Lara Trump Campaigns With One Of America’s Most Vile Anti-Muslim Extremists

Christopher Mathias,
HuffPost•September 2, 2020

Lara Trump, an adviser to the presidential campaign of father-in-law Donald Trump, campaigned with one of America’s worst anti-Muslim bigots on Tuesday.

In a photo posted by a campaign official to Twitter on Wednesday, Lara Trump can be seen standing beside Laura Loomer, the Republican nominee for Congress in Florida’s 21st District, at a GOP event in Boca Raton.

Behind Trump and Loomer are campaign volunteers who can be seen holding up signs for both Donald Trump and Loomer.

Another photo shows Lara Trump bumping elbows with Loomer, one of the country’s most infamous anti-Muslim extremists, whose bigotry has earned her the dubious distinction of being banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, PayPal, GoFundMe, Venmo, Uber, Lyft and Uber Eats.- -

She is, however, still allowed on the right-wing social media platform Parler, where on Tuesday Loomer posted a photo of herself standing with Lara Trump. The pair are smiling and pointing to a Loomer campaign sign.

The Trump campaign didn’t respond to multiple HuffPost requests for comment on Lara Trump’s appearance with Loomer.

Laura Loomer posted this photo on her Parler account. pic.twitter.com/Y2r8uFHKlv
— Alex Kaplan (@AlKapDC) September 2, 2020

Lara Trump, center, an adviser to her father-in-law's presidential campaign, poses for a photo with Laura Loomer, right, one of America's worst anti-Muslim bigots, at a Republican event in Boca Raton, Florida, on Sept. 1. Loomer recently won the GOP nomination for Congress in Florida's 21st District. (Photo: Twitter)More
Trump, left, bumps elbows with Loomer at the GOP event. (Photo: Twitter)

Loomer, 27, has been a far-right operative for years with stints as a correspondent for disreputable far-right conspiracy websites including InfoWars, Rebel Media and Project Veritas.

Once, responding to news that many migrants crossing the Mediterranean in Europe were drowning, Loomer tweeted that she hoped “2,000 more” would die.
A GOP nominee for Congress. (Photo: Twitter)

She has called Islam a “cancer,” Muslims “savages,” and herself a “#ProudIslamophobe.”

“I DON’T CARE ABOUT CHRISTCHURCH,” Loomer wrote in a Telegram post after a white nationalist massacred 51 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

According to Right Wing Watch, she has close ties to a Florida-based organization called The United West, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated an anti-Muslim hate group.

Loomer also has deep ties to white supremacists, and once posed for a photo with well-known fascist Richard Spencer.

It is not necessarily surprising that the Trump campaign would be supportive of an extremist like Loomer.

Trump himself, of course, is a raging Islamophobe who once called for a “complete and total shutdown” of Muslims entering the U.S.

Loomer’s campaign adviser Karen Giorno, who raised over $1 million to help Loomer win the Republican primary, worked as an adviser on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Loomer is widely expected to lose in the general election this November. Florida’s 21st District — which includes the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort — is heavily Democratic.

Related...

She Called Muslims ‘Savages’ And Islam A ‘Cancer.’ Now She’s A GOP Nominee.

2 QAnon Promoters Will Rally Voters For Trump At Official Events This Weekend

U.S. Faces A ‘Perfect Storm’ Of Political Violence Heading Into November Election

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Column: Trump is our first pro-vigilante president. Now stop and think about what that means

Harry Litman,
Los Angeles Times Opinion•September 2, 2020

President Trump tours an area in Kenosha, Wis., on Sept. 1, 2020. Both the city's mayor and Wisconsin's governor had asked him to stay away. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press )

President Trump took his discord-and-turmoil tour to Kenosha, Wis., on Tuesday, re-roiling a town that had calmed itself after a week of unrest.

Trump did not meet with the family of Jacob Blake, the Black man who was shot by a police officer seven times in the back, a stomach-turning act that the president likened to a golfer who misses a short putt.

By contrast, he offered supportive comments about Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who drove to Kenosha from Illinois with an AR-15 to join the fray and wound up shooting three protesters, killing two. Rittenhouse has been charged with first-degree murder, but Trump made the public case that he was acting in self-defense.

Trump, along with Atty. Gen. Bill Barr, rolled into Kenosha — over the objections of the city’s mayor and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, who told the president that “I am concerned your presence will only hinder our healing."-

Trump’s claim to being a law and order president would be risible were it not tragic. His presidency represents the antithesis of law and order. No president has been less respectful of law, both specific legislative enactments and the very concept of the rule of law, not of men.

Is it any wonder that chaos follows him like a bridal train? This is his governing strategy. But the aberration of his presidency goes much deeper than his phony lip service to law and order.

As his comments about Rittenhouse demonstrate, Trump encourages his supporters to take the law into their own hands. It serves his purposes to have them ignite a melee with Black Lives Matter protesters. Trump’s only campaign tactic left at this point, given the COVID-19 catastrophe, is to play out the lie that murderous left-wing mobs are amassing at the gates and only he can stop them.

He is our first pro-vigilante president.

Consider his many acts going back to the start of his term, beginning with his infamous reaction — “you also had very fine people on both sides” — after a car plowed into a group of counterprotesters at a huge white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Or his pardons of the Hammonds, who were convicted of setting fire to federal land, the case that inspired the Bundy family to lead an armed standoff against the federal government at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Or his commentary on the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis — “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Or on Sunday, when he praised hundreds of supporters — he tweeted that they were “GREAT PATRIOTS” — who invaded Portland, Ore., in a terrifying caravan and shot paintballs and chemical irritants at protesters from the back of their trucks.

Rittenhouse has already become a hero for far-right websites frequented by Trump supporters, one of whom, in a tweet that Trump “liked,” called the accused murderer “a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump.”

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) was right on the money when he said Trump “sees this violence, and his ability to agitate more of it, as useful to this campaign. What it does to the country, the loss of life, he doesn’t care.”

Trump’s embrace of vigilantism fits very well with his distinctly racist rhetoric. His desperate fiction is that his supporters, nearly all white, are peace-loving patriots, whereas the Black and brown victims of racism and police attacks are, in his dog-whistle descriptions, anarchists, rioters and criminals.

The facts are exactly to the contrary. A review of politically motivated attacks in the last 25 years by the Center for Strategic and International Studies determined that there were more than five times as many persons killed by right-wing violence as by left-wing violence. The anti-fascist movement antifa was linked to exactly one death over that period, and the person who died was the attacker.

