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    The Kurds will never again help the US in the Middle East: Veteran CIA officer

    Dana Kennedy, DCReport @ RawStory
    October 22, 2019

    Thanks for your support!

    This article was paid for by reader donations to Raw Story Investigates.

    Female fighters form a key part of the Kurdish security forces in Iraq and Syria (AFP Photo/Atta Kenare)

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Dana Kennedy, DCReport @ RawStory

    This week, as hundreds of ISIS fighters escaped from Kurdish prisons in northeastern Syria following Donald Trump’s decision to pull out American troops, a group of current and former “special operators” for U.S. intelligence met for a previously scheduled casual lunch in Washington.


    Their take on Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds—a move that enabled Turkey to invade the region, for Russians to move into former U.S. positions and for extremists to maybe start plotting attacks on Europe again.

    Everyone is heartbroken. We’ve lost face in front of the world and we’ve lost everyone’s trust.

    “Everyone is heartbroken,” said one former CIA agent at the lunch who worked conflicts all over Europe, Africa and the Middle East during a long career. “We’ve lost face in front of the world and we’ve lost everyone’s trust.”

    The lunch took place one day before a Kurdish female politician, Hevrin Khalaf, 35, was brutally pulled from her car and shot dead along with eight other people by pro-Turkish forces, many of which are recycled Syrian rebel soldiers with the same extremist sentiments as ISIS. The Turkish proxies are also reportedly deliberately releasing ISIS prisoners while they maraud and pillage through Syria.

    It was bad enough, said the CIA agent, that Trump totally lied last year when he said ISIS had been “100 percent” defeated. For months now, everyone from Pentagon officials to Sen. Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.] to witnesses on the ground in Syria have insisted ISIS is still very much active in the Middle East. One Parisian-based terror expert told DCReport he was in Syria in July and had proof of more than 100 ISIS attacks that month alone.

    Lost Credibility

    “But the worst part for us is that we’ve completely lost our credibility,” said the operative, who once fought alongside the Peshmerga, the Kurdish fighters, in Kurdistan in Iraq, among many others.

    “We’ll never get that trust back again when we go in for any kind of special ops or covert operations. We used to have respect as Americans. Now if we come in with our SUVs and our money and our tech and say we want to help you fight, they’re not going to want any part of us. They’re gonna think we’ll betray them.”

    U.S. officials, most notably Brett McGurk, the former U.S. special envoy for the coalition to defeat ISIS who quit in protest of Trump’s policies late last year, have been vehemently opposed to Trump’s actions in Syria.

    McGurk was furious when he heard Trump tell the faithful at his Dallas rally Oct. 17 that the Turks and the Kurds were like a couple of kids fighting.

    “This is an obscene and ignorant statement,” McGurk tweeted. “200k innocent people displaced. Hundreds dead. Credible reports of war crimes. ISIS prisoners escaping. US evacuating and bombing its own positions or handing them to Russia. Two kids in a lot?”

    McGurk is right, said the CIA agent, but even he doesn’t know what it will be like for U.S. soldiers and operatives on the ground from now on.

    “It changes everything,” he said. “On our level, it’s warrior to warrior, that is all. In war, all that matters is who you think you can trust and who you can’t. Not being trusted can get you killed out there.”

    U.S. Soldiers 'Devastated'

    Mark Campbell, the co-chair of the Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign in London, said he knew American soldiers still left in Syria who are “completely devastated, right up the ranks.”

    “The Kurds had built up a very good relationship with military on the ground under Obama,” Campbell said. “The Kurds were the boots on the ground ... They had an incredible comradeship with the Americans. Now I’ve heard that the American soldiers who are still in Syria are actually crying over this. Crying.”

    Campbell was in constant touch with Kurdish fighters and civilians on the ground this week. He told DCReport Friday that unarmed civilians were trying to form “human shields” to advance through the region and bring back the dozens if not hundreds of “rotting, stinking bodies” of those killed by pro-Turkish forces since the invasion.

