Note, the lede is buried in this draft, my apologies, but I’m writing this under a time constraint. The point I’m coming to is why the DOJ has not indicted Rudolph Giuliani for crimes he appears to have committed in his capacity as Trump’s personal lawyer, several years ago in Ukraine (prior to his unethical behavior as Trump’s lawyer in post-election purely propagandistic lawsuits).

I recently found myself listening to what I thought was the opening presentation from the popular Mr. Trump’s second impeachment trial. I was looking forward to hearing the presentation, prepared by the excellent editors over at Lawfare who had a great podcast covering the Mueller Report and, not long after, the first impeachment, called The Report.

Lawfare did a great job boiling down complex issues, and condensing many hours of hearings into a clear and compelling hour or so, and I followed their great dissection of the Mueller Report and the first impeachment closely. I discovered they had a new season and I eagerly jumped in to hear everything said during the second impeachment, weeks after the January 6 riot when most of us were keen to make sure the instigator of a violent assault on democracy could no longer run for the most powerful position in the world.

It turns out Lawfare hadn’t covered the second impeachment at all, at least not on The Report. I found myself instead listening to their excellent presentation of the first group of impeachment managers laying out the case for conviction in the impeachment trail (well worth hearing) — over the former president’s plan to shake down the new Ukrainian president not only in the perfect phone call, but in the weeks leading up to it, when our ambassador to Ukraine was smeared, menaced and abruptly fired, and in the days and weeks following the perfect call, when the whistleblower report on the call was being buried by Barr, as a Russian army threatened Ukraine (who had already been granted military aid by Congress) and Trump refused release the aid or to meet with the president of our beleaguered ally until he announced a fake investigation into seemingly slimy bastard Hunter Biden, in order to politically hurt his father.

If their crystal clear laying out of the facts of Trump’s extra-legal meddling in Ukraine, to extract the promise of a propaganda coup, had been presented to a jury in a court of law, there is no question that a guilty verdict would have been returned. Even with Trump’s party’s refusal to allow witnesses or new evidence (and damning new evidence was coming to light daily), the facts they produced supported conviction for a conspiracy to threaten a false corruption investigation out of the vulnerable new president of one of our allies, seeking more foreign help in an American presidential election.

Now this is all urine down the old urinal and I’m not bringing it up to re-litigate any of that “purely political” stuff, here’s the buried lede.

What is laid out in the presentation is how Giuliani, acting as Trump’s PERSONAL lawyer, conducted official business for the United States, employed Trump donors Lev Parnas and Igor Furman (both on trial now) to work with corrupt Ukrainian power brokers (pro-Russian associates of Trump’s first campaign manger, pardoned felon Paul Manafort) to have President Zelensky announce a corruption investigation into the son of Trump’s perceived rival in the 2020 election — after ousting our longtime ambassador. The plot stinks a mile, as my grandmother used to say. A few month’s after Barr, Trump’s warrior gunsel, parachuted out of the looming insurrection, Rudy Giuliani’s home and office were raided by the FBI, records, phones and computers seized. Rudy’s two shady associates, Lev and Igor, Individuals 3 and 4, were both indicted (though for other crimes). Why is there no indictment against Rudy?

If you indict Rudy for doing the corrupt, illegal bidding of Individual One, for the benefit of Individual One, at the request of Individual One, how do you avoid indicting fucking Individual One, particularly now that he’s a private citizen? Hard to do, maybe impossible. I feel your pain, Merrick Garland, and I hope to heaven that you have a very good plan the Department of Justice is busy working on.

Happy New Year, everyone.

So right-wing power center CNP, the powerful, off the radar Council for National Policy, a by-invitation-only private, secret membership society of leaders, funded by undisclosed donors, is a charitable non-profit under the laws of these United States of America. Of course it is.

Makes sense, I guess, considering the power and reach of its secret membership (identities sometimes leaked) who, in addition to sometimes having the final say on who the Republican presidential candidate is (2016), rotate seats on the boards of the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, The Progressive Policy Institute (“radically pragmatic”), Judicial Watch, ALEC, the Cato Institute, Donors Trust and Charles Koch’s personal favorite, The Institute for Humane Studies.

