Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Just another right wing con man making money off these gullible suckers. 

Guide to All the Times Mike Lindell and QAnon Promised Trump Would Definitely Be Back in the White House

The pillow baron may be the most obnoxious believer that the former president is returning to office soon, but a disturbing number of Americans are right there with him



It’s Thanksgiving, and with respect to any relatives who may have colorful takes about vaccine mandates, critical race theory, and the Rittenhouse verdict, the craziest uncle of 2021 is, without a doubt, Mike Lindell.

The pillow baron has for a year now been claiming vociferously that the 2020 election was rigged, that he can prove it, and that it won’t be long before everyone realizes the truth and Donald Trump is reinstated as president of the United States. Lindell most recently trumpeted Thanksgiving as the date Trump will be back in office. He has promoted a 96-hour holiday weekend livestream in which he will unpack “the historic U.S. Supreme Court complaint on the 2020 election” he says will reinstall Trump in the White House. (The livestream got off to a rocky start.)

Lindell is a clown and easy to mock. So is the idea that there is any sort of legal pathway for Trump, who lost to President Biden by a considerable margin, to be reinstated as president. But just because something is easy to mock doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken seriously (see: the 45th president himself).

The idea that Trump will return to office has been spreading throughout the MAGA movement since January. A Politico/Morning Consult poll published in June found that 29 percent of Republicans believe this is actually going to happen by the end of the year. A YouGov poll conducted in early November found that 28 percent of Republicans believed it was either “very likely” or “somewhat likely” Trump would be back in office by the end of the year.

In other words, millions and millions and millions of people have, like Lindell, lost touch with reality to a truly terrifying degree. In other words, millions and millions and millions of people have, like Lindell, lost touch with reality to a truly terrifying degree. Many of them are determined to stay out in orbit, perpetually setting and resetting dates Trump will definitely, this time, return to power. It can be a little hard to track all of these deadlines, so here’s a guide to one of the year’s most unhinged conspiracy theory rabbit holes, which doesn’t appear to have a bottom.

Jan. 20: QAnon is based on the belief that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, and that Trump in his capacity as president was going bring all of these people to justice. The fact that he got trounced by Biden last November accelerated the timeline for this to happen, and once the election results were certified on Jan. 6, conspiracy theorists decided he was going to do it on Biden’s inauguration day, while at the same time revealing a secret plan to remain in office. This did not happen. QAnon adherents were confused, but not deterred. In fact, they were more not deterred than anyone realized possible.

March 4: Yeah, Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20. So what? The real Inauguration Day is March 4, conspiracy theorists claimed, and it was on March 4, 2021 that Trump would be sworn in for his second term.

The theory hinged on the idea that in 1871 Congress turned the government into a corporation, and that every president who has held office since is illegitimate. March 4 served as Inauguration Day prior to 1933, when the 20th Amendment was passed, and it would be on this day that Trump would be inaugurated as the 19th president, or the first legitimate successor to Ulysses S. Grant. (Don’t think too hard about the logic here. It’s not supposed to make sense.)

The theory became widespread enough that hashtags like #march4th and #19thpresident started spreading across social media. The Capitol Police even warned of a “possible plot to breach the Capitol by an identified militia group” on the date, leading the House of Representatives to cancel plans for a session.

March 20: OK, nothing happening on March 4. What about March 20? It’s basically the same thing, right? I mean, when you think about it, all that’s differentiating the two dates are things like time and math, both of which are being foisted on us by liberal scientists. Can we just say he’ll come back on the 20th, instead?

There were corners of QAnon that did indeed say this, citing the Presidential Enhancement Act. Signed into law in 2020, the act is designed to smooth the transition of power by, in part, providing certain support to the president-elect’s team for 60 days after the inauguration. Conspiracy theorists misinterpreted this to mean that Trump retained control of the freaking military for 60 days after inauguration, and that the official transfer of power would not take place until March 20.

Aug. 13: All right, March was a bad month for conspiracy theorists. It was time to take a breather and really figure out when Trump was going to return to power. Lindell announced on March 29 that it was happening in August, citing all of the evidence of election fraud he was going to show the Supreme Court.

It wasn’t just Lindell, either. Trump himself had been telling people he expected to be back in the White House by August, as Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reported in June.

In July, Lindell locked down a specific date. “By the morning of Aug. 13 it’ll be the talk of the world, going, ‘Hurry up! Let’s get this election pulled down. Let’s right the right. Let’s get these communists out, you know, that have taken over,'” he told right-wing conspiracy theorist Bannon Howse.

