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      Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was an FBI informant

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      Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys extremist group, has a past as an informer for federal and local law enforcement, repeatedly working undercover for investigators after he was arrested in 2012, according to a former prosecutor and a transcript of a 2014 federal court proceeding obtained by Reuters.In the Miami hearing, a federal prosecutor, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and Tarrio’s own lawyer described his undercover work and said he had helped authorities prosecute more than a dozen people in various cases involving drugs, gambling and human smuggling.Tarrio, in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, denied working undercover or cooperating in cases against others. “I don’t know any of this,’” he said, when asked about the transcript. “I don’t recall any of this.”Law enforcement officials and the court transcript contradict Tarrio’s denial. In a statement to Reuters, the former federal prosecutor in Tarrio’s case, Vanessa Singh Johannes, confirmed that “he cooperated with local and federal law enforcement, to aid in the prosecution of those running other, separate criminal enterprises, ranging from running marijuana grow houses in Miami to operating pharmaceutical fraud schemes”.Tarrio, 36, is a high-profile figure who organizes and leads the rightwing Proud Boys in their confrontations with those they believe to be antifa, short for “anti-fascism”, an amorphous leftist movement. The Proud Boys were involved in the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January.The records uncovered by Reuters are startling because they show that a leader of a far-right group now under intense scrutiny by law enforcement was previously an active collaborator with criminal investigators.Washington police arrested Tarrio in early January when he arrived in the city two days before the Capitol Hill riot. He was charged with possessing two high-capacity rifle magazines, and burning a Black Lives Matter banner during a December demonstration by supporters of Donald Trump. The DC superior court ordered him to leave the city pending a court date in June.Though Tarrio did not take part in the Capitol insurrection, at least five Proud Boys members have been charged in the riot. The FBI previously said Tarrio’s earlier arrest was an effort to pre-empt the events of 6 January.The transcript from 2014 shines a new light on Tarrio’s past connections to law enforcement. During the hearing, the prosecutor and Tarrio’s defense attorney asked a judge to reduce the prison sentence of Tarrio and two co-defendants. They had pleaded guilty in a fraud case related to the relabeling and sale of stolen diabetes test kits.The prosecutor said Tarrio’s information had led to the prosecution of 13 people on federal charges in two separate cases, and had helped local authorities investigate a gambling ring.Tarrio’s then lawyer Jeffrey Feiler said in court that his client had worked undercover in numerous investigations, one involving the sale of anabolic steroids, another regarding “wholesale prescription narcotics” and a third targeting human smuggling. He said Tarrio helped police uncover three marijuana grow houses, and was a “prolific” cooperator.In the smuggling case, Tarrio, “at his own risk, in an undercover role met and negotiated to pay $11,000 to members of that ring to bring in fictitious family members of his from another country”, the lawyer said in court.In an interview, Feiler said he did not recall details about the case but added, “The information I provided to the court was based on information provided to me by law enforcement and the prosecutor.”An FBI agent at the hearing called Tarrio a “key component” in local police investigations involving marijuana, cocaine and MDMA, or ecstasy. The Miami FBI office declined comment.There is no evidence Tarrio has cooperated with authorities since then. In interviews with Reuters, however, he said that before rallies in various cities, he would let police departments know of the Proud Boys’ plans. It is unclear if this was actually the case. He said he stopped this coordination after 12 December because the DC police had cracked down on the group.Tarrio on Tuesday acknowledged that his fraud sentence was reduced, from 30 months to 16 months, but insisted that leniency was provided only because he and his co-defendants helped investigators “clear up” questions about his own case. He said he never helped investigate others.That comment contrasts with statements made in court by the prosecutor, his lawyer and the FBI. The judge in the case, Joan A Lenard, said Tarrio “provided substantial assistance in the investigation and prosecution of other persons involved in criminal conduct”.As Trump supporters challenged the Republican’s election loss in often violent demonstrations, Tarrio stood out for his swagger as he led crowds of mostly white Proud Boys in a series of confrontations and street brawls in Washington DC, Portland, Oregon and elsewhere.The Proud Boys, founded in 2016, began as a group protesting against political correctness and perceived constraints on masculinity. It grew into a group with distinctive colors of yellow and black that embraced street fighting. In September their profile soared when Trump called on them to “Stand back and stand by.”Tarrio, based in Miami, became the national chairman of the group in 2018.In November and December, Tarrio led the Proud Boys through the streets of DC after Trump’s loss. Video shows him on 11 December with a bullhorn in front of a large crowd. “To the parasites both in Congress, and in that stolen White House,’” he said. “You want a war, you got one!” The crowd roared. The next day Tarrio burned the BLM banner.Former prosecutor Johannes said she was surprised that the defendant she prosecuted for fraud is now a key player in the violent movement that sought to halt the certification of President Joe Biden.“I knew that he was a fraudster, but had no reason to know that he was also a domestic terrorist,” she said. More

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      Far-right extremism in the US is deadly serious. What will Biden do about it? | Cas Mudde

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      “The cry for survival comes from the planet itself, a cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear. And now a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.”
