LIVE THREAD: I’ve been caught in the act at an election denier dinner in Appleton, Wisconsin! 1/
One of the staffers here recognized me and I could see them huddling. They didn't approach- so I tried not to be paranoid. 2/
But they just had the emcee — Regular Joe — name check me during his opening speech 🫠 3/
I'm still here recording their speeches— they invited me up on stage! I’m minding my p’s and q’s listening to Michael Gableman— the guy who got fired by Robin Vos for spending over $1 million in Wisconsin’s bs election audit — and Gableman addressed me too 4/
He's saying that Mark Zuckerberg stole the election for Biden and railing against ballot drop boxes. Crying fraud, says that no one has challenged his report 5/
I just raised my hand to ask Gableman a question and they invited me on stage… why he didn’t produce documents from his investigation to the WI judge who held him in contempt… 6/
Gableman wanted me to leave stage, but I insisted on taking a seat since they invited me… 7/
Hands shaking, trying to suppress his rage, Gableman mocked me and evaded the question. He cut our convo short dismissing my inquiries bc I didn’t read his George Soros-Zuckerberg election denying conspiracy report. 8/
WI Assembly Elections Chair Janel Brandtjen was just on calling on all the election deniers in the room to get involved to protect “election integrity”… you should be terrified 9/
Election denier gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels decries “banana republics” and promises WI will lead on “election integrity.” He also promises to transform education in the state through universal school choice. 10/
I left after Michels, but they blocked me from talking to him. I went outside, a couple of attendees yelled at me asking why I came to stir up shit. I replied that did not- that they had in fact called me out and invited me onstage and I merely accepted the invite to engage. 11/
The fellow yelling at me calmed down then and we had a lovely debate, where we actually found common ground about Big Corporate $$ govt corruption. I invited Rocky to drinks if he’s ever in DC. And now I’m driving home.
Trump gave $1m to Mark Meadows' c3 nonprofit, where insurrection atty Cleta Mitchell is building an army of election-denier poll watchers in battleground states like Wisconsin, through hosting "election integrity" summits for rightwing activists. 1/
These summits are funded with taxpayer-subsidized money and are supposed to be NONPARTISAN in nature. C3 orgs are prohibited from engaging in partisan political activity.
And yet Sen Ron Johnson gave a flagrantly partisan speech at Cleta's WI summit last wkend... 2/
...on his strategy for flipping seats from D to R. Sen Johnson told the crowd "it's all about getting votes."
To a crowd of election deniers who will work the polls in a state that could very well determine control of the Senate. 3/
🧵 For some reason -- PROFITS!! -- @Google no longer does telephone support calls for business suite customers. They have locked my employee out of his gmail account now for over 2 hours. 1/
The first chat agent agreed to have support call us. My employee received a call, but they would not talk to him w/o me being on. So he called me on 3-way, and of course they hung up on him 2/
We were transferred to a 2nd agent who refuse to put the call in again, saying that only chat and email were available. He is now transferring me to a 3rd agent. 3/
I got into politics thru activism in Occupy LA to battle Wall Street chicanery, then the Money Out, Voters In Coalition to battle Big Money in politics. The Koch bros were clear foes. Reid was early to see them as a threat to democracy. 1/
In May of 2014, I interviewed Reid ahead of a doc screening of @bravenewfilms "Koch Brothers Exposed" that he hosted at the Capitol. (This was a BFD for me early in my reporting!) He supported amending the Constitution to allow Congress to set limits on political spending... 2/
and overturn Citizens United + other precedents that have allowed dark money to flood our politics.
That June, a source gave me several hours of tape from the Koch bros' donor retreat. The audio was in very bad shape -- low audio levels requiring forensic audio experts... 3/
EXCLUSIVE: Author of Jan 6 coup memo John Eastman told us Mike Pence didn't take his solid legal advice & overturn the election bc Pence is "an establishment guy"
(He previously told @NRO the memo was not “viable” and would have been “crazy” to pursue.)