The Tarbabys Blog

The New York Times

One Menacing Call After Another: Threats Against Lawmakers Surge

Catie Edmondson and Mark Walker – February 10, 2022

WASHINGTON — Early one morning in November 2019, Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., received a profanity-laden voicemail message at his office in which the caller identified himself as a trained sharpshooter and said he wanted to blow the congressman’s head off.

Two years earlier, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., received a similar voicemail message from an irate man who falsely accused her of threatening President Donald Trump’s life. “If you do it again, you’re dead,” he said, punctuating the statement with expletives and a racial epithet against Waters, who is Black.

Across the country, the office of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., received a profane call from a man who said that someone should “put a bullet in her” skull, before leaving his name and phone number.

The cases were part of a New York Times review of more than 75 indictments of people charged with threatening lawmakers since 2016. The flurry of cases shed light on a chilling trend: In recent years, and particularly since the beginning of Trump’s presidency, a growing number of Americans have taken ideological grievance and political outrage to a new level, lodging concrete threats of violence against members of Congress.

The threats have come in almost every conceivable combination: Republicans threatening Democrats, Democrats threatening Republicans, Republicans threatening Republicans. Many of them, the review showed, were fueled by forces that have long dominated politics, including deep partisan divisions and a media landscape that stokes resentment.

But they surged during Trump’s time in office and in its aftermath, as the former president’s own violent language fueled a mainstreaming of menacing political speech and lawmakers used charged words and imagery to describe the stakes of the political moment. Far-right members of Congress have hinted that their followers should be prepared to take up arms and fight to save the country, and in one case even posted a video depicting explicitly violent acts against Democrats.

A plurality of the cases reviewed by The Times, more than a third, involved Republican or pro-Trump individuals threatening Democrats or Republicans they found insufficiently loyal to the former president, with upticks around Trump’s first impeachment and, later, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol last year. In some cases leading up to Congress’ official count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, callers left messages with lawmakers in both parties warning them to keep Trump in office or face violence.

Nearly a quarter of the cases were Democrats threatening Republicans. Many of those threats were driven by anger over lawmakers’ support for Trump and his policies, including Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, as well as the drive to confirm one of his Supreme Court nominees, Brett Kavanaugh.

In 2018, for example, a Florida man called the office of Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., nearly 500 times and threatened to kill his children over the congressman’s support for Trump’s family separation policy at the southern border.

Other cases had no discernible partisan leanings or were driven by delusion or wild conspiracy theories, such as the belief embraced by QAnon that Democrats are part of a satanic cult.

Overall, threats against members of Congress reached a record high of 9,600 last year, according to data provided by the Capitol Police, double the previous year’s total. In the first three months of 2021 alone, the Capitol Police fielded more than 4,100 threats against lawmakers in the House and Senate, straining the law enforcement personnel tasked with investigating them.

“We’re barely keeping our head above water for those investigations,” J. Thomas Manger, the Capitol Police chief, testified last month. “We’re going to have to nearly double the number of agents who work those threat cases.”

Threats against members of Congress jumped more than fourfold after Trump took office. In 2016, the Capitol Police investigated 902 threats; the following year, that number reached 3,939.

The threats range from phone calls with gruesome, specific descriptions of violence that have led to jail time for the callers to broad threats posted on social media for which juries have, on occasion, acquitted those charged.

Each threat is reviewed and “thoroughly investigated,” a Capitol Police spokesman said. The reviews include assessments of the potential for targeted violence and the immediate risk to the victim. In some cases, the Capitol Police work in tandem with the FBI to investigate.

Two days after the Electoral College confirmed Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, Ryder Winegar, a former Navy cryptologist living in New Hampshire, called six members of Congress — both Democrats and Republicans — while heavily intoxicated and threatened to hang them if they did not support Trump.

In one of the calls, he warned that if a lawmaker did not stand behind Trump, he would hang them, according to court records. He also said that he would refuse to vote for any “RINO candidate like yourself,” using the acronym for Republican in name only.

In another call, Winegar said a member of Congress could worry either about being “outed as a racist” or about people like him “stringing” her up.

In Illinois, Randall Tarr was drinking coffee and watching television early one morning — either the History Channel or National Geographic, he recalled in an interview — when he saw an advertisement accusing Davis of turning a blind eye to Russian interference in the 2016 election and encouraging viewers to call his office. Tarr, an Army veteran who at one time identified as a Republican, was furious.

“I’m like, dude, I got to do this,” Tarr recounted. “It’s already been proven by our intelligence agencies, the CIA and the FBI, and the Russians were guilty of this. I didn’t stop there. I just kept going, which was stupid. Something I shouldn’t have said, I know.”

In the voicemail message, according to court records, Tarr informed Davis of his training — “I’m a sharpshooter,” he said — and threatened to murder the congressman.

“That was a stupid part of my call,” Tarr said in the interview. “I don’t even own a weapon. I just got mad, and I regret it.”

Patrick Carlineo Jr., who had been gorging himself on right-wing talk radio before making the call to threaten Omar, also expressed regret when he appeared before a judge in 2019.

