Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include additional information from Common Cause.
As Americans rush to file their taxes by this year’s April 18 deadline, a sliver of them — less than 4 percent, if recent history holds — will check a little box that directs $3 to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.
But that’s still millions of $3 contributions, year after year. And they’ve caused the Presidential Election Campaign Fund — a once-popular resource for White House aspirants that hasn’t been used regularly in 15 years — to swell past $430 million in value as of February 28, according to U.S. Treasury records reviewed by Raw Story.
With the untapped fund likely to continue growing after Tax Day en route to half a billion dollars, politicians and nonprofits have ideas for how to reform the nation’s obsolete public campaign financing policies and reallocate this resource at a time when, according to the Treasury, the country is facing more than a $1 trillion dollar deficit.
Among them is Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who told Raw Story the money could be used to help close the nation’s budget gap.
“It's just sitting there … This is just a small effort on many other efforts that we have in trying to tackle this budget,” Ernst said. “You’ve just got to get out there and raise money if you're gonna play, so why do we do this?”
Nonprofits could benefit from the money that’s sitting in the fund, said Rick Cohen, chief communications officer and chief operating officer for the National Council of Nonprofits. While the Council is focusing much of its tax policy efforts on getting the universal charitable deduction back after it expired in 2021, the hundreds of millions of dollars in the Presidential Election Campaign Fund could help numerous charities.
“Every dollar can make a big difference for people who rely on nonprofits,” Cohen said. “It may seem like a small amount when it comes to the government's budget, but 90% of the sector has less than a $1 million budget every year. You could double the budget of 500 nonprofit organizations and still have more to go around.”
Cohen said it would be great to see a tax form checkoff box for donating to charities like Colorado has that allows taxpayers to donate their return to nonprofits.
“It's very similar to that checkbox for the Presidential Election Fund, where they can check a box and say, ‘I want to donate a portion of my return to this charity,’ which is a great thing,” Cohen said. “It makes it that much simpler, and it's when people are having additional money coming to them.”
Why do no candidates want the money?
It wasn’t until the 2012 presidential election that candidates all but stopped using the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.
From the 1976 presidential election through the 2004 election, parties’ nominees would accept public funding for the general election.
But in 2008, Democratic nominee Barack Obamabroke the trend and opted not to accept general election public funds — with Republicans accusing him of breaking a promise in the process.
Prior to that, some candidates opted not to use the fund for presidential primaries, such as Democrat John Kerry and Republican George W. Bush in 2004, and Bush in 2000.
Why did the fund fall out of fashion?
“The basic reason is the system comes with a spending cap, and those amounts are very small by today's presidential election cost standards, so essentially, if you're a strong candidate, if you know you can raise hundreds of millions of dollars, it would not be a rational choice to participate in the program,” said Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program.
“Candidates can raise more and probably need to raise more to be competitive in a campaign. There's also issues about how early the primaries are now, and when the first disbursement is and whether you run out of primary money before you officially get nominated.”
During the early 2000s, “one could say that the fund was dying,” said Bradley A. Smith, a professor at Capital University Law School who served on the Federal Election Commission from 2000 to 2005, including one year as chairman. “You might say that it was starting to break up during that period at the beginning of the century.”
Back when candidates were using the fund regularly, having too little money to go around — not too much — was the problem. This necessitated candidates to borrow to keep their campaigns afloat until the fund was replenished after Tax Day, Smith said.
The majority of taxpayers have always chosen not to select the $3 checkoff box, but without any major candidate tapping it recently, the fund has now recovered and grown to its $430 million balance — its largest balance ever.
During the 2012 and 2016 elections, just four candidates — Republican Buddy Roemer, Democrat Martin O’Malley, Green Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson — together received about $3 million for their primary campaigns, and no one took money for the general election. In 2020, no candidates at all accepted funds for the primaries or the general election, according to FEC records.
Keep the $430 million in place?
Nevertheless, not everyone would like to see the $430 million in available public presidential campaign funding used for some other purpose.
“I think the Democrats realize nobody's using the fund, but it's almost like the dream is still there,” Smith said. “If the fund’s abolished completely, then you’ve got to reestablish the whole thing and pass on new legislation, whereas now, I think there's this hope that maybe it can spring back to life. They can amend it to get more money to the fund.”
Reforming the public campaign financing system to keep it alive is a viable option, some nonprofits argue. The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute affiliated with New York University School of Law, is pushing for a model of public financing based on small donor contributions, which would be matched by a multiplier. This model has been seen on the state level in places like New York where small donations are matched at a six-to-one ratio.
Nonprofit government reform group Common Cause supports citizen-funded elections, too, including campaign funding vouchers. Common Cause said it would prefer to see the current presidential public financing system modernized rather than see the fund emptied.
“The disclosure laws and regulations have not kept pace at all with outside spending,” said Stephen Spaulding, vice president of policy and external affairs at Common Cause. “A significant percentage of money comes through ‘dark money’ groups that don't have to disclose where the money is coming from, and so voters are left in the dark, and this sort of secret spending is really dangerous for democracy because it means that you're no longer able to follow the money.”
The Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission significantly contributed to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund’s current state of affairs as an unused resource.
The ruling overturned key campaign finance restrictions and allowed corporations and outside groups, including certain nonprofit organizations, to raise and spend unlimited money to advocate for or against political candidates.
“That's part of what generates this arms race mentality that drives people to look for the biggest donors. It doesn't have to be that way,” Vandewalker said. “We would support reforming the program to update it for the realities of campaigning today, which would mean larger grant amounts, potentially no spending cap and a multiple match system as opposed to what exists today.”
Another supporter of public campaign funding reforms is Ann Ravel, who served as an FEC commissioner from 2013 to 2017, including one year as the commission’s chairwoman.
“The thing about the idea of having the public funding of elections is in part because it's important that people just don't rely on donors or corporations and all of the unbelievable amount of money that's been spent in elections, and instead, hopefully, the idea is that more varied candidates can run and get some money in order to do it,” Ravel told Raw Story.
Restrictions, restrictions
For any 2024 presidential candidate who choses to use the nation’s public campaign matching fund, such as it is today, they’ll face significant headaches.
To access public funds, they’d need to obtain a minimum of 20 contributors in each of at least 20 states, raising at least $5,000 per state. The fund matches the first $250 of individual contributions during the primary campaign.
They’d also be required to limit personal spending on their campaign to $50,000 and limit their overall campaign spending.
Spending limits for the 2024 election haven’t been set yet and likely won’t until later this year or early 2024, according to Myles Martin, a public affairs specialist for the FEC.
“To my knowledge, I don't think anyone has submitted any applications for matching funds yet, and the general election grants that would be available to major party nominees, neither party has used those in recent years,” Martin said.
Changes to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund
Until 2014, the Presidential Election Campaign Fund also provided funding for the Democratic and Republican national conventions. In 2012, each convention received $18,248,300.
“The fact was that there was so much public money being spent on the conventions, and I guess the view then, and it probably is still the case, was that it made those conventions into shows,” Ravel said. “A lot of money was spent to entice people to go and watch and make it be like some big event.”
In 2014, Obama signed legislation that would stop the public funding of conventions. Instead, the money was reallocated to the National Institutes of Health to fund the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act, a 10-year initiative funding pediatric research. The last disbursement of the Presidential Election Campaign Fund was to the NIH in 2020 for $736,000 for the Pediatric Research Initiative Fund.
With the funding set to end in 2023, Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) introduced the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 in January 2021, which passed the House but didn’t pass into law. The Act calls for dedicating $25 million annually to the research initiative from 2023 to 2027.
“Advancing this legislation has been a top priority since I first came to Congress … I’m proud to see our hard work paying off and am eager to continue our efforts to get this bipartisan bill to the President’s desk,” Wexton said in a press release.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) is one of the bill’s 110 co-sponsors, and he also introduced in January 2023 the Strengthen the Pediatric Research Initiative Act that calls for eliminating the Presidential Election Campaign Fund altogether and transferring the remaining funds into pediatric research.
"There is nothing of greater importance than finding cures for childhood cancers and other deadly diseases," Cole said in a press release. "Although Congress has made significant strides throughout the last decade to provide the funding to find these lifesaving cures, there is much more work to be done still. I'm proud to introduce the Strengthen the Pediatric Research Initiative Act to redirect this money from political campaigns toward this worthy cause."
Spaulding, of Common Cause, said he was cynical of the motivations behind the Strengthen the Pediatric Research Initiative Act’s call to reallocate the fund.
“No question that we should be investing in health research, in ending cancer, in making advances in science, that's no question. I think it's a bit of a false choice to say that we have to do one or the other. We can do both. We can repair a presidential public financing system, which worked well for decades, and at the same time, continue to invest in science,” Spaulding said.
Smith, a Republican, said the GOP is angling to repeal the system under the guise of funding causes most people support, such as helping children or pediatric research.
“It’s really a relatively small amount, and it just always strikes me as gimmicky. I think they probably actually hurt support for repealing it … why not just say we want to repeal this because we don't think it does any good, and we think it's wasting a couple hundred million bucks a year?” Smith said. “To most people, a couple hundred million sounds like a lot of money. To a U.S. senator in Washington, a couple hundred million, that's chump change … But to your average citizen out in Omaha, $200 million still sounds like a lot of money.”
For the 2024 election, where presidential candidates in the primary and general elections are expected to collectively raise billions of dollars, experts agreed that the money is likely to continue sitting in the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, unused for any purpose.
“To take the money almost is like putting a sign up saying, I don't think I can win,” Smith said. “If you're running against Joe Biden … you know you’ve got to spend a lot of money, a lot more than you're going to get from the matching funds program, and the same thing on the Republican side. If you're going to match Trump or even [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis, who's sitting on a huge war chest, not all of which he can convert directly into running, but he's got huge fundraising capabilities, obviously, you have to realize that the matching funds program just probably is not going to give you enough to do it.”
The National Rifle Association (NRA) endured a withering attack recently from an unlikely source – the Firearms News – in an opinion piece bashing the organization as “running on empty” as it convenes its annual meeting this weekend in Indianapolis.
The magazine is chock full of ads selling firearms. But that didn’t prevent it from giving voice to Rocky Marshall, a Texas trucking executive and former NRA board director, who warned that the meeting “ironically corresponds to a financial tipping point when the NRA’s cash meter drops to empty.”