    “There’s no military around to help them,” Campbell said. “They don’t have guns. There are numerous reports of war crimes. Kurds are being dragged out of their cars and shot and the (pro-Turkish) fighters are filming it. Just like ISIS. And remember these are the people doing the fighting for NATO. These are NATO fighting forces that are acting in the same way as ISIS fighters. It almost begs the question, was this a calculated plan to instill fear among the Kurds, just as ISIS did?”

    The Turkish proxies who are coming over the border from Turkey, brandishing their guns and yelling in the same style as ISIS did in their heyday from 2015 to 2017. Brazenly filming their attacks and flooding the videos on social media is also reminiscent of ISIS, Campbell said.

    Watching Trump brag Thursday that he had reached a “great” ceasefire deal with Turkish president Erdogan “a situation where everyone is happy and there is no fighting,” was painful and disgusting, Campbell said.

    “What he said was a bizarre public relations stunt I guess to make him look good to his base and has literally nothing to do with the reality of what’s happening,” Campbell said. “I don’t think Trump understands one thing about the Kurdish situation. Nothing he said many any sense. And there is no ceasefire. There are Turkish airstrikes as well as attacks on the ground.”

    Campbell said he considered Trump’s remarks about the Kurds quite “racist” as well.

    “Characterizing them as children was so disrespectful and patronizing,” he said “We’re talking about the future of millions of people in the Middle east. The way he talks about it is disgusting.”

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

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    Raw Story is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Invest with us in the future. Make a one-time contribution to Raw Story Investigates, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you.

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    READ COMMENTS - JOIN THE DISCUSSION

    Should Trump be allowed back on social media?

    Right-wing media keeps on trying to justify the killing of Daunte Wright

    Zachary Petrizzo, Salon
    April 17, 2021

    On Sunday, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was pulled over for a traffic stop, apparently because of an expired registration, only to be shot and killed by a police officer who allegedly mistook her firearm for a taser. As the Minneapolis area grieves over Wright's killing, which has sparked volatile demonstrations throughout the small suburb of Brooklyn Center, national right-wing media has taken to the scene to defend the officer who allegedly murdered Wright.

    During his Monday night program, Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield proposed that the officer's action in shooting Wright could be "warranted." "Now let me be clear, even though the officer apparently is admitting to making a mistake, an argument could still be made that deadly force was warranted here," Stinchfield stated on his Monday night program. "Fighting officers like you just saw, you could argue, any officer could feel like they were in imminent threat, imminent body harm could come at any moment. There is no duty by the way to deploy a taser, an officer can go to their firearm first, and many do."

    Conservative Twitter pundit John Cardillo, currently embroiled in a feud with Roger Stone, attempted to present Wright negatively, which even drew the ire of the right-wing blog RedState, which called Cardillo out over his tweet. "Cardillo, like so many others, wants you to buy into the idea of the scary black man with a gun in order to deflect away from what was more obviously bad policing," RedState blogger Joe Cunningham wrote on Tuesday.

    The media's #DaunteWright as opposed to the real Daunte Right. pic.twitter.com/UZrGwTqqzG
    — John Cardillo (@johncardillo) April 12, 2021

    Conservative pundit and frequent Newsmax guest Terrence Williams tweeted, "#DaunteWright was charged for illegally carrying a pistol and fleeing a peace officer. He had a history of resisting and doing illegal things. This man did not get pulled over for having air freshener in his car. That's a HOAX."

    Fox News contributor Dan Bongino also downplayed the incident, which many have seen as an illustration of the larger problem of police violence against Black Americans, while debating Geraldo Rivera on Monday night. "You have no idea that there's a racial undertone to this at all. And you're saying, 'Oh, Black parents have to worry because …' You have no data to back that up at all!" Bongino claimed. "You're just further inflaming the situation, and the country will burn to the ground because of people like you who say dumb things like that with no evidence to back it up."

