WASHINGTON — Raw Story today revealed how a neo-Nazi organization led by teenagers has launched a multi-state campaign of violence aimed at Jews, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people and leftists.
“Green unearthed shocking, essential truths about dangerous extremists at significant personal risk,” said Dave Levinthal, editor-in-chief of Raw Story, the nation’s largest independently owned progressive news website. “His reporting today underscores the power — and peril — of independent, investigative journalism at a time when press freedoms are under constant attack and fascist ideologies creep into the mainstream.”
Extremists’ actions against Green include death threats, online doxxing and visiting his house earlier this month dressed in skull masks and holding burning flares.
As Green writes in “Hunted by Nazis: How extremists stalked me while I reported on their violence,” the threats white supremacists have directed at him “would become ever more extreme — and strange.
“The experience was unsettling, but their efforts at intimidation only confirmed in my mind that we had a story that was worth telling,” Green writes.
Green’s ordeal in exposing a violent neo-Nazi group are emblematic of dangers journalists across the nation face while exposing wrongdoing, from corruption in government to plotting by hate groups.
A second Raw Story article about the Nazi youth network to be published Feb. 21 explores the roles parents play in the lives of 2119 members.
Raw Story celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The site significantly expanded its investigative and original reporting team in 2023, redoubling its commitment to journalism focused on domestic extremism, political malfeasance and government accountability.
“Violent extremists threaten our freedoms and the very foundation of democracy,” said Raw Story CEO and founder John Byrne. “The nation is a better place because of Jordan Green’s courageous reporting. Raw Story is proud to support journalism that matters.”
In August, Raw Story filed a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Navy and U.S. Department of Defense following the agencies’ refusal to release records related to a former U.S. Marine and avowed neo-Nazi.
Green, who joined Raw Story in 2021, reports on extremism full-time and has regularly broken national news stories. Last year, he won a Folio Award from the Fair Media Council for his investigative reporting on extremism in America.
Green revealed that a Marine Corps veteran and former defense contractor facing prosecution for his role in a neo-Nazi terror plot is suspected by the government of mishandling classified documents.
He also reported that a former soldier convicted of distributing bomb-making instructions and advocating for the assassination of former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) menaced a drag show at an LGBTQ community center in North Carolina.
Green’s reporting on the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol ranks as among the most incisive in the nation. On the morning of the Jan. 6 attack, Green wrote an article headlined “We’re gonna kill Congress.” As Editor & Publisherlater noted, Green’s story predicted “exactly what would happen on that fateful day.”
Contact: Editor-in-Chief Dave Levinthal, levinthal@rawstory.com
Two rabbis sat down for dinner at Chabad Jewish Center in Pensacola, Fla.
The air on this July evening was warm and tranquil. A sense of peace filled the kitchen where the men shared their meal.
Suddenly, something crashed through the window, sending glass flying. The rabbis rushed over to investigate. Scrawled on the brick that lay on their floor: a swastika and the words “No Jews.”
Within days, local police arrested four white teenagers and collectively charged them with 18 felonies — not only in connection to the brick-throwing incident, but also for bigoted attacks on two area synagogues, a mosque and a Masonic lodge.
The group’s reputed ringleader, 17-year-old Waylon Fowler, initially denied responsibility. But he later admitted to an Escambia County sheriff’s deputy that he threw the brick. Fowler is also accused of throwing another brick — marked with swastikas, “SS” symbols and the words “Death to k----” — through the bathroom window at Temple Beth El.
That could have been the end of Fowler’s hate-filled story — the saga of a misguided boy and his friends who, when caught red-handed, vowed to right their ways.
Instead, the boys began taking an ever-darker path that, in their vision for America, includes a revolution leading to the collapse of the United States and a race war that drives Black people, Jews and LGBTQ+ people out of future whites-only homelands.
It’s a vision that has attracted young neo-Nazis across the country.
Raw Story spent four months investigating the 2119 Blood and Soil Crew, a nationwide network of teenage Nazis. The investigation revealed that Fowler now ranks among the leaders of the network.
In recent months, 2119 members have waged a campaign of targeted terror aimed at Jews, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people and leftists. Their targets include Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Texas and California. In mid-November, 2119’s official Telegram channel suggested the group had expanded to 21 states.
The 2119 gang’s rise as a clandestine network of teenagers who promote and carry out acts of antisemitic and racist violence hasn’t been organic. The group has undertaken a concerted marketing strategy of recruiting children by appealing to their interests, such as online gaming and skateboarding.
Nazi youth associated with 2119 are now under investigation by the FBI, Raw Story has confirmed. The FBI is also actively assisting local police departments as law enforcement pursues crimes committed in the group’s name.
But this legal danger has only emboldened the Nazi teens. They’ve indicated even bigger plans for sowing hate and fear across the country. And they’re recruiting more and more disaffected children to their cause.
The group’s activity comes at a moment when social tension throughout America builds by the day.
Local crime spree, national emergence
Fowler’s neo-Nazi youth group first emerged in 2022 as an under-18 boys auxiliary to the burgeoning “active club” movement — a loose collection of white supremacists united by their interest in fight training, mixed martial arts and white nationalist activism.
After renaming itself Revolutionary White Brotherhood — some bricks that shattered Pensacola windows featured the initials “R.W.B” — the group resurfaced after the arrests of Fowler and his associates as “2119.”
The number is an alphanumeric code. Two represents “B” for “blood,” 1 represents “A” for “and,” and 19 represents “S” for “soil. “Blood and soil” is a slogan dating back to Nazi Germany that invokes a racial claim on land.
Using a newly formed channel on encrypted social media app Telegram, 2119 members gleefully celebrated Fowler’s deeds by circulating an image of the brick used in the Chabad Jewish Center attack. They fashioned Fowler a martyr, circulating a stylized image of him with boyish looks and tousled hair and peppered their communications with the hashtag #FreeWaylon.
The brick quickly became a symbol of action central to the group’s identity. Members in the various Telegram chats associated with 2119 often used the verb “bricking” and referred to themselves as “brickstas.”
A national leadership cadre that had been coalescing since 2022 had now shifted into high gear. Members shared unsettling characteristics: all white boys or young men in their mid- to late-teens who embraced extreme violence against Black people and members of other marginalized groups. They delighted in a catchphrase that encapsulates an extreme aspect of a segment of the hyperviolent, racist internet culture: — “total n— death.”
Other teenage neo-Nazis that gravitated to the 2119 banner steeped themselves in virulent hate and a paramilitary aesthetic that draws as much from the Irish Republican Army and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as the Third Reich.
The exact size of 2119’s membership is unknown. But a source knowledgeable with the group’s internal dynamics said it numbers in the hundreds. While that figure could not be independently verified, Raw Story has confirmed at least 20 self-identified 2119 members that participate in group activities. They live throughout the country, from California to Texas to New Hampshire.
The white power ethos embraced by members of 2119 draws from a loose collective of extreme Telegram accounts known as Terrorgram. Together, they promote acts of domestic terror and destruction that range from mass murder to attacks on the power grid.
A steady diet of gore videos and images — a photo of nude, Black female body missing her head stands out for its depravity — and instruction manuals for industrial sabotage swirl amid unyielding racist discourse.
