David Corn's Blog, page 17

Jamie Raskin Explains Why He Voted to Keep George Santos in Congress…For Now

On Wednesday night, uber-liar George Santos faced the ultimate penalty for a member of Congress: expulsion. Several of his fellow New York Republicans, who have come to believe he’s bad news for the GOP, pushed a measure to bounce him from the House—a bill that required a two-thirds majority vote. Lucky George looked on as only 179 of his colleagues said aye and 213 voted against de-Santosfication. The vote was not a party-line affair. While most Republicans stuck with Santos, two dozen voted to kick him to curb. A whopping majority of the Democrats pushed the button to toss him, yet 31 Democrats voted against pink-slipping Santos.

One of those Democrats who declined to show Santos the door was Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a popular progressive leader. He released a statement explaining his nay vote, noting that as a “Constitution guy” he believes that even Santos—who is under federal indictment but has yet to be convicted of a crime or found in violation of House rules by an ongoing ethics investigation— deserves due process before being canned. Not too long after the vote, Raskin spoke with me to elaborate. He was sure to point out that if Santos is convicted or if the House Ethics Committee—which could soon  release a report on Santos—concludes Santos transgressed in an official manner, he will be delighted to vote for a defenestration.

NEW: @RepRaskin was one of 31 Democrats who voted not to throw George Santos out of the House. He explains why to @davidcorndc and notes that he's waiting to see if a forthcoming House ethics report on Santos will provide cause to bounce the indicted liar. pic.twitter.com/GXaWqxIihz

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) November 2, 2023

Mike Johnson Urged a Religious Test for Politicians

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

The elevation of Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) to House speaker was a shocker. Not since John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate has a heretofore little-known politician been lifted so quickly to a position of prominence and importance. Though Johnson now is second in the line of presidential succession, we’re still finding out basic and important facts about him and how he sees the world. This includes his alarming record as a hardcore conservative cultural warrior, motivated by a Christian fundamentalist belief, who has fiercely opposed gay rights (comparing homosexuality to pedophilia), called for a total nationwide ban on abortion, proposed the end of no-fault divorce, and urged a return to “18th century values.” One more significant thing I’ve discovered is that Johnson appears to believe in a religious litmus test for politicians.

This weekend I broke the news that Johnson and his wife, Kelly Johnson, a self-described Christian counselor, a few years ago created a seminar that promoted the premise that the United States has been a “Christian nation.” I found a video of one of these sessions they held in 2019 at the Baptist church they belong to in Bossier City, Louisiana. At that event, from the pulpit, Kelly declared that “biblical Christianity”—that is, a literal reading of the Bible as fundamentalists interpret it—is the only “valid worldview,” and nothing else makes sense. (This worldview includes creationism—believing that the Earth was created by God in six days 6,000 years ago—and the denial of evolution.) Mike Johnson called for “biblically sanctioned government.” In this venue and many others, including a podcast they have hosted together, the pair have contended that there is only one truth: “Jesus’ truth.”

The Johnsons are diehard fundamentalists who believe every religion other than their brand of Christianity is false and that whatever is written in the Bible should dictate all conduct, rules, policies, and laws. As I reported earlier, Mike Johnson in 2016 exclaimed, “We’re living in a completely amoral society.” The only way out, according to him and Kelly, is to abide by the Bible.

This is a lot to absorb. We’re often uncomfortable discussing a politician’s faith. But in this case, Johnson acknowledges that his fundamentalism determines his politics and policy positions. As he said during a Fox interview, “I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘It’s curious, people are curious: What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.'”

After reporting the story on the seminars he and his wife conducted, I went back and watched the video again and found another important nugget that I’m sharing here for the first time. Toward the end of that three-hour-long presentation, Johnson instructed the assembled on how they ought to apply their religious beliefs to politics:

You better sit down any candidate who says they’re going to run for legislature and say, “I want to know what your worldview is. I want to know what, to know what you think about the Christian heritage of this country. I want to know what you think about God’s design for society. Have you even thought about that?” If they hadn’t thought about it, you need to move on and find somebody who has…We have too many people in government who don’t know any of this stuff. They haven’t even thought about it.

This remark came after Kelly and Mike had repeatedly asserted that the Christian fundamentalist worldview—based entirely on what appears in the Old and New Testaments—is the only legitimate worldview.

Johnson was telling the folks in the pews that the only political candidates deserving support are those who share this worldview and who embrace the notion that the United States has been a Christian nation. This smacks of Christian nationalism and appears to be a religious test for politics.

Johnson, of course, is free to follow his values, back politicians who are fundamentalist Christians, and press others to do the same, believing that only people who follow his take on Christianity are worthy of holding elected office. But doing so demonstrates a narrow and rigid view of life and suggests that he yearns for a theocracy—a government run only by Christian fundamentalists who base all their decisions on what they consider to be the “absolute truth” of the Bible.

A good example of how Johnson’s faith affects his approach to public policy occurred earlier in this seminar, when he discussed climate change. He asserted that the demand for action to address the climate crisis “defies the created order of how this is all supposed to work.” He explained that the Bible presents an order to life: There’s God, beneath God is “man,” and below that all the animals. Humans are to follow God’s command to “take dominion of the Earth. You subdue it…We’re supposed to eat those animals.”

Johnson noted that environmentalists ignore God’s word, and he compared them to the devil:

When you take God out of the equation, and you remove absolute truths…you got to make all this stuff up. So what they’ve done is, as the devil always does, they take the truth and they turn it upside down. So the radical environmentalists—they actually believe that the environment is God.

Johnson adheres to a harsh perspective. The only truth is what he preaches. The only true religion is what he practices. The only guide to the problems of modern society is the Bible. Environmentalists are akin to Satan.

Johnson does come across as a mild-mannered fellow. Indeed, during this seminar, he told his co-religionists that they need to promote their truth in a Christ-like fashion, with loving and kindness, and that they must avoid bitterness or anger. Do not be quarrelsome, he advised. Don’t try to silence or censor others. Let the critics and foes have their say, for, ultimately, nothing can defeat the one and only truth that Johnson and his comrades in Christ hold.

Johnson’s amenable persona is a cover for his extremism. He sees himself as part of a small band of righteous Christian soldiers combatting an “amoral” society. (His wife’s business was called Onward Christian Counseling Services. After he became speaker, she took down its website.) For Johnson, this is truly a war for the soul of the nation. With a Bible in his hand, he and a small slice of Americans are up against dark and Satanic forces. Still, Johnson is a happy warrior—albeit an intolerant one who believes that only he and his fellow faith-keepers possess the truth and deserve access to power. He cannot accept the religious and cultural diversity of this nation and the world. He is much better suited to be a preacher than a leader just two heartbeats away from the presidency.

Mike Johnson Conducted Seminars Promoting the US as a “Christian Nation”

Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected Republican House speaker, used to conduct a seminar in churches premised on the idea that the United States is a “Christian nation.” This ministry, as he has referred to it, is yet more evidence that Johnson is committed to a hardcore Christian fundamentalism that shapes his views of politics and government.

