Home Depot – Meet the GOP State AGs Who Unfold Election Lies That Fueled an Revolt
After its nonprofit subsidiary promoted lies about election fraud and made a robocall forward of the Capitol riot urging Trump supporters to march there to “cease the steal,” the Republican Attorneys General Affiliation (RAGA)—a political spending group that promotes the election of GOP state AGs—is underneath hearth for its position within the marketing campaign to dam certification of the presidential election.
On Jan. 11, 5 days after the bloody, feces-strewn riot that left 4 protesters and one Capitol police officer lifeless, RAGA Government Director Adam Piper resigned his publish, a transfer RAGA introduced with out rationalization. Since then, quite a few corporations and different organizations have mentioned they are going to droop or rethink their donations to the group.
Piper, who held management roles in South Carolina Lawyer General Alan Wilson’s workplace from 2011 to 2017, beforehand served as RAGA’s coverage director. He additionally previously served as president and govt director of RAGA’s Rule of Regulation Protection Fund (RLDF), a 501(c)(4) secret-money nonprofit whose most not too long ago accessible IRS submitting says its mission is to “share finest practices amongst state attorneys normal.” The day earlier than the riot, RLDF despatched robocalls asserting, “At 1 p.m., we’ll march to the Capitol constructing and name on Congress to cease the steal,” in accordance with reporting by Documented, a watchdog group that investigates company affect. That hour coincided with the deliberate timing of the election certification vote.
RAGA’s RLDF was additionally a sponsor of the rally previous the riot, the place President Trump fired up the gang with false allegations of election theft whereas U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama informed protesters, “At present is the day that American patriots begin taking down names and kicking ass”—for which he faces Home censure. (Brooks, a lawyer and former Tuscaloosa assistant district lawyer, has since incorrectly blamed the riot on “antifa.”) Beside RLDF, the rally’s different sponsoring teams had been the Black Conservatives Fund, Eighty % Coalition, Mothers for America, Peaceably Collect, Phyllis Schafly Eagles, Cease the Steal, Tea Get together Patriots, Turning Level Motion, WildProtest.com, and Ladies for America First, as Doc reported.
Following the following riot—which led to the harm and eventual demise of Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, the suicide of one other Capitol police officer, the accidents of at the very least 58 D.C. law enforcement officials, and the taking pictures demise of a protester by Capitol police—Piper and different RAGA leaders issued an announcement condemning what they referred to as “anarchy.” Nonetheless, RAGA didn’t acknowledge its position in fueling Trump supporters’ ire by sharing repeatedly debunked lies concerning the final result of the presidential election, which was licensed by all 50 states, Republican- and Democrat-led alike, and referred to as “essentially the most safe in American historical past” by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company.
Alabama AG Steve Marshall took over the management of the RLDF from Utah AG Sean Reyes in November; Marshall additionally serves as RAGA’s coverage chair. He informed the Montgomery Advertiser that he was unaware of RLDF’s involvement within the anti-certification rally and blamed employees. Marshall was appointed AG by former Gov. Robert Bentley (R) in 2017 to exchange Luther Unusual, who crammed Jeff Periods’ U.S. Senate seat when he turned Trump‘s lawyer normal. A former Democrat who switched to the GOP in 2011, Marshall’s assertion on the pro-Trump mob’s violence on the Capitol drew a distinction between what he referred to as the “passionate however peaceable protestors” who had gathered as lawmakers licensed the election and “those that selected to interact in violence and anarchy”—who, he mentioned, “ought to and can be held accountable underneath the regulation.” A month earlier than he took the RLDF’s reins, Marshall led a profitable problem to the U.S. Supreme Court docket that struck down a federal court docket order permitting curbside voting in Alabama for voters anxious about contracting COVID-19.
Moreover Marshall and Reyes, different members of RAGA’s 2021 govt committee are AGs Chris Carr of Georgia and Eric Schmitt of Missouri, chair and vice chair respectively, and members Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, Mike Hunter of Oklahoma, Jeff Landry of Louisiana, Ashley Moody of Florida, and South Carolina’s Wilson. Landry chaired the group final yr, which RAGA referred to as a “historic yr” through which Republicans “enforced regulation and order amid nationwide anarchy and violence.” Amongst RAGA’s fundraising campaigns in 2020, a yr that noticed a nationwide rebellion towards police brutality and racial injustice, was one referred to as “Lawless Liberals,” that includes movies titled “Our America vs. Their America,” “Antifa Is an Group” (restricted as “inappropriate for some customers”), and “This Is Getting Scary.” As well as, RAGA despatched out tweets earlier than and after the election selling false conspiracy theories that the Democrats had been conspiring to “steal” it, as Fashionable Data reported.