But while spectacular and devastating, those modes of violence — by the 2119 members’ own admission — rarely allow the perpetrators to stay on the offensive and effectively network with one another.
The 2119 teenage neo-Nazis have instead embraced what’s for them a more scalable and sustainable — although no less disquieting — model of racist criminal violence.
Considered in isolation, the attacks across several states might be classified as acts of youthful vandalism and criminal mischief. Juvenile perpetrators who police catch might expect lenient punishments — ones that could be expunged as they reached adulthood.
But by 2119’s acknowledgement, these acts are deliberately designed to terrorize Jews and Black people. They offer 2119 members high propaganda value with relatively low risk to themselves.
These attacks also provide 2119 a model for a continuous, insidious feedback loop of documenting crimes, incorporating footage into propaganda videos and recruiting new members. Newly minted 2119 adherents, largely from rural and suburban communities, franchise the brand by committing new crimes in the group’s name. The process repeats and metastasizes.
Internal communications reviewed by Raw Story indicate that group members believe their status as children gives them a critical advantage — the impunity to commit acts of targeted terror against innocent people, while laying the groundwork for a future that they hope will allow them to commit murder on a grand scale.
When asked why he wasn’t already killing Black people, one former 2119 member responded, “When the system collapses, that’s the plan.”
Rapid radicalization
The 2119 leaders’ ambitions are chilling and plain in their voluminous online posts.
Their actions preceding prior run-ins with law enforcement speak even more loudly.
Aiden Cuevas, one of 2119’s most enthusiastic promoters, was charged as a juvenile in Alabama with terroristic threatening. He exhorted his peers to assault Black people “to save the white race.”
Aaron Alligood, a longtime member from Georgia, said that he wants “total collapse to happen” and has spoken of this desire to “stick a pistol” in a Black person’s nose, using a racial slur instead of “Black.”
Noah Houran, a 17-year-old from North Carolina described as “a 2119 OG,” distributed the IRA’s guerilla warfare handbook and a sniper training manual on his Telegram channel and expressed approval in response to a news story about a house that was booby-trapped with explosives in anticipation of a police raid.
Mathew David Bair, a 34-year–old Marine Corps veteran who joined 2119 last year, has unapologetically advocated for assassinating judges.
Members of 2119 likewise glorify mass shooters as “saints,” said Emily Kaufman, the associate director for investigative research at the ADL Center on Extremism, an anti-hate organization.
Kaufman noted that 2119 members also display the influences of the most extreme violent faction of the white power movement — what experts call “accelerationism” — “geared towards recruiting youth.”
Accelerationism is a tendency within the white power movement that seeks to hasten the collapse of American society for the purpose of creating conditions favorable to the rise of white ethno-states. Accelerationists reject political methods for achieving the movement’s objectives.
One 2119 member — Alligood — directly endorsed accelerationism on Telegram in December 2022: “I want total collapse to happen.”
Racist and antisemitic intimidation
When the authorities released Fowler on bond around Sept. 1, Georgia-based Aaron Alligood hailed his freedom as a signal that 2119 was on solid ground.
“Good news, Waylon is out on bail,” Alligood wrote in a Telegram chat with an extensive audience of racist skinheads from as far away as Southern California and the Balkans. “And the feds don’t got a case on him.”
Fowler, the reputed 2119 ringleader, awaits trial later this year in Pensacola, having pleaded not guilty to all charges. His freedom appears emboldening.
Since September, 2119 members have allegedly committed at least three additional hate crimes, twicetagging buildings in Laconia, N.H. with antisemitic graffiti and defacing a Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Concord, N.C.
Raw Story has independently confirmed vandalism incidents in at least four different states during the past 12 months that incorporated 2119’s various monikers.
The group makes scant effort to conceal its criminal intent. An “action report” it published online baldly states: “Members/associates of the crew are known to have a militant/violent reputation, and embrace confrontation with political/racial enemies.”
Impatience with standard-issue MAGA activism
When voters elected Donald Trump president in 2016, most of 2119’s members were elementary schoolers.
But they came of age during a time when Trump, as a candidate and president, demonized Muslims, attacked transgender Americans and generally shattered democratic norms.
They watched many Republicans cheer the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and jeer subsequent congressional inquiries and criminal trials. And they have seen multitudes of conservatives, from community agitators to federal lawmakers, fully commit to culture-war attacks on LGBTQ+ people, Black history and even library books.
Raised on internet violence, racism and homophobia, the children who gravitated to 2119 helped build their own, unique communion of hate. They could be as extreme and unmoored as they pleased. They operated free from adult-led, optics-conscious white power groups such as Patriot Front or extreme MAGA movements organized around the cult of Trump.
Patriot Front, for one, “failed to make any change in a matter of 6 years,” Alligood complained on Telegram in December. He dismissed Patriot Front’s activism as indistinguishable from MAGA, adding that he encountered the group’s members at a Trump rally — and he was not impressed.
Now, in 2024, Trump is once again all but guaranteed to become the Republican presidential nominee.
But for 2119 members, it’s not enough to be MAGA. It’s not enough to just support Trump.
The 2119 children aspire to something beyond Trump.
For them, it’s about “activism” that spreads fear, if not outright violence.
National 2119 leadership on FBI's radar
Two 2119 devotees in particular have made direct action their calling card of intimidation.
Eight days before his 16th birthday, in November 2022, the FBI summoned Noah Houran at his high school on the North Carolina coastline.
The agents asked Noah about a video he posted that he claimed showed him burning an LGBTQ+ pride flag. They quizzed him about an online statement he made about plans to attend an unspecified rally.
The agents wanted to know if Noah’s online statements were merely his fantasies, or if he really intended to carry out an act of violence.
Anti-LGBTQ+ violence was cresting at the time. Hysterical rhetoric among conservative politicians and right-wing media personalities braided into a mounting harassment campaign aimed at drag shows. The protests drew far-right groups, sometimes armed, ranging from the Proud Boys to avowed neo-Nazis.
The hostile political climate spilled over into fatal violence on Nov. 19, 2022, when a shooter gunned down five people at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colo. As an indicator of the legitimate concern about mass shootings targeting the LGBTQ+ community, the Club Q shooting took place only three days after the date Noah Houran reported to Aaron Alligood that he had been questioned by the FBI.
Noah Houran was a hiking enthusiast whose interest in nature extended to eco-terrorism. A Telegram channel Houran created in October 2023 served as a distribution hub for texts written by Ted Kaczynski, who died in prison last year while serving time for the murders of three people during a 17-year bombing campaign carried out from a cabin in rural Montana.
One of Houran’s posts displayed a photo of a shed built from salvaged materials that was captioned, “Here’s my Ted K cabin, built it about 2 years ago.”
Less than two months after Houran was questioned by the FBI, Aiden Cuevas announced on Telegram chat that he was in legal trouble, while reassuring his peers that “just in case they get my phone I took off everything affiliating with 2119.”
“I’m on probation for some bulls— charge of terroristic threat (by the FBI of course),” he said.
Cuevas, who in November said he was 18 years old, told his friends he would be serving a sentence at the Mt. Meig’s campus, an Alabama juvenile correctional facility outside of Montgomery.