Nov. 25: Nothing happened in August, either, but that’s OK. Lindell soon thereafter pegged Thanksgiving as the new date Trump would return to office based on his plan to deliver his “historic” election fraud complaint, which would be signed by state attorneys general, to the Supreme Court earlier this week. “I talked to all the lawyers today,” he said in September. “One hundred percent we are getting this before the Supreme Court before Thanksgiving. That is locked in stone, everybody.”

This did not happen.

Lindell explained why to Steve Bannon, noting that the attorneys general he claims to have spoken to “have so much going on right now that last Friday they gave them until today to fight these mandates where kids had to take the vaccine.” …OK. There are also, of course, the attorneys general who are refusing to sign onto the suit, whom Lindell says simply “don’t want to help save our country.”

“You know a lot of things are happening out there that are very suspicious,” he added.

Lindell also blamed Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who he said on his livestream Monday pressured attorneys general not to sign the complaint. “How dare the RNC try and stop this case from getting to the Supreme Court,” he ranted. “Shame on you, RNC! You are worse than Fox now! You can’t tell me why Ronna McDaniel, the head of the RNC, made a statement saying Biden won three days before this Supreme Court complaint was supposed to go to the Supreme Court.”

Lindell even released the complaint that all of these traitors prevented him from filing in time for Turkey Day. It’s 82-pages long, chock full of disproven conspiracy theories, and lists the plaintiff as “State of [Insert Your State Here].” Lindell has said the complaint is so rock solid that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of [Insert Your State Here] unanimously, and that this will somehow result in Trump’s return to office.

It’s no longer going to happen by Thanksgiving, but it surely won’t take Lindell long to come up with another date to tell supporters to expect Trump to return to office. Go ahead and tune into his livestream and find out. He may even offer a promo code for a Black Friday pillow deal.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-reinstatement-mike-lindell-thanksgiving-1262796/

[Rick Plant]

Conspiracy theories about the pandemic are spreading offline as well as through social media

A consistent feature of the pandemic has been the presence of a relatively small but vocal number of conspiracy theorists who resist attempts to tackle COVID-19. Their views might seem marginal and extreme but recent research suggests that we should take them seriously.

Survey data shows that belief in conspiracy theories is associated with a lack of confidence in steps aimed at addressing the pandemic and risky health behaviours and that conspiracy adherents are more likely to refuse to socially distance, wear a mask or get vaccinated.

One reason for this is that conspiracy theories work differently to other forms of misinformation. Rather than simply trading in inaccurate or misleading information, conspiracy theorists believe they have discovered the hidden truth that world events result from the deliberate actions of unseen, malevolent actors.

This might mean blaming the emergence of COVID-19 on “big pharma" or believing that social distancing measures form part of an attempt by a hidden “world government" to restrict civil liberties. This kind of thinking provides a simple explanation for complex and unpredictable events. In a time of widespread uncertainty and fear it is easy to see the appeal in claims that the pandemic is deliberate and controlled.

When we think about how conspiracy theories like these spread, there is a tendency to focus on the role of social media. We've become accustomed to seeing fact checking and moderators working in these spaces to manage to problem.

But with colleagues, I've been exploring the offline space through an analysis of the Light, a monthly newspaper (and self-described “truthpaper") delivered free of charge across the UK. It provides sceptical coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and we've concluded that a significant proportion of its content can be seen as conspiracist in nature.

What is a 'truthpaper'?

In terms of style and layout, the Light looks like a conventional newspaper. It has a masthead and banner headlines and each article is laid out in columns. The content varies in both style and topic, with opinion pieces and interviews appearing alongside news items.

Conspiracist articles are presented alongside other, unrelated material, so that overall, readers experience the variety of content that might be expected in a mainstream source of news. For instance, the same issue might include an article suggesting COVID vaccines could be used for mind control and a more conventional news item on Russian shipping.

As an example of the offline dissemination of conspiracy theories related to the pandemic, the Light is important for a number of reasons. It seemingly has a wide reach, with claims of a print run of over 100,000 copies for each issue. It is produced and distributed by a network of activists, drawing on a closed Facebook group of more than 8,000 members.



A front cover of an issue of The Light.

Author provided

Conspiracy and activism

However, the Light's real significance is that it appears to be encouraging a highly participatory engagement with its content. Readers are encouraged to seek out, disseminate and act on the issues they are reading about rather than simply passively receiving the information. This approach means that the Light doesn't just aim to broaden readers' knowledge but to engage them in a process of discovery, revelation and action.

We found this happens in a number of ways. There are direct calls for action, for example, through articles encouraging readers to attend rallies and events, or promoting the refusal to wear face coverings.

Other articles promote the importance of “doing your own research", directing readers to seek out content that challenges mainstream opinion on the pandemic. There are even puzzle features that require the reader to conduct research into conspiratorial content in order to be successfully completed.