      This sentence, in Joe Biden’s inauguration speech, was manna from heaven for anti-fascists, including me, and in many ways a direct refutation of President Donald Trump’s “American carnage” speech four years ago. After decades of presidents minimizing the white supremacist threat, and four years of emboldening and protecting it, finally there is a president who dares to call the threat by its real name: white supremacy.
      My relief was somewhat short-lived, however. A few days later Biden both narrowed and broadened his focus. While there were still implicit references to the far right, most notably the storming of the Capitol on 6 January, the focus was now on “domestic violent extremism”. Why we needed yet another neologism, rather than the common term “domestic terrorism”, was not explained – nor was the fact that most definitions of extremism include the threat or use of violence, which makes the phrase “violent extremism” redundant.
      But leaving aside semantics, much more problematic was the generalization of the threat. Did jihadis storm the Capitol? Were “eco-terrorists” involved? Or antifa? No, the only people storming the Capitol were a broad variety of conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and other far-right adherents. (To make this absolutely clear, given that conservative and far-right media and politicians keep spreading this lie, antifa was not involved in the storming of the Capitol.)
      So why focus on “domestic violent extremism” and not, specifically, on white supremacy or, perhaps better, the far right? I know that there are other “violent extremisms” in the US, but with the exception of the far right, they have not been ignored or minimized by the state. The threats from leftwing extremism, from antifa to the Animal Liberation Front, and Muslim extremism too, have been overemphasized for decades by intelligence agencies and politicians of both parties. It is far-right extremism, including white supremacy, that has generally been ignored.
      My second disappointment came from the fact that Biden called for a “comprehensive assessment of the threat of domestic violent extremism” by the director of national intelligence, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, thereby reducing it to a militarized security issue. This not only prioritizes a certain type of expertise and experts (eg military and security), at the expense of others (eg social sciences), it also tends to operate in the grey zones of democracy, with limited oversight from Congress and little to none from the public.
      Obviously, there is a security angle here, given the violent core in many far-right subcultures, including the alt-right, self-described “sovereign citizens”, QAnon conspiracy theorists and militia groups. In fact, most of these threats have long been acknowledged by agents on the ground. An FBI report in 2006 warned of far-right infiltration of law enforcement, while in 2014 a national survey of 175 law enforcement agencies ranked sovereign citizens as the most important terrorist threat in the country. Even Trump’s own FBI director and the acting secretary of homeland security called white supremacist extremists the most important domestic terrorist threat.
      However, the core of the far-right threat to US democracy goes well beyond these still relatively small groups of potentially violent extremists. That is why these extremists have been minimized and protected by sympathizers in law enforcement and the political mainstream. If Biden really wants to fight far-right “domestic violent extremism”, he has to go to the core of the issue, not limit himself to the most violent outliers. In fact, the “domestic violent extremism” threat can already be reduced significantly by simply providing political cover for FBI and homeland security agents who have been investigating them for decades. No new agencies, laws or resources are necessary – just a refocus of existing resources away from jihadi terrorism and towards the domestic far right.
