Pence’s top lawyer, Greg Jacobs, that concluded the scheme Eastman was trying to push on Pence wasn’t just improper but illegal. Something federal judge David Carter agreed with when he ordered the release of a December 13, 2020, memo written by Kenneth Chesebro to Rudy Giuliani describing this scheme. As Judge Carter saw it, the memo wasn’t covered by attorney client privilege under the “crime-fraud” exception. So when Ron Johnson asserts that everything was fine with the attempted handoff of the fake elector list, it was a handoff in furtherance of a conspiracy that was so obviously criminal Mike Pence’s lawyer couldn’t agree to allow him to go along with it. But would have if the state legislatures had also gone along with plan:
“The memo informed Pence’s ultimate decision to rebuff pressure from Trump to reverse the outcome of the election. Pence announced his decision the next day, when he traveled to the Capitol to preside over the Jan. 6 meeting of the House and Senate. His decision, in a letter that closely tracked Jacob’s memo, inflamed a crowd of thousands of Trump supporters that the president had called to Washington to protest his defeat.”
When Pence’s staff refused to accept the list of fake electors on Jan 6, it was based on the Jan 5 three-page memo written by Greg Jacobs. A memo that concluded that the scheme John Eastman was trying to pressure Pence into was illegal, something federal judge David Carter agreed with back in March. Recall how Judge Carter ordered the release of a memo written by John Eastman about this last ditch effort based on the “crime-fraud” exception to the attorney client privilege. Jacobs was trying to keep Pence’s office out of what was ultimately a criminal conspiracy:
And if it wasn’t clear that the Supreme Court’s likely upholding the ISL theory next year in Moore v. Harper is going to be an invitation for the GOP to try this scheme again, note the ominous words of Jacobs: had any state legislatures actually gone through with the scheme and appointed their own pro-Trump slates of electors, Jacobs was ready to advise Pence to go through with it. They were that close to getting Pence’s team on board.
Also note how the scheme that will likely be greatly enabled should the Supreme Court uphold the ISL theory next year: Eastman was also hoping that courts would refuse to step in and intervene to settle any questions over competing slates of electors. So when Eastman was instructing Pence to assert the powers to choose which slate of electors are valid, he was also assuming the courts would just stand aside under the so-called “political question doctrine.” Standing aside in future cases will be a lot easier after the Supreme Court upholds the ISL theory in next year’s likely Moore v. Harper ruling:
Next, here’s a report from back in March by the Center for Media and Democracy about a rather fascinating additional piece of information related to Ron Johnson and the insurrection: an obscure right-wing super-PAC decided to spent $100,00 on digital ads supporting Ron Johnson’s reelection bid. But the group, the National Victory Action Fund (NVAF), didn’t run the ads during the general election. It ran them in March, six months before the August 2022 Wisconsin primaries. Primaries where Johnson faces no serious opposition.
Why did the NVAF decide to seemingly blow $100k on Ron Johnson’s primary bid? That’s unclear, but the fact that the NVAF’s largest donor in this election cycle is a 501c4 dark money group founded by Cleta Mitchell certainly adds to the questions. Yep, the group Stand Up To China, founded by Mitchell, donated $1.6 million to the NVAF in 2021. So given Johnson’s key role in that last ditch effort to persuade Pence to go along with a plan to overturn the election results that Mitchell herself devised and led, we have to ask: was this seemingly random $100k expenditure at all related to Ron Johnsons deep involvement with the conspiracy? Or perhaps his ongoing public role in dismissing the investigation into the conspiracy? Or was it just a random coincidence that a super-PAC fueled with cash from a dark money group founded by Cleta Mitchell decided to blow $100k on Ron Johnson digital ads for seemingly no real reason back in March while Johnson was playing a lead congressional role in dismissing the Jan 6 investigation?
“Stand Up To China offers a way for GOP insiders and megadonors to push anti-China rhetoric in the midterms without jeopardizing super PACs representing the major Republican campaign organizations—all of whom are happy to raise funds from corporations doing business in China.”
Dark Money flowing into a super-PAC. Anonymous mega-donor money from the Stand Up To China 501c4 dark money group was flowing into the National Victory Action Fund (NVAF) to apparently run ads for selected Republicans. On one level, it’s an utterly generic story for 2022. But when we observe that Stand Up to China was founded by Cleta Mitchell and was the largest donor to the NVAF during this election cycle, questions about why the group felt the need to spend $100,000 on Ron Johnson’s primary back in March become a lot more interesting. A primary where Johnson faced no real opposition. Given Mitchell’s close proximity to the CNP’s larger efforts to overturn the election, we have to ask: was the NVAF’s assistance for Johnson at all an attempt to keep him nice and quiet as investigators probe the January 6 insurrection. Because it’s pretty clear Johnson knows where at least some of the insurrectionary bodies are buried:
And note how the NVAF was first registered in October 2020, but didn’t actually officially launch until February 2021. And yet it was apparently involved in the 2020 generation elections and the Georgia Senate runoffs. So this group was effectively operating in a kind of unofficial stealth mode from October 2020 up through the insurrection. It’s the kind of super-PAC origin story that raises some questions about what exactly the group was during this period in relation to the efforts to overturn the election:
How much is Stand Up To China planning on spending in support of Ron Johnson this fall? We may or may not find out. And we’ll most assuredly never find out who is ultimately footing the bill for Stand Up to China’s expenditures. But given that this is part of Cleta Mitchell’s network, we can be pretty confident about their general identity. It’ll undoubtedly be the same network of right-wing mega-donors behind the rest of the CNP’s broader agenda. A broader agenda that’s basically the right-wing power brokers’ broader shared agenda. A shared agenda of power at all costs. Much more affordable costs once the Supreme Court gets done upholding the garbage legal theories that were at the part of this ever-vaster plot to overturn the election and break democracy.
What constitutes consciousness of guilt for a man who doesn’t appear to have a working conscience? It’s one of the central questions raised by another day of explosive testimony in the congressional January 6th Capitol insurrection hearings. We got a lot more answers to key questions in today’s testimonies. And a lot more evidence of consciousness of guilt.
And that consciousness of guilt was not just repeatedly on display for former President Trump. A much larger network of figures playing leadership roles in what became the insurrection knew a whole lot they probably shouldn’t have known. Because as the following WaPo article describes, today we got the damning evidence we should have expected all along: evidence that the Trump White House and the groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers began secretly planning for a ‘wild’ day on Jan 6th weeks in advance. A leadership network that knew about these plans and also planned on keeping them secret right up until the moment Trump seemingly spontaneously directed the crowd at the ‘Stop the Steal’ Rally on Jan 6 at the Ellipse to march to the Capitol. Oh, and as we’re also going to see, a large number of this leadership network that was ‘in on the plan’ were members of the CNP. Because of course.
The evidence of today’s hearing focused on the now notorious “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th, Be there, will be wild!” tweet sent out on December 19, 2020 by then-President Trump at 1:42 am. As we’ll see, Trump had just held an hours-long meeting with ‘outside advisers’ before sending that tweet. In particular, Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell. But Trump didn’t hold that Dec 18 evening meeting with just Flynn and Powell. We’ve also learned that White House counsel Pat Cipollone was there, pushing back on their allegations about mass voter fraud and a stolen election. So Trump didn’t simply send that 1:42 am ‘Wild’ tweet after hours of lobbying by Flynn and Powell. He did it with his own counsel right there refuting their allegations.
But the scandalousness of that ‘Wild’ Dec 19 tweet appears to be far more significant than its timing at the end of a ‘wild’ meeting with Flynn and Powell. As congressional investigators laid out in Tuesday’s hearings, that tweet became the catalyst for what led up to Jan 6. It was widely heard as a call to arms by Trump’s ardent supporters and they responded by making plans. Plans to make that Jan 6 ‘Stop the Steal’ rally as wild as Trump called for. For example, recall how Ali Alexander’s Stop the Steal group wrote on December 23, four days after Trump’s tweet, that “We came up with the idea to occupy just outside the CAPITOL on Jan 6th,” leaders of the Stop the Steal movement wrote on Dec. 23 and called it the “Wild Protest”
And as we learned in Tuesday’s hearings, the morning of the Dec 19 tweet, Kelly Meggs, the head of the Florida branch of the Oath Keepers, declared an alliance between the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, “We have decided to work together and shut this #*# down”. Phone records show Meggs called Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio that afternoon. The next day, they set up an encrypted chat called the “Ministry of Self Defense,” in which they used maps of D.C. and other tools to engage in “strategic and tactical planning about Jan. 6.” Michael Flynn worked with the leaders of both groups, according investigators. So hours after Trump holds a ‘wild’ meeting with Flynn and Powell, Trump issues a tweet that results in the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers working on tactical and strategic planning for Jan 6. Pretty wild.
The Oath Keepers had their own encrypted chat group of interest: Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes set up the “Friends of Stone” (F.O.S.) chatroom. In the chat, Rhodes said anyone not able to travel to D.C. should instead launch protests in their state capitals. It’s the kind of detail that raises the question of how many other insurrections were being planned that day, especially in the swing states that Trump lost and were going to be the targets of planned ‘review’ of their results as the Jan 6 certification of the electoral vote is disrupted. Disrupted one way or another.
This is a good time to recall all the prior evidence of extensive coordinating done with violent militias like the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and III Percenters. Coordinating that included the creation of a heavily armed “Quick Reaction Force” (QRF) that was ready on that day to deliver a large number of heavy weapons to the crowd upon Trump’s orders according to Rhodes. One of the leaders of the the QRF was Jessica Watkins, who first claimed she had been coordinating with the Secret Service in providing security for VIPs at that ‘Stop the Steal’ rally that then-President Trump spoke at before the rally. Watkins later recanted after the Secret Service denied working with her, but by all accounts she was allowed into the VIP area of the rally before she was later filmed storming the Capitol. Seeming to operate parallel with the Oath Keepers were groups of Proud Boys who were also performing some sort of security role. Then there are questions about the role former Blackwater contractor Michael Simmons played in the operations. As we saw, Simmons claimed he was hired by the Oath Keepers to provide security for Roger Stone (one of the same figures Watkins claimed to be protecting). Finally, there was the “1st Amendment Praetorian” group providing security services for figures like Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell. And don’t forget the bizarre meeting between the leaders of the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys days before the insurrection in a parking garage that happened to be captured by a documentary filmmaker.
So just weeks before Jan 6, Trump tweets out his ‘wild’ tweet, the next day the Oath Keepers and Proud boys set up an encrypted channel, and within a few weeks they’re all working together, providing security for ‘VIPs’ at the rally before they lead the breaching of the Capitol. It all coalesced remarkably quickly when you step back and look at it. They all worked together and really did succeed in ransacking the Capitol. Trump may not have managed to cling to office, but the goal of far right teamwork still won the day. It’s also worth noting that now that we’ve learned about how Trump knew there were a large number of arm members of the Jan 6 crowd and not only wanted them to be allowed into the rally area past the security with their arms, but also wanted to join them in the march on the Capitol and was forced to return to the White House by his Secret Service detail, we have to ask the question of whether or not Trump was one of the intended VIPs Jessica Watkins’s Oath Keeper VIP security force was going to watch over during Trump’s triumphant march with the crowd on the Capitol.
But while the suddenly coordination of all these groups — militias with mutual grudges working with the Trump White House and groups like ‘Stop the Steal’, at the drop of a hat/tweet — might seem remarkable, also don’t forget how GOP legal strategists involved with the scheming to overturn the election, like John Eastman, ran simulations for various scenarios in October of 2020 for keeping Trump in office that involved the use of groups like the Proud Boys to help keep order in the streets in the event of massive national protests. So the use of these militias to cling to power was something the GOP and Trump White House was already thinking about before Election Day.
But it’s the tweet Trump didn’t send that might be the most incriminating new piece of evidence laid out in Tuesday’s hearing. An undated tweet drafted but never sent by Trump and concluding with “March to the Capitol after. Stop the Steal!!” was shown as evidence by the investigators. Which, all things considered, is pretty damning evidence. Trump planned on marching to the Capitol with the mob but wanted to keep that a surprise. At least a surprise to the world. It obviously wasn’t a surprise for the throngs of armed militias.
So just how many people were in on the plot? That’s one of the other major questions raised by all the new evidence shown by Investigators. Because based on tweets and texts shown during the hearings, we can now conclude that Katrina Pierson and Mark Meadows knew about the plans on Jan 2. Kylie Kremer — who was who organizing the official ‘Stop the Steal’ rally at the Ellipse with her mother (and and CNP member) Amy Kremer — apparently knew by Jan 5. Recall how Amy and Kylie Kremer reportedly used three burner phones to communicate with Pierson, Meadows, and a third unnamed individual in the final days leading up to Jan 6. Those burner phones take on far greater significance in light of all this coordinating and foreknowledge we’re learning about.
It’s worth recalling that while Amy Kremer became the organizing face of the official ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, it was a Roger Stone entity from its foundations and Kremer is close to Stone. As we saw, On November 4, 2020, the Stop the Steal Facebook group was launched by Amy Kremer, the chair of Women for America First. Kremer has previously started a super-PAC with Roger Stone’s ex-wife called Women Vote Trump. Also recall how Roger Stone was publicly telling Trump back in September 2020 to declared martial law and mass arrest his political opponents should he lose the election. After Trump’s loss, Steve Bannon’s advised to Trump supporters that they need to be willing to fight and die for Trump’s reelection. Again, don’t forget that Bannon is also a CNP member. They let him in their club. It’s that kind fo club.
We also learned during the hearings that CNP member Ali Alexander — who was leading the alternative ‘wild’ Stop the Steal Jan 6 rally that was supposed to be canceled but went on unofficially as the march to the Capitol and effectively became the insurrection — also knew by Jan 5 about Trump’s plans to march to the Capitol right after the rally. They knew. Learning that both Alexander and Kremer were in on the plans is rather fascinating in light of the alleged conflict between their two rally organizations. Recall how Amy Kremer was reportedly working closely with the Trump White House in the lead up to Jan 6 planning the Ellipse rally, and had become concerned about possible violence coming from the second ‘Wild’ rally being planned by Alexander. Kremer claims she expressed these concerns to the Trump White House and got Alexander to agree that the Ellipse really would be the only major rally that day. And yet Kremer became concerned when she learned that Alexander was going ahead with plans a second rally after their agreement. Kremer apparently became aware on December 31 of the possible violence emanating from Alexander’s Jan 6 rally.
Then there’s the strange ties between the Kremers’ ‘Stop the Steal’ operation and Alexander’s rival operation that was facilitated through one of the main financiers of the Ellipse rally, Publix heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli. Recall how Caroline Wren — the former deputy to Don Jr.‘s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle — had been raising money for the rally specifically from Publix heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli. Fancelli’s financing was reportedly facilitating by none other than Alex Jones. And in the week leading up to the rally, there were a number of changes in the plans. Changes pushed by Wren. We later learned Wren and Guilfoyle unsuccessfully pushed for last minute changes to the schedule of speakers at the Ellipse rally in order to get figures like Roger Stone, Alex Jones and Ali Alexander added to the speakers list. When Jones and Alexander left the rally early (to begin the march to the “Wild Protest”), it was Wren who escorted them away as they prepared to lead the march on the Capitol. Yep, the conflict between Kremers’ and Alexander’s rival rallies somehow got merged to the point where Alexander and Jones got escorted from the Ellipse rally to help lead the march to the Capitol.
So a week before Jan 6, Amy Kremer is getting freaked out about violence coming out of Alexander’s rally. She tells the White House and appears to get Alexander to agree to not hold his rally. We then learn that the Kremers’ financier seem to get them to work together, and Alexander and Jones end up getting a VIP escort out of the rally just in time for them to be ready to lead the march when it’s all over. Alexander was telling the truth to Amy Kremer when he promised not to hold a second rally. He and Alex Jones held a march to the Capitol and waged an insurrection instead.
At least that’s how it looks based on the evidence. Amusingly, don’t forget that Alexander recently claimed that he’s completely innocent and any militias that were coordinating with rally that day must have been coordinating with Amy and Kylie Kremers’ operation. And all that mutual finger-pointing just underscores the extent to which this was a joint effort. The evidence is in. At least enough evidence to conclude that this really was a big conspiracy. A conspiracy between the Trump White House, militia groups, corrupt GOP helpers, and a seemingly endless list of CNP members to make Jan 6 Trump’s last stand. Or Democracy’s last stand. It was definitely a last stand:
“Trump’s mood was brightest during the post-election period on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, former White House aides told the committee, according to clips from their depositions. That’s because he could hear his supporters gathering from his perch in the Oval Office, they said.”
Is an ominously good mood evidence of consciousness of intent? Because don’t forget that we’ve learned that Mike Pence effectively told Trump on the evening of Jan 5 that he wasn’t going to go through with ‘Plan A’ and simply refused to certify the electoral vote and instead send the votes back for ‘review’. ‘Plan B’ was creating a security risk against Mike Pence so large at the Capitol that he was forced to flee and Chuck Grassley would step in and do what Pence wouldn’t. So the evidence suggests Trump was already planning on creating a riot by that evening. And that’s when he was in the best mood. Again, what constitutes consciousness of guilt for a man who doesn’t appear to have a working conscience? The question looms large in this investigation.
What is clear is that Trump’s 1:42 am December 19 ‘wild’ tweet that took place hours after a ‘wild’ meeting with Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn was the catalyzing event that set the planning and organizing in motion. It was a order. A leaderless resistance-style stochastic violence order issued by the then-President to his supporters to do ‘something wild’ on Jan 6 at the Capitol to keep him in office:
Hours after the tweet, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys are declaring truces and pledging to work together. They had a joint mission. A joint mission that was going to require lots of coordination, hence all the encrypted chat rooms that popped up like the “Friends of Stone”:
But beyond the apparently high levels of secret coordinating that was taking place between the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and “1st Amendment Praetorian”, Trumps ‘wild’ Dec 19 tweet was a call to arms for a much larger group of militants. Including figures like former Matt Bracken, who warned his audience on December 31, 2020, that “millions” will be needed for storming the Capitol. Recall how, Bracken, a former Navy Seal, authored the far right Consider Enemies Foreign and Domestic fantasy novel (and eventually a trilogy) that was making waves in the far right a decade ago. Brackens novels were supposed to be like The Turner’s Diary with the overt racism filtered out but the far right ideology otherwise intact. It turns out it wasn’t all that filtered out. So when someone like Bracken can point to Trump’s tweet as a rallying cry for millions to descend on the Capitol, it’s an example of the dangerous powers Trump was wielding when he made that tweet. It was a leaderless resistance-style call from the president that figures like Bracken were listening for:
But it’s the tweet Trump didn’t send that is perhaps the most scandalous: the undated tweet that concluded, “March to the Capitol after. Stop the Steal!!” It’s the plan right there in the tweet. The tweet never sent. Does a tweet never sent constitutes consciousness of guilt for a man who doesn’t appear to have a working conscience? These are the kinds of questions we have to ask.
But that question of when the undated tweet draft was crafted looms even larger when we look at all of the evidence pointing towards numerous other figures who knew about the secret plans for a march to the Capitol right after Trump’s big rally speech. Katrina Pierson and Mark Meadows seemed to know the plans by Jan 2. How many other people knew about this? The militia leaders presumably knew. Who else?
Well, we know that Kylie Kremer and Ali Alexander knew about the march plans too. Kylie Kremer knew by Jan 4 (and we have to suspect her mom Amy also knew) and Alexander by Jan 5 about the plans for Trump’s march to the Capitol. That’s an interesting detail regarding one of the major questions long looming over Kremer’s and Alexander’s involvement in all this. Questions having to do with their levels of coordination or lack of coordination between the two CNP members. So the chatter about planned violence was already loud enough that Kremer caught wind by December 31, less than two weeks after Trump’s Dec 19 rallying cry. And both Kremer and Alexander knew about Trump’s ‘secret’ plans to march to the Capitol after the rally before Jan 6. That sounds like a lot of chatter. Alarmed chatter and coordinating chatter:
Ali Alexander, one of the main figures planning to unleash an angry mob on the Capitol that day, apparently can’t remember who told him about the plan. The plan that he and Alex Jones effectively executed. Of course. But he was correct about how “plans were changing daily”. They were. Again, don’t forget that Mike Pence didn’t tell Trump about his refusal to go along with the ‘Plan A’ scheme until the evening of Jan 5. The plans presumably did change after that. But as Tuesday’s evidence made clear, the threat of violence was part ‘Plan A’ all along. A plan to have Pence break democracy with Trump’s army standing outside to back him up. And when Pence didn’t go along with it, Trump’s army was there for Plan B. And the evidence just keep piling up that a whole lot of people were in on that plan, whether they can remember that today or not.
Here’s a set of articles that helps underscore how the network guiding the far right capture of the Supreme Court is the same network that helped to organize and execute the January 6 Capitol insurrection. The first article is a recent profile of a highly secretive conservative legal figure, Jonathan Mitchell, who has been one of the leading thinkers in formulating the legal arguments that were put on display by the recent Supreme Court overturning of Roe v Wade. Legal arguments that, if Mitchell has his way, will be used to overturn virtually every constitutional right won through the Supreme Court. Ever.
Yes, according to Jonathan Mitchell’s judicial philosophy, all rights not explicitly laid in the constitution are non-existent. In addition, legal precedent has no standing in Mitchell’s view. The fact that the Supreme Court has already rules that rights like the right to interracial or same sex marriage are protected by the US Constitution do not matter at all,j according to Mitchell. They only thing that matters is what is explicitly written in the Constitution in plain language. In other words, stare decisis is of no relevance. All of the constitutional rights won through court rulings need to be overturned.
So why is Mitchell’s judicial philosophy of any relevance? Well, for starters, he was one of the main architects behind Senate Bill 8, the Texas law that effectively outlawed abortion by setting up a vigilante-like system enabling random citizens to sue anyone involved with carrying out an abortion and was upheld by the Supreme Court in December 2021. As we’re going to see, Mitchell’s vigilante-style approach to finding legal loopholes for things that aren’t otherwise allowed is now seen by conservative lawmakers as template legislation to be used in other states on other issues.
And then there’s the fact that Clarence Thomas appeared to be openly agreeing with Mitchell’s judicial philosophy in Thomas’s concurring opinion in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling. A ruling would have never happened if it wasn’t for the decades of intense work by the Council for National Policy (CNP). Decades of grabbing power and warping the US’s democratic systems to their desires through any means necessary. As we saw in Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs, Thomas called for a range of other rights won the courts to be put up for a judicial review, including the rights to contraception and same sex marriage. Thomas’s opinion was like a shout out to Mitchell.
Interestingly, while Thomas didn’t list the right to interracial marriage in his concurring opinion as one of the rights he felt should be up for review, Mitchell doesn’t made such equivocations. As far as he sees it, interracial marriage is in no way protected by the constitution. Access to birth control either. But unlike rights like the right to same-sex marriage or even same sex behavior, which Mitchell sees as being ripe for outlawing, Mitchell assures us that the rights to interracial marriage and birth control are safe due to existing federal laws. Federal laws that, of course, could be overturn in a moment once the Supreme Court strips the public of these rights. All it would take is the inevitable return of GOP rule at the federal level and a ‘states rights’ push to declare that all these matters should be handled at the state level, something that’s entirely plausible with today’s GOP. It all points towards one of the key tactics constantly being deployed by this powerful network: assuring the public deceiving the public that there’s nothing to worry about...until it’s too late for the public to do anything about it.
So as we can see, a significant reason we should be wary of Mitchell’s judicial philosophy is simply because it’s been so wildly successful thus far and appears to be poised for further success. But as we’re going to see, there’s another part of Mitchell legal activism: his representation of far right figures like Steven Hotze in their legal crusades. Legal crusades that are ideologically in line with Mitchell’s philosophy.
Who is Steven Hotze? Well, on one level, he’s a notorious Texas-based anti-LGBTQ activist who even Mitchell acknowledges is a loathsome individual. As we’ll see in the first article excerpt below, when pressed about his law firm’s representation of Hotze in a lawsuit arguing that Christian business owners should have a right to discriminate against homosexuals, Mitchell responded, “Everyone deserves representation. White-shoe law firms represent murderers, al-Qaeda terrorists and child molesters like Jeffrey Epstein.” Mitchell then adds, “Of course, none of those law firms would represent Dr. Hotze, and they would ostracize any lawyer who does. But I don’t enforce a political-correctness test for the clients that I represent.” He voluntarily lumped Steven Hotz in with al Qaeda, child molesters, and Jeffrey Epstein. Those are Mitchell’s own words. Steven Hotz is something you don’t want to be associated with.
But, of course, Hotze isn’t just a random bigot. He was also one of the most aggressive conservative figures back in 2020 who was attempting to whip up ‘evidence’ of a vast vote rigging conspiracy. Hotze is also a member of the CNP. Yep, another CNP member who was deeply involved in pushing the idea of a stolen election. A rather notorious member after the botched October 2020 vehicular assault by a private investigator hired by Hotze, Mark Aguirre, who used his SUV to ram the truck of an innocent AC repairman off the road who Aguirre suspected of illegal ballot harvesting. Hotze has subsequently been indicted as part of the investigation into that criminal assault. That’s how intensely invested Hotze was in the efforts to proclaim the 2020 election stolen. Efforts that were clearly well underway before Election Day.
And ‘voting integrity’ efforts that included Ginni Thomas’s CNP organizing. We’ve already seen Hotze’s handiwork pop up in the story of Ginni Thomas’s efforts to lobby state legislators to nominate their own pro-Trump slates of electors, albeit indirectly: it turns out Hotze is the main figures behind the Liberty Center for God and Country (LCGC). As we saw, Ginni Thomas — a key CNP member herself — was lobbying state legislators in states like Arizona and Michigan using the political message platform freeroots.com. During a November 13, 2020, CNP workshop on how the group was going to oppose the election results, Thomas directed her CNP audience to everylegalvote.com. Everylegalvote.com, in turn, linked to freeroots.com, the political messaging platform owned by CNP operative Eric Berger and that Ginni Thomas was using to lobby state legislators into designating their own pro-Trump slates of electors. As we also saw, everylegalvote.com appeared to be a project of three entities: Russel Ramsland’s Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), the Liberty Center for God and Country (LCGC), and the “Economic WarRoom” podcast. In other words, that website Ginni Thomas directed people to during that November 13, 2020, was a product of Hotze’s ‘voter integrity’ efforts.
As we’re going to see, all three of the entities behind everylegalvote.com are CNP entities. Take ASOG: Recall the critical role CNP members Russell J. Ramsland and J. Keet Lewis played in the lead up to the insurrection. Ramsland’s private intelligence company, ASOG, was started in June 2017 by Adam T. Kraft, a former senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Starting in 2018, Ramsland became a leading GOP purveyor of mass voter fraud allegations. And in the days leading up to the insurrection, Ramsland was joined by retired Army colonel and psychological warfare expert Phil Waldron as they operated in Steve Bannon’s and Rudy Giuliani’s “war room” operating out of the Willard Hotel. As we’re also going to see, the Economics WarRoom podcast is hosted by Kevin Freeman, someone who shows up on the leaked CNP members list. Along with Hotze. And there is it: all three entities listed as “Founding Sponsors” for the now-disappeared everylegalvote.com were were founded by members of the CNP.