The seminar, titled “Answers for Our Times: Government, Culture, and Christianity,” was organized by Onward Christian Education Services, Inc., a company owned by his wife, Kelly Johnson, a Christian counselor and anti-abortion activist who calls herself a “leader in the pro-family movement.” The website for her counseling service—which was taken down shortly after Johnson became speaker—described the seminar, which featured both her and Johnson, as exploring several questions, such as, “What is happening in America and how do we fix it?” The list includes this query: “Can our heritage as a Christian nation be preserved?” There were different versions of the seminar running from two-hour-long lectures to retreats lasting two days. 

Mike and Kelly Johnson, each a fundamentalist Christian and culture war battler who advocates adhering to what they call a “Biblical worldview,” launched this initiative in 2019. After one such presentation on February 24, 2019, at the First Baptist Church in Bossier City, Louisiana, where they are members—an event that also featured Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council—a local television news show reported that the seminar’s goal was to “keep God in Government.” Johnson posted the article on his congressional website. 

According to a Louisiana Baptist newsletter, the Johnsons intended to first pitch their seminars to Baptist churches in the Pelican State before expanding to other states. The publication reported that the couple’s goal was “to equip churches to take a stand against the cultural attacks now being directed at people of faith, the traditional family and basic freedoms embedded in the U.S. Constitution.” It noted that Johnson said he was compelled to create this new ministry while serving in the US House because he was concerned “that too many believers today feel ill-informed to provide substantive answers to fake arguments.” It quoted Johnson: “Our nation is entering one of the most challenging seasons in its history and there is an urgent need for God’s people to be armed and ready with the Truth.” He was referring to what fundamentalists call “Biblical truth.”

A promotion blurb for the seminar described it this way: “As polls show that Christianity is in rapid decline in America, and the culture is growing more secularized and more coarsened, many believers feel ill-informed and ill-prepared to do anything to reverse these trends. Scripture is clear that we have an obligation to provide substantive answers… But HOW?”

“The government has replaced the Creator. Government is becoming God.”

At a “Answers for Our Times” seminar held at the First Baptist Church of Haughton, Louisiana, in April 2019, Kelly Johnson proclaimed that “Biblical Christianity” is the only “valid worldview.” Nothing else, she said, “makes sense.” She contended that guidance to the problems of today can be found in the “simple answers in the Bible.” Mike Johnson referred to the Bible as the “owner’s manual” for “how things are supposed to operate” and called for “Biblically-sanctioned government.” Johnson complained that there is now “total chaos on the street… God’s not at the top anymore.” He added, “The problem is most people” want “the government to take care of us now, we want the government to provide us everything… It will not work because it defies the created order of the Creator… The government has replaced the Creator. Government is becoming God.”

Mike Johnson ran through a quick version of US history, in which he insisted, “We began as a Christian nation.” He pointed out that Christopher Columbus said that he journeyed to the Americas “to bring the gospel to unknown coastlands and people.” Johnson added, “We would call him an evangelical today.” Fired up, he offered a litany of statements from the nation’s founders, government officials, and Supreme Court officials who cited God or religion as essential to the United States. “Is this a Christian nation?” he asked. “Yes, we live in a post-Christian culture. I think that’s beyond dispute. You can’t even argue with a straight face that this did not begin as a Christian nation.”

“You can’t even argue with a straight face that this did not begin as a Christian nation.”

At this seminar, Mike Johnson groused that few of his colleagues in government abide by or even recognize God’s principles—that is, his view of God’s principles—and he expressed great cynicism about his fellow politicians: 

A shocking number of elected officials in this country and state do not have a fully formed philosophy of government. They don’t know what their world view is. They’re just moving around waiting for whatever the loudest voice or the most powerful lobbyist tells them how to vote. God help us. That’s why we’re in the situation we’re in… They poll it. It’s not necessarily what his constituents want. I try to do every day what my constituents want. But sometimes what your constituents want does not line up with the principles God gave us for government. And you have to have conviction enough to stand [up] to your own people in a town hall and say, “I know you feel that way, but this is what you’re missing.” And I’m telling you, there’s a tiny percentage of elected officials who are willing to do that. 

Mike Johnson sees himself as part of small band of righteous officials who take on the hard task of governing strictly according to the tenets of Christian fundamentalism. He and Kelly are true believers. He has long associated with Christian nationalism; crusaded against gay rights and same-sex marriage; decried no-fault divorce; and pushed for a total ban on abortion. Her Christian counseling practice has compared homosexuality to bestiality and incest. They share a dark view of the modern world. In a sermon he preached in 2016, Johnson declared, “We’re living in a completely amoral society.” And during a podcast last year with Jordan Peterson, the Canadian conservative provocateur, he said that “sinister” elites were responsible for orchestrating climate change as an issue to achieve global “control.”

In a time of political upheaval, cultural clashes, and war, it’s clear that Mike Johnson believes he has the solution. It’s not government of the people, but government shaped by his fundamentalist worldview. As his wife and partner-in-preaching says, nothing else makes sense. They possess the truth, and now, as he has become second in the line of presidential succession, he has the opportunity to meld power to this truth and serve the goal of making America a Christian nation. 

Mike Johnson Hates America, But He Believes He Can Save It

Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker of the House, has a very dark view of America. He believes that the United States is “a completely amoral society” and that global “sinister” forces have a hold on some of its governmental policies. 

Immediately after Johnson—a little known congressman from Louisiana whose most notable act to date has been leading the effort to block the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory—was elevated by the House GOP to be speaker,  people started digging into his background and discovered that he was a far-right Christian fundamentalist who seeks to ban all abortions, who has called for getting rid of no-fault divorce, who has decried same-sex marriage, and who has compared homosexuality to pedophilia. He is a culture war extremist. 

He also seems to hate America—at least, modern-day America.

In a 2016 sermon he preached at the Christian Center of Shreveport—while he was running for Congress—Johnson summed up his take on the United States. Standing before an American flag and an Israeli flag, Johnson delivered a 90-minute-long presentation in which he traced all present ills to the countercultural upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s that undermined “the foundations of religion and morality.” He ticked off the culprits: no-fault divorce, the sexual revolution, radical feminism, and legalized abortion. “Collectively as Americans,” he declared, “we began to get together in growing number and thumb our noses at the Creator and say we don’t believe that anymore.” The nation, he bemoaned, chose a path of “moral relativism.” He pronounced a harsh verdict: “We’re living in a completely amoral society.”

That was quite an indictment: the United States as a godless nation and a moral wreck. But Johnson meant it. He continued: “We’ve taught a whole generation, a couple of generations now, that there is no right or wrong, that it’s about the survival of the fittest, and you evolved from the primordial slime.” One result, he claimed, was school shootings. Yes, the teaching of evolution has led to these bloody massacres. 

