Say No To Capital Punishment

Two little words this morning prove why Capital Punishment, murder by the state , is never justified.

Steven Truscott.

For fifty years he awaited justice, while the justice system failed him and Lynne Harper the victim of a brutal rape murder. This morning the Ontario Court of Appeal acquitted him.

Acquittal, but not innocence, likely for Truscott

Sentenced to death in 1959 for the murder of a 12-year-old, there is no avenue for the Canadian legal system to declare him innocent

The real sexual predator who brutally raped and murdered Lyn escaped justice, while Truscott suffered from a justice system that saw him as their best bet for conviction and would not be deterred by facts to the contrary.

Fifty years, the life of a man, to appeal an injustice, resulted finally in justice being served. Truscott is an excellent case for why capital punishment is never justified, it is an irreversible judgment.

No other crime in Canada has divided public opinion as much as the tragic story of the June 9, 1959, murder of 12-year-old Lynne Harper, for which Truscott, then 14, was ultimately convicted. He was the youngest person ever sentenced to death in Canada (his death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment). Still protesting his innocence, he began serving his sentence. His appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal was dismissed. Leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was denied.

Public opinion ran passionately in favour of his guilt. Pierre Berton had written a sympathetic verse in this very paper a week after the trial and later said he had never known a more violent response to any column he had ever written.

He was called "a sob sister for a monster" and callers expressed the hope that his own daughter would soon be raped. Yet, seven years later, the tide of opinion shifted spectacularly.

The public came to believe that Steven's trial suffered from serious deficiencies, questionable expert testimony and unfairness to the accused. The case was discussed everywhere, including the House of Commons. All because of Isabel LeBourdais, who had published The Trial of Steven Truscott in March 1966. The book was a passionate, emotional defence of Steven Truscott and a scathing denunciation of his trial. She was named woman of the year by The Canadian Press.

Isabel LeBourdais, whose book raised questions about the Truscott investigation, talks with Steven Truscott in 1968 outside Collins Bay Penitentiary.

The doubts raised by the book and the language in which these doubts were framed struck a nerve deep in the Canadian consciousness. As a result of the book, the minister of justice, for the first time in Canadian history, directed a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada as to the propriety of the conviction. It is also the first time in which that court heard live testimony.

The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction on May 4, 1967, but doubts remained. Justice Emmett Hall, one of the most eminent judges of the court, wrote a powerful, passionate and stinging dissent and would have directed a new trial. He sharply criticized the conduct of the Crown. An already inflamed public, he said, was further inflamed by the Crown's improper suggestions and the trial judge's improper charge to the jury. Many Canadians believed that of the nine judges on the Supreme Court, only Justice Hall got it right.

Because of the Truscott Case capital punishment in Canada was reconsidered and eventually removed from the criminal code.

Canada banned the death penalty because of fears about wrongful convictions, concerns about the state taking the lives of individuals, and uncertainty about the death penalty's role as a deterrent for crime.

The case of Steven Truscott, who was just 14 years old when convicted of a murder that many continue to believe he did not commit, was a significant impetus (although certainly not the only one) toward the abolishment of capital punishment.

The return to having Capital Punishment in the criminal code is a platform from the old Reform Party that is the base of the Harper Conservatives. And it came up in the Conservative Leadership race.

Tony Clement declared that he believes that capital punishment should be an option for extreme cases. "My personal view is that in the case of serial killers and murderers of police officers, for instance, that it would be appropriate in those circumstances". -- Tony Clement

This decision should bury that forever. But if it doesn't then my reply to the Law and Order right wingers who endlessly lobby for state murder, will forever remain two little words; Steven Truscott.

The first private bill calling for abolition of the death penalty was introduced in 1914. In 1954, rape was removed from capital offenses. In 1956, a parliamentary committee recommended exempting juvenile offenders from the death penalty, providing expert counsel at all stages of the proceedings and the institution of mandatory appeals in capital cases.

Between 1954 and 1963, a private member's bill was introduced in each parliamentary session calling for abolition of the death penalty. The first major debate on the issue took place in the House of Commons in 1966. Following a lengthy and emotional debate, the government introduced and passed Bill C-168, which limited capital murder to the killing of on-duty police officers and prison guards.

Contrary to predictions by death penalty supporters, the homicide rate in Canada did not increase after abolition in 1976. In fact, the Canadian murder rate declined slightly the following year (from 2.8 per 100,000 to 2.7). Over the next 20 years the homicide rate fluctuated (between 2.2 and 2.8 per 100,000), but the general trend was clearly downwards. It reached a 30-year low in 1995 (1.98) -- the fourth consecutive year-to-year decrease and a full one-third lower than in the year before abolition. In 1998, the homicide rate dipped below 1.9 per 100,000, the lowest rate since the 1960s.

The overall conviction rate for first-degree murder doubled in the decade following abolition (from under 10% to approximately 20%), suggesting that Canadian juries are more willing to convict for murder now that they are not compelled to make life-and-death decisions.

All of Canada's national political parties formally oppose the reintroduction of the death penalty, with the exception of the Reform Party which supports a binding national referendum on the issue.

The debate over capital punishment was renewed once again in 1984. There was a free vote in the House of Commons on the topic in 1987. Supporters of capital punishment narrowly lost the vote, 148 to 127. The Bill to reintroduce capital punishment came from Conservative backbencher Gordon Taylor. Taylor initially introduced the Bill to reinstate capital punishment for Clifford Olson in 1986 but the Speaker of the House refused the Bill, as a law cannot be passed relating to a specific person. Taylor therefore changed the Bill to cover all those convicted of first degree murder and mass murders. In the end though, the Bill was not successful.

The debate concerning capital punishment is far from over, and it is an issue that is not likely to end in the near future. For now though, the debate seems to be dormant. Yet at a time when Canadians are demanding that criminals be held accountable for their actions and that justice be put back into the justice system, it is not likely that the call for the reinstatement of capital punishment will ever go away. Poll after poll shows that Canadians support the use of capital punishment in certain circumstances, but the political will is simply not there. The recent acts of terrorism in the United States might spur a renewed call for capital punishment, even if only for terrorist murders.

In 1976, capital punishment was removed from Canada's Criminal Code. After years of debate, Parliament decided that capital punishment was not an appropriate penalty. The reasons for this decision were due to the possibility of wrongful convictions, concerns about the state taking the lives of individuals, and uncertainty as to the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent.

• In 1961, legislation was passed which reclassified murder into capital and non-capital offences. Capital murder referred to planned or deliberate murder, murder that occurred during the course of other violent crimes, or the murder of a police officer or prison guard. At this time, only capital murder was punishable by death.
• On December 10, 1962, Arthur Lucas and Robert Turpin were the last people to be executed in Canada.
• In 1967, a bill was passed that placed a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, except in cases involving the murder of a police officer or corrections officer.
• On July 14, 1976, with the exception of certain offences under the National Defence Act, the death penalty was abolished in Canada. The bill, C-84, passed by a narrow margin on a free vote.
• In 1987, a free vote regarding the reinstatement of the death penalty was held in the House of Commons. The result of the vote was in favour of maintaining the abolition of the death penalty, 148 to127.
• In 1998, Parliament removed the death penalty with the passing of An Act to Amend the National Defence Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, S.C. 1998 c. 35.
• In Canada, the abolition of the death penalty is considered to be a principle of fundamental justice. Canada has played a key role in denouncing the use of capital punishment at the international level.
• The Supreme Court of Canada has held that prior to extraditing an individual for a capital crime, Canada must seek assurances, save in exceptional circumstances from the requesting state that the death penalty will not be applied.

