Journalists and Expert Covering the Billionaires Behind the Douglas County Cabal

Jane Mayer is one of America's Greatest Investigative Reporters.  

Jane is  the author of four best-selling books, including Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, which the New York Times named as one of the ten best books of 2016.

JSNE rates Mayer's Dark Money as the single most important political analysis of modern American politics.

Bill Moyers: "Jane Mayer argues that what we once knew as the Republican Party is, in effect, being supplanted by a private party of billionaires who use its machinery but have little use for the traditional political tools of compromise and negotiation. Why? Because they want what they want, hate government and don’t really care if it works."  

Jane Mayer has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. The magazine’s chief Washington correspondent, she covers politics, culture, and national security. 

YouTube Recorded Feb 12, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8XcLHdejHQ&t=653s  

A New Yorker staff writer since 1995, investigative journalist Jane Mayer is renowned for her headlong plunges into the murky waters of national security, public relations in U.S. politics, governmental prosecution of whistleblowers, and other sensitive topics. She has written the bestselling nonfiction books Landslide, Strange Justice, and The Dark Side, an account of America’s self-destructive decisions in the War on Terror. For these landmark works she has won a slew of accolades, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ridenhour Prize, and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Dark Money tells the story of the ultra-wealthy’s systematic plan to subvert and fundamentally alter the American political system.  In conversation with Dick Polman, "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania, and national political columnist at WHYY's Newsworks.org. 

New Yorker August 2, 2021 by Jane Mayer

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-money-behind-the-big-lie

Dark-money organizations, sustained by undisclosed donors, have relentlessly promoted the myth that American elections are rife with fraud, and, according to leaked records of their internal deliberations, they have drafted, supported, and in some cases taken credit for state laws that make it harder to vote. 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island who has tracked the flow of dark money in American politics, told me that a “flotilla of front groups” once focused on advancing such conservative causes as capturing the courts and opposing abortion have now “more or less shifted to work on the voter-suppression thing.” These groups have cast their campaigns as high-minded attempts to maintain “election integrity,” but Whitehouse believes that they are in fact tampering with the guardrails of democracy. 

The New Yorker August 23, 2010  By Jane Mayer  

"From 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. 

The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement.  

 The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. " 

Democracy Now:  3/29/2017 Full interview with the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer about her new article, "The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency: How Robert Mercer Exploited America’s Populist Insurgency." 

Today, Jane Mayer on Robert Mercer, the reclusive hedge fund billionaire who helped Trump win the White House. Some say he and his daughter Rebekah out-Koched the Koch brothers. For years, the Mercers bankrolled Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News and other right-wing organizations. Now, allies of the Mercers control the White House. We’ll speak with investigative reporter Jane Mayer about her new piece in The New Yorker and hear excerpts of one of Robert Mercer’s only public appearances." 

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Stanley is the author of  How Propaganda Works, which won the PROSE Award for Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers. He writes about authoritarianism, propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, and other topics. 

Jason Stanley provides haunting insights into the communication tools employed by the right-wing propaganda machine behind Donald Trump and MAGA. Stanley forcefully presents the case that Trump's methods are not new or unique; in fact, Trump uses the same strategies and tactics used by Hitler, Mussolini and other modern despots.  

YouTube Interview, Jason Stanley on The Big Think

Fascism is a cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by immigrants, leftists, liberals, minorities, homosexuals, women, in the face of what the fascist leader says is a takeover of the country’s media, cultural institutions, schools by these forces. 

Fascist movements typically, though not invariably, rest on an urban/rural divide. The cities are where there’s decadence, where the elites congregate, where there’s immigrants, and where there’s criminality. 

Each of these individuals alone is not in and of itself fascist, but you have to worry when they’re all grouped together, seeing the other as less than. Those moments are the times when societies need to worry about fascism.

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Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley sees January 6, 2021 as part of a history of fascist impulses in American politics. This is the focus of his book "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them." His latest article in The Guardian is titled “America is now in fascism’s legal phase.” Stanley speaks with Michel Martin about what he calls an “extremely critical moment” for democracy around the world.  Originally aired on January 6, 2022. 

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We set out to examine topics like the historical roots of white supremacy in the U.S., the process of radicalization, the mechanisms of ideological spread, and the growing legitimacy of far-right ideologies due to its permeation through many aspects of our daily lives. Scholars will present their research in panels, taking questions from the audience; followed by practitioners and policymakers leading conversations that put scholarship into practice. The symposium will conclude with a final panel that will invite the presenters, responders, and audience to brainstorm ways in which we can all challenge, in our own ways and in our own corners of the world, the far-right movement.  

