Showing posts with label Roger Stone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roger Stone. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Proud Boys Entered Portland's Fray With Their Anti-Semitism and Hate Doctrines

Nadene Goldfoot                                           
             Gavin McInnes, founder of Proud Boys, a Canadian writer            Gavin McInnes is a Canadian writer and political commentator. McInnes is known for his controversial promotion of violence against political opponents, and has been described as far-right, although he denies this label." He's 50 years old and a father of 3 children, but refers to his group as boys.   

"Established in the midst of the 2016 presidential election by VICE Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys are self-described “western chauvinists” who adamantly deny any connection to the racist “alt-right,” insisting they are simply a fraternal group spreading an “anti-political correctness” and “anti-white guilt” agenda."  That may have been their first fleeting thought, but they're showing they're a most anti-Semitic group; a regular hate group.                                            

              Portland Police on September 26, 2020 on duty
 
A rumble was expected to happen the other night in Portland.  The Proud Boys appeared ready to take on Black Lives Matter, only they came and they left;  it didn't happen.  They had rolled into town in their automobiles and that was pretty much it.  So who are these Proud Boys and what are they so proud of, themselves, I gather. Where are they from?  Are they home-grown or from out of state? How well organized are they?   

Days before the Proud Boys rally took place, The Guardian and Bellingcat, an investigative journalism organization, reported on a trove of leaked chats obtained by anti-fascists in Eugene, Oregon, which showed a network of Pacific Northwest-based pro-Trump and pro-law enforcement activists planning to engage in acts of targeted political violence, including the assassination of elected officials.  Bellingcat is an investigative journalism website that specializes in fact-checking and open-source intelligence. It was founded by the British journalist and former blogger Eliot Higgins in July 2014.

 Their  "brief gathering mostly consisted of swilling cheap beer and hard seltzers and assaulting journalists in a park on the edge of town. The absence of large-scale violence, which has so often defined the group’s forays into Portland over the past few years, came as a relief to a city that has been blanketed in wildfire smoke in recent weeks and targeted by the Trump administration as an “anarchist jurisdiction” for its nightly protests against police brutality."

Police in tactical gear were mustered near overpasses outside Delta Park on the northern edge of the city, but with the exception of occasional visits from a handful of liaison officers, the Proud Boys were largely permitted to police themselves.

 "Proud Boys have appeared alongside other hate groups at extremist gatherings like the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville. Indeed, former Proud Boys member Jason Kessler helped to organize the event, which brought together Klansmen, antisemites, Southern racists, and militias. Kessler was only “expelled” from the group after the violence and near-universal condemnation of the Charlottesville rally-goers."   

"Jason Eric Kessler graduated from the University of Virginia with a bachelor of arts in psychology in 2009. Prior to his involvement in political extremism, Kessler wrote that he was employed in various working class jobs as a dishwasher, gym technician, truck driver and handyman. "He was  (born September 22, 1983) is an American neo-Nazi, white supremacist and anti-semitic conspiracy theorist.  Kessler organized the Unite the Right rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11–12, 2017 and the Unite the Right 2 rally held on August 12, 2018.  Kessler is a supporter of Neo-Nazism, far-right politics, and the alt-right.  In April 2017, Kessler was contracted to write two pieces for The Daily Caller.  He wrote another piece in May about the first protests in Charlottesville over the statue of Lee. Kessler also wrote several posts for the anti-immigrant white nationalist site VDare.  One of Kessler's posts claimed that the government was waging genocide against white people by policies that cause low Caucasian birth rates.                                      


“Let’s not bullshit,” Brian Brathovd, aka Caeralus Rex, told his co-hosts on the antisemitic The Daily Shoah — one of the most popular alt-right podcasts. If the Proud Boys “were pressed on the issue, I guarantee you that like 90% of them would tell you something along the lines of ‘Hitler was right. Gas the Jews."   "They are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric" (hatred of women). "The group admits only men and glorifies political violence. "                                        