It also turns out that ASOG was using the LCGC to fundraise, asking donors to send money to the LCGC which would then be forwarded to ASOG. Note that the LCGC is technically a 501c3 non-profit entity, meaning donations are tax deductible. But also recall how the IRS changed the disclosure requires back in 2018 to remove the need for 501c3 non-profits to disclose their donors’ identities. So writing off donations and obscuring donor identities was probably the reason for these donor instructions.
Oh, and it turns out everylegalvote.com was directing people to QAnon content. Specifically, a Twitter thread alleging mass voter fraud created by by Ron Watkins, the leading suspect for being the real person behind ‘Q’. Because of course.
So when we learn that Jonathan Mitchell, the highly secretive legal architect of the current judicial insurrection that was heavily shepherded bye the CNP for decades, has been representing CNP-member Steven Hotze in his anti-LGBTQ crusade when no one else would want to take the guy because Hotze is so openly loathsome, it’s a reminder that Mitchell isn’t just some guy on a quixotic personal crusade. He’s a key operative working on behalf of a much larger network of hyper-powerful figures. As we’ll see, CNP member (and 2018 CNP President) Tony Perkins called Mitchell’s strategy for a judicial revolution “brilliant” during a recent appearance on Perkins’s podcast. And we can be pretty confident the rest of the CNP shares Parkins’s enthusiasm for Mitchell’s agenda. Since it’s their agenda too:
“In a rare interview, the former solicitor general of Texas insisted that underlying his mission is not religious belief or political ideology or personal animus, but an unflinching conviction that federal courts must interpret the Constitution closely and cannot declare new rights not explicitly afforded in that document.”
All of the rights granted to US citizens over the last century via Supreme Court rulings need to be invalidated. All of them. As far as Mitchell sees it, the Supreme Court has been making up rights out of whole cloth that are in no way laid out in the Constitution. Instead, Mitchell has adopted a kind of radical form of strict ‘textualist’ constitutional originalism, where only a plain interpretation of constitutional language is acceptable. It’s so strict that Mitchell doesn’t appear to acknowledge the relevance of stare decisis and the relevance of precedent rulings. Instead, all court rulings are to be determined from a textualism originalist standpoint and any rulings that don’t adhere to that are just temporary and await for someone like Mitchell and the right set of jurists to come along and correct them. So, for example, when the Supreme Court found that sodomy laws banning homosexual acts are unconstitutional, Mitchell views that ruling as just a kind of temporary judicial aberration that’s waiting the right moment for overturn. A moment that could come sooner rather than later if we listen to Justice Clarence Thomas and Texas AG Ken Paxton:
And note how it really is virtually all of the rights won through the courts over the last century at risk. Mitchell makes that abundantly clear, ironically, in his denials that they are all at risk. Because when Mitchell dismisses concerns about his judicial philosophy resulting in the overturning of constitutional protections like the right to interracial marriage or contraception, he’s simply pointing out that existing federal laws also guarantee those protections in addition to the currently perceived constitutional rights. Which is no real protection at all as long as the GOP is intent on overturning those federal legal protections at the next opportunity. And as conservative figures like Ken Paxton and Clarence Thomas have made clear, there’s plenty of appetite for removing those protections inside the contemporary conservative movement. Given current trends, it’s just a matter of time before a right-wing lock on the White House and Congress result in some sort of radical ‘states rights’ overturning of virtually every federal protection the Supreme Court allows. It’s just a matter of time. The overturning of Roe provides the template: just act like it’s purely a procedure matter of returning these laws to the states and them pretend it’s not happening when states pass egregious restrictions:
As if Mitchell’s stated goals of reversing all of the rights gained through the courts wasn’t ominous enough, note how the Texas anti-abortion law deputizing citizens that Mitchell crafted and was upheld by the Supreme Court is seen as model legislation for other states. Not just for abortion. Imagine anti-sodomy vigilante laws. Or anti-interracial romance laws. That’s going to all be on the table when Mitchell and his allies on the Supreme Court are done with their judicial insurrection:
Also note how Mitchell’s conservative credentials don’t just include clerking for Antonin Scalia, but also include his membership in the Federalist Society, the entity that has played a greater direct role in shaping the ideological makeup of the current Supreme Court conservative majority. It’s a reminder that Mitchell’s strain of judicial radicalism isn’t radical within the thinking that currently dominates the court and will for years to come. And note how Tony Perkins — President of the CNP in 2018 — recently called Mitchell’s legal strategy and ambitions “brilliant”. Because of course. Mitchell’s goals appear to be entirely in line with the broader CNP agenda:
And as we’re going to see, Mitchell’s ties to this alliance of fascists and theocrats goes deeper than his elite conservative legal reputation and membership in the Federalist Society. His law firm also appears to be a go-to network for conservatives in legal trouble so odious no one else will represent. Figures like CNP-member Steve Hotze, who Mitchell himself puts in the same category as al-Qaeda terrorists and child molesters like Jeffrey Epstein:
Yikes. What did this Hotze do that put him in the same category as child molesters and terrorists? Well, Hotze’s militant anti-LGBTQ rhetoric obviously plays a big role in why he’s such a loathsome individual. Mitchell’s joint representation of Hotze, along with Stephen Miller’s “America First Legal Foundation”, is indeed related to one of the lawsuits Hotze filed claiming his Christian beliefs compel him to discriminate against homosexuals as a business owner.
So as we can see from this profile on Jonathan Mitchell’s decades-long career of influencing from the legal shadows, much of the conservative movement as devolved into a movement of sleazy lawyers. At least that’s who is leading it at this point. Sleazy lawyers tasked wit the job of finding constitutional ‘gotchas’ that can be used to strip away rights and push forward the agenda. And, when necessary, provide legal defense for figures like Steven Hotze who is so odious even Mitchell admits the guy is kind of a monster.
Now, Hotze doesn’t just show up as a plaintiff in lawsuits involving his far right antics. Hotze has been quite active in the kind of ‘election integrity’ fraud so many of his fellow CNP members have been deeply involved in. But Hotze’s involvement in ‘election integrity’ went ‘above and beyond’. At least above and beyond what is remotely legal in an act of vigilantism.
But as we’re going to see in the following set of articles, Hotze is far from an isolated monster. Hotze was a key figure in what appears to be another extension of the CNP’s ‘election integrity’ efforts. Efforts that directly implicated key CNP member Ginni Thomas in the lobbying campaign to convince Republican state legislators to overturn the election results. As we’ve already seen, Thomas was directing CNP members during a November 13, 2020 CNP workshop to be using an obscure website, everylegalvote.com, which, in turn, directed them to freeroots.com where they can send form letters to state legislators in key swing states demanding that they appoint their own pro-Trump slates of electors.
That website, everylegalvote.com, appeared to be a joint project of three entities:
* The Texas nonprofit group Liberty Center for God and Country (LCGC)
* The online talk show “Economic War Room”,
* Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG)
It turns out all three of those entities are run by CNP members. First, recall the critical role CNP members Russell J. Ramsland and J. Keet Lewis played in the lead up to the insurrection. Ramsland’s private intelligence company, ASOG, was started in June 2017 by Adam T. Kraft, a former senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Starting in 2018, Ramsland became a leading GOP purveyor of mass voter fraud allegations. And in the days leading up to the insurrection, Ramsland was joined by retired Army colonel and psychological warfare expert Phil Waldron as they operated in Steve Bannon’s and Rudy Giuliani’s “war room” operating out of the Willard Hotel.
The LCGC — having been founded by Hotze in August of 2020 — was also obviously founded by a CNP member. Again, Hotze is on the CNP membership list. Along with Kevin Freeman, the host of the Economic War Room podcast. So all three entities between everylegalvote.com were started by CNP members, and that’s the website key CNP member Ginni Thomas used to carry out her lobbying campaign to overturn the election. So when we learn that Jonathan Mitchell is acting as Hotze’s legal representative it’s further evidence of Mitchell’s proximity to the CNP. Because of course he’s in the CNP’s proximity. His judicial agenda is the CNP’s agenda.
Ok, first, here’s an article from a few months ago about the ongoing investigation into Hotze over his role in the ‘voter integrity’ efforts that resulting in, Mark Aguirre, a private detective hired by Hotze, ramming another vehicle off the road and making an attempted arrest on a man suspected of engaging in illegal ballot harvesting. Suspicions that turned out to be completely unfounded. Hence the criminal investigation. And since it was the LCGC who hired Aguirre, Hotze is also facing under investigation.
Also note the timing of the ramming incident: before 6 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2020. Yep, the guy Hotze hired to uncover alleged mass voter fraud rammed the guy off the road weeks before election day. It’s a reminder that the allegations of mass voter fraud started well before election day. It was part of a ‘heads we win, tails we also win because you cheated’ strategy laid out well in advance of the election:
“Through a group called Liberty Center for God and Country, Hotze funded a private investigation into a conspiracy theory that Democrats had collected hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots, prosecutors have alleged. The group paid Aguirre, a disgraced former Houston police captain, $266,400 to investigate the claims.”
When Steven Hotze wants to foment false hysteria about stolen elections, he always doesn’t do it directly himself. The Liberty Center for God and Country is the vehicle through which the money financing those ‘investigations’ were channeled. Money that doesn’t just come from Hotze. Hotze has backers. So when we learn that the The Liberty Center for God and Country paid former police officer Mark Aguirre $211,400 the day after Aquirre rammed an back of an innocent air conditioning repairman’s truck off the road and held him at gunpoint in an act of vigilantism (a recurring theme with this milieu), it’s important to keep in mind that Hotze isn’t just only figure involved with the Liberty Center for God and Country. Hotze is a leading figure in a larger network of far right extremists. A network directly that, as we’ve seen, is directly intertwined with the CNP.
That’s the broader network we should be keeping in mind when we’re reading about this vigilante ‘election integrity’ effort that Hotze is getting sued over:
Also note Ken Paxton’s proximity to this network. We saw above how Paxton is already publicly voicing his intent on helping Mitchell pursue legal efforts to challenge additional rights in the courts. And here we see Hotze hosting a “Freedom Gala” Fundraiser in Houston this year with Paxton and Mike Lindell. Even Jared Woodfill, who is involved with Liberty Center for God and Country, is characterizing the indictment of Hotze over his role in this ‘election integrity’ vigilantism as a response from the district attorney’s office driven in part by Paxton’s pledge to work with the Liberty Center for God and Country on election fraud cases. And while Woodfill’s comments are largely a reflection of the kind of ‘the state is out to get us because we’re freedom fighters’ narrative these movements prefer to adopt, it’s also a reflection of Hotze’s many friends in high places. The kind of powerful friendship network that comes with being a member of the CNP:
It’s also worth noting that Woodfill was the attorney representing Hotze in his 2020 Hotze v Abbott lawsuit against state of governor of Texas over a COVID contact tracing program.
Next, here’s an article from December 2021, that gives us more background on the Liberty Center for God and Country. It turns out the LCGC was formed in August of 2020. In other words, it was set up to foment claims of a stolen election. Quietly. It was Aguirre’s ramming incident that first brought public attention to the group.
And as we’re also going to see, it appears that the distinction between the LCGC and ASOG is largely formal. They’re basically the same network, as reflected by the fact ASOG ran a fundraiser where they requested donations be sent to the LCGC, which would then be forwarded to ASOG. Keep in mind that the LCGC is a self-declared ‘non-profit’, which also means it can likely benefit from the US’s dark money laws that shield the identity of donors from the public. So when ASOG asked donors to funnel their donations through the LCGC, it’s likely doing so in part to keep donor identities anonymous:
“The criminal charges outed the LCGC, which had quietly moved hundreds of thousands of dollars in the name of preventing voter fraud in the months before the election, launching a website and fundraisers in the months before Nov. 3.”
The Liberty Center for God and Country (LCGC) was largely running under the radar for months before it was effectively outed by the lawsuit against Aquirre and Hotze over their ‘election integrity’ vigilantism. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were donated to the ‘non-profit’ in the months before the election. And that included money raised to finance a lawsuit filed by Hotze accusing Democrats of a vast voter fraud plot. That’s all part of the context of Aquirre’s vigilante actions: they were trying to obtain ‘evidence’ for Hotze’s fraudulent lawsuit. A fraudulent lawsuit alleging vast voter fraud.
The sleaze abounds in this story. At the same time, there’s no denying that Aguirre’s vigilante attack on an innocent AC repairman brought a lot of bad press from this shadowy group and effectively outed their operation. Aguirre’s actions were a complete self-own for this network. It’s reflection of just how divorced from reality some of these figures genuinely are. Not all. It’s inconceivable that all of the figures involved with the ‘election integrity’ scam didn’t realize they were perpetrating a giant hoax. But at least some, like Mr. Aquirre, did appear to be swallowing their own BS and asking for seconds:
Also note how recently the LCGC was formed: in August of 2020. It was an entity that effectively existed for one reason: to foment allegations of vast Democratic voter fraud. That appears to be the sole reason this group was formed. Similarly, the everylegalvote.com website — which had its domain name first registered on November 5, 2020 — appears to have just popped up exclusively for the purpose of contesting the 2020 election:
And it doesn’t even look like there’s a real distinction between ASOG and LCGC: they jointly fundraise. ASOG and LCGC are just different faces on the same operation:
Finally, note how Every Legal Vote’s third “Foundation Sponsor” — The Economic WarRoom — is also founded by a CNP member. In this case, it’s CNP member Kevin Freeman. The more details we uncover, the more evidence that this is all just one more operation being run by an for the CNP’s agenda. An agenda of power at all costs:
Finally, here’s an article from November 2020 about the kind of content that was getting pumped out by everylegalvote.com. QAnon content. And note the prediction made by CNP member Kevin Freeman days after the election: the far left is going to end up waging an insurrection. He was at least half right:
“After President Trump made baseless claims that Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software that local governments use to help run their elections, had software glitches that changed voting tallies in key states, the site posted a Twitter thread on the software maker by Ron Watkins, who has been part of QAnon’s inner circle.”
A thread from Ron Watkins, one of the leading contenders for the identity of “Q”. That’s the kind of content that was being pushed by everylegalvote.com. Which, if anything, is at least consistent with the kind of fiction Hotze and Aguirre were pursuing. It’s the closest thing to integrity we’re going to find in this sordid ‘election integrity’ story.
And note the ironically ominous prediction from CNP member Kevin Freeman on his Economics WarRoom podcast in the days after the election: a violent insurrection by the “far left”. That’s what he was prediction:
It’s worth keeping in mind that, based on the available, we actually should assume that creating the conditions that just might lead to violent protests by left-wing activists appears to have been part of the plan that congealed in the days leading up to January 6. As we’ve seen, it looks like ‘Plan A’ was to have Mike Pence refuse to certify the election, and the militias were on hand to quell any street protests that they expected to erupt after that happens. The use of the militias to storm the Capitol was the last minute ‘Plan B’ necessitated by Pence’s last minute refusal to play his role in Plan A. So when Kevin Freeman was speculating about an upcoming far left insurrection, it’s the kind of rhetoric we might expect from someone who already knew the Trump team was planning on blocking the certification election results one way or another. One part projection, and the other part consciousness of guilt.
And that’s all what Jonathan Mitchell’s judicial crusade should be taken very, very seriously by everyone alive in the US. The guy literally wants to strip away all of the rights won through the courts. All of them. And the group that successfully capture a lock on the Supreme Court for the next half a century clearly shares his vision for the future, even if they don’t necessarily share his candor and willingness to share this vision. It’s one of the most ominous aspects of this whole situation: the hyper-secret lawyer who almost never gives interviews is the person we have to turn to for an open discussion of into what this powerful network is actually planning.
Here’s a pair of articles that flesh out the deep CNP ties to the network of ‘grassroots activism’ websites used by Ginni Thomas to lobby state legislators to elector their own pro-Trump slates of electors and the weeks following the 2020 election. As we’re going to see, there’s another component to this CNP network of online disinformation: the “Rally Forge” astroturfing troll farms financed by Turning Points USA and Turning Points Action. And facilitated by the blind eyes of both Facebook and the FEC:
First recall how, Ginni Thomas — a key CNP member herself — was lobbying state legislators in states like Arizona and Michigan using the political message platform freeroots.com. During a November 13, 2020, CNP workshop on how the group was going to oppose the election results, Thomas directed her CNP audience to everylegalvote.com. Everylegalvote.com, in turn, linked to freeroots.com, the political messaging platform that Ginni Thomas was using to lobby state legislators into designating their own pro-Trump slates of electors. As we also saw, everylegalvote.com appeared to be a project of three entities: Russel Ramsland’s Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), the Liberty Center for God and Country (LCGC), and the “Economic WarRoom” podcast. And as we also saw, all three of those entities are run by CNP members.
So everylegalvote.com was deeply tied to the CNP. But then there’s FreeRoots.com. As we’re going to see, FreeRoots.com appears to be one of two sister ‘grassroots activist’ websites that are running off of the same web code. But where FreeRoots.com offers its services to political campaigns across the political spectrum, its sister site, Align Act, is focused exclusively on conservative causes. FreeRoots.com was founded by Eric Berger, who is described as a CNP Operative. Align Act is founded by CNP member Jake Hoffman.
Hoffman was also running social media astroturfing operations in 2018 and 2020. The astroturfing was conducted by Rally Forge, founded by Hoffman. Since 2017, Rally Forge was Turning Point USA’s highest-compensated independent contractor, paid more than $1.1m over two years. Hoffman’s campaign-related activity on Facebook was quite extensive, with one of Hoffman’s accounts alone spending $650,000 of that was spent on Facebook ads, including ads for Donald Trump Jr’s Facebook page. Recall how Turning Points’s President and Founder is CNP member Charlie Kirk. That’s part of the story here: when we read about Facebook turning a blind eye to Rally Forge’s astroturfing, it was turning a blind eye away from a big spending CNP entity.
But even after Facebook stopped turning of a blind eye — which only happened following news reports in the days following the 2018 mid-terms on the APN’s astroturfing operations — it still concluded that the astroturfing didn’t actually break any company policies, much to the consternation of some staff members. It turns out it wasn’t against Facebook’s rules to pretend to be a non-existent organization. Rally Forge was eventually banned from Facebook, along with Jake Hoffman, in October of 2020. But this was only after the troll farm was reactivated in June of 2020, powered by teenagers in Phoenix, AZ. Facebook acknowledged that the troll farm activity was done on behalf of Turning Points and another unnamed client. Even so, Turning Points faced no punishment at all.
But this story isn’t just about Facebook looking the other way in the face of blatant astroturfing behavior by the disinformation operation run by a number of CNP associated individuals. It’s also about the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) looking the other way. In the stupidest way possible. As we’ll see, the FEC was eventually forced investigate the APN’s activity following a complaint by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a non-partisan elections watchdog group, which pointed out that the 2018 astroturning campaign encouraging people to vote Green constituted a campaign expenditure and therefore required that the APN file a disclosure with the FEC. First, the FEC mails an inquiry to the APN’s fake address and hears nothing back and does nothing for months. So then the CLC files a new complaint and FEC finally mails an inquiry to a real address. The APN manages to find someone to play the role of the innocent lone individual who was behind the APN. An Evan Muhlstein responded the the FEC with claims that he was entirely new to politics and had no idea he was supposed to file a disclosure and was sincerely sorry and would never do it again. Not only did the FEC completely buy it and dismiss the case, but a commission who was appointed by Trump the month before the case write that there was “no evidence to support CLC’s salacious theories about the ‘unknown person or persons’ behind APN”. Months later, Muhlstein’s disclosure to the FEC arrives where he acknowledges Rally Forge was the company that ran his ‘independent’ campaign. This was six months after the FEC voted to dismiss the investigation.
That’s all part of the still unresolved role played by Ginni Thomas in in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A role that involved the use of sleazy ‘grassroots activism’ portals that sleazy ‘campaign integrity’ websites all created by CNP members. The CNP is just a non-step theme in this story. And disinformation. Along with impunity. One story of CNP sowing disinformation with complete impunity after another :
“Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are continuing to press Thomas to testify about her role in pressuring lawmakers to overturn the results of the election which included emails from the FreeRoots platform. Queen Creek Republican Jake Hoffman, who sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence asking him on January 5 to not accept the election results and was one of Arizona’s fake Trump electors, now seems to operate a website built on FreeRoots and has connections to the old platform’s owner.”
As questions around Ginni Thomas’s usage of the FreeRoots.com website to lobby state legislators to overturn the 2020 election results continue to mount, the questions about FreeRoots itself have largely been unasked. But as this report demonstrates, all you have to do is scratch the surface to find CNP ties. For starters, FreeRoots is owned by CNP member Eric Berger. But then we get to Jake Hoffman — himself one of Arizona’s fake Trump electors — who is both a CNP member and appears to run a virtual clone of FreeRoots, AlignAct. The only difference is AlignAct exclusively promotes conservative causes. FreeRoots and AlignAct are obviously part of the same CNP operation:
And beyond the direct ownership ties to FreeRoot/AlignAct, there’s also all the CNP-connected clients. For example, when CNP member Ginni Thomas sent those letters to state legislators using FreeRoots, she was using a page on FreeRoots initially created by Act for America, CNP members using CNP platforms to lobby for the overturning of elections. It’s not a great look. You can see the desire for all the secrecy:
Also note that journalist Anne Nelson — who has researched the CNP extensively — lists Simone Gold as a CNP member in a Jan 2022 tweet. Gold founded America’s Frontline Doctors:
And then there’s the presence of the Eagle Forum and Tea Party organizations on AlignAct. Don’t forget that now-deceased Eagle Forum President and founder, Phyllis Schafly, was on the CNP members list, along with her daughter Anne Cori, and Ed Martin of the Eagle Forum Fund. Other Eagle Forum associates who showed upon the CNP members lists include Eunie Smith and LaNeil W. Spivy. So when we learn that the Eagle Forum has also been using AlignAct, that should be seen as one more entity with deep CNP ties using this platform owned by CNP members. And then there’s the numerous Tea Party leaders who show on the CNP membership list, including Amy Kremer who organized the “Stop the Steal” January 6 rally at the Capitol Ellipse:
And then we get to a related operation run by Hoffman and other CNP affiliated individuals: Rally Forge, a troll farm set up with Turning Point USA to pretend to be progressives encouraging Democratic-leaning voters to vote for the Green Party. Recall how Turning Point USA founder and Presdient Charlie Kirk also shows up on the CNP membership list. Rally Forge was engaged in such sleazy behavior it managed to get permanently banned from Twitter and Facebook:
And as the following Guardian piece from June 2021 describes, that teenage-powered troll farm revealed in 2020 was just one of the sleazy campaign tactics being carrying out by Jake Hoffman’s Rally Forge on behalf of Turning Points. Sleazy tactics that included spending nearly $2,500 on Facebook ads days before the 2018 mid-terms for a fake group, American Progress Now (APN), that was trying to encouraging Democrats to vote for the Green Party. APN’s Facebook page was administered by Hoffman and two other individuals with Turning Points ties. The troll farm was soon discovered, prompting a Facebook investigation that resulting in the three admins’ extra Facebook accounts being deactivated. Just the extra ones. They even gave them advanced warning before the deactivation.
As we’ll see, it was completely obvious that APN was a creation of Hoffman and Turning Points. It was blatant inauthentic activity. And yet Facebook’s staff concluded that this didn’t actually violate Facebook’s policies because there were no rules against pretending to be an entity that didn’t exist. Turning Points was in no way punished by Facebook at the end of this investigation.
Another important detail in all this is that Turning Points was spending heavily on Facebook ads and Rally Forge was the entity through which Turning Points was challenging the bulk of this spending. So when Facebook was playing dumb and going easy on this blatant inauthentic activity, they were doing it for a big spending customer. But, of course, we don’t need to point to Turning Points big spending to understand why Facebook may have wanted to go easy on the group. Facebook’s deep ties to the Republican Party that were put on display during the 2016 election and all the right-wing inauthentic behavior openly tolerated by Facebook make it clear that the platform has an unspoken internal policy of favoring right-wing disinformation and bad actions. The kid gloves used against Rally Forge and Turning Points are just one more example of that.
Now, Rally Forge was eventually banned from Facebook, along with Jake Hoffman, in October of 2020. But this was only after the troll farm was reactivated in June of 2020, powered by teenagers in Phoenix, AZ. Facebook acknowledged that the troll farm activity was done on behalf of Turning Points and another unnamed client. Turning Points faced no punishment at all.
And we’ll see, the FEC was eventually forced investigate the APN’s activity following a complaint by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC). Except it wasn’t an investigation so much as it was an exercise in playing dumb. Playing dumb about a network that is essentially the same group behind the network of ‘grassroots activism’ websites FreeRoots.com, Align Act, and everylegalvote.com. A network with the CNP’s fingerprints all over it. So when we’re reading about another example of Facebook and the FEC ignoring sleazy campaign tactics that break the rules and campaign finance law, it’s important to keep in mind that this is another example of the CNP sowing disinformation and undermining democracy with near impunity. In other words, the CNP’s insurrection was preceded by a lot of anti-democracy red flags fueled by a complete lack of any consequences:
“Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at CLC, said: “This is an example of why disclosure is so important in elections: swing state voters who saw ‘America Progress Now’ ads promoting Green party candidates would’ve had no idea that they were the handiwork of Republican political operatives. The FEC’s job is to enforce the transparency laws and protect voters’ right to know who is trying to influence them, but the agency here failed to conduct even a minimal investigation.””
Like so many stories, the big story isn’t this story. The big story is that the story is just an example of what must be rampantly going on unreported all the time. In this case, blatant inauthentic social media astroturfing like the kind RallyForge was engaging days before the 2018 midterms with its “American Progress Now” (APN) social media campaign. With the US’s post-Citizens United Dark Money rules, hiding the identities of the people who ultimately funded these operations is easier to avoid than ever.
