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Michigan Sen. Lana Theis, apparently feeling the heat in a primary race against Republican real estate manager Mike Detmer, took multiple shots against Democratic State Sen. Mallory McMorrow in a fundraising email campaign. According to screenshots of the emails shared on Twitter, Theis called Democrats like McMorrow “trolls” and “groomers” and accused them of sexualizing children for supporting education on systemic racism and LGBTQ+ rights. Theis introduced legislation to block transgender athletes from competing with the high school sports teams that correspond with their gender, according to the news nonprofit Michigan Advance.
“These are the people we are up against,” Theis stated in her email. “Progressive social media trolls like Senator Mallory McMorrow [D-Snowflake] who are outraged they can’t teach can’t groom and sexualize kindergarteners or that 8-year olds are responsible for slavery.”

Many a Democrat, McMorrow included, has called out this kind of cheap politicization of American history education. And after seeing McMorrow’s response to Theis’ attempt at it, it’s safe to say the Republican senator picked the wrong Democrat to try to make an example out of.

RELATED STORY: Michigan state senator: GOP lawmaker who made sexist remark to reporter sexually harassed me, too

Republicans have misrepresented Black history education as an outgrowth of critical race theory, a framework for interpreting law that maintains racism’s reach has had particularly harmful effects on the legal system and laws that govern our society. The theory would be almost exclusively confined to law school courses and the like if not for Republican fearmongers randomly asserting that it is being used to indoctrinate K-12 students.

McMorrow’s speech, initially made before her state Senate colleagues and shared on Twitter Tuesday, reinforced progressive Democrats’ message that attempting to eliminate the histories of people of color and other marginalized citizens of this country will not be tolerated. 

Because it’s worth it, read every word:

Thank you, Mr. President,

I didn’t expect to wake up yesterday to the news that the senator from the 22nd district had overnight accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an email fundraising for herself. So I sat on it for a while, wondering why me, and then I realized, because I am the biggest threat to your hollow hateful scheme, because you can’t claim that you are targeting marginalized kids in the name of quote, parental rights if another parent is standing up to say ‘no.’ So then what? 

Then you dehumanize and marginalize me. You say that I’m one of them. You say, ‘she’s a groomer. She supports pedophilia. She wants children to believe that they were responsible for slavery and to feel bad about themselves because they’re white.’

Well, here’s a little bit of background about who I really am. Growing up, my family was very active in our church. I sang in the choir. My mom taught CCD. One day, our priest called a meeting with my mom and told her that she was not living up to the church’s expectations and that she was disappointing. My mom asked why. Among other reasons, she was told it was because she was divorced and because the priest didn’t see her at mass every Sunday.

So where was my mom on Sundays? She was at the soup kitchen with me. My mom taught me at a very young age that Christianity and faith was about being part of a community; about recognizing our privilege and blessings; and doing what we can to be of service to others, especially people who are marginalized, targeted, and who had less often unfairly.

I learned that service was far more important than performative nonsense, like being seen in the same pew every Sunday or writing Christian in your Twitter bio and using that as a shield to target and marginalize already marginalized people. I also stand on the shoulders of people like father Ted Hesburgh, the longtime president of the University of Notre Dame, who was active in the Civil Rights Movement, who recognized his power and privilege as a white man, a faith leader, and the head of an influential and well-respected institution. And who saw Black people in this country being targeted and discriminated against and beaten and reached out to lock arms with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he was alive, when it was unpopular and risky, and marching, alongside them to say, ‘we’ve got you.’ To offer protection and service and allyship to try to write the wrongs and fix injustice in the world.

So who am I? I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows that the very notion that learning about slave slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense. No child alive today is responsible for slavery. No one in this room is responsible for slavery, but each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history. Each and every single one of us decides what happens next and how we respond to history and the world around us.

We are not responsible for the past. We all also cannot change the past. We can’t pretend that it didn’t happen or deny people their very right to exist. I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom. I want my daughter to know that she is loved, supported, and seen for whoever she becomes. I want her to be curious, empathetic, and kind.

People who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape after decades of disinvestment or that healthcare costs are too high or that teachers are leaving the profession. I want every child in this state to feel seen, heard, and supported, not marginalized and targeted because they are not straight white and Christian. We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people’s lives. And I know that hate will only win, if people like me stand by, let it happen.

So I want to be very clear right now. Call me whatever you want. I hope you brought in a few dollars. I hope it made you sleep good last night. I know who I am. I know what faith and service means and what it calls for in this moment. We will not let hate win.