About Seth Abramson. "Seth is an attorney, professor, New York Times-bestselling author, Newsweek political columnist, editor, award-winning poet, cultural critic, and curatorial journalist who has authored eighteen books. He has been a culture columnist at Indiewire and the Huffington Post, teaches post-internet cultural theory at University of New Hampshire, and is one of the foremost American advocates of the cultural paradigm known as metamodernism—a subject on which he’s authored both popular and academic articles.In 2017, Josh Meyering of Journalists, which named Seth one of the “most respected” journalists in either the United States or United Kingdom—one of only nine freelancers in either nation so honored—for his political columns. Other 2018 NCTJ honorees included Pulitzer Prize winners Ronan Farrow and Bob Woodward and Emmy- and, then the Senior Investigative Reporter with Politico, called Seth “one hell of an investigative journalist.” Meyer’s assessment was shortly thereafter endorsed by the National Council for the Train Murrow Award-winning reporter Christiane Amanpour."  

PROOF - June 17, 2021
From Eric Trump to the State Department, paramilitaries to pro-Trump rappers, Trump lawyers to Stop the Steal, this portrait of the ties of an invitee to an Insurrection Week "war room" is telling.
Joe Oltmann said it was a “lie” to call Rudy Giuliani’s suite of offices at the Willard Hotel in DC a “war room”, though it was described as such by Oltmann associate and Trump lawyer John Eastman, who appears alongside Oltmann in the war room photo.

 So who is Joe Otto/Joe Oltmann, besides a Trump supporter who appears to—much like others involved in the Willard Hotel war room on January 6, including Eastman, Hyde, Rudy Giuliani, Maria Ryan, Christina Bobb, Russell Ramsland Jr., and, per Oltmann, as many as twenty-three other people—accuse anyone who disagrees with him of being a secret member of what he calls a “terrorist” group (i.e., antifa)?

Joe Oltmann is a tech millionaire who resigned his position at PIN Business Network while he was in Washington working in Trump’s war room during Insurrection Week. More importantly for the investigation Proof is now conducting regarding wealthy, powerful, and or influential individuals in any way associated with any of the events of Insurrection Week, Oltmann is a co-founder of FEC United (“Faith, Education, and Commerce United”), which has in the past issued joint statements with—and presently shares a website with—the United American Defense Force (UADF), which advertises itself as “offering protection and support when first responders are unwilling or unable to fulfill their civic duties.”

Proof | June 17, 2022 | Seth Abramson

Ginni Thomas may also be further implicated in the January 6 conspiracy as a result of Trump attorney Eastman’s disastrous attempts at damage control using the very platform you’re reading right now. And former Donald Trump lawyer John Eastman, the newly minted Substack author in question, has indeed now chosen to do so.

And he’s done so with what is undoubtedly the strangest—and most ill-considered—essay ever published on the website you’re reading right now. While a few outlets have reported on this essay in passing in the last 24 hours, none have exposed or sought to expose its function as a series of inadvertent and historic confessions by a man who may be the most infamous future federal defendant whose name is not Donald Trump.

 Proof | Feb 3, 2023 | Seth Abramson
Highlight: "In the case of the 132-page federal testimony of Julie Jenkins Fancelli—the Donald Trump mega-donor who almost single-handedly bankrolled the January 6 White House Ellipse rally and march on the U.S. Capitol.   But as was the case with (again) Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle associate—you may be seeing a trend here—Charlie Kirk, who also pleaded the Fifth Amendment, Fancelli revealed much more than she might have intended simply by showing up to be questioned by Congress. Why? Because the many, many questions asked of her by lawyers from the now-disbanded House January 6 Committee comprise a stunning compendium of evidence compiled by the Committee before its investigation ended in December 2022."  

 Proof | Jan 14, 2023 |  Seth Abramson
In “The January 6 Files #2: Ginni Thomas, Part I,” an ex-federal criminal investigator and criminal defense lawyer whose January 6 research Congress has cited unpacks January 6 evidence others missed. Before the January 6 testimony of Ginni Thomas can be discussed as to its specifics, several broader points about her September 29, 2022 appearance before the House January 6 Committee must be established that confirm it as perhaps the strangest—and most suspicious—testimony ever received by the Committee. The Tense, Bizarre Federal Testimony of Ginni ThomasIn view of all the foregoing, it should be little surprise that Ginni Thomas executes her testimony as exactly the high-level political operator she is. While you can read much more about her work with controversial far-right entities like Groundswell and the Council for National Policy and Liberty Consulting and CrowdSourcers and CAP Action and Hillsdale College and Frontliners and The Heritage Foundation and The Daily Caller here and here, suffice to say that Thomas is one of the best-connected far-right activists in Washington—and as knowledgeable about how to exploit America’s political and legal processes as anyone in the nation’s capital. 