Johnson’s schtick, earnestly and passionately delivered, was Christian Fundamentalism 101. If the nation doesn’t abide by the Christian Bible—as the fundamentalists read it—all is lost. That’s why he has long been a crusader against gay rights. In 2003, he denounced the Supreme Court for overturning a Texas sodomy law, insisting the state had the right “to discriminate between heterosexual and homosexual conduct.” He based his stance on “millennia of moral teaching.” Elsewhere, he has cited the Bible for his opposition to same-sex marriage and has urged the criminalization of homosexuality. 

With his wife, Kelly Johnson, as a co-host, Johnson has produced a podcast for the past two years. On the inaugural broadcast in March 2022, Kelly reported what for her was a disturbing poll: “Just 4 percent of Americans still adhere to a biblical world view.” Mike Johnson called that “a real shocking trend.” He remarked, “Even if you’re not a Christian, why should you care about a biblical worldview slipping away from us? Because it happens to be the foundational principle, the premise of the country.” In essence, the United States needs to stick to that “biblical worldview”—or else.

In that same podcast, Kelly warned of socialism within the United States. “Socialism always turns into communism at some point,” she declared. Her husband noted that what was fundamentally wrong with socialism is that it “begins with the idea that there is no God.” Such statements show that the Johnsons hold a rather narrow perspective on these matters. There are plenty of Western democracies where citizens support socialist programs and believe in Christianity, including the United States. (Is the United Kingdom’s National Health Service anti-God? Is Medicare or Social Security?) 

But for Mike Johnson, the world is full of devilish and anti-Christian forces. On a podcast that featured him and Jordan Peterson, the Canadian conservative provocateur, the pair turned toward the topic of climate change. Johnson demeaned climate activists as irrational, and he contended that they “regarded the climate agenda as part of their religion.” He continued: “They’re not serving the people. They’re serving the planet…They have effectively replaced Father God with Mother Earth…They believe we owe fealty to Mother Earth. We are created by the Earth, they believe. So we must owe everything to the Earth itself.” He was saying climate advocates were anti-God. 

Johnson took it further. Peterson, who depicted climate change as a hoax, suggested that there was “something more nefarious going on…even than we owe fealty to the planet. It’s something like we have to destroy capitalism at all cost.” Johnson agreed: “I think that’s right. They’re consistently irrational. At a local or regional level here in the US, for example, I think the religious zeal argument makes some sense. But I do think on the international level, the persons who are ultimately responsible for this, those who are pushing the agenda, the elites at the top of the food chain, so to speak, there is a more sinister agenda. Ultimately, you and I, I think, agree this is about government control. They will pursue that with religious fervor, of course, as well. And they seem to have gotten the entire civilized world bought in on this, at least the leaders of many of these nations bought in on this idea that we have to pursue this agenda at any cost.”

When Peterson said that he found it “too convenient” that the solution to climate change is to grant power to governments to use “compulsion” to implement “their desired policies,” Johnson replied, “That’s exactly right.” The congressman noted that going along with “this agenda” required people to sacrifice “their freedom.”

This was Alex Jones terrain. Johnson was agreeing with Peterson that climate change was a diabolical scheme cooked up by a cabal of global elites as nothing other than a power grab. 

The above is just a dip in the pool of Johnson’s extremist stances. But taken together, this shows that Johnson, whose public demeanor is gentle and polite, is propelled by a rather grim and Manichean attitude toward the world. The United States is a moral hellhole. Those who embrace a biblical perspective, like he and Kelly do, are a small and decreasing minority—backs against the wall—fighting for the light in a time of darkness. And “sinister” conspirators at the global level are plotting against them. 

Yet Johnson still has faith. In the podcasts with his wife, the pair constantly affirm that their truth is the only truth and that the fight for their truth will eventually be victorious. In his first speech after becoming speaker, Johnson proclaimed, “I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear. That God is the one that raises up those in authority.” He must be interpreting his improbable rise to speakership as an act of God—and a step toward the “biblical” United States for which he has long yearned.

How the 47 Percent Video Drove Mitt Romney to Depression and Nearly Out of the 2012 Race

During the 2012 presidential campaign, when I obtained and posted a secretly recorded video of GOP nominee Mitt Romney deriding 47 percent of Americans as shiftless freeloaders who don’t “take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” I assumed this scoop would have an impact on the election. With President Barack Obama and the Democrats striving to define Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat who made millions acquiring companies he could break up or downsize—which meant throwing employees out of work—here was hard-and-fast evidence, in his own words, of a demeaning attitude toward nearly half the country. And, indeed, this revelation did shake up the race and place Romney on the defensive in the final stretch of the campaign. But what I didn’t think about at the time was how this story might affect Romney personally. Now we know. According to Romney’s own account, revealed in a new book out this week, the 47 percent exposé sent him into an emotional tailspin and caused him to ponder dropping out of the race. 

In Romney: A Reckoning, McKay Coppins, a reporter for the Atlantic, who conducted extensive interviews with Romney, recounts what happened within the Romney campaign and within Romney’s own mind when the 47 percent video hit. On the afternoon of September 17, 2012, after Romney had received his first classified national security briefing at the FBI building in Los Angeles, he was in a black SUV, and an aide handed him an iPad that showed the Mother Jones story with an alarming headline: “SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters.” Romney had been caught at a private Boca Raton fundraiser attended by big-money contributors scoffing at half of America. “My job is not to worry about those people,” the told the crowd of wealthy swells. He and his aides immediately realized this clip posed a threat to their campaign. 

As the video rocketed across the internet, Romney’s strategists plotted how best to respond. Romney thought about what had occurred at that event. A donor who had griped that “everybody” in America had been told “don’t worry, we’ll take care of you” had asked Romney how he could “convince everybody you’ve got to take care of yourself.” Romney now told himself that this had been a dumb question, and he had been stupid to accept its premise. But he recalled that he merely had been trying to be polite in answering the query. Besides, he had only made the obvious political point that he needed to focus on a narrow swath of voters to win the election. He realized his phrasing had been inartful, but, as Coppins writes, he believed “those who were trying to turn this into some great controversy were being disingenuous.”

Romney sure did misread the situation, and he and his campaign reacted clumsily to the video. A spokesperson released a statement: “Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy. As the governor has made clear all year, he is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government.” It contained no apology or admission of wrongdoing. At a press conference held hours after the story appeared, Romney insisted that what he said in the video “is the same message I give to people” on the campaign trail. His only failing, he said, was in the delivery. “It’s not elegantly stated, let me put it that way,” Romney said. “I’m speaking off the cuff in response to a question and, I’m sure I can say it more clearly”

That did not contain the firestorm. The Obama campaign denounced Romney. Assorted conservative pundits—Bill Kristol, David Brooks, and Peggy Noonan—piled on. Noonan proclaimed the Romney campaign “incompetent” and in need of a total shake-up. In his journal—to which Coppins had access—Romney blamed himself: “The team is excellent—the problem is me, not them!”