Being “awake" is a central theme in conspiracist content. Readers are invited to join an in-group of conspiracy adherents who refute the “official narrative". The state of being “awake" is often put across as being virtuous and exceptional, and readers are frequently encouraged to view their knowledge of the pandemic's “true" nature as a motivating factor to action.

Alongside this are frequent moral appeals to action which play upon readers' emotions to drive them to act. This includes content written in language that draws on themes of war and conflict and emotive articles warning of the effects of public health measures on children.

Why it matters

These calls to action are taking place in the context of an increasingly dangerous atmosphere. We already know that conspiracy theories have the potential to promote political polarisation, extremism and violence. Recent months have seen numerous examples of COVID-19 conspiracy theories influencing real-world activism.

Some of these might seem relatively trivial, such as sticker campaigns disputing the safety of the vaccination programme, or leaflets promoting unproven treatments posted through letterboxes. But there have also been protests at media organisations' offices, attempts to disrupt the work of vaccination centres and even footage of threats of violence being made against public figures associated with the pandemic response.

Offline material like the Light is highly potent because readers experience a sense of agency when they pick it up. They are being offered a way to actively engage in public issues which is outside of mainstream forms of political participation. And it's all happening without the automated warnings and links to more reliable sources which are now a mainstay of social media sites.

https://theconversation.com/conspiracy-theories-about-the-pandemic-are-spreading-offline-as-well-as-through-social-media-167418

[Rick Plant]

Trump's deranged and violent Qanon cult is expanding.

QAnon 'queen' orders 70,000 followers to 'shoot to kill' anyone vaccinating children



A QAnon leader who has declared herself "Queen of Canada" recently called for the deaths of anyone vaccinating children.

Romana Didulo's remarks were first reported by AntiHate.ca after being posted on Telegram, a social media platform where she has 70,000 followers.

In her post, Didulo said that so-called "Duck Hunters" should arm themselves against “everyone and anyone assisting in the injecting of coronavirus bioweapon into children." She also called on Americans to cross the border to participate in "hunting season."

“Please, use airports, hospitals, schools, stadiums, and other public venues to hold and detain all traitors," Didulo wrote. "They will stay there until Military Tribunal is held for each one of them until the day they are executed via firing squad or hanging."

She authorized her "military" to "shoot to kill anyone who tries to inject children under the age of 19 years old with Coronavirus19 vaccines/ bioweapons or any other vaccines."

“This order is effective immediately," the statement said.

According to Vice, the words "shoot to kill" had been modified to say "arrest" in subsequent social media posts.

Didulo is reportedly vetting applicants in separate social media groups. One of the groups had over 100 members as of Thursday.

https://www.rawstory.com/romana-didulo-hunting-season/


QAnon's 'Queen of Canada' Calls for Followers to 'Kill' People Vaccinating Children

QAnon influencer Romana Didulo told her 70,000 followers that "duck-hunting season is open” and by ducks she means healthcare workers, politicians, and journalists.

Earlier this week, the so-called QAnon Queen of Canada opened up “duck-hunting” season in the Great White North.

Now, to be clear, we aren’t talking about hunters in hip waders going after our fine-feathered friends with a loyal hound by their side. These “duck hunters” are “soldiers” of Roman Didulo—a Canadian woman who has convinced thousands of QAnon adherents that she’s the secret ruler of Canada—targeting health care workers administering COVID-19 vaccines to children, politicians, journalists, and others who make up the cabal at the heart of the QAnon conspiracy.

In a post on Sunday to her over 70,000 followers on Telegram, Didulo issued an order to the soldiers of her “Kingdom of Canada’s Military.” She demanded the mass arrests of those they consider opposition, and wanted her soldiers to take control of newspapers and seize the border.

“Shoot to kill anyone who tries to inject Children under the age of 19 years old with Coronavirus19 vaccines/ bioweapons or any other Vaccines,” she wrote. “This order is effective immediately.”

A follow-up post on Tuesday changed the wording from “shoot to kill” to “arrest.”

“Please, use airports, hospitals, schools, stadiums, and other public venues to hold and detain all traitors,” the post said. “They will stay there until Military Tribunal is held for each one of them until the day they are executed via firing squad or hanging.”

Didulo doesn’t have a passive audience; over the summer, the British Columbian woman mobilized her audience into sending out thousands of cease-and- desist letters across North America (some have recently popped up in Europe) demanding businesses, governments, and police forces stop all activities related to combating the pandemic.


ONE OF THE SCREENSHOTS FROM DIDULO'S MAIN TELEGRAM PAGE. PHOTO VIA SCREENSHOT.