Trump’s vigilantism is an astonishing full frontal attack on the state’s authority, as manifested in the law — which he is supposed to defend as the head of this administration. This fits nowhere within any identifiable strains of American political thought, such as conservatism or even a states’ rights ideology.

Instead, Trump’s ethos rejects the most basic tenet of civil society, namely the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. For political philosophers from Hobbes forward, this principle is foundational to ordered civilization.

There really is no precedent for Trump’s despicable stratagem among American presidents. To find one, we would have to consult the playbook of authoritarian thugs such as Viktor Orban or Vladimir Putin: Incite violence, including at the hands of your brown shirt faithful, blame it on the other (refugees, Jews, Crimean nationalists) and use it to justify strong-arm tactics.

For the president to promote outlaw tactics is beyond perverse. It is a direct assault on democratic rule. If Trump can succeed in winning reelection on these terms, we will lose, and may never reclaim, our status as a democracy governed by law.

@HarryLitman

Portland police missing in action against militias
PORTLAND POLICE PROMOTE MILITIA VIOLENCE


Caitlin Dickson and Melissa Rossi,
Yahoo News•September 2, 2020

In President Trump’s roster of crime-ridden, out-of-control Democratic cities, Portland, Ore., occupies a special place. Even meeting with local officials in Kenosha, Wis., on Tuesday, Trump devoted a good chunk of his remarks to the dystopia halfway across the country, where, he said, “I see it, every night it’s on the news, it’s burning.” The city of more than 650,000 has, indeed seen almost nightly protests, some peaceful and some violent, for more than three months, but until last weekend, no one had been killed in clashes among mobs from both sides of the spectrum, police and the federal law enforcement officers who were deployed there for several weeks in July to protect government property.

That changed on Saturday night, with the shooting death of a 39-year-old Portland man, Aaron J. Danielson — by a still-unidentified suspect who remains at large — signifying an even darker turn in the conflict, as the city has seemingly become a magnet for armed right-wing militias and left-wing agitators.

Trump himself was quick to blame his new go-to target, antifa “thugs,” a perception growing out of reports that the victim was a member or sympathizer of a Washington-based right-wing group known as Patriot Prayer, which participated in Saturday night’s noisy caravan of pickup trucks billed the “Trump 2020 Cruise Rally in Portland.” Reporters at the scene described seeing vehicles with out-of-state license plates, or plates covered with duct tape or removed altogether — while police stood by watching and directing traffic. That supports the conclusion by Michael German, a former FBI agent who specialized in domestic terrorism cases, that “the story that isn't being told is the escalation of violence from out-of-towners who come to Portland to wreak havoc and then go home, without police interference.”

German, now a fellow at Liberty & National Security Program of the Brennan Center for Justice, recently published a report on connections between law enforcement and white supremacist and far-right militant groups. The report highlights the history of Portland police officers with ties to white supremacists and racist groups. It concludes that the department’s failure to adequately address earlier allegations of white supremacist activity set the stage for the public to believe officers failed to do enough to control a series of violent rallies instigated by far-right militants and white supremacist groups starting in 2016.

Medics and police personnel surround the victim of a shooting in Portland, Ore., on Saturday night. (Courtesy of Sergio Olmos/Social Media via Reuters)

Saturday’s rally for Trump was just the latest in a series of gatherings over the past month that have resulted in violent clashes between far-right activists and armed militants on one side, and Black Lives Matter protesters and antifascist activists on the other.

The events, which have attracted many of the same far-right groups and individual activists that have been engaged in violent brawls in Portland in recent years, have renewed questions about the Portland Police’s apparently hands-off and even friendly approach to these groups — particularly contrasted to the treatment of participants in protests demanding police accountability, which have consistently been declared riots (a formal designation in Portland police protocol) and unlawful assemblies.

“Although those events have involved significant property damage at times, they have not involved firearms or rampant brawling among demonstrators,” the Washington Post noted in a report from Aug. 22 on violent clashes between leftist protesters and far-right participants in a “Back the Blue” rally, who came to Portland “armed with paintball guns, metal rods, aluminum bats, fireworks, pepper spray, rifles and handguns.”

In that instance, police reportedly remained at a distance while “the two groups sparred for more than two hours, as people exchanged blows, fired paintballs at each other and blasted chemicals indiscriminately into the crowd,” according to the Washington Post. “People lobbed fireworks back and forth. At least one person was hit in the abdomen with a device that flashed and exploded, causing bleeding.”

In a statement, the Portland Police Bureau offered a number of explanations for why they chose not to intervene in the violence, even though the event had met the criteria for a riot: the shortage of officers available to respond to the clashes, the danger to officers, and the fact that “each skirmish appeared to involve willing participants and the events were not enduring in time.”

German called that finding “astonishing” and said it showed both that police recognized “that their tactics escalate violence,” and a double standard for dealing with violence. The police, he said, are “acknowledging who is dangerous and using that as an excuse not to take action.”

“It’s not like they’re not known people,” he continued, pointing to the fact that many of the same people have been seen at far-right gatherings in the recent past, despite, in some cases, having “outstanding charges for previous protest violence.”

German said that by failing to prevent these violent incidents from occurring, “or at least enforce the law after the assaults appear on social media,” police in Portland have essentially granted permission for such violence to continue.

“If they are allowed to shoot pellets, bear spray and guns and ram their trucks into people they are only going to attract more violent people,” German said, predicting that “as long as the police don’t intervene, the Portland victims will begin to protect themselves.”

“This violence is going to escalate if police don’t change what they are doing,” he warned.

Alan Swinney uses a paintball gun at a protest against police brutality in Portland. (Maranie Staab/Reuters)

Laura Jedeed, a freelance reporter who has covered protests in Portland over the last four years, agrees that police are inflaming the situation.

“I’ve never witnessed the level and systemic amount of police brutality against protesters as I have in the past three months,” Jedeed told Yahoo News. She added that “There seems to be a real double standard” in who police are targeting.
“I don’t think they understand how angry this town is.”

Jedeed was one of the first Portlanders to sound the alarm on her Twitter account about the Saturday rally, when she came across a Facebook posting about the event, warning that it had the potential to be explosive. The reason for her concern: Over the past several weeks, right-wing groups have been appearing at the nightly BLM protests, bringing a new level of ferocity and violence to the demonstrations, which in early July had appeared to be fading away, with numbers dwindling to a hundred or so a night.

But later that month, when federal agents, without identifying uniforms or badges, began throwing protesters into unmarked cars and whisking them off to jail, the demonstrations “came roaring back to life,” she said. As federal agents have withdrawn from the city, right-wing groups began showing up — “some Proud Boys, some QAnon,” as well as Patriot Prayer members, and others from another local conservative group called Portland’s Liberation. The right-wing demonstrators were maskless, some dressed in blue, others wearing logos saying “Blue Lives Matter.” In Jedeed’s observation, they were afforded much gentler treatment than the Black Lives Matter protesters. “It became increasingly clear that the police were taking a side in the protests,” she said — the side of the right-wing groups.

