PayPal co-founder, venture capitalist, Republican megadonor, and disputed vampire Peter Thiel may also have been an FBI informant — at least according to a new report from Insider.
212 Greg Palast, Why Trump is STILL Illegitimate and Should the Democrats Hire Charles Johnson?
In the last chapter Sometimes the Bad Guys Win I took a huge deep dive into the causes of November 5. I went through quite a few factors but overall the focus was where the Democrats fell short and how they need to-seriously-up their game. One factor I didn’t touch on is voter suppression. As to why I didn’t in part that’s because I did touch on a lot of factors and you can’t touch on everything LOL. But even more I guess I was kind of thinking that while voter suppression was A factor-as it always is-it wasn’t THE decisive factor.
But then I came across the latest work from Greg Palast and it kind of made me think twice.
Carter, The Kochs and The Donald – Greg Palast
After all how much voter suppression would there need to be to say it was a major, decisive factor? It’s as if I was assuming that while some votes were suppressed they weren’t enough to make a difference. As to why I thought that I guess implicitly I was thinking that while the GOP is always going above and beyond to suppress the vote it couldn’t have been decisive-after all we won in 2020 right? Despite the fact that the GOP Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2014
Beyond that I think I was a bit thrown for a loop as many of us were that Trump actually won the popular vote for just the second time for the GOP since 1988. During the election when the polls were showing Kamala with less than a one point lead late in the cycle I had been thinking that the inevitable 3 point polling error would HAVE to go in her favor as if it didn’t this would imply Trump was actually going to win the popular vote! So when it did I was thrown into a bit of a tailspin as many Dems were.
But if you acknowledge voter suppression happened how can you be so confident it was NOT decisive? After all the GOP doesn’t work this hard to make sure Dem leading voters don’t vote because it makes no difference. And after reading Palast I began to see the fallacy of this assumption:
Did Voters — or Vote Suppression — Elect Donald Trump?
The 2026 and 2028 elections start NOW. And so, our investigation of vote suppression revs up NOW.
This is the dangerous moment, when progressives who gave literally billions for their candidates, cry into their beer and crawl back into their burrows.
But the Palast Team won’t, and I trust you won’t either. First, we are working feverishly to get the data to calculate the effect of racist voter suppression trickery on the election’s outcome. Not unexpectedly, we are getting stonewalled by red-state officials about the number of provisional ballots uncounted (above 42.3% we find from well-hidden data), the number of mail-in ballots discarded (we know it’s way over two million), and the number of vigilante challenges to legit voters (we’ve counted 852,000 so far).”
I mean 852,000 ballots is MORE than Trump’s margin of victory in the swing states. And the thing to remember is that the 2020 election was prior to 1/6 and the wide acceptance of Trump’s Big Lie by the Republican party. Over the last four years GOP states have introduced all manner of new tactics to suppress the vote-including Brian Kemp in Georgia-Palast has previously accused-and indeed sued-Kemp of suppressing 340,00 votes against Stacy Abrams in 2018.
John Nichols argued on Sam Seder’s The Majority Report a few weeks ago that had it not been for Wisconsin Act 10-one of the many poison pill legislation Scott Walker rammed through back in 2011 clearly designed the suppress the vote-Kamala Harris WOULD HAVE WON WISCONSIN
Can This Guy Save The Democrats?
FN: The main focus of the episode was Ben Wikler whose candidacy I discussed in Chapter Sometimes the Bad Guys Win. As I argued there Wikler has been my preferred candidate for DNC Chair though I also said I found both Martin O’Malley and Ken Martin impressive-all seemed to understand the central problem of the GOP’s big media advantage regarding social media
UPDATE: 1/6/25:
Ben Wikler was on DemocracyDocket today and argues that if the NC GOP Supreme Court hadn’t been able to rig the election by taking away three Congressional seats the Democrats would have a House Majority now.
(56) Ben Wikler’s Vision for the Democratic Party – YouTube
End UPDATE
I was very happy to see O’Malley actually do an episode with Destiny yesterday-as did James Skouflis who despite being unfamiliar with I found pretty impressive. Today I was also very impressed with another candidate I learned of for the first time, Jason Paul.
Certainly these Dem candidates get points simply for doing Destiny-clearly some Democrats are getting the memo that focusing predominantly on legacy media-ABC, CNN, Meet the Press, etc-is a losing proposition as the audiences continue to dwindle.
End FN
As I discussed in the last chapter there’s this completely vacuous narrative that Trump has a mandate-this is self evidently false. However, the more you think about it, even the claim that Trump is legitimate is open to question.
Like many are wondering why Trump continues to lie about winning 2020 when he fairly did win 2024. But even this concedes too much. The fact that Trump won the popular vote and didn’t need to do another coup belies the fact that he had intended to. At this point we live in this problematic world where elections are only legitimate if Trump wins.
In Trump’s America, There’s Democracy Only When He Wins – Democracy Docket
Indeed, after the election there were liberal institutionalist types who suggested maybe Trump’s win WAS A GOOD THING because at least now there won’t be violence (!!!) Talk about obeying in advance. But this is how far gone some institutionalist types are-maybe losing to Trump is good because at least now he has to admit the election was fair-except he STILL hasn’t. He’s still lying about 2020.
As far as I’m concerned Trump isn’t legitimate after 2024 for the same reason W still wasn’t after 2004-after all W couldn’t have been in position to win 2004 if he and his brother Jeb Bush, Roger Stone and the Brooks Brothers Riots, the GOP Supreme Court hadn’t stolen it in 2000 in the first place so the asterisk on Geroge W. Bush’s forehead didn’t go away.
Similarly for Trump-though in reality for him it’s far more pronounced as Trump was the first defeated President not to recognize the transfer of power in 2020 and had every intention of doing the same thing in 2024 until he won fairly-putting aside the question of voter suppression.
And we haven’t even gotten to the 14th Amendment which the W. Bush-Trump Court handwaved away. Trump will never be legitimate.
Still, the bigger picture, the larger thread that stitches all of this together is that the Democrats continue to bring a butter knife to a gun fight.
Another way to look at it is that the Democrats fight only on one dimension-normal campaigning and even here they focus mostly on persuasion rather than activating their base as the GOP does. Yet as we saw in the previous chapter the main reason the Dems lost was they got 6 million fewer votes than 2020 while Trump gained only 3 million.
The Dems focus entirely on the X dimension not realizing that there’s a V, W, Y and Z dimension. Palast wrote a book before the 2020 election “How Trump Stole 2020.”
No he wasn’t wrong-Trump was simply UNSUCCESSFUL that time. Because the song remains the same. If you’ve followed me this far-thank you! LOL-but what has hopefully been clear is that when it comes to GOP Nixonian dirty tricks the song remains the same, there is nothing new under the sun. During 2024 Palast had a video: HOw Trump Stole 2024.”
They continually use the same dirty tricks yet the Democrats NEVER LEARN. They continue to use the same failed Maginot Line.
Indeed one thought I had after the election was ‘Well this time I guess we can’t say Russia stole it for him’-but actually…
Russian interference in the 2024 United States elections – Wikipedia
FN: If anything it was more effective this time and less easy to detect-and as Marcy Wheeler has discussed ad nauseum the press basically abdicated its role in 2024. As we discussed in Chapter Barr Memo since Bill Barr the media has echoed Trump’s ‘Mueller showed no collusion’ lie’ so logically how could the legacy media take Russian Colllusion 2024-or Russian Collusion 2020-seroiusly when they’ve misinformed the public that Russian collusion 2016 didn’t happen?
End FN
The Republican party is literally willing to do anything to win no matter how sociopathic the Dems- as we saw in previous chapter- in the last election drew the line at “Republicans are weird”-too negative!
What are Republicans NOT willing to do to win-like the old song says war is good for: absolutely nothing. Dems are willing to do nothing but gentle positive “persuasion” of Right leaning independents.
Some recent amazing reporting from Josh Kaplan reveals how a private vigilante named John Williams took it upon himself to infiltrate the Right wing militia movement.
