WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday that the Senate to re-vote on the veterans' healthcare bill could happen as early as today.
"We won't know for sure until we talk at lunch," said Tester, noting the policy lunches that lawmakers have.
He went on to explain that everything is still "in flux," even when it comes to Sen. Pat Toomey's (R-PA) amendment. Toomey falsely claimed that the Democrats added in provisions that have nothing to do with veterans' healthcare after the earlier vote.
Republicans supported the bill weeks ago as it stands and it passed by 84-14 votes. It wasn't until Toomey lobbied the other Republican members that 25 pulled their support of the bill.
"I just want to say one thing to correct the record. There's not one thing that's changed in this bill, with the exception of one line that was taken out of this bill that allowed the VA to buy out provider contracts. That line was taken out because it was a revenue-raiser," Tester told PBS News on Monday. "And there is nothing else that was changed in this bill since we voted on it on June 16, and it passed with 84 votes. So I want to be clear with that. And I will sit down with anybody that wants to go through this bill line by line and prove that."
He went on to say that Toomey's ploy is nothing more than a final hurrah, "that says, hey, I'm going to be leaving this place, and I want to control the appropriations process." The GOP members complain that the funding is mandatory vs. discretionary.
"Well, there is. There's mandatory funding to take care of our veterans. That means it's mandatory funding to take care of our veterans," said Tester.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis Richard McDonough told Tester that passing Toomey's amendment would be "rationing care" to the veterans that need it.
"Hopefully he doesn't decline that opportunity," to support the veterans' bill with or without his amendment, Tester told Raw Story.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart is back on Capitol Hill Tuesday to press the Senate to support the legislation to provide healthcare to veterans exposed to toxic burn pits.
"This country hangs by a thread, and that thread is the hundreds of legislative aides that work in these buildings that work really hard and they keep this thing going," Stewart told Raw Story on Tuesday. "The senators themselves, a lot of them, don't really know what's in this stuff. And there are egos, like — I've never seen egos like this and I'm in show business. And I've never seen corruption like this and I'm from New Jersey. So, you can imagine how f*cked this place is."
He went on to say that his tactic has been to keep coming back and never give up in his ongoing effort to get the bill passed.
The Senate previously approved the bill with 84 votes, but a small change about private care was made in the House that required the Senate to vote again.
The vote came after it was revealed that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) reached a deal with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on a stripped-down version of President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" proposal. Republicans were furious, claiming that they were tricked into supporting a chunk of legislation under Democratic rule, such as the semiconductor bill and the burn pits healthcare bill, while Democrats will be able to pass Biden's budget package.
Republicans claimed that the burn pits bill was changed to add unrelated budgetary items, but all of those items were part of the initial bill that they supported.
“So ain’t this a b*tch?” Stewart said Thursday during a news conference. “America’s heroes, who fought our wars, outside sweating their asses off, with oxygen battling all kinds of ailments, while these motherf*ckers sit in the air conditioning walled off from any of it? They don’t have to hear it. They don’t have to see it. They don’t have to understand that these are human beings. Did you get it yet?”
“And if this is America First, then America is f*cked,” he continued.
In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, Stewart attacked Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who has led the Republican charge against the burn pits bill. Toomey isn't running for office again. Many of his colleagues are fighting in elections that have proved to be more difficult than they anticipated and
some are starting to get worried, as Politico reported.
“Pat Toomey didn’t lose his job. He’s walking away,” Stewart said. “God knows what kind of pot of gold he’s stepping into to lobby this government to shit on more people. I’m used to all of it, but I’m not used to the cruelty."
CORRECTION: This story previously misidentified the Patriot Front member who dropped off Michael Jones at a hospital in Virginia following a Washington, DC rally and reported Jones' health issues to Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau. His name is Joseph Timothy Sieber.
Sheriff’s deputies in Genesee County spotted a gray Nissan Sentra driving through Leroy, a small town 30 minutes outside of Rochester, NY, in March. After the deputies observed the vehicle fail to signal before making a turn and making an evasive maneuver, the deputies initiated a traffic stop.
The driver was Michael Alan Jones, a 24-year-old North Carolina man, and his passenger was another man identified in court documents only as “PK.” What the deputies found in the Sentra was something akin to a mobile arsenal: “several knives, military surplus gear, and two compound bows.” Bolt-cutters protruded from a backpack on the floorboards of the passenger seat, where PK was sitting. Inside, the deputies found pry bars and gloves, leading them to believe they were looking at burglary tools. They also found ammunition and pepper spray in the vehicle.
When the deputies ran the plate they discovered the car wasn’t registered to Jones and had it towed. A further search of the vehicle revealed yet more hardware: Baofeng handheld radios, more knives, an Army Tactical Combat Casualty handbook, an AR-15 rifle and a 30-round magazine.
Wearing tan cargo shorts, Jones had marched with the Proud Boys in a QAnon-inspired gathering in Fayetteville, NC in August 2020, and then during a protest against COVID restrictions and the outcome of the election in Raleigh, the state capitol. Jones marched with Proud Boys again in Washington, DC on Dec. 12, 2020 at a pro-Trump rally, and then again on Jan. 5.
On the morning of Jan. 6, Jones marched to the US Capitol with hundreds of Proud Boys led by Joe Biggs and Ethan Nordean, who are now in jail awaiting trial on charges of seditious conspiracy. Dressed in the same tan cargo shorts, but also with a heavy black sweatshirt and black balaclava, Jones joined a pitched battle against police on the West Plaza, alongside Proud Boys Matthew Greene and Dominic Pezzola, the latter whom would later bust out a window to enable the first wave of rioters to enter the building. Jones pulled away barricades at the police line on the West Plaza and later entered the Capitol from the northwest courtyard side door. He was seen later carrying out a broken furniture leg. That evening, Jones was arrested by DC Metropolitan police for violating curfew.
Summary of #ScarFaceHoodie aka Michael Jones' activities at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021Courtesy of jan6attack.com
Dozens of members and associates of the Proud Boys, a street-fighting group renowned for instigating fights with left-wing counter-protesters and interposing in local controversies to heighten tension, have received federal charges in connection with the attack on the Capitol. But, Jones is not among them.
Since Jan. 6, Jones has become active with Patriot Front, a fascist group with more pronounced white supremacist views than the Proud Boys. Compared with the Proud Boys, Patriot Front utilizes a tighter command structure and places a higher premium on secrecy while undertaking its primary activities — highly choreographed flash rallies, physical fitness drills meant to build group cohesion, and propaganda campaigns to promote the organization’s white supremacist agenda.
Jones’ identity as a Patriot Front member was first reported by a loose collective of antifascist researchers in North Carolina through a dox on Twitter last month. As early as March 2021, the Twitter accounts @K2theSky, @MasaSpalatin and @CoryCullington have been tracking Jones’ movements at the Capitol using his nickname #ScarFaceHoodie, and eventually connecting him to Patriot Front. Raw Story has independently confirmed the claims of both research teams.
To date, Jones’ activity with the Proud Boys and Patriot Front has generated no federal charges, but the deputies responsible for the traffic stop earlier this year determined that the AR-15 and magazine were in violation of the New York State SAFE Act due to modifications on the rifle. As a result, he was charged with criminal possession of a weapon.
