Big Lie Gets Bigger and Bigger and Bigger, Threatening the Nation
Trump’s big lie has metastasized with chilling success, as more than a year after Joe Biden’s inauguration, polling shows that only 21 percent of Republicans say they believe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States.
The disinformation campaign has been so successful that Republicans echoing Trump’s delusions and disputing the 2020 outcome include gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, secretary of state aspirants in 18 and attorneys general hopefuls in 14, according to tracking by States United Action, a non-partisan organization that tracks elections.
“In a deception that exceeded even (President Richard) Nixon’s imagination, Trump and a group of lawyers, loyalists and White House aides devised a strategy to bombard the country with false assertions that the 2020 election was rigged and that Trump had really won,” according to a column in the Washington Post by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that exposed the Watergate conspiracy.
The latest strategy in the unrelenting effort to assault Americans with the mantra that trump is the rightful president comes in the formation of a plan to elect Republican secretaries of state who would overturn their states’ legitimate results in the next presidential race to put trump back in the White House.
The Trump strategy is part of an elaborate plan by former trump strategist, Steve Bannon, to win over the electorate, voting precinct by voting precinct throughout the country. The formula has morphed into a scheme to elect far right wing, extremist trump loyalists to posts of secretary of state around the nation. Secretaries of state double as chief election officials and have the power to reject electoral votes, in what could be a crucial element in returning trump to the White House in 2024.
A group calling itself America First has been created to boost various campaigns for secretaries of state in battleground states. One member of America First is Doug Mastriano, who won the GOP primary for State Senator in Pennsylvania, where the governor appoints the secretary of state.
The motley crew of bottom-dwelling lunatic fringe miscreants involved in the America First efforts includes two men that QAnon conspiracists believe are both John F. Kennedy Jr. in disguise; a county clerk in Colorado who has been indicted for tampering with elections equipment; an unsuccessful candidate for U.S. Senate who claimed that like trump, he was a “victim of election fraud”; a candidate who said she was inspired to run for office after seeing Jesus was in her closet and that devil-worshippers sacrificed animals and performed other occult rituals in front of her house; another who has suggested that Jews profited as they had an outsized influence in the development of COVID-19 vaccines; a candidate who opposes teaching evolution and has called public schools “government indoctrination camps”; and a member of the militant, far right, Oath Keepers militia who believes the country is overrun with Democratic pedophiles.
But above all, they are all convinced that trump’s 2020 reelection drive was derailed by widespread voter fraud, that included modified voting machines and foreign hacking. In other words, the big lie.
Jim Marchant, a Republican candidate for secretary of state in Nevada, is a founding member of the America First slate. Others connected with America First include Mark Finchem; Tina Peters; Kristina Karamo; Jim Marchant; Mike Lindell; Patrick Byrne; Doug Mastriano; Rachel Hamm; Audrey Trujillo; Kristina Karamo; Phil Waldron; Russell J. Ramsland Jr.; Kim Crockett; and Wayne Willott, a shady QAnon figure who goes by the nom de guerre of Juan O’Savin.
Marchant, a candidate for Nevada secretary of state, is a former Nevada state assemblyman, who claims to have founded and served as CEO and President of numerous technology companies. He ran for Congress in Nevada in 2020 and lost, “a victim of election fraud.”
Marchant has been endorsed for secretary of state by trump, the central committee of the state Republican Party, the ultra right wing House Freedom Caucus and far right members of congress, including Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. and Rep. Pal Gosar, R-Ariz. Marchant said that he would not have certified Biden’s victory in Nevada if he had been Secretary of State at the time of the election. He also said that if he’s elected, he will remove all electronic voting machines and end vote-by-mail and early voting programs.
In May 2021, Marchant organized a day long meeting at the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, where speakers included Mike “The Pillow Guy” Lindell, a leading provocateur in the big lie, and Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel who later recommended that trump declare a national emergency to delay the certification of the 2020 results. The group created a platform that calls for moving to paper ballots, eliminating mail voting and “aggressive voter roll cleanup.”
In Las Vegas, Merchant met QAnon conspiracist Wayne Willott, also known as “Jean O. Savin” and the two soon joined forces and laid the groundwork for America First in May 2021. Also at the May 2021 organizational meeting were Lindell and Patrick Byrne, the former the director of Overstocked.com.
Willot is believed by QAnon followers to be John F. Kennedy Jr. in disguise. Willott helped Kristina Karamo win the GOP nomination for Michigan secretary of state, and is working with Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem in his bid for secretary of state and Rachel Hamm, who’s running in California. Willott, under his alias “Juan O. Savin,” has spoken about conspiracy theories involving global elites sharing alien DNA strands and has worked with another QAnon believer, Cynthia Abcug, who was arrested for plotting an armed assault on the foster home where her son lived. Two leading anti-vaccination, COVID-19 conspiracists also promoted Willot before they both died of COVID-19, including Robert David Steele, a former CIA officer who was vocal about his belief that COVID-19 was a hoax and Cirsten Weldon.