Raw Story was unable to find any record of Cuevas’ case. It is likely sealed, as he would have been a juvenile at the time of the offense. But in January 2019, WBRC-TV 6 in Birmingham, Ala., reported that a juvenile in Madison County was charged with making a terrorist threat to Thompson High School in Alabaster, Ala..
Cuevas lived in Madison County, which surrounds Huntsville, more than 100 miles to the north.
An Instagram post, made in November 2023, appears to show Noah Houran dressed in camouflage and aiming a rifle. The firearm, with the exception of the scope, is blurred out. Responding to a commenter who said he was “afraid to show his gun,” Noah wrote that he would “rather not repeat 2022” — an allusion to his run-in with the FBI agents.
Raw Story confirmed Cuevas’ identity as a 2119 member who posted on Telegram under the screen name “Bozak” by matching biographical details such as his mother’s birthplace in the Chuvash Republic in Russia, and his father’s U.S. Army assignment in Japan.
'The fascist pipeline'
Mathew David Bair, a 34-year-old Marine Corps veteran from Pennsylvania, meanwhile, came out of the extreme end of the MAGA movement, having been active with the Proud Boys when they stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. He appears to be one of the few members of 2119 older than 18 years old.
After Jan. 6, 2021, Bair increasingly gravitated to an array of far-right groups that embraced national socialism more explicitly than the Proud Boys.
“The fascist pipeline is very real, as you well know,” Bair said. “I was in a direct pipeline chapter.”
A well-publicized fistfight between Proud Boys and neo-Nazis in June 2023 appeared to hasten his transition. By November, he began heavily promoting 2119 on his Telegram channel.
In a phone call with Raw Story, Bair confirmed he is now a 2119 member.
The difference between the Proud Boys and younger groups such as 2119, Bair said, is that the Proud Boys tend to attract older men who join to fulfill a need for friendship. The younger members of 2119 are more ideologically committed and less concerned about concealing their racist beliefs, he said.
He said he admired the 2119 members for their brashness.
“When these young ones, when they’re talking to their peer groups — to take the step and proclaim your viewpoint, even talking surface level, they might not mention Hitler, but they’ll say, “Have you read Mein Kampf?”
Bair described Trump’s supporters as a natural constituency for Nazism, while condescendingly treating them as if they are clinging to outdated political norms.
“Regardless of your opinion on Trump,” he wrote on Telegram, “his MAGA following incorporates a large number of people who would be our guys if they could break the matrix.”
‘An untapped market full of white children'
In recent months, recruiting children to 2119’s hate-filled cause has become a top group priority.
For example, in August, Cuevas praised a Telegram channel called Robloxwaffen Division — a coupling of “Roblox,” a popular online game geared for youth, and “Waffen,” the combat branch of the Nazi Party’s Schutzstaffel, or SS.
Cuevas hailed the teenagers behind Robloxwaffen as “geniuses.”
“They are reaching an untapped market full of white children that could potentially change their worldview and get them into the movement just from some fun on Roblox,” he said.
In January, the creator of Robloxwaffen — a teenager known only by his Telegram nickname “Patrius” — posted a Roblox-generated scene that simulated the 1999 Columbine massacre with two avatars holding assault rifles while striking a pose between rows of bookshelves. While his age is unknown, “Patrius” has said he isn’t old enough to drive.
That hasn’t stopped the violent ideations of “Patrius” from becoming even more acute. Earlier this month he threatened to “bomb” a gathering at a skating rink to raise awareness for National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day — adding the obligatory disclaimer, “in Roblox.”
Cuevas, for his part, counseled fellow neo-Nazi teenagers to immerse themselves in subcultures, such as skateboarding, where they can easily make friends.
“I myself choose to target younger whites, still in high school that are lonely and all they want is a tight group of friends to have fun with,” Cuevas wrote.
Cuevas reported that he met a girl who was skateboarding alone after his local skate park had closed, and “she thought the swastikas were cool and had never seen ‘Nazis’ before.”
He boasted that in the past three weeks he had met “4 young white men that have seen my flag and hung out with my friends while we [will] be casually racist and throw up Romans,” referring to Nazi salutes.
‘Death squad'
Since its inception in May 2022, under the moniker “American Columbian Movement,” the 2119 group has made propaganda videos a key recruiting tool — one they consider essential to their growth and the advancement of their long-term goals.
One shows 2119 members marching to an anti-abortion rally.
“Nat soc death squad,” the teenagers chant in a robotic drone, a reference to the “national socialism” of the Nazis. The children occasionally giggle during the bizarre video.
As recently as December 2023, Cuevas and two other young men dressed in skull masks and protested outside a drag show in Albertville, Ala. The event organizer reviewed Cuevas’ Telegrams posts boasting of his involvement in the protest, and confirmed that she saw the men there.
Another early outing for the members of what would become 2119 took place in 2022, when they attempted to disrupt a May Day cookout in Pensacola. The event was co-hosted at a local park by two far-left organizations, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Democratic Socialists of America.
“We were cleaning up,” Sarah Brummet, a Party for Socialism and Liberation organizer, recalled in an interview with Raw Story. “Some kids came tearing through the park. They were yelling something. We couldn’t really hear it.”
They only learned later from a video that the boys were yelling, “F— you, you f—ing socialist slimy little s—.” After the socialists left the park, the teenage Nazis left flyers reading, “Commies stay off our street.”
“It was like they were afraid to confront us, and they were making agitation for the Internet,” Brummet told Raw Story.
When the official 2119 Blood and Soil Crew Telegram channel launched in September 2022, the group began churning out content that positioned it as a digital-era Ku Klux Klan teen auxiliary.
An eight-second video clip posted on the channel in November 2022 included the caption: “Pensacola lads out on patrol searching for Antifas! We protect our community!”
In another evocation of the Klan, a 2119-connected X account published a video showing a flier affixed to a front porch support post reading, “Attention! You have been visited by the 2119 Crew. We are pro-white, pro-Christian national socialists; anti-communist, anti-woke, anti-Zionist.”
Aaron Alligood of Georgia has indicated in online chats that he’s been involved with 2119 since at least October 2022. He also immersed himself in the Terrorgram community, as 2119’s on-the-ground activities became more aggressive.
Alligood became close with both co-administrators of the “P.A.W.G. Ops” channel, an acronym for Primal Aryan Warlord Gang.
A cross-country runner whose father was the head football coach at Berrien High School in Georgia until last year, Alligood became particularly close with Skyler Philippi, one of the channel’s co-administrators.
Philippi called Alligood a “little brother.” Raw Story was unable to determine Alligood’s age, but a runner profile indicates that he is currently a sophomore in high school.
“Like I said, keep your spirits high and play s— smart,” Philippi counseled Alligood. “We will prevail. Be the little man to a big man Hitler would be proud of. Go start reading Mein Kampf tonight.”
Like other Terrorgram channels, the Primal Aryan Warlord Gang celebrated racially-motivated mass murder, valorizing the shooters as “saints,” and promoted attacks on the energy grid. When anti-fascist researchers attributed a fatal shooting in Slovakia to a member of the Terrorgram community, participants in the chat congratulated themselves.