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An implausible, fraudulent, and unconstitutional legal scheme to reverse the 2020 election has become the most recent rallying cry of Donald Trump’s allies, even as some of them have attracted federal scrutiny for their initial attempts to overturn the election.

The new scheme is a familiar one, revolving around the notion that state lawmakers hold the authority to choose alternate electors—even after certification of the Electoral College—if they find irregularities sufficient enough to have affected the outcome. But while the effort is conceivably aimed at overturning 2020, the real target is providing a framework that can be quickly implemented in case of a Republican loss in 2024.

“At the moment, there is no other way to say it: This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy,” J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative lawyer and former appeals court judge, told The New York Times. “Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency.”

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John Eastman, the fringe lawyer who convinced Donald Trump the election could be overturned, once clerked for Luttig and is now actively pushing state lawmakers in several swing states to act on the retroactive plan. At the same time, a federal judge last month declared Eastman’s scheme “a coup in search of a legal theory,” said Trump “likely” committed crimes trying to overturn 2020, and ordered Eastman to turn over a tranche of emails to the select committee investigating Jan. 6. Eastman, however, is still withholding some 37,000 pages of coup plotting from the panel.

Despite his potential legal liabilities from 2020, Eastman is also central to the ongoing effort to keep his theory of the coup alive in the hearts and minds of Trump cultists and lawmakers across the country. The fellow hucksters hawking Eastman’s fraudulent plan are also a familiar band: pillow guy Mike Lindell; disgraced former national security adviser and right-wing icon Mike Flynn; former White House aide who’s also withholding information from the Jan. 6 panel, Steve Bannon; and former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn.

Eastman’s latest handiwork is perhaps most evident in the battleground state of Wisconsin, where his fringe theory has taken hold and absolutely no one can disabuse Trump cultists of it.

Wisconsin Assembly GOP Speaker Robin Vos has been all but swallowed alive by Eastman’s plot. Vos originally sought to appease Trumpers last year by launching an Arizona-style fraudit of 2020 with an estimated $680,000 price tag for taxpayers. But the sham audit only served to foster more conspiracy-fueled distrust among Trump supporters.

A couple months ago, Vos spent nearly an hour on a conservative radio show trying to deflect callers’ claims that state lawmakers could decertify the 2020 election.

“It is impossible—it cannot happen,” Vos told listeners. “I don’t know how many times I can say that.”

The state legislature’s attorneys have likewise affirmed, “There is no mechanism in state or federal law for the Legislature to reverse certified votes cast by the Electoral College and counted by Congress.”

Still, “Toss Vos” has now become a rallying cry on the right. Vos was also held in contempt of court late last month for withholding documents related to the Assembly’s supposed investigation of 2020 voter fraud.

Vos, who met last month with Eastman and decertify activists, is a classic lesson in appeasement of Trump’s corruption: It quickly turns one dying rose into a thicket of thorns down the road.

But Wisconsin isn’t alone. Similar schemes are being promoted in some form or another in Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan. The chances of any of them ever overturning the 2020 election are zero, but that’s not the point. The point is keeping that frothy dream alive among Trumpers.  

“We are on a full, full freight train to decertify,” Epshteyn told Bannon in January on his War Room podcast. “That’s what we’re going to get. Everyone knows. Everyone knows this election was stolen.”

The long-term consequences of that fringe-favorite fever dream will likely haunt U.S. elections for years, if not decades. The short-term electoral impact in a place like Wisconsin, however, remains to be seen. At least some reality-based voters who lean conservative could be turned off by a Republican Party divided against itself over yet another Trump-fueled controversy.  

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It appears Wells Fargo is starting to reap what it sows. New York City announced on April 8 that it is refusing to open new accounts with the financial company after a Bloomberg News study showed that the bank rejected more than half of its Black applicants looking to refinance their homes in 2020.

City Council Member Justin Brannan, chair of the committee on finance, called the disparity “indefensible” and “outrageous” in a news release from the mayor’s office. “In a world where we already expect big banks to flout the law and make their own rules, Wells Fargo really outdid themselves,” he said. “Over the past two years – of all the major mortgage lenders – Wells Fargo was alone in rejecting more Black homeowners than it accepted. These brazen and illegal discriminatory actions have no place in New York City.”

RELATED STORY: Wells Fargo is back with even more abuse for would-be customer

Brannan’s remarks were on par with many of the comments from city officials included in the release.

