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Lynette Hardaway, of pro-Trump duo Diamond and Silk, has died
CNN
—
Lynette Hardaway, a pro-Donald Trump social media personality and part of the duo most commonly known as “Diamond & Silk,” has died, according to the pair’s official social media accounts.
The official Diamond and Silk Facebook account announced the death in a post on Monday, and similar announcements were posted to the pair’s official Instagram and Twitter accounts. No additional details on the cause of death were provided. Hardaway, known as “Diamond,” was 51 at the time of her death, according to The New York Times.
“The World just lost a True Angel and Warrior Patriot for Freedom, Love, and Humanity! Diamond blazed a trail, founded on her passion and love for the entire race of humanity. In this time of grief, please respect the privacy of Diamond’s family but remember and celebrate the gift that she gave us all! Memorial Ceremony to be announced soon,” the duo’s official Facebook post read.
Hardaway, along with her sister Rochelle “Silk” Richardson, drew national attention as staunch conservative media personalities and backers of Trump.
“Trump is not a racist,” Hardaway insisted in a 2018 appearance on Fox & Friends. “He is a realist. And the only color he sees is green and he wants you to have the money.”
The former president announced Hardaway’s death on his Truth Social platform Monday night, writing that it was “really bad news for Republicans and frankly, ALL Americans.” Hardaway died at her home in North Carolina and Richardson “was with her all the way, and at her passing,” Trump said.
The former president often met the pair’s support with his own, shouting them out at times during his presidential campaign rallies in 2016 and inviting them to his inauguration in 2017. They became fixtures around the Trump White House, attending a Black History Month event there in 2020.
The pair leveraged their relationship with Trump into hosting their own show on Fox’s streaming service, Fox Nation, shortly after it launched in 2018. But Fox decided to part ways with the two women in April 2020 after they had made a series of false and misleading statements about how to combat Covid-19.
When news of their release from Fox went public, Trump again came to their rescue, writing in a tweet at the time: “But I love Diamond & Silk, and so do millions of people!”
This story has been updated with additional details.
Meadows texts reveal direct White House communications with pro-Trump operative behind plans to seize voting machines
In relaying the news to Meadows, Waldron said the decision would allow opponents to engage in “delay tactics” preventing Waldron and his associates from immediately accessing machines. Waldron also characterized Arizona as “our lead domino we were counting on to start the cascade,” referring to similar efforts in other states like Georgia.
“Pathetic,” Meadows responded.
The messages, which have not been previously reported, shed new light on how Waldron’s reach extended into the highest levels of the White House and the extent to which Meadows was kept abreast of plans for accessing voting machines, a topic sources tell CNN, and court documents suggest, is of particular interest to state and federal prosecutors probing efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The messages also provide an early window into how an effort to gain access to voting machines through the courts and state legislatures morphed into a more clandestine endeavor that is now the subject of multiple criminal investigations. Despite attempts to distance himself from the more dubious attempts to keep Trump in office, the messages underscore how Meadows was an active participant, engaging with someone who former White House officials have described as a fringe outsider peddling outlandish ideas.
Waldron, a retired Army colonel with ties to Trump’s one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn, has emerged as a key figure in the broader scheme to overturn the election and was the architect of several extreme proposals for doing so. That includes sending Meadows a PowerPoint presentation outlining a plan for overturning the election, which was later used to brief Republican lawmakers, titled, in part: “Options for 6 Jan.”
Waldron also helped draft language for an executive order directing the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines on behalf of the White House.
Trump never signed the order, siding with White House lawyers who insisted the idea was legally perilous. But there is evidence that his closest allies, including Meadows, continued to entertain similar pitches from Waldron in the lead-up to January 6 as they sought to validate conspiracy theories about foreign election interference.
Criminal prosecutors in Georgia are demanding Waldron and Meadows testify as part of ongoing grand jury investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there. Waldron is also engaged in a months-long legal fight with the January 6 Committee, which has subpoenaed his cellphone data. Meadows recently complied with a Justice Department subpoena to hand over information pertaining to the 2020 election including these text messages.
Recent subpoenas from the Justice Department related to the same probe indicate investigators are seeking information about claims of election fraud and efforts to persuade government officials to “change or affect” the election results, “or delay certification of the results,” according to one subpoena obtained by CNN, exactly the kinds of activities Waldron is known to have engaged in.
Waldron and his attorneys did not respond to several requests for comment. Meadows’ attorney also did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
‘Chasing election machines for years’
Before he retired from the Army as a colonel in 2017, Waldron specialized in psychological operations and worked alongside Michael Flynn at the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to his military records.
In numerous interviews, people familiar with Waldron’s background tell CNN that for years he has been obsessed with the idea that US voting machines are vulnerable to foreign hacking. “Waldron had been chasing election machines for years,” said one former US official with knowledge of his efforts.
It wasn’t until Trump started falsely claiming that the election had been stolen from him that Waldron had a chance to put his theories to use. Trump’s inner circle was warned by several Republican lawmakers that without evidence of fraud, their plan to subvert the Electoral College would almost certainly fail, text messages obtained by the House Select Committee investigating the US Capitol attack show.