“I was listening to the Glenn Beck show, then I listened to Rush Limbaugh, and they were talking about her on both shows, and I get a little carried away with the coffee in the morning,” Carlineo said. “I just got all fired up.”

Anthony Lloyd, who threatened Waters in 2017, told the FBI agents who were dispatched to investigate his call that he also “religiously” followed the news and had grown upset after hearing on talk radio that the California congresswoman had threatened Trump’s life, a false claim.

“I’m not a planner, I’m not a terrorist guy,” Lloyd told the agents. “I’m very patriotic and I love my country.”

Most calls have not led to actual violence. But they can terrorize offices, sending lawmakers rushing to cancel events and find security, and traumatizing the aides or even interns who have the misfortune to answer them.

In another case, an aide in Waters’ district office testified that she answered the phone one morning and received a broadside from a caller who hurled racial epithets and said he would be attending all of the congresswoman’s events and would kill her and “every last one of you that works for her.” The call was so frightening that the aide physically shook upon hearing it, she testified.

Many of the threats, especially those directed at lawmakers of color, contained racial slurs or threats against certain races. Others used the language of white supremacy, like the caller who threatened Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., both of whom are white, and said he would start shooting Black people.

In several cases, defense lawyers have taken to arguing that their client should not be punished for comments that were consistent with what elected officials and political pundits have said. Several rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 have employed similar “Trump made me do it” defenses.

When the judge in Carlineo’s case expressed concern during a hearing that the defendant had referred to Omar in his phone call as a “radical Muslim” and said that people like her had no place in government, his lawyer cited comments both Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence had made about her.

In a second case involving a threat against Waters, the defendant’s lawyer argued that the judge should allow her to explain to the jury that her client’s call came after Trump had publicly feuded with Waters, and that the threat had even quoted some of Trump’s insults about the congresswoman.

In most cases, judges were clearly unsympathetic.

“Just because the current leader in Washington is permitting the type of discourse,” one judge fumed in 2017, when Trump was president, “that does not mean that it has to be countenanced. Some of this is just vile and threatening.”

The Columbus Dispatch

Opinion: We must give Russia multiple reasons to ‘think twice’ before attacking Ukraine

Glen Duerr – February 8, 2022

At times, mired in corruption and with ongoing challenges in numerous areas of society, Ukraine — a former Soviet republic — is a country many people typically overlook.

Yet, despite these challenges — many of which were inherited under its time in the Soviet Union — Ukraine maintains a broadly democratic structure that tries to uphold the rule of law and provides a level of liberty and freedom for its citizens.

More: Putin ‘won’t stop’ with Ukraine: Why Americans should care about Russia’s aggression against its neighbor

There is no treaty that binds Ukraine’s defense to the United States as the former is not a member of NATO. And while the United States is a signatory on the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which effectively handed over nuclear weapons from Kiev to Moscow in exchange for promises to uphold Ukraine’s territorial integrity, it is not a treaty obligation for Washington that promises protection by American troops.

But if Russia invades Ukraine again, as it did in 2014 with the illegal annexation of Crimea and the stalemated frozen conflicts in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, or installs a puppet pro-Russian regime in Kiev, it threatens much of the existing world order enjoyed since the end of World War II.

More: OnPolitics: Why should Americans care about the Ukraine conflict?

That order is messy and has sometimes caused economic upheavals, but the world since 1945 has been made much safer for the expansion of the free market, constitutional rights, and liberty, in many parts of the globe.

As such, policymakers in the United States and its allies should do as much as possible to dissuade Vladimir Putin from further territorial breaches of Ukraine.

More: Respect, fear, power: What’s motivating Vladimir Putin to threaten Ukraine?

Failure to at least assist Ukraine emboldens other autocratic regimes around the world like China, Iran, and Turkey to engage in similar behaviors. Suddenly, there may be a lot less liberty and far fewer protections for constitutional rights and the free market.

Vladimir Putin has long claimed that NATO’s expansion in eastern Europe is an inherent threat to Russia’s security. Historically, Russia has been invaded from the west on several occasions: by Poland-Lithuania in 1610, Sweden in 1709, Napoleon’s France in 1812, during the Russian Civil War in 1917, and Hitler’s Germany in 1941. Yet, this argument is a “straw man” in many respects.

First, Russia’s assertion that it needs a buffer is historically misplaced.

Joseph Stalin negotiated such a buffer with Roosevelt and Churchill at the end of World War II, citing the massive death toll on the Soviet Union in fending off the Nazis.

While this is true, Stalin himself allowed his foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, to sign an agreement with his German counterpart, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, to divide eastern Europe (also known as the Nazi/Soviet non-aggression pact). Stalin himself assumed that Hitler would be of no threat to him.

Second, democracies and democratic aspirants throughout eastern Europe are far more threatened by Russia than the other way around, as evidenced by numerous incursions to the airspaces of Russia’s neighbors as well as ongoing and increasingly sophisticated cyber espionage coming from Moscow. No country in eastern Europe in modern times has considered the prospect of attacking Russia.

More: Russian attack on Ukraine would bring ‘significant’ casualties, Gen. Milley says: What we know

The United States and many NATO allies have done much to arm and train Ukrainians to defend themselves against the threat of Russian militarism. Yet, much more could be done, especially in terms of sanctions and pressuring Putin in the energy sector.