In a letter to Wells Fargo CEO & President Charles Scharf, Mayor Eric Adams and Comptroller Brad Lander stated:

“As the Mayor and Comptroller of New York City, a diverse community where Black homeowners own and are the primary residents of more than a quarter of two-to-four person homes, we are both gravely concerned about the recent report in Bloomberg that Wells Fargo rejected over half of Black applicants seeking to refinance their homes in 2020 while approving over 70% of white applicants.

“These disparate mortgage practices, layered upon a checkered history of steering homeowners of color into subprime mortgages, rejecting mortgages in redlined neighborhoods, and numerous outstanding consent decrees pertaining to mortgage practices, require a swift response by both your bank and stakeholders.

“In light of this persisting track record of discrimination, New York City will not be opening any new depository accounts with Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. as we continue to investigate these troubling findings.”

Wells Fargo’s history of discriminatory lending accusations is not recent.

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in May 2017 that he and then-Comptroller Scott Stringer would vote to “prohibit New York City from entering into new contracts for deposits with Wells Fargo, as well as suspend the bank’s role as a senior book-running manager for NYC General Obligation and Transactional Finance Authority bond sales.”

That year, Wells Fargo earned federal feedback that the company “needs improvement.” The Federal Community Reinvestment Act requires the Federal Reserve and other regulators to encourage banks to meet the credit needs of those earning low and moderate incomes in the communities those banks do business in.

“The rules are very clear: if you fall below ‘satisfactory,’ we will no longer do banking business with you,” de Blasio said at the time. “I encourage Wells Fargo to quickly clean up its act and do right by the millions of customers who trust the bank with their savings. Until then, we will not be entering new contracts with the bank.”

Wells Fargo apparently didn’t change enough to halt years of continued allegations of discriminatory lending. 

In 2020, the same year that Wells Fargo agreed to pay $7.8 million in back wages and interest to resolve allegations of hiring discrimination, the company approved only 47% of refinancing applications launched by Black homeowners, according to the Bloomberg News report. That approval number for white homeowners was 72%.

In a statement emailed to Daily Kos last month, Wells Fargo said the “recent media story ignored critical information known to the authors about Wells Fargo’s strong track record of lending to Black homeowners and the full range of our efforts underway to help meet the homeownership needs of diverse customers.” The company accused Bloomberg of relying “on an analysis designed to present a skewed picture” of its lending efforts.

“The same data source used in the reporting—from lenders’ Home Mortgage Disclosure Act filings—shows that Wells Fargo originated more home loans to Black and Hispanic customers than any other bank over the last 10 years,” the company claimed. “The approximately 8,400 mortgage refinances we provided to Black homeowners in 2020 were more than any of the largest banks—a crucial fact never mentioned in the story—and in 2021 we increased that total by 88% and provided more than 15,700 mortgage refinances to Black homeowners.”

Wells Fargo touted programs aimed at making homes accessible to low- and moderate-income families and a goal to pursue more than $185 billion in “diverse lending commitments.”

The company did not detail how many Black applicants specifically were approved to participate in the programs compared to white applicants. Nor did it address the question of why a greater disparity exists at Wells Fargo between white and Black customers looking to refinance.

The business didn’t immediately respond to Daily Kos’ latest request for comment.

Tuesday, Apr 19, 2022 · 7:38:20 PM +00:00 · Lauren Sue

Wells Fargo released this statement in response to Mayor Adams’ announcement:

“We are deeply disappointed that Mayor Adams and Comptroller Lander would publish a press release like this based solely on a news report. More specifically, we are deeply disturbed by irresponsible allegations of discrimination that we believe do not stand up to scrutiny. We are confident that we follow relevant GSE guidelines in our decision making and that our underwriting practices are consistently applied regardless of a customer’s race or ethnicity. We do not believe that these claims are based on factual analysis. We welcome the opportunity to correct the record with city officials.

In 2020, Wells Fargo was the largest bank lender of purchase and refinances to Black families and this is consistent with our performance over the last decade (2011 – 2020), in which Wells Fargo helped as many Black families purchase homes as the next three largest bank lenders combined.

In addition:

• Wells Fargo helped more Black homeowners refinance their mortgages in 2020 than any other bank.
• The 83% increase in the company’s refinance loans to Black homeowners in 2020 compared with 2019 also was by far the biggest gain among the largest banks.
• In 2021, Wells Fargo increased that total by 106% compared to 2020.
• In 2020, if you include loans originated and loans purchased from correspondent sellers, Wells Fargo funded twice as many loans overall to Black customers as the next largest bank funder.