Jedeed said she witnessed right-wing counterprotesters beating the left-wing protesters with batons, throwing firecrackers at them and spraying them with bear mace. (It was easy, she said, to tell the groups apart by masks alone: The left-wing groups she says almost always wore them, but the right-wing groups were typically maskless — as were most of the police.)

On Saturday, the day of the pro-Trump rally, at around 4:30 she witnessed hundreds and hundreds of vehicles at their meeting point, the parking lot of the Clackamas Town Center, roughly 10 miles southeast of Portland. Most of the vehicles were trucks, “flying all manner of flags, including some Confederate flags,” revving their engines and creating a cloud of oily black smoke. The proposed route shown on the Facebook event page was to circle downtown, but when they started off for the rally on wheels, severe gridlock ensued in the parking lot — ultimately lessened by the arrival of police who directed them toward 82nd Ave. Jedeed found it odd that the police didn’t stop the many vehicles with no license plates, or with numbers that had been obscured.

Other Portlanders similarly suspect outsiders are involved in the recently rising tensions in the city. “Suddenly I’m seeing license plates from Kentucky, Texas and Arizona,” said Joan Hess, a retired corrections officer. “They didn’t come for the beer.” Others says the right-wing groups are coming from the more conservative towns elsewhere in Oregon, or from Seattle or Vancouver, Wash.

A police officer checks the body of a man who was shot dead at protests in Portland. (Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Handout via Reuters)

Jim Redden, a reporter for the Portland Tribune, a twice-weekly, free local paper, said he also sees the shooting as part of a dangerous dynamic that’s been playing out in the city since Trump was elected, an event that triggered frequent demonstrations and led to brawls between right-wingers and left-wingers in downtown Portland that went on for months. But he puts much of the blame on Portland’s own “self-professed anarchists, who just want to protest everything.”

“Whenever there’s another protest going on, they hang around and break windows and stuff like that,” Redden told Yahoo News. “Now they’ve rebranded themselves as antifa — but it’s the same group just calling themselves a different name.”

While Redden noted that the reappearance of right-wing groups like Patriot Prayer in Portland during demonstrations in August exacerbated the clashes with left-wing protesters, he said, “It was pretty out of control even before they came back. After George Floyd’s killing there were huge protests that went on for two months with a lot of rioting and destruction.”

Asked to respond to charges from some that Portland Police officers have enabled the recent escalation of violence instigated by right-wing groups in the city by not intervening in recent clashes, Portland Police public information officer Sgt. Kevin Allen referred Yahoo News to the department’s earlier statement that “clearly spelled out why we did not step in to the event on Aug. 22.

“And it was discussed at length by the mayor and police chief at a press conference yesterday,” Allen wrote in an email to Yahoo News, along with a link to a YouTube video from a press conference held Sunday in response to the shooting.

As for how the Portland Police Bureau plans to prevent such violence going forward, Allen wrote: “We will not discuss any specific tactical plans going forward, however [we] will continue to utilize the resources we have to address criminal behavior while we employ de-escalation strategies where appropriate.”

“We do not take into account political ideology,” he continued. “We fully support free speech rights.”

At a press conference on Sunday, Mayor Ted Wheeler condemned the fatal shooting over the weekend, and urged people from both sides of the political spectrum to come together to help “stop the violence.”

“For those of you saying on Twitter this morning that you plan to come to Portland to seek retribution, I’m calling on you to stay away,” Wheeler said. “You of course have a constitutional right to be here, but we’re asking you to stay away and work with us to de-escalate this situation.”

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler speaking to reporters on Sunday. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

The shooting in Portland came less than a week after 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested and charged with shooting three people, killing two, amid unrest in Kenosha, Wis. Evidence from Rittenhouse’s social media presence indicates that the teenager was an aspiring police officer and Trump supporter who even appeared in the front row at one of the president’s rallies in Iowa earlier this year.

Trump has spoken in defense of Rittenhouse, while expressing sympathy for the victim in Portland and sharp criticisms of the city’s mayor.

Against the wishes of both Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, Trump traveled to the embattled Wisconsin city on Tuesday, where he condemned violence and property damage resulting from some recent protests as acts of “domestic terror” and questioned the existence of systemic racism within law enforcement, which has been the core issue driving recent protests.

He also continued to take credit for Evers’s decision to activate Wisconsin’s National Guard in response to the unrest that unfolded in Kenosha after video circulated of the 29-year-old Blake being shot seven times in the back by a Kenosha police officer.

“I strongly support the use of the National Guard in other cities,” Trump said, insisting that his administration is “ready, willing, and able to send in” federal forces to cities such as Portland, an offer that city’s Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler formally declined in a recent letter to president Trump.

On Monday, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf responded to Wheeler’s letter on the president’s behalf, writing that “due to a lack of action throughout the summer, Portland and its law-abiding residents continue to suffer from large-scale looting, arson, and vandalism — even killing.”

Wolf, who oversaw the controversial deployment of federal agents from DHS to Portland earlier this summer, urged Wheeler to “request federal assistance to restore law and order in Portland,” adding that, “at the same time, President Trump has made it abundantly clear that there will come a point when state and local officials fail to protect its citizens from violence, the federal government will have no choice but to protect our American citizens.”

In Kenosha, Trump seemed to suggest that he may once again deploy federal agents to Portland against the wishes of local officials.

“We could solve that problem in less than an hour in Portland, so I hope they call,” said Trump. “And at some point ... we’ll just have to do it ourselves.”

Insurance Plays Key Role in Civil Rights Settlements Against Law Enforcement

By Andrew G. Simpson | September 2, 2020

Municipalities, their insurers and risk pools should be heeding the current public re-examination of police and prosecutorial actions taking place across the country, according to an insurance policyholder attorney who works on civil rights cases.

Attorney Alexander Brown sees the Black Lives Matter movement, actions by reform-minded prosecutors, increasing legal actions and calls for police reform resulting in more municipalities having to answer for law enforcement errors and misconduct.


This, in turn, will mean closer scrutiny of law enforcement liability insurance policies by those seeking damages for victims of civil rights violations, according to Brown.

However, while today insurers may be changing their policies, the cases being brought tend to go back awhile and thus involve policies issued years and even decades ago.