Many politicians would hold their staffers responsible for not getting them out of a jam. But not Romney. His own failure hit him hard. “As his polling free fall steepened and the media free-for-all raged on and reports trickled in that the campaign was now begging donors not to bail on his fundraisers,” Coppins writes, “Romney sank into a depression so deep that some in his orbit would wonder if his suffering was clinical.”

Coppins’ depiction of a devastated Romney is wrenching:

He could barely eat during the day and struggled to sleep at night, even after popping a Lunesta. He couldn’t even bring himself to listen to music in his hotel room—“just too sick at heart,” he wrote. When he tried to concentrate on briefing materials, his mind would drift toward the self-inflicted damage he had done to his campaign, and to all the people he had failed. To take his mind off it, he rode the elliptical at a punishing pace.

Night after night, Romney castigated himself in his private diary. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he wrote.

“Awful, shameful, sorrowful,” he wrote.

“How I will have let so many down,” he wrote. “I can’t dwell on it—it is overwhelmingly depressing, even agonizing. I am so, so very sorry.”

Romney was also haunted by a past screw-up committed by his father. In 1967, Michigan Gov. George Romney was a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination the following year. But he told a television journalist that during a 1965 tour of Vietnam he had been “brainwashed” by American generals into supporting the war there. The remark created a furor that essentially sank his campaign. Romney now feared that he was on the same path as his father. 

His campaign aides convened a “war council” in which Republican governors and other party leaders assured Romney that the 47 percent video was not a lethal blow to his candidacy. It didn’t work. “I get lower and lower as I think about how I have messed up, with such consequences for everyone who has been counting on me,” he confided to his journal. “I leave the session pretty depressed.”

Others tried to buck him up. George W. Bush called. Veteran political strategist Mike Murphy forwarded Romney ideas for rebooting his campaign. His wife Ann arranged for Romney to have a private session at a San Francisco hotel with motivational guru Tony Robbins. None of this lifted his mood. He also wasn’t helped by the internal polling conducted by the campaign that showed him trailing in every swing state.

The 47 percent video story had not faded. That was partly because every time Romney addressed it, he made the situation worse by sticking to the line that what he had meant to say was a reasonable observation. About 10 days after my story was published, a CBS News producer called me to say that she was amazed that it remained in the news cycle. “That never happens,” she remarked. It wouldn’t be until October 4 that Romney would admit that he had erred, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity, “In this case, I said something that’s just completely wrong.”

But by that point, Romney had already concluded that he was toast. Late on the night of September 30, Coppins reports, Romney called Stuart Stevens, his chief strategist, and asked, “Should I just drop out of the race?” He said that at this point another Republican—one not tagged as an uncaring 1-percenter— might have a better shot. He tossed out names, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. Stevens wouldn’t hear any of this. You’re sticking it out, he told Romney, and if you lose it won’t be because of the video.

At Stevens’ urging, Romney pulled out of his funk and got his head back in the game. Only a month was left before the election.

In the 11 years since I broke the 47 percent story, I have seen several analyses that try to determine whether or not that video was responsible for Romney’s defeat. (Obama won 51 to 47 percent.) The polling and statistics are generally inconclusive. But whether that story changed votes or not, the article kept the Romney campaign pinned down for about two weeks—a stretch representing one-fifth of the entire general election. Think of the opportunity cost. Whatever Romney and his aides wanted to accomplish during this fortnight, the 47 percent video story thwarted their plans. It cost them a most valuable resource in an election: time. 

Whatever the story did to shape the dynamics of the race, Coppins’ insightful and engaging biography chronicles how the video had a direct effect on Romney himself—throwing him into a sharp psychological decline. His private reaction to the video demonstrates a degree of character that is not evident in many politicians, especially present-day GOP leaders. He refused to heap blame on his aides. He wrestled with his own failure. Though he publicly resisted apologizing for two weeks, he was racked with guilt for letting down his staff, his supporters, and himself. And he couldn’t escape the reality of the video: It did suggest that Romney had bought into a particular conservative mindset that was all-too consistent with the image of Romney peddled by his political foes. His response indicated he was too stubborn to acknowledge that.

For many American voters, that 67-second-long clip defined Romney. Unfortunately for Romney, he was unable to show the world the fellow who was not an insensitive rich-guy automaton and who now stars in Coppins’ book.

How Donald Trump and Jared Kushner Overlooked the Key to Middle East Peace

On September 15, 2020, President Donald Trump, sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on a White House balcony, delivered a speech in which he declared they were changing the course of history. Celebrating the signing of normalization agreements between Israel and these two Arab states—known as the Abraham Accords—Trump proclaimed, “Together, these agreements will serve as the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region, something which nobody thought was possible, certainly not in this day and age.” In his remarks, Trump never once mentioned the Palestinians.

That morning, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser on Middle East policy, hit the television news shows to hail the accords. He hyped them as the “beginning of the end of the Israel-Arab conflict.” When asked about the unresolved issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Kushner, supremely confident, remarked, “Those issues aren’t as complicated as people have made them out to be.”

Oops.

Trump’s grand strategic approach to the Middle East, orchestrated by Kushner, was to focus on state-to-state relations between Israel and Arab nations. Cool down the temperature at that level—encourage trade, commerce tourism, cultural exchanges and other connections between Israel and its neighbors and allow Arab Muslims to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem—and peace will follow. These agreements were commendable and genuine diplomatic advances. But this overall approach essentially kicked the Palestinians and their grievances (the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, its apartheid policies, and its blockade of Gaza, which turned the strip, according to Human Rights Watch, into an “open-air prison”) to the curb. This justifiably angered Palestinians. In Gaza and elsewhere, Palestinians protested the accords for allowing Arab states to normalize relations with Israel absent a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. And the agreements ended up being not that popular in the Arab signatory states. 

“Less than four years ago,” Trump misleadingly asserted, “we had peace in the Middle East with the historic Abraham Accords.”

After Trump departed the White House, Kushner and other Trumpers insisted that Trump never received sufficient credit for the accords. Last September, at a ceremony marking the two-year anniversary of the agreements (which also came to include Sudan, Kosovo, and Morocco), Kushner griped that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” had prevented the Biden administration from recognizing this historic achievement of the Trump crew. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) called the accords “the most significant peace agreement of the 21st century, and history will always remember the pioneers of this peace deal.”

In March, speaking at a conference in Miami, Kushner again oversold the accords. He claimed that they boosted stability in the Middle East and that  “Arabs and Muslims [are] now able to say nice things about Israel and Jews,”

In a way, Trump and Kushner engaged in trickle-down diplomacy. They concentrated on brokering deals among the leaders of Arab states and Israel that ignored the Palestinians. (Kushner came up with a plan for an Israeli-Palestinian accord, which went nowhere, and he has said he believed it fizzled because Palestinian leaders were corrupt and not “incentivized” to solve the problem.) The Abraham Accords Declaration, a brief document signed on that historic day at the White House, called for “efforts to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue to advance a culture of peace among the three Abrahamic religions and all humanity.” It noted that the signers “believe that the best way to address challenges is through cooperation and dialogue and that developing friendly relations among States advances the interests of lasting peace in the Middle East and around the world.” It had no direct reference to the Palestinians.

