Thanks to everyone who has reached out to me and subscribed to American Doom in the wake of my Rolling Stone piece on Republican refusals to certify election results. Here's an introduction of what I do, and what American Doom is all about.
The family of Sonya Massey says that police originally told them she had killed herself. Police DID NOT initially tell family that law enforcement had killed Massey.
Here is video of former general and National Security Advisor Mike Flynn calling for a Myanmar-like coup to replace the sitting U.S. president with Donald Trump. The talk of war is very real.
This is big. Kemp is actually listening to calls from Democrats to investigate and/or remove MAGA members of the Georgia State Election Board. Meantime, state Dems and
@lucymcbath
are currently holding a press conference calling for their removal. Previous coverage:
Update: Kemp’s office is asking the AG for guidance on whether he has the authority to remove members of the State Election Board. Voting rights groups, Democrats and even some Republicans have raised alarms about the rightwing majority’s recent votes.
#gapol
There were entire news cycles about Obama saluting with a cup of coffee in his hand but this corrupt doofus grins like he’s at a wedding while his vapid wife holds a baby victim of a mass murder he inspired and it will be forgotten by tomorrow.
This is just straight up disinformation: the buses seen yesterday were shuttling rally-goers from a pickup point in downtown Savannah to Enmarket Arena. These same shuttles operate for every single concert and hockey game held at the arena, and anyone who lives in Savannah knows
@ThwitterDotCom
It was revealed at a press conference that I attended today. The source is me, listening to the family say this at the press conference.
If Obama said this it would be on a loop at Fox News for weeks and they’d have militia members on bragging about how they’d fight back and there’d be a run on guns.
NEW from me at
@RollingStone
: the RNC is intervening on Trump's behalf to fight for the right to continue removing voters from Georgia rolls. The revelation comes in a federal lawsuit alleging Republican violations of the National Voting Rights Act.
Mike Flynn is now denying he called for a coup yesterday, saying reporters are twisting his words. Here is the video of him saying, precisely, that a coup “should happen here.” He is a liar.
Among the many things that feel so dystopian about our current reality is that a presidential candidate is openly claiming that would-be mothers are killing their newborn children in non-existent and illegal abortion procedures.
Corey Lewandowski on Fox News Sunday pushes Trump's disgusting, misogynist lie about moms in blue states murdering their babies. Host Shannon Bream pushes back (but barely) at the end of the clip.
Today, I’ve been in Springfield, Ill. reporting on the police killing of Sonya Massey, an unarmed Black woman shot in the face in her home by a white cop who used a racial epithet, a source close to the family tells me.
The source says the video will shock the nation.
Forget shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, my guy here gets up every day and tells voters directly to their faces that he doesn’t know what they’re talking about and doesn’t care and they still want to go to war for him.
To reiterate: The election denying QAnon conspiracist who runs this election board tried to hire a company to illegally access voting machines—then charged me and Rolling Stone $5.3k for records proving this attempted crime.
Here’s a great summation of what happened in Dallas this weekend. My biggest takeaways are the same as Steven’s: This a near-religious movement, and they are preparing to enact violence if they don’t get their way in future elections. The talk of war is now preparation for it.
The Qonvention in Dallas taught me a lot about the QAnon movement's most fervent supporters. For starters, they sure aren't economically anxious. Not only did tickets cost $500 minimum, some spent thousands on memorabilia at an auction. 1/
When he was still with us, Ronnie Van Zant once bemoaned guns as being terrible for society. He actually had no problem with Neil Young and was an anti-segregation hippie at heart. Now, his younger brother carries the Skynyrd banner as a full-on Trumper.
One side confronted Trump administration officials in restaurants to express their displeasure with their policies and the other side violently tried to carry out an insurrection to install Trump as emperor. These sides do not equate.
It should be noted that Lee's "mulligan" line came after a clip of Cory Booker saying people should "get up in the face" of Trump-supporting congresspeople. But the idea is to bothsides Trump's encouragement of insurrection. Here's the full context.
Vance continues to claim that the eating pets thing comes from “firsthand accounts” but after a week of media attention the closest thing reporters have discovered is a third hand account. Can Vance produce these supposed firsthand accounts?
Vance claims he and Trump have to "create stories" about migrants eating cats and dogs "so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people."
There is then some awkward dead air as Bash tries to highlight the absurdity of what he just said
Here is video of former general and National Security Advisor Mike Flynn calling for a Myanmar-like coup to replace the sitting U.S. president with Donald Trump. The talk of war is very real.