      The real threat comes from the broader political and public context in which these “domestic violent extremists” operate – such as the enormous media and social media infrastructure that promotes white supremacist ideas and spreads conspiracy theories. Banning extremist rhetoric and conspiracy theories from social media might help a bit, but it doesn’t do anything about more powerful voices in traditional media, such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity on Fox News. Similarly, it is easy to focus on relatively marginal groups such as the Proud Boys, but their actions are insignificant compared with those of Republican senators such as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.
      That is why the fight against the far right is, first and foremost, a political one. Our task is to call out the far right in all its guises, irrespective of connections and power. It is to reject far-right frames and policies, including the ones that have been part of the country’s fabric since its founding and those that have been mainstreamed more recently by the Republican party and Donald Trump. If Biden is not willing to go to the root of the problem, much of his fight against far-right “domestic violent extremism” will fail too, just as it did during the presidency of his friend, Barack Obama.
      In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security published an intelligence assessment of “rightwing extremism” in the US, which warned that veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan might be particular targets for recruitment by extremist groups. The report sparked a conservative backlash which accused the Obama administration of unfairly targeting conservatives and veterans. Within days, secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, apologized, the report was effectively shelved, rightwing extremism was deprioritized, and the main author of the report resigned. The situation has not gotten better since. We know that the military, and police departments across the country, have been infiltrated and compromised by hate groups and far-right sympathizers. We also know that nearly one in five defendants in Capitol storming cases have served in the military.
      So, the real questions are: does Biden understand how broad and entrenched the far-right threat to US democracy really is, and is he willing to boldly go where Obama did not dare? Or is he going to take the easy way out, as so many others have done before? I fear the Biden administration will engage in some rhetorical grandstanding and throw the might of the national security state at some of the more marginal far-right groups and individuals, further eroding civil liberties, while staying silent about the broader far right. While this might prevent some far-right terrorist attacks in the margins, it will also permit the further legitimization and mainstreaming of the far right at the heart of US politics and society.
      Cas Mudde is Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, the author of The Far Right Today (2019), and host of the podcast Radikaal. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Big tech facilitated QAnon and the Capitol attack. It’s time to hold them accountable

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      Donald Trump’s election lies and the 6 January attack on the US Capitol have highlighted how big tech has led our society down a path of conspiracies and radicalism by ignoring the mounting evidence that their products are dangerous.But the spread of deadly misinformation on a global scale was enabled by the absence of antitrust enforcement by the federal government to rein in out-of-control monopolies such as Facebook and Google. And there is a real risk social media giants could sidestep accountability once again.Trump’s insistence that he won the election was an attack on democracy that culminated in the attack on the US Capitol. The events were as much the fault of Sundar Pichai, Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg – CEOs of Google, Twitter and Facebook, respectively – as they were the fault of Trump and his cadre of co-conspirators.During the early days of social media, no service operated at the scale of today’s Goliaths. Adoption was limited and online communities lived in small and isolated pockets. When the Egyptian uprisings of 2011 proved the power of these services, the US state department became their cheerleaders, offering them a veneer of exceptionalism which would protect them from scrutiny as they grew exponentially.Later, dictators and anti-democratic actors would study and co-opt these tools for their own purposes. As the megaphones got larger, the voices of bad actors also got louder. As the networks got bigger, the feedback loop amplifying those voices became stronger. It is unimaginable that QAnon could gain a mass following without tech companies’ dangerous indifference.Eventually, these platforms became immune to forces of competition in the marketplace – they became information monopolies with runaway scale. Absent any accountability from watchdogs or the marketplace, fringe conspiracy theories enjoyed unchecked propagation. We can mark networked conspiracies from birtherism to QAnon as straight lines through the same coterie of misinformers who came to power alongside Trump.Today, most global internet activity happens on services owned by either Facebook or