Didulo implies that her duck hunters are secretive military veterans she’s bringing in from the U.S. But on Telegram (a chat app known for their lax rules), over 6,000 of her online supporters have signed up to be a part of “Canada Military 2.0”—a separate, but inactive, Telegram page where followers pledge to be part of Didulo’s fighting force. “I have offered my life for humanity and joined our Canadian duck hunters,” one of her followers wrote.

Didulo has made separate pages to vet prospective members of her Canadian and U.S. duck-hunting teams to help with her mission. The Canadian group currently has just over 100 members, including the man who posted the images of the firearms. Inside the chatroom one of the duck hunters shared information about a specific vaccine popup in an Ontario mall “specifically targeting young children.”

“It’s time to react now,” replied one person. “Hurry up and wait is no longer the thing to say.”

Her followers are pledging their support to their Queen’s initiative. “A few duck hunters coming in can stay with me… I’m ready… all my hunting gear is ready… let’s roll,” wrote one in the public chat and posted a picture of firearms strewn across a table.


DECREES ROMANA MADE TO HER FOLLOWERS. PHOTO VIA TELEGRAM.

“I myself can’t contribute much, other than myself and my Duck hunting gear,” wrote another. “I am ready and willing to help our Allies in cleaning up the Bad Actors in my small town of Lamont Alberta.”

Threats and violence against health care workers have been constant since COVID-19 vaccinations started rolling out earlier this year, and have ramped up after jurisdictions greenlit the vaccine for children (Canada just approved the Pfizer vaccine for 5-11-year-olds last week). For many of Didulo’s followers, the vaccine is a death sentence so vaccinating children is akin to murder.

It’s unknown how many followers take Didulo and her tactics seriously, or just consider them a part of the LARP (live action role-playing) and gamification that makes the QAnon conspiracy community so appealing, but experts say there’s cause for concern. Many QAnon adherents have been involved in violent acts like murders or kidnappings and the FBI has warned the violence may only increase with time.

In an already confounding ecosystem where people will make their way en masse to Texas in anticipation of JFK  coming back from the dead, Didulo and her followers somehow manage to be more bizarre than their contemporaries. To her followers, Queen Romana is the true leader of Canada who, alongside Donald Trump, is waging a war against a pedophilic cabal that runs the world. In a few short weeks this spring, Didulo went from a relatively unknown online conspiracy theorist to having a large following after she was “confirmed” by some large QAnon accounts. In some sense, she fills the void left by the titular Q, who has not posted in almost a year.

Didulo administers her decrees on her large Telegram page, a confusing collection of militarist statements, modern-day spirituality, and postings about intergalactic beings. She typically addresses her followers through either simple messages (littered with emojis) or videos featuring her sitting on a brown couch in front of a nondescript wall.

“I call her the ‘hardest LARP in the movement.’ Probably even greater than Q themself,” Alex Mendela, a researcher who works on The Q Origins Project, told VICE World News. “She’s unique in the sense that she’s sort of filled the role of an absent Q, but has taken on an independently authoritative role all her own.”

Mandela added that while Didulo has yet to order her audience to violence directly, and mostly skirts around it, he’s concerned about “one of her followers actually taking it seriously, getting riled-up by all the urgent rhetoric and frustrated that he/she/they are not receiving clear directives, and taking matters into their own hands with self-directed violence.”

Peter Smith, a journalist with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network who recently penned a story on Didulo, told VICE World News that her “real power has always been the ability to mobilize (her) following into types of real-world action.”

“In the time we have spent monitoring her numerous channels, that following has more than tripled and the rhetoric from Didulo has only grown more severe, culminating in calls for armed action to be taken by people from both the U.S. and Canada,” said Smith. “We do not know how many, if any, of her audience have decided to heed the call to go ‘duck hunting’ in Canada, but with such a large and engaged base of supporters, it is extremely worrying.”

The duck hunters are a massive hit with her audience. Some of her fans have requested the duck hunters attend specific events such as local school board meetings, or target specific people like Sarnia city councillors, environmentalist David Suzuki, or even one follower’s ex-girlfriend. Other fans, upon Didulo’s request, are offering their homes to the “duck hunters” as lodging.

“I am more than happy to be able to house a couple of duck hunters!” wrote one. “I only have a one-bedroom apartment but would happily give up my bedroom.”

If they can’t find lodging with her followers, Didulo instructs her duck hunters to stay at a motel and “file the invoice to the Department of Finance/Treasury Department of Canada.”

Not all her followers are celebrating the future deaths of health care workers and members of the cabal. One follower, seemingly convinced these extrajudicial killings were taking place, begged Didulo to spare the life of her son, a teacher.