A return to North American energy independence and/or an increase in the global energy supply will help, noting that Putin generally does not act out on the world stage while the supply of oil and natural gas is high around the world, pushing down his profits in the energy sector.

More: US responds to Russia’s demands and doesn’t yield on Ukraine and NATO: What to know

Next, NATO should refuse all concessions to Russia except for trying to assure the Kremlin that the West has no ambitions to ever engage in an unprovoked attack against it.

Finally, further helping Ukrainians is another key deterrent. Although Russia is on paper far more powerful than Ukraine, lessons of the 1939-1940 Winter War are apparent. In that conflict, the small country of Finland fended off an abrasive attack from the Soviet Union and fought the superpower to a draw.

Pressuring Vladimir Putin on several fronts and reminding him of this history is a useful way to have him think twice before attacking Ukraine. Although the current world order certainly has its shortcomings, it is a system where the free market, constitutional rights, and liberty, have generally expanded.

Glen Duerr is associate professor of International Studies at Cedarville University.

The Conversation

The Jan. 6 Capitol attacks offer a reminder – distrust in government has long been part of Republicans’ playbook

Amy Fried, John M. Nickerson Professor of Political Science, University of Maine and Douglas B. Harris, Professor of political science, Loyola University Maryland – February 9, 2022

The Republican National Committee has legitimized the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attacks. The RNC declared on Feb. 4, 2022, that the insurrection and preceding events were “legitimate political discourse” — an assertion that Sen. Mitch McConnell soon after countered, saying that it was a “violent insurrection.”

The Justice Department is investigating former President Donald Trump’s involvement on Jan. 6, when several thousand rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol. The attacks resulted in the deaths of at least seven people and the injury of 150 police officers.

Meanwhile, Trump says he will consider pardoning Jan. 6 rioters if he is reelected in 2024, while continuing to lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

It’s the latest step in a long-standing, systemic effort of the Republican Party to sow and capitalize on public distrust.

As political scientists who study the politics of public opinion and congressional rhetoric, we have chronicled American conservatives’ decadeslong strategic use of distrustful rhetoric in our book “At War with Government.”

How distrust can help in politics

There are a few clear benefits to leveraging distrust as a political tool.

Over the past several decades, Republicans have used distrust to caution voters against opponents in election campaigns and to argue that Democrats’ policy proposals would hurt Americans. Republicans have also sown political distrust toward institutions they did not control – like the presidency – while seeking to empower the same institutions when they were in power.

Our research shows that distrust has been a particularly powerful resource for Republican politicians as they work to galvanize the conservative base and attract the independent voters they need to win elections.

History of distrust

In the 1950s, Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy conducted a series of high-profile probes into U.S. government officials’ potential Communist Party affiliations. McCarthy and others used smear tactics to delegitimize political opponents, painting them as untrustworthy.

Public trust in government dropped precipitously, from 77% in October 1964 to 36% in December 1974.

Democrats began championing civil rights in the early 1960s. Republicans then adopted an electoral plan known as the Southern strategy around 1968, wooing white Southerners who opposed Democrats’ progressive direction on civil rights and social issues and who championed states’ power.

Various presidential administrations’ secrecy about the Vietnam War, as well as former President Richard Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal, furthered political distrust.

Left-wing American politicians have also capitalized on government distrust, especially regarding national security. Historian Paul Sabin attributes distrust in government to such liberal reformers as Ralph Nader, who criticized cozy relationships between government and business.

But it is largely Republicans who have strategically promoted political distrust. Republicans have also used distrust to rally against Democrats’ health policy proposals.

Working for the American Medical Association in 1961, 20 years before his election, for example, former President Ronald Reagan said that the proposal that would become Medicare was “one of the traditional methods of imposing socialism or statism on a people.”

Newt Gingrich’s 1990s fight against former President Bill Clinton and House Democrats marked a turning point, as Gingrich encouraged his fellow Republicans to use hyperbolic and highly personal attacks against Democratic colleagues, casting them as undeserving of citizens’ trust.

An early 1990s campaign memo from Gingrich advised candidates to define “the Democrats as the party of radical left-wing activists, unionized bureaucracies, and corrupt political machines.”

When arguing against Clinton’s proposed health reform, Republicans used phrases like “Gestapo medicine” to elicit fear of a destructive government.

In 2009 and 2010, opponents of the Affordable Care Act raised the prospect of government “death panels” making life-and-death decisions for citizens. A Republican strategist urged Republican leaders to characterize the health care plan as a “government takeover” which “like coups … lead to dictators and a loss of freedom.”

‘He had everyone enraged’

The echoes of more than a half-century of anti-government rhetoric spilled over on Jan. 6.

Trump’s “drain the swamp” rhetoric, along with his claim that elections are rigged, fueled people’s long-held suspicions toward government.

In a New York federal district court in January 2021, one of the accused Jan. 6 insurrectionists defended his participation in the attack, saying that he had “tired of the corruption of government.”

Some protesters present on Jan. 6 were involved in far-right anti-government groups, such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters.