Unfounded attacks on Wells Fargo by the city stand in stark contrast to the significant long-term investments Wells Fargo has made including $1.3 billion through the New York City Housing and Development Corporation to finance more than 92 affordable housing projects; $33 million in Open for Business Fund grants to Community Development Financial Institutions and non-profits; and $19 million to support nonprofits in all five boroughs. While some other large companies have been shrinking their New York presence, Wells Fargo has meaningfully increased its headcount over the past 12 months.

Minority home-ownership and access to financing is a significant problem in this country, and Wells Fargo has been and remains committed to being a leader in taking action to help close this and other racial equity gaps.”

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The news has been terrible of late, full of war and bloodshed and an unending series of American meatheads and godbotherers combing through libraries to find new books to ban, so here’s a moment of actual good news to bask in for a moment. Remember Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again PAC,” aka the remnants of his campaign fundraising committee? It reported yet another loss this last fundraising quarter, and at the rate things are going, it will run dry of cash in just a few more quarters.

Instead, Trump’s MAGA PAC has been reduced to that most primal of all Donald Trump-adjacent schemes. It’s an entity that pays Donald’s legal bills so that Donald doesn’t have to. The people still donating to Donald Trump can be assured that little to none of their money will be going to Make America Great Again. Nope! They’re just acting as Donald’s walking checkbooks.

The Daily Beast reports that MAGA PAC lost $1.2 million in 2022’s first quarter, the third straight quarter of deficit. $1.1 million of that loss was “legal fees.” The PAC now has roughly $5.5 million of remaining cash on hand, which means that if their fundraising efforts continue to (ahem) suck, they won’t have any cash left to pay Donald’s legal bills around this time next year. That’s assuming that Donald does not start ordering his lawyers to screw around with challenges to whatever midterm voting totals his most devoted suck-ups convince him are “suspicious.” We all know the chance of Donald not ordering spurious election challenges is approximately zero, so long as he personally doesn’t have to write the checks.

It may be a way to the 2024 presidential season, but these aren’t the fundraising numbers of someone who’s trying to retain his status as the King of Republicanism. This is just Donald scraping up whatever’s left in the cash barrels to throw towards his lawyers.

Trump continues to have a whole lot of legal expenses for a whole lot of things. He has to defend himself against evidence-gathering probes of his role in a violent assault on Congress. He’s got New York investigators breathing down his neck for that whole lifetime-of-financial-crimes bit. But he’s also got to pay all the lawyers filing asinine claims disputing the results of his election losses.

So yeah, there you go. It’s not so much a Make America Great Again fundraising PAC as it is a Pay Donald’s Legal Defenses PAC, and while there are apparently still enough Trump allies around to have given the PAC $1.4 million in donations last quarter, that’s … not a lot, right? It feels conspicuously like the whole thing’s coasting on Trump voters who forgot to uncheck the “donate this amount every month” box on one of Trump’s dodgy fundraising sites and now don’t even know they’re being charged.

There you go, then. Some genuinely good news. Donald Trump’s Pay My Legal Bills PAC is running so dry that it will soon not be able to pay Donald’s legal bills, all the money it is raising is coming from pro-Trump Americans who we don’t have to feel bad for because they chose to be scammed of their own free will, and Donald will have to spend actual effort coming up with a new grift. Maybe he’ll form a new PAC, one with blackjack and overpriced drinks. Maybe he’ll turn Mar-a-Lago into an unlicensed casino.

He’s fortunate he’s turned the whole Republican National Committee into a cash machine for the rest of his legal bills, because with all the criminal and civil probes poking at him those bills will be going away approximately never. And maybe the even the Republican National Committee will at some point figure that out, and maybe they won’t. It’s no skin off our noses. If they want to spend less money on getting Republicans elected and more money on Donald Trump’s personal legal grooming, who are we to object.

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A federal judge will allow a group of Georgia voters to move forward with a case to disqualify Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for a second term, arguing that her role in the Jan. 6 insurrection disallows her from appearing on the ballot.

The ruling reads that Greene “voluntarily aided and engaged in an insurrection to obstruct the peaceful transfer of presidential power, disqualifying her from serving as a Member of Congress under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment …”

RELATED STORY: Marjorie Taylor Greene suggests it’s ‘wise’ to ban Democrats who move to red states from voting

Judge Amy Totenberg, a President Barack Obama appointee, also denied Greene’s request for an injunction and temporary restraining order, The New York Times reports. Greene’s attorney has argued that without the injunction, the case is unlikely to be resolved before the May 24 primaries, putting her in further jeopardy of having her name in the running.  