And Marshall didn’t stop there with his not-so-friendly fire:
“The annual meeting should be a highlight for all members as a celebration of the second amendment and of the NRA’s long history of supporting firearm programs,” the opinion piece stated. “However, the greatest spectacle will be when the NRA’s financials are reviewed by the Board of Directors (BOD) with the possible anecdote ‘Indy We Have A Problem!’”
“The NRA’s financials are more than just a problem; the actual numbers reflect how the ongoing corruption scandal has decimated the organization,” it continued. “In reviewing the current balance sheet through November 30, 2022, the pending disaster is easy to predict.”
The NRA failed to respond to a request for comment from Raw Story about the Firearms News column. Marshall also couldn’t be reached for comment, and his scathing commentary, replete with data detailing the NRA’s financial condition that he said is extracted from the NRA’s balance-sheet metrics, could not be independently verified.
But the NRA’s financial challenges have been widely confirmed. And advocates in the gun-violence prevention (nee “gun control”) movement are delighting in the NRA’s plight, no longer considering it the existential threat they once did.
“The NRA leadership has been operating so far from its membership that it’s really one of the reasons that the gun-violence prevention has been so successful in the last decade,” Christian Heyne, vice president of policy and programs for Brady, a nonprofit gun violence prevention organization, told Raw Story. “Folks who are members of the NRA know how corrupt and extreme the leaders are and they’re beginning to pressure politicians for action. They’re sick and tired of the violence, too.”
Heyne added that the NRA has become overrated as a force in American politics, focusing its campaign spending on easy red-state races to run up its winning percentage, while losing an increasing number of key races around the nation.
Heyne also noted how Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin distanced himself from the NRA during his 2021 race despite the NRA’s headquarters location in that state.
“For a lot of years, the NRA has been a paper tiger,” Heyne said.
Indeed, the NRA’s federal lobbying expenditures, as well as the overall number of lobbyists it employs, have trended downward of late, according to federal lobbying data compiled by nonpartisan research organization OpenSecrets.
The NRA’s super PAC spent more than $15 million to advocate for or against federal candidates running during the 2022 midterms, but it made many of its biggest bets on losers — U.S. Senate candidates Herschel Walker of Georgia, Mehmet Oz of Pennsylvania, Blake Masters of Arizona and Adam Laxalt of Nevada.
“The gun-rights group generated $139.7 million in the first eight months of the year, an internal NRA document reviewed by Bloomberg shows,” the publication wrote. “During the same time period, the NRA’s office of the general counsel spent more than $40 million, the documents showed. The organization’s annual revenue is on track to be the lowest in more than a decade as legal costs for 2022 approach $60 million, set to exceed previous records.”
Peter Ambler, executive director and co-founder of Giffords, another anti-gun violence organization, said the NRA’s financial woes were not a surprise.
“I would not want to be the one holding the gavel at the start of the NRA meeting this year,” Ambler told Raw Story. “The organization is a shell of its former self and a lot of that has to do with its strained credibility with its base.
“There are the perks that the executives there have rewarded themselves with and the obsession with lobbying and influence over the interests of regular gun owners,” Ambler continued. “Consequently, [NRA leaders] have come to rely all the more on their far-right base which is a tiny sliver of the population but has some very extreme views. The NRA has left behind the millions upon millions of Americans who understand that with rights come responsibilities and that firearms ownership and the Second Amendment are not invitations to insurrection.”
Ambler doesn’t have a any further insight into the financial meltdown predicted in Firearms News for the NRA. But he didn’t doubt that the organization’s annual confab would be a colorful scene. It’s a prediction in part made true by the crowd’s booing of former Vice President Mike Pence and the appearance of former President Donald Trump, who on Friday called for arming schoolteachers and promised to be a “loyal friend” to the NRA if he’s once again elected commander-in-chief.
“Walking through an NRA convention these days is an extraterrestrial experience,” Ambler said. “It is a theme park of every right-wing grievance and conspiracy theory that you could concoct, with racism and extremism on display everywhere. You’ve got companies marketing weapons like the AR-15. Whatever happened to responsibility?”
In the Firearms News, it’s hard to imagine a publication less in step with the philosophies of Brady and Giffords, yet the two sides found common ground – for different reasons – with their criticism of NRA leadership.
On April 4, Giffords updated its assessment of the NRA’s “disarray” that it has published since 2019. It now states that “the NRA seems to be teetering on the brink, hemorrhaging both money and support.”
At Firearms News, Marshall was more blunt:
“Insolvency is the last warning sign on the financial road which drives most organizations into bankruptcy.”
Citing calculations from the NRA balance sheet data he obtained, Marshall predicted the NRA could be expected to run out of cash right around the start of today’s meeting.
“Financial planning is never this precise; however, observing a financial wreck approaching and not attempting to avoid the disaster is unfathomable,” Marshall wrote. “The Board of Directors has been warned REPEATEDLY by former Directors, industry advocates, and industry reporters without taking the necessary action to avoid the coming calamity.
He added: “I spoke to a few of the current NRA BOD members who attended the January 2023 meeting, and once again the BOD was not informed of the current financial crisis. With the Indy-23 meeting looming, the NRA is running on fumes and will not finish this race!”
Smithsonian Institution officials scrambled to respond to numerous media requests — and alert Donald Trump's political action committee — when news broke last year that the Trump PAC was funding a portrait of the 45th president destined for the National Portrait Gallery, according to government records obtained by Raw Story through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The brouhaha followed news — first reported by Insider and matched by numerous other news organizations — that Trump's Save America PAC made a "charitable contribution" worth $650,000 to fund official portraits for Trump and former first lady Melania Trump.
The FOIA reports include a May 11 letter from National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet and Assistant Secretary for Advancement Robert J. Spiller to Save America PAC treasurer Bradley Crate that described the PAC's donation as "generous support", according to a letter included among the more than 100 documents Raw Story obtained.
The letter detailed that Save America, which has raised tens of millions of dollars to advance Trump's post-presidential agenda, and is reportedly under federal investigation over whether it defrauded donors by making claims about the 2020 election it knew to be false, would be publicly lauded for its contribution.
"To recognize this generous support, the Smithsonian will recognize Save America on the object labels that will be displayed alongside the portraits when they are on exhibition and alongside images of the portraits on the NPG website," Sajet and Spiller wrote. "In addition, Save America will be recognized in the commemorative program for, and remarks delivered at, the unveiling ceremony and provided with invitations and reserved seating for 10 guests to attend the event."
The letter further states that Save America will have the "opportunity to arrange a private viewing of the portraits for up to five guests." Save America PAC would also be honored in the text of the Smithsonian's annual report. The letter's authors said they were "grateful" for Save America PAC's contribution.
The letter did note that Save America PAC would not be allowed to use the Smithsonian and National Portrait Gallery logos and other branding in the PAC's "products" or "product packaging," or in "advertising, promotion, publicity, or fund-raising" without Smithsonian approval.
Smithsonian officials, meanwhile, attempted to contain fallout from angry Americans aghast that Trump's image — to date, the Trump portraits have not been revealed — would soon hang in the National Portrait Gallery, which has traditionally displayed portraits of all former U.S. presidents.
Trump, however, is unlike any other president: He is now facing 34 felony counts in New York related to hush money payments paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels, and he faces three other criminal investigations — two at the federal level, and one in Fulton County, Georgia.
"Just an update that we're seeing tons of angry tweets about the Trump portrait, from small and huge accounts," Smithsonian social media official Erin Blasco wrote to several colleagues. "People do not seem to understand, of course, that we have portraits of all the presidents. They're upset that we're getting a Trump portrait but also there are plenty of people upset that this counts as a 'donation,' especially since their fundraising practices have been criticized."
Among the tweets Smithsonian officials shared with each other, per their emails:
"Nice to see that @smithsonian is in bed with a Nazi pedophile wanna-be tyrant. Donation or bribe ?"
"This is f*cking infuriating."
"This is not how museums are supposed to work."
"Why would the Smithsonian even hang anything with that treasonous pig? Unless the exhibit talks about the crimes, abuse of power, and a portrait of Narcissism!"
"It's disturbing to hear that the Smithsonian is accepting so much money from Trump's Save America PAC, which has been using what Business Insider calls 'aggressive and deceptive' solicitations to squeeze money from the faithful."
Meanwhile, the National Portrait Gallery decided to inform Trump's PAC that it would be releasing additional information about the financial arrangement to the press, according to the emails obtained through FOIA.
"NPG will reach out to Save America to inform them we are releasing details to media," wrote Concetta Duncan, who leads the National Portrait Gallery's communications and marketing department, to colleagues.
Officials for Save America PAC could not immediately be reached for comment.
Smithsonian officials also appeared to alert the Smithsonian Board of Regents to the Trump-related intrigue, per a partially redacted email with a subject line of "Informing regents."
Among the 17-member Board of Regents: Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, Vice President Kamala Harris, several members of Congress, and several businesspeople and philanthropists.
Several reporters inquired about the names of the artists tapped to paint portraits of the Trumps. Smithsonian officials decided against releasing the names of the artists.
"Two different artists. Again, we really don’t want to get into the names," Duncan advised colleagues in an Aug. 22 email.
"We are not sharing any information about the artists at this time," National Portrait Gallery Director of Advancement Usha Subramanian emphasized in another email the same day.
WASHINGTON — Once a titan of the Senate, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is nearing the end of her career. The question is whether she’ll leave Capitol Hill on her own terms — she says she will serve out her current term, which ends in January 2025 — or if she’ll give in to pressure from her fellow Democrats and retire in the coming weeks or months.
Raw Story and other news organizations have recently observed a confused and forgetful Feinstein, sometimes personally contradicting official statements her office puts out in her name. For example, in August, at the tail end of an all-night vote-a-rama session, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spoke to Feinstein as if she were a child — and helped direct the senator back to her office for a nap.
This week, Feinstein enlivened the debate over her ability to serve when she announced she’s “temporarily” stepping down from the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee after being absent for more than a month while suffering from shingles, which has stalled the confirmations of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees.
It’s time for @SenFeinstein to resign. We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty. While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties. Not speaking out undermines our credibility as elected representatives of the people. — Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) April 12, 2023
“I need a little bit of time, so it's not this year,” Feinstein said from the Capitol.
Hours after Raw Story broke the news that her decision was potentially a year away, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) launched his campaign to replace her in the Senate.
Four days later, Bloomberg’s Laura Litvan reported Feinstein changed her timeline. Feinstein said she would make her decision one way or another “in the spring sometime. Not in the winter. I don’t announce in the winter.”
By February, the Capitol buzzed with alerts and salutations after Feinstein’s office released a statement announcing the senator would not seek another six-year term and retire in 2025.
