Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Jan. 6 investigators appear to have ‘stumbled on another’ crime committed by Trump: legal expert
https://www.rawstory.com/jan-6-hearing-trump-crimes/

[Rick Plant]

Former Fox News editor Chris Stirewalt: Network knew early on that Trump lost



Fox News on Monday aired footage of a former Fox News editor suggesting that the network knew President Biden won the 2020 election in several battleground states, even though the channel went on to promote Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud for months.

The development centers on Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News editor who worked on the channel's decision desk during the 2020 presidential election. Stirewalt – who was fired after calling Arizona, a swing state, in then-candidate Joe Biden's favor – provided testimony this week to the Jan. 6 select committee about the circumstances behind his controversial call.

"Mr. Stirewalt, after the votes were counted, who won the election?" asked the committee's chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.

"Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. of the great state of Delaware," Stirewalt responded.

At one point, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., another member of the committee, asked Stirewalt what the chances were of Trump having won Arizona after the state had been called for Biden.

"None," the pundit replied, explaining that most recounts are conducted on the basis of hundred-vote margins. "You're better off to play the Power Ball than to have that come in."

Stirewalt's testimony came just hours after he laid into both sides of the aisle in a Monday column for the news conservative site The Dispatch, where he served as a former politics editor. In it, Stirewalt argues that both sides of the aisle failed to expeditiously hold an effective impeachment trial after Donald Trump's coup attempt.

"A single, short article against Trump for trying to disrupt the transfer of power, including by sending an angry mob to the Capitol, would have been very hard to vote against for Republicans who hadn't been part of the power grab," he wrote. "If such an article had been passed by the House that week, I believe Trump would have been convicted and removed from office by the Senate."

"Instead, Pelosi put three cable news stalwarts and sharp-elbowed partisans in charge of drafting the articles: Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, David Cicilline, of Rhode Island, and Ted Lieu, of California," he added. "What the House voted on a week after the attack was not designed to make it easy for Republicans to get to 'yea.'"

Stirewalt also alleged that both the Democrats and Republicans fumbled on their investigation into the insurrection. Republicans, he said, failed to nominate anyone to the January 6 committee who did not promote Trump's baseless claims and election fraud. And Democrats, Stirewalt added, "rather than adopting a somber, non-partisan tone," were "out in advance boasting about how the hearings would hurt Republicans in November's midterm elections and 'blow the roof off the House.'"

Stirewalt's 2020 call wasn't the first time he angered his own Fox News colleagues.

During the 2012 presidential election between Barack Obama and Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, the pundit correctly called Ohio in Obama's favor before all the votes had been tallied. But Karl Rove, then a Fox News analyst, pushed back, saying it was a "very early call." The disagreement led to a significant on-air dustup between Rove, Fox host Bret Baier, and former Fox host Megyn Kelly.

https://www.rawstory.com/former-fox-news-editor-chris-stirewalt-network-knew-early-on-that-trump-lost/

[Rick Plant]

The Jan. 6 committee establishesd the Trump campaign was a complete grift — they raised $250 million after the election for the “Official Election Defense Fund” which did not exist and the money instead went to Trump hotels and his own Save America PAC. A clear case of fraud having a fake "election defense fund" to shove hundreds of millions into his own pockets. 

Lock Trump up! He is a criminal which is why he is known as Criminal Donald.

Trump Scammed Supporters Out of $250 Million for Nonexistent Fraud Fund
Supporters who thought they were donating to “election integrity” instead saw some of their money funneled to Trump hotels



"Not only was there the Big Lie, there was the Big Ripoff,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) near the end of the Jan. 6 committee’s second hearing in laying out how the Trump campaign scammed money from supporters over false claims of election fraud.

The Trump campaign sent “millions” of emails to Trump supporters about how they needed to “step up” to protect election integrity, according to the Jan. 6 committee. The money would go to the so-called the “Official Election Defense Fund” — which doesn’t appear to have actually existed, according to testimony.

The fund — which, again, did not actually exist — raised $250 million, most of which did not go to election litigation, but to Trump’s newly created Save America PAC. The PAC then made contributions to Mark Meadows’ charity, to a conservative organization employing former Trump staffers, to the Trump Hotel Collection, and to the company that organized the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol last Jan. 6.