Though the Biden administration rejected using the term “Abraham Accords”—it preferred calling these pacts “normalization” agreements—it recently was seeking a similar deal with Saudi Arabia, which could include a mutual defense pact and US assistance to the Saudis’ civilian nuclear program (which, of course, could also boost any effort by the Kingdom to cook up nuclear weapons). Like the agreements Trump and Kushner brokered, this accord—now presumably on hold or dead—did not appear to do much to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Not surprisingly, in the aftermath of the heinous Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and Israel’s counterstrikes on Gaza, Trump misleadingly claimed that he had brought peace to the Middle East when he was president. At a rally in New Hampshire, he asserted, “Less than four years ago we had peace in the Middle East with the historic Abraham Accords. Today, we have an all-out war in Israel and it’s going to spread very quickly. What a difference a president makes.”

Kushner, too, in recent days, has been insisting that Trump and he got it right in the Middle East. (Kushner certainly was generously rewarded for his work on the Middle East, which included arranging a $110 billion weapons sale to Saudi Arabia. Six months after leaving the White House, he secured a $2 billion investment from the kingdom for his new private equity firm.) In a podcast last week, he touted the Abraham Accords and said, “My hope and prayers are that President Trump is reelected and that he’s able to then restore calm and peace and prosperity to the world.”

The peace achieved by the accords was hardly a full peace. It left out the most critical part of the Middle East conflict. Israelis, the Palestinians, and the world are now paying the price for the lack of progress on this front. Cobbling together the Abraham Accords was akin to clearing brush—a useful and important endeavor—but it left in place a massive pile of tinder. A wildfire now rages, and Trump and Kushner’s strategy has gone up in smoke.

Steve Bannon and Alex Jones Have a Bizarre Conspiracy Theory About the Israel-Hamas War

There’s nothing like war to bring out the crazy in the crazy far-right. 

As the Israeli military pummeled Gaza and created a humanitarian crisis in response to Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians, Steve Bannon and Alex Jones found common cause in a conspiracy theory explaining what’s really going on with this war. The coming together of this pair demonstrates how far the MAGA right has descended into the swamps of paranoia and irrationality, as Trump’s onetime chief strategist has mind-melded with the nation’s leading and most scurrilous conspiracist.

Jones is perhaps best known for promoting the noxious notion that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was faked to boost support for gun control. Last year, juries in Connecticut and Texas ordered him to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to a first responder and the families of the victims for spreading defamatory falsehoods about this tragedy. But Jones has been a purveyor of a many other conspiracy theories—about 9/11, the 1969 moon landing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 2020 election, and Covid. In between hustling dietary supplements on his talk show, he has told his audience that chemtrail emissions from aircraft are part of a clandestine scheme to poison humans or cause extreme weather, and he has claimed the government is inserting substances into children—via juice boxes!—to make kids gay. His Infowars promoted the absurd Pizzagate theory that Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats were running a child sex ring in the basement of a Washington, DC, pizzeria. His grand claim—the uber-theory of Jones-ology—is that all this evil is being perpetuated by a secretive global elite to implement a clandestine plan to kill off or enslave most of the planet’s population. And for kicks, members of this cabal eat babies shipped to them in gold foil.

Since Donald Trump, while campaigning for the presidency, appeared on Jones’ show in 2015 and praised him—”Your reputation is amazing”—Jones has been part of the Trump cosmos. During the 2016 GOP convention, he was spotted entering the hall wearing a “special guest” badge. On January 5, 2021, he was a featured speaker at a “Stop the Steal” rally held on Capitol Hill the day before the insurrectionist riot. At that event, he decried “globalists” who “brainwash and gaslight the public,” and he denounced “the “satanists who run this system.” He called Joe Biden a “Chinese communist agent” and claimed the Covid pandemic was a “hoax.” 

So, naturally, this week when Steve Bannon wanted to discuss the conflict under way in Israel and Palestine on his internet talk show, War Room, he turned to Jones. That made sense, for Bannon was peddling his own conspiracy theory about the war. During the broadcast, he noted that he was “very concerned a trap has been laid for us in Gaza by the Chinese Communist Party and the Persians.” The “Persians” is how Bannon refers to Iran. And he was suggesting that Tehran and Beijing had somehow cooked up this crisis to suck the United States into a war and distract it from China’s plan to dominate the world. 

After making that point, he turned to Jones, who fleshed out the conspiracy Bannon hinted at. Jones urged viewers to “look at this at a multidimensional level, not just a one-dimensional level.” He continued:

Why did Biden give the $6 billion five weeks ago to the mullahs in Iran who then gave it to Hezbollah who gave it to Hamas? Why did we give them $80 billion-plus weapons and equipment in Afghanistan just two years ago? Why are they doing this? Because there’s larger globalist forces and, of course, communist China is right in the center of that—the jewel and the crown—that want to wear our America, destabilize America, and drive nations of the world away from a Western uni-power to this multi-polar world they talk about that really will finally end up unseating the US as the dominant force of the planet.

Jones’ feed was cut off by a technical glitch at that point, and his ravings came to an end. (Factcheck: Biden did not hand over $6 billion to Iran. As part of a deal to free hostages, he unfroze Iranian funds for use for humanitarian purposes—and that money has not yet not been released.) Yet later in the show, Bannon amplified the idea that the new Israel-Hamas crisis was covertly orchestrated by China and Iran as part of the 10,000-year-long crusade waged by the “Persians” against the West. He went on to claim that unnamed nefarious actors had tried to force Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of office—”exactly the same playbook they ran on Trump”—an apparent reference to the widespread protests against Netanyahu that raged in Israel prior to the war and his ongoing criminal trial for alleged bribery and fraud. And referencing the Israeli military’s failure to pick up warning of the Hamas attack and respond quickly, he observed, “Is the military there, is the problem that it’s woke like the US military?”

Bannon was serving up a melange of conspiratorial talking points. He eventually put all this to a commercial purpose, remarking, “The war between the Persians and the West goes back to time immemorial. Gold was a hedge then. It’s a hedge now.” He urged his viewers to visit a website for an advertiser who peddles gold.

On his own Infowars show, Jones more fully explained what’s actually happening in the Middle East. He counseled his viewers to consider the  “third-dimensional, fourth-dimensional, fifth-dimensional” levels of analysis: “Don’t buy into the corporate mind control of ‘are you for the Palestinians or are you for the Israelis?’ You realize we’re all being targeted by the same globalist forces.”

Jones asserted that Israel founded Hamas and that Netanyahu purposefully stood down the Israeli military during Hamas’ attack—because he wanted a war to distract attention from his corruption scandal. There’s more: The Biden administration and military contractors both helped engineer this war that will bring corporations big profits and allow for the expansion of state surveillance and the exploitation of fear to control populations in nations around the world. And there’s even more: The evildoing globalists have a plan: “You create one group or fund one group, you create and fund another group, you collide them together.” Then the “media and the corporate systems and the central [banks]” can impose a solution that gives them more power. 