The statement seemed to end years of speculation over whether Feinstein would attempt to serve well into her 90s.
Except, it didn’t.
“I heard you finally announced you’re retiring?” Raw Story asked Feinstein as she walked through the Capitol, just minutes after her office blasted out the announcement.
“Oh no, I’m not announcing anything,” Feinstein replied.
“No?”
“I will one day…” Feinstein said, “… not too far away."
National Journal reporter Savannah Behrmann then captured a bizarre exchange between Feinstein and a staffer that indicated Feinstein was unaware of her own retirement announcement.
“I haven’t released anything,” Feinstein said.
NEW: Dianne Feinstein tells @RawStory's @MattLaslo that she is "not announcing anything ... I will one day" — after announcing earlier today she would not seek re-election. https://t.co/5yk4uwRSCv — Dave Levinthal (@davelevinthal) February 14, 2023
“We put out the statement,” the staffer replied.
“You put out the statement?” Feinstein asked.
Ultimately, Feinstein’s office clarified that, indeed, Feinstein would not seek a seventh term in the Senate.
Forgetting the assault weapon ban
In January, California endured back-to-back mass shootings within 48-hours of each other.
While celebrating the Lunar New Year on Jan. 21 in Monterey Park,11 people were slaughtered and another nine left permanently scarred. Two days later, on Jan. 23, in northern California, a farmworker killed seven people while injuring at least eight others.
Later that day, as Californians reeled from their second mass shooting in two days, Feinstein’s office reintroduced the historic 1990s assault weapon ban she had championed.
Three days later, Feinstein couldn’t remember her own measure. .
“What was that?” she asked after a member of the press corps asked about her measure.
No one in the congressional press corps asked a follow-up question. They just whispered about Feinstein’s failing health.
Last year, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision that effectively overturned Roe v. Wade nationally while leaving abortion policy to each state, Democrats coast-to-coast cheered after Kansas residents voted to keep abortion legal.
It took a few moments for Sen. Feinstein to remember the earth-moving news from the Great Plains.
Once she remembered, Feinstein was optimistic as she told Raw Story that upending Roe was an "enlightened finding" by the right wing of the Supreme Court.
Feinstein’s reaction put her at odds with every elected Democrat in Washington, save Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), the anti-abortion Democrat whoRep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other progressives tried to primary out of the party. Feinstein’s statement also put her at odds with herself — her own Senate website describes Feinstein as someone who “strongly supports congressional efforts to codify the protections Roe v. Wade.”
But on that historic day, Feinstein said: "This is a country of different beliefs. We're not all unilateral. So, it didn't surprise me."
‘Puppies have a nap’
In August, senators were needed for an all-nightvote-a-rama before taking the rest of the month off. The following morning, Raw Story found it peculiar when Feinstein was escorted off the Senate floor by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), along with Feinstein’s chief of staff.
“Puppies have a nap, now it’s time for you to have one,” Warrentold Feinstein.
The entourage then escorted Feinstein to her expansive personal office tucked deep in the Capitol’s rafters.
What’s new and what’s not?
Feinstein’s anything but predictable. In 2012, as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee,she dropped classified information about a highly sensitive Obama-era prisoner swap to a hallway full of reporters.
In 2014, Feinstein’s anti-torture speech from the well of the ornate – if objectively boring – Senate floorwas carried live by CNN. In 2018, she bucked critics and was, at times, energized and eloquent – well, as eloquent as any soundbite-peddling politician ever is.
As she’s done since 1992, whenshe first flexed and won the coveted Senate seat, that focused, perpetually fighting spirit shows itself occasionally these days.
But not often. Even before her fellow California Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna called for her to step aside, other politicians raised concerns about the ability of lawmakers of advanced age to execute their public responsibilities. While some have proposed term limits, others are now floating age limits or tests to address such concerns.
Take Nikki Haley. The GOP presidential candidate’s enviable resume – she’s a former U.N. ambassador and governor of South Carolina – is so far doing nothing to outshine former President Donald Trump, who’s also running in 2024 and happens to be Haley’s former boss.
Haley needs headlines, and she got them this January for proposing a mental health test for lawmakers who are 75-year-old or older. While popular among voters, the odds Congress would pass a law subjecting its own members to such scrutiny are about as likely as any of them living to age 150.
At the time, Raw Story asked Feinstein about it.
“I don't have a problem with it,”Feinstein told Raw Story.
“You’d embrace it?”
“No,” Feinstein replied. “But I don’t have a problem with it.”
Sean Kauffmann gave a stiff-arm Nazi salute as he arrived at a protest outside a drag show at a local brewpub in Cookeville, a small city about 75 miles east of Nashville, Tenn., in late January.
“Kill all the n—ers and the Jews!” shouted a 16-year-old boy who had come with Kauffmann to protest the “Celebrity Drag Brunch,” an event benefiting a local LGBTQ advocacy organization.
An array of fascist and far-right groups flanked Kauffmann and the boy, chanting homophobic slurs at the several dozen people across the street who had arrived to serve as informal protectors for the drag show performers and patrons, according to police body-camera footage exclusively obtained by Raw Story through a state open records request.
Kauffmann, the 16-year-old boy and a third friend — former Proud Boy and Army military veteran Robert Bray — left the protest in a black Honda Civic around 1:30 p.m. As the three were driving past the brewpub, the protectors saw them throw some type of projectile out of the car.
William Beals, a 15-year-old boy and Sean Kauffmann (l-r) outside a drag show in Cookeville, Tenn. on Jan. 22. Robert Bray is in the background at left. Courtesy Josh Brandon
But they had company. A Cookeville Police Department officer tailed the car as it passed the brewpub and turned right at a stop sign. The officer activated his blue emergency lights about 30 seconds later. Kauffmann pulled his Honda over. Three additional police units fell in behind.
Exclusive video obtained by Raw Story shows the local Tennessee police officers letting neo-Nazis off with a warning after menacing the drag show brunch that was supporting charity. The police’s encounter highlights a broader pattern of law enforcement missing the warning signs about extremist violence.
The lead officer, who identified himself as “Officer Smith,” first greeted Kauffmann, while another officer, Caleb Rubel, approached the passenger side.
“The reason I stopped you is throwing stuff at people. You can’t be doing that, okay?” Smith said, after collecting driver’s licenses from Kauffmann and Bray, who was seated in the front passenger seat, the police body cam footage showed.
“What’d y’all throw out over there?” Smith asked.
“A stink bomb,” one of the occupants of the vehicle replied.
While Smith was running the men’s driver’s licenses, Rubel alerted him: “Hey Smith, front guy’s got a firearm on his right hip.”
Rubel approached the Honda Civic’s passenger side again.
“So, which one of you all threw it?” Rubel asked.
Bray raised his hand, and chuckled.
“So, why?” Rubel asked.
“Control,” Bray replied.
“Trying to use that gun on your hip?” Rubel asked, referring to Bray’s pistol.
“No, that’s for my personal protection.” Bray replied.
“It’s not real smart to go provoking people and then trying to find some lousy excuse to use it, right?” Rubel asked.
“Those aren’t people,” Bray responded.
Rubel continued standing at the front passenger window, as Smith meanwhile learned from dispatch that the occupants of the vehicle were part of a “terroristic group.” Smith informed Kauffmann, Bray and the 15-year-old that they could be charged with aggravated assault. An arrest seemed likely, even imminent.
But it wasn’t: Smith ultimately let Kauffmann, Bray and the 15-year-old juvenile go with a mild warning.
“Don’t throw something at someone, OK? You guys are free to go,” the officer said.
After the traffic stop, the Tennessee Active Club, a neo-Nazi crew led by Kauffmann, celebrated the protest as a victory.
Noting the participation of two other neo-Nazi groups in a post on its Telegram channel, he declared: “Hail victory, hail group unity and networking.”
'Law enforcement is unprepared'
The Cookeville police’s encounter with Kauffmann and his crew highlights a broader pattern of law enforcement missing the warning signs about extremist violence.
From the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017 to the attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, and now a groundswell of attacks against LGBTQ Americans, police have repeatedly found themselves overmatched or under-informed relative to the potential threat.
And the failure to enforce the law and accurately identify known extremist groups points to an apparent bias that makes it difficult for law enforcement to recognize threats from far-right actors, and predisposes them to view community members who mobilize to protect drag shows and LGBTQ-friendly spaces as equal offenders.
Kauffmann and his Tennessee Active Club’s effort to provoke violence in Cookeville came amid the group’s participation in a sustained run of vitriolic protests against drag shows across the state from November 2022 through February 2023.
Since a new law went into effect on April 1 banning drag shows in the presence of anyone under the age of 18 in Tennessee, the Tennessee Active Club’s campaign of provocation has fed into a wider national pattern of violence against the LGBTQ community. This includes a Molotov cocktail attack last month by a neo-Nazi against a church hosting a drag event in Ohio.
Meanwhile, the campaign to curb if not shut down drag shows has united a coalition of far-right factions — from neo-Nazis to the Proud Boys and QAnon followers — to a degree not seen since the Jan. 6 insurrection. The intimidation campaign against LGBTQ-friendly spaces unfolded alongside a flurry of legislative proposals in dozens of states targeting transgender people, whether following Tennessee’s lead to ban drag performances or restricting gender-affirming care and blocking access to collegiate and school sports.
In concert with the harassment of drag shows and legislative efforts, anti-trans talking points by conservative media figures such as Tucker Carlson and Matt Walsh have created a feedback loop that lends mainstream legitimacy to vigilante violence.
Gwen Snyder, an anti-fascist researcher and veteran community organizer in Philadelphia, told Raw Story that the fact that Kauffmann “is so engaged in anti-trans terrorism now is telling in terms of what the terrorist far-right agenda is, and really goes to show how both this terrorist far right has laid the groundwork for the assault on trans people by the mainstream right and what the mainstream right is giving cover to. This stuff bubbled up on Terrorgram and Nazi right spaces. It was taken on by the mainstream right, and the mainstream right is now giving cover to Nazis like Sean” Kauffmann.
The mainstreaming of anti-trans hate dovetails with a continuous failure by law enforcement to interdict extremist violence over the decade.
“Law enforcement is unprepared, despite public statements that they’re planning to commit violence,” Michael German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program, told Raw Story. “And too often, they don’t follow up after the violence occurs, which tends to condition the militants to believe they’re allowed to commit violence.