The leader of The Daily Shoah is another hater, mainly of Jews.  Michael Isaac Peinovich (born 1977), commonly known by his pseudonym Mike Enoch, is an American neo-Nazi. He grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey in an upper-middle class Episcopalian family of Norwegian and Serbian descent.  His parents were divorced.  His only education was high school, and he was a dropout from several higher educational facilities as well as vocational ones.  Working at programming, he revealed his ani-Jewish conspiracy theory and therefore lost his job. Now he's a blogger and podcast host. He founded the alt-right media network The Right Stuff and podcast The Daily Shoah. Through his work, Peinovich ridicules African Americans, Jews, and other minorities, advocates racial discrimination, and promotes conspiracy theories such as Holocaust denial and white genocide.  This is what the Proud Boys listen to. 

 Proud Boys is based in the United States and has a presence in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. The group was started as a joke in the far-right Taki's Magazine in 2016 by Vice Media co-founder and former commentator Gavin McInnes, taking its name from the song "Proud of Your Boy" from the Disney https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX4YR3ItBswfilm Aladdin.   The Proud Boys emerged as part of the alt-right, but McInnes began distancing himself from the alt-right in early 2017, saying the alt-right's focus is race while his focus is what he defines as "Western values". This re-branding effort intensified after the Unite the Right rally.

In late November 2018, a news story which attracted national attention reported that the FBI classified the Proud Boys as an extremist group with ties to white nationalism.  Two weeks later, an FBI official briefing Clark County, Washington, law enforcement officials on the group denied that it was their intent to classify the entire group in this manner and ascribed the mistake to a misunderstanding. During the briefing, FBI agents suggested the use of various websites for more information, including that of the SPLC.  The official said that their intent was to characterize the possible threat from certain members of the group.  

Could it be that they only have their skin color to be proud of; not any manly accomplishments, are basically afraid of women, and that's why they cling to each other against all others?

                                                

All people should be raised to be proud of themselves and their origins.  Parents should complement their children enough to give them confidence in life.  Somehow, these "boys" have no pride at all having felt that being "white" was their only accomplishment in life, and felt denigrated by other non-whites and their achievements.  Too much pride is not good, however.  

Pride goeth before fall. (People who are overconfident or too arrogant are likely to fail. This saying is adapted from the biblical Book of Proverbs.).Pride is G-d's gift to little men.  Pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.  Remember, when the peacock struts his stuff, he shows his backside to half the world.                           


                         

  "In July 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would commute the sentence of Roger Stone, a political ally who was convicted of seven felony charges, including witness tampering, lying to congress, and obstruction, in relation to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.  His only occupation is that of a conservative political consultant and lobbyist. Stone was for many years a lobbyist for Donald Trump on behalf of his casino business and also was involved in opposing expanded casino gambling in New York State, a position that brought him into conflict with Governor George Pataki.

      Donald Trump's longtime friend, Roger Stone has pleaded not guilty to charges in the special counsel's Russia investigation on January 29, 2019. Video shows him leaving the federal courthouse in Washington after his arraignment.  with Proud Boys; not the picture referred to.

Shortly after the news broke, a photograph started to circulate online that supposedly showed Roger Stone and members of the Proud Boys flashing a white power gesture at a bar:" Snopes reports that this is true.  According to the Anti-Defamation League, white nationalists started to appropriate the common "OK" hand gesture in 2017.

"The perception" in Portland "that the police favor the far-right agitators was further informed by the sharp contrast with how the police treated those protesting police violence and racism later that day,” German, the former FBI agent, said. “That they would modify the law enforcement command structure specifically to avoid restraints on police violence ordered by courts and local political leaders demonstrates complete disregard for the law, democratic restraints on police power, and the security of Portland residents from unaccountable law enforcement actions.”

