Former Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis is under fire after remarks she made to prosecutors on a now-leaked video appear inconsistent with her public remarks during and after the 2020 presidential election.
“Jenna Ellis is a fraud,” declared former Fox Business producer Breanna Morello, who says she quit over the cable network’s “COVID vaccine mandate,” and now has a far-right podcast on Rumble.
Morello posted screenshots of several tweets showing as recently as December 28, 2020 — well over a month after the 2020 election Joe Biden won — Ellis was promoting an election fraud claim.
More pushback against Ellis came from Bernard Kerik, the former Giuliani partner, disgraced NYPD Commissioner, and convicted felon pardoned by Donald Trump.
“I was on the legal team, and I spoke to Jenna [Ellis] daily, and not once, EVER, did she tell me what she claims to have told the president, or about a conversation with [Dan Scavino],” Kerik wrote on social media.
“Her December 28 tweet, clearly contradicts her proffer statement,” he added, pointing to the last of Ellis’ tweets Morello posted.
Some are suggesting the leaked video shows an Ellis who appeared to know on December 19, 2020, that Trump had lost the election.
Ellis “said that one of Trump’s top White House aides, Dan Scavino, allegedly told her ‘in an excited tone’ at a White House Christmas party weeks after the 2020 election that ‘the boss is not going to leave under any circumstances,’” ABC News reported when it published the leaked video of her October 2023 testimony.
ABC adds that Ellis told investigators that on December 19, 2020, Scavino “said to me, in a kind of excited tone, ‘Well, we don’t care.’”
“And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said ‘Well, the boss’, meaning President Trump — and everyone understood ‘the boss,’ that’s what we all called him — he said, ‘The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.’ ”
And yet, one day later, Ellis posted to Twitter, “President Trump should never concede the election.”
That post remains up to this day.
In her plea agreement hearing before a Georgia judge last month, Ellis suggested she was unaware Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 election, and said she had relied on information from others rather than doing her “due diligence.”
“As an attorney who is also a Christian, I take my responsibilities as a lawyer very seriously, and I endeavor to be a person of sound moral and ethical character in all of my dealings,” Ellis told the court according to a transcript from Lawfare.
“In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, I believed that challenging the results on behalf of President Trump should be pursued in a just and legal way. I endeavored to represent my client to the best of my ability.
“I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than I, to provide me with true and reliable information, especially since my role involved speaking to the media and to legislators in various states. What I did not do, but should have done, Your Honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true.
“In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election in several states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence. I believe in and I value election integrity. If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post election challenges.”
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin is also digging into Ellis’ past public remarks and the statements she made to Georgia prosecutors.
Rubin writes, “Ellis was happy to tell the Fulton County DA that she pushed back on Scavino when he suggested the boss would never leave. ‘It doesn’t quite work that way,’ she claims she said. But here’s Jenna 9 days after that alleged conversation. Hmmm.”
Rubin also posted a photo of Ellis with Rudy Giuliani.
On Monday former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti wrote that “Ellis continued to promote and defend Trump, and spread disinformation about the election, long after she was told that Trump planned to usurp power.”
House speaker Mike Johnson's election makes him the most powerful ally the Christian Right has had in decades, and a report says his rise reveals the anti-democratic faction within the evangelical movement has won out.
Johnson's elevation shows the "any means necessary" wing of the Christian Right now has a direct line to the elected official who's second in line to the presidency – "Praise God," trumpets right-wing Pastor Jim Garlow – and shows that evangelicals are moving away from pluralism, reported NPR.
"I like this country and I like the democratic process, and then there are other folks, and again, this is a civil war almost within Christianity who say, no, we want to achieve these ends and we'll do it by any means necessary," said Marvin Olasky, longtime editor of the Christian news publication World.
"I have to say that compassionate conservatism is out of business these days, and in a sense, cruel conservatism is ascendant."
Olasky, who's considered the godfather of "compassionate conservatism," said some within the evangelical faith "Holy Land theme park" governed by strict biblical law, while others prefer a "Liberty theme park" where pluralism and democracy flourish, and Johnson has ties to the former.
"God has given us a miracle in the election of Congressman Michael Johnson to this position," said right-wing Pastor Dutch Sheets. "He's a godly man, raised up for such a time as this. I do not know him, but have several friends who do, who attest to his qualifications, integrity and heart for the Lord."
Johnson and Sheets may not know one another, but they both have deep ties to the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, which has existed on the fringes but rose to a position of influence with Donald Trump's election and played a key role in fomenting the Jan. 6 insurrection.
"Dutch Sheets did more, in my estimation, than any Christian leader to organize Christians for Jan. 6," said Matthew D. Taylor, a senior scholar at The Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies.
"I don't see Mike Johnson as some sort of like, 'oh, man, he is really a crazy person from the margins and an outlier in this world,' " Taylor added. "I think he's just a signal of what it looks like to be a right-wing Christian politician these days is these are the people that you hang out with. These are the people that support you."
A new book claims that Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo single-handedly gave birth to the "Big Lie" that Donald Trump used to justify his efforts to overturn his election loss and which cost Fox Corp. nearly $800 million.
Fox boss Rupert Murdoch decided to send the vanquished president a message – you lost, get over it – within an hour of Fox News projecting on Nov. 7, 2020, that Joe Biden had won the election by directing an editorial to be published in the New York Post giving point-by-point directions on managing the defeat, according to excerpts of Brian Stelter's new book Network of Liespublished by Politico.
"Get Rudy Giuliani off TV," the editorial advised. "Ask for the recounts you are entitled to, wish Biden well, and look to the future.”
Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott told Lachlan Murdoch she would circulate that editorial around the network, and the hosts of "Fox & Friends Weekend" were told Nov. 8 to stay away from election fraud claims, but Bartiromo took to the airways immediately afterward with an episode devoted to baseless conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems – which came from a highly questionable source.
"This episode is worth analyzing in detail because Bartiromo’s source was so unhinged; because the segment foreshadowed months of smears; and because it provided a predicate for the 'Big Lie' that Trump continues to promote to this day," Stelter wrote. "Six in 10 Republican voters say they believe the 2020 election was 'stolen' from Trump. But 'stolen' how? One day after Biden became president-elect, Bartiromo used her Fox megaphone to tell a story that Trump and the heartbroken MAGA base embraced, to the detriment of Trump’s party and the country writ large."
David Clark, the Fox executive who oversaw weekend programming, warned Bartiromo the day before not to book Rudy Giuliani due to his "bizarre" conspiracy theories about the network allegedly aiding Biden, but the host ignored him and asked her producer Abby Grossberg to warn the former New York City mayor not to bash Fox News on air.
“It’s also a pretape,” Grossberg told Bartiromo, “so if it goes completely off the rails, we could always try to cut."
But the episode's other guest, attorney Sidney Powell, proved to be even more problematic.
"What they didn’t know was that Powell’s Dominion smear was rooted in a ludicrous email from one random, especially unglued Trump fan," Stelter wrote.
Dominion's legal team reviewed hundreds of thousands of emails during their ultimately successful defamation suit – which cost Fox News $787.5 million – and found those costly claims were based on a single email dated Nov. 7, 2020, from an unhinged Trump fan named Marlene Bourne, who sent a message called "Election Fraud Info" to Powell, Fox host Lou Dobbs and pro-Trump activist Tom Fitton, and then forwarded by Powell to Bartiromo.
"Parts of the three-page email were, by Bourne’s own admission, 'wackadoodle,'" Stelter wrote. "She claimed to be 'internally decapitated'; she described having visions; she said, 'The Wind tells me I’m a ghost.' She said some things that were easily debunked: For example, that Roger Ailes and other 'owners of the major US media outlets secretly huddle most days to determine how best to portray Mr. Trump as badly as possible.' It was a supremely well-kept secret, indeed, since Ailes died in 2017 — and he hadn’t owned Fox, he’d just acted like he did in his CEO role. The email also asserted that former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia 'was purposefully killed at the annual Bohemian Grove camp … during a weeklong human hunting expedition.'"
Instead of deleting the missive and ignoring it, Bartiromo instead sent it to Grossberg and then replied to Powell, indicating she had spoken to Eric Trump, the ex-president's son, and described Bourne's email as "very imp info."