The state charge attracted the attention of an FBI special agent in Rochester who discovered that Jones had been convicted of a felony in North Carolina in 2019. The conviction arose from a 2017 arrest in Alamance County for statutory sex offense when Jones was accused of having sex with a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old when he was 19 and 18, respectively. The discovery of Jones’ 2019 felony conviction in North Carolina resulted in a complaint in federal court in the Western District of New York on June 3 for knowingly and unlawfully possessing a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon.
Matthew Kriner, a senior research scholar at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said what’s notable about Jones’ case is that his involvement with the Proud Boys and Patriot Front wasn’t what prompted a law enforcement investigation and arrest.
“The reality is that many of the contemporary threats of violent extremist networks are brazenly operating with little check on their violent extremist activities,” Kriner told Raw Story. “Instead, far too often we have to rely on incidental arrests stemming from traffic violations and firearms violations to mitigate threats.”
Kriner said Jones’ case exemplifies how “militant accelerationist actors and networks” are “integrated” into a broader milieu of extremist activity. Far-right activists have historically demonstrated a high degree of cross-membership in different organizations due to egotism and infighting, but Kriner added that “we are seeing an uptick in network and group partnerships or mergers between entities that are accelerationist in nature.”
Last week, Jones appeared before a federal magistrate judge in Rochester and waived his right to a detention hearing. His lawyer, Steven Slawinski, told the judge that Jones doesn’t have a place to stay in New York state were he to be released, and that he is interested in a plea deal.
“Thank you, your honor,” Jones said after the judge set a new date for a status hearing on Aug. 30.
Slawinski declined a request from Raw Story for an interview with Jones.
Samantha Kutner, who co-authored a report for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, described the Proud Boys as a “radicalization vector” whose appeal to potential recruits is “the opportunity to engage in violent shows of force against antifascists.”
Leaked chats from Patriot Front’s private communications on the RocketChat app, that were published by the media collective Unicorn Riot earlier this year, reveals a personnel pipeline from the Proud Boys to Patriot Front, as members gravitate towards an increasingly hardline ideology. Both groups have ties to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.
While the Proud Boys leadership publicly disavowed Unite the Right, members including future national chairman Enrique Tarrio attended the rally. James Fields Jr. rallied with Patriot Front predecessor Vanguard America before murdering antiracist protester Heather Heyer. In the aftermath of the deadly attack, Vanguard America collapsed and Patriot Front was founded by a Texan named Thomas Rousseau as a splinter group.
In a report to Rousseau on Nov. 19, 2021, a member identified as “Ben MD” disclosed that previously held an “official role in the leadership team of the MD/DC chapter” of the Proud Boys. The crossover between Patriot Front and the Maryland-DC Proud Boys chapter was on display in late January 2022 when two men wearing skull masks heckled counter-protesters as a detachment of Patriot Front members marched alongside the anti-choice March for Life in Washington, DC. Two days later, the two men joined the local Proud Boys chapter at an anti-vaccination rally at the Lincoln Memorial. The Maryland-DC Proud Boys chapter later validated one of the men by including him in a group shot shared on the group’s Telegram channel.
“Respect remains with the only members whose opinions I care for, so I think the split went as smoothly as could have,” “Ben MD” told Rousseau in November 2021. “I miss a few guys, but I don’t miss the club. A shame to see genuine potential flounder in a drinking club. Honestly, I felt a great relief distancing myself from a group with such low standards of opsec and discipline. I haven’t made any effort to recruit from that pool because I don’t think any of them would be a good fit for us.”
In a private chat between Casey James Knuteson, a Patriot Front member in Oregon, and a chapter leader identified as “Samuel VA,” the two men bonded over their shared history in the Proud Boys.
“I have your back brother, as one former PB to another and a Man of the Front,” “Samuel” told Knuteson. “We do not run…. We lock arms and stand our ground.”
“They accusing me of running a fake doxing account,” Knuteson responded. “They’re probably trying to sow dissent b/w us and the proudboys…. The PBs here already don’t like me. They’re the ones that started the rumor that the account belongs to me…. They hate PF here…. They’ve actually covered up my stencils before and posted it on Twitter.”
In another instance, Patriot Front members in Michigan looked at a Proud Boys chapter that gained notoriety by placing “Afghan refugee hunting permit” stickers around the University of Michigan as a potential recruiting pool.
After speaking to the leader of the Proud Boys chapter, a Patriot Front member identified as “Benjamin MI” reported that all the members were ineligible to join Patriot Front because they were over the age of 35.
“They broke off from the state PB after [the stickering incident],” “Benjamin MI” reported to “Alan MI.” “He says they all love PF and follow us on Telegram. They aren’t as serious as PF, meaning they are more for trolling.”
The massive leak of Patriot Front includes two videos that show Michael Jones, who had rallied with the Proud Boys in late 2020 and early 2021, participating in banner drops with Patriot Front to promote the group’s white supremacist agenda in two South Carolina cities: Columbia and Greenville. Another shows Jones and fellow Patriot Front member Charles Conry casing a park in Sylva, NC as they planned to vandalize a sculpture honoring abolitionist leader Harriet Tubman.
The video shows Jones, who is wearing a T-shirt inscribed with the words “Legalize Arson,” and Conry discussing options for cutting the power for the lighting around a pavilion near the sculpture to provide a cover of darkness.
Conry and Jones, who was known by his Patriot Front moniker “Adam NC,” wound up abandoning the planned vandalism, Conry explained to Rousseau in a Dec. 11 chat, after they became suspicious of the behavior of a fellow Patriot Front member named “James NC.”
“He has very odd filming habits referring specifically to the Harriet Tubman statue scouting mission that Adam NC and myself planned in Sylva, NC, which James was also late to and he filmed our faces and us talking while scouting the area, which made us feel uncomfortable and then bailed shortly after when we had pre-planned banner drop,” Conry told Rousseau. “Adam then asked him for the footage and he took a week to send it to Adam. At that point, neither Adam nor myself felt comfortable completing and further planning in dealing with the statue, which would have undoubtedly led to further membership.”
Jones rose to sufficient stature in Patriot Front that he was entrusted with coordinating communications for the organization’s Dec. 4, 2021 flash rally in Washington, DC. Jones’ responsibilities included allocating Baofeng radios to each chapter leader, known as network directors in Patriot Front parlance.
“Mike ID and I have gotten the comms stuff for the December event all figured out,” Jones told Rousseau on Nov. 16, 2021, referring to an Idaho member who was partnering with him on the project. “We should be completely good to go and all that’s really left is reminding all the network directors and everyone to actually bring all their equipment. We’re both confident that we are all squared away, and you shouldn’t have a thing to worry about!”
Rousseau congratulated his foot soldiers during a Dec. 10 national voice chat, trying to put a positive spin on the damage inflicted on members’ vehicles by antifascist opponents.
“So, our opposition decided to find further covert, nefarious, slithering, slimy means to impair us, and we have discovered their methods and countered them,” Rousseau said. “Everything that they had, all their earthly willpower, possessions and resources were bent towards the singular motive of stopping us. And it wasn’t enough. Every single thing they could throw at us thrashed against our will, our brotherhood. Like a storm on a stone, there was nothing that they could do to break our spirits and at their very best, they cost us some time and money. Replaceable things, not you men.”
