O What A Tangled Web We Weave
When we first learn to kill Americans
Early in Trump’s first term, the March 27, 2017 issue of the New Yorker, Jane Mayer wrote a story about the rising political influence of a reclusive programming genius billionaire and his daughters, who played a key role in the election of Trump. The article is filled with vital information but one paragraph leaps out since it’s become prophetic:
Political scientists and consultants continue to debate Cambridge Analytica’s record in the 2016 campaign. David Karpf, an associate professor at George Washington University who studies the political use of data, calls the firm’s claim to have special psychometric powers “a marketing pitch” that’s “untrue.” Karpf worries, though, that the company “could take a very dark turn.” He explained, “What they could do is set up a MoveOn-style operation with a Tea Party-ish list that they could whip up. Typically, lists like that are used to pressure elected officials, but the dangerous thing would be if it was used instead to pressure fellow-citizens. It could encourage vigilantism.” Karpf said of Cambridge Analytica, “There is a maximalist scenario in which we should be terrified to have a tool like this in private hands.”
(Link #1 in footnotes)
__________________________
The key players in this family saga begins with Robert Mercer but his daughter’s political savvy and impatience with the presidential election outcomes that the Koch Brothers’ network was producing has had a profound impact on the US since. Rebekah Mercer’s role in getting Trump elected and in connecting him to key advisers in his administration is clear. But it’s now fair to ask, in light of all that’s become known since, whether she wittingly or unwittingly fulfilled David Karpf’s fear.
It’s hard to prove intent, but important to define mine. I believe Congress needs to fully investigate her actions as they relate to the spreading of conspiracy theories that hardened support for Trump within his most violence-prone base. Not to demonize her out of any desire for political revenge, but to determine whether her actions blew a broadside through the walls of American democracy that require more fundamental repair work than simply prosecuting the individuals and terror groups that sought the overthrow of US election systems and government on January 6th.
The penchant to believe in conspiracy theories is one that her father and the ex-President shared. It’s not clear if she believes in them, too. But she’s associated with -- and the family’s funded -- several major outlets of political propaganda. That includes ones utilized by political opportunists and one that has played a central role in the recruitment and plotting efforts of terror groups that shocked the world last month. Ones that have previously mainstreamed violent acts in multiple locations over many months before that.
It’s fair to also ask whether the line between protected speech and incitement to acts of violence/insurrection requires legal remedy to protect the rights of the voting public. I’m certain that it does.
Without an investigation and without those legal remedies applied, that hole can be broadened to sink the republic that’s the foundation of everything that America is and stands for. And I think a Constitutional Amendment overturning the 2010 Citizens United decision will have to be a central part of that fix.
The 2010 Citizens United ruling and several after “removed virtually all limits on how much money corporations and nonprofit groups can spend on federal elections, and how much individuals can give to political-action committees. Since then, power has tilted away from the two main political parties and toward a tiny group of rich mega-donors.”
(Link #1 in footnotes)
Robert ‘Bob’ Mercer, whose fortune was made creating programs that gave a hedge fund tools to make more strategic and simplified trades, was considered an eccentric genius. He was uncomfortable having conversations with others, reclusive and preferred the company of his cats. His political leanings were Libertarian, but heavily tinged with unusual biases and conspiratorial beliefs.
He considers nuclear war feasible, that its use in Japan made it a healthier country. He thinks evolution is a myth and climate change warnings overblown. He considers the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a mistake and said “There are no white racists in America today, only black racists. “
A former colleague stated: "A cat has value, he's said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he's a thousand times more valuable."
Mercer participated in the Koch Brothers network that seeded numerous campaigns at state and federal levels with massive infusions of cash from ultra-wealthy donors. Despite sinister sounding terms others use, I think it’s defined best as huge amounts hidden from public view. It helps avoid the perception that they’re essentially buying desired legislation from government officials they help elect.
And why does Hidden Money exist? Because it’s anti-democratic. Exposed, it displays the price of each policy and politician it buys.
