Promise the marks the stakes are apocalyptic and they are the Chosen
Still as true as when LBJ said it in 1960:
The Jan. 6 panel on Monday played tape after witness tape confirming that Donald Trump’s closest advisers knew his stolen election narrative was “bullshit,” and said so. So they claim now under oath, having done nothing to alert the public when it might have saved lives. The committee also emphasized that promoting the Big Lie as a fundraising gimmick (for his nonexistent “Official Election Defense Fund”) netted Donald John Trump roughly $250 million.“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” — Lyndon B. Johnson, as told to Bill Moyers
Ja’han Jones writes at the ReidOut Blog that Trump could wind up paying for those lies. He’s already been sued by several Capitol and D.C. police officers. And more:
Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine is investigating the Jan. 6 attack and has filed a civil suit seeking damages from members of extremist groups — such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers — accused of participating in the riot. Multiple members of both groups have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their roles in the attack. If the committee continues to provide evidence Trump was responsible for the attack, it seems increasingly likely he’ll be added as a defendant in the D.C. lawsuit.
On top of that, Trump is also facing a lawsuit filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which claims his campaign’s effort to discard 2020 votes in cities with large Black populations was illegal.
Not facing war crimes charges, former President George W. Bush is painting in his retirement. Trump could spend his facing lawsuits from attorney’s general across the country over his “Official Election Defense Fund.”
Amanda Wick, a senior investigative counsel to the committee noted in video testimony, “Claims that the election was stolen were so successful, President Trump and his allies raised $250 million, nearly $100 million in the first week after the election.” (In the small print, IIRC, the mailings did mention a portion of the funds would go to Trump’s PAC.)
Not specifying these reports directly, New York Attorney General Tish James tweeted on Monday that investigating fraud is part of her remit. She is already investigating Trump for financial misconduct in New York.
The Department of Justice has in the past “charged a number of operators of so-called scam-PACs” for raising money that went to consultants and not to the advertised purpose. See Steve Bannon’s “We Build the Wall” campaign.
But, says the New York Times:
The experts said that any investigation of Mr. Trump’s fund-raising would likely target his aides, not the former president himself.
And they pointed out that the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, the campaign committee that sent out most of the solicitations for the election defense fund, transferred funds to the Republican National Committee, which spent money on legal fights related to the 2020 election.
“In contrast with some of these other scam PAC prosecutions — where effectively none of the money raised went toward satisfying donor intent — Trump might argue that a portion of the funds raised in the postelection period went toward litigation, and an additional portion went toward future ‘election integrity’ efforts,” said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance expert at the watchdog group Documented.
“It would certainly be novel for the Justice Department to pursue a fraud case against a former president’s PAC, but Trump’s fraudulent postelection fund-raising was novel, too,” Mr. Fischer said, adding that the amount Mr. Trump’s team had raised after the election was “entirely unprecedented.”
Stephen Spaulding, an official at the good government group Common Cause who advised Ms. Lofgren on election law issues in 2020, said the Justice Department should examine whether the misleading fund-raising “crossed the line into wire fraud.”
“We Build the Wall” campaign crowd-funders Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato in April pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The charge carries a maximum of 20 years. Steve Bannon received a pardon from Trump.
But will Trump’s faithful even care that they were scammed?
In conversation with Greg Sargent, historian Rick Perlstein suggests they may not. Televangelists have fleeced their followers for decades. Seeing their supporters as “marks” goes back to the earliest days of movement conservatism in the 1960s (Washington Post):
Sargent: You see that overlap very clearly here: Trump and his allies told millions of voters that the election was being stolen from them — and that their country was being taken from them as well.
That had the effect of bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars. But it has also had the effect of creating something akin to a social movement.
Perlstein: Right-wing voters are acclimated into an understanding of the world in which they are being victimized by dark forces. That’s a great way for conservative leaders to get money shoveled in their direction. But it’s also a great way to form what Marxists used to call a “cadre,” a group of fanatically dedicated followers.
Now we face the phenomenon of millions of people, many of them armed, who are identifying their own safety, comfort and flourishing as human beings with the political success of Donald Trump and his allies.
Once, Republican used direct mail pitches pioneered by Richard Viguerie in the 1970s. Today, it is social media. Both do two things simultaneously, Perlstein observes. They raise money while spreading the misinformation gospel:
Perlstein: The mainstream of the population wakes up to discover that millions of people believe that babies are being harvested in a pizza basement. The only reason that can happen under the mainstream’s nose is the structure of social media and targeted algorithms.
In the same way, direct mail was news that people got that wasn’t from a newspaper or network news. It was news they got directly from the instigators of this conservative countercoup.
Like so much of the relationship between Reagan-era conservatism and Trump-era conservatism, it’s the same phenomenon — supercharged.
Yes, it’s confounding. Why don’t they rebel against being conned, David Roberts asks in a tweet thread. Why aren’t they furious?
Lyndon Johnson answered that 60 years ago.
It’s a wonder the former president is not hawking Trump-branded prayer cloths.
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