JFK Assassination Forum
Off Topic => News - Off Topic - Weird & Wacky => Topic started by: Paul May on June 10, 2022, 11:39:39 PM
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QAnon believers flock to Dallas after again being promised 105-year-old John F. Kennedy will appear.
Cannot make this up!
QAnon believers are flocking back to Dallas, Texas, after once again being promised that they'll be treated to an appearance by the late President John F. Kennedy, who would be 105 years old today if he hadn't been assassinated in 1963.
Vice News reports that QAnon influencer Michael "Negative 48" Protzman has told his followers that JFK is headed to Dallas, despite the fact that Protzman's similar prediction about JFK's return last November never came true.
As an added twist, Protzman also claims that the 105-year-old dead president will also reveal himself to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
Although there's no official count of how many people are attending this event, Vice News has counted "dozens" of replies from Protzman's followers saying they will join him in Dallas.
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Paul, you come here every now and then and post weighty horse shizznit that obviously more related to the state of decline going on in USA, right now. It's in no way a reflection on the people who choose to laugh at the LBJ created verdict on who killed JFK. But that is what you're saying?
But do please carry on trying to crowbar into this cesspool of American insanity non-believers of the Warren Commission bollocks. You're causing a bit of a distraction. When do you imagine you might wonder if all the insanity going on there in USA is related to the gigantic cover-up of the assassination? What if you are a significant contributor to the oncoming troubles set for USA in the future!?!?
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Paul, you come here every now and then and post weighty horse shizznit that obviously more related to the state of decline going on in USA, right now. It's in no way a reflection on the people who choose to laugh at the LBJ created verdict on who killed JFK. But that is what you're saying?
But do please carry on trying to crowbar into this cesspool of American insanity non-believers of the Warren Commission bollocks. You're causing a bit of a distraction. When do you imagine you might wonder if all the insanity going on there in USA is related to the gigantic cover-up of the assassination? What if you are a significant contributor to the oncoming troubles set for USA in the future!?!?
You’ve had 59 years to prove your case. It’s been a miserable failure. Look at these threads. 50+year old garbage long ago put to rest. QAnon is the next evolution of the CT movement. You should feel proud. Enjoy.
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The QAnon cult is a lot like the LN cult. They have a fanciful, made-up faith-based narrative that they insist is true but can’t demonstrate that it is true. And they spend all their time and energy patting their fellow cultists on the back and telling them how right they are.
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The QAnon cult is a lot like the LN cult. They have a fanciful, made-up faith-based narrative that they insist is true but can’t demonstrate that it is true. And they spend all their time and energy patting their fellow cultists on the back and telling them how right they are.
You've just described your own JFK CT cult.
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You've just described your own JFK CT cult.
I’m not a CT, but nice try.
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I’m not a CT, but nice try.
Of course you are. (But nice try.)
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Of course you are. (But nice try.)
Really. Then describe what my conspiracy theory is.
Or do you define “CT” as anybody who doesn’t uncritically swallow your faith and assumption-based BS?
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QAnon is a Donald Trump worshipping cult which believes God sent him to rule over us.
They are a violent deranged Christian Nationalist conspiracy cult who believes John F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. are both still alive and will magically appear with Donald Trump to rule the world.
These are the same cultists who took part in the violent January 6th insurrection who beat cops and ransacked the inside of our Capitol looking to hang Mike Pence and kill members of Congress. Disgraced General and traitor Michael Flynn is another QAnon cultist who took the QAnon oath.
Current Republican members of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are both part of this radical cult. Many Republican candidates running for office this year belong to this deranged QAnon cult
These QAnon conspiracy lunatics have no business being in Congress or government because they vote and make laws based on their dangerous radical conspiracies that affect our lives.
It's been widely speculated this this loon below named Ron Watkins is actually "Q". Most likely he will get a subpoena from the January 6th Committee for his role in Trump's coup and insurrection. He continuously pushed Trump's lies about "rigged voting machines" and "voter fraud". It was all a lie and the first January 6th Committee Hearing has Trump's own Attorney General Bill Barr on tape saying all of Trump's claims were b.s. there was never any "voter fraud". And you had the right wing media like Faux News and Republicans pushing these insane conspiracies to steal the election.
This clown is currently running for Congress in Arizona as a Republican. And right wing morons would probably vote for him. Notice how Donnie, when he used to be on Twitter, was pushing Watkins' conspiracy lies. You can see the disclaimer about fake election fraud claims in blue on the tweet.
(https://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/styles/scale_w1024/s3/static/D8Image/2020/12/21/EnZwYsuXIAAA5x6.png?VersionId=pGzFbE3SCBrli8SVdIAD68l1HvzFV40.&itok=mYrbWIKs)
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The QAnon cult is a lot like the LN cult. They have a fanciful, made-up faith-based narrative that they insist is true but can’t demonstrate that it is true. And they spend all their time and energy patting their fellow cultists on the back and telling them how right they are.
You've just described your own JFK CT cult.
Both CTers and LNers say they are right. Both CTers and LNers say the other side is irrational. But among the prominent spokespeople on the JFK debate, as will as the prominent posters at this forum, it is the CTers who have a monopoly or at least a near monopoly on wacky beliefs not related to the JFK assassination.
Beliefs like governments conspiring with UFO aliens? Check. Holocaust denial? Check. Admiration of Putin? Check. I’m not certain who the bigger fan boy is, Trump or Oliver Stone. U.S. government involvement in 9/11? The False Flag Sandy Hook operation? The powerful Illuminati secret society? Or, my personal favorite, the Confederates being justified in succeeding from the Union. Check, check, check, etc.
Question:
What is the wackiest belief held by a prominent LNer? Does anyone have anything?
Us LNers may be wrong about the JFK assassination. But our group is the irrational group? I don’t think so. The kinds of minds that are attracted to the CT side make me feel confident that us LNers are likely correct. Its better to be a Lone Nut than a Real Nut.
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What is the wackiest belief held by a prominent LNer?
That there is sufficient reliable evidence to demonstrate that Kennedy was killed by Oswald.
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That there is sufficient reliable evidence to demonstrate that Kennedy was killed by Oswald.
If this is a wacky believe, what other wacky beliefs are held by prominent LNers? Surely, if LNers are prone to wacky beliefs, this wouldn’t be the only wacky belief that they hold. I can give examples of multiple wacky beliefs by prominent CT authors, like Jim Marrs or James Fetzer.
Question:
Can you name a single prominent LNer who holds a wacky belief that is non related to JFK?
I have asked for such an example in the past and have never gotten a response.
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Bugliosi’s belief that Charles Manson was trying to start a race war was pretty wacky.
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Another wacky LNer belief:
That a creaky gun was snuck into the building, reassembled but not test fired, with a telescope on it that was not properly aligned, fired three times - scoring two perfect shots but a middle shot being so far off that it went downwind to strike up concrete and hit a spectator - all within 6 seconds.
And by the way, one of these bullets fired from said gun hit someone in the shoulder, creating no through and through exit point, but supposedly this same bullet somehow exits higher than its entry point, then continues downward, hitting someone else, going through this person and hitting the hardest bone in the body, but somehow is found later with literally no damage to it.
Sounds pretty wacky but I digress.
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Bugliosi’s belief that Charles Manson was trying to start a race war was pretty wacky.
Try this on for size:
Bugliosi comes up with this crazy narrative regarding the Manson murders. His story is that Charlie wanted to create a race war and Helter Skelter when all it really was about is Manson wanted to become a rock star, thought he was xxxxxxxx over by Terry Melcher [who used to live in the Tate house] and wanted to exact revenge.
YET - he actually wanted to re-open the RFK murder case if you can believe it:
https://www.kennedysandking.com/robert-f-kennedy-articles/sirhan-and-the-rfk-assassination-part-i-the-grand-illusion
Then goes 360 and becomes the so-called master of the JFK case.
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The JFK QAnon Cult Is Heading Back to Dallas for Another ‘Second Coming’
Michael Protzman, a QAnon influencer, has once again promised that JFK would reappear and reveal himself to the group.
(https://video-images.vice.com/articles/62a3453e16b70e009a2327b7/lede/1654873568643-gettyimages-515287546.jpeg?crop=1xw:0.8291xh;0xw,0.0081xh&resize=1000:*)
It’s been 220 days since more than 1,000 people traveled from across the U.S. to Dallas at the behest of Michael Protzman, a QAnon influencer known as Negative 48, who promised his followers that John F. Kennedy would reappear at Dealey Plaza. JFK didn’t reappear, of course, but the QAnon cult is now returning to Texas.
More than seven months after the group first met in Dallas, it is heading back to the city this weekend after Protzman once again promised that JFK would reveal himself to the group, proving once and for all that he is, in fact, the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Protzman has already checked into the Hyatt Regency, where hundreds of people gathered back in November.
“What started in Dallas ends in Dallas,” one member of a Telegram group linked to the cult wrote on Friday morning.
Earlier this week, Protzman, in hours-long audio chats on his Telegram channel, laid out what he predicted would happen this weekend. He told his followers that JFK would only reveal himself to those willing to travel to Dallas on Saturday. This would be followed by 10 days of darkness before JFK would finally reveal himself to the world.
A core group of followers remained in the city for months after their initial gathering, before going on tour to follow former President Donald Trump at rallies across the country. In that time, Protzman has destroyed relationships, financially ruined families, and pushed increasingly erratic and wild conspiracies about Trump, JFK and the Ukraine war.
It’s unclear how many people will be in Dallas this weekend, but a review of posts on Telegram, as well as videos posted by those already in Dallas, suggest that at least dozens of people will once again make the journey.
For the family members of those involved, the fact that so many are once again willing to flock to Dallas, shows just what a hold this man has over his followers.
“I’d like to say that I am glad Protzman’s group of believers are all heading back to Dallas so that Michael Protzman will be exposed as a liar, but I am not holding my breath that any of his followers will suddenly have the ability to think critically and see that they are following a madman,” a family member of one of Protzman’s followers told VICE News. “They have the uncanny ability to believe everything Protzman tells them. I mean EVERYTHING.”
The family member, who did not want to be identified over fears of retaliation from the group, described the last 220 days as a “nightmare,” adding that they and the rest of the families affected by this just want “closure.”
“It has been something that has almost broken me completely,” they said. “I have had to come to grips with losing my loved one, and yet they are still alive. The person I once knew doesn’t seem to be there—mentally—anymore. It has filled me with anxiety, confusion, deep pain, and deep feelings of rejection. It has been a difficult journey of trying to come to grips with something so unbelievable that it seems impossible to reconcile in my own thinking.”
Protzman, a former demolition expert from Federal Way in Washington state who was previously arrested for domestic violence, rose to fame as a QAnon influencer through his use of a bastardized version of the Jewish numerology system known as gematria, which assigned a numerical value to each letter of the alphabet, allowing those who use it to draw links between seeming disparate events, names, and phrases.
He amassed tens of thousands of followers on his Telegram channel in the space of months, and was able to persuade over 1,000 people to pay for flights and accommodation to come to Dallas at the beginning of November last year.
In Dallas, he forced elderly followers and children to spend hours waiting for the JFK appearance that never materialized. One day, he forced his followers to wait in the rain at Dealey Plaza—where JFK was assassinated in 1963—for the former president to reappear. When that didn’t happen, he forced everyone to buy expensive tickets for a Rolling Stones concert in the city where he claimed dead celebrities like Prince, Michael Jackson, and Aaliyah would join JFK Jr on stage dressed as the members of the band.
While many of the followers realized Prtozman was a fraud at this point, there were still over 100 who remained loyal to him and remained in Dallas for months, spending Thanksgiving and Christmas away from their families.
Many of them also handed over tens of thousands of dollars to Protzman to pay for his penthouse suite at the Hyatt. Numerous family members who VICE News has spoken to over the course of the last seven months have said that their family members have given huge sums of money to the group.
This year, Protzman has taken his group on the road, travelling to numerous Trump rallies where he has claimed that Trump was in fact JFK in disguise. The group became so friendly with the event staff at Trump’s rallies that they were given jobs helping set up seating at the events in exchange for VIP tickets.
This is what an actual cult looks like:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKXgo7dXMAglhCa?format=jpg&name=small)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKXgrJ9XMAQ0zVO?format=jpg&name=small)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKXgtAxXwAMFCiF?format=jpg&name=small)
Protzman has continued to make wilder and wilder claims, including false assertions that the Ukraine war was a cover to unmask President Joe Biden’s criminality and that Melania Trump was the Queen of Russia.
The group has also posted images of some of the most prominent members, including Protzman himself, making Nazi salutes. One of the members of the group told VICE News at the time that it was done for “just some laughs” and to “make fun of you guys who falsely report us as a cult.”
In March, it looked like the group may be about to collapse, when Protzman kicked out some core members of the group and subsequently formed a splinter group, which became known as the Scooby Doo Crew. The group, led by former actor Stephen Tenner and Shelly Mullinax, have also been travelling to Trump rallies, most recently in an RV painted to look like the Mystery Machine from the Scooby Doo cartoons.
The two groups have been fighting with each other for months, both online and in person when they meet at Trump rallies.
However, Tenner and Mullinax both believe that Protzman only kicked them out of the main group as a plot to expose others within the group as frauds and that he will ultimately welcome them back into the fold. The reality, VICE News previously reported, is that Protzman kicked Shelley out of the group because she refused to give him more money.
Both Protzman’s group and the splinter group have continued to solicit and receive donations from followers on Telegram using the money to travel around the country.
They still share the same interests—on Thursday night, the Scooby Doo Crew arrived in Dallas and also checked into the the Hyatt Regency.
2022 Karma @2022Karma
The splinter group aka Scooby Doo Crew arrived at the Dallas Hyatt, to a welcoming of Michael Protzman’s aka -48 cult members waiting for them in the lobby. They all had their phones out recording them as they checked in. -48 claims to have a restraining order on Shelly.
It’s been 220 days since Michael Protzman aka -48 first arrived in Dallas with 100s of people who followed him to see JFK aka the second coming of Jesus Christ arise from the dead.
They spent until January 2022 camped out at the Hyatt.
Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1535137183564148736
https://twitter.com/2022_Karma/status/1535137183564148736
For the last seven months, an open-source researcher who is known as Karma has spent countless hours monitoring this group’s activities, flagging Protzman’s increasingly erratic behavior, and helping families get their loved ones back.
She believes that calling followers to Dallas this weekend will result in more hardship and pain.
“Michael Protzman has caused irreparable damage to his followers’ families, tearing apart husbands, wives and children,” Karma told VICE News. “Protzman asking more of his followers to come to Dallas on the 11th is worrying because more than likely some will stay on past that date and more families will be torn apart.”
Protzman or other members of his group did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7v48d/the-jfk-qanon-cult-is-heading-back-to-dallas-for-another-second-coming
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Just what we need. Yet another political, non-JFK assassination, anti-Trump political thread on this forum. There are only a dozen or so of those created by one poster to the tune of tens of thousands of posts on the topic. But since this is here, the whole QAnon business is something created by leftist nuts and media to make Trump supporters appear to be conspiracy theorists. It's a bogus movement started by leftist and populated by a handful of nuts. Anyone with half a brain knows that no one believes JFK is headed back to Dallas. But that fits a desired narrative, though. It's a hoax. Like the alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer which turned out to be FBI-driven hoax. Or Russian collusion. Hoax. It's laughable that anyone takes this nonsense seriously.
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It's a hoax. Like the alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer which turned out to be FBI-driven hoax.
See? ....Richard Smith does believe in conspiracies. ;)
From the depths of the Deep State no less.
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See? ....Richard Smith does believe in conspiracies. ;)
From the depths of the Deep State no less.
Sure there are many conspiracies in history. I've never said otherwise. There was a conspiracy to kill President Lincoln, for example. What proves a conspiracy is the evidence of the involvement of more than one person. That is not the case in the JFK assassination.
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First of all, the Governor Whitmer kidnapping plot is not a "hoax". The poster above who posted that is posting clear disinformation. That's a conspiracy theory Fox "News" pushes for the gullible sheep just like they claimed there was "massive voter fraud" that wasn't. The trial against the two men accused of the kidnapping plot ended in a hung jury. Federal prosecutors plan to try the men again. The article is below at the bottom.
Russian collusion is not a hoax. The Senate Intelligence Report stated that there was Rusian collusion and Russia admitted they helped to elect Criminal Donald. Articles are again below.
QAnon is not "made up by leftists to make Trump look bad". That's a ridiculous false claim. Republican Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are both QAnon cultists.
Radical QAnon Trump cultists believe JFK is alive and was not assassinated, so this is perfectly relevant to the JFK case.
Of course the QAnon lunatics believe JFK and JFK Jr are coming back to Dallas. They are cult members who follow Donald Trump and keep coming back to Dallas. Only a radical supporter of Criminal Donald would get offended by this.
The GOP and the right wing media ARE conspiracy theorists. They push QAnon conspiracy theories.They all pushed Trump's election fraud lies. Fox "News", Newsmax, OANN, and Trump's cohorts all got sued by Dominion Voting Systems. They lied about Dominion "rigging the vote". And we can't forget about the "Cyber Ninjas" in Arizona who claimed the ballots contained "bamboo from China". All of these lies were pushed by Republicans and the right wing media. Yes indeed they are conspiracy theorists, and their conspiracy theories made it possible for these QAnon kooks to keep coming back to Dallas looking for JFK Senior and Junior to emerge from the shadows to join forces with Trump.
QAnon cultists wear t shirts depicting Trump/JFK/JFK Jr. as they wait for their "grand return". These people are nuts and want to take over our government. Many QAnon cultists are running for office as Republicans in 2022 including the man who people say is "Q" (Ron Watkins) who makes up these bogus conspiracy theories.
(https://dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/IpPGB0945zkIhJe-CzOmkmXZIjA=/1660x934/smart/filters:no_upscale()/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/dmn/QFE6LGMSNZDSLHDG47IWUPKAEM.jpg)
(https://img.btdmp.com/10311/10311726/products/0x540@1651219951894.jpg)
QAnon and the Trump cult: Expert Steven Hassan on whether they can be saved
https://www.salon.com/2021/03/25/qanon-and-the-trump-cult-expert-steven-hassan-on-whether-they-can-be-saved/
How Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, promoter of QAnon's baseless theories, rose with support from key Republicans
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/greene-qanon-house-trump-republicans/2021/01/30/321b4258-623c-11eb-ac8f-4ae05557196e_story.html
How Trump Ally Michael Flynn Nurtured And Profited From The QAnon Conspiracy Theory.
https://theintercept.com/2021/06/27/qanon-michael-flynn-digital-soldiers/
Feds move forward on case against ‘leaders’ of Whitmer kidnap plot
https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/feds-move-forward-on-case-against-leaders-of-whitmer-kidnap-plot/
U.S. Senate report goes beyond Mueller to lay bare Trump campaign's Russia links
Bipartisan intelligence panel says that Russian who worked on Trump’s 2016 bid was career spy, amid a stunning range of contacts
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/18/donald-trump-us-senate-report-russia-campaign
Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House
Exclusive: Documents suggest Russia launched secret multi-agency effort to interfere in US democracy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/15/kremlin-papers-appear-to-show-putins-plot-to-put-trump-in-white-house
Fox News Hit With Massive Lawsuit Over Rigged Election Lies
The network is being sued by election technology company Dominion for $1.6 billion
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/03/fox-news-hit-with-massive-lawsuit-over-rigged-election-lies
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Well, the Trump QAnon cultists once again suffered more disappointment as JFK and JFK Jr. were both no shows at the huge gala event in Dallas, Texas waiting for their "grand return". But don't worry, their cult leader Michael Protzman says JFK and JFK Jr. will now make their triumphant return on June 24th. So, these loons are staying in Dallas until the 24th believing that's the day the Kennedy's will emerge from the shadows. These cultists also believe that "JFK wears a mask so he could be anyone". Absolutely insane how people are so weak minded that they can fall for a scam like this.
Here's a photo of some of the Trump QAnon cultists eagerly awaiting the "grand return" of JFK and JFK Jr.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVGuIG8VIAIkeT4?format=jpg&name=900x900)
2022 Karma has some videos on cult leader Michael Protzman.
2022 Karma @2022_Karma
After Michael Protzman’s aka -48 failed prediction that JFK the second coming of Jesus Christ would return on the 11th June, -48 has moved the Goalposts to the 24th of June. Sometime between now and then the 10 days of darkness will happen according to -48.
Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1536479739967414273
2022 Karma
-48 tells his followers that Durham is JFK and that JFK wears a mask, so basically JFK can be anyone he tells his followers he is.
Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1536479847278444544
2022 Karma
-48 told his followers that after he watched 2000 Mules he realized that Gregg Philips was really John McAfee.
Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1536479983782469632
If you don't know what "2000 Mules" is, that's a Trump "election fraud" conspiracy documentary produced by convicted criminal Dinesh D’Souza who was pardoned by Criminal Donald. Dinesh is currently pushing this phony "2020 election fraud" documentary and it's been hyped on Faux News. Trump's former Attorney General Bill Barr called it joke on tape and it was played during the January 6th Committee Hearings yesterday. Dinesh even claimed he dated Faux News hack Laura Ingraham in college. All of these conspiracy theorists are all intertwined with Trump and the right wing media to push their insane lies and disinformation.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVJaavzX0AA_d1f?format=jpg&name=medium)
Convicted criminal Dinesh D’Souza
Here's Bill Barr on tape laughing at this bogus "documentary".
Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1536377673886404608
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The jury found that the FBI concocted the fake plot to kidnap Whitmer. They found a few numbskulls who didn't like her and set up a "plot" to kidnap her. These guys were just pawns in the FBI's desperate effort to make a political arrest that harmed Trump. As a result, the jury did not convict any of the defendants. To suggest otherwise is the disinformation. The facts speak for themselves and can be easily verified by anyone who does a one second Google search. That doesn't fit the desired narrative, however. So keep peddling a falsheood. In addition, there are not ten people in the entire world who believed JFK was coming back from the dead. Not even mentally ill people. That is a fake story given social media attention to make Trump supporters look like loons.
"A federal jury failed to convict four men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer."
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The above is blatant propaganda. The fact is, defense attorneys use any bogus excuse to get their clients off the hook and that's what we have here. There was no "fake plot" as the above nonsense says. These two right wing radicals plotted to kidnap Governor Whitmer. The only argument in their defense was "entrapment" and that's not a "fake plot". Sad that people need to post disinformation to push their false political narratives.
Feds move forward on case against ‘leaders’ of Whitmer kidnap plot
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Federal prosecutors are moving forward with their case against two men accused of leading a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after their trial ended with a hung jury.
The attorneys for Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. last month filed a motion to dismiss all charges against the men. But federal prosecutors have responded with a motion asking the judge to deny that request.
“The evidence adduced at trial was sufficient to support the defendants’ conviction as to all the charged offenses,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils R. Kessler wrote in his response.
A hearing is scheduled for June 14 before Chief U.S. District Judge Robert J. Jonker.
"The parties should be prepared to address logistical questions regarding duration and timing of re-trial if the court denies the (acquittal) motion,” the judge wrote.
On April 8, following a 20-day trial, the jury deadlocked on the cases against Fox and Croft while finding co-defendants Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta not guilty.
The feds said the men started the conspiracy in June 2020 at a meeting of militia members in Ohio. Their plan, they said, evolved to kidnapping the governor from her cottage in Elk Rapids, blowing up a bridge or two to slow down police, then taking her in a boat, either to strand her in Lake Michigan or to Wisconsin to face trial and execution.
They were angry, the feds said, over Whitmer’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and hoped to ignite a second Civil War.
Defense attorneys argued that the FBI, working with informants, entrapped their clients.
“Government agents may not originate a criminal design,” Fox’s attorney, Christopher Gibbons, wrote in his motion to acquit. “Yet that is precisely what occurred here. In this case, the Government produced evidence that Adam Fox was prone to speaking offensively, making objectively anti-government statements, and juvenile remarks casually advocating violence.”
The feds, in their response, argued the FBI did not entrap the men.
"Both Fox and Croft espoused anti-government action long before they met any government agents or informants,” Kessler wrote in his motion. “Croft had been advocating a ‘second American revolution’ (including tattooing his body with insurrectionist slogans) for years, and proposed hanging a governor to destabilize the states like ‘dominoes.”
“The jury saw Fox likewise broadcast his desire to ‘kick off the boogaloo’ (initiate a second civil war) before he met any government agents or sources,” he wrote.
The feds argued the men provided no evidence that the idea to kidnap Whitmer came from the government.
“On the contrary, Croft told the plotters in Dublin, Ohio, that he had received permission directly from God,” Kessler wrote. “Fox proposed storming the Capitol and trading hostages for the Governor the first time he met CHS (Informant) Dan and the other potential recruits Croft sent his way.”
U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge has said he plans to try Fox and Croft again.
https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/feds-move-forward-on-case-against-leaders-of-whitmer-kidnap-plot/
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Yes, QAnon is a Republican Trump cult.
Confederate Flags, Conspiracies, and the Ghost of JFK Jr.: What I Saw at Trump’s Bananas Texas Rally
It’s part roadshow and part religious revival, but the show is a grift and the religion being revived is fascism
(https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/GettyImages-1238075202c.jpg?resize=1800,1200&w=1200)
Donald Trump speaks to a crowd at a rally at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, on Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022, in Conroe, Texas.
Conroe, Texas — The Donald Trump train made its second stop here this Saturday with a coterie of politicians, conspiracy theorists, and grifters in tow. It came on the heels of a Lara Trump rally in north Texas this past Thursday and just two weeks after a similar rally in Phoenix, Arizona. Meanwhile, six hours south at the border, the disgraced QAnon peddling general Michael Flynn and other far-right figures held an event at the exact same time followed up by a caravan to the border on Sunday. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who spoke at a QAnon conference in Dallas last July, was featured as a speaker at both events.
This confluence of events in Texas demonstrates the sort of far-right politics that is coalescing here: paranoid, obsessed with or tolerant of bigoted conspiracy theories, eager to appeal to violence, and convinced they’re fighting against a secret Marxist plot. If this sounds familiar, it’s because similar politics emerged during the Weimar period in Germany, were honed by the Nazis, and later trafficked into mainstream politics via the John Birch Society — one of the sponsors of the event at the border.
Dozens of politicians from across the state and country turned out for the rally, seeking to ride on Trump’s political coattails. Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and State Senator Dawn Buckingham all spoke glowingly of Trump and touted their endorsements from the former president.
We were in one of the reddest counties in one of the reddest states, and it showed: When I arrived at the press check-in station, the first thing I saw was a merchandise vendor with a Confederate flag — the banner of a nation that lasted only 4 years before being routed out of existence — that says “Come And Take It.” It was set up directly across from a wooden cross.
Having attended the prior rally in Arizona and the Lara Trump event on Thursday, a twisted sense of deja vu came over me when I got into the venue and began to hear the same songs, watch the same videos, listen to the same speeches, and see the same people. There were many familiar faces — election conspiracy peddling MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and the JFK Jr. obsessed QAnon cult leader Michael Protzman — and in some instances, near word for word repeats of previous events.
Trump opened the Houston rally in the exact same manner as he did in Arizona: saying it’s the biggest rally ever, that the media is fake, and that they won’t turn their cameras around to show the crowd size. He even repeated the false claim about a 29 mile long line of cars, but this time it was 30 miles long. The crowd began to jeer at the press. When I turned around to take a photo of the overflow crowd, someone flipped me off.
From inside the press pen I was able to observe Michael Protzman, aka Negative 48, and over one hundred of his followers secure prime seats directly to the left of the stage. The Protzmanians arrived over a day early and began lining up for the event the night before, just as they had in Arizona. The group was in rare form, dancing and singing together. They wore matching red ties and shirts depicting Donald Trump, JFK, and JFK Jr. Prior to the event, Protzman predicted to his group that who they would be seeing speak at the event was not actually Trump but JFK in disguise — a claim they’ve made before regarding the Rolling Stones concert in Dallas, Texas.