According to Wikipedia, (In early 2018, ahead of an appearance at the annual Republican Dorchester Conference in Salem, Oregon, Stone sought out the Proud Boys to act as his "security" for the event; photos posted online showed Stone drinking with several Proud Boys. In February 2018, the Proud Boys posted a video on Facebook which they described as Stone undergoing a "low-level initiation" into the group. As part of the initiation, Stone says "Hi, I'm Roger Stone. I'm a Western chauvinist. I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world", making him a "first-degree" member, which Kutner characterizes as being a "sympathizer".                                                   

A man hold his hand to his heart as a Proud Boys organizer recites the Pledge of Allegiance during a Proud Boys rally at Delta Park in Portland, Oregon on September 26, 2020. A Proud Boys supporter has been filmed warning that there will be a "civil war" if Donald Trump does not get re-elected in November.MARANIE R. STAAB/AFP/GETTY Stone denies being a member of the group. In July 2020, Facebook announced it had shut down the accounts and pages linked to Stone and Proud Boys. This network of over 100 Facebook and Instagram accounts spent more than $300,000 on ads to promote their posts and included false personas.  In late January 2019, when Stone was arrested by the FBI on seven criminal counts in connection with the Mueller investigation, Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, met Stone as he left the courthouse in Florida. Tarrio, who wore a "Roger Stone Did Nothing Wrong" T-shirt, sold by a company owned by Tarrio, told a local TV reporter that the indictment was nothing but "trumped-up charges", and was later seen visiting Stone's house. The next day, in Washington D.C., a small number of Proud Boys demonstrated outside the courthouse where Stone pleaded not guilty to the charges, carrying "Roger Stone did nothing wrong" signs and others that promoted the InfoWars conspiracy website. The Proud Boys got into an argument with anti-Stone hecklers Tarrio was later filmed behind Donald Trump in February 2019, during a televised speech in Miami, where he was seen wearing the same message on a T-shirt.  Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes said Stone was "one of the three approved media figures allowed to speak" about the group. When Stone was asked by a local reporter about the Proud Boys' claim that he had been initiated as a member of the group, he responded by calling the reporter a member of the Communist party. He is particularly close to the group's current leader Enrique Tarrio, who has commercially monetized his position.  At a televised Trump rally in Miami, Florida on February 18, 2019, Tarrio was seated directly behind President Trump wearing a "Roger stone did nothing wrong" tee shirt.Update: 10/16/20

Resource: 

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys

https://ucommblog.com/section/national-politics/proud-boys-greatest-threat-america

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/28/portland-proud-boys-rally-journalists/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/23/oregon-portland-pro-trump-protests-violence-texts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Enoch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Kessler

https://www.newsweek.com/proud-boys-trump-civil-war-qanon-1538208?fbclid=IwAR1yfckIXuCeW0iE-f3PK5kHmSFVnguXjDmvaA86zfY0AjFyIF6liSobYx0

Monday, August 24, 2020

Caught in Mueller's Net: Trump's Friends and Associates ; Tracked and Tried Guilty

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                               
(Reuters) - Steve Bannon: has been charged with defrauding Trump supporters in a campaign to help build the president’s signature wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, prosecutors said on Thursday.He was one of Trump's advisers.  Bannon served as a top adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and later worked as White House chief strategist before leaving the administration in August 2017.
      Trump met Bannon in 2010;  Bannon first met Trump through David Bossie, the head of conservative group Citizens United, Bannon said in a later interview with then-CBS anchor Charlie Rose.
      The count includes senior members of Trump’s campaign staff, including former campaign chair Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates – both snared on financial misdeeds in special counsel Robert Mueller investigation. Trump’s first national security adviser – Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn – pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI – though he has recently moved to retract his plea. His personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is under criminal investigation for his business relationship with two men arrested in an alleged campaign finance scheme, according to sources. Both Giuliani associates have pleaded not guilty.                                                                   

      
*Roger Jason Stone: "Trump’s longtime friend and adviser, was convicted of lying under oath to lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.  an American conservative political consultant, lobbyist, and convicted felon. In November 2019, subsequent to the Mueller report and Special Counsel investigation, he was convicted on seven counts, including witness tampering and lying to investigators.   Stone first suggested Trump run for president in early 1998 while he was Trump's casino business lobbyist in Washington. The Netflix documentary film Get Me Roger Stone focuses on Stone's past and his role in Trump's presidential campaign.  Since the 1970s, Stone worked on the campaigns of Republican politicians Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump." He had a great resume!  
                                                             