    Almost EVERYONE is Ignoring, Skipping or "Just not Going There" about the Criminal Daunte Wright, who Resisted Arrested, Ran Away! (Black cop was placing him under arrest btw)—it is BAD that he was shot, should NOT have happened—he should have listened to his MOM. Don't run! pic.twitter.com/Pwj7BqV8c9
    — Greg Kelly (@gregkellyusa) April 16, 2021

    Fox News contributor Leo Terrell stated on Twitter, "Race card is played in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota ... Shameful!!!" "Daunte Wright was: An adult, with a warrant, for a gun crime, who resisted arrest. These are empirical facts," right-wing radio host Sebastian Gorka wrote on Instagram while attaching a photo of Wright with what appears to be a gun in his hands. Conservative Twitter personality and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik tweeted, "#DaunteWright was stopped by a black cop because he had a warrant for robbing a woman at GUNPOINT! He then resisted arrested (sic) in an attempt to escape. #WhiteSupremacy had nothing to do with it."

    While some conservative pundits have gone on the defensive about the deadly incident, calling it a mere "accident," others have stayed silent on the issue and focused on the tension between demonstrators and police in Brooklyn Center during the nighttime hours over the past week.

    On Thursday, there was even an unlikely change of course for one staunch conservative who called out Wright's killing. Pat Robertson, the right-wing televangelist, broke with the consensus and ripped into policing in America. "The police, why don't they open their eyes to what the public relations are? We've got to stop this stuff," Robertson stated.

    When the police are starting to lose the approval of Pat Robertson, you know things are bad. pic.twitter.com/Pu7tw6aoDC
    — Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) April 15, 2021

    All-American insurrection: Expert explains how right-wing extremists' targets have shifted

    Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
    April 17, 2021

    A scathing new report by the Capitol Police's internal watchdog reveals officials knew Congress was the target of the deadly January 6 insurrection, yet officers were instructed to refrain from deploying more aggressive measures that could have helped "push back the rioters." Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports domestic terrorism incidents surged to a record high in 2020, fueled by white supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-government extremists on the far right. The Post found that, since 2015, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots or attacks, leading to 91 deaths. Reporter A.C. Thompson, who explores the threat of far-right extremism in the new PBS "Frontline" documentary "American Insurrection," says there was a "massive pool of radicalized individuals" ahead of the January 6 attack who were being pushed toward violence by "an abundance of lies by the former president, by this entire conspiratorial right-wing media and social media ecosystem." We also speak with director Rick Rowley, who says many white supremacist groups began to splinter during the intense backlash to the violence in Charlottesville in 2017, but Trump gave the groups new life ahead of the January 6 insurrection. "Many elements inside the white supremacist movement found in him a path into the mainstream," says Rowley. "They took off their swastikas, and they wrapped themselves in the flag."



    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

    A new report by the Capitol Police's watchdog reveals officials knew Congress was the target of the deadly January 6th insurrection, yet officers were instructed to refrain from deploying a more aggressive response that could have helped, quote, "push back the rioters." Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton found the agency failed to properly prepare for and respond to the pro-Trump mob despite warnings. The report cites a Capitol Police intelligence assessment issued several days before the attack that warned, quote, "Stop the Steal's propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike." The assessment also warned "Congress itself is the target on the 6th." Well, Bolton is set to testify Thursday before the House Administration Committee.

    Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports domestic terrorism incidents surged to a record high in 2020, fueled by white supremacist, anti-Muslim, anti-government extremists on the far right. The Post found, since 2015, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots or attacks, leading to 91 deaths.

    For more, we turn to a new film called American Insurrection, that explores how far-right groups were emboldened and encouraged by former President Trump, and what the fears and concerns are, going forward. The documentary by Frontline premiered Tuesday on PBS in collaboration with ProPublica and the University of California, Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program. In a minute, we'll be joined by the film's director, Rick Rowley, and correspondent A.C. Thompson. This is the trailer.