“After a thorough analysis of the evidentiary and legal issues presented in this complex matter involving unsettled questions of law, the Court finds Plaintiff has not carried her heavy burden to establish a strong likelihood of success on the legal merits in this case,” Totenberg wrote in the 73-page ruling.

The challenge was filed with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger by five voters represented by Free Speech for People, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded in 2010 offering legal assistance with a focus on election and constitutional issues.

In a news release, one of the voters named in the challenge, Michael Rasbury, said: “Everything I’ve read says Rep. Greene was involved in the Jan. 6th insurrection that was trying to override everything I believe in — Our Constitution, how we run elections, and how our government is set up … She should not be on the ballot.”

In an email to the Times, Ron Fein, the legal director of Free Speech for People, applauded Totenberg’s latest ruling.

“Judge Totenberg’s well-reasoned opinion explains why the Georgia voters who filed this challenge against Greene have the right to have their challenge heard, and why none of Greene’s objections to the Georgia state challenge have any merit,” Fein wrote. “At the hearing on Friday, we look forward to questioning Greene under oath about her involvement in the events of Jan. 6, and to demonstrating how her facilitation of the insurrection disqualifies her from public office under the United States Constitution.”

Greene, 47, an openly unapologetic Trump bootlicker, has denied being involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection on the Capitol, and no evidence has linked her to the attack from Congress, the Jan. 6 congressional committee, or law enforcement.

“This is fundamentally antidemocratic,” said Greene’s attorney, James Bopp Jr., adding that the congresswoman has “publicly and vigorously condemned the attack on the Capitol.”

She has, however, made a lot of ridiculous and incendiary comments. Just this month, she told NBC News: “The American people are fed up with this over-dramatization of a riot that happened here at the Capitol one time … They are sick and tired of Jan. 6 — it’s over, OK?”

On Jan. 5, 2021, Greene appeared on Newsmax for a Facebook Watch interview where she proclaimed that the next day when Congress was meeting in a joint session to formally count the votes of the Electoral College, when asked what she or her party would do, she said, “This is our 1776 moment,” a reference to the American Revolution in 1776 that has become synonymous with far-right extremists.

​​

Greene was famously relieved of her House duties on both the Education and Budget Committees last year after spewing violent, racist, and Islamophobic vitriol on social media. 

According to the Daily Beast, the proudly unvaccinated Greene spent over half her $174,000 salary on mask fines during her first year in Congress.

Let’s not forget the relief we all felt when Greene was banned from Twitter in January after violating the company’s COVID-19 misinformation policies. 

Greene’s challenge will resume Friday with a hearing where the congresswoman will be questioned under oath, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, but the final ruling on whether or not Greene will appear on the ballot will come from Raffensperger.

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John Eastman—he of insurrection memo fame—is petitioning to shield thousands of documents from the House Jan. 6 committee, Politico reports. Eastman filed a new petition this week in which he seeks to shield more than 3,200 documents comprising nearly 37,000 pages, claiming attorney-client privilege.

U.S. District Judge David Carter has proven unsympathetic to Eastman thus far in Eastman’s attempts to drag out the release of documents. Carter has ordered Eastman to produce at least 1,500 pages of records per day from a 19,000-page tranche obtained by a committee subpoena sent to Eastman’s ex-employer, Chapman University, and has further ordered him to prioritize emails for the days immediately before and after the Jan. 6 insurrection: Jan. 4-7.

This filing, however, is for the whole period of Eastman’s use of his Chapman account emails. There were nearly 100,000 pages originally included in the House committee’s subpoena of the records, but about 30,000 have already been removed as they were mass mailings unrelated to Eastman’s work with Trump to subvert the election.

RELATED STORY: Republicans’ Jan. 6 plan called for Pence to declare Trump the ‘winner’ by leaving out seven states

Now Eastman is attempting to shield these emails and the Jan. 6 committee has refused “every claim,” so Eastman is asking Carter for a case-by-case review on the 37,000 or so pages left. Carter has already ruled that Trump “more likely than not” attempted to illegally obstruct Congress in a criminal conspiracy in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” Carter wrote in a March decision.

He described the work of the committee as urgent in ordering Eastman to cough up the records, but now will have to look through this tranche of documents. The committee has questioned whether Eastman was actually acting as Trump’s lawyer that early, making his claim for attorney-client privilege at that point moot. Carter’s determination that Eastman was eventually Trump’s attorney puts all this in the chunk of stuff that needs to be reviewed page by page.

Ultimately, though, Eastman now has 3,200 documents that he refuses to turn over, which is not suspicious at all.

