David Corn's Blog, page 15

A Major Polling Firm Has Signed Up to Help Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Campaign

In early December, John Zogby, a prominent American pollster, appeared on Sky News Australia, as he occasionally does, to chat about the latest developments in the US presidential campaign. He noted that it was bad news for Biden: “I haven’t seen one published poll in the states or, for that matter, nationwide, including my own unpublished polls in the battleground states, where Joe Biden is where he needs to be… Joe Biden is not in good shape heading into 2024.”

Zogby was encouraging about another presidential candidate: Robert Kennedy Jr. He pointed out, “Bobby Kennedy is out there. And even with terrible press that he’s getting, Bobby Kennedy is about 20, 22 percent nationwide, actually 24, 25 percent in some of the battleground states. So this thing is complex this year. Remember, 73 percent don’t want Biden or Trump to be running.”

As he provided his analysis, which jibed with other political commentators, Zogby left out an important piece of data: His firm has been working for Kennedy, who is running as an independent. 

According to Federal Election Commission records, the Kennedy campaign in 2023 paid John Zogby Strategies just over $200,000 for research and consulting. The super PAC supporting Kennedy, American Values 2024, paid Zogby’s company another $83,500 for polling. Zogby Strategies has also done polling for Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vax nonprofit Kennedy has headed. In December 2020, the organization released a poll conducted by Zogby Strategies in which 16 percent of respondents said they “don’t want to take this new mRNA COVID-19 vaccine” and 39 percent preferred to “wait and see if it negatively affects other people who get it.”

So one of the more notable polling firms, led by a veteran pollster who identifies as a progressive Democrat, is helping to elect as president an anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist who has been associating with the heroes of the alt-right, including Tucker Carlson and Michael Flynn.  

In an interview with Mother Jones, Zogby said that he has sometimes disclosed his firm’s connection to Kennedy while punditing but not always. “I’ve been fairly responsible,” he said, “but not every time.” In future appearances, he added, “I will give it my best.” Asked if had had qualms about his business associating with a candidate who has promoted conspiracy theories and been identified as a major spreader of disinformation about Covid and vaccines, Zogby replied, “That’s a very good question. But I’m 40 years into this business. I’ve been a vendor and worked for conservatives and progressives and all sorts in-between and that includes the private sector. As a progressive, I’ve learned a lot from folks with whom I disagree.” 

Zogby noted that he has chatted a few times with Kennedy but that his son Jeremy Zogby, the managing partner of the firm, has been handling the Kennedy account. 

Jeremy Zogby told Mother Jones that Kennedy reached out to him and asked the firm to handle his campaign polling. “We’re an independent polling firm,” he said. “We’ve always worked with people who are and are not controversial. We’re not party-based or affiliated with any ideology.” He added, “I don’t discriminate based on people’s worldview.”

Asked about Kennedy’s anti-vax position and support for conspiracy theories, Jeremy Zogby responded, “I read that all kinds of people are crazy.” But he said he doesn’t take his cues from the media: “Because 90 percent of the media says a person is this or that—I can’t listen to that.” Instead, he said, people should watch the 2020 debate on vaccines between Kennedy and law professor Alan Dershowitz. “A lot of people out there say Kennedy is a nut job,” he explained. “I’ve met him. I don’t think so. A lot of what he says has been misrepresented.” He pointed out that “with 90 percent of our clients, there are some things I don’t agree with. I’m not going to come up with a litmus test… We aspire to be accurate and independent.”

On the campaign trail, Kennedy has denied he is a foe of vaccination, but that’s a false claim, as the Associated Press reported. In July, he declared on a podcast that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” He also said on Fox he believes the debunked notion that vaccines cause autism. He backed the bizarre idea that the development of the coronavirus vaccines was part of a plot linked to billionaire Bill Gates to control people via microchips. Last summer, he said Covid was designed “to attack Caucasians and black people” and that the “people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” His remarks were widely seen as antisemitic gibberish suggesting a malevolent entity had cooked up Covid to kill whites and Blacks but spare Jews and Chinese. In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named Kennedy one of the top disseminators of false information regarding the Covid vaccines. 

Kennedy has also spread other conspiracy theories and baseless claims, asserting that anti-depressants are linked to school shootings, chemical exposures causes gender dysphoria, and the CIA killed President John Kennedy, his uncle. 

FEC records indicate that John Zogby Strategies in recent times has not worked for other presidential or congressional candidates.

Not long ago, John Zogby hailed Biden’s presidency. In a 2022 column in Forbes, he wrote that Biden’s “first 15 months in office have produced an envious record of relief, recovery and reform – to borrow a slogan from the New Deal… Mr. Biden handles his job with aplomb and his record is one of enormous accomplishment.” He blasted Biden’s advisers for being overprotective of the president and urged them to place Biden in front of the American public more often. “Let Joe be Joe,” he advised. 

More recently, Zogby has been less bullish on Biden. In November, he conducted a poll for the Arab American Institute (which is headed by his brother James Zogby) that showed Biden’s standing among Arab Americans had fallen precipitously during the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza that was triggered by the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on October 7. Only 17 percent said they would vote for Biden in 2024, as opposed to the 59 percent who supported him in 2020. The poll, which was widely cited, found that Biden’s approval rating among Arab Americans had plummeted to 29 percent. (Kennedy has been a stalwart defender of Israel during the war.)

Zogby has participated in a regular feature for the Washington Examiner—the “White House Report Card”—in which he is teamed up with Jed Babbin, a Pentagon official during the George H.W. Bush administration, and they each give Biden’s ongoing performance in office a grade. In recent weeks, Zogby has tended to hand out C’s. The column does not mention that Zogby’s company is working for the Kennedy campaign and the Kennedy super-PAC. 

On February 2, Zogby was again on Sky News Australia. He said that a recent Quinnipiac poll showing Biden ahead of Trump by 6 points in a national match-up might be an outlier. When the host asked whether Kennedy would draw votes from Biden or Trump, Zogby replied, “There are things that Bobby Kennedy says that are appealing to the right, particularly the lack of trust in government and institutions. On the other hand, Bobby Kennedy [is a] longtime successful environmental lawyer and the scion of a scion of a Democratic family. Our polls are showing that Bobby Kennedy is actually drawing equally from Trump’s and Biden’s supporters.” That point is useful for Kennedy, who does not want to be labelled a spoiler. 

Zogby said nothing about Kennedy’s crusade against vaccinations or his promotion of conspiracy theories. Once more, he did not mention his firm’s tie to the Kennedy campaign.

Is Biden Shifting His Stance on Israel? Is It Too Late?

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here.

After the recent drone attack on a US military base in Jordan that killed three service members, Politico examined the possible Biden administration response. Could he thread the needle? Strike back against the Iran-backed militias that were, according to the White House, behind this assault and deter future attacks without inflaming the conflicts already underway or brewing in the region? (On Friday, the US military launched strikes against Iran-backed militants at sites in Iraq and Syria.) One sentence in the article stuck out for me: “[President Joe Biden’s] senior advisers believe that foreign policy presents an opportunity to show his decades of experience, which they believe they can contrast with Trump.”

The first thought that popped into my head upon reading that line: Jimmy Carter.

To put a finer point on it: Do voters care about experience or results? Carter was the more experienced statesman when he ran for reelection against Ronald Reagan in 1980. But the Iran hostage crisis tarred him as a failure in foreign policy. Democrats attempted to depict Reagan as a far-right extremist eager to push the button (perhaps in part because he seemed to believe in end-times prophecy). Yet these scare-’em tactics did not persuade a majority of Americans. Carter was judged on results, not experience. And Reagan’s lack of experience and hawkishness did not trigger sufficient worry.

Trump’s narcissism, erraticism, authoritarian impulses, and embrace of chaos raise more troubling questions than Reagan’s stances did. His is a far from steady hand. But I’m hoping that Biden and his crew realize that Biden’s years of experience don’t on their own win the day for him. Voters will look at what he has done with that experience. The disorderly Afghanistan withdrawal—which was set in motion by Trump—did not assure the American public of Biden’s abilities. More important, his response to the Hamas-Israel war has disappointed and enraged voters in key Democratic constituencies: young adults, progressives, people of color, and Arab Americans. These voters don’t give a damn about his experience. They are looking at the results.

For the first months of this war, those results have been gruesome and heartbreaking. The destruction and civilian death toll in Gaza—following the horrific October 7 Hamas attack—have been horrible. Though the flow of nightmarish stories and images out of Gaza has lessened, as the war becomes less newsy, the reports remain harrowing and profoundly upsetting. Half of all buildings in Gaza have been damaged; the area is uninhabitable. Its health care system has all but collapsed. Experts are predicting widespread starvation among Gazans. The body count grows.

Biden’s response to the war has disappointed and enraged voters in key Democratic constituencies. These voters don’t give a damn about his experience. They are looking at the results.

Israel’s brutal campaign has been supported by Biden and our tax dollars. For the millions of Americans pained by this cruelty and suffering, Biden’s experience is no selling point. For all the effort Biden and his aides have made to restrain the response of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, they have enabled this savagery and co-own it. Certainly, if Trump had been in the White House the past few months, things would be far worse, as David Rothkopf noted in Haaretz. But Biden is responsible for what has occurred on his watch.

As I write this, the ground may be shifting. The Biden administration has been endeavoring to strike a combined ceasefire-hostage deal. Perhaps by the time this newsletter reaches you, such an accord will be realized. And on Thursday, Biden issued an executive order sanctioning Israeli settlers in the West Bank accused of attacking Palestinians and Israeli peace activists. The order imposes financial penalties and visa bans on only a few people, but it allows for a much broader use against individuals responsible for or who engage in “actions that threaten the peace, security, or stability of the West Bank.” This could cast a wide net for far-right Israeli extremists, including members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, and their supporters in the United States.