SEE:

Saddam and the CIA

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Revealed: Aileen Cannon failed to disclose all-expenses-paid right-wing junket in Montana

Matthew Chapman
May 7, 2024 

U.S. Senate Television/CNP/Zuma Press/TNS

The judge overseeing the former president's Mar-a-Lago classified documents case lived it up at an all-expenses-paid retreat for right-wing federal jurists at a $1,000-a-night resort in Montana near Yellowstone National Park, reported Lucian K. Truscott IV for Salon.

"It's called the Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, and it’s where George Mason University sends gaggles of federal judges for a week-long 'colloquium' every year or so," wrote Truscott — all paid for by the Antonin Scalia Law School, named for the late justice who ironically died on a ranch getaway paid for by right-wing benefactors.

Topics at these conferences include "Woke Law!" and “Unprofitable Education: Student Loans, Higher Education Costs, and the Regulatory State” — which, Truscott noted, "rings what we might call a rather different bell after the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program last year."

The GMU department behind this program has received generous donations from Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society leader who helped Trump appoint numerous judges and is under investigation in D.C. for allegedly funneling nonprofit money into his for-profit consulting firm.

Cannon was a guest at these conferences in 2021 and 2022, Truscott wrote — however, she "failed to file the form known as a Privately Funded Seminar Disclosure Report, which lists whoever paid for the judge to attend the seminar, who the speakers were and what topics were discussed.

"The form is supposed to be posted on the website of every federal court within 30 days of the time a judge attending such an all-expenses-paid seminar.

"Cannon, however, somehow forgot to do so, so anyone who might be interested in learning who was paying for Cannon’s vacations and the nature of her judicial education would have been out of luck."

Cannon has become a constant point of controversy for a series of unusual decisions made in the Trump case that appear calculated to help the former president. She tried to stop the FBI reviewing classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago, later being smacked down by an all-Republican appellate panel, demanded special counsel Jack Smith hand over information to Trump that could expose witnesses to tampering, and is currently delaying the trial with no clear timeline for it moving ahead.

"I mean, 10 grand or so in first-class air travel and luxury accommodations and bottomless trips to the luxo-resort’s 'local produce' salad bar and steak pit might start to look like a bribe when you pay attention to what was actually being discussed between float trips down the Yellowstone and hikes through the mountains, don’t you think?" wrote Truscott.

Bombed out: Why we keep on making war, and tolerating it

War is brand new every time it happens, and it's one of our oldest ideas. We claim to hate it, but it's part of us

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
PUBLISHED MARCH 19, 2022

A man walks amid debris in front of a residential apartment complex that was heavily damaged by a Russian attack on March 18, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Russian forces remain on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, but their advance has stalled in recent days, even while Russian strikes - and pieces of intercepted missiles - have hit residential areas in the north of Kyiv. An estimated half of Kyiv's population has fled to other parts of the country, or abroad, since Russia invaded on February 24. 

(Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

The hardest thing I do as a writer is trying to find words to describe the indescribable. It doesn't matter what it is — beauty or bliss or sadness or tragedy or dullness or despair or horror or ecstasy or the ordinary — it's the writer's job. I remember as a young man having a dream that someday I might come up with one great idea. Just one would do it, but that was my goal. Now I realize what I've been doing for more than 50 years is excavating old ideas and finding new ways to express them.

We are witnessing one of man's very oldest ideas in Ukraine. Call it the will to power or the urge to take what is not yours or the wrath of ignorance and pride, every time war is waged it is the same. War is man's inhumanity to man on a mass scale.

Perhaps that is why we become so readily inured to images of war. We have seen them all before — the anguished, bleeding faces of the wounded, the bleakly inert limbs of the dead, the angry fire of explosions, the darkness and sameness of destruction — to borrow Hannah Arendt's term, the sheer banality of it all.
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RELATED: Ukraine and the dark lessons of war: What does it mean to "take" a country or a city?

War is brand new when it first happens, yet after only a day it is already old to us because it has been headlined on the front pages of newspapers, featured on the covers of magazines, flickered across our televisions, splashed on the big screen of movies in Technicolor, engraved in the text of great novels and first-person reports from the front. The most extraordinary scene in the 1970 movie "Patton," the one that I believe gives it staying power, comes when Gen. George S. Patton is on a bluff in North Africa or Sicily seeming to reminisce about having been at that exact spot before during ancient battles. He ends his oration by saying this about war: "I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life."

I don't know if Patton ever said the lines from the movie in real life, but I do know that after I took my grandmother, Sara Randolph Truscott, to see "Patton" the week it came out, I asked her what she thought, and she turned to me and answered with a little smile, "Why, it was just like being in the room with Georgie," calling him by a nickname only his family and close friends used.

Her late husband and my grandfather, Gen. Lucian K. Truscott Jr., knew Patton and served on the same cavalry posts with him between the wars. It's safe to assume she would have known what the man was like, so that's probably as good an assessment we'll ever get of the movie's essence. In Patton's rumination on war, he is saying the unsayable out loud. It makes him seem like a monster, but we are all monsters, we humans who love war, or at least tolerate it such that we keep waging it over and over and over again.

It chills the soul to think that he might be right, but here we are again, 52 years after "Patton" was released, bearing witness to yet another war being fought over the same ground, in the same cities, for largely the same reasons as the war against the Nazis that Ukraine (and Russia) fought 81 years ago. It's tempting to ask why nothing is ever new, but I'm afraid we know the answer all too well.

There is one image of war we haven't yet seen in the coverage of Russia's war against Ukraine. We've seen people sheltering in subway stations and basements and people traveling by train or by car to get to western Ukraine or Poland to escape the bombing and shelling. But we haven't seen the people left behind who don't have the wherewithal or money or even the energy to escape the cities and towns being bombed, and who end up stuck trying to survive in the ruins. I saw an interview with an expert on Ukraine this week who said that 10 percent of the population already lived below the poverty line of about $5 or $6 a day, even before the war began. It won't take long for as many as 90 percent of Ukrainians to be in the same position, he said.

I am certain that there are already people in Ukraine living in the bombed-out ruins of rural homes and urban apartment buildings with no electricity, heat, source of food or water — just existing on nothing. Because I haven't traveled to Ukraine to cover this war, and because all wars are essentially the same, I'll tell you what I saw in Afghanistan in March of 2004 in the ruins of some old apartment complexes and office buildings on the edge of Kabul.

It was like a landscape out of a near-future movie about the world after the Big Bomb, but it was real: Families had fashioned shelters out of the rubble of the buildings, using scrap wood and metal for roofs and more wood scraps and piles of rubble and cheap carpets and blankets for walls, and they were living in the midst of this horrific destruction without electricity or water and only small cooking fires for heat. Here and there, I could see pits that had been dug out of the dirt and sealed with mud walls to make bread ovens, where they could bake flatbread by slapping dough on the curved walls of the pits. But none of the ovens had fires going, because the families didn't have any flour and water to make dough.