When I approached Protzman and asked him what he expected to see, he responded cryptically. “You never know,” he said, before bopping off to tend to his flock and dance with one of his lieutenants, Stephen Tenner, who at one point shook hands with Mike Lindell. As of late the Protzmanians have taken to compiling a variety of non-standard calendars to ensure they have every combination of possible dates to check against their “decoding” of the numerology. This is because none of their dates or predictions have panned out.
The entire scene — replete with more merch vendors than a Grateful Dead concert — made me think of the Church of Unlimited Devotion, the infamous subset of Deadheads who believed Jerry Garcia was the second coming of Jesus. One of the central claims of Protzman’s belief system sounds awfully similar: JFK is the second coming of Jesus Christ. They also traffick in fascist propaganda and Holocaust denial.
The Protzmanians, like the Church of Unlimited Devotion, are a relatively small sect. Neither are fully representative of the larger movements from which they emerged, but they demonstrate what can happen when magical thinking and cults of personality collide and provide us an understanding of how far some folks have fallen off the map. Even if only a little over 100 out of the thousands of people at the Trump rally truly believe that JFK Jr. is secretly alive or somehow related to Christ, many attendees seem to be willing to believe other things that aren’t true, like that refugee immigration from crisis-stricken countries is a part of a sinister Marxist plot or that murders have gone up one thousand and nine hundred percent.
This strain of political thought, particularly the notion of a secret Marxist plot, isn’t new in this country. The paranoid anti-communism of McCarthyism gave way to the John Birch Society, which has sought to mainstream its far-right ideology for decades. In Conroe, I witnessed the fruits of their labor. Hats and shirts for sale that simply say “God, Guns, and Trump” and speeches that I can only describe as full-blown Bircherism.
Without a hint of irony, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said the upcoming elections are a race between “Patriots and Traitors,” suggesting that the side that isn’t on trial for seditious conspiracy is the traitorous one. Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said the election was stolen and that Marxists want to “take away the country from us.” Gov. Abbott made an abstruse comparison between Biden’s response to the Russian army at the Ukraine border to the Texas-Mexico border, doubling down on the idea that immigration is a part of a planned invasion. The crowd chanted “build that wall,” which Biden has continued to do in some parts.
When Trump finally took the stage after hours of patience, the temperature had dropped significantly. My toes were cold and my soles regretted the choice of cowboy boots. Trump repeated much of what he said in Arizona but mixed in some of his trademark stream of consciousness riffs to keep things fresh. Less than an hour into his speech, the crowd started to thin out. I’d heard it all before, so I decided to follow suit.
(Indeed, it was more than an hour into his rambling speech when Trump offered something new: teasing a 2024 presidential run and dangling pardons for Jan. 6 rioters if he retakes office.)
As I approached the main exit, Trump was talking about Hillary Clinton. “Lock her up!” the crowd chanted. A woman walking beside me said to no one in particular, “Clinton’s a witch, that’s why they’re never going to lock her up.”
And as I approached the parking lot by the nearby baseball fields where I’d parked, I overheard a conversation between two older women. “How does Trump expect us to stand around for five hours?” one said to the other, referring to the ban on any form of lawn chair at the event. “By the time he started talking, we were hurting.” For the first time all day, I agreed with what I was hearing.
Later that evening, I went back to a pizza place by my hotel about 40 minutes south of Conroe in an upscale suburb of Houston called The Woodlands. I got to chatting with my server, a young man with a ponytail and glasses. When I told him I’d been in Conroe, his eye twitched. He said he grew up in Conroe and that his eye had twitched for a reason. When I told him what I had seen there, he asked me if I wanted a free shot of whiskey. I wish I had asked for two.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-texas-rally-conspiracies-ghost-of-jfk-jr-1292592/
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The leftists don't like the First or Second Amendments. They intimidate federal judges and want to deprive them and their families of protection to influence their judicial opinions. And now they want to defame the jury process? The fact remains that the FBI concocted a fake plot to entrap a few numbskulls simply based on their political dislike of Whitmer. They did this purely for political motivations. There was a trial in which both sides had an opportunity to present their arguments. And contrary to falsehoods stated the jury found them not guilty. This is simply an undeniable fact that anyone can confirm with a one second Google search. The disinformation is to suggest otherwise. What is humorous is that some folks are so invested in their hatred of Trump that they can't allow their conclusions to be influenced by the undeniable evidence and actual facts.
"A federal jury failed to convict four men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer."
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Actually it's the radical right who doesn't like the First Amendment because they are banning books.
The propaganda above his hilarious. No matter how many times it gets repeated it will never be true.
The feds are bringing a new case against the kidnappers.
Feds move forward on case against ‘leaders’ of Whitmer kidnap plot
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Federal prosecutors are moving forward with their case against two men accused of leading a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer after their trial ended with a hung jury.
https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/feds-move-forward-on-case-against-leaders-of-whitmer-kidnap-plot/
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These deranged QAnon loons are absolutely nuts. These Republican QAnon conspiracy theorists are running for office to take over our government to push these insane conspiracy theories.
Trump is backing a full-fledged QAnon extremist in Ohio
https://www.salon.com/2022/06/14/is-backing-a-full-fledged-qanon-extremist-in-ohio_partner/
JFK QAnon group harassed gun violence protestors in Dallas, claiming Uvalde shooting was ‘all an act’
Members of the JFK QAnon group verbally and physically harassed March For Our Lives participants in Dallas, shouting at them that the government staged the Uvalde mass shooting.
(https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/26/13/57/22592500/5/950x0.jpg)
JFK QAnon cult members harassed gun violence protestors, shouting at them that the Uvalde shooting was 'all an act'.
Members of the JFK QAnon group harassed March For Our Lives participants in downtown Dallas Saturday, shouting at them that the mass shooting in Uvalde on May 24—in which a gunman killed 19 elementary-school-aged children and two teachers—was orchestrated by the federal government.
Members of the group gathered at Dealey Plaza Saturday after their leader, Michael Protzman, predicted earlier that week that JFK would reappear there that day to reinstate Donald Trump as president and begin executions of the alleged global cabal of pe**philic, blood-drinking liberal elites Protzman claims runs the world.
Organizers of Dallas’ March For Our Lives rally had told participants to gather at Dealey Plaza Saturday morning before marching to nearby Dallas City Hall. Members of the two groups encountered one another early Saturday afternoon when several March For Our Lives protestors returned to Dealey Plaza after the march.
“We were just asking each other if we could take pictures of each others’ signs,” said Gabrielle Gonzalez, 20, of her and other gun violence protestors who’d reunited at Dealey after marching to city hall. “Then one of [the members] came up to me and were like ‘what do your signs say, are you on the opposite side of the fence?’ and we were like, ‘we’re with March For Our Lives,’” Gonzalez explained.
“Then [the QAnon member] was like, ‘did you know that Uvalde has been closed for years? It was fake, it was all an act, it was actors and actresses.’ Then two more [QAnon members] came up and were like ‘none of these are real, mass shootings don’t happen,” Gonzalez continued.
“And I asked them if they’d like to tell Maite Rodriguez’s parents that,” said Gonzalez.
Maite Rodriguez was one of 19 kids killed by 18-year-old Uvalde shooter Salvador Ramos. Maite was only identifiable by her green Converse sneakers due to the severe mutilation of her body caused by the shooter’s AR-15 rifle.
The confrontation in Dealey Plaza is rooted in a QAnon conspiracy that has spread across far-right social media forums alleging liberal elites stage mass shootings to divert attention from their alleged misdeeds. Multiple videos and posts pushing the false conspiracy have appeared on the JFK QAnon group's Telegram channel, which has more than 68,000 subscribers.
"False flag" conspiracies began gaining traction among a number of right-wing groups in the aftermath of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary—a massacre in which a lone gunman shot and killed 20 students and six teachers at school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Allegations claiming the federal government's involvement in the attack were initially spread by Austin-based far-right provocateur Alex Jones, who has since trumpeted similar conspiracies regarding the May 14 attack by a lone gunman at a Buffalo, New York grocery store that left 10 dead.
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/JFK-QAnon-cult-harassed-gun-violence-protestors-17238529.php
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The QAnon-JFK Cult Is Pivoting to Crypto
QAnon influencer Michael Protzman, known to his followers as Negative 48, is teaching followers to invest in a cryptocurrency network.
Her mother had been kicking herself since last November for missing her chance to go to Dallas to see John F. Kennedy resurrected from the dead.
But then she heard that QAnon influencer Michael Protzman was once again calling on his followers to make yet another trek to Dallas to see JFK return, and she was determined not to miss out.
“She wanted to go in November but did not have the means,” said her daughter Linda, who is using a pseudonym to protect her mother’s privacy. “She was very upset that she didn’t go, but made every excuse as to why it didn’t happen.”
Last week Linda’s mother “picked up and left” for Dallas, and within hours of arriving, Protzman, known to his followers as Negative 48, was teaching her how to invest in crypto.
“She called me this afternoon and told me that they are hosting classes on how to invest,” Linda told VICE News on Monday, referencing a cryptocurrency network that has been promoted within Telegram channels linked to Protzman and his followers.
Linda’s mother was joined by up to 100 other people in Dallas this weekend, with most of the group staying at the Hyatt Regency in the center of the city.
Protzman has spent the last seven months living off his followers' donations and financial support to cover his accommodation costs given that he was living out of his car prior to initially traveling to Dallas last November.
But this time Protzman made it clear in an audio chat on his Telegram channel that those without money shouldn’t bother coming to Dallas and said that people should plan to be in the city for longer than just a few days.
As well as hosting classes for the people who have traveled to Dallas, Protzman’s Telegram channels have been sharing videos giving his 70,000 subscribers detailed instructions on how they too can invest money in the cryptocurrency network, which is linked to a broader conspiracy about a coming global financial reset.
Protzman made his declaration that no one without enough money should travel to Dallas because the latest predicted return of JFK on Saturday never happened, and now Protzman has pushed the date of the former president’s return—which he predicts will trigger “10 days of darkness”—to June 24.
“She told me that Michael has moved the dates again, and when I questioned if she saw Jesus, she called me a satanist and the devil and then promptly hung up,” Linda said, adding that her mother has completely changed her personality since starting to follow Protzman’s online conspiracies last year. “My real mother would never do that.”
Video of Michael Protzman: Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1535677990310486018
After JFK Jr. or his dad failed to materialize at Dealey Plaza (again), Michael Protzman aka Negative 48 and his followers went to AT&T Plaza in downtown Dallas, where I first saw the group back in November 2021.
Listen to this video. It's barely comprehensible: https://twitter.com/i/status/1535791833393303552
Over the course of the weekend, Protzman once again made his followers spend hours waiting in downtown Dallas for JFK’s return. While they were waiting, some passed the time by harassing people attending a March for Our Lives event by telling them that the Uvalde school shooting was a hoax.
Like many family members of those under Protzman’s spell, Linda is now weighing up whether or not he should abandon her mother completely. “I don’t know who this person has become. I’m torn between letting go of the relationship and putting up with it to keep them in my life,” she said.
Protzman has destroyed dozens of families over the course of the last seven months, with many members of his inner circle now left with nowhere to go, even if they did want to leave the cult.
This has led to rising tensions between certain members of the group and during last weekend in Dallas, there were some angry clashes between Protzman’s group and a splinter group known as the “Scooby-Doo Crew” who were kicked out by Protzman over money issues.
During one face-off in the lobby of Hyatt hotel, one of Protzman’s most loyal followers struck a member of the splinter group in the face. The growing anger is also playing out in increasingly unhinged audio chats on Telegram where some members are making overt threats against opposing groups.
Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1535410993978699776
Watch: https://twitter.com/2022_Karma/status/1535137183564148736
Shelly was kicked out of the cult, at the end of January. The Scooby doo crew have been following them around for months, doxxing and making up conspiracies about Protzman’s inner circle.
With them all heading back to Dallas a clash was inevitable.
Watch: https://twitter.com/2022_Karma/status/1535137183564148736
“I keep saying, something is eventually going to happen, one of them is gonna snap. I just don't know which one,” Karma, an open-source researcher who has been closely tracking this group since the beginning, told VICE News.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/akew5p/qanon-jfk-crypto
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Things Overheard at the QAnon Rally for the Return of JFK Jr.
https://www.dallasobserver.com/arts/the-qanon-crowd-gathered-in-dallas-to-see-the-ghost-of-jfk-12706456
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Rep. Flores joins Greene and Boebert in having referenced QAnon
https://www.businessinsider.com/flores-joins-greene-and-boebert-in-having-referenced-qanon-2022-6
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Why some QAnon believers think JFK Jr is still alive – and about to become vice president
A theory considered too far-fetched even for most followers of the Q conspiracy could still be a cause for concern
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/qanon-jfk-jr-alive-trump-b1995594.html
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QAnon cryptocurrency implodes — and costs its investors millions of dollars: report
(https://www.rawstory.com/media-library/qanon.jpg?id=29997401&width=2400&height=1350)
On Monday, disinformation-fighting tech company Logically.ai reported that a special cryptocurrency developed for adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory has imploded.
"For the past year, two QAnon-affiliated influencers have been persuading their thousands of followers to invest in a portfolio of cryptocurrency tokens marked as fraudulent by the Stellar network — a major blockchain, alongside the better known Bitcoin and Ethereum — causing their followers to collectively lose millions of dollars, one of whom died by suicide after losing more than $100,000," said the report. "Combining conspiracizing with bad investment advice, the WhipLash347 and Quantum Stellar Initiative (which has no relationship with the Stellar network) Telegram channels coordinated to produce a weekly curated list of cryptocurrency assets, claiming that they had access to secret military intelligence and knew which assets were going to succeed."
This comes as cryptocurrencies in general face a huge market correction, with Bitcoin losing 15 percent of its value in a 24-hour period last week alone.
"The leaders, WhipLash347 and PatriotQakes (also active in the community under her real name, Emily Tang), capitalized on distrust in both financial institutions and mainstream media to lend credence to the assets they promoted, and bombarded their tens of thousands of followers with misinformation about crypto ventures," said the report.
These leaders used encrypted Telegram channels — a favorite method of organizing for the far-right — to inundate QAnon adherents with advice to buy the coins, which experts have called scams.
