Trump world continues robbing the US treasury

 

UPDATE 04/02/2026:

MAGA is the gift that keeps on giving to grifters

 

Epstein - the gift that keeps on giving

 

UPDATE 08:06 pm:  Mike Flynn and Glenn Beck!

It's Sunday

Accusations are floating in MAGA world that the Lutheran church is laundering money.

Money laundering in Trump 2.0 world is redistribution to the poor.  

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Secretary of Retribution

I found the “Secretary of Retribution” on Tuesday, sitting on a couch on media row during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. As an associate filmed him with a phone camera, [long-time associate of Michael Flynn and former Green Beret] Ivan Raiklin was railing against enemies of former President Donald Trump. The self-styled Retribution Secretary had an ominous message: “Constitutional sheriffs,” he warned, were going to round up all the people on Raiklin’s “Deep State target list” in live-streamed “swatting raids” so they could be punished for treason.

Those who wanted to avoid such a fate, he said, had until September 3 to “come out as a whistleblower,” by reaching out to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) or Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) to help with their investigations into the “weaponization” of government. Then, he said, “We will spare you. Everyone else will be treated as a co-conspirator.”

[...]

For the past six months or so, Raiklin has been circulating an enemies list of about 350 people whom he believes should be prosecuted for treason. The list, which has unnerved many democracy advocates, includes former Vice President Mike Pence, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, journalists, witnesses from Trump’s impeachment hearings, Capitol police officers, and more.

[...]

Raiklin also calls himself the “Deep State Marauder.”

  Mohter Jones

Raiklin is also a total nutjob, which should not surprise you, considering he's associated with total nutjob Michael flynn.

I attempted to ask Raiklin about the allegations that he was inciting political violence with his target list.

“I have full 100 percent disrespect for your news organization. One hundred percent. When you can lower that to below 99.9 percent, then I’ll consider communicating with you. Is that fair?…When you can show that level of repentance to start getting things right, then I’ll see you’re making a good faith effort to try to report accurately and truthfully. So you may want to go back to your employer and start to inform them that they need to start becoming an accurate purveyors of content. Until that happens, well, you can go and talk to other people, ‘cause I’m not moving.”

[...]

Raiklin told me cryptically to “talk to Elon Musk” about the Deep State list.

You may recall Ivan Raiklin (Russian origins?) from the 2020-21 coup attempt.

To coordinate national efforts, Raiklin and [Houston real estate mogul Al] Hartman on 3 July spearheaded one of a series of “Election Integrity” calls with Trump loyalists, lawyers and donors to discuss the status of audits efforts in several states and other plans to cast doubt on Biden’s win, according to an Arizona senate document shared by the watchdog group American Oversight.

[...]

Raiklin in December 2020 outlined a wild scheme in tweets and a podcast to thwart Biden’s win, charging a vast conspiracy that included Pence, intelligence, China and Big Tech, as Reuters reported. Raiklin told Trump to “activate the emergency broadcast system” and deployed the hashtag #FightLikeAFlynn, stressing that “we the people are going to force this plan on them”.

  Guardian

For more, you can read this MSN article on Raiklin's meeting with Texas sheriffs last summer outlining how his retribution plan would work.

And there's this...

Gee, maybe Trump has Alex Jones to thank for the assassination attempt.

I don't want to link to that Stasi shit.  But the list is very long.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Will Flynn actually testify?

We'll see.

It's Sunday

Chirren.  God is a black nanny from the South in the 1800s.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here

The snakes have escaped the pit.  

And why do they say "Father God"?  Are they afraid someone will think they're speaking of a female when they invoke the name of God?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

On Thursday night in Castle Rock, Colorado, a group called “FEC United” (FEC stands for faith, education, and commerce) held a “town hall” meeting that featured a potpourri of GOP candidates and election conspiracy theorists. Most notably, the event included John Eastman, the Claremont scholar who authored the notorious legal memos that purported to justify the decertification and reversal of the 2020 election results [...] , but perhaps the most ominous aspect of the evening was its location—a church called The Rock.

If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event.

[...]

Last week, the New York Times’s Robert Draper wrote a must-read profile of former President Donald Trump’s one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn.