The Mercers are members of the Council for National Policy. I’ve written about that secretive organization before, which I learned about from a book tour appearance by Columbia University professor/journalist Anne Nelson, who wrote the book “Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right” after research she conducted in the wake of the 2016 election. Unlike the baseless conspiracy theories we’ve witnessed in recent years that fueled the January 6th attack, Nelson documented its membership with evidence: oil barons, evangelists, the NRA , media moguls and Republican operatives.
It was begun after the election of Reagan and its membership has included or currently includes Reagan AG Ed Meese, Oliver North, Tim LaHaye (best known for the Left Behind series of apocalyptic fiction who founded multiple Christian orgs while also anti-Catholic), Ralph Reed (Christian Coalition), Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Phyllis Schlafly, Joseph Coors, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Joseph Farah (WorldNetDaily), Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Bannon, Virginia Thomas (wife of Clarence), the Mercer and DeVos families and others. (A video of her talk convinced me to buy her book, which I consider an essential read for anyone who thinks America might be worth saving.)
The CNP has helped build a broadcast and print network across the country for decades, replacing hundreds of local newspapers that collapsed in the digital age. That ‘Shadow Network’ has been pushing messages steeped in conservative beliefs that have grown more radical as it’s grown, with most of its consumers unaware that they’re being fed a stream of extremist propaganda with a dollop of local news thrown in to cloak it.
I guess some rich and powerful people find secrecy important to their goals.
The main question answered by Nelson’s book is why fundamentalist Christian conservatives would back a man like Trump who never met a moral he wouldn’t break. Answer: Trump agreed to let them pick the acceptable finalists for federal judges that Trump would pick from.
The Mercer Family Foundation has invested more than $25 million through the Koch Brothers Network. Rebekah also maintains membership in other conservative groups like think tanks as she seems to be a very busy and very focused lady. She’s a trustee at the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation whose chair described the family: “The Mercers have strong values, they’re kind of funny, and they’re really bright. Their brains are almost too strong.” Rebekah, she noted, supports several think tanks, but grows tired of talk; she “is into action.” “
(Link #1 in footnotes)
That action included the 2011 meetup with Andrew Breitbart, head of Breitbart News at a Club for Growth conference. the Mercers loved his idea of “taking back the culture” with a media outlet eager to counter the mainstream press which Breitbart assured them would incite “the silenced majority.” It was like Richard Nixon with a megaphone and the Mercers began investing in his effort too.
However, upset with the 2012 presidential election outcome, Rebekah considered it an inefficient use of their megabucks and decided to pursue more and fresher ways to buy influence. In 2012, the family gave $2m to Citizens United. It was headed by David Bossie, a Republican congressional aide forced to resign after putting out disinformation on a Clinton associate during the Clinton presidency.
Bossie’s group spent years afterward putting out more disinformation about the Clintons, including a 2008 movie about Hillary in her first presidential run. It’s the same organization that had already garnered the successful SCOTUS ruling that opened the floodgates of billions spent since to foist ever more radical policies onto the public.
Hidden Money like that boosted the rise of a once marginal group, the Tea Party, into a major force within the GOP today. In 2015, another half a million bucks Mercer investment paved the way for a Freedom of Information Act request for Hillary Clinton’s State Dept e-mails, whose release bogged down her campaign with endless fishing expeditions by the GOP Congress that ultimately turned up evidence of nothing beyond the improper use of a private email server. The same thing a prior Republican Secretary of State had done without anyone seeming to mind at all.
In addition to that sustained effort to derail the Hillary train, she joined the board of a nonprofit that Bannon created, the Government Accountability Institute, and donated $3.7m to that, with Bannon picking up $376,000 of that in its first 4 years. Just an average $94K/yr sum for a 30 hour/wk side job, since his full time job was now heading Breitbart News after Andrew up and died.
This ultimately resulted in a film that debuted at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival detailing Hillary’s ‘criminality’ that was steeped in conspiracy theories plucked off the Hokey Web. Which, of course, included Breitbart News. Are you starting to see how this conspiracy stuff works? If you love a conspiracy, set it free. A week later, cite it on your side job and voila! Soon every fake news org will cite it, along with Tea Party members of Congress.