For Jones, the DC rally ended in calamity. About three hours into the trip back home, he started experiencing acute pain in his legs, and fellow Patriot Front member Joseph Timothy Sieber dropped him off at a hospital in Wytheville, Va. It is unclear whether he remained active with Patriot Front since that time.
“I’m not sure if you heard, but Adam NC could be out for a little while,” Sieber told Rousseau three days after the national audio chat. “Something weird happened with his health on the way back from Virginia. He had to go to the hospital. Now he says he’s going to do acute rehab and psychical [sic] therapy after a few surgeries. He said he was insured and could have an autoimmune disorder.”
At 22,000 square feet, the yellow brick Ku Klux Klan city headquarters was as big as a plane hangar. Incredibly, the KKK was once so popular in Fort Worth, Texas, the building could easily fill its 2,000 seats for ceremonies, rallies and minstrel shows. It burned down in 1924, but the KKK had enough money to quickly rebuild.
Newspapers trace the Fort Worth Klan’s disturbing efforts to normalize itself. One story describes Klansmen in white hoods and robes scaring an entire church when they walked up to the pulpit into a worship service to give the pastor a bouquet of blood red roses. Luckily for him, they were paying tribute to his charitable work in the city.
By daylight, Klansmen donated to charities and tried to recruit bankers, lawyers, ranchers and businessmen. They rode in city parades in hoods and robes at the sheriff’s invitation. But by night, they kidnapped men they believed had broken the law or defied Deep South racial or social class boundaries, beating and terrorizing victims.
But now, the Klan’s huge building has new owners — artists, dancers and musicians, from groups the KKK hated and terrorized: Black people, Latinos and people from LGBTQ+ communities. They bought the building in January to transform it into a showcase for visual art, concerts, a Juneteenth museum and a stage for performers — including SOL Ballet Folklórico and DNAWORKS.
Workspace in the building is planned for nonprofits like LGBTQ SAVES, the Opal Lee Foundation (launched by the 95-year-old activist who helped get Juneteenth become a federal holiday) and the Tarrant County Coalition for Peace and Justice. The coalition named the project Transform 1012 N. Main Street.
Why not bring a wrecking ball?
The building had different lives before being abandoned. At the end of the 1920s, KKK membership plunged. The headquarters was sold. During the Great Depression, the building was used for dance marathons. In the 1940s, a new owner used it for a pecan warehouse.
It was bought in 2004 by Sugarplum Holdings. Today, it clearly needs lots of work. Photos show smashed glass panes in windows facing the street and the tall arched windows on the side. Chunks of the roof have caved.
Coalition members declined to be interviewed for this story.
“A bid (in January) to stabilize the building, bringing it up to code, was $1.62 million,” the Star-Telegram said. “The hard costs to turn it into the coalition’s vision is about $35 million. That doesn’t include soft costs like the design.”
Bloomberg reported that U.S/ Representative Marc Veasey helped secure substantial, unspecified funds for Transform activists via the $1.5 trillion spending bill President Joe Biden signed in March 2022.
But activists didn’t want to tear the place down like a Confederate statue. Their list of financial backers includes the National Endowment for the Arts, Ford Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. The building will be named The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing in honor of a Black butcher, Fred Rouse, lynched in 1921. Rouse’s grandson, Fred Rouse III, sits on Transform’s board.
Texas Christian University assistant dance professor Adam McKinney and Transform cofounder have already created an augmented reality app called the Fort Worth Lynching Tour: Honoring the Memory of Mr. Fred Rouse. Despite the grim name, McKinney says people end the tour feeling hopeful. Group tours deploy bikes and buses to retrace Rouse’s final days.
In a YouTube presentation, McKinney explains as a Black, openly gay man who often feels targeted and unsafe, Rouse’s death resonated with him.
Rouse was a Black butcher who got a job at a meatpacking plant when workers went on strike for better wages. Blacks weren’t allowed to join unions in Jim Crow Texas. So, Rouse worked the job he could get. In December 1921, a crowd swarmed around him as he left work, angry at him for strike breaking. A melee ensued. The crowd blamed Rouse for shooting two strikers. They beat Rouse with metal rails and stabbed him. Police arrived and thought Rouse was dead.
Police drove him toward the morgue. They were shocked when Rouse sat up and sped him to the city hospital and down to the basement’s Black ward. Doctors said his skull was fractured in two places but he would recover.
Rouse never got the chance. A group of white men invaded the ward one night and kidnapped Rouse. They hanged him from a hackberry tree, still clad in his hospital gown.
McKinney is part of an effort to create a memorial park in honor of Rouse on the same land where the hackberry tree stood. McKinney lobbied for historical markers at the park and the hospital building where his life was briefly saved.
“I see these historical markers around our city like acupuncture needles where we get to implant truth and history and twist them a little bit to change and balance the energies of our local sites,” he said wryly
Rescuing a swath of Texas Black history may seem daunting in a state where battles rage over how much schools should teach about slavery and the Civil War. But McKinney sees saving truth as his mission as an artist and a scholar.
“To place (Black) history at the center of our cultural memory resists racism,” McKinney said in the YouTube session. “Truth will set us free… The Earth will be a better place when we look back (at history) together.”
He has given lynching tour app users of all races a unique glimpse of a better world that they can experience together. When they get to the stockyards where Rouse was beaten and left for dead, the app shows a drawing of a mob descending over the real-life scene. The participant can swipe away the mob. The scene is replaced with a video of McKinney portraying Rouse, a white apron flung over his shoulder. Rouse walks down the cobblestone street lit by a blue and pink sunset.
In that alternate universe where racist violence can be stopped, Rouse walks home to his family.
Longtime Donald Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen revealed to Raw Story on Saturday new details about the chaotic 2016 Donald Trump campaign for president.
In June of 2016, Trump was the presumptive GOP nominee, but had not yet officially secured the nomination and was trailing Hillary Clinton in the polls. Then he fired his campaign manager.
"Donald J. Trump fired his divisive campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, on Monday as he confronts urgent challenges heading into the general election — a strategic shift after months of concerns from party officials and donors about Mr. Lewandowski’s stewardship of the campaign," The New York Timesreported on June 20, 2016.
"Mr. Trump had faced increasing concerns from allies and donors, as well as his children, over whether Mr. Lewandowski, who had never before worked on a national race, was able to direct a battle against Mrs. Clinton."
CNN reported it was Ivanka Trump who played a "pivotal role" in the ouster.
"Contributing to Ivanka Trump’s recent dissatisfaction with Lewandowski were intensifying tensions between Lewandowski and Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, an influential force behind the scenes. One source said rumors swirled that Lewandowski had attempted to plant negative stories in the press about Kushner – a final straw for Ivanka Trump," CNN reported. "It was ultimately Ivanka Trump who sat down with her father on Sunday and convinced him to let Lewandowski go – even offering an ultimatum of sorts about her own continued involvement with the campaign, according to sources with knowledge of this conversation."
Now more details are coming out about the incident.
The forthcoming book Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted but Not Silenced by Paul Manafort alleges that Michael Cohen had administrator privileges on the campaign server that allowed him access to see everyone’s email messages, Vox reported on Saturday.
Cohen told Vox that Manafort was "distorting the truth."