"Bourne’s 'wackadoodle' email was germane for two reasons: It was chock-full of equally loony claims about Dominion, and it was the only message referencing Dominion in Bartiromo’s and Grossberg’s inboxes prior to Powell’s live shot on their show," Stelter wrote. "In other words, it was Patient Zero in the coming contagion that would infect all of Fox and the GOP."
FRANKLIN, Tenn. — Diners lined the sidewalk to snag one of the coveted tables at Puckett’s Grocery on Sunday as this small city south of Nashville hummed through one of the last perfect days of autumn.
It was a convivial scene replicated throughout the day with boisterous teenagers on soccer fields at Pinkerton Park and patrons at Kimbro’s Pickin Parlor playfully bantering on the music hall’s front porch during an LGBTQ happy hour.
One missing element — Nazis.
A coalition of neo-Nazi groups had threatened to march Sunday on Franklin after interjecting themselves in the city’s recent mayoral election, which descended into ever-increasing depths of strangeness as far-right candidate Gabrielle Hanson embraced them and amplified their conspiracy theories.
But throughout the afternoon, as police cruisers circled the roundabout near City Hall, and undercover officers with earpieces scanned the public square and cradled cameras with telephoto lenses from the top of a public parking garage, no Nazis showed themselves.
Their absence — like Hanson’s overwhelming defeat earlier this month — served as a silent victory for democratic principles and political moderation in this Tennessee city that’s emerged as ground zero in conservative communities’ often awkward fight against right-wing extremism.
Indeed, the cultural contradictions of America in the era since MAGA has taken a stubborn hold on national politics are contained in Franklin, which is part of the region anchored by Nashville.
While Nashville is the undisputed capital of country music, Franklin has become a hub of the Christian music recording industry, and the region has attracted a growing roster of conservative influencers such as Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh.
As such, Franklin, one of the wealthiest cities in the country, plays a crucial role in American mythmaking. While Democratic-leaning Nashville recently elected a progressive mayor, the far right has targeted Franklin and surrounding Williamson County.
America’s cultural contradictions in microcosm
Franklin’s contradictions can be seen in the Confederate monument that soars from a tall plinth at the center of the public square, commemorating the city’s role as the site of a historic battle near the end of the Civil War. It’s offset by a less prominent bronze sculpture of a Black soldier to tell a more complete story about the city’s history by recognizing the contributions of the United States Colored Troops who helped repulse the Confederate advance.
A girl studies the history of the Civil War in Franklin at the U.S. Colored Troops monument on the city's public square. Jordan Green/Raw Story
On weekends, the two-block stretch of downtown Franklin billed by a local foundation as “America’s favorite Main Street district” is chock-a-block with youthful buskers plying a fresh-scrubbed version of Americana that includes fiddle tunes, folk songs and contemporary country music. This past Saturday, teenagers in town for a religious retreat roamed through downtown to evangelize, and they mobbed one of the buskers, a college student, who was taking a break after playing a song by LGBTQ-friendly country artist Tyler Childers.
But social tensions in Franklin are real, culminating last month with Hanson’s neo-Nazi-backed campaign. These tensions also foreshadow a kind of conflict that could rock most any red-leaning corner of the United States ahead of the 2024 presidential election, when Democratic President Joe Biden is likely to face a rematch with former Republican President Donald Trump.
While the local election in Franklin, along with the recent off-year elections in Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia, have handed Trump and the GOP a succession of defeats, both Trump and neo-Nazis organizing in Middle Tennessee have embraced increasingly violent rhetoric. Trump, with four criminal trials in the next many months, even continues to embrace the policy positions of these right-wing extremists on issues such as immigration, elections and political opponents. And as became clear on Jan. 6, 2021, ahead of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump sometimes embraces the extremists themselves.
More recently, during his Veterans Day speech in New Hampshire on Nov. 11, Trump vowed that, if reelected, he will “root out… the radical left thugs that live within the confines of our country.” On the same day, the neo-Nazis led by the coalition that embraced Hanson’s unsuccessful mayoral candidacy staged a flash rally at the Tennessee state capitol in Nashville, and posed for a photo in front of the monument to Andrew Jackson, the former American president responsible for the forced removal of the Cherokee people from east of the Mississippi resulting in thousands of deaths from hunger, sickness and exhaustion. (As president, Trump hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office.)
A neo-Nazi flash rally and fight club meetup
At first, it seemed as if Nazis would indeed attempt to spoil Franklin’s bucolic Sunday afternoon — and worm their way back into the city’s civic discourse after Hanson’s overwhelming defeat.
For weeks, they had been circulating a digital flier headlined “March of the Tristar Legionnaires” that named Franklin and the date Nov. 12. The flier was otherwise vague on the time and location. But a flash rally in Nashville on Saturday offered one clear indication of trouble.
And Brad Lewis, a 51-year-old self-described “actual literal Nazi,” hosted on Saturday at the Lewis Country Store — a Nashville gas station equipped with a private gym —about 25 members of the neo-Nazi groups Vinland Rebels and White Lives Matter, as well as so-called “active clubs” from Tennessee, Alabama and Ohio.
Lewis had previously warned that local journalists will be killed in a violent purge known as the “day of the rope.” Writing on Telegram, he proclaimed without evidence that “there is no stopping this train now. No deals. No mercy.”
He went on to say that left-wing political enemies, whom he falsely described as “murdering, child molesting degenerate communist cock suckers” will “get everything you deserve and then some.”
As it turned out, the Nashville gathering was the main event, and not a warm-up for Franklin.
The neo-Nazis did not explain their absence, but Lewis hinted at dissension within the ranks in a Telegram message on Tuesday in which he said that “it saddened me to hear that certain factions of our movement weren’t allowed to participate in our events with us this past weekend.”
Two days after Hanson lost her election by garnering only roughly 20 percent of the vote compared to 80 percent for her opponent, incumbent Mayor Ken Moore, the 30-year-old Kauffmann had boasted on Telegram that he was preparing to “open a new chapter of struggle with the Active Club Crew on the streets to fight the commie foot soldiers who up to now have had minimal resistance.”
City leaders took the threat seriously. And there certainly would be no invitation, directly or indirectly, to extremists bent on causing trouble.
“We’re a very safe community,” Moore told Raw Story last week. “We have a very good police force. We’re prepared.”
The Franklin-Nazi connection
Kauffmann launched the Tennessee Active Club in the fall of 2022, he quickly positioned it at the center of a coalition of other neo-Nazi and far-right groups by using provocative Nazi symbols and gestures while fielding members to intimidate drag shows at a time when state legislation banning gender-affirming care for minors was pending.
Kauffmann stepped into the arena of neo-Nazi organizing with a reputation for violence because of his history of participation in an online community known as “Terrorgram” for its valorization of white supremacist mass murderers as “saints” and for his arrest on a disorderly conduct charge for allegedly attempting to assault Black Lives Matter protesters in Tennessee in 2020.
Kauffmann’s group distinguished itself in the rapidly growing network of so-called active for its open embrace of bigotry and violence. Like other active clubs, Kauffmann’s crew is built around the idea of bringing together young, white men for martial arts training, coupled with strident propaganda promoting the false claim that white people are endangered as a result of racial diversity.
Tennessee Active Club leader Sean Kauffmann gives a Hitler salute during a protest outside a drag show in Cookeville, Tenn. earlier this year. Courtesy of Josh Brandon
But unlike its more optics-conscious counterparts, the Tennessee Active Club unapologetically promotes neo-Nazi ideology, with members displaying swastika flags, giving Hitler salutes and yelling racial and homophobic slurs at rallies.
The Tennessee Active Club began using the upstairs gym at Lewis Country Store in Nashville this past spring for hand-to-hand combat training, further solidifying Middle Tennessee as a hub for neo-Nazi organizing by hosting meet-ups with Nazis from as far away as Ohio and Alabama. Meanwhile, Lewis had developed a friendship with Hanson, a realtor and at the time a Franklin alderman because she was the listed agent when Lewis Country Store was put on the market.Hanson has described Lewis as “an absolutely great person” and “such a cool guy.”