“Defendants made no objection to Dr. Eastman’s claims of privilege over 643 documents totaling 3,006 pages, but did object to every claim of attorney-client privilege and work-product protection that Dr. Eastman asserted with respect to his representation of former President Trump and/or his campaign committee,” Eastman’s attorney, Charles Burnham, wrote in this request to Carter. “Those 3,264 documents, totaling 37,650 pages, have therefore been submitted for in camera inspection.”

This is a delaying tactic as much as anything else. Meanwhile, Eastman is still at it. He took his “alternate electors” show on the road last month to Wisconsin, pressuring the legislature to decertify the election results.

This is a legal argument Eastman has been working on since 2000 when he helped the Florida Republican Party formulate a plan to steal that election for George W. Bush. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to do that dirty work, so he didn’t get to put the plan in action. By the way, the current Supreme Court has three justices—Chief Justice John Robert Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—who were in on that Bush conspiracy in Florida.

Back to the present: The good news is Carter has already shown he’s not particularly willing to countenance Eastman’s claims. The bad part is that the process demands he consider them, and that’s going to eat up more time.

RELATED STORIES:

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A series of text messages newly poured into the record for the impending seditious conspiracy trial of extremist Oath Keepers leader Elmer Rhodes and his cohort has exposed often frantic correspondence where members discussed providing security details for Trump World figures like Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Alex Jones, and others. 

The texts also appear to show a working relationship with the Proud Boys, another extremist network once headed by ringleader Henry Tarrio, who now sits in jail as he—and his minions—await trial for numerous charges related to the events of Jan. 6, including conspiracy to obstruct Congress and assaulting police.

RELATED STORY: Oath Keeper leader wants charges dropped, joins push for new trial venue

From December 2021 onward, the text messages made public late Monday demonstrate a startling pathway to Jan. 6. They were released as part of the exhibits that accompanied a pretrial release motion filed by Oath Keeper Edward Vallejo. A hearing will be held on that matter on April 29.

Rhodes, as the apparent ground zero for the group, served as a touchstone for the daily concerns, schemes, and strategy of fellow Oath Keepers coming from all around the U.S. to Washington, D.C., for Jan. 6. He would add people to the group chat, introduce them, and explain their roles. 

In the hundreds of texts that were made public, some stand out more than others, like those from late afternoon on New Years Day.

It was hours after Oath Keepers held a conference call for “DC Leadership,” when they began chatting about firearm restrictions and magazine limits in Washington. They also spoke about possible loopholes they believed might exist for private security guards. 

In one exchange, Jessica Watkins—who prosecutors say was in one of the Oath Keeper stack formations that marched on the Capitol during the breach—mentioned that she heard GOP fink and convicted felon Roger Stone call for security during his appearance on Alex Jones’ show, Infowars. 

Florida Oath Keeper division leader Kelly Meggs, using his handle “OK Gator 1” initially told Watkins: “We have Stone.”

Then moments later, Meggs said he “just texted him.”

When another person in the chat believed to be an Oath Keeper—their name or handle is redacted—chimed in that they wanted to shake Stone’s hand, Meggs boasted that he could arrange it since he had been to Stone’s home “a few times.” 

“I’m down for doing PSD for folks,” Watkins replied, using shorthand for “private security detail.”

“I don’t want to be a spectator. I want to be useful,” she added. 

“As per Stewart,” a reply from a redacted sender began, “We are all likely to be doing PSD most of the time …” 

Stone has tried to put distance between himself and the Oath Keepers, albeit poorly.

He has also denied being in Washington on Jan. 6, though he was filmed fleeing D.C. that day by a group of documentarians. And in that same film, a screenshot shows he was in a group chat with Rhodes as well as Tarrio.

RELATED STORY: Documentary featuring Roger Stone is an embarrassment of riches for Jan. 6 probe

Joshua James, the Alabama Oath Keeper chapter leader who pleaded guilty to the seditious conspiracy charges in March, served as security detail for Stone on Jan. 5. He also hauled him to meetings at the Willard Hotel where Trump and his cronies Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, attempted coup strategist John Eastman, and others would often meet in their self-described “war room.”

Sal Greco, a former New York Police Department officer, allegedly worked alongside James when they did private security for Stone on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. Greco has denied being anything more than a friend to Stone. Greco is facing a police department trial in New York for misconduct. 

RELATED STORY: Oath Keeper: I was ready to protect Trump by force

James, however, admitted that on Jan. 6 he used a stolen golf cart with co-defendant Robert Minuta to evade police as they beelined for the Capitol. From there, James has admitted, he was part of an organized effort to breach the Capitol as lawmakers conducted the counting of electoral votes, a necessary step toward the peaceful transfer of power. 