But as the story of Facebook’s belated crackdown on RallyForge’s inauthentic behavior, a crackdown it was almost forced to do when repeatedly pressed on this issue, the problem isn’t just the US’s dark money laws that facilitate the anonymous financing of this kind of activity. It’s also a problem with the apparent lack of any real enforcement against this activity even when it’s in plain sight. Whether it’s Facebook or the FEC tasked with doing the enforcing. In the case of Facebook, there was simply no policies against pretending to be a group that doesn’t exist, a policy that was being abused not just be political outfits but governments like the right-wing government of Honduras. Recall how inauthentic Facebook behavior by right-wing forces connected to the Honduran government appeared to be the organizing force behind the 2018 migrant caravan that roiled US politics just in time for the 2018 mid-terms. We later learned that Facebook knew about this inauthentic behavior by the Honduran government but let it continue for another 11 months. Also recall how Sophie Zhang claims that Facebook planned on cracking down on inauthentic behavior it discovered on its platform in India until it discovered it was the right-wing governing BJP doing it. Fostering inauthentic behavior like this is part of Facebook’s business model. At least when it’s right-wing inauthentic behavior:
Facebook’s bad faith behavior when it came to Rally Forge’s astroturfing antics started from the beginning, days after the 2018 midterms, when the APN’s campaign was reported on and it was completely obvious to Facebook that APN was a Rally Forge operation. The administrators of the APN Facebook Pages were Rally Forge founder Jake Hoffman, Connor Clegg and Colton Duncan, who also served as Turning Point USA’s Facebook page administrators. And Clegg and Hoffman administered the Facebook page for Turning Point USA founder and president (and CNP member) Charlie Kirk. The nature of APN wasn’t a real mystery. Facebook was just playing dumb because that’s it’s business model. At least that’s it’s business model for right-wing astroturfing operations since those are the examples that keep getting uncovered:
But there’s another sleaz angle to this whole story to observe: Jake Hoffman was a big spender on Facebook ads. One of his accounts spent ~$650k on Facebook ads on behalf of 40 pages, includes the official page of Donald Trump Jr. So when Facebook stumbled upon suspected inauthentic behavior by APN only to discover Jake Hoffman was one of the APN administrators, they business side of Facebook had to realize that they were dealing with an entity that was spending a lot of money on its platform:
Also note how, when Facebook did belatedly deactivate the extra accounts of Hoffman, Duncan, and Clegg in 2018, it was only after providing the three offenders with advanced notice. These were clearly big-spending valued customers. And yet, despite concluding that these extra accounts warranted being deactivated, Facebook’s staff nonetheless concluded that existing company policies had not been violated because there was no policy against pretending to be an organization that doesn’t exist. In other words, inauthentic behavior was just fine, as long as you didn’t pretend to be a real person or entity. Facebook just kept coming up with one excuse after another to justify the inauthentic behavior it knew was taking place on its platform. At least when it involved the inauthentic behavior of right-wing groups spending big:
And when Facebook did eventually issue a permanent ban for Hoffman and Rally Forge in October 2020, it was only after Rally Forge was discovered to have set up a new troll farm operating out of Phoenix, AZ, in June of 2020 operated by teenagers. And even then, no action was taken against Turning Point USA or Turning Point Action despite the fact that Turning Point USA was identified as the one of the clients paying for this trolling. Nor did Facebook publicly disclose that Rally Forge had engaged in fraudulent behavior in 2018 on Turning Point’s behalf. Turning Point USA can do no wrong in the eyes of Facebook:
And note how, when faced with questions about Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action’s involvement with the 2018 astroturf Rally Forge campaign, Turning Point USA denied the involvement of either Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action in any involved with the astoturfing. But when faced with questions about the restarting of the astroturfing troll farm in the June 2020, Turning Point USA deflects blame to Turning Point Action and acts like they are completely separate entities. Which is a reminder that the real troll farm in this story is Facebook and this broader CNP network that is endlessly gaslighting us and playing the public for fools:
Oh, but there’s one more significant troll in this story: the FEC. Just when you think no organization to do a more effective job than Facebook of playing dumb, the FEC comes along. Because while those 2018 APN ads encouraging Democrats to vote Green may not have violated Facebook’s rules, they did constitute a campaign expenditure since they advocated for a party, and that means the ‘APN’ was required to file a disclosure wit the FEC. Which, if course, it hadn’t done. So when the FEC is finally forced to investigate this following a complaint filed by the campaign finance watchdog group Campaign Legal Center (CLC), the ‘APN’ somehow managed to find Evan Muhlstein to play the role of being the innocent figure behind the group. Muhlstein proceeds to file what are obviously criminally fraudulent statements that make no mention of Turning Point. And the FEC pretends to buy this story completely. When it comes to Turning Point’s fraudulent behavior everyone keeps playing dumb:
And when the FEC initially opened its investigation, that investigation appeared to consist of sending a letter to a non-existent address and then doing nothing when it heard nothing back. It was only following a another CLC complaint that the FEC got in contact with Muhlstein, who completely lied in his written replies, making no mention of the role Rally Forge played in his $2,467.54 ad campaign. His “sincere apology” was obviously insincere. But the SEC voted to dismiss the investigation anyway:
FEC Commissioner James “Trey” Trainor even went out of his way to explicitly state his belief that the APN really was this completely independent operation “and no evidence to support CLC’s salacious theories about the ‘unknown person or persons’ behind APN”. Months later, Mulhstein’s disclosure to the SEC would finally arrive admitting that his “independent expenditure” had been made through Rally Forge. How could Commissioner Trainor by that gullible? Well, keep in mind that Trainor was confirmed to the FEC in May of 2020, so he had just been nominated by then-President Trump before writing this outlandish letter. It was highly motivated gullibility:
What will it take for the FEC to seriously investigate this? Well, we may never find out since Rally Forge and Jake Hoffman were finally kicked off Facebook in October of 2020. But with Turning Points facing zero repercussions, it’s just a matter of finding another CNP member to carry on with the effort under a new corporate shell. And as we’ve seen, there’s always another CNP member. It’s an exclusive club, but still a pretty big club too. And a kind of “Who’s Who” of people working to undermine democracy. And the kind of club that knows how to get what it wants. And it wants disinformation. Disinformation designed to sow chaos and discord around elections. Which is convenient for the CNP since Facebook and FEC both seem to want its disinformation too.
One of the main features of ‘Project Blitz’ is right in the name: it’s a blitzkrieg. A full spectrum multi-pronged stealth assault on the US’s education system with the goal of enforcing a far right corporatist Christian fundamentalist narrative on the US classrooms. One think-tank initiative and state-mandated curriculum change at a time. But unlike military blitzkriegs, this one isn’t intended to end until the war is over. It’s an unrelenting stealth blitzkrieg of awful ideas put into action.
So here’s an update to that ongoing stealth blitzkrieg: Civics Alliance and the “American Birthright” curriculum ‘template’ being peddled to state legislatures and governors. Peddled as a template that should be imposed by those legislatures and governors on local school districts. The “American Birthright” prescription also calls for the federal government to withdrawal from all regulation of K‑12 content. Licensing standards for teachers are also to be done away with.
Now, there doesn’t appear to be any reporting indicating that Civic Alliance is part of Project Blitz, but when we look at the institutions and individuals involved it’s pretty obviously part of the same overall agenda because this is clearly an extension of the Council for National Policy’s Project Blitz. It’s the same network pushing the same agenda.
We also find Christopher Rufo involved with the effort, as we should expect. Recall how Rufo was the figure who formulated the right-wing attempt, largely successful attempt, to create a hysteria over ‘Critical Race Theory’ in classrooms. The FRC began running workshops on how to fuel the CRT hysteria. It sounds like Rufo has been particularly aggressive in pushing the idea that teacher licensing should be done away with. Because of course. It’s a formula for getting rid of teachers unions and teachers and replacing them with random lunatics willing to teach a radical curriculum.
Civics Alliance was formed in 2021 as a spinoff of the National Association of Scholars (NAS). The NAS has key CNP-member Ginni Thomas on its board. Interestingly, there’s another figured involved with Civics Alliance who showed up in the context of Ginni’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election: Arizona state Rep Shawnna Bolick. As we saw, Bolick was one of the state representatives who Thomas lobbied to overturn the 2020 election results using the Freeroots.com ‘grassroots’ online portal. Bolick replied to Thomas’s letter with a personalized reply. As we saw, the FreeRoots.com platform wasn’t just some random grassroots civics outreach platform. It was a CNP operation. As we also saw, 29 Arizona state lawmakers were emailed by Thomas in her efforts to overturn the election results. It’s unclear how many of the other state lawmakers personally wrote to Thomas. Bolick is the only one we know who did that. The whole episode points at a particularly close working relationship between Thomas and Bolick, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that Thomas and Bolick reportedly worked together in the creation of these “American Birthright” standards.
It’s also worth noting how Bolick and CNP member Cleta Mitchell — the chief legal strategist behind the GOP’s efforts to overturn elections — co-chaired a high-level working group strategized on promoting the idea that state legislatures have the constitutional authority to select their own slates of electors in August of 2019. So when we read about how the “American Birthright” agenda is pinning its hopes on convincing state legislatures and governors mandate these standards on local communities, it’s worth keeping in mind that it include figures like Ginni Thomas and Shawnna Bolick who are very experienced with advancing novel theories about powers of state legislatures.
And then there’s the other institutional affiliations to Civics Alliance, brimming with CNP connections. For starters, the Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College are apparently deeply involved. Note that the the president of Hillsdale College, Dr. Larry P. Arnn, is also the co-Founder of the Claremont Institute. And a member of the CNP. In addition, CNP member Douglas A. Jeffrey is the VP for External Affairs at Hillsdale College and the Former Executive VP for Claremont Institute.
Recall one of the stories were we saw the NAS show up recently and the Claremont Institute: The new President of the Heritage Foundation, Dr. Kevin Roberts, is both a member of the CNP and the NAS. Also recall how Roberts is the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) and how the TPPF was found to be running the “79 Days report” election simulations in the final weeks of the 2020 election in coordination with the Claremont Institute. The Claremont Institute happens to have John Eastman, one of the central figures in developing legal justifications for the events that led up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. So when we learn that someone like Kevin Roberts is involved with the NAS and is CEO of an organization that was running election simulations with the Claremont Institute, that gives us a sense of the kind of ‘scholarship’ the group is representing.
Members of the Family Research Council (FRC) and Discovery Institute are also apparently involved. The FRC members who show up on the CNP membership list include Thomas R. Anderson, Michael “Mike” Baller, Timothy Throckmorton, Executive VP Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” G. Boykin, former board member (and mother of Erik Prince) Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, VP for Strategic Initiatives Paul A. Fitzpatrick, president of the FRC (and former president of the CNP) Tony Perkins. Discovery Institute President Steve Buri shows up on the CNP members list. Also note that the institute has been heavily financed by the family foundation of CNP member Howard Ahmanson, Jr.. So the founders and leaders of both the Discovery Institute and the Claremont Institute are heavily overlapped with the CNP.
Richard Viguerie and multiple staffers associated with Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum are also reportedly involved with the creation of the “American Birthright” standards. Recall how Viguerie isn’t just a CNP member. He’s also a CNP co-founder. The late Phyllis Schlafly and her daughter, Anne Cori, both show up on the CNP members list. Other CNP members with Eagle Forum ties include Eunie Smith, LaNeil W. Spivy, Ed Martin, and Khadine L. Ritter. Once again, when we pull back the curtain of a new right-wing ‘civics’ group, we find out its the handiwork of a bunch of CNP members
That’s the network advancing a Christian Nationalist curriculum standard. The usual suspects. And as usual, these usual suspects are succeeding with their agenda. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has already championed the curriculum for Florida’s public schools. And Tennessee’s governor Bill Lee is planning on opening up 50 publicly funded charter schools that draw on the Hillsdale College’s “1776 Curriculum” program. Wheels are in motion for this agenda. An agenda that is both hyper-stealth and right in our faces, which is what a secret campaign by powerful forces to reshape society feels like:
“While it claims to represent an ideologically neutral, apolitical history, the document holds that most instruction that references “diversity, equity and inclusion” or “social justice” amounts to “vocational training in progressive activism” and “actively promote[s] disaffection from our country.” It heralds Ronald Reagan as a “hero of liberty” alongside Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. Its proposed lessons in contemporary U.S. history include Reagan’s revitalization of the conservative movement, Bill Clinton’s impeachment, “Executive amnesties for illegal aliens” and the “George Floyd Riots.””
A document describing an “ideologically neutral, apolitical history” curriculum guide that just so happens to elevate Ronald Reagan to “hero of liberty” status alongside Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. It’s the kind of ‘template’ for state education standards that we should expect from this network. And as the recent reports out Florida make clear, this “American Birthright” curriculum is already finding takers:
The entity behind “American Birthright”, The Civics Alliance, is itself a recent offshoot from another entity, the National Association of Scholars (NAS), which has other than key CNP-member Ginni Thomas on its board. And look who else we see involved with the creation of these standards: Arizona state Rep Shawnna Bolick. As we saw, Bolick was one of the state represenatives who Thomas lobbied to overturn the 2020 election results using the Freeroots.com ‘grassroots’ online portal. Bolick replied to Thomas’s letter with a personalized reply. As we also saw, 29 Arizona state lawmakers were emailed by Thomas in her efforts to overturn the election results. It’s unclear how many of the other state lawmakers personally wrote to Thomas. Bolick is the only one we know who did that. The whole episode points at a particularly close working relationship between Thomas and Bolick, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that Thomas and Bolick reportedly worked together in the creation of these “American Birthright” standards:
And then there’s the other institutional affiliations to Civics Alliance, brimming with CNP connections. The Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College are apparently deeply involved. Note that the the president of Hillsdale College, Dr. Larry P. Arnn, is also the co-Founder of the Claremont Institute. And a member of the CNP. In addition, CNP member Douglas A. Jeffrey is the VP for External Affairs at Hillsdale College and the Former Executive VP for Claremont Institute. Members of the Family Research Council (FRC) and Discovery Institute are also apparently involved. The FRC members who show up on the CNP membership list include Thomas R. Anderson, Michael “Mike” Baller, Timothy Throckmorton, Executive VP Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” G. Boykin, former board member (and mother of Erik Prince) Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, VP for Strategic Initiatives Paul A. Fitzpatrick, president of the FRC (and former president of the CNP) Tony Perkins. Discovery Institute President Steve Buri shows up on the CNP members list. Also note that the institute has been heavily financed by the family foundation of CNP member Howard Ahmanson, Jr.. So the founders and leaders of both the Discovery Institute and the Claremont Institute are heavily overlapped with the CNP. We also find Christopher Rufo involved with the effort, as we should expect. Recall how Rufo was the figure who formulated the right-wing attempt, largely successful attempt, to create a hysteria over ‘Critical Race Theory’ in classrooms. The FRC began running workshops on how to fuel the CRT hysteria. And then there’s Richard Viguerie and multiple staffers associated with Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. Recall how Viguerie isn’t just a CNP member. He’s also a CNP co-founder. Phyllis Schlafly and her daughter, Anne Cori, both show up on the CNP members list. Other CNP members with Eagle Forum ties include Eunie Smith, LaNeil W. Spivy, Ed Martin, and Khadine L. Ritter. Almost without fail, when we pull back the curtain of a new right-wing ‘civics’ group, we find out its the handiwork of a bunch of CNP members. That’s what a vast right-wing conspiracy looks like:
And returning to the observation of Ginni Thomas’s and Shawna Bolick’s role in creating these ‘standards’, note how the plans for getting these standards imposed on classrooms appears to create a requirement that all academic standards be approved by the governor and state legislatures. You have to wonder how long before the Right’s favorite new pet legal theory — the Independent State Legislature theory of election law — gets applied to state education standards:
Which state is next? We’ll find out. It’s just a matter of time before another Republican state government falls under the influence of the most powerful network in US politics. So we will undoubtedly get plenty of updates on the evolution of the “American Birthright” curriculum. The network behind this plays a long game. Long enough to take over the education curriculum one state at a time. And then presumably wipe that curriculum of any mention of this network’s deep involvement in the Jan 6 insurrection and ongoing capture of the economy and government.
Have we reached peak-freakout yet over the the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago? Let’s hope so, because the cries for taking arms and civil war emanating from the right-wing in the immediate wake of the news about the execution of the search warrant was infused with a kind of organized outrage that suggested the freakout had the kind of momentum to build into something worse. Something like widespread stochastic terrorism directed against law enforcement stoked on by the increasingly mainstreamed extremist voices dominating right-wing commentary in the US.
So with the violent outrage over the raid only growing by the day, it’s worth asking how the Council for National Policy (CNP) is responding to Donald Trump’s growing legal peril. It’s a question we can readily answer given the number of CNP members who routinely show up in the media. And it’s more or less what we should expect. As far as the CNP members like Tony Perkins, Charlie Kirk, or Tim Wildmon are concerned, the raid was an illegitimate actions carried out by an illegitimate government. Perkins suggested the FBI has been so politicized that this was all political. Wildmon asserted that the judge who issued the search warrant — Bruce Reinhardt — didn’t actually have the authority to issue the warrant and wasn’t a real judge. And last but not least, Kirk declared Mar-a-Lago to be “a core point of American history” which was now desecrated.
Granted, that’s just three of the hundreds of known CNP members, but it’s not like we’re hearing about any CNP members with a different message. Or anyone else still welcome inside the Republican Party. And that’s why we can be pretty confident that the wildly hysterical response to the raid is more or less shared by the rest of the CNP. Because of course. CNP’s message is the GOP’s message. An increasingly violent insurrectionary message:
“On the night of the raid, Tony Perkins, president of the leading Christian right political organization the Family Research Council, tweeted, “Who trusts the FBI to pursue justice? The agency has become so politicized that even if their actions were justified half the nation still would not trust them.” The next day, Franklin Graham, scion of the evangelist Billy Graham, also stoked distrust of the FBI, invoking the 1992 standoff at the Ruby Ridge compound of the anti-government, white supremacist extremist Randy Weaver. “Last night as we watched the events that unfolded at Mar-a-Lago, I couldn’t help but think that the FBI and DOJ are losing credibility and the trust of the American people again,” Graham wrote on Facebook. He then invoked the conspiracy theory, now pervasive in right-wing circles, that new funding in the Inflation Reduction Act to boost collection of taxes owed by the wealthy was “a step in weaponizing the IRS to act against people, organizations, and businesses who have a voice of dissent against government agendas.””
As we can see, it didn’t take long for leading figures on the Christian right to chime in on the Mar-a-Lago raid. Figures like Tony Perkins and Franklin Graham. And as we can also see, that commentary was almost entirely hysterics and allusions to civil war. So it should come as no surprise to observe that a large number of the leading Christian nationalist figures engaged in this commentary are members of the CNP. As we’ve seen, Perkins was even the CNP President as recently as 2018. And while Franklin Graham doesn’t show up on the leaked CNP membership lists, Tom Phillips — Franklin Graham’s senior aide and the VP of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association — does appear on the membership list.
And then there’s CNP-member Charlie Kirk, who characterized the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago as the desecration of a “core point of American History”. It really would be hard to be more over-the-top:
Finally, there was the CNP member Tim Wildmon, of the American Family Association. Wildmon seemed to suggest that the judge who issued the search warrant, Bruce Reinhardt, wasn’t a legitimate judge in a position to issue that warrant. Now, as we’ve seen, Reinhardt does have the troubling history of having been a federal prosecutor who retired in 2008 only to join Jeffrey Epstein’s defense team. And that alone should have provided Wildmon ample fodder to engage in all sorts of dark speculation. But Wildmon instead appeared to take a different approach of portraying the whole raid as some sort of illegal government action:
Now, to get a better sense of how Tim Wildmon and his AFA platform fits in the larger CNP network, here’s an SPLC profile of Wildmon from back in 2015. As we can see, Wildmon was operation a thriving internet-based media empire with a $20 million annual budget and multiple internet-based TV channels. That was in 2015. Pre-Trump. The AFA’s media presence is presumably larger and more extreme by now. And when we look at the list of guest Wildmon was showcasing on the AFA’s platform it was just one CNP member after another. Each one a lunatic theocratic extremist:
“Tim Wildmon is the son of former Methodist minister Donald Wildmon, who left the ministry to form the National Federation for Decency in 1977. After claiming that Jews “heavily influence” Hollywood and that Hollywood is actively hostile to Christians, he was widely accused of anti-Semitism, even by many conservative Christian leaders. In 1988, after changing his group’s name to the American Family Association, Donald Wildmon expanded its scope far beyond its original focus on fighting pornography and profanity in television and movies. AFA was rebranded as a group that aimed to promote “traditional moral values” with a major focus on fighting what it calls “the homosexual agenda.””
Yes, Wildmon’s dad, Donald Wildmon, was known for his wild “anti-Christian Jews control Hollywood” anti-Semitism. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. And yet despite his extremist history, Tim Wildmon remains a frequent mainstream commentator. But beyond that, he’s used his substantial AFA media platform to showcase an array of extremists. Extremist who keep showing up on the CNP membership list: Michael Farris , Joseph Farah, and Mathew Staver all show up on the leaked membership list. It’s a reminder that the CNP is basically an organized network of extremists. Increasingly mainstream extremists:
If you’re an outspoken bigot of a Christian persuasion, there’s a club for you. A club filled with other Christian bigots, many who happen to have media platforms. Granted, these are all basically fake Christians animated by worldviews that would make Baby Jesus cry a river. But organized fake bigoted Christianity is more less the animating force in the contemporary Republican Party. That and the worship of Donald Trump as a god-sent earthly change-agent. At least that’s the public messaging. The real agenda is obviously an amoral worship of money and power. But in terms of the public messaging from CNP the message is clear: Donald Trump is God’s chosen leader, and any threat to Trump is an attack on the Christian foundations of the US. In other words, the same message the CNP network had during God’s insurrection not too long ago.
It turns out Ginni Thomas had no organizing role at all in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, including no organizing role in the lobbying campaign of state legislator via the FreeRoots.com website she was involved with. At least that’s the new spin from Ginni Thomas, delivered via Mark Paoletta — a longtime close associate of the Thomases — who recently told reporters that Thomas played no role in organizing the email campaign to Arizona lawmakers and did not draft or edit the form letters she sent. Paoletta also downplayed the invitation Thomas sent to John Eastman to a December 8, 2020 meeting with Thomas’s “Frontliners for Liberty” group as simply an invitation to speak, not an endorsement of Eastman’s views or “any indication of a working relationship.” Yep.
That’s the new spin we’re getting in a recent report in the Washington Post revealing for the first time how Ginni Thomas’s lobbying campaign of state legislators included Wisconsin’s Republicans. In particular, state Sen. Kathy Bernier, then chair of the Senate elections committee, and state Rep. Gary Tauchen. The two received emails encouraging them to ‘follow their constitutional duties’ at the same time at least 29 of Arizona’s Republican state legislators received the same email, sent through the CNP’s FreeRoots.com online platform.
We’re also learning that Thomas was the fourth out of 30 people to send the exact same form letter to all these state legislators. The first person to send them was a Stephanie Miller Coleman. Recall where we also saw Coleman pop up in this sordid affair: Coleman happens to be a co-administrator along with Thomas in the group Frontliners for Liberty group. As we saw, the Frontliners for Liberty group was only formed in August of 2020 in association with FreedomWorks. Coleman is the widow of the late Gregory Coleman who was Texas’ solicitor general. Greg Coleman was once a clerk for Justice Thomas and Coleman and Justice Thomas are repeated pictured together on Coleman’s personal Facebook page. So a group that was formed in August of 2020 had Ginni Thomas as its leader and a Thomas family friend as the administrator. When Judge Carter ordered the release of John Eastman’s emails to congressional investigators back in March, he specifically referenced emails between Thomas and Eastman inviting Eastman to a December 8th Frontliners meeting as well as emails describing that meeting agenda. An agenda that included plans to talk about how state legislatures could be used to change the election results. Whatever Judge Carter saw in those emails was so incriminating that he ordered their release under the “crime-fraud” exemption to attorney client privilege.
So emails involving the Frontliner’s invitation for a Dec 8 meeting John Eastman were so incriminating a judge ordered them released, and now we’re learning that the two co-administrators of the Frontliners group — both with close ties to Justice Clarence Thomas — were the first and fourth out of 30 people to send the same form letters to state legislators lobbying them to play their role in the scheme Eastman was proposing. A scheme to have Mike Pence block the certification of the vote and send the issue back to the states. And a scheme that involved multiple paths that could land the scheme before the Supreme Court. It’s the kind of update that only adds to the many questions about the full scope of the lobbying campaign Ginni Thomas was leading.
On one level, to learn that Ginni Thomas used the FreeRoots.com portal to also target Wisconsin state legislators is almost a non-story only because it’s entirely what we should expect at this point. But the fact that we’re only now getting confirmation about targeting of Wisconsin legislators serves as a reminder that we still don’t know about the full scope of Thomas’s shadow lobbying efforts. First it was two Arizona state legislators. Then it was 27 more Arizona state legislators. And now, months later, we’re learning about two more Wisconsin legislators. There’s presumably a lot more. Shouldn’t we expect all of the contested states that Trump lost to be on the receiving end of this ‘grass roots’ lobbying campaign?
But it’s the statements by Thomas family friend Mark Paoletta seemingly distancing Thomas from any involvement with even organizing the FreeRoots.com email campaign that’s really the news here. As the following article reminds us, when the House committee investigating Jan 6 initially asked Ginni Thomas to sit for a voluntary interview back in June, her initial public response was “I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them.” Less than two weeks later, Mark Paoletta told the committee that while Thomas remained willing to sit for an interview, he did not believe there was “sufficient basis” for her to do so. He then wrote the Washington Post a letter containing denials that Thomas was at all working with Eastman or even played an organizing role in the FreeRoots.com email campaign. Ginni Thomas went from “This is all a big nothing-burger” to “I had nothing to do with this sh#t sandwich” faster than you can spell ‘consciousness of guilt’ and the denials just keep coming:
“Thomas sent all of the emails via FreeRoots, an online platform that allowed people to send pre-written emails to multiple elected officials.”
It’s confirmation of what we basically already knew: Ginni Thomas was using the CNP’s FreeRoots.com platform to lobby more than just Arizona’s state legislators. She almost certainly spammed Republican state legislators in all of the contested states. Except when an email like that comes from someone like Ginni Thomas, it’s not just spam. Not if you’re one of the Republican swing-state legislators at that moment in history. That was powerful persuasive spam Ginni was sending. The kind of spam that sent that message that any moves to contest the election would be viewed favorably should they reach the Supreme Court.