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes wrote on the messaging app Signal two days after the November 2020 election that the group’s members shouldn’t accept the election results, saying, “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war.”

Other insurrectionists rationalized their actions by citing Trump’s false claims in court.

Some rioters, for example, defended themselves against trespassing charges by saying that Trump “invited” them to the Capitol.

One accused insurrectionist, Zachary Wilson, said, “I was caught up in President Trump telling everybody the election was stolen. He had everyone enraged.”

Trump’s promotion of distrust about the election results proved legally dangerous to citizens who were moved by his rhetoric.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta told one Jan. 6 defendant that he was “a pawn” of those who lied about the 2020 election results. The people who believed the lie “are the ones paying the [legal] consequences,” Mehta said

Distrust in the American election system has grown since the Jan. 6 attacks. More than 3 in 10 Americans believe the nation’s system is fundamentally unsound, according to a November 2021 Monmouth University poll, up from 22% in January 2021. That finding fits with the longer-term GOP effort to weaponize political distrust.

Read more:

• Behind the 11 Oath Keepers charged with sedition are many more who have been trained by the US military
• Civil war in the US is unlikely because grievance doesn’t necessarily translate directly into violence

Both authors received support for portions of the research for their book, “At War With Government: How Conservatives weaponized Distrust from Goldwater to Trump” (2021, Columbia University Press). Amy Fried received funding from the University of Maine for several archival visits and to support research assistants at several other archives. Douglas B. Harris received funding from the Everett McKinley Dirksen Congressional Research Center, the Carl Albert Congressional Research & Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma, and the Loyola University Summer Research Grant Program.

Amy Fried does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Daily Beast

Sorry, Mitch McConnell. Frankenstein’s Monster Runs the GOP Now

Wajahat Ali – February 9, 2022

Groupthink, obedience, loyalty, and propaganda are the lifeblood of every successful cult trying to indoctrinate, retain, and strengthen its members. That’s why it was such a rare and strange sight to see Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly break with the Republican National Committee and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy over the censure of Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

Don’t be fooled by this public theater. McConnell is desperately trying to put lipstick on a wild, savage pig before a contentious and pivotal 2022 midterm election. He realizes the aforementioned livestock he’s nurtured has transformed into a radicalized and weaponized death herd willing to violently tear down our democratic institutions.

Republican National Committee Chairperson Ronna McDaniel reflected the grievance of a wounded cult member when she said, “Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line” by choosing to join “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in a legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with the violence at the Capitol.” Sen. Mitt Romney—McDaniel’s uncle— apparently “exchanged texts” with his niece over the RNC’s “inappropriate message,” but, alas, he was unpersuasive.

Republicans Actually Love Affirmative Action (for Themselves)

Maybe he should engage in “legitimate political discourse” by arming himself with a variety of weapons like the Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent riot that led to the deaths of five people, including a cop. They intended to engage in “discourse” with stun guns, bats, flagpoles, rope, and pepper spray. Many of these “ordinary citizens” were actively hunting for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—who is now seen as a “traitor” for deciding to opt-out of Trump’s coup and instead reflect the will of the American people and their voters.

Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju about the RNC’s controversial statement last week, McConnell replied that January 6 “was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next.”

But it would be a grave mistake to assume that McConnell and other Republicans—such as Sens. Romney and John Thune, who support his sentiment—are “moderate Republicans,” an oxymoron that should have been retired in 2016. They are walking dinosaurs soon to be replaced by the true base of the GOP, which increasingly believes in the Big Lie, entertains the “Deep State” conspiracy theory, and wants to model itself after Hungary’s authoritarian, ethnoreligious nationalism.

If anything, their distancing is perhaps motivated by self-interest with an increasing realization that the Department of Justice and the House Select Committee are ramping up their investigations, which might implicate many of their colleagues and place them in serious legal jeopardy. At any rate, their words are hollow when compared to their actions, which are in full support of the GOP’s radical agenda against voting rights, climate change, income inequality, gun control, police reform, and any meaningful attempt at addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Recall that McConnell similarly had harsh words for Trump after the failed coup attempt, but he still voted against impeaching him. In 2021, McConnell warned of a “death spiral” for democracy, yet he has done almost nothing to rein in the extremists of his own party. His legacy will be defined by being an obstructionist who made the Senate into a legislative graveyard and surgically packed the courts with right-wing hacks—most notably the Supreme Court, which just oversaw a 5-4 decision that will suppress Black voters in Alabama.

Another top Republican who is doing his part to accelerate the death spiral of U.S. democracy is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who rather than answer questions about the RNC’s “legitimate political discourse” madness, ran from reporters like he was practicing for an upcoming track and field competition.

Much like McConnell, McCarthy initially blamed Trump, publicly saying, “the president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” A year later, after realizing his base was fully radicalized by the Big Lie, he did a 180 and said, “I was the first person to contact him when the riots were going on,” adding that Trump promised to “put something out to make sure to stop this. And that’s what he did; he put a video out later.”