"WhipLash347 is an anonymous personality in the QAnon community who has claimed close personal connections with Elon Musk, former President Donald Trump, and John F. Kennedy Jr, who is dead," said the report. "Although at one point there was a WhipLash347 QAnon influencer account on Twitter and Facebook, the social media behavior of the WhipLash347 Telegram account makes it likely that the account has changed hands within the past year. Currently, the group mostly contains forwarded messages from other crypto investing groups, and contains far fewer Q-related posts than it did at the account’s inception."
The QAnon conspiracy theory, which arose on extremist social message boards in the early Trump years, asserts that America is controlled by a secret ring of Satanic child-trafficking cannibals who consume human blood to live forever. Adherents have generally gravitated toward Trump, claiming he is the only U.S. politician aware of the conspiracy, and constantly predicted martial law and mass arrests while he was in power.
https://www.rawstory.com/qanon-cryptocurrency/
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QAnon influencers are now reportedly defrauding their followers via cryptocurrency scams
Weaponizing conspiracy theories for cold, hard cash
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You may not have heard very much about QAnon in recent months, but believers in the right-wing conspiracy theory are very much still around.
And those believers are proving to be easy-to-dupe marks for influential QAnon promoters looking to make money.
Two QAnon influencers are using their cachet within their conspiratorial communities to prey on their followers and bilk them out of millions of dollars via cryptocurrency scams, according to a new report by the tech-based fact-checking firm Logically.
Using their large followings on Telegram, QAnon influencers Whiplash347 and PatriotQakes have promoted numerous fraudulent tokens to their followers on the messaging platform. The two, along with other leaders in the chats, frequently weaponize QAnon conspiracy theories in order to sucker their fans into investing in their various cryptocurrency schemes.
According to Logically's research, the two mainly use their Telegram channels to run their scams. Whiplash347, an anonymous QAnon influencer, has built a Telegram channel with 277,000 subscribers thanks to his promotion of QAnon conspiracy theories over the years. PatriotQakes — who, unlike Whiplash347, has also gone by her real name, Emily Tang — also runs the Quantum Stellar Initiative (QSI) Telegram channel, which has 30,000 subscribers.
“I am without doubt that Whiplash347, Emily, and QSI are scam artists,” said a former admin of the QSI chats, Rocky Morningside, to Logically. “[They] were promoting pump and dumps, and this appeared to be a very large and well organized Ponzi Scheme.”
Logically's detailed report follows just how these crypto scams played out on the Stellar blockchain. Stellar, a network like Bitcoin or Ethereum, allows anyone to create their own tokens in "5 easy steps." The QAnon influencers would create scam tokens and then transfer their holdings out for real money or more establish cryptocurrency after telling their followers to invest. This is commonly known as a "rug pull" in the crypto space. The tokens were created under the domain name "Indus.Gold," and the QAnon influencers would tell their followers that the crypto was backed by a real New York bank with a similar name. In fact, many of the scam cryptocurrencies followed a similar naming pattern in order to make them sound connected to an actual real company. Logically found that none of these tokens had any connections to the companies they were named after.
For example, Sungold token, which was pitched to their followers as being "backed by a Kazakh gold mine," was supposedly "linked" to a Russian company of the same name. Logically could not find any information to back this claim up. This scam, however, netted the QAnon influencers approximately $2 million according to Logically.
Followers of the vast right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon have a number of outrageous and obviously false beliefs. The movement itself was built upon the lie that former President Donald Trump was trying to takedown a global Satanic child sex trafficking ring run by baby-eating Hollywood elites and members of the Democratic Party.
The QAnon influencers appear to use these conspiracies in their money-making schemes. The channels release investment advice regarding which cryptocurrency assets to buy into. They would claim this investing knowledge came from "secret military intelligence" and that this meant they "knew which assets were going to succeed." According to the Logically report, the Telegram chat leaders would also reference supposed connections to "Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and JFK Jr," and claim that "aliens will facilitate a 'quantum' wealth transfer to the followers."
QAnon followers have long-believed that JFK Jr., President John F. Kennedy's deceased son is still alive and a supporter of Trump. In fact, Whiplash347 was a major disseminator of conspiracy theories about the Kennedy's. The Telegram channel was a major influence on some of the more cult-like QAnon phenomena, including an assembly at Dealey Plaza in Texas last year, during which adherents believed that the assassinated former president was going to reveal that he was actually alive.
In YouTube videos discovered by Mashable, Tang would utilize other common QAnon beliefs about the "banking cabals" and news media to sell her followers on these scam crypto assets.
According to Logically, their research led to a Telegram support group made-up of those who were scammed by the two QAnon influencers and were trying to warn others. A survey in that chat found that between 52 people who responded, a total of $223,494 was estimated to have been lost in these crypto scams.
In addition, Logically spoke to the family of one individual who lost more than 98 percent of his $100,000 investment into these QAnon influencers' crypto scams. The family says the man later took his own life over "losing his house and construction business due to unpaid debts."
And there's one more wrinkle to the report: Logically believes that it is "likely" that the original Whiplash347 isn't the one running the Telegram channel of the same name anymore.
Logically determined in its report that currently "the group mostly contains forwarded messages from other crypto investing groups, and contains far fewer Q-related posts than it did at the account’s inception."
https://mashable.com/article/qanon-influencers-crypto-scams
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QAnon’s ‘Q’ returns after long absence: ‘It had to be done this way’
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The mysterious person behind the absurd QAnon conspiracy theory is back.
"The anonymous message board user known as 'Q,' whose cryptic announcements spawned the fascist pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, has returned to posting after a nearly two-year hiatus," The Daily Beast reported. "On Friday night, someone with access to Q’s login credentials posted on 8kun, the anarchic internet community where Q last posted in December 2020."
The conspiracy theory has even been believed by elected officials like Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
"In QAnon’s telling, Donald Trump was recruited by the military to run for president in 2016 to take down that nefarious 'cabal.' QAnon believers await 'The Storm,' an event in which they believe Trump enemies like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be executed via orders from a military tribunal, or imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay," The Beast reported. "The Q poster followed up with two more messages on Friday night. Asked why they had disappeared for more than a year, they wrote, 'It had to be done this way.'"
Ginni Thomas also appears to believe in the conspiracy theory.
“Remember your oath," one message ominously instructed.
AFP
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QAnon in Dallas: Why have QAnon followers been flocking to Dealey Plaza -- and what do they believe?
Over the last few months, QAnon followers have been flocking to Dallas in droves. On November 2, 2021, WFAA's Kevin Reece was at Dealey Plaza as hundreds of followers come together.
What were they hoping to see happen there that day? Did they really expect John F. Kennedy Jr. was going to show up? What do these people actually believe?
You've probably heard plenty about QAnon conspiracy theories over the last year -- including during the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol -- but how much have you heard from these people themselves?
We visited the scene of their latest mass gathering -- and spoke with some area experts -- in order to get to the bottom of the situation and find out.
Watch:
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QAnon Conspiracies Are Tearing Through Evangelical America
It’s been almost a year since we heard anything from the shadowy figure behind QAnon, yet the wild conspiracy is gaining a foothold in evangelical churches. VICE investigates how congregations across the country have become fertile ground for disinformation and conspiracy theories.
Watch:
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Dangerous QAnon Fringe Seen At Gathering Waiting For JFK Jr. To Show Up
Ben Collins, NBC News senior reporter covering disinformation, extremism, and the internet, about a gathering in Dallas of a sect of the QAnon movement that expected JFK Jr. to not only not be dead but to show up at the same time and place his father was assassinated, and what it means that such a large number of Trump supporters took part in this real world event.
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QAnon supporters gather in hope JFK junior returns from dead
QAnon supporters attended a gathering in Dallas, Texas, at which they falsely believed JFK junior would reveal he is not dead and announce a 2024 presidential run with Donald Trump, the former president.
Watch:
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QAnon believers who flocked to Dallas to see JFK Jr. reappear are refusing to leave, saying they want to set up a permanent HQ there
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/qanon-believers-flocked-dallas-see-134222017.html
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The Fringe QAnon ‘Cult’ Is Still Waiting for a JFK Jr. Miracle in Dallas
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/qanon-dallas-conspiracy-theorist-jfk-still-there-1264953/
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So, these QAnon radical Trump supporters think JFK is Trump wearing a mask. These people absolutely insane and some of these loons are running for various offices as Republicans. All of these deranged Republican conspiracy theorists need to be voted out.
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Trump's QAnonn loons has set a new date in August for the return of JFK from the dead. :D
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QAnon Fan Is Resurrecting JFK Jr.’s Magazine in Creepy Twist
https://www.thedailybeast.com/qanon-fan-gene-ho-is-resurrecting-jfk-jrs-magazine-george-with-a-trump-twist
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QAnon Followers Think JFK Jr. Is Coming Back on the 4th of July
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/qanon-jfk-jr-conspiracy-theory-854938/
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QAnon’s Takeover of the Republican Party Is Virtually Complete
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QAnon's infiltration of the Republican Party has proceeded with frightening steadiness over the last couple years, its growing foothold marked by the arrival of conspiratorial politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene. According to Business Insider, Ron Watkins, widely believed to be one of the authors of the Q posts that started the movement, is one of nearly 60 Q sympathizers running for Congress in the 2022 midterm elections. QAnon’s adherents tend to espouse some selection of bizarre beliefs from the conspiracist’s buffet that includes accusations of pedophile politicians eating children, secret political tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, a great bloodletting, and Donald Trump swooping in to free us from evil. One day. Or maybe the day after. The prophecy is flexible, which is why it has evolved and endured.
This week brought us evidence that QAnon thought has spread further than we knew: into the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the very highest levels of the Republican Party. It is increasingly difficult to separate the movement’s demented beliefs from the ideology of the already democracy-averse GOP, its traces evident in legislation, media appearances, and leaked private communications.
The latest exemplar of the GOP’s descent into anything-goes nuttery is Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and a well-connected conservative activist who recently admitted to attending the January 6 Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C. Ginni’s right-wing beliefs have long been known, but leaked texts between her and then–White House chief of staff Mark Meadows revealed Thomas’s commitment to overturning the election, based on an apparently sincere belief that Joe Biden had stolen the presidency. She encouraged Meadows to help put a stop to Democratic perfidy. “The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” went one message to Meadows, encouraging him to stand strong.
The texts also revealed that she has traveled far down the QAnon rabbit hole. She made reference to “watermarked ballots” that signaled a secret Trump-led military “sting operation.” She described a plot hatched by the “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators” who were already being arrested and shipped to floating barges off the coast of Guantanamo Bay. She wrote messages supporting Sidney Powell, a lawyer whose deranged media appearances made her such a liability that she was forced out of Trump’s circle. But Thomas strongly supported Powell, a QAnon favorite. “Don’t let her and your assets be marginalized instead … help her be the lead and the face,” she wrote to Meadows on November 13.
Thomas’s willingness to embrace even the most wild-eyed, Big Lie–fueled theories only affirms what we already know about some of her political peers, including those who served in the Trump White House. Some went along out of self-preservation or an instinct for power, but other Trumpists, including perhaps Trump himself, actually accepted the proliferating lies about hacked voting machines, a communist influence project, corrupt state officials, and whatever else could be added to the witch’s brew of baseless speculation. Whether they believed these lies or not, the effect was functionally the same. In the months before and after Joe Biden’s election as president, the government was run by erratic coup plotters, some of whom thought that corrupt Democratic officials were being tried for treason secretly in Gitmo. The sheer absurdity of all this would be hilarious if it didn’t involve people in positions of real influence.
These include lawmakers and aspiring presidential candidates in the Senate. Earlier this month, Missouri senator Josh Hawley presented a long Twitter thread charging that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson “has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook” — a blaring Klaxon for QAnon adherents obsessed with child endangerment. He later repeated his criticisms on the first day of Jackson’s confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court, prompting a White House spokesman to assert that Hawley was engaging in a “QAnon-signaling smear.” Hawley’s remarks were later echoed by South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who, in addition to chiding Jackson for representing detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, told Jackson, “Every judge who does what you are doing is making it easier for the children to be exploited.” To cap it off, one of the Republican witnesses for the hearing was Alessandra Serano, an executive at Operation Underground Railroad, a well-funded anti-sex-trafficking organization whose vigilantism and weak relationship with reality resemble that of QAnon adherents.
The signs of the Republican slide toward full epistemic crack-up are all around us. One can see it everywhere lately, not only in the “why do you want to hurt children?”–type questions hurled by Republican senators at Jackson, but also in the revanchist anti-LGBTQ laws being introduced in Texas and Florida and in fearful talk of teachers “grooming” children on Fox News. The ginned-up moral panic, centered around the child-exploitation themes that helped give life to QAnon, is now a regular part of Republican political rhetoric.
This phenomenon’s origins go back decades, with important mile markers appearing under the George W. Bush administration, which gave us “truthiness” and the “reality-based community.” How else to explain General Mike Flynn, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and, briefly, national security adviser to the president, who now supports QAnon? Flynn’s full tilt toward Strangelovian madness may be partly because it’s popular on the speaking circuit, but he has also draped himself in some of the most unhinged and bloodthirsty language of the QAnon prophecy — and seemingly delighted in doing so. (He thought Myanmar’s military coup was a good model for the U.S., for example.) It may be just another right-winger’s embrace of the troll’s ethos — riling the enemy being the great credo of the modern Republican Party — but again, the effect is the same: The free-associative, crazed accusations of conspiratorial thinking stand at the core of modern Republican politics.
If you had any lingering pretensions that our political elites know better than the average QAnon-pilled zombie, it’s past time to let them go. The people in charge of the Republican Party are mostly old and poorly informed operators who believe some of the most asinine theories to emerge from social-media bilge. Granting them some measure of savviness — saying that this is red meat for the Republican base, or that it keeps the checks from right-wing billionaires coming in — is to offer too much credit. More than that, it risks absolving them through some nod toward political practicalities when, mostly, this is all pretty evil and disturbing.
The added trouble with Ginni Thomas, of course, is not just that she’s a well-connected right-wing activist who communicates abject lies to sympathetic presidential officials. It’s that her husband, whose own beliefs are more closely held but likely fairly bonkers, has the power to help implement her agenda and protect her from repercussions. Clarence Thomas’s defenders on the right have been keen to point out that he and his wife are not the same person, and that much is true — but can anyone say with any certainty whether this sitting member of the Supreme Court believes Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 election?
