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      Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes found guilty of seditious conspiracy

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      Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes found guilty of seditious conspiracyJury convicts leader of rightwing group which supported Trump’s attempt to overturn 2020 election Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the rightwing Oath Keepers militia, has been found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a charge arising from the attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.Rhodes and co-defendant Kelly Meggs are the first people in nearly three decades to be found guilty of the rarely used civil war-era charge at trial. The trial was the biggest test yet for the US justice department in its efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the attack that shook the foundations of US democracy.US courts ruling in favor of justice department turns legal tide on TrumpRead moreOn social media, Harry Litman, a former US attorney turned legal analyst, said the guilty verdicts represented “a huge huge victory for the US [justice department] in a challenging and deeply important, even historic, case”.Rhodes is a Yale Law-educated former paratrooper and disbarred attorney. In an eight-week trial, he and four associates were accused of fomenting a plot to use force to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.It was the most significant trial arising from the Capitol riot of 6 January 2021, which has been linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement officers. A US district judge, Amit Mehta, presided. The 12-member jury deliberated for three days.Rhodes’ four co-defendants were Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell.Meggs was convicted of seditious conspiracy. Harrelson, Caldwell and Watkins were acquitted.During the trial, Watkins admitted impeding police officers, and apologized. All five defendants were convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding, with mixed verdicts on a handful of other charges. Rhodes was acquitted of two other conspiracy charges.Rhodes intends to appeal, defense attorney James Lee Bright told reporters. Another Rhodes lawyer, Ed Tarpley, described the verdict as a “mixed bag”, adding, “This is not a total victory for the government in any way, shape or form.”“We feel like we presented a case that showed through evidence and testimony that Mr Rhodes did not commit the crime of seditious conspiracy,” Tarpley said.Rhodes, who wears an eye patch after accidentally shooting himself in the face, was one of the most prominent defendants of around 900 charged so far in connection with the Capitol attack.He founded the Oath Keepers, whose members include current and retired military personnel, law enforcement officers and first responders, in 2009. Members have showed up, often heavily armed, at protests and political events including demonstrations following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.Prosecutors said Rhodes and his co-defendants planned to use force to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win.Rhodes did not go inside the Capitol but was accused of leading the plot. Through recordings and encrypted messages, jurors heard how he rallied followers to fight to keep Trump in office, warned of a “bloody” civil war and expressed regret that the Oath Keepers did not bring rifles on 6 January.Meggs, Watkins and Harrelson entered the Capitol wearing tactical gear. The defendants were accused of creating a “quick reaction force” positioned at a Virginia hotel and equipped with firearms that could be quickly transported to Washington.Fifty witnesses testified. Rhodes and two others testified in their own defense. They denied plotting an attack or seeking to stop Congress from certifying results. Rhodes insisted that his followers who went inside went rogue.Prosecutors sought to paint Rhodes as a liar, showing him his own inflammatory text messages, videos, photos and recordings. These included Rhodes saying he could have hanged the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, from a lamppost.Watkins, a transgender woman who fled the US army, and Caldwell, a disabled navy veteran, were the others who chose to testify.Watkins admitted “criminal liability” for impeding officers inside the Capitol but denied any plan to storm the building, instead describing being “swept up” in the moment, just as enthusiastic shoppers behave when they rush into stores to purchase discounted holiday gifts.Caldwell, who like Rhodes did not enter the Capitol, never formally joined the Oath Keepers. He tried to downplay inflammatory texts he sent in connection with the attack, saying some of the lines were adapted from or inspired by movies such as The Princess Bride or cartoons such as Bugs Bunny.Four other Oath Keepers members charged with seditious conspiracy are due to go to trial in December. Members of another rightwing group, the Proud Boys, including its former chairman Enrique Tarrio, also are due for trial on seditious conspiracy charges in December.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpUS crimeThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

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      Jewish conservatives condemn Trump for meeting antisemite Nick Fuentes