Terrorgram has been publicly credited for spawning one mass shooter, and here was one of the administrators of a channel where Alligood was a frequent commenter claiming victory.
Alligood’s involvement with the channel came to an abrupt end in January 2023, when one of the channel’s co-administrators was arrested at his home in Rustburg, Va. for conspiring with two other white supremacists to commit a bank robbery.
Shortly after the arrest, the FBI seized Aaron Alligood’s cell phone and laptop, he recounted on a Telegram chat with fellow white supremacists several months later. Although there is no public record of the seizure, Alligood confirmed the incident in a recent interview with Raw Story.
Meanwhile, the 2119 members’ online extremism was also manifesting in aggressive behavior on the ground.
In March 2023, a handful of 2119 members showed up to counter-protest a celebration of International Women’s Day hosted by the PSL in Pensacola. There’s no indication that Alligood, who lived in Georgia, was there.
Brummet described the incident as “a marked escalation.”
“They came up and they started standing close over our members and they were yelling racial slurs,” Brummet recalled. “We were speaking to a lot of things we identify as major social problems and the role of the existing capitalist system in that. They were yelling, ‘F the Jews.’”
2119 members disrupt an International Women's Day celebration in Pensacola, Fla. in March 2023.
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‘Sounds like you fear the brick'
Following the arrests of Waylon Fowler and his co-defendants in Pensacola, Fla. for their antisemitic hate spree in late July, a gusher of local news coverage followed.
The brick inscribed with a swastika instantly became the group’s singular totem of power — an implied threat.
It also became a liability.
Alligood turned to a white power activist named David William Fair, who runs a separate white power group that is friendly with 2119, for advice. He confided that his girlfriend was concerned about his involvement in extremist activity.
Fair advised caution.
“I don’t want you in jail just as much as she don’t,” Fair said on Telegram. “Brick through the finance building is fun and all. But not worth your youth.”
Cuevas interrupted the heart-to-heart conversation between Fair and Alligood by posting a cutout of the brick used to vandalize the Chabad Jewish Center from the photo published in the Pensacola News Journal.
“Sounds like you fear the brick,” he quipped.
“I’m angry at the brick bc it got good boys put behind bars,” Fair replied.
“It rooted out the weak,” Cuevas shot back. “The others are out and will get thru it ez.”
Cuevas was likely referring to the Ferry brothers, Kessler and Nicholas. Kessler Ferry, Fowler’s 18-year-old co-defendant, admitted to a Pensacola police detective that he drove Fowler to Chabad Jewish Center.
Randall Etheridge, who is representing both Ferry brothers, told Raw Story his clients are fully cooperating with law enforcement, and that they were “ordered” to drive the Fowler brothers to the crime scenes.
Fowler and his younger brother have pleaded not guilty to all charges. His grandparents, with whom the boys live, referred Raw Story’s questions to their attorney, who declined to comment.
When another member chat asked about 2119, David Fair felt compelled to vouch for the members while also attempting to shield them from the consequences of the alleged crimes in Pensacola.
In an audio recording obtained by Raw Story, Fair identified “Bozak,” who is Cuevas, and “AllenWrench,” who is Alligood, along with “Constantine,” who remains unidentified, as “guys inside” 2119.
Fair opined that 2119’s critics were “insecure,” adding a homophobic slur. They might be “hooligans” who spray-painted swastikas, he said. But so what?
In the recording, Fair acknowledged the alleged crimes in Pensacola, but attempted to insulate the national 2119 leadership from them.
“You know, that was from a local crew of boys that did something objectively stupid, and it shouldn’t have happened,” Fair said. “But that’s not really something on the crew.”
David Fair, the leader of Southern Sons Active Club, discusses 2119 on a Telegram chat for racist skinheads in late 2023.
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Multiple comments on Telegram show that “Constantine,” Alligood and Noah Houran were involved in assessing prospective members to determine if they were suitable material for 2119.
Chatting online with other extremists in early December, Alligood claimed to be on “house arrest.”
Reached by Raw Story for this story, Alligood initially claimed he quit 2119 after he was partially doxed by anonymous antifascist researchers. The researchers were able to identify Alligood because his mother posted a photo of him on her Facebook page posing with a deer he had killed, and Alligood posted the exact same photo on the official Blood and Soil Crew channel.
But when Raw Story offered Alligood evidence that he had continued to promote 2119 online and helped members network, he walked back his statement by claiming instead that he never did any “IRL,” or in-real-life, activities after he was doxed.
Alligood admitted to Raw Story that “house arrest” didn’t mean he was legally confined to his house, but rather, it was a way of saying that he had been grounded by his parents.
Commenting on Telegram in early December, Alligood said he was “looking forward to f---ing leaving this house so I can actually meet you n------.
“Oh yeah, it’s gonna be on,” he added. “Thinking about doing a country tour with 2119.”
When contacted by Raw Story in late January for this story, Alligood said he had decided to leave 2119 a couple days earlier.
At one point, Alligood said he would be willing to check in with Raw Story once a month to provide assurances that he continues to avoid any associations with other neo-Nazis.
“I promise you I’ll walk away,” he said. “I’m done with that.”
Antisemitic hate arrives in New Hampshire
The antisemitic vandalism spree in Pensacola had provided 2119 with a degree of notoriety, at least in Florida.
But 2119 members faced a question: How could they extend their brand across the country?
On the weekend of Rosh Hashanah 2023, six weeks after Waylon Fowler and his co-defendants were arrested in Florida, a man ambling down a central New Hampshire walking path discovered antisemitic graffiti on the abandoned Laconia State School building.
The graffiti included the “2-1-1-9” tag, a swastika and a crossed-out Jewish star.
It also said the word “f—,” followed by the name of a specific Jewish person in Laconia whose identity Raw Story has agreed to withhold. Following the person’s name: an antisemitic slur and the words “go to hell.”
Local news reports noted that a year earlier, graffiti depicting Nazi symbols and antisemitic messages had been found at the Laconia Public Library and a local park. A couple months later, police found antisemitic graffiti at the state school property.
The group has had a presence in New England since at least October 2022, when the original 2119 channel displayed a banner described as “a new flag for our folk in New England!”
City Manager Kirk Beattie told the Laconia Daily Sun that the recent graffiti in September 2023 marked an escalation by “calling out a member of the Laconia Jewish community.”
The official 2119 Telegram channel posted a video two weeks later that interspersed images of the graffiti at the Laconia State School and the earlier incident at the public library with images of members stepping on a Black Lives Matter flag and carrying an ammunition box. The video ended with the URL for the Telegram channel and the invitation to “join today.”
Law enforcement struggles
Laconia police have taken note that the graffiti at the state school included 2119’s Telegram address spray-painted onto a nearby water tower. That Telegram channel then displayed a video publicizing the crime.
Detective Eric Benoit, who was assigned to the case, reported that he could not determine who submitted the footage to 2119’s Telegram channel.
Telegram is designed in a way that makes it difficult for law enforcement to investigate user communications. For that reason, Benoit said, Laconia police aren’t putting legal pressure on Telegram to release the information.