RELATED STORY: Trail from Oath Keepers to Trump via Roger Stone comes into view with sedition guilty plea

Other text messages from Meggs to the group also indicate a through-line between the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. 

Video has already emerged showing Rhodes meeting with Tarrio in a parking garage on the evening of Jan. 5 in D.C.

Tarrio was arrested just a day before on an outstanding warrant for his December theft and burning of a Black Lives Matter banner from a prominent church.

The Miami, Florida, resident was ordered out of Washington after his release, but before he left, he met with Rhodes, Oath Keeper lawyer Kellye SoRelle, Josh Macias, and Bianca Garcia in the D.C. garage. Macias is the founder of Vets4Trump and Garcia is the president of Latinos for Trump.

As news of Tarrio’s arrest first spread, Meggs told the group he tried reaching out. 

“I just called him no answer. But he will call [when] he’s out,” Meggs said of Tarrio. 

That evening, another redacted speaker in the chat responded to the news of the arrest.

“They [think] chopping the head off kills it or something? Damn fools should have left him alone,” the text said. 

RELATED STORY: Tarrio is back in jail as feds find chilling plans to storm federal buildings

This is also far from the first time that prosecutors have exposed a unity between the groups. 

In a Dec. 19 message entered into the record by prosecutors last month, Meggs tells a person on Facebook that he spent the week doing outreach to Proud Boys leadership. 

“This week I organized an alliance between Oath Keepers, Florida 3%ers, and Proud Boys. We have decided to work together and shut this shit down,” Meggs wrote. 

The Three Percenters are an anti-government extremist militia. 

A week later, according to exhibits attached to Meggs’ request for pretrial release, the Florida Oath Keeper told members their groups had a plan in place to deal with “antifa,” or supporters of the anti-fascist movement. 

Meggs explained how they would coordinate together on Jan. 6:

“We’re going to march with them for awhile then fall to the back of the crowd and turn off,” Meggs wrote in December 2021. “Then we will have the Proud Boys get in front of them [and]] the cops will get between antifa nad Proud Boys.”

He continued: “We will come in behind antifa and beat the hell out of them.” 

Many of the Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy who have pleaded guilty have maintained they only came to Washington because they believed Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act.

If he did so, then, in short, they believed they would then have the green light to proceed and assist him as necessary. 

The messages revealed Monday also offered a brief glimpse into the network’s ties to 1AP, or the First Amendment Praetorian, a self-styled militia. That pro-Trump group was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee already for its connections to Michael Flynn. Flynn used its members as bodyguards at “Stop the Steal” rallies. The group also threw its support behind proposals to seize voting machines as a part of Trump’s bid to stay in power.

Like the Oath Keepers had in the past, 1AP also reportedly had members assigned to protect Jones. 

Rhodes appeared enthralled by the prospect of working with Jones again in a text Rhodes sent to members on Dec. 31, 2020.

“Bottom line, is those of you wanting to do PSD details will get plenty of opportunity. We may also end up assisting the PSD for Alex Jones again. Which was a great feather in our cap. We worked subperbly well with both Alex Jones security team (who are awesome guys) and with the Praetorian Guard (also awesome veterans led by SF and SEAL veterans),” Rhodes wrote. “They LOVE working with us because of our legit ‘quiet professional’ demeanor and skillsets.” 

Rhodes continued: “It’s incredibly important for us to be front and center and again very visible for the patriots AND the domestic enemies. Heck, also to our foreign enemies, who will surely be watching as well.”

Jones was subpoenaed by the committee months ago. He had a private meeting with investigators in January and when he emerged, he went on his own show to unpack the day. He vowed that he “stayed silent” and said he didn’t know answers to half of what he was asked. 

Jones also swore that same day that he did not use members from the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys as his private security. Instead, he said, he hired 12 or 14 people from a private security firm in Texas. He simultaneously claimed that some of those members were D.C. or Maryland police officers. 

Jones also didn’t think the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys were threat. He chalked up their activities to “live action role playing.” 

According to the texts, Oath Keepers were also interested in providing security to Ronny Jackson during the insurrection itself. Jackson was the former White House physician under Trump who turned into a congressman for Texas. 

“Dr. Ronnie Jackson on the move,” one message from an unidentified person stated on Jan. 6 at 3:08 PM. “Needs protection. If anyone inside  cover him. He has critical data to protect.”