"I requested administrative access to only Corey Lewandowski’s campaign email address after he was terminated," Cohen said. "The purpose was to prove to Trump that it was Corey who was leaking negative information on Jared and Ivanka to the press. The information was located and turned over to Donald.”
Cohen told Raw Story on Saturday that his investigation proved Lewandowski was leaking about Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, "as well as about other people."
Cohen said his investigation found "several emails with journalists demonstrating [Lewandowski] was leaking information; the basis for which he was terminated."
The most consequential night of the 2022 primary season looms Tuesday, highlighted by races that should provide the clearest reading to date of former president Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party.
The August 2 lineup features primary contests in five states, representing the largest number of nationally watched battles on any single day of the 2022 primary calendar. Among the key tests will be the fate of three Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 – all of whom face primary challenges as a result.
There are wild GOP primaries raging for statewide races in Michigan, Arizona and Missouri. Trump squares off with former Vice President Mike Pence in an Arizona endorsement battle. Pence endorsed Karrin Taylor Robson, while Trump endorsed Kari Lake in the race for governor on the Republican side.
Looming in Kansas is the highest-profile anti-abortion ballot measure in the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision striking down the right to abortion. Kansas voters will decide on a constitutional amendment stating that nothing in the Kansas Constitution creates a right to abortion or requires government funding for abortion. It would also say that the legislature has the authority to pass laws regarding abortion, Ballotpedia news reports.
Here's a breakdown of the five state primaries:
Michigan: Rep. Peter Meijer, who voted to impeach Trump, faces former Trump administration official John Gibbs, who is endorsed by his former boss. In a controversial move, Democrats have spent $450,000 to support Gibbs in the belief he would be more beatable than Meijer in November. In a recent interview with CNN, Meijer continue to hammer Trump for “a shameful dereliction of duty” during the January 6 insurrection and – asked if he regretted his impeachment vote – responded, “not for a second.”
Gibbs, a full-fledged defender of the Big Lie, rationalized the absence of evidence to support Trump’s claims of fraud: “Gibbs compared Biden's victory to a criminal scheme cooked up by the mafia. "I think one analogy that you could look at here is the mafia," Gibbs told CNN. "For many years, you could never arrest them. You knew they were throwing guys off roofs and stuff but all you could get them for was tax evasion and money laundering because you don't quite have the legal and investigative framework in place to catch them."
Meanwhile, in a circus-like race for governor, Trump endorsed conservative commentator Tudor Dixon despite strong opposition to her over her support from Trump Education Secretary Betsy Devos. And In the state legislature, no fewer than 32 of the 44 Republican incumbents in the state legislature face primary challenges, many with Trump’s influence on the line.
Arizona: Recent polling of Republicans for the races for governor and U.S. senator show Trump-endorsed candidates leading. Along with his support of Lake against Robson, Trump is backing Blake Masters – a wealthy protégé of billionaire Peter Thiel -- over Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and businessman Jim Lamon.
Trump has been especially critical of Brnovich for failing to prosecute people for voter fraud as if his Big Lie were truthful.
The primary winner will face Sen. Mark Kelly. Meanwhile, two of the nation’s highest-profile right-wing promoters of bigotry are on the Arizona ballot: Mark Finchem for secretary of state and state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who is seeking re-election. Both “are trumpeting an endorsement from Andrew Torba, the CEO of far-right social media platform Gab, who said earlier this month that Jewish people aren’t welcome on Gab and should be exiled from the conservative movement altogether,” the Sentinel in Tucson reported Friday.
Rogers also can boast of her nearly unanimous censure by the Republican-controlled Senate in March for, among other things, attacking Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, as a “globalist puppet for George Soros.”
The Arizona primaries are so filled with the strangeness that the longshot presence in a congressional race of Ron Watkins – believed by some to be the original Q – has gone largely noticed. At least three other QAnon candidates are seeking offices in Arizona, including former NFL player Jerone Davison, who “is certain that federal law enforcement is responsible for children being murdered in mass school shootings,” the AZ Mirror reports.
Missouri: The ballot features the most-followed U.S. Senate primary in the nation, a circuslike Republican battle to fill the seat of retiring three-term Sen. Roy Blunt. The main event has been an effort from the state’s Republican establishment to derail the candidacy of former Gov. Eric Greitens, a Trump devotee who resigned in disgrace just over a year into his term of office amid a salacious sex scandal involving a mistress in his basement, as well as charges of campaign-finance violations.
Since leaving office, Greitens has also faced allegations in court from his ex-wife claiming that he abused her and one of their children – now the subject of a campaign ad bombardment. Greitens has fallen to third place in the polls, and it’s widely believed he’d need a late Trump endorsement to save him. Trump has hinted he’d make an endorsement but hasn’t so far.
Recent polls show a growing lead for Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who has abandoned his previous persona as a moderate state senator to run one of the most MAGA-shrieking campaigns in the nation. Schmitt’s office authored the amicus brief in the famous and failed Texas Big Lie lawsuit against Pennsylvania after the 2020 election. He sued dozens of public-school districts in the state to stop them from requiring masks during the COVID pandemic. Schmitt unveiled an ad in which he was sporting a blowtorch “to put the heat on Biden Democrats” to counter a Greitens ad featuring the twisted ex-governor going “RINO hunting” with an assault rifle. That sums up the race.
Washington: Two more of the 10 GOP House members to vote to impeach Trump face tough primary challenges from Trump-endorsed opponents. Both Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse are paying for their votes in jungle-primary competition – in which the two top vote-getters of any party advance to the general election.
Herrera Beutler’s Republican foe is Joe Kent, a former Green Beret. Trump held a telephone-based “rally” this week for Kent, as reported by The Reflector, a Washington newspaper. Kent called Trump “a personal inspiration” and introduced Trump as the 45th president of the United States, noting he is also “the 46th, and probably the 47th. Trump labeled Herrera Beutler “a false Republican” who fights for the Washington swamp, not for the Washington state.
Newhouse also faces a Trump-endorsed challenger in former police chief Loren Culp. Culp proclaimed at a campaign event this week, “It’s time to send Newhouse to the outhouse,” the report said. And there was this revisionist history about the January 6 insurrection: “Culp claimed Trump merely told his supporters, “Go let your voices be heard peacefully and patriotically. That is not a high crime or misdemeanor. But Joe Biden is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. ‘If he gets to the House, Culp said, he would work with other Republicans to immediately impeach both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for several reasons, including high gas prices and their immigration policy.”
Kansas: By far the dominant question for August 2 is whether Kansas voters will pass a constitutional amendment that would allow its Republican-controlled legislature to outlaw abortion in the state. The amendment came about in response to a 2019 ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court that found the state constitution “includes a right to bodily autonomy. That includes abortion, the justices said. As a result, the Kansas Legislature is barred from passing laws that restrict access to abortion.
Any abortion restrictions must clear an extremely high level of ‘strict scrutiny’ from the court to become law, and most restrictions on abortion, including a total ban, would be considered unconstitutional in Kansas,”, the Kansas City Star reported in a FAQ page on the amendment. Here’s how Vox summarized what’s at stake: “If the amendment passes, nothing could stop Republican lawmakers from passing a total or near-total abortion ban, and political experts say the likelihood of such restrictions moving forward in that context is very high.