Jones noted that neither the Covid pandemic, the “climate scam,” nor the Ukrainian war has allowed the “globalists to gain control.” So now these schemers “move to war in Gaza.” That, he added, is the “fourth- or fifth-dimensional level.” Netanyanhu, he asserted, “does what the New World Order tells him. Biden does what the New World Order tells him.”

This is the sort of analysis that Bannon believes Americans need. So much so that he has written the foreword for a book that Jones is scheduled to release next week. In that foreword, Bannon proclaims, “For more than twenty years, no populist figure has had more of a bayonet to the back of the Deep State than Alex Jones.” It’s a full-throated endorsement of a dangerous grifter. 

The publicity material for Jones’ new book exclaims that Jones reveals the “failed plans of social Darwinists to capture free market capitalism and turn it toward their fascist aims of controlling and depopulating the globe.” It describes Jones as the leading foe of “the anti-human future the globalists have planned for us,” adding, “God consistently works His will in our world, even through imperfect individuals like Donald Trump, Alex Jones, or you.”

Bannon remains an important voice and strategist for the Trump right—and could well be advising Trump. His alliance with Jones is more evidence that this alt-right champion who co-founded Breitbart and went on to be a top Trump aide—before being indicted (twice) for fraud and hooking up with a fugitive Chinese tycoon recently indicted for fraud—has fallen completely into the world of conspiratorial nuttery. 

Biden Cannot Give Netanyahu a Blank Check

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

The horrific massacres waged by Hamas against Israeli civilians and the horrific Israeli counterstrikes that have caused a humanitarian crisis in Gaza have prompted extreme and callous responses. Fringe far-left outfits, campus groups, and some pro-Palestinian activists have justified Hamas’ vile attacks, while Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) endorsed wiping out Gaza, not just Hamas. As I noted in a previous newsletter, any dehumanization that allows for a blasé attitude toward the murder of civilians is condemnable. But when such a stance is adopted by persons with power and influence, it especially warrants opprobrium. On Fox News, when asked about the dire conditions, destruction, and deaths in Gaza caused by the Israeli assault, Cotton showed no compassion: “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza. Anything that happens in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas…If we can back Ukraine for as long as it takes, surely we can back Israel for as long as it takes.”

Back Israel for as long as it takes. That has often been the sentiment within the United States—a bipartisan consensus in which supporting Israel means fully embracing its government and policies. For the diehard pro-Israel lobby, the goal has always been to cut off criticism of Israel, even when vigorous debate has waged within Israel about its actions. Once again, we have seen the emergence of the Israel-can-do-no-wrong crowd. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), for example, called for Israel to use “overwhelming force” in Gaza, as its airstrikes kill, injure, and displace thousands of Palestinian civilians. He rationalized this by insisting that all Palestinians in Gaza are antisemitic.

DeSantis and other Republican 2024 contenders slammed GOP frontrunner Donald Trump for daring to criticize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for being ill-prepared for the Hamas attack. (Trump was probably more ticked off that Netanyahu never supported his Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.) In the face of this pounding from his rivals, Trump quickly backtracked and posted “#IStandWithIsrael” and “#IStandWithBibi” on social media.

Equating Netanyahu and Israel is a problem for those who profess support for Israel. He has been disastrous for Israel. Accused multiple times of corruption, he has elevated racist ultra-nationalists to the highest ranks of the Israeli government, and he has pursued measures to weaken Israeli democracy and consolidate power within his own office—prompting mass protest and bitterly dividing the nation. He has allowed the expansion of settlements and done nothing but exacerbate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu miscalculated and ignored a fundamental challenge for Israel.

As Michael Hirsh put it in Foreign Policy:

Netanyahu suddenly faces a long, bloody war with the Palestinians after spending most of his political career sidelining, short-shrifting, and underestimating them, all the while relying on his country’s military superiority—including its Iron Dome anti-missile system—to protect Israel… Netanyahu’s policies helped create the conditions that led to the bloodiest few days in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Netanyahu not only disregarded Palestinian grievances while chasing after normalization accords with Arab states. He connived to solidify Hamas’ standing in Gaza as a means to undercut the Palestinian Authority—which allowed him to duck serious negotiations to reach a permanent resolution. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, “Netanyahu pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy by propping up Hamas, while at the same time weakening the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, said Yohanan Plesner, a former lawmaker and head of the Jerusalem-based think tank the Israel Democracy Institute.” A 19-year-old Israeli summed it up rather simply: “Bibi chose to give us Iron Dome instead of a diplomatic solution.”

And Netanyahu’s most immediate screwup of all: He failed to foresee or prepare adequately for the heinous attacks from Gaza.

With this record, unqualified support for Netanyahu makes no sense. As many commentators have opined, this moment is reminiscent of the post-9/11 period in the United States. Here’s one sad similarity: There were plenty of reasons to oppose George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and a key one was that Bush would be in charge of the war. It was evident that he did not have the experience, judgement, vision, values, or know-how to oversee such a difficult and consequential endeavor. Bush had no clue what to do after the US assault toppled Saddam Hussein. It was no surprise the war turned out to be a disaster that ended the lives of several thousand American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and that did little good for the region and world. 

After all of Netanyahu’s failures and miscalculations, who wants to bet on him now? He deserves no blank check. While it is encouraging to see President Joe Biden issue a statement that suggested Israeli should not bounce the rubble—“We must not lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas’s appalling attacks, and are suffering as a result of them”—it remains unclear whether Biden has directly pressured Netanyahu on this point. How far will he go to rein in Netanyahu? The appalling images coming out of Gaza before the expected ground assault are not reassuring on this front. As I write this, Biden is in Israel huddling with Netanyahu. This strikes me as a mistake that could possibly be viewed as a vote of confidence in Netanyahu and that could tie the United States further to the devastation underway in Gaza.

Many Israelis have no faith in Netanyahu. There have been calls on him to resign—for both his actions (or inaction) prior to and following the Hamas attacks. Haaretz, the liberal newspaper, ran an op-ed headlined “Netanyahu: Resign Now!” Another column in the paper began, “Benjamin Netanyahu should be removed as prime minister immediately—not ‘after the war,’ not after a plea bargain in his corruption trial, not after an election.” A veteran Israeli television broadcaster tweeted, “don’t wait. Put him on trial now. He is a war criminal.” Members of Netanyahu’s cabinet have been driven out of hospitals by hecklers enraged with the government. Another minister was denied entry into a southern Israeli community when the man on guard started shouting at him, “Shame on you and on your government! Get out of here.”