And now we learn that the first person to send out the exact same form letter three hours before Thomas was Stephanie Miller Coleman, the widow of one of Clarence Thomas’s former clerks. Thomas was the fourth person to send it out. And Coleman also happens to be a co-administrator along with Thomas of that Frontliners for Liberty group. As we saw, the Frontliners for Liberty group was only formed in August of 2020 in association with FreedomWorks with Ginni and Stephanie Coleman as co-administrators. Coleman is the widow of the late Gregory Coleman who was Texas’ solicitor general. Greg Coleman was once a clerk for Justice Thomas and Coleman and Justice Thomas are repeated pictured together on Coleman’s personal Facebook page. So a group that was formed in August of 2020 had Ginni Thomas as its leader and a Thomas family friend as the administrator. When Judge Carter issued his ruling back in March ordering the release of 101 of John Eastman’s emails to congressional investigators he specifically referenced emails between Thomas and Eastman involving both an invitation to a December 8th Frontliners meeting and the meeting agenda. Given that context and given that Miller was the first person to send those form letters and Thomas was the fourth out of 30 people in all, it would be interesting to learn how many of those other 28 people were involved with either Frontliners, the CNP, or the Thomas family:
And that’s all part of the context of Ginni Thomas’s characterizations of her involvement in this entire scheme as entirely incidental seem all the more suspicious. There’s absolutely no denying that Thomas was deeply involved with the larger efforts to find a way to overturn the election. And yet she’s denying it. Like entirely denying any involvement to an utterly implausible degree:
So given that Ginnni Thomas has taken the position that she had no involvement whatsoever in the larger plot that John Eastman discussed during that December 8, 2020, Frontliners meeting — a plot that was entirely in line with what Thomas and Coleman lobbied state legislators to do — here’s a reminder that when Judge Carter ordered the release of that now-notorious Dec 13, 2020 “Cheseboro memo” because it was so incriminating that it fell under the crime fraud exemption of attorney client privilege, that was just one of the 101 emails in John Eastman’s possession that the judge ordered released to investigations. In other words, John Eastman had A LOT of incriminating emails. Involving a lot of people. Again, Judge Carter specifically cited the emails between Thomas and Eastman in relation to that Frontliners meeting in that group of 101 emails as an example of evidence important for understanding a plot that could end democracy. And as the following piece also reminds us, the plot laid out in those 101 emails Judge Carter ordered be released had multiple paths that could put the entire scheme before the Supreme Court:
“Carter’s sweeping and historic ruling came as he ordered the release to the House’s Jan. 6 committee of 101 emails from Trump ally John Eastman, rejecting Eastman’s effort to shield them via attorney-client privilege.”
It wasn’t one memo that judge Carter turned over despite Eastman’s attorney-client privilege claims. It was 101 emails. 101 emails demonstrating that they weren’t just plotting an illegal scheme. They knew it was an illegal scheme and premised their plot on the idea that the 1877 Electoral Count Act was unconstitutional and could therefore be ignored. It was a plot that created a license for elected officials to ignore basically any law they feel is unconstitutional:
Also keep in mind that Eastman was simply a forwarded recipient to the now-notorious Dec 13, 2020 email between Kenneth Chesebro — the little-known attorney who had been advising Donald Trump’s legal team — and Rudy Giuliani laying out the strategy where Pence first refuses to certify the electoral count and then recuses himself, leaving the responsibility to allow Chuck Grassley. Recall how Grassley signaled to the press his awareness of this plan on Jan 5! It’s a reminder that Eastman wasn’t just a central architect of this scheme. He was also one member of a larger team that included figures like Chesebro, Giuliani — and don’t forget Cleta Mitchell — who were all deeply involved in devising this ‘legal’ strategy. A strategy that Chuck Grassley appeared to be on board with one day before Jan 6. In other words, the plot being discussed in those 101 email involved a much larger network than the immediate circle of lawyers directly around Trump. And that’s part of what makes the organizational role Thomas appeared to play in this effort so significant. But, again, it’s not just her organizing role. It’s the fact that she’s Clarence Thomas’s wife and the fact that this scheme involved multiple paths that could put it before the Supreme Court that makes her organizing role potentially so significant:
Also recall how Ginni Thomas’s lobbying efforts of state legislators had two rounds of emails. The first was on November 9 and the second on December 13. Five days after Eastman’s meeting with Frontliners and the same day Kenneth Cheseboro sent the email to Giuliani that Judge Carter cited as being so incriminating it fell under the crime-fraud exception of attorney client privilege. An incriminating email that was forwarded to Eastman. Was there any communication Thomas and Eastman about Cheseboro’s memo that day in relation to the state lobbying she did that day? It sure would be interesting to know the answer to that question. But either way, it’s abundantly clear that they were all on the same page. They had to be. This was a plot that involved a lot of actors. All on the same page. The same highly incriminating page that a federal judge characterized as an existential threat to democracy. You can see why Ginni isn’t excited about claiming authorship for anything on that highly incriminating page.
The world just keeps getting closer to the edge. Sooner than we expected. That’s the conclusion of the latest report examining the various climate tipping points — points where irreversible damage takes place — that we’re approaching far faster than expected. So with humanity poised to commit one of the greatest acts of collective evil we can imagine — the intentional collapse of the biosphere with no regard for the rest of life on the planet or the future — it’s worth noting how the development of the ‘End Times’ religion in the US is largely a product of the very same shadow networks of industrial interests leading the way on this mass ecological destruction. The same networks of powerful industrialists that, of course, comprises one of the core elements of Council for National Policy (CNP). The CNP basically exists to fuse the interests of industry and politically active conservative religious leaders, after all. But while the CNP only got started in 1981, this network has been operating for over a century.
It started with oil barons like Lyman Stewart and the Pew family pouring money into religious organizations and effectively amplifying what was, at the time, a new form of fringe Christian theology: dispensationalism or premillennialism. In other words, End Times Christianity would have likely never taken off had it not been for these US oil barons. A generation later, J. Howard Pew bankrolled non-profit organizations that effectively fused Christianity with libertarian economics. Yep, Supply-side Jesus! was a product of this network. Along with the CNP. And we’ve seen all the fruits the CNP has borne since. Fruits like the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection and the ongoing push to effectively end democracy. And, of course, out of control climate change as a result of this networks’ grip on government.
So if it seems like a dark coincidence that the world is facing the collapse of the ecosystem at the same time ‘End Times’ movements have secured their grip on governments around the world, keep in mind that it may not be a coincidence. The End Times we’re collectively bringing about has been a long-term project:
“Right-wing forms of Christianity have reshaped the political landscape of the US in recent decades, culminating with the current 6–3 conservative Supreme Court majority. But despite the fact that they’ve achieved so much as their numbers have dwindled, and often in deeply unorthodox ways, most commentators fail to mention, perhaps even to see, what enabled them do it. Our new book on evangelicalism in the US emphasizes that institution-building over more than a century has created a vast and evolving network of institutions that spreads ideas, mobilizes energy, and amplifies political and theological messaging.”
A century of ideological institution-building is quite an investment. The kind of investment that pays dividends in the form of raw political power. And as the authors describe in their new book, these wealthy industrialists weren’t just promoting a deeply conservative form of Christianity. They were effectively inventing and popularizing the ‘End Times’ apocalyptic form of theology of dispensationalism or premillennialism. Yes, the fixation on the End Times — with all of the horrific consequences that comes with such an ideology that cares nothing about the future — was a product of wealthy industrialists operating in the shadows. It would be hard to come up with a more Satanic-sounding plot:
Flash forward a generation, and we find this same network of right-wing industrialists effectively fusing Christianity with libertarian economics. Supply-side Jesus is born! And sure, Christians at the time weren’t particularly receptive to this profoundly anti-New Testament teachings. But practice makes perfect and eventually those ‘teachings’ took hold. Again, this movement has been going on for over a century. It’s had plenty of time and money on its side:
Flash forward again and we find that branches of Christianity been so hyper-politicized and infused with right-wing economic doctrines that these communities now form the core of the Republican Party base. Recall how ‘latter rain’ pastor Rick Joyner was calling for a military takeover of the US government back in 2013. And as we’ve also seen, this same ‘latter rain’ movement is infused with the sense that these follower represent a kind of “super race” of the “elected seed” of all the best bloodlines of all generations — foreknown, predestined, and hand-selected from billions of others to be part of the “end-time Omega generation.” A kind of End times eugenics theology. Then there’s the closely related ‘Seven Mountains’ form of Dominionism that animates much of the CNP. As we saw, David Barton’s political philosophy — a philosophy that explicitly negates the Separation of Church and State — was rooted in Seven Mountain Dominionism. A mandate from God for this network to seize power across society and impose its theology. And as we’ve also seen, it’s the ‘End Times’ conservative churches where we find the notion that Donald Trump is a god-sent divine actor similar to the Biblical figure of King Cyrus.
The religiosity that has gripped so much of conservative Christianity in the US has long seemed like it was handmade for right-wing oligarchs. Because it was. Handmade by the oligarchs themselves. Over a century of work was required to pull it off. But they did it. The dominant form of Christianity today in the US is basically warmed over theocratic fascism. End Times theocratic fascism. The fascism is basically already here, with the End Times just around the corner. They did it, with all its rewards. Well, maybe not the reward of some sort of religious salvation. But they did get really really rich and convince a bunch of people to effectively worship their wealth, so that’s something. Heaven on earth for a power mad oligarch who cares nothing about the future.
The US midterms are just a couple of weeks away. It’s the crucial final stretch, when a party’s ‘momentum’ or lack thereof can become the make-or-break factor in the US’s closely divided political arena. And there’s no doubt about it: the momentum in this final stretch is one the GOP’s side. At least that’s what the steadily shifting polls would suggest. A couple of weeks is an eternity in politics. Things can change. But it’s not a very long eternity. The political shockwave of the overturning of Roe v Wade four months ago appears to have already started to wane and the GOP looks increasingly like it’s going to capture both chambers of Congress.
On one level, it’s not really all that surprising that the political impact of the overturning of Roe has already worn off. The politically disengaged American electorate really does have a short attention span when it comes to just about anything. The full impact of that ruling won’t be felt until after states have passed draconian laws that end up resulting in women going to prison or dying. Because that’s how politics in American works: it’s often only after large number of people have been harmed that the public tends to respond. It’s going to take one real life horror story about the impact of outlawing abortion after another after another for the full political impact of the overturning of Roe to really be felt and that’s going to take time. Time and enough suffering that it can no longer be ignored. The American electorate is going to have to be repeatedly reminded of the real-world horrors that come with lost reproductive rights. That’s inevitably going to happen, either through the news or personal experience, but it’s going to happen. It’s also going to take time.
And as the following pair of articles remind us, there’s another dynamic that drives US politics and animates voters: effective mass fear-mongering. The US electorate may not respond to warnings and real-world data, but it’s highly responsive to fear-mongering. Whether there’s any truth to that fear-mongering is kind of beside the point. It was a lesson amply demonstrated by the CNP’s wild success in fomenting widespread parental fears about ‘critical race theory’ in the classroom, otherwise known as Project Blitz.
And that brings us to the latest round of Project Blitz mass fear-mongering: trans kids in the class room. It’s the concocted mass hysteria of choice for the 2022 elections. And as we’re going to see, it’s a CNP project. Specifically, the CNP’s next generation of Project Blitz.
The CNP isn’t directly leading the effort, of course. There’s a new ‘grassroots’ front group to do that: Moms for Liberty (M4L). The group was set up on Jan 1, 2021, by three women who present themselves as just concerned moms. With an emphasis on school boards, M4L has put out various pledges for school board members to sign. As we’re going to see, the big boogyman last year of ‘critical race theory’ has been replaced. It’s all about trans kids in the classroom and ‘gender ideology’. Restorative justice is another new theme. Moms fr Liberty has been showered with media coverage across the right-wing media landscape to share with audiences its fear-mongering of these issues and over the past two years the group has grown to what it claims is 100,000 members in chapters across the country.
Despite that extensive media coverage, what we haven’t seen is hardly any coverage at all of the clear and extensive ties between M4L and the CNP and broader conservative establishment. It’s blatant astroturf. Next-gen Project Blitz. But it’s astroturf that’s been allowed to keep up the act. When directly asked about the group’s ties to the CNP during a CSPAN appearance, one of the co-founders expressed an unfamiliarity with the CNP entirely. It was an obvious lie. Fortunately, AlterNet and the group Our Schools just put out an report documenting that obvious astroturf status.
As we’re also going to see, it’s not just that Moms for Liberty has deep ties to the CNP. Those CNP ties are heavily overlapping with the CNP’s ties to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. For example, it turns out that one of the CNP’s big funders is non-other that Publix Heiress Julie Fancelli. Recall how Fancelli paid $300k for the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally on Jan 6 and tried to get Alex Jones and Roger Stone added to the rally speakers list.
Two of the entities deeply involved with Project Blitz — the Leadership Institute founded by CNP founder Morton Blackwell and Turning Point USA founded by CNP member Charlie Kirk — both appear to be involved with the M4L anti-trans kids project. Betsy DeVos — whose family is deeply tied to the CNP — spoke at the M4L’s national summit this year. And one of the co-hosts for the M4L’s “American Dream” conference was a group founded by CNP member Carol Swain.
Another interesting angle to this story is who the M4L appears to be endorsing for the GOP nomination in 2024: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the figure who has probably gone further than any other GOP governor in making sexuality in the classroom at the center of his political strategy this year. DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation for Florida schools is seen by M4L as a model for the rest of the nation and the group’s leader’s don’t mince words about their hopes for DeSantis. They are actively excited to campaign for his presidential run in 2024. That would merely be an interesting detail if this was a genuine ‘grassroots’ group. But it’s not. It’s a manufactured movement staffed by movement operatives working in coordination with the CNP network.
So when we see this group that is leading the way on the GOP’s key wedge issue of 2022 openly talk about their eager anticipation for Ron DeSantis’s 2024, you have to wonder if we’re looking at a kind of CNP DeSantis endorsement being made via Moms for Liberty. And if so, you have to wonder what Donald Trump thinks about that.
One thing is very clear given the enormous political currency the GOP has managed to extract this year with the whole ‘trans kids in the classroom’ manufactured hysteria: it works, which means we should probably expect more of it. Although there will presumably be a new manufactured hysteria for the next election cycle. A next-next-generation Project Blitz.
And, again, don’t forget who the target audience of Project Blitz is: moms with school-aged children. A group that heavily overlaps with the demographics of people who might be very worried about the implications of lost abortion rights and the waves of draconian laws already passed and on the way. In other words, the next-next-generation of Project Blitz for 2024 is going to have to be absolutely bonkers because there’s going to be a lot of very real horror stories related to lost abortion access that the CNP and the GOP are going to have to distract from. It’s going to take time for the full impact of lost abortion rights to be felt and the horror stories to be experienced and told. But those horror stories are coming. A manufactured distraction of epic proportions is going to be needed.
That’s all part of the grim overall context of this story: this isn’t just the story about the wild success of the ‘anti-trans kids’ next-generation Project Blitz following on the heels of the wild success of the ‘anti-CRT’ original Project Blitz. It’s a story about the wild ongoing success of manufactured rage. It just keeps working. Year after year. Decade after decade. We don’t learn. The US electorate is driven by the pain we experience — pain cultivated by the US’s highly exploitative economy and broken and bought off political system — and manufactured outrage we are induced to feel. Real pain and fake misdirected anger. The real pain of lost abortion rights is a growing phenomena that is set to simmer and build for years to come. The fake manufactured outrage machine never stops and it appears to have won out in 2022. It’s an existential problem. This is just a cutting edge example of that existential problem.
Ok, first, here’s a report in an education journal, the Hechinger Report, that takes a critical look at Moms for Liberty and makes an important observation: while only 42% of US adults report being satisfied with the sate of the US K‑12 educational system, 80% of parents report being satisfied with their local schools. It’s a sign of the success of the manufactured hysteria and the general success of right-wing propaganda in the US. One important detail not mentioned in this article, or the vast majority of articles about Moms for Liberty, is M4L’s obvious status as a CNP front-group pushing the next generation of Project Blitz:
“They have led successful efforts to ban books and classroom discussions on topics such as race, gender and sexuality. They’ve established about 200 county-wide Moms for Liberty chapters, the majority in the South, and the group has been featured heavily on conservative talk shows.”
It’s a miracle: this ‘grassroots’ group started in January of 2021 gets featured heavily on conservative talk shows and explodes across the country. It’s grassroots in action.
The group started off fixated on Critical Race Theory, but at this year’s July summit it was a new theme: gender ideology in the classroom. Emotional learning. And restorative justice in the education system. Teaching kids empathy and treating trans kids with a degree of compassion is a dangerous concept that will subvert the next generation. This group that started with three people less than two years ago now had chapters across the country, 100,000 members, and a campaign to turn school board races into the ‘Red Menace’. Other more of a ‘Rainbow Menace’ in this case:
And yet, as the report notes, while only 42% of US adults report being satisfied with the sate of the US K‑12 educational system, 80% of parents report being satisfied with their local schools:
The article raises a number of important questions about M4L. But not enough important questions. Because unless the group is forced to acknowledge its status as a CNP front-group, it’s clearly not going to admit that status. And as the following Alternet/Our Schools report makes clear, that status as a CNP astroturf group is really undeniable. They’ll still deny it, but it’s undeniable:
“In her 2019 book, Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right, Nelson exposed the CNP as combining vast sums of conservative money, Christian nationalists and their communications networks, and activist groups like the National Rifle Association into a powerful organization. Among the CNP’s wish list of policy preferences, according to Nelson, is taking down public education and replacing it with privatized schools that practice religious-based indoctrination.”
It’s like the next generation of Project Blitz and the CNP’s campaign to undermine and capture public education in the US. Moms for Liberty (M4L) may claim to be some sort of grass roots entity. But as is abundantly clear from all the circumstantial evidence, M4L is just another CNP front group, albeit one with particularly close ties to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Ties so close to DeSantis that one of the group’s co-founders expressed how she “cannot wait to vote for him for president” at the same time she present DeSantis with an award at the M4L national summit. It points to one of the potentially very significant elements of this story: In addition to being an extension of the CNP’s Project Blitz, M4L is operating like a manifestation of the CNP’s desires to see Ron DeSantis get the GOP nomination 2024:
And as a 504c4 ‘dark money’ entity, M4L is in a position to play an active role in a lot more than just Ron DeSantis’s future races. The group is already set up to receive millions of dollars in anonymous donations. And it’s pretty obvious that the group isn’t going to be hurting for donations. The group was given waves of free publicity across the right-wing media landscape from the very beginning. It’s clearly a ‘grass roots’ group with immense establishment backing:
It’s that obvious establishment backing that makes the denials by M4L co-founder Tina Descovich of not just CNP financial support but awareness of the CNP at all such a blatant lie. M4L is a CNP front group, making it one of the least ‘grass roots’ entities on the planet. It’s not wonder that M4L would want to keep its CNP ties hidden. What’s genuinely confusing is why the rest of the media and political establishment allows this group to get away with it:
Of course, there’s the other major reason M4L might want to keep its ties to the CNP and its donors list under wraps: the CNP was a major player in the network that led up to the January 6 Capitol Insurrection. And it turns out that some of main figures in that insurrectionary effort, like Publix heiress Julie Fancelli, are also major M4L donors. In addition, M4L’s Florida legislative chair and Sarasota County chapter chair, Alexis Spiegelman, reportedly entered into an arrangement with none other than Roger Stone to pressure Senator Rick Scott to challenge Joe Biden’s victory on January 6. In other words, the Florida legislative chair of M4L was acting as an operative for the Jan 6 plot in direct coordination with Roger Stone. It’s presumably another reason M4L wants to keep its public ties to the CNP so private:
And those Jan 6 ties also flow through M4L co-found Bridget Ziegler and her husband Christian, who was physically at the Capitol on Jan 6. It was Bridget Ziegler, a Sarasota County School Board member, who helped write the now-notorious ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law that’s been a centerpiece of Ron DeSantis’s culture war-style of governing. And as part of her successful 2022 reelection campaign, Ziegler received $10k from CNP member Caroline Wetherington. Wetherington’s group, Defend Florida, reportedly held a rally in April of 2021, “featuring Michael Flynn and Roger Stone that attracted white nationalists, [and] claims to have 5,571 affidavits alleging ‘voting irregularities’ across Florida.” Formed five days before Jan 6, M4L is, a minimum, a fellow traveler of the plot:
And then we get this extremely revealing pairs of admissions from Christian Ziegler in a WaPo interview from last October: First, he’s expecting M4L to operate as “foot soldiers” for Ron DeSantis’s reelection campaign. A campaign that’s expected to overlap with a 2024 presidential run. And then Ziegler admits something that should take on a whole new context in the post-Roe political reality for the US: the CNP’s theocratic stances with respect to abortion of are deeply inimical to the interests of women aged 20–30 — prime years for fertility and possible pregnancy — and it’s been “a heavy lift to get that demographic.” But M4L — with its predatory fear-mongering about trans kids — represents that hook that Ziegler was looking for to capture that demographic. That’s part of what makes M4L’s activities in Florida so significant in the broader context of national US politics: Ron DeSantis is poised to champion at a national level an issue that the CNP sees as an effective counter for young women who might otherwise be turned off by the GOP’s unleash abortion extremism. Fear-mongering about trans kids is the political shield the CNP needed and a nationwide DeSantis campaign fueled by M4L’s ‘grass roots’ alarmism is how the CNP is planning on doing it:
It’s those big nationwide plans for the M4L ‘grassroots’ agenda — an agenda of terrorizing and monstering gay and trans kids for political gain — that underscores the need to keep the M4L’s ties to the CNP as far from the public as possible. But there’s also the issue of those CNP ties just be so extensive. It’s one tie after another. At the same time she sits on the Sarasota County School Board, Bridget Ziegler was hired by Leadership Institute to be the director of the organization’s school board programs. And Marie Rogerson, who sits on the M4L executive board and the director of program development, is a Leadership Institute graduate. And the president of the Leadership Institute just happens to be Morton Blackwell, a member and founder of the CNP. Recall how the Leadership Institute has already played a key role in the CNP’s broader “Project Blitz” agenda by ‘sounding the alarm’ about ‘critical race theory’ in the classroom. It’s another reminder that the M4L agenda is just another front group pushing the CNP’s Project Blitz agenda of making political gains by terrorizing parents with wild claims about out of control ‘wokism’ in the classroom:
Also recall the partner the Leadership Institute had in its campaign of alarmism over critical race theory in the classroom: Turning Point USA, founded by CNP-member Charlie Kirk. And, true to form, we seen Turning Point USA also involved with boosting the ‘grassroots’ M4L agenda:
Then there’s Betsy DeVos’s speech at the group’s 2022 national summit. As the article notes, while DeVos herself doesn’t show up on the leaked CNP membership lists, her mother Elsa Prince Broekhuizen is a “Gold Circle” CNP Member and sits on the group’s board of governors. Her father-in-law Richard DeVos also shows up on the membership list along with his wife Helen DoVos. The DeVos family has deep ties to the CNP. So of course we find Betsy DeVos spoke at M4L’s national summit:
Then there’s the group, Be the People Project, founded by former Vanderbilt professor and CNP member Carole Swain. The group co-hosted M4L’s “American Dream” conference. One CNP connection after another after another:
And then we get to the ties to the other arms of the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’: the Heritage Foundation and the Koch network. Recall how the Heritage Foundation is under the new leadership of CNP-member Kevin Roberts. Roberts is also a member of the “National Association of Scholars” (NAS) and the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). Also recall how the NAS and Roberts have been working on the “American Birthright” school curriculum project that is filled with CNP members. Finally, recall how the TPPF was found to be running the “79 Days report” election simulations in the final weeks of the 2020 election in coordination with the Claremont Institute. The Claremont Institute happens to have John Eastman, one of the central figures in developing legal justifications for the events that led up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Just as there isn’t actually meaningful difference between the Koch network and the Heritage Foundation, there isn’t really a meaningful difference between the CNP and the Heritage Foundation or the Koch network. It’s the same overall network pushing the same theocratic billionaire agenda:
This ‘grassroots’ entity sure got a lot of rich and powerful friends fast. Rich and powerful friends they would rather not talk about. Instead, the focus is on gay and trans kids. That’s the threat this ‘grassroots’ group would like the US to focus on now and for years to come. At least until this wedge issue runs its course and they have a new manufactured outrage to hype. With Ron DeSantis as chief hype-man. Or maybe Trump can retake the mantel of ‘new hotness’ in the eyes of the billionaires behind rage machine. Or next-gen DeSantis. We’ll see. But the manufactured rage machine is going to have to be cranked up to 11. That is for sure. The consequences of lost reproductive rights will be very real and deeply felt.
Plus, don’t forget that the conservative Supreme Court majority that was largely hand-picked and installed by this same CNP network is still just getting warmed up. And its agenda can be summarized as more pain for the masses to the benefit of the wealthy and powerful. Managing that is going to require a lot of manufactured outrage. In that sense, this is also a story about the CNP getting more practice at the thing it needs to keep getting better and better at if its agenda is going to succeed in the long run. So far so good. Or rather, so far so bad, but well executed badness with good prospects for greater badness and a lot more outrage.
How bold are the theocrats behind the GOP feeling these days? A little over a week before a round of midterms that the GOP could end up sweeping, but maybe not. It’s a nailbiter but with a GOP edge. How bold are the Council for National Policy (CNP) thoecrats behind the GOP feeling at this potentially momentous moment? It’s one of the many questions looming ever more ominously with the 2022 midterms less than a week and a half away. Is the GOP going to be just one chamber of congress or two? And what will they do with that congressional power? Sure, they’ll open a slew of investigations and almost certainly impeach Joe Biden if given the opportunity. But legislatively-speaking, what can we expect from GOP-controlled chambers of Congress facing the veto power of a Democrat president?
In one sense, it’s a familiar question that seems to pop up within two years of every new Democratic president. We sort of know what to expect: absurd aspirational legislation designed purely to placate the conservative base that doesn’t have a prayer of becoming law.
But the GOP congressional caucus of 2023 isn’t exactly going to be a ‘traditional’ GOP caucus. This is the post-democracy GOP. The era of Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert, and Donald Trump’s enduring stolen election 2020 Big Lie that has absolutely captured the party. Insurrections and political violence are increasingly seen as part of the battle for the soul of America.
It’s also the post-Roe GOP. The ‘theocracy unleashed’ GOP. It’s that question of just how theocratic will GOP congressional majorities be that brings us to the following fascinating article from USA Today describing the GOP’s internal discord over how to proceed on the abortion issue, now and after the mid-terms. The way it’s portrayed in the article, the party is filled with disagreement over how to proceed at the federal level, as seemingly evidenced by the tepid national Republican response to Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed 15-week federal abortion ban. The other major GOP figure pouring cold water on the idea of bold GOP federal moves on abortion is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who just might have be the Majority Leader next year.
And while that would seem to paint a picture of a GOP that’s too divided on abortion to unite behind a path forward should the GOP recapture control of one or both houses of Congress, leaving the issue to the states, as we’re going to see there’s another angle to that story. A CNP angle. Because of course. The overturning of Roe wouldn’t have happened without the decades of effort directed by the CNP. Dobbs was just the finishing blow.
None of the many conservative movement figures — many leaders in the ‘pro-life’ movement — are identified as being CNP members. But it’s just one CNP member after another, including CNP member Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who was standing next to Graham when he publicly announced his 15-week ban proposal. Recall how Dennenfelser was involved with making the ‘updates’ to the Dobbs case designed to gut Roe entire, which of course is what happened. Dennenfelser basically explained to USA today how Republican officials are trying to find the “sweet spot” on how to approach the abortion issue while the election is going on. But then she warns, “Post election there’ll be no excuses. Time to go ahead and look at what you already know and move on it.” That sure sounds like a call to move forward on passing that 15-week ban at the federal level, at a minimum.