Richard Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, told Vox that even though the amendment is not itself a ban on abortion, it’s safe to assume Kansas lawmakers would adopt highly restrictive abortion laws if the amendment passes. He pointed to the supermajority of Republicans in the House and Senate, the Kansas legislature’s long history of adopting laws intended to limit abortion, and to the fact that the amendment’s supporters have indicated that’s their goal.”
California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu told Raw Story on Friday that "extreme MAGA Republicans are batsh*t crazy."
Lieu, who was sworn in to the California legislature in the fall of 2005 and elected to Congress in 2014, was asked to reflect on how much things had changed during his political career.
"A huge amount has changed," he told Raw Story.
"Number one, extreme MAGA Republicans are batsh*t crazy and they want to criminalize women's health care, they want to ban birth control pills," Lieu said. "I mean, it's the 21st century, they want to have government ban birth control pills?"
"They want to attack democracy and end Social Security," he continued. "So that's where the other side is."
Lieu, who retired from the Air Force Reserve with the rank of colonel in 2021, had harsh words for the Republicans who blocked the burn pit bill they had previously supported.
"And then they just flipped their votes because they threw a temper tantrum," Lieu said. "It is obnoxious and morally wrong."
The former constitutional law professor who sits on the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol warned his congressional colleagues not to be nonchalant about subpoenas.
"I would not be casual about a subpoena," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story during a Capitol Hill scrum.
"Please tell the moms and dads of America, if your child gets subpoenaed, don't tell them to just dream up in their mind an executive privilege or attorney-client privilege and throw it under the sofa and forget about it," he said. "That's not how you do it."
"A subpoena is not like an invitation to a summer party that you can just forget about," Raskin said. "A subpoena is something you've got to respond to."
In May, the select committee subpoenaed five members of Congress, including House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
The other four members are Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Scott Perry (R-PA).
Last week, a federal jury found Donald Trump's former aide Steve Bannon guilty of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to testify before lawmakers investigating the assault on the US Capitol.
Bannon, who led Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign, was among hundreds of people called by a House of Representatives committee to testify about the storming of Congress by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021.
The 68-year-old Republican strategist did not appear on the summons date or provide requested documents, and was indicted on two charges of contempt of Congress.
The 12-person jury deliberated for less than three hours before finding Bannon guilty of both misdemeanor charges.
Bannon, who served as Trump's strategy chief at the White House before being sacked in 2017, faces a minimum of 30 days in jail and a maximum sentence of a year for each count.
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for trying to turn schools into a "haunted house" and scaring parents into thinking that their children are somehow being turned into monsters.
Republicans in Florida have been waging what they call a battle for parents to have a greater say over what their children learn in school.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Wilson explained she's not sure that DeSantis is a "little Trump" because Trump isn't "smart enough" to come up with issues like critical race theory or the 'don't say gay' bill to attack public education.
"This man has taken a theory that's only available in colleges, universities, and law schools," Wilson explained. "Critical race theory has never been mentioned, taught or even considered in any public school across this country. Never! And he has made people think that little children are learning critical race theory across the nation... then he turned around and called it a culture war."
The Republican governor is seen as a possible presidential contender for his party in 2024 -- possibly challenging Trump if he decides to runs again.
The state's so-called "don't say gay" law bans teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity "in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards."
The education war in Florida also centers on teaching of critical race theory, the doctrine holding that racism is an inherent part of law and legal institutions in America in that they serve to maintain social, economic and political inequality.
Wilson said that DeSantis is pretending to stand up for the children, but the reality is far from it.
"The difference is — one is Mr. Trump is dumb, Mr. DeSantis is smart. What he has done is created little vignettes to mislead the American people. He's made parents think that they should run the public schools when we have principals and administrators who we have trusted for years," Wilson continued, pointing out that DeSantis is a product of public schools.
"Parents don't have to show up at a school board meeting to run a school. They know to respect the will of the parents and what parents need for their children. These are trained experts. I was one of them. So, I know. But he has made the school district as a sinful place. That they talk about 'gays!' I mean, hello. Give me a break. This man has taken little vignettes of culture and made them into haunted houses and monsters. He has permeated fear not just in Florida but it has permeated across the nation. That's what's so amazing."
The bill still has some way to go before becoming law but the multi-billion dollar package finally won crucial support from conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin (WV). His previous opposition had essentially killed President Joe Biden's ambitious plans, because in the 50-50 Senate, where Republicans rarely back Biden on anything, Democrats can't afford to lose a single vote.
"It's a complete flip-flop," said Cornyn on Manchin's support. "Everything he said he was against, now he's for. And, uh, I just wonder what the transaction was that got him to 'yes.'"
He went on to say that it "poisons the well" in his relationship with Democrats, though it's unclear how strong that relationship was at all.
"They work around here — even though we're political adversaries there has to be some modicum of, uh — that when people tell you something, you can believe them," Cornyn said. "That's been pretty well eviscerated."
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) was just as furious, saying that he was opposed to the "chips bill," meaning the legislation for semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. It's a bill that Republican Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX) told Raw Story was a GOP suggestion two years ago that got unanimous support among Republicans.
"Sounds like a lot of people got schnookered," Johnson said. When asked what he's heard from party leaders he repeated, "sounds like they got schnookered."
He noted that it "didn't help" the strained relationship between the two parties.
If passed, the reconciliation package will pour some $369 billion into clean energy and climate initiatives and $64 billion into state-funded healthcare, including a popular measure meant to lower ruinously high prescription medicine prices.
It would be paid for by raising $739 billion, with a major chunk coming from a 15 percent corporate tax rate. An extra $300 billion raised under the plan would go to paying off the federal deficit.
Biden said prescription drug prices would drop and healthcare for Americans using the subsidized Affordable Care Act policy would also become $800 a year cheaper.
Funding for clean energy will "create thousands of new jobs and help lower energy costs in the future," he said.
"We will pay for all of this by requiring big corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, with no tax increases at all for families making under $400,000 a year."
Biden thanked Manchin, an often unpredictable partner in the Senate, for his "extraordinary effort."
"If enacted, this legislation will be historic, and I urge the Senate to move on this bill as soon as possible, and for the House to follow as well."
According to Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX), the legislation from the Senate that would invest in manufacturing semiconductors on U.S. soil was a suggestion from former President Donald Trump's secretaries.
Speaking to reporters at the Capitol on Thursday, McCaul couldn't figure out why his GOP colleagues refused to back the bill.
"I'm going to vote what's right for the country and national security. I'm not going to vote against my own bill," McCaul said.
When Raw Story asked about the GOP opposing the law, McCaul said he couldn't figure it out.
"Look, you know, the inception of this bill came to me from the prior administration," he told Raw Story. "Trump's national security team, Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser, Secretary Wilbur Ross, [Robert] Lighthizer, that we have to protect our semiconductors capacity. We need to manufacture them in this country and not let it go offshore, particularly when you look at Taiwan having 90 percent of the semiconductor manufacturing capability."
"Imagine with the threat from China right now, if China takes over Taiwan, they will own the global market of 90 percent of semiconductor production and manufacturing in your phones, in your automobiles, even our most advanced weapons systems, which I'm most concerned about."
McCaul went on to say that in his role on the foreign affairs committee he gets classified briefings that other members don't get. The bill, he said, is "vitally important to our national security."