We spoke a handful of times over encrypted calls before he fled. He’d been galvanized by the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol, Williams told me, when militias like the Oath Keepers conspired to violently overturn the 2020 presidential election. He believed democracy was under siege from groups the FBI has said pose a major domestic terrorism threat. So he infiltrated the militia movement on spec, as a freelance vigilante. He did not tell the police or the FBI. A loner, he did not tell his family or friends.
Williams seemed consumed with how to ensure this wasn’t all a self-destructive, highly dangerous waste of time. He distrusted law enforcement and didn’t want to be an informant, he said. He told me he hoped to damage the movement by someday going public with what he’d learned
At first glance you might well wonder if it is wise to for a private citizen to play vigilante this way-certainly is pretty risky. Still it seems to me that not reaching out to the police or the FBI was exactly the right move. Every day it becomes more clear that we are truly living in Orwell’s world where simply telling the truth is a radical act. One of the may lies that large parts of the public currently believe is that the “Deep State” is after Trump. As this book documents in painstakingly granular detail this is the opposite of the truth.
What a coup it is when now nothing leftists like Briana Joy Gray extoll the GOP for claiming they want to “defund the FBI.”
FN: Vaush debate
(56) Briahna Joy Gray DEFENDS Marjorie Taylor Greene?? – YouTube
In reality as this book discusses in considerable detail the FBI elected Trump and to this day has never had a Democratic FBI Director. The Defund the FBI canard-as they don’t mean it-came after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to get back the classified and/or sensitive documents Trump refused to return for over a year-Trumpland the FBI had bent over backwards to get Trump to release them voluntarily. And many of the rank and file agents were outraged when they finally-very much belatedly-took this step.
UPDATE: Just another version of the Orwellian Alice in Wonderland our national discourse has become regarding Trumpland the FBI is consider the MAGA conspiracy-championed by Kash Patel that the FBI actually planned 1/6 itself.
Kash Patel Believes the FBI Planned Jan. 6th
What liberal institutionalists tend to miss is the kernel of truth in these kinds of lies: there may well have been rogue FBI agents, perhaps the same ones threatening to leak the emails between Huma and Hillary on Weiner’s laptop to Wikileaks in October 2016 who were part of Trump’s own conspiracy to steal the Presidency in 2020-more than just an insurrection 1/6 was the penultimate moment in a long running coup Trump had been planning much of 2020-as he knew there was a good chance he was going to lose.
As some really interesting Marxists like Remain In Hell Withotu Despair tell us regarding “fascist creep” there’s always been a mixture of leftist and right wing elements in fascism. Similarly the best way to lead the public to believe lies is to mix crucial aspects of the truth within the lies.
End UPDATE
And then there’s the Secret Service who just happened to do a mass deletion of SS texts from January 6 ON JANUARY 7-see Chapter the Real Deep State.
As for the police it’s been argued that there’s a QANON chapter in every single police department in the country.
QAnon Is Attracting Cops – Mother Jones
Remember the Michigan sheriff who defended the militia members who plotted to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer?
Indeed what John Williams discovered in his infiltration of the Oath Keepers is how many police officers or former officers are in it.
The files give a unique window, at once expansive and intimate, into one of the most consequential and volatile social movements of our time. Williams penetrated a new generation of paramilitary leaders, which included doctors, career cops and government attorneys. Sometimes they were frightening, sometimes bumbling, always heavily armed. It was a world where a man would propose assassinating politicians, only to spark a debate about logistics.”
Williams discusses his highly risky interactions with Bobby Kinch-a former detective who’d become the current national director of the Oath Keepers.
Kinch is interesting in a few ways. OTOH it’s notable that a former detective goes on to be the director of a Far Right militia movement. But it’s also kind of interesting that as a teenager he was basically a petty criminal-this touches on a theme that many have suggested-that cops have more in common with the criminals they deal with than private civilians like John and Jane Q Public.
Wiliams actually got close enough to Kinch to sleep at his house:
The documents laid out a remarkable odyssey. Posing as an ideological compatriot, Williams had penetrated the top ranks of two of the most prominent right-wing militias in the country. He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of the Oath Keepers, rifling through his files in the middle of the night. He’d devised elaborate ruses to gather evidence of militias’ ties to high-ranking law enforcement officials. He’d uncovered secret operations like the surveillance of a young journalist, then improvised ways to sabotage the militants’ schemes. In one group, his ploys were so successful that he became the militia’s top commander in the state of Utah.”
Milita ties to high-ranking law enforcement officials…
The personal trajectory of Finch is pretty interesting in itself-again in his early life he was something of a petty criminal in his own rite.
He moved to Las Vegas and, at the age of 25, became an officer in the metro police. Kinch came to serve in elite detective units over 23 years in the force, hunting fugitives and helping take down gangs like the Playboy Bloods. Eventually he was assigned to what he called the “Black squad,” according to court records, tasked with investigating violent crimes where the suspect was African American. (A Las Vegas police spokesperson told me they stopped “dividing squads by a suspect’s race” a year before Kinch retired.)”
Race seems to have always been a fraught issue for Kinch:
Then around Christmas in 2013, Kinch’s career began to self-destruct. In a series of Facebook posts, he said that he would welcome a “race war.” “Bring it!” he wrote. “I’m about as fed up as a man (American, Christian, White, Heterosexual) can get!” An ensuing investigation prompted the department to tell the Secret Service that Kinch “could be a threat to the president,” according to the Las Vegas Sun. (The Secret Service interviewed him and determined he was not a threat to President Barack Obama, the outlet reported. Kinch told the paper he was not racist and that he was being targeted by colleagues with “an ax to grind.”) In 2016, he turned in his badge, a year after the saga broke in the local press.”
There’s a common saying: violence doesn’t solve anything. On that Kinch is skeptical:
Kinch moved to southern Utah and found a job hawking hunting gear at a Sportsman’s Warehouse. But he “had this urge,” he later said on a right-wing podcast. “Like I wasn’t done yet.” So he joined the Oath Keepers. “When people tell me that violence doesn’t solve anything, I look back over my police career,” he once advised his followers. “And I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s interesting, because violence did solve quite a bit.’
Wow, that’s interesting, because violence did solve quit a bit.
But to return to the idea of the Deep State this is pretty striking:
Kinch added Williams to an encrypted Signal channel where the Utah Oath Keepers coordinated their intel work. Two weeks later on Nov. 30, 2022, Williams received a cryptic message from David Coates, one of Kinch’s top deputies.
Coates was an elder statesman of sorts in the Oath Keepers, a 73-year-old Vietnam veteran with a Hulk Hogan mustache. There’d been a break-in at the Utah attorney general’s office, he reported to the group, and for some unspoken reason, the Oath Keepers seemed to think this was of direct relevance to them. Coates promised to find out more about the burglary: “The Sheriff should have some answers” to “my inquiries today or tomorrow.”
Hmmm-for “some unspoken reason” they seemed to think it was of “direct relevance to them.” Sounds like a perfectly natural thing to happen to anyone any day of the week. For yet another unspoken reason Coates believed the Sherrif would have “some answers” to his inquiry “today or tomorrow.”
This last line went on to “obsess Williams”-me too.
“That last line would come to obsess Williams. He sent a long, made-up note about his own experiences collaborating with law enforcement officials. “I’m curious, how responsive is the Sheriff to your inquiries? Or do you have a source you work with?”
“The Sheriff has become a personal friend who hosted my FBI interview,” Coates responded. “He opens a lot of doors.” Coates had been in D.C. on Jan. 6, he’d told Williams. It’d make sense if that had piqued the FBI’s interest.”
With all the rightful storm and stress over the possibility of an FBI Director Kash Patel the FBI has always been Trumpland-it’s always been GOPland going back to Hoover. Kash Patel will fit right in-if God help us he’s confirmed and as we saw in the prevoius chapter even a Democrat like Fetterman is apparently “open” to confirming Patel-Kash told him he was just joking about locking up all these people on his enemies list-among the folks on his list are folks like Liz Cheney, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. But he didn’t mean it-April Fools! Guys win again a la Nick Fuentes
MAGA group shares sickening new message after Trump win shuts down women’s rights – The Mirror US
So it’s not clear what Williams would have gotten by going to the FBI just as despite receiving prior warnings before January 6 the FBI failed to prepare adequately for 1/6. Was it mere incompetence? Or something far more insidious, by design. Based on everything we’ve documented in this book I’m leading to door number two. Perhaps going to them would have only alerted the many QANONists within the FBI-same ones wailing that their own agency would seek to hold Trump to the same rules as any other citizen-that they have a double agent in their midst.
