Tag: georgia
Steve Bannon

Bannon And January 6 Organizer Now Pushing Anti-Immigrant Rallies

Podcaster and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon pushed the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory while hosting Tea Party Patriots leader Jenny Beth Martin, who was on to promote an anti-immigrant rally in Georgia.

Martin co-founded the Tea Party Patriots, a conservative grassroots organization formed in 2009 that has spread conspiracy theories and claims about alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election. The group sponsored a pre-insurrection rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021.

During the March 1 interview, Martin promoted a rally calling for “an end to the invasion on our border” and centers around the recent death of student Laken Riley. The suspect in Riley’s death is an undocumented person from Venezuela, a fact right-wing media have used to whip up hysteria about so-called “migrant crime.”

“We’re going to deport 10 million illegal alien invaders,” Bannon said. “They’re not going to sit here and continue to perpetrate crime on our cities, taking away health care, taking away the little education that is happening in the cities for these kids today.”

Later in the interview, Bannon invoked the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which asserts that migrants will replace white people in America and vote for Democrats. This conspiracy theory has previously motivated mass shootings against minority communities.

“This whole thing is to break the minority communities on wages, to destroy their schools, their education. They want to replace them,” Bannon said. “They want to replace the existing African American and Hispanic population in this country because, guess what, they understand they’re turning right.” While Bannon describes this imaginary replacement of Americans specifically as a threat to Black and Hispanic communities, his career laundering extreme racism into the mainstream belies this cheap slight of hand.

This interview continues Bannon’s extreme anti-immigrant crusade. Given Bannon’s prominence in the MAGA media universe, his show sometimes functions as a platform for message testing on issues that Trump-aligned figures hope to capitalize on ahead of the 2024 election.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Jesse Watters

Fox Guest Ranting About Migrant Crime Has His Own Violent Rap Sheet

On February 28, Fox News host Jesse Watters hosted “James Lee” on his show to discuss the murder of Laken Riley on the campus of the University of Georgia. Watters did not disclose, however, that Lee is actually James DePaola, who has had multiple run-ins with the law himself, including when he became violent over a grilled cheese sandwich his wife had made, prompting his 12-year-old daughter to call the police.

On February 28, Athens-Clarke County Mayor Kelly Girtz held a press conference. The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported that the press conference had been interrupted multiple times by protesters, including James DePaola.

Law-enforcement officers did not remove anybody from the room while Girtz spoke, but police asked Athens resident James DePaola several times to wait his turn to speak.

“We the people are tired of this lawlessness,” Depaola told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the press conference ended. “We are being put last.”

DePaola also spoke to Flagpole.com at the press conference.

Later that day, Watters hosted “James Lee” on his show and played footage of DePaola interrupting the press conference, praising him for his actions. (Watters’ full “migrant crime spree” segment can be viewed here. Watters likens his guest to Rick Santelli's rantin 2009 that kicked off the tea party. His guest concludes by telling Watters that “You don't get the credit you deserve as a patriot and a real journalist.”)

He can also be seen shortly before the four-minute mark in a video of the press conference posted by NBC News, when the camera pans away from the lectern.

James Lee certainly appears to be James DePaola, as others have begun to notice.

The Georgia Gazettehas a picture of a “James Lee DePaola” related to a 2023 booking at Whitfield County jail. The picture appears to be the same man.

The site also has a booking picture from a 2020 booking in Gwinnett county.

But before advising Fox News on immigration policy, DePaola was previously best known for violently threatening his wife after deciding that she had used too many slices of cheese on his grilled cheese sandwich, leading to his young daughter calling the police. As Time reported in 2016:

A man wanted just two slices of cheese on his sandwich, so when his wife used three slices in his grilled cheese sandwich, he became irate.

Angered at the sight of all the extra cheesiness, James DePaola became agitated and violent, yelling at the woman, Michele DePaola. According to WSB-TV, DePaola then ripped the landline out of the wall so his wife couldn’t call the police and reportedly screamed at her intensely. The couple’s 12-year old daughter who witnessed the incident called the police to the scene, according to Athens-Clarke County police.