Longstanding evangelical leader and CNP member Ralph Reed echo that Dannenfelser’s call for federal action on abortion telling USA today, “I don’t think we can afford to unilaterally disarm and say that we’re not going to have a federal solution, when they’re pushing a federal mandate.”
And as the president and CEO of the anti-abortion group Concerned Women for America and a CNP member Penny Nance points out, there’s absolutely nothing in Graham’s federal 15 week ban that prevents states from passing stricter bans. “This is a very low bar for candidates. We expect pro-life candidates to support this. This should not be a problem.” In other words, while Democrats who support abortion rights have plenty of reason to oppose a federal 15 week ban, the only reason abortion opponent have for opposing Graham’s proposal is if a more strict federal ban is desired. Which is exactly what CNP member Kristan Hawkins, President of Students for Life of America is demanding with her organization’s call for federal legislation that imposes a much stricter “heartbeat” ban, which is effectively a six-week abortion ban.
So we have four conservative movement leaders — all CNP members — endorsing a federal ban of some sort, with Lindsey Graham’s 15 week ban being the minimum. And while any such bans won’t have a shot of making it past Joe Biden’s veto, these CNP-connected figures are making it clear that what they are pushing is to be seen as model legislation for the next GOP White House, whoever the specific president might be. In other words, the CNP’s plan is very much for a federal abortion ban at the earliest opportunity.
And the Heritage Foundation’s vice president of domestic policy, Roger Severino, points out in the article, there’s a variety of other abortion-related federal laws a GOP congress could pass that don’t involve outright bans. The Heritage Foundation is calling Republican lawmakers to immediately pass a range of bills that would further regulate unsuccessful abortions, cut funding for Planned Parenthood, ban sex-selective abortion and bar providers in states where abortion is legal from mailing abortion pills to individuals residing in states where abortion is outlawed. An abortion pill ug war is about to begin. Too bad Biden’s pot pardon only pardoned people out of prison. US federal prisons are going to need the space.
The Heritage Foundation, which heavily influences conservative policy on Capitol Hill, wants Republican lawmakers to immediately pass a range of bills that would further regulate unsuccessful abortions, cut funding for Planned Parenthood, ban sex-selective abortion and bar providers in states where abortion is legal from mailing abortion pills to individuals residing in states where abortion is outlawed. Then note Severino’s ominous warning: “Once that contrast is drawn, then you build on to the gestational protections. We want to see heartbeat or better for the next presidential candidate that is conservative.” Yep, Heritage is calling for ‘heartbeat or better’ for the next presidential candidate. You can’t find a more representative mouthpiece for the GOP mega-donor’s wishlist than the Heritage Foundation. It’s like the public face for the CNP/Koch mega-donor network. And its vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation is already hoping to see ‘heartbeat or better’ from the 2024 GOP nominee.
Oh, and in case Severino’s comments seemed like they weren’t also representative of the CNP’s thinking, don’t forget that Severino’s wife is Carrie Severino, who is both the president of the Judicial Crisis Network and a CNP member. And then there’s the fact that the new President of Heritage, Kevin Roberts. Recall how, in addition to being a CNP member, Roberts is also a member of the “National Association of Scholars” (NAS) and the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). Also recall how the NAS and Roberts have been working on the “American Birthright” school curriculum project that is filled with CNP members. Finally, recall how the TPPF was found to be running the “79 Days report” election simulations in the final weeks of the 2020 election in coordination with the Claremont Institute. The Claremont Institute happens to have John Eastman, one of the central figures in developing legal justifications for the events that led up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Plus, the Heritage Foundation was a “meeting sponsor” of CNP’s 2022 annual conference. There are a lot CNP front groups, but the Heritage Foundation is like the public face of the CNP’s agenda. An agenda that included the January 6 Capitol insurrection and the GOP’s ongoing efforts to subvert and destroy what’s left of the US’s democratic system. That’s the group that’s ultimately going to determine how the GOP treats the abortion at the federal level once it gets power and the
group’s quasi-secret members keep warning us to expect federal bans. It might start with Lindsey Graham’s 15 week ban, but expect ‘Heartbeat or better’ by the time GOP nominees are done with the 2024 presidential primaries. Because that’s what the CNP clearly wants:
“GOP leaders have not articulated a unified legislative approach with more conservative members favoring a bill that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected at roughly six weeks – unless the mother’s health is in danger – and some senators opposed to getting rid of the filibuster to pass a national ban.”
GOP have not yet articulated a unified legislative approach. At least not publicly. But that doesn’t mean a unified approached that the GOP leadership doesn’t want to share with the public hasn’t been reached behind closed doors. So when we see the proposal put forward by Senator Lindsey Graham for a federal 15 week abortion ban — a ban that would not preclude states from imposing their own stricter bans — getting publicly dismissed by GOP leaders like Mitch McConnell, it’s hard to avoid observing how Grahams’s proposal appears to have the backing of a number of key unelected conservative leaders who happen to be members of the CNP. So whose expressed opinions on Graham’s proposal carries more weight? Mitch McConnell’s word or the CNP’s?
Because while the article may not list their CNP status, we were hearing support for Graham’s federal abortion ban proposal — or something stricter at the federal level — from one CNP figure after another. First there was CNP member Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, taking the stance that “I don’t think we can afford to unilaterally disarm and say that we’re not going to have a federal solution, when they’re pushing a federal mandate”.
Then there was CNP member Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who was standing next to Graham when he announced his proposal. According to Dannenfelser, GOP lawmakers can figure out where the “sweet spot is” post-midterms and “do that very well if they have some courage”. At least they better have courage because as Dannenfelser warns, “Post election there’ll be no excuses. Time to go ahead and look at what you already know and move on it.” In other words, Graham’s proposal wasn’t just a CNP-backed standard being laid down for whoever gets the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. The CNP expects some sort of federal abortion ban after the midterms should the GOP recapture control of Congress.
And as CNP member Penny Nance, president and CEO of the anti-abortion group Concerned Women for America, points out, there’s absolutely nothing in Graham’s federal 15 week ban that prevents states from passing stricter bans. “This is a very low bar for candidates. We expect pro-life candidates to support this. This should not be a problem.” That’s plain language for GOP candidates: the CNP expects support for Graham’s proposal.
Finally, we got to hear from CNP-member Kristan Hawkins, President of Students for Life of America. Her organization is pushing for federal legislation for a much stricter “heartbeat” ban which is effectively a six-week abortion ban. Notice how Hawkins is pretty open about how the group is “keeping its options open at the federal level” as the election is ongoing, warning that, “In November going into January we’ll see where folks really are, where they’re going to be standing on these different bills that are being introduced.” She’s basically telling us to expect very different language from the GOP on federal abortion bans once the GOP retakes control of congress. The CNP wants the GOP to do some sort of federal action on abortion whether it’s going to get vetoed by Joe Biden or not:
And then we get to the comments from Heritage Foundation vice president of domestic policy Roger Severino that give us a better sense of why the CNP wants the GOP to push federal abortion legislation it knows will get vetoed. It appears the Heritage Foundation is calling for immediate action from the GOP caucus at the federal level, including the barring of sending abortion pills to states where abortions are banned. America’s War on Drugs is about to get a big new addition. The kind of addition that’s going to turn large new swathes of the US population into potential illicit drug users.
And then Severino reveals the next stage: that proposed federal action is just a warm up act intended to ‘create a contrast’ in anticipation of 2024. By the end of the GOP nomination process, Severino is hoping for ‘heartbeat or better’ for the next conservative presidential candidate. That’s the Heritage Foundation’s stance a week out before the mid-terms. ‘Heartbeat or better’ in 2024. And as we’ve seen, you can’t really separate the Heritage Foundation from the CNP. For example, Roger Severino’s wife, Carrie Severino, is both the president of the Judicial Crisis Network and a CNP member. But we can’t forget the extensive CNP ties of the new President of Heritage, Kevin Roberts. Recall how, in addition to being a CNP member, Roberts is also a member of the “National Association of Scholars” (NAS) and the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). Also recall how the NAS and Roberts have been working on the “American Birthright” school curriculum project that is filled with CNP members. Finally, recall how the TPPF was found to be running the “79 Days report” election simulations in the final weeks of the 2020 election in coordination with the Claremont Institute. The Claremont Institute happens to have John Eastman, one of the central figures in developing legal justifications for the events that led up to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Plus, the Heritage Foundation was a “meeting sponsor” of CNP’s 2022 annual conference. Again, you can’t really separate Heritage from the CNP. They are largely the same network of people pushing the same shared agenda. And banning abortions as much as possible is clearly part of that agenda. They keep telling us:
We got another clue as to what to expect from the House Republicans. Specifically, the multiple plans put forward by the House Republicans. One plan that already has the support of 100 cosponsors is essential a copy of Graham’s 15 week proposal in the Senate. But then there’s the other proposal that already has 123 GOP cosponsors in the House: a federal ‘heartbeat’ ban, which is effectively a 6 week federal abortion ban. A federal abortion ban is already the leading proposal within the GOP’s House caucus. How is that going to change after the GOP takes control of the House after the midterms?
So with what appears to be overwhelming CNP support for an immediate push for federal abortion bans at the federal level upon retaking control of congress and heavy support for a six week ‘heartbeat’ ban inside the GOP House caucus, what about Mitch McConnell’s warnings to his fellow Republican that the GOP is highly unlikely to be in a position to overcome a 60-vote filibuster threshold even if the GOP does manage to get at least 51? But that’s a warning from McConnell that assumes a GOP Senate majority doesn’t simply do away with the filibuster altogether. The filibuster is just a tradition, after all. With the CNP clearly backing a range of federal abortion laws it’s hard to imagine getting rid of the filibuster won’t be part of that agenda:
Now, it’s true that getting rid of the filibuster with a Democrat in office doesn’t really have much payout for the GOP since they won’t be able to overcome a presidential veto. But that may not be the case after 2024. And that’s why the current mystery over what a GOP-controlled Congress might on abortion includes the implicit question of whether or not Mitch McConnell will be willing to do away with the filibuster after the GOP wins the White House in 2024 with control of both chambers of congress. McConnell is taking the stand that he’ll keep the filibuster in place, for now. How much is Mitch McConnell’s word worth? Because that’s going to be a major factor in the fate of abortion rights in America post 2024: what is Mitch McConnell’s word worth? It’s an ominous question for the US electorate. Along with the ominous question of: when Roger Severino pines for ‘Heartbeat or better’, how much ‘better’ is the CNP network shooting for here? Is a 6‑week ‘Heartbeat’ ban the bare minimum of what the CNP is going to be demanding of candidates? Is so, yeah, we can probably expect the eventual nominee to do a lot ‘better’ than that as the primary process plays out. We’ll see.
But we don’t have to wonder whether or not to take all of these CNP members at their word. They’re telling us what they are planning. As Heritage’s Roger Severino puts it, ‘Heartbeat or better’. That’s going to be on the ballot in 2024 if the CNP gets its way. And the CNP will get its way one way or another. That’s how insurrectionary theocratic power establishments work.
The end is near. At least the end of the 2022 US mid-terms cycle. And perhaps the end of what’s left of the US’s democratic traditions. But the end may not be as near as assumed for one simple reason: the highly contested Senate race between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker appears likely to go to a runoff race due to neither candidate getting a majority of the vote. So unless we see the GOP take a 51 seat majority without that Georgia seat, the US is in store for two month period of extra uncertainty over the control of the Senate.
But this being 2022, the year Election Denialism became the official GOP position, means there’s another reasonable prediction we can make about that Georgia Senate race: endless howls from conservatives about voter fraud. It’s coming.
So with that looming voter-fraud allegation-fiasco for the upcoming Georgia runoff in mind, it’s worth noting the remarkable update we got lost week in the January 6 Capitol insurrection investigation. An update we got thanks to the “crime-fraud exception” to the attorney-client privilege. As we’ve already seen, that exception has been the source of some of the most damning pieces of evidence so far, including the now notorious “Chesebro memo” sent by Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro to Rudy Giuliani on December 13, 2020, describing the plot to use voter fraud allegations as the pretext for Mike Pence to block the certification of the vote on Jan 6. That memo was part of 101 emails and documents ordered released by Judge Carter under the crime-fraud exception. And as we saw, when Judge Carter issued that order, he specifically referenced emails between Ginni Thomas and Eastman involving both an invitation to a December 8th meeting with Thomas’s Frontliners for Liberty group and the meeting agenda. In other words, just that vague description in those emails of what they were planning on discussing was potentially criminal evidence in the eyes of Judge Carter. Just imagine how incriminating the actual meeting was.
That trail of incriminating emails between Trump’s attorneys and Ginni Thomas are part of the context of the newly released batch of eight emails further fleshing out the scheme. And as we’ll see, these newly released emails should make the rest of the released emails involving Ginni Thomas all the more incriminating. Because it turns out Clarence Thomas’s cooperation was not only absolutely vital to their plot, but it sounds like John Eastman was confident Thomas would play along. And as the following Politico article reminds us, Eastman was a former clerk for Thomas. That’s on top of the clear close working relationship Eastman had with Ginni.
So what was Trump’s team hoping justice Thomas would do for them? Provide constitutional ‘cover’ and inspiration, mostly. The idea was that Trump’s team would challenge the election results in Georgia. It turns out Justice Thomas is the justice tasked with handling emergency legal issues for Georgia. So the idea was that Trump’s team would issue a challenge, and Justice Thomas would uphold that challenge and, in doing so, inspire the Georgia state legislature, Congress, and even then-Vice President Mike Pence to act according to the plan. Thomas was supposed to effectively rally conservatives to the cause and give them a sense that what the Trump team was proposing was indeed constitutional.
Now, as we now know, Clarence Thomas never ended up playing the decisive role they were hoping he would play. But as we’ve also seen, there is no way to refute the conclusion that Ginni Thomas was deeply involved in crafting this overall plot.
And as the following article also points out, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that then-President Trump committed an outright crime when he ultimately signed the document filing the legal challenge over Georgia. Judge Carter specifically cited Trump’s signature on that document as reason for releasing the emails. John Eastman even expresses qualms in one of the emails about including claims of fraud that had already been debunked. That’s also part of the context for any upcoming legal challenges the GOP might file during any ensuing Senate runoff: Donald Trump committed an open crime in making fraudulent voter fraud allegations over the Georgia vote that he knew were false and the evidence is there for everyone to see.
Finally, it’s also important to keep in mind that all of this pre-Jan 6 scheming was scheming over a plot that they were never able to carry out because Mike Pence refused to play along. What actually transpired, the insurrection, was Plan B. The backup plan intended to prevent Pence from going through with certification. And as we saw with ominous Jan 5 comments by Chuck Grassley, it was a plan that much of the GOP caucus was aware of heading into that day. Grassley literally warned reporters that he, and not Pence, might be proceeding over the certification process under his role as the Senate Pro Tempore. By Jan 5 it was apparent that Pence may not play along and they were already planning on a Plan B. That’s what Grassley was hinting at. And then we all got to see Plan B in action.
Would Pence have gone along with Plan A had Clarence Thomas done what they were hoping and upheld the Trump team’s blatantly fraudulent legal challenges over Georgia? We’ll never know. Just as we’ll never know if Justice Thomas would have gone along with the legal challenge if it wasn’t filled with already-debunked claims. It’s one of the many “We’ll never know” questions raised about Jan 6, an event that we actually know quite a bit about at this point. There are plenty of “we’ll never know” aspects to this story, but what we do know makes it very clear that it was a criminally fraudulent plot from the beginning and the Thomas family was deeply involved the whole time. And we also know they’re planning on a more refined version of the plot next time. And that next time just might be upon us in Georgia in a few days:
“The messages were part of a batch of eight emails — obtained by POLITICO — that Eastman had sought to withhold from the Jan. 6 select committee but that a judge ordered turned over anyway, describing them as evidence of likely crimes committed by Eastman and Trump. They were transmitted to the select committee by Eastman’s attorneys last week, but remained largely under wraps until early Wednesday morning.”
A whole batch of “crime-fraud exception” emails. That’s what was released last week, adding to the now notorious “Chesebro memo” that was previously released under the same “crime-fraud exception”. And as these incriminating emails make clear, Justice Clarence Thomas’s cooperation with their scheme was seen as crucial. At least that was the opinion of two key Trump attorneys hatching the plot: Kenneth Chesebro and John Eastman. It wasn’t that Thomas was going to single-handedly overturn the election. Instead, they were hoping that Thomas — the justice assigned to handle emergency matters arising out of Georgia — would agree to hear the Trump team’s appeals regarding the Georgia election results and, in turn, embolden the GOP-controlled state legislatures, Congress, and Mike Pence to all go along with the broader plot. Thomas’s role was to grant a kind of constitutional patina to this plot:
Also note how the emails reveal how the plot they were formulating in the week leading up to Jan 6 wasn’t a plot to resolve the election on Jan 6. They just wanted to stop the certification of the vote that day and then use the following 13 days before Inauguration Day to finish the plot:
And don’t forget that John Eastman wasn’t just in direct communication with Ginni Thomas during the post-election period. He was also a former clerk for Clarence Thomas. It’s part of the reason Ginni Thomas’s role in the scheme remains a major area of investigation. Recall how when Judge Carter ordered the release of John Eastman’s emails to congressional investigators back in March, he specifically referenced emails between Ginni Thomas and Eastman inviting Eastman to a December 8th Frontliners for Liberty meeting as well as emails describing that meeting agenda. An agenda that included plans to talk about how state legislatures could be used to change the election results. So when we learn that Eastman concurred with Chesebro’s optimism that Clarence Thomas might be willing to play ball with their plot we have to keep in mind that this was a plot Thomas’s wife was intimately involved with helping to craft in the first place:
Finally, just note the overt crime then-President Trump appears to have engaged in as described by these emails: a fraudulent testimony under threat of perjury of alleged voter fraud in Georgia that Trump legally attested to with his signature. It was so blatantly fraudulent that Eastman himself warned they were going to face prosecutions if they went through with it. But they went through with it anyway. Trump signed the documents fraudulently alleging voter fraud in Georgia:
The messages “show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” wrote Judge Carter. The evidence is right there in Trump’s legal filing. That’s a criminal fraudulent fraud allegation with Trump’s signature. And come January, the GOP retakes control of the House and maybe the Senate and all investigations into this open fraud will grind to a halt. That’s all part of the reason any open questions about this story are going to remain in the “We’ll never know” category. We know enough to understand the broad outline of the plot, but there are plenty of details we are never going to learn after the investigations are squashed. Although we’re presumably going to learn soon whether or the unrepentant election denying GOP establishment is ready to engage in more openly fraudulent Georgia voter fraud claims.
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. It’s been a thematic undercurrent in US politics ever since the historic overturning of Roe v Wade back in June. Decades of effort by the conservative movement came to fruition. But with that remarkable success came the slew of new political headaches with no obvious remedy. At the end of the day abortion rights are quite popular in the US. Sure, some restrictions are popular too. But outright abortions bans are basically political poison at this point. And yet, as we’ve seen, near-complete abortion bans are precisely what the powerful Council for National Policy appears to have in mind. ‘Heartbeat or better’ was the phrase used by the Heritage Foundations Roger Severino, husband of CNP member Carrie Campbell Severino. And if ‘Heartbeat or better’ is what we can expect from the GOP, that’s effectively a complete abortion ban. Yes, it’s technically a six week abortion ban, but since many women don’t even know they’re pregnant at six weeks it’s effectively a ban on almost all abortions that will actually be sought out.
And that brings us to the Republican politician who arguably ‘won’ last week’s midterm elections: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who not only defied expectations with a blowout 19 point margin of victory in his gubernatorial race., but saw his fellow Florida Republicans achieve a historic majority in the state legislature. And as so political observers many have pointed out, DeSantis’s big win was even bigger in the context of a 2024 Republican presidential campaign because the ‘Big Loser’ of the night was none other than Donald Trump. The GOP’s Alt-Trump won big at Trump’s expense. And now Ron DeSantis is increasing viewed as the solution to the GOP’s 2022 historic bust. The future of the GOP is ‘Ron’, not a ‘Don’-rerun. At least that’s the current take we’re hearing quite a bit in the wake of the GOP’s wipe out last week.
But as the following article should remind us, Ron DeSantis isn’t exactly facing smooth waters on his journey to the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. On the contrary, it’s looking rather choppy. And perhaps politically perilous. At least choppy and perilous when it comes to the now issue of abortion. An issue that appears to have lived up to its game-changing expectations. While we can’t say how much the Democrats’ beating of expectations after the dust settled was entirely due to abortion vs the various other mega-issues looming over this election — like the GOP’s ongoing embrace of Trump and Trumpism — abortion was obviously a huge factor in the GOP’s ultimate disappointment. A factor that clearly wasn’t too big of an obstacle for Ron DeSantis. Or the Florida GOP in general. The party won big in that state.
So does Ron DeSantis have some sort of answer to the abortion issue that presents a tempting option for the party at a national level in 2024? Maybe. We wouldn’t know because Ron isn’t talking about it. Mum’s the word on his plans for abortion after the Republicans secured record majorities in the state legislature. Mum from DeSantis along with vague statements from the the incoming leaders of the Florida House and Senate.
Florida currently has a 15 week ban that was passed just last year. A ban that allows exceptions for the life of the mother but not for rape or incest. So it’s an issue that was already heavily debated in the state. But that 15-week ban is nowhere close to strict enough for conservative activist in the wake of the end of Roe and some sort of new restrictions are definitely coming. Incoming Senate President Kathleen Passidomo appears to have the most relax stance, suggesting she would be up for a 12-week ban in exchange for adding exceptions for rape and incest.
But incoming House Speaker Paul Renner hinted as far more extreme new restrictions, saying he wouldn’t yet say if they were going to merely push for new restrictions on the existing 15-week ban or go with an outright ban on all abortions. It’s a pretty big negotiation range. The kind of starting negotiating position that ends up making the ‘Heartbeat’ bill almost seem like the compromise. Instead of an outright ban, you have a six-week ban. That’s the kind of outcome Paul Renner appears to be setting up with talk of potential total bans. The Overton Window on abortion includes complete bans no exceptions in post-Roe America.
So what is DeSantis saying about his plans for abortion rights in Florida? Nothing specific right now. Which is more is less how he played the issue all year: a clear strategy of saying nothing specific on what he would do about abortion. But as the following Miami Herald article notes, DeSantis was very clear about what he would do back in 2018 when he was running for governor and when Roe was still in place and the political costs of promising restrictions was blunted: DeSantis backed a ‘Heartbeat’ law.
As the article also notes, there’s another Florida-specific complication for DeSantis and Florida Republicans when it comes to abortion: the Florida state constitution protects the right to abortion. Sort of. The right to privacy is explicitly in the Florida constitution and a 1989 Florida Supreme Court case found that right extended to abortion. But supreme courts can change their mind, and there’s nothing stopping the Florida Supreme Court from deciding that, actually, the right to an abortion isn’t protected by that privacy right. Oh, and DeSantis’s office is already in the middle of a lawsuit before the Florida Supreme Court that would do exactly that and strip the state-level right to an abortion away.
It’s that stubborn silence from Ron DeSantis on what he’s going to do about abortion juxtaposed with the reality that his own office is trying to remove the state-level right to an abortion while the Florida’s Republicans are unified in their desire to impose new restrictions that just might present the biggest obstacle between DeSantis and the GOP 2024 nomination. Because he’s probably going to have to make a decision on abortion sooner rather than later and all indications are that it’s going to be a very unpopular decison. Abortion rights are popular in Florida, as they are nationally. But DeSantis’s core constituencies have unpopular priorities and it’s not clear he’s in a position to defy them if he wants to get that 2024 nomination. Because, again, as we’ve seen, the CNP wants ‘Heartbeat or better’ on abortion nationally. CNP members keep drawing that line in the sand. ‘Heartbeat’ six-week bans are the bare minimum they’ll accept.
And, sure enough, we find another CNP member in the following article making that prediction for Florida. John Stemberger — the director of the Florida Family Policy Council and CNP member — predicts that “the most likely thing to happen is a heartbeat bill” because that would put Florida in line with states to the north. Stemberger is, of course, not identified as a CNP member in the article. And yeah, he’s probably right. A ‘heartbeat bill’ seems plausible. Because that’s what the CNP is demanding and Republican politicians don’t casually defy the CNP.
At least that’s what it sure seems like the CNP is demanding because we keep seeing CNP members pop up in the news saying that’s what they’re expecting to see. The CNP seems to be setting expectations, but who is the target audience? Keep in mind that for the most ardent ‘pro-Life’ groups, a ‘heartbeat ban’ really is an enormous compromise that they’d rather not accept when full bans look possible. It’s like a messaging strategy that sends the message to the pro-Life activist community to get ready for a ‘heartbeat’ compromise while also tell elected Republicans that they had better deliver at least ‘heartbeat’ bans. That’s how it looks. And Florida looks like the state best situated to test that theory. The GOP has historic majorities and the governor is the GOP’s new ‘Alt Trump’ replacement for 2024. What is the CNP and the rest of the GOP mega-donor class going to tell Ron DeSantis do on this issue of paramount national political importance? Especially after the Red splatter of last week’s mid-terms? It’s going to be highly revealing about the GOP’s national strategy on abortion is going to be, no matter who ultimately gets the nomination.
There wasn’t anything about Ron DeSantis’s and the Florida Republican’s big win that suggested that had a silver bullet for the abortion issue. They appear to have largely dodged it instead, but that’s not going to be as easy to do now that they have this complete lock on power across the state. The 15-week ban isn’t nearly enough post-Roe. What is DeSantis going to push for knowing full well that he’s going to have to defend that position in 2024? And he’s going to have to defend it both in the GOP primaries — which attract voters who tend to want complete bans — and then defend it again at the national level should he secure the nomination.
It’s quite the political pickle, which is presumably why DeSantis has been treating it like a hot potato this year. But he’s going to have to grab hold of that hot pickle and do something with it before 2024 and the CNP hasn’t stopped giving DeSantis and the rest of the GOP suggestions what how that hot pickle should be served:
“It is unclear whether Florida voters would punish or reward Republicans for passing more restrictions, which is considered popular with just a segment of the conservative base.”