[...]

During the Biden administration, he’s taken his show on the road, launching a “ReAwaken America” tour that features conferences that combine “elements of a tent revival, a trade fair and a sci-fi convention.”

[...]

[T]he tour is sponsored by Charisma News, a charismatic Christian outlet. The next thing you should notice is the list of upcoming venues: Trinity Gospel Temple in Ohio, Awaken Church in California, The River Church in Oregon, and Burnsview Baptist Church in South Carolina.

[...]

MAGA Christian nationalism is emotional and spiritual, not intellectual or ideological. While a number of scholars have done yeoman’s work in identifying the basic tenets of Christian nationalism, I’m still partial to Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd’s formulation of the ideology as “more a visceral reaction than a rationally chosen stance.” Kidd provides a telling example:

I recently saw a yard sign that read “Make Faith Great Again: Trump 2020.” I wondered, How can re-electing Donald Trump make “faith” great again? What faith? When did it stop being great? No coherent answers would be forthcoming to such questions, but that’s the point. The sign speaks to a person’s ethnic, religious, and cultural identity in ways easier to notice than to explain.

But a MAGA Christian nationalist will read that sign and know exactly what it means–when Trump wins, America wins, and the church wins. The man, the nation, and the church are the movement.

[...]

It’s no coincidence that Paula White, a pentecostal pastor herself, was Trump’s spiritual adviser.

[...]

MAGA Christian nationalism is often rooted in purported prophecies. I’ve spent every single day of the Trump era living deep in the heart of Trump country, surrounded by Trump-supporting friends, and attending church with Trump-supporting Christians. If there’s anything I know by heart, it’s the “Christian case for Trump.” I’ve read all the essays. I’ve heard all the arguments. It’s in the air out here.

There’s the pragmatic or prudential cost/benefit analysis—he’s a bad man, but his judicial appointments are good. There’s the cultural argument about threat—the left has grown so terrible that we have to punch back. But there’s also another argument entirely, one that’s impossible to discuss rationally—that Trump is divinely anointed by God to save this nation from imminent destruction.

[...]

It’s possible to overreact to this, to paint with too broad a brush. Michael Flynn is not speaking for the Evangelical mainstream. Millions of Republican Evangelicals have likely never even heard of the ReAwaken America tour. They dismiss “prophecies.” They’re legitimately aggrieved when they’re lumped into a movement and an ethos they find strange and appalling.

[...]

For all the (legitimate) talk of cancel culture from the left, many Christians self-censor out of fear of the right. They know Michael Flynn is dangerous, but saying so out loud carries a cost. So they remain silent. They stay in their anti-left lane.

[...]

But underreaction can be dangerous too. We know that fanatical religious subcultures can do an immense amount of damage to the body politic. We know that they can be both deadly and destabilizing. A Christian political movement that’s so focused on the threat from the left can often unwittingly facilitate the rise of radicals.

[...]

[W]e have to know what we face, and what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.

  French Press

Trump's involvement in the seizure of voting machines scheme

The New York Times, citing three unidentified sources, reported that Trump ordered his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in December 2020 to ask if it could legally take possession of voting machines in crucial swing states.

Giuliani reportedly placed a call to Acting Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli to relay the president’s request. But, according to the Times, Cuccinelli told Giuliani that he did not have the power to examine or take possession of the voting machines.

The request came after Trump declined to use the Pentagon to seize the voting machines, an idea that was floated by his team of outside advisers, the Times reported.

  The Hill

Come on. He didn't decline. Somebody told him he couldn't do that.

Trump also reportedly brought up potentially using the Department of Justice to take possession of voting machines. According to the Times, the president raised the prospect during a meeting with then-Attorney General Bill Barr in the Oval Office, a gathering that took place not long before Giuliani called Cuccinelli.

See what I mean? He was asking everybody to do it.

Last month, Politico reported on a draft executive order that sought to order the Defense secretary to take possession of voting machines, and appoint a special counsel to investigate the 2020 election.

And on Monday, CNN reported that advisers to Trump drafted another version of an executive order that would have directed DHS to seize voting machines.

