Officials downplayed involvement in Kansas newspaper raid — but here’s what they knew

LONG READ

Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector
November 6, 2023 

Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, top left, spearheaded the Aug. 11 raid of the Marion County Record. During the raid, Cody reviewed a file on him that revealed a confidential source who had accused Cody of misconduct. (Marion County Record screen capture of surveillance video)


MARION — Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody enlisted the support of local and state law enforcement officials in the days before he led raids on the local newspaper office, the publisher’s home and the home of a city councilwoman.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Kansas Department of Revenue, Marion County Sheriff’s Office and the Office of the State Fire Marshal — along with the county attorney and a magistrate judge — were complicit in the Aug. 11 raid or knew it was imminent. But in the days that followed, they largely downplayed their involvement.

Police reports, internal agency emails and other documents obtained by Kansas Reflector provide a clearer picture of the raid than the early one that crystallized as a fast-moving story attracted international attention.

There was the restaurateur who wanted a liquor license. The reporter who looked up the restaurateur’s drunken driving record. The police chief who knew reporters were investigating his past misconduct. The newspaper publisher with his strident editorial voice, and the demise of his defiant 98-year-old mother.

We now know there was also a KBI agent and his supervisor who had advance copies of the search warrants. A sheriff’s detective who wrote the search warrants. Department of Revenue staff who treated the reporter’s actions as criminal. And a fire marshal’s investigator who participated in the raid even though he seemed to realize it was unlawful.

Then there was the county attorney who claimed he didn’t review the search warrant affidavits until after the raid, even though police had sent them to him for preapproval. And the magistrate judge, with her own checkered driving record, who signed three of the search warrants but refused a fourth.

Officers from three agencies converged Aug. 11 to seize personal cellphones, computers and other items from Marion County Record publisher Eric Meyer, two of his reporters — including one who wasn’t even a target in the investigation — and Councilwoman Ruth Herbel. Police also rummaged through a reporter’s desk drawer and Meyer’s paperwork to take stock of confidential sources.

There is no indication in any of the records obtained by Kansas Reflector that anybody anywhere suggested the raid would be a bad idea, despite federal protections for journalists and the flimsy pretext of a crime.

Katherine Jacobsen, U.S. and Canada program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said it is incredibly concerning that so many taxpayer-funded agencies were willing to tacitly or directly sign off on a gross violation of the freedom of the press.

“I think the most charitable interpretation I can come up with is they just didn’t know and were ill informed about freedom of the press and the rights that journalists have in this country,” Jacobsen said. “A more nefarious interpretation is, of course, that they just didn’t care and were in fact kind of happy to see the journalists put in their place.”

Before and after

Marion County Record reporter Phyllis Zorn was exhausted Aug. 16 after staying up all night to publish the first edition of the newspaper since the raid five days earlier.

Scrutiny of the raid had intensified as the police chief and KBI director issued statements about journalists not being above the law — a distraction from the reality that if anyone had broken the law, it was the police. The newspaper’s 200-point bold type headline that morning read: “SEIZED … but not silenced.”


Cody, the police chief, had notified County Attorney Joel Ensey of his investigation in an Aug. 8 email, and sent copies of the search warrants to Ensey before taking them to a magistrate. A day after the raid, Ensey told Cody he would need to get a district court judge to sign the warrants so that the evidence seized during the raid could be reviewed by law enforcement outside of Marion.

“I also believe with the scrutiny this will receive, another judge reviewing the warrant would be a good idea, especially with some of the new information learned during the search,” Ensey said.

But as copies of the newspaper were being delivered around town on Aug. 16, and new subscribers streamed into the newspaper office, Ensey claimed he had reviewed the search warrants in detail just two days before. He said there was insufficient evidence to support the raids and that items seized would be returned.

Zorn, wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, leaned against the doorway to the sheriff’s office evidence locker, where a deputy was retrieving the electronic devices that police had collected and bagged during the raid. The reporter was listening to Sheriff Jeff Soyez assign blame to the police department.

“It’s not my search warrant,” Soyez said. “It was PD’s search warrant.”

He leaned in to say quietly in Zorn’s ear: “You didn’t see me over there.”

“No, I’m glad I didn’t,” she told him, “because as relaxed as it is between you and me, I probably would have said some things.”

In fact, it was one of Soyez’ officers, Detective Aaron Christner, who had advised Cody on Aug. 8 to get a search warrant to preserve emails. Christner then drafted the search warrants and sent them to Cody to modify and sign. During the raid, Christner used software to make a digital copy of files from Zorn’s computer, which police initially didn’t disclose on their evidence log.

Ensey and the sheriff weren’t the only ones offering a cop-out.

Anyone can access driving records legally through the Department of Revenue’s online database — if they have a name, date of birth, and driver’s license number. Marion resident Pam Maag on Aug. 2 sent Zorn and Herbel a copy of restaurateur Kari Newell’s driving record, which showed Newell had a DUI and had been driving without a license. Zorn used KDOR’s website to verify the record.

According to Marion police officer Zach Hudlin’s written summary of an Aug. 7 phone call, an unnamed employee in KDOR’s IT department told him “there was a loophole or a vulnerability in their system that would allow someone to access another person’s private data.” The IT staffer confirmed that Zorn had looked up Newell’s driving record on Aug. 4.

Emails exchanged among Chad Burr, with KDOR’s Office of Special Investigations; Garrett Kaufman, technical services manager at KDOR; Craig Bowser, with the Office of Information Technology Services; Desiree Perry, a cyber intelligence specialist; and Valerie Pitts, IT manager at KDOR, show the agency treated Zorn’s use of the website as a crime. Kaufman said it was good that police were working with the KBI.

KDOR didn’t respond to an email asking why the agency’s perspective changed in the days after the raid.

On Aug. 21, KDOR spokesman Zach Denney told the Kansas City Star that “this information is public record and available online.” He told NBC News “the motor vehicle driver’s checker is public-facing and free-use.”

Cody emailed KBI special agent Todd Leeds on Aug. 8 and asked for assistance. Leeds forwarded the request to his supervisor, special agent in charge Bethanie Popejoy, then opened a case on “Marion Public Corruption.”

Leeds asked police for cellphone numbers, Facebook account names and email addresses for Newell, Meyer, Herbel, Zorn and Maag. The KBI agent also wanted Newell’s witness statement and Herbel’s emails. Marion police sent Leeds “everything we have currently for the case.”

Hudlin sent copies of search warrants to Leeds on Aug. 10.

“Did you guys execute this today?” Leeds asked.

“No,” Hudlin replied. “My understanding is that the county attorney wasn’t in the office today.”

A day after the raid, Cody wrote to Popejoy at the KBI to notify her of the items police had gathered during the raid. He CC’d Ensey on the email.

“I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the KBI’s support,” Cody wrote. “It has been tough being the Chief of Police today.”