“Law enforcement has been reluctant to respond to far-right violence in a manner that would address its organized activity,” said German, who infiltrated neo-Nazi groups in the 1990s as an undercover FBI agent. “Unite the Right is an example of national groups that included individuals who had committed violence elsewhere coming to an event that was publicly advertised. That shouldn’t be a hard problem to recognize.”
Raw Story left 10 voicemails over the course of a week for the Cookeville police chief and the department’s public information in an attempt to obtain comment from them. Cookeville officials did not respond to these messages.
'All the red flags are there'
Kauffmann’s violent ideations reached a fever pitch in 2019, when he founded a neo-Nazi group called Panzer Strike Force in Tucson, Ariz.
During that period, he communicated with an enlisted soldier named Jarrett William Smith, who was later convicted for distributing bomb-making instructions to an FBI informant while suggesting former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) as an assassination target. Shortly before Smith’s arrest in September 2019, he counseled Kauffmann to “hide your guns” after Kauffmann expressed the fear that federal authorities would seize his firearms because of his history of violence and Nazi beliefs.
Snyder uncovered communications on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app favored by white supremacists, between Smith — handle: “Anti-Kosmik 2182,” according to federal court documents — and Kauffmann, who posted under the handle “Boog Führer.” Raw Story has independently reviewed the material.
Posting under the “Boog Führer” moniker, Kauffmann inadvertently disclosed his identity by sharing clippings from what appear to be confidential documents referencing his history with the Arizona Department of Child Safety to illustrate why he was at risk of losing his guns. The clippings shared by Kauffmann, posting as “Boog Führer, included his first and last name.
Snyder discovered Kauffmann when she was monitoring the emergence of “Terrorgram” — a term researchers use to describe an online network of neo-Nazis who share violent propaganda on the social media app Telegram, including posts valorizing white supremacist mass shooters as “saints.”
“He was very noticeably one of the most active users in those spaces,” Snyder told Raw Story. “He has been in conversation with people including Jarrett William Smith.…. He has obviously a prolonged interest in committing acts of terror. He has a violent history. All the red flags are there.”
Kauffmann declined to comment when reached by Raw Story.
In June 2020, when Nick Martin — another anti-fascist researcher — posted a photo of four men throwing up stiff-arm, Nazi-style salutes at a Black Lives Matter rally in Tucson. Snyder said in a Twitter thread two days later that until that point she had been reluctant to reveal Kauffmann’s identity, but his appearance at a protest prodded her into action.
“I am truly worried about the dangers this man poses, and if I weren’t actively afraid he’d try to murder people at a protest, I wouldn’t be chancing provoking him with an ID,” Snyder wrote at the time.
A month later, Kauffmann traveled to east Tennessee and showed up at a Black Lives Matter protest in Rogersville, a small town of about 4,700 people. Kauffmann and three other neo-Nazis were charged with disorderly conduct. A local news station cited police reports that said the men “became violent and started trying to assault people in the crowd.”
It’s hard to imagine that the FBI wasn’t tracking Kauffmann by the summer of 2020. Jarrett William Smith had been arrested by the FBI in September 2019, after speaking with an undercover informant who purported to be interested in traveling from Oklahoma to Texas to carry out an assassination against an unnamed politician. In the Telegram chats that Snyder uncovered, prior to his arrest, Smith expressed interest in driving to the Dallas/Fort Worth area to meet one of Kauffmann’s associates.
“I sent a DM,” Kauffmann said in the chat. Smith replied: “If you need help or knowledge I have contacts in the aforementioned orgs that can supply me with the stuff you may want/need.”
Darrell DeBusk, a spokesperson for the FBI’s Knoxville Field Office, declined to comment on whether the agency is tracking Kauffmann.
The Telegram chats that Snyder culled in 2019 and 2020 show that Kauffmann's appetite for violence was nearly boundless. There was a suggestion to “make it a Saint Day September” — a term indicating a month of mass murder. He shared a GIF of the Norwegian white supremacist and mass murderer Anders Breivik. He made comments promoting rape as weapon of dominance and others expressing a desire to “rape and kill antifa.” He denied that the Holocaust occurred, while arguing, “it should of happened.”
The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks extremism, sent out a law enforcement alert on the Tennessee Active Club and Kauffmann specifically to the FBI in November 2022. But it’s unclear how much of this information, if any, reached the Cookeville police officers when they surrounded Kauffmann’s Honda Civic on Jan. 22.
“Did they say who they’re with?” an officer identified as “Young” who responded to support the traffic stop, asked Smith, his fellow officer.
“They got American flags in the back,” Smith replied.
Gesturing towards Bray, the neo-Nazi who could not be reached for comment for this story, he added, “Got a veteran.”
It’s unclear what Smith saw that looked like an American flag, but the men had been openly displaying a flag with a swastika encircled by a field of red less than an hour before.
After confirming Kauffmann’s insurance, Smith told him: “The only issue is that if you’re throwing something at a protest or whatever … still that can cause bodily injury, you can still be charged with aggravated assault by throwing something like that at somebody. Do you understand that?”
“Yeah,” Kauffmann said.
“That’s a Class D felony in the state of Tennessee,” Smith continued. “Don’t want to see anybody get charged with anything today. It’s a protest. We want to see everybody protest however they feel. Just don’t throw stuff, okay?”
“Right, yeah,” Kauffmann said. “We were making sure to [remain] nonviolent.”
“I got you,” Smith replied.
“I can see the way it would be construed that way,” Kauffmann said.
Conferring with Young a couple feet away from the vehicle, Smith said, “They’re definitely affiliated with the Proud Boys, that’s what dispatch said. Terroristic….”
The group’s links to the Proud Boys was grounded in personal history and association: A YouTube interview from 2019 that was reviewed by Raw Story shows Bray wearing a Proud Boys shirt, and photos published by the Philadelphia Inquirer and a local blog show that he attended rallies with the Proud Boys in Philadelphia in September 2020 and then, in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, the following month. Video from the Jan. 22 rally also shows Kauffmann and Bray shaking hands with two Proud Boys when they arrived at the Cookeville protest.
Robert Bray, a passenger in Sean Kauffmann's car, admitted to throwing a stink bomb at drag-show supporters.Courtesy Cookeville Police Department
The police body-camera video from the traffic stop also shows Sgt. Zach Gilpin, who was on the scene, advising Smith to police the situation with a light hand. Any further enforcement, he told Smith would just make them “hostile” and “make them want to retaliate and make it even bigger.”
“Oh yeah,” Smith agreed.
While conferring with Gilpin, Smith characterized Kauffmann’s statement about his intentions in a way that was imprecise at best and took his assurance at face value.
“He said, ‘We don’t want violence; we just want to protest,’” Smith told Gilpin. “I said, ‘You have every right to do that.’”
Michael German, the Brennan Center fellow, told Raw Story he finds the sergeant’s rationale to be astonishing.
“Wow,” he said. “I would think that would have the opposite effect. If this individual in the group thinks the police are not going to enforce the law, then they might think they can get away with even more aggressive actions to instigate violence.
“I’m not sure how that would escalate things unless the police thought the militants were going to escalate violence towards them,” German added. “And that would point to a bigger problem if the police are more concerned about protecting themselves than protecting the community. Either they know that this is a group that is prone to violence that is coming into their town, or they don’t. If they think this is a group that is prone to violence, they should probably be doing more to police that group.”
German said the hands-off approach taken by many law enforcement agencies toward far-right extremists stands in stark contrast to the approach commonly taken toward non-violent left-wing protesters, who are often subject to mass arrest just for marching.
“It’s hard for me to see it any differently than it’s a demonstration of bias on the part of the police that they view a non-violent environmental protest as a national-security threat, and deadly violence by white supremacists as not that big of a deal,” German said.
Smith and Gilpin could not be reached for this story, either directly or through the Cookeville Police Department.
See no hate
The absence of any apparent recognition on the part of the officers that the driver of the vehicle was a prominent white supremacist who leads the Tennessee Active Club, or even that he and his passengers were neo-Nazis is striking, considering that reforms two decades ago were intended to address this very gap, German told Raw Story.
German told Raw Story that after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, “law enforcement established numerous intelligence-sharing vehicles” that include FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces, along with state and local fusion centers that are intended to disseminate intelligence among agencies “about the kinds of groups that are engaged in organized criminal acts.”
Many of the fusion centers “spread misinformation and unfortunately don’t accurately portray violent groups in a way that allows law enforcement to understand how to react,” German added.
“It seems that this information-sharing network is not sharing the accurate information correctly,” he said.
By the time of the Jan. 22 traffic stop in Cookeville, there was ample public documentation of Kauffmann’s presence at protests outside drag shows across Tennessee, including Chattanooga on Nov. 13 and Maryville on Nov. 25.
Following a period of relative dormancy, Kauffmann had moved from Arizona to rural Perry County in Tennessee in October 2022.
With the launch of the Tennessee Active Club the same month, Kauffmann grafted his organizing efforts onto a national network of so-called “active clubs” that typically distribute white supremacist propaganda, join small-scale demonstrations and gather for private training events. The network was inspired by Robert Rundo, the founder of the Rise Above Movement, who is currently under indictment for conspiracy to riot.
Since founding the Tennessee Active Club, Kauffmann has made it into one of the most robust crews in the country, putting a particular emphasis on anti-LGBTQ activism while aggressively deploying white supremacist symbols and rhetoric, according to Morgan Moon, an investigative researcher with the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, a nonprofit dedicated to monitoring, exposing and disrupting extremist threats.
“A lot of that has to do with the fact that Sean Kauffmann is running this organization,” Moon told Raw Story. “He’s been on our radar for some time. Kauffmann has advocated for violence online. He’s advocated for rape. … He has a history not only of white supremacy, but also aggression and violence.”
Moon spotted a Nov. 20, 2022, post on the Tennessee Active Club’s Telegram channel flagging an upcoming drag show in Maryville and calling on supporters to “shutdown [sic] the grooming, sexualization and exploitation of children.”
The Anti-Defamation League issued a law enforcement alert the following week.
Prior to the Maryville protest, a similar protest outside a community theater hosting a drag show in Chattanooga on Nov. 13, 2022 provided an intelligence-gathering bonanza for law enforcement.
After speaking with the owner of a tattoo shop next door to the theater who called in a complaint about threats from the anti-drag protesters, the responding officer crossed the street and approached Kauffmann, according to police body camera video reviewed by Raw Story.
“Hey guys, who’s in charge of this group right here?” asked the law enforcement official identified as “Officer Hauge.”
“We’re just independent,” Kauffmann responded. “We’re not with a group.”