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      Jewish conservatives condemn Trump for meeting antisemite Nick FuentesMike Pence, Chris Christie and several Republican senators were also critical, to varying degrees, of former president Several Republican lawmakers and prominent Jewish conservatives have condemned Donald Trump for meeting with white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, in a rare distancing from the ex-president.Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and several Republican senators were critical, to varying degrees, of Trump, who has come under fire after dining with Fuentes last week.Joe Biden on collision course with unions over effort to block rail strike – liveRead moreFuentes, described by the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League as “among the most prominent and unapologetic antisemites in the country”, met Trump with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who has repeatedly made racist comments about Jewish people.“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table,” Pence said in an interview with News Nation on Monday. “I think he should apologize for it, and he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification.”Chris Christie, a sometime Trump ally who, like Pence, is said to be considering a presidential run, told the New York Times that Trump’s actions “make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican party in 2024”.“This is just another example of an awful lack of judgment from Donald Trump,” Christie said.Jewish conservative figures also spoke out against Trump, including Jay Lefkowitz, a former adviser to George W Bush.“We have a long history in this country of separating the moral character of the man in the White House from his conduct in office, but with Trump, it’s gone beyond any of the reasonably acceptable and justifiable norms,” Lefkowitz told the newspaper.Trump has said Ye had been invited to dinner and “unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends”, “whom I knew nothing about”.Ben Shapiro, a Jewish rightwing personality who has been supportive of Trump in the past, rejected Trump’s explanation in a post on Twitter.“A good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you don’t know is not to dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you do know,” Shapiro wrote on Sunday.The meeting with Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who has repeated the racist “white genocide” theory, was not the first time Trump has engaged with racism.After deadly clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump declared that there were “very fine people on both sides”, and he told the far-right Proud Boys group to “stand by” during a presidential debate.“President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites,” the Republican Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy tweeted on Monday. “These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican party.”The Republican West Virginia senator Shelley Moore said: “It’s ridiculous you would do something with someone who espouses those views.”The condemnation was far from universal, however. PBS approached 57 Republican politicians for comment on Trump’s meeting with Fuentes, and a majority declined to comment.Others said it was wrong for Trump to hold the meeting, but stopped short of criticizing the former president, while the Florida senator Marco Rubio defended Trump.“I know (Trump) is not an antisemite. I can tell you that for a fact that Trump is not but this guy (Fuentes) is evil. And that guy is a nasty, disgusting person. (Fuentes) is an ass clown,” Rubio told a reporter.CNN reported that during the dinner Trump “was engaged with Fuentes and found him ‘very interesting’”.“At one point during the dinner, Trump declared that he ‘liked’ Fuentes,” CNN said.The twice-impeached former president, who has filed for corporate bankruptcy at least four times, said he had given Ye business advice during the dinner.“We got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’ Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes,” Trump said on Truth Social, his rightwing social media platform.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansAntisemitismThe far rightKanye WestnewsReuse this content More

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      Donald Trump ‘shied away from criticising Nick Fuentes’

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      Donald Trump ‘shied away from criticising Nick Fuentes’Advisers wanted ex-president to distance himself from white supremacist with whom he dined but Trump feared alienating supporters – insiders Donald Trump repeatedly refused to disavow the outspoken antisemite and white supremacist Nick Fuentes after they spoke over dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort, rejecting the advice from advisers over fears he might alienate a section of his base, two people familiar with the situation said.”The former US president was urged publicly and privately to denounce Fuentes in the aftermath of the dinner, which included the performer Ye, previously known as Kanye West, who has also recently been propagating antisemitic remarks.But Trump eschewed making outright disavowals of Fuentes, the people said, and none of the statements from the campaign or on his Truth Social account included criticism of Fuentes, despite efforts from advisers who reached Trump over the Thanksgiving holiday.Republican says Trump ‘empowering’ extremists by having dinner with white supremacist Read moreTrump ultimately made clear that he fundamentally did not want to criticise Fuentes – a product of his dislike of confrontation and his anxiety that it might antagonise a devoted part of his base – and became more entrenched in his obstinance the more he was urged to do so.Across three statements on Friday, Trump initially sought only to