And once Congress members start citing it, regular mainstream news orgs will cite it too with only an occasional mention that the claim is missing actual evidence of criminal acts.
And within the same time frame, between 2011 and 2014, the Mercers gave more than $10m to the Media Research Center, an org advertising its “sole mission,” which was to “expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the Left: the national news media.” Hello and howdy to its founder, L. Brent Bozell III, for being another propaganda voice to cite when spinning out conspiracies.
But nosiree, Big Brain Becky wasn’t done yet.
I first became aware of the Mercers in 2010 when they backed the candidacy of Art Robinson against my popular Congressman, Peter DeFazio in the 4th Congressional District of Oregon.
Robinson founded the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in Southern Oregon in 1980. Its mission statement is, "research, development, and public education on the biochemistry of molecular clocks and the degenerative diseases of aging, elementary science education, the effects of environment on health and welfare, and disaster preparedness."
He circulated the ‘Oregon Petition’ to persuade the federal government to reject the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and other policies that fight against global warming. The petition asserted "the proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment," the advance of science, and human health and welfare. He also advocates for “cheap” nuclear power, is anti-abortion, favors tax cuts, an end to the Federal Reserve System and increased border security. He rejects climate science as a "false religion" that will enslave mankind, and opposes public education. He’s also a big supporter of Intelligent Design theories.
With views so closely aligned with Bob Mercer’s, it was a given he’d gain Mercer’s financial support. From 2010 to 2018 he lost 5 straight times to DeFazio, finishing 10 points or more behind each time. But that’s okay. When last reported, he had over 14,000 urine samples stored in lab freezers at his Institute which he believes hold the key to combat the degenerative diseases common to aging. He hasn’t published any peer-reviewed research in decades but has claimed "we've completed experiments here, which we could easily publish, but we want to wait until they are perfect."
But it was the presidential election of 2016 that brought the national spotlight on the Mercers.
Originally, they backed Ted Cruz as an establishment outsider. As an elected Tea Party Senator in 2012, he has regularly attacked fellow GOP Senators including Mitch McConnell. His campaign manager for his 2012 Senate win was Ed Meese, who the Mercers knew from their secret CNP meetings.
Initially, in the 2016 presidential primaries the Mercers threw in $11m to a Super PAC for Cruz, run by Kellyanne Conway. Rebekah so harshly critiqued his debate performances while insisting he hire Cambridge Analytica that she quickly alienated Cruz and his campaign staff. Cruz pulled off a surprise win in Iowa, drawing Trump’s immediate denunciation, his first attempt to claim an election was fraudulent.
Later, after Ted dropped out of the primaries, Big Brain Becky denounced Cruz’s refusal to back Trump. “If Clinton won, the Mercers claimed, she would “repeal both the First and Second Amendments of the Bill of Rights.” Given the stakes, they said, “all hands” were “needed on deck” in order to insure a Trump victory. Cruz, they noted, had “chosen to stay in his bunk below.” “
(Link #1 in footnotes)
She tossed in another $2m to the Cruz Super PAC and directed it to throw its full support to Trump. Several weeks later, Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was forced to resign, which gave her a further opening.
She pushed the campaign to hire Cambridge Analytica and bore down harder.
“Rebekah Mercer successfully pushed for a staff shakeup that led to the promotions of three people funded by the family: Bannon became the campaign’s C.E.O., Conway its manager, and Bossie its deputy manager. William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard and an adamant Trump opponent, warned, “It’s the merger of the Trump campaign with the kooky right.”
And
“Although Bannon was running Trump’s campaign, Fischer said that it appears to have paid him nothing. Meanwhile, the Mercers’ Super PAC made a payment of about five million dollars to Cambridge Analytica, which was incorporated at the same address as Bannon Strategic Advisors. Super pacs are legally required to stay independent of a candidate’s campaign. But, Fischer said, “it raises the possibility of the Mercers subsidizing Steve Bannon’s work for the Trump campaign.” “
(Link #1 in footnotes for both quoted passages)
And her alliance with Cambridge Analytica was suspect since CA may have breached legal boundaries.