Look it’s not terribly surprising that these Right wing militias have friends in high places in terms of law enforcement as a far from trivial number of them are from law enforcement in the first place.
Speaking of Trumpland the FBI I’ve been thinking a lot the last week about Charles Johnson-of all people. We discussed Johnson back in the FBI cum Emailgate chapters-particularly Chapter Barbara Leeden. Remember him? He was a major co-conspirator in 2016 regarding a couple majorly consequential moments late in the campaign-he and Roger Stone got into a catfight over who gets credit for Trump arriving at the second debate with Hillary Clinton the Sunday after the release of the Hollywood Access tape with the various Bill Clinton accusers on his arm.
As I discussed in Chapter The Unreported Background arguably they both deserve “credit”-Stone did publish a book about them during the campaign season but OTOH per Johnson he paid them to be there-whether genuine sexual assault survivors would likely accept pay to play to benefit someone’s political campaign is another question.
FN: Anything is possible by definition but this doesn’t seem to be behavior consistent with how most SAVs are said to behave-often there’s an understandably strong reticence to discuss such painful moments for public consumption much yes to help someone’s political campaign. Suffice it to say that their conduct wasn’t typical-for the record the allegations have never been found credible in a court of law unlike Jean Carroll’s allegations against Trump.
End FN
The other big campaign moment where Johnson’s name came up was Emailgate itself regarding the late, not so great GOP operative Peter Smith. As we saw in Unreported Background when Johnson spoke to Politico he was fairly effusive about Smith’s clearly stated effort at working with Russian hackers to find Clinton’s deleted emails. According to Johnson Smith came to him with his proposal. He was quite intrigued but ultimately demurred-again we covered it in Chapter Unreproted Background.
The political headline declared Peter Smith had Alt Right help:
GOP Researcher Who Sought Clinton Emails Had Alt-Right Help
Peter Smith’s quixotic effort to obtain Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails from Russian hackers got a boost from a pro-Trump activist with White House ties.”
This “Alt Right help” cum “pro Trump activist with White House ties” referred to none other than Charles Johnson.
In his Hail Mary bid to tip the election to Trump, the Republican private equity executive enlisted two controversial alt-right activists to help him understand the workings of the internet and make contacts in Trump’s orbit, according to interviews with those involved and emails obtained by Politico.
The activists, the journalist-turned-entrepreneur Charles Johnson and his former business partner Pax Dickinson, agreed to help Smith’s quixotic mission, which failed to track down copies of Clinton’s emails. Johnson is a polarizing figure who was banned from Twitter in 2015 after promoting an effort to “take out” a Black Lives Matter activist but maintains ties to White House officials. Smith also reached out to “Guccifer 2.0”—an alias the U.S. intelligence community has linked to Russian state hackers—and was advised to seek the help of a white nationalist hacker who lives in Ukraine.”
Johnson also had Steve Bannon ties-he worked under him at Breitbart for a number of years. As we discuss in Chapter Leeden I quibble with Politco’s framing it as “Smith’s doomed effort”-in point of fact it was widly successful-Trump won didn’t he and the Comey Letter was the decisive factor. In the Roger Stone chapter I argue the late Smith may well have been who had linked Stone and Jerome Corsi to NYFBI and NYPD operatives that enabled Huma Abedin’s emails to so conveniently show up on Anthony Weiner’s laptop-based on Corsi’ revelations in his version of the story.
The new details of Smith’s operation, which were shared with Politico Magazine by Johnson and others, paint a picture of a determined but ill-equipped activist casting about far and wide in a frantic but ultimately futile quest to get ahold of Clinton’s deleted emails and publish them ahead of Election Day. As the ailing octogenarian was dealing with sophisticated hackers and navigating the darkest corners of the internet, for instance, he was being tutored in the use of basic computer technology.”
Again it wasn’t futile quite the opposite.
In any case we covered the details fairly exhaustively in these previous two chapters. For our purposes here the focus is specifically how Smith’s story intersects with Charles Johnson-the most unlikely #Resistance hero yet? But I get ahead of myself.
Johnson, a former Breitbart reporter, said he first encountered the Chicagoan around 2013 when the two collaborated on opposition research about Barack Obama.”
2013 notably is also when Corsi says he first met the Late Peter Smith. Johson and Smith seemed to be on the same side of the fence in the internal GOP fight over who would replace Boehner-they both were trying to prevent Kevin McCarthy from being the Speaker at the time-of course his glory years were yet to come at that point.
Johnson said he and Smith stayed in touch, discussing “tactics and research” regularly throughout the presidential campaign, and that Smith sought his help tracking down Clinton’s emails. “He wanted me to introduce to him to Bannon, to a few others, and I sort of demurred on some of that,” Johnson said. “I didn’t think his operation was as sophisticated as it needed to be, and I thought it was good to keep the campaign as insulated as possible.”
Color me skeptical on the whole “I sort of demurred on some of that” part. In Chapter Unreported Background we also saw that there is evidence he wasn’t so “demur” quite the opposite.
As we saw in Chapter Leeden, EmptyWheel also discussed Smith’s path crossing with Johnson during his crusade to work with Russian hackers to get HER EMAILS.
All of this leads me to be more interested in where the methods adopted imperfectly by this 80 year old came from than that he did. An obvious candidate is Chuck Johnson, whose cooperation with the Smith rat-fuck is detailed in the Politico article, and whose businesses have all been shutting down in recent months, and whose defense attorney did not respond to a question from me last week about whether he still represents Johnson. Though Johnson, and his Nazi friend living in Ukraine, Weev, are better at operational security than what the WSJ describes here.
Someone got this old rat-fucker to use just enough secrecy to serve as signposts for the interesting bits.”
Peter Smith Had a Penchant for Secrecy, But Whence Might Be More Interesting Than How – emptywheel
Also in that chapter we looked at the unredacted parts of the SSCI Russia investigation about Charles Johnson’s interactions with the Late Peter Smith including this passage here which wasn’t nearly so friendly as the picture you got from reading Chuck’s comments in the Politico article.
To quote myself from Chapter Leeden:
The claim that Johnson “kind of demurred on some of that” is contradicted by the SSCI report-finally released in 2020. The SSCI Russia investigation turned up an email Johnson sent Smith where he got quite nasty, apparently on behalf of: the uniquely insightful Steve Bannon.
So apparently Johnson and Steve-aka Steve Bannon-were threatening to sue him and force him to let Brietbart publish the emails first. The flourish at the end “We do not give a rats ass what happens to you” is a pretty striking sense of foreboding considering that just 8 months later Smith would turn up dead in a Chicago hotel room officially the result of a suicide.
Just saying it’s an interesting correlation. Kind reminds you of Analise Keaton in How to Get Away With Murder warning Sinclair the prosecutor who was doggedly trying to investigate Analise for murdering her husband and Rebecca-among other victims-that “You’re messing with the wrong bitch.”
Sinclair responded: “Is that a threat?”
Annalise responded to her response: “We’ll see.”
We DID see-the next time we and Annalise saw Sinclair she was face down in Bonnie truck dead. Sinclair was very inconvenient to Annalise-but like Stalin said “Death is the solution to all problems. No man no problem.”
Sinclair’s death was certainly the solution to Annalise’s problem-at least the most immediate-and Smith’s death was likely the solution for the problems of many of the GOP co-conspirators who worked so hard to get Clinton’s emails with Huma onto Weiner’s laptop-which led to the Comey Letter that is widely understood to have elected Trump.
Anyway I’d forgotten about Charles Johnson ‘the Far Right internet troll’ though he continued to do his Far Right trolling-though it’s pretty clear he’s far more than JUST a troll.
FN: OTOH Trolling is wrongly seen as “just” trolling is a major league political tactic as Johson knows well.
In 2017 he falsely accused Schumer of sexual harassment. He suggested in a Reddit thread that the Holocaust didn’t happen-or which amounts to the same thing symbolically, maybe the numbers that died are inflated. In 2017 he also falsely accused someone of being the person who ran over the anti racist female protester at the White Supremacist Charlottsville march.