Patrick Byrne, the former leader of Overstocked.com, has spent millions on the discredited “audit” of votes in Arizona and has pledged to spend up to $15,000 on public forums on alleged voter irregularities and has contributed around $83,000 to a political action committee controlled by Marchant. Byrne resigned as CEO in August 2019, following revelations that he had an affair with a Russian spy, Maria Butina. Byrne was the outspoken leader of the “deep state” conspiracy theory and spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tina Peters, a candidate for secretary of state in Colorado, was indicted on allegations that she tampered with elections equipment, and a judge has barred her from overseeing this year’s elections. Peters attended a forum in Dallas, focusing on the purported weaknesses of American voting systems. “They took the ability to cheat to a global scale,” said Lara Logan, a former CBS journalist who moderated the event. Other speakers included Russell J. Ramsland Jr., a Texas businessman whose firm produced a widely circulated report that trump and his associates presented as evidence of fraud. The report, which focused on results in one Michigan county, was later debunked by Republicans in the State Senate.
Vincent Fusca, a trump devotee from Pittsburgh, lost his bid for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. QAnon followers believe that Fusca also is actually John F. Kennedy Jr., in disguise and that Kennedy Jr., the son of the 35th president, did not die in July 1999 when the airplane he was flying crashed off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Kennedy Jr., AKA Fusca, will be named vice president after trump returns to office, or so the QAnoners believe.
Rachel Hamm is a candidate for secretary of state in California. An author, speaker and podcaster, Hamm has been endorsed by Bannon, and convicted felon and election denier, Gen. Michael Flynn who said that “Rachel is committed to ensuring California has honest elections and she has the tenacity needed to make this happen.” Also endorsing Hamm is Lindell, who said “The Golden state needs a leader who will get to the bottom of voting laws and regulations that have favored corrupt politicians for years.”
In March, Hamm said her son found an angel in her closet where Hamm prays.
“That wasn’t an angel. That was Jesus himself. And so that’s why I’m running for Secretary of State,” Hamm said.
In 2021, The Daily Beast reported, “Hamm has claimed that devil-worshippers sacrificed animals and performed other occult rituals in front of her house. But she isn’t without her defenses, saying that her prayers also inspired the murder of a witch in her neighborhood.”
Audrey Trujillo, candidate for secretary of state in New Mexico, said that U.S. voting systems are “no better than any other communist country like Venezuela or any of these other states where our elections are being manipulated.” She called the 2020 presidential election a “coup.” Trujillo’s social media account has shared tweets mimicking a Spanish accent and suggesting Jews had outsized influence in the development of COVID-19 vaccines.
“Over 70 percent of Americans support voter integrity laws. Guess who doesn’t support? The answer is obvious, those who do not want to lose power and want to undermine the integrity of the electoral process. It’s all about political power at the expense of our citizens,” Trujillo said.
Kim Crockett has the endorsement of the Minnesota Republican Party for secretary of state. Crockett played a video at the state party convention showing election officials, including the state’s Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon, who is Jewish, under the control of Jewish financier George Soros. Crockett also once derided East African immigrants coming to Minnesota because “These aren’t people coming from Norway, let’s put it that way. These people are very visible.”
Kristina Karamo, a strong proponent of trump’s big lie, won her party’s endorsement for Michigan secretary of state and she is expected to be nominated in August. Karamo is a part-time community college professor who has never held elected office and who describes herself as a defender of the Christian faith. She opposes teaching evolution and has called public schools “government indoctrination camps.” She has argued that many Americans live in poverty because “they just make dumb decisions” and she contends that the instigators of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol were “totally antifa posing as Trump supporters.”
Mark W. Finchem, a current member of the Arizona House of Representatives and a member of the far right militia group, Oath Keepers, is running for secretary of state in Arizona. He has falsely claimed to have discovered tens of thousands of missing or lost votes in Arizona. He attended the protest that led to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that had been instigated by “leftists,” Finchem said. Finchem also attended the QAnon convention in Las Vegas and has repeated the QAnon conspiracy theory about a plot for world domination run by Democratic pedophiles out of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor.
“We’ve got a serious problem in this nation. There’s a lot of people involved in a pedophile network in the distribution of children … And, unfortunately, there’s a whole lot of elected officials that are involved in that,” Finchem said.
Russell Ramsland Jr., owner of Allied Security Operations Group in Texas, is believed to have first suggested the first iteration of the big lie to trump. The Washington Post reported that key elements of the big lie were concocted by Ramsland in 2018 in Addison, Texas. Ramsland and associates first pitched the idea of voter fraud to losing Texas candidates in the 2018 mid-term elections. Ramsland claimed to have voting-machine audit logs and other information that seemingly contained proof of voter fraud. It turned out there were no such voting machine logs or any other proof, for that matter. Ramsland’s claims made their way to trump, who soon adopted them for the big lie.
Phil Waldron, a bar-owner from Texas, also managed to get his conspiracy theories before trump. A former Army officer, Waldron claimed he had worked with Ramsland and that he had proof of a how a cabal of Chinese Communist officials, international shell companies and the financier George Soros, had quietly conspired to hack into U.S. voting machines in a “globalist/socialist” plot to steal the election. Waldron was able to get the ear of Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, a far right devotee of the big lie, who passed the information on to trump.