play down the dinner and made no mention of Fuentes or his views, before saying angrily in a post on his Truth Social website that evening that Ye “expressed no antisemitism” and “I didn’t know Nick Fuentes”.The line about not knowing Fuentes was the closest Trump came to acknowledging the offensive nature of the dinner, under pressure from advisers who warned him that being associated with a racist and Holocaust denier could further damage his personal brand as well as his recently launched 2024 presidential campaign.But even with his ignorance of Fuentes taken at face value, the statements signal Trump will give extraordinary deference to the most fringe elements of his base – even if it means potentially losing support from more moderate Republicans who have not typically cared for his indulgence of extremism.Trump has had a long history of delaying or muting criticism of white supremacy, drawing moral equivalency in 2017 between neo-Nazis and counter protesters at the deadly unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia, and refusing to denounce the far-right Proud Boys group at a 2020 presidential debate.The halting response to Fuentes most closely mirrored his inability to condemn white supremacist groups after Charlottesville, the people said, when Trump faced intense criticism for not naming the rightwing groups in the bloodshed that ended with the death of a young woman.When reached for comment, the Trump 2024 campaign said the former president had a record of combating antisemitism, including the appointment of a special envoy to combat antisemitism, and strengthening ties to Israel by recognising Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights.The circumstances of the dinner at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, though, have been a new source of consternation for aides, who privately concede that Ye should never have been allowed to meet with Trump in the first place given his own recent antisemitic history.Trump had intended to meet with Ye one-on-one for some time, according to a person briefed on the matter, though it was postponed around the time that Ye tweeted offensive tropes against Jews – only for it to be inexplicably rescheduled for late November.The former president ended up meeting with Fuentes, who was at the unrest in Charlottesville, after he came along with Ye and a former Trump campaign aide Karen Giorno. There was only a skeleton staff from Trump’s “45 Office” at the property ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.During the dinner, the person said, Fuentes told Trump he was among the former president’s supporters, but that he had been unimpressed with the 2024 campaign launch speech because it appeared stilted instead of appearing “authentic” with his ad-libs and off-the-cuff remarks.Trump, who had told Fuentes that his advisers preferred him to read speeches as scripted, turned to Ye at one point and said: “He gets me.”Fuentes also told Trump that he thought the former president would crush other 2024 candidates in a primary, including the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, the person said – only for Fuentes to appear to endorse DeSantis on his livestream, saying the future of the country “isn’t Donald Trump”.TopicsDonald TrumpThe far rightAntisemitismUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Uniting America review: how FDR and the GOP beat fascism home and away

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      Uniting America review: how FDR and the GOP beat fascism home and away Charles Lindbergh casts a shadow over Peter Shinkle’s new book, which ends with a warning about Trump and his partyThe subtitle of this remarkable popular history is “How FDR and Henry Stimson Brought Democrats and Republicans together to Win World War II”, Stimson being the Republican Franklin Roosevelt chose as secretary of war on 19 June 1940, the same day he chose another Republican, Frank Knox, for secretary of the navy.‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreThose appointments came five weeks after the king asked Winston Churchill to form a unity government in Great Britain, two weeks after 338,000 French and British troops were rescued at Dunkirk, and four weeks before Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented third term, all events featured in this compelling volume.But Peter Shinkle’s book is a great deal more than a celebration of the bipartisanship that was a key factor in American success. It also offers brisk accounts of all US campaigns in Africa and Europe, a detailed description of how Pearl Harbor happened, and the best explanation I have read of why the government pursued its disastrous policy of interning Japanese Americans.Besides all that, there is terrific social history of the ways the war changed the status of women and African Americans. Practically the only important social impact Shinkle omits is the war’s effects on gay and lesbian Americans, a subject covered best by Allan Bérubé’s definitive book, Coming Out Under Fire.Shinkle is a veteran reporter who has written another fine book, Ike’s Mystery Man, about Robert Cutler, the closeted gay man who was Dwight Eisenhower’s right-hand man for foreign policy in the White House. That book also combined political and social history. But his new volume is broader and more important.There are probably more books written about the second world war than any other 20th-century event, but every generation needs to be reminded of its triumphs and tragedies. Shinkle does a splendid job mining for new nuggets of information and fresh perspectives.There are two big reasons for focusing on Stimson. Not