Brown, who is with the firm of Lathrop GPM in its Kansas City office, is an insurance coverage specialist who represents policyholders including municipalities facing civil rights complaints from victims of wrongful conviction and incarceration.


Recent Settlements Involving Law Enforcement

A Nebraska county that owes $28.1 million to six people wrongfully convicted of murder reached a settlement with several insurance companies to help pay part of the judgment.

Wrongfully Convicted Missouri Man Gets $8M Settlement

A southeastern Missouri city has agreed to an $8 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by a man who spent 17 years in prison for murder before the state Supreme Court overturned his conviction. The city will pay about $75,000 of the settlement, with the rest coming from its insurance.

Missouri Sheriff’s Dept. Settles with Wrongfully Imprisoned Man for $2M

An eastern Missouri sheriff’s department has reached a $2 million settlement with a man who spent more than three years in prison for his wife’s killing before the conviction was overturned. An insurance company has agreed pay the money.

$3.5M Settlement Reached in Death of Black Man Shot 22 Times by West Virginia Police

A West Virginia city has agreed to settle an excessive force lawsuit filed by the family of a homeless Black man who was shot 22 times by police, an attorney said. The police department said the city’s insurance carrier agreed to the settlement.

Brown is a member of the Lathrop GPM Civil Rights Insurance Recovery Practice along with Mike Abram and Bill Beck. In a recent interview with Insurance Journal, Brown offered his legal and policyholder perspectives on civil rights claims and some insurance ramifications.

Not all persons that have been wronged by law enforcement or the civil justice system are in a position to pursue a liability case against the government. In fact, strong liability claims are relatively rare in part because of the qualified immunity doctrine for police officers and the absolute immunity doctrine that protects prosecutors while performing prosecutorial functions.

“I would say that a majority of people exonerated do not have strong liability claims because of these immunities. If qualified immunity is weakened for police officers, it follows that more liability claims will be brought,” Brown said.

Once exoneration is secured, the Lathrop GPM team moves to obtain compensation for the exonerees, who are disproportionately Black men. The settlements, which can sometimes be costly, are most likely to happen where there is insurance.

“[I]n these cases where you’re trying to come to a resolution outside of a verdict, the existence of insurance is critical. It’s the most critical part of the entire settlement process,” Brown acknowledges.

According to Brown, obtaining insurer-funded settlements helps avoid trials, which can be risky for both the public entities as well as the plaintiffs because either could lose big. State caps on liability do not apply in these federal civil rights suits and jury verdicts can be $1 million to $2 million per year. The insurance deals help alleviate situations where a public entity that has no insurance or inadequate coverage may be forced to raise taxes to cover settlements or have to declare bankruptcy.

The cases typically involve older insurance policies because the alleged violations stretch over long periods of time of 10, 20 or even 30 years. “The cases are treated and should be treated akin to long-tail liability claims for any kind of exposure to conditions, or illnesses, environmental contamination. It’s the same kind of thing, where you have a long period of time between the conviction and the exoneration,” he said.

“So really the only win-win scenario, if there is one in these cases, is to make sure that the insurance that they bought specifically for these type of situations covers them.”

“[I]n these cases where you’re trying to come to a resolution outside of a verdict, the existence of insurance is critical. It’s the most critical part of the entire settlement process.”

The insurance settlements also help those who are exonerated and then face being released back into society with little or nothing, especially in states without any compensation fund for wrongfully convicted persons. According to The Innocence Project that works to free wrongfully convicted persons using DNA evidence, the federal government and 35 states have provisions to provide some compensation for exonerees. However, advocates for the exonerees believe the amounts states provide (often $50,000 a year for each year of wrongful imprisonment) are inadequate for the injuries suffered.

What’s Changing

To hold a municipality liable for a civil rights violation, a plaintiff has to show the violation was due to a policy, practice or procedure of the municipality, or that a decision-maker like a sheriff was involved in it. Forces now at play are likely to aid plaintiffs in their causes, according to Brown.

“What I see now with the Black Lives Matter is that there’s going to be a whole lot of investigation into whether various municipalities or police entities have policies or practices that discriminate against African-Americans, and that’s going to be established with respect to numerous cities,” Brown said

“Once it is established that they do have a pattern and practice of locking away Black men or of beating Black men, then suing those cities and municipalities is going to be a lot easier. Because then they can point to a policy and practice, and so you can hold the city and the municipality liable along with the individual defendant or officer who committed the misconduct.”

Once a municipality gets hit with a verdict, not only is that verdict potentially crippling, but also it may signal the start of a pattern of practice for the next aggrieved person who sues.

Law Enforcement Liability Discussions

Police Liability Insurance in 2020, a Time of Civil Unrest

A discussion of municipal and law enforcement liability accountability.

Do Police Officers Need to Buy Professional Liability?

Insurance Journal Academy’s Patrick Wraight examines the idea of police officers buying their own insurance.

While it might behoove police departments and prosecutors to review their practices and patterns to see what has been going on, it’s not that easy.

“You might have a police officer saying, ‘Hey, let’s not look too deeply into this because we don’t want to create paper trails,'” Brown suggests.

Similarly, district attorneys may fear the legal and financial repercussions may lie ahead for the municipality if they start unearthing wrongful conduct by previous officeholders as they try to get innocent people out of jail, which a few reformist district attorneys across the country are trying to do. Brown is currently representing a prisoner in Missouri who is stuck in jail because of a dispute over a prosecutor’s authority to undo a previous prosecution.

“If you’ve got a progressive reformist DA who’s working, as they should, to get people out of prison who were in prison because of wrongful conduct of their past offices, they know at some level that there might be liability at the end of the rainbow when these guys get out,” Brown said. “It’s a brave thing to do and it’s a necessary thing to do. I think that it’s a good thing.”

Brown said that in addition to the current questioning of the current qualified immunity for police officers in light of several shootings of Black men, there has also been some shifting in case law that could limit prosecutors’ immunity if they commit misconduct while acting in a non-prosecutorial capacity, such as helping with the investigation or doing ministerial work.

“Then they do not have absolute immunity; they only have qualified immunity. So that immunity is slowly degrading, while what cops can get away with in terms of qualified immunity is also degrading. So you have situations where these lawsuits are going to be a serious focus and a serious concern for municipalities and public entities across the country,” he stressed.

Landmark Ruling

The 2010 movie Conviction starring Hilary Swank tells the story of how a determined sister secured her brother’s exoneration and release from prison after he served more than 18 years for a murder he did not commit. The movie ends with Kenneth Waters’ release and reunion with his daughter in 2001 but the real story — including the insurance effects — did not end there.

“So you have situations where these lawsuits are going to be a serious focus and a serious concern for municipalities and public entities across the country.”