I had stopped at a small bakery next door to the Mustafa Hotel, where I was staying in Kabul, and picked up a bag of sugar cookies that I planned on eating as snacks later in my room. I had the bag stashed in a kilim shoulder bag I was carrying, but almost immediately upon entering the ruins, I was surrounded by a crowd of starving children. Their faces were dirty from having not been washed in weeks, and many of them had open infections oozing pus on their legs and arms. They were pawing at me and chattering in Dari and my translator told me they were asking for food and water, so I took out the bag of cookies and began handing them out. It was like being set upon by a pack of wolves, their fingers were tugging and scratching at my pant legs and arms as I tried to spread the cookies evenly between the children. Within a minute or two, they were all gone and the children disappeared into gaps in the rubble and behind the thin rugs where their mothers huddled in the cold.

With my translator, I tried to talk to a few of the women to get their stories: How they had ended up in these ruins in Kabul, how long they had been there, the usual questions a reporter asks in a war. Their husbands, the fathers of the children, had all been killed in fighting between Afghan factions or by the Taliban or by U.S. soldiers, so there were no men in the ruins. My translator explained that widowed women with children were undesirable and were shunned in their villages, which was why they had traveled from distant areas looking for shelter and work and aid from NGOs in Kabul. They had noplace else to go; that's why they were living in the ruins among the detritus of war.

I went back to the ruins once more before I left Afghanistan and handed out flatbread and some bottled water this time. The scene was the same. The children clawed at me desperately. It was all I could do not to throw down the bag of bread and the water bottles and run.

When I returned to L.A. a week or so later, there was a sore on my left forefinger that wouldn't heal. I went to my GP. He examined my finger and took a swab and asked me to wait while he had it tested. A couple of hours later the test came back. It was an MRSA infection. He asked me what I had come in contact with in Afghanistan that might have caused it, and I thought immediately of the children in Kabul with their open sores and cracked lips and desperate eyes. I had touched them repeatedly while handing out cookies and bread in the ruins.

The doctor gave me a big shot of antibiotics and put me on the only pill known to knock down MRSA infections. The sore got worse for a couple of days and then began to heal. The doctor told me that if I had waited to get it treated for even a day longer, I would probably have lost my finger. If I had neglected the infection longer, I could have lost my hand.

This is one of the very old ideas about war I have excavated: After the bombs have fallen and the artillery shells have exploded and the missiles have found their targets, what is left are women and children with no money, no food, no water, living in bombed-out ruins with no place else to go. That was what happened in Afghanistan, and it happened in Sicily and Vietnam and Korea and Iraq and Aleppo and Rome and Jerusalem and Cairo and Mogadishu, and now it is happening in Ukraine. History becomes present becomes future and nothing changes. The thing that is forever is war.


LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives on the East End of Long Island and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better. You can read his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Read more on the Ukraine war and its consequences:
Endless war is back — as the merchants of death waltz us toward Armageddon
Putin's invasion of Ukraine exposes the Fox News-QAnon feedback loop
Why I'm going to Ukraine: We deserve the truth — and that's my job

Why I Oppose Capital Punishment

Two words, nouns, proper name;
Steven Truscott.

Autopsy drafts that would have cleared Truscott never given to defense




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$800,000 wire transfer from billionaire donor to US Chamber of Commerce raises curtain on dark money

Taylor Giorno

Tue, June 11, 2024

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce received an $800,000 wire transfer from billionaire donor Hank Meijer days after it endorsed his son, then-Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), in a contentious 2022 primary, according to previously unreported internal emails reviewed by The Hill.

Within days of the transfer, the Chamber spent $381,000 on “Media Advertisement – Energy and Taxes – Mentioning Rep. Peter Meijer,” according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

But because the ad — titled “Thank you, Rep. Peter Meijer” — does not explicitly advocate for his election or defeat, the pro-business lobbying giant did not have to legally disclose the donation from Hank Meijer, the co-chair and CEO of the Meijer chain of superstores. It also did not have to disclose any other potential contributions behind the $1.8 million it told the FEC it spent on “electioneering communications” that cycle.

Emails obtained by The Hill lay out the timeline of the endorsement, donation and ad buy just weeks before the Aug. 2, 2022, House GOP primary in Michigan. Campaign finance experts told The Hill that the emails pull back the curtain on a surge of “dark money” in U.S. elections, spending where the ultimate source of the money is not publicly disclosed.

“They’re exploiting a legal loophole to help them conceal the sources of election spending in this race,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the nonprofit watchdog Campaign Legal Center (CLC), which filed a complaint during the 2020 cycle alleging an individual later identified as Hank Meijer tried to obscure separate donations by using a limited liability corporation (LLC) to donate to another super PAC supporting his son.

“And they’re doing it in a very sophisticated way, but ultimately the voters suffer as a result,” Ghosh added.

Nonprofits such as the Chamber are not legally required to publicly disclose their donors. The Supreme Court recently ruled nonprofit disclosure requirements violated donors’ First Amendment rights and risk deterring donors who don’t want their names to be public.

Under federal campaign finance law, however, it is illegal for a campaign and spender to coordinate on so-called “independent expenditures” — election communications such as an ad. But the involvement of a candidate’s family member is not de facto coordination, campaign finance experts told The Hill, and so long as the group does not coordinate with the candidate, campaign or its agents on an endorsement, or spending touting that endorsement, they would legally be in the clear.

Both the Chamber and John Truscott, a Meijer family spokesman, insisted the donation complied with all applicable laws. But neither the Chamber nor Truscott answered specific questions about the timing of or discussion around the donation, the terms of the contribution and how that money was used.

“The personal contribution made two years ago to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Voter Education Fund was in full accordance with all laws and regulations,” Truscott told The Hill.

A Chamber spokesperson told The Hill that the organization “operates consistent with all applicable campaign finance laws, including restrictions related to coordinated activities and requirements around donor disclosure” and “timely reported this advertisement to the FEC, providing all information required by law.”

But the timing of the donation so soon after the endorsement “raises some serious questions” about the arrangement between the Chamber and Hank Meijer, said Anna Massoglia, a dark money expert and the editorial and investigations manager at the nonpartisan money-in-politics tracking nonprofit OpenSecrets.

“It is not unheard of for the parents of candidates to fund super PACs or other outside groups that spend in support of their children, and it is perfectly legal so long as disclosure and coordination rules are followed,” Massoglia said.

“The biggest question … would be what agreements, if any, are in place behind the scenes with this. Is this explicitly giving money for an endorsement or their support? Or was this a big coincidence that the timing was so close?”

Ghosh, Massoglia and other campaign finance experts argue the status quo of dark money disclosure hurts everyday citizens who are unable to see the people behind the massive campaigns or see evidence about their motives.

“That’s the essential problem with political activity by these entities: They’re a black box,” Ghosh said.

While unprecedented sums of dark money poured into the 2022 election, the 2024 election is on track to set a new record.

More than $210 million in dark money contributions have already been funneled into political groups during the 2024 election cycle, according to Massoglia. That’s up from $170 million at the same point during the 2022 election cycle and more than double the amount tracked at this point in the 2020 election cycle.

“It’s important for voters to be able to have information about who’s funding groups that are spending to influence their vote or influence their opinions generally, so that they can better evaluate the information they’re consuming from those groups,” Massoglia told The Hill.

Voters “may trust the Chamber because of its reputation as a pro-business group, as a trade association, and not realize who all is actually behind [an ad],” she added.

How the Chamber came to back Meijer

Peter Meijer was in a tough spot.