These moves are positive ones. But it’s also necessary for Biden to break with Netanyahu. The Netanyahu administration is dominated by extremists who are delighted with the war and see it as an opportunity to conquer Gaza and the West Bank. That is, to get rid of the Palestinians. Last Sunday, an event in Jerusalem called “Conference for the Victory of Israel—Settlement Brings Security: Returning to the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria” drew five ministers in Netanyahu’s government and 27 lawmakers in his coalition to a far-right messianic hoedown that called for full Jewish settlement of Gaza and the West Bank. As Israeli columnist Alon Pinkas wrote,

What you saw there was a religious-nationalistic sect in a state of thrall. Even if you’ve seen one before, it’s not the same. This was not a fringe opposition group: it was the government of Israel in all its political splendor , unabashedly showing its true colors. This was the governing coalition in an orgy of anti-state and antidemocratic euphoria.

This was, he added, a display of the “theocratic-fascist strain in Israeli society and politics,” and it represented “almost half of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition.”

As Biden and his aides talk of moving past the hell of Gaza to a two-state solution, Netanyahu is outright rejecting that path and is more attuned to the religious rantings of the right-wing extremists, upon whom he depends for his employment. Biden has to dump Netanyahu—or dramatically distance himself from this scoundrel.

There are plenty of ways to do this. Some Democrats in Congress have called for conditioning assistance to Israel and forcing human rights evaluations of Israel’s actions in Gaza. The Biden White House did consider going further with its executive order and imposing sanctions on two ultranationalist ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. But it held back on that for now. Yet here’s a sign of the intractable conflict at hand: Smotrich, the finance minister, declared he would continue to bolster Israeli settlements in occupied territories, noting, “If the price is U.S. sanctions against me—so be it.” Biden ought to realize that partnering with a government controlled or influenced by such men is morally wrong, as well as a big political problem for him at home.

To return to where we started: Biden needs results. A ceasefire-hostage agreement would count. More must come after that. His association with the inhumane annihilation of Gaza cannot be wiped away—and it could well undermine his effort to remain in the White House and prevent its occupation by an authoritarian demagogue flirting with fascism. A significant number of Democratic voters will neither forget nor forgive. There are far too many dead Palestinians for that. But it is not yet too late for Biden to demonstrate that he can learn from recent experience and change course by breaking with the apartheidists and fanatics of Israel. Doing so will help those seeking democracy and dignity in Israel and the Palestinian territories and those seeking to protect democracy in the United States.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, has been released in a new and expanded paperback edition. 

Why the Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory About Taylor Swift Is Good for American Democracy

You probably have noticed all the recent hubbub about Taylor Swift, because we all notice all the hubbub about Taylor Swift. But this spate of hate, though ludicrous, casts a light on an essential feature of right-wing America: It is deeply tied to the world of conspiracy theory.

Let’s start with the word on Swift. (That’s always good for business.) About three weeks ago, Stuart Kaplan, a Florida lawyer and former FBI agent who regularly appears on Fox News, showed up on Jesse Watters’ show to discuss Swift. He noted that “she can potentially singlehandedly swing voters.” Watters replied, “I wonder who got to her from the White House or from whatever.” Kaplan then suggested the pop star was part of a clandestine operation: “It is possible that Taylor Swift, quite frankly, does not know that she’s being utilized in a covert manner to swing voters…The Biden administration is savvy.” As the two discussed this breaking story, the chyron at the bottom of the screen went further and exclaimed, “Is Taylor Swift a Pentagon PsyOp? Is Taylor Swift a Pentagon Asset?”

Taylor Swift, a useful idiot for a secret Biden operation—that was the thrust here. Of course, conservatives have had their panties in a twist since Swift in September deployed her powerful Instagram account (279 million followers!) to call on her fans to register to vote, and tens of thousands did so that day. Given that the mega-popular chanteuse opposed the reelection of Tennessee MAGA-Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn in 2018 (which aggravated white nationalists) and endorsed Biden in 2020—citing Biden’s support for reproductive rights, gay rights, and civil rights—Republicans who have been peeved at her (including Trump) are certainly right to fear another Swift shout-out to Biden. But it’s nuts to call this the result of a secret plot. Doing so says more about the conservative mindset than Swift, Biden, or the Deep State. 

What triggered this latest burst of irrational paranoia on the right is Swift’s headline-grabbing romance with Travis Kelce, the star tight-end of the Kansas City Chiefs, whose exceptional playing has helped lead the team to the coming Super Bowl. Conservatives on social media have howled that the attention she draws at Chiefs’ games—with the networks cutting to her in a luxury box celebrating when Kelce makes a smashing play—has ruined the matches for them. (What snowflakes.) But in recent days, this harrumphing has exploded into far more than grousing. The rightists have latched on to the Swift-Deep State conspiracy theory and expanded it with a new storyline: The NFL has rigged it for the Chiefs to reach the Big Game…to raise Swift and Kelce’s profiles even higher….to give even more oomph to her presumed 2024 endorsement of Biden. 

After the Chiefs dispatched the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday to win a spot in the Super Bowl, a right-wing account on X with a massive following of 2.2 million posted photographs of a newsstand full of publications featuring Swift, a shot of her at a Chiefs game, and a snapshot of her hugging Kelce and commented, “What’s happening with Taylor Swift is not organic and natural. It’s an op. We all feel it. We all know it.”

What's happening with Taylor Swift is not organic and natural. It's an op.

We all feel it. We all know it. pic.twitter.com/GqQ2VWB98G

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 28, 2024

The grand plan: Deep State globalists orchestrated Swift’s rise to ultra-stardom and have engineered the Chiefs’ winning season and Kelce’s hook-up with Swift. This post has received over 6.4 million views. Mike Crispi, a Trump supporter in New Jersey with a moderate social media following, boosted this sentiment as that game was ending: “The NFL is totally RIGGED for the Kansas City Chiefs, Taylor Swift, Mr. Pfizer (Travis Kelce). All to spread DEMOCRAT PROPAGANDA. Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield. It’s all been an op since day one.” This poster was referring to Kelce’s participation in a Pfizer ad campaign to promote Covid and flu shots—certainly another reason for right-wing conspiracists to be suspicious of him and his relationship with Swift.

Defeated and discredited GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy jumped on this bonkers bandwagon. He tweeted, “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.” Artificially “propped-up?” Swift devotees are not going to like that. And did the Deep State ingeniously arrange for Swift to write a hit song on the Romeo-and-Juliet theme 16 years ago? But this was hardly a surprise coming from Ramaswamy. He has championed the most treasured conspiracy theories of Trumpland: The Deep State stole the 2020 election from Dear Leader and the January 6 insurrectionist riot was a false flag operation concocted by, yes, the Deep State.

Other usual-suspects of the alt-right have joined in. “Taylor Swift is an op,” Benny Johnson, a right-wing media personality, exclaimed. “It’s all fake. You’re being played.” Laura Loomer, an Islamophobe close to Donald Trump, declared, “The Democrats’ Taylor Swift election interference psyop is happening in the open.” Jack Posobiec, a far-right provocateur who helped spread the violence-promoting Pizzagate conspiracy theory, tagged dismissal of the Swift-Kelce-NFL-Biden conspiracy theory as obvious “gaslighting.”

This latest fever dream of the right is another blast of cuckoo-ness. Yet with Swift as the target, this nutjobbery may well have a positive impact—showing a wide audience how extreme and lunatic the conservative movement can be. 

For decades, conspiracism has been a fundamental element of right-wing and conservative politics. I chronicled this history in my book American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy. The modern right’s detached-from-reality paranoia stretches back to the frenzied McCarthyism of the 1950s that claimed the Russkies had infiltrated all nooks and crannies of American society. The most radical manifestation of this was the John Birch Society (led by a man who said Dwight Eisenhower was a commie agent), which was a significant component of Sen. Barry Goldwater’s coalition when he ran for president in 1964. In the 1960s, Republicans assailed the civil rights and antiwar movements as Moscow-engineered plots. So, too, in their eyes, was Medicare. President Richard Nixon believed his own government was scheming against him. (The Deep State!) 

In the 1970s, far-right strategists depicted the Democrats as conspiring with radicals and gay activists to destroy America and Christianity. They raised a lot of money doing that and steered Christian evangelical voters into the Republican Party. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan revived the 1950s paranoia when he insisted the anti-nuclear weapons movement was a Russian operation. (The FBI at the time said it was not.) The GOP embraced Christian Coalition leader Pat Robertson, a purveyor of antisemitic conspiracy theories, and allowed him to become a powerbroker within Republican ranks. 

When Bill and Hillary Clinton were in the White House, the right went wild with conspiracy theories about their Whitewater  business deal and the suicide of aide Vince Foster. Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell—a mainstay in GOP politics—hawked a video alleging the Clintons had killed dozens of their political enemies. Established Republican leaders, including Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, amplified the assorted anti-Clinton conspiracy theories, as conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh roared about them regularly and radicalized his audience of millions. 

The right’s attack on Barack Obama was fueled by a torrent of conspiracism regarding his past and his intentions, most notably the racist birther conspiracy theory that Trump embraced and exploited to become an idol of the conservative set. Obama was roundly portrayed on the right as a Kenya-born undercover Muslim and secret socialist who harbored clandestine plans to destroy the American economy so he could become an emperor. And yes, on Fox News, Glenn Beck constantly told his audience that Obama was plotting to set up concentration camps for those who would defy him. And don’t forget the death panels. 

This latest fever dream of the right is another blast of cuckoo-ness. Yet with Swift as the target, this nutjobbery may well have a positive impact—showing a wide audience how extreme and lunatic the conservative movement can be. 