“Please don’t hurt the innocent in this,” they pleaded. “People here are brainwashed. It’s not their fault. My whole family took the shot believing it was the right thing to do but were falsely led. They are good people. Please.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7ddgm/qanons-queen-of-canada-calls-for-followers-to-kill-people-vaccinating-children

[Rick Plant]

GOP operatives funneling Russian money to Trump is the latest foreign “straw” donor scheme

The indictment of two Republican operatives on charges they allegedly funneled money from a Russian national to the Trump campaign’s joint fundraising committee is the latest in a string of high profile — and high stakes — foreign straw donor schemes exposed by the Department of Justice.

Federal prosecutors claim Jesse Benton and Doug Wead accepted $100,000 from an unidentified Russian foreign national in exchange for getting the person a meeting with then-candidate Donald Trump at a fundraiser in 2016. Allegedly, the two funnelled $25,000 to the Trump campaign’s joint fundraising committee and pocketed the other $75,000.

Benton, a former campaign manager for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), worked for the pro-Trump super PAC Great America PAC in 2016. In December 2020, Benton was pardoned by Trump on charges tied to hiding bribes in a 2012 scandal. At the time, Benton allegedly paid a vendor who then paid a subvendor, violating the FEC’s ultimate vendor disclosure rules.

Wead was a White House adviser during former President George H.W. Bush’s presidency and  also worked for Paul as well as the Kentucky senator’s father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). In 2019, Wead released a book titled “Inside Trump’s White House.”

Although the indictment, made public Tuesday, does not name the foreign national, Forensic News reported that evidence suggests the description of “Foreign National 1” — the Russian who allegedly funded the straw donations — matches Roman Vasilenko. The indictment’s description of “Foreign National 2” shares similarities to Olga Kovalova, a Ukrainian-born translator who has appeared at events with both Wead and Vasilenko.

As evidence, Forensic News pointed to Vasilenko’s ties to Wead and unearthed a picture of Vasilenko posing with Trump at the 2016 fundraiser mentioned in the indictment. A 2016 video also appears to show Vasilenko and Wead at a 2016 fundraiser with Trump.

Tickets to the Philadelphia fundraiser mentioned in the indictment cost at least $25,000, payable as a contribution to the Trump campaign’s joint fundraising committee. As a foreign national, Vasilenko would have been barred by federal law from making contributions to political groups or campaigns to influence U.S. elections. Straw donations, where the source of funding is obscured, are also illegal.

Wead’s longstanding relationship with Vasilenko and Kovalova is evident from their digital footprints.

Life is Good, Vasilenko’s company that provides ‘self-help’ seminars on how to “achieve financial prosperity,” lists Wead as a partner. A YouTube video from 2009 shows Kovalova translating for Wead, who was also listed on the Ukrainian born translator’s website.

Vasilenko and Wead were also both involved in Canyonville Academy, a Christian boarding school where Wead was president until 2019. Wead appointed Vasilenko to the school’s board in 2018.

The new indictment is not the first instance of the Justice Department probing foreign contributions that boosted Trump.

Last week, Igor Fruman, a Soviet-born operative and assocate of Rudy Giuliani, pleaded guilty to funneling political contributions from a foreign national to pro-Trump super PAC America First Action.

Federal prosecutors recently announced that Giuliani, who also worked with Fruman’s business partner Lev Parnas, is under investigation over whether he may have acted as an unregistered foreign agent.

Parnas, Fruman and their U.S. partner, David Correia, were charged in the illegal foreign straw donor scheme after allegedly funneling $325,000 from Russian national Andrei Muraviev through shell companies to America First Action.

Fruman’s guilty plea notably did not include an agreement to cooperate with the government, and he could face up to five years in prison.

In February, Correia was sentenced to a year and a day in prison after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and making false statements about the illegal foreign straw donor scheme.

The trial for Parnas and another alleged co-conspirator, Ukrainian-born California cannabis investor Andrey Kukushkin, is set to open Oct. 13.

Other groups supporting Trump have also come under scrutiny for alleged foreign money.

Federal prosecutors reportedly began probing allegations of foreign donations to Trump’s inaugural committee and pro-Trump super PAC Rebuilding America Now in 2018. The inquiry reportedly examined whether foreign nationals from Middle Eastern nations — including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — funneled money through straw donors to disguise their donations to the super PAC and Trump’s inaugural committee. That committee was chaired by Tom Barrack, who was arrested in July on charges he secretly acted in the U.S. as an agent for the UAE.