When asked if he supported the RNC’s resolution, McCarthy declined to respond. However, he defended the use of “legitimate political discourse,” and did a remarkable Jedi mind trick by suggesting the RNC was actually referring to subpoenas sent to RNC officials who were allegedly part of Trump’s false electors scheme. Nobody believed him. Nonetheless, House Republicans did emerge from a closed-door meeting agreeing that Rep. Cheney, who voted with Trump 93 percent of the time and used to be the third highest-ranking Republican, should not be re-elected.

Both Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger were targeted by the RNC for simply putting loyalty to the country and national security above the GOP’s interests. Their punishment is permanent exile. They were not guilty of antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry, allegations of sex trafficking, or palling around with white nationalists. Those are the acceptable sins, respectively, of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebart, Matt Gaetz, and Paul Gosar. None of them have been publicly condemned by the RNC for their vile behavior nor reprimanded by the party’s leadership.

Instead, the RNC has decided to focus explicitly on Cheney and Kinzinger, because they were the only two Republicans who chose to sit on the House Select Committee. As a result, Rep. Kinzinger has announced he’s no longer running for re-election. In November, Wyoming Republicans voted to stop recognizing Liz Cheney as a member of the GOP. (Her last name…is freaking Cheney.)

For his brief dalliance with democracy, Pence now also stands condemned and joins Kinzinger and Cheney in the small cast of villains and traitors to the right-wing cause.

Justice Department is Finally Getting Serious About Holding the Jan. 6 Ringleaders Accountable

Despite spending four years utterly debasing himself and prostituting his dignity and ethics in servitude of Trump, Pence was recently thrown under the bus by none other than former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who still nurtures hopes of becoming president one day. Pence’s crime? He said Trump was “wrong” to claim that the vice president could have overturned the results of the 2020 election. Haley jumped on Fox News to praise Pence as a “good man” and an “honest man,” but nonetheless revealed her true loyalties when she admitted, “But I will always say, I just, I’m not a fan of Republicans going against Republicans.”

Ironically, Haley did just that against Trump last year when she said, “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him.” Now? Haley says, “We need him in the Republican Party. I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.”

Haley, perhaps unintentionally, revealed a painful and sad truth about the modern GOP that many within powerful institutions, especially the media, are still unwilling to hear. It is no longer a normal political party with sober adults who are able and willing to form guardrails that protect democracy. The movement is so beholden to its radicalized base that it must abandon its own legacy star, Liz Cheney, simply for refusing the Big Lie.

Where are the moderate Republicans and why can’t they condemn this violent extremism? They’re too busy applying lipstick to a pig, but sadly they can’t hide the true face of this ravenous herd coming for our democracy.

Daily Beast

Russia’s Big, Bizarre ‘Thank You!’ to Tucker Carlson and Josh Hawley

Julia Davis – February 9, 2022

There’s no question about it: the Kremlin has found a group of advocates in Fox News and the GOP, and Russian state media mouthpieces couldn’t be more grateful. Scarcely a day goes by without a supportive mention of Tucker Carlson on Russian airwaves, and his open opposition to U.S. support of Ukraine—as it faces down the imminent threat from Russia—are bearing fruit.

Carlson, who has been described as “practically the co-host” of state TV propagandists and “a voice of reason,” is often quoted to support official Kremlin narratives. Russian senator Alexey Pushkov claimed that the West—and not Russia—is “provoking war.” He asserted: “This isn’t just my opinion. Prominent Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson says that the mainstream media is getting us ready for war, demanding war.”

At the same time, Russian state TV worries about the scrutiny Carlson and others are facing for insisting that the United States should abandon the fledgling democracy and allow the Kremlin to continue its conquests of Russia’s neighbors unabated. On Sunday’s edition of the weekly program Vesti Nedeli, New York-based reporter Valentin Bogdanov asserted: “If you’re smart, you’re pro-Putin. Those who don’t believe in Washington’s magic are treated as witches… Tucker Carlson is on the watch list of the hawks.”

Kremlin TV Worries Tucker Carlson’s Pro-Putin Bias Has Gone Too Far

Vesti Nedeli went on to air clips from Carlson’s Friday show, where the talk show host complained that “during a closed-door briefing in Congress on Russia, Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a Democrat, asked an intelligence briefer to find out if this show is tied to Russia. We are not tied to Russia, of course.”

Describing himself as an “opposition journalist,” Carlson claimed that “Joe Biden’s NSA” secretly monitored his electronic communications last year. He was likely referring to an incidental collection linked to his communications with “Kremlin intermediaries” in an effort to secure an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Carlson criticized Republicans who “now believe Russia is our greatest enemy” and opined: “They could stop this tomorrow. If Mitch McConnell criticized the build-up to the war with Putin, it would end immediately… The lunacy would end. But they are not doing that. Instead, Republicans are every bit as hysterical about Russia as Adam Schiff ever was… Is that what Republican voters want?”

Carlson proceeded to compare a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine to what’s happening at the U.S.’s southern border. “Texas is a state that’s had well over 1 million foreign nationals pour into it illegally over the last year. Right over the border. That is a far bigger invasion than anything Vladimir Putin is planning in Ukraine,” he said on Friday. In response to Carlson’s complaints, Congressman Cooper’s office reportedly told Tucker Carlson Tonight that Cooper “has every right to ask whatever questions he thinks are important to strengthening American security during confidential House Intelligence Committee hearings.”