Trump took this grand tradition of conspiracy-mongering on the right—which had often been kept to the side—and placed it center stage. When he ran for president in the 2016 campaign, he hobnobbed with Alex Jones, the nation’s most notorious promoter of conspiracy theories, and praised the disinformer. Trump used conspiracy theories to counter (accurate) reports that Moscow had attacked the election to assist him. As president, he advanced a variety of conspiratorial notions, and he flirted with QAnoners, the nutters who assert that a global cabal of Democrats and world leaders are running an international pedophilia ring.

Then came the Big Lie conspiracy. Trump falsely claimed his foes—including the Democrats, the media, the CIA, Venezuelan socialists, Italian satellite operators, the Chinese, and Black election workers—had rigged the election against him. After that he pushed conspiracy theories about the January 6 riot. His current White House campaign is propelled by the fake story that his reelection was blocked by this vast anti-Trump conspiracy. Polls show that 80 percent or so of his supporters believe this bunk. 

The Republican love affair with the irrational extremism of the far right has been long and enduring, though not always in the spotlight. This is why it’s not been a major storyline within the overall narrative of American politics. Trump, though, shifted that, and recent years have showcased the widespread derangement within Republican ranks. Still, it’s easy to understand why many American voters may not want to accept and come to terms with the fact that a large chunk of the GOP and the conservative movement has become unhinged. It’s a frightening prospect. 

Yet here comes Swift to save the day. With the attacks on her, MAGAites are displaying their true colors and their extremism. Their efforts to denigrate her and Kelce—and their calls to football fans to root for the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl—evince a smallness of spirit and a censorious instinct. Conservatives are supposed to be against canceling people for their political views. Moreover, they are showing Swifties and the rest of us how central conspiracism is to their worldview and how bonkers they are. Claiming Obama was born in Kenya was one thing; alleging that Swift is a puppet of the Deep State being manipulated by its denizens—that’s quite another. 

This conspiracy theory is an insult to Swift and her fans, and perhaps for some it will be an eye-opener to the craziness and meanness that dominates the Trump and MAGA cosmos. Biden and Democrats ought to hope that these voters don’t shake it off. And if they don’t, that would, as Swift might say, be karma. 

Trump Shares His New Hampshire Victory With an Accused Sexual Predator

After winning the Republican primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, Donald Trump took the stage at his victory celebration and delivered a rambling speech in which he repeatedly denigrated Nikki Haley, who he had hired to be his UN ambassador when he was president. He did not offer thanks to any specific person. He did not mention his top campaign advisers. He did not express appreciation to anyone on his New Hampshire team. He did not refer to any member of his family. (His wife Melania did not appear with him.) But he did namecheck two supporters in attendance: Steve Wynn and John Paulson. 

Most viewers probably missed the significance of this moment, which offered a true snapshot of Trump’s perverted worldview.

Wynn is a former casino mogul. For years, he was the king of Las Vegas. He developed several resorts there, including the Golden Nugget, the Mirage, and the Bellagio. He also built casinos in Macau, Atlantic City, and elsewhere. He became a wildly successful billionaire—the sort of guy Trump once aspired to be. Though Wynn and Trump had a bruising legal fight over their Atlantic City casinos in  the 1990s, they eventually settled the dispute and ended up bosom buddies. A big-money Republican donor, Wynn was an early supporter of Trump’s first presidential campaign. After Trump entered the White House, Wynn became finance chair of the Republican National Committee. 

Wynn is also a disgraced businessman who was credibly accused of sexual assault. In 2018, the Wall Street Journal published a blockbuster article citing dozens of people saying that Wynn had “sexualized his workplace and pressured workers to perform sex acts.” The piece opened with the story of a manicurist who said that Wynn had forced her to have sex with him in his office. The newspaper noted that the woman’s supervisor filed a report with the casino’s human resources department, and Wynn later paid the manicurist a $7.5 million settlement. According to the Journal, dozens of people who worked at his casinos described incidents that formed “a decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct.” Wynn denied the charges, telling the paper, “The idea that I ever assaulted any woman is preposterous.”

Wynn’s alleged wrongdoing led to multiple investigations, lawsuits, and regulatory actions. In 2019, Nevada regulators fined Wynn Resorts $20 million for ignoring complaints about Wynn’s misconduct. This was the largest fee imposed on a gambling licensee in the state. That year, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission released a report concluding that senior executives at Wynn’s company had covered up allegations of Wynn’s behavior. The Massachusetts regulators fined Wynn Resorts $35 million. Last July, Wynn paid a $10 million fine and agreed to cut his ties to the casino industry to settle a case with Nevada gambling regulators that began with the allegations of workplace sexual misconduct. (In 2022, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to force Wynn to register as a foreign agent for the Chinese government for having lobbied the Trump administration to extradite fugitive Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui to China; the case was dismissed on a technicality.)

Wynn resigned as national finance chair of the RNC days after the Wall Street Journal story appeared in 2018. 

Despite the many allegations against Wynn, Trump remains his pal. So much so that Wynn warranted one of the few shout-outs of the night in New Hampshire. It’s as if Trump and he are two accused sexual predators in a pod. (Actually, Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll.) Here’s a good window into Trump’s psyche: a billionaire forced out of his business due to a flood of sexual misconduct allegations was foremost in Trump’s mind when he was celebrating an important political accomplishment. 

John Paulson, whose attendance Trump also noted, is a hedge fund billionaire. He’s most famous—or infamous—for having made about $4 billion in 2007 betting against subprime mortgages. Though this move has been hailed as one of the greatest trades in US financial history, it is tainted. Paulson scored this windfall by shorting a package of mortgage bonds assembled by Goldman Sachs. Guess who selected the bonds that went into this package? Paulson.

Goldman Sachs allowed an investor looking to wager against the housing bubble to concoct this package that Goldman Sachs then peddled as reasonable investments to its clients, including pension funds, foreign banks, and insurance companies. “Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio,” the Securities and Exchange Commission stated when it filed a civil lawsuit against the firm in 2010. The complaint did not name Paulson as a defendant, but it detailed his role in creating the financial instrument that led to $1 billion in losses for Goldman’s customers. Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $550 million to the SEC to settle this case. That was one of the largest penalties ever paid by a Wall Street firm.

Like Wynn, Paulson supported Trump in the 2016 campaign, and he has been a Trump donor ever since. In 2020, he held a $500,000-per-couple fundraiser for Trump at his mansion in the Hamptons. 

From the stage in New Hampshire, Trump told Wynn and Paulson, “Good to have you guys.” He also teased that he might name Paulson Treasury secretary if he returns to the White House.

This was just a brief occurrence in a speech full of the customary Trump nonsense that included misogynistic references to Haley, the usual lies about the 2020 election, and inflammatory rhetoric about migrants and President Joe Biden. But it was telling that in the middle of this triumph the people Trump appeared to care most about were not campaign aides who have toiled hard to help him achieve his win or loved ones who have been at his side. When he looked into the audience, his gaze fell upon two oligarchs—one an accused sexual assaulter; the other, a wheeler-dealer who cashed in on a deal that led to one of the biggest penalties in Wall Street history. 

These are Trump’s people. This is his world. This is his crowd.  

A Crash Course on Yemen: Are Biden’s Attacks on the Houthis the Solution?

The Biden administration says that it has being trying to prevent the ongoing war in Gaza from spreading to other parts of the region. Yet despite these efforts, Israel’s massive bombing campaign, which has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives, has spurred fighting between Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Israel, attacks from Iran at targets in Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan, and assaults on shipping in the Red Sea from Houthi forces in Yemen. The latter has led to US strikes against Houthi military targets within Yemen. And once again, the United States is involved in warfare in a country little-known within America. It may be hard for many Americans to evaluate whether the Biden administration raids are an appropriate and effective response. So I invited Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, to explain the basics of the Yemen conflict and share his view of President Biden’s response to the Houthi attacks. 

Duss contends that Biden is on the “wrong course” in Yemen. He was particularly unimpressed when Biden a few days ago acknowledged the US attacks were not stopping the Houthis but would continue. Duss told me:

I heard that answer, and it chilled me a bit. It’s kind of a similar approach Israel took to Gaza for years and years. They called it “mowing the lawn.” We know we’re not going to stop those rocket attacks. We’re going to maybe pause them. We’re going to degrade their abilities by bombing them every once in a while. But the problem just ultimately gets worse and worse. And at some point it explodes in ways you cannot predict.

Duss notes that the first step toward addressing the intensifying military conflict in the region—including this limited (for now) fighting in Yemen—is the obvious one: a ceasefire in Gaza.

See the rest of my chat with Duss here:

 

There Is a Very Good Reason Why Donald Trump Thinks Everything Is Rigged

When the US targeted Russia’s oligarchs after the invasion of Ukraine, the trail of assets kept leading to our own backyard. Not only had our nation become a haven for shady foreign money, but we were also incubating a familiar class of yacht-owning, industry-dominating, resource-extracting billionaires. In the January + February 2024 issue of our magazine, we investigate the rise of American Oligarchy—and what it means for the rest of us. You can read all the pieces here.

Donald Trump is not a typical oligarch. Before entering politics, he was not part of the small group of powerful and rich people who buttressed the ruling elite. He did not build a railroad or a technology empire. His fortune—whatever its size—was not determined by a close personal connection to a head of state. As a businessman, he generally did not use his influence and wealth to advance the interests of the government or any cause. He mostly cared about one thing—himself. But essential to his own rise to wealth and power was a core component of oligarchy: exploiting a rigged system. And during both his private sector career and his time in the White House, he has been friendly to oligarchs, cutting deals with them, cozying up to oligarchic regimes, and stacking his own Cabinet with the super­rich. It’s this world of immense wealth and power that Trump wishes to rule.

Trump emerged from the swamp of New York City real estate, where political connections were as important as architectural blueprints. His father, Fred, profited from that corrupt system. He took advantage of a government program to stimulate housing construction by overestimating his costs and pocketing the extra money that the Federal Housing Administration loaned him. He used a political fixer tight with the local machine to expand his real estate development business in Queens and Brooklyn.