In a Mexican detention center where the government is doing Trump's bidding, a migrant pleads with a photographer to give her and her sick child *drinking water.*
On "outside agitators": There is something strange going on at
#GeorgeFloyd
protests not just here in Minneapolis but across the country: white protesters are burning and looting like never before. My dispatch for
@thedailybeast
:
NEW today at my newsletter, Where Do We Go From Here: I've discovered three more election deniers *currently* working on election boards throughout Georgia. That makes at least 11 total that I've found since January.
Right after
@willsommer
got kicked out a man in the crowd asked Flynn why “what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?”
“No reason,” Flynn replied. “It should happen here.”
One of QAnon’s most revered figures calling for a coup.
The amount of insanity I’ve found in Glynn County, where
#AhmaudArbery
was killed, is simply stunning: an incompetent DA, corrupt cops, horrific police shootings, drugs, murder and utter madness. My latest at
@thedailybeast
.
#IrunwithMaud
Now at
@guardian
: Sonya Massey's killing by police in Illinois:
- Radio traffic has someone saying her wound was "self-inflicted."
- Massey is a descendant of a man lynched here during the infamous 1908 race riots that prompted the creation of the
@NAACP
GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt on Trump's news conference this morning: "We're going to hear a steady hand. We're going to hear the voice of a father and a grandfather. We're going to hear a voice of the future president telling us it's okay."
Of the 130 Republicans who voted against giving $2,000 checks to all Americans 13 of them (and
@justinamash
) received $20,424,026 in PPP and COVID bailout funds.
Funny how all these people who hate the government and want to make it as small as possible end up making so much money off it all the time. Looking at you,
@BeniclesMF
.
The plane contractor DeSantis paid $615K to fly migrants to Martha's Vineyard donated exclusively to Republicans in Florida, including to the state's appropriations chief (who funded the relocation program) & his father, a DeSantis transportation appointee
The importance of the United States shutting down an international border crossing instead of providing proper resources to process asylum claims must not be lost in all of this.
This is the woman behind a new rule in Georgia requiring poll workers to “hand count” ballots, which will cause delays in obtaining county vote totals — delays that will be seized upon by election deniers like herself as evidence of fraud.
At the height of Trump’s election conspiracy theories in 2020, Salleigh Grubbs chased a truck she believed was full of shredded ballots.
It wasn’t.
Now, Salleigh runs the GOP in a key county in Georgia and is campaigning to change election rules in the state. Changes experts
TRUMP during NRCC speech: "If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value. And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, okay? Rerrrr rerrrr!"
Here's my dispatch from Dallas, where Mike Flynn compared "patriots" getting kicked off social media to the 5,000 men who died on Omaha Beach on Normandy. On Memorial Day weekend, no less.
I get that local news sites want to hook you on the annual subscription, but they should also have an option available for purchasing individual stories. Consumers want specifically what they want, they want it now, and will pay for it. Journalism should adjust accordingly.
I’m out today at the
@guardian
with
@CREWcrew
emails showing county election officials in Georgia coordinating on efforts to call November’s election into question and to hamper certification of results o behalf of Trump’s election lies.
"One thing I've not done, is I've never pretended to be a police officer and I've never threatened a shootout with the police," Warnock says in exchange on crime
In response, Walker holds up a prop police badge, gets reprimanded by moderator
Barr claims asylum-seekers are "abusing the asylum system, coming in, they’re being coached what to say." Another way to put that: attorneys and advocates are informing migrants of their *legal rights under U.S. and international law to claim asylum.*
BARR echoes Trump's talking points on immigration: "I think one of our major problems as the president says is that the immigration laws just have to be changed."
Says he's "inclined to support" a bill that's punitive for undocumented immigrants.
Interesting that this line of thinking doesn’t apply to the voter purge lawsuits being filed by Republicans all across the country or the election rules being promulgated *right now* by the Georgia State Election Board.
New — Trump suggests at North Carolina rally he won’t accept another debate against VP Harris: “The problem with another debate is that it's just too late, voting has already started.”
Good morning from sunny Savannah, where after a few months of work I can finally share today's exclusive for
@RollingStone
: Republican election officials nationwide could cause chaos in November by refusing to certify results. Here's how that works:
Please explain to me what “control” the government or the “left” achieves by asking people to wear a mask. Many of us tie our bank accounts to the IRS to pay our taxes, which seems a bit more controlling to me considering they can then literally take your money.