At the very least, critics have rightly objected to the fact that Thomas has refused to recuse himself from cases related to the January 6 committee. He’s in a position to not only provide legal cover for his wife but also her potential co-conspirators. If Thomas hadn’t been quietly tucked away in a hospital with an undisclosed illness, perhaps this glaring conflict of interest could have been dealt with publicly, but for now, Republican officials continue to make excuses to protect one of their own. And the depressing reality is that the rot is deep. Even if Ginni and Clarence Thomas are excised from American political life, their shameless confederates remain.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/qanons-takeover-of-the-gop-is-virtually-complete.html
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The GOP Just Nominated a ‘QAnon Whackjob’ and a ‘True Confederate’ in Maryland
A guy who tried to impeach Maryland’s GOP governor was just nominated to replace him—and he’s not even the most extreme candidate who won on Tuesday.
(https://video-images.vice.com/articles/62d7ffcdfae1370093ff92fd/lede/1658322926052-gettyimages-1242005172.jpeg?crop=1xw:0.8427xh;0xw,0xh&resize=1000:*)
A man who organized buses to Washington on Jan. 6, tweeted during the Capitol riot that Vice President Mike Pence was a “traitor,” tried to impeach Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan over his actions to stem COVID-19, and spoke at a QAnon conference this spring, just won the Republican nomination for Maryland governor.
And he’s not even the most extreme candidate Maryland Republicans nominated for statewide office on Tuesday.
Maryland state Del. Dan Cox won the GOP gubernatorial primary Tuesday night, buoyed by an endorsement from former President Donald Trump and big spending by Democrats. And his coattails helped his friend and ally Michael Peroutka—a Christian nationalist and former board member of the neo-Confederate, secessionist League of the South whose extreme views are almost too numerous to enumerate—win the GOP’s nomination for attorney general.
Their wins show how radicalized and conspiracy theory-minded a significant segment of the Republican base has grown in response to COVID and Trump’s lies about the 2020 election—even in a Democratic-leaning state like Maryland.
The Associated Press has called both races. Peroutka led his race by 58 percent to 42 percent with an estimated 78 percent of ballots counted, while Cox led his primary by 56 percent to 40 percent with an estimated 80 percent of ballots counted in that race as of Wednesday morning. Those margins may narrow, as mail-in ballots won’t be counted until Thursday, but the AP assessed that there aren’t enough outstanding ballots to make up the difference.
Cox’s win comes after a vocal endorsement from Trump, whose long-running feud with Hogan helped sink Hogan’s handpicked successor, former Maryland Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz, in the primary. Cox also benefited from millions in campaign ads from Democrats highlighting his ties to Trump in a successful bid to help him win the primary so they’d face a significantly less electable candidate in the general election.
Peroutka has repeatedly said he believes public education is a communist plot, and during his campaign argued that Maryland laws protecting both gay marriage and abortion are illegal and unconstitutional because they violate “God’s law.” He called the Confederate song “Dixie” the “national anthem,” and is a former board member of the League of the South, an neo-Confederate organization whose explicit aim is for the South to leave the U.S. and form its own country. That organization is best known for helping to organize the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally that turned violent, a few years after Peroutka left the group.
Peroutka doesn’t like the term “neo-Confederate”—but it’s the “neo” part he takes issue with. In 2014, he called the term a “code word” that’s “meant to stir up hatred against us.”
“If anything, I want to be just a true Confederate,” Peroutka said, according to Right Wing Watch.
Neither candidate has a real shot of winning the general election in Democratic-leaning Maryland.
Hogan called Cox a “QAnon whackjob” last November, one of the nicer things he’s had to say about Cox during the campaign. (Cox has tweeted using the hashtag #WWG1WGA, a reference to the QAnon slogan “where we go one, we go all.”)
“Neither of these guys has a shot in hell winning the general election in Maryland. It’s mathematically impossible,” Schulz and Hogan adviser Doug Mayer recently told VICE News.
And it’s not even clear that their GOP primary opponents will endorse them. Schulz hasn’t said what she’ll do, while Hogan’s team said Wednesday morning that he wouldn’t vote for Cox. Jim Shalleck, the establishment-leaning candidate Peroutka defeated on Tuesday, recently told VICE News that he wasn’t sure who he’d vote for this November.
“That’s a very tough decision for me to make knowing what his history is,” Shalleck said. “His background concerns me very much.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epzxpa/maryland-gop-primary-dan-cox-michael-peroutka
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Majority Of Republicans Believe The QAnon Conspiracy Theory Is Partly Or Mostly True, Survey Finds
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-of-republicans-believe-the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-is-partly-or-mostly-true-survey-finds/?sh=4dca534c5231
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Radical MAGA right wing Republicans are QAnon. They're a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists who believe in total insanity. What's dangerous is kooks like this are running for political office as Republicans being die hard loyalists to Donald Trump and he endorses them.
These QAnon extremists have zero qualifications to hold office, but Trump endorses these kooks because they peddle his election fraud lies and push insane conspirfes against Democrats. Would you vote for Republicans who think Democrats are "secret lizard people"? These kooks will be enforcing and voting on laws that will affect your life. Crazy loons like this must be kept out of government or we will be in big trouble when our laws will be based on crazy conspiracy theories like JFK and JFK Jr. returning from the dead to partner with Trump.
These Arizona QAnon candidates want your vote
All three are working with a QAnon influencer who says their victories will bring about ‘regime change’
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Jerone Davison, a former NFL player mounting a long-shot bid for Congress in Arizona, is certain that federal law enforcement is responsible for children being murdered in mass school shootings, like the one that left 19 fourth-graders and two teachers dead in Texas in May.
“The FBI is not a friend of this country,” Davison said on a conservative talk show last month. “All these school shootings, the FBI had prior knowledge to what was going on.”
And Davison is equally sure that the FBI set up a Chandler man named Austin Steinbart.
Steinbart is a QAnon celebrity, known in the conspiracy theory community as “Baby Q.” Many of his supporters believe him to be the mythical Q that for years posted cryptic messages on an obscure online message board. He has told his followers that his future self is sending messages back in time so that present-day Steinbart can reveal the truth.
He also happens to be Davison’s campaign manager.
Davison is one of three Arizona candidates this year with close ties to Steinbart, all of whom are openly embracing QAnon.
In its simplest form, the complex and damaging QAnon conspiracy theory that alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping ped*philes are running a global sex-trafficking ring, control world governments and are trying to bring down former President Donald Trump — who is himself single-handedly dismantling the cabal.
There are many iterations of the theory, as adherents are encouraged to do their own “research.” As a result, there are a wide variety of QAnon beliefs. For example, some believe that Q is actually John F. Kennedy Jr. — who died in 1999 when the plane he was flying crashed into the Atlantic Ocean — while others believe Q is actually Trump himself.
In a June 20, Facebook post Davison shared an interview between himself, Steinbart and a conservative talk show host in which he said “the left” is attempting to have him fire Steinbart from his bid as a Republican in Congressional District 4.
In Davison’s interview with Jim Price, he says that Steinbart, who was arrested for posting medical images and information online of NFL players that he was able to obtain while getting a brain scan, was set up by the FBI. Steinbart directed his followers to harass the tech company and claimed he had done so in part under orders from his future self.
Davison said that, after “researching” the things Steinbart did, he concluded the 31-year-old “didn’t do it.” The real culprit, he said, was the FBI, which set him up “just like the people on January 6.”
Davison’s campaign staff reportedly quit when he hired Steinbart to be his campaign manager, according to video obtained by Media Matters for America.
“They quit, raged out,” Steinbart told his followers in the video. “They called, like, all of Jerone’s primary opponents, all of the party people, and like the precinct committee and all the legislative district chairmen, all of the state level people running all the races, all of the party people, all the federal races… telling everyone Jerone is now Austin’s puppet.”
Steinbart said that was part of his plan, to get the eyes of everyone on Davison so he could launch a campaign website prominently featuring his special brand of QAnon language.
Steinbart believes that one of the ways the Q from the future speaks to him from the future is via “quantum computing.” Davison’s campaign website includes mentions of the “quantum era.”
“We are rapidly reaching the end of the ‘Nuclear Era’ and entering the ‘Quantum Era,’” Davison’s campaign website declares. In the video obtained by MMFA, Steinbart said Davison’s campaign will allow him to go “really hard” on the “Q stuff” in a more mainstream setting.
On social media, Davison has been echoing QAnon conspiracies that Steinbart has previously espoused.
In one Twitter post, Davison alludes to “HUGE” leverage that former President Donald Trump has on Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Steinbart has alleged that Trump helped bin Salman cover up the 2017 Las Vegas shooting which he alleges, without any proof, was carried out by a “Saudi hit team” and not by a lone, middle-aged white man. The chat was excited by Davison seemingly acknowledging the conspiracy theory.
(https://www.azmirror.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/jake-angeli-qanon-shaman-capitol-j6-getty-2048x1066.jpg)
Jake Angeli, an Arizona man who dubbed himself the “Q Shaman,” celebrates being part of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to block Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election. The violent insurrection marked the first time in American history where there wasn’t a peaceful transfer of power. The crowd was spurred on by Donald Trump, who insisted baselessly that he lost the election to Joe Biden because of fraud. Photo by Win McNamee
Davison also has been a guest on a podcast that is listened to frequently by Steinbart’s chat and other QAnon acolytes. Jake Angeli, the infamous self-appointed “Q Shaman” who was among the first people to breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, hosts a podcast from prison. Davison appeared on the podcast earlier this year alongside Angeli and others.
Steinbart said Davison is one of several candidates he is working for — with the goal of fostering a “regime change” in the GOP.
He’s also working with long-shot gubernatorial candidate Scott Neely, who has appeared on the online QAnon show “The Night Owl News” to discuss his campaign. Duringt the interview, he espoused his support of the QAnon conspiracy theory.
“If you have critical thinking skills, you are Q,” Neely said, referring to a part of QAnon ideology that asserts the community is collectively Q because it questions reality. He said on the show that, after researching QAnon, he decided he was always a “Q” and that the real movement is “quantum.”
“Quantum is the future of Q, and it is going to unlock so many doors for us,” Neely said, adding that it was going to be needed in the upcoming war against the elitists. “Some people call them lizard people, some people call them luciferians — I just call them elitists.”
Neely is one of three candidates that Steinbart has said he needs to win as part of his “political strategy.”
“I need Jerone Davison, I need Scott Neely, I need Gail Golec,” Steinbart said in audio obtained by MMFA “With those three politicians, I can execute the plan in real life.”
Neely has promoted both Davison and Steinbart on his social media accounts. Gail Golec, who is running for Maricopa County Supervisor, has said on Telegram that Steinbart was hired to do a promotional video for her campaign.
Golec, a conspiracy theorist who was a prominent figure during the Maricopa County audit and quit her career as a realtor to pursue the non-existent voter fraud in Maricopa County. Steinbart also worked on the audit, as well as the conspiracy theory film made at the audit.
Davison, Golec and Neely did not respond to requests for comment about their connections to Steinbart or their QAnon beliefs.
https://www.azmirror.com/2022/07/25/these-arizona-qanon-candidates-want-your-vote/
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The connection between White evangelical Republicans and QAnon
The QAnon movement is still growing even after its baseless conspiracy theories are proven to be false. One group driving the movement is White evangelical Republicans. A recent study found the faction is more likely than others to believe in fanatical theories, like the "Deep State" and that there was fraud during the 2020 presidential election. Colin Clarke, director of policy and research at the Soufan Group, joined CBSN's Lana Zak to discuss the connection between the two groups.
Watch:
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QAnon cult leader predicts JFK will return to Dallas—again—this coming weekend
https://www.chron.com/politics/article/QAnon-Dallas-JFK-conspiracy-theory-Dealey-Plaza-17231751.php
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QAnon inked candidate wins Republican nod for Nevada’s top elections post
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/nevada-elections-official-republican-primary-qanon
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Some QAnon Believers Think JFK Disguised Himself As Trump At Arizona Rally
https://news.yahoo.com/qanon-believers-think-jfk-disguised-225445960.html
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Dallas QAnon Cult Leader Is Using Indoctrinated Kids To Spread His Ideas On Livestreams
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-qanon-cult-leader-is-using-indoctrinated-kids-to-spread-his-ideas-on-telegram-livestreams-13583190
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Alleged QAnon mastermind set to come in last in House primary
Former ‘8kun’ administrator fails to garner support in crowded primary
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ron-watkins-primary-results-qanon-b2137441.html
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QAnon candidate Ron Watkins finishes last in Arizona GOP primary race
Ron Watkins, an influential figure in the QAnon conspiracy movement who last year announced he was seeking the GOP nomination for Arizona's Congressional seat
https://www.businessinsider.com/ron-watkins-qanon-results-last-arizona-gop-primary-race-2022-8
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This is the Republican party. Republican voters, candidates, and politicians believe in these bogus conspiracy theories known as QAnon.
QAnon Believers Gather In Dallas Awaiting Return Of Long-Dead JFK Jr.
QAnon supporters have reportedly gathered in Dallas, Texas, in anticipation of the return of John F. Kennedy, who they believe will announce a 2024 presidential run alongside Donald Trump despite being dead for 22 years — the latest outlandish claim from a movement that believes the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping ped*philes.
Forbes Breaking News Video Watch:
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These QAnon loons are a danger to us all trying to take over our government.
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Confused QAnon Followers Question Whether Keith Richards Is JFK After 'Reappearance' Flop
https://www.newsweek.com/qanon-keith-richards-jfk-john-f-kennedy-jfk-jr-reappearance-flop-1645341
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Why are QAnon followers flocking to Dallas? A closer look at the movement
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/nation-world/qanon-shaman-plans-to-appeal-prison-sentence-for-role-in-jan-6-insurrection-hundreds-of-followers-flock-to-dallas/287-571279dd-3adb-4611-91aa-bf1188f101c6
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QAnon believers flock to Dallas after again being promised 105-year-old John F. Kennedy will appear.
Cannot make this up!
