Tag: trump administration
Michael Flynn

Mike Flynn Says He's Been An Alex Jones Conspiracy Fanboy Since 2008

Retired Gen. Mike Flynn appeared on the December 27, 2023, edition of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show to praise the host, saying that when he “had first seen him in 2008 and 2009” he had said, “That guy's absolutely right on the money.” In the years since, Flynn has served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and White House national security adviser, and could potentially return to government under a second Trump administration.

Jones is one of the country’s leading conspiracy theorists. He has pushed false claims about a variety of tragedies, including the mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School; the Boston Marathon bombing; and 9/11. In November, Jones aired a report questioning the Holocaust death toll.

The families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims successfully sued Jones for his lies about the tragedy.

Despite Jones’ long history of toxicity, right-wing media figures and Republican politicians — including former President Donald Trump — have embraced him over the years.

Among Jones’ admirers is Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI before being pardoned by Trump. Prior to that, Flynn also served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under then-President Barack Obama, but was fired in 2014.

Trump has suggested that Flynn will be involved in his potential second administration, telling him at an event last year: “We’re going to bring you back.”

Flynn has also acted as a far-right media commentator and has repeatedly made toxic remarks. In 2021, he warned his audience that “we're being marched” to Nazi death camps but that, unlike Holocaust victims, he “would never get on that train.” He also seemed to call for a Myanmar-style coup in the United States (which he later denied); encouraged Trump to invoke martial law in order to redo the 2020 election; and tweeted that “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” Flynn also previously supported the QAnon movement.

Along with Clay Clark, Flynn co-founded the pro-Trump ReAwaken America tour. Those events, which feature Eric Trump and other Trump allies, have repeatedly featured Hitler-promoting antisemites. (The tour has dropped those speakers after facing criticism.)

On the December 27, 2023, edition of The Alex Jones Show, Flynn appeared in-studio for a significant amount of time and praised his host. Clark also appeared on the program as a guest.

During a commentary about trusting the right people, Flynn spoke directly to Jones’ audience: “Alex has been bashed over the head for the better part of really 30 years, and I told Alex a couple of years ago when we met that I had first seen him in 2008 and 2009. I said, ‘That guy's absolutely right on the money.’ And here we are sitting here today in 2023, we're talking about the same issues — although they have exacerbated. So we have to really dig in. Do the research, listen to the right people.”

Shortly after Flynn’s endorsement, Jones characteristically argued that government-aligned entities are planning to stage false flags in order to spark a civil war: “They're going to stage false flags — unless we expose them and stop them — to blame us and trigger this. And they're going to make moves that they believe will elicit a civil war. This isn't coming. It's here. They are going to try this.”

Following Jones’ “false flags” warning, Flynn replied: “This is absolutely right.”

During the show, as Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights Executive Director Devin Burghart noted, Flynn also invoked violent imagery to prepare viewers for bloody conflict.

MIKE FLYNN: I don't raise my voice that much, but when I do, it means that we are moving to — as Alex just said — we're moving towards the sound of the guns here, folks. And the sound of the guns is freedom. We are going to move towards freedom.

In a December 2018 Washington Post profile about Flynn, a Defense Intelligence Agency officer said that when Flynn was leading the agency, he “started doing weird things, like bring[ing] his unsecured BlackBerry into the secure space.” Flynn “became unabashed about his beliefs,” the officer said, “In meetings, he sounded like he was reading Breitbart and Alex Jones and random bloggers, alt-right stuff, and he’d just say, ‘Well, I heard this . . .’ ”

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Black Election Workers Targeted

Black Election Workers Targeted By Trump Weathered Racist Death Threats

Two Georgia elections officials who were viciously harassed by former President Donald Trump and his allies are being lauded as heroes following their gripping testimony on Tuesday before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

Wandrea Shaye Moss and her mother Lady Ruby Freeman were accused by Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani that they helped steal the election from him and were subsequently treated with racist and defamatory subjugation.

Moss recalled how the trauma from what she experienced has destroyed her life.

"It's turned my life upside down. I no longer give out my business card. I don't transfer calls. I don't want anyone knowing my name. I don't want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my name out over the grocery aisle or something. I don't go to the grocery store at all. I haven't been anywhere at all," Moss revealed.

"I've gained about 60 pounds. I just don't do nothing anymore. I don't want to go anywhere. I second guess everything that I do," she continued. "This affected my life in a major way. In every way. All because of lies, for me doing my job, the same thing I've been doing forever."

Watch below via ABC News:

Freeman also described the devastating impact Trump's sanctioned actions have had on her.

"I've lost my name and I've lost my reputation. I've lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with No. 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen," Freeman, a 62-year-old grandmother, said in a taped statement.

"There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States to target you?" Freeman asked rhetorically. "The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American—not to target one. But he targeted me, Lady Ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton County run its elections in the middle of the pandemic."

Watch below via ABC News:

Observers are lauding Moss and Freeman as heroes for sharing their stories with the whole world.