Will Ron DeSantis and the Florida Republican Party get punished by voters for doing something profoundly unpopular that only appeals to a segment of the conservative base? That’s the questions the Florida GOP is wrestling with following their capture of a historic majority in the state legislature. If the GOP wants to pass laws banning all abortions in Florida it has the power to do so. But does it really want to do thing that even a majority of Republicans in the state oppose? The answer to that question is going to tell us a lot about just how important abortions bans are to the most-influential elements of the conservative base. And that’s why the question of whether or not the Florida GOP is willing to go along with an abortion ban is really the question of whether or not the Council for National Policy and other mega-donor groups are going to force the politicians beholden to them to go ahead with abortion bans despite the unpopularity of such a move:
Adding to the mystery of how this new Florida super-majority is going to proceed is the fact that the incoming Senate President Kathlreen Passidomo doesn’t sound as enthusiastic about further abortion restrictions as Incoming House Speaker Paul Renner. Passidomo appears to want to execute a kind of trade with more anti-abortion elements of the GOP caucus: pulling the 15 week ban back to 12 weeks, but in exchange for adding exceptions for rape and incest. Renner, on the other hand, is making no mention of adding new exceptions but is instead talking about just imposing further restrictions. And while Renner wouldn’t say that the he would be seeking an complete abortion ban, he also didn’t rule it out. So both the House and Senate majority leaders are signaling further abortion restrictions, potentially up to a complete ban with no exceptions:
Reproductive rights for women are now a political bartering chit in the US. Less time for more loopholes. Those kinds of negotiations are going to be taking place in states across the US for years to come, but Florida is turning into a very interesting early test case of how the GOP is going to handle this in states where abortion rights are overwhelmingly popular. They caught the hot pickle.
And what about Governor DeSantis? As the party’s presumptive Alt-Trump in 2024, this could be a make-or-break decision for his national prospects. What is DeSantis going to do now that his party has near complete control over the state? DeSantis isn’t saying. Neither is his office. But as the article reminds us, when he first campaigned for the office in 2018, DeSantis was pushing for ‘heartbeat’ restrictions. As we’ve seen, that’s a 6 week abortion ban and effectively a near total abortion ban since most women won’t even know they’re pregnant at 6 weeks. And we’ve also seen, the CNP’s position on the matter appears to be ‘Heartbeat or better’. So when we see governor DeSantis suddenly get mum on the topic of his abortion plans, keep in mind that he’s already largely boxed into a ‘heartbeat or better’ stance on the issue, which probably explains why he doesn’t want to talk about it. After all, if you know you’re mega-donors are going to demand that you pass a deeply unpopular bill, do you want the public to be aware of what’s coming? Probably not. Just passing the unpopular law and hoping the public doesn’t notice might be a politically safer strategy. And yet there’s no way anything DeSantis does on abortion won’t be thoroughly dissected by the national media during his assumed 2024 presidential run. This is the political tightrope DeSantis is walking right now. Staying quiet for now is part of the highwire act:
At the same time, DeSantis and the Florida GOP have to deal with potential obstacles in the Florida constitution. And they’re dealing with it lawsuits designed to overturn Florida’s right to privacy enshrined in the state constitution. So it’s possible legal challenges will prevent DeSantis from ultimately following through with a ‘heartbeat or better’ bill before 2024. But that’s going to come down to the outcome of the court case filed by DeSantis’s office already pending before the Florida Supreme Court. So yes, the court might prevent DeSantis from having to making these politically toxic decisions. But maybe not, in which case it will have been DeSantis’s own lawsuit that stripped the privacy-based constitutional right to an abortion and paved with way for the ‘heartbeat or better’ restrictions likely to come:
And that all brings us back to the common theme in all this: the CNP’s overarching influence over the Republican Party and the fact that the CNP is clearly pushing for a ‘heartbeat or better’ ban. So we shouldn’t be surprised to find another CNP member quoted in this article — but not identified as a CNP member, of course — hinting at a ‘Heartbeat or better’ outcome. Yes, John Stemberger, an Orlando attorney and director of the Florida Family Policy Council, is also a CNP member. And as we can see, while Stemberger is expressing uncertainty over what the Florida GOP is going to be willing to do on abortion, he still predicted that that “the most likely thing to happen is a heartbeat bill.” That’s the CNP’s line: a heartbeat bill or better. CNP members keep making that clear, even if it isn’t always clear they’re CNP members in the first place:
“I think Renner would support a heartbeat bill, as would the governor.” That was the prediction from CNP-member John Stemberger. He expects DeSantis to support a heartbeat bill. And it sure sounded like incoming House Speaker Renner is angling for something like a heartbeat bill so it’s looking like the kind of issue DeSantis is getting closer and closer to having to take a stand on. A stand he’s going to take into 2024’s GOP primary. A ‘heartbeat’ stand that is, by all indications, not at all popular at a national level. But it’s the bare minimum that with core GOP constituency of Evangelicals, as CNP members keep publicly making clear in one comment to a journalist after another. ‘Heartbeat or better’. That appears to be the CNP’s plan for 2024 but it will be up to Ron DeSantis to confirm it. Which he is bound to do one of these days despite his best efforts.
With the conservative movement’s embrace of the independent state legislature theory (ISLT) now more or less a done deal, promising to disrupt elections for years to come, it’s worth noting an important detail in the mess of legal arguments put forward by figures like Cleta Mitchell when they were attempting to convince members of congress that they had the constitutional authority to formally oppose the certification of the 2020 vote: Mitchell argued that not only do state legislatures have a constitutional duty to reject election results (the ISLT) but so do members of congress. And she was making that argument to senators like Utah senator Mike Lee.
That’s one of the details we learned from the trove of texts related to the investigation. Mitchell was telling Lee he had the power and responsibility to reject the results. For any state, not just Utah. And while Lee didn’t ultimately follow Mitchell’s advice, it’s clear that Mitchell’s exotic election law theories didn’t die with the failed insurrection. Quite the opposite. With the hiring of Mitchell by the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) in March of 2021, Mitchell’s election theories were enshrined as the new conservative orthodoxy on how elections are settled. And that’s why it’s going to be important to not just keep in mind that the new conservative election law orthodoxy doesn’t just include the ability of state legislatures to overturn election results but members of congress too:
““The document speaks for itself,” Mitchell reiterated. “I’m not going to speculate further, not on what I meant or what my intent. The document speaks for itself.””
As Cleta Mitchell emphatically repeated to investigators, the transcript of her conversation with Senator Mike Lee “speaks for itself.” What exactly it says is, however, rather self-contradictory and largely a matter of interpretation. Because as the article points out, Mitchell wasn’t just spouting a single alternative electors scheme. She was pushing both the idea that state legislatures could choose their own slates of electors and also that congress has another independent role in validating state elections. At least that’s the collection of legal theories she was pushing on Senator Mike Lee. And who knows how many other senators. Elections have to go through at least two filters, according to Mitchell’s view on constitutional law: first state legislators get to decide which slate of electors to send to congress, at which point congress decides whether or not to accept them:
And note how Mitchell didn’t view the Senate’s role in reviewing slates of electors as only happening in cases where state legislatures already intervened with their own slate. No, Mitchell views the Senate’s power to reject slates of electors as being ever present in every election. And to back that theory up she cites Bush v Gore, an example where there was no rejection of the Florida slate of electors but there happened to be some objections in the House alone. Keep in mind that while some House Democrats did formally object to the certification of the 2000 vote, there were no Senators who ultimately joined them in those objections. Also recall how Florida Republican legislative leaders asserted exactly the kind of broad powers to reject election results back in 2000 that Mitchell asserts today. It’s part of the legacy of Bush v Gore: Democratic objections to the highly controversial way the case was resolved by the Supreme Court ended up being used by Cleta Mitchell 20 years later to justify Trump’s 2020 ‘win at all costs’ scorched earth legal insurrection, effectively upholding the independent state legislature theory the Florida GOP was trying to assert in the weeks before that historically awful ruling:
So given the multilayered powers to censor electoral results envisioned by Mitchell, what happens if a state legislature selects its own slate of electors but then congress decides to reject that slate? Congress could reject those state-selected slates under Mitchell’s vision of election law. It’s a potentially noteworthy detail to keep in mind in 2024 should states decide to go ahead and appoint their own slates of electors: even under that scenario, congress could reject those state-select slates, according to Cleta Mitchell who is the apparent legal architect of this:
Cleta Mitchell was quite insistent with the investigators: state legislatures and congress have a role in reviewing election results. And she clearly hasn’t backed away from that position.
Of course, it’s not just Mitchell who obviously still holds these views. A large portion of the conservative establishment remains committed, as evidenced by Mitchell’s hiring by the CPI and her launching of the CPI’s “Election Integrity Network”. The CPI remains staunch backer of Mitchell and as we’ve seen it’s hard to find a more influential conservative group right now.
And as we also learned following the release of a large number of text messages sent to and from Mark Meadows in the post-election period, the CPI was effectively the headquarters for that broader effort Mitchell was organizing for the White House. And that trove of texts includes a November 9 text to Mark Meadows from CPI CEO (and CNP member) Ed Corrigan that is rather interesting in light of the above texts between Mitchell and Lee: “Mike Lee has about a dozen Senators coming over to CPI tonight and they wanted to hear from a legal expert on what’s going on with the campaign,” Corrigan wrote. “Any suggestions who would be good for that?” It’s not clear if Meadows wrote back to Corrigan with a legal expert to consult Lee’s group of Senators but we know by now that Mitchell did eventually get Lee’s ear and the CPI’s full and ongoing endorsement:
“Meadows’ messages also provide an indication of the support the election objection received from right-wing dark money groups. The text log shows how the Republican efforts to fight the electoral certification at the Capitol became more organized and gained steam in the days after Biden’s victory. On Nov. 9, Edward Corrigan, the president and CEO of the Conservative Partnership Institute, wrote Meadows to say Sen. Mike Lee (R‑UT) would be holding a meeting about legal strategies with his colleagues at the organization’s Capitol Hill townhouse.”
This may have been an ad hoc ‘anything goes’ push to overturn the election results. But you cant say it wasn’t organized. And as the trove of texts sent to the from Mark Meadows — a central figure in the Trump White House’s 2020 post-election efforts — makes clear, it was the CPI at the center of that organizing. It’s part of what made the CPI’s hiring of Meadows and Cleta Mitchell in early 2021 so intriguing: we had two key organizers of the post-election efforts, Mitchell the Meadows, hired by the organization that effectively became the organizing headquarters of those efforts. So when we see this Nov 9, 2020, text from CPI CEO (and CNP member) Ed Corrigan, to Senator Mike Lee, who later received those texts from Mitchell telling him he had the power to block the certification of the vote in the Senate, it’s important to keep in mind how Mitchell and Meadows appeared to transition directly from their roles as key organizers of the efforts to overturn the election to employees at the CPI:
And as we’ve seen with the ongoing key role the CPI has been playing with the Schedule F plot, the CPI’s growing role as the conservative establishment’s leading election/government dirty tricks entity continues to get cemented. Don’t forget that the CPI was only formed in 2017. Flash forward five years and it’s now the hub of the conservative movement’s efforts to both overturn elections and then purge the government of non-cronies. The CPI is the entity through which the conservative establishment — and CNP in particular — are formalizing the MAGA-fication of the GOP and Cleta Mitchell’s legal theories are a key part of that process. That’s why we unfortunately have to take the details of Cleta Mitchell’s various legal theories seriously. Cleta Mitchell speaks for the conservative establishment. Especially the parts of the conservative establishment that hired her to work on creating the next election crisis.
The plot to overturn the election wasn’t just a scheme. It was a flurry of schemes. So many different schemes that it almost seemed at times like a frantic chaotic flail in the face of defeat designed to give conservative audiences a performative display of defiance. But as the following TPM piece reminds us, there was a method to the madness. A method that investigators appear to have honed in on too, according to the materials recently released by the Jan 6 committee. It’s a method we’ve seen pop up over and over in this story: the fake electors scheme. Or rather, schemes. Whatever it took. Somehow, one way or another, they needed to find an excuse to use pro-Trump ‘alternate’ slates of electors from the key swing states Donald Trump last in 2020. Those were the the ends. Everything else was just the means. Whether we’re talking about the efforts to foment allegations of stolen elections (as Trump declared at every opportunity), subvert the Department of Justice (e.g. Jeffrey Clark’s scheming), weaponize state legislatures (Cleta Mitchell’s and Ginni Thomas’s scheming), or summoning an angry mob and forcing Mike Pence out of the Capitol on Jan 6 to block the certification of the electoral vote (as hinted at in the December 13, 2020 “Chesebro memo” and cryptically warned by Charles Grassley the day before the insurrection), the underlying plot was always about finding an excuse to count alternate slates of pro-Trump electors.
Well, almost always. There were some alternate scenarios bandied about, like the scenario where the election results are contested to the point where the decision is tossed to the House of Representatives in a state-delegation vote, where each gets one vote, which would have presumably gone to Trump. And then there was the ominous scenario Trump was openly hinting at in the months leading up to the election where he would just use the pandemic as an excuse to cancel the election entirely. But for the most part, it was the the fake elector scheme that served as the ultimate goal. It was a plot to achieving that goal. A plot with many moving parts. And when you view the totality of all the investigative details on the plot to overturn the 2020 election from that lens, it’s the kind of lens that makes all of that seemingly chaotic scheming look a lot less chaotic and a lot more organized. And a lot more criminal. And when we look at the range of figures involved, it’s very apparent that this was an act of organized crime that was centered around the Trump White House, but organized well beyond the Trump White House. This was a broader organized effort executed by a broad swath of the leading elements of the conservative movement in the US. And it started long before Trump actually lost the election:
“This new understanding of the fake electors plot is drawn from the Jan. 6 committee’s now-released materials, and from other reporting conducted by TPM, including a review of the texts Mark Meadows turned over to the committee. It also comes as Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis weighs whether to issue indictments after her year-long investigation of Trump. Willis has focused on the fake electors in her investigation, probing not only the electors themselves but the attorneys and officials on the Trump campaign who organized them.”
The ‘fake electors’ scheme wasn’t just one of many zany schemes. It was the unifying scheme that drew together the other schemes into a coherent plot. All of the schemes were, ultimately, about getting slates of fake pro-Trump electors counted in the states Trump lost. Because, in the end, it wasn’t a plot intended to bypass the US electoral system. It was a plot to subvert that system, ending up with a ‘certified’ Trump victory. Alternate slates of electors were the means of subversion, hence the investigative focus on that element of the scheming. The ‘fake electors’ schemes were just one part of a much larger plot, but a particularly incriminating part of that plot:
And as the Nov 5, 2020, text message from Don Jr. to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows make clear, the ‘fake electors’ plot was already ready to go the time the election took place. It was the go-to ‘Plan B’ when the ‘Plan A’ of winning legitimately didn’t pan out:
And then there was the Nov 12 email from Newt Gingrich to Meadows seemingly preparing for a December 14 showdown where competing slates of electors would be put forward which would “force contests, which the house would then have to settle.” Recall how, while the Democrats controlled the House at the time, the scenario Gingrich was obviously referring to was triggering the constitutional scenario where each state delegation in the House gets a vote on the next president, which would have presumably gone to Trump. So by that point, the idea of blowing past the Dec 14 deadline for submitting the slates of electors and creating some sort of crisis that the Trump team could somehow game to their advantage was already the plan in discussion.
Flash forward to the Dec 13, 2020, “Chesebro memo” — one day before the deadline — and we see this “Plan B” plan developing a “Plan B” of its own: Kenneth Chesebro — a member of Trump’s legal team — suggested that Mike Pence should recuse himself from the certification process entirely, citing “conflict of interest”, and creating the need of someone else to step in. And as we saw, that “someone else” appears to be Senate pro tempore Chuck Grassley, who was himself cryptically hinting to reporters on Jan 5 that we might play that exact role. Chesebro’s Dec 13 memo was just fleshing out the ideas Gingrich was vaguely referencing back on November 12. Idea’s Don Jr was even more vaguely referencing on November 5. This plan was already in place and everyone knew it, even if they didn’t have the exact details worked out at first:
It’s also important to keep in mind that part of what makes the Nov 12 message from Gingrich so significant is that it’s a reminder that the plot was not a Trump White House plot alone. This was a plot with major buy-in from the broader conservative power structure.
But it’s the role played by CNP-member Cleta Mitchell that really underscores the extent to which this was plot broadly endorsed by the GOP’s leadership and, more importantly, the GOP’s mega-donor networks. Recall how Mitchell’s involvement in overturning the 2020 election arguably goes back to August of 2019, when she co-chaired a high-level working group that ended up advocating for radical reading of the constitution that would enable state legislatures to override the popular vote. Also recall how not only was Cleta Mitchell sitting in on the shake-down phone call Trump make to to Brad Raffensperger, but she was also the featured speaker at FreedomWorks’s October 2020 ‘Election Protection Summit’ where they discussed challenging the validity of mail-in ballots should Trump lose. So Mitchell was repeatedly discussing plans to overturn a Trump loss well in advance of the 2020 election at major conservative organizing forums. This wasn’t the Trump White House plot. It was a plot hatched and orchestrated by the broader fascist movement that captured the GOP a long time ago:
And that’s all part of why the state fake elector shemes really are a kind of glue that ties together the broader criminal plot. Whether we’re talking about lawsuits or DOJ maneuvers, the ultimate plan was always to get a slate of pro-Trump electors counted with the electoral college vote finally came in. And specific plans may have taken a while to congeal, but the ends were always the same. And as Cleta Mitchell’s extensive, multi-year involvement in the scheming makes clear, the means to achieve those ends were gamed out well in advance of the 2020 election. Again, Mitchell’s involvement in overturning the election arguably goes back to August 2019!
But also recall another important detail about that August 2019 ‘election integrity’ gathering: That high-level working group was co-chaired with none other than Shawnna Bolick, the Arizona state legislator who introduced legislation in 2021 that would have effectively enshrined the Independent State Legislature legal theory in Arizona state law. Also recall how Bolick was one of the state legislators targeted by Ginni Thomas’s influencing campaign focused on convincing the state legislators in key states Trump lost to overturn the election results at the state level. On December 14, 2020, Bolick was among dozens of Arizona lawmakers who signed on to a letter to Congress calling for the state’s electoral votes to go to Trump or “be nullified completely until a full forensic audit can be conducted.” So when we see Mitchell co-chairing an ‘election integrity’ gathering in August of 2019 and proposing Independent State Legislature theory in 2021, it’s pretty easy to see why Ginni Thomas — herself another key CNP operative — reached out to Bolick as the plot was taking shape in the final months of 2020. Bolick was in on the plot all along. A plot that the broader GOP was working on for over a year before the 2020 election.
Of course, when we’re talking about Ginni Thomas’s extensive role in this plot, we also have to recall the invitation Thomas sent out to John Eastman to attend a December 8 “Frontliners for Liberty” meeting — a group Thomas leads to give the group an update on the Trump White House’s strategy at that point. It was five days later, on December 13, when Thomas sent the second round of emails to state legislators imploring them to challenge their states’ slates of electors. It was an extensively planned scheme. A Super Bowl of Scheming. And the Jan 6 insurrection was part of that scheme. It wasn’t a random violent chaotic ending. It was a highly strategic violent chaotic ending that was part of the last ditch attempt to find a means to that fake electors ends.
And while they ultimately didn’t win. They didn’t really lose either. Well, ok, the Jan 6 rioters sent to prison certainly lost. But when you plan and foment an insurrection in plain sight and get away with it, you didn’t really lose whether or the insurrection actually worked or not. After all, blatantly getting away with an organized criminal plot to overturn an election that culminates in an insurrection may not technically constitute another insurrection. But from a legal precedent standpoint, it’s close.
Is Catholic fascist social media star Nick Fuentes a fed asset? That’s the compelling question raised in a three-part series by Anya Parampil in The Grayzone, exploring an allegation that has been gaining steam in conservative circles as something else has been losing steam: the investigation of Nick Fuentes’s role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Why hasn’t Fuentes — someone who was undoubtedly a leading voice advocating for insurrection-like action of their demands aren’t met to angry crowds in the weeks leading up to Jan 6 — faced any legal consequences or even been brought in for FBI questioning? That’s one of the questions swirling around Fuentes’s trollish Nazi antics and the lucrative empire of provocative stunts fed to his online audiences that bring in the cash, but also smear the Nazi taint. Is Nick Fuentes being allowed to smear good conservatives with his Nazi taint because he’s a fed asset?
As we’re going to see, while those are indeed many very interesting questions about Nick Fuentes and his treatment by authorities, especially in relation to Jan 6, the most interesting aspect of Fuentes’s role in Jan 6 and subsequent treatment by authorities is how deeply he was coordinating with so many of the other major organizers, like Ali Alexander and Alex Jones, and how none of them have faced any legal consequences at all. Just as virtually none of the Council for National Policy (CNP)‘s profound role in the insurrection has remained effectively untouched.
And as we’re also going to see in the Rolling Stone article below from last month, we got a big update on just how closely Nick Fuentes was working with Ali Alexander and Alex Jones thanks to a document dump of Ali Alexander’s text messages made public by the Congressional Jan 6 Committee’s report. It’s a doozy.
For starters, the text messages start at 12:00 am, Jan 5, with an inquiry from none other then NIck Fuentes, asking Alexander if Fuentes can speak at any of the Jan 5 rallies. Alexander replies that he expects Alex Jones will let him speak at a rally. Recall how Ali Alexander led the crowd in cries of “Victory or Death!” and Michael Flynn told them, “We stand at a crucible moment in United States history” at the Jan 5 “Stop the Steal” rally at the Freedom Plaza outside the Capitol. So Alexander was inviting Fuentes to speak at rallies on Jan 5. Which shouldn’t be at all shocking. Also recall the December 12, 2020, DC rally, where Fuentes led the crowd in “Destroy the GOP! Destroy the GOP!” chants, threatening to burn the party down for not supporting Trump. This was the same rally that include multiple flyovers by Trump in Marine One. Fuentes and Alexander — himself a CNP member — working closely this whole time. Along with Alex Jones.
But let’s not forget how closely Ali Alexander was also working with the other rally organizers at “Women for America First”. So closely that CNP member Amy Kremer was reportedly working closely with the Trump White House in the lead up to Jan 6 planning the Ellipse rally, and had become concerned about possible violence coming from the second ‘Wild’ rally being planned by Alexander. Kremer claims she expressed these concerns to the Trump White House and got Alexander to agree that the Ellipse really would be the only major rally that day. And yet Kremer became concerned when she learned that Alexander was going ahead with plans a second rally after their agreement. Kremer apparently became aware on December 31 of the possible violence emanating from Alexander’s Jan 6 rally. As we’re going to see in the released texts, the VIP organizer for Women for America First, Caroline Wren, was surprisingly up-to-date on the status of the insurrection, as was Alexander. In a pair of 12:56 PM Jan 6 tweets, Alexander informs Wren, “We are D escalating the front side of the capital” and “We are going to the southside, Senate side”. This is three minutes after the insurrection technically started when protestors first broke through the police barricades. So Ali Alexander was informing Caroline Wren about the unfolding starming of the Capitol three minutes into it.
Recall how Wren — the former deputy to Don Jr.‘s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle — had been raising money for the rally specifically from Publix heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli. Fancelli’s financing was reportedly facilitated by Alex Jones. And in the week leading up to the rally, there were a number of changes in the plans. Changes pushed by Wren. We later learned Wren and Guilfoyle unsuccessfully pushed for last minute changes to the schedule of speakers at the Ellipse rally in order to get figures like Roger Stone, Alex Jones and Ali Alexander added to the speakers list. When Jones and Alexander left the rally early (to begin the march to the “Wild Protest”), it was Wren who escorted them away as they prepared to lead the march on the Capitol. So those 12:56 pm texts came not long after Wren excorted Jones and Alexander out of the first rally so they could get things underway at the ‘Wild’ second rally at the Capitol. A rally that got too ‘wild’ to get started. Presumably according a plan that has yet to be really prosecuted.
That’s all part of the context of Nick Fuentes’s apparent legal impunity: he’s not the exception. He’s the norm. Almost no one involved with planning and organizing this has been prosecuted. Why is that? Well, Fuentes has an intriguing answer that he gave to the Grayzone: as he points out, all of these figures who have yet to get prosecuted played apparent organizing roles, like himself. If such people are going to be charged, it will probably come later in the overall investigation process, with the low level people who stormed the Capitol getting prosecuted first. In other words, just wait. His prosecution is coming, along with the rest of the Jan 6 organizers’ prosecutions.
It’s a fascinating defense Fuentes put forward against the charges he’s a fed asset, because either he gets charged eventually by the feds, or he’s an asset. Will Funtes ever get prosecuted? How about his many, many co-conspirators? Time will tell. Ever increasing amounts of time it seems:
“As Fuentes escalates his rhetorical attacks on Jews, immigrants, gays and any public figure that piques his seemingly endless storehouse of outrage, the coffers of his political operation continue to fill up with cash from mostly anonymous backers. In the meantime, he has demonstrated a unique capacity to arrange photo-ops with popular figures from the pro-Trump MAGA movement, tarnishing their reputations and reveling in his destructive handiwork.”
It’s a grift. But are Nick Fuentes’s embarassing, yet highly lucratic, antics a federally-sponsored grift designed to smear conservatives? Those suspicions are at the heart of this Grayzone piece. Suspicions rooted in Fuentes’s clear, and arguably very direct and important, role in fomenting the January 6 Capitol insurrection. A role that doesn’t appear to have been punished at all. But suspicions also rooted in the highly provacative behavior of Fuentes and his ‘Groyper Army’. Provocative behavior that has undoubtedly had the effect of tainting anyone associated with him. Including, now, Donald Trump.
Of course, as we’ve seen, that Fuentes taint was something then-President Trump seemed to be more than happy to court back in December 2020. Recall the December 2020 rally in DC where Fuentes led the crowd in chants of “Destroy the GOP.” As Fuentes declared, “In the first Million MAGA march we promised that if the GOP did not do everything in their power to keep Trump in office, then we would destroy the GOP...As we gather here in Washington, D.C. for a second Million MAGA March, we’re done making promises. It has to happen now. We are going to destroy the GOP...Destroy the GOP! Destroy the GOP!” Michael Flynn also spoke at the rally, and at one point, then-president Trump did a flyover of the crowd in the Marine One helicopter three times. Fuentes’s fascist energy is the kind of taint that Trump has long made part of his brand.