Standing to Kauffmann’s right was the 15-year-old juvenile who the police in Cookeville later encountered in the back seat of the Honda Civic. Standing to his left was an unidentified man wearing a shirt and hat identifying him as a member of the League of the South, a group that advocates for the secession of the original states of the Confederacy to create a homeland for white Christians. The League of the South was among dozens of white supremacist groups and individuals found liable for conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and ordered to pay more than $25 million to plaintiffs injured in the attack.
Belying his claim that he was an independent participant, Kauffman was wearing the Tennessee Active Club’s official T-shirt and ballcap. The ballcap was turned backward, and there was no lettering on the front of the T-shirt. But later Hauge walked up behind Kauffmann, and the video shows the distinctive Tennessee Active Club logo, with the sonnenrad — a symbol commonly embraced by neo-Nazis — encircling the three stars of the Tennessee state flag, on the back of his shirt.
Later, Hauge’s video shows that he watched members of Patriot Front, a fascist group accused of vandalizing a monument to the African-American tennis legend Arthur Ashe and defacing an LGBTQ pride mural. Patriot Front splintered from Vanguard America following Unite the Right. Vanguard America collapsed amidst a storm of bad publicity after James Fields Jr. rallied with the group before accelerating his car into an anti-racist march, murdering Heather Heyer in Charlottesville.
Despite ample documentation of Patriot Front’s background by groups that monitor extremism, the officers give no indication in the video that they were familiar with the extremist group in their midst. The video shows Davis, the police sergeant, bringing back a flier to show the other officers, including Executive Chief Glenn Scruggs.
“So, the weird-looking flag thing, that’s what they are,” Davis said, referring to Patriot Front’s distinctive flag featuring the fasces encircled by 13 stars.
Scruggs took a quick look at the flier and responded: “Yeah.”
Davis noted that the name of the group was “Patriot Font,” and another sergeant, George Forbes, muttered something that is hard to discern in the video.
Whatever he said, it ended the discussion.
As the event was winding down, Hauge instructed a rookie officer named Shackleford on how to write a report.
“Did somebody have a card on what that flag meant?” Shackleford asked Hauge.
“Yeah, I think Davis got one that was like …” Hauge responded, his words trailing off.
There was no further discussion between the two officers about the group with the strange flag, but Hauge gave Shackleford a rambling and fine-grained tutorial on when officers should and should not name specific groups. The discussion illuminates the political sensitivity surrounding policing protests against drag shows and the pressure on officers to take a “both sides” approach toward those harassing drag shows and those seeking to protect LGBTQ-friendly spaces.
“Now, say you had a Blood or Crip shoots a Ghostface, Aryan Nation, Latin King, whatever,” Hauge said. “Putting it in that kind of report where there has been a physical assault on somebody and saying that this set attacked this set — all that does in that report — that’s not Crips attacked this Aryan guy and it’s Black on white; it has to do with gang affiliation, right? So, there’s no problem with associating a specific set with that because that helps us track what’s going on there.”
But documenting groups involved with drag show protests required more delicate treatment, Hauge suggested.
“When it comes to a political view where it’s two parties that are going to sit there and cuss and yell and scream at each other, don’t put yourself in that hole,” Hauge counseled. “Because what’s ultimately gonna happen is ultimately in some way, shape or form, the media’s gonna get a hold of this. I guarantee they’re probably going to pull it up. And the last thing we want to put in there is that us as police who are neutral to this situation — all we’re here for is to make sure the public is safe — is to sit here and say, ‘Oh, well, LGBTQ was harassed by Republicans, or Democrats were harassed by Republicans, or left wing was harassed by right wing,’ and we put a stigma that they can use as flak against us or anything else. So, don’t put yourself in that situation.”
Hauge’s final point to his law enforcement colleague: “We’re not gonna establish groups, or whether or not it’s a hate group, unless there’s physical violence.”
Jerri Sutton, an assistant chief with the Chattanooga Police Department, defended the decision to exclude information about specific extremist groups in the report, adding that it doesn’t reflect officers’ awareness of intelligence.
“That incident report was written up and gave an account of the event,” Sutton told Raw Story. “It was documented on video, as you have pointed out. The report’s not written to slight any group. The information was part of the intelligence gathering. We were aware of who we were dealing with.”
William Beals, a 51-year-old construction worker who attended the Chattanooga protest and two months later walked up on the Cookeville police officers as they were conducting the traffic stop involving Kauffmann, told Raw Story that he has been tailed in Chattanooga by an “FBI member that is chosen to be on the side of antifa.”
“I am on the terrorist watch list because of the FBI,” he said. “I don’t give a s—. I’m not an actual terrorist. I’m a Three Percenter.” Three Percenters are an authoritarian movement whose adherents view themselves as latter-day equivalents of the original American patriots who are guarding against supposed government tyranny.
Beals has been publicly identified by online researchers, who nicknamed him #TowerPup, as being present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and going inside the building. He told Raw Story that at least one of the videos cited by researchers as evidence that he was at the Capitol was fabricated from a photo of him on his motorcycle that was grafted onto another person’s body at the Capitol. But he has publicly stated he was involved in an altercation with left-wing counter-protesters during the same time period.
In an interview with a right-wing podcaster last month, Beals said his own mother asked him if he was at the Capitol.
“I said, ‘Nope,’” Beals recounted. “I’m one of those Three Percenters that was whupping the s— out of antifa and BLM down BLM Plaza road. I definitely take accountability for that one.”
During the Nov. 13, 2022 protest at the drag show in Chattanooga, Forbes, the police sergeant, noted that Beals was walking around with a “Bowie knife on his damn hip” and singled him out as one two “instigators” in the crowd.
When Forbes arrived on the scene, Beals approached him — and asked him to investigate the venue hosting the drag show.
“See, the reason I’m asking — if they’re giving children alcohol or in any form grooming those children, okay, that’s what we need to know,” Beals told Forbes. “Because this ain’t OK.”
William Beals (left), a self-identified Three Percenter, addresses Sgt. George Forbes at a drag show protest in Chattanooga, Tenn.Courtesy Chattanooga Police Department
Forbes heeded Beals’ request. The venue owner informed Forbes that they were not serving alcohol because they submitted their application for an alcohol permit too late. With her permission, Forbes and two other officers conducted a walkthrough of the venue, where they inspected a drink menu and looked behind the bar.
Video from the protest shows Beals walking into the middle of the street and daring a drag supporter to fight.
“I’m right f—ing here, boy,” he said. “I’m right here, pussy.”
It’s unclear whether officers observed the incident, but police body-camera video shows that Hauge told another man that Forbes also identified as an “instigator” to get out of the street. Later, as the man walked through a grassy strip occupied by drag show supporters, Forbes told him: “Sir, right now, you’re causing a disorder.” Around the same time, drag show supporters accused the man, in the presence of officers, of assaulting a woman by bumping her with his shoulder, but Forbes brushed them off.
German said provocation is a time-worn tactic of white supremacists and far-right groups, going back to Nazi Germany.
“When I was working undercover in the 1990s in neo-Nazi groups, law enforcement understood the tactics that they used,” he said. One of those tactics, he said, was to show up at rallies where they knew they would face opposition, and then provoke a fight.
“Law enforcement has forgotten those lessons since 2015, and they have tried to present these events as mutual combat,” German said.
Sutton, the assistant police chief in Chattanooga, noted to Raw Story that Executive Chief Glenn Scruggs responded in person to monitor the scene.
“Any situation where the officers deem it necessary to make an arrest, they have the discretion to do so,” she said. “In this case, they made the decision to keep the parties separate, so that the patrons going to the business could do so safely, and those who were protesting could do so from a distance that allowed them to exercise their freedom of speech.”
German also said that law enforcement responses often reflect a false equivalency between extremists and the communities they are sworn to protect.
“What’s frustrating to me and what’s frustrating to many others is that the far-right militants are coming from outside the community, and law enforcement doesn’t protect them, and treats them as mutual antagonists rather than understanding that this is an outside force coming in with the purpose of instigating violence. There’s a fallacy that mutual combat means there’s no crime, and we don’t have to intervene.
“If someone wants to have a drag show and far-right militants are coming to menace and prevent them from exercising their rights,” German added, “law enforcement needs to understand that this isn’t a both-sides issue.”
Since the Nov. 13 standoff, Chief Celeste Murphy has met with the owner of the community theater.
“Chief Murphy has been in contact with several interested parties in this whole situation,” Sutton told Raw Story. “We have a relationship with the LGBT community. We are well aware of their ability to exercise their rights. We are working with the district attorney’s office to ensure that everybody’s rights are secured.”
Within a week of the Chattanooga drag show, the Tennessee Active Club mobilized again to harass a drag show in Maryville, a small city outside of Knoxville. The LGBTQ community and anti-fascists also mobilized to protect the bookstore hosting the drag show and toy drive.
Josh Brandon, a voice actor and former country radio programmer who hosts the “Overthinking Everything” podcast, had planned to travel to Virginia that day to visit a friend who was having gender-affirming surgery. But on Thanksgiving he found himself in the emergency room. With his travel plans disrupted, Brandon decided he might as well go to help out at the drag show.
A self-described “lifelong shamed and closeted bisexual,” Brandon handed off a metal detector used to check patrons for weapons when Sean Kauffmann and his crew arrived at the bookstore, instantly finding a new calling as an anti-Nazi antagonist.
“Look me in the eye,” Brandon told Kauffmann, with a big smile spreading across his face. “I’m not afraid of you, you piece of s—.”
Shortly after the encounter, Brandon said Kauffmann shared his personal information on Telegram. Around the same time, he also received a phone call from Beals, who was not present at the Maryville protest, but indicated he had seen footage of Brandon there.
“He made threats,” Brandon recalled. “He said, ‘I’m going to come find you. I’m going to beat the s— out of you.’”
Brandon told Raw Story he reported Kauffmann’s Telegram post and Beals’ phone call to the FBI. He said he also called the Knox County Sheriff’s Office to tell them to expect Beals at a drag protest in Knoxville on Dec. 22.
As a precaution, Brandon said, he continued to alert the FBI when he planned to attend a drag event in which he expected to face Beals and Kauffmann across the street.
It remains unclear whether the implementation of the new Tennessee state law banning drag performance for audiences under 18 will aggravate or ameliorate far-right violence against LGBTQ-friendly venues in Tennessee, or whether the neo-Nazi groups will be able to capitalize a recent right-wing effort to leverage rage against trans people in response to as a school shooting in Nashville that was carried out by a person who identifies as trans.