“In August 2017, Johnson’s website GotNews was one of several right-wing websites that falsely accused a Michigan man of being responsible for the car attack on August 12, 2017 that killed one anti-racist protestor and injured others in Charlottesville, Virginia.[31]
Charles C. Johnson – Wikipedia
A Right wing troll’s got to troll right? But here’s what’s interesting. Last week during the whole schism between Ultra White Nationalist MAGA as typified by Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon and Ultra Libertarian Tech Bro MAGA as typified by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy I came across the Right wing troll on Xitter. He was-uh-trolling.
He was trolling President House Speaker Elon Musk Adrian Dittman? really hard. Indeed he even got him on Audio during a Xitter audio session. Steve Bannon was also hitting Musk hard-accusing him of being “not even an American, you’re a globalist and you’ve been sleeping with the enemy Brother.’
Whoever Chuck was really on the show with it was really funny: he accused the alleged Dittman of being Elon Musk and then accused Musk-though he insisted he was Dittman-that the American people refused to accept this disrespect and that he would be prosecuted.
Dittman-or Musk-exploded and declared ‘You will do no such thing.’
How Elon Musk’s Twitter Alt Account “Adrian Dittmann” Was Unmasked
UPDATE: One good argument for the theory that Dittman and Musk are the same guy is that “Dittman” has no public face to put with the voice and Xitter account. But we now have an alleged face to put with the voice-the American Spectator-a Right wing rag-claims to have cracked the case and determined Dittman is a real guy.
The real Adrian Dittmann – The Spectator World
Maybe. Or maybeeeee Elon Musk is paying a guy to SAY he’s Adrian Dittman? Indeed what’s become crystal clear is one reason Trump and Musk spend so much time together and haven’t fallen out yet is they really do have so much in common-remember Trump used to do a false persona John Baron he pretended was his publicist. Perhaps this is yet another symptom of our Orwellian Post Truth age that even this is undecidable?
Anyway I found the fact that Johnson had turned on Elon Musk pretty fascinating wondering what his game endgame was-was he trying to get Musk thrown out of Trump World? To be clear I’ve been skeptical of the idea that Musk will be thrown out like many in Trump’s orbit who got too far out in front have done-a la Anthony Scaramucci. There are like 500 reasons Musk is different-that is to say he now has close to $500 billion dollars. Trump might just need Musk too much to unceremoniously dump him the way he does to all his non billionaire staff members-but they’re just the help in Trump’s mind. Trump and Musk need each other too much. So I’m not so sure they break up any time soon-though if they ever do it will be explosive-as both have the ability to harm the other a great deal.
Maybe I had theorized this was part of a conspiracy that Johnson and Bannon had hatched together to take Musk down-even though I’m skeptical he can be taken down too easily. But I was joining how fired up on this Johnson had gotten. He claimed with great confidence he knows for close to certain Dittman IS Elon Musk
Part of the reason I was as aggressive as I was with Adrian/Elon was to get him agitated so he would speak faster than his voice modulator could work and we could make a positive match using some software some friends of mine use for this sort of thing. I can confirm it’s Elon.
And even if it wasn’t Elon and if it’s not physically Elon in the flesh, it’s an account controlled and operated by Elon/X that represents him in every way shape and form. But of course it’s actually Elon. I’ll be uploading a video which more or less confirms it. Watch me be hit.”
Johnson claims he knows Elon in real life.
“Elon knows me in real life so I wasn’t surprised when he made a number of errors, talked over me, etc. There are several grand juries investigating Elon now. It’s only a matter of time.”
However what became clear as I looked through more of Johnson’s archive is that he’s been on a crusade against Elon Musk for some time-this was not something new just because Musk praised the use of H1-B visas. As has for that matter Steve Bannon. However I would discover that Johson and Bannon are no longer GOP co-conspirators in good standing quite the opposite.
Here was another very interesting article the title of which touches on many recurrent themes in Johnson’s recent writing:
“Yes, He’s a Traitor: Elon Musk, The Mormons, Bibi & Me.”
Yes, He’s a Traitor: Elon Musk, The Mormons, Bibi & Me
Johnson certainly seems to be preoccupied with Mormons, Bibi-indeed the Israelis in general, as well as Elon Musk. He does a lot of hate watching of these folks.
FN: He’s also-big surprise-not a big fan of Indians, his animus being reignited after Musk’s Hi-B’s are good actually tweets
There are legitmiate questions if his obsession with “The Mormons” is just another of his prejudices and I can certainly imagine someone asking if when he speaks of the Israelis he doesn’t mean the Jews. OTOH many of the things he says about Israel is kind of based-even though you do wonder if there isn’t a dog whistle in much of it-a long time trope of anti Semites is to disguise their anti Semitism in the more politically palatable form of anti Zionism.
Which is not to deny that Israel does indeed deserve a lot of criticism and Zionism has always been and remains politically problematic.
FN: No as should be obvious if you’ve read this far in this book-I’m not a Genocide Joe-ist who declares “Israel should not exist”-I think it WILL exist and steps should not be taken to change that. OTOH I also believe that Palestine should exist-a proposition that Netanyahu strongly opposes.
Indeed as I myself am the opposite of a fan of Netanyahu it’s hard not feel some level of bonding with Johnson over our shared disdain for him-even though I do also suspect that the motivations for some of his vehement views are not based on things far from wholly unproblematic.
FN: This piece he about Marc Andreessen’ wrote on December 1 is classic of his genre:
No, You’re Just A Criminal: Marc Andreessen’s Foreign-Backed Techno-Mormon Grift Is Dangerous
It’s always interesting hearing Silicon Valley libertarians sound off.”
Some might well accuse him here of anti Mormon bigotry-he has many such titles and articles preoccupied with Mormon interests-does he simply not like Mormonism one might ask-but even putting that aside many things in this title are probably true. It certainly IS interesting to hear Silicon Valley libertarians sound off. It’s also quite plausible that Marc Andreessen is just a criminal and that he engages in foreign-backed techno grift. And wether the fact that the folks in Andreessen’s particular version of foreign-backed techno grift is heavy on “Mormon interests” well if you do read the article what he tells us about the etymology of Mormon interests in this country IS interesting.
To be clear I for one have nothing against Mormon people per se. But his history lesson on powerful people in the Mormon community is pretty interesting.
UPDATE: Here is another piece that centers “Mormonism” regarding Mckay Coppins’ Mitt Romney Biography
What Is Mitt Romney’s — and Mormonism’s — Final Destination?
UPDATE 2.0: Accusations of anti Semitism are not going to be that easy for Johnson to shake with post titles like this:
Happy 36th Birthday To Me! And Have I Been A Secret Jew This Whole Time?
End FN
But for all that a lot of his writing is nevertheless very interesting-a large part of what makes it interesting is who he is and what he knows. This is a guy who knows where a lot of bodies are buried-like Peter Smith’s? What’s ironic is Peter Smith’s suicide is more suspicious than Vince Foster’s-seeing Smith’s own history 30 years ago on the phony scandal around Foster’s suicide.
Anyway I literally discovered Johnson’s work on December 30, the day before New Years Eve, and then Elon blocked him. This wasn’t exactly surprising seeing how hard Chuck was hitting him on Xitter-the coup de grace being when he told Musk/Dittman that Musk was going to prison.
How Elon Musk Is Working With Foreign Governments and Compromised Attorneys To Promote Lawfare Against Me and Silence My Voice … and Now He Has Now Deleted My Twitter Account
“Why Musk’s sock account Adrian Dittman matters.”
Some months ago I got a briefing that Elon Musk — the richest man in the world — was looking for people to sue me.
But this is one of the reasons I find Johnson so fascinating-I do think this may be true. He DOES have these kinds of contacts-again he was intimately involved in the Peter Smith and the successful placing of HRC’s emails with Huma Abedin on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Again he paid the Clinton accusers to be on Trump’s arm the Sunday after the Hollywood Access tape and as we also saw in Chapter Leeden Manifesto, Johnson was at Trump’s election victory party in 2016.
“Is this serious?” I asked. “It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on it. He doesn’t like it when you embarrass him.”