When Donald, in his late 20s, made the leap into Manhattan real estate in the 1970s, he relied on the relationships Fred had acquired via campaign contributions. Looking to buy a large tract of land owned by the bankrupt Penn Central railroad, the young Trump arranged a key meeting with a top executive of the company and Mayor Abe Beame—an alum of the Brooklyn Democratic operation that Fred had courted with donations (despite being a registered Republican). At that sit-down, the mayor wrapped his arms around the Trumps and declared, “Whatever Donald and Fred want, they have my complete backing.” With this endorsement, Trump worked out a related deal for the Commodore Hotel, adjacent to Grand Central Terminal, and secured city tax abatements worth about $168 million. As veteran Trump chronicler Tim O’Brien later noted, the Beame-orchestrated tax breaks were “the first ever given to a commercial property in New York.”

And so it went for Trump. That hotel project led to bigger ventures in which he often gamed or ignored the rules. He cut a deal with a mobbed-up union boss to facilitate the construction of Trump Tower, and he used lawyer Roy Cohn—the onetime aide to red-baiting Sen. Joseph R. ­McCarthy who was then defending prominent mafiosos—to attain tax breaks for it. In the early 1980s, Trump partnered with two Mafia associates to enter the casino business in Atlantic City. When he got into trouble with gaming regulators, they gave him a pass. When he went through a series of bankruptcies in the 1990s, he wheedled his way out of one jam after another. He became notorious for not paying his bills while also receiving at least $413 million (in current dollars) from his father, much of that attained through tax dodges and fraudulent schemes. The lesson that Trump learned? Rules are for suckers.

Trump took on the aesthetics of oligarchs—all that gold and tacky displays of wealth—and became an enabler of them. His glitzy luxury properties in Manhattan­ and elsewhere drew wealthy overseas purchasers looking to park their money in American real estate. The Saudis, he would later say, “buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.” In 1995, he sold the Plaza Hotel to a partnership that included a Saudi prince who had reportedly purchased Trump’s yacht for around $18 million a few years earlier. As Donald Trump Jr. noted in 2008, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets…We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” That year, a Russian oligarch paid Trump $95 million for a Palm Beach property that he had bought for $41 million four years earlier.

In Dubai, Trump arranged two golf course ventures with a major developer connected to the rulers of the United Arab Emirates. In 2014, he purchased a golf course in Scotland for $60 million from a holding company controlled by the government of Dubai, and he poured $200 million (the source of which is still unclear) into rehabbing the property. He hooked up with a politically wired billionaire media mogul in Indonesia to license and manage high-end resorts.

In one bizarre episode, in 2012, Trump and two of his children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, worked closely with an Azerbaijani billionaire who apparently had ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to develop a hotel in Baku, the corruption-riddled capital of the former Soviet republic. Around that time, Trump also forged a partnership with Aras Agalarov, an oligarch connected to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, to host his Miss ­Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013. According to Miss Universe officials, the venture had to be blessed by Putin. Trump ended up pocketing $2.3 million for the event—but only because Agalarov had subsidized the contest. In other words, Trump scored a big payday financed by a Putin-friendly oligarch. While running for president in 2016, Trump secretly sought Putin’s help to develop a Moscow tower.

More recently, Trump cooked up a deal with Oman to design a Trump-branded golf club and hotel there. The business plan calls for selling luxury villas to the well-to-do from Russia, Iran, India, and elsewhere. The venture, still under construction, has already earned Trump $5 million.

As president, Trump brought an oligarch-­ish feel to the White House. He stuffed his Cabinet with plutocrats who had little or no prior government experience, including Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon Mobil (secretary of state); Betsy DeVos, a member of the billionaire Amway clan (secretary of education); Steve Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs veteran and hedge fund big shot (secretary of the treasury); and Wilbur Ross, an investor known as the “King of Bankruptcy” (secretary of commerce). A key adviser to Trump was Tom Barrack, a private equity mogul close to the autocratic Arabian Gulf governments, whom the feds charged for acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates. (He was acquitted.) Trump also installed Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, in senior White House positions for which they were immensely unqualified.

Throughout his time in the White House, Trump repeatedly expressed admiration for the dictatorial leaders of oligarchic regimes. His first overseas trip as ­president took him to Saudi Arabia. (Kushner­ played a critical role in this initiative, and after Trump left the White House, Kushner’s new hedge fund received a $2 billion infusion from the Saudis.) Trump’s signature achievement as chief executive was implementing a $1.9 trillion tax cut that favored corporations and 1 percenters, including Trump himself. At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC—no longer in operation—foreign officials looking to curry favor with Trump booked high-priced rooms and event space. He tried to intimidate the media and undermine its independence, which in Russia and elsewhere is often the duty of oligarchs.

In most countries, the superrich have a transactional relationship with the ruling regime: They help preserve its hold on power in exchange for the opportunity to amass great wealth for themselves. But the robber barons of the United States, past and present, have forged a different type of oligarchy, in which they employ their fortunes to shape the political order and the workings of the government to their advantage. Trump has taken that further, merging his business interests fully with politics and his attempt to dominate the American political system. With his current effort at presidential restoration, Trump—who faces 91 criminal charges in four cases—is pursuing the ultimate oligarchic goal: a complete rigging of the system so it comes fully under his control, allowing him to escape all accountability and increase his riches and power. He has openly acknowledged his plan to impose authoritarian schemes should he return to the White House. (“I am your retribution,” he told an adoring crowd last March.) For Trump, oligarchy is a steppingstone to a system that poses a greater threat to American democracy: autocracy.

Trump II: How Bad It Could Be

How bad could it be?

In recent weeks, I’ve had several people tell me they are not overly worried about Donald Trump possibly returning to power, noting the republic survived his four years in the White House. These are folks who do not want to vote to reelect President Joe Biden because of his support of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign in Gaza and others who just feel meh about the current occupant of the White House. It’s clear they have not been paying attention, for Trump himself and others have been outlining the alarming abuses of power that could ensue if he gets another shot at this. These projections ought to frighten anyone who gives a damn about American democracy. Moreover, it’s not hard to imagine potential Trump excesses that go beyond those he has already teased.

Let’s start with Trump’s own forecasts. He has promised the MAGA right that he will be its force of vengeance against liberals, Democrats, the supposed Deep State, the media, and other political opponents, whom he routinely casts as depraved commies and radicals out to destroy him and America (particularly its white suburban neighborhoods). “I am your retribution,” he proclaimed at a gathering of right-wingers in March. At a Fox News event on Wednesday night, he claimed that if he wins the 2024 election, “I’m not going to have time for retribution.” Yet Trump, who in September suggested that the top US military commander should be executed, has repeatedly indicated that he’s out for revenge against all his detractors (real and imagined) and that he will consider using the Justice Department to prosecute his enemies. In fact, a group of conservative think tanks under the auspices of what they benignly call Project 2025, has been drawing up plans for how Trump could do this. 

Trump has also half-jokingly said that he will only be a “dictator” on “day one,” in order to implement key policy objectives. But in federal court this week, his lawyers, trying to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case against Trump, sort of made this official. They presented their boss’ view that once back in the White House he would be able to order a SEAL team to assassinate a political rival and be beyond criminal prosecution, unless he were convicted in an impeachment proceeding. That legal argument was absurd, but the fact that Trump would allow his attorneys to advance this contention ought to be a DEFCON-1 warning. (It was reminiscent of his worrisome 2016 quip that he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and “wouldn’t lose any voters.”)

So Trump 45 envisions a possible Trump 47 as a force unrestrained by rules or laws. He would literally be above the law—able to do anything, as long as 35 senators do not convict. 

In a filing submitted on December 30 that challenged Trump’s over-the-top position on presidential immunity, Smith outlined several nightmarish scenarios that could occur with a chief executive who has such power: “a President who instructs the FBI Director to plant incriminating evidence on a political enemy; a President who orders the National Guard to murder his most prominent critics; or a President who sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary.”

Smith added that under Trump’s framework, “the Nation would have no recourse to deter a President from inciting his supporters during a State of the Union address to kill opposing lawmakers—thereby hamstringing any impeachment proceeding—to ensure that he remains in office unlawfully.”

There are many less dramatic—but still troubling—abuses that can be easily imagined transpiring during a second Trump term. We only need to look back to Richard Nixon for two obvious examples. Trump could order the Internal Revenue Service to pursue his critics, demanding that the agency audit his foes and challenge the tax-exempt status of organizations, such as think tanks, policy advocacy shops, and media outlets, that oppose or denigrate his actions. (One of the charges in the House impeachment resolution against Nixon was that he attempted to weaponize the IRS against his enemies.) And Trump has repeatedly threatened to go after the broadcast licenses of media companies that he considers antagonistic to him—a move Nixon allies tried with the Washington Post during Watergate. (And don’t forget Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia.)

Trump and his henchmen foresee a second term in which he would have ironclad control of the federal bureaucracy. The Project 2025 gang has been cooking up a scheme that would allow the White House to replace tens of thousands of federal civil servants with Trump devotees. Part of that process includes devising a questionnaire for thousands of appointees that is designed to assess how devoted they are to Trump. In essence, Trumpists are aiming to impose a pro-Trump loyalty throughout the government. Under this plan, workers and officials at various agencies who are not Trump supporters—perhaps those who do not contribute to his campaign—could be summarily dismissed. Picture the atmosphere of fear—and snitching—that would infect the federal government. Might there be anonymous tip lines set up so employees could rat out a colleague who muttered something derogatory about the commander in chief? This would create an environment of intimidation and, no doubt, result in a brain drain across the executive branch. 