In 2018, Republican lobbyist Sam Patten pleaded guilty to helping funnel foreign money to Trump’s inaugural committee from a Ukrainian oligarch. Patten was a longtime partner of Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian businessman with ties to Russian intelligence who previously worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign chair Paul Manafort.

California financier and Trump inaugural donor Imaad Zuberi was sentenced to 12 years in prison in February after pleading guilty to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act and making illegal contributions after he failed to register as a foreign agent while working for the Sri Lankan government and lobbying high-level U.S. government officials. Zuberi, along with his firm Avenue Ventures, gave $900,000 to Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee and admitted he “helped facilitate” donations from foreign sources.

The Justice Department reportedly probed whether another $100,000 donation to Trump’s inauguration came from Jho Low, a fugitive Malaysian financier accused of stealing billions in the 1MDB scandal, and who allegedly transferred roughly $21 million to the Fugees’ Pras Michel as part of the straw donor scheme.

The Justice Department also scrutinized Low’s $1.5 million in transfers to a firm called LNS Capital shortly before the firm’s head, Larry Davis, made political contributions to the Trump campaign’s joint fundraising committee.The Justice Department has not released a conclusion on whether or not Low was the source of funding behind those contributions.

The Malaysian financier’s contributions reached politicians on both sides of the aisle, with foreign money allegedly going to support former President Barack Obama as well as Trump.

Federal prosecutors claim Low funneled more than $1.8 million through straw donors to a super PAC and joint fundraising committee supporting Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman and lobbyist known for serving as a witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into 2016 Russian interference, also allegedly steered foreign money across the political spectrum — funneling money to both Trump and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

Nader was indicted for charges related to funneling more than $3.5 million through straw donors to political groups supporting Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid in a purported attempt to build influence with her inner circle. During that period of time, Nader was working as an adviser to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

After Trump won the 2016 election, the payment processing company owned by one of Nader’s straw donors, who allegedly facilitated the donations to Clinton, gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and later met Trump in the Oval Office.

Foreign straw donor schemes are not limited to presidential elections and recent cases have exposed attempts to funnel foreign money into congressional races and even local elections.

In April, the Justice Department released court documents revealing that Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury agreed to pay the U.S. government $1.8 million to resolve allegations in a straw donor scheme routing illegal foreign contributions to U.S. campaigns.

Chagoury’s longtime spokesperson Mark Corallo, was the Trump legal team’s spokesperson during the Mueller investigation as well as a personal spokesperson for Giuliani associates Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova.

In January 2020, East Bay real estate developer James Tong was sentenced to 15 months in prison for funneling around $38,000 in illegal donations to Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) through a network of straw donors, including at least one foreign national who was legally barred from making political contributions.

In 2017, Mexican foreign national Jose Susumo Azano Matsura was sentenced to three years in prison for funneling around $600,000 in illegal foreign contributions to candidates in the 2012 San Diego mayoral campaign through straw donors as part of an effort to buy influence.

While the number of foreign straw donor cases pursued by the Justice Department has mushroomed in recent years, foreign straw donor schemes are nothing new.

In 1996, the Justice Department opened a task force to investigate allegations of campaign fundraising abuses and attempt to shine light on evidence that illegal foreign contributions to Democrats were laundered through domestic straw donors during the 1996 election cycle.

Despite the influx of foreign straw donor cases, the Federal Election Commission’s Office of Inspector General recently revealed that the FEC does not even have a written policy on how to verify that donors are not foreign nationals, warning of “significant national security risks” of foreign money flowing into U.S. elections.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/09/gop-operatives-funneling-russian-money-trump-latest-foreign-straw-donor-scheme/

[Rick Plant]

Trump pushed QAnon and 4chan-created conspiracy theories in Georgia call
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/trump-pushed-qanon-4chan-created-conspiracy-theories-georgia-call-n1252769

[Rick Plant]

Stunning new data on radical Republican policies shows how the richest workers got a lot richer under Trump's rule

Donald Trump's presidency and the Covid pandemic combined to make 2020 a remarkably enriching year for the highest-paid workers in America. Meanwhile, the numbers for the bottom 99.9% are, in a word, awful.

Just one in 900 workers makes $1 million or more, a new Social Security report on wages shows. My annual analysis of this data shows that this thin and rich group made 14% more money in 2020 than in 2019.

On average, the pretax pay of the $1 million-and-up workers increased by $305,600.That's after adjusting for inflation.

The share of all pay going to $1 million-and-up workers grew by a fourth during Trump's four years.

The other 99.9% of American workers got an average raise of just $76 each. But even that overstates how badly most workers did. That's because most of this minuscule pay increase went to the 1/10th of workers making $100,000 to $1 million. The bottom 88%, those making less than $100,000, got next to nothing.

