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    New book details Steve Bannon’s ‘Maga movement’ plan to rule for 100 years

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    Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign chair and White House strategist, believed before the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on Congress that a “Maga movement” of Trump supporters “could rule for a hundred years”.“Outside the uniparty,” the Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf writes in a new book, referring to Bannon’s term for the political establishment, “as Bannon saw it, there was the progressive wing of the Democratic party, which he considered a relatively small slice of the electorate. And the rest, the vast majority of the country, was Maga.“Bannon believed the Maga movement, if it could break out of being suppressed and marginalised by the establishment, represented a dominant coalition that could rule for a hundred years.”Arnsdorf’s book, Finish What We Started: The Maga Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy, will be published next week. The Post published an excerpt on Thursday.A businessman who became a driver of far-right thought through his stewardship of Breitbart News, Bannon was Trump’s campaign chair in 2016 and his chief White House strategist in 2017, a post he lost after neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville that summer.He remained close to Trump, however, particularly as Trump attempted to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden.That attempt culminated in the attack on Congress of 6 January 2021, when supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” to block certification of Biden’s win attacked the US Capitol.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,200 arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured. Trump was impeached for inciting the insurrection but acquitted by Senate Republicans.Notwithstanding 88 criminal charges for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments, and multimillion-dollar penalties in civil cases over fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape claim a judge called “substantially true”, Trump won the Republican nomination with ease this year.As a Trump-Biden rematch grinds into gear, Bannon remains an influential voice on the far right, particularly through his War Room podcast and despite his own legal problems over contempt of Congress and alleged fraud, both of which he denies.The “uniparty”, in Bannon’s view, as described by Arnsdorf, is “the establishment [Bannon] hungered to destroy. The neocons, neoliberals, big donors, globalists, Wall Street, corporatists, elites.”“Maga” stands for “Make America great again”, Trump’s political slogan.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionArnsdorf writes: “In his confidence that there were secretly millions of Democrats who were yearning to be Maga followers and just didn’t know it yet, Bannon was again taking inspiration from Hoffer, who observed that true believers were prone to conversion from one cause to another since they were driven more by their need to identify with a mass movement than by any particular ideology.”Eric Hoffer, Arnsdorf writes, was “the ‘longshoreman philosopher’, so called because he had worked as a stevedore on the San Francisco docks while writing his first book, The True Believer [which] caused a sensation when it was published in 1951, becoming a manual for comprehending the age of Hitler, Stalin and Mao”.Bannon, Arnsdorf writes, “was not, like a typical political strategist, trying to tinker around the edges of the existing party coalitions in the hope of eking out 50% plus one. Bannon already told you: he wanted to bring everything crashing down.“He wanted to completely dismantle and redefine the parties. He wanted a showdown between a globalist, elite party, called the Democrats, and a populist, Maga party, called the Republicans. In that match-up, he was sure, the Republicans would win every time.”Now, seven months out from election day and with Trump and Biden neck-and-neck in the polls, Bannon’s proposition stands to be tested again.
    Biden v Trump: What’s in store for the US and the world?On Thursday 2 May, 3pm EDT join Tania Branigan, David Smith, Mehdi Hasan and Tara Setmayer for the inside track on the people, the ideas and the events that might shape the US election campaign. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live More

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      ‘He believes in power and chaos’: alarm as Steve Bannon plots to propel Trump