 Proof  | Jan 11, 2023 | Seth Abramson
Highlight:  In “The January 6 Files #1: Charlie Kirk,” a former federal criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney whose January 6 research Congress often cites unpacks January 6 evidence others missed.The evidence is quickly mounting—after the public release of over a hundred January 6 witness transcripts by the House January 6 Committee in the final hours of 2022—that the plot to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 had its origin in the Turning Point USA “Student Action Summit” (SAS) that was held just four miles from Mar-a-Lago between December 19 and December 22 of 2020.Hours before that raucous far-right conference began, then-President of the United States Donald Trump—at the time just 72 hours from flying to Mar-a-Lago himself—infamously announced his endorsement of a “big” and “wild” event (which he termed a “protest”) that was slated to occur a nine-minute walk from the Capitol on January 6.Documentary evidence now confirms that this December 2020 Mar-a-Lago-adjacent summit, which featured Trump himself as well as Trump family members and leading congressional allies, was used to shape the planning, funding, and logistics of a rally and subsequent march in January 2021—a rally and march that in turn helped set off an armed insurrection of a sort not seen in the United States since the American Civil War.
 

Proof | December 12, 2022 | Seth Abramson

Highlight: "Many Americans have forgotten that perhaps Trump’s most egregious pre-election statement about the 2020 vote didn’t involve asking China for illegal aid, but inciting Americans to commit voter fraud.

As the New York Times reports, on September 2, 2020, Trump stunned journalists on an airport tarmac in North Carolina by using a nationally televised press availability to urge voters (presumably in particular those Republican Party voters likely to listen to his public entreaties) to commit voter fraud—specifically, the serious federal felony of deliberately voting more than once. Needless to say, double-voting inflates the vote count for the candidate for whom it’s done and can invalidate election-day vote tallies."

YouTube Video Series
"Senator Sheldon Whitehouse turns his attention to the right-wing scheme to capture the courts, and how it influenced the Trump administration’s appointment of over 230 “business-friendly” judges, including the last three justices of the United States Supreme Court.
Whitehouse traces the motive to control the court system back to Lewis Powell’s notorious memo, which gave a road map for corporate influence to target the judiciary, and chronicles a hidden-money campaign using an armada of front groups and helped by the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court decision.
The scheme utilized the Federalist Society as an appointments turnstile, spent secret millions to support the nominees, orchestrated an “amicus brief” signaling apparatus, and propped up front-group litigants to “fast-lane” strategic test cases to the friendly justices.
Whitehouse finds the same small handful of right-wing billionaires and corporations running operations that he likens to “covert ops,” ultimately enticing the Senate to break rules, norms, and precedents to confirm wildly inappropriate nominees who would advance the anti- government agenda of a small number of corporate oligarchs." 

  Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Sheldon Whitehouse join MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss the effect dark money is having on federal courts. Sen. Whitehouse also says the Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices are “doing the bidding of very big special interests that spent millions of dollars in dark money to put them on the court.”  

 December 20 | Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) takes to the Senate floor to discuss the threat to democracy posed by dark money political spending and the captured Supreme Court. 

Bob Woodward is an American investigative journalist. He started working for The Washington Post as a reporter in 1971.  While a reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Woodward teamed up with Carl Bernstein, and the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal.

THE TRUMP TAPES is the intimate and astonishing audio archive of Bob Woodward’s 20 interviews with Donald Trump. 

Featuring more than eight hours of Woodward/Trump conversations, THE TRUMP TAPES is as historically important as the Frost/Nixon interviews.  In this up-close, unvarnished self-portrait of Trump and his presidency, listeners will hear Trump as Woodward did: profane, incautious, divisive, and deceptive, but also engaging and entertaining, ever the host and the salesman, trying to sell his presidency to win Woodward over.

The Washington Post 

"In more than 50 years of reporting, I have never disclosed the raw interviews or full transcripts of my work. But after listening again to the 20 interviews I conducted with President Donald Trump during his last year as chief executive, I have decided to take the unusual step of releasing them. I was struck by how Trump pounded in my ears in a way the printed page cannot capture. " Bob Woodward, 2023

YouTube Nov 19,2023

Trump 'failed' & is unfit: Bob Woodward reveals WH reporting in Melber ‘Summit Series.

 In this special extended interview, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward discusses his celebrated White House journalism from Nixon to Biden; why Donald Trump poses a particular challenge to the U.S. and journalistic tradition; how he tries to build trust with sources and subjects while maintaining independence; how his legendary career took him from beats as varied as the White House, Pentagon, Supreme Court and 'Saturday Night Live,' and why he's found reporting is “always hard.” Woodward sat for the free-wheeling interview in his Washington home with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, and shared some archival and source material from his past books, for this new installment of The Summit Series with Ari Melber, featuring discussions with leaders at the summit of their fields. 

The New Yorker  By Susan B. Glasser September 10, 2020
Reality, in the form of the President’s own words, taped by the journalist Bob Woodward with Trump’s permission, had intruded. The coronavirus was “deadly,” he had told Woodward, on February 7th, “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.” As we now all know, Trump then spent the next month publicly downplaying the danger, telling Americans the exact opposite of what he had privately confided to Woodward.