Embarrass him, I had though that was not my intention. I was trying to help him stay on the right side of the law.
Johnson’s helpful that way…
FN: For more about Johnson’s account being deleted by Mr. Freedom of Speech Absolutist-remember how euphoric people like Nate Silver and Noah Smith were when Musk took over Twitter-turning it into Xitter? see this other Johnson post:
I’m being asked a lot why I was banned for life from Twitter and I can’t honestly answer that other than to say I was told by a mutual friend of Elon and mine that I was “embarrassing Elon” and that he was “flipping out at Mar-A-Lago.”
Job well done, I suppose. Think about that. The richest man in the world (TM) is pissed off from me, a lowly blogger eating thai food, wearing pajamas and drinking Turkish tea.
When I last saw Elon he called me a “cretin” but I guess I am having the last laugh. He’s done and he’s knows it. I’ve been involved in the operations to make Elon Musk Follow The Law. Elon is a criminal so he doesn’t like being told to Follow The Law.
End FN
In particular Musk was furious that I had spoken with the FBI about Igor Kurganov, the Russian-Jewish poker player that Musk had entrusted his fortune to in some sort of sham charity. The FBI says that Kurganov is backed by the Chinese mafia. I’ve written about it here.”
Musk certainly has many foreign connections-by definition with SPACEX, etc. We know that he has spoken with Putin multiple times the last few years no doubt this had something to do with Musk going from being supportive of Ukraine early in the war to a Russia simp.
As for Netanyahu, Johnson discussed the video that generated new interest post of Netanyahu’s public conversation with Musk back in September 2023 where Bibi suggested Musk is America’s “real President.”
Yes, Elon is a Nazi and So Is Bibi But Mike and Donald Are Americans
Netanyahu calls Musk “our unofficial president.” Is he right?”
Yes, Elon is a Nazi and So Is Bibi But Mike and Donald Are Americans
The last few weeks certainly make this seem like it is right-apparently Bibi is both our unofficial President AND our unofficial House Speaker. But apparently Bibi saw this coming long before we Americans did.
Again I find Johnson so interesting particularly at this very dangerous moment in US history for a few reasons. OTOH his “conspiracy theories” are very interesting-if you’ve followed this book at all-if you made it this far you’re awesome LOL-you know that I DON’T believe that calling something a conspiracy theory necessarily proves it’s false-. OTOH who he is makes them even more interesting. That is Johnson’s own experiences in terms of who he knows and what he’s done. And this goes to the final thing that has gotten me so interesting in him the last week: he’s one of the top GOP co-conspirators from MAGAWorld WHO HAS LEFT MAGAWorld.
This I didn’t realize until I looked back in his archive and discovered that he apparently left MAGA the last four years. Now WHAT caused this is a very interesting question. As often happens with Charles Johnson his narrative is rather contradictory-which only makes it more interesting in a way. Here’s what he wrote the day after the election when that terrible excuse for a “human being” won reelection:
What I Got Wrong and Right About the 2024 Election
There’s no middle way forward with fascism.”
What I Got Wrong and Right About the 2024 Election
It was then with that subtitle I realized: he was no longer Maga-after all if he were he wouldn’t call it “fascism.”
Right under this title Johnson inserts a picture of Trump and Bibi shaking hands.
I believe most elections are fake but some of them are still authentic — you know, kind of like America. As with so much of our modern life, technology determines the outcome. It’s not who votes but who counts the votes that determines these things and if you control the voting counting software, well…”
Well as a 2016 GOP co-conspirator who chased Her Emails along with Bannon and the unholy trinity of Roger Stone-Jerome Corsi-Peter Smith- and successfully weaponized them into the Comey Letter that elected Trump Johnson of all people would know.
Of course all the talk about technology determining the outcome that it’s about who counts the votes that determines things smacks of the Big Lie of the stolen 2020 election. Of course in 2000 what mattered wasn’t who counted the votes but who wouldn’t be allowed to count the because the Republican Supreme Court wouldn’t let them.
FN: Indeed, his formulation reminds you of Keir Washington’s great tv drama from a few years ago Scandal. In the world of Scandal Keir Washington’s Olivia Pope was involved with a powerful political faction who CHOSE the President-in the world of Scandal every election was rigged. Scandal came at the tail end of a partiuclar politcal and tv era where you’d have these really dystopian poliitcal dramas-a la House of Cards etc-that were kind of a escapist where you got to imagine a political world far more dystopian than ours. It would be a fun place to visit-though it would feel like a relief to leave that world to-Thank God our real political world wasn’t THAT dystopian.
It seems to me this tv era of political dramas was roughly between the Clinton 1990s and: Trump’s victory in 2016. It’s been said that Trump put political satire out of business, this is true, it also put dystopian political dramas out of it. The idea that elections are all fake andn are actually decided by this tightnit small cabal of elites no longer seems like fiction. As we have seen in this book the Republican party successufly stole the elections of 1968, 1972, 1980-there’s now at least an argument for 1988-, 2000 and 2016.
They WERE going to steal 2024 but apparently didn’t need to steal it-unless you hear Greg Palast tell it.
End FN
Indeed Johnson has the rather astonishing position that both 2020 AND 2024 were stolen.
For those who are more technical and more interested you should look very closely at Election Guard and Microsoft and you should ask yourself how likely it is that the Russian-Israeli Microsoft was to help steal an election on behalf of Bill Gates.
Now it’s undoubtedly a lonely place believing that both the 2020 and 2024 elections were rigged but it’s where I find myself. And candidly I’m okay with both elections being fake.
We’ve talked before about my view that 2004 was rigged through Diebold Voting systems and I’ve recounted elsewhere how Rep. Scott Perry told me that the 2020 election was stolen by the British. Is that so? I don’t know. But if 2020 was stolen by Brits then 2024 was stolen by the Likud Israelis.”
But dubious vs more plausible conspiracy theories aside-this was when I discovered that ‘the Right wing internet troll Charles Johnson’ actually moved to the Left the last four years and supported Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris.
How about that?
Sometimes the best way to bring down a criminal syndicate is with a master criminal and could it be that the way to finally take down Trump and his GOP co-conspirators is with a disgruntled GOP co-conspirator?
It kind of reminds me of the story of Yanis Varoufakis who had been the finance minister of Greece for the the left-wing Syriza party that had been swept into power in 2015.
Varoufakis related how when he was going to battle against the Troika-the ECB, the IMF, and the EC-the European Commission-he was every excited when former of officials from the troika joined his team. Another analogy is when former mob members join the criminal investigative team.
I’ve long thought if the Democrats actually want to win-it’s far from clear listening to the DOGE Democrats lately that they actually care about winning-every Democratic campaign should have lot a disgruntled GOP campaign operative on the team.
In that vein Charles Johnson is from the GOP campaign Dream Team-a truly Nixonian cum Trumpian dirty trickster-a true peer of Roger Stone who he has drawn swords with many times during the first Trump term.
UPDATE: EmptyWheel has also recently referenced Johnson though unlike me apparently she’s not willing to even link to him:
Conspiracy theorist Charles Johnson, in his inimitable self promotion, claims to have proven the case (you’ll have to click thru for the link because I refuse to link him directly).
Right wing influencer and notorious troll Charles Johnson also claims to have uncovered “proof” that Dittmann is Musk.
He writes in his Substack article: “I recently attended a Twitter Space where I exposed Elon Musk’s alt account and Elon Musk as a fraud to his face. Take a listen. It was pretty great. Part of the reason I was as aggressive as I was with Adrian/Elon was to get him agitated so he would speak faster than his voice modulator could work and we could make a positive match using software some friends of mine use for this sort of thing. I can confirm it’s Elon. Even if it isn’t physically Elon in the flesh, it’s an account controlled and operated by Elon/X that represents him in every way shape and form. But of course, it’s actually Elon.”
I’ll let the conspiracy theorists argue about whether Dittmann is Musk.
Artificial Frameworks about Elon: On Adrian Dittmann and Tommy Robinson – emptywheel
Well whether Dittmann is Musk or not is not an entirely unimportant question. That this ambiguity remains is just another symptom of our Orwellian age where no one can agree as to the most basic facts and when many now believe 2+2=5=even some notably classically trained mathematicians.