One of 10 House Republicans who had voted to impeach former President Trump for “incitement of insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021, he faced a Trump-endorsed challenger in the GOP primary in early August 2022.

Against the backdrop of this heated primary, the Chamber endorsed Meijer on July 11, a Monday.

The Meijer company is a member of the Chamber, and Hank Meijer is a member through his business, Truscott, the Meijer family spokesperson, told The Hill. The company is also a member of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce, Muskegon Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

On the morning of Friday, July 15, John Van Fossen, vice president of government relations for the Meijer company, sent an email to Neil Bradley, the U.S. Chamber’s chief policy officer.

“Everything is being processed,” Van Fossen said.

That afternoon, a Chamber staffer sent Bradley an email that said, “Hank Meijer’s office called me an hour ago — they are wiring in $800k Monday. This will be for VE — correct?” referencing the Voter Education Fund.

“Correct.” Bradley responded.

Late Monday, July 18, in an email with the subject line “Contribution Form – H.G. Meyer/Meijer,” Nancy Duchaine, an associate at Greenville Partners — an organization that supports the Meijer family’s financial and philanthropic endeavors — emailed the Chamber to say, “Our approver was held up in meetings today so you will see this come through tomorrow.”

“Attached is the contribution form to accompany the $800,000 donation wired out earlier today,” Duchaine had sent in an email earlier that evening.

The following morning, a Chamber staffer sent Bradley an email with the messages that said, “800k confirmed in writing below.”

“thx,” Bradley responded.

A few days later, on Thursday, July 21, the Chamber started running an ad on energy and tax issues that mentions Peter Meijer.

Bradley, Van Fossen, Duchaine and Peter Meijer did not respond to requests for comment.

The Chamber’s ad

The ad praises Peter Meijer but stops short of using the eight specific words and phrases established in the Supreme Court’s 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo that would require the Chamber to report the ad as an independent expenditure, and thus disclose the source of the funds: “vote for,” “vote against,” “elect,” “defeat,” “support,” “reject,” “cast your ballot for” or “Smith for Congress.”

“Fourth-generation west Michigander, steadfast conservative leader. In Congress, Peter Meijer always puts west Michigan first,” the ad’s narrator says.

“That’s why he’s fighting against the liberal policies that are failing our nation, fighting for increased domestic energy production to lower gas prices and fighting to stop Biden’s reckless tax increases on our families. Call Peter Meijer. Ask him to keep up the fight for west Michigan,” the ad continues.

This was the only ad buy the Chamber reported making between April and October of 2022, although its YouTube page includes ads that summer thanking then-Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) for his work on energy and taxes posted two weeks before he lost his primary to a Trump-backed incumbent, and praising Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), who was serving as a Democrat at the time and was not up for reelection that cycle.

“The U.S. Chamber is in a constant state of raising money, endorsing candidates, and engaging in issue advocacy to advance our priorities and the efforts of elected officials who champion them,” the Chamber spokesperson told The Hill.

Linguistic limbo is a common practice for dark money groups to circumvent disclosure requirements. Groups can run issue ads that praise or attack candidates without disclosing their donors, so long as they don’t invoke the “magic words.”

Dark money groups and politically-involved nonprofits are also increasingly donating to super PACs or spending money on issues ads that don’t have to be disclosed to the FEC, Massoglia said, which makes it more difficult to track the ultimate source of dark funds flowing into elections.

Meijer would go on to lose the GOP primary three weeks after the Chamber endorsed him. While he ran for the Michigan Senate GOP nomination this election cycle, he dropped out in April.

Only two House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his actions on Jan. 6 remain in Congress.

Chamber falls under specific disclosure rules

As a 501(c)(6) tax-exempt nonprofit, the Chamber is not legally obligated to disclose its list of members or the source of any donations or dues it receives, although it does have to file an annual report to the IRS with top-line totals.

The Chamber takes in and spends a lot of money each year: It reported nearly $210 million in revenue in 2022 on its most recent Form 990, and OpenSecrets found the group spent more than $81 million on federal lobbying that year.

The Chamber also weighs into elections, although critics say its political operation is less potent than it was before the 2020 election cycle, when it endorsed 23 first-term Democrats for reelection, enraging and alienating many of its traditional allies in the Republican Party.

The Chamber also endorsed Meijer in October 2020 but did not report any “electioneering communications” mentioning Meijer after that endorsement or post any ads mentioning Meijer on its YouTube page.

Ghosh described the emails as one of “the rare instances where you do see what’s happening on the inside and how a group is making the buys it’s making.”

“There’s always the machinery behind it. But because of the lack of transparency around these groups, you never get to see that machinery,” Ghosh added.

Hank Meijer previously accused of obscuring donations

Hank Meijer has previously been accused of obscuring donations to a political group supporting his son.

In October 2020, just a few weeks before the 2020 general election, CLC filed a complaint against Montcalm LLC, which contributed $150,000 to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Republican congressional leadership, less than two weeks after incorporating.

The campaign finance watchdog alleged the ultimate source of the funds, which was later revealed to be Hank Meijer, funneled them through a “straw donor” to obscure their involvement.

Montcalm LLC donated another $100,000 to the super PAC on the day the complaint was filed.

After CLC filed the complaint, Truscott told MLive that Meijer had made the donation “with the full expectation that his name would be made public.”

The Congressional Leadership Fund ultimately attributed both contributions from Montcalm LLC to Hank Meijer on reports filed to the FEC. The super PAC spent nearly $1.2 million that cycle against Peter Meijer’s Democratic opponent, according to OpenSecrets.

The FEC dismissed CLC’s complaint last month after concluding “[Hank] Meijer was the true source of the contribution purportedly made in Montcalm’s name, and Meijer should have been disclosed as the true contributor at the time of making the contribution.”

Ghosh called the FEC’s decision to dismiss the complaint “inexplicable given their finding.”

“It sets terrible incentives for others to do the same to avoid disclosure,” said Ghosh.

Fight over disclosure rules

Both Democratic and Republican groups benefit from dark money contributions and spending, including House and Senate party leadership-aligned super PACs that rake in tens of millions of dollars from undisclosed sources each cycle.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a leading advocate for the disclosure of dark money pouring into elections, told The Hill that the identity of billionaires spending to influence elections is “information voters deserve to know, especially when that billionaire is a candidate’s own father.”

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is doing the dirty work of billionaires and Big Oil via a massive litigation, lobbying, and electoral spending operation intended to influence the federal government. The Chamber regularly dumps dark money into American elections to sink candidates who support fighting climate change and growing the middle class,” Whitehouse told The Hill.

“Senator Whitehouse has a long history of only objecting to spending when he doesn’t agree with the message or source,” a Chamber spokesperson told The Hill.

Whitehouse has consistently reintroduced the DISCLOSE Act, which, among other provisions, would compel dark money groups that donate to super PACs or spend on communications that refer to a federal candidate to disclose contributions topping $10,000. The Senate version of the bill has 51 Democratic and independent co-sponsors, and the House version has 156 Democratic co-sponsors.

But as recently as 2021, the Supreme Court has ruled disclosure requirements infringe upon nonprofit donors’ First Amendment right to free speech.

In July 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that a nonprofit donor disclosure requirement in California was unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts said in the majority opinion that it would have a chilling effect on donors who may be deterred if their names were made public.