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      Wearing an olive green jacket over a black shirt, Steve Bannon blew the doors off a subject that most other speakers had tiptoed around. “Media, I want you to suck on this, I want the White House to suck on this: you lost in 2020!” he roared. “Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States!”A thrill of transgression swept through the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland. “Trump won!” Bannon barked, pointing a finger. “Trump won!” he repeated, shaking a fist. “Trump won!” he proclaimed again. His audience, as if hypnotised, chanted the brazen lie in unison.It was a blunt reminder that Bannon, an architect of Trumpism variously compared to Thomas Cromwell, Rasputin and Joseph Goebbels, remains a potent force in American politics as the 2024 US presidential election looms into view and the re-election of Trump looks a clear possibility.The former White House chief strategist may not be in daily contact with Trump any more but it scarcely matters: he is a vital source for the far-right ecosystem that shapes and animates the “Make America great again” (Maga) base.Bannon, 70, is currently appealing a criminal conviction and four-month prison sentence for defying a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. The committee heard evidence that Trump spoke to Bannon at least twice on January 5 and predicted that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow”.In the meantime, he hosts a regular podcast called War Room, which propagates false narratives about the 2020 election and coronavirus vaccines but is given a veneer of respectability by guests including Elise Stefanik, the No 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, and other senior politicians.A pop-up War Room studio commanded a prime location at CPAC last week and featured guests such as Liz Truss, the former British prime minister. On the main stage, Bannon compared Trump to the Roman general Cincinnatus and declared: “His fate and destiny is to have the greatest political comeback in American history from November 5 to drive the vermin out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.“Biden, you and your crime family are nothing but trash, OK? And on 20 January of 2025 we’re going to take out the trash.”The Maga-regalia wearing crowd went wild, cementing Bannon’s status as a tribune of the movement heading into the 2024 presidential election.Charlie Sykes, a political commentator and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, said: “At the moment Steve Bannon is the id of the American right and, if we’ve learned anything in the last eight years, it’s don’t assume because somebody sounds extreme and unhinged that they will not be influential in this party.”Sykes makes an analogy with drug dealers competing with each other by selling purer and stronger forms of methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant. “Steve Bannon is still peddling the most powerful meth out there.“Donald Trump does not look at Steve Bannon and think this guy is unhinged; he’s looking at Steve Bannon and saying this is exactly what I want to hear from my supporters. Steve Bannon knows what he’s doing and he will act as a gravitational pull on the rest of the right because they have to match him.”Unkempt and unpolished, Bannon is the opposite of a career politician. He is a former naval officer, Goldman Sachs investment banker and film producer. He was executive chairman of Breitbart News, which he once described as “the platform of the ‘alt-right’”, a movement that has embraced racism and antisemitism, and became chairman of Trump’s 2016 winning election campaign.His tenure at the White House was short and acrimonious as he clashed with the president’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, who later described him as a “toxic” presence who accused him of “undermining the president’s agenda”. Trump himself may have been piqued by how much media attention Bannon was receiving and eventually branded him “Sloppy Steve”.But his ideas have proved harder to kill. Bannon continues to advocate the “deconstruction of the administrative state”, a radical downsizing of federal government bureaucracy, and an isolationist “America first” policy that he insists would keep the country out of a third world war. Such notions are percolating through to Republicans in Congress who oppose further military aid to Ukraine.Bannon also helps set the narrative on Trump’s signature issue, border security, blaming undocumented immigrants for crime, even thought studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than other US residents, and advocating mass deportations as a solution.Bannon argues that biggest losers from the record influx of immigrants is the Black and Latino working class. “Every Black person, every Hispanic person in our country, vote for Trump,” Bannon said at CPAC last Saturday. “Trump will set you free because right now they’re enslaving you.”He then assured his overwhelmingly white audience: “They call you racist, they call you xenophobic, they call you nativist. Nothing could be further from the truth because they can’t win the intellectual argument. What they have to do is try to smear you and you don’t care because you know that’s not true.”Bannon has a sign on his mantelpiece that says, “There are no conspiracies but there are no coincidences” – placing him in a twilight zone between conspiracy theories and otherwise. War Room is his biggest mouthpiece. Last year a study by the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington found that almost 20% of its episodes contained a false, misleading or unsubstantiated statement, making it a bigger disinformation spreader than any other political podcast.Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings fellow who led the research, said War Room had been one of the most prominent platforms for election denialism even after networks such as Fox News pulled back. “The way he approaches things that are more conspiratorial in nature… he’s quite effective at considering the questions in a way that makes the audience think it’s not immediately evident that he’s confirming them. There’s this idea that he seems to be hearing all sides of the conversation.”As America braces for another divisive and volatile election, longtime Trump critics warn that Bannon still casts a long shadow. Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, said: “Steve Bannon is a if not the primary spiritual and intellectual force of this nationalist movement that is in control of the Republican party.“He is a very powerful figure in today’s GOP [Grand Old Party] and it is inescapable in some ways that he will play a central role in whatever Trump administration emerges if Trump wins. He is the architect. As an avowed Leninist, he is a guy who is trying to engineer the revolution in his image.”Asked what a Bannon return to the White House would mean, Wilson replied: “Concentration camps. This guy keeps saying out loud they’re the enemies of the people, our opponents are deserve what they get, this hyperbolic rhetoric. He believes in power and chaos and will do whatever he can if he gets it. Whatever he could get away with in that circumstance, he will get away with it.”Bannon has spent years courting far-right nationalist movements around the world and the results were on vivid display at CPAC. Nigel Farage, a former leader of the Brexit party in Britain, observed that a decade ago he was the sole foreign-born speaker at the conference but now it has become a hub for populists from countries including Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Hungary and Spain.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “To his credit, and to America’s detriment, he was one of the first people to look outside of the American political system to find like minded public high-profile figures in foreign counties like Nigel Farage to play an outsized role in being messengers.”Truss, who was removed as prime minister after just 50 days, found common cause with Bannon in blaming a “deep state” supposedly dominated by the left. Bardella, a former Breitbart News spokesperson and Republican congressional aide, added: “For people like Farage and Liz Truss, Bannon extends to them a second lease on life. They’ve peaked in terms of their public service career; there’s nothing left for them to be able to realistically attain.“Here comes Bannon with this direct line to one of the two most powerful forces in American politics in Donald Trump: we will elevate you, you will have status, you will have the perception of influence, you again will be an influencer. These people are desperate for relevancy Bannon is giving them that combination of relevancy and legitimacy and access to power.” More

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      Immigration, Ukraine distrust and January 6 games: Republican agenda on display at CPAC