    MIKE DUNN: I think about a revolution against the government. We're past the point of peace.
    WHITE SUPREMACISTS: You will not replace us!
    NARRATOR: From Charlottesville to the assault on the Capitol —
    TRUMP SUPPORTERS: Fight for Trump!
    PRESIDENT-ELECT JOE BIDEN: One of the darkest days in the history of our nation.
    REP. ANDRÉ CARSON: We're seeing this country fall apart before our eyes.
    NARRATOR: How the former president galvanized an army.
    TRUMP SUPPORTER: Who's our president?
    TRUMP SUPPORTERS: Trump's our president!
    BRIEN JAMES: We've got a guy who's a nationalist in the most powerful seat in the world. We can actually win. We can actually get our views represented.
    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.
    ROBIN GILL: So, Trump encouraging calls to lock Whitmer up…
    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Lock 'em all up.
    MARY McCORD: The far-right militias have felt much more license to publicly engage.
    REPORTER: Terror plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
    A.C. THOMPSON: And so, you think the guys were planning to arrest her?
    MILITIA MEMBER: It was going to be a citizen's arrest.
    GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER: Two militia groups were preparing to kidnap and possibly kill me.
    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If you do not fight like hell, you're not going have a country anymore.
    REPORTER: Violent mob, stoked by the words of President Trump, stormed the building.
    REP. ANDRÉ CARSON: They were hostile. They were venomous that their country somehow was being taken away from them.
    NARRATOR: In the aftermath of the 2020 election, how these groups have become part of the American political landscape.
    A.C. THOMPSON: What was the role of the boog bois on that day?
    MIKE DUNN: There was some boogaloo bois in the crowd associated with us. They weren't there for Trump. They were there just to mess with the federal government one more time.
    NARRATOR: Over the last several years, Frontline and ProPublica have been reporting on the rise of hate groups —
    A.C. THOMPSON: Talk to you about what you were doing in Charlottesville last year.
    NARRATOR: — and their violence.
    A.C. THOMPSON: What do you think was going on in this house?
    UNIDENTIFIED: They were making bombs.
    NARRATOR: Now correspondent A.C. Thompson investigates the surge of far-right political violence.
    A.C. THOMPSON: What do soldiers and marines bring to the boogaloo?
    MIKE DUNN: They bring training expertise in certain areas.
    REP. KEITH ELLISON: They have decided this is a strategic initiative for them. There is a real, legitimate fear. We've got to be vigilant about it.
    UNIDENTIFIED: I'm afraid that more innocent civilians will be targeted and actually victimized by these violent offenders. Everything that we had predicted has come to fruition. And it's actually even worse.
    NARRATOR: The first in a series of films on the rise of extremism around the world.
    MIKE DUNN: We definitely are the modern militia.

    AMY GOODMAN: That's the trailer for American Insurrection, the new Frontline documentary, now streaming on PBS.org.

    For more, we're joined by A.C. Thompson, PBS Frontline correspondent and staff reporter with ProPublica, who's covered the rise of right-wing extremist and white supremacist groups for years, and director Rick Rowley, the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning filmmaker, independent journalist with Midnight Productions.

    We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! A.C., you begin this documentary on January 7th, the day after the deadly insurrection in Washington, and then you make your way back to the University of Virginia. Talk about what we're facing now and the buildup.

    A.C. THOMPSON: You know, the concern that I have at this point is that we may see an act of mass casualty terrorism sometime in the relatively near future, because we have a massive pool of radicalized individuals who have been fed an abundance of lies by the former president, by this entire conspiratorial right-wing media and social media ecosystem. And that is the concern I have.

    For us, the film traces sort of what happens from Charlottesville with the white power movement, which was emboldened and catalyzed by former President Trump, up to now, where we see the sort of white supremacists fading and these groups we saw on January 6th coming out, the street fighters, like the Proud Boys, the militias, the boogaloo bois. And that's sort of the arc that we're tracing here. We expect trouble from those groups in the future.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, A.C., in the film, you explore several of these groups. In the Proud Boys, for instance, the Cuban American, Enrique Tarrio, who is the — one of the leaders of the group — several of these folks are not — they're white supremacists, but they're not white themselves. And those of us who know the Latin American history know there's always been an extreme-right-wing trend among people of Latin American descent. Could you talk about Tarrio and the Proud Boys and what you found?