Two days after the raid, KBI agent Toni Mattivi professed his belief in free speech while defending his agency’s involvement in the investigation and taking a jab at news media. Mattivi said his agent did not apply for the search warrants and wasn’t present during the raid.

Attorney General Kris Kobach, who has oversight of the KBI, told reporters on Aug. 16 that the KBI “was not notified of the searches prior to their taking place.”
The s---storm

Cody told the KBI that Magistrate Judge Laura Viar “scrutinized the evidence and decided it was not enough for me to get Pam Maag’s electronic devices.”

But Viar approved search warrants for the Marion County Record newsroom, Meyer’s home and Herbel’s home. The alleged crime was identity theft.

On the morning of Aug. 11, Marion police asked Chris Mercer, an investigator with the Office of the State Fire Marshal, to help with the raid.

Mercer agreed. He was briefed and assigned to Meyer’s house, according to the report he filed. He arrived at 10:55 a.m.

There, he secured Meyer’s cellphone and laptop and made Meyer leave a stack of paperwork on a table. Mercer told Meyer and his mother, Joan, the 98-year-old co-owner of the paper, they were free to leave.

From Mercer’s notes: “Eric home walking around with phone he’s upset, ‘we in s---storm,’ he says.”

Joan Meyer alternated between being calm and outraged, Mercer wrote. She called the judge stupid. Demanded police get out of her house. Called them Nazis.

She told Mercer she had previously suffered two strokes. If she has another, she said, that’s “going to be murder.”

“Joan crying and violent verbally, sitting in living room, Nazi comments, angry kicking walker,” Mercer wrote.

At one point, Mercer heard Eric Meyer talking to someone on the landline: “Cody has checkered past, and he will now have access to that information!”

The phone rang after Eric Meyer left to go to the newsroom, which was under siege. The caller was the author of this story. Joan Meyer answered, then handed the phone to a sheriff’s officer, who wasn’t interested in answering questions.

“Joan appears to be getting more confused,” Mercer wrote. She was crying and mumbling about corruption.

At the newsroom, police read reporters Zorn and Deb Gruver their Miranda rights. Gruver, who wasn’t named in any of the search warrant affidavits, told Cody she didn’t have anything to do with Newell’s driving record. Cody ripped her personal cellphone from her hand.

Surveillance video shows Hudlin uncovered a file in in Gruver’s desk drawer and encouraged the police chief to take a look, the Marion County Record reported.

“Hmm,” Cody said. “Keeping a personal file on me. I don’t care.”

The first page in the folder revealed a confidential source who had provided information about Cody’s time on the Kansas City, Missouri, police force. A half-dozen of Cody’s former coworkers had told Gruver that Cody faced demotion for sexual harassment before taking the Marion job in April.

When police arrived at Herbel’s house, she was in the bathroom. Her husband, who suffers from dementia, ran in a circle through the house trying to find her. He went to the backyard and screamed her name. She sat him down on the couch to try to calm him.

The councilwoman’s supposed crime involved forwarding Newell’s driving record to the city manager and raising concerns about whether the city council should grant Newell a liquor license. A political adversary, Mayor David Mayfield, had tried and failed to remove Herbel from office before. A felony crime would disqualify her from public service.

Police took her cellphone and computer during the raid, leaving her without a way to call for medical help if her husband needed it. She had to drive 35 miles to a town where she could buy a new phone.

Herbel’s husband ended up staying on the couch for more than three hours. Following the raid, she has taken him to the doctor several times because of his declining health.

“I will never forgive this police force or the sheriff’s office or the county attorney or anybody else for what they did to him,” Herbel said. “I mean, they can kick an old lady — and I’d say I’m an old lady because I’m 80 years old. And I can’t run that fast either. But they don’t do that to my husband. He’s 88, and I just felt that this shortened his lifespan tremendously when they did this, and I’ll have hard feelings against them all.”
Federal protections

By Mercer’s own account, he made sure city police went through the stack of paperwork he required Eric Meyer to leave behind.

Meanwhile, Mercer wrote, Joan Meyer was “yelling not to touch her stuff, calling us a--holes.”

She hoped officers would fall down the stairs and break their necks. She threw her walker.

“The team left and I was the last one out of the front door, while she sat in her recliner continuing to yell at us,” Mercer wrote. “She mentioned something about shoot if we come back, but I disregarded it as a I walked out the door.”


The article — “When the police knock at your door: Newsroom search warrants” — is about the federal Privacy Protection Act, which requires criminal investigators to get a subpoena instead of a search warrant. Congress passed the law to address concerns about police weaponizing search warrants against journalists.

Journalists “feared that the magistrates who issued warrants for these searches, often political allies of law enforcement officials, would be biased in deciding whether there was probable cause to justify issuing a warrant,” the attorneys wrote. “In addition, they feared that such searches would physically disrupt the newsroom and its operations.”

A spokeswoman for the Office of the State Fire Marshal didn’t respond to questions for this story about why the legal memo is attached to Mercer’s report, or why he agreed to join an unlawful raid.

Max Kautsch, president of the Kansas Coalition for Open Government, said the reference to federal protections attached to Mercer’s report “goes a long way to show that the decision-makers at the state and local levels involved with authorizing and executing the searches knew or should have known the searches were contrary to clearly established law.”
A convenient excuse

Four days after the raid, Marion Councilman Zach Collett emailed the League of Kansas Municipalities. He was “beginning to wonder if it would be beneficial to our community to have a council member grant an interview request?”

“I would be comfortable doing this, but would most definitely want lots of coaching from someone more versed in crisis communication than myself,” Collett wrote. “I was wondering if the League offers any services like that? I am still unsure of the best route forward, but I am tired of our community being portrayed the way (it) is in a national headline currently.”

Nathan Eberline, executive director of the League of Municipalities, referred Collett to two firms that focus on crisis communications and pointed him to a YouTube webinar on the topic.

“Given the weight of the media focus, I agree that it would be prudent to speak with an expert,” Eberline said.

Eric Meyer said nobody in Marion, including himself, wanted this kind of publicity.

“I mean, we’ve become the laughingstock of the free world, really, in terms of we’ve got these Keystone Cops and the judge who doesn’t know anything and had drunk driving arrests, and prosecutors who can’t take time to read stuff, and city council members who don’t answer questions,” Meyer said.

In the weeks that followed, ethics complaints were filed against Ensey and Viar. Gruver left the newspaper and filed a civil lawsuit against Cody in federal court. Cody resigned after KSHB reported he had instructed Newell to delete text messages between them. Hudlin is now the interim police chief. Herbel is up for re-election Tuesday.

Melissa Underwood, spokeswoman for the KBI, said the agency’s investigation “remains ongoing.”

“We expect to be able to update on the case soon,” Underwood said. “At that time we should be able to answer some additional questions.”

Meyer believes the raid was orchestrated by local figures who wanted to bully him.

“And for what? So we got Kari Newell’s driving record,” Meyer said. “This isn’t a big drug deal. This isn’t embezzlement.”