CSPAN @cspan
"The Trump campaign knew these claims of voter fraud  were false, yet they continued to barrage small dollar donors with emails encouraging them to donate to something called the Official Election Defense Fund. The Select Committee discovered no such fund existed." #January6th

Watch Video: https://twitter.com/i/status/1536397724534378500

"The evidence developed by the select committee highlights how the Trump campaign aggressively pushed false election claims to fundraise, telling supporters it would be used to fight voter fraud that did not exist,” said Amanda Wick, a lawyer for the Jan. 6 committee. “The emails continued through Jan. 6, even as Trump spoke on the Ellipse. Thirty minutes after the last fundraising email was sent, the Capitol was breached.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-fundraising-scam-jan-6-hearing-1367359/

[Rick Plant]

'Garbage in. Garbage out': Trump's former chief of staff trashes Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell
https://www.rawstory.com/garbage-in-garbage-out-trump-s-former-chief-of-staff-trashes-rudy-giuliani-and-sidney-powell/

[Rick Plant]

Former Trump official: Donald didn't want to look 'like a loser' — and it put the nation in crisis



On Monday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," former national security official Miles Taylor outlined how former President Donald Trump's election lies undermined the institutional guardrails of American democracy.

A key point, Taylor told anchor Nicolle Wallace, is that Trump knew what he was saying was false — and continued to go ahead pushing it.

"I made the mistake, Nicolle, of saying publicly, Trump's crazy, his advisors know it, but don't worry, there are people around him who are aware of it," said Taylor, referring to his anonymous 2018 op-ed in The New York Times.

"That was wrong. The guardrails of democracy weren't strong. Trump systematically dismantled them and the folks who were on at the very end, they already knew that. They knew that the rational points they would make to him would not be accepted, because Trump's tactic is to latch on, as you said, Nicolle, to the one person in the room who reflects his views and discard the others. He is the king of cognitive dissonance. Those people knew that."

"What they should have done is come out sooner and made that clear once they knew it and we have grand examples of that in the post-election period," said Taylor. "My good friend who you have had on this program many times, Chris Krebs, was the one we appointed to lead election security. Chris came out publicly, he was the one person most qualified in the entire federal government to say whether the election was secure or not, he went out and said it, Trump fired him, but Trump knew years before the 2020 election that this election would be secure because we briefed him on it."

Taylor emphasized this point, making clear that Trump had intelligence that debunked all of his election conspiracy theories — and disregarded all of it.

"I was there when we told him we were putting in place the preparations to make 2018 and 2020 the two most secure elections in American history," said Taylor. "What did he do? He conveniently forgot that information and started to seize the narrative that it might be stolen from him so he could perpetuate this fraud on the American people and so that he wouldn't look like a loser. That's the one thing he cares most about, it's not upholding his constitutional oath, but trying to not look like a loser, and as a result, we're suffering the corrosion of our democratic institutions."

Watch the segment below:

[Rick Plant]

Ron Watkins files an ethics complaint against Wendy Rogers, alleging she put his life in danger



Ron Watkins, the man purported to be an architect of the QAnon conspiracy theory, filed an ethics complaint against Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers for a post she made about him on social media.

Watkins’ complaint stems from a February post by Rogers on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app favored by conservatives, in which she asked the “Groyper army” to “hit” Watkins.

Rogers was asking her fans and allies in the “groyper army” to go after the QAnon conspiracy theorist turned Congressional candidate because he had alleged Rogers, a Flagstaff Republican who has built her political brand on spreading lies about the 2020 election, was involved in some sort of “backroom deal” that was preventing some equipment from being examined for alleged election fraud. There is no evidence of such a backroom deal.

The self-styled online “army” that Rogers sought to rally to her aid is a collection of white nationalists who favor online trolling tactics. Their goals broadly include normalizing their extreme and racist views by aligning them with Christianity and so-called “traditional” values.

“I wish to submit a formal ethics complaint and ask that you commence an ethics investigation into Senator Wendy Rogers to determine whether she is fit for service to the people of Arizona due to a pattern of behavior that is unbecoming of a Senator,” Watkins wrote in an email to Ethics Committee Chairwoman Sine Kerr that was also sent to the other 29 senators. “I have been included in her online attacks and will list the details here, along with a history of actions that call into question her ability to faithfully execute her duties in a way that brings honor to the State of Arizona.”

Watkins initially filed the complaint as an email, not as a signed and notarized letter as required by the rules of the Senate Ethics Committee. He has since submitted a complaint that follows those guidelines, he told the Arizona Mirror.

