Republican party leaders linked to the White House helped boost a QAnon’s primary campaign with a history of making racist and bigotry statements, showing filings of campaign funding.
The victory of Marjorie Taylor Greene in the August 11 primary runoff for Georgia’s 14th Congress District only guarantees that a novelist of the baseless and anti-Semitic QAnon conspiracy theory will be elected to Congress in November. Her primary opponent, John Cowan, ran as a pro-Trump, pro-life, and pro-gun conservative.
The applications show donations from:
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groups linked to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and his wife in the White House,
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the chairman of the council of leading conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation,
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the lawyer representing “Covington Kid” Nicholas Sandmann in defamation suit against the Washington Post and CNN,
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and multiple Republican megadonors.
Meadows was given the opportunity to reject or deny QAnon in multiple television interviews on Sunday, but he escaped, claiming not to know what it was.
“Participating in a primary on behalf of an absolutely insane, conspiracy-minded, explicitly racist candidate in a citation that is reliably conservative is mind-bogglingly irresponsible,” said Tim Miller, a former Republican National Committee spokesman. t now politics is director for Republican voters against Trump.
‘This is how you signal to the Trump base,’ We are with you. We are teaming up with the most radical, collaborative segment of the Trump base to show that you can trust us, that we will not be ‘cucked’ by the media. ‘ ‘
Greene has garnered major media attention for her outspoken support for QAnon, a groundless conspiracy theory rooted in anti-Semitic tropes whose followers believe Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against a cabal of Democrats, celebrities and billionaires who are engaged with pedophilia, child trafficking, and even cannibalism. The movement has repeatedly inspired vigilante violence, and has been identified by the FBI as a potential threat to domestic terrorism.
In videos discovered by Politico, Greene argued that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in the U.S. government, comparing Black Lives Matter activists with neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, describing the election of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib as “an Islamic invasion”, and promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about billionaire financier and Holocaust survivor George Soros.
The Republican Jewish Coalition called those videos, as well as its refusal to apologize for posing for a photo with a “long-time white supremacist leader” in its decision to choose sides in a Republican primary and support Cowan.
As a blogger for a now-defunct website, Greene promoted QAnon like other fringe collusion theories, according to NBC News. Archives of the website show that they promoted conspiracy theories about a “Clinton Kill List”, about the mass master of guns in Las Vegas in 2017, and about the murder of a young Democratic Party staff member.
Madihha Ahussain, special advocate of Muslim advocates for anti-Muslim bigotry, condemned Greene’s “cruel, false, violent rhetoric” in a statement that also addressed anti-Muslim extremist Laura Loomer’s Republican primary victory. “A failure of this anti-Muslim hatred is a signature of it,” she added.
Some high-profile Republican leaders spoke out against Greene after Politico made videos of her making racist remarks, and the Political Action Committee (Pac) affiliated with Koch Industries, KochPac, asked for a refund of an earlier donation. But campaigns of campaign funding revealed that their campaign remained supported by major Republican donors and influential political leaders.
The Your Voice Countts Pac affiliated with Meadows first donated $ 2,000 to Greene’s campaign in March. Greene received further support from the Meadows family when the RightWomen Pac, whose CEO is Debbie Meadows, Mark’s wife, signed Greene and spent $ 17,500 to counter Cowan in the runoff.
Greene also received significant support from the House Freedom Fund, the Pac affiliated with the House Freedom Caucus, of which Meadows was a member before being tapped as White House Chief of Staff. Meadows can still be seen on the House Freedom Fund website. In addition to spending more than $ 30,000 on an independent spending campaign to support Greene through Cowan, the House Freedom Fund has raised nearly $ 90,000 from its own donors, who are dedicated to Greene’s campaign.
These donated donations include $ 5,600 from Barb Van Andel-Gaby, chairman of the board of the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank. Van Andel-Gaby is also the director of Amway’s parent company, which was founded by her father with Richard DeVos, who in turn was the father-in-law of US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Van Andel-Gaby’s husband, Richard Gaby, also donated to Greene’s campaign through the House Freedom Fund. Van Andel-Gaby did not respond to numerous requests for comment about her support for a candidate who supports QAnon.
Some of Greene’s donors are an ironic touch, seeing the confusion of the QAnon movement with unfounded accusations from Democrats, Hollywood celebrities, and billionaires of pedophilia and human trafficking.
In addition to Meadows, the House Freedom Fund is also led by Representative Jim Jordan, who has been dogged for years by accusations he knew and did nothing to stop the sexual abuse of student athletes at Ohio State University when he was there during the years ’80s and ’90s worked. Jordan has denied any knowledge of the abuse.
Greene received $ 2,800 from John W Childs, the former chairman of JW Childs Associates who resigned after being charged with crime attempted in an investigation into the suspected sting of human trafficking that led to the arrest of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Childs denied the charge at the time, saying he had retained a lawyer. Kraft pleaded not guilty to two counts of felony criminal mischief.
Greene also received $ 2,800 from L Lin Wood, the lawyer representing British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth in his unsuccessful defamation lawsuit against Elon Musk, after Musk baselessly called Unsworth a “pedo guy”. Wood also represented Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann when he voiced numerous media accusations about covering a viral meeting between Covington students and attendees of a March in Inigenous Peoples.
Wood, mad Twitter biography includes a hashtag associated with QAnon, “# WWG1WGA”, declined to comment on his belief in QAnon, his view of other conspiracies that Greene promoted, or her history of bigotry statements. He confirmed the donation as a matter of public record and said he represented Greene, adding: “You would be wise to let me out of your propaganda piece.”
Greene also received donations from major Republican donors, including Tatnall Hillman, who was described by Colorado Politics as “a mysterious Aspen billionaire who makes several million contributions annually to Republican candidates”; Lenore Broughton, described by Vermont paper Seven Day as “an heir of Burlington with a history of funding for conservative causes”, and Cherna Moskowitz, head of the Irving Moskowitz Foundation and chairman of the Moscow Prize for Zionism.
Almost all of the Guardian’s attempts to contact donors were unsuccessful. Greene received $ 5,600 from William Pope, CEO of NCIC Inmate Communications, a private company that provides telephone services to prisons. Asked about Greene’s donations and support for QAnon, Pope replied via email, “Never heard of her!” He did not respond to follow-up questions.
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