With such control, Trump could order agencies beyond the Justice Department to investigate his opponents or shut down probes that target his pals. If a foreign government he favors—maybe one with which he has done business—is illegally lobbying in the United States, he could nix an inquiry. He could instruct EPA attorneys not to follow environmental laws. He could force the SEC to cut his buddies a break. He could demand agencies hand out contracts to his political supporters or withhold them from critics. (Recall how he threatened during the Covid pandemic to not send ventilators to states led by governors who criticized him.) He could tell officials in government agencies to suppress or alter research and reports and to phony up statistics to make his administration look great. Who knows what covert stuff he would order the CIA and the Defense Department to do? And if a career employee does not do Trump’s bidding—within this Trump World Order—he or she could be fired. 

Some of these actions might well be illegal—not just for Trump, but for the government worker who follow his orders. Here’s the kicker: Trump could pardon any offender. At the end of his presidency, he exhibited his willingness to pardon or commute the sentences of his felonious cronies (such as Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and others). In a second term, if any of his underlings get nabbed for breaking the law on Trump’s say-so, they could be handed a get-out-of-jail-free card by the boss. Not only would Trump (in his mind) be above the law, so would his lieutenants and foot soldiers. 

Of course, Congress and the courts could try to counter Trump’s abuses of power. But a president does possess much leeway in how he or she runs the government. And there’s no telling how one or multiple constitutional crises will play out. Trump has already called for suspending the Constitution (so he could return to power) and declared that he would use the Insurrection Act to turn the military into a domestic police force at his command. He has vowed to pardon the January 6 rioters—he now calls them “hostages”—a move signaling his support for political violence. This week, he threatened “bedlam” if he loses the 2024 election, and he did not respond when a reporter asked if he would urge his supporters to eschew violence. During the Fox News event, he agreed with host Bret Baier that political violence is not acceptable, but he insisted that when he was president there was “very little of it”—obviously downplaying the seditious January 6 riot he incited. 

Given what Trump has already told us, we can expect Tump II to be a demagogic president bent on revenge who believes that there are no constraints on his power and that he need not abide by the law. Putting aside the policies he says he intends to pursue—more tax cuts for the well-off, removing health care insurance from tens of millions, ending climate change action, bombing Mexican cartels, restoring a Muslim travel ban, deporting millions—Trump has made it clear he yearns to be a ruthless autocrat. So how bad could it be? With Trump, we have learned, the bottom has no bottom. Our imaginations cannot conceive all the anti-democratic horrors that will likely occur. But to comprehend the depth of this immense threat, voters need only do one thing: listen to Trump and take him seriously. 

A Story of Mother Jones (the Labor Organizer) That’s Relevant a Century Later

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here. 

I spend a fair bit of time in West Virginia. I have friends who co-own what used to be a fishing and hunting lodge in the beautiful and rugged mountains of the Monongahela National Forest far away from most everything, and for years my family and I have enjoyed sojourns there. On a recent visit, our host showed me a biography of his great-grandfather, John Kern, a Democratic senator from Indiana, the first Senate majority leader, and the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1908. (He was on the ticket with William Jennings Bryan that lost to William Howard Taft.) I started flipping through the volume, The Life of John Worth Kern, published in 1918 and written by Claude Bowers, a newspaper columnist who produced a string of bestselling books about American history, and I came across an entire chapter about Mother Jones (the person) and how Kern teamed up with her to beat back a big-money lobbying campaign in the US Senate. It’s a story that resonates today.

Naturally, I’m familiar with the general arc of Mother Jones’ life. Mary Harris Jones was an Irish immigrant whose birth date was uncertain. She was baptized in 1837. Her family, due to the Great Famine, moved to Toronto when she was about 10, and as a young woman she immigrated to Michigan to become a teacher at a convent. She soon married an organizer for the National Union of Iron Moulders. Her husband and four children died of yellow fever in 1867, and she opened a dress shop in Chicago. After her business was destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871, she became a labor activist, most noteworthy for her stint as an organizer for the United Mine Workers, during which she adopted her nom de political guerre.

Yet I didn’t know that Jones successfully lobbied the Senate to beat back an effort to protect feudalism in West Virginia.

At the heart of this tale are the infamous labor battles in the coal mining regions of the Mountain State. As Bowers describes it, in the towns of Paint Creek and Cabin Creek, coal mining firms had established a “form of peonage.” Miners were forced to live in high-rent housing owned by the companies and to purchase food at exorbitant prices from company stores, while receiving meager pay. “These men were slaves,” he noted. Worse, they lived under the heel of “mine guards”—militias of gunmen that were “composed largely of the scourings of the slums of the cities” and that had no “legal status.” A key goal of the guards: to keep out organizers from the United Mine Workers and prevent journalists from nosing about. “Popular government,” he wrote, “had broken down and had been displaced by the feudalism of the coal barons and their allies.”

Cabin Creek was fully under the thumb of the coal companies, but Paint Creek workers were organized. And in 1912, Big Coal decided to break the union there. The area was “invaded by the gun-men.” They terrorized the miners and their families, breaking into their homes, harassing their families, and stealing their food. They even “let loose the flood gates of profanity and vulgarity in the presence of women and babes.” One pregnant woman who was kicked and roughed up by the goons lost her child. Some miners and their families were driven out of their homes into a tent city. Newspapers in Charleston, the state capital, sided with Big Coal and claimed anarchistic miners were attacking “the representatives of law and order.”

Enter Mother Jones. She arrived in Charleston on July 6, 1912, about 80 years old. Already well known as a labor organizer and strategist, she led a march of thousands of miners to the statehouse. She demanded the governor order the removal of the gunmen. He did not do so, and the miners “proceeded to arm themselves,” according to Bowers. This led to a “pitched battle” between the miners and the guards that “left the guards in danger of annihilation.” The governor sent in a militia to try to disarm both sides. Meanwhile, Jones headed to Cabin Creek and organized workers there for the UMW. When company guards tried to prevent one of their meetings, they were assaulted by 500 armed miners. “West Virginia was in a state of civil war,” Bowers observed. The governor declared martial law.

In early 1913, while Jones was on a speaking tour seeking support for the miners, the violence intensified. An armored train came through a mining camp and fired on the workers, killing at least one. State troops arrested a large group of miners. Back on the scene, Jones encouraged the workers “from taking extreme measures” and organized a committee to call on the governor and request the release of the detained miners.

When she and her allies arrived in Charleston, she was arrested by local police and then conveyed 22 miles into the martial law zone, turned over to military authorities, and placed under house arrest in “the house of a poor miner where the only furniture in the room was a small lounge on which she slept, a small table and two rocking chairs, with no wash bowl.” She was guarded by militiamen for two months, while awaiting trial in a military court for the murder of a coal company bookkeeper who had been killed during one of the confrontations between miners and the guards.

Up to now, Bowers pointed out, there had been scant press coverage of the conflict in West Virginia. But when the Washington Post reported “in less than a dozen lines” that Jones was to be tried by a military court, “the system made a fatal blunder.” Sen. Kern spotted that item in the paper and was amazed that it provided “so little information.” He began to ponder what should be done.

Soon after, a fuller account of the travails of Jones and the miners appeared in Collier’s Weekly. Cora Baggerly Older, the wife of Fremont Older, the editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, had traveled to West Virginia to cover the murder conspiracy trial of Jones and 48 men in the military court. She found Paint Creek under full military occupation. When she tried to speak to Jones, she was arrested—and then released.

Older finally got the chance to talk with Jones, who met her “with curling tongs in hand,” as Older recounted. Older told Jones, “They say you must choose between leaving the state and going to jail.” Jones laid down her curling tongs and replied, “I choose jail now. I can raise just as much hell in jail as anywhere.” Other press accounts about the conflict and Jones’ arrest followed.

Kern decided Senate action was warranted. He introduced a resolution calling for a Senate investigation to determine if the coal companies were running a peonage system in West Virginia and whether the legal rights of the miners were being violated. The immediate rise of fierce opposition to his measure, Bowers reported, astonished the senator. One of the owners of the West Virginia mines—who happened to be a former US senator—wired his past colleagues and protested establishing an inquiry. Other fat cats contacted Kern:

Men with no apparent interests in the coal mines nor citizens of West Virginia began to wire and phone their importunities to drop the proposed investigation. Many railroad officials seemed morbidly concerned. The highest financial circles of New York City brought every possible influence to bear.

Kern did receive letters and telegrams “by the hundreds” from miners and their neighbors attesting to the horrific conditions. Older visited Kern and described her trip. UMW officials weighed in. But the the monied interests shook the senator to his core. As Bowers put it,

The climax of this campaign came when an old and valued friend in New York City connected with one of the great financial groups of that city called [Kern] on the phone in an effort to dissuade him. “I will see you in hell first,” was the reply as Kern slammed up the receiver.

The West Virginia governor attacked Kern “in the most bitter language.” Across the nation, the “conservative element” pilloried Kern as a “demagogic sensationalist in league with lawlessness.” In the Capitol, his foes decried his resolution as a deadly blow at states’ rights. This was a battle royale. Bowers noted the historic stakes (perhaps in grandiose terms): “Never before in the history of the United States Senate in a straight contest between the lowly or the workers and the great financial interests had the workers won—and the politicians were judging the future by the past.”

Back to Mother Jones. Under house arrest in West Virginia, she had no idea what was happening in Washington. Then one day, someone threw through her window a copy of the Cincinnati Post with a story on the fight over Kern’s resolution in the Senate. She smuggled out a message that was sent to Kern via telegram:

From out of my military prison walls, where I have been forced to pass my eighty-first milestone of life, I plead with you for the honor of this nation. I send you groans and tears of men, women and children as I have heard them in this state, and beg you to force that investigation. Children yet unborn will rise and bless you.