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      A digital pinball game defending the January 6 insurrection. A panel discussion called Putting Our Heads in the Gas Stove. An eager crowd watching agent provocateur Steve Bannon interview former British prime minister Liz Truss for a tiny online audience.Every year the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, conjures a theatre of the absurd beside the Potomac River. This week something else slowly came into focus: three pillars of a Republican agenda that the party believes will provide a winning formula in the 2024 elections.First, speaker after speaker highlighted the crisis at the southern border, variously describing it as “a war zone” where “thugs, Islamic extremists and Chinese spies” are staging an “invasion”. Second, this year’s CPAC theme was “Where globalism goes to die”, a rare foregrounding of foreign policy that embraced “America first” isolationism and advocated no more funding for Ukraine.Finally, there was the contention that only Donald Trump can save American democracy. Speakers cast the Republican frontrunner as both as the underdog David, bravely battling political persecution, and a mighty Goliath tirelessly fighting for the forgotten and left behind. This was in striking contrast to Joe Biden, portrayed as both criminal mastermind and senile old man.“I’m just going to say it – Joe Biden and Kamala Harris suck,” said Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, seen as a potential Trump running mate. “And we shouldn’t look to Congress for the answers – the gridlock on Capitol Hill is not going to break in time to save America. We need a president who will. And I have always believed – and supported the fact – that our next president needs to be President Trump.”This week marked the 50th anniversary of CPAC’s inaugural gathering, when Ronald Reagan, then the governor of California, urged conservatives to remain united. In 2015 the conference heard from establishment Republicans such as Jeb Bush. But since then it has marched rightward, each year proving more extreme than the one before. It has effectively become The Trump Show.It has also lost relevance. Under CPAC impresario Matt Schlapp, who faced multiple sexual assault allegations, many sessions took place in a half-empty ballroom. “Media Row”, which includes various live talk radio broadcasts, and “CPAC Central”, a marketplace for vendors, was diminished compared with past years, exposing empty and forlorn floor space. Instead of Fox News, a plethora of fringe podcasters and streamers held sway.But CPAC does provide a window to the soul of a Republican party in thrall to Trump. No issue is more central to his candidacy than immigration and resuming construction of a border wall. It was a constant talking point on the CPAC main stage.Elise Stefanik, another contender for Trump’s vice-presidential pick, said: “We had the most secure border in our nation’s history when President Trump left office … In Joe Biden’s America, every district is a border district. Every state is a border state. The southern border is being invaded.”In a session titled Trump’s Wall vs Biden’s Gaps, Thomas Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump, said: “The reason I wake up pissed off every day is because this administration – Joe Biden is the first president in the history of this nation who came in office and unsecured a border on purpose.”Describing Trump as the “greatest president in my lifetime”, Homan confidently predicted that the former president would destroy drug cartels in Mexico if re-elected. “President Trump will declare them a terrorist organisation. He will send a Hellfire rocket down there and he’ll take the cartels out.”There was little acknowledgment over four days of the positive contribution immigrants have made to American society. Instead there were nods to white nationalism, the “great replacement” theory and Trump’s recent assertion that illegal immigrations “poison” the bloodstream of the nation.Senator JD Vance, a devout Trump loyalist, told the gathering: “The reason why we have a border crisis is by design. Biden is invading the country with people who he knows are going to vote disproportionally for Democrats. California has five more congressional representatives than it should.“Do you know why? They count illegal aliens for purposes of assigning apportionment in Congress. So when these guys flood the country with millions of people who shouldn’t be here they destroy the voting power of citizens in our own republic. This is by design and this is maybe the last very good chance we have to stop it.”An examination of this topic in 2020 by the Pew Research Center found that if unauthorised immigrants were excluded from the apportionment count, California, Florida and Texas would each end up with one less congressional seat than they would have been awarded based on population change alone.Vance and others were quick to draw a contrast between the border crisis and Washington’s obsession with the war in Ukraine. They questioned why taxpayer dollars should fund a conflict 6,000 miles away instead of tackling problems at home. Many were quick to add disclaimers distancing themselves from Russian president Vladimir Putin – not always convincingly.Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said: “We’re the one that forced this war because we kept forcing Nato on Ukraine and showing Russia, hey, we’re going to build military bases on your borders. And Putin said, no, no, you’re not going to do that.“I haven’t voted for any money to go to Ukraine because I know they can’t win. You hate that they’ve had 300,000 or 400,000 people killed, so – Russians also. You hate that we supported this. We’re pushing them out in front of the guns or out in front of the bus, I guess you’d speak. It’s an atrocity but they can’t win.”Tuberville added: “Donald Trump will stop it when he first gets in … He knows there’s no winning for Ukraine. He can work a deal with Putin.”View image in fullscreenThere was little support here for Congress to pass a national security bill that would provide military funding for Ukraine. In a speech headlined Burning Down the House, Matt Gaetz, a congressman from Florida, said: “What’s really left unsaid in this Ukraine aid debate is that Europe’s fecklessness is a direct result of them becoming national security welfare queens largely at your expense … America is not the world’s police force and we are not the world’s piggy bank. It is not sustainable.”In a jarring contrast from Reagan’s vision of American leadership, politicians from Britain, El Salvador, Spain and other parts of the world came to CPAC to rail against the sinister forces of “globalism”.Nigel Farage, a former leader of the Brexit party in Britain, observed that CPAC has become an international movement. “We all want the same things. We want international cooperation. We want trade. We want peace. We want common sense. We want it within the framework of the nation-state, not within the framework of the European Union or the United Nations – or the increasingly appalling World Health Organisation.”The audience erupted in cheers and applause.CPAC offered a preview of other Republican talking points for the campaign. There were plenty of references to inflation and the demonstrably false claim that Trump bequeathed a booming economy that Biden ruined. A session called No Woke Warriors nodded to culture wars and, despite recent evidence about its limited electoral potency, numerous speakers assailed transgender rights.The other common thread was a Trump worship that elevated him to the status of political martyr. Farage said the former president had been unfairly targeted by the justice system and commented: “I believe that Donald Trump is the bravest man I have ever met in my life.” Mark Robinson, lieutenant governor of North Carolina, opined: “We need warriors like President Trump, who is literally spending his golden years fighting for the survival of this nation.”And Noem put it this way: “President Trump broke politics in 2016 – he just did – and that’s a good thing. He’s real. He’s not perfect – none of us are – but he cares about you. He doesn’t think he’s better than you. Luckily, we are not going back to the old days of the Romneys and Cheneys. The Republican party is much bigger than that now. We are filled with blue collar workers, many cultures, perspectives and viewpoints.”Contrast will be key in the presidential election campaign. Biden, 81, was subjected to cheap shots and derogatory insults. At a discussion billed as Cat Fight? Michelle vs Kamala, rightwing commentator Kurt Schlichter commented: “I don’t think Joe Biden has any plans other than eating mush while watching Murder She Wrote. Two scoops. It will be tough to pry that desiccated old husk of a human being out of the White House.”Down in CPAC Central, attendees were clear about the priorities for the coming campaign. Barbara Hale, a retired property agent from Austin, Texas, who was wearing a “Trump was right” badge, said: “The most important thing is our border. If Trump would have been our president instead of Biden, the wall would have been finished.“We wouldn’t have this catastrophe that we have right now. I don’t know how anybody can vote Democrat today if you’re an American. I’m serious about that. If you love America, how can you vote to destroy America?”America has sent enough funding to Ukraine, Hale added: “Like Trump has said he was going to do it as soon as he becomes president, he’s going to go talk to Europe and say, OK, we’ve paid our share to Ukraine to help them. We want Ukraine to be free. They need to pony up some money and they need to get more serious about helping Ukraine, not just the United States of America.”Phil Cuza, 63, a saxophone player and retired police officer from New York, criticised corrupt politicians and district attorneys for “picking and choosing” who to prosecute. He added: “The southern border is extremely important because they’re undermining the whole country. It’s like having a house and you’re trying to dig underneath the house. Eventually the house will collapse if you don’t address that.”Rachel Sheley, 54, a cybersecurity practitioner from northern Kentucky, said: “We need to stop funding wars in other countries. I like Trump’s initiative to loan money to these countries if they need it but they need to be held accountable to pay the money back.“Our taxpayer money is going to these other places, some of which none of us ever travel to or get to. We don’t even know what’s going on in Ukraine. There’s no video or evidence of anything. I think it’s just a money-laundering scheme for the Democrats and the [George] Soros people.”Asked what she thought of Putin, Sheley replied bluntly: “I don’t care.”The marketplace featured everything from vibration plates to Trump glass art, from “Make America great again” shirts, hats and hammocks to a bus with a huge picture of the former president. There also a January 6-themed virtual pinball machine with the game modes “Political Prisoners”, “Have Faith”, “Babbitt Murder”, “It’s a Setup”, “Peaceful Protest”, “Fake News” and “Stop the Steal”, along with a photo of the “QAnon shaman” who stormed the Capitol and a screen showing footage from that day.It was the brainchild of software developer Jon Linowes, 65, an election denier from New Hampshire who believes a baseless conspiracy theory that Trump’s foes planned the insurrection a year in advance as a pretext for keeping him off the ballot. He said: “If Trump was in office now, Ukraine would never have happened. October 7 [in Israel] would never have happened. The border would be shut down.“All of these crises or situations that the Biden administration created were totally artificial and unnecessary and pathetic. We need someone like Trump with the strength and the fortitude to fix it if he can. If anyone can, he can. So that’s what I would expect. And I would expect him to pardon the J6 prisoners.” More

