Monthly Archives: August 2023

Internal Secret Service emails obtained by CREW show special agents in close communication with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, while failing to acknowledge the groups ties to white nationalists and clashes with law enforcement.

In September 2020, a Secret Service agent sent an email to others within the agency, informing them that he had just spoken to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes about an upcoming visit by then-President Trump to Fayetteville, NC. The agent, who referred to himself as the unofficial liaison to the Oath Keepers (inching towards official), described the group as primarily retired law enforcement/former military members who are very pro-LEO [law enforcement officer] and Pro Trump. Their stated purpose is to provide protection and medical attention to Trump supporters if they come under attack by leftist groups. He went on to say that Rhodes, had specific questions and wanted to liaison [sic] with our personnel and shared Rhodess cell phone number.

The emails obtained by CREW as part of an ongoing public records request offer only a snapshot of the communication between the Oath Keepers and the Secret Service. As they focus solely on the time period around the Fayetteville event, the extent of the contact Stewart Rhodes had with the agency remains unknown. The agent inching towards being the official liaison for Oath Keepers suggests a more longstanding relationship with Rhodes.

Another Secret Service agent spoke to Rhodes and informed the other agents that their desire is to assist those attending the event make it to and from their cars safely. They are NOT there to demonstrate or push a political agenda. In October 2022, a former member of the Oath Keepers testified that Rhodes had spoken to the Secret Service to coordinate around the rally, but an agency spokesman told CNN that, The US Secret Service doesnt have enough information to say whether or not this call actually took place. These emails show that it did.

When one agent requested intelligence about the Oath Keepers another responded: General searches revealed news articles that touched on the background of the founder Stewart Rhodes and the group. Rhodes has denounced White Nationalists ideals while sharing his dislike for ANTIFAThe group claims it is a local community response team for natural or civil disorders. Agents also noted that a Facebook account associated with the group contained pro-gun content, commentary on racism in the US, and news articles about politics, but failed to find anything else.

There was plenty of other publicly available information about Rhodes and the Oath Keepers at the time that should have easily raised alarm.

In 2014, Oath Keepers traveled to Ferguson, Missouri with assault rifles claiming they were providing security for businesses in the area after the grand jury decision not to indict the white police officer who killed Michael Brown. The St. Louis County Police Department had to demand that the Oath Keepers stop patrolling the city, explaining in a statement that members were walking on rooftops of businesses holding semi-automatic rifles, breaking the countys ordinance regulating security officers and guards. The police reportedly threatened arrest, and the Oath Keepers began protesting the authorities.

On the one-year anniversary of Michael Browns shooting, Oath Keepers again arrived in Ferguson with assault rifles and flak jackets, apparently intending to protect businesses and right-wing journalists, including an employee from InfoWars. St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar called their presence both unnecessary and inflammatory. This was also covered extensively by national media.

The group has also compared Hillary Clinton to Hitler on its website, and on May 5, 2015, Rhodes was recorded saying that then-Sen. John McCain should be tried for treason, convicted and hung by the neck until dead. A long list of former Oath Keepers allegedly cut ties with the group by 2017, citing concerns with Rhodess leadership.

Rhodess conduct outside of the Oath Keepers had also repeatedly come into question. In October 2015, the Montana Supreme Courts Office of Disciplinary Counsel recommended that Rhodes be disbarred for violating his attorney oath following a number of ethics and conduct complaints against him, joining Arizona, which admonished Rhodes in 2012 for practicing without a license.

While the nearly all-white Oath Keepers themselves are purportedly not a white nationalist organization, and Rhodes may have denounced white nationalist ideals, Oath Keepers have repeatedly worked alongside white supremacist and white nationalist groups. In 2016, as neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups such as the National Socialist Movement, factions of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Freedom Party deployed members at polling sites, the Oath Keepers advised its members to do the same undercover. The Washington Post reported in 2017 that white supremacists in the alt-right scene seem to have a lot in common with the Oath Keepers, but that the Oath Keepers were not as racist or radical as certain far-right white nationalists would prefer. The Oath Keepers have repeatedly been highlighted in national articles as part of the landscape of white supremacist militias, and are often tied to their public ally the Proud Boys, a group that has been categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Proud Boys similarly are allied with the American Guard, a white nationalist group according to SPLC.