Three sources told the Times that retired Army Col. Phil Waldron conceived the idea to order federal agencies, like the military or DHS, to seize voting machines. Waldron reportedly went to former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn with his idea.

Doesn't really matter who conceived the idea. Trump was the one pushing it.

Trump also tried to encourage state lawmakers in key battleground states — including Michigan and Pennsylvania — to uti.lize law enforcement agencies and seize voting machines, according to the Times. The state lawmakers, however, would not get on board with the effort.

He should have asked Erik Prince. (And for all I know, maybe he did.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

When did Mike Flynn lose the thread?

AKA escape reality.

I'd like to see his flow chart for just how this will work.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sad

The University of Rhode Island will revoke honorary degrees given to Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn, key allies of Donald Trump in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

The URI board of trustees on Friday voted unanimously to revoke the degrees, which were given to Giuliani in 2003 and Flynn in 2014.

Giuliani’s doctorate of laws was given for his leadership as mayor of New York City after the 9/11 attacks, the Providence Journal reported.

Flynn, a retired general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who graduated from URI in 1981, was given a doctorate of humane letters.

  Guardian

They just wanted to get some fame by association with Giuliani and Flynn, didn't they? I mean, come on. Rhode Island? What connection did they have with either of those crooks?

The trustees voted on the recommendation of the URI president, Marc Parlange, who said the two men “no longer represent the highest level of our values and standards that were evident when we first bestowed the degree”.

[...]

Recommending the revocation of the honorary degrees, Parlange said: “As a civic institution, URI has the privilege and responsibility to sustain and preserve American democracy by insuring and modeling good citizenship. Revoking these honorary degrees reinforces our values and allows us to lead with truth and integrity.”

Next time, choose more wisely.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And speaking of Flynn...

FBI agents and the House panel investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol have both learned of an alleged plan by allies of retired army Lt Gen Michael Flynn to gather “intelligence” on top Republicans to “move” them to back election audits in key states Trump lost, said ex-whistleblower Everett Stern who talked to the panel and the FBI.

Stern, who runs the intelligence firm Tactical Rabbit and is a Republican vying for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, in multiple interviews with the Guardian said two Flynn associates with the rightwing Patriot Caucus group enlisted his help in April in a scheme to seek potentially damaging information on two Republican members of Congress [Pennsylvania’s Senator Pat Toomey and Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick] to prod them to back an audit of the 2020 vote that Joe Biden won.

[...]

Stern said he alerted the FBI in June when he learned more details of the bizarre drive by Flynn allies to specifically target the two Republicans, both of whom backed impeaching Trump after the January 6 insurrection.

  Guard

I bet they're not the only two who've been blackmailed in some manner by the insurrectionists.

The efforts by Flynn’s Patriot Caucus allies were launched after Trump failed to block Biden from taking office, and are part of a wider drive by Trump loyalists and Flynn to help boost Trump’s political fortunes via more state audits nationwide into false charges that Biden’s win was rigged, and elect like-minded candidates in key states to top electoral offices.

[...]

Stern said Flynn’s Patriot Caucus associates first approached him in Pennsylvania for possible help after an April Republican party event, and soon after told Stern in phone calls they worked with Flynn and the Patriot Caucus, and planned to recruit “former domestic and foreign intelligence officials” to facilitate their scheme.The plan by Flynn’s allies alarmed Stern, but as a former whistleblower involved in exposing a large bank money laundering scandal by HSBC in 2012, he told the Guardian he decided to play along for a few months to glean information to expose the Trump allies’ scheme.

Actually, that's a brilliant defense. None of those Oath Keepers were smart enough to use it.

In an April exchange of Hartman text messages seen by the Guardian, Hartman asked a Flynn scheduler to help “connect” Flynn with Stern whose Senate campaign and credentials he touted highly, calling Stern a “strong believer”, in their cause.

[...]

Stern said Hartman wanted to use Tactical Rabbit’s intelligence gathering tools and his campaign to dig up potentially embarrassing campaign finance information and other dirt about the Pennsylvania members, plus Republican political figures in Michigan who were also resisting audits.

[...]