Eh, what are you gonna do? The law’s the law. No law against powerful partisan zealots secretly meeting as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) or (c)(4) corporation. This is America!

Exceptional!

That’s why the RNC is footing the bill for all of Trump’s legal fees, he’s a tremendous earner.

A couple of millions in payments to lawyers is chump change in the mutual windfall of a Trump-branded GOP. A frigging gold-plated corporate gold mine, their charismatic leader.

The religious right’s bargain with Trump, in a nutshell, from Bob Garfield’s recent interview with CNP researcher, author Anne Nelson on his podcast Bully Pulpit:

GARFIELD: All right. Let’s now turn to the more-or-less present: the rise of Trump and the now violent assault on democracy. How was CNP involved in Trump’s ascent?

NELSON: The CNP was involved with Trump, initially, very reluctantly. He wasn’t one of them, he had no particular religious background, he was multiply divorced, and he really didn’t reflect their values in many ways. Their favored candidate was Ted Cruz, but they had a problem – which was that Cruz had a tremendous charisma deficit, and as he lost the primaries, they realized that either they supported Trump, the primary victor, or they lived with Hillary Clinton’s presidency, which was unacceptable to them.

GARFIELD: Oh, I – I’m sorry, I just – I just have to interrupt to remind you what then Senator Al Franken (laughs) said about Cruz.

AL FRANKEN: I probably like him more than most of my other colleagues like Ted, and I hate him (laughs).

NELSON: That is the case. Cruz is a formidable intelligence and strategist. He was not a winning candidate outside Texas. So the fundamentalists convened something like a thousand leaders and representatives in New York City in June of 2016 at the Times Square Marriott. They brought Trump out to parade him before them, and they had a number of leaders from the Council for National Policy there on the program. And publicly, what that event was about was to sell Trump to this thousand fundamentalist leaders, many of whom had been Never Trumpers, and they were like, “This is going to be your guy. You need to go home and tell your flocks that this is the plan.” But the second part of that agenda involved meetings where they cut a deal with Trump. They said, “You don’t have a war chest, you don’t have ground troops for the election canvassing, you don’t have a strategy. And all indications are you’re going to get creamed.” So we have all three of those that we can put into your service. But in return –

GARFIELD: We have a shopping list. 

NELSON: We have a shopping list, and it’s basically got three items. The first one was enact some of our policies by executive orders. So when suddenly the Republican platform has this new anti-trans, anti LGBT language that was literally written by the president of the Council for National Policy, Tony Perkins, Trump enacted the anti-trans policy for the Pentagon against the Pentagon’s wishes, which, you know, the Pentagon said, “This is disruptive of our operations and trans people are not a problem,” but Trump had to deliver on his deal. The second part was to create an evangelical advisory council. Obama had a religious advisory council, but it included Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims. This one was 100% Protestant, and none of these other religions needed to apply. The leadership of this council were in and out of the White House on policy discussions and photo ops on a weekly basis. The third was by far the most important, far reaching, and devastating to our democracy. And that was when they got Trump to agree that any federal judges he nominated would be approved from a list that was submitted by three organizations run by members of the Council for National Policy. These were the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Rifle Association. Now, what business the NRA has in recommending federal judge nominations? I do not know, but that’s how it played out, and after his first confirmation, he invited the representatives of these groups, most of them from the Council for National Policy, for a little victory luncheon at the White House.

GARFIELD: So that was the origin story of Trump’s deal with the devil, a man with not only no religion, but no ideology to speak of creating himself in the image of his political and financial sponsors. Over the ensuing – well, so then he was elected, more or less – and then over the ensuing four years, many of Trump’s 30,000 lies, big and small, find their provenance, what do you know, in the CNP. So, can we just tick a few of these off beginning with the COVID hoax, and the savior drug hydroxychloroquine?