Netanyahu's 31-year-old minister-for-god-knows-what @ItshakWaserlauf is denied entry into a southern Israeli community when the man on guard sees who he is. "Shame on you & on your government! Get out of here." A government without a country! pic.twitter.com/Q31Urb4gXA

— Noga Tarnopolsky נגה טרנופולסקי نوغا ترنوبولسكي (@NTarnopolsky) October 15, 2023

The Biden administration cannot defer to Netanyahu. As Israel’s number-one underwriter—to the tune of $3.9 billion a year—it has leverage, and it ought to use it to prevent further Netanyahu miscalculation and more brutality in Gaza. This man cannot be trusted—especially not to lead a military action with possible consequences for the entire planet.

Back to Cotton and his cavalier call for the razing of Gaza. It should not be difficult to empathize with Israelis murdered by Hamas’ vile attack and with Palestinian civilians being killed and terrorized by Israel’s assault on Gaza. I find it unbearable to watch videos from the rave where 260 young Israelis were slaughtered or the footage of injured children being carried into Gaza hospitals overflowing with bombing victims. (The explosion Tuesday at the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City—whoever was responsible for it—yielded gruesome images and a heartbreaking death count of hundreds.) The goal is peace, security, and dignity for both sides. I don’t know how that will be achieved. But we can be sure that Netanyahu is not the man for this job.

Let’s end with a moving moment that occurred when Maoz Inon, an Israeli whose parents were killed during the Hamas attacks, was interviewed by the BBC. He began to cry, and he explained:

I’m not crying for my parents. I’m crying for those who are going to lose their life in this war. We must stop the war. The war is not the answer. I beg all the viewers and listeners to do everything in their power to put pressure on everyone that is relevant to stop the war immediately… In our family, we are not seeking revenge. Revenge will just lead to more suffering. And to more casualties. And even though it’s the most horrible day—it was the most horrible loss of life in Israel since the foundation of the country—I’m afraid that the numbers can be much bigger… I’m afraid for the soldiers, for the civilians from both sides in Gaza and in Israel that will pay [with] their life. This is why I am crying.

"I'm not crying for my parents – I am crying for those who will lose their lives in this war. We must stop the war."

Powerful testimony from @maozinon on @BBCNews – just days after his parents, Bilha and Yakov, were killed by Hamas. pic.twitter.com/xk9iWEONhi

— Helena Humphrey (@helenachumphrey) October 16, 2023

 

Santos Indicted for Fake-Donor Scheme Exposed by Mother Jones

On Tuesday evening, federal prosecutors charged already-indicted and disgraced Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) with several new crimes, including campaign finance violations for a fake-donor scheme exposed by Mother Jones earlier this year. These new counts added to the preexisting indictment also include wire fraud and identity theft. The feds claim that Santos used his donors’ credit cards to make unauthorized transactions that ended up transferring funds to his own campaign, the campaigns of other candidates, and his own bank account. 

“Santos allegedly led multiple additional fraudulent criminal schemes, lying to the American public in the process,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office James Smith.

Earlier this year, Mother Jones broke the news that Santos had reported receiving what appeared to be fake donations during his 2020 and 2022 congressional campaigns—a straightforward violation of federal campaign finance laws. His former treasurer, Nancy Marks, confirmed Mother Jones’ reporting by pleading guilty last week to having helped Santos pull off this scam in order to falsely inflate his campaign’s fundraising totals. Marks is facing a recommended prison sentence of up to four years. In May, Santos pleaded not guilty to 13 other charges.

After the New York Times revealed in December that the newly elected congressman had made up much of his résumé, the list of lies that he had told about his career and personal history continued to expand. Santos falsely claimed that he wrecked his knees playing on a college volleyball team that “slayed” Harvard and Yale; that he had helped produce Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, a musical that lost tens of millions of dollars; that he was Jewish and that his ancestors had fled the Holocaust; that four of his employees died in the Pulse nightclub shooting; and that the attacks on 9/11 had taken his mother’s life.

These fabrications, while notable, were not criminal. Lying on a campaign finance report, however, is. When we examined Santos’ campaign finances from his first run for office in 2020, we found that many of his top-dollar donors did not seem to exist. For example, Victoria and Jonathan Regor were each recorded on his campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission as having donated the legal maximum of $2,800 in the general election. Public records, though, showed nobody named Victoria Regor or Jonathan Regor anywhere in the United States, and the New Jersey address listed for them did not exist.

 

 Post by @motherjonesmagView on Threads

 

In another case, a retiree named Stephen Berger was listed as living on Brandt Road in Brawley, California. Public records showed that William Brandt was the real resident of that address. A spokesperson for Brandt told us that Brandt had never donated to Santos, that no one named Stephen Berger had ever lived at the address, and that he did not know anyone by that name.

In other cases, the apparent fraud was comically sloppy. One of the major donors listed at a fake address was Rafael da Silva. That happened to be the name of a Brazilian soccer player who had played near where Santos once lived in the Rio de Janeiro area. Da Silva’s nonexistent address was 15 West 57th Street—another curious coincidence. Sam Miele, Santos’ fundraiser at the time, appeared to have named his company, the One57 Group, after the luxury tower at 157 West 57th Street. (In August, Miele was indicted for impersonating a top aide to Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican, while soliciting donations.)

We also reported on the suspicious presence within Santos’ FEC filings of large donations from relatives of Santos and Marks, who was also his business partner. This included Santos family members whose occupations were recorded in filings as mail handler, painter, and student. A Santos relative who was listed as having given $5,800 told us that they did not make any contribution to the campaign. Marks and her relatives made large donations to Santos’ 2022 campaign that totaled more than $30,000. This included Marks’ two children who were 19- and 22-year-old students.

The superseding indictment alleges that Santos used the fake donations and a fake loan to attract additional support from a national Republican committee during the 2022 race. His campaign had to show that it had raised $250,000 to qualify for this assistance. 

On January 31, 2022, Santos texted Marks that he was “lost and desperate” and asked her “what did we figure out about the report.” That same day, the Santos campaign submitted a report to the FEC that listed $53,200 in fake donations from relatives, including the ones Mother Jones later identified. “Contrary to the representations made by” Santos, the new indictment states, “none of the family members of [Santos] and Marks had made, or ever did make, the listed contributions.”

Prosecutors also allege that a $500,000 loan the Santos campaign reported receiving from the candidate in March 2022 never actually occurred. Santos appears to have tried to keep members of his own campaign in the dark about that fake loan. In March 2022, a person affiliated with the campaign texted Santos, “Did you get the wire done for the [first quarter] loan?” Santos replied, “That’s getting done tomorrow and it’s not a wire, banker check.” Santos had less than $8,000 in his personal and business bank accounts at the time, according to the latest indictment. 

The new indictment describes another scheme in which Santos allegedly used a donor’s credit to make nearly $16,000 of donations to his campaign and associated political committees. These donations exceeded legal limits on individual contributions to a candidate. To help get around that, Santos listed some of these donations under the name of a relative who is not named in the indictment. (FEC records show that it was his sister, Tiffany Devolder.)

Santos later used the donor’s credit cards to attempt to make at least $44,800 in unauthorized charges, according to the indictment. In one case, Santos used the card to funnel nearly $12,000 to a company he controlled. Later that day, he transferred almost all of that money to a personal bank account.

