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Tag: bannon
Moms for Liberty founders, Tiffany Justice, left, and Tina Descovich

After '60 Minutes' Debacle, Mom For Liberty Scurries To Bannon 'War Room'

Following a disastrous interview on 60 Minutes, Tiffany Justice – a co-founder of the extremist group Moms for Liberty – retreated to the friendlier terrain of Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in an attempt to mitigate the damage she’d done to her organization.

Bannon and Justice spent nearly 11 minutes criticizing CBS’ Scott Pelley for supposedly subjecting the anti-LGBTQ activist to unfair scrutiny, primarily by reading Moms for Liberty’s own tweets to her and asking for her response. At one point, Pelley asked Justice and her fellow Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich what they meant by “grooming.” At another, Pelley asked for clarification on what ideology they claimed kids were being indoctrinated into. Justice and Descovich responded by dodging and retreating to their standard talking points.

It’s no surprise that Justice sought to clean up her mess using Bannon’s show. She usedWar Room and other right-wing media programs to build up Moms for Liberty in 2021 and 2022, and then leveraged that growth into a series of friendly mainstream media profiles and interviews. Now, as parents and communities become more aware of her organization’s extreme, anti-LGBTQ and anti-Black positions, they are fighting back, as demonstrated in the 60 Minutes segment.

During the War Room interview, Justice accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing her responses.

“You’re saying they selectively edited out your answers?” Bannon asked.

“Yeah, they wanted to make it seem like Tina and I didn’t know what we were talking about, I guess,” Justice responded.

On X (formerly Twitter) Descovich posted what she claimed were excerpts from the official transcript of the interview, purportedly exposing CBS’s omissions. The only problem with the Moms for Liberty counter-narrative is that the exchanges Descovich posted were just as incoherent as the responses CBS aired.

“If there are any lawyers watching this and you’d like to try to help me to navigate dealing with 60 Minutes, I’m open to ideas,” Justice said later in the interview. “But I’ve been talking with a few and trying to figure out —”

“Are you thinking of suing 60 Minutes?” Bannon interjected.

“I want to make sure I’m releasing information in a legal way,” Justice responded.

Bannon also said CBS was trying to make Moms for Liberty look like “bad and evil people, that are hurting people, bullies, whatever you want to call it,” as though that were self-evidently false. Unsurprisingly, Bannon didn’t mention the myriad examples of Moms for Liberty harassing and intimidating teachers and administrators, including an incident where Justice’s conduct was “so disruptive and disrespectful,” according to a superintendent, that she “could be barred from the campus.”

Later in the War Room segment, Bannon told Justice that Moms for Liberty was “trending” on X and that “one of the terms is Klansman Karenhood,” adding, “They’re trying to say you’re the new Klan.”

“They are out to destroy you,” Bannon said to conclude the interview. Despite Bannon’s trademark bombast, it might just be that parents and teachers are opposed to a group that has repeatedly quoted Hitler and attempts to ban books in schools.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Michael Flynn

Smartmatic Subpoenas Bannon And Flynn In Lawsuit Against Fox News

Smartmatic, the voting technology company suing Fox News and Newsmax for pushing 2020 election lies, subpoenaed former President Donald Trump's ex-staffers, Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon, CNN reports.

Earlier this year, after Dominion Voting Systems settled its its defamation lawsuit with the right-wing network in for $787.5 million, The New York Times reported the company said, "Dominion's litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox's disinformation campaign. Smartmatic will expose the rest."

Reuters reports:

Bannon and Flynn, both of whom have faced their own legal woes, were two of the most vocal boosters of Trump's false claims that the 2020 U.S. election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud, and they could have information on the spread of these claims that might help Smartmatic in the litigation.

"Court filings made public last week in New York and Delaware," according to CNN, reveal the pair received the subpoenas, ordering them to "sit for depositions and answer questions under oath."

Additionally, CNN notes, "Bannon is also required to turn over subpoenaed documents to Smartmatic, including any communications with top officials from Fox News, the Trump campaign and the Trump administration about the 2020 presidential election, according to court filings."

Smartmatic, Reuters reports, "is seeking a total of $2.7 billion in damages across five cases, including against Fox, several of its hosts and former Trump lawyers."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Guo and Bannon

Bannon Repeatedly Promoted Alleged Scams By Indicted Partner Guo (VIDEO)

Several newly resurfaced videos show former Trump adviser Steve Bannon promoting allegedly fraudulent schemes perpetrated by his longtime associate and former financial backer Miles Guo, also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Guo Wengui.

Federal prosecutors arrested Guo on Wednesday on allegations that he ran a sprawling $1 billion fraud and money laundering scam, according to an unsealed indictment released the same day. Shortly after the news broke, Media Matters reported that Bannon had promoted some of the elements of Guo’s scheme that were included in the indictment.

Guo’s alleged wide-ranging conspiracy included a faux-cryptocurrency “ecosystem” called Himalaya Exchange, including a digital asset called H Coin. Unlike most cryptocurrencies, the coins in Himalaya Exchange weren’t tradable with other digital currencies unless they were first converted to U.S. dollars — requests which the platform could deny at its “discretion” — according to the indictment. Guo also ran a suite of media properties, including a broadcast service called GTV, which he used to allegedly defraud investors through selling stock in the company and pocketing the deposits, rather than investing them in the business.