*Paul Manafort: Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty of tax fraud and bank fraud in a jury trial in August 2018. A month later, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges related to money laundering, lobbying violations and witness tampering.  On October 27, 2017, Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates were indicted in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on multiple charges arising from his consulting work for the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine before Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014. The indictment came at the request of Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation. In June 2018, additional charges were filed against Manafort for obstruction of justice and witness tampering that are alleged to have occurred while he was under house arrest, and he was ordered to jail.
                                                       

*Rick Gates:  Richard William Gates, III:  The former deputy chairman of Trump’s campaign pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiracy against the United States and lying to investigators.  is an American former political consultant and lobbyist who pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. He is a longtime business associate of Paul Manafort and served as deputy to Manafort when the latter was campaign manager of the Donald Trump presidential campaign in 2016, and after under Kellyanne Conway.  Gates agreed to cooperate with former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and testified as a prosecution witness against Manafort, his former business partner, and Stone. Gates was sentenced in December 2019 to 45 days in jail.
                                                        

Michael Cohen, lawyer: Cohen joined the Trump Organization in 2006. Trump hired him in part because he was already an admirer of Trump, having read Trump's Art of the Deal twice. He had purchased several Trump properties and convinced his own parents and in-laws, as well as a business partner, to buy condominiums in Trump World Tower. Cohen aided Trump in his struggle with the condominium board at the Trump World Tower, which led Trump to obtain control of the board. Cohen became a close confidant to Trump, maintaining an office near Trump at Trump Tower.Michael Dean Cohen is an American disbarred lawyer who served as an attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump from 2006–2018. Cohen was a vice-president of The Trump Organization, and the personal counsel to Trump, and was often described by media as Trump's "fixer". 
        He pleaded guilty in August 2018 to crimes including orchestrating ‘hush money’ payments before the 2016 election to women who had said they had sexual encounters with Trump.  Trump’s former personal lawyer is serving a three-year prison sentence at home due to the coronavirus pandemic. 
                                                        

Michael Flynn:  The retired Army lieutenant general served as Trump’s national security adviser for less than a month in 2017.Michael Thomas Flynn is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who was the 24th National Security Advisor for the first 22 days of the Trump administration until his forced resignation.. He pleaded guilty that year to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks before Trump took office.  
      In December 2017, Flynn formalized a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to a felony count of "willfully and knowingly" making false statements to the FBI, and agreed to cooperate with the Special Counsel's investigation.  In January 2020. Flynn moved to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming government vindictiveness and breach of the plea agreement. The United States Department of Justice announced that it intended to drop all charges against Flynn on May 7, 2020. Federal district judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled the matter to be placed on hold.  
                                                         
       

George Nader: A Lebanese-American businessman who was a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election - a businessman who also helped broker the release of American hostages;  an informal Trump adviser on foreign policy and witness in the Mueller investigation, was sentenced in June to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in Virginia.  
       George Nader pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and to bringing a 14-year-old boy from the Czech Republic to engage in sexual activity to the United States for sex.  There was another George Nader, also of Lebanese ancestry, an actor and writer who was gay, and who died much earlier.  Nader's name appears more than 100 times in the Mueller report. It details Nader's efforts to serve as liaison between Russians and members of President Donald Trump's transition team.  
      "He  is an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates and a consultant to Blackwater founder Erik Prince. In January 2018, special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators questioned Nader in connection to suspicions that the UAE had been involved with President Trump's 2016 campaign. 
     On August 3, 2016 Nader met with Trump Jr., Erik Prince, and Joel Zamel, an Israeli entrepreneur and specialist in social media manipulation, to offer help to the Trump team in winning the elections. There are conflicting accounts of whether the close to 2 million dollars Nader paid Zamel after Trump's victory is attributed to that or not. 
      In December 2019, Nader was charged in U.S. federal court with violating campaign finance laws by allegedly also using over three and half million dollars to reach out to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for the U.S. Presidency, through a front." During the George H. W. Bush Administration he helped to free American hostages in Lebanon after the Iran–Contra affair.] 
      During the Clinton Administration, Nader tried unsuccessfully to broker an Israeli–Syrian peace agreement, working with Estée Lauder heir Ronald Lauder.  
     In August 2016, Nader met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower offering assistance to his father's presidential campaign. Nader served as an envoy representing Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The meeting included Erik Prince and Joel Zamel, an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation and owner of intelligence gathering firms including Wikistrat and the Psy-Group, who bragged to have received $2 million from Nader as part of the presidential campaign.
     Nader attended a December 2016 meeting in New York between the United Arab Emirates officials and president-elect Donald Trump's associates Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon. In January 2017 he was at a meeting on the Seychelles islands between the Emiratis and Erik Prince, and was present when Prince met with officials from the UAE and Kirill Dmitriev, head of state-run Russian Direct Investment Fund.                                                     