QAnon believers are flocking back to Dallas, Texas, after once again being promised that they'll be treated to an appearance by the late President John F. Kennedy, who would be 105 years old today if he hadn't been assassinated in 1963.
Vice News reports that QAnon influencer Michael "Negative 48" Protzman has told his followers that JFK is headed to Dallas, despite the fact that Protzman's similar prediction about JFK's return last November never came true.
As an added twist, Protzman also claims that the 105-year-old dead president will also reveal himself to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
Although there's no official count of how many people are attending this event, Vice News has counted "dozens" of replies from Protzman's followers saying they will join him in Dallas.
What's worse is that Republican members of Congress and candidates believe in this absurdity. These conspiracy theorists want to make laws based on these asinine conspiracy theories.
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15 QAnon-linked candidates have won key primaries in 2022. The GOP and its leaders are embracing them.
https://www.grid.news/story/politics/2022/07/28/15-qanon-linked-candidates-have-won-key-primaries-in-2022-the-gop-and-its-leaders-are-embracing-them/
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Marjorie Taylor Greene Dodges Question About Supporting QAnon
https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-dodges-qanon-question-1700193
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Michigan GOP Secretary of State candidate to speak at QAnon conference
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/michigan-gop-secretary-state-candidate-speak-qanon-conference
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QAnon Trump supporters are pushing more JFK conspiracies claiming JFK is Trump in a mask. These people are deranged.
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Trump on Truth Social rampage, lashes out at FBI, shares QAnon references
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-on-truth-social-rampage-lashes-fbi-shares-qanon-references-2022-8
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Trump on Truth Social rampage, lashes out at FBI, shares QAnon references
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-on-truth-social-rampage-lashes-fbi-shares-qanon-references-2022-8
Donnie is nuts!
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The GOP is no longer a political party, they are an authoritarian conspiracy cult.
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The GOP is the QAnon party. A conspiracy cult.
Republican who ousted Liz Cheney immediately pivots to QAnon conspiracies
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/liz-cheney-opponent-harriet-hageman-qanon/
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Kari Lake uses QAnon show to fundraise and promote campaign days before primary
Days before the state’s August 2 primary, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake appeared on a QAnon show where she asked viewers to donate to her campaign and vote for her. The hosts also endorsed her; invoked the QAnon conspiracy theory’s central figure and mentioned other QAnon figures; and seemingly bragged that her interview showed the influence of the “anons.”
On July 29, Lake, a frontrunner in the primary, appeared on the MatrixxxGrooove Show (or MG Show), which is co-hosted by QAnon influencer Jeffrey Pedersen. (Pedersen is known online as “intheMatrixxx” and Lake has previously been photographed with him.) During the interview, Pedersen asked viewers to donate “$17, $20, $50, you know, to help her get to the final stretch, maybe get some TV ads out there”; 17 is a reference to “Q,” the conspiracy theory’s central figure, being the 17th letter of the alphabet. He also urged Lake to use one of his followers who has “such a beautiful voice” for her campaign events.
Lake also asked viewers to “vote early, if you can, vote on election day,” to donate to her campaign, and to “let your friends and relatives in Arizona know how much is on the line right now.” Pedersen also mentioned other QAnon influencers and a QAnon influencer collective that he is a part of, and he urged viewers to vote for Lake. Lake also said it was “a real pleasure” to meet the show’s co-hosts, and Pedersen said that “MG Show endorses Kari Lake for Arizona governor.”
After the interview, Pedersen praised Lake for coming on, saying, “I’m proud that she came on the show. That really shows me a lot.” He also seemingly suggested it showed the influence of “the anons out in this community.”
Multiple other Arizona political figures have now appeared on MatrixxxGrooove Show, including Dan Schultz, who played a major role in an increase in QAnon supporters becoming Republican precinct committee members.
Watch videos in link:
https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/kari-lake-uses-qanon-show-fundraise-and-promote-campaign-days-primary
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Nevada’s GOP secretary of state candidate follows QAnon, neo-Nazi accounts on Gab, Telegram
The Daily Dot unearthed previously unknown accounts for Marchant.
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Jim Marchant, the Republican nominee for secretary of state in Nevada, has a conspiratorial online presence, as evidenced by the groups and people he follows from accounts on Gab and Telegram, which the Daily Dot has unearthed.
Marchant is a member of the far-right of the Republican party, who has stated that had he been Nevada’s secretary of state in 2020, he would not have certified the election for President Joe Biden.
A number of far-right Republicans have been running for office in states that swung the 2020 election, with the unspoken goal of keeping their states from sending Democratic electors to Congress in the event of another close presidential contest in 2024. Marchant is a key part of that effort; he co-founded the America First Secretaries of State Coalition (the other co-founder is a QAnon influencer named Wayne Willott and known as Juan O Savin). Five of the coalition’s candidates, including Marchant himself, have won their state’s Republican primaries.
Marchant’s personal Telegram account, and a Gab account that matches Marchant’s online identity, show just what voices are being listened to by someone who could hold sway in Nevada in 2024.
On Gab, a far-right haven for antisemitism, the account for Marchant follows 12 accounts.
What appears to be Marchant’s Gab account, @jcm9079, is under a username he has had across various forums and services since the mid-2000s.
(https://uploads.dailydot.com/2022/08/Screen-Shot-2022-08-19-at-10.34.24-AM.png?auto=compress&fm=png)
Marchant did not respond to a request from the Daily Dot.
The account follows only 12 other users. Among them is a pro-Nazi QAnon influencer called IPOT1776. QAnon is the conspiracy theory that claims former President Donald Trump will soon arrest, imprison, try, and execute all of his most prominent opponents on charges of being Satan-worshipping pedophiles.
IPOT1776’s pinned post on Gab is a link to his latest video, a two-hour screed arguing that the Nazis were right about Jews. The video makes use of Nazi propaganda posters and antisemitic art, and borrows long stretches of material from at least one other neo-Nazi “documentary.”
The video’s central claim is that the Jews were spreading Communism and “degeneracy” and had to be stopped. The video portrays the Nazis as a natural and defensive reaction to the Judeo-Bolshevik menace—a sentiment that IPOT1776 has also recently expressed on Truth Social.
IPOT believes this Jewish menace is still a threat today.
It is important to note that it’s impossible to know when the account followed IPOT1776. The earliest possible date would be in January 2021, when this account was created. That was a few months before IPOT started posting overtly antisemitic content.
It’s possible @jcm9079 followed IPOT before it was openly pro-Nazi. However, in January 2021 IPOT was still an extremist—he had called for hangings and “citizen’s arrests” of people who had stolen the election from Trump.
IPOT’s posts also often make references to Q, and many of his videos use Q’s writings as a framework to interpret current events.
At a minimum, the account follows someone who openly fantasized about violent revenge against his political enemies, a jarring influence on the timeline of someone who could control the fate of Nevada’s six electoral votes.
In addition to IPOT, it follows two other QAnon influencers: Ron Watkins, one of the people most associated with the QAnon conspiracy, and Neon Revolt, a popular QAnon influencer.
Along with the QAnon promoters, @jcm9079 follows other fringe figures on Gab—most notably Paul Joseph Watson, a conspiratorial influencer whose popularity exploded on the coattails of Alex Jones.
The Gab account is under the username @jcm9079, which has been Marchant’s online alias of choice for decades. Marchant has clearly used it on various sites since long before he became a public figure.
For instance, starting in 2009 he used an account labeled jcm9079 to write fiery political commentary on the conservative site Redstate. One of his articles mentions that he met Newt Gingrich in Las Vegas. A Disqus account under jcm9079 also shows this user saying that he met Gingrich at an appearance in Las Vegas.
Marchant brought his politics into a forum for pickup truck owners. In a 2009 thread on a site called “The Diesel Stop,” user jcm9079 wrote: “They have not taken any Obama money and have so far avoided being taken over by our Marxist Government. Kudos to Ford!” The user signed the post “Jim,” and later in the thread revealed that he lived in Las Vegas.
That makes three separate instances of Marchant using the name “jcm9079” before he became a politician. Marchant was elected to the Nevada state legislature in 2016, serving a two-year term.
Marchant continued to use jcm9079 after he began his political career as well. A document available on the Nevada state legislature’s website shows him using jcm9079 as a personal email address in 2017.
Marchant has also used it as a handle in at least two other places: his Instagram and Rumble accounts are both under jcm9079.
Additionally, Marchant is a member of at least two QAnon-affiliated Telegram groups, and uses the app daily.
Telegram is a social media app that became the de facto hub of the QAnon movement after Q influencers and followers were banned from Twitter in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
One of the QAnon groups Marchant follows is run by a man known as “QAnon John.” The other is a chat for followers of Ron Watkins, who Marchant also follows on Gab.
(https://uploads.dailydot.com/2022/08/marchant_telegram.png?auto=compress&fm=png)
QAnon John has organized several conferences for QAnon followers—including an October 2021 convention in Las Vegas, which Marchant attended and spoke at.
Marchant’s Telegram account is registered under his real name and with his personal cell phone number, which is publicly available in a document published by the Nevada state legislature.
Telegram’s desktop app will show the hour and minute a user last logged off, provided that it was recent enough. Over approximately two weeks of observation, it appears Marchant was a daily user of the app, frequently logging on in the late night and early morning.
Marchant’s association with QAnon promoters is hardly a secret and his denial of the 2020 election is openly known. But seeing the accounts he chooses to follow on far-right networks reveal just how deep those beliefs might go.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/jim-marchant-gab-telegram-qanon/
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Nevada’s GOP secretary of state candidate follows QAnon, neo-Nazi accounts on Gab, Telegram
The Daily Dot unearthed previously unknown accounts for Marchant.
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Jim Marchant, the Republican nominee for secretary of state in Nevada, has a conspiratorial online presence, as evidenced by the groups and people he follows from accounts on Gab and Telegram, which the Daily Dot has unearthed.
Marchant is a member of the far-right of the Republican party, who has stated that had he been Nevada’s secretary of state in 2020, he would not have certified the election for President Joe Biden.
A number of far-right Republicans have been running for office in states that swung the 2020 election, with the unspoken goal of keeping their states from sending Democratic electors to Congress in the event of another close presidential contest in 2024. Marchant is a key part of that effort; he co-founded the America First Secretaries of State Coalition (the other co-founder is a QAnon influencer named Wayne Willott and known as Juan O Savin). Five of the coalition’s candidates, including Marchant himself, have won their state’s Republican primaries.
Marchant’s personal Telegram account, and a Gab account that matches Marchant’s online identity, show just what voices are being listened to by someone who could hold sway in Nevada in 2024.
On Gab, a far-right haven for antisemitism, the account for Marchant follows 12 accounts.
What appears to be Marchant’s Gab account, @jcm9079, is under a username he has had across various forums and services since the mid-2000s.
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Marchant did not respond to a request from the Daily Dot.
The account follows only 12 other users. Among them is a pro-Nazi QAnon influencer called IPOT1776. QAnon is the conspiracy theory that claims former President Donald Trump will soon arrest, imprison, try, and execute all of his most prominent opponents on charges of being Satan-worshipping pedophiles.
IPOT1776’s pinned post on Gab is a link to his latest video, a two-hour screed arguing that the Nazis were right about Jews. The video makes use of Nazi propaganda posters and antisemitic art, and borrows long stretches of material from at least one other neo-Nazi “documentary.”
The video’s central claim is that the Jews were spreading Communism and “degeneracy” and had to be stopped. The video portrays the Nazis as a natural and defensive reaction to the Judeo-Bolshevik menace—a sentiment that IPOT1776 has also recently expressed on Truth Social.
IPOT believes this Jewish menace is still a threat today.
It is important to note that it’s impossible to know when the account followed IPOT1776. The earliest possible date would be in January 2021, when this account was created. That was a few months before IPOT started posting overtly antisemitic content.
It’s possible @jcm9079 followed IPOT before it was openly pro-Nazi. However, in January 2021 IPOT was still an extremist—he had called for hangings and “citizen’s arrests” of people who had stolen the election from Trump.
IPOT’s posts also often make references to Q, and many of his videos use Q’s writings as a framework to interpret current events.
At a minimum, the account follows someone who openly fantasized about violent revenge against his political enemies, a jarring influence on the timeline of someone who could control the fate of Nevada’s six electoral votes.
In addition to IPOT, it follows two other QAnon influencers: Ron Watkins, one of the people most associated with the QAnon conspiracy, and Neon Revolt, a popular QAnon influencer.
Along with the QAnon promoters, @jcm9079 follows other fringe figures on Gab—most notably Paul Joseph Watson, a conspiratorial influencer whose popularity exploded on the coattails of Alex Jones.
The Gab account is under the username @jcm9079, which has been Marchant’s online alias of choice for decades. Marchant has clearly used it on various sites since long before he became a public figure.
For instance, starting in 2009 he used an account labeled jcm9079 to write fiery political commentary on the conservative site Redstate. One of his articles mentions that he met Newt Gingrich in Las Vegas. A Disqus account under jcm9079 also shows this user saying that he met Gingrich at an appearance in Las Vegas.
Marchant brought his politics into a forum for pickup truck owners. In a 2009 thread on a site called “The Diesel Stop,” user jcm9079 wrote: “They have not taken any Obama money and have so far avoided being taken over by our Marxist Government. Kudos to Ford!” The user signed the post “Jim,” and later in the thread revealed that he lived in Las Vegas.
That makes three separate instances of Marchant using the name “jcm9079” before he became a politician. Marchant was elected to the Nevada state legislature in 2016, serving a two-year term.
Marchant continued to use jcm9079 after he began his political career as well. A document available on the Nevada state legislature’s website shows him using jcm9079 as a personal email address in 2017.
Marchant has also used it as a handle in at least two other places: his Instagram and Rumble accounts are both under jcm9079.
Additionally, Marchant is a member of at least two QAnon-affiliated Telegram groups, and uses the app daily.
Telegram is a social media app that became the de facto hub of the QAnon movement after Q influencers and followers were banned from Twitter in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
One of the QAnon groups Marchant follows is run by a man known as “QAnon John.” The other is a chat for followers of Ron Watkins, who Marchant also follows on Gab.