The newspaper’s website recently was subjected to a malware attack, Meyer said.

“That’s probably a more serious crime than what we were accused of — particularly since when all this was said and done, nobody did anything about it,” Meyer said. “And we told them what we’d done. So what crime existed? No, they just saw this as a convenient excuse.”

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

SAME OLD GOP
'MAGA Mike Johnson' wants commission to cut Social Security formed 'immediately'

Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
November 3, 2023 

Then-President Donald Trump is greeted by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) before the State of the Union address in the House chamber on Feb. 4, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

 (Leah Millis-Pool/Getty Images)

When Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives elected Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson as speaker last week, critics quickly sounded the alarm about his previous calls to cut trillions of dollars from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—and the GOP leader triggered a fresh wave of fears on Thursday with related comments to a Capitol Hill journalist.

NBC News' Sahil Kapur reported on social media that Johnson "says he pitched a debt commission to Senate Republicans yesterday and 'the idea was met with great enthusiasm.' He says it will be bipartisan and bicameral. He says he wants 'very thoughtful people' in both parties to lead it. He wants this 'immediately.'"

In response to Johnson's remarks—which echoed his first speech as speaker—the Alliance for Retired Americans wrote, "Translation: They're eager to begin gutting Social Security behind closed doors."

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla)—who led the ouster of ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)—celebrated Johnson's rise as a win for the far-right. He declared last week that "MAGA is ascendant," referring to the "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan of former President Donald Trump, who is the GOP front-runner for 2024.

Critics of the new speaker have similarly framed his election as a display of the far-right's hold on the Republican Party, and are even calling him "MAGA Mike," including in response to his comments Thursday.

"A week into his tenure, MAGA Mike Johnson is ALREADY calling for closed-door cuts to the Social Security and Medicare benefits American workers have earned through decades of hard work," warned Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Social Security Works said that "MAGA Mike Johnson's NUMBER ONE priority is to cut our earned benefits behind closed doors."

"The White House has rightfully called this type of commission a 'death panel' for Social Security and Medicare," the group noted. "HANDS OFF!"

Back in February, long before McCarthy struck a deal with President Joe Biden to suspend the country's debt ceiling, Republicans in Congress and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) were floating the idea of a commission, and White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said that "the American people want more jobs and lower costs, not a death panel for Medicare and Social Security."

As Republican lawmakers have continued to pursue the idea, others have embraced the "death panel" description.

After Johnson's mention of the commission in his speech last week, Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote:

On the whole, Johnson's approach to social safety net programs comes right out of the GOP library of lies about the programs' finances and their effect on the federal budget.

"The reality is, they're headed towards bankruptcy," he said in his July 2022 C-SPAN appearance. "In just a few number of years, Social Security goes belly up. So does Medicare, Medicaid, all of these big-spending programs because we're drowning in debt."

The idea that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are going "bankrupt" is standard Republican hogwash. So is the idea that Social Security will go "belly up" in some number of years—even if Congress sits on its hands, the program will still have enough revenue to cover three-quarters of the benefits due.

"The notion that those programs are drivers of the federal debt is also a bog-standard GOP talking point," Hiltzik added. "A far more significant portion of the federal budget deficit is the lavish tax cut that Johnson's party gifted to corporations and the wealthy in 2017, a $1.5-trillion giveaway from which the U.S. economy received no significant gain."

Most House Republicans and a dozen Democrats on Thursday evening voted to pass a bill that would deliver on Biden's request for $14.3 billion to help Israel wage war on Gaza—which experts are condemning as genocide—and cut Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding.

Analysts and Democrats in Congress have warned that the IRS cut would hamper the agency's ability to crack down on wealthy tax cheats, bolstered by the Congressional Budget Office finding Wednesday that the measure would reduce federal revenues by $26.8 billion and add $12.5 billion to the deficit over the next decade.

Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), who opposed the bill and is among the few Democrats demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, said that "the only thing crueler than sending $14 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars for weapons that will result in the deaths of thousands more innocent Palestinian children in Gaza is exploiting that war—exploiting the death of over 1,400 Israeli mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, and hundreds more hostages—to help corporate CEOs and billionaire donors cheat on their taxes."

BEING HONEST ABOUT 'PROLIFE'

'Wildly out of step': Fox News host hits Mike Johnson on birth control crusade

IT'S ANTI-CONTRACEPTION

David Edwards
November 5, 2023 

Fox News/screen grab

Fox News host Shannon Bream challenged House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) over his history of opposing certain forms of birth control.

While appearing on Fox News Sunday, Bream noted that Johnson had been accused of being "wildly out of step" with Americans on birth control.

"He supported bans that would not only criminalize abortion but ban IVF treatments and common forms of birth control and that you voted against access to contraception," Bream said, quoting Emily's List.

"Is that an accurate assessment of where you are?" she asked. "Because that's not in step with the American people."

Johnson, however, feigned ignorance.

"No, Shannon, look, I'm pro-life," he said. "I've said very clearly I'm a Bible-believing Christian. I believe in the sanctity of every single human life."

"Listen, prior to the modern time, I mean until recently actually, almost all of our nation's leaders openly acknowledged that they were also Bible-believing Christians," he added. "I mean, this is not something that should cause great unrest, okay?"

"To be clear, though, have you voted against fertility treatments and access to contraception?" Bream pressed.

"I don't think so," Johnson said. "I'm not sure what they're talking about. I really don't remember any of those."

As a member of Congress, Johnson has called some forms of birth control abortifacients.

Watch the video below from Fox News or at the link.

 

How Speaker Mike Johnson’s plans for a Christian law school unraveled

Johnson vouched for the school -- and agreed to serve as its dean -- without seeing a key feasibility study, he would ultimately admit


By Michael Kranish and Isaac Stanley-Becker
November 4, 2023 

In February 2012, Mike Johnson sent an aide on an urgent mission at the college where he had been working to open a law school: Locate a study that he believed would prove the project was financially possible.

For more than a year, Johnson — the dean of the not-yet-opened law school — had been telling donors and the public that the institution, which would focus on training Christian attorneys in northwest Louisiana, was not only achievable, but inevitable.

“From a pure feasibility standpoint,” Johnson, then 38, told the local Town Talk newspaper in 2010 after becoming dean, “I’m not sure how this can fail because … it looks like the perfect storm for our law school.”

But he had still not actually seen a feasibility study commissioned by the parent school, Louisiana College, a private Southern Baptist college in Pineville, La., now known as Louisiana Christian University.

The aide soon returned with disturbing news: The study had been buried in a filing cabinet. And it was all but useless.

Six months later, in August 2012, Johnson resigned as dean of the new school, which never opened even though the college spent $5 million to buy and renovate a Shreveport headquarters, among other expenses detailed in local media accounts.