Benoit reported that the investigation had so far uncovered no suspects, and he requested that efforts “be suspended pending new information or suspect leads.”
The following month, in October 2023, vandals spray-painted the “2-1-1-9” tag on a Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Concord, N.C. Two days after the vandalism was discovered, the official 2119 Telegram channel posted a link to a local news story, accompanied by the comment, “Hitting the news once again.”
Sgt. Gary Mearite, supervisor of the Concord Police Department’s criminal investigation division, told Raw Story that investigators have struggled to develop leads.
Currently, Mearite said, the Concord police are reviewing Telegram channels that have reposted images of the vandalism “and see if we can work our way back.”
“We’re still investigating,” he said. “It takes a long time.”
Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC), whose district includes Concord, N.C., expressed fury and frustration at the situation. She condemned the vandalism as an act that “shows an appalling absence of basic decency or empathy.”
“I don’t know if it’s social media raising the mirror closer to our faces, the lingering isolation from the pandemic, or something more sinister, but the rise in hatred in this country is apparent,” the congresswoman told Raw Story. “Hate is contagious. Those who catch the illness can only expel it onto others. They seek nothing more than to divide us and then spread their darkness in the void. They want us to hate each other like they hate us. We cannot give in, no matter how we’re provoked.”
In November, 2119 struck again in New England, spray-painting a swastika and the “2-1-1-9” tag on the Belknap County Democratic Party headquarters in downtown Laconia. The perpetrator glued fliers to the windows. One featured a swastika with the slogan, “Save the planet and your race,” while the other featured a quote by American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell.
On the same day as the attack on the Democratic Party headquarters, someone placed a bogus order to deliver pizzas to the home of the Jewish community member who was named in the earlier graffiti incident at the state school building.
Elected officials in New Hampshire have also condemned 2119’s attacks.
“The people who did this are domestic terrorists,” Mayor Andrew Hosmer toldTheLaconia Daily Sun. “They want to strike fear in you — not just our Jewish brothers and sisters, but anyone that disagrees with them.”
Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) posted on X: “This antisemitic vandalism is part of a surge in hateful attacks on the Jewish community across the country. There is simply no place for bigotry and hate in our society, and we must speak with one voice to condemn it.”
Shortly after the antisemitic harassment in Laconia, 2119 announced that Telegram had deleted its channel.
This hardly deterred them. They simply created a new Telegram channel, and more notably, the 2119 members turned to the broader neo-Nazi community for help promoting the group’s it so they could continue their propaganda push.
“I think the feds ordered our account deleted, with the recent incident in Laconia,” Alligood wrote. “Shout-outs of the channel would be appreciated.”
One member of the chat, unfamiliar with the incident, asked what happened in Laconia.
“Constantine,” the 2119 leader, replied: “2119 Member may or may not allegedly spray-painted the Democrat HQ and left a s— ton of fliers.”
He quickly added: “2119 takes no responsibility for the action taken.”
Feds catching up with 2119?
Tucked into the crevices of their bluster, profanity and grotesque racism, some of the 2119 members have quietly been expressing concern that law enforcement might be catching up to them.
“I’m surprised the feds haven’t been on 2119s ass since the whole Pensacola fiasco,” Alligood remarked to Houran on Telegram in mid-September.
“I’m sure they are,” Houran replied. “We just don’t know it yet.”
Detective Joseph Taschetta told Raw Story that the FBI has assisted the Pensacola Police Department in its investigation of the antisemitic vandalism spree. Likewise, Sgt. Mearite at the Concord Police Department said one of his vice officers contacted an FBI task force officer to obtain information about the 2119 group. And multiple outlets have reported that the FBI is assisting the investigation by the Laconia Police Department.
The FBI declined to confirm or deny that the agency is investigating 2119.
“We would also point out that the FBI investigates individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and other criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security,” a spokesperson for the FBI National Press Office told Raw Story. “Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on criminal activity. We are committed to upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
Bair, for one, is well acquainted with law enforcement.
In 2018, he unsuccessfully sued the city of York, Pa., and its police department for civil rights violations because an officer allegedly assaulted him during an arrest for disorderly conduct.
During his deposition, Bair told the opposing counsel that he had received multiple concussions while playing soccer in high school and while on combat deployment with the Marine Corps in the Middle East — all of which went untreated. He said he was court-martialed out of the Marine Corps for larceny and sale of classified materials during a deployment to Djibouti, and served one year in the Navy brig in Chesapeake, Va.
Following his military service, Bair said he checked himself into a sober living house in Colorado, and has been in and out of prison for domestic violence and burglary.
Bair, who specialized in demolition in the Marine Corps, told Raw Story that he likes Terrorgram for the “aesthetics.”
“It’s like what the Proud Boys did,” he said. “Nobody promotes the acts themselves, but here’s the information. Read it your goddamn self.”
Asked about a video he posted showing a flier with the words “Shoot your local judge” that includes a URL to the 2119 Telegram channel, Bair suggested that the “judge” referenced on the flier was a kind of handgun — a Taurus Judge.
He responded with equanimity when asked whether he thought someone might interpret the sign as an endorsement for shooting a judge in a court of law.
“That’s all right,” Bair said.
Bair then volunteered that he lives close to where an anti-feminist extremist went to a federal judge’s home in New Jersey during 2020 and fatally shot her son.
A future for 2119?
In response to Raw Story’s reporting, some 2119 members have gone dark on Telegram.
Others, such as Bair, remain defiant. The recent exposure, which also includes a new reference page by the Anti-Defamation League, might cause 2119 to rebrand once again, or potentially splinter.
Bair told Raw Story he expects 2119 will be leading large Nazi marches ahead of the 2024 election.
That seems unlikely given the group’s philosophy of spreading hate while avoiding public scrutiny. And if evidence were needed that his words should be treated with skepticism, Bair mentioned his interview with Raw Story on his Telegram channel, writing, “There’s a lesson about misinformation and misdirection here.”
But now that 2119 is a known entity, history suggests the individual members could put on new costumes to evade scrutiny from law enforcement, antifascist researchers, the media and communities at large.
So don’t look for the young white boys and men steeped in terror doctrines to march under a banner reading “2-1-1-9.” Next time 2119 members show up on the streets of American cities and towns, it’s plausible they’ll have migrated to completely new neo-Nazi groups. And regardless of what mantle they claim, they’ll likely downplay their group identity while merging with other fledgling groups in a bid to project maximum force.
The 2119 members, however, appear unyielding as they continue to propagate hate, lionize those who attack the power grid and laud racially-motivated mass shooters.
* * *
About this investigation: This is the first in a two-part series about youth neo-Nazi organization 2119. The second part, published here, examines how parents navigate the challenges posed by online youth radicalization. A first-person account about the threats and harassment reporter Jordan Green has received as a result of his coverage of 2119 may be found here.
This project draws upon numerous interviews, primary sources and accounts of 2119’s members and activities, along with information uncovered by Appalachia Research Club, an anonymous antifascist research collective.
I began reporting on 2119 in an effort to expose its actions. As I investigated the group’s leadership and activities, and publication of a two-part project neared, neo-Nazi threats against me escalated. Online harassment led to phone calls and doxxing, which devolved into death threats and, most recently, visits to my home.