A brand deeply infused with Christian nationalism, for both Trump and Fuentes. Christian nationalism with a distinct ‘Schedule F’ agenda. Recall how fellow “Church Militant” Catholic-fascist Dalton Clodfelter has been quite explicit about the mass society-wide purges he wants to see impose. It was a plan with a number of similarities to Curtis Yarvin’s ‘Schedule F+’ agenda of mass institutional purges that go beyond just government purges. And as we can see, Fuentes describes himself as a “Christian reactionary” with a vision for the future of American politics that includes a total purge of government agencies, complete shutdown of the border, and constitutional reform to mold the country into a true “Christian nation.”:
Notably, we’re told that Milo Yiannopoulos is the person who apparently came up with the whole scheme to get Fuentes invited to a dinner with Trump. Recall how Yiannopoulos himself has become quite close to the Church Militant crowd in recent years. It was November of 2021 when Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Church Militant leader Michael Voris held a rally in Baltimore over the objection of city officials who feared the event was going to be used to provoke political violence. So who knows if Yiannopoulos really was somehow behind this stunt, but there’s no denying that Yiannopoulus and Fuentes are occupying the same “Christian reactionary” space these days:
It’s also worth noting that Yiannopoulos’s seemingly sudden transition from ‘Alt Right’ provocateur to a Catholic reactionary is awfully similar to the relatively rapid transition Fuentes made in recent years. Fuentes started off as a “campus conservative” in 2016, but quickly became the head of an online neo-Nazi “Groyper Army” and the leader of an America First Foundation that appears to have as one of its goals the annual trolling of the establishment CPAC conference. Trolling the conservative establishment from a “Christian reactionary” framing is a specialty shared by both Fuentes and Yiannopoulos. And it’s that consistent trackrecord of trolling, highly effective trolling at times, that has many conservatives suspecting that Fuentes is a plant. A “Christian reactionary” whose actions systematically discredit and associate the ‘MAGA’ wing of the conservative movement with Fuentes’s neo-Nazi taint. Suspicions Yiannolopoulos seemed to validate with the explanation he gave for setting up that dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
And yet, there’s no denying that the neo-Nazi infused ‘Alt Right’ wing of the MAGA movement has been where the real grass roots energy in the MAGA movement has been in recent years. The ‘Alt Right’ is basically the future of the GOP, where the youth energy is found. That’s part of the story here: Fuentes, and fellow travelers like Yiannopoulos, are overt trolls who routinely target fellow conservatives and act like disruptor provocateurs. But that trollish behavior is also undoubtedly at least part of the contemporary zeitgeist of the moment. So is this destructive trolling or sincere trolling designed to effectively shift the conservative Overton window?
Those questions about the nature of Fuentes’s rise in conservative politics in the face of his trollish antics are made all the more salient when we observe what has become one of Fuentes’s specialties: claiming government persecution and “Most Canceled Man in America” status in order to get sympathetic mainstream conservative coverage. For example, the claims of persecution by TSA were, according to a former associate of Fuentes, part of a ploy to book appearances on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Alex Jones’ Infowars, and other major conservative platforms. In other words, it’s not just that Fuentes has been playing games with the conservative media. They’re all playing games with each other. Fuentes’s claims of government persecution are catnip to figures like Tucker Carlson and the narratives they want to promote. A conservative media that, itself, has turn ‘establishment bashing’ — no unlike the ‘establishment bashing’ of Fuentes — into a business model:
But that ‘trolling the conservative establishment’ business model is just part of what has so many to conservative wondering who Nick Fuentes is ultimately working for. There’s also the simple fact that Fuentes has yet to face an real legal consequences for the seemingly very direct role he played in fomenting the insurrection. A role that includes co-organizing the ‘rally’ outside the Capitol that descended into the insurrection and issuing marching orders like “It appears we are taking the Capitol!”, “Keep marching, and don’t relent!”, “break down the barriers and disregard the police!”, and “This Capitol belongs to us, now!” The only way Fuentes could be more directly implicated in the insurrection was if he had actually gone into the Capitol himself instead of just exhorting his many followers to do it:
Yes, multiple “Groypers” have been arrested and charged. And yet, Fuentes remains essentially legally unscathed. What’s going on here?
And that brings us to the “fed asset” suspicions. Suspicions that have been aggressively explored by conservative audiences as allegations of a fed plot behind the insurrection took hold in conservative media. Allegations that included Ray Epps, one of the rioters who was fingered by Revolver News as being a possible fed asset and who was also caught on video as one of the figures encouraging people to storm the Capitol. As that Revolver investigation noted, Epps was initially on the FBI’s most wanted list but seemed to be removed on July 1, 2021, which was one day after Revoler News published a piece suggesting that Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was working of the FBI. It was the timing of that removal of Epps from the FBI’s wanted list, coupled with the fact that Rhodes and Epps, have a history of working together and the lack of any reports of Epps’s arrest, that formed the basis of that Revolver News piece. It’s part of a broader narrative pushed by Revolver News about the insurrection being an FBI plot at its core. Keep in mind that Rhodes was indeed convicted of sedition over his organizing role in Jan 6 back in November.
Now, as the Grayzone notes, both Fuentes and Epps testified before the congressional Jan 6 investigation. And both have yet to have federal charges filed against them. So why was Epps pulled from the FBI wanted list without charges ever filed? Interestingly, during his congressional testimony, Epps explicitly denied being an FBI agent or working for any national security agency, while also suggesting that Antifa has infiltrated the mob of rioters. Keep in mind that these congressional testimonies are typically done under oath.
While those details about Epps and the role he played is indeed interesting, it’s with noting at this point that the this is the same Revolver News started by former Trump speech writer Darren Beattie. Recall how Beattie was fired from the Trump White House in 2018 after he was found to have given a speech in 2016 at the white nationalist H.L Mencken Club, although was subsequently appointed to a commission that helps preserve sites related to the Holocaust. And then, as we also saw, Beattie went on to use his Revolver outlet to push a narrative in the weeks after Jan 6 suggesting that Capitol Hill officer Brian Sicknick died for reasons entirely unrelated to the insurrection or was possible murdered to make Trump look bad. In other words, Revolver News is that kind of ‘independent news outlet’ that Trump would publicly endorse.
It’s also worth noting that one of the behaviors of Epps the Revolver investigation found particularly suspicious was video showing Epps encouraging protestors to refrain from attacking the Capitol police. So Epps helped lead the initial breach of the Capitol but also had the presence of mind to discourage his followers from attacking the police. That apparent juxtaposition appears to be part of what many found suspicious about Epps’s leadership role. In other words, a real insurrection leader would have encouraged his followers to attack the Capitol police, like Fuentes was doing:
But one major detail shared by the FBI’s treatment of both Fuentes and Epps is the lack of any FBI questioning for either figure. It’s a genuine mystery, especially in the case of Fuentes, who played a key organizing role alongside Alex Jones and fellow “Christian reactionary” CNP-member Ali Alexander in putting together the various “Stop the Steal” protests, including the “Stop the Steal” protest on Jan 6 outside the Capitol. That’s how Fuentes was in position to exhort his followers to breach the Capitol in the first place. This was the plan, and Fuentes was one of the leaders in executing that plan.
So what’s with the lack of any FBI question of Fuentes? Well, that’s part of what makes his explanation so interesting: as Feuntes notes, “There’s tiers to this...The lowest tier is the the guy that trespassed, the second tier is the militias. The next tier is the organizers… this is the key to my legal fate, if I’m considered an organizer, you know, maybe I get in trouble...Trump may be charged, Don Jr. may be charged, Alex Jones, Ali [Alexander] may be charged, I may be charged, but nobody in that category has been seen charged...My suspicion is that they are building a conspiracy case against these types.” And it’s hard to argue with his observation: virtually none of the major political organizers have the charged so far. Charges that could be forthcoming any day now. In other words, the question of whether or not Fuentes is getting a pass by the feds is a question that we can’t really answer until we find out if any of the major organizers get charged. The charges against Stewart Rhodes ironically stands out as a notable exception:
But then there’s the other rather conspicuous behavior by Fuentes after Jan 6 fueling these fed asset suspicions: Fuentes proceeded to carry out high profile mask mandate/covid vaccine protests. Protests that ended up overshadowing and smearing the other protest groups with the ‘Groyper’ Nazi taint, resulting in open suspicions that Fuentes was sent in to discredit their protests. Sent in by federal agents. That’s one of the big stories to keep in eye going forward: how much are the suspicions about Fuentes’s fed asset status going to grow as a consequence of his lack of Jan 6 prosecutions? Now, obviously, those suspicions are going to dissipate if Fuentes does ultimately get indicted over his Jan 6 actions. But, for now, it’s not hard to see why conservatives who find their rallies disrupted with an army of Nazi ‘Groyers’ might be harboring suspicions:
And yet, as conspicuous as Fuente’s over-the-top behavior might seem to frustrated conservatives who don’t want Nazis showing up and stealing the spotlight, let’s not forget that showing up and stealing the spotlight by being a Nazi is more or less his schtick. That’s how he gets his adoring fans and makes his money. In other words, Nick Fuentes’s conspicuous behavior is less conspicuous in the context of who he is as an Alt Right culture warrior troll in the age of social media.
But as the following Rolling Stone article from last month also makes clear, there’s an other major reason to be skeptical of the idea that Nick Fuentes was working as a fed asset provocateur troll on Jan 6: he was coordinating directly with Ali Alexander and was slated to be a VIP at the rallies. That’s just one of the fascinating details we got to learn from a dump of Alexander’s text messages from Jan 5–6. Messages that start at 12:00 Jan 5 when Nick Fuentes texts Alexander asking if he can speaking at one of the rallies “tomorrow” (Jan 5). Alexander answers in the affirmative, explaining that Alex Jones owns part of one of the stages and will allow Fuentes to speak. Then, on the morning of Jan 6, Fuentes texts Alexander at 1:56 am asking, “Is the VIP entrance the same as the general entrance?”
It’s not clear how Alexander responded to Fuentes VIP question. No response from Alexander is indicated, which itself is interesting given the fact that Fuentes’s ‘Groyper Army’ obviously comprised a significant element of that riot crowd and Fuentes was pretty overt in the days leading up to Jan 6. If Fuentes really was planning on ordering his Groyper Army to breach the Capitol, those were plans that likely came into effect overnight. Don’t forget that it wasn’t obvious that Pence was going to refuse to go along with the plan until the evening of Jan 5. It was only then that some sort of ‘Plan B’ to get Pence out of the way was needed. And that Plan B appeared to center around getting Chuck Grassley to replace Pence in the electoral count proceedings. A role Grassley even hinted at with reporters on Jan 5. Ideally, Pence would recuse himself, citing conflicts of interesting or something. But when he didn’t, we got to see the ‘Plan B’s Plan B’. That was the insurrection. Driving Pence out of the Capitol and preventing the certification of the electoral vote and the opportunity to arrange for Chuck Grassley to replace him. Had Pence followed the advice of his Secret Service lead officer and left the Capitol instead of refusing, who knows if it would have worked. Communications with an insurrection rabble-leader like Fuentes may have been complicated at that point. Still, the texts are clear. Fuentes was working closely with Ali Alexander right up until the insurrection. Alexander even agreed to give Fuentes a speaking slot at a Jan 5 rally.
But what’s also clears is that Fuentes and Alexander have one big thing in common with almost all of the other major organizing figures who played a role in the events leading up to the insurrrection: they haven’t face any criminal prosecution. Basically no one in that text dump has faced any sort of prosecution. Including Roger Stone, who Alexander exorts to rush to the Capitol in a 12:47 pm text, on Trump’s orders.
Although there’s one notable exception to the no prosecution rule: Brandon Straka was part of a group chat the Alexander was part of that day. Straka sent live updates to the group while he was breaching the Capitol, including one at 2:03 pm where he talked about getting gassed and never feeling more alive. Even Straka was directly tied into Ali Alexander’s lines of communication. That how central Ali Alexander was, and yet he’s never faced any prosecution at all.
And that’s really the big picture here when it comes to the disparate treatment of Fuentes and low level figures like Straka who actually entered the Capitol: Straka’s prosecution is the exception. Fuentes is the rule. Almost no one involved with the organizing of Jan 6 has faced any real consequences or likely ever will. It was like a ‘too big to fail’ conspiracy that is too vast for the US to realistically handle. Fuentes was one of ‘too big to fail’ conspirators to dodge prosecution:
“Alexander served as a central node in the information flow for the events of Jan. 6. He was texting with congressional staffers, GOP consultants, white supremacists, religious zealots, and Oath Keepers, including Kelly Meggs, since convicted of seditious conspiracy. The texts underscore Alexander’s advance knowledge that Trump would send masses marching on the Capitol. And while Alexander made futile attempts to calm the crowd in the moment, he also advised his collaborators to lie low after the Capitol breach because “the FBI is coming hunting.” Rolling Stone has combed through the messages Alexander provided to the Jan. 6 committee, presenting a chronological selection below, to illuminate how the events unfolded in real time for one of the day’s most important players. (Alexander did not respond to an interview request.)”
Ali Alexander’s texts from Jan 5 and 6 aren’t just revealing. They’re damningly reflective of the central role Alexander played in organizing the insurrection. Damning to a lot more people than just Ali Alexander. In these texts we find figures ranging from “Women for America First” VIP coordinator Caroline Wren — who was handling a number of organizing decisions for the Jan 6 “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse — to Roger Stone and Joe Flynn, brother of Michael Flynn. And Brandan Straka, the rioter who is actually facing prison time (and who, unlike Fuentes, actually entered the Capitol). Even Straka is included in these texts. Because Ali Alexander was at the center of it all. And has yet to face any charges.
That’s part of the context of the mystery over the lack of legal action against Nick Fuentes, as opposed to Straka, and the questions about whether or not he’s a federal asset: Fuentes isn’t the exception in not getting prosecuted. He’s closer to the norm. In terms of legal action against the people playing organizing roles in what became the insurrection, it’s Straka and Rhodes who are the exceptions.
And that brings us to perhaps the most infamous person to be texting Ali Alexander on Jan 5 and 6: Nick Fuentes, who messages Alexander at midnight on Jan 5, asking Alexander if he knows of any events where Fuentes will be allowed to speak. Alexander replies that “Alex owns part of the stage at Freedom Plaza,” a presumed reference to Alexander’s co-organizer Alex Jones. Fuentes asks if Jones will let him speak at that Freedom Plaza rally and Alexander responds with a “Yes”. This is all presumably a reference to the Jan 5 “Stop the Steal” rally at the Freedom Plaza where Ali Alexander led the crowd in cries of “Victory or Death!” and Michael Flynn told them, “We stand at a crucible moment in United States history.”
It’s not clear if Fuentes did ultimately speak at the Jan 5 rally, but either way, it wouldn’t have been the first ‘Stop the Steal’ rally he spoke at. Recall the December 12, 2020, DC rally, where Fuentes led the crowd in “Destroy the GOP! Destroy the GOP!” chants, threatening to burn the party down for not supporting Trump. This was the same rally that include multiple flyovers by Trump in Marine One.
Then, at 1:56 am on Jan 6, Fuentes texts Alexander about the VIP entrance. Now, keep in mind that Jan 6 was supposed to have two rallies: the first rally, which actually happened, organized by “Women for American First” of figures like Caroline Wren. But then there was the second planned ‘wild’ ‘Stop the Steal’ rally at the Capitol that never happened because the insurrection erupted from that crowd right after the end of the first rally (with Ray Epps reportedly playing a leading role in initiating that crowd activity at approximately 12:53 PM, according to that Revolver News report). So it’s possible that Fuentes was referring to a planned VIP entrances for that second rally. Or maybe the first rally. As we can see with the texts sent to Alexander from Lance Wallnau and Michele Odom, Alexander was apparently relaying VIP entrance information to VIPs for the morning Ellipse rally too, referencing a 9:30 am start time and a promise to send them VIP instructions. So in addition to playing a leading role in organizing the second “Stop the Steal” rally at the Capitol, Ali Alexander was acting as a VIP point of contact of the morning “Women for America First” rally too.
This is a reminder of one of the points of ambiguity in the story about the Jan 6 events that’s never been entirely clear but is getting clearer the more we’re learning: how separate were these two rallies? Not separate at all. By Jan 6, they were part of a joint effort. Don’t forget how Alex Jones, one of Ali Alexander’s key partners in organizing the second ‘wild’ Stop the Steal rally, was publicly claiming in the days following the insurrection that he and Alexander has some sort of arrangement with the White House involving Jones and Alexander leading a march to the second rally at the Capitol “We had a legitimate deal with the White House,” Jones said in an InfoWars show. “‘Hey Jones and Ali,’ literally, they let us out early, we were supposed to lead a peaceful deal.” Jones went on to double down on the claim that Trump gave him the impression that Trump himself was going to join the second ‘wild’ rally Alexander was organized planned for January 6. A claim that Trump himself appeared to validate in April of 2022 with his statements about how he really did want to join the march to the Capitol but the Secret Service prevented him. Both rallies were being organized in concert with the Trump White House, and Ali Alexander was one of the central players in the entire effort. That’s why all the VIPs were texting him for details.
So Fuentes was either a VIP at the morning or afternoon rallies. Or maybe both. Either way, it’s abundantly clear that Nick Fuentes and Ali Alexander were both playing important organizing roles in the events that led up to the insurrection and they were working with each other. It’s also pretty clear at this point that neither one has faced any legal repercussions:
And then there’s the texts from Caroline Wren, the official VIP coordinator for the “Women for America First” morning rally. We see a text from Alexander to Wren asking about whether “Marsha, Cruz, Hawley, Gohmert, Brooks, and Gosar” are booked and a 5:00 am Jan 6 message from Wren to Alexander telling him to cut the line to get expedited entry and that “All your names are on the list.” It’s further evidence of how the two rallies — the ‘establishment’ morning rally and ‘wild’ afternoon rally’ — had already merged into a single working operation. Recall how Caroline Wren — the former deputy to Don Jr.‘s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle — had been raising money for the rally specifically from Publix heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli. Fancelli’s financing was reportedly facilitated by Alex Jones. And in the week leading up to the rally, there were a number of changes in the plans. Changes pushed by Wren. We later learned Wren and Guilfoyle unsuccessfully pushed for last minute changes to the schedule of speakers at the Ellipse rally in order to get figures like Roger Stone, Alex Jones and Ali Alexander added to the speakers list. When Jones and Alexander left the rally early (to begin the march to the “Wild Protest”), it was Wren who escorted them away as they prepared to lead the march on the Capitol. And here we see Wren and Alexander exchanging texts about who is getting booked to speak and Alexander’s super VIP status. Along with texts from Wren asking Alexander for updates on Donald Trump’s status every five minutes. Alexander and Wren — the organizers for what were ostensibly two separate rallies — were working hand in glove:
And then we get to this fascinating pair of 12:56PM Jan 6 texts sent from Alexander to Wren: “We are D escalating the front side of the capital.” “We are going to the southside, Senate side” Keep in mind that this is literally minutes from who en the breach at the capitol started. Again, as that Revolver News piece that focused on Ray Epps documented extensive ties between Epps and Stewart Rhodes (Epps was the former head of the Arizona Chapter of the Oath Keepers) and their allegations that Rhodes is himself a fed asset. Now, if indeed Rhodes was operating as a fed asset, that would be a very significant detail in the investigation give the highly important role he and his Oath Keepers played, including protection VIP protection at the rallies. But if Rhodes isn’t a fed asset, that just puts Epps in the orbit of this larger very organized network Rhodes was working with. And makes the role he played in fomenting people to “Go to the Capitol” all the more interesting.
So, returning to the 12:56 pm text from Alexander to Wren, Epps speaks with Ryan Samsel shortly before Samsel starts the breach, the moment the insurrection technically starts at 12:53 pm according to the official investigation. That brief conversation with Samsel was the last in a string of moments captured on video throughout Jan 5 and Jan 6 where Epps was loudly imploring the rally crowds to “Go to the Capitol” after Trump’s Ellipse speech. That’s why Epps is seen by many conservatives as the big instigator of the actual insurrection. And here, we see Ali Alexander texting Caroline Wren three minutes after the start of the breach, at 12:56 pm, with an eerily calm message of “We are D escalating the front side of the capital”. It’s another example of how, the more we learn, the larger and more organized the plot appears:
Regarding the texts to Michael Flynn’s brother Joe Flynn sent to Ali Alexander about the speaking times, don’t forget about Michael Flynn’s other brother, Charles Flynn, who was actually serving in the Pentagon that day and was sitting in on the meetings about calling in the National Guard. And don’t forget about the whistleblower who called the DOD Inspector General’s report on the Pentagon’s performance that day a cover up that obscures how General Charles Flynn was arguing against sending in the National Guard during a 2:30 call due to the bad optics. So there’s actually three Flynn siblings who potentially played a role in the events of that day and Charles Flynn may have arguably played the biggest role. A big covered up role:
Now, regarding the texts sent from Ali Alexander to Roger Stone at 12:47 pm — six minutes before the barricades are first breached by Ryan Samsel — it’s interesting that Alexander refers to “the presidents order.” What did Trump order?
Another very interesting text exchange started with the 9:26pm Jan 5 text from Bob Weaver, asking “Is it true that grassley is going to preside over the senate on the 6th? Not sure of the play??” and Alexander replies “Pence cucked. Grassley is better.” First, recall how it was the evening of Jan 5 when the Trump team learned that Mike Pence was unwilling to go along with any plans of rejecting the electoral vote, meaning the planning that took place in the “war room” that evening was likely planning that included talk of using a mob of supporters to just openly block the vote by raiding the Capitol. That was the “cucking” Alexander was referring to. They were already texting about a ‘Grassley option’ by 9:26 pm. That being the plan described in the now-notorious Dec 13, 2020 email between Kenneth Chesebro — the little-known attorney who had been advising Donald Trump’s legal team — and Rudy Giuliani laying out the strategy where Pence first refuses to certify the electoral count and then recuses himself, leaving the responsibility to allow Chuck Grassley. Grassley even signaled to the press his awareness of this plan on Jan 5, hinting to the press he might play a role in the electoral count proceedings!. And if Pence was willing to recuse himself, driving him out of the Capitol was the Plan B. That’s kind of planning was starting by the evening of Jan 5. Planning around making the “Grassley Play” somehow happen:
Finally, regarding Brandon Straka and point made in the Grayzone piece about Straka facing consequences while Fuentes has yet to do so, note how Straka was texting the “STS Patriots” chat group that included Ali Alexander at 2:03 PM about how exhilarated he was to get gassed while breaching the Capitol. Straka was part of this same larger network:
And, of course, adding insulting to injury for Straka is the fact that it’s not just that Nick Fuentes hasn’t been charged while Straka has. Almost that entire larger network that key organizers like Ali Alexander, Caroline Wren, Stewart Rhodes, Alex Jones, and Nick Fuentes, who were coordinating with the Trump White House, have virtually all avoided any legal culpability. Only the useful idiots like Brandon Straka who breached the Capitol faced any consequences. Jail is for the expendable rabble.
One of the few exceptions to that rule is Stewart Rhodes, who didn’t enter the Capitol himself but was the obvious leader of the Oath Keepers who were prominently there and with the “Quick Reaction Force” (QRF) and arms awaiting Trump’s orders. Rhodes was convicted for sedition in November 2022, which doesn’t point toward Rhodes being a federal asset provocateur.
Is the federal case against Nick fuentes coming up? It’s hard to keep holding out hope. Given the logic box Fuentes created for himself — either he gets prosecuted or he’s a fed asset — you have to wonder what Fuentes is hoping for too. But, again, even if Fuentes does end up getting prosecuted, that just makes him the another exception to the rule. Unless we see a lot more prosecutions of Jan 6 planners and organizers. Planners and organizers who, at this point, are probably regretting all those incriminating texts they sent to all the other high-level people who, like Ali Alexander, have yet to get prosecuted.
Third time’s a charm? Let’s hope so. But with all the understandable excitement and fanfare around Donald Trump’s third indictment — an indictment over his role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection — it’s important to keep in mind that this was far from a ‘Trump coup attempt’. Yes, Trump played a central role in the entire affair. And yes, many other players, including the low level insurrectionists, have already been embroiled in their own legal defenses. But we can’t really understand the January 6 plot without recognizing the reality that it was joint effort between the Trump administration and the Council for National Policy (CNP). This was an oligarchic coup attempt too. And, so far, the oligarchs are getting away with it.
Now, we don’t know when all the investigations will be over and which ‘names’ fill ultimately get named. But as more details are coming out about this latest indictment, it’s looking more and more like the CNP dodged a bullet again. As the following CNN piece notes, of the six unnamed co-conspirators in the indictment, five can be clearly identified: Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, and Kenneth Chesebro. And while they were all unambiguously deeply involved in the plot, note how none of them are known CNP members. CNP figures like Cleta Mitchell and Ginni Thomas who played major organizing roles. As we’ve seen, Mitchell’s involvement in overturning the 2020 election arguably goes back to August of 2019, when she co-chaired a high-level working group that ended up advocating for radical reading of the constitution that would enable state legislatures to override the popular vote. And then there’s the fact that Mitchell was sitting in on the now notorious Jan 2, 2021 phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensburger demanding that they “find” the votes he needed to win the state, resulting in Mitchell’s law firm effectively kicking her out of the firm. And as we’ve also seen, it’s been Ginni Thomas who we find working alongside Mitchell on these CNP-sponsored ‘election integrity’ efforts that amount to preemptively formulated legal pretexts for overturning elections.
And Mitchell and Thomas are just two of the more prominent examples of the CNP members involved with this scheming, pre-and-post 2020 election. So what does it tell us that there doesn’t appears to be an CNP members included in this latest indictment? Is the CNP going to be allowed to get away with this without any formal acknowledgment? And will the media continue in its bizarre inability or unwillingness to meaningfully address the CNP’s role in all this? These are some of the major questions raised by the newly announced indictment. The kinds of questions that, as we’re going to see, aren’t entirely new for the US. The kinds of questions FDR’s administration faced after it dodged a bullet of its own with the exposure of the 1933–34 ‘Business Plot’, when the wealthiest industrialists in the US got together and decided to overthrow FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in reaction to the New Deal. As we’re going to see in a Jan 13, 2021, WaPo piece — one week after the insurrection — it’s hard to avoid noticing the parallels between the two events. And while the piece doesn’t note the CNP’s role in plot — which wasn’t as clear at that point — don’t forget that the CNP is basically the mothership for organized right-wing oligarchic political organizing. Jan 6 was an oligarchic plot.
But as the piece also reminds us, nothing was done with Butler’s revelations and the press at the time even derided the whole thing as an elaborate hoax. There’s even speculation that FDR’s administration cut a deal with the plotters, offering to avoid prosecuting them for treason if they dropped their opposition to the New Deal and asking the press to drop the story. Is this true? Were the coup plotting oligarchs allowed to cut a deal and promise they won’t do it again? If so, we also have to ask: was Jan 6, in part, a direct echo for that secret deal? Because it’s hard to see that story would discourage an oligarch from staged a new coup. The ‘we’ll cut a deal with you if you fail’ precedent was already set. Was a similar deal cut with the CNP today? If not, what’s the explanation for the apparent legal impunity of the CNP’s members? And what explains the media’s near-complete absences of any coverage of the CNP’s profound role in Jan 6? Why all the silence? It’s a question that has been looming over the Jan 6 investigation the whole time. All the more so now that we have this indictment.
Ok, first, here’s a CNN identifying five of the 6 unnamed co-conspirators: Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, and Kenneth Chesebro. All deeply involved in the plot. Just not any of CNP members who were also deeply involved in the plot:
Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, and Kenneth Chesebro. All undoubtedly deeply involved in the plot.