only did he play a vital role in practically every important military decision from 1940 to 1945, he also kept an extremely detailed diary, which makes it possible for Shinkle to tell us exactly what he was thinking.Besides canny portraits of Roosevelt, Stimson and George Marshall, the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there are a host of subsidiary characters. The first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Black activist A Philip Randolph are two of the most important heroes while Charles Lindbergh, the celebrated solo pilot to Paris who became a fierce isolationist and a virulent antisemite, is one of its principal villains.There has been a raging debate for decades about how the surprise Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor came about, and whether Roosevelt and his aides ignored information from Japanese diplomatic cables because they wanted to bring America into the war.It turns out almost all of the answers are in Simpson’s diary, including this key sentence: “The question was how we should maneuver [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot, without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”One of the biggest problems Roosevelt faced in 1940 and 1941 was how to counter isolationists like Lindbergh, whose affection for the Nazis and hatred for the Jews made him as popular in some quarters as he was despised in others.Before Congress, Lindbergh denounced the bill that gave Britain resources to survive the Blitz. There was much he didn’t like in the world, but “over a period of years [on both sides] there is not as much difference in philosophy as we have been led to believe”. After the House approved the extension of the draft by a single vote, Lindbergh declared “the greatest danger to this country” posed by its Jewish citizens “lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government”.While Roosevelt’s White House denounced that speech for resembling “the outpourings of Berlin”, former president Herbert Hoover “readily defended Lindbergh, a sign of the enduring political power of both the aviator and isolationism”.That power of these isolationists explains why Stimson did not record “shock, horror or anger” after Roosevelt informed him of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Instead, he wrote, “my first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite our people … For I feel this country united has practically nothing to fear while the apathy and visions stirred up by unpatriotic men have been hitherto very discouraging.”Roosevelt refused to desegregate the armed forces, largely for fear of alienating southern Democrats. But Shinkle reminds us that Roosevelt’s civil rights record was much more complicated than that failure suggests.Ike’s Mystery Man review: astonishing tale of a gay White House aideRead moreRandolph, who was president of the first important Black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, used the threat of a March on Washington by 100,000 citizens to pressure Roosevelt into signing a landmark executive order prohibiting discrimination and segregation by military contractors. One activist wrote that the Fair Employment Practice Committee Roosevelt impaneled led to “more progress” against “racial and religious discrimination than [in] any other period in American history”.Three million women were employed in the defense industry by the end of 1942, as well as new divisions of the army, navy and coast guard, similarly transforming their status.Jacqueline Cochran commanded the Women Airforce Service Pilots, which graduated 1,100 women training inspectors and test pilots. “Menstrual cycles didn’t upset anyone’s cycle,” Cochran wrote. Women flew “as regularly and for as many hours as the men”.Shinkle ends with all the ways history is repeating itself today, including a description of “Trump’s fascism”. The resurgence of that hateful ideology, and the budding isolationism of many Republicans eager to end support for Ukraine, are two reasons why this vivid volume is so timely and important.
      Uniting America: How FDR and Henry Stimson Brought Democrats and Republicans together to Win World War II is published in the US by St Martin’s Press
      TopicsBooksHistory booksFranklin D RooseveltSecond world warUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansreviewsReuse this content More

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      Jury deliberations begin in January 6 sedition trial of Oath Keepers founder

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      Jury deliberations begin in January 6 sedition trial of Oath Keepers founderJurors will decide if his actions amount to seditious conspiracy, which carries significant jail time As angry supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol, ready to smash through windows and beat police officers, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes extolled them as patriots and harked back to the battle that kicked off the American revolutionary war.