Rhodes is now best known for his role in organizing significant turnout of insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, just a few months after he was in contact with the Secret Service. Rhodes and other Oath Keepers planned to participate in violence at the Capitolagainst Secret Service protectees, no lessand he gave followers instructions like stay fully armed and get ready to fight leading up to the attack.

In November 2022, Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy by a jury for his role in the attempt to keep Donald Trump in power, and was sentenced to 18 years in prison in Maythe longest of any convicted January 6th defendant so far. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta found that Rhodess role in January 6th amounted to terrorism and said that he presents an ongoing threat and peril to this country.

Stewart Rhodes photo by Gage Skidmore under a Creative Commons license.

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Emails reveal Secret Service contacts with Oath Keepers - Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

The Michigan Republican Party is starving for cash. A group of prominent activists including a former statewide candidate was hit this month with felony charges connected to a bizarre plot to hijack election machines. And in the face of these troubles, suspicion and infighting have been running high. A recent state committee meeting led to a fistfight, a spinal injury and a pair of shattered dentures.

This turmoil is one measure of the way Donald J. Trumps lies about the 2020 election have rippled through his party. While Mr. Trump has just begun to wrestle with the consequences of his fictions including two indictments related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 results the vast machine of activists, donors and volunteers that power his party has been reckoning with the fallout for years.

As the party looks toward the presidential election next year, the strains are glaring.

Mr. Trumps election lies spread like wildfire in Michigan, breaking the state party into ardent believers and pragmatists wanting to move on. Bitter disputes, power struggles and contentious primaries followed, leaving the Michigan Republican Party a husk of itself.

The battleground has steadily grown safer for Democrats. No Republican has won a statewide election there since Mr. Trump won the state in 2016. (Republicans have won nonpartisan seats on the State Supreme Court.) G.O.P. officials in the state are growing concerned that they do not have a top-tier candidate to run for the open Senate seat.

Its not going real well, and all you have to do is look at the facts, said Representative Lisa McClain, a Republican from Eastern Michigan. The ability to raise money, weve got a lot of donors sitting on the sideline. Thats not an opinion. Thats a fact. Its just a plain fact. We have to fix that.

She added: Everyone is in the blame game. Weve got to stop.

Michigan Republicans were long a force in national politics. The state was home to Gerald Ford and George Romney and to many of the Reagan Democrats who helped transform the party four decades ago. Ronna McDaniel, the current chair of the Republican National Committee, was the chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party until 2017. Betsy DeVos, the former secretary of education under Mr. Trump who resigned after Jan. 6, is a power broker in the state, managing vast wealth and a political network with influence far beyond state lines.

The slow unraveling of the state party began well before the 2020 election. Throughout the Obama administration, the right wing of the party grew more vocal and active. After Mr. Trumps victory in 2016, many party posts that were once controlled largely by megadonor families and the Republican establishment began to be filled by Trump acolytes.

By 2021, the new activists wanted to support only candidates who believed the 2020 election, which Mr. Trump lost in Michigan by more than 154,000 votes, was fraudulent and were committed to trying to do something about it.

Those leaders soon emerged. Matthew DePerno, a lawyer who advanced false election theories, became a folk hero in the state and ran for attorney general. Kristina Karamo, a poll worker who signed an affidavit claiming she had witnessed vote stealing, became a conservative media star and ran for secretary of state. And Meshawn Maddock, the leader of Women for Trump who organized buses to Washington on Jan. 6, became co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.

Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo did not respond to requests for comment. The Michigan Republican Party did not respond to requests for comment. In a video released on Monday night, Ms. Karamo defended her actions as party chair and lashed out at more moderate Republicans she claimed were part of a uniparty.

Their nominations exposed a rift within the party, with more moderate, traditional Republicans like the DeVos family swearing off both Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo and withholding funds from most of the state party. Other donors similarly expressed their frustration. County nominating conventions devolved into open conflict.

Meshawn was never connected to the donor base, and so having her as the vice chair for a lot of us was a showstopper, said Dave Trott, a former Republican congressman from Michigan who retired in 2018 and is also a former donor to the state party. Because we just knew she would never be someone that would be rational in her approach to state party politics.

Ms. Maddock, who is no longer involved in the party, responded to Mr. Trott, saying she was not surprised at all that he takes no responsibility for disappointing Michigan voters or anyone.