The feasibility study was a “hodgepodge collection of papers,” with “nothing in existence” related to the need for the new law school, market studies, or “funding sources and prospects,” Johnson wrote the following year, describing the episode in what he called a “confidential memorandum” responding to questions from the Louisiana College Board of Trustees

Johnson’s April 2013 memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post, reveals how he navigated a previous executive management experience as he takes over a much larger organization, the U.S. House of Representatives, and becomes second in line to the presidency. The memo suggests that Johnson encouraged and agreed to lead what he later described as a sparsely researched effort that collapsed soon after he left.

The new speaker’s congressional biography makes no mention of his tenure as dean of the never-opened law school. Before winning election to the Louisiana legislature in 2015, and Congress a year later, Johnson mainly worked as a litigator for conservative causes, once remarking that his profession was “legal ministry.” He has also taught college courses, according to his House financial disclosures.

A spokesman for Johnson did not respond to a request for comment about the failed law school. Several others involved in the effort said Johnson had worked hard to make the project a reality and was not to blame for its failure.

The 2013 memo suggests, however, that when given a leadership opportunity, Johnson oversold his project’s prospects and failed to divulge key problems until after he left the job. In the memo, he blamed others for the problems, writing that the project collapsed because of larger issues at Louisiana College. He also faulted administrators for failing to send him the feasibility study, and said that a crisis involving the college’s accreditation agency undercut his effort to have the law school win operational approval.

“The ordeal created a real hardship for me and my family,” Johnson wrote, saying that he resigned “with great sadness and only as a last resort.”

Joe Aguillard, the president of Louisiana College, later offered an alternative explanation of events — pinning the blame for the law school’s failure on Johnson, according to a memo written at the time by another board member, Heath Veuleman. Aguillard said that Johnson’s resignation was a selfish decision to pursue a “dream job,” according to the memo, which was obtained by The Post. Aguillard also blamed Johnson’s resignation “for the Law School’s present delays in opening its doors.” After leaving the school, Johnson said in a memo that he had accepted a job at a conservative legal institute in the Dallas area.

Veuleman wrote that Johnson had denied these allegations and said in an interview with The Post that the college’s financial and management turmoil made Johnson conclude that he “couldn’t be dean. He was constantly being usurped. … I remember phone calls in which Mike would say, ‘I can’t keep doing this.’”

Aguillard said in a brief phone conversation that he was hospitalized and could not give an interview. His wife, Judy Aguillard, later texted that “my husband loves Mike and mentored him. They are very close.”

Johnson had raised hopes in Shreveport that his project could be transformative for Louisiana’s third biggest city by bringing in its first law school. Today, civic leaders say that whoever was responsible for the failed effort, it was a significant missed opportunity.

Funding and opening a law school, said a former Shreveport mayor, Democrat Cedric Glover, “is a heavy lift even in the best of circumstances, so success was never a guarantee.”

Jay Adkins, a trustee of the parent school at the time, said in an interview that he was among those shocked at how the plans for the law school had collapsed. For several years, Adkins said, he had been led to believe everything was going perfectly.

“Mike did everything he needed to do to move forward, but Louisiana College got in its own way,” Adkins said. “There were a number of us on the board of trustees who felt duped, we felt misled, we did not receive information we asked for. I can’t say anything to defend Mike in that arena. All I can say is, I felt very similar to how he felt.”

‘One heck of a presentation’

Johnson had raised hopes in his hometown of Shreveport, La., that he could bring the city its first law school. (Rory Doyle for The Washington Post)

Johnson, a Shreveport native, after law school joined a prominent local firm and then became an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian nonprofit that grew up as an answer to the American Civil Liberties Union and is now known as Alliance Defending Freedom.

In that role, he staked out positions that went further to the right than the views of Republican Party leaders, saying gay relationships were “inherently unnatural” and that same-sex marriage threatened democracy. He sought to take a failed quest to allow religious prayer at public meetings in North Carolina all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. He left the group in 2010, according to a spokeswoman.

Soon, he was boosting plans for a law school in Shreveport. He was hired about September 2010 to be the school’s founding dean and joined Aguillard at a ceremony announcing the project.

The school’s concept was to create an army of Christian legal warriors, as laid out by Aguillard, who said at the announcement that the law school would have “a singular focus on Jesus Christ … We will affirm Jesus Christ in every lecture, in every classroom, in every office on every square inch of campus.”

That vision was in line with the traditions of the parent college, which was founded in the early 1900s by a Baptist clergyman. The college had long aspired to open a law school, but those efforts advanced considerably under Aguillard, who became president in 2005.

The law school was to be named for Paul Pressler III, a retired Texas judge and leader of the Southern Baptist Convention who, after the school’s collapse, was accused in a lawsuit and court affidavits of sexual misconduct or assault by multiple men, including some who said they were underage at the time of the alleged activity. Tim Johnson, who was executive vice president of Louisiana College at the time of the law school’s launch, said there was pushback about making Pressler the namesake due to his “ultraconservative” biblical views, but that the assault allegations were unknown at the time.

Pressler’s lawyer, Ted Tredennick, said the 93-year-old was unable to respond directly due to dementia but rejected the assault allegations on his behalf. “He denied those allegations categorically when they were first made 20 years ago; he has continuously and consistently denied them since; he would deny them today if he were able.” A trial in the lawsuit has been delayed but is expected early next year.

Beginning a new law school is a monumental task, requiring the recruitment of faculty, raising funds, creating a curriculum and winning accreditation from the American Bar Association.

The school was to open in 2012 in a Shreveport office building that required extensive renovation, including asbestos removal, a cost borne by Louisiana College. The plan was then to raise at least $20 million and as much as $50 million to support the law school, according to news accounts at the time.

Gabriel Little, who was in charge of the capital campaign, said Johnson led an impressive effort to recruit faculty, create a curriculum, and present a proposal to win certification from the American Bar Association.

“He put together one heck of a presentation for accreditation” by the ABA, Little said.

But as Johnson prepared to do that, he later wrote in his memorandum to trustees, he learned that Louisiana College had run into a roadblock in its own effort to bolster its accreditation status from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Johnson wrote that the college’s problem with accreditation meant he could not win ABA approval for the law school.

Around the same time, the college faced other struggles. As it moved in a more conservative theological direction, its leaders seized on doctrinal disputes within the Southern Baptist convention to discredit critics, sparking protests by students and some faculty.

Rondall Reynoso, a previous head of the college’s art department, said a culture of fear pervaded the campus — to the point that he stopped using his work computer because of concern that he was being surveilled.

“It was an inquisition-type atmosphere, almost,” Reynoso said, attributing the unrest to what he called the undue influence of the Southern Baptist Convention.

A spokeswoman for Louisiana Christian University, as the school is now known, said no one currently in leadership was serving at the time of the failed law school. The new administration, which took over in 2015, “has worked to address previous deficiencies,” the spokeswoman said, resulting in a 2021 review that affirmed the university’s accreditation “with zero findings of noncompliance.”