RAGA leaders had been additionally concerned in Texas AG Ken Paxton’s lawsuit filed final month within the U.S. Supreme Court docket difficult the presidential election leads to the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, claiming adjustments made to accommodate voters within the COVID-19 pandemic had been illegal. Amongst these signing on to the swimsuit had been RAGA’s Hunter, Landry, Marshall, Moody, Reyes, Schmitt and Wilson, in addition to the Republican AGs of Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
The Supreme Court docket dominated that Texas lacked standing to convey the case, one in every of greater than 60 lawsuits difficult the presidential election outcomes that had been rejected by state and federal courts. However the judiciary’s rejection of the authorized gambit didn’t cease RAGA’s RLDF from persevering with to falsely declare in its Jan. 5 robocall that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen.”
RAGA funders rethink
RAGA was shaped in 1999 by conservatives together with former Texas Lawyer General John Cornyn searching for to curb lawsuits towards company wrongdoers. (Three years later, Cornyn could be elected to the U.S. Senate, the place’s he is now his state’s senior senator; he break up with junior Sen. Ted Cruz over certifying the 2020 presidential election, saying that “allegations alone is not going to suffice” and “proof is required.”) Three years later when the Republican State Management Committee was launched, RAGA operated as its subsidiary till changing into impartial in 2014. On the time of RAGA’s founding there have been 12 Republican attorneys normal nationwide; at present there are 26, together with in 11 of the 13 Southern states.
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RAGA is organized as a 527 nonprofit underneath IRS guidelines. Such teams are permitted to lift limitless funds from people, companies or labor unions however should register with the IRS and disclose contributions and expenditures. They will work to affect points, insurance policies, appointments, or elections however usually are not presupposed to coordinate with candidates’ campaigns. 527s may be dominant forces in elections, nevertheless: Within the 2016 AG race in West Virginia, for instance, RAGA purchased $6.eight million in adverts supporting the re-election of Republican Patrick Morrisey, outspending each his and his opponent’s campaigns. Morrisey, who served as RAGA’s chair in 2017, has declined to touch upon the group’s position within the Capitol riot.
Going through South reviewed the three quarterly disclosures RAGA filed with the IRS in 2020 (first, second, and third) in addition to the post-election submitting masking the interval as much as Nov. 23. Throughout that interval the group raised over $18.three million—a lot of it from company pursuits.
The group’s greatest donor by far, giving over $2.7 million, is The Harmony Fund of Washington, D.C. Identified till not too long ago because the Judicial Disaster Community, this far-right secret-money community has been working with President Trump to get allies appointed to the federal judiciary; it additionally pushed voting restrictions earlier than the 2020 election, in accordance with reporting by OpenSecrets.org and The Guardian. It is run by Carrie Severino, a former clerk for Supreme Court docket Justice Clarence Thomas, whose spouse, Ginni Thomas, took down her Fb web page after reviews surfaced about her promotion of the Jan. 6 anti-certification rally.
Among the many different donors who’ve given RAGA at the very least six-figure contributions in 2020 had been the U.S. Chamber Institute for Authorized Reform ($750,000); Karen Wright and Thomas Rastin of Ohio gasoline compressor producer Ariel Corp. ($500,000 every); multinational conglomerate Koch Industries ($375,000); multilevel advertising and marketing firm Melaleuca ($290,000); Virginia tobacco big Altria ($275,000); index-fund pioneer Rex Sinquefield of Missouri ($250,000); telecomm agency Comcast ($210,315); lawyer and former U.S. diplomat C. Boyden Grey ($200,000); pharma firm Pfizer ($150,930); Ronald Cameron, proprietor of Arkansas poultry big Mountaire Farms ($150,000); Cherokee Nation Companies of Oklahoma ($150,000); billionaire Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus of Atlanta ($150,000); Wal-Mart Shops ($140,000); Home Depot ($130,957); Anthem, the biggest for-profit managed care firm within the Blue Cross Blue Defend Affiliation ($130,000); Lowe’s house enchancment firm ($125,775); Ace Cash Express ($125,000); AT&T ($125,000); monetary providers agency AWL Inc. ($125,000); Anschutz Corp., proprietor of Coachella Music Competition ($125,000); house well being firm Caremark ($125,000); well being care insurer subsidiary Centene Administration ($125,000); Fears Nachawati, a private harm regulation agency in Dallas ($125,000); media and web holding firm InterActiveCorp, ($125,000); e-cigarette maker JUUL ($125,000); house well being providers firm LHC Group of Lafayette, Louisiana ($125,000); on-line relationship firm Match Group ($125,000); pharma firm Horizon Therapeutics ($100,265); retail big Amazon ($100,000); brewer Anheuser-Busch ($100,000); retired banking govt Leslie Baker of Winston-Salem, North Carolina ($100,000); electrical energy firm Entergy of Louisiana ($100,000); General Motors ($100,000); billionaire enterprise capitalist Peter Thiel ($100,000); and Uber Applied sciences ($100,000).