While she served as a member of the Cambridge Analytica board, which had developed “profiles” made from several thousand data points about two hundred and twenty million Americans, that company’s data was allegedly stolen or illegally acquired from Facebook. Purportedly each profile would indicate political leanings and issue biases. The company would then microtarget that person with specific ads that appealed to their biases while assuring them Trump shared those views.
Skeptics described it as inconceivable that they could deliver so many customized ads or that the ads could sway enough people, but with the razor thin margins in three key swing states, it’s impossible to fully assess whether that or other variables were crucial to the outcome.
It provoked the FEC and Robert Mueller to do some degree of investigation without any significant determinations. And when lawsuits erupted over the illegally acquired FB data, the company declared bankruptcy. Many questions remain unanswered like did it fold so the principals could escape prosecution?
Within a few weeks, I reached my own conclusions:
1) It’s possible that they at least partially had an impact on the outcome;
2) it was an innovative approach;
3) if it succeeded, the approach could be further refined to become more effective in subsequent elections, and:
4) others might attempt to replicate the effort, including foreign governments.
I warned thousands of my Facebook friends about the last two points. My concerns subsided after the company went bankrupt and the Mueller investigation ended.
But after the 2016 election, Mercer swayed Trump to make several Cabinet appointments including Mike Flynn and Jeff Sessions. And presumably she can get Trump’s ear anytime she calls.
From the time of the Charlottesville tiki torch hate group offensive till the January 6th siege of the Capitol Building, much of my attention was focused on the hate groups escalating after the murder of George Floyd or on the pandemic.
But those old concerns arose again in September 2020 when polling indicated Biden was heading to a likely win. Concerned about the way Trump was pulling out all stops to disrupt mail-in balloting, including his efforts to claim the outcome would be fraudulent before many mail-ins had occurred, my research included seeking an answer to this question: what were the Mercers doing in 2020?
I discovered that Cambridge Analytica had been a subsidiary of SCL Group, self defined as a global election management agency. It claims to have participated in at least 25 major elections since 1994. But it also conducted military psy-ops in the War on Iraq and the war in Afghanistan and has claimed it’s capable of successfully instigating coups in developing countries. Cambridge Analytica originated in 2012 and participated in numerous US elections in 2014 and 2016 before folding in 2018.
And its principals, including the CEO, Rebekah Mercer and Mercer’s sister, immediately arose from CA’s ashes. In the summer of 2019, Emerdata acquired both SCL and CA to acquire what remained after the two were liquidated. The CEO has since been legally blocked from participating in any companies’ endeavors. It’s unclear whether Emerdata has been disbanded after raising $19 million from international investors.
That ticked up my worries a bit. Less than two weeks after the 2020 election it emerged that Big Brain Becky had funded Parler, the alternative social media site frequented by many of the Q-Anon followers and other violent hate groups.
On Tuesday (Feb 3) the Wall Street Journal reported that Parler CEO John Matze “said he was fired on Friday by the company’s board. He said the board is currently controlled by conservative political donor Rebekah Mercer.”
And that “Ms. Mercer said in a post on the platform that she “started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended.” “
(Link #2 in footnotes)
That article prompted me to complete this newsletter which I’d worked on intermittently for the past couple of weeks. In the wake of the January 6th Capitol siege, while observing the volumes of videos, investigations and arrests that have occurred, several what-ifs have popped into my head.
What if Cambridge Analytica and the SCL Group determined that - instead of microtargeting voters with political ads, it was more effective to target them with conspiracy theories, particularly if the desired result is a coup? SCL has previously indicated it had the capacity to instigate coups.
What if Rebekah Mercer or someone in her employ is actually Q?
And while I was writing and condensing this newsletter edition, another article was published in Salon yesterday by Igor Derysh. Much of it revisits the information Jane Mayer wrote in 2017 (as do my 6 cites of her work which I include here under Fair Use rules with links below).
But Derysh’s article adds some noteworthy fresh detail.