James DePaola was charged with obstruction of a 911 call and criminal trespass/damage to property over what the police now refer to as “the grilled cheese incident”. DePaola has a history of “abusive behavior,” and was often “excessively critical and controlling of day to day things in life” like sandwiches, apparently.

Fox5 Atlanta posted a booking picture of DePaola at the time, making clear he is from Athens-Clarke County; the site also mentioned that two of his other young children were present when he threatened his wife.

While this may be Jesse Watters’ ideal guest, we cannot recommend that news outlets take public policy advice from someone violently triggered by an unexpected slice of cheese.

The real question is why Fox News didn’t tell its audience DePaola’s full name.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Trevian Kutti

Lawyers Dump Trump Co-Defendant After She Poses With 'QAnon Shaman'

At Turning Point USA's AmeriFest gathering, Trevian Kutti — one of Donald Trump's co-defendants in Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference case — posed for a photo with Capitol rioter Jacob Chansley, a.k.a. The QAnon Shaman. On Monday, December 18, the Chicago-based Kutti posted the photo (which shows her raising her middle finger) on Instagram. And that same day, her attorneys filed a motion to drop her as a client.

Kutti's Instagram post, referring to Chansley, reads, "just like they lied on him THEY ARE LYING ON ME." Chansley served time in prison for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.

Atlanta-based attorney Darryl Cohen, who has been representing Kutti in Willis' case, told The Messenger, "In order to have a good lawyer-client relationship, the client has to listen. The client has to be on board, and you have to be paid. All these things have to happen. I'm not saying any of those things did or didn't happen, but you can extrapolate."

Cohen, according to Messenger reporters Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon and Darren Samuelsohn, said he was speaking in general terms and didn't talk about Kutti specifically.

The attorney, however, also told The Messenger, "This case is so unusual and so high profile with everybody looking at it under a microscope, that you've got to be very careful as to what you say because you never know who's coming after you."

Kutti, an ex-publicist for R&B singer R. Kelly and the pro-Donald Trump rapper formerly known as Kanye West, is facing RICO and witness intimidation charges in Willis' case but is free on bail — at least for now.

The Messenger's Zachary Leeman, on December 4, reported that Willis' office was considering a request to revoke Kutti's bail in response to threatening comments she made on Instagram about former Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump Flack: He's 'Confused' By His Lawyers' Guilty Pleas In Georgia (VIDEO)

Trump Flack: He's 'Confused' By His Lawyers' Guilty Pleas In Georgia (VIDEO)

Former President Donald Trump is “a little confused” by several of his former associates accepting plea deals in the Georgia election interference case, according to Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington.

Harrington spoke on The Absolute Truth program on [Mike] Lindell TV Sunday after four of Trump’s associates — bail bondsman Scott Hall and attorneys Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro — pleaded guilty in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ RICO case against the president and 18 co-conspirators.

As part of their plea deals, the four defendants have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and write a letter of apology to the state of Georgia.

“I think [Trump’s] a little confused, because look, if you’re a lawyer, you know that there’s no crimes here. According to the law, there’s literally nothing to plead guilty to, because there’s no laws that were broken,” Harrington said on The Absolute Truth. “And speaking out against a fraudulent election and telling people to watch hearings and petition their elected officials about fraud that was happening, on camera — so it’s just surprising.”

Bail bondsman Hall was the first Trump co-defendant to plead guilty to five misdemeanor charges of “conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of an election.” Hall “originally faced seven felony charges … based on allegations he helped breach election equipment in rural Coffee County, Georgia, in a failed effort to prove Trump’s false claims of voter fraud," as Al Jazeera reports.

On Friday, Oct. 20, Chesebro pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of conspiracy, the New York Timesreported. That same day, Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts “to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties,” according to CNN.

Ellis on Tuesday pleaded guilty to “one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.”

For Trump, according to Harrington, these plea deals are outside the scope of the law.

Watch the video below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.