“California’s disclosure requirement imposes a widespread burden on donors’ associational rights, and this burden cannot be justified on the ground that the regime is narrowly tailored to investigating charitable wrongdoing, or that the State’s interest in administrative convenience is sufficiently important,” Roberts wrote.

Taylor Giorno was the money-in-politics reporter at OpenSecrets before joining The Hill as the business and lobbying reporter.

SIGN THE PETITION

Edmonton mom facing deportation makes impassioned plea for her and her daughter to stay in Canada

A mother and daughter from Edmonton facing an imminent deportation order are desperate to remain in Canada.

The Cayanans are scheduled to be deported July 11, 2022 - but hope public pressure will assist them in staying in Canada long-term.

Sarah Ryan / Global News- Yesterday 

Vangie Cayanan came to Canada as a temporary foreign worker back in 2010, but she alleges her employer abused her and when she reported it, she was let go.

The next year, she moved to Edmonton where she continued to work.

In 2015, while still in Canada, Cayanan had a baby girl named McKenna. That's the same year Cayanan became an undocumented migrant.

Recently, her lawyer said the Canada Border Services Agency started rounding up undocumented workers and deporting them.

Family friend Whitney Haynes said the government isn't being fair to the Cayanans.

"She came here legally, under the temporary foreign worker program," Haynes said. "She was abused by her employer, abused by a system which has abused many people -- that throws people away back to their own country just to bring in a new batch of people to do the same jobs."

Cayanan was told she and her daughter would have to leave the country and go to the Philippines on May 11.

After being granted an emergency extension allowing McKenna to finish her school year in Canada, a new deportation date has been scheduled for July 11.

"I'm asking for all the support to stay here because McKenna belongs here, I belong here, we belong here. This is our home," Cayanan said.

Recently, Cayanan said her six-year-old daughter was diagnosed with ADHD and Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

In Canada, McKenna is receiving supports in school and is getting medication for her conditions, something Cayanan said wouldn't happen in the Philippines.

"In an impoverished learning environment, without the resources, I don't know that those special needs can be met," agreed registered social worker Susan Otto.

Plus, they added that McKenna only speaks and understands English.

READ MORE: Toronto senior facing deportation allowed to stay in Canada after more than 20 years

A statement from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said "all foreign nationals are expected to respect our immigration laws by maintaining a legal status while in Canada, restoring their status within 90 days after their status has expired, or returning to their country of origin.

"An individual who remains in Canada more than 90 days after their status expires should leave Canada. From abroad, they may apply to return to Canada through any type of temporary or permanent status they are eligible to apply for."

Options include the permanent residence program or a temporary work permit, according to the government agency.

READ MORE: LBTGQ+ refugee in Quebec facing deportation says he will be killed if sent back to Jordan

"Everyone deserves a work environment where they are safe and their rights are respected. The government takes the safety and dignity of foreign workers very seriously, which is why we've been taking strong action to protect workers since before the pandemic," the statement continued.

"Migrant workers have the same rights to workplace protections under applicable federal, provincial and territorial employment standards and collective agreements as Canadians and permanent residents."

Supporters also say Cayanan has proven herself to be a valuable member of the community.

Despite her status, in 2017 she advocated for children of migrants to have basic rights -- and won.

"Every child born in Canada can access health care now because of her work," explained Clarizze Truscott, vice-chair with Migrante Canada.

Cayanan also helped deliver packages to undocumented people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Her tireless community work earned her the human rights award from the John Humphrey Centre For Peace and Human Rights. This isn't just given to anybody," Truscott said.

"We should strive to keep these kinds of wonderful people in our community, because these are the people who contribute positively to the community, always," explained her lawyer, Manraj Sidhu.

He is appealing the deportation order based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. But that process could take three years.

"I don't want to beg, I just want to fight for her rights. McKenna deserves everything, just like other children here in Canada," Cayanan explained.

In the meantime, Migrante Canada launched a petition for the family to stay, hoping to present it to the federal minister of immigration.

The petition already has more than 2,100 signatures.

"No worker should ever feel like this. No human should ever feel like this. No child should ever, ever be part of this process," Haynes said.

"Obviously there's a very real need for workers here, it's all over the media. I don't understand why we're expanding the temporary foreign worker program when we can just let the workers here stay here, that have developed a strong sense of community here."

Migrante said there are currently more than half a million undocumented people in Canada

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/06/filipino-woman-allegedly-abused-by-her.html

THEY STILL DO
Opinion | Poison Pills and Deadly Powders: When Presidents Ordered Assassinations

Amid calls to target Putin, it’s worth recalling why the U.S. has stopped trying to kill foreign heads of state.


President Eisenhower at his desk on March 16, 1959. | Bob Schutz/AP Photo

Opinion by STEPHEN KINZER
03/13/2022 
Stephen Kinzer's new book is Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control.

America’s rage at a foreign demon has rarely been as intense as our current fixation on Vladimir Putin. He is this generation’s Mao or Castro, its Gadhafi or Saddam or Khomeini, the rampaging and perhaps deranged foreign tyrant who personifies everything we hate and fear. Many in Washington see last month’s invasion of Ukraine as entirely his doing. Some believe the world will never be at peace as long as he lives and rules. From there it’s a short step to wishing him “sawed off” — as Dwight Eisenhower put it when he ordered Fidel Castro’s assassination in 1960.

“Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?” Sen. Lindsey Graham mused recently. “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.”

In some circles it might be considered imprudent for a leading political figure to urge the murder of a foreign leader. Graham, however, was only expressing publicly what some of his colleagues may wish privately. The reasoning is simple. If Putin is the problem, “eliminate” Putin and the problem disappears.

Such open calls for political murder are rare. The Fox News host Sean Hannity jumped aboard, reasoning that “You cut off the head of the snake and you kill the snake. Right now, the snake is Vladimir Putin.” Others are less explicit about their wishes for Putin’s death or overthrow. When a spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was struck by an attack of honesty and admitted that sanctions on Russia are intended “to bring down the Putin regime,” she was quickly corrected. Yet when senators including Graham, Cory Booker, Marco Rubio and Amy Klobuchar co-sponsor a resolution accusing Russia of “flagrant acts of aggression and other atrocities rising to the level of crimes against humanity and war crimes,” they are clearly putting a target on his chest.

Two deep fallacies undermine this argument. First is the premise itself — that a different Russian leader might seek an accord to withdraw troops from Ukraine. No one who hopes to secure power in Moscow, however, could ever accept Ukraine’s entry into NATO or the presence of hostile troops on Ukrainian soil. Any Russian president who did so would be seen as exposing his country to mortal danger and quickly deposed. Removing Putin would not alter Russia’s determination never to tolerate an enemy army on another of its borders.

The second and more illuminating argument against killing foreign leaders is the poor record we have in past attempts. We’ve tried it repeatedly. Often we have failed, but even when we seem to have succeeded, the long-term consequences have been terrible. An order from the Oval Office to assassinate a foreign leader would not break a taboo. It would only be the latest in a series of self-defeating blunders.

So far as is known, Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to order such assassinations. He began by targeting Premier Zhou Enlai of China. During the 1950s, Eisenhower and nearly every other policymaker in Washington considered the “Red Chinese” to be maniacal fanatics bent on world conquest. When Zhou announced in 1955 that he would travel to Bandung, Indonesia, for a momentous conference of Asian and African leaders, the CIA saw a chance to kill him. Zhou chartered an Air India jet for his flight to Bandung. It exploded in midair, killing 16 passengers. But Zhou had not boarded. China called it “murder by the special service organizations of the United States.”