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      Steve Bannon hawks disinformation to support Trump as legal troubles mount

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      The far-right strategist and Donald Trump loyalist Steve Bannon is again playing an influential role in the propaganda circles around the former US president as he bids to return to the White House, even as Bannon faces a barrage of legal problems.The conspiratorial Bannon, who spearheaded part of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and served as chief White House strategist in the first half of 2017, is waiting to see if a federal appeals court overturns his obstruction of Congress conviction. He also faces other legal problems from New York fraud charges, former lawyers and potentially other fronts.But at the same time he is pushing a tidal wave of election disinformation on his War Room podcast to help Trump win the presidency again and promote a Maga-heavy policy agenda as Trump and his allies plot out authoritarian-style plans for a second presidency.Ex-justice department prosecutors, Democrats and Republicans say Bannon’s odds of winning his obstruction of Congress appeal are long, and foresee more legal headaches ahead for the pugnacious Make America Great Again guru, while analysts warn that by spreading election falsehoods and other misinformation he endangers democracy.At present, the biggest legal threat confronting Bannon is his two-count federal conviction and a four-month jail sentence for defying a House panel subpoena for documents and testimony concerning the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results.Last fall, Bannon appealed his contempt of Congress conviction for refusing the House subpoena, citing executive privilege and advice from a lawyer, even though he had long left the administration and the matters covered by the subpoena.Separately, Bannon is slated to be tried in May on New York charges of fraud and money laundering involving his key role in a private “We Build the Wall” Mexico venture that bilked thousands of investors out of about $25m, a scheme in which three Bannon associates have been convicted.Bannon last month sought to dismiss the charges, which alleged in part that $1m of the funds were improperly diverted to Bannon and a top associate, but Manhattan prosecutors wrote in a court filing that his argument “bears little resemblance to reality”.The charges by the Manhattan district attorney against Bannon, an alleged architect of the scheme to raise private funds for Trump’s abortive Mexico wall, mirror earlier ones from federal prosecutors against Bannon that Trump pardoned him for the night before leaving office.Experts say more legal scrutiny of Bannon could come on other fronts. The exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, a Bannon ally and benefactor who last year was charged by federal prosecutors in a billion-dollar fraud case, was charged again in January for running a “criminal enterprise” that bilked Chinese American dissidents out of tens of millions of dollars.Guo allegedly promoted a cryptocurrency scam, propaganda and other businesses, plus financing a lavish lifestyle including purchasing a yacht, on which Bannon in 2020 was arrested on the federal Mexico wall project charges.Among the businesses linked to Guo in the superseding indictment was the conservative social media platform Gettr, which he helped finance and launch in 2021 and which Bannon’s War Room has profited from. Guo is slated to be tried in April.Bannon’s War Room podcast has reaped tens of thousands of dollars a month in ads from Gettr, according to a source familiar with its operations and news reports.War Room, which regularly hosts staunch Trump allies such as the congresswoman Elise Stefanik and the My Pillow CEO, Mike Lindell, last year was named the top promoter among political podcasts of misinformation about elections, Covid-19 and other issues, according to a Brookings Institution study.Unfazed, Bannon told the New York Times his top ranking was a “badge of honor … What they call disinformation or misinformation we consider the truth.”A key figure in promoting the January 6 Save America rally, Bannon proved prescient shortly before the insurrection on his War Room podcast when he said “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow”.Former justice department prosecutors and members of both parties say Bannon’s legal woes are mounting.“Like former president Donald Trump, Steve Bannon’s sketchy business and political activities seem to be a magnet for criminal prosecutions and investigations,” said Paul Pelletier, an ex-acting chief of the Department of Justice’s fraud section.“With his criminal ‘Build the Wall’ fraud trial looming and his criminal contempt of Congress long-shot appeal pending, it appears Bannon’s penchant for associating with and profiting from unsavory characters and his own schemes will keep him busy fending off financial fraud investigations for the foreseeable future.“Bannon’s business and financial ties with Guo should certainly attract rigorous scrutiny,” he added.View image in fullscreenOther justice department alumni concur Bannon faces big legal headaches.“Bannon is nothing more than a garden variety fraudster,” said the ex-federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig. “He had the benefit of a patron in the White House who rewarded his loyalty and protected him.” But with Trump gone, “he is now going to pay the price.“His appeal will not succeed and his criminal trial in New York will result in conviction. Only a Trump victory in November can save him from the federal [obstruction] case and even that won’t suffice to save him in New York.”Bannon has pleaded not guilty to the various criminal charges he faces, and his attorney Harlan Protass did not respond to calls for comment.Still, the ex-Republican congressman Charlie Dent noted: “It’s absurd and nonsensical for Bannon to think he was protected by executive privilege for events that occurred when he was not a White House employee.”The Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, a key member of the House panel that investigated the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s role in it, said: “Bannon seems to have been deeply enmeshed in the planning of the disruption of the peaceful transfer of power and the seizing of the presidency for Donald Trump.”Raskin noted: “Bannon is the intellectual ringleader of the Maga circus … In fact, he fancies himself not just the philosopher of white Christian nationalism in our country but the political strategist for allied autocrats and theocrats all over the world.”In that role, Bannon’s War Room podcast has loomed large, making him an influential figure in promoting Trump and Maga world views including falsehoods about the 2020 election and Covid-19.Bannon’s personal account shows he has nearly 7 million followers and on Gettr, where War Room is one of the most popular shows, more than 800,000 followers.Bannon’s close Gettr ties are underscored by his frequent mention of the platform on War Room. Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings fellow in emerging technologies and AI who led its podcast research, said that Gettr was referenced, often multiple times, in more than 60% of more than 1,000 episodes reviewed.Trump allies who were on War Room multiple times last year included Stefanik, Lindell and the ex-justice department assistant attorney general Jeff Clark, with whom Trump plotted to promote fake electors in several states that Biden won.Bannon has touted Clark, an unindicted co-conspirator in the special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment of Trump over his attempts to subvert the election results, as attorney general if the former president wins another term. Clark was also indicted along with Trump and 17 others by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, for trying to overturn Joe Biden’s win in Georgia.“Bannon’s War Room stands out – with claims about votes being switched by Dominion machines to Sharpies being used to disenfranchise voters to the Covid-19 virus being a plot to deny Trump a second term, among many, many others,” Wirtschafter said.While Bannon’s War Room keeps pushing Maga misinformation, the bombastic strategist faces other financial and legal woes.Robert Costello, a former Bannon lawyer who played a key role in Trump’s pardon of the strategist, filed a claim against him last year for $480,000 in monies owed. Costello and his firm won a summary judgment from New York’s supreme court to obtain payment, but Bannon, with Protass’s help, is fighting the ruling.Interestingly, Protass in a court filing last month wrote that an effort by Costello’s firm to access Bannon’s bank account and depose him “poses a significant risk of compromising” his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination with fraud charges against him pending in New York.Regarding Bannon’s upcoming Mexico wall fraud trial, Raskin said: “Given that three associates of Bannon have been convicted of the conduct charged in these events, it has to be a serious threat to Bannon too.”Bannon’s multiple legal problems do not surprise Raskin. “He has adopted the persona of bad boy lawlessness. Like Trump, Bannon considers himself way beyond the reach of the law.” More