(https://uploads.dailydot.com/2022/08/marchant_telegram.png?auto=compress&fm=png)
QAnon John has organized several conferences for QAnon followers—including an October 2021 convention in Las Vegas, which Marchant attended and spoke at.
Marchant’s Telegram account is registered under his real name and with his personal cell phone number, which is publicly available in a document published by the Nevada state legislature.
Telegram’s desktop app will show the hour and minute a user last logged off, provided that it was recent enough. Over approximately two weeks of observation, it appears Marchant was a daily user of the app, frequently logging on in the late night and early morning.
Marchant’s association with QAnon promoters is hardly a secret and his denial of the 2020 election is openly known. But seeing the accounts he chooses to follow on far-right networks reveal just how deep those beliefs might go.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/jim-marchant-gab-telegram-qanon/
These Trump MAGAs are all the same.
They push insane Qanon conspiracy theories, advocate violence, and support white supremacists & nazis.
This is today's Republican party.
Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave.
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GOP legislators spoke at a QAnon convention chock full of conspiracies and hate
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Republican legislators spoke at Patriot Double Down, a QAnon conference. L to R: Rep. Leo Biasiucci of Lake Havasu City, Rep. Mark Finchem of Oro Valley, Sen. Sonny Borrelli of Lake Havasu City and Sen. Wendy Rogers of Flagstaff.
Four Republican members of Arizona’s state legislature attended a QAnon convention in Las Vegas over the weekend that included speakers from the fringe of the conspiracy world as well as antisemitic imagery.
One of the legislators, Rep. Leo Biasiucci of Lake Havasu City, bragged to the attendees of Patriot Double Down that he stood strong against people who tried to convince him not to attend a gathering so closely tied to a violent extremist belief system that calls for the death of political enemies. He recounted an exchange he had with an unnamed Arizona lobbyist whose client was concerned about being associated with Biasiucci.
“Have the CEO of that company give me a call directly and I’ll explain to them why I’m going to this event,” he said.
“And then I’ll explain to them why nobody explains to me what I can or cannot do. ‘Cause I don’t bow down to anybody. No CEO, not the dictator in D.C. I bow down to God and I answer to you, my constituents,” Biasiucci told the crowd, most of whom were not his constituents and had paid between $650 to $3,000 to attend.
And while Biasiucci seemed to revel in being linked to QAnon — the bio he submitted for the event included a reference to a QAnon conspiracy about convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein — Sen. Wendy Rogers played dumb about the event’s overt links to the conspiracy. “What is a Q?” Rogers tweeted before the gathering.
In its simplest form, QAnon is a conspiracy theory that alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles are running a global sex-trafficking ring, control world governments and are trying to bring down President Donald Trump — who is himself single-handedly dismantling the cabal.
Each member can adopt their own beliefs and are encouraged to do their own “research,” and there are as a result a wide variety of QAnon beliefs. For example, some believe that the founder of QAnon, dubbed simply “Q,” is actually JFK Jr., while others believe Q to be Trump himself. (JFK Jr. died in 1999 when the plane he was flying crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.)
Borrelli: COVID is a ‘plandemic’
Biasiucci and Rogers spoke alongside Rep. Mark Finchem, who is running for secretary of state, and Sen. Sonny Borrelli on a panel discussing the Arizona Senate’s partisan “audit” of the 2020 election. That self-styled audit was marred by controversy and conducted by conspiracy theorists who had no background in elections or knowledge of Arizona election law. It found no evidence of the fraud that the four GOP legislators and tens of millions of Republican voters nationwide say stole the election from Donald Trump.
Instead, the “audit” concluded that Joe Biden won Arizona.
The panel discussion opened up with a video by a company that makes QAnon memes and videos, many of which center on debunked conspiracies in them or antisemetic messaging. None of the legislators refuted any of the conspiratorial or antisemitic themes in the video.
Parts of that same video would later be shown during the opening of the second day of the convention.
Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1452329605264773129
(One video found by the Arizona Mirror that was created by the company used by Patriot Double Down stated that the Titanic disaster was a hoax, Hitler faked his death and babies blood is being harvested as part of a popular QAnon conspiracy about Hollywood elites. Another video also superimposed the Star of David among images of the 9/11 attacks.)
Other than Biasiucci’s opening remarks recounting his conversation with the lobbyist, the Arizona legislators avoided talking about QAnon directly, but alluded to parts of the wide-ranging conspiracy theory.
For instance, Borrelli called the COVID-19 pandemic, which has taken the lives of over 21,000 Arizonans and 984 in Mohave County, where he lives, a “plandemic” and used a stack of masks as a prop to demonstrate the many “masks” of Democrats that were “coming off.”
“CRT, another distraction, another distortion,” Borrelli said, referring to critical race theory while throwing a mask in the air. Borrelli also claimed that disgraced Gen. Michael Flynn — who pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russian officials — had been “framed.”
The lawmakers urged those in attendance to get involved in local politics, urging them to become precinct committeemen — the foot soldiers of political parties who primarily do things like registering voters, canvassing neighborhoods for their party’s candidates and other grassroots activities.
Finchem also spoke on a second panel of other QAnon-linked candidates who are running for secretary of state in their respective states.
The panel discussion mostly focused on similar debunked claims around the election, including ones around California’s recent recall election. Finchem also praised a Colorado county clerk who is under federal investigation after allowing unauthorized individuals access to voting equipment.
“Tina Peters, god bless her, y’all need to pray for that woman ‘cause she is under fire,” Finchem said about the Mesa County Clerk who has been branded a hero by QAnon conspiracy theorists.
Later, Finchem compared the murder of six million people in Holocaust to “cancel culture.”
“You know what happened in the 1940s, right? Six million Jews were exterminated because they were dehumanized. (Kurt Tucholsky) said, ‘A country is not just what it does, it’s what it tolerates.’ We have become far too tolerant of those who would try to ‘cancel culture’ us, of those who would tell us to sit down and shut up,” he said. “And Aristotle, another notable, said tolerance is the last virtue left of a failing society.”
One other Arizona politician was in attendance: QAnon leader and congressional candidate Ron Watkins.
The event also featured a speech from actor Jim Caviezel, who fully embraced QAnon during a session that included a man whose fans claim he is JFK Jr.
https://www.azmirror.com/2021/10/28/gop-legislators-spoke-at-a-qanon-convention-chock-full-of-conspiracies-and-hate/
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Full List of Republican Politicians Attending QAnon Convention in Las Vegas
https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-attending-qanon-convention-las-vegas-nevada-1641562
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At this point the GOP should just rename their party QAnon.
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The dangerous Qanon cult tearing families apart with conspiracies | 60 Minutes Australia
This story presented a serious dilemma for Sarah Abo because for the most part it is pure fantasy, and 60 MINUTES reporters prefer to deal in facts. But pure fantasy is how to best sum up QAnon, an ever-shifting mega-conspiracy theory that’s bizarre and nonsensical. As whacky as it is though, millions of people appear to be caught up in the internet-based cult, including more and more Australians. The dangerous real-world consequences of QAnon, where families are being torn apart, now demand that the rest of us stop scratching our heads in disbelief and start to take much more notice of this strange group.
Watch:
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The jury found that the FBI concocted the fake plot to kidnap Whitmer. They found a few numbskulls who didn't like her and set up a "plot" to kidnap her. These guys were just pawns in the FBI's desperate effort to make a political arrest that harmed Trump. As a result, the jury did not convict any of the defendants. To suggest otherwise is the disinformation. The facts speak for themselves and can be easily verified by anyone who does a one second Google search. That doesn't fit the desired narrative, however. So keep peddling a falsheood. In addition, there are not ten people in the entire world who believed JFK was coming back from the dead. Not even mentally ill people. That is a fake story given social media attention to make Trump supporters look like loons.
"A federal jury failed to convict four men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer."
There was no "fake FBI plot". That was nothing but right wing propaganda.
I correctly stated that the Feds were bringing a new trial and these 2 right wing radicals were convicted by a jury yesterday and will rot in prison for the rest of their lives.
Once again I am 100% correct.
2 men convicted in plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Whitmer
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Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, delivering swift verdicts in a plot that was broken up by the FBI and described as a rallying cry for a U.S. civil war by anti-government extremists.
The result was a big victory for the U.S. Justice Department. A different jury just four months ago couldn’t reach unanimous decisions on Adam Fox or Barry Croft Jr. but acquitted two other men, a stunning conclusion that led to a second trial.
Their arrests nearly two years ago came at an extremely tense time: the volatile homestretch of the election between Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump playing out against a backdrop of armed protests over COVID-19 restrictions, especially in Michigan.
Jury selection in the retrial of Fox and Croft coincidentally occurred a day after FBI agents searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for documents, putting the agency in headlines at the same time that the judge was trying to detect any biases about law enforcement in the jury pool.
Fox and Croft were convicted Tuesday of two counts of conspiracy related to the kidnapping scheme and attempts to use a weapon of mass destruction. Prosecutors said they wanted to blow up a bridge to disrupt police if the abduction could be pulled off at Whitmer’s vacation home.
Croft, 46, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, was also convicted of another explosives charge. The jury deliberated for roughly eight hours over two days.
“Today’s verdicts prove that violence and threats have no place in our politics and those who seek to divide us will be held accountable. They will not succeed,” said Whitmer, a Democrat, who turned 51 years old on Tuesday.
“But we must also take a hard look at the status of our politics,” she added. “Plots against public officials and threats to the FBI are a disturbing extension of radicalized domestic terrorism that festers in our nation, threatening the very foundation of our republic.”
Law enforcement officials across the country have been warning about an increase in threats and the potential for violence against agents or buildings.
Fox and Croft, who face sentences of up to life in prison, just stared at the jury as the verdicts were read. Defense attorney Christopher Gibbons shook his head while another defense lawyer, Joshua Blanchard, removed his glasses.
Jurors declined to speak to reporters.
“It’s been a good fight. We were hoping for a different outcome,” Gibbons said.
During closing arguments Monday, a prosecutor had a blunt message: No one can strap on an AR-15 rifle and body armor and snatch a governor.
“But that wasn’t the defendants’ ultimate goal,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said. “They wanted to set off a second American civil war, a second American Revolution, something that they call the boogaloo. And they wanted to do it for a long time before they settled on Gov. Whitmer.”
The investigation began when Army veteran Dan Chappel joined a Michigan paramilitary group and became alarmed when he heard talk about killing police. He agreed to become an FBI informant and spent the summer of 2020 getting close to Fox and others, secretly recording conversations and participating in drills at “shoot houses” in Wisconsin and Michigan.
The FBI turned it into a major domestic terrorism case with two more informants and two undercover agents embedded in the group. Evidence showed the group had many gripes, particularly over stay-at-home orders and other pandemic restrictions imposed by Whitmer.
Fox, Croft and others, accompanied by the government operatives, traveled to northern Michigan to see Whitmer’s vacation home at night and a bridge that could be destroyed. Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, too, were on that ride. They pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution.
Whitmer was not physically harmed; six men were arrested hours away from her home in October 2020.
David Porter, who leads the FBI in western Michigan, hailed the verdicts.
“Here in America, if you disagree with your government you have options. ... What you cannot do is plan or commit acts of violence,” he said outside the courthouse.
Defense attorneys tried to put the FBI on trial, repeatedly emphasizing through cross-examination of witnesses and during closing remarks that federal players were present at every crucial event and had entrapped the men.
Fox and Croft, they said, were “big talkers” who liked to smoke marijuana and were guilty of nothing but exercising their right to say vile things about Whitmer and government.
“This isn’t Russia. This isn’t how our country works,” Blanchard, Croft’s attorney, told jurors. “You don’t get to suspect that someone might commit a crime because you don’t like things that they say, that you don’t like their ideologies.”
Gibbons said the FBI isn’t supposed to create “domestic terrorists.” He described Fox, 39, as poor and living in the basement of a Grand Rapids-area vacuum shop, which was a site for meetings with Chappel and an agent.
Hours after the verdicts, U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker unsealed his Aug. 14 findings about a juror. Blanchard had disclosed early in the trial that his office took a call from someone who said the juror was eager to get picked and would vote to convict.
“The juror repeatedly and consistently denied making any such statements,” said Jonker, who, with staff, spoke to the person in private. “Based on the court’s observation of the juror’s demeanor and behavior, these responses were credible.”
In separate but related cases, eight other men linked to the kidnapping scheme are being prosecuted by the Michigan attorney general in state courts.
Whitmer in 2020 blamed Trump for stoking mistrust and fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions and refusing to condemn hate groups and right-wing extremists like those charged in Michigan.
On Aug. 6, three days before jury selection, Trump told conservative activists that the kidnapping plan was a “fake deal.”
https://apnews.com/article/elections-presidential-michigan-gretchen-whitmer-grand-rapids-9ad8f100d32e7d5883b1be9d6c4cb8d5
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BIGOTED, TRUMP-APPROVED CANDIDATE LAURA LOOMER SHOWS WHERE THE GOP IS HEADED
The president celebrated the outspoken Islamophobe’s Republican primary win in Florida, along with a “future Republican Star”—and QAnon conspiracist—in Georgia. QAnon’s followers, he told reporters Wednesday, “love our country.”
AUGUST 19, 2020
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The president celebrated the outspoken Islamophobe’s Republican primary win in Florida, along with a “future Republican Star”—and QAnon conspiracist—in Georgia. QAnon’s followers, he told reporters Wednesday, “love our country.”
In 2018, Laura Loomer, far-right conspiracy theorist, frequent laughing stock of the internet, and self-described “#ProudIslamophobe,” handcuffed herself to the outside of Twitter’s office building in New York for more than two hours. The stunt was aimed at pressuring the website to reinstate her Twitter account, as she had been banned on the platform—which, to this day, still grants white nationalist Richard Spencer the space to air out his views—for violating rules against hateful conduct. Loomer’s offline bigotry includes walking up to people she assumes are Muslims to ask them to disavow terrorist attacks and famously struggles to get anywhere in New York City. “I’m late to the NYPD press conference because I couldn’t find a non Muslim cab or @Uber @lyft driver for over 30 min! This is insanity,” she wrote in a 2017 tweet, which was just one of many similar racist outbursts that culminated in the 27-year-old being banned from PayPal, Uber, Lyft, and even Uber Eats.