The original indictment of Santos charged him with using donations intended for a super-PAC supporting his campaign to pay for luxury goods and other items, committing unemployment insurance fraud, and making false statements on his congressional financial disclosure forms. 

At the time of that indictment, prosecutors curiously sidestepped the fake donations. But when Marks last week pleaded guilty to a charge related to the fake-donor scheme, as well as the plot to record the false $500,000 loan, it became clear that federal prosecutors would add similar charges to their case against Santos. The charging documents in the Marks case alleged that Marks had committed her crime in full partnership with Santos. 

In trying to explain irregularities with his campaign’s FEC filings, Santos has maintained that Marks went “rogue.” Marks’ plea directly contradicts this claim. 

Santos is set to return to court on October 27.

Jim Jordan Tried to Help Trump Mount a Coup. Now He Gets to Be Speaker?

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), like Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the man he hopes to replace as House speaker, lies a lot. Jordan’s rapid-style monologues—on topics such as Russia’s attack on the  2016 election, Donald Trump’s 2019 effort to extort Ukraine, Hunter Biden, and internet censorship—are often loaded with allegations that are demonstrably false. He has made pushing pro-Trump disinformation a priority for the GOP caucus. As the House Judiciary Committee chairman, he presides over a subcommittee on the supposed “weaponization” of the federal government that is mostly devoted to furthering Trump’s claim that the former president is a victim of the Deep State and facing four indictments only because of a vast conspiracy. Jordan uses that post to promote the belief system of the Fox News bubble. And though he may stand out from his colleagues on brazenness, on most topics, his fibs align with his fellow House Republicans.

But Jordan, a leading contender for the speakership, does differ from his GOP colleagues in an important way: his unique role in helping Trump try to steal the 2020 election and launch the January 6 riot. 

.@Jim_Jordan claims he never said the election was stolen. That’s not what the video shows. Let’s roll the tape, shall we? pic.twitter.com/wOLI9l3TQW

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) January 12, 2021

Many Republicans endorsed Trump’s Big Lie about the election. But Jordan was one of only a handful of congressional Republicans who actively conspired with Trump to overturn the election results. As he runs for House speaker, Republicans appear eager to ignore that. Yet by embracing Jordan they tie themselves further to that attack on democracy and the Constitution.

Jordan was an early and enthusiastic recruit in Trump’s war on the republic and reality—in public and in private. 

Days after the November election, he spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in front of the Pennsylvania state capitol. He spread election conspiracy theories within right-wing media. He endorsed Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell’s bogus claims that Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic had robbed Trump of electoral victory. He called for a congressional investigation of electoral fraud for which there was no evidence and demanded a special counsel be appointed. He endorsed state legislatures canceling vote tallies and selecting their own presidential electors. He urged Trump not to concede. He demanded Congress not certify Joe Biden’s victory in the ceremony scheduled for January 6, 2021. 

Behind the scenes, he schemed with Trump. The final report of the House select committee on January 6 lays out in damning detail Jordan’s participation in Trump’s eletion-thwarting machinations. “Representative Jordan was a significant player in President Trump’s efforts,” the committee said. “He participated in numerous post-election meetings in which senior White House officials, Rudolph Giuliani, and others, discussed strategies for challenging the election, chief among them claims that the election had been tainted by fraud.”

As early as November, Jordan was “involved in discussions with White House officials about Vice President Pence’s role on January 6th,” the report noted—conversations that focused on whether Pence could block the certification of Biden’s win. Jordan was one of 10 Republican members of Congress who attended a White House meeting on December 21 where the topic was how to pressure Pence to undo the election.

What understanding, if any, did Trump have with Jordan? The January 6 committee did not find out. And Jordan has never fully explained his role in Trump’s scheming, let alone apologized. He refused to cooperate with the House January 6 committee’s investigation. And now he is close to becoming House speaker—second-in-line to the presidency—without accounting for his participation in Trump’s attempt to overturn an election.

But the committee did uncover evidence that Jordan was hatching some plan with Trump to mount a coup.

On December 27, 2020,  the defeated president held a phone call with Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue. Trump insisted that there had been widespread fraud in the election and raised numerous allegations that had been debunked. Rosen and Donoghue repeatedly told Trump there was no evidence of significant wrongdoing. Trump pushed the pair to publicly state that this had been an “illegal” election. He cited three Republican politicians who were supporting his claim of a stolen election: Representative Scott Perry (R-Penn.), Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator, and Jordan, whom he praised as a “fighter.”

When Rosen said to Trump that the Justice Department couldn’t “snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election,” Trump responded, “I don’t expect you to do that. Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.” Trump did not explain what he meant or what the GOP House members—presumably including Jordan—intended to do if the Justice Department falsely declared the election fraudulent. Rosen and Donoghue refused to issue such a statement. 

On January 2, 2021, Jordan led a conference call in which he, Trump, and other members of Congress discussed strategies for delaying the January 6 joint session of Congress, where the election results would be certified. “During that call,” according to the January 6 committee, “the group also discussed issuing social media posts encouraging President Trump’s supporters to ‘march to the Capitol’ on the 6th. An hour and a half later, President Trump and Representative Jordan spoke by phone for 18 minutes.” It is not publicly known what the two discussed. 

Three days later, Jordan texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to pass along advice that Pence should “call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”

On January 6—a day of violent chaos and insurrection—Jordan spoke with Trump by phone at least twice. As the committee noted, Jordan “has provided inconsistent public statements about how many times they spoke and what they discussed.” That day Jordan also received five calls from Rudolph Giuliani, and the two connected at least twice in the evening, as Giuliani was attempting to encourage members of Congress to continue objecting to Biden’s electoral votes. In the days after January 6, Jordan spoke with Trump White House staff about the prospect of presidential pardons for members of Congress.

It is obvious that Jordan knows a lot about Trump’s attempt to sabotage the constitutional order and the run-up to the January 6 riot. But he has refused to share any of this with the public. On May 12, 2022, the January 6 committee subpoenaed several Republican members of Congress—including Jordan, McCarthy, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn.), and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.)—to obtain information related to its investigation. Jordan and the others refused to cooperate.

The committee referred Jordan, McCarthy, Perry, and Biggs to the House Ethics Committee for sanction for failing to comply with subpoenas. The committee noted that Jordan and the others “should be questioned in a public forum about their advance knowledge of and role in President Trump’s plan to prevent the peaceful transition of power.” It also stated that the Justice Department ought to seek testimony from Jordan regarding his “materially relevant communications with Donald Trump or others in the White House.”

Jordan was a key advocate of Trump’s election falsehood and co-conspirator in Trump’s bid to steal power. (Trump faces 17 felony counts for this effort.) He was one of the GOP’s chief crusaders pushing falsehoods that threatened the constitutional order. If his fellow Republicans elevate Jordan to speaker, they will be fully embracing Trump’s attack on the republic, and a profound threat to democracy will now be coming from inside the House.