Alphabet, which includes YouTube and Google. The internet has calcified into a pair of monopolies who protect their size by optimizing to maximize “engagement”. Sadly, algorithms designed to increase dependency and usage are far more profitable than ones that would encourage timely, local, relevant and, most importantly, accurate information. The truth, in a word, is boring. Facts rarely animate the kind of compulsive engagement rewarded by recommendation and search algorithms.The best tool – if not the only tool – to hold big tech accountable is antitrust enforcement: enforcing the existing antitrust laws designed to rein in companies’ influence over other political, economic and social institutions.Antitrust enforcement has historically been the US government’s greatest weapon against such firms. From breaking up the trusts at the start of the 20th century to the present day, antitrust enforcement spurs competition and ingenuity while re-empowering citizens. Most antitrust historians agree that absent US v Microsoft in 1998, which stopped Microsoft from bundling products and effectively killing off other browsers, the modern internet would have been strangled in the crib.The best tool to hold big tech accountable is antitrust enforcement: enforcing the existing antitrust laws designed to rein in companies’ influence over other political, economic and social institutionsIronically, Google and Facebook were the beneficiaries of such enforcement. Over two decades would pass before US authorities brought antitrust suits against Google and Facebook last year. Until then, antitrust had languished as a tool to counterbalance abusive monopolies. Big tech sees an existential threat in the renewed calls for antitrust, and these companies have aggressively lobbied to ensure key vacancies in the Biden administration are filled by their friends.The Democratic party is especially vulnerable to soft capture by these tech firms. Big tech executives are mostly left-leaning and donate millions to progressive causes while spouting feelgood rhetoric of inclusion and connectivity. During the Obama administration, Google and Facebook were treated as exceptional, avoiding any meaningful regulatory scrutiny. Democratic Senate leadership, specifically Senator Chuck Schumer, has recently signaled he will treat these companies with kid gloves.The Biden administration cannot repeat the Obama legacy of installing big tech-friendly individuals to these critical but often under-the-radar roles. The new administration, in consultation with Schumer, will be tasked with appointing a new assistant attorney general for antitrust at the Department of Justice and up to three members of the Federal Trade Commission. Figures friendly to big tech in those positions could abruptly settle the pending litigation against Google or Facebook.President Joe Biden and Schumer must reject any candidate who has worked in the service of big tech. Any former White House or congressional personnel who gave these companies a pass during the Obama administration should also be disqualified from consideration. Allowing big tech’s lawyers and plants to run the antitrust agencies would be the equivalent of allowing a climate-change-denying big oil executive run the Environmental Protection Agency.The public is beginning to recognize the harms to society wrought by big tech and a vibrant and bipartisan anti-monopoly movement with diverse scholars, and activists has risen over the past few years. Two-thirds of Democratic voters believe, along with a majority of Republicans, that Biden should “refuse to appoint executives, lobbyists, or lawyers for these companies to positions of power or influence in his administration while this legal activity is pending”. This gives the Democratic party an opportunity to do the right thing for our country and attract new voters by fighting for the web we want.Big tech played a central role in the dangerous attack on the US Capitol and all of the events which led to it. Biden’s antitrust appointees will be the ones who decide if there are any consequences to be paid. More

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      Fears grow that efforts to combat US domestic terrorism can hurt minorities

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      An expanded no fly list. New crimes put on the books. Increased use of the death penalty.These are some of the ways that politicians, pundits and law enforcement want to head off a repeat of the 6 January attack on the Capitol. But a renewed national security push aimed at addressing domestic terrorism has civil liberties groups steeling themselves, concerned that moves to combat far-right extremism will instead redound against communities of color and leftwing activists.Last summer’s racial justice protests jump-started a national conversation over the endurance of racism within America’s law enforcement and security apparatus. But despite campaigning on the need to reform those institutions, some mainstream Democrats are now taking the lead on calls to expand them.