Less than two years later, there is at least one notable institution still in her corner. “Great going Laura,” tweeted Donald Trump in response to the news that Loomer, who is currently running for Florida’s 21st Congressional District, had won the race’s Republican primary. “You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!” he added, while also retweeting news articles and supportive commentary about her win throughout Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Loomer is now looking to defeat Representative Lois Frankel, the four-term Democratic incumbent in November. The president’s congratulatory tweets are notable for more reasons than just his seeming support for an out-and-out racist with long shot congressional aspirations—which is not entirely surprising given that his 2016 campaign revolved around a proposed ban on all Muslims from entering the U.S.—as the South Florida district Loomer is hoping to seize control of is home to his “Winter White House,” i.e. Trump’s Palm Beach property and Mar-a-Lago resort.
Trump did not weigh in on the race until the six-candidate primary process was over, but the president’s close congressional ally Representative Matt Gaetz did throw his support behind fellow millennial Loomer. When pressed Wednesday for comment on the president’s tweets, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany avoided addressing Loomer’s views and racist meltdowns, only saying instead that he “routinely congratulates” Republican primary victors and that “he hasn’t done a deep dive into” Loomer’s history. Additionally, Loomer bragged during her Tuesday night celebration that she had received a call from Republican Party chairman Ronna McDaniel, who she claimed had anointed her a “political rock star.”
The odds of Loomer dethroning Frankel are very slim, but her primary win offers a look at what the future of Republican congressional races could look like and the thumbs-up thrown her way by the president suggests that he welcomes a party shift toward the younger, outwardly more extreme outliers. Trump’s recent endorsement of congressional nominee Marjorie Taylor Greene—a supporter of the deranged QAnon conspiracy theory that claims, in part, that Trump is in a secret war against an Illuminati pedophile cabal—who won her primary race in Georgia, marked another telling sign that this trend is here to stay. (Greene has also made racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic comments). Trump called Green, who is just one of 15 QAnon-tied candidates set to represent the GOP in November, a “future Republican Star” and “a real WINNER!” and added in a presser last week that “she had a tremendous victory. So absolutely, I did congratulate her.” However, when asked on Friday for his thoughts on QAnon, which the FBI flagged as a potential terrorist threat last year, the president refused to answer. However, on Wednesday, he spoke favorably about the QAnon movement. “I’ve heard these are people who love our country,” Trump told reporters.
His refusal to distance himself is all the more telling given that his Twitter habits has subtly done the talking for him. Vice News reported that since the start of the pandemic, the president has promoted 90 tweets from 49 pro-QAnon accounts for all of his 85 million followers to see—amplification that is no doubt appreciated by Trump’s many supporters who bring “Q” merchandise to his rallies and the millions who are members of QAnon Facebook groups.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/08/trump-approved-laura-loomer-shows-where-gop-is-headed
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"I am pleading with the Republican Party to please start taking this issue seriously. Please.”
— Far-right QAnon congressional candidate Laura Loomer, who was defeated by conservative Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL), sobs while falsely claiming voter fraud cost her the primary.
Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1562253945506267137
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Pa. GOP governor hopeful Mastriano campaigned at event promoting QAnon
https://www.penncapital-star.com/blog/pa-gop-governor-hopeful-mastriano-campaigned-at-event-promoting-qanon/
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“ It’s Easier To Fool People Than To Convince Them That They’ve Been Fooled”
Mark Twain
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QAnon supporters gather to see JFK & JFK Junior return from dead
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/qanon-supporters-jfk-jr-dallas-b1962575.html
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With legal peril rising, Trump turns to QAnon and 4chan memes for support
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-truth-social-qanon-4chan-memes-messages-184803844.html
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A Quarter of Republicans Believe Central Views of QAnon Conspiracy Movement
Americans who most trust far-right news outlets are nearly five times as likely to believe the central views of the conspiracist movement, a study found.
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-02-24/a-quarter-of-republicans-believe-central-views-of-qanon-conspiracy-movement
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QAnon, the scarily popular pro-Trump conspiracy theory, explained
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/1/17253444/qanon-trump-conspiracy-theory-4chan-explainer
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Instead of proposing policies that help Americans MAGA Republicans are pushing QAnon conspiracy theories!
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MAGA Republicans are going full QAnon. Their agenda is based on conspiracy theories.
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The GOP is the QAnon conspiracy party!
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What is the QAnon conspiracy theory?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-is-the-qanon-conspiracy-theory/
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QAnon candidates are on the ballot in 26 states
With millions in funding and the support of prominent Republicans, the conspiracy theory movement is one of the fastest-growing forces in American politics, a Grid investigation finds.
https://www.grid.news/story/misinformation/2022/04/12/qanon-candidates-are-on-the-ballot-in-26-states/
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Trump Works To Reactivate Dangerous QAnon Conspiracy
Former President Donald Trump spent Tuesday morning posting inflammatory messages on social media, including many explicitly promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory
Watch:
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Newly resurfaced videos and social media posts show GOP's Marjorie Taylor Greene openly supporting QAnon and praising its 'patriotic sentiment' in 2020 - two years AFTER she claims she 'walked away' from the conspiracy theory
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9226817/2020-videos-Marjorie-Taylor-Greene-supporting-QAnon-two-years-stopping-believing.html
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QAnon Now as Popular in U.S. as Some Major Religions, Poll Suggests
Fifteen percent of Americans believe that “patriots may have to resort to violence” to restore the country’s rightful order, the poll indicated.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/us/politics/qanon-republicans-trump.html
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QAnon supporters gather in downtown Dallas expecting JFK Jr. to reappear
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Trump QAnon Rally
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Why QAnon’s similarity to other cults makes it a significant national security threat
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-21/qanon-cults-capitol-attack-trump-threat
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More deranged QAnon Trump supporters.
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QAnon Trump cultists are the base of MAGA Republicans
(https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/5f455fb728b2d98ef014e6b2/0x0.jpg?format=jpg&crop=4769,2683,x394,y0,safe&width=1200)
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Trump's answer to growing legal woes and shrinking support? QAnonsense, of course.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2022/09/22/donald-trump-new-york-attorney-general-qanonhuppke/8073650001/?gnt-cfr=1
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Most Americans who have heard of QAnon conspiracy theories say they are bad for the country and that Trump seems to support people who promote them
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/09/16/most-americans-who-have-heard-of-qanon-conspiracy-theories-say-they-are-bad-for-the-country-and-that-trump-seems-to-support-people-who-promote-them/
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Former GOP candidates push baseless QAnon conspiracy theory that Hurricane Ian was created to punish DeSantis
Two far-right former Republican congressional candidates amplify baseless conspiracy theory that ‘deep state’ creates storms to target Republicans
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/qanon-hurricane-ian-lauren-witzke-deanna-lorraine-b2184996.html
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John F. Kennedy Jr.'s Close Friends Speak Out About the Emotional Impact of QAnon Lies
Extremists claim the late Kennedy is alive, a falsehood devastating those who knew and loved him.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a39787446/john-f-kennedy-jr-q-anon-friends-speak-out/
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JFK Jr. died over 20 years ago — he is not a QAnon leader
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/may/05/facebook-posts/jfk-jr-died-over-20-years-ago-he-not-qanon-leader/
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Trump openly embraces, amplifies QAnon conspiracy theories
https://apnews.com/article/technology-donald-trump-conspiracy-theories-government-and-politics-db50c6f709b1706886a876ae6ac298e2
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LOL. There are probably a handful of actual Q supporters. The story has been amplified by leftist media and propagandists because it fits their political narrative that all Trump supporters are conspiracy kooks. Ironically, this from the same crowd who vented the "Russian collusion" hoax. Perhaps the biggest false conspiracy theory in history. In contract to Q which is largely the product of leftist promotion, the Russian collusion hoax was promoted at the highest levels of government. An example of how the hate filled leftists believe that the ends justify ANY means to harm Trump. Nothing is off the table. They don't care how much harm results to the country. Their sole objective is to maintain power and corruption. And that can only be done by keeping Trump out of office at all costs.
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These Trump supporters are nuts!
Western Washington Man Is Leading QAnon Gathering in Dallas, Waiting for the Late JFK Jr. to Show Up
https://www.chronline.com/stories/western-washington-man-is-leading-qanon-gathering-in-dallas-waiting-for-the-late-jfk-jr-to-show,280154
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Trump's QAnon MAGA loons made up flags with JFK Jr. These people are deranged.
(https://www.bostonglobe.com/resizer/gIniSxJffFYXg27YyEfhrBBCjyM=/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-bostonglobe/public/ZBFFREXF35EQDFDYEH25UZ7PSU.jpg)
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QAnon videos are getting millions of views on TikTok as Trump embraces conspiracy theory
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/qanon-tiktok-trump-salute-theme-song-embraces-conspiracy-theory-rcna48641
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QAnon groups have millions of members on Facebook, documents show
The preliminary results of an investigation by Facebook shed new light on the scope of activity and content from the QAnon community on the platform.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/qanon-groups-have-millions-members-facebook-documents-show-n1236317
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Maria Shriver Responds to the QAnon Obsession with JFK Jr
Shriver is the first Kennedy to publicly comment on the story.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a38346881/maria-shriver-responds-qanon-obsession-jfk-jr/
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LOL. There is no such thing as QAnon. This is a creation of leftists promoted by mass and social media to promote their desired narrative that all Trump supporters are kooks. A few mentally ill people have taken the bait. Take a look at Biden's cabinet and make the real assessment of who the kooks are. Many of those who show up at Trump rallies or such events with Confederate or Neo-Nazi flags are plants. They are sent there by radical leftists to discredit and promote a false narrative. Trump received over 70 million votes for ordinary Americans.
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LOL. There is no such thing as QAnon. This is a creation of leftists promoted by mass and social media to promote their desired narrative that all Trump supporters are kooks. A few mentally ill people have taken the bait. Take a look at Biden's cabinet and make the real assessment of who the kooks are. Many of those who show up at Trump rallies or such events with Confederate or Neo-Nazi flags are plants. They are sent there by radical leftists to discredit and promote a false narrative. Trump received over 70 million votes for ordinary Americans.
There is no such thing as QAnon. This is a creation of leftists promoted by mass and social media to promote their desired narrative that all Trump supporters are kooks. A few mentally ill people have taken the bait.
A few people have taken the bait? Are you insane? And no, there is no leftist plot to discredit right wingers with QAnon, just like there was no FBI plot to blame the storming of the Capitol on Trump and his ilk. The left doesn't have to do anything to make the right wingers look bat spombleprofglidnoctobuns crazy. They do that all by themselves, day after day.
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There is no such thing as QAnon. This is a creation of leftists promoted by mass and social media to promote their desired narrative that all Trump supporters are kooks. A few mentally ill people have taken the bait.
A few people have taken the bait? Are you insane? And no, there is no leftist plot to discredit right wingers with QAnon, just like there was no FBI plot to blame the storming of the Capitol on Trump and his ilk. The left doesn't have to do anything to make the right wingers look bat spombleprofglidnoctobuns crazy. They do that all by themselves, day after day.
There are a handful of such nuts. Just as there are on the left. No one would have ever heard of this nonsense had it not been promoted by the leftist media. It is pure political propaganda of the type in Russia. Like Putin claiming Ukraine is run by Nazis. The intent here is to portray any Trump supporter as a conspiracy kook. As a real conspiracy kook, you should be the one taking offence at that tactic. They are claiming its people like yourself who are these Q types. Over 70 million normal Americans voted for Trump. They are not Q believers or racists. Just normal people. Compare them to the Biden clown show.
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Trump embraces QAnon at rally by playing music similar to its anthem
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/19/trump-qanon-song-rally-video-ohio-vance
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Trump embraces QAnon at rally by playing music similar to its anthem
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/19/trump-qanon-song-rally-video-ohio-vance
LOL. Now that is a conspiracy theory. You should be ashamed.
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Criminal con man Donald Trump will embrace and kooky and radical conspiracy theory in order to get the support of right wing freaks.
Trump openly embraces, amplifies QAnon conspiracy theories
https://apnews.com/article/technology-donald-trump-conspiracy-theories-government-and-politics-db50c6f709b1706886a876ae6ac298e2
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There are a handful of such nuts. Just as there are on the left. No one would have ever heard of this nonsense had it not been promoted by the leftist media. It is pure political propaganda of the type in Russia. Like Putin claiming Ukraine is run by Nazis. The intent here is to portray any Trump supporter as a conspiracy kook. As a real conspiracy kook, you should be the one taking offence at that tactic. They are claiming its people like yourself who are these Q types. Over 70 million normal Americans voted for Trump. They are not Q believers or racists. Just normal people. Compare them to the Biden clown show.
Over 70 million normal Americans voted for Trump. They are not Q believers or racists.
First of all; how in the world would you know that they are not Q believers or racists? Did you talk to all of them?
Secondly, it depends on your definition of the word "normal". Perhaps you consider insane to be the new normal......
But people are not "normal", in the usual sense of the word, just because you agree with their points of view.
Just normal people.
Show me footage of one single normal people at a Trump rally!
Compare them to the Biden clown show.
You can't compare apples and oranges, insane delusional Trump cult followers will always lose such a comparison hands down.
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Trump’s Evolution in Social-Media Exile: More QAnon, More Extremes
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/28/us/politics/trump-social-media-extremism.html
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, controversial Republican embraced QAnon conspiracy theories
Before she joined Congress, Greene supported Facebook posts that advocated violence against leading Democrats and the FBI.
https://eu.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/politics/2021/01/28/rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-embraced-qanon-conspiracy-theories/4292521001/
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A new book explains how QAnon took hold of the GOP — and why it's not going away
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160320273/a-new-book-explains-how-qanon-took-hold-of-the-gop-and-why-its-not-going-away
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That's because they are a bunch of kooks. The Republican party is just a conspiracy theory cult. Ike and Ronald Reagan are rolling over in their graves at what the GOP has become.
Majority Of Republicans Believe The QAnon Conspiracy Theory Is Partly Or Mostly True, Survey Finds
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-of-republicans-believe-the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-is-partly-or-mostly-true-survey-finds/?sh=2c6d5ec5231d