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      Bannon used Confederate code words to describe Trump speech, book says

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      The far-right Donald Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon used Confederate code words linked to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to describe a speech by the former US president before his historic first criminal indictment, a new book says.On 6 March this year, addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, Trump took aim at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney then widely expected to bring charges over hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, thereby making Trump the first former president ever criminally indicted.Trump told his audience: “I am your warrior; I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution.”In a forthcoming book, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, writes: “When I spoke with Bannon a few days later, he wouldn’t stop touting Trump’s performance, referring to it as his ‘Come Retribution’ speech.“What I didn’t realise was that ‘Come Retribution’, according to some civil war historians, served as the code words for the Confederate Secret Service’s plot to take hostage – and eventually assassinate – President Abraham Lincoln.”Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on 14 April 1865, by John Wilkes Booth, an actor. The president died the following day.Karl is the author of two bestsellers – Front Row at the Trump Show and Betrayal – about Trump’s rise to the presidency, time in the White House and defeat by Joe Biden.In his third Trump book, excerpted in the Atlantic on Thursday, Karl quotes from a 1988 book, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and Assassination of Lincoln.“The use of the key phrase ‘Come Retribution’ suggests that the Confederate government had made a bitter decision to repay some of the misery that had been inflicted on the south,” the authors write. “Bitterness may well have been directed toward persons held to be particularly responsible for that misery, and Abraham Lincoln certainly headed the list.”Bannon, Karl writes, “actually recommended that I read that book, erasing any doubt that he was intentionally using the Confederate code words to describe Trump’s speech.“Trump’s speech was not an overt call for the assassination of his political opponents, but it did advocate their destruction by other means. Success ‘is within our reach, but only if we have the courage to complete the job, gut the deep state, reclaim our democracy, and banish the tyrants and Marxists into political exile forever,’ Trump said. ‘This is the turning point.’”In Karl’s estimation, the “Come Retribution” speech “was a turning point for Trump’s campaign” for re-election.Trump began his 2024 campaign sluggishly but then surged to huge leads over his Republican party rivals in national and key-state polling, despite a charge sheet now totaling 91 criminal counts and two civil trials, one over his business practices and one concerning a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKarl writes: “The [federal] trial date for the charge of interfering in the 2020 election has been set for 4 March [2024]; for the hush-money case, it’s 25 March; for the classified-documents case, it’s 20 May.“As election day approaches and [Trump] faces down these many days in court, he will be waging a campaign of vengeance and martyrdom. He will continue to talk about what is at stake in the election in apocalyptic terms – ‘the final battle’ – knowing how high the stakes are for him personally. He can win and retake the White House. Or he can lose and go to prison.”Bannon is quoted as saying: “Trump’s on offense and talking about real things. The ‘Come Retribution’ speech had 10 or 12 major policies.”But, Karl writes, “Bannon knew that the speech wasn’t about policies in a traditional sense. Trump spoke about whom he would target once he returned to power.“‘We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers,’ Trump said. ‘We will drive out the globalists; we will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country … We will beat the Democrats. We will rout the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the RINOs. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House.“‘And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.’” More

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      Top Trump allies facing charges lose lawyers after failing to pay legal bills