Johnson wrote in his memo that the “unrest” on campus was shocking, but others said he should have been well aware of the turmoil from news reports about threats to the college’s accreditation.

“By the time Johnson gets involved, the problems are well-known, but they’re dismissed by hardcore conservatives as a liberal attack,” Reynoso said.

At the same time, concern grew at the college about millions of dollars of deferred maintenance at the Pineville campus, raising questions about plans to spend money to start the law school and other projects.

Johnson wrote in his confidential memorandum that Louisiana College’s conflicts undercut his plans and he had “no choice” but to delay the ABA filing. In addition, he needed to provide information from the law school feasibility study to win over the ABA.

The problem was that he had never seen the study, notwithstanding his bold statement more than a year earlier that the school’s feasibility was beyond question.

Johnson wrote that he had long heard about the feasibility study, saying that the college as far back as 2007 had “heavily relied upon” it as part of its decision to open the law school. Indeed, Johnson wrote that the study would be the “most important” part of the accreditation process because both SACS and the ABA were “increasingly reluctant to approve new law schools.” Johnson did not say who wrote the study.

Johnson had to prove the school made financial sense and would have long-term support. He wrote in his memo that he repeatedly asked for the study, but it was never sent to him.

‘Minimize publicity’

Two years after Johnson walked away from a project to open a law school in Shreveport, he was elected to Louisiana state legislature. A year after that, he was elected to the U.S. House. This year, he became speaker. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By February 2012, Johnson said he could wait no longer. He wrote that an aide finally found the study in the bottom two drawers of a filing cabinet at the alumni center.

Johnson had spent the prior year insisting that there was a great need for the law school, that millions of dollars would pour in, and that there were more than enough students to fill it. But in the memo, he said it was “shocking” to read the feasibility study and realize that it undercut his rationale for opening the school, adding in a footnote that he was “deeply disturbed” that most trustees had never seen it.

Information from a solidly researched feasibility study was needed as part of the presentation to the accreditation officials, and now, Johnson wrote in the memo, “Suddenly, we realized we had to create all of this from scratch.”

Adkins said trustees also felt the college leaders did not respond to their inquiries.

“I felt that we asked questions and they were either obfuscated or ignored. There was material we asked for and couldn’t get,” the former trustee said.

Tim Johnson, the former Louisiana College executive vice president, who has no relation to the new House speaker, said in an interview that there were plenty of skeptics about the need for a new law school, but he said he and others were convinced that a Christian-based institution could thrive.

However, he said that when the law school struggled to raise funds, along with the accreditation issues, “Mike probably saw that it was going to be a long time to do it, if it ever got done, and he was a bright young man and just chose to pursue another path.”

On Aug. 15, 2012, Mike Johnson wrote Aguillard a letter of resignation. He said that developments “beyond our control” had affected his ability to run the school, citing the college’s accreditation problems that had made it difficult to raise funds and recruit students and faculty.

“Our hands are currently tied,” Johnson wrote, adding that he needed to look out for his family.

Privately, Johnson worked with the college on a public relations strategy to cast the resignation in the best possible light, according to internal documents reviewed by The Post.

The talking points included, “Minimize publicity on Mike’s resignation and keep all necessary messaging brief, positive and consistent,” and “Do not concede law school, but maintain it as a temporarily delayed and scaled-down future project.”

That didn’t happen. The law school never opened. Johnson, meanwhile, was elected as a state representative and then in 2016 to the U.S. House, followed by his elevation last month to the speakership.

Alice Crites and Michelle Boorstein contributed to this report.


By Michael Kranishis a national political investigative reporter. He co-authored The Post’s biography "Trump Revealed," as well as biographies of John F. Kerry and Mitt Romney. His latest book is "The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor." He previously was the deputy chief of the Boston Globe's Washington bureau. Twitter

By Isaac Stanley-BeckerIsaac  is an investigative reporter on the national staff. Twitter

Ramaswamy campaign hats made in repressive nation with ‘one of the worst governments in the world’

Alexandria Jacobson and Raw Story

“Truth. Vote Vivek.”

Black baseball caps emblazoned with this message made their way around the Iowa State Fair last month, and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy sported the hat before participating in Fox News’ Republican presidential debate held in Milwaukee, Wis., less than two weeks later.

But the hats have a truth of their own.

They’re made in Myanmar, a country rife with human rights atrocities and led by a military junta. The Myanmar military has propagated torture, sexual violence and mass murders, including killing children, according to press accounts and Human Rights Watch.

“It’s clearly one of those countries that’s sliding back on the freedom scale very much so,” said Irina Tsukerman, a foreign policy expert, human rights and national security lawyer and president of communications advisory company, Scarab Rising. “The fact that Vivek has chosen that place as opposed to another country where such issues are not really as prominent, like India or the Philippines maybe, it raises questions why. What is he willing to do for money?”

Ramaswamy’s campaign acknowledged purchasing the hats, explaining that they were from one “rush order for an event.”

“When this was brought to Vivek’s attention, he said we were changing it. He was not aware at all of the source, and it has been changed,” Stefan Mychajliw, deputy communications director for Ramaswamy’s campaign, told Raw Story.

The “Truth. Vote Vivek.” hats are made by a company called Otto, which calls itself “America’s largest source for blank caps and custom headwear.” The caps distributed by the Ramaswamy campaign show tags that say “Made in Myanmar,” and the company’s website also shows images of tags that say “Made in China."

Two Raw Story sources saw the hats in person and confirmed that the labels indicate they were made in Myanmar.

“This is bottom of the barrel,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division for Human Rights Watch. “This is amongst one of the worst governments in the world. It is right at the top of the list of the worst human rights abusers in Asia.”

The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, a London-based nonprofit organization, is just “seeing the tip of the iceberg of allegations” in terms of the labor rights abuses in Myanmar since it tracks such abuses from publicly available news sources, which is limited due to a lack of press freedom in the country, said Natalie Swan, labor rights program manager for the organization.

A tag inside a "Truth. Vote Vivek." hat distributed in Iowa by the Vivek Ramaswamy presidential campaign shows that the cap comes from a company called Otto and was made in Myanmar.

“There's not some special zone where things are better in Myanmar,” Robertson said. “It's not like somehow that Otto is going to be this shining paragon of good practice in a country where the military is controlled and the workers are repressed.”

Members of Otto’s leadership team did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment. Otto has offices in Ontario, Calif.; Arlington, Texas; and Fairburn, Ga.

China-Myanmar relationship

While the choice of where a presidential campaign sources its promotional hats might seem trivial, merchandising “is a very important part of his foreign policy because it normalizes his positions with the public,” Tsukerman said.

Ramaswamy, who is running third behind former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in some recent national polls, wants an “America first” approach to foreign policy, according to an article he wrote for The American Conservative on August 28.


The merchandise for sale on his website also boasts “Made in USA” as a selling point.