What followed his release from prison were years of legal proceedings and negotiations with insurers to obtain compensation for Waters for the years of mental and physical injuries he suffered while in prison, as well as for his loss of freedom. Eight years after his release, in 2019, Waters’ estate eventually settled a wrongful conviction lawsuit against the town of Ayer, Mass. Five of the town’s six insurers paid $3.4 million to the plaintiff’s estate (Waters himself died in 2001 in an accident only six months after getting out of jail).

However, a sixth insurer, Western World, argued that it was not obligated to defend the town under any of the six consecutive law enforcement officers’ liability policies it issued from 1985 to 1991, and it did not participate in that settlement. But four years later in a follow-up proceeding, a court found that Western World had breached its duty to defend and that its policies did apply. The court awarded $1,000 per day that Waters had been incarcerated ($6.7 million), another $1 million “for physical illnesses and injuries incurred during and because of his incarceration” and another $3 million for “mental anguish, pain and suffering,” for a total of $10.729 million against Western World.

Brown says the Ayer decision was significant for holding that insurance policies with unique language can be held accountable for acts during the tenure of a wrongful incarceration and not just at the time of a wrongful conviction.

“The Waters case was the first decision to recognize that certain insurance policies issued in post-conviction years might apply to wrongful imprisonment cases,” Brown said.

The Waters case was handled by Brown’s mentor, Bill Beck, of the firm’s civil rights division. It was Brown’s introduction to this field of insurance law.

Beyond Hollywood

The Waters case that garnered the attention of Hollywood was important. The ruling has helped get more insurers to come to the table and participate in settlements, according to Brown.

Even more important is a case decided in May 2019 in which Brown and his firm were involved.

Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Ethel Mitchell involved whether multiple insurance carriers had a duty to defend their insured, Mississippi’s Forrest County, which was sued by the estates of three wrongfully convicted men. The insurers had issued more than a dozen specialty law enforcement liability policies between 1979 and 2010 (the year of the exonerations).

“The Travelers v. Mitchell case is our firm’s most important civil rights case to date,” Brown said.

From 2013 to 2019, Brown and his colleagues fought for compensation for the families of three men in Mississippi who were wrongfully convicted in 1979 and spent a collective 83 years in prison for a rape and murder they did not commit. The men ultimately died from the injuries they sustained in prison.

Brown and his colleagues successfully litigated the underlying rights matter against multiple carriers that resulted a $20.5 million insurer-funded settlement for the families of the three men. The insurers appealed. On May 29, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a unanimous panel decision, upheld the lower court rulings in the case.

According to Lathrop GPM’s reading, the Fifth Circuit judges ruled that insurers cannot utilize common law “coverage theories” such as “first manifestation” or “first exposure” or “continuous trigger” to sidestep the plain language of their policies.

In Brown’s words, “This groundbreaking and precedent-setting decision rejected a so-called ‘single trigger’ theory advanced by the insurance lobby in favor of a plain language reading of the insurance policies, ultimately holding multiple insurers liable for bodily injuries sustained by our clients while imprisoned.”

The result was a victory not only for the families of three men but also for the county, police officers and thousands of future exonerees seeking financial compensation for their wrongful imprisonment, according to Brown.

“This is definitely a case that municipalities need to be aware of,” said Brown, noting that it has since been adopted and expanded in opinions in Missouri (Ferguson v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co.) and Kentucky (St. Paul v. City of Newport Ky.).

(The law firm also said it thinks the Travelers case may have even more widespread implications. “While the win immediately benefits the families of wrongfully convicted men, the implications will help business clients vindicate their rights to insurance proceeds to cover liabilities for other ‘long-tail claims’ including asbestos exposure cases,” the firm said in announcing the ruling.)

“It’s a good feeling to help compensate those who have been destroyed by society as well as protecting the current cities or entities.”

Brown joined the Lathrop GPM firm in 2013, right after Western World settled in that landmark Waters case. It was a move that he says changed his life.

“I never thought as an insurance coverage lawyer that I’d be looking at crime scene photos all day long, but it’s exciting. It’s a good feeling to help compensate those who have been destroyed by society as well as protecting the current cities or entities,” Brown told Insurance Journal.

Brown and other Lathrop GPM attorneys work pro bono with attorneys from the civil rights litigation firm Neufeld, Scheck & Brustin and The Innocence Project, which Neufeld and Scheck founded in 1992 to use DNA evidence to get innocent people out of jail. The Innocence Project receives thousands of requests for help a year. To date, 375 people in the U.S. have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 14 years in prison before exoneration and released.

Overall Lathrop GPM has been involved with more than 15 settlements totaling almost $200 million. Most recent was the case of Craig Coley, 71, who served four decades in prison for a murder that DNA proved he did not commit. The city of Simi Valley, Calif., and its insurers reached a $21 million settlement with Coley. The victories also include getting $25 million for an upstate New York man who in 1991 at age 16 was wrongly convicted and jailed by Putnam County for a rape that in 2006 DNA proved he did not do.

Brown is now working with the legal team representing Lamar Johnson, who remains in a prison for the 25th year in Missouri even though there is evidence he is innocent. He has not been released or given a new trial because of a dispute over whether a current prosecutor — in this case St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner — has the power to try to correct what she believes are wrongful convictions in decades-old cases.

Lawsuit by Former Black Franchisees Accuses McDonald’s of Racial Discrimination
By Malathi Nayak | September 2, 2020

Email This Subscribe to Newsletter
Email to a friend Facebook Tweet LinkedIn Print Article

Article
2 Comments


McDonald’s Corp. is the subject of a lawsuit by more than 50 Black former franchisees in the U.S. who say they were driven out of business after being pushed by the company to set up shop in crime-ridden areas and denied financial help extended to White franchisees.

The Black franchisees were steered to inner-city and urban areas with low-volume sales and high security and insurance costs, and were refused favorable franchise terms because McDonald’s unfairly graded their performance, according to a copy of a complaint filed Tuesday in Chicago federal court.


The 52 franchisees are seeking as much as $5 million in damages for each of more than 200 stores they operated.

McDonald’s said in a statement Tuesday that it categorically denies the allegations that the franchisees were unable to succeed because of any discrimination by the company.

“These allegations fly in the face of everything we stand for as an organization and as a partner to communities and small business owners around the world,” it said in the statement.

McDonald’s said in July that it would step up efforts to fight systemic racism by addressing any hiring biases, increasing the diversity of its leadership and doing more to attract diverse franchisees.

The Black Lives Matter movement, while initially focused on police misconduct, has also spurred a push for corporate accountability around racial equity. On Monday, California lawmakers passed a bill to require corporations to include a minimum number of people of color on their boards, which would be the nation’s first such law.