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has called for the Capitol rioters to be placed on the no fly list. President Joe Biden, whose campaign website pledges his administration will “work for a domestic terrorism law”, has ordered a comprehensive assessment of domestic violent extremism. House speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for a new “9/11-type commission”. And the first domestic terrorism legislation to follow the Capitol attack was introduced in the House last week by Illinois Democrat Brad Schneider.The Democratic party, however, isn’t entirely united on the issue.Ten progressive members of Congress, led by Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib have sent a letter to congressional leadership expressing opposition to an expansion of national security powers.“The Trump mob’s success in breaching the Capitol was not due to a lack of resources at the disposal of federal law enforcement,” the letter reads. “We firmly believe that the national security and surveillance powers of the US government are already too broad, undefined, and unaccountable to the people.”“Our history is littered with examples of initiatives sold as being necessary to fight extremism that quickly devolve into tools used for the mass violation of the human and civil rights of the American people,” the letter continues.It cites as examples the McCarthy-era House Un-American Activities Committee, the surveillance of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the invention of a category in 2017 called “Black Identity Extremism” the FBI claimed posed a risk of domestic terrorism.More than 100 civil and human rights organizations have also joined in a statement of opposition to any new domestic terror legislation.Since 6 January, security officials have resurrected the same well-honed argument trotted out when the debate around domestic terrorism resurfaces: that the law hamstrings police from effectively fighting white nationalist violence. “There are so many limitations on law enforcement,” Bill Bratton, former commissioner of the NYPD, recently told CNBC. “We don’t have many of the tools to battle domestic terrorism that we have to battle international terrorism.”Civil rights and civil liberties experts say that argument is disingenuous, a ploy to seize power in a time of national crisis, and point to the many laws at the disposal of law enforcement in fighting domestic extremism. What they lack, they say, is the will to go after white supremacists the way they do communities of color, despite white supremacists accounting for the vast majority of criminal acts that are classifiable by law as domestic terrorism.“In the last four years, white supremacists and far-right militias have engaged in public violence, and have made public statements about their intent to do so,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent now with the Brennan Center for Justice. “So it’s a little hard for me to understand how the FBI and local law enforcement had no idea that the attack on the Capitol was being planned.”The government does have more expansive powers – powers that ballooned in the decades since 9/11 – to target Americans it claims are associated with groups designated by the State Department as “Foreign Terrorism Organizations”. While the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 authorities did expand the government’s ability to investigate and prosecute domestic terrorism, it has so far avoided extending all of those authorities to domestic groups. That’s in part due to First Amendment-related concerns, as the US Constitution permits nonviolent association with hateful groups.Advocates also point out how damaging those anti-terrorism powers have been to Muslim-American communities and the rule of law. The “terrorism” label has been used to justify the surveillance of entire communities, mass arrests and deportations, entrapment, harassment, an inflated watchlist system and, of course, the Muslim ban, one of the original sins of the Trump presidency.“An expansion of domestic terrorism won’t mean more focus on white terrorism,” said Diala Shamas, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. “When you consider the biases that law enforcement has – with its focus on black political dissent, Muslim political dissent, Palestinian organizing – it’s not far-fetched to imagine that those are the groups that will be disproportionately represented in any so-called domestic terrorism framing.”Shamas says the concept of terrorism can’t be divorced from its legacy of politicization and abuse. “The caution I urge in using that terminology is because of this acute awareness that it ends up triggering such expansive state action.”Asad Dandia, a Brooklyn-based community organizer, has firsthand experience with the upheaval the terrorism label can wreak.When Dandia was a teenager, his charity was infiltrated by an informant working for the NYPD who spent months spying on Dandia, his family and friends, as part of the police department’s notorious, years-long surveillance program of the city’s Muslim communities. Dandia joined a lawsuit against the NYPD in 2013 that settled in 2017 after the NYPD agreed to a series of reforms.He recently reread the confession the informant posted on Facebook. “I was an informant for the NYPD, for a little while, to investigate terrorism,” it read.