Watkins’ complaint alleges that, in trying to mobilize the “groyper army,” Rogers put his life in danger because of his Asian-American heritage and because “someone in this group would interpret this post to mean a ‘hit’ on my life.”

The complaint also mentions Rogers’ other ethics complaints that have been brought against her including her comments about the Buffalo shooting, a former staffer she allegedly mistreated, her censure and her antisemitic social media posts.

Although he said in the complaint that he was fearful of the groypers, Watkins has repeatedly associated with prominent Arizona groypers. For instance, Kyle Clifton, who has promoted white nationalist Nick Fuentes as well as used the Neo-Nazi term “blood and soil” in Instagram posts, has posed alongside Watkins for photos.

Clifton, along with anti-LGBTQ activist Ethan Schmidt, both joined Watkins to file a frivolous lawsuit against Gov. Doug Ducey for his “failure to protect the border.” They were joined by a woman who believes AIDS is a hoax and the Earth is flat.

Watkins was also interviewed by groyper Greyson Arnold, who has used his social media pages to post memes lauding Nazis as the “pure race” and lament the American victory in World War II. He also called Adolf Hitler a “complicated historical figure,” and was present at the U.S. Capitol insurrection on January 6.

Watkins has boosted the Telegram accounts of both Arnold and Clifton. Before all three were banned from Twitter, he also boosted their Twitter accounts.

Before QAnon, many came to associate Watkins with an online image board called 8chan, which was later renamed 8kun. Watkins didn’t create the site — its founder was Fredrick Brennan, who would later cut ties with the website — but he became its administrator after his father, Jim Watkins, purchased it.

The site has become a hotbed for hosting extremist and illicit content. It has hosted white supremacist mass shooters have used it as a platform to spread their manifestos. 

The Christchurch shooter in New Zealand said that he frequented the 4chan and 8chan message boards where far-right and white supremacist rhetoric was prevalent, and directly linked to other real-life hate crimes. The website also promoted antisemitism, at one point creating a cryptocurrency for users to boost their posts with a program they called “King of the Shekel.”

Watkins did not respond to questions about his interactions with Arizona groypers. Rogers did not respond to a request for comment about the complaint by Watkins.

Six days prior to Watkins filing his complaint, Rogers and Rep. Mark Finchem both endorsed Watkins’ opponent, Eli Crane, in the primary election.

https://www.azmirror.com/2022/06/13/ron-watkins-files-an-ethics-complaint-against-wendy-rogers-alleging-she-put-his-life-in-danger/

[Rick Plant]

Republicans sure don't "back the blue". White supremacists and neo Nazis are Trump's base and they vote Republican.

Idaho cops inundated with death threats after bagging white supremacist Patriot Front members: report



On Monday, The Daily Beast reported that the police department in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho is being bombarded with angry messages — including death threats — after a high profile mass arrest of the members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front.

The arrests took place over the weekend, after 31 men were caught piled into a rented truck, on their way to a local Pride event where they allegedly were intending to cause a riot. The arrested white supremacists came from at least 11 states around the country, and included 23-year-old Thomas Ryan Rousseau of Grapevine, Texas, believed to be the group's leader.

"Police Chief Lee White said Monday the department had received 149 phone calls since the arrests, some of which have included death threats," reported Alice Tecotzky. "About half of the calls were complimentary, White told reporters, 'and the other 50 percent — who are completely anonymous, who want nothing more than to scream and yell at us and use some really choice words — offer death threats against myself and other members of the police department.' Some callers have threatened to publish officers’ personal information, such as their phone numbers or addressed, online."

According to Nick Martin of the independent hate group tracker The Informant, white supremacist activists are already zeroing on on the Coeur d'Alene police department as a target after the arrests took place.

"Neo-Nazis on other social media platforms have started doxxing members of law enforcement in Coeur d'Alene. Names, home addresses, phone numbers and photos are being circulated," wrote Martin. "One of the members of the Coeur d'Alene Police Department is being described by neo-Nazis as an 'Anti-American and Pedophile Apologist' because the arrests prevented the Patriot Front members from allegedly planning to disrupt a Pride event."

Coeur d'Alene, a town in the Idaho panhandle near Spokan e, Washington, is part of a region that has become a notorious hotbed for right-wing paramilitary extremists.

AFP