How Putin Made a Fool of Tucker Carlson

But Russian state television doesn’t see it the same way. What’s at stake, Bogdanov alleged, is not simply the taming of Carlson, but preventative sanctions against Russia or its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany. He complained that by accusing former President Donald Trump of “working for Russia,” the Democrats “tied his hands and feet and squeezed him out of the White House.”

Kremlin propagandists have high hopes for Trump’s triumphant return—which they’re promising to support—along with what they describe as “the new wave of Republicans.” Classifying them as a “horde” or “pack,” Bogdanov pointed to Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), who opposed the deployment of American troops to Eastern Europe, and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), who has echoed Tucker Carlson’s talking points on Russia, including when Marshall said: “I’m against sending U.S. troops to Ukraine. I’d send them to the southern border [of the U.S.] before sending them to Ukraine.”

Russian state television singled out their favorite of the bunch: Josh Hawley, who recently demanded that President Joe Biden suspend U.S. support for Ukraine’s potential NATO membership. Hawley also called on the U.S. to stop carrying “the heavy burden it once did in other regions of the world, including Europe.” It was such music to the Russian propagandists’ ears that across state media, Hawley’s position was extolled and anyone who criticized him was smeared.

During last week’s White House media briefing, press secretary Jen Psaki said: “If you are digesting Russian misinformation and parroting Russian talking points, you are not aligned with longstanding bipartisan American values, which is to stand up for the sovereignty of countries like Ukraine… That applies to Sen. Hawley, but it also applies to others who may be parroting the talking points of Russian propagandist leaders.”

Appearing on a state TV show The Big Game on Thursday, the president of the Center for the National Interest, Dimitri Simes claimed that Jen Psaki practically accused “leading Senator” Hawley of acting as an agent of Russia. Simes surmised that a sharp split is taking place within the Republican party, with the two congressmen, Braun and Marshall, suddenly opposing any intervention by the United States with respect to Ukraine’s attempts to defend itself from Russia’s aggression.

Simes was so incensed that Psaki dared to criticize Hawley’s stance that he compared the White House press secretary to the notorious chief of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, who played a major role in the bloody purges of Joseph Stalin’s opponents. Concerns about Hawley’s alleged persecution reverberated throughout state media channels. On Thursday, channel Rossiya-24 complained that Hawley was being “harshly denounced” by Psaki and English-speaking RT said that he was “admonished… for telling Biden to let Ukraine defend itself and focus on China.”

The same day, Olga Skabeeva, the host of 60 Minutes, also criticized Psaki for “coming after Hawley” and agreed with panelists on the show, who argued that Democrats are on their way out. She urged Ukrainians not to rely on Biden, and instead to work on establishing better relations with Trump, especially since the former U.S. president made it clear that he would be happy to let Ukraine handle Russia’s aggression without America’s help.

Skabeeva concluded: “Trump said he will become the 47th president [of the United States]… We have already started working on that. Having elected him the first time, I think we can manage to do it again.”

Insider

Putin’s super yacht abruptly left Germany amid sanction warnings over Russia-Ukraine tensions, report says

Julie Coleman – February 9, 2022

• Vladimir Putin’s yacht Graceful left Hamburg before finishing repairs, German media reported.
• It is speculated Graceful made an abrupt exit to avoid Western sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine.
• The luxury superyacht is said to be worth at least $100 million.

A yacht named Graceful and said to belong to Russian President Vladimir Putin left port in Hamburg abruptly before finishing repairs, according to reports from German media.

It is unclear what prompted the move, but the $100 million yacht’s relocation from German waters to Kaliningrad, part of Russian territory, came amid fears the West would impose sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine.

While Moscow has continuously denied any plans to invade its neighbor, it has gathered over 100,000 troops at positions all around Ukraine and has even sent six assault ships into the Black Sea, moving more combat power toward the former Soviet territory.

The US and UK have warned of sanctions on Russian elites, and President Joe Biden has threatened to sanction Putin personally should Russia decide to attack Ukraine. He has also deployed troops to Eastern Europe to support NATO members and has put thousands of US troops on “heightened alert” as tensions rise.

Some have speculated that sanctions could target certain luxury assets. Graceful was spotted on a public maritime-traffic-tracking site sailing for Kaliningrad.

—Manu Gómez (@GDarkconrad) February 9, 2022

Graceful arrived last year in Hamburg, where the superyacht has been receiving several modifications, including two forward balconies and an extension to the swimming platform, Boat International reported.

It was built by the German shipbuilding company Blohm and Voss and officially launched in 2014. Designed by H2 Yacht Design, Graceful is classified as a tri-deck superyacht, according to Boat International.

The luxury yacht is 270 feet long and equipped with a gym, a saloon featuring a white Steinway piano, a spa, a library, and a 49-foot indoor pool that can be converted into a dance floor. The vessel is meant to accommodate up to 12 guests and 14 crew.

Jonny Horsfield, H2’s founder, told Boat International in 2015 that Graceful was meant to be a timeless yacht.

“The owner is a very confident person,” Horsfield told the outlet without mentioning Putin directly. “He knows what he likes and he’s not a slave to trends.”