Following a public furor over Lewis and Kauffmann’s appearance at a candidate forum held at City Hall in Franklin in early October, Hanson refused to denounce the two men and their fellow neo-Nazis.
Instead, she issued a press release that prominently featured statements by Tennessee Active Club and posed for a photo with Kauffmann at a taping in which he was interviewed by one of Hanson’s campaign supporters. While Hanson doubled down during the final days of the campaign by flaunting her relationship with the white supremacists, voters turned out in droves to reject her at the polls, with turnout soaring by more than 300 percent compared to the last mayoral election.
“The community said, ‘No,” and it was with capital letters,” Moore, the mayor, told Raw Story last week. “We’re an inclusive community that wants everybody to enjoy the quality of life that we have here. We don’t accept antisemitism and hate in our community.”
Since losing her bid for mayor, Hanson has predictably leveled unsubstantiated and false claims of election fraud, following a path forged by Trump in 2020, along with Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in 2022.
With Trump using his platform as the leading GOP candidate to amplify election denialism, Hanson’s false claims of election fraud — by extension undermining the legitimacy of democratic governance — are unlikely to fade from public discourse.
Hanson, who participated in a charismatic tent revival in which an evangelist declared that she was “anointed to be the mayor,” used martial language in her campaign. Referencing the famous Civil War battle, Hanson described the mayoral election to conservative podcaster Jeremy Slayden as being “like the next battle of Franklin.”
“This is much larger and has much more significance, not only to Franklin, but to our state and potentially our nation,” Hanson told Slayden. “Williamson County has been in the top 10 wealthiest counties in America for years. Franklin is the county seat. If they topple Franklin, they can take the rest of the country. If they can take Williamson County, they can take our state. And it’s pretty much over for our nation.”
Along with opposing multifamily housing and policies to promote urban density in Franklin, Hanson had vocally opposed “racial terror markers,” her phrase to describe official acknowledgments of lynching incidents that were carried out against African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.
Earlier this year, the city’s ethics commission recommended that Hanson be censured for lobbying the president and CEO of the Metro Nashville Airport Authority to withdraw funding for a local Juneteenth celebration, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.
During the Juneteenth celebration that took place the previous year, masked members of White Lives Matter encircled the celebration at the public square while holding signs with white supremacist messages.
The forces of white supremacy and Christian nationalism run deeper than Hanson, said Kevin Riggs, a self-described “social justice” pastor who leads Franklin Community Church.
A low-income congregation in a markedly affluent city, the church’s membership is split roughly equally among African-American and Latino worshipers. Hanson’s mayoral candidacy is part of a concerted push by the far right over the past few years to take over the city’s board of aldermen, the local school board and the county commission, Riggs said.
“There were people who believe they have been anointed by God to run for alderman, and if they had won they would have implemented God’s rules and standards — as they see it,” Riggs told Raw Story. “It didn’t end with this election. They got some positions on the school board…. When county elections are up, I’m sure they’ll have someone who is going to run for county mayor.”
Riggs has become an outspoken critic of Christian nationalism, arguing that the movement to promote Christian dominion over government and society violates both the Constitution and Jesus’ teaching to treat others as they would want to be treated.
He told Raw Story that the alliance between Christian nationalists and neo-Nazis, many of whom do not profess to be religious, or instead practice Odinism — an ancient Norse belief system — is unsurprising.
“While a neo-Nazi may not claim to be Christian, it’s the traditional values that they want to go back to, which are steeped in white supremacy,” he said. “Historically the dominant group in our country was WASP — white Anglo-Saxon protestants. When that dominant group feels threatened by immigrants, by the LGBTQ community, they feel that they’re losing their identity, which is whiteness. If you wrap that in religious language, then it becomes powerful. ‘It’s not just what we want — this is what God has mandated us to do.’”
It seems unlikely that Hanson’s ignominious defeat at the polls and her neo-Nazi allies stand down on Sunday signals a retreat for the far right in Franklin and other conservative communities across the country.
Hanson’s loss and a conservative city's rejection of Trumpian rhetoric may be a harbinger of trouble for Trump in next year’s election, but the MAGA forces that Trump unleashed and Hanson stoked are unlikely to go quietly.
A former Republican lawmaker says ex-President Donald Trump "is done" after Jenna Ellis admitted to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' investigators that she was told he wouldn't leave the White House, despite having lost the 2020 election.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges and decried the Georgia election fraud case as a "witch hunt." On Tuesday, a representative for Rudy Giuliani, who worked closely with Ellis, issued a statement demanding his charges be dropped based on evidence given by Sidney Powell.
This is not the first time Kinzinger, one of two House Republicans to join the Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, has criticized Trump.
Longtime Donald Trump associate Sidney Powell, an attorney who pushed election conspiracy theories that were espoused by a woman who believes she can speak with the wind, has taken a plea agreement in the Georgia election racketeering case — and part of her agreement involved admitting that the former president called her several times to check in on how her legal efforts to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election were coming along.
That's a problem, notedWashington Post reporter Aaron Blake on X, because it contradicts a defense that the former president made on his Truth Social platform attempting to throw Powell under the bus.
"Despite the Fake News reports to the contrary, and without even reaching out to the Trump Campaign, MS. POWELL WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS," Trump said at the time. "In fact, she would have been conflicted."
This was already at odds with a great deal of public evidence.
For example, on December 14, 2020, Trump posted on social media welcoming Powell, along with Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani, as "a truly great team, added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives" who would work on "the legal effort to defend OUR RIGHT to FREE and FAIR ELECTIONS."
This at the very least implies that he had retained Powell for legal services. Moreover, prior reports indicate Trump strongly considered appointing Powell as a special counsel to investigate fraud, and Giuliani stepped in to prevent this from happening.
All of this comes as Trump is facing an ultimatum from Judge Tanya Chutkan in the federal 2020 election case to declare whether or not he is going to rely on an "advice of counsel" defense for his actions — which would potentially blame his attorneys for his actions, but also invalidate attorney-client privilege and leave his communications with his attorneys open to examination.
ABC News revealed clips of the proffer session from Fulton County with Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell on Monday, revealing previously unknown details about the aftermath of the 2020 election.
In Ellis' case, a White House aide told the former Donald Trump lawyer that they weren't leaving. They would hole up in the White House and refuse to leave. That ultimately didn't happen, and it's unclear why.
Powell told prosecutors she planned to take voting machines from around the country, and she frequently communicated with Trump to overturn 2020. She specifically mentioned her effort to seize voting machines.
"Did I know anything about election law? No," she told Fulton County. "But I understand fraud from having been a prosecutor for 10 years, and knew generally what the fraud suit should be if the evidence showed what I thought it showed."
Powell agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors in the county, accepting six years of probation.
In response to Raw Story's report, Ted Goodman, political advisor to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, sent the following statement:
"The government's main witness, Sidney Powell, just cleared Rudy Giuliani from any involvement in a conspiracy by making it unequivocally clear that Rudy Giuliani told her that he would never work with her on anything, under any circumstances. If Fani Willis had any integrity, she'd dismiss the case against Rudy Giuliani and end this farce of a trial designed solely to keep President Donald Trump out of the White House in 2024."
An attorney who tearfully accepted a plea deal in the Georgia election fraud case against Donald Trump says she was told the former president “was not going to leave” the White House after losing the 2020 election, according to a new report.
Jenna Ellis detailed to investigators from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office a White House Christmas party conversation she'd had with former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, according to recordings obtained by ABC News.
"The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances," Scavino reportedly said in an excited tone. “We are just going to stay in power.”
Neither Scavino nor the Fulton County District Attorney responded to ABC News’ request for comment, which was declined by Ellis’ attorneys. Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the Georgia criminal corruption case, called Ellis’s statement “bogus.”
"If this is the type of bogus, ridiculous 'evidence' DA Willis intends to rely upon, it is one more reason that this political travesty of a case must be dismissed,” Sadow told ABC News.
Ellis was initially one of 19 co-defendants in the racketeering indictment Willis filed in August, but has since joined a growing number of “flips” who’ve accepted plea deals in exchange for testimony.