Ramaswamy has been particularly critical of China, which has a close relationship with Myanmar. When asked about “Made in America” stickers on The Fifth Column podcast, Ramaswamy said, “I’ve actually called for total decoupling from China, total economic independence from China, not on protectionist grounds at all but on grounds of long run national security … I think it is not good for the long run security interests of the United States when we are dependent economically on our enemy for our modern way of life.”

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Hindu faith is a 'major stumbling block' with evangelical 'Christian nationalists': report   WHY?BOTH ARE FASCIST RELIGIONS

Vivek Ramaswamy in Phoenix in December 2022 (Gage Skidmore)

Ramaswamy says the United States should no longer have economic dependence on China.

“I will admit that it is unacceptably dangerous that so much of our way of life is dependent upon Chinese manufacturing and Taiwanese semiconductors. I will declare economic independence from China,” Ramaswamy wrote in The American Conservative. “I will incentivize American companies to move supply chains away from China and rebase them in allied markets, especially in our own hemisphere, and I will use trade deals as the main way to do it.”

Mychajliw says Ramaswamy’s support for America’s independence from China is unwavering.

“As far as Vivek Ramaswamy is concerned, the major part of his foreign policy platform is declaring independence from China. We cannot be dependent on America's biggest adversary for the shoes on our feet or phones in our pockets. That does not change, and that's very consistent,” Mychajliw told Raw Story.

But factories in Myanmar, which shares a border with China, often are operated by Chinese factory owners, Robertson and Swan said.

China is a strong supporter of Myanmar’s military government, Tsukerman said, with the Council on Foreign Relations writing that China has “gone all in with the Myanmar regime”.

“It's really rather astonishing to me that he would stoop so low to have a piece of merchandise coming from a country that is one of the worst rights abusing situations in the world,” Robertson said. “It boggles the mind, frankly, that somehow they think it's alright to source something like a hat from Myanmar when any sort of brief Google search can come up with a full page of atrocities that have been committed by that military government.”

Ramaswamy’s foreign policy views were called out during the August Republican presidential debate by his challengers.

“You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows,” said Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, The Hill reported. Haley’s campaign did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

 

Republican presidential candidates, Vivek Ramaswamy (L) and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley (R) participate in the first debate of the GOP primary season hosted by FOX News at the Fiserv Forum on Aug. 23, 2023, in Milwaukee, Wis. 

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Former Vice President Mike President, another Republican presidential candidate, said Ramaswamy is “just wrong” on foreign policy on Fox News this week. Pence’s campaign also did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

“It's hypocritical on his part to claim that he wants to move away from China but nevertheless is supporting products in places where China is very dominant, where it basically is behind many of these manufacturing companies,” Tsukerman said.

Last month, Ramaswamy wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that his “progressive ‘elite’ former peers in places like Harvard, Yale & Wall Street” are “dripping sanctimony and condescension toward the so-called ‘rubes’ in the rest of the country.” Minutes later he shared another post with a similar message.

“They remain cloistered in their enclaves and think they’re worldly because they’ve been to London, backpacked in Prague, and took a photo with some starving child in Myanmar — yet they’re downright ignorant, bigoted, and unwilling to hear out their own fellow citizens in their own country. Do that first. Then you can feel good about yourself for going to Haiti or Myanmar *after* that. I know how to give them the dose of reality that they need. I will not be shy about prescribing it,” Ramaswamy wrote.
‘One of the worst governments in the world”

In February 2021 a military coup took place in Myanmar, sending the country into “effective civil war,” where the military has bombed civilians and engaged in” systematic commission of war crimes,” Robertson said.

In April 2023, the military bombed a Myanmar village, killing at least 157 civilians, with at least 25 of them children, the Washington Post reported.

The U.S. State Department has issued a Level 4 travel advisory — it’s most restrictive — for Myanmar, and warns of “significant ongoing challenges and human rights issues” across the nation.

Conditions for garment workers in Myanmar are particularly concerning to human rights activists.

In its August 2023 report, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre describes “gender-based violence, wage violations, unpaid and mandatory overtime, inhumane working conditions and other forms of abuse” as common, with wages around $2 per day.

As for Ramaswamy’s campaign hats, “It is very, very problematic that this is being produced there, and any claim that somehow this was produced under fair conditions, this is produced in a way that was ethical, I think doesn't hold any water,” Robertson said.

Unions aren’t currently allowed in Myanmar, forcing union leaders to flee the country, and protests are put down by military force. Factory owners are supported by the military and take advantage of workers’ poverty and inability to strike, Robertson said.

ALSO READ: Vivek Ramaswamy campaign took money from a notorious Islamophobe

In one case in March 2021, the military massacred at least 65 people as part of a protest by factory workers, Human Rights Watch reported. More than 4,000 pro-democracy activists and civilians have been killed by the junta and nearly 25,000 arrested, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

“You see an immediate crackdown of the right to freedom of association and the right to join and form a trade union in the country, persecution of existing labor rights,” Swan said. “Leaders, you're no longer able to get your union registered in the country, and what that means is that you've lost that foundational framework with which workers can call for better terms and conditions.”

The U.S. Department of State has levied numerous sanctions against Myanmar since 2021.

Trump administration considered ideological ‘screenings’ of noncitizens

ICE examined implications of expelling foreign nationals from the US for their political beliefs, unsealed documents show

Erum Salam

THE GUARDIAN

Mon 6 Nov 2023 

During Donald Trump’s presidency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) considered the implications of expelling foreign nationals from the US for their political beliefs, newly unsealed documents have revealed.

The two memos were written and revised by the US immigration enforcement agency and top White House lawyers in the Trump administration and recently obtained by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute via a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) lawsuit filed in 2017.

The memos examined intentions to perform ideological screenings on foreign nationals in the US, but ultimately concluded such a plan would be illegal to implement.

The first memo addresses constitutional constraints on what the former US president in 2016 called the “extreme vetting” of noncitizens through the use of ideological “screenings tests”.

“It seems likely that at least a large fraction of those aliens located in the United States who would be the subject of the vetting would be able to assert various constitutional rights. We therefore recommend assessing proposals being considered on the assumption that the aliens within the United States are generally protected by the constitution,” it read.

One constraint in particular explored what could happen in the case of mistakenly including an individual on a watchlist. “There may also be claims against programs related to vetting that are targeted against particular individuals or groups, alleging that the targeting itself is on an impermissible basis,” the memo stated.

The second memo addressed more specifically, people who “endorse or espouse terrorism”. It concluded that allowing for the exclusion or removal of these people would be unconstitutional, since a person cannot be targeted based on seemingly expressing support for terrorist-related activity due to their first amendment rights.

The memo reads: “The security-related inadmissibility ground for endorsing or espousing terrorist activity targets speech that demonstrates a degree of public approval or public advocacy for terrorist activity. Depending on an alien’s immigration status, contacts with the United States, and location, first amendment concerns may limit use of this inadmissibility ground.