“Next comes our Lexington,” Rhodes told his fellow far-right extremists in a message on 6 January 2021. “It’s coming.”Jurors will begin weighing his words and actions on Tuesday, after nearly two months of testimony and argument in the criminal trial of Rhodes and four codefendants. Final defense arguments wrapped up late Monday.Oath Keepers called for ‘violent overthrow’ of US government, trial hearsRead moreHundreds of people have been convicted in the attack that left dozens of officers injured, sent lawmakers running for their lives and shook the foundations of American democracy. Now jurors in the case against Rhodes and four associates will decide, for the first time, whether the actions of any January 6 defendants amount to seditious conspiracy – a rarely used charge that carries both significant prison time and political weight.The jury’s verdict may well address the false notion that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, coming soon after 2022 midterm results in which voters rejected Trump’s chosen Republican candidates who supported his baseless claims of fraud. The outcome could also shape the future of the justice department’s massive and costly prosecution of the insurrection that some conservatives have sought to portray as politically motivated.Failure to secure a seditious conspiracy conviction could spell trouble for another high-profile trial beginning next month of former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and other leaders of that extremist group. The justice department’s January 6 probe has also expanded beyond those who attacked the Capitol to focus on others linked to Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.In the Oath Keepers trial, prosecutors built their case using dozens of encrypted messages sent in the weeks leading up to January 6. They show Rhodes rallying his followers to fight to defend Trump and warning they might need to “rise up in insurrection”.“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war. Prepare your mind, body and spirit,” he wrote shortly after the 2020 election.Three defendants, including Rhodes, took the witness stand to testify in their defense – a move generally seen by defense lawyers as a last-resort option because it tends to do more harm than good. On the witness stand, Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, and his associates – Thomas Caldwell of Berryville, Virginia, and Jessica Watkins, of Woodstock, Ohio – sought to downplay their actions, but struggled when pressed by prosecutors to explain their violent messages.The others on trial are Kelly Meggs of Dunnellon, Florida, and Kenneth Harrelson of Titusville, Florida. Seditious conspiracy carries up to 20 years behind bars, and all five defendants also face other felony charges. They would be the first people convicted of seditious conspiracy at trial since the 1995 prosecution of Islamic militants who plotted to bomb New York City landmarks.The trial unfolding in Washington’s federal court – less than a mile from the Capitol – has provided a window into the ways in which Rhodes mobilized his group and later tried to reach Trump.‘We must defeat them’: new evidence details Oath Keepers’ ‘civil war’ timelineRead moreBut while authorities combed through thousands of messages sent by Rhodes and his codefendants, none specifically spelled out a plan to attack the Capitol itself. Defense attorneys emphasized that fact throughout the trial in arguing that Oath Keepers who did enter the Capitol were swept up in a spontaneous outpouring of election-fueled rage rather than acting as part of a plot.Jurors never heard from three other Oath Keepers who have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy.Over two days on the witness stand, a seemingly relaxed Rhodes told jurors there was no Capitol attack plan. He said he didn’t have anything to do with the guns some Oath Keepers had stashed at a Virginia hotel that prosecutors say served as the base for “quick reaction force” teams ready to ferry an arsenal of weapons across the Potomac River if necessary. The weapons were never deployed.Rhodes, a Yale Law School graduate and former Army paratrooper, said his followers were “stupid” for going inside. Rhodes, who was in a hotel room when he found out rioters were storming the Capitol, insisted that the Oath Keepers’ only mission for the day was to provide security for Trump ally Roger Stone and other figures at events before the riot.That message was repeated in court by others, including a man described as the Oath Keepers’ “operations leader” on January 6, who told jurors he never heard anyone discussing plans to attack the Capitol.A government witness – an Oath Keeper cooperating with prosecutors in hopes of a lighter sentence – testified that there was an “implicit” agreement to stop Congress’s certification, but the decision to enter the building was “spontaneous”.Prosecutors say the defense is only trying to muddy the waters in a clear-cut case. The Oath Keepers aren’t accused of entering into an agreement ahead of January 6 to storm the Capitol.Citing the civil war-era seditious conspiracy statute, prosecutors tried to prove the Oath Keepers conspired to forcibly oppose the authority of the federal government and block the execution of laws governing the transfer of presidential power. Prosecutors must show the defendants agreed to use force – not merely advocated it – to oppose the transfer of presidential power.TopicsUS newsUS politicsThe far rightUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      The Successor review: life of Lachlan Murdoch pulls punches all too often