The Russian president’s net worth is unknown, but it has been speculated that Putin is worth as much as $200 billion, if not more, Fortune previously reported. Documents leaked last year suggested that Putin had secret assets abroad.

Daily Beast

Judge Orders Bannon’s Sugar Daddy to Cough Up $134 Million Over Notorious Yacht

William Bredderman – February 10, 2022

The financier famed for bankrolling some of Steve Bannon’s best-known ventures, as well as the far-right strategist’s jet-setting lifestyle, is in deep trouble for steering a $28 million yacht—the same boat where federal agents arrested Bannon in 2020—out of American waters.

A New York judge slapped Guo Wengui, who also uses the aliases Kwok Ho Wan and Miles Guo, with $134 million in contempt of court fines on Wednesday for violating multiple restraining orders barring him from selling or relocating the boat or any other property he controls. The high price tag results from nearly a year of the fugitive Chinese national defying the court’s order that he return the craft to a U.S. port—an order that carried a daily forfeiture of $500,000.

Court documents filed in late January showed the 151-foot-long pleasure vessel blithely plying the western Mediterranean. Now, Guo has only until Monday to come up with the funds. His attorneys at BakerHostetler—a firm with close ties to the Republican National Committee—declined to comment for this story.

The punishing penalties result from a case unrelated to Bannon’s maritime arrest a year and a half ago for allegedly looting a nonprofit, a charge for which he never faced prosecution thanks to a last-minute pardon from outgoing President Donald Trump.

Rather, the fines are connected to a separate fight over Guo’s enigmatic yet ostentatious wealth. Nearly five years ago, an affiliate of the Hong Kong-based investment firm Pacific Alliance Group brought suit against Guo, alleging his companies had failed to repay tens of millions of dollars in loans made between 2008 and 2009 or deliver on promised property transactions. The opulent boat has emerged as a key asset in that fight over the allegedly unpaid tab.

The Messy Money Drama Behind Steve Bannon’s Propaganda Machine

Guo, a Shandong-born construction magnate, absconded from the Chinese mainland in 2014, fleeing charges ranging from corruption and money-laundering to rape (all of which he has denied). Since 2017, he has lived in luxury, setting up residence in a $68 million Central Park penthouse and underwriting numerous right-wing projects, from nonprofits with Bannon to dodgy media operations to bogus COVID-19 studies to would-be Twitter competitor GETTR. All the while, he has sought refugee status and attacked figures in both the Communist Chinese regime and in the dissident diaspora online.

The yacht imbroglio is hardly the first time Guo’s activities have run afoul of U.S. authorities. In September 2021, his companies agreed to pay half-a-billion dollars in Security and Exchange Commission fines for running a crypto-currency scheme in violation of federal regulations.

Associated Press

Florida high court refuses DeSantis request on redistricting

February 10, 2022

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Supreme Court told Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday it will not answer his question on whether a Black congressman’s district is unconstitutional.

DeSantis has interjected himself into the once-a-decade process of drawing new congressional maps, something highly unusual for a governor to do. The House and Senate have considered maps that largely left Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Lawson’s district intact, but DeSantis is pushing a map that would make his district lean Republican.

After submitting his map, DeSantis asked the Supreme Court if Lawson’s district is unconstitutional. The district runs from Jacksonville to Gadsden County west of Tallahassee, a distance of about 200 miles (about 321 kilometers). DeSantis questioned whether drawing it to contain Black communities so far apart met the state and federal constitutions.

The court said the issue was too complicated to simply grant an advisory opinion.

“The scope of the Governor’s request is broad and contains multiple questions that implicate complex federal and state constitutional matters and precedents interpreting the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” it wrote.

The Hill

Former bank CEO sentenced in loan scheme to land Trump administration position

February 9, 2022

Former bank CEO Stephen Calk was sentenced to one year and a day in prison this week after he was convicted for participating in a loan scheme with the goal to secure a role in the Trump administration.

Calk, who was formerly the head of the Chicago-based Federal Savings Bank, was sentenced on Monday over his dealings with Paul Manafort, the onetime chairman of former President Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said that Calk improperly used his position as CEO to secure high-risk loans for Manafort and leveraged that as a means to gain a senior position in the Trump administration, according to a press release.

“Stephen Calk abused his position as the CEO of a federally-insured bank to try to buy himself prestige and power by trading millions of dollars in high-risk loans for influence with a presidential campaign and consideration for positions at the highest levels of the Defense Department,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in the release.

“Today’s sentence sends the message that those who corrupt federally regulated financial institutions will be held to account.”

Last year, Calk was convicted of conspiracy to commit financial institution bribery and financial institution bribery.

During his trial, prosecutors presented evidence arguing that he was seeking a position as either the secretary of the Army or head of the Treasury, Commerce or Defense departments, though he was not chosen for those jobs.

Calk was also sentenced on Monday to two years of supervised release and 800 hours of community service. He will also have to pay fines totaling more than $1 million, according to the release.

“As you can imagine, my life is in shambles,” he said during the sentencing, according to The Washington Post. “I deeply, deeply regret that the bank’s reputation has been tarnished as a result of my indictment and my conviction.”