Rhodes sent a text asking what Jackson needed and then offered up his cell phone number. 

“Rep. Jackson is frequently talked about by people he does not know. He does not know nor has he ever spoken to the people in question,” a spokesperson for Jackson said Tuesday morning. 

In another message appearing to involve U.S. lawmakers, on Jan. 3 Meggs told the group that friends to the Oath Keepers mentioned the group “on the call with congressmen,”

“[They] wanted to say thank you all for providing and protecting us,” Meggs wrote. 

Attorneys for Rhodes, Tarrio, and Meggs did not immediately return a request for comment. 

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Sometimes, the best defense is a good offense.

Democrats are heading into a difficult midterm defending a very narrow majority in the U.S. House. Republicans need to flip just five seats to take control, and we’re defending a lot of vulnerable members.

But that’s only part of the story. Thanks to Republican retirements, the continued defection of suburban voters from the GOP, and unexpected Democratic successes in redistricting, there’s a whole host of districts where Democrats can go on offense and flip seats from red to blue.

These are the sorts of opportunities Daily Kos has always prioritized, and which you’ve always responded to with such enthusiasm. These races not only give us the chance to stick it to the GOP, they offer us greater bang for the buck, since challengers invariably don’t have access to the kinds of resources that incumbents do.

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Attorneys for the Texas mom who is facing death for the 2007 accidental death of her toddler have made an urgent plea to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stop her execution, set for April 27. Innocence Project said the filing on Friday is the first time a court will see ”new scientific and expert evidence showing that Melissa’s conviction was based on an unreliable, coerced ‘confession’ and unscientific false evidence that misled the jury.”

It may also be the last time a court is able to intervene in her execution, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear her case last fall.

Innocence Project said the petition to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals “details how the police investigation and prosecution were infected by gender bias,” using interrogation tactics “that replicated the dynamics of domestic violence” in order to get her to confess to a crime she didn’t commit. Lucio, a childhood sexual abuse and domestic abuse survivor, was berated for hours by detectives on the night of her daughter’s death. Prosecutors then used a coerced statement against her in court.

The petition notes a technique where police, “intentionally or unintentionally, often ‘prompt the suspect’ on how they believed the crime happened, thereby allowing an innocent suspect without any knowledge of the crime to ‘parrot back an accurate-sounding narrative.’”

Like previously noted, one of the jurors who has since expressed remorse over sentencing Lucio to death has said that he was never told her history as a sexual and domestic abuse survivor made her particularly vulnerable to interrogation tactics, “or how she repeated the same words the interrogators fed to her.” Johnny Galvan Jr. wrote last month that “no evidence was presented of that and it would have mattered to me.”

“’New linguistic analysis shows that while the police treated Melissa as a suspect, they treated her partner like an innocent victim—even though he was also Mariah’s caretaker, and had a history of intra-familial violence. He is now a free man,’ said Professor Sandra Babcock, Director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, and one of Ms. Lucio’s attorneys,” Innocence Project continued.

Support for halting Lucio’s execution has also won backing from of a majority of the Texas House of Representatives, which has urged Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant her clemency or a reprieve.

Lucio’s advocates have also pleaded to Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz, who has power to stop the execution. KHOU reported that Saenz gave conflicting statements during a “combative” hearing last week, after first defending the process that sentenced Lucio, then saying that if she “does not get a stay by a certain day,” he would “do what I have to do and stop it.”

“Because of Saenz’s conflicting statements, and without any court motions or rulings, it’s still not certain Lucio’s execution will be stopped,” KHOU said. Armando Villalobos, the Cameron County district attorney who charged Lucio, was himself sentenced to prison on charges of bribery and extortion, further adding to the doubt around Lucio’s case.

“If the jury had heard evidence about the coercive tactics used in Melissa’s interrogation and the medical evidence showing that Mariah’s cause of death was consistent with an accident, they would have found there was no murder, Melissa would have been acquitted, and she would be preparing for Easter mass with her children, not facing execution,” said Innocence Project Director of Special Litigation Vanessa Potkin. “She deserves a new trial.

“Melissa’s children are also urging the Governor and the Board not to execute their mother,” Innocence Project said. “They are Mariah’s brothers and sisters and Texas law requires that their wishes be taken into account.”

There are a number of steps you can take right now to help spare Melissa Lucio’s life. You can click here to send a Daily Kos petition to Gov. Abbott, as well as clicking here to sign Innocence Project’s petition. You can also call 956-446-2866 and leave a message urging the governor to prevent an irreversible injustice.