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      A trio of top Donald Trump allies who have racked up huge legal expenses to defend themselves from either criminal charges, convictions or defamation lawsuits have lost key lawyers for failing to pay six- and seven-figure bills in a sign of the huge legal problems they face.The hefty legal bills of the ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon, former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow CEO, Mike Lindell, underscore the scale of the criminal and civil charges that ensnare them.Welcome to the escalating legal and financial headaches plaguing three of the former US president’s top loyalists who pushed various false claims about his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden that helped provide cover for Trump’s election falsehoods.The list of legal woes is long.Bannon has a court appeal slated for November over his criminal conviction last year and pending four-month jail sentence for obstructing Congress by spurning a subpoena from the House panel that was investigating the January 6 insurrection.Bannon also faces a trial next May in New York related to state fraud, conspiracy and money-laundering charges that he bilked donors in a Mexican wall project, dubbed “We Build the Wall.”Meanwhile, Giuliani was charged in August with 13 criminal counts in Georgia by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, who also charged Trump and 17 others as part of a conspiracy to thwart Trump’s 2020 loss there. Pressures on Giuliani escalated in October when three other ex-Trump lawyers he worked with in varying ways agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors.Further, Lindell is fighting $2bn defamation lawsuits by electronic voting machine firms he has claimed helped rig the 2020 against Trump, which have cost him millions of dollars in legal fees owed to a Minneapolis law firm.In October, the law firm formally asked a court to allow it to withdraw from representing Lindell in these cases, citing millions of dollars it was owed.On another legal front, a top lawyer for Bannon and Giuliani has ditched them and filed big claims for monies owed. Robert Costello and his firm, which has represented both Giuliani and Bannon, have filed separate claims against the duo, respectively, for $1.4m and $480,000.A court judgment has been issued against Bannon for the $480,000, which he is fighting with the help of lawyer Harlan Protass. It is unclear when and how much Giuliani may pay Costello and his firm. But a legal source familiar with Giuliani’s seven-figure debt faults Trump not Giuliani for the unpaid bill, claiming that Trump at a meeting with Costello and Giuliani earlier this year in Florida said he would “take care of” Giuliani’s legal bill.On top of their past-due legal bills, Giuliani and Bannon now are also locked in other high-stakes legal battles.In Georgia, Giuliani’s legal situation seems to have become more perilous: lawyers Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell who worked in varying ways with Giuliani as he pushed false claims in Georgia and elsewhere about Trump’s loss, pleaded guilty in October, and agreed to cooperate with Willis’s officeGiuliani has called his indictment a “travesty”, but ex-prosecutors say that he faces new pressures in the wake of other Trump lawyers’ plea deals.“As expected, the dominoes have started to fall in Georgia with three plea agreements by key Trump lawyers who in different ways worked with Rudy,” Paul Pelletier, the ex-acting chief of the fraud section at the justice department, told the Guardian.“Rudy too may want to plead and cooperate to reduce his exposure, but no prosecutor in their right mind would use him as a cooperating witness. There’s simply no way to undo the entrenched legacy of his outlandish behavior.”Other ex-prosecutors concur that Giuliani’s credentials as a witness are tarnished.“Rudy’s under huge pressure, but he’s unlikely to flip because that would be the rational thing to do,” ex-prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig told the Guardian.Still some justice department veterans say Giuliani may try to cut a deal.“Giuliani must be concerned that Powell and Ellis will testify against him and add to the likelihood of conviction,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan, told the Guardian. “It may not be in Giuliani’s DNA to admit wrongdoing, but now would be the time to pursue a deal from Fani Willis if he is willing to plead guilty.”Giuliani reportedly has not been offered a plea deal so far, and Giuliani’s spokesman has nixed the idea of accepting one.In another blow in Georgia, Giuliani was found liable in August for making defamatory comments about two Georgia election workers, and later ordered to pay their legal fees and turn over evidence to them.Further, the voting technology firm Smartmatic in August skewered Giuliani in court filings, charging him with making up “excuse after excuse” to avoid handing over documents in its $2.7bn defamation lawsuit against him, Fox News, and others who pushed lies about the 2020 election results.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite his mounting problems, Giuliani has kept some longtime allies. John Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of WABC radio, where Giuliani has a daily radio program, told the Guardian that Giuliani “earns good money with us. He gets paid monthly.” Catsimatidis added that: “I pray he’s found innocent.”Although Bannon’s legal problems differ, they are just as intense, if not more so.The combative Trump ally, known for his far-right War Room podcast, was convicted last year and sentenced to four months in jail for obstruction of Congress by flouting subpoenas to cooperate with the House January 6 panel.Bannon appealed the conviction and a court hearing is slated for November.Although Judge Carl Nichols, in granting Bannon an appeal of his conviction, left the door open to a possible reversal or new trial, ex-prosecutors do not think Bannon’s conviction is likely to be reversed.“I think Bannon‘s conviction is on very solid ground,” McQuade told the Guardian. “He failed to even appear when subpoenaed by Congress. If he thought he had a good faith basis for a testimonial privilege, the way to assert it would have been to show up and answer all other questions, and to assert the privilege on a question-by-question basis. He failed to do even that.“Moreover, because he was not an executive branch employee during the relevant time period, his claims of executive privilege are flimsy to nonexistent.”Other ex-prosecutors are dubious that Bannon’s appeal will succeed.“Even though Judge Nichols said Bannon’s appeal was serious, it is not. Bannon has almost no chance of overturning his conviction. He’s manifestly guilty,” Rosenzweig told the Guardian.Separately, Bannon is due to stand trial next May on New York state charges that he defrauded donors to his non-profit “We Build the Wall” project, which already has led to three pleas or convictions of Bannon associates.Bannon’s trial will be in the same court in Manhattan that ruled he owed Costello’s law firm $480,000. His lawyer is slated to be Protass, who is appealing the court’s fee decision against Bannon which he has called “clearly wrong”.Bannon has pleaded not guilty to the charges of defrauding donors.Right before Trump left office in early 2021 he pardoned Bannon, who had been indicted on similar federal fraud charges for his role in “We Build the Wall”.Notwithstanding his mounting legal threats, Bannon remains an aggressive and busy Trump ally. In October, he used his War Room podcast to host some of Trump’s most far-right Maga allies like the Florida representative Matt Gaetz, who played a key role in ousting the former House speaker Kevin McCarthy.Some ex-Republican congressmen view Bannon as a disruptive, pro-Trump political force. “Bannon always struck me as a leader of the nihilist wing of the GOP coalition,” ex-Republican congressman Charlie Dent told the Guardian. “His intervention with the speaker’s race was clearly a problem and advanced Trump’s interest in the House.”“He’s like Trump: all grievances, all the time.” More