Here is the video from Trump’s rally in Atlanta on Saturday night calling three Republican members of the State Election Board “pit bulls fighting for victory.” That means his victory.
Good morning. As many have seen and shared from yesterday’s
@americandoom_
, Saturday marked an important turning point in the Trump campaign’s electioneering efforts in Georgia: an explicit admission that the State Election Board is working on his behalf.
I spoke to
@briantylercohen
mere hours before news broke that Georgia Democrats are suing the State Election Board over denier-backed rules that help Trump. In our conversation I previewed… lawsuits likely to be filed against the SEB. Happy to consult on lottery numbers if you
Merry Christmas: A bunch of your elected representatives in Congress used COVID relief funds to bail out their own companies — then blocked aid to average workers and voted against Monday's stimulus bill.
EXCLUSIVE: Private companies where 28 members of Congress or their spouses hold positions received at least $27 million in forgivable loans from the CARES Act, while many small businesses struggled to access funding.
Just saw a guy with a Trump 2020 mask underneath his chin with his face and mouth fully exposed while walking through the Philly airport which is so perfectly on brand it should be a campaign ad.
Today at
@RollingStone
and
@americandoom_
: MAJOR EXCLUSIVE:
70 pro-Trump election deniers work as election officials in swing states. They are primed to deny certification of November’s election.
This guy is one of the most shameless people in American journalism, for years now climbing up the ladder of fear of migrants to advance his career. A hate-filled haircut of a man.
My thoughts tonight regarding the news today that 8 nationals of Tajikistan w/ suspected ISIS ties were arrested after crossing the southern border illegally & initially had no derogatory info flag during vetting.
For years, my border contacts have told me vetting is inadequate.
Recent deaths of multiple ICE detainees were preventable, according to internal agency documents I obtained for
@tytinvestigates
.
In one memo, an ICE official warns Acting Director Albence their health services department is “severely dysfunctional”
New: Acting AG Matt Whitaker plans to end a chance at asylum for domestic violence victims, including child victims of sexual abuse and assault. My report
@thedailybeast
:
Finally, news outlets need to check the language they’re using on this. It is not an “allegation” that Flynn called for a coup and he did not “appear to say” it. He fucking said it. Literally and directly. “It should happen here.”
NEW and EXCLUSIVE at
@thedailybeast
: the head of a Georgia elections board is fixated on QAnon. His Twitter account —
@BeniclesMF
— proves he is "deep" into the movement,
@travis_view
told me.
New from me at the
@guardian
: Georgia Republicans purged Democrats from a county election board, then cancelled Sunday voting. The board is now led by an election conspiracy theorist whose company does IT and computer work for the county, I've discovered.
That same guy also runs an IT company that contracts with the county and *has access to election management servers.* I first reported this back in January.
Much of small town America is run by extremists who've taken over government not to make life better, but to further a regressive slide in support of conspiracies and religion. It's like an unhinged version of Footloose but they run your health department.
An unarmed dance studio patron took down a gunman faster than all those warrior cops in Uvalde; a protester killed in Atlanta during a botched raid; five black cops beat a black citizen to death in Memphis. If now isn’t a time to rethink American policing I don’t know when is.
This is why the organizers of this and other events don’t want reporters from reputable news outlets attending: we will report the insane things these treasonous people say. Then they’ll accuse us of bias for that accurate reporting.
This is all very bad but guess what? It’s not over. The county is still trying to charge me thousands to access more communications about the board’s actions—all while these election deniers refuse to speak to me. This is what a modern Republican government looks like.
We also made our database public so you can view exactly how much money your representative or senator has taken in while working against relief for struggling Americans.
@guardian
Ben Johnson is the conspiracist now in charge of the Spalding County elections board. He also has apparent ties to the notorious racist, convicted hacker, serial cyber-stalker and all around awful human being Joey Camp.
New Georgia Project alleges that six counties in Georgia have illegally removed voters from voter rolls at the behest of election denial activists, specifically targeting the homeless. The RNC wants the practice to continue.
This is a great reminder that it’s not just the big personalities and corporate higher-ups at Fox who promote and exploit nativist fears, it goes all the way down to reporters on the ground. A top-to-bottom propaganda machine.
Fox News has a reporter stationed in the woods along the US-Mexico border (
@GriffJenkins
) who appears to be helping feds apprehend migrants.
"We found a group. This is the first one we found," he says.
The Georgia State Election Board — praised by Trump here — is currently considering an election-denier backed rule to the process of certification. This is big. Board is likely to pass, making it easier for deniers to hold up certification of votes crucial to determining the next
Here is the video from Trump’s rally in Atlanta on Saturday night calling three Republican members of the State Election Board “pit bulls fighting for victory.” That means his victory.