While Fitzpatrick and Toomey were the main “targets” Stern said other Pennsylvania officials including judges were also being targeted by the Flynn allies as they sought to ramp up pressure for an audit in the state.

[...]

To coordinate national efforts, Raiklin and Hartman on 3 July spearheaded one of a series of “Election Integrity” calls with Trump loyalists, lawyers and donors to discuss the status of audits efforts in several states and other plans to cast doubt on Biden’s win, according to an Arizona senate document shared by the watchdog group American Oversight.

[...]

Hartman in emails with Stern obtained by the Guardian invited him in June to attend a religious far-right meeting known as Ziklag in Dallas where he could meet separately with Flynn. Stern said Hartman told him a “private meeting was going to be arranged with Flynn” who Stern was told wanted to meet him.

After indicating to Hartman he would attend, Stern opted to cancel at the last minute after his lawyer indicated there could be legal repercussions from a meeting with Flynn.

[...]

“Stern’s allegations suggest serious crimes,” said ex-prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig, who worked on Ken Starr’s team during the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

The fascists are far from done.

DENIED

A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday denied Michael Flynn’s request for a temporary restraining order to block subpoenas from the House Jan. 6 committee compelling him to testify and to produce scores of documents.

The judge took action the day after Flynn filed his motion in federal court in Florida, where he lives.

U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven of Tampa said Flynn’s motion, which was filed Tuesday, failed for two reasons, including a lack of urgency.

[...]

Scriven said Flynn's lawyers also failed to follow the correct procedure for such requests. Federal rules require someone seeking a temporary restraining order to notify the other party or parties — in this case, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the Jan. 6 committee — or say why the notice shouldn’t be required. Flynn’s lawyers failed to do either, an omission that the judge said was fatal to his motion.

  NBC

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Yep, they're eating themselves now

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Absolutely fucking nuts

In "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show," scheduled to be released today, [ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan] Karl reports that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump attorney Sidney Powell tried to enlist a Pentagon official to help overturn the election.

  ABC News

I think you should just go read this whole thing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

More on Mike Flynn's desire to have only one religion in America

Flynn’s suggestion that there should only be one religion in the United States drew quick backlash on social media.

[...]

Flynn has recently taken to talking about his Christian faith as a way to refute claims by QAnon followers that he worships Satan.

  Slate

I did not realize that was a QAnon thing.

The former national security adviser also characterized the investigation into the riot as “the insurrection crucifixion” and likened House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Pontius Pilate. “This is a crucifixion of our First Amendment freedom to speak, freedom to peacefully assemble. It’s unbelievable,” Flynn said.

How did he get past freedom of religion to get to freedom of speech? It's right there at the beginning.

Prior to the unusual controversy, Flynn had embraced his position as a hero to supporters of QAnon, taking a QAnon oath, raising money from QAnon believers, and selling QAnon T-shirts. In May, Flynn even appeared at a QAnon conference and endorsed the idea of a military coup.

But QAnon fame is a fickle thing. After promoting QAnon for more than a year, Flynn now finds himself on the business end of the conspiracy theory. Like QAnon targets before him, Flynn is now struggling to persuade angry QAnon believers that he isn’t a secret Satan-worshipper. 

If we can afford to wait, these people will eventually eat each other.

Flynn isn’t the first right-wing figure tied to QAnon to see its acolytes turn on him. Oklahoma Senate candidate Jackson Lahmeyer, whose challenge to Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) has been endorsed by Flynn, appeared at an April pro-QAnon conference with Flynn in Tulsa.

A few months later, however, Lahmeyer posted a seemingly innocent picture of his daughter wearing red shoes—apparently unaware that QAnon followers consider red shoes to be yet another sign of their imagined Satanic sex-trafficking cabal. Lahmeyer was soon caught up in a QAnon controversy of his own.

"Unfortunately, I have to say it because people are asking me," Lahmeyer wrote in a Facebook post. "I’m in no way involved in Child Sex Trafficking, pedophilia or devil worship."

[...]

Flynn’s trouble started on Sept. 17, when he led a congregation at Nebraska pastor Hank Kunneman’s Lord of Hosts Church in prayer. Flynn’s prayer included invocations to “sevenfold rays” and “legions,” two phrases that struck some of Flynn’s followers as strange.