According to ABC News, Ellis told Willis’ team that she was puzzled by Scavino’s statement.
“I said to him, 'Well, it doesn't quite work that way, you realize?'”
According to Ellis, Scavino replied, “We don't care."
In response to Raw Story's reports about Ellis and Sidney Powell, Ted Goodman, political advisor to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, sent the following statement:
"The government's main witness, Sidney Powell, just cleared Rudy Giuliani from any involvement in a conspiracy by making it unequivocally clear that Rudy Giuliani told her that he would never work with her on anything, under any circumstances. If Fani Willis had any integrity, she'd dismiss the case against Rudy Giuliani and end this farce of a trial designed solely to keep President Donald Trump out of the White House in 2024."
Following a request to Donald Trump from Judge Tanya Chutkan over whether he will use the "advice of counsel" defense in his Washington D.C. trial related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, one former prosecutor claimed it won't fly and the former president will have painted himself into a corner if he attempts it.
Speaking with MSNBC host Katie Phang, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner claimed the judge is putting the former president and his legal team in a difficult position.
"Here is the problem, Katie," he began. "One of Donald Trump's lead attorneys, Rudy Giuliani was investigated by [special counsel] Jack Smith to see if he was intoxicated during the time he was giving legal advice to Donald Trump on and around January 6th. Guess what? There is no advice of drunk counsel defense."
"But even worse, Donald Trump, in an interview with, I believe, [NBC's] Kristen Welker said, 'You know what? I did not really rely on my lawyers. I relied on my own instincts.' Guess what? There is no reliance on your own instincts' defense."
"I hope he goes with that one because his instincts are often corrupt if not criminal," he quipped before continuing, "But here's the most dramatic problem for Trump: his counsel, his lawyers like Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro and John Eastman are his charged co-conspirators and co-defendants in the Georgia RICO case and, the one thing I can tell our viewers is there is no such thing as an advice of co-conspirator defense."
"Donald Trump has nowhere to turn on this one," he pronounced.
House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) displays a flag associated with Christian extremism outside his office at the U.S. Capitol.
The Louisiana Republican posted flags outside his office representing the United States and Louisiana, along with a Revolutionary War-era "Appeal to Heaven" flag, which has become associated with New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) network seeking to place the government under right-wing Christian control, reported Rolling Stone.
The white flag shows an evergreen tree in the center and black letters spelling out "An Appeal to Heaven" at the top, and it was originally commissioned by George Washington as a naval flag for Massachusetts.
But for the past decade it has become a symbol of the NAR movement and their goal of establishing a “Seven Mountain Mandate" over the government.
"The 'Mandate,' as they understand it, is given by God for Christians to 'take dominion' and 'conquer' the tops of all seven of these sectors and have Christian influence flow down into the rest of society," reported Bradley Onishi and Matthew D. Taylor for the magazine. "Drawn into American politics by this aggressive theological vision, many New Apostolic Reformation leaders became very active in right-wing political circles, including one of C. Peter Wagner’s key disciples, an apostle-prophet named Dutch Sheets. Sheets is not a household name in Christian politics like Jerry Falwell or Ralph Reed or James Dobson, but he has real influence."
Sheets was given an "Appeal to Heaven" flag in 2013 by a friend who described it as the banner that flew over the nation at its birth because it predated the Stars and Stripes, and he seized upon it as a symbol of the spiritual warfare he believed would be necessary to complete a Christian nationalist revolution, and he published a book on the topic in 2015, the same year Sarah Palin endorsed his efforts an opinion piece in Breitbart after he gave her a flag.
The NAR movement and Sheets endorsed Trump's candidacy early on, and dozens of "Appeal to Heaven" flags were carried to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Sheets and his team were in Washington, D.C., eight days before the insurrection and stayed at the Willard Hotel, where Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon set up war rooms ahead of Jan. 6, and Sheets and 14 other NAR prophets held a multi-hour meeting at the White House with Trump administration officials, although it's not clear which officials were there.
A spokesman for Johnson told Rolling Stone that all members of Congress may post three flags outside their office, and said the speaker appreciates the “rich history of the flag."
“Rep. Johnson’s Appeal to Heaven flag was a gift to him and other members of Congress by Pastor Dan Cummins, who has served as a guest chaplain for the House of Representatives over a dozen times, under Speakers from both parties,” the spokesperson said.
This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
A 21-year-old police recruit stood in the early morning winter darkness, unsure of what had just happened inside the Comfort Suites in Grand Chute, Wisconsin.
After a night of heavy drinking she awoke partially clothed in a hotel bathtub. Two male academy recruits — from Appleton and Sheboygan — were dousing her feet with cold water and slapping her awake. She dressed and fled the hotel room, but still felt too drunk to drive, so she phoned a trusted co-worker at the Grand Chute Police Department.
After the officer brought her to the police station, she described her ordeal and raised the possibility that she had been sexually assaulted. A DNA swab and blood test were taken at the hospital. She later told Wisconsin Watch she felt confused and still intoxicated during the initial interview.
“Some of the things that I told them — when I was reading the report — I didn’t even remember telling them,” she said.
The two men involved initially gave conflicting accounts of what happened. DNA results that came back almost two months later confirmed one of the men in the hotel room had sex with her. Yet within 34 hours of the reported assault, the Grand Chute Police Department decided not to refer criminal charges to the district attorney and within a week forced her to resign over an unrelated disciplinary complaint.
Wisconsin Watch obtained internal reports, reviewed the evidence and spoke to criminal justice experts. It found in a case like this, in which a police department employee is an alleged crime victim, Wisconsin has no clear standard for when an outside agency must be involved to avoid a potential conflict of interest either in the law or through professional guidelines.
Wisconsin has adopted a constitutional amendment, known as Marsy’s Law, guaranteeing a crime victim’s right to fairness in the justice system. Grand Chute police cited the law in refusing to release the report or details of the incident to Wisconsin Watch, the latest example of a Wisconsin police department using Marsy’s Law to shield individual police officers from scrutiny.
Wisconsin Watch learned about the Grand Chute sexual assault allegations as part of its initial investigation into the Sheboygan police department and then identified, located and made initial contact with the woman involved. Wisconsin Watch is not naming the parties because it does not typically name alleged sexual assault victims and because the two men involved have not been charged with a crime.
The woman involved said she felt the department used the separate disciplinary review as a pretext to force her out after she reported the assault. Official records show only that she abruptly resigned from the police department before graduating from the law enforcement academy.
“I feel so betrayed by law enforcement as a whole,” she said.
She said because her allegations involved officers from two partner agencies and she was subject to an internal review, her employer should have called in an outside agency like it does for a police shooting.
“I don't think Grand Chute should have investigated it,” she said. “I think they should have called in other people.”
A parallel administrative investigation by Fox Valley Technical College, where the three were enrolled, found the woman’s account — that she was too intoxicated to consent to sex — was credible. The investigation led to both men being suspended from the law enforcement academy.
Shortly after the incident they were both out of a job within their respective departments.
The two men did not respond to calls, voicemails, text messages and emails for comment.
‘There’s no reason I can’t do this’
The female recruit grew up in a small suburban Appleton community. She didn’t have any family in law enforcement and never imagined she would work as a police officer.
“As a child, I always kind of admired the profession,” she said.
She wanted to help people in need and began training to be an EMT. But she found it unfulfilling and was drawn to working closer to her own community. She enrolled in criminal justice courses and said the subject fascinated her.
“There’s no reason I can’t do this,” she recalled thinking, “just because I don’t have a family legacy.”
A Portrait of a former police recruit taken near her home outside of Wisconsin on Sept. 17, 2023. The woman says she doesn’t think the Grand Chute Police Department should have investigated her sexual assault allegations against two law enforcement academy classmates. (Jenn Ackerman for Wisconsin Watch)
Shortly after her 20th birthday, Grand Chute’s police department hired her as a community service officer — a part-time civilian employee who investigates minor complaints such as off-leash dogs and parking violations.
The entry level program is often a precursor to the 18-week police academy.A year and a half into her employment, she learned someone filed a complaint alleging she disparaged the department in front of academy students and used a slur to refer to a co-worker with whom she had clashed, which she disputes.