“In cases involving aliens within the United States interior – lawful permanent residents either inside or outside the United States, or aliens outside the United States who have significant US contacts, first amendment protections could apply.”

The lawsuit was born in the aftermath of then president Trump’s announcement of “extreme vetting” immigrants to the US and the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” – a move that drew the ire of the Muslim American community and civil rights groups.

The goal of the Foia lawsuit was to explore how this policy could be legally justified, lawyers from the Knight First Amendment Institute said.

Under US law, non-US citizens have constitutional rights, including the right to free speech found in the first amendment of the US constitution.

If the policy explored in the memos had gone into effect during Trump’s time in office, foreign student visa holders and other foreign nationals could have been at risk of deportation for expressing attitudes that did not align with those of the US government – a gross violation of the first amendment right to free speech, say legal experts.

Trump vows to expand Muslim ban and bar Gaza refugees if he wins presidency

Carrie DeCell, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute and a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School, said the memos’ revelation is significant in that it lays out in detail why such a policy would be unconstitutional.

DeCell said: “These memos make it clear that government lawyers themselves have carefully considered whether proposals to remove people from the country based on their political speech [and] proposals removing people for endorsing terrorism are constitutional, and they concluded that, in many contexts, the answer is likely no.”

The news of the memos and its conclusions comes at a time when Republican politicians have called for the expulsion of some foreign nationals in the US who have been protesting against the Israeli war in Gaza in the wake of a Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,400 people and saw more than 220 hostages taken. The Israeli military assault on Gaza has now killed more than 9,000 people, many of them children, according to local officials

In an address to his supporters in Iowa last month, Trump, who is the leading Republican presidential candidate for 2024, brought up the idea again and said if he returns to the White House, he would revoke student visas of “radical, anti-American and antisemitic foreigners”.

He also vowed to bar refugees from Gaza, cut off any funding to Palestinians and expand a Muslim ban he tried to implement during his first term that targeted immigrants from several majority-Muslim countries.

Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis, who is also vying for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, also expressed support for deporting international students who he believed support Hamas. DeSantis took action against protesters in his state by banning Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a popular pro-Palestinian student organization, from Florida’s university system.

DeSantis said: “You don’t have a right to be here on a visa. You don’t have a right to be studying in the United States.”

Another Republican presidential candidate, the South Carolina senator Tim Scott, said on an episode of the Sean Hannity radio show: “If any of those students on college campuses are foreign nationals on a visa, they should be sent back to their country.”

Experts fear that such remarks – and the existence of the Ice memos – reveal a continuing desire by rightwing Republicans to bring about such a policy, despite the clear problems outlined in the memos.

They also fear that aside from targeting potential extremists in the US, such a policy would risk also sweeping up many people simply expressing support for Palestinian rights or criticizing Israeli actions or many other political opinions that might be at odds with US government policy.

DeCell said it was a cautionary tale to those considering similar policies.

“These memos speak to the vagueness of the proposals that former President Trump and other Republican candidates have been putting forward to revoke student visas or remove people from the country based on their political speech.”

Americans seem alarmingly open to Trump's 'revenge' campaign: ABC's Jon Karl

Brad Reed

RAW STORY
November 6, 2023

WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 15: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at the Pray Vote Stand Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel on September 15, 2023 in Washington, DC. The summit featured remarks from multiple 2024 Republican Presidential candidates making their case to the conservative audience members.

 (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images).


ABC News' Jonathan Karl on Monday expressed alarm that American voters seem open to giving former President Donald Trump a second term despite his overtly authoritarian calls to enact revenge against a wide array of public figures.

Appearing on "Good Morning America," Karl outlined the dramatic stakes when it comes to the 2024 election.

"I don't think voters have come to terms with what he is talking about doing," he said. "He's talking about a campaign of revenge and retribution... He wants to go out and prosecute his political opponents. Not just Democrats, but people who served him. John Kelly, his former chief of staff, Mattis, his former defense secretary, Bill Barr, his former attorney general."

Karl then questioned Americans whether unhappiness with gas prices was really worth enabling this kind of raw authoritarianism.

"Are voters really ready to sign up for that?" he asked. "He's talking about invoking the Insurrection Act on day one, using American troops on the streets of U.S. cities, something he tried to do when he was president last time but he was stopped by his own people."

Karl concluded with an ominous warning that "this would be a very radical Trump presidency, much more so than even the first one."

Watch the video below or at this link.

Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term

Advisers have also discussed deploying the military to quell potential unrest on Inauguration Day. Critics have called the ideas under consideration dangerous and unconstitutional.


By Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett
Updated November 6, 2023
Washington Post

Former president Donald Trump at the courthouse in Manhattan on Oct. 17. 

(John Taggart for The Washington Post)

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.

In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.

To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.

“It would resemble a banana republic if people came into office and started going after their opponents willy-nilly,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia who studies executive power. “It’s hardly something we should aspire to.

Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.

The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed. In the final year of his presidency, some of Trump’s supporters urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down unrest after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but he never did it. Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force and said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not answer questions about specific actions under discussion. “President Trump is focused on crushing his opponents in the primary election and then going on to beat Crooked Joe Biden,” Cheung said. “President Trump has always stood for law and order, and protecting the Constitution.”

The discussions underway reflect Trump’s determination to harness the power of the presidency to exact revenge on those who have challenged or criticized him if he returns to the White House. The former president has frequently threatened to take punitive steps against his perceived enemies, arguing that doing so would be justified by the current prosecutions against him. Trump has claimed without evidence that the criminal charges he is facing — a total of 91 across four state and federal indictments — were made up to damage him politically.

“This is third-world-country stuff, ‘arrest your opponent,’” Trump said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire in October. “And that means I can do that, too.”

Special counsel Jack Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Biden have all said that Smith’s prosecution decisions were made independently of the White House, in accordance with department rules on special counsels.

Trump, the clear polling leader in the GOP race, has made “retribution” a central theme of his campaign, seeking to intertwine his own legal defense with a call for payback against perceived slights and offenses to right-wing Americans. He repeatedly tells his supporters that he is being persecuted on their behalf and holds out a 2024 victory as a shared redemption at their enemies’ expense.

‘He is going to go after people that have turned on him’

It is unclear what alleged crimes or evidence Trump would claim to justify investigating his named targets.

Kelly said he would expect Trump to investigate him because since his term as chief of staff ended, he has publicly criticized Trump, including by alleging that he called dead service members “suckers.” Kelly added, “There is no question in my mind he is going to go after people that have turned on him.”

Barr, another Trump appointee turned critic, has contradicted the former president’s false claims about the 2020 election and called him “a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country’s.” Asked about Trump’s interest in prosecuting him, Barr deadpanned, “I’m quivering in my boots.”

“Trump himself is more likely to rot in jail than anyone on his alleged list,” said Cobb, who accused Trump of “stifling truth, making threats and bullying weaklings into doing his bidding.”

Milley did not comment.