“I had totally forgotten that keyword was there,” Dandia says of the word terrorism. “We, my community and my friends, were given that designation. To argue for that designation for another community would implicitly mean to accept it for myself. And I refuse to accept it for myself.”Policymakers are currently considering a number of options. The bill introduced last week calls for the creation of domestic terrorism offices within the FBI and the departments of homeland security and justice, and for increased monitoring and reporting on threats and investigations.The proposal that has civil liberties most concerned is a bill first introduced in 2019 by House intelligence chair Adam Schiff, which would give the attorney general the authority to identify certain crimes as acts as terrorism. Given the aggressive policing and prosecutions of last summer’s racial justice protesters – in just one example, an Indigenous man now faces 10 years in prison for his Facebook posts – they say it’s easy to imagine charges against protesters inflated even more with a terrorism designation green-lit by an unsympathetic attorney general like William Barr.“In addition to further harming already marginalized communities, these charges could be used to brand as terrorists people who protest against government injustices by engaging in civil disobedience or actions that result in property damage,” the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in a letter opposing that bill.German, the former FBI agent, recently published a report tying biased policing to the extensive infiltration of police departments by white supremacists.German charges the FBI with playing a “semantic game” in claiming the US lacks a domestic terrorism law, pointing to the dozens of statutes relating to what the law defines as domestic terrorism. The best way for police to target white supremacist violence, he says, is by rooting out racists within their ranks and enforcing laws that already exist.Shamas and German both point to the need for a broader reckoning with the reasons the government has historically turned a blind eye to far right extremism. “In my view, the real problem with white supremacy is the proximity to the state,” says Shamas. “It’s the fact that we have representatives in Congress who are white supremacists, it’s the fact that police departments are being infiltrated by these groups.“None of that is captured when you say, ‘these are terrorists.’ The relationship with the state gets blurred.” More

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      Oregon Republican party falsely suggests US Capitol attack was a 'false flag'

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe Oregon Republican party has falsely claimed in a resolution that there is “growing evidence” that the 6 January attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob was “a ‘false flag’ operation”.The resolution, which was published on 19 January and was endorsed by the executive committee of the state Republican party, suggested that the storming of the capitol by Trump supporters was an orchestrated conspiracy “designed to discredit President Trump, his supporters and all conservative Republicans,” and to create a “sham motivation” to impeach the former president.To back up these false claims, the resolution cited links to rightwing websites, including the Epoch Times, a pro-Trump outlet that has frequently published rightwing misinformation, as well as the Wikipedia entry for “Reichstag Fire.”In a Facebook video released on 19 January, the Oregon Republican party chairman, Bill Currier, said that Oregon Republicans were working with Republicans in other states to release similar resolutions. “We are encouraging and working with the others through a patriot network of RNC members, the national level elected officials from each state, to coordinate our activities and to coordinate our messaging,” Currier said as part of the video conversation with other members of the Oregon Republican party.“We’re partway in the door of socialism and Marxism right now … and we have to fight,” Currier said. “It’s a time for choosing. People can decide what they want to believe and what they want to do, but there are people standing up and there are people sitting down.”Currier did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. The Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In addition to labeling the Capitol attack a potential false flag operation, the Oregon GOP’s resolution also condemned several House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the 6 January assault. The statement called the legislators “traitors” who had “conspired” with the enemy, and described members of the Democratic party as “Leftist forces seeking to establish a dictatorship void of all cherished freedoms and liberties.”The resolution was a sign of the Oregon GOP “aligning itself with conspiracy theories,” the Oregonian, the state’s largest newspaper, wrote last week.The newspaper also reported that one of the members of the Oregon GOP’s executive committee, which produced the resolution, is the chief of staff to the Republican state lawmaker who opened the door to allow armed demonstrators protesting coronavirus restrictions to illegally enter the Oregon state capitol on 21 December. This invasion of the Oregon state capitol in December was one of the events that served as a model for the US Capitol invasion in January.Federal prosecutors in Washington have already charged more than 100 people in connection with the violence at the Capitol on 6 January, which was extensively documented in real time by journalists, as well as by many of the people who participated in the invasion, including well-known members of hate groups.Several of the people facing charges in connection with the invasion of the capitol have said they believed they were following Trump’s instructions. “I listen to my president, who told me to go to the Capitol,” a Texas real estate agent facing federal charges told CBS News.Family members and friends of the four participants who died during the Capitol invasion, including an air force veteran shot to death by a police officer, have also described them as dedicated Trump supporters. More