The Tennessee Active Club has recently shown signs of looking beyond Tennessee. Kauffmann and three of his associates traveled to Lexington, Ky., last month to protest the prosecution of a University of Kentucky student accused of assaulting another student while berating her with racist slurs. Meanwhile, protests at drag shows, often marred by violence and displays of overt support for white supremacy, continue to be a nearly weekly occurrence in communities across the country.
Moon, of the Anti-Defamation League, noted that Kauffmann has shown a motivation to travel, including a trip to San Diego, Calif., in August for a mixed-martial arts competition and to Washington state in December to network with other active clubs.
Moon noted that the active clubs place a strong emphasis on physical fitness, and the Tennessee Active Club recently held a joint fight training with the Vinland Rebels, another neo-Nazi group that was also in Cookeville. Law enforcement should pay attention to Kauffmann for a number of reasons, Moon told Raw Story.
“I think what’s most important is that the Tennessee Active Club and Sean Kauffmann have put a particular focus on LGBTQ events,” she said. “They keep coming out to these drag events. Sean Kauffmann has a history of violent criminal activity. He shares his extreme and violent beliefs online. This shows this potential for a future powder keg at an event with counter-protesters.”
* * *
Editor's note: Raw Story obtained more than two hours of body worn- and dash-camera video from the Cookeville Police Department after requesting the video through the Tennessee Public Records Act. Raw Story edited down the video to produce a compilation video presenting a chronological narrative of a Jan. 22, 2023 traffic stop. The Cookeville Police Department blurred footage that shows a 15-year-old juvenile and one of the officers’ laptop computers, and redacted a conversation between the officer and dispatch.
Raw Story also reviewed more than three hours of police body-camera video from the Chattanooga Police Department capturing officers’ response to a Nov. 13, 2022 drag show protest. The first video compilation shows officers’ encounters with known extremist groups and the lead officer coaching a rookie on how to file a report. The visuals were blurred inside the police unit in the original video as provided by the Chattanooga Police Department. A second compilation video has been edited to produce a chronological narrative of the Chattanooga officers’ encounters with two men described as “instigators” and discussion among officers about how to handle the situation. Raw Story did not include footage showing individuals at the scene whose presence is incidental. Portions of the video that include a letter reviewed by one of the officers was visually redacted by the Chattanooga Police Department.
WASHINGTON — A number of fake presidential committees have been formed over the last year, and the Federal Election Commission still won't do anything about it.
Last year, a fake campaign committee was formed for former Vice President Mike Pence, sending news reports and speculation swirling.
“Former Vice President Mike Pence did not file to run for President today,” Pence spokesperson Devin O’Malley wrote on Twitter. When The Washington Post reached out for comment, O’Malley confirmed the tweet and added: “You’ll have to reach out to the FEC for answers about the filing.”
"It has come to the attention of the Federal Election Commission that you may have failed to include true, correct, or complete candidate information," FEC senior campaign finance analyst Jacqueline Gausepohl wrote in a letter to "Mr Joseph R Biden Jr" in a letter obtained by Raw Story.
"Mr Joseph R Biden Jr" filed documents with the FEC on March 31 listing the mailing address as an office in a medical building in Washington, D.C.
It's easy to spot a fake when a committee already exists for Biden.
Now a new filing has revealed Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) got the same treatment. The dead giveaway for this one is that the DeSantis committee doesn't capitalize the first "s" in his name. Similarly, it also names the running mate as Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD). Running mates aren't typically named until someone actually wins their party's nomination.
Raw Story reached out to DeSantis' office for comment, but on Easter Sunday, there was no answer. DeSantis is stronglyconsidering entering the 2024 GOP presidential primary field, which former President Donald Trump is leading in the race's early months. But while a DeSantis run seems likely, he has not yet made a formal announcement.
The largely toothless FEC hasn't done much about any of these cases to attempt to rid their committees of the fraud. There hasn't been any public investigation or announcement of an internal investigation either.
It takes little time and effort to create a federal political committee, at least on paper. But once done, a federal record is automatically generated and posted publicly to FEC.gov, the agency's website.
The FEC notes that "knowingly and willfully making any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation to a federal government agency" is a violation of federal law, and the FEC is "authorized to report apparent violations to the appropriate law enforcement agencies."
But the FEC, an independent, bipartisan civil regulatory agency that only has the power to seek civil penalties against suspected bad actors, rarely asks the Department of Justice to pursue such matters.
The most it's likely to do, as noted in a letter to the fake Biden committee, is removing the fake presidential candidate filing from the FEC's main public database "and placing the filings under the unverified filings database on the Commission's website."
He especially hated the kind he felt he didn't have to pay. Notably, these include police and public safety expense invoices — now collectively worth millionsof dollars — many municipal governments fruitlessly sent his presidential campaign after Trump swept into their towns to stage mass political rallies.
So when Trump wanted to conduct an "unprecedented" 2024 presidential campaignrally on March 25 in Waco, Texas, municipal officials there didn't dawdle in ensuring the former president's committee would cover tens of thousands of dollars in unanticipated city expenses, according to government documents obtained by Raw Story through a Texas Public Information Act request.
Knowing full well they had legal leverage over Trump — Trump's requested rally venue was city-owned Waco Regional Airport — the city manager and city attorney's office made the Trump campaign sign a binding 10-page contract eight days before his event.
"All expenses incurred by the City for public safety, sanitation and transportation personnel and resources required to preserve public order and protect public health, safety and welfare, together with any other expenses or costs that may be incurred by the City as a result of the Event shall be paid for by DJTFP24," the contract reads, using the acronym for "Donald J. Trump for President 2024".
The contract, for example, details how Trump's campaign must pay a $24,000 facility rental fee up front and agree to reimburse Waco's government — by the day of the event — for any municipal law enforcement and traffic control services provided.
Trump's campaign also needed to cover an additional $36,714.27 for public safety services that included police, fire and traffic services, according to the records.
Total bill: $60,714.27.
Trump campaign treasurer Bradley Crate signed the contract on March 17, as did Waco City Manager Bradley Ford and Assistant City Attorney Lauren Olivarez.
"The bill was paid in full prior to the event. No balance remains," Waco Director of Parks and Recreation Jonathan Cook said in a statement Thursday to Raw Story.
Campaign officials for Trump, who this week was arrested and arraigned on 34 felony counts related to a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump-Waco contract also gave the City of Waco other powers.
For example, the city retained the right to terminate both the contract and Trump's rally itself "in order to protect public health, safety, and welfare".
It further compelled the Trump campaign to carry employer, contractual, injury and automotive liability insurance.
The contract also stipulated that Trump's campaign would "be responsible to repair any damages to the property" including but not limited to "rutting, replanting of wildflowers and trash collection and litter removal" and would have 24 hours after the event to makes any required amends.
Waco officials also banned the Trump campaign and any rally attendees from operating drones within five miles of the airport, according to the contract.
"No major issues were reported at the event," said Cook, who added that "first responders provided assistance to several heat-related incidents with guests."
Cook also noted that neither the city did not officially track attendance numbers at the event, nor did the "event organizers" — even as Trump boasted that "tens of thousands" of people would attend the "very big" outdoor rally. Cook said the City of Waco Fire Marshal’s Office estimated event attendance at 12,000 to 15,000.
The Trump campaign was contractually authorized by Waco "to sell political merchandise in exchange for federal political contributions on the Premises" to those that attended.
Trump's payment of bills from Waco stands in sharp contrast to bills his campaign received from another Texas city — El Paso — after he conducted a rally there in February 2019.
El Paso is still waiting for Trump's campaign to pay them $569,204.63 — including a city-issued late fee of $98,787.58, El Paso city spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta confirmed to Raw Story.
The difference between why Trump is paid his Waco bills and ignoring his El Paso bills is tied directly to the mundane but significant matter of jurisdiction and contractual obligations.
Trump conducted his 2019 rally at the El Paso County Coliseum, which is controlled by the nonprofit El Paso Sports Commission, not the City of El Paso. Nevertheless, City of El Paso officials provided police and other resources for the event, but — unlike Waco — had no power to compel the Trump campaign to pay beforehand.
Several city governments, including the government of Nashville, Tenn., have taken similar approaches to that of Waco when Trump's campaign wanted to use a city-managed facility for a political event.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, has registered a presidential campaign with the Federal Election Commission — and is publicly testing the waters to see how much support he would have for such a run.
Kennedy, who filed his paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday afternoon, is calling his committee Team Kennedy.
Florida-based attorney John E. Sullivan, who is serving as the campaign's treasurer, confirmed to Raw Story by phone that Kennedy is running for president and that the FEC filing is valid. Sullivan added that the Kennedy campaign's plans for a formal launch remain in the works but that the new presidential committee is targeting April 19 in Boston.
"We are releasing a statement tomorrow," added an unnamed Kennedy campaign official who responded to an email inquiry from Raw Story.
Kennedy's filing indicates that he would run as a Democrat.
Kennedy has teased running for president for several weeks. In a tweet on March 10, he asked followers for their help in deciding whether to run for president.
"If it looks like I can raise the money and mobilize enough people to win, I’ll jump in the race," Kennedy wrote. "If I run, my top priority will be to end the corrupt merger between state and corporate power that has ruined our economy, shattered the middle class, polluted our landscapes and waters, poisoned our children, and robbed us of our values and freedoms. Together we can restore America's democracy."
Kennedy also telegraphed his presidential ambitions last month in a speech delivered at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H.
“I’m thinking about it, and I’ve passed the biggest hurdle, which is my wife has green lighted it,” Kennedy said, according to New Hampshire Public Radio.
One of the nation's most prominent skeptics of vaccines, Kennedy has generated ongoing controversy by pushing baseless conspiracy theories linking vaccines to the onset of autism spectrum disorders in childhood.
In 2021, he published a book, "The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health." The book's promotional material says the tome details "how Fauci, Gates, and their cohorts use their control of media outlets — both conservative and liberal leaning, scientific journals, key government and quasi-governmental agencies, global intelligence agencies, and influential scientists and physicians to flood the public with fearful propaganda about COVID-19 virulence and pathogenesis, and to muzzle debate and ruthlessly censor dissent."
Last year, he was publicly rebuked by the Auschwitz Museum after claiming in a speech that Anne Frank didn't have it as bad as unvaccinated people do in the United States today.
Kennedy joins Marianne Williamson as Democrats challenging President Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. Biden has not officially announced he is seeking a second term but has indicated for months that he plans to make such an announcement.