The standard measure for worker pay is the median. It illustrates the typical pay situation because at the median, half of workers make more while half make less. Median pay in 2020 rose by a mere $26.

What a Surprise!

Put another way, for each $1 of increased pay going to the typical worker, each worker in the two-comma club collected $11,750.

Suppose $26 is the height of the heel of a shoe worn by a man standing on Fifth Avenue outside Trump Tower. The heel is 1 inch. The height for the highest-paid workers' pay would soar 315 feet above that 58-story highrise, for a total of 908 feet. That's a lot of heels. Plus one.

Trump has a policy: One for you, thousands for the rich; another for you, thousands more for the rich…

And don't forget, Trump's 2017 tax law gave the most highly paid workers a roughly 4% federal income-tax cut. Also, those workers tend to be the Americans with significant stock portfolios and Trump gave corporations a 40% tax-rate cut. So, they got a two-fer.

Crumbs for the Rest

You didn't get anything like either of those income-tax cuts. You got crumbs in tax savings plus the burden of $2 trillion in federal debt to pay for the Trump/Radical Republican tax cuts.

Indeed, if you live in the states with most of the high-paying jobs – California, Connecticut, New York, Maryland and the like – Trump and congressional Republicans increased federal incomes for millions of people. That's because Trump and the Radical Republicans took away your deductions for state and local income and property taxes and mortgage interest. The number of Americans who itemize deductions, including charitable gifts, fell by three-fourths after Trump's tax cuts for the rich and the companies they own became law.

More pay going to workers at the top is a long-term trend that began long before Trump. What's significant in the newest data is how much that trend accelerated during the Trump years.

In 2016, just 143 workers made $50 million or more. That number jumped 50% in Trump's first year as president and stayed at that level in 2018 and 2019. But in 2020, Trump's last year as president, the number of workers paid $50 million and up soared to 358, 1.5 times as much as under Barack Obama.

Monthly gross paychecks for those 358 highest-paid workers averaged close to $8 million each. A worker at the median pay would have to labor for more than 225 years to get paid what these workers made in a month.

More for the Top

Even more significant, the share of all pay going to $1 million-and-up workers grew by a fourth during Trump's four years.

Their collective pay rose to 5.2% of all worker compensation, up from 4.2% of total compensation in 2016 under Obama. That means most workers got a thinner slice of the American wage pie under Trump, the opposite of MAGA pledges to improve most incomes and just as I predicted back in 2015 and 2016.

The median worker in 2020 made just $34,612, or less than $3,000 a month before taxes. During Trump's four years, inflation-adjusted median income rose by 5%.

By far the biggest increase in median pay in this century occurred in 2014 under Obama when Social Security data show an increase of 3.44% over 2013.

The average pay for all workers was $53,383.18, or less than $4,500 per month.

More than two-thirds of workers made less than the average. The average is higher than the median because all those very highly paid workers skew the average upward.

One more awful fact: The number of Americans with any work fell in 2020 by more than 1 percentage point. In 2020, more than 1.7 million fewer people found any paid work than in 2019. That's the first time this has happened in all of Trump's life.

While Trump at his inaugural promised that every act he took would be for the benefit of the "forgotten men and women" of America, it was all just another con.

His actions, again and again, favored the highly paid, the already rich and, not least of all, the Trump-Kushner family.

https://www.rawstory.com/how-the-rich-benefit-under-trump/

[Rick Plant]

The January 6th Investigation Gets Closer to Donald Trump
Judges, national-security officials, and Liz Cheney say that the inquiry must proceed.

The congressional attempt to expose any direct role that Donald Trump and his top associates played in the January 6th assault on the U.S. Capitol is intensifying. This week, the House select committee investigating the attack issued subpoenas to sixteen former senior Trump Administration and campaign officials, including the former White House adviser Stephen Miller and the former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. A federal judge roundly dismissed Trump’s effort to block his allies from having to testify before the committee, including his erstwhile strategist Steve Bannon. Legal experts suggested that the judge’s ruling could prompt Attorney General Merrick Garland to criminally prosecute Bannon for refusing to testify, a step that may induce others to coöperate. And, late on Thursday, the committee threatened to hold Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who spent hours with Trump on January 6th, in contempt if he does not testify on Friday morning.

Meanwhile, in a speech in New Hampshire, Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice-chair and one of the few Republicans daring to challenge Trump while seeking reëlection, said that the nation is “confronting a domestic threat that we’ve never faced before: a former President who’s attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic, aided by political leaders who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man.” She added, “Political leaders who sit silent in the face of these false and dangerous claims are aiding a former President who is at war with the rule of law and the Constitution.”