Kern got the message and released it to the press. It “flashed across the country” and Jones’ imprisonment sparked an uproar. She was released from her boarding house prison and escorted to Charleston, where she was courteously received by the governor. She then headed to Washington to assist Kern:

She trudged the interminable marble corridors of the Senate office building, informing senators individually and at length of the conditions in West Virginia. At times, the eighty-odd years bore heavily upon her and worn and weary she would return to Kern’s office, sink exhausted into a chair for a rest of a few minutes—then on her way again.

Kern disseminated scores of letters and telegrams from the miners, including those held in jail, stripped of their constitutional rights, denied a jury trial, and facing court martials. In a passionate speech, Kern noted “the fire of Socialism” was being fueled by the conditions in West Virginia and the “lawless action there.” He warned, “Socialism grows and will grow in exact proportion as wrongdoing is countenanced.” He stated that should the “American Republic” face a military threat from overseas, “we will need those million of men.” He asked, “Do you make good citizens of men by denying them their rights? Do you command the respect and the patriotism of the toilers of this land by turning them away when they come into this great tribunal and simply ask that the light be turned on?”

Other prominent senators–including Elihu Root (R-N.Y.) and William Borah (R-Idaho)—backed the Kern resolution. Root contended it was vital to the preservation of American democracy. After weeks of tussling, the measure passed in the Senate on a voice vote. The Senate education and labor committee would initiate an inquiry. In his book, Bowers declared, “Thus for the first time in the history of the senate in a fight involving a contest between capital and labor the workers won.”

The subsequent investigation, he wrote, “was a vindication—and a triumph for the miners.”

The committee met in Charleston in July and continued its work in Washington in September and October. Soon it issued its findings that included the conclusion that the miners were induced through “misinformation and misrepresentations” to accept employment in the coal mines and that “hardships in this respect were disclosed.” Bottom line: The coal profiteers had bamboozled the workers. Moreover, the committee, according to Bowers, affirmed “the all important charge that the constitution had been set aside, martial law established, men arrested without warrant of the civil authorities, tried by drumhead court martials, and given sentences in excess of any provided by the statutes.”

In a supplemental report, Sen. James Martine (D-N.J.) stated, “I charge that the hiring of armed bodies of men by private mine owners and other corporations and the use of steel armored trains, machine guns and bloodhounds on defenseless women and children is but a little way removed from barbarism.”

The committee pointed out that after national attention was drawn to the crisis in West Virginia (and to Jones’ arrest and detention) and the Senate investigation was initiated, martial law ended and civil law and authority fully established. It even stated that relations between the operators and miners “have become friendly and conciliatory.” The arrested miners were released.

Jones, who had received a 20-year sentence from a military court, was in the free and clear. She exclaimed, “Senator Kern threw open the prison doors for me.”

Later in 1913, she joined the campaign to organize miners in Colorado that became part of the Colorado Coalfield War. She was again arrested and imprisoned in a hospital before being escorted out of the state. She continued working as a UMW organizer into the 1920s and died in 1930.

Kern had succeeded. The Senate went on to launch similar investigations of copper mining in Michigan and coal mining in Colorado. But there was no big political payback for him. Kern had been a prominent proponent of the 17th Amendment, which modified the Constitution to implement the direct election of senators. The measure was ratified in April 1913, just as Kern started his crusade for an investigation of the coal industry in West Virginia. Three years later, under the new system for selecting senators, he narrowly lost his bid for reelection. He died in 1917. Over a century later, he is not much remembered.

The unlikely duo of Kern, a Democratic lawmaker, and Jones, a socialist, worked together to reveal the abuses of the rapacious coal companies and to challenge corporate power—to advance the rights of West Virginia workers. Now, the descendants of those workers are largely pro-Trump. In 2016, they believed—or wanted to believe—Donald Trump’s claim that he would bring back coal jobs. Yet over his four years in the White House, coal mining employment fell 23.6 percent, and coal production declined 31.5 percent. Still, West Virginia remains solidly a red state. So much so that Sen. Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat, decided not to run for reelection. The leading candidate for his replacement is outgoing GOP Gov. Jim Justice, whose coal business had a long history of safety problems.

Over the recent decades, the coal miners of West Virginia, for an assortment of reasons, have become aligned with conservative forces that are now led in the state by a coal baron. How symbolic. This turnaround is an example of the larger political shifts that have weakened the bond between white working-class Americans and the Democrats. The tale of the Kern resolution and what came afterward is a reminder that no political alliances are set in stone, and that the Democrats and progressives possess a pro-worker legacy that is readily available for revitalization.

PS: Below is a political cartoon that extolled Kern’s populist progressive record. The accompanying text noted that he “forced the passage of Indiana’s first Employers’ Liability Law and first Child Labor Law through the Indiana Legislature in 1893.” It added, “He won the first straight out fight ever waged in the Senate between the lowly and the combined forces of plutocracy when he forced an investigation of the horrible conditions in the coal fields of West Virginia, and stopped the trying of miners by drum head court martials.”

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, has been released in a new and expanded paperback edition. 

The Far-Right Pushes a New Conspiracy Theory to Discredit Jack Smith

A new conspiracy theory rising on the right is being deployed to help Donald Trump.

It claims that Jack Smith, the special counsel who is prosecuting Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and for his alleged swiping of classified documents, was part of a multimillion dollar extortion scheme when he was the chief prosecutor investigating and prosecuting war crimes in Kosovo. In the past two weeks, this unsubstantiated narrative has started popping up on fringe right-wing sites and social media posts. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser and QAnonish MAGA champion, has promoted this tale. These allegations appear to be in the early phase of the right-wing transmission belt that propels false stories and conspiracy theories from less prominent platforms to more established conservative media and toward the mainstream—often facilitated by Republican members of Congress. 

The participants in this current effort include a former DEA official who not long ago claimed to have evidence showing the Clinton Foundation was a criminal enterprise, a lawyer who represents the computer repair shop owner who obtained and passed along Hunter Biden’s laptop, and one of the most prominent election deniers of 2020. And this allegation is mostly based on a wild account provided by a Kosovo businessman who was twice arrested in Spain for extortion, who has disputed rumors that he was tied to Russian intelligence, and who has been linked to a Russian mobster.

This campaign against Smith is based on documents circulated by John Moynihan, a onetime DEA employee who says he handled money laundering investigations for the agency. Last month, he submitted to the inspector general of the Justice Department—as well as the IGs of the State Department and CIA—what he termed a “whistleblower complaint” (though he no longer works for the DEA) that charges that a blackmail ring was set up within the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a European Union judicial initiative based in The Hague to prosecute war crimes committed during the Kosovo war of independence in the late 1990s. This criminal enterprise, Moynihan claims, “extorted millions of dollars from wealthy individuals targeted for investigation and/or prosecution by the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office” (known as the SPO), which brings the cases tried by the chambers. Smith was the chief prosecutor for the SPO from 2018 to 2022, and Moynihan alleges that witnesses he spoke to said Smith was an “active participant” in this conspiracy. 

It’s an explosive charge: the prosecutor pursuing Trump being a power-abusing crook himself. But the sources for these unconfirmed allegations have told outlandish stories, and some of the promoters of this tale have track records of involvement in squirrelly endeavors to tar Trump’s political opponents. 

This is not Moynihan’s first rodeo. In December 2018, he and an associate, Larry Doyle, appeared before the House Oversight Committee, chaired by then-Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), and claimed they had evidence that the Clinton Foundation had engaged in serious financial crimes. The pair asserted that the Clinton Foundation was operating as an agent of a foreign government and that Bill Clinton had used its funds for personal business. But they refused GOP entreaties to turn over the 6,000-plus pages of evidence they said they had amassed, noting they had passed the material to the FBI and the IRS. “If you’re not going to share [the documents] with the committee and cut to the chase, my patience is running out,” Meadows groused.

Meadows pointed out the IRS had told him it would be fine for Moynihan and Doyle to share their files. “I don’t find how [refusing to turn over information] provides a good foundation for truth and transparency,” the congressman told them. Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) slammed the duo: “I feel like you’re using us for your own benefit.” He added there was a “little game going on here.” The Washington Examiner called the hearing a “fiasco.”

Moynihan and Doyle certainly had an agenda. They had sued the IRS in 2017 alleging improprieties related to how that agency handled the Clinton Foundation. They maintained that the foundation had underpaid its taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars. If they prevailed in court, they could be entitled to tens of millions of dollars for exposing an underpayment. That case is still pending. 

Moynihan did not respond to requests for comment.

Brian Della Rocca, the lawyer representing Moynihan in his crusade against Jack Smith, has played an important role in another MAGA project. He is representing John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of the Delaware computer shop who came into possession of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop and turned it over to Rudy Giuliani. Hunter Biden has sued Mac Isaac and others for disseminating material from his laptop. And Mac Isaac has sued Hunter Biden and others for defamation. 

Della Rocca says has “no comment at this time” about Moynihan’s complaint, adding he wants “to give the government the opportunity to review the complaint and take action.”

Patrick Byrne, a prominent 2020 election denier and ardent conspiracy theorist, has claimed credit for helping to launch Moynihan’s allegations against Smith. The former CEO of Overstock, Byrne tweeted a link to a story on the Moynihan charges that appeared on Gateway Pundit, a fringe-right site, and he declared, “I DID THAT. Well, the extraordinary federal John Moynihan and I.” He added laughing emojis. A website he created called Deep Capture was among the first to post the Moynihan complaint. Weeks prior to that, Byrne repeatedly declared on his Telegram account that he was involved in arranging a “liver punch.” He then used that term to describe the Moynihan complaint.

Mother Jones sent Byrne emails asking him to explain how he was responsible for the Moynihan complaint. He did not reply.

Byrne resigned as head of Overstock in 2019 after he admitted publicly that he had an intimate affair with Maria Butina, a Russian agent. He claimed the Deep State encouraged his relationship with her and that he “was being used in some sort of soft coup” against Trump. A year later, he was one of the loudest voices spreading assorted conspiracy theories and asserting the election had been stolen from Donald Trump. In December 2020, he participated in an unscheduled White House meeting with Trump, Flynn, and attorney Sidney Powell, during which they considered various schemes to overturn the election results, including Trump seizing voting machines. Weeks earlier, Byrne paid for a private jet to fly a group of Proud Boys to Washington, DC, to attend a protest supporting Trump and his false claim that the election had been rigged against him.