The complaint also alleged she occasionally talked with a co-worker while leaving a phone call on hold and neglected to conduct neighborhood patrol checks, which she acknowledged.
The review was opened in early January 2022. She said at first she was assured it would take a week or two, but it dragged on without resolution. She said she threatened to quit in February but was told she would get no reference from the department if she did.
“The inquiry was going on for so long,” she said. “I was like, I just want this to be done with.”
A night out after success on the shooting range
Fox Valley Technical College’s law enforcement academy recruits were out on March 2, 2022 — a Wednesday evening — to celebrate passing their firearms qualification. The woman met a friend at a steakhouse for dinner and a cocktail after class, and she later spotted the two academy classmates.
The trio next went to the lobby bar of the Comfort Suites where one of the men was staying, before heading to The Peppermint Hippo strip club in Neenah for more drinks.
“On the car ride back to the hotel I couldn’t even hold my own head up,” she recalled.
By the time they returned to the Comfort Suites, she told investigators, she had between six and nine mixed drinks and as many as three shots over the course of the evening.
“One of the things that registered as a red flag to me — after the fact — was that the only drink I paid for myself that night was the margarita I had before I even met up with them,” she said. “Every other drink was being brought to me by them. And I just kept drinking, for free.”
She was too drunk to drive back to her mother’s house nearby so one of the men rented a second room. What happened next inside the room is in dispute.
The woman said she lay down on the couch. She vaguely remembers being carried to the bed and her jeans being pulled down but didn’t resist because her pants were tight and uncomfortable.
“I felt like I was way too drunk. I just wanted to go to bed,” she said. “Because I think at that point … I was like, ‘I've been drunk for too long. I just want to be sober again.’ ”
A Portrait of a former police recruit taken near her home outside of Wisconsin on Sept. 17, 2023. Her former agency recommended no charges after concluding a sexual assault investigation within 34 hours, which one criminal justice expert calls “troubling.” (Jenn Ackerman for Wisconsin Watch)
In the report one of the men said he picked her up and tossed her onto the bed as she was laughing. She told investigators she may have been carried to the bed, but her recollection was hazy.
She later recalled both men performing sexual acts on her while she slipped in and out of consciousness, unable to physically resist.
“I couldn’t get myself to come to,” she said, “to wake myself up and stop anything.”
Speaking to Grand Chute police investigators, one of the men at first denied any sexual contact, claiming that she had attempted to have sex with him and that he could be considered a victim of sexual assault. After police revealed the other man confirmed the three had sex, he changed his story.
All three told investigators that they fell asleep but woke up minutes later when the woman’s alarm went off around 2 a.m.
“They carried me into the shower and set me on the side of the tub and turned the cold water on me to try and wake me up,” she recalled. “Because I think at that point, they just kind of wanted to get rid of me.”
Investigators met a second time with her that afternoon. They suggested she answer a Snapchat social media message she received from one of the men earlier that morning. The detective coached her on how to answer, she said.
The detective’s coaching is not reflected in the report that includes a transcript of the written exchange. She responded at one point that she was “embarrassed” — a word choice she said was suggested by the detective and which she later thought hurt her credibility.
“Embarrassed isn’t the right word to describe how I feel about this,” she told Wisconsin Watch. “If I had regrets, this would not be the course of action I would take.”
Open and shut in less than 34 hours
Investigators concluded the woman wasn’t completely incapacitated by alcohol because she wasn’t visibly swaying when she checked into the hotel and she used her phone to call an officer she knew.
Grand Chute Police Chief Greg Peterson said investigators ultimately received conflicting stories about what happened inside the room.
“There was her statement and there are the statements from (the two male recruits) — their opinion that she wasn't completely blacked out,” he said.
Experts say sexual assaults can be difficult to prosecute for a number of reasons but particularly when the parties know each other, there is no sign of physical coercion and alcohol is involved.
But Spohn — who advises the military and metropolitan police agencies on handling sexual assault cases — also called the quick resolution of the case “troubling.”
“In my experience of reviewing these kinds of cases, the police would not close the case so quickly,” she said. “They would spend a little more time giving the victim at least the satisfaction of knowing that they did do a thorough investigation.”
Spohn based her opinion on the incident report prepared by Grand Chute police investigators, whom she credited with apparently thorough work — gathering evidence immediately at the hotel and interviewing all three involved.
Spohn said the fact that all three confirmed that the woman was out cold with her socks on in the bathtub and they were slapping her to try to wake her up supported her claim that she was too intoxicated to consent.
Spohn also said it was odd that a detective would suggest the victim say she felt “embarrassed” after being sexually assaulted if they wanted to get information out of a potential crime suspect.
“You think that they would have coached her to say ‘I feel really violated’ rather than ‘embarrassed’ and his response might have been different,” Spohn said.
A Portrait of a former police recruit taken near her home outside of Wisconsin on Sept. 17, 2023. The two men she accused of sexual assault are no longer in law enforcement, but could be eligible to reapply to a law enforcement academy as early as next year. (Jenn Ackerman for Wisconsin Watch)
In an interview Grand Chute Capt. Colette Jaeger said investigators believed the woman was telling the truth, but the evidence they found — which included video surveillance footage from the hotel lobby — wasn’t consistent with someone being incapacitated to the point of being sexually assaulted.
“She reported sexual assault, and then the elements of the crime just weren’t able to be confirmed, validated,” Jaeger said. “I mean, what we were left with was her saying she did not give consent and then two other stories as well as video evidence that didn’t support that.”
Much of the woman’s account to investigators took place in the early morning when she said she was still reeling from more than 10 alcoholic drinks the night before.
“By her own statement, (she) could not recall if she had said yes to the encounter occurring and she did not recall what had occurred,” detective Sgt. Joe Teigen wrote in his summary explaining why criminal charges were not filed.
Ian Henderson, an attorney and policy director for the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said when police officers are involved in a critical incident like a shooting it’s standard practice to give them time to cool down and collect their thoughts before taking a definitive statement.
That the female recruit was confused and expressed doubt over what had just happened immediately after a traumatic event should not be a surprise. “Doing a comprehensive, investigative interview, a day or two after the assault” is considered “best practice,” Henderson said.
But investigators notified all three within 34 hours that criminal charges weren’t being filed. Peterson said his department didn’t rush anything.
“The length of time is not a good indicator of the quality of the investigation,” Peterson said. “I think it was very thoroughly investigated. So, I do feel sorry for the experience that (she) went through. But I do think she was treated with respect.”
Grand Chute police officials confirmed they have no plans to reactivate the investigation. The toxicology report found no evidence of foul play such as a date rape drug in her system.
No professional standards for potential conflicts
Wisconsin state law requires police agencies to call in third-party investigators in critical incidents when officers kill or seriously wound someone in the line of duty.
But the law only applies to those narrow circumstances. And professional standards don’t provide concrete guidance over investigations when there are potential conflicts of interest, said Glendale Police Chief Mark Ferguson, president of the Wisconsin Law Enforcement Accreditation Group.
“We do not have a specific standard that covers an agency requesting another agency to conduct an investigation,” he said.
Grand Chute’s police chief disputed that there were any conflicts in investigating an alleged crime against the recruit while she was separately under administrative scrutiny.
“There usually isn’t a conflict associated with investigating somebody who has been a victim of a crime,” Peterson said.
Daniel Shaw, regional program manager for the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), of which Grand Chute is not a member, said agencies may conduct personnel investigations with regard to administrative violations of policy and procedure. But the group recommends that agencies not investigate their own employees alleged to have committed crimes.
If an officer under a personnel investigation is an alleged crime victim, Shaw said he would want an outside agency to review the case.
“I guess if that happened in my jurisdiction, I'd want to give it to some other agency,” said Shaw, who was a police chief in a mid-sized Michigan city for a decade. “That's my personal view — not a CALEA view.”
Marsy’s Law and victim rights invoked to withhold records
When Wisconsin Watch initially requested Grand Chute’s report on the alleged sexual assault during an investigation into sexual harassment within the Sheboygan Police Department, Grand Chute police declined to release even a redacted version of the report, claiming even associations could violate the privacy of victims.