McDonald’s has come under fire in recent years for allegedly failing to prevent widespread sexual harassment in its restaurants and doing too little to protect its workers from Covid-19, as well as from violent customers. The company is in a tussle with ex-CEO Steve Easterbrook as it tries to claw back $37 million of his compensation after he was found to have allegedly carried on sexual relationships with subordinates.


Lower Sales

“For decades, McDonald’s ruthless, one-sided bargaining steered Blacks toward the oldest, most decrepit stores in the toughest neighborhoods routinely rejected by Whites franchisees,” lawyers for the Black franchisees at Miami-based Ferraro Law Firm said in a statement. “This severely limited opportunities for expansion and growth, and far too often set in place a chain of events –- low cash flow, decreased equity, debt and bankruptcy –- that led to financial ruin.”

The Black franchisees’ average annual sales of $2 million was less than McDonald’s national average revenue of $2.7 million from 2011 to 2016 and $2.9 million in 2019, according to the Ferraro firm.

A historic high of about 400 Black McDonald’s franchisees in 1998 has dropped to less than 200 today because of the revenue shortfall, the franchisees said in their complaint.

McDonald’s said in its statement that Black franchisees — including the former franchisees in the complaint — operate restaurants in all types of communities. It said that “while McDonald’s may recommend locations, franchisees ultimately select the locations they wish to purchase.”

The company also said there has been consolidation in the total number of franchise organizations across all demographic groups in the last several years, and that “the overall representation of Black operators in the McDonald’s system is broadly unchanged.”

It said some of the plaintiffs are franchisees that had been a part of the system for more than 20 years and retired after making yearly profits.

–With assistance from Josh Eidelson, Leslie Patton and Daniela Wei.


Copyright 2020 Bloomberg.

Scenes From President Donald Trump's Visit To Kenosha Tuesday

Here is what it was like when President Donald Trump visited Kenosha Tuesday in the wake of the Jacob Blake police shooting.

By Scott Anderson, Patch Staff
Sep 1, 2020 

Shared from Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant, WI

​

President Donald Trump talks to business owners Tuesday, Sep. 1 as he tours an area damaged during demonstrations after a police officer shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

KENOSHA, WI — President Donald Trump traveled via presidential motorcade into the heart of Kenosha Tuesday, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake and the deaths of two protesters in a separate shooting incident days later.

Trump traveled into Kenosha along streets lined with a mix of supporters and detractors Tuesday. Supporters waving "Blue Lives Matter" flags were intermixed with those sporting American Flags, Joe Biden campaign signs and Black Lives Matter signs.

Supporters of both President Donald Trump and Black Lives Matters exchange words outside the Kenosha County Courthouse, Tuesday, Sep. 1 in Kenosha. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

During a press conference held on the tarmac in Waukegan, Illinois, Trump said he saw people trying to break into the Kenosha mayor's house when watching coverage: "Very stupid mayor. I don't see how he can be mayor," Trump said "He still sticks up for them. Only a fool would stick up for them."

Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian refuted Trump's claim that burglars were trying to break into his house.

When a reporter asked whether his visit would help racial tensions: "I think it's helping because I'm about law and order."

Trump confirmed with reporters he did not meet with Jacob Blake's family but did talk with the family pastor. But Blake's father, Jacob Blake Sr., has told CNN that the family does not have a pastor and that he does not know who Trump spoke with.

President Donald Trump talks with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.,, second from left, Attorney General William Barr, front right, and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, right, as he arrives at Waukegan National Airport in Waukegan, Ill., on his way to visit Kenosha. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Later, Trump visited the Danish Brotherhood building in Kenosha's Uptown District.

"So, this store was here 109 years. Just about the oldest in the nation, doing what you do," Trump said of the two-story building that lay in ruin. "And we're going to help them a lot. I think we're going to help them a lot."

"We're going to have some meetings. We're going to meet with some of the owners, and then we're going to have a roundtable. I think you're going to be there," Trump said as he saw the damage for himself Tuesday. "But we're going to work with you. We're going to help you. Okay? We'll help you rebuild. It's a great area. It's a great state. This should never happen. A thing like this should never happen."

President Donald Trump tours an area Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, damaged during demonstrations after a police officer shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

People line up to watch as the motorcade with President Donald Trump passes by Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, near Kenosha, Wis. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

People line up to watch as the motorcade with President Donald Trump passes by Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump walks over to speak with business owners Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, as he tours an area damaged during demonstrations after a police officer shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Later, Trump traveled to Bradford High School to see the Emergency Command Center. Rep. Bryan Steil, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, and Sen. Ron Johnson toured the center with Trump. The center was full of local law enforcement officials and National Guard members, according to an AP pool report.

When asked if he had a message for Blake family he said he will speak to Jacob's family pastor later. Trump said he wanted to talk to Blake's mother later but: "It's also better off if it's handled locally."

President Donald Trump listens as Kenosha Sheriff David Beth, right, speaks at the emergency operations center at Mary D. Bradford High School, Tuesday, Sep. 1 in Kenosha. Also listening are Attorney General William Barr, Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Unrest Causes $2M in Insured Losses to City Property in Kenosha, Wisconsin

September 2, 2020

Damage to city-owned property from violence that erupted over the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha is estimated at nearly $2 million so far, a city official said.

The city’s public works director, Shelly Billingsley, provided the estimate to local leaders Monday night on what it would cost to replace garbage trucks, street lights and traffic signals, among other things that were destroyed or damaged in the unrest over the last week.


Demonstrators are calling for the Kenosha officer who shot Blake seven times in the back Aug. 23 to be fired and face attempted murder charges, and more than a week after authorities say a 17-year-old from northern Illinois shot and killed two protesters.

Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was shot while police responded to a call about a domestic dispute. His family planned to hold a community gathering at the site where he was shot that is to include a community clean-up, food drive and voter registration effort.

Mayor John Antaramian has said the city will request $30 million in aid from the state to help rebuild in the aftermath of the unrest. Some of the city’s garbage trucks, which were parked downtown to provide security and limit movement by protesters, were set on fire during the demonstrations.

Billingsley said they were insured and that city staff is working with the insurance company to log damage information, the Kenosha News reported. Some of the trucks, which had functioned as snowplow vehicles in the winter, were also destroyed.

Billingsley said she hoped that the setback would not affect snowplow operations this winter. She told the Public Works Committee the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors could affect the timeline in obtaining the new trucks.

City staff continues to compile numbers from the damage, Billingsley said.