The heart of Moynihan’s case is an account from a 57-year-old Kosovar businessman named Halit Sahitaj, who lives in Spain and travels on a Serbian passport. A statement from Sahitaj dated October 3, 2023, is attached to Moynihan’s complaint. The statement doesn’t indicate who collected it from Sahitaj, but in his filing, Moynihan says he spoke with the witnesses he cites.

Sahitaj offers a wild and seemingly implausible account. He claims that in February 2020 he was contacted by a man who called himself Florian and who said he worked for the US State Department. Florian told Sahitaj that Kosovo intelligence suspected Sahitaj was a Russian spy and that he could help Sahitaj with this situation. Florian eventually revealed that he worked for the CIA. He noted he was interested in Sahitaj’s connections in Russia. According to Sahitaj, he officially recruited Sahitaj as a CIA informant. But Sahitaj doesn’t say whether he was able to confirm Florian worked for the intelligence agency.

Florian instructed Sahitaj to meet him at a safe house in Belgium and to bring watches worn by him, his wife, and their son. These watches and his car would be modified with tracking technology. All Sahitaj had to do was pay Florian 75,000 euros for these modifications and 12,000 euros for a training course and wire an additional 6,000 eruos to a colleague of Florian in the United States to cover expense for the training course. Sahitaj claims he did all this. Florian supposedly showed him a badge that said “Special Agent” and bore the initials “CIA.” 

This recruitment story does not match with what’s known about CIA procedures.

Months later, in June 2020, when Sahitaj was with Florian, the supposed CIA officer received a call from a man Florian identified as Jack Smith. On speaker, the man said to Sahitaj, “Hello, it’s nice to meet you.” Later Florian told Sahitaj that Smith wanted Sahitaj to assist his investigations. Then an assignment came: Sahitaj should contact people in Kosovo and ask them for money to be dropped from war crime investigations. If they actually paid Sahitaj, he could keep 10 percent and the rest would go into a “black account” to finance future operations run by Smith’s office.

Sahitaj says he approached three people with this offer, and they each angrily told him to get lost. Florian subsequently informed Sahitaj that he was mad at Sahitaj for blowing this job. But, he said, Sahitaj could demonstrate his “value” to the CIA by voluntarily donating 400,000 to 500,000 euros to Smith’s “black funds.” Sahitaj reports that he made a 400,000 euro payment, and Florian put Sahitaj on the phone with the fellow who supposedly was Smith. That man thanked Sahitaj. So by now, Sahitaj, at Florian’s instruction, had supposedly handed the CIA and this “black account” 493,000 euros of his own funds. He had not met Smith in person. At one point, while he was traveling with Florian, he saw Florian flash an identification card with the name Faik Imeri. 

The story continues. Sahitaj says that Florian arranged for him to provide false and incriminating testimony to Smith’s investigators during an October 1, 2020 interview. This was being done, he was told, at Smith’s behest. Florian also “tasked” Sahitaj with locating Russian oligarchs on the US sanctions list and offering to remove them from the list if they would sign a contract to work with the CIA, provide the agency information on Vladimir Putin, and pay into the “black fund.” Sahitaj maintains that Florian told him “during this operation I would be working directly for Jack Smith.” He says he found one Russian oligarch for this scheme. Then on December 15, 2020, according to his statement, Sahitaj was arrested in Spain for extortion and money laundering. He was imprisoned for ten months before he was released on bail.

Once again he heard from the man who Florian claimed was Jack Smith—via phone—and this fellow urged him to continue pursuing that Russian oligarch. Sahitaj says that he used this oligarch to cut a deal with another oligarch.

Not surprisingly, there is a supposed Hillary Clinton angle in Sahitaj’s account. He claims that in January 2022 Florian told him that Smith wanted to know if the second oligarch “was still in possession of evidence of corruption by Hillary Clinton” and that Sahitaj learned through an intermediary that the second oligarch “does still have the evidence and had not shared it with anyone.” Sahitaj’s statement does not provide any details regarding this alleged material. 

Then, Sahitaj recounts, he had a falling out with Florian, who abruptly dumped him as an operative. He says in the statement that he felt he “had been used by Florian and Prosecutor Jack Smith.” Sahitaj adds that he learned that Florian had swindled $16 million from the two Russian oligarchs, and one was demanding that Sahitaj pay him back for that.  

It’s a bizarre account from a fellow who says he handed a self-proclaimed CIA officer half a million euros to become his operative without ever ascertaining this man was truly connected to the agency and who was arrested for extortion and money laundering, not once but twice. In his statement, he acknowledges his first arrest. And according to El Confidencial, a Spanish outlet, Sahitaj was arrested in Spain in August. It reported he had allegedly “contacted various individuals and threatened to file false complaints against them in Russia or Spain to involve them in criminal cases if they did not agree to pay him large sums of money.” Spanish news outlets have described Sahitaj as an associate of a convicted Russian mobster. 

In a 2019 interview with a Kosovo outlet, Sahitaj said, “Anyone who thinks I’m a spy for Russia is a spy for Serbia.” He noted, “I know the Russian oligarchs, even those who hang out with Putin.” He maintained in this interview that Interpol files stated that he was not suspected of criminal activities such as espionage and money laundering.

It’s tough to confirm the key—and most outlandish—parts of Sahitaj’s story. But he did interact with the SPO. On April 22, 2022, he had an interview via phone with with Alan Tieger, a prominent lawyer who was a senior prosecutor in the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office. According to a transcript of the conversation—which Moynihan attached to his complaint—Sahitaj had indeed been interviewed by the SPO in October 2020. That was when, according to Sahitaj’s statement, he presented false testimony to the war crime prosecutors at Florian’s urging.

The SPO declined to comment regarding Sahitaj’s allegations or Tieger’s interview with Sahitaj. But in a court filing the SPO submitted last year—in which Sahitaj was identified not by name but by a witness number, W04730—the prosecutors asserted that Sahitaj has been spreading “fanciful allegations” and a “fantastical” account regarding his own actions and that the SPO possessed no material “suggesting that [Sahitaj] has a relationship with any intelligence agency.” 

Sahitaj could not be reached for comment.

Another statement attached to Moynihan’s complaint comes from Milaim Zeka, a 61-year-old, Kosovo-born Swedish citizen who is a journalist and a former member of the Kosovo parliament. Zeka is a controversial figure in Kosovo, with a history of arrests and acquittals. He was arrested in 2013 and charged for broadcasting a show in which protected witnesses against a group of former fighters for the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)—an ethnic Albanian militia that fought for Kosovo independence and has faced accusations it committed war crimes—could be identified. Prosecutors said this was an effort at witness intimidation. He was later acquitted. Zeka was charged in 2018 with fraud and money laundering and subsequently indicted for threatening a prosecutor in the case. He was acquitted this year of some of those charges. Others are pending before an appeals court. He was charged in 2021 with illegally recording and photographing subjects of a story, but again acquitted.

Moynihan’s complaint does not mention Zeka’s arrests or his ties to lawmakers Smith prosecuted. It describes Zeka as a “well known journalist in Kosovo.”

In the Zeka statement Moynihan cites—dated September 26, 2023 and titled “Statement for the American Congress (not to be disclosed with media)”—Zeka recalls his own interactions with the self-purported CIA officer who Sahitaj knew as Florian. Zeka’s statement says that this man told him he had participated in the assassination of Osama bin Laden and that he said that Smith had been part of an attempt to extort 10 million euros from a Kosovo businessmen. Zeka maintains this fellow claimed that Smith worked with Serbian intelligence to create a “criminal group” in Kosovo that involved Halit Sahitaj. Zeka notes that he came to the conclusion that the this supposed CIA operative had “nothing to do with the CIA.”

Edlira Qefalija, Zeka’s wife, also submitted a “Statement for the American Congress” attached to Moynihan’s complaint. She says that she witnessed Zeka’s conversations with the man who claimed to be a CIA officer and that this person “on behalf of Jack Smith” told her husband that he could be arrested due to a 2003 real estate transaction and sent to prison for 10 years. But if Zeka paid 320,000 euros he could be cleared. She notes that Sahitaj loaned her and Zeka 100,000 euros for this payment but “it was [Sahitaj] who actually gave…the whole sum of money.” She also says, “I heard [the man who claimed to be with the CIA] was asking for money on behalf of Jack Smith in order for other people not to face possible charges.” 

Mother Jones sent Zeka messages asking who took his statement and whether he possessed any firsthand information implicating Smith in any wrongdoing. We also requested comment regarding his arrests. He replied, “You have read my statement. I have nothing more to add.” Qefalija, his wife, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

The statements from Sahitaj, Zeka, and Qefalija contain a whirl of allegations that are difficult to follow and assess. They appear tied to political disputes and intrigues related to the prosecution of war crimes in Kosovo. Bota Sot, a newspaper in Kosovo, reported in September that both Sahitaj and Zeka were involved in a wiretapping scandal related to Serbian intelligence and persons accused of war crimes. (Sahitaj has also been tied to a separate wiretapping controversy in Spain.) 

Neither Sahitaj nor Zeka, in their statements, present direct evidence of wrongdoing by Smith. His name only came up when mentioned by the man Sahitaj knew as Florian, whose credibility they each ended up questioning. Was Florian really a CIA officer? Or was something else afoot? Zeka’s statement also claims that this person was somehow connected to Charles McGonigal, the FBI official who pleaded guilty to money laundering, violating US sanctions on Russia, and accepting $225,000 from an Albanian American named Agron Nezaj, a former Albanian intelligence employee. 