    A.C. THOMPSON: Yeah, that's a great question. Honestly, a few years ago, our colleague Karim Hajj and I were filming in Portland and filming these Proud Boys rallies. And we thought, you know, "How do we even make sense of these guys?" Like, you know, because they're ethnically mixed. They're sort of white supremacist-adjacent, like they're hanging out with white supremacists, but that's not how they categorize themselves. And I think the term that we came up with was sort of multicultural fascism, multiethnic fascism.

    You know, in the film, we meet a member of the Proud Boys, and he's wearing a shirt that says "Pinochet did nothing wrong," referring to the fascist Chilean dictator. And that's a thing that we saw over and over again with the Proud Boys, is shirts that said "right-wing death squads," shirts that talked about throwing socialists and leftists out of helicopters, as happened in Chile and Latin America during the dirty wars. So, that's the sort of thing that I think these movements, the ultranationalist movements, really represent, is a multiethnic fascism.

    AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a clip from your documentary, American Insurrection. You report on Steven Carrillo, the active-duty Air Force sergeant accused of shooting dead a federal security officer in Oakland during last year's protests over the police killing of George Floyd. Remember, it was originally blamed on antifa. But then it turns out to be that Carrillo killed not only him, but a deputy sergeant in the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office. He belonged to the anti-government boogaloo bois movement and was interviewed by investigative journalist Gisela Pérez de Acha from jail.

    A.C. THOMPSON: Before he was captured, Carrillo wrote messages in his own blood, including a single word that would be the key to all the chaos: "Boog."
    STEVEN CARRILLO: What the boogaloo is, is a revolution, a revolutionary thought.
    A.C. THOMPSON: Carrillo told Pérez de Acha that he was part of a movement called the boogaloo bois.
    STEVEN CARRILLO: The boogaloo movement, it's about people that love freedom, liberty, and they're unhappy with the level of control that the government takes over our lives. Being free to do what you want as long as you don't hurt anyone else.
    GISELA PÉREZ DE ACHA: Aren't you accused of hurting someone?
    STEVEN CARRILLO: Oh, that's — you know, that's what I'm accused of, but — yeah, so, back to the example, that's what I wanted to get to, you know, is the freedom of choice, the freedom of expression.
    A.C. THOMPSON: Carrillo has pleaded not guilty, and he wouldn't answer questions about the shootings.
    Did you find it hard to get him to actually —
    GISELA PÉREZ DE ACHA: It was so hard. It was so hard. He would just deny and skirt every question.
    How did you come to this? How did you — because you said you didn't read a lot before.
    STEVEN CARRILLO: Basically, through friends, friends, you know, the Air Force. Once I joined the Air Force, you know, I traveled around the world. I met people from all over the world. And just talking to people changed my whole views.
    A.C. THOMPSON: So, do you think that he's saying that he found these radical ideas in the military?
    GISELA PÉREZ DE ACHA: Yeah, I think — mainly from my conversations with him, I think he was definitely radicalized at the Air Force.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, we were hearing the voice of Carrillo there from jail, thanks to the investigative journalist Gisela Pérez de Acha. And you're talking to her, A.C. Thompson. Now, central to this is the military's prominent role in the white supremacist movement. I mean, you even interview a Pentagon spokesperson who says this is what they're looking at now, the disproportionate representation of police and military in the white supremacist movement. Tell us more through the story of Carrillo.

    A.C. THOMPSON: Yeah. So, Steven Carrillo is a 32-, now-33-year-old Air Force staff sergeant. He was assigned to a sort of elite security unit called the Phoenix Ravens within the U.S. Air Force. He had been in the service for many years.