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      Schumer promises quick but fair trial as Trump impeachment heads to Senate

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      Ex-president forms legal team before February hearingsBiden focuses on nominations and legislative prioritiesTrump plots revenge on Republicans who betrayed himThe single article of impeachment against Donald Trump will on Monday evening be delivered to the Senate, where Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer is promising a quick but fair trial. Related: Trump’s second impeachment trial: the key players Continue reading… More

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      Can Trump do a Nixon and re-enter polite society? Elizabeth Drew doubts it

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      Asking if Donald Trump can rehabilitate himself in US public life as did a disgraced president before him, legendary Washington reporter Elizabeth Drew was not optimistic.“For all their similarities,” she wrote, “Nixon and Trump clearly are very different men. For one thing, Nixon was smart.”Drew, 85 and the author of the classic Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon’s Downfall, published her thoughts in the Washington Post.“Donald Trump and Richard Nixon both left Washington in helicopters and ignominy,” she wrote, “awash in financial problems and their customary self-pity.“Both were above-average paranoiacs who felt (with some justification) that the elites looked down on them and that enemies everywhere sought to undermine them; they despised the press, exploited racism for political purposes and used inept outside agents (the “plumbers,” Rudy Giuliani) to carry out their more nefarious plots.“Neither was inclined to let aides rein them in. Both faced impeachment for trying to manipulate the opposition party’s nomination contest. Both degraded the presidency. Both came unglued at the end.“But then, astonishingly, Nixon rehabilitated himself … [his] post-presidency was a quest to make himself respectable again and it worked … through wit, grit, wiliness and determination he wrought one of the greatest resurrections in American politics.“If he could do it, can Trump?”Her short answer? No.Impeached a second time, Trump now awaits trial in Florida, playing golf but keeping himself involved in Republican politics, making endorsements, sitting on $70m in campaign cash and entertaining thoughts of starting a new political party, if reportedly mostly as a way of revenging himself on Republicans who crossed him.Drew wrote of how after Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, to avoid impeachment over the Watergate scandal, the 37th president went into exile in California. But she also cited his deep background in US politics and institutions – as a former congressman, senator and vice-president who “essentially understood the constitution and limits, even if he overreached at times” – and how, “interested in the substance of governing, he studied white papers and was conversant in most topics the government touched.”Drew also discussed the way Nixon set about re-entering public life, mostly as a sage voice on foreign policy, and eventually moved back east to become “the toast of New York” and, in 1979, one of Gallup’s “10 most admired people in the world”. Ruthlessly, she wrote, Nixon even managed to force his way back into the White House, visiting (under the cover of night) to counsel the young Bill Clinton.Trump, Drew wrote, “lacks discipline, intellectual rigour and the doggedness Nixon used to pull himself up from the bottom.”But on the day the solidly pro-Trump Arizona Republican party formally censured grandees Cindy McCain, Jeff Flake and Doug Ducey for daring to cross Trump, Drew also had a warning.“Trump has one advantage Nixon didn’t,” Drew wrote, “even after the assault on the Capitol this month: a large and fanatically devoted following.[embedded content]“According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released 15 January, 79% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents still approved of his performance. Trump of course had the backing of many Fox News hosts, and … some still supported the Trump line about the 6 January attack on the Capitol (for example, that it was spawned by a leftwing group). There was no such thing as Fox in Nixon’s day.”Though Drew thought Trump unlikely to gain access to mainstream media, as Nixon famously did via interviews with David Frost, and has been suspended by Twitter and Facebook, she did note that he “still has the support of fringe networks like One America News and Newsmax”.“If Trump is canny enough and has the energy,” she wrote, “he will have already begun devising ways to heal his battered reputation with much of the public and, in particular, the Republican politicians who indulged him for years.“But unlike Nixon, Trump faces a paradox: how can he maintain the support of his rabble-rousing followers, particularly if he wants to run again in 2024 or simply remain a force in in the GOP, while building respectability among the broader public?” More