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      Bannon ally handed four-year prison term over Trump border-wall fraud

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      Brian Kolfage, a US air force veteran and former associate of the Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon, was sentenced on Wednesday to more than four years in prison after admitting to conspiring to defraud donors to a campaign to build a wall along the US-Mexican border, as promised by the former president.Bannon, 69 and a former campaign chair and White House strategist for Trump, was also charged in the case but received a presidential pardon in the final hours of Trump’s term.Bannon remains a prominent presence in far-right media and politics. In September, he was indicted in New York state court in Manhattan on money laundering and conspiracy charges over the planned wall. He pleaded not guilty. Trump’s pardon of Bannon covered federal crimes but not alleged state crimes.Kolfage, 41, lost his legs and right hand in a rocket attack in Iraq. In the federal case, he pleaded guilty last year to misappropriating funds meant for the We Build the Wall campaign.On Wednesday a US district judge, Analisa Torres, announced the 51-month sentence at a hearing in federal court in Manhattan.Andrew Badolato, 58, another former Bannon associate, also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.“The fraud perpetrated by Mr Kolfage and Mr Badolato went well beyond ripping off individual donors,” Torres said. “They hurt us all by eroding the public’s faith in the political process.“Badolato and Kolfage led the fundraising push alongside Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist.Federal prosecutors in Manhattan had recommended Kolfage spend 51 months in prison and Badolato 41.Kolfage was accused of taking more than $350,000 and spending it on boat payments, jewelry and cosmetic surgery. He also pleaded guilty to tax charges.Lawyers for Kolfage proposed he be sentenced to home detention, citing his medical needs. Badolato’s lawyers said three years of probation would have been sufficient for their client because he was less culpable.Another defendant, 52-year-old Timothy Shea, was convicted in October. He is set to be sentenced in June. More

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      Russia disinformation looks to US far right to weaken Ukraine support

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      As Russia’s ruthless war against Ukraine has faced major setbacks since it began a year ago, the Kremlin has deployed new disinformation themes and tactics to weaken US support for Kyiv with help from conservative media stars and some Republicans in Congress, according to new studies and experts.Moscow’s disinformation messages have included widely debunked conspiracy theories about US bioweapon labs in Ukraine, and pet themes on the American right that portray the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as an ally in backing traditional values, religion and family in the fight against “woke” ideas.Further, new studies from thinktanks that track disinformation have noted that alternative social media platforms such as Parler, Rumble, Gab and Odysee have increasingly been used to spread Russian falsehoods since Facebook and Twitter have imposed more curbs on Moscow’s propaganda.Other pro-Russian messages focused on the economic costs of the war for the US have been echoed by Republicans in the powerful far-right House Freedom Caucus such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Scott Perry and Paul Gosar, who to varying degrees have questioned giving Ukraine more military aid and demanded tougher oversight.Since Russia launched its invasion last February, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Trump ally – turned influential far-right podcaster – Steve Bannon have promoted some of the most baseless claims that help bolster the Kremlin’s aggression.For instance, Bannon’s War Room podcast in February 2022 featured an interview with Erik Prince, the wealthy US founder of Blackwater, where they both enthused that Putin’s policies were “anti-woke” and praised Putin’s homophobia and transphobia.Last month too on the anniversary of Moscow’s invasion, Carlson revved up his attacks on US support for Ukraine claiming falsely that Biden’s goal had become “overthrowing Putin and putting American tanks in Red Square because, sure, we could manage Russia once we overthrow the dictator”.Analysts who track Russia’s disinformation see synergies between the Kremlin and parts of the US right that have helped spread some of the biggest falsehoods since the start of the invasion.“Russia doesn’t pull even its most outlandish narratives out of thin air – it builds on existing resentments and political fissures,” Jessica Brandt, a policy director at the Brookings Institution who tracks disinformation and foreign interference, told the Guardian.She added: “So you often have a sort of harmony – both Kremlin messengers and key media figures, each for their own reasons, have an interest in dinging the administration for its handling of the Ukraine crisis, in amplifying distrust of authoritative media, in playing on skepticism about the origins of Covid and frustration with government mitigation measures.”“That was the case with the biolabs conspiracy theory, for example, which posits that the Pentagon has been supporting the development of biological weapons in Ukraine. The Charlie Kirk Show and Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, among others, devoted multiple segments to the claim. It’s not so much that we’re witnessing any sort of coordination, but rather an alignment of interests.”Brandt also noted that Russia had an “interest in promoting authentic American voices expressing views that align with the Kremlin’s foreign policy goals. And that’s why you often see them retweet Americans that make these arguments.”Likewise, two reports issued separately last month by the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the Atlantic Council, reveal how Russian state media have shifted some messaging themes and adopted new tactics with an eye to undercutting US backing for Ukraine.The Alliance report documented a shift in messaging in the US and Europe from directly defending Russia’s invasion to stressing the energy and economic impacts that it was having, themes that seem to be resonating with some Republican politicians.In the first six months of the war, Alliance data revealed that Russia-linked accounts on Twitter mentioned “Nazi” in more than 5,800tweets.But in the following six months from August 2022 through January 2023, “the number of ‘Nazi’ tweets dropped to 3,373 – a 42% decline”. Likewise, mentions of Nato by Russian-linked accounts on Twitter dropped by roughly 30% in the second six-month period.By contrast, in the most recent six-month period the report said that “tweets mentioning both ‘energy’ and ‘Ukraine’ increased by 267%, while tweets mentioning ‘cost of living’ increased 66%” compared to the first six months of the war.In another twist, Bret Schafer, who leads the Alliance’s information manipulation team, told the Guardian: “In response to restrictions and crackdowns by major tech platforms, accounts and channels affiliated with Russian state media outlet RT, which has been banned entirely on YouTube, have fanned out across alternative social media and video sharing platforms like Rumble and Odysee that have less restrictive content moderation policies and that allow RT to operate without labels or restrictions.“Those platforms also tend to cater to audiences who are not necessarily pro-Russian, but are certainly more apt, based on the other videos found on those platforms, to oppose continued support for Ukraine.”Despite Moscow’s disinformation offensive and the $100bn plus in military and financial assistance that has flowed to Ukraine in one year, the ex-Republican House member Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said that “most GOP members still support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression”.But Dent stressed that “the hardest edge of the Bannon-Carlson wing of the Maga movement in Congress is more sympathetic to Russian arguments and has an isolationist view of American foreign policy. There are some members who are less willing to push back against autocrats. There are others too who find common cause with Russia’s professed socially conservative orientation.”Those voices are especially loud in the Freedom Caucus which is wielding growing influence with the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who has said he will not support a “blank check” for Ukraine and this week declined the invitation of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to visit Kyiv.Freedom Caucus member Greene from Georgia at the recent CPAC conference said flatly: “We’ve done enough.”Democrats are especially worried about the embrace of pro-Kremlin disinformation by the American right.The Democratic senator Chris Murphy blasted US conservatives for echoing Kremlin propaganda and traced its roots back to ex-president Donald Trump, who at the start of Russia’s invasion lauded Putin as “savvy” and a “genius”. Murphy said Trump’s “admiration for Putin” has “turned into a collective rightwing obsession”.Murphy noted that among the obsessed on the right are Donald Trump Jr, whom he follows on social media, and who is “relentlessly making fun of Zelenskiy online”.Meanwhile, Putin’s own words and propaganda have lately shifted as he has tried to influence opinion in the US and the west, and blunt Russian dissent.“Millions of people in the west understand they are being led to a real spiritual catastrophe,” Putin railed last month in a wildly hyperbolic speech that homed in on “the destruction of families”, and related themes.Russia experts warn that Putin’s rhetoric and Kremlin messaging on these themes is far removed from the reality in Russia.“One of the glaring mistakes of far-right propagandists is to view Vladimir Putin as some kind of defender of Christendom, of family values and as a protector of the white race,” said Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “They repeat the Kremlin talking points and get excited about the Russian ‘gay propaganda’ law. Nothing could be further from reality.“Today Russia is the leader in Europe of high divorce rates, HIV infections, and low church attendance and practice.”Senator Murphy expects Putin to count “on the [American] right wing to advance Russian propaganda and exploit our internal divisions.” More