Daily Beast

How the QAnon Crazies Went From Comet Pizza to the National Butterfly Center

Eleanor Clift – February 9, 2022

The National Butterfly Center, in Mission, Texas, was forced to close indefinitely after Kimberly Lowe, a fringe congressional candidate running in a GOP primary in Virginia, visited the site with hopes of uncovering a child sex-trafficking hub.

Denied entry based on her trail of inflammatory Facebook posts, Lowe became belligerent. A war of words and a physical altercation with the center’s director followed. Soon after, right-wing media featured video from outside the center’s gates alleging “credible threats of the cartels trafficking children through the butterfly center.”

The false claims follow the same script as the Pizzagate conspiracy theory in 2016, when Democrats were falsely accused of abusing children and holding them captive in the basement of Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in upscale northwest Washington, D.C. that doesn’t have a basement. But proving or debunking a conspiracy theory isn’t the point.

Crisis and Opportunity Could Lead to a Biden Bounce Very Soon

The point is to inflame and excite a Republican base that flirted with (or openly embraced) the QAnon conspiracy theory alleging a Deep State cabal of Democratic-Satanic pedophiles—and has focused its energy on trying “Stop the Steal” of a legitimate election that didn’t go their way.

Multiple conspiracy theories spawned by rage and grievance are coming together in a powerful and frightening GOP coalition.

“Far-right candidates like Kimberly Lowe have a blueprint on how to ride conspiracy theories and extreme rhetoric to office,” Kristen Doerer, managing editor of Right Wing Watch, said in an email. “They only have to look to Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert or Madison Cawthorn—all of whom have become MAGA celebrities—and see that’s a winning strategy.”

Harassing butterfly conservationists is cowardly enough, but for extremists looking for role models, Greene is hard to top. She harassed David Hogg, a survivor of the high school school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, suggesting the shooting that took 17 lives was a false flag.

“They are not just conspiracy theorists. They’re movements, they’re networks, and they span across multiple social media platforms,” Doerer told The Daily Beast. “These conspiracy theorists became valuable for the Republican Party because they can spread the Republican Party’s message whatever that might be throughout their networks. One only has to look at the cavalcade of conspiracy theorists traveling the country for the ReAwaken America Tour to see how large this network has become.”

The confluence of events that led to closing the butterfly sanctuary did not begin or end with Lowe’s visit. An account in The New York Times describes the escalation and the involvement of familiar figures like ex-Breitbart boss and Trump White House senior adviser Steve Bannon and Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The 100-acre site along the Rio Grande is near the path of the promised wall that helped elect Trump, and its construction remains a magnet for his supporters. Bannon raised money to pay for the wall when Congress wouldn’t. He was charged with fraud for absconding with the money. Trump pardoned him. Flynn recently spoke at a rally in support of the wall in nearby McAllen, Texas, where protesters with long guns held vigils.

Adam Klein is an associate professor of Communication Studies at Pace University, whose most recent book is Fanaticism, Racism and Rage Online. He told The Daily Beast that he listened to Bannon’s podcast the previous week recounting his version of the events at the butterfly center. The episode was titled, “Sex Slaves at the Border,” fueling the conspiracy theory swirling around the butterfly center.

Many modern right-wing conspiracy theories draw on the same storyline—which is that liberals and elites and Democrats are depraved. What is devilishly different about the butterfly center conspiracy is “marrying it to another valuable currency, anger at the border,” says Klein. He calls it “old poison in a new bottle.”

Jared Holt, a resident fellow at Atlantic Council who follows digital extremism, said his first reaction to the butterfly center’s closing was “sad to see this happen again. Conspiracy theories about this place have been floating around since 2017.”

Proximity to the wall’s construction path thrust the center into the fray, combined with rhetorical excesses on the right where opponents “are not just disagreeing but acting nefariously and are part of a larger conspiracy,” said Holt. Toss in vile accusations of sex-trafficking, which is universally reviled, “and the people who believe these conspiracy theories then place themselves in a heroic bulwark position, so in their minds they are combating these evils head on.”

The Jan. 6 Committee Members Are Patriots Making Sure Treason is Fully Documented

Monitoring this culture of true believers motivated by baseless conspiracy theories, Holt says that “any lasting solution will have to include very clear line drawings from influential Republican figures who state that this kind of behavior is unacceptable and that it is false. No amount of news media or statements from Democrats will make a difference. Until people who are politically aligned are able to speak to them and they listen, it’s going to be an uphill battle.”

With the midterms looming and control of Congress in the balance, there are few profiles-in-courage within the party whose members parrot conspiratorial theories like the Big Lie to placate Trump.

“This conspiratorial wing has gained so much sway that we’ll see more politicians catering directly to it, and that means we’re going to get more Marjorie Taylor Greenes,” says Holt. And if you’re thinking the voters will reject these extremists, “Jewish spaceships weren’t too much for her constituents,” he notes, referring to Greene’s widely ridiculed claim that Jewish space lasers caused California’s wildfires.

As for the butterfly center, the director has taken to carrying a sidearm, telling The New York Times that her board of directors won’t like it but the people attacking the center “need to know they’re not the only ones who carry weapons.”