Then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly listens as then-President Donald Trump leads a working lunch with governors in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in 2018. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Other modern presidents since the Watergate scandal — when Richard M. Nixon tried to suppress the FBI’s investigation into his campaign’s spying and sabotage against Democrats — have sought to separate politics from law enforcement. Presidents of both parties have imposed a White House policy restricting communications with prosecutors. An effort under the George W. Bush administration to remove U.S. attorneys for political reasons led to high-level resignations and a criminal investigation.

Rod J. Rosenstein, the Trump-appointed deputy attorney general who oversaw the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 election, said a politically ordered prosecution would violate the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under law and could cause judges to dismiss the charges. That constitutional defense has rarely been raised in U.S. history, Rosenstein said.

“Making prosecutorial decisions in a nonpartisan manner is essential to democracy,” Rosenstein said. “The White House should not be meddling in individual cases for political reasons.”

But Trump allies such as Russ Vought, his former budget director who now leads the Center for Renewing America, are actively repudiating the modern tradition of a measure of independence for the Department of Justice, arguing that such independence is not based in law or the Constitution. Vought is in regular contact with Trump and would be expected to hold a major position in a second term.

“You don’t need a statutory change at all, you need a mind-set change,” Vought said in an interview. “You need an attorney general and a White House Counsel’s Office that don’t view themselves as trying to protect the department from the president.”

A fixation on prosecuting enemies

As president, Kelly said, Trump would often suggest prosecuting his political enemies, or at least having the FBI investigate them. Kelly said he would not pass along the requests to the Justice Department but would alert the White House Counsel’s Office. Usually, they would ignore the orders, he said, and wait for Trump to move on. In a second term, Trump’s aides could respond to such requests differently, he said.

“The lesson the former president learned from his first term is don’t put guys like me … in those jobs,” Kelly said. “The lesson he learned was to find sycophants.”

Although aides have worked on plans for some other agencies, Trump has taken a particular interest in the Justice Department. In conversations about a potential second term, Trump has made picking an attorney general his number one priority, according a Trump adviser.

“Given his recent trials and tribulations, one would think he’s going to pick up the plan for the Department of Justice before doing some light reading of a 500-page white paper on reforming the EPA,” said Matt Mowers, a former Trump White House adviser.

Jeffrey Clark, a fellow at Vought’s think tank, is leading the work on the Insurrection Act under Project 2025. The Post has reported that Clark is one of six unnamed co-conspirators whose actions are described in Trump’s indictment in the federal election interference case.

Clark was also charged in Fulton County, Georgia, with violating the state anti-racketeering law and attempting to create a false statement, as part of the district attorney’s case accusing Trump and co-conspirators of interfering in the 2020 election. Clark has pleaded not guilty. As a Justice Department official after the 2020 election, Clark pressured superiors to investigate nonexistent election crimes and to encourage state officials to submit phony certificates to the electoral college, according to the indictment.

In one conversation described in the federal indictment, a deputy White House counsel warned Clark that Trump’s refusing to leave office would lead to “riots in every major city.” Clark responded, according to the indictment, “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”

Clark had dinner with Trump during a visit to his Bedminster, N.J., golf club this summer. He also went to Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday for a screening of a new Dinesh D’Souza movie that uses falsehoods, misleading interviews and dramatizations to allege federal persecution of Jan. 6 rioters and Christians. Also attending were fringe allies such as Stephen K. Bannon, Roger Stone, Laura Loomer and Michael Flynn.

“I think that the supposedly independent DOJ is an illusion,” Clark said in an interview. Through a spokeswoman he did not respond to follow-up questions about his work on the Insurrection Act.

Clark’s involvement with Project 2025 has alarmed some other conservative lawyers who view him as an unqualified choice to take a senior leadership role at the department, according to a conservative lawyer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks. Project 2025 comprises 75 groups in a collaboration organized by the Heritage Foundation.

Project 2025 director Paul Dans stood by Clark in a statement. “We are grateful for Jeff Clark’s willingness to share his insights from having worked at high levels in government during trying times,” he said.

After online publication of this story, Rob Bluey, a Heritage spokesman, said: “There are no plans within Project 2025 related to the Insurrection Act or targeting political enemies.”

How a second Trump term would differ from the first

There is a heated debate in conservative legal circles about how to interact with Trump as the likely nominee. Many in Trump’s circle have disparaged what they view as institutionalist Republican lawyers, particularly those associated with the Federalist Society. Some Trump advisers consider these individuals too soft and accommodating to make the kind of changes within agencies that they want to see happen in a second Trump administration.

Trump has told advisers that he is looking for lawyers who are loyal to him to serve in a second term — complaining about his White House Counsel’s Office unwillingness to go along with some of his ideas in his first term or help him in his bid to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

In repeated comments to advisers and lawyers around him, Trump has said his biggest regrets were naming Jeff Sessions and Barr as his attorneys general and listening to others — he often cites the “Federalist Society” — who wanted him to name lawyers with impressive pedigrees and Ivy League credentials to senior Justice Department positions. He has mentioned to several lawyers who have defended him on TV or attacked Biden that they would be a good candidate for attorney general, according to people familiar with his comments.

The overall vision that Trump, his campaign and outside allies are now discussing for a second term would differ from his first in terms of how quickly and forcefully officials would move to execute his orders. Alumni involved in the current planning generally fault a slow start, bureaucratic resistance and litigation for hindering the president’s agenda in his first term, and they are determined to avoid those hurdles, if given a second chance, by concentrating more power in the West Wing and selecting appointees who will carry out Trump’s demands.

Trump speaks with staff members backstage following a campaign event at the Kingswood Arts Center on Oct. 9 in Wolfeboro, NH. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Those groups are in discussions with Trump’s campaign advisers and occasionally the candidate himself, sometimes circulating policy papers or draft executive orders, according to people familiar with the situation.


“No one is opposed to them putting together ideas, but it’s not us,” a campaign adviser said. “These groups say they’ll have the whole transition planned. Some of those people I’m sure are good and Trump will appoint, but it’s not what is on his mind right now. I’m sure he’d be fine with some of their orders.”

Trump’s core group of West Wing advisers for a second term is widely expected to include Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies including family separation, who has gone on to challenge Biden administration policies in court through a conservative organization called America First Legal. Miller did not respond to requests for comment.

Alumni have also saved lists of previous appointees who would not be welcome in a second Trump administration, as well as career officers they viewed as uncooperative and would seek to fire based on an executive order to weaken civil service protections.

For other appointments, Trump would be able to draw on lineups of personnel prepared by Project 2025. Dans, a former Office of Personnel Management chief of staff, likened the database to a “conservative LinkedIn,” allowing applicants to present their resumes on public profiles, while also providing a shared workspace for Heritage and partner organizations to vet the candidates and make recommendations.


“We don’t want careerists, we don’t want people here who are opportunists,” he said. “We want conservative warriors.”


Marianne LeVine and Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.