And while we don’t yet know the identity of that sixth co-conspirator, it’s hard not to notice how we don’t see a single CNP member under indictment despite the extensive roles CNP members like Cleta Mitchell or Ginni Thomas played formulating and organizing this whole scheme. A scheme that was much, much larger than just Donald Trump and his six co-conspirators. Take, for example, the Dec 13, 2020 “Chesebro Memo” that laid out a scenario where Mike Pence would refuse to certify the votes for several states on Jan 6 and send them back for ‘review’. As we saw, after it became clear that Pence wasn’t going to go along with the plan, it apparently morphed into a plan to effectively force Mike Pence out of the Capitol over a security threat, allowing the President of the Senate, Chuck Grassley, to serve in his place. And as we also saw, Grassley hinted at this exact scenario to reporters on Jan 5! This was a much, much larger plot that large numbers of prominent members of the Republicans fully on board, which why we have to ask the grim question of whether or not the prosecution of Donald Trump over this coup plot is effectively sending the signal that most of the elite members of serious coup plot will be allowed to avoid any responsibility, or even exposure, should the plot fail.
And that brings us to the following WaPo piece published on Jan 13, 2021, just one week after the insurrection, reminding us about how we’ve collectively forgotten about the last time the US experienced an elite coup plot scheme. An elite coup plot scheme that was never meaningfully investigated, never prosecuted, and effectively covered up by both the government and press at the time. That would, of course, be the Business Plot scheme of 1933–34, when the wealthiest industrialists in America attempted to recruit Marine Corps general Smedley Butler to lead an army of veterans on DC, with a fascist government as the intended replacement. Why? Opposition to FDR’s New Deal. It was just too much for America’s business elites. So much that they were willing to end democracy and join the new fascist trend that was sweeping Europe at the time.
Altogether, the coup plotters controlled assets worth nearly $40 billion, or roughly $778 billion in 2021. And that underscores one of the aspects of this entire Jan 6 scheme that wasn’t nearly as clear in the immediate aftermath of Jan 6 but did become much clearer over the following two and a half years of reporter: Jan 6 was a joint Trump/CNP plot. Yes, Trump and those in his immediate orbit were obviously leading the efforts. But with key CNP figures shepherding the scheme the whole time, arguably going all the way back to August 2019, when Cleta Mitchell co-chaired a high-level working group with Shawna Bollick that ended up advocating for radical reading of the constitution that would enable state legislatures to override the popular vote.
So we have the CNP — a group that more or less exists as a kind of fusion center for oligarchs, politicians, and wealthy theocrats — playing a major role in this scheme to overthrow an election but apparently dodging virtually any culpability. And that’s why we have to ask: are we repeating the same mistake that was made in the wake of the Business Plot revelations?
Interestingly, as the WaPo piece notes, journalist John Buchanan suggested during a 2007 BBC interview that the reason the government didn’t pursue the investigation and the press downplayed the whole thing as a hoax was because Roosevelt’s administration cut a deal with the plotters: back off their opposition to the New Deal and they won’t be prosecuted for treason. We don’t know that’s what happened but it sounds plausible. And, in turn, raises another disturbing question: how familiar were the CNP coup plotters behind Jan 6 with the history of the failure to prosecute the Business Plot? Because it’s hard to read this chapter in history as anything but emboldening to future coup plotters. Especially emboldening that we’ve collectively forgotten it all:
“How close this fascist cabal got, and who exactly was in on it, are still subjects of historical debate. But as the dust settles after the pro-Trump attack on the U.S. Capitol, and as it becomes clearer how close lawmakers came to catastrophe, the similarities to the Business Plot are hard to ignore.”
Yes, the similarities between the January 6 Capitol insurrection and the Business Plot are indeed hard to ignore. That was clear in the aftermath of Jan 6, when this WaPo article was written. And yet as has also become clear in the following 2 1/2 years, we’ve done a pretty good job of ignoring it all and remain a society almost entirely oblivious to this history. The history of how the most powerful industrialists in America plotted to overthrow the government and install a fascist dictatorship. One one think this would be a chapter in history any self-respecting society would have etched in its collective memory. But nope. This is America. Forever oblivious America:
Of course, that obliviousness didn’t happen in a vacuum. It took a team effort, like the press actively dismissing it as a hoax. Again, one would think that a self-respecting society would have a clear memory of the time the elite press ran cover for a fascist plot involving the most powerful people in the country. But that’s not America. Instead, it’s as if this all never happened:
And then there’s the never-released congressional report that Butler claimed has been censored of the names of the coup plotters. This sure seems like the kind of story the press should have been mightily interested in at the time:
Finally, we get to this warning from the past: the explanation for the near-complete coverup of this fascist plot is that a deal was struck. The coup plotters could avoid treason charges if they backed off to their opposition to the New Deal. Beyond that, FDR’s administration even asked the press to tamp down on the story. Why? So the public wouldn’t realize just how delicate the situation really was. That’s the scenario put forward by journalist John Buchanan back in 2007. We don’t know that’s what happened, but it sounds plausible:
So with the news of the historic indictment of Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, we have to ask: are we poised to see history repeat itself? Are the oligarchs getting away with another failed coup plot? If so, let’s hope history repeats itself again and the next oligarch-sponsored coup plot fails. Because it appears that the ‘get out of jail if you’re an oligarch’ precedent remains as strong as ever. The public may not have noticed, but we can be pretty sure the oligarchs eagerly assisting the plot to overturn the 2020 election are taking the lesson to heart.
Who was the ultimate architect behind the events that led up to Jan 6? It’s long been one of the central questions surrounding that day. But as we’ve seen with the recent NY Times report on a previously undisclosed December 6, 2020, memo authored by Kenneth Chesebro, the question of who formulated the legal rationale behind the strategy being pursued by the Trump administration appears to have an answer. Albeit a somewhat vague and confusing answer.
As we’ve seen, there’s already a notorious ‘Chesebro memo’. That would be the December 13, 2020 memo where Chesebro lays out the plan where Pence declares on Jan 6 that he has the authority to count the electoral votes and decide how to deal with any outstanding issues, but he also has a conflict of interest, and will therefore the President pro tempore of the Senate, Senator Chuck Grassley, would serve in his place instead. As we also saw, Chuck Grassley publicly hinted at this scenario on Jan 5, one day before the insurrection. It was a memo that made clear blocking the certification of the vote was central to the strategy. It was matter of finding a way to get there
But Chesebro wasn’t the only lawyer working on Trump’s team coming up with zany schemes. As we also saw, the Claremont Institute’s John Eastman has publicly embraced a revolutionary rationale for the insurrection itself in a recent interview. Eastman was clearly a major legal voice in the team of people in Trump’s immediate orbit after the election. Eastman was gaming out insurrection-related scenarios at the Claremont Institute a month before the 2020, although in those scenarios it was armies of angry antifa and other left-wing forces preventing the certification of the election. And it was a scenario where the contested vote is sent to the Supreme Court, where it gets tossed to the House for a one-state-one-vote decision that Eastman was eying. So we could see Eastman as the legal mind behind the idea of blocking the certification of the vote on Jan 6 through an insurrectionary.
But as the newly revealed December 6 memo underscores, Kenneth Chesebro’s whole strategy for securing Trump a second term also involved the blocking of the Jan 6 certification of the vote, which was what he had in mind as he formulated the strategy of assembling pro-Trump electoral delegations from contested states with the idea of having those states send two sets of votes to the electoral college on the December 14 deadline, as laid out in the memo. It was a strategy of contesting the electoral vote in such a way that it gets ultimately sent to the Supreme Court. This fake electors strategy has reportedly become the cornerstone of Jack Smith’s indictment.
Specifically, it’s the assembling of fake slates of electors where Smith view the scheming as veering into criminal territory. And that’s, in part, based on this Dec 6 memo, where Chesebro suggested that Pence argue on Jan 6 that he, and he alone, has the constitutional authority to determine which sets of electoral votes are the valid ones to count. Trump could even remain ahead in the count the whole time as the case works its way to the Supreme Court if Pence asserts his authority to decide which slate of electors to accept. As Chesebro puts it in the memo, “I believe that what can be achieved on Jan. 6 is not simply to keep Biden below 270 electoral votes...It seems feasible that the vote count can be conducted so that at no point will Trump be behind in the electoral vote count unless and until Biden can obtain a favorable decision from the Supreme Court upholding the Electoral Count Act as constitutional, or otherwise recognizing the power of Congress (and not the president of the Senate) to count the votes.”
As prosecutors note, this plan to have Pence assert this authority was NOT expressed to the slates of fake pro-Trump electors in contested states that the Trump team was assembling around this same time, which is part what Jack Smith’s indictment characterizes this is a deceptive. Instead, those fake electors were told that they were merely going to be put together as a ‘just in case’ back up should lawsuits contesting their state prevail. The obscuring of the ‘have Mike Pence unilaterally choose the fake slates of electors’ part of plot from the fake electors themselves appears to be part of the criminality here.
Notably, Chesebro expresses doubt in the memo that the Supreme Court will accept their legal arguments, but he still views that as the best strategy going forward at that point. So he had to expect that, should Pence pull that stunt, the act would result in lawsuit that quickly make their way to the Supreme Court.
And that brings us back to Eastman’s one-state-one-vote scenario where the ultimately resolves the election House. Was that what Chesebro was ultimately depending on too? It’s part of why it’s not entirely clear who is chief legal architect here. Is it Kenneth Chesebro, the architect for the plan to block the certification of the vote that will end up before the Supreme Court? Or John Eastman, the architect for scenarios involving the blocking of the certification of the vote though violence on Jan 6 and an emergency fall back on the House one-state-one-vote rule to resolve the chaos?
This is also a good time to recall that it appears that the Trump team was hoping to get Pence to go along with a ‘blocking the certification of the vote’ plan up until the even of Jan 5, and at that point an insurrection was really the only remaining option. In that sense, Chesebro was the legal architect behind ‘Plan A’, which got ditched for Eastman’s ‘Plan B’ in the final hours after Pence made clear he wasn’t going to play along. And thanks to this newly released December 6, 2020, memo, we know now that buying time in order to get a case before the Supreme Court that they didn’t even expect to win was part of the plan:
“The false electors scheme was perhaps the most sprawling of Mr. Trump’s various efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It involved lawyers working on his campaign’s behalf across seven states, dozens of electors willing to claim that Mr. Trump — not Mr. Biden — had won their states, and open resistance from some of those potential electors that the plan could be illegal or even “appear treasonous.” In the end, it became the cornerstone of the indictment against Mr. Trump.”
The cornerstone of Jack Smith’s indictment against Trump. That’s how this previously unknown December 6, 2020, memo is characterized. A memo written by Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, author of the already notorious December 13, 2020, “Chesebro memo” that, itself, was so incriminating that a judge forced its disclosure under the “crime-fraud” exception to attorney client privilege. So it appears that ‘Chesebro’ memo had an even more incriminating memo written by Chesebro a week earlier. A memo where Chesebro more or less lays out how he doesn’t even think the plan will necessarily pass legal muster and will probably be rejected by the Supreme Court in the end, but will nonetheless achieve the goal of buying time. It’s a plan without a clear path to a realistic legal resolution, which is another big clue about its legality:
And as the indictment lays out, part of what made this scheme criminal is the fact that it relied on the engineering of “a fake controversy that would derail the proper certification of Biden as president-elect.” A fake controversy that, as the December 6 memo lays out, Mike Pence could then cite as a reason for his refusal to certify the electoral votes on Jan 6. But only after Pence asserted “the position that it is his constitutional power and duty, alone, as president of the Senate, to both open and count the votes.” It’s that engineering of a fake controversy, coupled with the legal theory put forward in the memo that the Vice President has the sole power to count the electoral votes, that has the memo just dripping with consciousness of guilt:
And then we get to this interesting memo from December 9, 2020, where Chesebro speculates about the feasibility that the vote counting can be conducted in such a manner that the recognizes “the power of Congress (and not the president of the Senate) to count the votes.” Keep in mind that the President of the Senate is, normally, the vice president. This is a good time to recall the remarkable January 5, 2021, public comments made by Senator Chuck Grassley — then the Senate pro tempore — who was warning reporters that he might have to play Pence’s role of President of Senate on Jan 6 and handle the role of deciding which electoral votes to count should Pence not show up (or, implicitly, should Pence be driven away from the capital by an angry mob). So they were already scheming of ways to get Pence out of the picture at that point. But also recall how there was speculation months before the 2020 election that a contested election scenario that arrives in the Supreme Court’s lap could end up getting tossed back to the House of Representatives, where a one-state-one-vote procedure would play out for determining the next president. A scenario that Trump would presumably have won. And a scenario that John Eastman was thinking about a month before the election. So when we see Chesebro talking in this Dec 9 memo about recognizing the power of Congress to count the votes, that wounds like a one-state-one-vote scenario:
Finally, it’s especially notable that this Chesebro was co-conspiring alongside John Eastman this entire time. So when we find the Claremont Institute releasing a recent interview of Eastman where he more or less describes what they were engaged in as a righteous revolution against an oppressive government, that’s potentially important context for understanding what Chesebro and Eastman were actually planning:
And that brings us to the following TPM piece that underscores the fact that, while Eastman may be the most full-throated in his defense of this legal strategy, Chesebro was the ultimate legal architect for the legal strategy that was pursued by the Trump . The legal architect for a strategy that required the blocking of the certification of the electoral vote one way or another. But a strategy that ultimately required Mike Pence’s cooperation:
“It was a situation of Chesebro’s own alleged making: the fake elector slates he convened, the legal theory which created an expectation in the crowd on January 6 that Pence would do anything except duly certify the election. Chesebro told me that the day disappointed him. The delay that those legal theories were meant to achieve didn’t get him what he wanted: a debate about “serious concerns about the election in several states that were never really addressed on the merits.””
Yes, as the article reminds us, it was Chesebro’s legal theories that the Trump team was routinely parroting in the weeks leading up to the insurrection. Legal theories that implicitly placed Mike Pence in the ‘traitor’ category in the eyes of Trump’s followers when Pence refused to go along with the scheme. John Eastman was clearly a very important legal player in this scheme. But Chesebro was arguably the central legal player in the overall plot, with that December 6 memo serving as the creative kernel for what unfolded. And it was Chesebro’s kernel:
And when we see Chesebro express disappointment that the insurrection failed to achieve the aim of delaying the certification of the vote on Jan 6, don’t forget the one-state-one-vote congressional scenario John Eastman was thinking about. A scenario that first requires bringing a case to the Supreme Court and have them toss it back to the House. In other words, a scenario that likely would have played out after Jan 6. That’s part of the context of Chesebro’s overarching strategy: it’s a strategy that assumes that either Mike Pence asserts the right to decide which electoral votes to count on Jan 6 or, if Pence isn’t willing to go along with that plan, assume that the certification doesn’t happen at all on Jan 6, resulting in court cases that ultimately end up at the Supreme Court where it all gets tossed back to the House for one-state-one-vote outcome. And with Mike Pence refusing to go along with the plan, insurrection was the only option left:
Finally, we get to this intriguing detail: John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro started working together back in 2016 thanks to a mutual desire to see the birthright citizenship requirement removed. Putting aside the merits of that constitutional requirement, we have to ask: who is the foreign-born conservative they have in mind? Because it’s hard to imagine Chesebro and Eastman just randomly decided to pick that battle based on principle. Peter Thiel? Elon Musk? They must have had someone in mind:
Given how intertwined their plans were in the end, with the Trump team pursuing Chesebro’s ‘Plan A’ up until Pence’s refusal to play along on Jan 6, seemingly triggering Eastman’s ‘Plan B’, it’s kind of all one big plan. Which raises the interesting question as to whether or not any memos between Chesebro and Eastman were recovered in this investigation.
And more generally, as the December 6 memo demonstrates, when Donald Trump was publicly issuing barely veiled threats against Mike Pence before his crowd of supporters on the morning of January 6, declaring “If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election”, he was playing a last ditch role to keep a plan in place that Chesebro was proposing in that December 6, 2020, memo. And when that didn’t work they went with Eastman’s burn it all down plan. It really was a group effort.
Well that’s convenient, investigatively speaking. It’s long been clear that Donald Trump’s post-2020 election team’s strategy on Jan 6 hinged on stopping Mike Pence from certifying the electoral vote on Jan 6. Just as it’s long been clear that the Trump team had a close working relationship with the ‘Stop the Steal’ group led by Alex Jones and Ali Alexander that actually marched to the Capitol that day and morphed into the insurrection.
Still, it wasn’t previously clear that Trump’s legal team was working directly with Alex Jones and Ali Alexander. But that’s a lot clearer now, following the discovery of video footage showing none other than Kenneth Chesebro in Alex Jones’s entourage as Jones marched from the rally at the Ellipse to the Capitol. In fact, the videos show Chesebro with his phone out seemingly recording Jones for about an hour starting around 1:40 pm as Jones’s entourage was making its way to the Capitol. Videos also show Chesebro with Jones in two restricted sections around the Capitol.
Beyond that, video also show Chesebro at the Freedom Plaza rally held by Alex Jones rally on January 5! So Chesebro’s appearance in Jones’s entourage on Jan 6 wasn’t some impromptu decision. What Jones was doing really was ‘part of the plan’. A plan devised by Trump’s legal team.
This is a good time to recall how the march to the Capitol on Jan 6 by Alex Jones and Ali Alexander was seemingly done in coordination with the Trump team that organized that morning’s rally at the Ellipse. It was a reflection of the many ties between these two ‘Stop the Steal’ organizers. For example, there were the ties between Amy and Kylie Kremer — the organizers of the ‘official’ Trump ‘Stop the Steal’ rally at the Ellipse — and the Jone/Alexander rival operation that was facilitated through one of the main financiers of the Ellipse rally, Publix heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli. Recall how Caroline Wren — the former deputy to Don Jr.‘s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle — had been raising money for the rally specifically from Publix heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli. Fancelli’s financing was reportedly facilitating by none other than Alex Jones. And in the week leading up to the rally, there were a number of changes in the plans. Changes pushed by Wren. We later learned Wren and Guilfoyle unsuccessfully pushed for last minute changes to the schedule of speakers at the Ellipse rally in order to get figures like Roger Stone, Alex Jones and Ali Alexander added to the speakers list. When Jones and Alexander left the rally early (to begin the march to the “Wild Protest”), it was Wren who escorted them away as they prepared to lead the march on the Capitol.
Also recall how Amy Kremer was reportedly working closely with the Trump White House in the lead up to Jan 6 planning the Ellipse rally, and had become concerned about possible violence coming from the second ‘Wild’ rally being planned by Alexander. Kremer claims she expressed these concerns to the Trump White House and got Alexander to agree that the Ellipse really would be the only major rally that day. And yet Kremer became concerned when she learned that Alexander was going ahead with plans a second rally after their agreement. Kremer apparently became aware on December 31 of the possible violence emanating from Alexander’s Jan 6 rally. Last year, Alexander claimed that he’s completely innocent and any militias that were coordinating with rally that day must have been coordinating with Amy and Kylie Kremers’ operation.
So we now know that Kenneth Chesebro — one of the key legal architects behind the scheme that resulting in an insurrection — was palling around with the group from which the insurrection erupted at the time that eruption happened. But there’s more. Because let’s not forget that the schemes Chesebro proposed were all eventually going to include a hearing before the Supreme Court. And as the following article also notes, Chesebro is already on record for holding the opinion that a little ‘wild chaos’ on Jan 6 would have been beneficial for their legal standing should their case make it before the court. That was the view Chesebro expressed in a December 24, 2020, memo to fellow then-Trump lawer John Eastman.
Keep in mind that use of ‘wild’ terminology around in time. First, Trump himself called on his supported to attempt Jan 6 for a ‘wild’ time in a now notorious late night December 19, 2020, tweet. Then, on December 23, 2020, Ali Alexander’s “Stop the Steal” group wrote, “We came up with the idea to occupy just outside the CAPITOL on Jan 6th.” So it was a day after “Stop the Steal” wrote about occupying the Capitol on Jan 6 that Chesebro wrote to John Eastman and expressed his view that a little ‘Wild Chaos’ might help their standing before the Supreme Court court. And then, on Jan 5 and 6, Chesebro is somehow part of the Jones/Alexander “Stop the Steal” rallying that morphed into the insurrection:
““Even if Chesebro is simply a diehard Infowars fan, I think that would further illustrate how thin the line was between the serious, credentialed people who sought to undermine election results and the extremist figures who sought to unleash havoc was in that period, to the extent it meaningfully existed at all,” said Jared Holt, an expert at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue which investigates extremism, hate and disinformation.”
It’s long been clear that the Trump team had an alarmingly close relationship with the parallel ‘Stop the Steal’ protests being planned by Alex Jones and Ali Alexander. A relationship that was made abundantly clear after learning how Jones and Alexander were escorted out of the Jan 6 rally at the Ellipse so they could begin preparations for the march to the Capitol. But as we can now see with the discovery of this video footage, Trump’s legal team was merged at the hip with Alex Jones’s operation too. Ken Chesebro was part of Jones’s Capitol Hill entourage, a fact he hid from investigators with the 5th Amendment:
And note how Chesebro can’t claim to have just been swept up in the moment when it comes to his decision to follow Jones to the Capitol. He was there for the Jan 5 rally Jones and Alexander also held. Keep in mind that it was only on the evening of Jan 5 that Mike Pence finally refused to go along with the ‘Plan A’ scheme of refusing to certify the votes. So when Chesebro attended that Jan 5 rally, this would have been at a time when the Trump knew it might need a lot of violence the next day:
Finally, we get to this extremely interesting email exchange between Chesebro and John Eastman, where Chesebro more or less lays out the motive for Jan 6: “chaos” on Jan 6 could pressure the Supreme Court to act. Importantly, Chesebro also felt that “chaos” would increase the odds of the Supreme Court acting in their favor. He literally uses the same ‘wild’ terminology in the email Trump used in his December 19th tweet and Ali Alexander’s “Stop the Steal” group used in its December 23 communication. In case it wasn’t already obvious what they meant by ‘wild’, Chesebro’s email made that abundantly clear. It’s not hard to connect these dots:
So given that we’ve now learned that Kenneth Chesebro was following and videotaping Alex Jones in that fateful march from the Ellipse to the Capitol, let’s take a closer look at that June 2022, NY Times report on Chesebro’s speculation about ‘wild chaos’ persuading the Supreme Court to rule in their favor. A December 24, 2020, memo, making it 5 days after Donald Trump’s ‘Wild’ tweet and one day after the ‘wild’ communication from ‘Stop the Steal’ about occupying the Capitol. A memo between Eastman and Chesebro over whether to file legal papers that they hoped might prompt four of the justices to agree to hear an election case from Wisconsin. Eastman was in favor of filing. Chesebro replied, “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.” It’s kind of shocking that he laid it out in an email like that but here we are. So while John Eastman may be the member of Trump’s legal team who is now willing to openly endorse the idea of a righteous insurrection, Chesebro’s email makes clear that any insurrection on Jan 6 was going to be a highly strategic affair. Legally strategic, according to Chesebro’s reasoning:
“Mr. Chesebro’s comment about the justices being more open to hearing a case if they fear chaos was striking for its link to the potential for the kind of mob scene that materialized at the Capitol weeks later.”
Fear of a mob ransacking as an argument before the Supreme Court. That’s some creative legal reasoning on Chesebro’s part. Illegal legal reasoning too, presumably. And he sent this memo five days after Trump’s December 19th ‘Wild’ tweet and just one day after Ali Alexander’s memo declaring “We came up with the idea to occupy just outside the CAPITOL on Jan 6th”, calling it “Wild”. A credible threat a political violence was seen as helpful for their case before the Supreme Court, as Chesebro put it:
It’s also important to note that Chesebro still didn’t see their odds of success before the Supreme Court as particularly great, even when factoring in John Eastman’s intel about “a heated fight” then underway on the Supreme Court. That’s the kind of assessment that would have made Trump even more inclined to invite a riot. The threat of violence was probably necessary for a Supreme Court victory, based on Chesebro’s somewhat pessimistic assessment of the situation:
And as we saw when we looked at the communication between Eastman and Ginni Thomas, it was clear that Thomas was repeatedly in contact with Eastman in the post-election period as she was doing her own part to encourage state legislators to oppose Biden’s victory. And when Judge Carter cited the “crime fraud” exception to attorney-client privilege to force Eastman to turn over documents he was trying to shield, the judge made specific reference to what appeared to be Eastman’s communications with Ginni Thomas to arrange for him to meet with a group she led, Frontliners for Liberty, about the plans to use state legislatures to change the election results. The facts suggest, Ginni, and presumably Clarence, were very much aware of the plan. A plan that ultimately hinged on getting a favorable ruling before the Supreme Court.
Also recall how Eastman reportedly was only convinced that two of the nine Supreme Court Justices (one of which was Justice Thomas). This was in the final weeks before Jan 6. Beyond raising more questions about Eastman’s communications with Ginni, it also raises more questions about why Chesebro came up with the idea that “chaos”, or the threat of chaos, would help them get a favorable Supreme Court ruling. He presumably did it because even Eastman only thought they had two of the nine justices for their scheme. They need “chaos” to get at least three more. In other words, Ginni was involved in a plot to terrorize the Supreme Court. And got away with it so far:
And when we see this early reporting on that now notorious December 13, 2020, ‘Chesebro Memo’ we learned about last year — the memo that floated that idea that Mike Pence would first declare on Jan 6 that he, and he alone, has the constitutional authority to resolve any election disputes, but he has a conflict of interest and so will step aside and allow Senate pro tempore Chuck Grassley to take his spot — keep in mind the December 6, 2020, Chesebro Memo we only recently learned about where he argued to Trump that Pence should assert that same authority on Jan 6 and not step aside but instead wield it in favor of Trump and let the Supreme Court settle it. That Dec 13, 2020, plan where Pence asserting sole authority but them passed that authority off to Chuck Grassley was like a savvier version of that Dec 6, 2020, plan:
Finally, when we see this reference to Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, warning Pence’s Secret Service one day before Jan 6 that Trump was going to publicly turn on Pence the next day, it’s a reminder that Pence didn’t give his final refusal to go along with these schemes until the evening of Jan 5, according to reports. The threat of rioting may have been seen as necessary to give the Supreme Court cover to rule in their favor, but the actual rioting was only really ‘necessary’ for the overall ‘stopping the certification of the vote and letting the Supreme Court handling it’ to happen once it became clear that Pence was going to do his duty and certify the vote. And it worked for a few hours:
Who knows how many additional details there are yet to be learned about the last-minute chaos insider this overall scheme. Again, they had a scheme predicated on Pence’s cooperation that he never gave but only formally rejected the night before the insurrection. Parallel planning — a plan assuming Pence cooperated and plans in case he didn’t — had to be in operation at this point. It’s not hard to imagine there’s a lot more to learn. But at this point it’s pretty hard to imagine learning something that doesn’t make this look like a planned insurrection. Specifically, a plan to create the kind of ‘wild chaos’ Ken Chesebro felt would give the Supreme Court’s conservative majority the cover they need to go along with the rest of the plan.