NELSON: So if you get to the beginning of 2020, the Trump campaign is in trouble and the Council for National Policy recognizes it. They had hoped that the 2020 elections would be won with a popular vote, that was cast into doubt. COVID set in a couple of months later, and the whole strategy of the Trump campaign had been built around mass rallies and data harvesting from attendees of the rallies and building on that to secure a victory. Well, mass rallies became impossible because of COVID restrictions, so there was a critical phone call that involved the president of the Council for National Policy and members of the Trump campaign staff, where they said, “We need to open up society, get the economy roaring again, and people are afraid of COVID, but they trust doctors. We have a group of doctors who will say that COVID is a hoax, will argue for the reopening of society and the mass rallies.” So that summer, these doctors were convened by Jenny Beth Martin in Washington. Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots and a leading figure in the Council for National Policy. At that point, the point person – when Dr. Simone Gold announced that hydroxychloroquine was a cure for COVID – she was put on partner media platforms of the CNP, including the Charlie Kirk Show and the Christian Broadcasting Network, spreading this disinformation 

SIMONE GOLD: With the tyranny of medical apartheid nipping at our heels, rise up. Rise up. Rise up.

NELSON: And that has now expanded into a small army of unethical physicians who are continuing the hydroxychloroquine hoax. They’ve added ivermectin as a cure and, in fact, they have online prescription services charging money to people who are ordering ivermectin as a COVID cure.

JAKE TAPPER: Poison control centers are reporting that their calls are spiking in places like Mississippi and Oklahoma because some Americans are trying to use an anti parasite horse drug called ivermectin to treat coronavirus, to prevent contracting coronavirus. What would you tell someone who is considering taking that drug?

FAUCI: Don’t do it.

NELSON: There’s no evidence that it helps against COVID and, in fact, there are several cases of deaths. Not just from COVID and the failed approach of ivermectin, but people taking overdoses of ivermectin. At the same time, they’re discouraging vaccination, and the purpose that lies behind this is, I believe, to discredit any federal agency, to discredit the CDC and the NIH, and to have their followers distrust any kind of fact based authority. Whether it’s science, whether it’s professional journalism, whether it’s federal agencies, and work them into this stoked anger and frustration that is then politically mobilized, and so is chaos.

GARFIELD: And not just because they’re elites and look down at the silent majority, as Nixon called Middle America, but because there is a vast conspiracy to make money for Bill Gates or to turn children against their country, or to put right wing political dissidents into concentration camps or, you know, whatever the crazy talk is. It wasn’t enough just to make people suspicious of – of expertise and authority, but to brainwash them that they were actually active enemies of the people.

NELSON: I would say that the strength of the Council for National Policy is to figure out what I call the raw nerves of our culture and to further inflame them. So right now, parents – with kids in public schools – are stressed on so many levels. Are the schools open or are they not open? Are there mandates? Are there not mandates? Can working mothers go to work if their kids aren’t in school? Right? These are real, real issues. And then you put on top of that our very difficult conversation nationally about race. When the Black Lives Matter protests happened, the way that the CNP’s media and other media systems played it was, “these are violent riots,” and they cherry picked photos of buildings and flame and violence in the streets and amplified it and exaggerated it. These were not invented or doctored photos, these things happened, it’s just that they happened as very, very few cases and very small percentage of the peaceful protests. But that’s not what their audience saw.

TUCKER CARLSON: This may be a lot of things this moment we’re living through, but it is definitely not about black lives. And remember that when they come for you, and at this rate, they will.

The rest of their conversation is HERE. Fascinating and horrifying, both.

Formed in 1981, the Council for National Policy is an invitation-only, secretive charitable organization that promotes deeply conservative Christian values [1], and advances plans and policies for that purpose. It is a coordinating leadership committee for a network of far right groups with an influential membership list.

CNP’s highly private membership is a Who’s Who of right-wing royalty and wealthy dark money donors. Among the member names that some traitor leaked you will find Oliver North, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, former AG John Ashcroft, Steve Bannon, Kelleyanne Conway, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, Clarence Thomas’s influential right-wing wife Virginia and the billionaire philanthropist mother of billionaire donors Erik Prince and Betsy DeVos [2].

Here’s a huge shocker:

On October 14, 2020, The Washington Post reported that it had obtained videos recorded by CNP of several meetings in February and August 2020 whose overtly partisan, political nature raised “potential issues of compliance with election laws and charity rules.”^[1]

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I hadn’t even heard of this influential group until a recent, excellent Bob Garfield interview with author Anne Nelson. Garfield says of their talk: a conversation with author Anne Nelson about the Council for National Policy, which has spent decades exploiting bugs in the system to gain minority control of our politics — and our future.