After Zhou landed safely on another flight, CIA Director Allen Dulles decided to try again. He directed the chief of the CIA’s chemical division, Sidney Gottlieb, to prepare poison. Gottlieb made one that would kill Zhou 48 hours after it was dropped into his rice bowl — presumably after he was back home in China, giving the Americans plausible deniability. This plot was aborted at the last moment when Gen. Lucian Truscott Jr., then serving as a deputy CIA director, learned of it and exploded in anger. Fearing that CIA involvement would become known, according to his biographer, he “confronted Dulles and forced him to cancel the operation.”

Gottlieb destroyed all his files upon leaving the CIA in 1973. As a result — and because of the tradition that assassination orders must never be explicit — no details of the Zhou Enlai plot have been discovered. It was the strict policy of the CIA, however, never to embark on something as serious as assassinating a head of government without presidential approval.

Evidence ties Eisenhower more directly to other plots. During the summer of 1960, he was preoccupied by political murders. His main target was the demon who would obsess American leaders for generations and still does today, even though he is dead: Fidel Castro. On May 13, 1960, after receiving a briefing from Allen Dulles, he ordered Castro “sawed off.”

“In that period of history, its meaning would have been clear,” Richard Bissell, then the CIA’s covert action chief, testified years later. “Eisenhower was a tough man behind that smile.”

Eisenhower’s order set off a wild series of assassination attempts. For more than three years, CIA planners considered plots ranging from a sniper shot to an exploding seashell. The most elaborate ones involved toxins or devices designed by Sidney Gottlieb. They included, according to a later Senate report, “poison pills, poison pens, deadly bacterial powders, and other devices which strain the imagination.”

While waiting for news of success in his plot against Castro — which never came — Eisenhower ordered another assassination. His victim was to be Patrice Lumumba, a defiant nationalist who was elected prime minister of the Congo in May 1960. Eisenhower feared Lumumba’s challenge to Western power in a huge African country that controls vast mineral riches.

On the morning of Aug. 18, 1960, Allen Dulles received an electrifying cable from the CIA station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin. “Embassy and station believe Congo experiencing classic Communist effort takeover government,” it said. “Anti-West forces rapidly increasing power Congo and therefore may be little time left in which take action to avoid another Cuba.” Dulles took the cable to the Oval Office.

From 11:10 to 11:23 that morning, according to Eisenhower’s official calendar, he held an “off the record meeting” with Dulles and other CIA officers. After hearing their report, the note-taker wrote, the president “turned to Dulles and said something to the effect that Lumumba should be eliminated. There was stunned silence for about 15 seconds, and the meeting continued.” Senate investigators later pinpointed this moment as the point when Eisenhower “circumlocutiously” ordered Lumumba’s assassination.

What does a president do after giving such an order? Eisenhower posed for a photo with the departing Ecuadorian ambassador, had lunch, and then decamped to Bethesda for an afternoon of golf at Burning Tree Club. In case anyone missed the point, he sent his national security adviser, Gordon Grey, to the next meeting of the CIA’s covert action “special group” with instructions to convey “top-level feeling in Washington that vigorous action would not be amiss.”

A couple of weeks later, Devlin received a cable from CIA headquarters telling him to expect a visit from an officer who would identify himself as “Joe from Paris.” When the officer arrived, Devlin recognized him as Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA’s poison-maker. Gottlieb handed him a packet containing a vial of liquid botulinum and told him he was to use it to kill Lumumba.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Devlin cried. “Who authorized this operation?”

“President Eisenhower,” Gottlieb told him. “I wasn’t there when he approved it, but Dick Bissell said that Eisenhower wanted Lumumba removed.” Then he helpfully added: “With the stuff that’s in here, no one will ever be able to know that Lumumba was assassinated.”

Devlin managed to organize a coup in which Lumumba was overthrown but not killed. He remained immensely popular both at home and abroad. Devlin’s efforts to penetrate his security ring and poison him, including an attempt to slip him a tube of tainted toothpaste, all failed. That didn’t discourage Allen Dulles. “We wish to give every possible support in eliminating Lumumba from any possibility of resuming government position,” he wrote in one cable. At one point Devlin and his officers considered using a “commando type group” to capture him. Then they asked if a sharpshooter with a “high powered foreign made rifle” could be found.

“Hunting good here when light’s right,” one CIA officer observed in a cable to headquarters.

The CIA’s poison ultimately went unused, but Devlin found another way to complete his mission. On November 27, Lumumba slipped out of the home where he was being held under Congolese and United Nations guard. Devlin set out to find and capture him. His key partners were intelligence officers from Belgium, the former colonial power, which had become fabulously wealthy by exploiting the Congo’s mineral wealth. Together, they had Lumumba tracked, seized, tortured and delivered to his most murderous local enemies. A Congolese squad executed him under watchful Belgian eyes. No American was present.

Years later, an interviewer asked Allen Dulles if he regretted any of his operations. “I think that we overrated the danger in, let’s say, the Congo,” he replied. Devlin agreed.

“None of us had any real concept of what he stood for,” Devlin later wrote of Lumumba. “He was simply an unstable former postal clerk with great political charisma, who was leaning toward the Communist bloc. In Cold War terms, he represented the other side. The fact that he was first and foremost an African nationalist who was using the East-West rivalry to advance his cause was played down by the Belgians, who greatly feared him.”

When Eisenhower left office in January 1961, he could count one successful assassination — Lumumba, in concert with the Belgians — and two failures: Zhou Enlai and Castro. His successor, John F. Kennedy, focused intently on Castro. Especially after the spectacular failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, he absorbed Eisenhower’s view that Castro must be “sawed off.”

“There was a flat-out effort ordered by the White House, the president, Bobby Kennedy — who after all was his right-hand man — to unseat the Castro government, to do everything possible to get rid of it by whatever device could be found,” former CIA director Richard Helms later told congressional investigators. The Kennedy administration sought relentlessly to kill Castro, even as it sent peace feelers to him through secret channels. On the very day President Kennedy was assassinated, a CIA officer in Paris passed a poison device to an operative who was to use it to kill Castro.

Kennedy also embraced another of Eisenhower’s Caribbean plots, aimed at the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Both presidents detested Trujillo and feared that his brutal rule might produce a Castro-style revolution. In July 1960, while Eisenhower was in office, the CIA delivered 12 “sterile” rifles with telescopic sights to anti-Trujillo plotters. Nine months later, with Kennedy in the White House, it delivered three carbines. The plotters carried out their tyrannicide on May 30, 1961. Democracy emerged a couple of years later, but the United States decided it could not tolerate that democracy because President Juan Bosch seemed too leftist and sympathetic to Castro. That led the United States to launch its 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic and to stage-manage the election of a former Trujillo ally, Joaquin Balaguer, who went on to dominate the country for much of the next 30 years.

The assassination that most tormented Kennedy was one that he set in motion but did not realize he had ordered. In a jumble of diplomatic missteps, and without a direct presidential command, the Kennedy administration authorized the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. On Nov. 1, 1963, assured of U.S. support, plotters carried out their coup and then assassinated Diem.