He went on to complain that two years ago he passed the same piece of legislation in the national defense reauthorization and that it got unanimous support at the time from both sides.
"It's been hijacked for two years by the Senate primarily, for political reasons, for other things to get passed on it," McCaul continued. "And, you know, that's a shame about politics today. A national security bill getting hijacked by politics? Come on."
Speaking to Raw Story, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said that after the revelations uncovered by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack, the Justice Department will have to step in.
Up until recently, the Justice Department has been investigating the fake electors scam in which members of Trump's campaign and legal advisers allegedly attempted to create a list of fake Republican electors. They then sent the names and signatures to the National Archives.
"Based on the House investigation I don't see how they could avoid that," Warren said of whether the DOJ would move forward on Trump. "Ultimately the Department of Justice will make their own independent decision about whether they have enough evidence to prosecute some or all of the people involved in the January 6 insurrection. DOJ has to make their own independent decision and that means independent of the politics. That's how the justice system works."
Amid calls by some Democrats for Trump to be prosecuted for the Capitol riot, Attorney General Merrick Garland said last week that "no person is above the law."
"This is the most wide-ranging investigation, and the most important investigation, that the Justice Department has ever entered into," Garland told reporters about the probe into the January 6 attack on Congress by Trump supporters.
"And we have done so because this effort to upend a legitimate election -- transferring power from one administration to another -- cuts at the fundamental of American democracy," Garland said.
"We have to get this right," he stressed. "We have to hold accountable every person who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election."
Asked whether that even applies to a former president, Garland said: "No person is above the law in this country. I can't say it any more clearly than that.
"There is nothing in the principles of prosecution, in any other factors which prevent us from investigating anyone -- anyone -- who's criminally responsible for an attempt to undo a democratic election," he said.
More than 850 people have been arrested in connection with the 2021 attack on Congress, which came after Trump delivered a fiery speech to his supporters near the White House falsely claiming that the election was "stolen."
Most of them have been charged with seeking to obstruct an official proceeding -- the certification by Congress of Democrat Joe Biden's election victory.
The 76-year-old Trump, who has repeatedly hinted that he may run for the White House again in 2024, was impeached for a historic second time by the House after the Capitol riot -- he was charged with inciting an insurrection -- but was acquitted by the Senate.
A select House committee conducting an investigation of the Capitol riot is to hold its eighth and final hearing on Thursday and plans to provide a detailed examination of Trump's actions on January 6.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story identified Mr. Penrose as a Trump administration official. However, records show he left the NSA in 2014. Raw Story regrets the error. This story has also been updated to remove statements by Andrew Kloster that he says were recorded without his consent, at his request.
In late 2020, Lt. General Michael Flynn sent a security team to the home of Staci Burk, an Arizona law student. The team leader asked Burk to prepare an affidavit with information about ballots on planes that could be used to support lawsuits filed by attorney Sidney Powell to overturn the 2020 election.
Members of the security team, part of a group called 1st Amendment Praetorian, took Burk’s cell phone against her will. She later learned that it turned up in Washington, DC a couple of days before Trump supporters overran the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Burk herself was not in DC in December 2020 and January 2021. She said in a
court filing in February 2021 that she learned on Jan. 11 that her phone was at the Willard Hotel, which has been described as a “command center” of the effort to overturn the 2020 election.
The 1st Amendment Praetorian security team’s seven-week residency at Burk’s home upended her life. Burk fled her home, incurred financial debt, reassessed her beliefs about the election and struggled to repair her reputation as various conspiracy theorists in the election denial world assailed her credibility.
Burk’s ordeal with 1st Amendment Praetorian — better known by its initials 1AP — pulled her into the orbit of a dizzying array of pro-Trump actors, including Arizona politicians, conspiracy theorists and associates of Flynn and Powell.
In January 2022, almost one year after her cell phone was confiscated, a lawyer who served in the Trump White House Office of Presidential Personnel named Andrew Kloster reached out to Burk with an unusual request. He wanted a written statement from her disassociating a former National Security Agency official and Flynn associate from 1AP.
The request came just as the investigation of the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol was causing increasing unease among allies of the former president.
Kloster told Burk he was representing former NSA official Jim Penrose during the phone call earlier this year, which Raw Story is reporting for the first time. Kloster also indicated he was familiar with the former president’s interest in the widening congressional probe.
Described in his Federalist Society
bio as “a longtime fixture of the conservative movement” who had worked at the Heritage Foundation, Kloster joined the Trump White House Office of Presidential Personnel in 2020. After Trump left office, Kloster served as chief of staff for a special counsel appointed by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to investigate the outcome of the 2020 election in Wisconsin.
“Well, yes,” Kloster told Burk during the January 2022 phone call, explaining why Penrose was concerned. “Yes. Because — because I think a lot of what’s happening now — again, having talked with different attorneys and people who were swept up in this whole mess — a lot of this now is groups like 1AP, other people, who, maybe they’re not totally bad but they’re self-interested. There are circles that are close to the president, and then further out, blah blah blah, and everybody starts shooting at each other, and then they try to blame people for things. And the more of that can be limited by the truth, the better because it limits the ability of these little s***head staffers to do a fishing expedition.” Burk did not accede to Kloster’s request because she told him that would be a lie, and she said he did not contact her again.
Emails to the January 6th Committee for this story seeking clarification on whether Penrose is under scrutiny went unreturned.
According to a professional biography, Jim Penrose retired from the NSA as a senior-level defense intelligence analyst in 2014. Lin Wood, the defamation lawyer who collaborated with Powell to file election challenge lawsuits, has confirmed that Penrose
joined Powell and Flynn at his South Carolina estate in November 2020 to work on the election, along with Seth Keshel, a former Army intelligence captain, and Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas who would later lead the partisan review of the Arizona election.
Raw Story initially contacted Staci Burk in August 2021. She has continually expressed reluctance about going on the record due to her concern about ongoing threats from associates of Michael Flynn, including 1AP member
Michael Kenny. She said she decided to give Raw Story access to the recording now because she feels the public has a right to know about matters important to democracy.
Robert Patrick Lewis, the 1AP cofounder, received a
subpoena from the January 6th Committee in November 2021, requesting that he appear for a deposition and turn over documents. Lewis’ lawyer, Leslie McAdoo Gordon, has since indicated that Philip Luelsdorff, the other cofounder, and the organization itself have also been subpoenaed. Lewis appeared before the committee in April and invoked the Fifth Amendment, on his lawyer’s advice.
Citing a ruling by a federal judge in California that gave credence to an assertion made by the committee that President Trump participated in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election, McAdoo Gordon said in a letter to the committee that the committee’s position puts pressure on the US Department of Justice to pursue charges.
“Thus, the committee’s theory creates a genuine risk of criminal exposure for anyone who may have, in the opinion of motivated prosecutors, assisted former President Trump or his supporters in any way as they contested the election results between November 2020 and January 6, 2021,” McAdoo Gordon wrote.
In an addendum provided to the committee in July, McAdoo Gordon confirmed that Joshua James, who has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, was “a member of 1AP for a very short time in 2020.” James was charged as part of a conspiracy with other members of the Oath Keepers militia. McAdoo Gordon told the committee that James left 1AP after being advised he could not simultaneously be in the Oath Keepers and 1AP. She added that James was not a member of 1AP in January 2021 and has had no association with the group since that time.