      
George Papadopoulos:  According to court records, Papadopoulos joined Trump's foreign policy adviser team as a volunteer adviser in early March 2016. Sam Clovis, who at the time was national co-chairman of Donald Trump's campaign team, approved him as an unpaid adviser. In his campaign job interview via Skype from London on March 6, Clovis allegedly told Papadopoulos that one of the campaign's foreign policy priorities was to improve U.S.–Russia relations, though Clovis later denied saying that.  
        George Demetrios Papadopoulos is a former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.  Papadopoulos joined candidate Trump as well as Senator Jeff Sessions and other campaign officials for a National Security Meeting at the Trump Hotel, on March 31, 2016. Papadopoulos averred that he could facilitate a foreign policy meeting between candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
         The former Trump campaign adviser was sentenced in September 2018 to 14 days in prison after pleading guilty in October 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials and a Maltese professor who told him the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton.
      At a breakfast meeting at the Andaz London Liverpool Street hotel on April 26, 2016, Mifsud (While employed at that time with the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), on March 12, 2016, Papadopoulos was part of an LCILP visiting delegation to the Link Campus University in Rome. There he met Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic who was at the time a teacher at the University of Stirling in Scotland.)  told Papadopoulos that he had information that the Russians have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, "the Russians had emails of Clinton", "they have thousands of emails.  Despite his communications with members of the Trump campaign regarding Russia, the Mueller Report found no evidence that Papadopoulos ever shared information with the Trump campaign regarding Russia having "dirt" on Hilary Clinton or possessing her hacked emails.
       Between March and September 2016, Papadopoulos made at least six requests for Trump or representatives of his campaign to meet in Russia with Russian politicians. In May, campaign chairman Paul Manafort forwarded one such request to his deputy Rick Gates, saying "We need someone to communicate that [Trump] is not doing these trips. It should be someone low-level in the campaign so as not to send any signal." Gates delegated the task to the campaign's correspondence coordinator, referring to him as "the person responding to all mail of non-importance. 
                                                 

These men were investigated mostly because of Robert Swan Mueller III, an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2001 to 2013.  On May 17, 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters. He submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019.  On April 18, the Department of Justice released it.  On May 29, he resigned his post and the Office of the Special Counsel was closed. Mueller and William Barr—the attorney general who supervised the late stage of Mueller's special counsel investigation—have known each other since the 1980s and have been described as good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.
                                           


Resource; 
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-bannon-associates-factbox/factbox-here-are-eight-trump-associates-arrested-or-convicted-of-crimes-idUSKBN25G1YU
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-associates-prison-faced-criminal-charges/story?id=68358219
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-trump-bannons-turbulent-relationship/story?id=52137016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Stone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Cohen_(lawyer)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-manafort-trial-testimony-rick-gates-tells-jurors-he-embezzled-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Gates_(political_consultant)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/key-mueller-witness-george-nader-sentenced-10-years-200626170105895.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Papadopoulos
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2017/12/flynn-mueller-and-trump-investigating.html  Dec 1,2017