Dibran Hoxha, a political analyst and activist in Kosovo, says Zeka appears to be part of an opposition to the SPO that has developed in Kosovo since prosecutors began targeting former members of the KLA, in addition to Serbs, for war crimes in the 1990s. “They want to delegitimize the functioning and the role of the court,” Hoxha explains. He adds that these critics, with their grudges against Smith, have seemingly found “a common interest” with Trump supporters in the United States.

The Justice Department did not reply to a request for comment regarding Moynihan’s allegations. 

The MAGA right has seized on Sahitaj’s uncorroborated story to disparage Smith. And there’s an interesting piece of history to this episode. In June 2020, the SPO announced the indictment of Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi. This came three days before he was to travel to the United States for a special summit with Serbia at the Trump White House. Thaçi had been one of the top commanders of the KLA during Kosovo’s war for independence. The SPO said that after a “lengthy investigation,” it could demonstrate “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Thaçi, who denied committing war crimes, and others had perpetrated “murder, enforced disappearance of persons, persecution, and torture.” It alleged the victims numbered nearly 100. 

In response to the indictment, Thaçi canceled his trip to Washington, and the summit was scuttled. This meeting, promoted as a step toward a final peace settlement between Kosovo and Serbia, was touted by the Trump administration as a major accomplishment. The talks had been brokered by Ric Grenell, a Trump-appointed special envoy. Some European diplomats feared Grenell had rushed the negotiations, which included dicey land swaps that had the potential to rekindle the fighting. Several months later, Thaçi resigned. (The Thaçi case is pending. He has pleaded not guilty.) 

Smith’s decision to indict Thaçi before the summit has long rankled Trump and his crew. Earlier this year, Trump, apparently referencing Thaçi, put up a social media post that accused Smith of seeking to put “a high government official in prison because he was a Trump positive person.” After Smith was appointed special counsel to investigate Trump, Grenell, a fierce Trump cheerleader and potential top national security official if Trump regains the White House, claimed that Smith had indicted Thaci purely for Smith’s own benefit. He tweeted, “Jack Smith’s actions to indict and imprison [based on] a 20 year old accusation simply because President Thaçi was negotiating a big agreement that would end Jack’s cushy job is a scandal.”

After Smith in June indicted Trump for mishandling sensitive government documents, Grenell declared, “He has always overplayed his hand in the cases he’s handled because he’s an emotional partisan activist. His Kosovo case is falling apart and his own witnesses there are now claiming he and his team at The Hague faked CIA officials to intimidate them.” Earlier this month, Grenell in an interview with America’s Future, a group led by Mike Flynn, slammed Smith as “willing to do anything, including manipulating the rule of law, to indict his political opponents and put them in jail. What Smith did to Kosovo President Hashim Thaci was purely political. It was designed to ruin President Trump’s negotiations to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia.”

This latest effort to undermine Smith echoes the Trump gang’s attempt to tar Joe Biden with allegations from Ukraine. Prior to the 2020 election, Giuliani, on Trump’s behalf, went hunting for dirt on Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine and ended up collaborating with Ukraine officials who have been cited by the US government as Russian disinformation agents. To concoct a scandal, Giuliani and right-wing media disseminated allegations from unreliable sources that emerged from the cauldron of Ukraine politics and that were unsupported or debunked. The made-in-Kosovo Smith allegations have a similar ring. Moynihan states in his complaint that he is unable to “corroborate” these “serious allegations,” insisting the Justice Department and other US agencies must investigate them. This lack of corroboration is unlikely to keep these allegations from spreading. For the moment, they are percolating within far-right circles. But if the past is any guide, they could soon be coming to a cable news show or congressional hearing.

After Jan. 6, Brad Parscale Felt “Guilty” for Helping Trump. Now He’s Back on Trump’s Gravy Train.

On the evening of January 6, 2021, Brad Parscale texted Donald Trump adviser Katrina Pierson about the insurrectionist assault on the US Capitol that had finally been quashed by police. “This is about [T]rump pushing for uncertainty in our country,” wrote Parscale, who ran digital and data operations for Trump’s 2016 campaign and managed his 2020 reelection effort before being replaced. “A sitting president asking for civil war. This week I feel guilty for helping him win.”

“You did what you felt right at the time and therefore it was right,” Pierson replied.

“Yeah,” Parscale answered, “but a woman is dead.” The conversation continued, with Pierson texting, “You do realize this was going to happen.” Parscale responded that Trump’s rhetoric had “killed someone.” Pierson countered, “It wasn’t the rhetoric.”

Parscale didn’t buy that, telling Pierson, “Katrina. Yes it was.” Parscale was obviously blaming Trump for the storming of the Capitol and the death of Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt. In these private texts—which were not made public until mid-2022 during the House investigation of January 6—Parscale’s regret over his own role in making Trump president is clear.

But that regret isn’t getting in the way of Parscale’s desire to make a buck. Since the start of 2023, Parscale has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars providing services to Trump’s 2024 campaign with a company that boasts it uses artificial intelligence to assist conservative candidates. 

2020 was not a great year for Parscale. That July, he was demoted from his post as Trump’s campaign manager, though he was kept on as an adviser for data and digital operations. Two months later, he made national news when police were called to his Florida home, and his wife reported that he was screaming, behaving erratically, waving a loaded and cocked gun, and threatening to kill himself. SWAT team officers tackled him, and he was involuntarily committed.

After this episode, Parscale stepped down from the Trump campaign. He seemed done for. Yet months later, he was back in the game, reviving his political consulting firm, Parscale Strategy, and launching a start-up called Campaign Nucleus, which would provide assorted data and communications services to right-wing candidates. 

According to Federal Election Committee records, Parscale Strategy has so far not brought in much revenue from federal political candidates or organizations—only $840 in total for working on a website for a super PAC called Jefferson Rising that hasn’t yet raised any money.

But Parscale’s Campaign Nucleus business has been cashing in on the Trump campaign. It has pocketed at least $385,000 in payments from Trump-related entities in 2023, through October. FEC filings show that the firm is collecting $20,000 a month from Trump’s election committee for fundraising software. It has also received $25,000 from Make America Great Again, Inc., the pro-Trump super PAC, for web hosting and email marketing. Campaign Nucleus pulled in an additional $180,000 for fundraising services from Trump Save America, a joint fundraising effort that benefits Trump’s official campaign committee and a Trump-run PAC. This is quite a haul for Parscale’s new company. Its only other major federal client is the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which paid the firm about $70,000 for list rentals. 

Campaign Nucleus sells itself as enabling “seamless department and product integration for every department in your campaign and organization.” And it says it can offer “targeted email campaigns that speak directly to your audience’s interests and needs. Leverage our robust segmentation and personalization features to tailor your messages based on demographics, interests, and past engagement.” A 2022 press release described Campaign Nucleus as “an AI-based digital platform that provides center-right candidates, organizations and corporations a centralized ecosystem to not only curate actionable data, but also build political movements through accountability, analysis and action.” It added, “Parscale’s experience as a developer, marketer and political consultant has shaped Campaign Nucleus, which can help win elections and drive influence.”

Parscale’s quiet return to TrumpWorld has not been reported in stories about Trump’s current campaign. He was most recently in the news for working with a company named AiAdvertising that intends to use artificial intelligence for ad campaigns that target individuals with hyper-personalized messages. “I think there’s a lot of patriot companies who want an agency that’s a non-woke, Christian-based agency that wants to help grow their businesses,” Parscale told Texas Monthly in September. “I think AiAdvertising could be a leading company, delivering that service.”

To expand AiAdvertising, Parscale recruited as an investor Texas oil billionaire Tim Dunn, a right-wing Christian nationalist. Texas Monthly calls Dunn “arguably the most powerful financier of Texas Republican politics and…a major supporter of [far-right and impeached-but-not-convicted Texas Attorney General] Ken Paxton.” (Dunn did not reply to a request for comment.)

In 2022, Campaign Nucleus forged a “strategic relationship” with AiAdvertising to “leverage the Ai Ad Platform to provide persona-based dynamically created ads and creative content to Nucleus’ Customers,” according to an AiAdvertising press release. Parscale said at the time that this arrangement would yield “a revolutionary new eco-system which leverages artificial intelligence in marketing and advertising for both political and commercial use. Together, we provide the most innovative marketing and advertising solutions that will automate much of the efforts that have to be manually orchestrated during political elections and commercial advertising campaigns.”

Parscale has come a long way from when he first entered the Trump cosmos. In 2012, as a San Antonio-based website developer, he made a bid to design a site for the Trump Organization. He purposefully proposed a low estimate that might not be profitable. But that won him entry into the Trump world and eventually earned him hundreds of thousands of dollars in work in the coming years. In 2015, he built the website for Trump’s presidential campaign; he earned Jared Kushner’s favor and became the campaign’s digital director. Parscale had the campaign place a big bet on Facebook—it paid off—and according to former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski, $94 million in campaign money flowed through Parscale’s business. In the years after Trump entered the White House, Parscale Strategy earned tens of millions of dollars from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. When he was manager of Trump’s 2020 campaign, Parscale pulled in $300,000 a year. 

Parscale’s texts show that in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 riot, he was wrestling with his responsibility for helping Trump reach the presidency. But two years later, he was back on the Trump gravy train and assisting Trump’s restoration crusade. This time around, is Parscale merely a vendor for the Trump campaign and not part of its brain trust? As Trump has ramped up his authoritarian and divisive rhetoric—the sort of rhetoric that Parscale blamed for the attack on the Capitol—has Trump’s former digital guru returned to Trump’s inner circle?

Parscale did not respond to multiple email requests for comments. And the Trump campaign did not reply to a request for comment. Whatever his role, Parscale has gone from ruing the day he signed up with Trump to making big bucks helping the former president he once disparaged return to the White House.