“It is critical for us to consider the potential adverse effects that may occur if such sensitive records were to be released,” Jaeger, the Grand Chute police captain, wrote in denying Wisconsin Watch’s request.
The department refused to release any narrative — even without names.
“It is more complicated than simply redacting a name in an investigation of this nature,” Jaeger wrote.
Outagamie County District Attorney Melinda Tempelis — whose office has a role enforcing the public records law — agreed with the police department and declined to intervene.
Resignation not voluntary
Five days after the incident the woman was told her employment was over due to the findings of the administrative inquiry. She had a choice: be terminated or immediately resign.
Writing two days after she resigned, Peterson noted in an administrative review that her alleged disparagement of the department to fellow students could damage the agency’s reputation and make it harder to recruit.
Peterson denies any correlation between her departure and her allegation of a crime.
“The episode at the hotel had already taken place — it didn't change or alter my assessment of the administrative violations,” Peterson told Wisconsin Watch. The administrative violations warranted “substantial discipline up to and including termination. It became moot, you know, she had chosen to resign.”
Town of Grand Chute Human Resources Director Sue Brinkman was among those present when the woman was called in on the last day of her job. She confirmed her resignation was not voluntary.
Male recruits lose their jobs
The two men also lost their jobs with their respective police departments.
Appleton police declined to answer questions, but it did release a summary of its disciplinary review to Wisconsin Watch following a public records request. Grand Chute’s police chief contacted his Appleton counterpart the evening of March 3, 2022, to notify him that Appleton’s recruit was the subject of a sexual assault complaint.
Appleton Police Chief Todd Thomas wrote that the recruit was terminated for “immoral” and “unbecoming” conduct three days later. That was after receiving a copy of Grand Chute’s incident report that concluded there was no probable cause for his arrest.
The recruit, who had previously resigned after about a year and a half as a prison guard at Oshkosh Correctional, returned to his job as a corrections officer at the medium-security prison.
The Sheboygan recruit resigned from his job on March 15, 2022.
“I am grateful for the support and belief you all had in me,” he wrote. “It brings me sadness and disappointment to have to submit this letter, but I am honored to have had the time spent with this department.”
College mum on sexual misconduct complaints
Fox Valley Technical College officials wouldn’t say how many sexual misconduct investigations they have conducted at the law enforcement academy in the past five years.
College investigators reviewed Grand Chute’s reports and conducted interviews with three additional witnesses who were at the bars with all three that evening, according to a May 27, 2022, letter outlining the college’s investigation.
College administrators found the woman’s account credible and moved to sanction the two male students.
“After reviewing the evidence and credibility of the witness statements, the preponderance of the evidence outlined above leads me to the finding that the complainant was unable to give valid consent to sexual intercourse due to her incapacitation,” wrote college Associate Vice President Elizabeth Burns.
College administration and law enforcement academy officials declined to answer questions.
“We respect the rights of our students and alumni to share their own experiences,” the college said in an unsigned statement.
The female recruit returned to the academy the following week and went on to graduate in May. She said she was warned not to discuss the incident and deliberately skipped the graduation ceremony.
“Going back to the academy as a whole was probably like, one of the hardest things I’ve done,” she said. “I was very isolated from my classmates.”
The Outagamie district attorney concurred with the decision not to bring charges against the men.
“Although I don’t remember the specific facts, there was a consensus between the investigator and me that this was not a case that could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” Outagamie County Assistant District Attorney Randall Schneider — a former high-ranking state Department of Justice official — wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch.
“If additional information has come to light, this decision can be reevaluated,” he added.
Neither of the men is employed by a police department. The Department of Justice lists the Appleton recruit as “terminated for cause” and the Sheboygan recruit as resigned “prior to completion of internal investigation.”
They could apply to have their suspension from the college lifted next year.
Wisconsin Watch reporter Phoebe Petrovic contributed to this report.
The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.
Former President Donald Trump sat down with Univision for an interview in which he promised his second term would be all about going after his enemies list.
In a leaked transcript provided to Semafor, Trump justified his next campaign against his perceived enemies, saying he would pursue the same course he did in his first time but further.
“Yeah. If they do this, and they’ve already done it, but if they follow through on this, yeah, it could certainly happen in reverse,” he rambled, justifying his future retribution. “It could certainly happen in reverse. What they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box.”
“They have done something that allows the next party — I mean, if somebody, if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business, they’d be out of the election.”
During the 2016 election, brief Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) bragged to Fox’s Sean Hannity that Republicans were able to weaponize Congress to bring down Hillary Clinton's poll numbers.
"Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping," said McCarthy.
After being elected, Trump wanted to prosecute Clinton, The New York Times reported in Nov. 2018. He then sought to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, who refused to give him the "loyalty" he sought.
It was then reported that former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe as well as Comey, were subjected to rare invasive IRS audits that found nothing. In fact, McCabe overpaid his taxes.
When it became clear Joe Biden was going to run for president in 2020, Rudy Giuliani went to Ukraine in an attempt to dig up "dirt" on the Biden family. A flood of conspiracies followed that continues today.
Trump went on to say that he would have prevented the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas by having a "deal" with Iran. Trump left the deal that was in place with Iran.
He continued attacking Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was at one time an ally of Trump. Biden, however, has known Netanyahu for over 40 years, and positive words about the help from the U.S. under Biden seem to have infuriated Trump.
It appears Trump is dialing back his previous attacks. He blasted Netanyahu in October, saying he "let us down" when Trump sought to assassinate top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in 2020. He went on to say Israel must "step up their game" and called Hezbollah "very smart."
"I think Israel has to do a better job of public relations, frankly, because the other side is beating them at the public relations front,” he said in the interview.
When asked about his family separation policy at the border, Trump defended it.
“When you hear that you’re going to be separated from your family, you don’t come,” Trump said. “When you think you’re going to come into the United States with your family, you come.”
He went on: “We did family separation. A lot of people didn’t come. It stopped people from coming by their hundreds of thousands because when they hear family separation, they say ‘Well, we better not go.’”
SANFORD, N.C. — A former U.S. soldier-turned-neo-Nazi, who recently served a federal prison sentence for distributing bomb-making instructions for killing former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, protested outside a children’s story hour led by drag performers last month, Raw Story has confirmed.
Jarrett William Smith, 28, wore a skull mask and a shirt inscribed with the chilling words, “Support your local Einsatz-Kommando” to protest a drag show at a yoga studio in Sanford, N.C.
“Einsatz” refers to a Third Reich-era Nazi mobile death squad that assassinated political enemies, Jews and communists. The shirt also includes the Totenkopf “death’s head” skull that was utilized by Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel paramilitary squad.
Smith, a resident of South Carolina, traveled to Sanford, N.C., where he met five other men and a child wearing masks and sunglasses. Together, they marched single-file down Main Street and joined a small group that included a local pastor on a public sidewalk behind the Sanford Yoga & Community Center, which was hosting a Halloween-themed drag story hour for about 15 children.
Raw Story identified Smith by matching the vehicle that he used to travel to the rally to a 2012 Honda registered in his name in Horry County, S.C., where he currently lives. Ryan Patrick, one of the men wearing skull masks, confirmed in an interview with Raw Story that Smith was also one of the skull-mask wearers and present beside him.
Smith’s presence at the protest does not appear to violate a law. But it indicates he’s back in the business of intimidation following his release from prison.
In 2019, prosecutors accused Smith of encouraging a federal informant to assassinate O’Rourke — a former congressman who’s run for president, U.S. Senate and Texas governor — with a car bomb.
Court documents also indicate that Smith, who law enforcement arrested at Fort Riley in Kansas in September 2019, encouraged users on an encrypted social media app to commit arson against an anti-fascist podcaster.
In February 2020, Smith pleaded guilty to two counts of distributing information related to explosives, destructive devices and weapons of mass destruction. A judge ultimately sentenced Smith to 30 months in prison.
Smith was released from prison in November 2021 after serving slightly more than 14 months, and earlier this year, he successfully petitioned for early termination of supervised release.
“Early termination of Mr. Smith’s supervised release poses no danger to public safety and is in the best interest of justice,” Smith’s federal public defender argued in a court filing. A federal judge in Kansas signed off on the order in July, noting that the government did not oppose the move, effectively cutting Smith’s probation in half — from three years to 18 months.