My ordeal began in November, when 2119 called me out by name in profane Telegram posts laden with racism, antisemitism and homophobia.
Soon, I began receiving threatening phone calls and voicemails. Someone took pictures of me with a telephoto lens, private investigator-style, and posted them online. A pizza delivery showed up at my doorstep, unrequested, courtesy of 2119. And earlier this month, matters culminated with six avowed white supremacists standing in front of my house, holding burning traffic flares, their arms up in Nazi salutes. One held a sign warning me of “consequences.”
Harassment and even death threats are, unfortunately, an occupational hazard for journalists on this beat. The leader of the neo-Nazi terror group, Atomwaffen, unhappy about being the subject of a ProPublica story, conspired with others to carry out a swatting attack — a tactic in which the perpetrators place bogus calls for the purpose of eliciting a law enforcement response to the victim’s residence — on journalist A.C. Thompson.
Other examples abound: Journalist James LaPorta, for one, learned his name was on a hit list in the possession of a neo-Nazi accused of plotting race war. In another case, a journalist received a death threat from the leader of a Nazi group called Feuerkrieg Division to try to discourage them from reporting on his group.
I first ran across 2119, also known as Blood and Soil Crew, while combing through Telegram chats in December 2022. They’ve been firmly on my radar since the spring of 2023, when I began to tally up racist and antisemitic incidents and attacks made in 2119’s name. Starting in late October 2023, my editor let me spend significant time investigating what — and who — 2119 truly is.
Almost as soon as they became aware of my reporting, the 2119 members responded with hostility and threats in a naked attempt to stop me from reporting on what had become a multi-state campaign of racist, antisemitic and homophobic violence.
Four days before Thanksgiving, an anonymous Telegram channel published my professional headshot, home address and phone number.
This wasn’t the first time such a thing has happened during my many years covering neo-Nazis, and other extremists. Online posts that include my personal information have been a semi-regular occurrence for the past four years. What was notable this time is that 2119 members immediately amplified this doxxing, highlighting it to like-minded extremists on their Telegram channel.
The accompanying note included a complaint from 2119 that “the bastard above” — me — had “been found out to be harassing our boys.”
Over the next two months, their tactics would become ever more extreme — and strange.
‘You're being watched'
Just before New Year’s Eve, I received a phone call from a restricted number at dinner time. Someone identifying himself as “Bozak” warned me that I was “being watched by international bricksters.”
I already knew by that time that “Bozak” was 2119 member Aiden Cuevas, but the caller hung up before I had an opportunity to confront him.
I understood this “bricksters” term as a reference to an antisemitic attack last summer in Pensacola, Fla., where another 2119 member, Waylon Fowler, threw a brick through the window of a Jewish center while two rabbis sat inside having dinner.
Written on the brick: a swastika and the words “No Jews.”
A couple minutes after the “Bozak” phone call, the same person made a transparent attempt at misdirection by calling back and leaving a voicemail. He claimed to be Thomas Rousseau, leader of the white power group Patriot Front, and again warned: “I’m letting you know that we have people on standby. You’re being watched. Quit messing with us.”
In early January, early on a Sunday afternoon, an unidentified 2119 member placed an order for a pizza delivery at my house. It’s clear a 2119 associate was parked down the street with a camera and a telephoto lens because, the following day, a 2119 member posted a photo on Telegram that shows me standing in my doorway.
The experience was unsettling, but their efforts at intimidation only confirmed in my mind that we had a story that was worth telling. Just as any investigative journalist would do in the course of reporting a story, I called the subjects to offer them an opportunity to be interviewed and to ask them questions.
I began calling 2119 members — and their parents. The response was an odd mixture of silence, defiance, confessions and pleas for understanding.
'We'll keep shooting'
But one particular interview — with Mathew Bair, a Marine Corps veteran who, at 34, is roughly twice the age of most of his fellow 2119 members — stood apart.
Bair readily confirmed much of my reporting about 2119’s activities and goals. And unlike some of his younger cohorts, he was unapologetic, even appearing to take pleasure in confirming some of the most unsavory aspects of 2119’s racist and antisemitic intentions.
As we came to the end of the interview, I dropped what I expected to be one of the most difficult questions.
I asked Bair about a video he had posted showing a flier with the words “Shoot your local judge” that includes a URL to the 2119 Telegram channel.
Bair danced around the question. He initially attempted to deflect by suggesting that the reference was to a specific firearm model — a Taurus Judge.
Regardless, he told me he wasn’t concerned about how a potential victim might interpret the message.
He might have left it at that — an ambiguous, vaguely worded threat shrouded in plausible deniability.
But instead he veered back to the more direct interpretation, mentioning that he is “close” to where an anti-feminist extremist went to a federal judge’s home New Jersey, in 2020, and fatally shot her son.
Then, he casually tossed out the phrase “just like you live in the Raleigh/Durham area, right?”
As it so happens, I don’t live in that area. But the implication was clear: I could be a target, too.
A couple of days later, on Jan. 21, Bair forwarded a message from a private Telegram channel complaining about my reporting.
“Jordan Green, you have a healthy respect for a Taurus Judge now, yes?” the message concluded. “Keep phishing for minors and we’ll keep shooting our local Judge.”
One might be tempted to chalk this up as nothing more than online bluster. But gun violence directed at journalists is very real. This became apparent when shots were fired into the home of an online news publisher in Tennessee last April.
Concurrent with Bair’s warning, an anonymous Telegram account patronized by avowed extremists doxxed me again — this time with the photo of me standing in my doorway when 2119 sent a pizza to my home.
A couple weeks later, the account posted more personal information about me, accompanied by a note: “It’s not over, yet. More to come soon.”
They weren’t lying.
Around 5 p.m. on Feb. 10, six Nazis approached my house on a quiet, residential street in Greensboro, N.C. They held burning traffic flares as they raised their arms in Nazi salutes.
Photos show that at least three of the men are subjects of my reporting on extremism.
Among them: Sean Kauffmann, leader of the Tennessee Active Club, stood in the middle holding a sign warning about a “consequence” for exercising freedom of the press. Flanking Kauffmann were David William Fair, leader of the Southern Sons Active Club, and Jarrett William Smith.
The three men have a history of glorifying and pursuing violence.
Kauffmann and Smith met through Terrorgram, a loose collective of Telegram channels that extol mass shooters, while promoting graphic violence and wildly flagrant racism, in 2019.
Smith, then a soldier in the Army, advised Kauffmann on how to hide firearms from law enforcement when Kauffmann was worried that the police would take them due to a custody dispute with an ex-partner.
According to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, sheriff’s deputies responding to a domestic violence incident in 2021 encountered Kauffmann waving around an assault rifle and later “received information that Kauffmann stated he was going to get into a shootout with police.”
Smith was arrested and charged with distributing information related to explosives and weapons of mass destruction in 2019, a couple months after his exchange with Kauffmann on Telegram. The government alleged that Smith shared information with others on Facebook about how to make improvised explosive devices and suggested to an FBI informant that then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) would make a suitable assassination target.