The new videos raise further questions about Bannon’s potential involvement in Guo’s activities. In a video published November 17, 2021, Bannon promoted Himalaya Exchange and H Coin, shortly after the coin was publicly offered.

“I think the H Coin team and the Himalaya Exchange team is to be congratulated,” Bannon said. “I believe it’s the first time anybody's ever — in 2 weeks, we have $27 billion of market cap.”

Bannon then went on to praise a laundry list of Guo’s ventures, several of which are included in the indictment.

“One of the things about Miles, in my time of knowing him — just the, you know, the music, the fashion, GNews, GTV, association with Gettr, all these things you see popping off has been such successes really in such a short period of time,” Bannon said.

Last April, Guo allegedly illegally transferred $37 million from Himalaya Exchange to cover costs of his personal luxury yacht. Postal service agents arrested Bannon on Guo’s yacht in August 2020, for allegations of defrauding investors in the failed “We Build the Wall” scam.

Two other videos come from a panel discussion in September 2021, that included Guo, Bannon, former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, and former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller. At the time of the event, Miller was CEO of Twitter competitor Gettr, another project backed by Guo. As part of the investigation against Guo, authorities seized over $2.7 million from a Gettr bank account in September 2022, according to the indictment. This February, Miller resigned from Gettr to join Trump’s 2024 campaign.

The panel discussion was in celebration of Guo and Bannon’s joint venture called the New Federal State of China, a rebranding of the so-called whistleblowers movement. Bannon hoped the NFSC would become a “government in exile” that could seize power once the Chinese Communist Party was destroyed, a goal he and Guo shared.

“No matter what the CCP does, it’s impossible to take down this movement,” Bannon said. “The whistleblower movement, the New Federal State, the Rule of Law, GTV and G News — GTV and G News are five times bigger than a year ago.”

Guo founded two nonprofits — the Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of Law Society — both of which are named in the indictment as vehicles he used in furtherance of the conspiracy. Bannon was on the board of the Rule of Law Society but reportedly resigned at some point in the summer of 2020.

Earlier in the panel, Bannon made many of the same points about Guo’s various projects.

“The New Federal State, the whistleblower movement, the Rule of Law Society and Foundation, Gettr, G Fashion, all this — what the world is seeing is a new China and a new Chinese,” Bannon said.

Although G Fashion is not mentioned in the indictment, another similarly branded company of Guo’s called G Clubs was allegedly a central pillar in the scheme to defraud investors.

Last June, the NFSC celebrated its second anniversary, and Bannon again promoted Guo’s ventures, praising “G Fashion and Gettr and all these different companies that have been brought together,” which also include “a news organization, … that you can stay on GNews 24 hours a day and get incredible news.”

At the same event, Guo underlined his pitch to potential investors. “Lots of investors trust us because we are in business in America,” Guo said as Bannon sat beside him. “Because they trust, believe us — we really can take down the CCP.”

The NFSC was also a big sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference this year after other companies, including Fox News, dropped out.

Hours after Guo was taken into custody, a fire broke out at his luxury Sherry-Netherland penthouse in Manhattan. The blaze is still under investigation.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Bannon

Bannon And Kirk Exploit China Balloon Paranoia To Boost 'Prepper' Sales

After days of nonstop coverage of a Chinese balloon crossing the continental United States, far-right influencers are now using it to sell prepper supplies for what they claim is an imminent collapse of the American economy. Right-wing media personalities Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon are hyping the recent Chinese spy balloon saga to sell prepper supplies on their shows.

Both Kirk and Bannon have plugged the preparedness company My Patriot Supply during their recent broadcasts, claiming that the balloon incident — which has been a major subject of fearmongering and conspiracy theories in conservative media — should prompt viewers to amass large quantities of food and other supplies in case of an apocalyptic disaster.

During an ad read on his February 3 radio show, Kirk mentioned the Chinese spy balloon and told his audience they are “nine meals away from anarchy,” adding, “As the Chinese Community Party takes pictures and spies on you, gets your kids addicted to fentanyl and also hooked on TikTok, at least you will be well fed when anarchy comes.”

On February 7, Bannon hosted My Patriot Supply Vice President of Sales Joe Rieck, who said that the balloon posed such a threat that “literally we were seconds away from being pushed back to the dark ages” and has sparked an increased interest from the public in his company’s products. He then plugged “Faraday bags,” “anti-radiation tablets,” and “dosimeter cards” as the items his customers are “stocking up on right now” because “we were so close to having something catastrophic happen in our borders.”

“You’ve got to get ahead of the curve here” added Bannon, advising his audience as “rational people” to purchase My Patriot Supply products.

“These are things that are going to come in handy because we’ve all seen how close we were to a huge disaster,” said Rieck. “And if they can float a balloon and it takes the government five days to take action, then who’s to say that the Chinese couldn’t have just pushed a button and ended everything three days ago.”

This type of bottom-of-the-barrel grift is par for the course for right-wing media — Bannon alone has promoted a veritable empire of scummy products.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.