In a two part discussion they talked about the sixty year right wing coup, carried out quite brilliantly by what Hillary Clinton was widely mocked for calling the vast right wing conspiracy. The CNP is part of a large network of well-funded, hugely influential, interlocking organizations. The reach of this network is definitely vast and always serves a well-coordinated right-wing plan to control the narrative of American politics, get and maintain power and make laws consistent with its distinctly minoritarian views.

CNP appears to be close to the top of the movement conservative food chain, the beating heart at the center of well-financed, secretive right-wing power. Here’s a bit more about CNP.

Membership is by invitation only. The organization’s membership list is considered “strictly confidential”. Guests may attend “only with the unanimous approval of the executive committee.” Members are instructed not to refer to the organization by name to protect against leaks.^[4] The New York Times political writer David D. Kirkpatrick suggested that the organization’s secrecy since its founding was intended to insulate it “from what its members considered the liberal bias of the news media.”^[2]

CNP’s meetings are closed to the general public, reportedly to allow for a free-flowing exchange of ideas. The group meets three times per year.^[13] This policy is said to be similar to the long-held policy of the Council on Foreign Relations, to which the CNP has at times been compared. CNP’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status was revoked by the IRS in 1992 on grounds that it was not an organization run for the public benefit. The group successfully challenged this ruling in federal court. A quarterly journal aimed at educating the public, promised in the wake of this incident, has not substantially materialized. The organization has a website that contains many policy speeches from past gatherings (covering the years from 2013 up to the present).^[14]

While those involved in the organization are almost entirely from the United States, their organizations and influence cover the globe, both religiously and politically. Members include corporate executives,^[15] legislators^[15] former high ranking government officers,^[15] leaders of ‘think tanks’^[15] dedicated to molding society and those whom many view as “Christian leadership”.^[15]

In May 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a leaked copy of the membership directory for 2014.^[16][17]

A membership list for September 2020, leaked a year later, revealed that members, who could attend meetings together, included elite Republicans, wealthy entrepreneurs, media proprietors and pillars of the US conservative movement, and anti-abortion and anti-Islamic extremists. It was reported that members of the secretive CNP are instructed not to reveal their affiliation or even name the group.^[

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The first rule of Fight Club, yo. If they don’t ever find out you’re even doing it, how are they going to be able to stop you? Use your fucking head!

Coming up: the CNP wish list and Trumpism, the deal that was made between CNP and The Donald before the elite of the organized right in the US would throw its weight behind a clearly unsuitable presidential candidate with vast media charisma. It was one deal that Trump kept, 100%, for maybe the only time in his long, transactional life.

[1]

CNP was founded in 1981 by Southern Baptist pastor Tim LaHaye, author of The Battle for the Mind (1980) and the Left Behind series of books. Other early participants have included W. Cleon Skousen, a theologian within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and founder of the Freemen Institute; Paul Weyrich; Phyllis Schlafly; Robert Grant; Howard Phillips, a former Republican affiliated with the Constitution Party; Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail specialist; and Morton Blackwell, a Louisiana and Virginia activist who is considered a specialist on the rules of the Republican Party.^[40][41][42]

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[2]

Members of the CNP have included: General John Singlaub, shipping magnate J. Peter Grace, Edwin J. Feulner Jr of the Heritage Foundation, Rev. Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Jerry Falwell, U.S. Senator Trent Lott, Southern Baptist Convention activists and retired Texas Court of Appeals Judge Paul Pressler, lawyer and paleoconservative activist Michael Peroutka,^[10] Reverend Paige Patterson,^[11] Senator Don Nickles, former United States Attorneys General Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft, gun-rights activist Larry Pratt, Colonel Oliver North, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, philanthropist Elsa Prince (mother of Blackwater founder and former CEO Erik Prince and Trump Administration Secretary of Education Betsy Devos), Leonard Leo, and ^[1] Virginia Thomas (wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas).^[1] Former California State Assemblyman Steve Baldwin was CNP’s executive director from 2000 to 2008.^[12]

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