‘This had the potential of blowing up all over the place’
Based on his conversations with Jim Penrose, Andrew Kloster told Burk he understood his client’s relationship with 1st Amendment Praetorian to be minimal.
“I talk with a lot of the people who were involved with different things, and I think — as far as I’m aware — as far as Jim has told me — I mean, his involvement is quite technical, was quite technical,” Kloster said. “So, he might have puffed himself up. It sounds like there are other circumstances where he puffed himself up that bit him in the ass, and maybe that’s what happened here. But I don’t think he’s as super connected — he knows a lot of people, don’t get me wrong — but he’s not as much of a mover and shaker as you might suppose.”
As previously reported by
ProPublica, Penrose told Burk during a phone call in late December 2020 that he had spent $75,000 to pay former FBI agents to look into two separate allegations about potentially illegal ballots delivered by plane in Phoenix and Seattle.
“Let me be crystal clear: I’m investigating this on behalf of Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, right, the people that are going to take this right up to the president and the Supreme Court and work on these cases,” Penrose told Burk during that call.
The call, which Burk recorded, took place on Christmas day after she and a 1AP member named Brandon Pittman had returned from a local shooting range. According to an incident report by the Florence Police Department, Richard “Chi” Chichester, a former correctional officer from Massachusetts who was also a member of the 1AP security team, reported that two black SUVs had followed Burk home from the shooting range. The incident also prompted a phone call to Penrose.
The recording reveals that Penrose, who expressed concern about Burk independently investigating the two ballots-on-planes leads, set parameters and conditioned the 1AP security team’s continued presence at her home on her compliance.
“Here’s the deal: If we’re going to protect you, we need to have some kind of understanding about what the parameters are and the way you’re going to engage publicly and how you’re going to expose yourself to threats publicly,” Penrose said. “Because it’s all of us, right? We’re all in this together.”
Penrose added that anything Burk did — from picking up the phone to inviting someone into her home — was “impacting the guys in the room with you, and anybody who’s going to be assigned to your protective detail.”
Burk told Raw Story she turned over her recording of the phone call to the January 6th Committee in October 2021.
Raw Story reviewed more than 20 recordings — which Burk has not publicly shared — that provide a picture of how her cell phone was stolen and how it wound up at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, just before Jan. 6.
In recorded statements, Pittman and Chichester — the two 1AP members assigned as Burk’s protective detail at the time — have both admitted that her phone was stolen, while giving conflicting accounts of how it took place. In one of the recordings, Pittman told Burk that he learned that Chichester had her phone in Washington, DC.
Joe Flynn, Michael Flynn’s brother, corroborated the account in a phone call with Burk. When the matter was brought to his attention, Flynn indicated he turned to a man named Geoffrey Flohr for an explanation.
Flohr, whose nickname was “Yoda,” was a former Michigan State Police officer and former polygrapher with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Pittman described him as the “team leader,” and Chichester called him “the guy in charge.”
“Yoda told me that Chi took it out of your hands,” Flynn told Burk. “Or something like that. And when I heard that, I said, ‘What are these people doing taking somebody’s property without their permission?’”
Former NSA official Jim Penrose tells Staci Burk that her security is conditioned on her acting within certain "parameters."
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The precise reason why Burk’s phone was stolen and who, if anyone, ordered it remains unclear. Regardless, responsibility for the misdeed ultimately fell to Flohr, who also served in Michael Flynn’s personal security detail for his speech in front of the Supreme Court during the Jericho March on Dec. 12, 2020.
Chichester told Burk he encountered Flohr at the Willard hotel after Burk’s phone surfaced in DC.
“He just tapped me on the shoulder, didn’t say a f***ing thing, okay?” Chichester recounted. “And I was just watching him as he came past, all right? I was angry. I probably showed a little bit of anger in my face or something because I was pissed off at him because of the whole clusterf***…. Because of the whole thing — the stealing — the phone being stolen. The way he did things, it was just all f***ed up, and he was the guy in charge.”
James Curtis, a Marine Corps veteran who replaced Chichester on the 1AP protective detail at Burk’s house, also blamed Flohr.
“Seeing Yoda plan the theft of the phone — that by itself is problematic,” Curtis said. “But the timeline that sets this in motion and moves this off of you being a team player and to a target is knowing that on day one, they came asking for your phone.”
1AP team leader Geoffrey Flohr discusses the theft of Staci Burk's phone
In a call with Burk, Flohr told her he was told “to be quiet” about the phone debacle “because this had the potential of blowing up all over the place. You literally hold — I’m telling you right now — you literally hold 1A Praetorian in your hand. That’s how it’s viewed. But I wanted the f***ing truth.”
Flohr said he reported the matter to Matthew Wallach, a prominent 1AP member.
“We want to do the f***ing right thing,” Flohr said. “And it’s all on my shoulders. So, listen up. It’s all on my shoulder. I went and told him forty-five seconds after f***ing numb nuts there right next to you told me what it was. I went and drilled it right into the people that run this place. And I said, ‘We got to fix this. We gotta f***ing fix this.’ And they said, ‘Well, we’re gonna take it under advisement, get through the DC op, and then address it.’”
Flohr ended his involvement with 1AP shortly after Jan. 6, 2021. After the phone debacle, Pittman told Burk that Flohr’s departure was directly linked to the handling of her security detail.
“Because of the issues that we had with you, and the way that they were handled was a bunch of bulls***, and Yoda was the guy that was like, ‘This is a bunch of bulls***,’” Pittman told Burk. “And so, Yoda, like, shields me from a lot of flak, because I tell Yoda, and Yoda tells the bosses. The bosses hit back at Yoda, and then Yoda hits back at me, you know?”
As
previously reported by Raw Story, Flohr was on the grounds at the US Capitol, along with a second 1AP member named Alan Kielan.
Leslie McAdoo Gordon, 1AP’s lawyer, said in a statement provided to the January 6th Committee in early July that she learned following Robert Patrick Lewis’s deposition that “two members of 1AP went with or followed the portion of the crowd from the Ellipse that went to the Capitol grounds.” McAdoo Gordon minimized Flohr and Kielan’s connection to the organization, writing, “They had already completed their work with 1AP at that time.” She added that the two men went to the Capitol “without the knowledge or approval of 1AP or Mr. Lewis.”
Flohr could not be reached for comment for this story.
After Burk’s phone was stolen, James Curtis made a prediction that, in hindsight, seems prescient. He also entertained the possibility that Penrose bore some responsibility for the theft.
“I don’t know Penrose, but if he’s self-serving enough to take your phone, he’s also self-serving enough to help fabricate tales about you that aren’t true,” Curtis said. “But right now, your actions are being defined probably — I’m making some assumptions here — your actions are being defined by whoever it was that wanted your phone. And so, your actions are not going to be defined in a way complimentary to you or the truth you understand, right? They’re going to be defined in ways that benefit whoever took your phone — presumably Penrose, right?”
When Kloster called Burk nearly a year later, she told him that's almost exactly what ended up happening.
“He pushes this out there: ‘She’s crazy, she’s this, she’s that,’" Burk said of Penrose. "And tries to discredit and do all of this stuff, which leads all of those minions who thought they were saving the country and all of that to then chase me out of town and dox and harass and threaten."