During his prosecution — for which he ultimately pleaded guilty and served 14 months in prison — federal prosecutors presented evidence that Smith stated in a text message that it was on “my bucket list to KO an antifa member” and advised other Telegram users on how to get away with committing arson against a Michigan podcaster.
The channel that helped organize the flash rally in front of my home followed with an eerie sequel. The subsequent post showed some of the protesters posing with a historical marker commemorating the Greensboro Massacre. The sign marks the site where a coalition of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members fatally shot five civil rights and labor activists near a public housing community in 1979.
The caption in the Telegram post emphasizes the point that the shooters were acquitted during state and federal criminal trials by arguing that they acted in self-defense.
The message to me isn’t subtle.
Jordan Green is a Raw Story investigative reporter who covers domestic extremism.
Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on MSNBC's "The 11th Hour" believes the events that take place on March 1st will determine if the criminal case against Trump for stashing top-secret government documents at Mar-a-Lago will go to trial before the 2024 election.
Judge Aileen Cannon has already met separately behind closed doors with both prosecutors and Trump’s defense team to determine what additional classified materials can be shared with the former president as part of discovery.
But come March 1st, Kirschner expects Trump's team to play their favorite card: Delay.
However, Kirschner said that even if Trump succeeds in getting Cannon to delay the classified documents trial, it may give Judge Tanya Chutkan an opening to begin the D.C. election subversion trial in late May.
"We know that Donald Trump and his team of lawyers will try to convince Judge Cannon to try to kick the May 20th trial date," he said. "And you may not expect to hear this from me, but I almost hope that she does kick the May 20th trial date. Why? Because if the Supreme Court denies the stay in the absolute immunity issue and returns the case to [Judge] Tanya Chutkan in D.C. in the election interference case — would love to see her take that case and drop it on the docket for May 20th."
Kirchner also dug into the 45th president for failing to accept defeat after Judge Arthur Engoron hit him with a $350 million fraud verdict last week.
"[Trump] sings the song of a loser," he said. "He has an unabated string of losses. He has lost civil case after civil case... he lost a criminal case, albeit by proxy. His organization, his namesake, the Trump Organization that he headed up was criminally convicted of 17 felony counts for a 15-year-long criminal scheme to defraud. No, he wasn't at the counsel table, but he lost that case, right? That was his organization that he built, and he ran in a way that was corrupt."
Donald Trump successfully pushed out Ronna McDaniel as chair of the Republican National Committee, and next his allies are planning to purge insufficiently loyal committee members.
The former president endorsed his own daughter-in-law, an election denialist state party chair and a Trump campaign senior adviser to take over the RNC's top positions, and Steve Bannon and other sources told The Daily Beast that staffers and committee members were next.
“I think within 30 days you’ll see a purge of staffers from the RNC, because it’s a hotbed for anti-Trumpism,” Bannon told the website. “That’s the open secret.”
The Trump-backed leadership slate – Lara Trump, campaign adviser Chris LaCivitia and North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley – still needs the approval of a majority of the party's 168 members, but once installed they intend to expunge the organization of careerist "partycrats" and replace them with staffers who have more campaign experience.
“I think there will be a whole new 168, and they’ve been working around the country to make it a full Trump 168,” said one source close to the RNC. “Trump’s gonna make his own rules here, and he wants his own people in there.”
The MAGA takeover comes as the former president is hitting a cash crunch related to his myriad legal battles, and there are serious concerns that he'll tap into RNC funds to pay those bills, but the new regime intends to transfer more money to state party organizations, especially in battleground states like Arizona and Michigan – both of which are close to going broke.
Lara Trump, who's married to Eric Trump, would serve as co-chair chiefly responsible for fundraising, and one former official on the Trump 2020 campaign expressed happiness that McDaniel was leaving, but said the ex-president's daughter-in-law wasn't a serious choice as a replacement.
“Lara Trump as the solution is a joke," that former campaign official said. “She’s not there to be an asset to the RNC, she’s there to be Trump’s eyes and ears."
Another GOP operative agreed, saying donors were concerned.
“GOP donors are in full panic mode over the possibility of Lara Trump” taking a leading role, that person said. “The RNC needs someone who can rack in the dough for Trump. She ain’t it.”
Faced with criticism over his return to "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart decided to take some much needed reporting lessons Monday night from the "journalist" he respects the least: Tucker Carlson.
"Saints be praised!" cried Stewart. "For Professor Tucker!"
With joy in his eyes, Stewart took out pen and paper then asked Carlson to explain how best to do his job. Stewart then minced clips of the conservative pundit during his controversial reporting trip to Russia — which included an interview with President Vladimir Putin — with journalistic tips he gleaned.
They were, according to Stewart:
Lie about what your job is
Lie about what your duty is
Disguise your deception and capitulation to power as moral and noble and based in freedom.
Stewart described Carlson's demeanor while interviewing Putin as a mixture of "shame, arousal and irregularity." He then showed a clip of Carlson responding "of course" to Putin's description of how World War II was instigated.
"Why would a country whose navy has submarines with screen doors want to instigate a war?" Stewart asked. He then explained, "I like to give you a little bit of dumb."
Stewart asked Carlson if great journalism could include field trips. Yes, it could.
Daily Show viewers were treated to video of Carlson exploring a Russian subway and grocery store.
A clip of Carlson sneering at homeless people and taking a deep inhale of bread, of course, spurred some scorn from Stewart.
"Oh Mother Russia!" Stewart declared. "The guy really likes bread."
Ultimately, Stewart slammed Carlson for failing to provide important context about economic hardship and political oppression.
"You aren't as dumb as your face would have us believe," Stewart said, addressing Carlson directly. He then said to his audience, "They think the battle is woke versus unwoke, and in that fight, Putin is an ally to the right. He is their friend. Unfortunately, he is also a brutal and ruthless dictator."
House Speaker Mike Johnson made his pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago for a photo-op with former President Donald Trump — but when he took it to X Monday, it didn't get the kind of reception he'd hoped.
"Just had a great meeting with President @realDonaldTrump this Presidents’ Day," reads Johnson's tweet. "Together, we will grow the majority and save America! 🇺🇸"
The pose with the former president didn't wash well with heaps of folks who took Johnson to task.
"You’re both traitors who tried to overturn the results of a legitimate election & then staged a failed insurrection," reads Tara Dublin's response. "What does the adjudicated rapist criminal fraud have on you, Speaker Jesus Freak?"
"Why are you so proud to be a traitor to Christ and a traitor to the United States of America," asked Agatha@NaughtyAgatha.
Rodney Clayes tweeted the duo's integrity: "Hallelujah‼️Moses Johnson meets with Putin’s indicted MAGA Republican Messiah #Smelvis Trump"
Republicans against Trump reminded Johnson that his ousted predecessor former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy also paid face time to the 45th president posting, "It didn't end well for the last Speaker."
Forest@MTF_Tweets sought to make sure Johnson was made aware Trump is the former president. "My man... he is not the President."
Donald Trump's failure-forward bankruptcy business model has been foiled by his success as a presidential candidate and that could mean trouble should he return to the White House, a media commentator explained Monday night.
Tim O'Brien appeared on "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" Monday to remind Americans — who last week witnessed the former president slammed with a more than $350 million civil fraud judgement — that money problems are nothing new to Trump.