“Kennedy leaped to his feet and rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face which I had never seen before,” General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, later wrote of the moment when news of Diem’s death landed in the Oval Office. “He had always insisted Diem must never suffer more than exile, and had been led to believe or had persuaded himself that a change in government could be carried out without bloodshed.” This killing, the historian Staley Karnow wrote, “haunted US leaders during the years ahead, prompting them to assume a larger burden in Vietnam.”

Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, embraced covert action, as have all modern American presidents, but did not emulate his two predecessors by authorizing assassination. The day after Kennedy was killed, he showed a visitor a portrait of Diem and said, “We had a hand in murdering him. Now it’s happening here.” Later Johnson wondered if Kennedy’s assassination was “divine retribution.” He also expressed disgust for the plots against Castro and Trujillo: “We were running a goddamn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.”

Americans are impatient by nature. We want quick solutions, even to complex problems. That makes killing a foreign leader seem like a good way to end a war. Every time we have tried it, though, we’ve failed — whether or not the target falls. Morality and legality aside, it doesn’t work. Castro thrived on his ability to survive American plots. In the Congo, almost everything that has happened since Lumumba’s murder has been awful.

Our record in carrying out regime change short of murder is hardly better. The CIA-directed overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 cast Iran into a political whirlwind from which it still has not escaped. A year later, the CIA coup against President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala aborted a ten-year democratic experiment and set that country on a path toward civil war and genocide.

Soon after the Guatemala coup, Eisenhower invited Allen Dulles and other CIA officers to the White House for official congratulations. They presented an elaborate account of their operation, complete with charts, slides, and film clips. Eisenhower had one question.

“Why the hell didn’t you catch Arbenz?” he asked.

“Mr. President,” came the reply, “that would have set a very dangerous precedent for you.”

Men accused in plot on Michigan governor attended protests

DAVID EGGERT, Associated Press•October 10, 2020



1 / 15

 In a photo provided by the Antrim County Sheriff, William Null is shown in a booking photo. Null is one of several charged Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020, in state court for allegedly seeking to storm the Michigan Capitol and seek a “civil war.” (Antrim County Sheriff via AP)

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Among the armed protesters who rallied at the Michigan Capitol against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's coronavirus lockdown this past spring were some of the men now accused in stunning plots to kidnap her, storm the Capitol and start a “civil war.”

The revelation has sparked scrutiny of rallies that were organized by conservative groups opposed to the Democratic governor's orders and egged on by President Donald Trump. It has also prompted renewed calls from Democrats for a gun ban in the building — an effort that so far has failed even after they reported feeling threatened by rifle-carrying protesters who entered the Statehouse.

At least one man accused of aiding in the surveillance of Whitmer's home as part of the alleged scheme to kidnap her stood in the Senate gallery on April 30 as majority Republicans refused to extend an emergency declaration that was the underpinning of Whitmer's stay-at-home and other restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the COVID-19 virus. “Several” of the 13 men arrested in the plots against the state government were seen at Capitol protests this year, the state attorney general's office said.

A man whom the FBI identified in court papers as a leader in the alleged plot, Adam Fox, attended an “American Patriot” pro-gun rights rally at the Capitol on June 18 to recruit members of anti-government paramilitary groups to attack the Statehouse, according to a federal complaint that cites a recording from a confidential informant.


“I’m not surprised — and anyone who is just hasn’t been paying attention," Whitmer told The Associated Press by phone on Friday. There have been Republican lawmakers and at least one sheriff at the protests, she said, "who fraternize with these domestic terror groups, who egg them on, who encourage them, who use language that incites them. They too are complicit.”

Some of the men involved in the alleged plots were members and leaders of Wolverine Watchmen, which authorities described as “an anti-government, anti-law enforcement militia group.” Federal authorities became aware in March about an initial plan by Wolverine Watchmen to target and kill police, according to court papers. Officials have not indicated whether law enforcement monitored the anti-lockdown protests in April and May.

Such protests have attracted a range of people, including openly armed Second Amendment backers and members of paramilitary groups dressed in tactical gear — particularly early in the pandemic when some demonstrators displayed Confederate flags, misogynistic anti-Whitmer signs and threatening images. GOP leaders have denounced such tactics while saying many people protest safely and responsibly.

The state's Republican Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, “does not condone violence, does not embrace violence and has never advocated in support of violence,” spokeswoman Amber McCann said. “Like many politicians, he has spoken out when he disagreed with policy.”

Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf told WXMI-TV that maybe the men wanted to arrest Whitmer, not kidnap her, and suggested that could be legal. At least one man charged under the state's anti-terrorism law by Attorney General Dana Nessel appeared on stage in May at a protest in Grand Rapids against Whitmer's stay-at-home order that was also attended by the sheriff and Shirkey.

Nessel, a Democrat, told the AP that Leaf’s remarks were “terrifying.”

“To suggest that it is proper for armed gunmen who are not licensed law enforcement officers to execute an arrest on a sitting governor for policy disagreements is abhorrent to me on every level,” she said.

The bombshell charges prompted Democratic legislators to plead, again, for the GOP-led Legislature to prohibit firearms inside the Capitol.

The federal complaint alleges that Fox in June said he needed 200 men to storm the building and take hostages, including Whitmer, and that several individuals talked about using Molotov cocktails to destroy police vehicles. By July, the men had shifted to targeting Whitmer's official summer residence or her personal vacation home before settling on the latter, according to authorities.

“We literally dodged death this time — this time. But what about next time? Because there'll be a next time,” said Sen. Dayna Polehanki, a Democrat. “I pray we use our God-given common sense to make a law banning guns from this building. If not now, when?”

It is unclear if anything will change. Republican leaders are having further discussions about guns with a commission that maintains the Capitol. A panel member noted that legislators have authority over certain areas of the building including the voting chambers.

“From the evidence I've read, a magnetometer or similar equipment would not have stopped what was planned,” John Truscott said. Shirkey told reporters: “There is no way in a country like ours that you can legislate and get rid of all risk.”

Whitmer told the AP she is concerned about the safety of lawmakers, visiting schoolchildren, media and others.

“The Legislature needs to act to protect everyone at the Capitol,” she said. “It is all of our building and every one of us should be able to go in there and feel safe.”

Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, said the anti-government movement in the U.S. and certainly in Michigan has been particularly active at statehouses in the past year — first by opposing proposed “red flag” laws that allow authorities to temporarily take guns away from people deemed to be dangerous to themselves or others, and later by opposing governors' measures to combat the pandemic.

“Militia groups and other actors who harbor violent agendas will continue to look for opportunities to conduct attacks against politicians, community members and government officials whom they believe are legitimate targets,” said Javed Ali, a former senior counterterrorism director at the National Security Council who is a policymaker in residence at the University of Michigan.

___

Associated Press writers Ed White in Detroit, John Flesher in Traverse City and Angie Wang in Atlanta contributed.

___

Delaware suspect in Whitmer plot was pardoned last year


RANDALL CHASE, Associated Press•October 9, 2020


DOVER, Del. (AP) — The Delaware man charged in federal court with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has a long criminal history and was pardoned just last year by Delaware’s governor for crimes dating to 1994, according to state records.

Barry G. Croft Jr., 44, was taken into custody this week after being arrested by the FBI in Swedesboro, New Jersey. Croft made an initial appearance before a federal magistrate in Wilmington on Thursday.