“We are your instrument of those sevenfold rays and all your archangels, all of them,” Flynn said, later adding, “We will be the instrument of your will, whatever it is. In your name, and in the name of your legions, we are freeborn, and we shall remain freeborn, and we shall not be enslaved by any foe.”

As video of the prayer circulated in online conspiracy theorist groups, the references to “legions” and “rays” soon sparked speculation among Flynn’s right-wing supporters that their hero had been lured to the dark side. Always on the lookout for the Satanic influence they imagine lurks at the heart of the world, they claimed that Flynn had secretly been worshiping the devil. Worse, since the congregation was repeating the prayer after Flynn, the rumor went, he had duped hundreds of Christians into joining the ritual.

“A lot of people in the Christian world believe that when you pray to rays of light and legions that you’re praying to the devil,” Oebel, the YouTube host, explained in his interview with Flynn.

[...]

Flynn’s prayer bears a striking resemblance to a prayer by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the now-deceased leader of an anticommunist doomsday cult obsessed with nuclear war. Prophet’s group, the Church Universal and Triumphant, reached its peak in 1990, the year she predicted much of the world would be destroyed in a fiery nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States. Prophet’s followers flocked to her Montana ranch, building fallout shelters for an apocalypse that never arrived.

[...]

For example, in one address to her congregation, Prophet said, “In the name of Archangel Michael and his legions, I am freeborn, and I shall remain freeborn, and I shall not be enslaved by any foe within or without.”

  Daily Beast

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

So much for freedom of religion.  MAGA's mullahs go full bore.

I didn't realize Matthew mentioned the United States.

"Under God" was added to the pledge in 1954.  Why?

After Flynn's screed, this will be the next thing MAGAheads want removed from history curricula.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

JFC

New University.  New course.

Taught by Mike Flynn.

I guess you can now get a degree in assholery. Only the school isn't accredited, so I don't know what you're going to do with it. Aside from go on the MAGA circuit giving speeches to dupes who'll pay you.

They're asking for donations to buy land and build a physical institution.

Grifters gonna grift.

House Committee issues more subpoenas

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack has issued subpoenas to six of Donald Trump’s associates involved in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election from a “command center” at the Willard Hotel in Washington DC [- egal scholar John Eastman, Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, Trump’s adviser Jason Miller, the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump’s campaign aide Angela McCallum, and the former New York police department commissioner Bernard Kerik].

[...]

The select committee chairman, Bennie Thompson, said in a statement that the panel was pursuing the Trump officials in order to uncover “every detail about their efforts to overturn the election, including who they were talking to in the White House and in Congress”.

[...]

House investigators are taking a special interest in Eastman after it emerged that he outlined scenarios for overturning the election in a memo for a 4 January White House meeting that included Trump, the former vice-president Mike Pence and Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

At the meeting, according to a source close to Trump, Eastman ran through the memo that detailed how Pence might refuse to certify electoral slates for Biden on 6 January and thereby unilaterally hand Trump a second term.

[...]

In the letters accompanying the six subpoenas, Thompson said Eastman was compelled to produce documents by 22 November and appear for a deposition on 8 December. The other Trump officials have until 23 November to produce documents and have deposition dates later in December.

[...]

The pro-Trump legal scholar also pressured nearly 300 state legislators to challenge the legitimacy of Biden’s win, reportedly participated at a “war room” meeting at the Willard on 5 January and spoke at a rally before the Capitol attack, the select committee said.

[...]

At that meeting, the select committee said, Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani discussed how to subvert the election by having Pence follow Eastman’s memo and not certify the election for Biden.

[...]

The select committee was expected to send further subpoenas to Trump officials connected to activities at the Willard, the source said, noting that Thompson had told reporters last week that he had signed about 20 subpoenas that were ready to be issued.

  Guardian

Maybe Giuliani is in that batch.

Let's see how many of them pull a Steve Bannon.  And by the way...how's that going? Apparently we're waiting for the DC US Attorney to decide whether to charge Bannon after the committee referred him for contempt.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE 11/10:

Thwarting the grifting Flynns

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.