On the Republican side, former President Donald Trump is again seeking the GOP nomination along with former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Several other prospective Republican candidates are also expected to enter the race, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
WASHINGTON – During Donald Trump’s one-term presidency, his namesake hotel, five blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, endlessly hummed with political wheeling and personal dealing.
But Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in 2020. The following year, the Trump Organization sold the rights to his once-prized MAGA monument. By 2022, Trump International Hotel DC became a Waldorf Astoria. The nation’s capital is a town that rewards winners. And on Tuesday, as a New York judge arraigned the 45th president of the United States on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, the scene in what was once Trump’s expansive, sun-soaked hotel atrium, replete with its faux cherry blossom branches and four sunbeam-powered chandeliers, silently shrugged.
“Loser.”
As Trump sits in Manhattan’s Trump Tower, preparing for a short drive to the courthouse and a million camera clicks, the few dozen people sprinkled about barely pay notice to any of the four flat screen televisions hovering over the ornate bar.
Three of these TVs are playing “The Price is Right.” Some eyes occasionally glance up to see overexcited contestants spin the big flashing wheel. “The Young and the Restless” flickers on next.
Fox News’ Trump coverage plays on the fourth flat screen. But no one is watching. The only other sign of Trump in his former hotel are two unflattering headlines emblazoned across the front of complimentary stacks of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. The real estate developer-turned-politician, who’s running for president again, isn’t even mentioned on the iconic pink-tinged paper of the Financial Times.
The presidential ballroom is empty.
Newspapers in the former Trump International Hotel DC on April 4, 2023, the day of Donald Trump's arraignment on 34 felony charges. Matt Laslo/Raw Story
I order a vodka tonic and an ice water on this sunny, 70-degree spring day. My Serbian bartender — after eyeing my press pass and frantic scribbling on my tattered notepad — makes small talk.
“When’s Trump on?” he asks, looking over his shoulder at the screen I’m eyeing.
“Who knows.”
After watching a steady stream of mostly tourists coming and going, I ask if he’s noticed any changes from the hotel’s Trump International days when this was the mecca of making America great again.
The consummate service professional is strictly business.
“For me, everybody’s the same,” the bartender says. “You can be a governor or something, and I treat you the same. I don’t pay attention to [politics].”
And this hotel no longer pays attention to Trump.
As the former president is formally booked in Manhattan, one bartender slowly hand polishes water glasses. A manager leans on the expansive wood bar, catching up on texts or, maybe, playing a game. Neither ever bother looking up at the large man wearing a blue suit, red tie and scowl fit for someone about to plead “not guilty” before a judge.
The only person in the atrium wearing a mask is a mother rocking shorts and beige-green baseball cap that screams “TOURIST.” She pauses to snap a picture of the TV screen showing Trump and masses of American paparazzi. You can feel her daughter’s eyes roll as the girl looks up and then keeps walking. Mom quickly gets the message and scurries to catch up.
This space now feels like an oasis from politics, not the heart of it.
The soaring bar at the former Trump International Hotel DC. Matt Laslo/Raw Story
I pay up and catch a cab.
“What’s going on with Trump?” my cabbie asks upon learning I’m a reporter.
“TMZ Breaking News alert,” I say, answering by reading the first alert I see on my locked screen. “Donald Trump arrested in Stormy Daniels hush money case.”
“So he’s arrested?”
“You haven’t listened?”
“I was busy.”
“Not to pry too much,” I ask, “but what made you so busy it trumped Trump?”
“I was driving.”
Indeed, his radio’s off. Turns out this Ethiopian cab driver is a self-proclaimed evangelist.
“Are you saved? That’s the question. That’s the only question,” the cabbie says before getting a little theological with this former pastor-in-training. “Total depravity…”
“I know total depravity,” I joke.
“You need Jesus Christ,” he says, handing me a tract titled, “After Death, What?”
“I’ve actually heard about him from the former president. President Trump talked a lot about Jesus Christ.”
“There are people who use the name of God to do business, to do many things,” the cabbie preaches as Trump’s former hotel recedes in the rearview. “They are false prophets.”
Business owners are complaining that no one wants to work anymore and there’s a labor crisis in America. The crisis is that workers have more leverage and are refusing to work for minimum wage and be treated like crap.
The obvious solution is raising wages and improving working conditions but some offer a different solution – a return to child labor. After all, children have no work experience, are easily exploited and are unlikely to organize.
Republicans would rather erode child labor laws than support a living wage. But it’s Democrats who have abandoned the working class, amirite?
The reason Republicans want to erode child labor protections is the exact reason we need these laws – children are easily exploited in the labor market.
This discussion gets to the heart of labor laws in this country, which is that the concept of “freedom of contract” doesn’t exist when one party (the employer) has significantly more power than another (the employee).
Initially, many attempts by the labor movement to protect workers from unfair hour requirements and extremely low wages were struck down by the Supreme Court for violating the supposed right to “freedom of contract.”
In Lochner v. New York in 1905, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment protected a constitutional right to freedom of contract and, therefore, that a New York state law outlawing bakeries from hiring bakers for more than 10 hours a day or 60 hours a week was unconstitutional.
The theory was that the bakers should have the freedom to work as many hours as they wanted – discounting coercive pressure by employers to force bakers to work extreme and unsafe hours if they wanted to keep their jobs.
The Lochner ruling ushered in the “Lochner Era” of the Supreme Court and was used to strike down laws forbidding “yellow-dog contracts” (contracts that required workers to promise not to join a union) and minimum wage laws out of a belief in laissez-faire economics and “freedom to contract.”
This precedent changed in Nebbia v. New Yorkin 1934 when the Supreme Court ruled there was no constitutional fundamental right to “freedom of contract,” and in 1937 in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, which upheld a minimum wage law. West Coast Hotel v. Parrish stated that economic regulation is reasonable if in the community’s best interest. Protecting kids from exploitation seems to me like it's in the best interest of the community.
Historically, child labor was common. Children often worked on family farms or were apprenticed out to learn a trade when they got a little older.
Child labor became exploitative with the industrial revolution. Children worked away from families in factories. They were paid less than adults. They were often useful for tasks requiring small hands or small stature.
Public education reformers promoted the importance of public education but laws that required school attendance were rarely enforced or only applied to primary school. (This is probably another reason why Republicans are trying to destroy education. They’ll get more workers out of it!).
The first compulsory education law was passed in Massachusetts in 1852. Mississippi was the last to require primary education for all students in 1917.
The National Child Labor Committee was founded in 1904 at the same time the larger labor movement was also trying to pass reforms to protect workers from unsafe and unfair labor practices. It served the larger labor movement’s goals to restrict child labor because child laborers drove down wages and were less likely to join in strikes and unionizing efforts.
The National Child Labor Committee hired a photographer to photograph the conditions children were worked in to influence public opinion.
The Congress passed the first anti-child labor law in 1916. Called the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, it relied on Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce to ban products from “any factory, shop, or cannery that employed children under the age of 14, from any mine that employed children under the age of 16, and from any facility that had children under the age of 16 work at night or for more than eight hours during the day.”
Unfortunately, the law was short-lived. It was struck down by the Supreme Court two years later in Hammer v. Dagenhart when the court said the Congress did not have the power to regulate working conditions. The next attempt – regulating child labor by levying an extra tax on goods made using child labor – was also struck down in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture.
The Congress finally succeeded in restricting child labor in 1938 with the Fair Labor Standards Act. It established a right to minimum wage, overtime pay, a maximum number of hours that could be worked in jobs related to interstate commerce, and set a minimum age of 16 to work in mining or manufacturing industries. The act was upheld in United States v. Darby Lumber Co in 1941. It was later expanded, in 1949, to include more industries.
Today “federal labor law prohibits the employment of workers under the age of 14 in non-agricultural settings. Fourteen- and 15-year-olds must work outside of the hours of school and cannot work: more than 3 hours on a school day…more than 18 hours per week when school is in session…”
Last month, the Arkansas legislature rolled back child-labor protections. Minors under 16 previously needed age verification and work certificates. This requirement has been abolished under the newly passed Youth Hiring Act of 2023. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders called it an “arbitrary burden” but it protected children from exploitation by ensuring that the state was involved in their employment and that those working weren’t below 14.
Arkansas isn’t the only state eroding child labor law to meet labor shortages. Last year, New Jersey expanded the number of hours teens can work. In Minnesota, Republicans proposed allowing teens to work on construction sites. Iowa is considering a bill to allow 14 and 15 year olds to work in industrial laundry services and meatpacking plants while also exempting them from worker’s compensation protections. Ohio is considering removing the cap on hours minors can work as long as a parent or guardian approves. These will expose minors to exploitation and dangerous working conditions.
Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children because Republicans reject gun-law reforms. Public education is being harmed by anti-history laws and book banning. Now there’s a movement to send children back to work, all to avoid raising wages and improving working conditions.
Thieves. Stalkers. Rapists. Mobsters. Murderers. All tried and convicted in Manhattan. If DA Alvin Bragg gets his way, you can add a former president of the United States to the city’s long list of felons.
The circus-like atmosphere surrounding Donald Trump has distracted from the gravity of the moment, but for those who work in the Manhattan Criminal Court, today is both business as usual and business most unusual.
And it’s straight-up surreal to New York public defender Thalia Karny, who is intimately familiar with the spot where Trump will today stand before the law.
“I’ve sat in that same courtroom. My client sat in the same seat that Trump will be sitting in. It’s just very hard to envision a former president sitting in the same chair, but he should,” Karny — who boasts 25 years of legal experience — tells Raw Story. “If he's been indicted he should be in that same chair. Right? Why should he be treated any differently than anyone else?”
The Manhattan courthouse is no stranger to fallen icons — Harvey Weinstein and Cuba Gooding Jr., of late — overwhelming security, or a piranha-like press corps.
After attending New York University, Karny moved to Los Angeles to dabble in the entertainment industry before coming back to New York. The public servant shared with Raw Story that this week’s Trump reality show meets court TV — an American drama airing live across the globe — is a historical spectacle dwarfing all other storied spectacles the Big Apple’s criminal justice system and entertainment-fueled media have ever known.
The below interview with Thalia Karny of New York County Defender Services has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Raw Story: Have you ever seen anything like this?
Thalia Karny: [Paul] Manafort came through our courthouse, [Steve] Bannon came through our courthouse, and then [Allen] Weisselberg. So Trump is, like, the big kahuna now, he’s coming through, too. It’s just bizarre now.
RS:Did you just expect it?