In addition to her help getting Josh Hawley elected to the Senate in 2018, there’s a link displaying her contributions in 2020 which shows:
$5600 donated to David Perdue/GA
$5600 to Kelly Loeffler/GA
$2800 each to John James/MI, Cory Gardner/CO, Martha McSally/AZ, and these first 5 lost.
$2800 each to winning candidates Thom Tillis/NC, Joni Ernst/IA, Steven Daines/MT, Dan Sullivan/AK, Susan Collins/ME, and the cursory sum of $1600 to Mitch McConnell
While it’s clear she really wanted to hold onto the GOP Senate,, we can’t tell how much Hidden Money she actually donated to pursue that.
Also this:
“More recently, Rebekah Mercer co-founded Parler, ostensibly a "libertarian" moderation-free social network that quickly became a megaphone for far-right figures like Alexander and fellow organizer Alex Jones, both of whom had been banned from mainstream social networks for spreading disinformation. Alexander, Jones and others used Parler to spread falsehoods about the election while others simply trafficked in white supremacist content, according to the Anti-Defamation League. "Holocaust denial, antisemitism, racism and other forms of bigotry are also easy to find," the ADL said.
Parler was used by some of the Capitol rioters to plan and coordinate the attack. The site was briefly taken offline by Amazon before finding a new host, though its apps have been removed from the Apple and Google app stores. Rebekah Mercer said in a Parler post that she started the social network to combat the "increasing tyranny" of our "tech overlords," slamming mainstream social networks over "data mining" — which is exactly what the Mercers' former company, Cambridge Analytica, exploited to steal Facebook users' personal data to help Trump in 2016. Although Mercer touted Parler's protection of user data, hackers were able to easily gain access to unsecured user data, which showed that Parler users had penetrated deep inside the Capitol and shared videos and photos of their crimes.”
(Link #3 in Footnotes)
Other things worth your review in the Salon article include Lincoln Project Steve Schmidt’s opinion of what she’s funded, how well the Mercer’s have concealed their tracks in UK courts, her participation in the Gatestone Institute, and the words of Mobashra Tazamal, a senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Bridge Initiative.
There’s also a bunch of jaw droppers in the Jan 14th report by Matthew Cunningham-Cook at The Intercept that displays how deep is her hate. It’s deep enough to question whether she deliberately tried to incite the violent attempt t overthrow the election. It’s another must-read.
(Link #4 in Footnotes)
CONCLUSION
I think we should write or call our Senators today and insist that Rebekah Mercer be called as a witness in the Impeachment Trial next week or any subsequent investigations of the Capitol Riots. I think she should be whiteboarded thoroughly by Katie Porter in any House investigation too.
Among the areas to be probed are the two I mentioned:
1) What if Cambridge Analytica and the SCL Group determined that - instead of microtargeting voters with political ads, it was more effective to target them with conspiracy theories, particularly if the desired result is a coup? SCL has previously indicated it had the capacity to instigate coups.
2) What if Rebekah Mercer or someone in her employ is actually Q?
And here’s one we all need to consider: what if the only way to break the cult-like adherence to Trump by his violent followers is to start anonymously hitting them with fresh conspiracies of our own?
If so, let’s start with:
3) Did Andrew Breitbart really die of a heart attack or did Vladimir Putin hit him with polonium to put his puppet Bannon in?
4) Why did Donald Trump pardon Steve Bannon? Did you know if Bannon defrauded you with his fake Wall project you still can sue him to recover your losses and more?
5) Why did Trump hire a lawyer who helped pedophile and child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein avoid prison for so long?
Footnote Link #1 – the Jane Mayer report in the New Yorker, Mar 27,2017
Footnote Link #2 - the Wall Street Journal report, Feb 3 2021
Footnote Link #3 – the Igor Derysh report in Salon, Feb 4, 2021
Footnote Link #4 – the Matthew Cunningham-Cook report in The Intercept, Jan 14, 2021
__________________
You have my permission to repost this information or copy and paste it, if you credit me as the author and link back to this page.
Kevin Hayden (aka Trey Bushay)