But wether or not Charles Johnson is a “consipracy theorist”-hard to argue with the label though as we saw in Chapter Kenzior many conspiracies have the inconvenience of being either true or at least interesting and helpful in a search for the truth. Again I take it as axiomatic that conspiracies happen every day certainly in powerful, elite circles, for “conspiracies” to be going on just makes it Tuesday. As FDR said there are no coincidences in politics.
As for self promotional-well that’s a double edged sword in a potential ally but at least it’s a sword rather than the butterknife the elected Dems a la Ro Khanna and John Fetterman burnish. Again what interesting to me about Johnson beyond the fact that his conspiracy theories are often very interesting and thought provoking is that he knows where a lot of bodies are buried-maybe or maybe not the Late Peter Smith.
I’m sorry if you’d followed US politics as closely as I have the last 32 years maybe you’d be a “conspiracy theorist” too. Indeed as is clear even from Robert Parry’s work on the October Surprise of 1980 a big reason people choose to not believe in “conspiracy theories” and prefer “Occam’s Razor” is that they prefer for their preconceptions to be as undisturbed as possible and Occam’s Razor is what Nietzsche would call the “pillow” of those lazy herd animals who seek to expend the “lowest expenditure of energy” in every situation. Occam’s Razor is a nice way of holding on to your preconceptions.
Paul Krugman at one time at least said Bush v Gore “radicalized” him. For me what truly radicalized me was 2016 particularly the Comey Letter where even a liberal like me had to admit that are elections too often are NOT on the level that all kinds of powerful interests put their fingers on the scale all the time-almost always to the benefit of the Republican party.
To be sure Bush v Gore was “radicalizing” for me too though after Obama won in 2008 for the short term I once again deluded myself that just the normal blocking and tackling of a political persuasion campaign is enough for liberals to win back the power they lost in 1968 and have never won back since.
But 2016 was truly radicalizing for me because I can’t unsee what I saw Comey and his Republicans Friends over at the FBI Trumpland do.
Again Kash Patel will fit right in-if God help us he’s confirmed and God hasn’t been helping us, if he were real you’d have to admit he’s forsaken us. The latest evidence is that is John Fetterman’s naive trust that there wont be criminal investigations of Liz Cheny or Adam Schiff because Kash assured him there wouldn’t.
April Fools! Guys win again. A woman will NEVER be President.
FN: ‘Your Body, My Choice” X Post Goes Viral As Women Report Increased Misogyny Post-Election – Newsweek
There’s noting worse than being right early and that’s the story of my life the last 9 and a half years and it’s done nothing but get worse. In the 1990s I read with horror Susan Faludi’s Backlash which included an anecdote about a woman who the pro-lifers forced birthers prevented from having an aborttion even though her pregnancy threatened her life. She was forded to give birth, it killed her, and then the baby was born stillborn.
The forced birthers tried to justify themselves by parading the stillborn child around in a sailor suit. This story filled me with horror and revulsion. I had initially read this in a college literature class. what also struck me though is that many of my classmates were completely dismissive of Faludi. They saw HER as the heavy not the dudes who sentenced a woman to death and then paraded around a stillborn child in a sailor suit as if this somehow makes it better.
This included many of my female classmates. But just over 30 years later, Faludi’s “mere anecdote” became reality-now in many parts of the country this is reality for many women-like the not so great state of Texas.
I wrote about this in the previous chapter as well but this is how much this has effected me. It sucks to be a Cassandra be proved right but even then no one acknowledge what happened-in 2024 millions of voters including many female voters voted for both abortion protections AND Donald Trump the guy who overturned Roe and may yet install a version of a national abortion ban. Trump’s proposed budget guy-from Heritage-thinks so.
So excuse me if I don’t reject “conspiracy theories” out of hand as if anything is clear from this history the truth is usually far stranger than fiction.
Guys win again. Whoops I guess we ARE going to do Project 2025. April Fools.
FN: You need more evidence that truth is stranger than fiction? Consider that the guy who just blew himself up in front of Trump Tower Louisiana in a Tesla truck is a Trump supporter who wrote a manifesto to support Trump-and Elon Musk AND RFJ Jr-AND get all the Democrats out of government.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/soldier-killed-in-tesla-outside-trump-tower-left-chilling-wake-up-call-letter-before-explosion/ar-AA1wVBYd?ocid=BingNewsSerp
But how dare you call this fascism?
As Josh Marshall notes the mainstream narrative is really understating the manifesto which calls for “culling Democrats” from politics.
End FN
So 2016 cum Emailgate cum Comey gate was radicalizing for me-it explains this extremely granular lenghty book i can’t unsee what I saw I REFUSE to unsee what I saw hence I wrote a very very long book. I’ll let others say if it’s the greatest book ever but it’s clearly the longest anyone has written in a long while LOL
And this is why Charles Johnson is so fascinating. Because he knows a lot more than he’s even said publicly about Emailgate cum Comeygate.
To look at where Johnsson’s particular skillset, knowledge experiences, and contacts can get us take the example of JD Vance. In 2023 he released 20 months of texts between himself and Vance to the Washington Post.
My conclusion as well as the conclusion of my colleagues, based upon years of tracking and observing J.D. Vance, is that Vance works for foreign powers as well.
Leaking the text messages was a patriotic move and one I did not do lightly but one which was necessary
“Clear and Present Danger” to American Interests: Why I Leaked J.D. Vance’s Text Messages
Johnson also discusses why he chose WaPo over the NYT:
“I chose the Washington Post to leak the text messages to because I have become disillusioned with how compromised the New York Times is. Indeed there was a catch and kill operation led by Likud asset Maggie Haberman and Mattathias Schwartz about the very text messages that the Washington Post decided to publish.”
LOL. I don’t know whether or not Maggie Haberman is a Likud asset-though it would explain a lot-but neither does her trying to prevent Vance’s texts from going public seem out of character based on the public understanding of who Maggie Haberman is. We know that Trumpworld considers her “friendly to us.”
“Friendly to Us:” NYT Buries Its Own Role in Trump’s Attacks on Rule of Law – emptywheel
If only…
Johnson argued the reason he leaked Vance was because of his belief that Vance works for foreign powers. Based on Vance’s campaign rhetoric he certainly SOUNDS LIKE he works for Russia just as it certainly SOUNDS LIKE Tulsi Gabbard Trump’s proposed new Director of DNC works for Putin and Assad-at least until Putin apparently assassinated him in Moscow…
Based on texts Vance sent to Johnson-after he became GOP Senator from Ohio-the idea that Vance works for Russia is only buttressed.
This sounds not unlike Joe Rogan in his recent refusal to speak to Zelensky-‘Dude that’s not even worthy my time!’
So Vance wasn’t even willing to take the calls of the Ukrainians. Yet some folks want us to believe Trump-and Elon Musk don’t forget about him-want to give a fair deal to Ukraine. As I noted in the previous chapter that’s hard to imagine assuming personnel IS policy.
Johnson also asked Vance about if he thought Epstein committed suicide.
Hmm: The patriotic Jewish spy.
Beyond the obvious point that many would see this as anti Semitic is it’s notable that Johnson apparently sees Epstein as a sympathetic figure.
FN: According to Johnson, he’s been “thinking about Epstein for the better part of 17 years” and he MET Epstein when he was 17 years old.
But this takes us back to Johnson’s old boss at Breitbart Steve Bannon. Bannon was actually a fan of Epstein and actually filmed Epstein for 15 hours in what he intended to be an Epstein documentary.
Steve Bannon Filmed Jeffrey Epstein for 15 Hours. Where’s the Footage? – Business Insider
But of course Johnson knew this firsthand.
Steve Bannon Befriended Jeffrey Epstein, Thought He Was a Spy
Steve Bannon for his part thought-not unreasonably-that Epstein is a spy. It’s a fairly widely held belief that Epstein was an Israeli spy.
FN: Why Johnson considers him patriotic is paradoxical seeing as he’s hardly a fan of the Israelis.
UPDATE: Reading further in the link above regarding “The Indispensable Epstein” Johnson argues Epstein had been “turned” by US intelligence.