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      Chinese business tycoon and Bannon ally Guo Wengui arrested in $1bn fraud conspiracy

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      Guo Wengui, a self-exiled Chinese tycoon with close links to prominent Trumpist Republicans including Steve Bannon, has been indicted on 12 counts relating to an alleged $1bn fraud.The charges announced by the US attorney for the southern district of New York on Wednesday include wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.Kin Ming Je, a Hong Kong and UK dual citizen also known as William Je and described as Guo’s financier, was also named in the charges and faced a further count of obstruction of justice.The US attorney for the SDNY, Damian Williams, said Guo “led a complex conspiracy to defraud thousands of his online followers out of over $1bn.“[Guo] is charged with lining his pockets with the money he stole, including buying himself, and his close relatives, a 50,000 sq ft mansion, a $3.5m Ferrari, and even two $36,000 mattresses, and financing a $37m luxury yacht.”Guo was arrested early on Wednesday at his home in a building on 60th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Just after noon, a fire broke out at the same address, according to the New York fire department.ABC News reported that FBI agents were inside the $32.5m penthouse apartment when the fire broke out, and that the bureau is now investigating whether the blaze was related to the arrest.Guo’s contacts in influential circles have been widely reported.In October 2022, the New Yorker described how his application to buy the penthouse at an exclusive building on Fifth Avenue included “a personal recommendation from Tony Blair, Britain’s former prime minister, [who] said, ‘Miles is honest, forthright and has impeccable taste.’”The same report, however, said that in China, Guo was “at the center of a burgeoning scandal involving corruption and espionage”.Guo was also reported to have “paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump advisers, including Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani and the attorney L Lin Wood, who joined efforts to overturn the 2020 election”.Bannon, who was Trump’s campaign chair when he was introduced to Guo during the 2016 election, came to call him “the Donald Trump of Beijing”.Bannon was aboard Guo’s yacht on the Long Island Sound when he himself was arrested on fraud charges in August 2020.Guo left China in 2014 during an anti-corruption crackdown led by the president, Xi Jinping.In 2017, Guo made a series of salacious accusations about the Chinese government, accusing officials of having illegitimate children, houses and large sums of money in overseas bank accounts. The Chinese police accused him of paying associates to forge Chinese government documents and requested that Interpol issue a notice for his arrest.Guo claimed that allegations against him in China were launched in retaliation for his efforts to expose graft.On Wednesday, the Department of Justice said Guo, who is also known as Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, was “an exiled Chinese businessman who has resided in the US since in or about 2015 and garnered a substantial online following.“In or about 2018, Kwok founded two purported nonprofit organizations, namely, the Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of Law Society. Kwok used the nonprofit organisations to amass followers who were aligned with his purported policy objectives in China and who were also inclined to believe Kwok’s statements regarding investment and money-making opportunities.”Je, the department said, “owned and operated numerous companies and investment vehicles central to the scheme and served as its financial architect and key money launderer”.Guo was also charged with laundering hundreds of millions of stolen funds to conceal the conspiracy’s illegal activities and continue the fraud’s operations, Williams said.Michael J Driscoll, assistant director of the FBI, said: “Fraudulent investment scams make victims out of innocent people, ultimately harming the public’s confidence in the integrity of financial systems.“The FBI continues to make investigating complex financial crimes a top priority, and anyone attempting these crimes will be made to face the consequences in the criminal justice system.”Maximum sentences for the charges range from five years in prison, for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, bank fraud, securities fraud and money laundering, to 20 years. More