As part of the special conditions of Smith’s supervised release that U.S. District Court Judge Daniel D. Crabtree imposed, Smith was ordered to “not participate in any anti-government or tax protesting activities which endorse or encourage violence or associate with individuals who are known members of these groups, or possess any literature advocating or supporting these groups” during his probation.
Crabtree freed Smith from these conditions on July 14, when the same judge granted him early release from probation.
Smith, who lives in the Myrtle Beach area — a two-and-a-half hour drive from Sanford — could not be reached for comment, despite multiple efforts to contact him by phone and email, and through family members and his employer.
Rebecca Bongiorno, Smith’s mother, told Raw Story by email that his family would “speak to no one unless they can reverse this lie about him, both in the court and the media.” Asked to elaborate, Bongiorno cited unspecified accusations by then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Tony Mattivi that she said “were thrown out of court.”
Mattivi declined to comment on Smith’s release from probation.
But Mattivi, who now directs the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, told Raw Story he left the U.S. Justice Department while Smith was serving his prison sentence. Mattivi has an extensive prosecutorial history on matters related to terrorism and explosives, having served as the lead prosecutor against the al Qaeda operative who masterminded the bombing of the USS Cole and led the team of prosecutors that convicted three militia members for plotting to bomb an apartment building where Somali Muslim immigrants lived and worshiped.
According to Smith’s motion, the government was represented by First U.S. Attorney Duston Slinkard, who did not oppose Smith’s request for early termination of supervised release. In his order, Crabtree took note that the government did not oppose the request.
“Anyone who is sentenced to probation following conviction has a right to request early release,” Danielle Thomas, a spokesperson for the government, told Raw Story. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas respects the decision of the court in these matters, and we have nothing further to add.”
‘We want you gone’
Smith’s presence Oct. 15 in Sanford, a city of about 30,000 residents, was neither coincidental nor accidental.
And he had help in ensuring the atmosphere around the children’s story hour would be filled with tension.
Jarrett William Smith protests a drag story hour with a bullhorn outside a yoga center in Sanford, N.C. on Oct. 15, 2023.
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As observed by a Raw Story reporter, Smith led the group of masked men to a corner of the public sidewalk at the edge of a gravel parking lot behind the yoga studio in Sanford where two drag performers were reading to children.
They fell in behind Thomas Booher, a local pastor. Holding a Bible to his chest, Booher chastised a small group of pro-LGBTQ supporters stationed throughout the parking lot to protect the venue. Among them: yoga studio co-owner Mike Knapp.
In addition to Ryan Patrick, the crew with Smith included Nicholas Garner Fisher, a 32-year-old self-identified “Nazi” skateboarder from Raleigh.
Fisher, like Smith, has a criminal record, with his record including convictions for illegally carrying a concealed gun.
In Telegram chats reviewed by Raw Story, Fisher has expressed hostility toward Black people. Of Black people using a skate park that he frequents, Fisher wrote, “If someone’s in my way, they get snaked by Fuhrer daddy and the skateparks are a no n----er zone.” Less than 10 days before the Sanford protest, he had posted on Telegram that he had been prevented from boarding a flight in Florida for using a racial slur.
In a written statement provided to Raw Story, Fisher did not confirm or deny that he was present at the protest in Sanford.
“Everyone was wearing a mask, and I reckon they were just concerned citizens as I was,” he said. “I can’t tell you who was there because of the masks.”
While Booher was speaking, some members of Smith’s group introduced themselves to Jere Brower, a local man who served about 30 days in the D.C. Jail for violating the curfew instituted by Mayor Muriel Bowser after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Brower attracted notoriety when coverage of his arrest noted his past association with Aryan Nations, a white power group that brought together racist skinheads and Klansmen in the 1980s and ’90s.
The 48-year-old Brower acknowledged to Raw Story in an interview last week that he has previous ties to the white power group Aryan Nations, but said that today he accepts that whiteness is not a precondition of American citizenship.
Brower told Raw Story that he did not know Smith at the time of the Oct. 15 protest in Sanford, but that members of the crew introduced themselves to him using their nicknames.
Brower had warned — in a comment on the yoga center’s Facebook page prior to the drag event — that he would be tracking who went into the building. He would be ready, he said, to call Child Protective Services, even though performing in drag in the presence of children is not illegal in North Carolina.
Brower tagged friends on a thread under a post on the yoga studio’s page announcing the event.
Some of the responders openly suggested violence. One of them replied by posting a drawing of a person dressed in the colors of the transgender flag colors hanging from a noose. Brower himself replied to a comment by one of the drag performers with a meme promoting the idea that trans people are prone to self-harm.
Smith’s crew coordinated their travel to the protest on Telegram, Patrick told Raw Story. Information about the protest came up in an online chat, he said. One member asked if anyone was going, and another responded affirmatively. Knowing Smith’s affinity for skull masks, Patrick said it was his idea that everyone should wear one so that they could “all look the same, more or less.”
During the protest, Brower ominously predicted, “This will be the last time.”
Smith raised a bullhorn. He slowly launched into a staccato harangue that gradually increased in intensity and volume.
“If you sit around wearing sexual-fetish gear to give yourself sexual pleasure, and you require the presence of children in order to attain that sexual pleasure, you are a pedophile!” he shouted, parroting a false accusation that drag show organizers and attendees are pedophiles.
Smith shook his head in disgust, and his foot slowly edged into the gravel parking lot.
One of the LGBTQ supporters approached and warned, “Hey, back up, man. Back up on the sidewalk.”
One of the members of Smith’s crew then stepped between the two men, and called the LGBTQ supporter a “f---ot.”
Smith resumed his tirade, seething with rage and frustration
“You do not represent us!” he yelled. “We do not want you here! We want you gone! Out of our town! Out of our state! And out of our country!”
LGBTQ supporters stand guard during a drag story hour at a yoga center while facing protesters led by Jarrett William Smith (holding bullhorn). Jordan Green/Raw Story
‘Kindness and support’
Inside the yoga center, drag performer Stormie Dae wielded a light saber and wore a headdress, heavy gray shawl, pants and knee-high boots while portraying the Star Wars character Ahsoka Tano.
Mx. Princexx Peritwinkle, the other performer, embodied the Muppet character Cookie Monster, wearing a floor-length, blue velvet dress with googly eyes. The two performers read books such as Gustavo the Shy Ghost, Calvin, and Creepy Carrots. They made candy bracelets with the children in attendance.
As a trans person, Mx. Princexx Peritwinkle told Raw Story that this performance name puts a “gender queer” spin on “the idea of princess.” Peritwinkle, whose real name Raw Story agreed to withhold for safety reasons, generally uses the ze/zim/zir pronouns.
“When I would go to drag shows, I would see Black and brown and queer and trans people being free and being their authentic selves,” Peritwinkle told Raw Story. “I was like, ‘How do I sign up?’ I learned a new way to sew a zipper and hem a skirt. It’s a space where I’m able to be free and be me and explore how I move my body and how I interact with the audience. There’s so much kindness and support. It feels good being onstage and seeing the audience live for the performance.”
Lindsey Knapp, a lawyer who has represented military veterans facing retaliation for reporting sexual assault, opened the Sanford Yoga & Community Center with her husband in 2020.
Located 30 miles from Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg) — one of the largest military installations in the world — the yoga studio initially focused on providing trauma-informed services to veterans.
During the pandemic, the Knapps’ son came out as trans. Initially, they started an “LGBTQ kids hangout,” Lindsey said, adding that LGBTQ adults started asking for programming as well. Thus, the yoga center expanded into an LGBTQ resource center, incorporating drag shows as one among many queer-friendly activities, including a monthly game night and “sip and paint” sessions.
“My kiddo, when he came out as trans, I wanted to expose him to a lot of different trans humans so he could know he has options,” Lindsey said. “Not everybody who performs in drag events is trans and not every trans person performs in drag events. There are plenty of cisgender people who do drag. Drag in itself is just an art form. I enjoy it because it’s a lot of fun. It’s letting people be creative and use their attire in an effort to express themselves.”