I see we are entering a Murders Are Up news cycle in which bad faith actors will try to blame 2020's spike in homicides on criminal justice reform efforts.
He and another election-denying member of the election board tried to hire the same IT company that is now under investigation for illegally accessing voting machines in Coffee County. No one knew this until Rolling Stone paid the $5.3k for the records that proved it.
What you’ll hear and see tomorrow when the video is released will be as “unbelievable” to you as it was to the source, I’m told.
More tomorrow at
@GuardianUS
and
@americandoom_
.
@lucymcbath
Part of Dem complaints is that one of the SEB members, Rick Jeffares, solicited a Trump admin job. I caught him in that apparent conflict-of-interest a couple weeks ago, feels like a couple months ago.
The owner of a Georgia bowling alley told me today that a few customers were lined up ahead of reopening, "dying to bowl." Georgia is now a test case for the nation on whether now is the time to begin reopening — or not. Today's dispatch at
@thedailybeast
:
That’s not what that flag means, they told me. It just means we support police, they said. There’s no deeper or more sinister meaning behind it, they assured me.
This is a fascist, un-democratic movement that seeks to oppress and silence anyone who does not agree with its views, ideals and goals. Flynn is currently the leader of it, and he’s now trying to convince the world that he did not say what he absolutely did.
With
@KELLYWEILL
lending a much-needed hand in New York and me in the city I live: The would-be Dallas mass murderer's Facebook page is a dumping ground for hateful, right-wing memes and white grievance.
We know this because
@Jeremy_Borden
and I went through all 535 members of Congress' financial disclosures and compiled a database of their private companies. Then we found all their loans — at least $27m worth — and reported our findings for
@Sludge
:
First one for Rolling Stone and not only is it a doozy, it's just the beginning. The BIG story is still coming. Fuck around and find out, as people on Tik Tok say (my wife tells me).
Luke is a freelancer who, like
@chick_in_kiev
, is now being targeted for his work by the most powerful cable news channel in the country. Tucker Carlson is a millionaire.
For the few of you folks on here who I know in person and who may not see it elsewhere,
@sarahbertness
and I are now married. Because why the hell not, and because “We got married in a fever” from Johnny and June is about the best inspiration one can have in these crazy times.
Out of shape right-wing white guys who’ve never served love to use military terminology and invoke martial themes in a transparent attempt to associate themselves with the supposed righteous violence they cannot physically commit.
The ICIG has no idea why Trump— with access to the greatest intelligence gathering and law enforcement apparatus in the history of mankind — believes a fever dream conspiracy about the DNC server being physically located in Ukraine. A dangerously stupid person.
After endless hours of digging, I can reveal that at least eight county election officials throughout Georgia — with direct power over voting rights and election administration — are election lie conspiracy theorists. Read about them at the
@guardian
:
The worst part: this is just the tip of the iceberg. As I reported back in May and June, the election deniers in Spalding are far from alone. They’re at work all across Georgia.
Here’s the Georgia State Election Board’s new X account, being managed by Dr. Janice Johnston. And here’s my new
@RollingStone
/
@americandoom_
story detailing how she coordinated with election deniers to pursue certification-denial rules and voter purges.
Do it right-
1. Follow the law
2. Provide maximum transparency
3. Require accurate and true results
Thanks to candidates, workers, watchers, parties, and of course, the voters.
Dr. Jan
VP Pence after getting vaccinated: "The truth is the American people deserve to know that we've never been more prepared to combat the coronavirus than we are today."
The easiest way to access police communications is to buy a police scanner or download any number of apps that allow you to listen to law enforcement channels. It doesn’t take a secret device that only Antifa has access to, as these conspiracists have convinced... the president
New: How a false flag conspiracy theory about a Buffalo protester moved from an anonymous Twitter thread to an anonymous blog to the president's Twitter account.
In July I caught the RNC pushing rules at the Georgia State Election Board (first link). Today's revelation is more evidence that the RNC is deep into electioneering on behalf of Trump's attempts to call November into question.
There is also nothing normal about what’s happening in Spalding County, GA, where I’ve traveled to tonight because what was a Democrat-majority election board was transferred to Republican hands virtually overnight thanks to a new and obscure law.
VP Kamala Harris opening for President Biden in Atlanta: "There is nothing normal about a law that makes it illegal to pass out water or food to people standing in long voting lines."