    And the truth about Steven Carrillo, who is facing the federal death penalty for allegedly killing a federal security officer, facing state charges for murder for allegedly killing a deputy down in Santa Cruz County, California, is that he's representative of a much, much broader nexus between the military and extremist movements, most prominently anti-government militias and the white supremacist movement. Now, Steven is Mexican American. He wouldn't identify as white supremacist in any way. But he does identify with these sort of extremist, extreme libertarian ideas and this really anti-government sentiment that we've seen swirling around many people in the armed forces in recent years.

    We did reporting that found — that basically found some 20 members of the boogaloo movement with military ties, many of them active-duty. Thirteen of them had been jailed on serious, serious criminal charges in the last year. Our colleagues at Berkeley found another 15 active-duty airmen, many of them connected to Carrillo online, who are promoting boogaloo anti-government content, while collecting a government paycheck.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rick Rowley, I'd like to bring you into the conversation, as well. Could you talk about this — first of all, the timeline of the film, starting from Charlottesville through a variety of other events, that most people don't — most Americans don't associate as part of any kind of continuum, but also the role of social media, as you got into this story, in the growth of these groups?

    RICK ROWLEY: Yeah. Thanks, Juan.

    I mean, I think, really, the important — a major, important takeaway for everyone is that, you know, we look too often at these movements as a monolith, as an unchanging kind of thing. But actually, the far-right ecosystem is diverse, and it evolves, and it takes advantage of political crises as they appear. And if you don't understand how it's growing and changing, then it becomes impossible to understand the kind of threat they pose.

    So, yeah, we begin in Charlottesville with Unite the Right, the explosion of the largest white supremacist — openly white supremacist demonstration in our lifetimes. And there was a backlash after that, that was actually quite effective in splintering and breaking up the overt, explicitly white supremacist organizations that were there. The main groups behind that, you know, they dissolved, or they changed their names, or they just kind of disappeared.

    But what happened was, something else happened there, and that was that Trump, with his response to Charlottesville, he made explicit something that had been imminent inside his campaign for a long time. And many elements inside the white supremacist movement found in him a path into the mainstream. And so, they took off their swastikas, and they wrapped themselves in the flag, and they joined groups like the Proud Boys.

    At the time, the Proud Boys seemed to me to be kind of a joke — right? — not a very serious player in this space. But they became a vehicle through which neo-Nazis and white supremacists could enter into a mainstream kind of organization. You know, one of the great interviews that A.C. does is with this guy Brien James, who is — his career is like a bingo card of far-right violence, like the Klan, militias, where he met Tim McVeigh. He's founder of a neo-Nazi skinhead gang whose members have been committed — who have been convicted of multiple murders. Now he's a Proud Boy. And he says to us on camera that he sees that now they can win with someone like Trump in power, in office, and then also just offering them this vehicle into the mainstream.

    And so, you know, what you mentioned earlier, Juan, about Enrique Tarrio and the Black and Latino members of the Proud Boys, this is a very self-conscious move by the movement to put forward an image of themselves that is difficult for people who haven't watched them evolve to classify. So, people look at them, and it's hard to call them white supremacist, because they can't — you know, it's hard for them to square that image because they haven't seen them evolve. I mean, the slogan, "Pinochet did nothing wrong" — "Hitler did nothing wrong" was a slogan, you know, started, I think, on Stormfront a couple decades ago and sort of popularized. They just take the "Hitler" out, put the "Pinochet" in, and suddenly they're a multiethnic, multicultural fascist movement that finds a way to become more acceptable.

    AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to another clip of American Insurrection. This is about the boogaloo bois.