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      Don't believe the anti-Trump hype – corporate sedition still endangers America | Robert Reich

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      The sudden lurch from Trump to Biden is generating vertigo all over Washington, including the so-called fourth branch of government – chief executives and their army of lobbyists.Notwithstanding Biden’s ambitious agenda, dozens of giant corporations have said they will no longer donate to the 147 members of Congress who objected to the certification of Biden electors on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud, which rules out most Republicans on the Hill.After locking down Trump’s account, social media giants like Twitter and Facebook are policing instigators of violence and hate, which hobbles Republican lawmakers trying to appeal to Trump voters.As a result of moves like these, chief executives are being hailed – and hailing themselves – as guardians of democracy. The New York Times praises business leaders for seeking “stability and national unity”. Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Airlines, says: “Our voice is seen as more important than ever.” A recent study by Edelman finds the public now trusts business more than nonprofits, the government or the media.For years, big corporations have assaulted democracy with big money, drowning out the voices of ordinary AmericansGive me a break. For years, big corporations have been assaulting democracy with big money, drowning out the voices and needs of ordinary Americans and fueling much of the anger and cynicism that opened the door to Trump in the first place.Their assault hasn’t been as dramatic as the Trump thugs who stormed the Capitol, and it’s entirely legal – although more damaging over the long term.A study published a few years ago by two of America’s most respected political scientists, Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page of Northwestern, concluded that the preferences of the average American “have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy”. Instead, lawmakers respond almost exclusively to the moneyed interests – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.The capture of government by big business has infuriated average Americans whose paychecks have gone nowhere even as the stock market has soared.The populist movements that fueled both Bernie Sanders and Trump began in the 2008 financial crisis when Wall Street got bailed out and no major bank executive went to jail, although millions of ordinary people lost their jobs, savings and homes.So now, in wake of Trump’s calamitous exit and Biden’s ascension, we’re to believe chief executives care about democracy?“No one thought they were giving money to people who supported sedition,” explained Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and chairman of the Business Roundtable, referring to the disgraced Republicans.Yet Dimon has been a leader of the more insidious form of sedition. He piloted the corporate lobbying campaign for the Trump tax cut, deploying a vast war chest of corporate donations.For more than a decade Dimon has driven Wall Street’s charge against stricter bank regulation, opening bipartisan doors in the Capitol with generous gifts from the Street. (Dimon calls himself a Democrat.)When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg shut Trump’s Facebook account, he declared: “You just can’t have a functioning democracy without a peaceful transition of power.”Where was Zuckerberg’s concern for a “functioning democracy” when he amplified Trump’s lies for four years?After taking down Trump’s Twitter account, Jack Dorsey expressed discomfort about “the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation”.Spare me. Dorsey has fought off all attempts to limit Twitter’s power over the “global conversation”. He shuttered Trump only after Democrats secured the presidency and control of the Senate.If they were committed to democracy, CEOs would permanently cease corporate donations to all candidatesLook, I’m glad CEOs are penalizing the 147 Republican seditionists and that big tech is starting to police social media content.But don’t confuse the avowed concerns of these CEOs about democracy with democracy itself. They aren’t answerable to democracy. At most, they’re accountable to big shareholders and institutional investors who don’t give a fig as long as profits keep rolling in. These CEOs could do a U-turn tomorrow.If they were committed to democracy, CEOs would permanently cease corporate donations to all candidates, close their Pacs, stop giving to secretive “dark money” groups and discourage donations by their executives.They’d stop placing ads in media that have weaponized disinformation – including Fox News, Infowars, Newsmax and websites affiliated with rightwing pundits. Social media giants would start acting like publishers and take responsibility for what they promulgate.If corporate America were serious about democracy it would throw its weight behind the “For the People Act”, the first bills of the new Congress, offering public financing of elections among other reforms.Don’t hold your breath.Joe Biden intends to raise corporate taxes, increase the minimum wage, break up big tech and strengthen labor unions.The fourth branch is already amassing a war chest for the fight. More