The political reality, though, is that Trump’s hold on the Republican Party remains iron. A recent Morning Consult / Politico poll found that sixty-seven per cent of Republicans want Trump to run for President in 2024, a slight increase from several months ago. Other surveys showed similar numbers. “The Republican nomination would likely be his for the taking,” Nathaniel Rakich and Mackenzie Wilkes wrote on FiveThirtyEight. “He remains extremely popular among Republicans.” And opinion polls suggest that three-quarters of Wyoming Republicans plan to oppose Cheney when a Trump-backed candidate challenges her in the 2022 primary. Hours after Cheney’s speech, Trump declared, in trademark Orwellian fashion, “She is a threat to Free and Fair elections,” adding that the 2020 election had been stolen from him in “the Crime of the Century.”

The situation is unprecedented. A former American President refuses to concede that he lost the election. He has launched a public effort to drive the state election officials who certified his defeat from office. He continues to employ the lies and rhetoric that helped incite violence on January 6th. And this week an independent review alleged that thirteen former Trump Administration officials—including Meadows and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner—campaigned illegally for him in the final weeks of the 2020 election. It’s increasingly clear to many observers that Trump plans to make every attempt to insure that he or an acolyte wins the 2024 election at any cost. On Wednesday, a hundred former national-security officials, Republicans and Democrats—including Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency, who was hired and fired by the Trump Administration—published an open letter to Congress, warning that partisan interference, intimidation campaigns, and disinformation are rapidly undermining American democracy. “In the course of our careers, many of us have analyzed the threats posed by unstable democracies elsewhere, never imagining we would begin to see similar threats at home,” they wrote. “Sadly, that moment has arrived.”

Democrats focus on the fact that, among Americans as a whole, Trump remains broadly unpopular, with fifty-three per cent viewing him unfavorably and forty-one per cent seeing him favorably. While political analysts and legal experts lose sleep over Trump’s continued claims that he won in 2020, most Americans, according to Gallup polling, see covid, the economy, and poor leadership as the country’s three most important problems. Only one per cent cited the need for election reform. If Republicans win control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, they would almost certainly disband the January 6th committee and end its investigation.

Members of the committee vow to achieve results before then. The panel plans to produce a definitive account of Trump’s actions and to propose laws that will prevent future Presidents from interfering in the Electoral College vote count. In a court hearing last week, Douglas Letter, a lawyer for the committee, said that investigators are seeking White House documents dating back to April, 2020, to help determine whether Trump engaged in a months-long effort to discredit the results if he lost. “We think, maybe, this all ties in with . . . the fomenting of it, building a groundswell of feeling that this election was going to be tainted,” Letter said. Timothy Mulvey, the committee’s communications director, told me that most witnesses called are coöperating. “Even among former Administration officials,” he said, “very few have flatly refused to comply with a subpoena.” He added, about Trump’s legal attempts to block the investigation, “The former President’s aim is to delay and impede our probe, but the committee’s work will nonetheless continue to move forward quickly.”

Stephen Gillers, a professor of law at New York University, said that Attorney General Garland may wait for higher courts to rule on Trump’s legal claims, but he believes that Garland will eventually prosecute Bannon. Gillers pointed out that if Bannon is not charged, those who were subpoenaed this week might be encouraged to try waiting out the investigation. “Garland knows that,” Gillers said, adding, “Everything we know about his devotion to the rule of law makes me confident that he will not allow that to happen.”

Ilya Somin, a libertarian legal scholar at George Mason University, predicted that the higher courts will uphold the committee’s right to subpoena individuals significantly involved in the events leading up to January 6th. “It seems to me that it should be a no-brainer, that Congress should be able to subpoena” witnesses, he said, particularly those who may have “played a role in an attack on Congress.” Somin doubts that the committee’s investigation will produce conclusive evidence of seditious acts by Trump. “I think sedition is a high hill to climb, unless the committee uncovers some dramatic new information,” he said. The broader political challenge is the country’s seemingly intractable polarization. Like the two impeachment trials of Trump, the January 6th probe may simply harden existing divisions rather than ease them. “Barring some dramatic revelation, I’m not sure it will fundamentally change anything,” he said.

Cheney, in her speech, said that the country is in “a time of testing” and implored political leaders to recognize the fragility of American democracy. “Will we defend our Constitution? Will we stand for truth? Will we put duty to our oath above partisan politics?” she asked. “Or will we look away from the danger, ignore the threat, embrace the lies and enable the liar? There is no gray area when it comes to that question. When it comes to this moment, there is no middle ground.” She is right that America’s drift toward authoritarianism continues, but it is not inevitable.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-january-6th-investigation-gets-closer-to-donald-trump