Croft was being held Friday at a state prison in Wilmington. A hearing on his continued detention and removal to Michigan is scheduled for Tuesday.

Five other men, all from Michigan, were charged in the alleged scheme that involved months of planning and even rehearsals to snatch Whitmer from her vacation home.


Croft spent nearly three years in prison after being convicted on Dec. 1, 1997, of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. That sentence followed a one-year stint that ended in March 1996.

In April 2019, one week after Delaware revenue officials filed a state tax lien against Croft for more than $36,700, Democratic Gov. John Carney granted him a pardon for the 1997 gun charge and several other convictions from 1994 to 1996. The crimes involved included assault, burglary, theft and receiving stolen property.

Carney’s pardon came after a December 2018 Board of Pardons hearing at which the attorney general’s office did not object to Croft’s request for a pardon. The board’s recommendation for a pardon was based on the lack of opposition from the state “and the need for a pardon for employment purposes.”

“The prior administration did not oppose this application because Croft’s criminal history was more than 20 years old and it appeared to everyone involved that his offenses were in his past and that he had gotten himself on the right track,” said Mat Marshall, a spokeswoman for Democratic Attorney General Kathy Jennings. “Needless to say, nobody — neither the DOJ nor the bipartisan Board of Pardons — would have endorsed a pardon had they known what the future held.”

Jonathan Starkey, a spokesman for Carney, noted that the charges in Croft’s unopposed pardon petition were from 1994 and 1997, more than 20 years earlier, and the pardon was unopposed.

“The charges brought in Michigan are disturbing and everyone charged in this plot should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Starkey said. “This is also another warning sign about the growing threat of violence and radicalization in our politics.”

In addition to Croft’s criminal convictions, authorities in Delaware twice sought to have him declared a habitual offender for motor vehicle offenses, first in 1995 and again in 2004.

He was also the subject of a criminal judgment filed in July 2005 but not satisfied until 2018. It’s unclear what offense that involved.

According to the Delaware Department of Correction, Croft was last under DOC supervision in January 2005, when a period of probation ended.

One of the men involved in the plot to kidnap Michigan governor had 'rage issues,' report says

Yelena Dzhanova,
Business Insider•October 10, 2020

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer addresses the media about the flooding along the Tittabawassee River, after several dams breached, in downtown Midland Reuters/Rebecca Cook


One of the six men charged by the FBI with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had shown signs of "rage issues" while a member of the Michigan Home Guard, BuzzFeed News reported.

The man, Adam Fox, also appeared to want to incite violence against racial justice protesters earlier this year, Michigan Home Guard cofounder Rick Foreman said. 

The FBI said that Fox and the other suspects involved in the plot "agreed to unite others in their cause and take violent action against multiple state governments that they believe are violating the U.S. Constitution."

One man charged on suspicion of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had previously exhibited signs of "rage issues" and clashed with racial justice protesters, BuzzFeed News reported.

Rick Foreman, the cofounder of Michigan Home Guard, which proclaims to be the state's "largest and most active militia," told BuzzFeed News that the man, Adam Fox, had been kicked out of the group earlier this year.

"He has rage issues," Foreman said, adding that there were no problems with Fox until he became a full member of the group. 

"And then all of the sudden he's all anti-government, he wants to start a war, he wants to take people out," Foreman said. 

The FBI on Thursday identified Fox as one of the six men involved with a plot to kidnap Whitmer. Fox had orchestrated several facets of the planned attack, including conducting meetings with accomplices and contacting members of a Michigan-based militia group to carry out the plan, an FBI affidavit reads.

The suspects "agreed to unite others in their cause and take violent action against multiple state governments that they believe are violating the U.S. Constitution," the FBI said.

While at the Michigan Home Guard, Fox had threatened multiple people, Foreman said. 

At one point in June, when Fox had still been a part of the Michigan Home Guard, the group gathered for an "American Patriot Rally" in front of the state capitol building, BuzzFeed News reported. Counterprotesters calling for racial justice appeared, and Fox tried to block them and seemed to want to engage the group in a physical altercation, Foreman told BuzzFeed News. 

Foreman also said that other group members speculated that Fox was taking steroids during his time at the Michigan Home Guard, saying that he had "roid rage." 

Far-right and right-wing protesters were angered earlier this year when Whitmer issued a statewide lockdown in response to the spreading coronavirus. Many brought guns to the state capitol building, according to photographs that flooded social media. Business Insider received almost 1,200 emails from Michigan residents complaining about her executive order. 

President Donald Trump openly embraced the groups, calling them "very good people" who "want their lives back again, safely."

2 suspects in Michigan kidnapping plot are US Marines who were recently-discharged

David Choi, Business Insider•October 10, 2020

Both of the veterans' military awards mentioned in the report were unremarkable.
Joseph Morrison, left, and Daniel Harris. Associated Press

Two of the men charged with terrorism-related crimes and a plot to kidnap the Michigan governor are Marine Corps veterans, a service spokesperson said to Marine Corps Times.

Joseph Morrison, 26, was a Marine reservist who reportedly discharged as a lance corporal, on Thursday, the same day the charges were announced.

Another Marine veteran, 23-year-old Daniel Harris, was an infantryman and was discharged in 2019.

Two of the men charged with terrorism-related crimes and a plot to kidnap the Michigan governor on Thursday are Marine Corps veterans, a service spokesperson reportedly said.

A Marine Corps spokesman told Marine Corps Times on Saturday that Joseph Morrison, 26, was a Marine reservist since 2015. Morrison was reportedly discharged as a lance corporal, a junior enlisted service member, on Thursday.

The spokesman told the Marine Corps Times that his recent discharge was unrelated to the alleged plot he was implicated in.

Morrison was one of the cofounders of an armed militant group dubbed the "Wolverine Watchmen," according to state investigators. The group was said to have had a broad goal of fueling a "civil war leading to societal collapse."

Another Marine veteran, 23-year-old Daniel Harris, enlisted in the service when he was 18 in 2015, according to the Marine Corps Times. Harris, who was an infantryman, was discharged in 2019.

Harris was one of six men charged by federal attorneys for allegedly conspiring to kidnap Gov. Whitmer.

A total of six men, including Harris, are facing federal charges with the plot to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. Seven others, including Morrison, are facing state terrorism-related charges.

The group, which has ties to the amorphous militant "boogaloo" movement, allegedly urged its members to conduct surveillance on Gov. Whitmer's private home and gather information on law enforcement officers to kill them.

Adam Fox, one of the six men who was charged in the plot, was quoted saying he needed "200 men" to attack the Capitol in Lansing and take hostages, including Whitmer.

"Snatch and grab, man. Grab the f---in' governor. Just grab the b----," Fox said during a July 27 meeting recorded by an informant, according to the affidavit. "Because at that point, we do that, dude — it's over."

Gov. Whitmer has been criticized by conservative activists for the state's response to the coronavirus. In April, Whitmer extended a stay-at-home order that imposed restrictions on businesses that were classified as essential. The order was later rescinded as part of the state's reopening plans. The armed group's associates characterized Whitmer as a "tyrant b----," according to a federal affidavit.

Harris's attorney denied his client's alleged involvement was intentional.

"All of this is something that he didn't envision happening, so he has given me information that makes me call into question at least some of the things that are related in the complaint," Parker Douglas, the attorney for Harris, said to WJRT-TV. "And that just means certain things that may have been said or related that he believes may have been taken out of context."