The state party needs the wealthy RINOs who often fund it to come to terms with what the actual voters on the right want, Ms. Maddock said. Instead of constantly gaslighting the Republican base, the wealthy donors need to treat them with an ounce of respect for once.

As standard-bearers for the state party during the 2022 midterm cycle, Mr. DePerno, Ms. Karamo and Ms. Maddock all maintained the falsehoods about the 2020 election. In their campaigns, Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo placed extra emphasis on the 2020 election, often at the expense of other issues more central to voters.

They were resoundingly defeated. Republicans also lost control of both chambers of the State Legislature. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic incumbent, sailed to a landslide victory.

Republicans across the state were left pointing fingers. The state party blamed Tudor Dixon, the candidate for governor, for an unpopular abortion stance and anemic fund-raising. Ms. Dixon blamed state party leadership. Ms. Maddock blamed big donors for not supporting their candidates. Ms. Karamo refused to concede.

A state party autopsy days after the election, made public by Ms. Dixon, acknowledged that we found ourselves consistently navigating the power struggle between Trump and anti-Trump factions of the party and that Mr. Trump provided challenges on a statewide ballot.

Ms. Karamo, who succeeded Ms. Maddock at the helm, pledged to bring in a new donor class. But those donors never materialized. The party has lost money since Ms. Karamo took over, with under $150,000 in the bank as of June 30, according to federal campaign finance records. At the same time four years ago, the party had roughly three times as much cash on hand.

She has drawn condemnation from both Republicans and Democrats for her social media posts tying gun reforms to the Holocaust and has faced attempts to limit her power.

The party has been plagued by infighting. In April, two county leaders were involved in an altercation, with one filing a police report claiming assault, according to video obtained by Bridge Michigan. In July, a brief brawl broke out during a state party gathering. The chairman of the Clare County Republican Party told police he had stress fractures in his spine, bruised ribs and broken dentures as a result of the fight.

A memo circulated this month from the executive director and general counsel of the state party, obtained by The Times, warned of a rogue meeting being advertised under the banner of the state party that was in no manner properly connected to or arising from the true and real Michigan Republican Party.

The issues facing the party extend beyond infighting and fund-raising; this month, Mr. DePerno, as well as a former Republican state representative and a lawyer, were charged with felonies related to a plan to illegally obtain voting machines. They have pleaded not guilty.

Tell me how that helps. Tell me how that helps get the swing voter, said Ms. McClain. Voters dont care about the infighting. The swing voter wants to know, how are your policies going to help me have a better life for my family?

Prominent Michigan Republicans appear content to let the state party wither. Former Gov. Rick Snyder, among the last Republicans elected statewide in Michigan, has begun a fund-raising campaign directing money away from the state party and directly into the House Republican caucus in a desperate attempt to win back at least one chamber of the State Legislature.

(The effort bears some similarities to one Gov. Brian Kemp undertook in Georgia, another state where division over Mr. Trumps election claims hobbled the state party.)

Mr. Snyders fund-raising, as well as some activity from the DeVos family network, have filled the coffers of the Republican House caucus, led by Matt Hall, the minority leader in the State Legislature whom many party elites are looking to as the de facto leader. The House Republican Caucus, despite being in the minority, is outpacing the House Democratic Caucus in fund-raising this year, with $2.3 million to the Democrats $1.7 million.

Mr. Hall also has helped fuel 2020 election doubts. (He once was the chairman of a committee hearing featuring the Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani spreading lies about the election.) But he is far more likely to attack Democrats on spending or pork projects.

Separate from Mr. Halls efforts, the DeVos family and other influential donors have begun raising money for congressional and state legislative races only, forgoing any presidential or Senate races, according to Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the state party.

But the problems looming ahead of next years election are not just about money.

What cant be replicated is the manpower infrastructure, said Mr. Timmer, who now advises the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. You cant just go out and buy the passion and zealousness of people who will go out knock on doors and put up signs and do all those things that require human labor in a campaign.

Prominent Republicans point to the coming Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference as a sign of how far the state party has fallen. It was once a marquee stop for presidential hopefuls looking to make an impression on the critical swing state, and not a single Republican candidate for president in 2024 is scheduled to make an appearance.

Instead, the featured speaker at the September conference will be Kari Lake, who lost her race for governor in Arizona and has since claimed her loss was marred by fraud.

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How Trump's Election Lies Left the Michigan G.O.P. Broken and ... - The New York Times