    A.C. THOMPSON: I need to see the movement for myself. I go to Virginia, where a boogaloo cell is marching against a local gun ordinance. Fifty protesters show up. They have body armor, assault rifles and outlawed high-capacity magazines. They carry igloo flags and wear Hawaiian shirts and ironic patches. The group is led by Mike Dunn.
    So, how are you feeling about today?
    MIKE DUNN: Liberty shall not be infringed.
    A.C. THOMPSON: Has this been a success, in your mind?
    MIKE DUNN: Liberty shall not be infringed.
    A.C. THOMPSON: Dunn postures like a seasoned squad leader. But this doesn't look like a group that's going to lead a violent insurrection. I can see the threat they pose, though. Boogaloo bois have demonstrated the potential to carry out acts of violence. Some in law enforcement and the intelligence community also saw this threat. I've been told that their concerns were rejected by the White House.
    ELIZABETH NEUMANN: Among the counterterrorism community, we took it very seriously. But you really do need that presidential-level leadership saying, "This is a threat. We are going to use all of our tools to go after this threat." That never happened under Trump.
    A.C. THOMPSON: Elizabeth Neumann was one of the top counterterrorism officials in the Trump administration. She says she tried to warn the White House about the rising threat of far-right extremists, but the president and his allies claimed the real threat was from Black Lives Matter and antifa.
    ELIZABETH NEUMANN: Does antifa exist? It's not an organization; it's a movement. You have groups of people that associate with them. Do they show up at protests? Sure. Is it a massive conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government and kill a lot of people? No. You know where that is? It's on the right. It's in the white supremacist movement. It's in the anti-government militia movement. It's in the boogaloo bois movement.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, that is key. That was Elizabeth Neumann, who was a Trump administration official, who quit then because the White House kept stressing the threat was Black Lives Matter and antifa, when all of the facts indicate the overwhelming level of violence, the number one domestic terror threat in this country are the white supremacists, are the anti-government groups, this right wing that coalesced on January 6th. You have Mike Dunn in there. A.C., you say he's gone underground now? What do you see as the next insurrection or threat? And what about how the Biden administration is dealing with this?

    A.C. THOMPSON: You know, I think the fear that I have, and I've gotten this from our interviews with people like Mike Dunn, is both federal agencies and federal law enforcement being targeted. They are a particular target for people in these militia and militant anti-government groups. As well, I think there's a real concern with state-level and county-level officials being targeted, particularly in states that maybe have more serious COVID restrictions — I think that's the thing we saw in Michigan with the kidnapping plot there against the governor — particularly in states where they may be moving to enact some forms of slightly more aggressive gun control laws. Those are the concerns I think that we should all have. And that's what's been articulated to us, is like, "Look, it's not just that we're targeting the federal government; we're targeting everybody."

    AMY GOODMAN: A.C. Thompson, we want to thank you for being with us, PBS Frontline correspondent, ProPublica reporter, and Rick Rowley, Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning filmmaker, just released American Insurrection, a new Frontline documentary, now streaming at PBS.org.

    Republicans who fought Biden certification see massive plunge in corporate donations: report

    Tom Boggioni
    April 17, 2021

    According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, GOP lawmakers who attempted to block the certification of Joe Biden's 2020 election win over Donald Trump have seen a massive drop in donations from corporate PACs.

    The report notes an 80 percent drop in the first quarter of the year as Republicans took in only $1.3 million from business groups and trade organizations, compared to $6.7 million donated by the same groups in the first quarter of 2019 after the 2018 midterms.

    The report adds that PAC money to Democrats and Republicans who voted to certify the results were only down about 30 percent and 35 percent respectively.

    The Journal goes on to add that some the GOP lawmakers who saw their business PAC money shrivel up did see a surge in dollars sent by small donors.

    "PAC money isn't critical to some high-profile politicians who voted against certifying the election results such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), whose campaigns are heavily funded by small online donations. All three raised upward of $3 million in the first quarter of this year for their campaign committees, " the report states. "Ms. Greene didn't receive any corporate PAC donations and brought in roughly 80% of her campaign money from people who donated $200 or less in the first quarter. Roughly a third of the Republican objectors saw small-dollar donations increase by 10% or more compared with the same period in 2019."

    You can read more here -- subscription required.


     
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