Copyright 2020 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, b

US private employers hire fewer people, Ford to cut 1,400 jobs


A man walks past a sign ‘Now Hiring’ in front of a store in Arlington, Virginia. Agence-France-PresseWASHINGTON: US private employers hired fewer workers than expected for a second straight month in August, suggesting that the labour market recovery was slowing as the COVID-19 pandemic drags and government money to support workers and employers dries up.

Large businesses accounted for the bulk of the job gains shown in the ADP National Employment Report on Wednesday, with small enterprises posting a modest increase. A $600 weekly unemployment supplement expired on July 31, while a programme that gave businesses loans that can be partially forgiven if used for employee pay has also lapsed.

Private payrolls increased by 428,000 jobs last month. Data for July was revised up to show hiring gaining 212,000 jobs instead of the initially reported 167,000. The revision still left the July tally out of alignment with the 1.462 million rise in private employment reported by the government last month.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast private payrolls would increase by 950,000 in August.

The ADP report, jointly developed with Moody’s Analytics, has fallen short of the government payrolls count since May because of methodology differences. The ADP report is based on active employees on company payrolls.

The labour Department’s Bureau of labour Statistics (BLS) counts a worker as employed if they received a paycheck during the week that includes the 12th of the month.

When businesses were shuttered in mid-March, millions of workers were either laid off or furloughed. Some economists believe that the return of furloughed workers when most businesses reopened in May boosted the employment numbers reported by the government.

Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi told reporters he expected the gap between the ADP and BLS private payrolls narrowed in August. The government is scheduled to publish August’s employment report on Friday.

According to a Reuters survey of economists, private payrolls probably increased by 1.265 million jobs in August after rising 1.462 million in July. Such a gain would result in nonfarm payrolls advancing by 1.4 million jobs last month after increasing 1.763 million. That would leave nonfarm payrolls about 11.5 million below their pre-pandemic level.

Wall Street stocks opened higher Wednesday despite lackluster US employment data, adding to records amid bullish investor sentiment for equities.

About 15 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.6 percent at 28,821.09.

The broad-based S&P 500 gained 0.6 percent to 3,546.94, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 0.7 percent to 12,026.86.

Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished at records Tuesday, riding a wave of positive sentiment based on expectations for a solid US economic recovery from the coronavirus.

The data comes ahead of Friday’s much-anticipated government employment report for August.

The moderation in job growth suggested by the ADP report is in line with other labour market indicators. Weekly new applications for unemployment benefits are hovering around 1 million. Data from Kronos, a workforce management software company, showed an increase in shifts in August, but the rise was heavily influenced by the late summer return to school.

Adjusting for back-to-school seasonality, weekly shifts fell on average. Data from Homebase, a payroll scheduling and tracking company, showed little change in employment in August from July.

Large businesses accounted for 298,000 jobs last month, while small business payrolls increased 52,000.

Most of the increase in employment last month was in industries directly impacted by the pandemic, including restaurants, leisure and hospitality. There were also gains in temporary help, reflecting the uncertain economic environment. Ford to cut 1,400 jobs: Ford Motor Co. will offer early retirement incentives with hopes of cutting its US white-collar workforce by 1,400 more positions.

Kumar Galhotra, the company’s president of the Americas, told employees about the offers Wednesday morning. The company says they’re part of an $11 billion restructuring plan that started more than a year ago.

Most of the reductions would take place in the area of Dearborn, Michigan, where Ford has its headquarters and large product development and engineering operations.

A spokesman says Ford expects to meet its goals with the offers. If it doesn’t, then it may consider involuntary separations.

Republicans Open Probe Into 'Left-Wing Violent Extremists' in D.C., Accuse Mayor Bowser of 'Inaction'

BY RAMSEY TOUCHBERRY ON 9/2/20

Top congressional Republicans are blaming the mayor of Washington, D.C., for recent skirmishes in the nation's capital involving protesters demanding racial justice—and the lawmakers want answers.

The ranking Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees—Jim Jordan (Ohio) and James Comer (Ky.), respectively—want D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to produce documents pertaining to how the city has handled what the Republicans described as "left-wing agitators," according to a letter the GOP duo sent to the Democratic mayor on Wednesday that was obtained by Newsweek.

"Like other Democrat-run cities, the District of Columbia (D.C.) under your leadership has allowed radical left-wing violent extremists to commit senseless acts of violence and destruction," the letter stated. "By your inaction in response to their mayhem, these left-wing agitators have become emboldened to be even more aggressive and more dangerous."


Jordan and Comer requested copies of all documents and communications related to the city's response to any unrest that has occurred since June 1, and information about whether any "perpetrators" of violent confrontations were "paid or otherwise induced to commit these acts" by a third party.

There is currently no evidence to suggest any protesters were paid. The pair of lawmakers said the information they requested should be provided by September 16.

Bowser's office did not immediately respond to Newsweek's request for comment.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) speaks to Ranking Committee Member James Comer (R-KY) during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on slowdowns at the Postal Service ahead of the November elections on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on August 24.PHOTO BY TOM BRENNER/POOL/AFP/GETTY

The Republicans cited recent events in D.C., including one last Thursday night, when protesters heckled outdoor diners and attendees of President Donald Trump's Republican National Convention speech at the White House.

Jordan, one of the president's closest allies on Capitol Hill, and Comer cited three specific confrontations involving protests that were spurred by the shooting of a Black Wisconsin man, Jacob Blake, in the back seven times by a white police officer that left Blake paralyzed.

On August 24, Black Lives Matter protesters confronted D.C. diners seated outside. A viral video appeared to show a protester demanding a restaurant patron raise her fist in solidarity. Bowser condemned the events, and encouraged diners and restaurants to call the police in the future.

"What I saw in those videos was highly inappropriate," Bowser told reporters. "And more importantly, I don't think it had anything to do with demands for social justice."

After Trump's acceptance of the Republican presidential nomination at the White House Thursday—an event that drew some 1,500 guests and included prominent government officials and lawmakers—attendees departing the grounds were harassed by protesters.

Some, such as Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and his wife, required police escorts, while others like Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) briefly stopped to respond to their shouting questions and demands to condemn recent high-profile police shootings of Black men and women and back criminal justice reform.

"Just got attacked by an angry mob of over 100, one block away from the White House," Paul wrote in a tweet. "Thank you to @DCPoliceDept for literally saving our lives from a crazed mob.

Rand Paul just got chased by a crowd back to his hotel, after leaving the White House from Trump’s Republican Party Nomination #DC #DCProtests pic.twitter.com/h1kPcZG1jh— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) August 28, 2020

Protesters outside the White House gates also put a life-size Trump doll in a guillotine.