"This problem was there in 2016 when Trump was elected," O'Brien said. "Trump was trying to get a real estate deal done in Moscow while he was running for president."
O'Brien said the pattern continued during his term as president when he did political favors for the Saudis and, after he left the White House, his son-in-law and former treasury secretary "got billions."
"Trump has always been a human billboard," O'Brien said. "He's been willing to sell his name and his voice to anyone who will put a bag of cash on his desk.
"That is fine when you are self promoter and a serial bankruptcy artist, who has never been able to operate a business very effectively," O'Brien concluded. "It's a world of difference when you become president."
O'Brien argued that pattern, and lack of ethical barriers enforced by the GOP, led Trump toward his current financial situation and the nation toward a tenuous political one.
"He has these massive judges against him," O'Brien said. "He is going to be scrambling to pay his bills. That makes him a mark. When you have a president that is a mark, it's bad for public interest."
National Review writer and hardcore conservative Dan McLaughlin is frustrated at the state of his party.
Writing on X Monday evening, he reflected that the GOP is seeing a dire brain drain in Congress — and former President Donald Trump and his loyalists, like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), are a big part of the reason why.
"Trump & Gaetz have made serving in Congress as a Republican something responsible, capable people don't want to do," wrote McLaughlin. "There will be a recruiting & fundraising bonanza when Trump is gone. But it could be a long wait for that.
"In the meantime, Democrats profit," he added glumly.
This comes amid a huge surge in retirements on the Republican congressional side that has swept up a number of longtime party leaders and committee chairs.
Among those who have recently announced their intention to leave are Reps. Ken Buck (R-CO) and Mike Gallagher (R-WI), two longtime conservatives who expressed frustration and skepticism towards GOP impeachment efforts against President Joe Biden and his cabinet officials, and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who previously chaired the House Republican Conference.
A MAGA salad bar and a Champale fountain at the presidential library and steakhouse — at $10,000 a plate, how could you say no to this, sadly, likely fake invite to a Donald Trump fundraiser?
These wild attractions appear on a satirical invitation to a Save America fundraiser hosted in Florida on Feb. 16, that has been seen by tens of thousands of tickled X users.
"Time To Raise Some Money At The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library and Steakhouse," it reads. "No sharing."
The affair was slated to be "All You Can Eat New York Strip and Crab Legs!"
The invite further tried to entreat folks to come by offering the "MAGA" Salad Bar and the malt liquor Fountain.
In small typeface, the invite lays down certain sarcastic limitations: "No Splitting. No Takeout. No Coupons 50% Gratuity on all parties over 1... Cash Only."
"Well he doesn’t have a line of credit anymore and no one would take a check from him," wrote Andy Mack. "So that makes sense."
"What the hell is champale?" asked lol@sedow63. Daze answered, "It's a hideous combo of beer and champagne."
"His Library is finished already," asked Liane Albert. "Must have been very easy to do since he doesn’t read and neither do the MAGATS. Totally ridiculous. But not not surprising at all."
"And you know the steak is leftover from his Trump steak business," wrote @PattiR57167178. Replied @BagdMilkSoWhat, "A little freezer burn never killed anyone."
TOPEKA — Attorney General Kris Kobach said an individual was arrested in Florida for allegedly forging signatures on a petition to qualify the No Labels organization as an official political party in Kansas.
The attorney general’s office said George Andrews, 30, of Dade City, Florida, was charged with dozens of counts of election misconduct. He was arrested Feb. 10. Once extradited to Kansas, Andrews would be required to appear in Johnson County District Court.
“The arrested individual was part of a scheme to defraud Kansas voters by placing their forged signatures on petitions,” Kobach said. “In Kansas, we take election fraud seriously, and we will prosecute every case where the evidence indicates a crime has been committed beyond a reasonable doubt.”
An investigation by the attorney general’s office led to charging Andrews with 28 counts of election forgery and two counts of election perjury.
In 2015, the Kansas Legislature granted the attorney general’s office authority to prosecute election crime. That power was previously held by the secretary of state’s office. In that role as secretary of state, Kobach’s staff prosecuted a dozen cases of election fraud.
Former President Donald Trump ended up with an $83.3 million judgment in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case — and yet he continues to push the same false claims that he never knew the writer, most recently at an event over the weekend.
Shawn Crowley, an attorney representing Carroll, told MSNBC's Jen Psaki on Monday that they are still monitoring him for legally actionable behavior.
"So I'm just gonna restate for everyone, Trump knows exactly who your client is," said Psaki. "He was found liable for sexually abusing her and then defaming her by lying about it. Do you watch these?"
"We certainly watch them," said Crowley. "It's hard not to. Every time Donald Trump speaks, you know, as we said at trial, many times, he has the biggest megaphone in the world. So everyone hears them, including us, including our client, E. Jean Carroll."
"What he said was absolutely a lie," Crowley continued. "Two unanimous federal juries have found that only did Trump know who E. Jean was, he sexually assaulted her and lied about it, repeatedly. Everything he said about her over the last five years has been a lie, and has been defamatory. So we're watching, we're listening."
"We really hoped that, as I think the jury found, that $83 million would maybe be enough to convince him to keep E. Jean Carroll's name out of his mouth," she added. "Apparently, he showed us this weekend that he really cannot control himself, and that maybe it wasn't. But, you know, we'll see what happens as this continues to play out."
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis feels confident she defeated former President Donald Trump's co-defendants in a recent hearing that put her professional conduct into question.
Willis's ability to prosecute Georgia's election interference case against Trump hangs in the balance as a Georgia judge considers whether last week's hearing proved she had committed misconduct.
According to Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, she's not worried.
"She feels confident that the other side didn't reach the burden of proof," said Dickens during an appearance on CNN. "And so she's going to continue to do what she does best, which is be the D.A. for this county that has really been helpful, in bringing down violent crime across Atlanta."
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is weighing whether or not to remove Willis from prosecuting the sprawling RICO case lodged against Trump and other defendants after blistering days of a televised hearing.
The effort was led by co-defendant Michael Roman, who in documents exposed Willis of carrying on a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a private attorney she hired to work as a special prosecutor.
They stood accused of benefitting financially from the lavish trips they enjoyed to such places as Napa Valley to Aruba on Fulton County taxpayer funds.
Willis made it quite clear in court what she thought of the allegations.
Willis accused Roman's attorney Ashleigh Merchant of pushing “lies” about her relationship with Wade, at one point declaring: “It’s a lie!... Do you think I’m on trial? These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial no matter how hard you try to put me on trial."
The 61st mayor believes that Willis said he headed to court to show his solidarity with Willis.
"I'm no lawyer and I don't even like to go to court. I went there the other day to look at somebody that just needed to know that people were supporting them," he said.
He felt it was Willis' right to battle back against her personal life being splattered in the public eye, especially considering that she is not a defendant.
"This is a trial about Donald Trump and the attempt to steal an election. Him [sic] and 18 co-defendants and four of them have pled guilty," he said. "So this is all a distraction. This is something that's when Donald Trump is in trouble he throws dirt on anybody and tries to find victims."