There have even been calls for President Joe Biden to award them the Medal of Freedom.







Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Conservative Judge: Trump And Allies Are

Conservative Judge: Trump Is ‘Clear And Present Danger’ To Democracy

Retired Judge J. Michael Luttig testified under oath before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack on Thursday that the former president, Donald Trump, and his MAGA supporters are a “clear and present danger to American democracy.”

Luttig, a highly-respected conservative attorney and a former federal judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, advised then-Vice President Mike Pence that the John Eastman scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election was illegal.

“I have written, as you said, Chairman Thompson, that today – almost two years after that fateful day in January of 2021 – that still, Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”

“That’s not because of what happened on January 6. Is because to this very day, the former president, his allies and supporters, pledge that in the presidential election of 2024 if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican Party presidential candidate were to lose that election that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election, but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020.”

Luttig goes on to say, “I would have never have spoken those words ever in my life except that that’s what the former president and his allies are telling us.”

“The former president and his allies are executing that blueprint for 2024 and open and plain view of the American public.”

Watch:

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump Pal Got Emirati Bonanza While Lobbying White House

Trump Pal Got Emirati Bonanza While Lobbying White House

Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a billionaire fundraiser and longtime friend of former President Trump, sought hundreds of millions of dollars in investments from the United Arab Emirates for an investment fund that would reinforce the former president’s agenda and benefit from his administration’s policies, federal prosecutors said in a Tuesday court filing.

The filing was a superseding indictment that levied additional charges on Barrack for lying to federal investigators, lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of the UAE, and conspiring with Emiratis to influence the Trump campaign.

Federal prosecutors also said that Barrack’s investment management firm, Colony Capital — which, per NBC News, wasn’t named in the filing — received a sudden injection of $374 million in capital commitments from two UAE wealth funds after not receiving any funds from the country in seven years prior, from 2009 to 2016.

In a 55-page superseding indictment, which replaced the original 46-page court filing, the Justice Department closely details how although the pro-Trump fund’s “primary purpose” was to earn profits, it quickly adopted “a secondary mandate to garner political credibility for its contributions to the policies” of the Trump administration, federal prosecutors said in the filing, quoting what a top Trump aide wrote in a “U.A.E Fund” plan in the weeks after the 2020 election, according to the New York Times.

The Times also reported that the plan claimed the fund would make money by “sourcing, financing, operationally improving and harvesting assets” in industries that would “benefit the most” from the Trump administration. Federal prosecutors cited the fund as evidence that Barrack wanted to profit from his illegal lobbying of Trump and his circle on behalf of Emiratis.

The Justice Department also accused Barrack of making “multiple false statements” when he lied to the FBI in a 2019 interview with the bureau. The amended indictment charged Barrack for allegedly lying he had one phone when he, in fact, had a secret line solely dedicated to his communication with the Emiratis. Barrack was also accused of lying when he denied engineering phone calls between then-President-Elect Trump and two Emiratis officials in 2016.

Last year, the Justice Department accused Barrack and two co-conspirators, Mathew Grimes and Rashid Al-Malik, of “acting and conspiring to act as agents of the UAE” from April 2016 to April 2018.

“The defendants repeatedly capitalized on Barrack’s friendships and access to a candidate who was eventually elected President, high-ranking campaign and government officials, and the American media to advance the policy goals of a foreign government without disclosing their true allegiances,” said the Department of Justice in a statement.

The indictment also cited April 2017 email and text message communications investigators obtained from the suspects, which stated Barrack could meet with the Emirati ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi crown prince at the time.

Although there is no evidence that the meeting ever took place, the indictment stated that Barrack’s company, now known as DigitalBridge Group, received multi-million dollar capital investments in the following months. Internal company records attributed the massive investment to “Barrack magic,” the New York Times said.

According to a 2019 congressional oversight committee report, Barrack sent the Emiratis a copy of a Trump campaign speech about Energy he had drafted — and permitted Emiratis to recommend amends to — that praised Shiekh by name, the New York Times reported.

“They loved it so much! This is great,” responded co-conspirator Malik, who is still at large outside the United States. The speech also contained mild language favorable to the Emiratis: a pledge to "work with our Gulf allies.”

The Emirati meddling increased in scale after that, according to the indictment. In the weeks leading up to the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, Barrack worked with Paul Manafort, former President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, to water down the GOP platform at the Emiratis' behest.

“Can be much more expansive than what we did in the speech,” Manafort wrote Barrack in an email, “based on what you hear from your friends,” referring to the Emiratis.

In the indictment, federal prosecutors also alleged that Barrack and several Emirati officials worked together to arrange a phone call Trump had with Sheikh Mohammed during the transition in November 2016. “It’s done, great call,” co-conspirator Malik wrote in thanks to Barrack’s aide.

Barrack pleaded not guilty to the original counts filed last year and is awaiting trial, and his representative declined to comment on the superseding indictment. A spokesperson for Trump also ignored requests for comment.