Over the weekend, five people were arrested in D.C. and several police officers were injured after violent confrontations with demonstrators who started fires and vandalized property. The protests caught Trump's eye, who tweeted Sunday that Bowser "should arrest these agitators and thugs! Clean up D.C. or the Federal Government will do it for you. Enough!!!"


Bowser later said the agitators were outsiders who "came together to create havoc" and were separate from the peaceful March on Washington that took place on the National Mall Friday.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill about HR51, legislation to make Washington, DC a state, on June 16 in Washington, DC.PHOTO BY BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY

"What we're certainly not going to do is stand by and allow outside agitators to come to our city to distract us from the work of D.C. residents," Bowser said. "We know the President considers himself Mr. Law and Order... We are for law and order, too."

In their letter to Bowser, Jordan and Comer accused the mayor of surrendering the nation's capital to "violent left-wing extremists."

"Your choice to surrender the streets of D.C. to violent left-wing extremists and agitators so that they can intimidate, coerce, and assault innocent people places at risk all who live, work, and patronize businesses in the District," the letter said. "Your actions also highlight the wisdom of the Founders to ensure that the seat of the federal government is not beholden to a particular state."

https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-open-probe-left-wing-violent-extremists-dc-accuse-mayor-bowser-inaction-1529180?piano_t=1

Trump campaign spokesman flails as CNN host corners him on president’s promotion of conspiracy theories

Published September 2, 2020 By Brad Reed

Hogan Gidley and CNN host Jim Sciutto. (Screenshot)

Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley on Wednesday got into a heated exchange with CNN host Jim Sciutto, who repeatedly cornered him on President Donald Trump’s embrace of QAnon conspiracy theories.

During the interview, Sciutto asked Gidley to comment on the president’s recent rant about antifa agents filling up an entire airplane and flying together to spread anarchy throughout the United States.

“The president has been sharing a whole host of unfounded conspiracy theories, many of them sourced from QAnon, which I know you’re well aware of,” Sciutto said. “I just wonder, does the president actually believe some of these theories or is he just trying to keep the support of QAnon people?”

Gidley at this point tried to plead ignorance

“I’m confused, what things?” Gidley asked. “What theories?”

Sciutto then recited some of the conspiracy theories the president has pushed, and Gidley said that he hadn’t actually spoken with the president about any of them.

“QAnon, as you know, started with the conspiracy theory that Democrats and Hollywood stars are running a child sex ring out of a pizzeria here in Washington,” he said. “Does the president believe that QAnon conspiracy theory?”

“Again, not to my knowledge,” he replied. “I’ve had no conversation with him about that, we’re not focused on that here.”

“The FBI has declared QAnon a domestic terror threat,” Sciutto continued. “Why would the president share stories from the group that the FBI has deemed a domestic terrorism threat?”

“What do you mean share stories?!” asked an exasperated Gidley, even though Sciutto had already given him multiple examples of the president sharing QAnon conspiracy theories.

Trump Spread Multiple Conspiracy Theories on Monday. Here Are Their Roots.

Davey Alba and Ben Decker,
The New York Times•September 2, 2020


In a wide-ranging interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday night, President Donald Trump spread multiple conspiracy theories about the protests that have erupted across the nation. Many of his unfounded claims can be traced back to narratives that have been swirling online for months.

Here are three of the baseless conspiracy theories that Trump spread and where they came from.

A plane ‘loaded with thugs’ headed to the Republican convention.

During the interview with Ingraham, Trump claimed that “we had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend, and in the plane it was almost completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that.”- ADVERTISEMENT -


Trump then alleged that the people were headed to Washington, D.C., to disrupt the Republican National Convention.

There is no evidence of a flight matching Trump’s description. But the claim is similar to a baseless allegation that appeared online as early as June, when a wave of cities and towns became alarmed by unsubstantiated rumors that the loose collective of anti-fascist activists known as antifa was being sent into their communities to disrupt the peace.

On June 1, a man from Emmett, Idaho, posted on Facebook: “Be ready for attacks downtown and residential areas. At least a dozen males got off the plane in Boise from Seattle, dressed head to toe in black.” He claimed, “One had a tattoo that said ‘Antifa America’ on his arm.” The post was shared nearly 4,000 times.

That same day, the local sheriff’s office posted that there was no merit to the rumor. “The Payette County Sheriff’s Office has not had contact with and has not verified that antifa is in Payette County,” it said. “The Payette County Sheriff’s Office has not given any specific warnings to our citizens about antifa or other organizations.” It was shared only 716 times on Facebook.

The idea resurfaced prominently again last week when Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., spoke about protesters who confronted him at the Republican convention.

“You just think, ‘Oh, these are some normal hoodlums from a big city.’ I promise you that at least some of the members and the people who attacked us were not from D.C.,” Paul said, according to Politico. “They flew here on a plane. They’ve all got fresh, new clothes.”

Paul did not offer any evidence to support this assertion.

Some ‘very stupid rich people’ are bankrolling racial justice protests across the U.S.

In the same Fox News interview, Trump said he believed “some very stupid rich people” had been financing the racial justice protests that took place in Washington last week and around the country in recent months.

The unsupported idea echoes claims spread online for months that George Soros, the billionaire investor and Democratic donor, was funding protests against police brutality.

Soros has for years been cast as an anti-conservative villain by a loose network of activists and political figures on the right and has become a convenient boogeyman for many different conspiracies, including that he “owns” antifa and Black Lives Matter groups.

Open Society Foundations, a philanthropic organization that Soros founded, has donated to Black Lives Matter in the past. But so have many other public figures, including Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Prince, just weeks before he died.

The false notion that a shadowy cabal of Democratic elites like Soros pulls strings behind the scenes and controls the world with money is a main pillar of the far-right extremist conspiracy theory QAnon.

‘People that you haven’t heard of’ are controlling Joe Biden

This rumor, too, is a pillar of the baseless internet conspiracy QAnon. The theory states, falsely, that the world is run by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles that is plotting against Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring.

QAnon followers, who number in the millions, believe that this clique includes top Democrats like Soros, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And they believe that real and actual political power resides not with public candidates like Joe Biden but with these individuals exercising their secret power beyond any immediately visible public link.

Since the start of the pandemic, as people in lockdown turned to the internet for entertainment, membership in 10 large Facebook QAnon groups grew more than 600%, a recent article by The Wall Street Journal said. This year, QAnon has been a main faction fueling false information about COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter protests and the 2020 election. Followers have also attached themselves to anti-vaccine and anti-child-trafficking movements, helping expand their ranks.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2020 The New York Times Company