End FN
Bannon wasn’t interested in the side of Epstein where he was providing child sexual slaves to old rich men but rather the fact that he was likely a spy. Apparently Bannon himself aspired to be like Epstein in this regard-the reason he befriended Epstein was because he thought he was a spy-probably accurately.
In the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign, Jeffrey Epstein told associates something they would never forget: He was advising both Republicans and Democrats.
“He would say things like ‘Trump’s people were here this morning. Hillary’s people were here for lunch,’” a former Epstein associate tells Rolling Stone. Epstein “would claim he was impacting the campaign dramatically.” But he would never name names, and these meetings always took place behind closed doors.
Like many things Epstein said, it may have been a wild exaggeration with a kernel of truth. Years earlier, when Epstein’s influence was at its peak, former President Bill Clinton flew multiple times on his private plane and future President Donald Trump famously described him as a “terrific guy.”
Per Michael Wolff Trump’s relationship with Epstein was much closer and more extensive than this passage suggests.
FN:
The Yale Review | Michael Wolff on Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and…
Among the many very interesting revelations in this interview is that mainstream outlets one and all turned down flat the opportunity to release the Epstein tapes he did with Wolff in 2017. There are many reasons why legacy media is no longer trusted-even though what’s replacing them is even worse than the disease-God help us Musk is arguing Xitter is the “new media” which suggests media doesn’t mean what he thinks it means-but this is symptomatic of one significant reason
JS This is one of the most interesting aspects of this story, particularly from a journalistic point of view. You had all these recordings of Epstein, which gave you a unique perspective—not just on his relationship with Trump but also on Epstein himself. Epstein is someone who people were—and arguably still are—not just horrified by but fascinated by and desperate to know more about. But when you tried to get different outlets to tell this story, the answer almost always ended up being no.
MW Right. People are really interested in the Epstein story. They cannot get enough of it. All of the mysteries are there—not just the sex but the money and all the famous people he surrounded himself with—and people want answers. So this was a story that would probably be a significant draw. And most outlets that you could think of were pitched this material at one point in time. I would say I had a dozen meetings, maybe a dozen and a half meetings, with various outlets, and everybody was interested—everybody was listening, there were a lot of executives in rooms or on Zoom calls—and then everybody passed.
There was a deal with a studio to do a miniseries on this, with a fair amount of money involved. As I recall, it was going to be a six-part series with one hour-long episode entirely about Epstein and Trump. So I wrote a pilot script, and everybody liked the pilot, and then there were revisions to it, and then it became like, “Well, maybe.” I remember sitting around a table, and had a sense of it being kind of a hot potato, of people essentially saying, “How did we get here? Who thought this was a good idea?”
I also gave considerable thought to writing a book about Epstein. And even with that, I was absolutely discouraged. Even from publishers who probably would have done what I wanted them to do, I heard, “Please don’t do this. This is not going to be good for you.” And so I came to feel, Why would I do the most difficult thing to do? You would take that risk up to some point but not beyond that. And Epstein as a subject proved to be beyond that point.
FN: This I will argue is a recurring problem in terms of why it’s so hard to have any public accountability: no one wants to be the one to do “the most difficult thing to do.”
FWIW this book is MY attempt to do “the most difficult thing”-wether or not it’s successful it’s certainly won’t fall short for want of trying…
End FN
JS Why do you think no one really wanted to go forward with this?
MW A lot of these outlets had portrayed Epstein as a kind of representative figure of pure evil. Once you’ve created that image, it’s hard to flip and to say, “No, no, no, no. We’ve convinced you this monster is the ne plus ultra of monsters, and now we have to convince you that, well, there might be something interesting about him and something that he has to say.” That’s a hard sell.
I will say IMHO there’s more to it than JUST that. My guess is some very powerful people-quite possibly including in Trumpworld- don’t want this-Johnson himself has noted how there really have been no books centrally about Epstein since his death
Consider that there’s been no serious biography of Epstein as yet. Nor has there been any really good, really serious documentary about Epstein. Indeed to the extent there’s been any public discussion about Epstein it has been in books written by compromised or Likud-affiliated propagandists affiliated with the very Israeli Washington Free Beacon. My friend and columnist Arthur Bloom does a very good send up of some of these people in his latest.
Suffice it to say there’s a very good book on Epstein in Michael Wolff but he’s been bullied out of writing it. This kind of thing I believe is very common. There are many such important books that could be written-just like there are many very important articles good journalists are bullied out of writing.
End FN
There’s no evidence that Epstein’s connections to either president had survived the 2008 scandal that branded Epstein a sex offender — with one notable exception: Steve Bannon, the chairman of the Trump campaign and a White House strategist, was a frequent visitor to Epstein’s New York mansion.”
As investigators know absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence…
Anyway Bannon was the exception as Johnson had firsthand knowledge of. While Bannon got a kick out of hanging out with Epstein the feeling was mutual:
A former Epstein associate, who spoke to Rolling Stone anonymously for fear of professional reprisal, recalled being introduced to Bannon at Epstein’s Manhattan home. “He was the main person that [Epstein] would brag about to literally everyone. It wasn’t a secret,” this person said. Epstein “loved having this ‘one famous person’ around that he would talk about and introduce to everyone. Almost like [he was] using Bannon to get more people to accept him. That’s my sense.”
Bannon did not respond to several messages left seeking comment. His spokesperson declined to comment on the record
No question part of the reason we haven’t gotten a real biography of Epstein is exactly what Wolff’s interview suggested-no one wants to be tainted by association with Epstein. Who wants to go on the record as being this guy’s friend-as Trump in fact was for many years? Which I strongly suspect is very convenient for some very powerful, well connected people. Because according to Wolff even while he was in prison, many powerful people continued to visit Epstein.
Although Epstein’s reputation was badly damaged after he spent 13 months in a Florida jail for soliciting sex from a teen, the conviction didn’t stop the flow of wealthy and famous people who flocked to his $77 million Upper East Side mansion. Behind the 15-foot oak front doors, Epstein played host to old friends like Wall Street billionaire Leon Black, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and new ones like Steve Bannon.
According to Too Famous, a new book by journalist Michael Wolff, Epstein and Bannon had been introduced in December 2017. The two men had bonded, in part, “out of a shared incredulity about Donald Trump,” Wolff writes. Bannon liked to compare notes with Epstein and “was often astonished by what Epstein knew.”
So right there that’s VERY INTERESTING. Recall we saw above that Rolling Stone wrote earlier in the piece that “There’s no evidence that Epstein’s connections to either president had survived the 2008 scandal that branded Epstein a sex offender…”
But how then did Epstein know so much in 2017 about the inner workings of the Trump Russia House White House?
Why would the media-savvy Bannon run the risk of associating with a sex offender? Two Republican operatives who worked for Bannon offer an explanation. While reporting on MAGA world, and Bannon in particular, merits an extra degree of caution as it often involves unreliable sources with questionable motives, these independent accounts line up and point to an alluring thesis: Bannon was intrigued by Epstein’s reputed role as middleman for intelligence services in the United States and abroad.”
One of the operatives, who spoke anonymously to discuss private conversations, asked Bannon in 2018 about reports that he was spotted entering Epstein’s mansion. Bannon admitted they had met and then said, cryptically, “Have you seen the Turkish currency?” which the employee took to mean that Epstein was somehow involved in the recent collapse of the Turkish lira. “He [Bannon] always insinuated that he was still working with the CIA, even when he was outside the White House, which is completely bullshit,” the former employee said. The Wall Street Journal and New York magazine reported that Epstein claimed to have a currency-trading business that earned tens of millions of dollars.”
Rolling Stone then quotes Charles Johnson:
“Charles Johnson, a conservative provocateur, worked with Bannon at Breitbart News, the right-wing website Bannon led for several years, and also got the impression that Bannon’s visits to Epstein involved the intelligence world. Johnson says that Bannon made several visits to Epstein’s New York mansion after he was ousted from the White House in August 2017. “He also offered to introduce me to him at one point,” Johnson tells Rolling Stone. (Johnson declined the offer.) “What I was told about that meeting by people close to Bannon was that he was trying to replace Epstein as a source for information from various intelligence networks. He saw Epstein as a rival or a partner but he wanted what Epstein had.” Johnson, who says he’s now a Biden supporter, said he has been cooperating with law-enforcement officials investigating Bannon.