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      The Successor review: life of Lachlan Murdoch pulls punches all too oftenReaders of Paddy Manning’s book should keep in mind the words of Media Matters: Fox News is ‘an unchained pro-Trump propaganda outlet that promotes white nationalism’ The Murdochs are in many ways the most important media story of the last 50 years. On three continents their shoddy journalism, blind political ambition, outright racism and unlimited greed have done more damage to democracy than the actions of all their rivals put together.From George Floyd to Hunter Biden: Lachlan Murdoch, Fox News and the year that tested AmericaRead moreThe family’s internal competitions and political alliances are the subjects of dozens of books and documentaries, as well as the inspiration for Succession, the HBO hit now filming its fourth season.The Australian journalist Paddy Manning’s new book focuses on Lachlan Murdoch, the family’s current leader who will be fully in charge if his 91-year old father, Rupert, ever completely retires.This 359-page volume is a gigantic clip shop, giving us the greatest hits of everyone from Roger Ailes’s biographer, Gabe Sherman, to the Vanity Fair media writer Sarah Ellison and the investigative reporter Nick Davies, who broke so many of the details of the Murdoch newspapers’ illegal hacking of voicemails in the pages of this paper.The author’s main problem is that he has no judgment about what’s important to include and what ought to be left out. As a result he gives us equally dense accounts of Lachlan Murdoch’s early, disastrous media investments, the family’s efforts to create a new rugby competition in Australia and the sexual harassment scandal that finally ended the career of Ailes at Fox News.Manning also has no idea about which parts of this story are most important. An early section describes Rupert Murdoch’s brush with insolvency after he over-extended himself in the 1980s. But Manning never mentions the main reason: Murdoch’s vast overpayment of $3bn for Walter Annenberg’s TV Guide and his other Triangle properties in 1988, a purchase which turned out to be about as sensible as Elon Musk’s $44bn purchase of Twitter. Annenberg said he called Warren Buffet for advice about whether to take Murdoch’s bid, and Buffet replied: “Run to the bank!”None of the details of the TV Guide deal appear in these pages. Serious students of the Murdoch saga won’t learn anything new. But there are plenty of eye-popping numbers to remind most of us that the rich are not at all like you and me.The Successor opens with Lachlan relaxing with his wife on a new $30m yacht – a present for Sarah’s 50th birthday – which turns out to be a placeholder for a $175m yacht under construction in a Dutch shipyard. The couple paid “a stunning $37m for a boatshed and jetty at Point Piper, a few minutes’ drive form their $100m Bellevue Hill Mansion”.In 2007, the Murdoch family trust filed notice that each of Rupert Murdoch’s six children was getting $100m of News Corp stock, plus $50m in cash. Which sounds like a lot until you find out that after Disney paid $71bn for various Fox assets, each Murdoch child received “roughly $2bn” in Disney stock.Manning’s inability to make sensible judgments about any of this is suggested by his decision to quote the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren’s spot-on description of Fox News as a “hate-for-profit racket” – and then offer, in his very next sentence, his judgment that Lachlan was “a laid-back Australian and all-round smooth operator: spectacularly rich, impeccably mannered, handsome, open minded, adventurous, savvy, fun”.Similarly, after describing a Sydney mansion bought for $23m in 2009 and renovated for $11.7m, with room for two custom-built Porsche Panamera sedans at $300,000 each, just a few pages later Manning credulously quotes the Murdoch lackey Col Allan on Lachlan’s “deep appreciation of that part of America that’s ignored by the coastal liberal elites. I think it is true that Australia and its egalitarianism has had a profound and very positive effect on Lachlan’s nature and his cultural views”.Egalitarianism?The cost of Rupert Murdoch’s naked nepotism included a $139m settlement News Corp paid in 2013 after the Massachusetts Laborers’ Pension & Annuity Funds alleged that his children on the News Corp board “should be liable for its refusal to investigate and to stop known misconduct at the company”. It was “the largest derivative settlement in the history of Delaware’s court of chancery”.The book veers beyond implausibility when it describes the relationship between Lachlan and Tucker Carlson, who has become one of the Murdochs’ biggest cash cows by pushing racism, xenophobia and wild conspiracy theories. According to Manning the two men, “close in age”, share “a kind of philosophical bent”.After far-right protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 shouted “Jews will not replace us”, Kathryn Hufschmid, married to Lachlan’s brother James, insisted they issue a statement declaring “standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis”. According to the New York Times, Kathryn said to her husband: “If we’re not going to say something about fucking Nazis marching Virginia, when are we going to say something?” Lachlan never followed his brother’s lead.The pervasive power of Rupert Murdoch: an extract from Hack Attack by Nick DaviesRead moreCarlson refused to condemn the neo-Nazi protesters and did “a bizarre segment on slavery in which he listed good people who had owned slaves, including Plato, the Aztecs and Thomas Jefferson”.To his credit, Manning quotes the judgment of the activist group Media Matters, that Fox News had become “an unchained pro-Trump propaganda outlet that promotes white nationalism” just “as Lachlan Murdoch’s control over the network steadily increased … he is happy to profit from the forces he continues to unleash”.But then, incredibly, the author describes Lachlan as devoted to “a vibrant marketplace of ideas, serving to raise the standard of public debate”, which “must offer a diversity of news and opinion … His closest advisers say a belief in free speech, in all its diversity, is Lachlan’s ‘north star’”.Why would anyone trust an author who can’t distinguish between racism for profit and celebration of free speech?