Penrose could not be reached for this story.
Reached by Raw Story by phone, Joe Flynn said he doesn’t know why Burk’s phone was stolen, but indicated he was surprised to hear Penrose’s name come up in connection with the episode.
“It was inconsequential,” Flynn said during a brief interview. “It doesn’t mean much to anybody.”
Joe Flynn has acknowledged his role in assigning the 1AP security team to Burk’s home.
“At the time we were working with 1st — 1A Praetorians,” Flynn said in an interview for the QAnon-aligned Patriot Voice channel on Telegram in January. “We were working with them for a very short period of time, just after the election when we were participating in the rallies in Washington. And their team provided General Flynn, myself, Sidney, Patrick [Byrne] and a few others security…. By the way, they provided that security free of charge. At the time, we didn’t have any money, so that was a benefit not having to pay that money. As I understand it, we sent a team out to watch over her out in Phoenix.”
Joe Flynn talks about 1st Amendment Praetorian and Staci Burk on the Patriot Voice channel on Telegram.
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Joe Flynn told Raw Story that his brother “didn’t have anything to do” with the decision to assign a security team to Burk, but Flohr gave a different account to Burk.
“It started with Joe,” he told Burk. “I got a call from him. He goes, ‘And we need ya in the Southwest.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ He says, ‘Hold on.’ And then Mike comes on the phone. He says, ‘Yoda, this is Mike Flynn. I need you to get to the Southwest for a whistleblower that we have down there. How long is it going to take you to get there?’ I said, ‘I haven’t been out to Arizona before.’ I said, ‘It’s going to take me a day and a half.’ He says, ‘Get going.’ And so, I did, because I had to pack my car. Two and a half hours later, I was on the road.”
Before 1AP’s arrival, a man named John Shattuck, who is linked to Michael Flynn through the Gold Institute for International Strategy, arranged for a local firm in Arizona called Mayhem Security Solutions to provide security for Burk.
Joe Flynn later explained to Burk that Mayhem was replaced because their fee was too expensive.
“We couldn’t afford it,” Flynn told Burk. “We weren’t going to be able to pay them. They wanted us to pay them thirty thousand dollars. We don’t have that kind of money. So, we said, ‘Okay, we got this other group who can do it for free.’”
‘If there’s going to be a second Trump term…’
Burk, who has since
concluded there is no evidence of widespread election fraud, looked into two separate allegations about potentially illegal ballots on planes shortly after the Nov. 3, 2020 election. She said that Geoffrey Flohr, the team leader for the 1st Amendment Praetorian security detail at her house asked her to prepare an affidavit for Powell. Burk said assertions about extensive fraud by Powell and Michael Flynn helped convince her there must be something to the allegations of ballots on planes, which Powell herselfmentioned in a speech at a Dec. 2, 2020 rally in Alpharetta, Ga.
“I listened to General Flynn and Sidney Powell say they had reliable evidence there were bad actors rigging the election and their team validated there was a great deal of corroborating evidence it was true and that I was in grave danger of being killed and needed a security team,” Burk said in a statement to Raw Story.
“Those were obviously lies,” Burk continued. “I believed the lies because, at the time, I thought, why else would they be taking the South Korean plane story so seriously when it was their associates who were on the ground with the plane taking video. I now see in their psyop I was a pawn, and it was much easier to raise money if they terrorized the witnesses and then said they needed money to protect the witnesses. I was just a pawn in their elaborate money-making venture,” Burk added.
Burk claims that in late December 2020, she had not been aware of a Dec. 18 meeting that took place at the White House in which Flynn, Powell and Byrne urged President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and order the National Guard to seize voting machines.
“It was my understanding Trump had a plan, and I trusted that,” Burk said. “As things came to light, I now see everything their associates did with me between November 2020 and May 2021 was all gaslighting, cover up and narrative control with an ends-justifying-the-means mentality and little care or concern for how their actions terrified my family and disrupted our lives.”
Joe Flynn said in a text to Raw Story that his brother was not interested in responding.
“This is a story about nonsense and nothing,” he said, “and anyone who reads Raw Story needs to get a mental exam.”
Sidney Powell could not be reached for this story.
Despite describing Penrose as a “contractor” during the period he engaged with 1AP, Kloster also suggested to Burk that his client’s relationship with Michael Flynn was insignificant.
“He knew General Flynn,” Kloster said. “He knew who he was. They had some communication. There was no hand in glove. He didn’t report to him, or vice-versa.”
Kloster also dismissed the notion that Penrose was working on behalf of President Trump, telling Burk: “I’m a little bit closer to some of that stuff. I kind of know — yeah, that’s a little bit, uh, that’s on the order of puffing up, for sure, yeah.”
Kloster did not return messages for this story. But in a post on Telegram in early July, he announced a new project to protect the professional reputations of so-called “America First” public servants.
“We’re just getting started, but if you’re looking to assist in giving our conservative public servants the tools they need to survive attack, pls look at this new org run by our former WH staff,” Kloster wrote.
The website for Personnel Policy Operations describes the new nonprofit’s foundational precept as a belief that conservative public servants targeted for “persecution” by “the radical left, corporate media, tech companies, leftwing NGOs and other activists” need support in order to succeed, while warning that without a robust safety net, “others will be deterred from entering public service in the first place, or from taking real action for their country.”
Kloster recently spoke up in defense of Kenneth Klukowski, a former senior counsel to Trump Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark. Kuklowski
reportedly helped Clark draft a letter to state officials in Georgia in late December 2020 requesting that they delay certifying their votes to allow time for federal prosecutors to investigate election fraud allegations.
“The January 6th investigation is all about attacking mid-level and senior staff like Ken, to ensure that we don’t have a farm team in 2024, no matter who the president is,” Kloster
toldThe Federalist last month. “This isn’t about the truth, but about making it impossible for conservatives to successfully enter and leave government.”
In a recent
Axios report, Kloster was named as part of a group of “former Trump administration and transition officials working on personnel, legal or policy projects for a potential 2025 government.”
Jack Posobiec,
described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a political operative who is “known primarily for creating and amplifying viral disinformation campaigns,” praised Kloster’s Personnel Policy Operation while filling in as a host on the “War Room” show for former White House strategist Steve Bannon on July 1. (Bannon wasconvicted of contempt of Congress on July 22 for refusing to cooperate with the January 6th Committee.)
“We’ve got the precinct project that’s going on here from the War Room,” Posobiec told Kloster. “That’s precinct by precinct across the country. We’ve got the dismantling of the administrative state. That’s the other project. But what you just said, I think, is one of the most important lessons, shall we say, from the first Trump term, which is that personnel
is policy.
“If there is going to be a second Trump term — and that’s basically been kind of the theme of this show today — that this key office, the PPO and the staffers across the government, right, getting into the administrative state and wrestling down with Leviathan.
”During his January 2022 phone call with Staci Burk, Kloster indicated that Jim Penrose was eager to put time assisting in the effort to challenge the election behind him.
“I mean, Jim, he’s in a different place now,” Kloster told Burk. “He does talk about a lot of that election stuff as — he had a weird second life basically for a couple months. But he seems very buttoned down now.”
Summary of #ScarFaceHoodie aka Michael Jones' activities at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021Courtesy of jan6attack.com