TK: No. No, I never thought — I did not think that. I didn’t think he’d get indicted. I didn’t think this would happen. It's just bizarre. Really bizarre.
RS: How so?
TK: He's going to be sitting in the same place where my clients sat, and I represent indigent defendants — people that are charged with crimes who are too poor to afford lawyers. And that's kind of the beauty of this system, he’s going to sit in the same chair, in the same courtroom, presumably. I can't tell you 100 percent, but that's what I've heard.
RS: That’s so fascinating, because on Fox News and all that, it’s a different story … Ben Shapiro tweeted out something like, “Oh, this is so precedent setting.” You’re saying, “No, this is just America’s criminal justice system”?
Donald Trump will turn himself in for arraignment on Tuesday. At that very moment, America will find herself in a brave new world -- a world in which the consequences of political defeat may mean legal prosecution. — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 3, 2023
TK: He’s a guy who was indicted, and because he was indicted, he has to be arraigned. That’s the way it works. What’s mind bending is that a former president is being indicted. It's not where he's going to be or that he's going to be arraigned. It is what it is. He was indicted by a grand jury.
RS: What are you expecting?
TK: In my experience, it's gonna be a very brief appearance. They go before the court and they're advised of the charges. They're entitled to their lawyer being present. They plead guilty or not guilty. But this is such an abnormal circumstance. It's just so insane and unprecedented that it's really hard to even talk about it until it's done. Because, you know, I don't think anybody can really imagine the behavior of a former president being arraigned on an indictment in a state Supreme Court. It's just crazy.
RS:Wait, explain that to us on the levels that you're understanding it, because it's crazy to us, probably on the spectacle level and also a little bit the historical level, but it sounds like it's crazy to you on the legal level — or no?
TK: No. No, not really. It's not crazy on the legal level. It's crazy for the reasons you think it's crazy, because it's unprecedented and because of who Trump is. It was always going to be this type of circus, and this is so close to home. It's the courthouse that we're in every day and, for the most part, your garden variety people. Mostly, our clients are Black and brown and poor.
RS: How’s the staff handling the circus?
TK: People at the courthouse, the court officers, they look totally nonplussed by this. Everyone looks how they always look, no one’s like, "Oh my god" like this is like the biggest deal of the world.
RS: They’ve dealt with everything.
TK: Not with a president, because a president’s never been indicted.
RS: What’s the buzz around the court been this week?
TK: There's no shock value anymore — I'm shocked because I'm a little older — but when you see people walk by the reporters and everything, they don't even look at them. Every other week Law & Order is filming right in front of the courthouse. I think Lady Gaga was next to the federal courthouse a few weeks ago. People just don't even — they just walk on by and don’t care.
RS:If anything, the camera crews and news people, they’re in their way?
TK: Exactly. It's like, "What the hell are you doing here?" That's exactly the New York attitude.
RS: What's the worst case ever tried in this court?
TK: [Harvey] Weinstein. Two years ago. It was a circus, too. He was convicted in that courtroom.
RS:It will be so curious to compare the crowds for Weinstein and Trump …
TK: There will be no comparison. Oh my god, no comparison. This is much bigger.
RS:Wait. Why?
TK: Because Harvey Weinstein was a movie producer, and Trump was the leader of the free world.
RS: But this is America where most of us know about the presidency through movies!
TK: No, no, no. I personally don't see the comparison. Cuba Gooding Jr. also got adjudicated at [the New York County Criminal Court] a couple years ago. Yeah, the cameras were out there, but it's nothing like I've seen the last couple of days.
RS: Love that you, as a public defender in New York, are less cynical than I am, a jaded 17-year congressional correspondent.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has traveled a long and winding road to reach his indictment of former President Donald Trump on charges related to hush money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.
Little more than a year ago, Bragg was receiving sharp criticism from Trump foes after two top prosecutors in his office — Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne — resigned in protest over his unwillingness to charge Trump at that time. There were calls for state or federal authorities to intercede.
These Trump detractors believed that the 45th president had once again escaped accountability for his alleged misdeeds, and they were especially galled that it was happening on the watch of a Democratic prosecutor. Bragg, feeling the pressure, had this to say:
“While the law constrains me from commenting further at this time, I pledge that the office will publicly state the conclusion of our investigation — whether we conclude our work without bringing charges, or move forward with an indictment,” New York Magazine reported.
Little fanfare greeted Bragg's statement. But it would turn out to survive the test of time.
In contrast, the barrage of criticisms aimed at Bragg haven’t aged so well. And neither has Republican gloating and predictions about Trump emerging from the investigation unscathed.
Here are our top 10 examples:
10) “Alvin Bragg has abdicated his duty and/or lacks the courage to do his job.” — Bakari Sellers, pundit and former South Carolina state legislator.
9) "The more I read about the NY AG civil fraud case against Trump, the more I wonder how Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg could possibly have rejected indicting him for criminal fraud." — Tristan Snell, an attorney formerly in the New York AG’s office who prosecuted the Trump University case.
8) “Bragg’s actions undercut the credibility of his words and represent a third strike, this time for a lack of candor. Just how gullible does Bragg think New Yorkers are? — MSNBC columnist Glenn Kirschner, reacting to the news that Bragg was disbanding the first grand jury in March, 2022.
7) “It is a great tribute to the system that Alvin Bragg came in and stopped the unfairness against Trump. Bragg and his team did the legally and morally correct thing, and they didn’t go the typical political route." — Fox News, quoting an anonymous source “close to the investigation” in a 2022 article reporting it was over.
6) “No. I spent countless hours, over 15 sessions — including three while incarcerated. I provided thousands of documents, which coupled with my testimony, would have been a valid basis for an indictment and charge. The fact that they have not done so despite all of this … I’m not interested in any further investment of my time,” Michael Cohen, asked in March 2022 by The Daily Beast about cooperating with Bragg if no indictment was coming at that time.
5) “My guess is that there are political forces — political people at the national level on the Democratic side — who have urged restraint on Bragg because they realize what a mistake and debacle it would be to indict the former president for this conduct.” — Sol Wisenberg, deputy independent counsel to Kenneth Starr during the Clinton investigation — two days before Trump was indicted.
4) “Left-wing prosecutor Alvin Bragg in New York, it kind of looks like he can’t, he cannot indict a ham sandwich. It looks like Trump will not be indicted.” — Former Trump adviser and Fox Business News host Larry Kudlow — less than one hour before the indictment was announced.
3) “Alvin Bragg is sweating even more than usual tonight. Now, his pathetically weak case against former President Trump has totally imploded. Let's be very clear here. The case died this very week. It is very obvious. It is very clear. It's transparent.” — Sean Hannity on Fox News, speaking on March 23.
2) “I and others believe that your decision not to authorize prosecution now will doom any future prospects that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating.” — Pomerantz, in resignation letter to Bragg published March 23, 2022, in the New York Times.
1) “There was no crime, period.” — Donald J. Trump, on March 19, via Truth Social.
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is the latest in a string of prominent politicians and political committees to lose campaign cash to a thief.
Schumer's campaign committee acknowledged to federal regulators that a check it cut in November was "fraudulently cashed by someone other than the intended recipient" a short time after its issuance, according to a letter to the Federal Election Commission that Raw Story obtained Monday.
The check, intended to pay a campaign "facilities and AV rental" bill, "was stolen after it was mailed and was fraudulently cashed by someone other than the intended recipient," Friends of Schumer campaign treasurer Constantine Dimas wrote the FEC.
"The Committee has no reason to believe the theft was committed by someone affiliated with the Committee or vendor," Dimas continued. "The Committee worked with its bank to report the theft to law enforcement and sought a refund from the bank."
Friends of Schumer campaign finance report indicating there had been a committee "check intercepted" by a thief. Source: Federal Election Commission
Dimas said Schumer's committee received a refund on March 30.
While Friends of Schumer maintains "recommended internal controls to prevent misappropriations and associated misreporting," such internal controls "would not have helped prevent this situation where a check was stolen by a third party after it was mailed," Dimas added.
Even with the theft, Schumer's campaign coffer is among the most robust in politics, with Friends of Schumer reporting nearly $9.9 million in reserve as of Dec. 31, according to FEC records.
Representatives from Schumer's Senate offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.
While it isn't immediately clear which law enforcement entity is investigating the Schumer campaign's intercepted check, although the FBI has this year has involved itself in previous thefts from political committees, including a cybertheft incident late last year that initially cost the campaign of Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) $690,000.
Political theft epidemic
Raw Story in recent weeks has identified several current and former Republican members of Congress who’ve been victimized by fraudsters in what’s fast becoming open season on politicians’ campaign accounts.
The problem isn’t unique to Republicans, either: In addition to Schumer's committee, President Joe Biden’s 2020 Democratic presidential campaign committee lost at least $71,000.
Recently, the Business Industry Political Action Committee — the nation's oldest federal business— lost $14,156 to thieves, while the federal PAC of State Farm Insurance lost $12,220 to thieves, Raw Story first reported.
The McKesson Corporation, a pharmaceutical and medical supplies company, informed the FEC that it, too, had fallen victim to someone who "created, forged and cashed a fictitious PAC check for $12,000" on Nov. 7.
The McKesson Company Employees Political Fund notified its bank "immediately upon discovery of the fraudulent activity" and attempted to secure return of the lost funds.
"To date," the committee added, "the bank has not returned the stolen funds."
The political action committees of Google, National Association of Manufacturers, Consumer Technology Association, National Association of Home Builders, National Air Traffic Controllers Association, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, MoveOn.org, and law firms Akerman LLP and Blank Rome LLP have also experienced theft of various kinds, be it cyber theft, forgeries or check tampering, according to Insider.
William Beals, a 15-year-old boy and Sean Kauffmann (l-r) outside a drag show in Cookeville, Tenn. on Jan. 22. Robert Bray is in the background at left. Courtesy Josh Brandon
Robert Bray, a passenger in Sean Kauffmann's car, admitted to throwing a stink bomb at drag-show supporters.Courtesy Cookeville Police Department
William Beals (left), a self-identified Three Percenter, addresses Sgt. George Forbes at a drag show protest in Chattanooga, Tenn.Courtesy Chattanooga Police Department
Newspapers in the former Trump International Hotel DC on April 4, 2023, the day of Donald Trump's arraignment on 34 felony charges. Matt Laslo/Raw Story
The soaring bar at the former Trump International Hotel DC. Matt Laslo/Raw Story
Friends of Schumer campaign finance report indicating there had been a committee "check intercepted" by a thief. Source: Federal Election Commission