      The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch is published in the US by Sutherland House Books
      TopicsBooksLachlan MurdochRupert MurdochJames MurdochNews CorporationMedia businessFox NewsreviewsReuse this content More

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      Adrian Fontes wins highly contested secretary of state in Arizona

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      Adrian Fontes wins highly contested secretary of state in ArizonaThe former Marine beat Mark Finchem, an ex-member of Oath Keepers militia who was at the Capitol on January 6 The victory of Adrian Fontes, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, may come to be seen as one of the most significant results of the 2022 elections in terms of the future of American democracy.Activists scramble after some Georgia voters don’t receive absentee ballotsRead moreFontes, a former Marine, managed to fend off one of the most contentious Republican election deniers in a bitterly fought and exceedingly close race. His opponent, Mark Finchem, is a state lawmaker who has been a member of the far-right Oath Keepers militia and was present at the US Capitol on the day of the 6 January 2021 insurrection.Finchem has made repeated efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in Arizona in the 2020 election, in favor of his idol Donald Trump.By frustrating Finchem’s efforts to secure the secretary of state position, Fontes has prevented both local and federal election administration in Arizona falling into the hands of an avid opponent of democratic norms. Had Finchem come out on top, as some polls suggested he might in the final stretch of the campaign, he would have been placed to radically alter Arizona’s handling of elections and could even have subverted the outcome of the 2024 presidential battle.In an interview with the Guardian shortly before election day, Fontes said that a Finchem victory would have threatened “the fate of the republic, and the free world too if you accept that America is still its leader”.As Arizona’s secretary of state-elect, Fontes will now become second in line of succession to the governor. He will be in a strong position to influence how elections are conducted in the state, including the presidential race in two years’ time in which Trump has indicated he is minded to stand again.In his bid to voters, Fontes promised that were he to win he would preserve mail-in voting, a popular way of casting ballots in Arizona that Finchem had threatened to restrict claiming without evidence that it was riddled with fraud.Fontes is no stranger to electoral disputes. In 2020 he was the recorder of Maricopa, Arizona’s most populous county, which put him at the centre of the storm over the election count there in which Republicans demanded a much-derided “audit” of the count.TopicsArizonaUS midterm elections 2022The far rightUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Inside the unhinged midterm election conspiracy theories on Truth Social

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      Inside the unhinged midterm election conspiracy theories on Truth Social Stuffed ballot boxes, ‘BlueAnon’, support for Russia and ‘corporate communists’ are catnip on the rightwing platform Ballot boxes being stuffed. “BlueAnon”. Men in underpants. Every Democratic candidate: a “complete weirdo psychopath”.To dive into Truth Social, Donald Trump’s Twitter-but-for-conspiracy-theorists social media platform, is to enter a world where all of the above are real topics of debate, breathlessly discussed by Trump-backing Republicans and anonymous rightwing provocateurs.Twitter sued by former staff as Elon Musk begins mass sackingsRead moreTruth Social has always been a platform for lies and obfuscations; about the 2020 election, the Democratic party, vaccines, Hunter Biden. But with less than a week before the election, the platform and its users have become even more unhinged.The site, formed as Trump’s alternative to Twitter after he was banned from that platform in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, is awash with false theories about how the Democratic party is attempting to manipulate the midterm vote, false claims about the attack on Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and false accusations about Democratic candidates themselves.As one of the most followed Truth Social users, Donald Trump Jr, son of the former US president, has been one of the most prominent agitators.In the run-up to the election, Trump Jr has used the platform to echo rightwing talking points about vaccines, drugs, Ukraine and a host of other issues. His posts are eagerly lapped up by fellow Truthers, and he isn’t the only thought leader on the platform.The unusually named Catturd2 has emerged as one of Truth Social’s tastemakers since the site launched, and with more than 760,000 followers – Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority speaker has only 54,000 and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s on-off friend and lawyer, has 89,000 – when Catturd2 speaks, people listen.In recent days Catturd2 has mostly chosen to speak about the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Like numerous other Truth Social users, Catturd2 has their doubts and has echoed a rightwing, homophobic, incorrect conspiracy theory about the attack – an idea Trump Jr also peddled on Truth Social.But Catturd2 has other thoughts, too, including on the Democrats running for election in the midterm elections.