Again before I read this I had not realized he’d broken with Bannon much less allegedly cooperated with law enforcement against him.
Again I will insist that I believe this guy has some heavyweight connections who knows where a lot of the bodies are buried. That he’s also a well known “Right wing internet troll” doesn’t disprove this-logically he can be both. The thing to remember is that if you know where a lot of the bodies are buried you probably have some complicity or exposure yourself at some point. Once gain I wonder what he knows about how Peter Smith’s alleged suicide.
Look you’re not going to take down the top guy in the Mob with a busload of nuns…
For shear comic relief see Vance’s texts asserting Bibi tried to warn us NOT To invade Iraq. In a post from Johnson on July 17:
If You Love Trump You Have To Vote Against Him… And All David Sacks’s Russian Ties
“If the GOP listened to Bibi we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq.” — U.S. Senator J.D. Vance
If You Love Trump You Have To Vote Against Him… And All David Sacks’s Russian Ties
The suggestion about Trump seems to relate to the idea that Vance was CHOSEN by Peter Thiel and Friends to replace Trump-which has far from been falsified as of 1/7/2025, Indeed as understandably skeptical as Marcy Wheeler is of Johnson she herself has suggested there could be a plan from Moscow to replace Trump with Vance-although lately I’ve been wondering if he may be replaced with Elon-though that seems almost redundant at this point.
However in the post Johnson focuses on Bibi:
If you love Trump the man you have to vote against Trump the candidate. That seems to be the takeaway from recent events. He’s not safe so long as Netanyahu’s people want a President Vance.”
Vance initially tried to handwave away the texts claiming that Johnson was just a spammer. Right-that’s why he had a back and forth correspondence with him for 20 months-that’s what I do when a random spammer texts me-text with them for 20 months.
The Washington Post-before it decided it LIKES THE DARKNESS:
The day after JD Vance was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, he received a congratulatory text from Charles Johnson, a blogger and entrepreneur who has zealously promoted right-wing conspiracy theories.
Johnson assumed the posture of a wise mentor, cautioning the first-time officeholder to choose his staff carefully and repeatedly pressing him on his committee assignments. “Got to keep you out of trouble,” wrote Johnson, who now describes himself as a government informant seeking to protect the United States from foreign influence
JD Vance texts with Charles Johnson show his friendly ties to far-right fringe – The Washington Post
From this I think it’s safe to infer Vance and Johnson already knew each other fairly as Johnson says they did.
William Martin, a Vance spokesperson, said in statement to USA TODAY that Johnson “spam texted” Vance, who “occasionally responded to push back against things he said.”
“To suggest they were ever close or shared the same politics, especially given Johnson’s public support of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, is simply laughable,” Martin said.
LOL. I guess people’s politics changes-after all in 2016 Vance called Trump Hitler and wrote the Hillbilly Elegy while Johnson was doing oppo to help Trump along with Bannon-Stone-Corsi-Peter Smith rig the election.
Their correspondence over the next 20 months — extending into the weeks before former president Donald Trump picked Vance as his running mate — offers a glimpse of the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s off-the-cuff musings, often matching his public expressions but voiced with much less polish and more profanity. Vance was just as casual in discussing America’s foreign alliances as he was in evaluating his own private alliances with the GOP’s moneyed class. With Johnson, he pondered responsibility for the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and crudely described his aversion to the Ukrainian government and refusal to consider its pleas for U.S. assistance.”
So basically Johnson engaged in-very effective-political espionage. Contrary to Vance’s facile denial that they “ever shared the same politics” obviously he had wrongly thought they did during the course of text buddying with him for 20 months. Likely he didn’t realize Johnson supported Biden-Harris during their texting days.
In response to questions about his correspondence with Johnson, Vance spokesman William Martin said the two were never close and don’t share the same politics. “Chuck Johnson spam texted JD Vance,” Martin said. “JD usually ignored him, but occasionally responded to push back against things he said.”
Again not plausible. If someone is spam texting you don’t “push back against things they said” you block them. Pushing back would admit you were engaged in a CONVERSATION with them.
CF:
Who is Charles Johnson, the conspiracy theorist who exchanged messages with JD Vance?
To underscore how much Johnson might know about where a lot of dead bodies are buried I just recently learned in reading Max Chaifkin’s “The Contrarian”-the “Contrarian” being Peter Thiel that Johnson not only had a major role in helping Thiel destroy Gawker-setting a pretty good precedent for Trump’s plans to take on critical media the next few years-but it was Johnson who first introduced Thiel to Trump.
FN: Chafkin link
Johnson also outed Thiel as an FBI informant in 2023.
Insider spoke to multiple people who claim Thiel became a “confidential human source” for a Los Angeles-based agent named Johnathan Buma — a term that indicates a long-running relationship with the FBI, allegedly beginning in 2021. While Thiel was once a high-profile supporter of former President Donald Trump, a subject of multiple FBI investigations, the deal is said to have excluded any information about Thiel’s domestic political contacts. Insider says it focused instead on “foreign contacts and Silicon Valley intrigue,” potentially including foreign influence operations in the tech industry. He was apparently outed as revenge for not investing in a right-wing blogger’s startups.”
Peter Thiel was reportedly an FBI informant – The Verge
CF: Maybe place this below?
On My Extracurricular Activities, the Business Insider Thiel Story, and Founders Fund
The “right-wing blogger” in question being Charles Johnson. But not only did Johnson-who again as we saw above also introduced Theil to Trump-out Thiel-for not investing in his startup-but it was Johnson who apparently who recruited Thiel to the FBI in the first place. Pretty impressive-huh? He introduced Thiel to both Donald Trump in 2016 AND in 2021 to Trumpland the FBI.
It was also Johnson who convinced Thiel to donate to the Mercers-which led to Thiel being deeply implicated in the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal-through is company
FN:
Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal – Wikipedia
Spy Contractor’s Idea Helped Cambridge Analytica Harvest Facebook Data – The New York Times
End FN
Here is a pretty perfect description of Johnson:
Neither Thiel nor the FBI commented to Insider about the report. And one of Insider’s sources is Charles Johnson, a far-right political figure and blogger that Insider acknowledges has spread a mix of accurate and false information in the past. But Johnson’s relationship with Thiel has been previously reported, including in Kashmir Hill’s recent book on facial recognition startup Clearview AI, a company Johnson claims in a lawsuit to have co-founded. (In that March suit, Johnson identifies himself as an FBI informant as well.) Johnson told Insider he introduced Thiel to Buma — then exposed him because Johnson “felt betrayed that Thiel did not invest in Johnson’s own startups, which he had expected Thiel to do in exchange.”
I love this: “Insider acknowledges has spread a mix of accurate and false information in the past.”
No doubt some will argue progressives shouldn’t touch someone like Johnson with a ten foot pole like for example see the faux outrage of the Missouri Democratic party over one of their own simply taking a picture with Johnson in late 2023.
If only the Missouri Democratic party were as excised over beating the Republicans as they are over this kind of phony virtue signaling. They’re fine with permanent second class status and with the Missouri’s brutal anti abortion laws but taking a selfie with a “Right wing internet troll” is a bridge too far for the allegedly “righteous” Dems who never can understand that occupying the moral high ground and $5 dollars may or many not buy you a cup of coffee-it won’t come close to buying a sandwich at Subways these days.
(2) My Weekend Trip to Missouri Sure Was Interesting…
Certainly Sarah Unsicker speaks for Democrats not just in Missouri but nationally
(2) I’m Tired of Losing – Sarah Unsicker’s newsletter
But so often the Dems in office hardly seem tired of it-it’s as if as long as they keep their jobs and their seats on a few committees aren’t too concerned.
The Democratic party needs a Charles Johnson because they need someone who knows how to do cutting edge political intelligence-or ANY political intelligence at all-to say nothing of knowing where all the bodies are buried. They need someone who can do more than play the most facile version of one dimensional checkers. Seeing how successful Johnson was in effectively doing counterintelligence on JD Vance-the next VPOTUS-for 20 months there are surely many things he could help the anemic Dems with-maybe start with figuring out what’s going on with John Fetterman?
i