Drag performers Stormie Dae (foreground) and Mx. Princexx Peritwinkle make bracelets with children during a drag story hour. Courtesy Sanford Yoga & Community Center
During the brief altercation between Smith’s crew and the LGBTQ supporters outside, one of the LGBTQ supporters called the Sanford police. Two officers showed up and informed the protesters that, because they didn’t have a permit, they could not use amplified devices and would need to stay on the sidewalk.
The police left. The energy at the protest began to flag. LGBTQ supporters maintained a line and stared down Smith’s crew. About 30 minutes before the conclusion of the drag story session, Smith and his cohort filed out. Most of the drag show protesters joined them in a nearby Dollar Store parking lot where they continued to talk before returning to their cars and driving away without further incident.
A track record of encouraging violence
The federal criminal complaint against Smith alleged that after enlisting in the Army in 2018, he led a group chat on Facebook with other extremists in which he bragged about his expertise in bomb-making.
“Oh yeah, I got knowledge of IEDs for days,” Smith wrote, referring to improvised explosive devices. “We can make cell phone IEDs in the style of the Afghans. I can teach you that.”
Additionally, an FBI confidential source who was communicating with Smith asked him to recommend a political figure in Texas who would be a good candidate for assassination.
“Outside of Beto?” Smith responded. “I don’t know enough people that would be relevant enough to cause a change if they died.”
Meanwhile, according to an affidavit filed by the government, “Smith talked with the [confidential source] about killing members of the far-left group, Antifa, as well as destroying nearby cell tower or [a] local news station.”
In August 2019, the affidavit alleges that Smith told the confidential source “that the headquarters of a major American news network would be a suggested target, utilizing a vehicle bomb.”
During Smith’s sentencing in 2020, he sought to undercut the government’s case by hiring a retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives enforcement officer as an expert witness. The retired officer submitted a report that concluded that Smith’s advice was largely “incorrect or without sufficient detail to have anyone assemble a functioning explosive or incendiary device or weapon of mass destruction.”
According to the government, Smith’s advocacy for violence was motivated by an obscure Satanic belief system known as Quayinism.
Based on an interview following his arrest, an FBI agent wrote about Smith: “He gives information out freely to people who may use it for harm, for the glory of Quayinism, and his religion of anti-kosmik Satanism. He wants to cause chaos, as it brings back the realm of his religious beliefs, through the destruction of the universe.
“Smith said the idea of chaos in the world is a disruption and he can be an agent of chaos by enabling people with his knowledge,” the report continues. “Smith said that if the death of people isn’t affecting him, then he doesn’t see an issue.”
Although Smith was ultimately convicted only of distributing bomb-making instructions, the government also charged him with threatening interstate communication. While stationed at Fort Riley, Smith allegedly communicated a plan to burn down the home of a Michigan man identified in court documents only as “D.H.”
Matching the username “Anti-Kosmik 2182,” which was cited in Smith’s charging documents, anti-fascist researchers noted the user’s contributions to an energetic discussion on the encrypted social media app Telegram about how to respond to a podcast by Daniel Harper that discussed Atomwaffen and how the group drew inspiration from a text by an obscure neo-Nazi author.
“Ditch the car somewhere a few blocks away, take back alley trails in the woods, etc., and then come up to the house wearing a mask,” Anti-Kosmik 2182 wrote, according to a report by the Daily Beast. “I’m not saying do anything illegal, but I am saying it would be a real shame if all he has went up in literal flames.”
In another chat, according to screenshots from a neo-Nazi channel infiltrated by anti-fascist researchers, Smith provided instructions for assembling and setting off an improvised chlorine bomb.
“Good for clearing out a room or breaking up a meeting,” he wrote, while posting as Anti-Kosmik 2182.
Arson appears to be a consistent theme in Smith’s online communications, as well as in his music interests.
The 2019 chats show Smith advocating that someone burn down the trailer of a white supremacist Satanist whom Smith faulted for betraying the cause by supporting North Korea.
Arson is also a theme in the story of “Burzum,” the Norwegian black metal music project whose shirt Smith was wearing in Sanford on Oct. 15.
Burzum was a solo project of Norwegian musician Kristian Vikernes, who served a prison sentence from 1994 to 2009 for murder and arson related to a church-burning spree.
Vikernes was convicted for the murder of former bandmate Øysten Aarseth. Vikernes and his erstwhile musical collaborator “burned churches and desecrated cemeteries,” according to a report by Southern Poverty Law Center. In the early 1990s, Vikernes and Aarseth helped establish National Socialist black metal, a musical subgenre that is explicitly racist.
Smith’s arrest in late 2019 came at a time when the FBI carried out a significant crackdown against white supremacists and their alleged terror plots. Smith found himself at the epicenter and served prison time for his crime.
But since Smith’s release from prison in November 2021, the white power movement has rebounded with a proliferation of so-called “active clubs,” and other, more obscure neo-Nazi and fascist groups.
Smith’s documented history of calling for car-bombings and arson is striking in the current climate of intimidation against the LGBTQ community in which neo-Nazis and other far-right actors have threatened to shut down drag shows.
‘Greater risk’
For some observers, Smith’s presence at the drag show story hour indicates he hasn’t reformed himself.
“If Smith has remained involved in white supremacist activity, that would be concerning,” Jake Hyman, a spokesperson for ADL Center on Extremism, told Raw Story. “His sentence was relatively short, which makes him at greater risk to hold on to extreme views and perhaps even reoffend.”
As an example, Hyman cited Brandon Russell, an Atomwaffen leader who served prison time for possession of explosives, and then was arrested again roughly a year after his release for allegedly plotting an attack on the power grid.
Mx. Princexx Peritwinkle, one of the drag performers at the Sanford Yoga & Community Center on Oct. 15, is no stranger to threats from far-right protesters.
Last December, Peritwinkle participated in an ensemble drag performance at a downtown theater in Southern Pines, N.C. Peritwinkle stood alongside lead performer Naomi Dix as Dix addressed a throng of protesters outside the show. Peritwinkle was onstage that night right before a power outage disrupted the show.
The outage was caused by someone shooting out a substation in surrounding Moore County, resulting in a blackout that was celebrated by accelerationist neo-Nazis who embrace chaos and societal collapse as a precondition for establishing white ethno-states.
Peritwinkle’s mind would go back to that show in Southern Pines for several months when applying drag makeup. But over time the preoccupation with fear diminished and the joy of being in the moment while performing onstage returned.
“After the violence at the Moore County show, knowing that drag can be protested and can be met by so much animosity, I like to remind people that this gets me free,” Peritwinkle said. “It has a way of reaching queer, trans folks, young and old folks. For me, it’s so personal.”
A girl studies the history of the Civil War in Franklin at the U.S. Colored Troops monument on the city's public square. Jordan Green/Raw Story
Tennessee Active Club leader Sean Kauffmann gives a Hitler salute during a protest outside a drag show in Cookeville, Tenn. earlier this year. Courtesy of Josh Brandon
A Portrait of a former police recruit taken near her home outside of Wisconsin on Sept. 17, 2023. The woman says she doesn’t think the Grand Chute Police Department should have investigated her sexual assault allegations against two law enforcement academy classmates. (Jenn Ackerman for Wisconsin Watch)
A Portrait of a former police recruit taken near her home outside of Wisconsin on Sept. 17, 2023. Her former agency recommended no charges after concluding a sexual assault investigation within 34 hours, which one criminal justice expert calls “troubling.” (Jenn Ackerman for Wisconsin Watch)
A Portrait of a former police recruit taken near her home outside of Wisconsin on Sept. 17, 2023. The two men she accused of sexual assault are no longer in law enforcement, but could be eligible to reapply to a law enforcement academy as early as next year. (Jenn Ackerman for Wisconsin Watch)
LGBTQ supporters stand guard during a drag story hour at a yoga center while facing protesters led by Jarrett William Smith (holding bullhorn). Jordan Green/Raw Story
Drag performers Stormie Dae (foreground) and Mx. Princexx Peritwinkle make bracelets with children during a drag story hour. Courtesy Sanford Yoga & Community Center