RAGA’s disclosure reviews present the group additionally has quite a few main donors in Southern states. They embody quite a few vitality pursuits: NextEra Power of Juno Seashore, Florida ($75,000); Valero Power of San Antonio, Texas ($50,350); Dominion Power of Richmond, Virginia ($50,000); Texas-based oil big ExxonMobil ($50,000); Texas gasoline driller Vary Assets ($50,000); Southern Firm of Atlanta ($42,500); CenterPoint Power of Houston ($25,000); Florida Energy & Mild ($25,000); Georgia Energy ($25,000); Diversified Gasoline and Oil of Birmingham, Alabama ($15,000); and Duke Power, headquartered in North Carolina ($10,000). RAGA’s Southern donors additionally embody well being care pursuits: Fresenius Medical Care of Metairie, Louisiana ($50,800); Blue Cross Blue Defend of South Carolina ($50,000); Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA ($50,000); Ochsner Clinic Basis of New Orleans ($50,000); Smile Direct teledentistry firm of Nashville, Tennessee ($40,000); Sensiva Well being of New Orleans ($25,000); and Tenet Healthcare of Dallas ($25,000). Others main Southern donors are Atlanta-based Coca-Cola ($50,000); software program big SAS Institute of Cary, North Carolina ($50,000); Sazerac, an alcoholic beverage firm with workplaces in Kentucky and Louisiana ($50,000); Smithfield Meals of Virginia ($50,000); Tyson Meals of Arkansas ($40,000); Reynolds American tobacco of North Carolina ($30,000); house building big Lennar Corp. of Miami ($15,000); and U.S. Sugar of Lewiston, Florida.
Different outstanding corporations and organizations that made main donations to RAGA final yr are the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation ($85,000), Cigna Well being and Life Insurance coverage ($80,350), Caesar’s Leisure ($75,350), Fb ($75,000), TikTok ($75,000), Constitution Communications ($50,645), College of Phoenix ($50,400), American Petroleum Institute ($50,000), Johnson & Johnson ($50,350), Fox Corp. ($50,000), Monsanto ($50,000), American Gasoline Affiliation ($40,000), Microsoft ($36,622), Toyota ($35,000), Nationwide Beer Wholesalers Affiliation ($25,750), DoorDash ($25,000), JPMorgan Chase PAC ($25,000), PepsiCo ($25,000), Walgreens ($25,000), Yelp ($15,375), and Lyft ($15,000).
Taking an extended perspective, ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer exhibits RAGA’s industry-level funders from 2012 to 2019. Among the many greatest are the Alliance of Vehicle Producers, Blue Cross and Blue Defend Affiliation, Distilled Spirits Council, Recording Trade Affiliation of America (RIAA), and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. RAGA additionally acquired important funding from quite a few vitality {industry} teams together with the American Gas and Petrochemical Producers, American Pure Gasoline Alliance, and the Edison Electrical Institute. Not surprisingly, RAGA has been concerned in efforts to dam state motion on local weather change, as DeSmogBlog has reported. Local weather change, just like the 2020 election, has been a goal of a corporate-backed disinformation marketing campaign that has concerned RAGA donors, together with ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute.
The general public outrage over the riot on the U.S. Capitol is hurting RAGA’s fundraising. Fashionable Data reviews that the College of Phoenix is demanding its $50,400 donation again, whereas DoorDash, Edison Electrical Institute, Fb, Lyft, RIAA, and Smithfield Meals mentioned they’re suspending additional contributions to RAGA. The Cherokee Nation has additionally introduced it is withdrawing its $150,000 donation to the group. And Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and Smile Direct informed Fashionable Data they’re reviewing their contribution insurance policies in mild of RAGA’s messaging.
RAGA has not launched any further statements on the riot or its funders’ choice to stroll away. However at the very least one chief is distancing from the group, at the very least in a small approach: The Tampa Bay Occasions reported that Florida AG Moody erased the RLDF, on whose board she served, from her on-line biography.