“Every single Democrat candidate is a complete weirdo psychopath,” Catturd2 wrote recently, in a truth that was liked by more than 6,000 accounts, and which largely captures the attitude of Truth Social users toward Democratic politicians and their supporters.Truth Social launched, chaotically, in February 2022. Billed as “a major new platform” where Republicans and Democrats alike could converse in an environment free from the “censorship” of big tech – an environment with an “ironclad commitment to protecting vigorous debate” – thousands of would-be users were unable to access the service for weeks, and Trump himself was said to be furious with the platform.Trump had planned a $1.3bn merger of Truth Social with Digital World Acquisition Corp, a blank check company, but the deal has been plagued by delays and is under federal investigation. In October it emerged that the co-founder of Trump’s social media company had told the US Securities and Exchange Commission that the company’s efforts to raise $1bn were based on “fraudulent misrepresentations … in violation of federal securities laws”.Still, Truth Social has managed to grow in popularity, with its number of users surging past other rightwing platforms like Gab, Parler and Gettr. Even if Truth Social’s 1.7m US unique visitors a month is dwarfed by Twitter and Facebook, it has become the go-to meeting place for Trump supporters to voice unsubstantiated concerns about voter fraud.As the election looms, ballot “drop boxes” have become the particular bete noire for the rightwing crowd. Introduced so that people can drop off their early voting or absentee ballots, to Truth Social users these drop boxes are nothing more than election fraud in plain sight – flimsy, poorly guarded containers where Democratic backers or members of the deep state regularly stop off to jam hundreds of fraudulent ballots into the counting system.On Truth Social, people have been called to action.“Get out and help patriots. Watch those ballot drop boxes. We can’t let them steal another election,” msannthrope wrote, in a post similar to hundreds of others on the platform.In fact, on Tuesday a judge issued a restraining order against a rightwing group in Arizona which had deployed people to watch over drop boxes, after accusations of voter intimidation, but the obsession with the boxes hasn’t gone away.Thousands of users posted a link this week to a story from a rightwing website which alleged irregularities at ballot drop boxes in Pennsylvania, a state which Trump and his supporters have accused of seeing fraud in 2020. Politifact, a non-partisan fact-checking website, reported that people had “successfully inserted 18 ballots into three of the eight ballot drop boxes in Centre County, Pennsylvania, before the official window of time when the boxes were open to receive ballots”.But, Politifact wrote: “The ballots are not evidence of fraud. The voters simply didn’t follow directions,” while Michael Pipe, the county’s commission chair and chair of its election board, told local news station KDKA-TV. The ballots will not count towards the Pennsylvania vote, Pipe said, because they were returned incorrectly.If misinformation is king on Truth Social, then that might explain how Marjorie Taylor Greene, a darling of the Trump-Republican movement who is known for both extremism and incompetence, has become one of the loudest voices in what is a very loud room.Throughout October, her account has been a flurry of vague assertions about the Democratic party: half-baked off ideas and theories tossed off apropos of nothing, without explanation or justification.“There are more Democrat conspiracy theories & theorists on Twitter than Qanon ever produced,” Taylor Greene wrote on October 28.“Most have blue check marks, post their pronouns, support war in Ukraine, are triple vaxxed & boosted, and work in corporate media, Hollywood, or the government.“Blueanon [an apparent play on the rightwing QAnon conspiracy theory] is dangerous.”It wasn’t clear – because she didn’t say – what had set Taylor Greene off. But she clearly enjoyed this foreboding, dystopian style, because the next day, she was back at it.“Corporate communists control the speech of their employees & customers by only allowing Democrat speech and punishing, silencing, and canceling Republican speech,” Taylor Greene said.If it was unclear how the concept of a corporate communist would actually work, then it was also unclear what Taylor Greene meant by her grimly threatening follow up: “But there is a shift beginning,” she wrote. “People are beginning to refuse to be silenced and a Patriot economy is beginning.”Perhaps the real motivation for these posts is simply that people on Truth Social love stuff like this. Truth Social is, according to its bosses, a platform where anyone is free to say whatever they want, but what they mostly want to say is that they don’t have anywhere to speak.“Why are people being censored for misleading or false information and not the biggest offenders, the media?” user mikesonfire pondered obliquely this month.Mikesonfire’s other posts have included a suggestion that the military, not “biased clerks” count votes, and that: “Russia invaded the Ukraine to stop the NWO [New World Order, a conspiracy theory which states a cabal of elites is striving for a world government] for producing more viral weapons”.Russia has been a particular fascination for Truth Social users, many of whom have spoken sympathetically about the country and its invasion of Ukraine. Other users have posted approvingly about a Russian government plan to ban people from suggesting homosexual relationships are “normal”, and the hashtag IStandWithRussia has been used repeatedly over the past month.In recent days, despite users’ apparent satisfaction with Truth Social, the main interest has been Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and how it might impact the Democratic party in elections and beyond.Musk’s vague promise to overturn Twitter bans has had people giddy with excitement, claiming it could open the door to a glorious era of Republican reign.“Democrats are not going to be able to handle free speech and the corrupt Democratic Party will fall apart after hearing the truth,” one Truth Social user gravely intoned after Musk purchased Twitter.Another posted: “3 PATRIOTS🇺🇸 TRUMP, MUSK, & [Steve] BANNON,” above a photoshopped picture of the three men. Others “truthed” photos of Musk entering the Twitter HQ, and reveled in the departure of Twitter employees.Troublingly for Trump and Truth Social, however, the most striking response from Truth Social users was the large number of them pleading with Musk to be allowed to return to Twitter.For now, Truth Social might be the platform of choice for those loyal to Trump and his election lies, but it seems large numbers of the platform can’t wait to get away.TopicsDonald TrumpElon MuskSteve BannonUS politicsSocial mediaNancy PelosiRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More