In the days after the election, Waldron quickly emerged as one of the Trump legal team’s favorite “expert witnesses” on election fraud. He was a near constant presence during Giuliani’s road show in the weeks after the election when he and his team of Trump lawyers traveled around the country to convince state officials that the outcome had been tainted by widespread voter fraud.
During one December 2020 hearing in Georgia, Waldron appeared alongside Giuliani and conservative attorney John Eastman, where he pushed unfounded claims about Dominion voting machines and similarly alleged that fraudulent ballots had tainted the election results.
Those familiar with his role in the effort also described Waldron as being in charge of “operational planning” and working directly with Rudy Giuliani on gaining access to voting systems in states where Trump lost.
“Waldron was responsible for planning and overseeing execution” of efforts to access voting systems,” said one of those sources.
That was especially true in Antrim County, Michigan, where Waldron and his team of pro-Trump operatives gained access to voting systems there in late 2020 — producing a since-debunked report based on their findings that Trump repeatedly held-up as proof of election fraud even after it was dismissed by his own top advisers.
The Antrim County breach is now the subject of a criminal investigation by authorities in Michigan. Among those under investigation are Matthew DePerno, the Republican nominee to become Michigan’s attorney general, and a number of people Waldron worked with after the 2020 election, including Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas.
Arizona audit
As Trump’s lawyers worked to enlist sympathetic state and local officials to help keep Trump in office, Waldron often served as a key liaison, according to emails and text messages obtained by the group American Oversight and shared with CNN. That was particularly true in Arizona, where Waldron was in direct communication with a number of GOP state officials and lawmakers about producing evidence of fraud.
In the weeks before his December 23 text to Meadows, Waldron exchanged nearly a dozen emails with state GOP officials in Arizona, discussing various plans for gaining access to voting systems or ballots from certain counties and pitching himself to analyze the election data for evidence of fraud, according to the documents reviewed by CNN.
On December 11, Waldron sent an email to three Arizona state GOP lawmakers who were pushing to overturn the election, suggesting a member of his team could “take a hard drive” to county elections offices, upload relevant voter data and “get the files to us.”
“This would be the fastest and most transparent way to give you the direct evidence you need to either pursue or close the issue,” he wrote, referring to ongoing efforts to upend the election results in Arizona.
“We are happy to consult with you to answer questions or coordinate a ‘way ahead,'” Waldron added.
Two days later, Waldron’s attorney and business associate, Charles Bundren, sent one of those same Arizona lawmakers draft language for subpoenas seeking electronically stored voting information. The document is nearly identical to subpoenas Arizona state Republicans ultimately filed demanding election officials hand over voting machines, emails obtained by the group American Oversight and provided to CNN show.
After an Arizona judge ultimately rejected those subpoenas on December 23, Waldron reached out to Meadows about the decision, according to the newly revealed text messages.
Waldron texted Meadows again on December 28, 2020, suggesting a member of his team had analyzed election data from “several counties” and pointing to two specific examples of what he called the “Southern steal” — an apparent reference to voting irregularities that, he alleged, had changed the election outcome in those localities.
“OK,” Meadows responded, acknowledging Waldron’s message.
Ongoing efforts
It remains unclear if there are additional texts between Waldron and Meadows beyond the messages exchanged on December 23 and December 28, in part because both men have sought to block the January 6 committee from obtaining their cellphone data.
Over the past year, Trump allies have continued to push baseless claims about widespread fraud and sought access to voting systems in various states. Waldron has remained a central figure in that effort.
Emails obtained by CNN connect Waldron directly to the 2021 partisan audit in Maricopa County, Arizona. After his work in Antrim County, Michigan, Waldron pushed GOP state officials in Arizona to hire his team to conduct the audit. But Arizona officials expressed concerns after Waldron’s Antrim County report was thoroughly debunked.
Instead, with Waldron’s endorsement, they hired Cyber Ninjas to conduct the Maricopa audit, which ultimately proved that Biden won the county. Waldron remained heavily involved, emails obtained by CNN show. It’s unclear whether Waldron was paid for his work as Arizona Republicans have fought to keep that information from coming out publicly. Emails have emerged that show contractors connected to Waldron were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by America Voting Rights Foundation, a Trump-affiliated PAC created last summer.
Over the past year, Waldron was also listed as a key participant for a series of “election integrity” planning sessions involving other notable Trump allies like Flynn and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Lindell and another known associate of Waldron, Conan Hayes, are subjects of a separate FBI investigation focused on an election system breach in Colorado.
In April, Waldron sued the House January 6 committee to block their efforts to obtain his cellphone data. Waldron’s own lawyer, Charles Bundren, has taken steps to shield his own communications from the committee.
Court documents show that Bundren stepped aside as Waldron’s primary attorney in the case against the committee last month and joined the lawsuit as a co-plaintiff, arguing the panel is seeking cellphone data that could expose the breadth of his own contacts with others involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Bundren did not respond to several requests for comment.
CNN’s Jamie Gangel contributed to this report.
Pro-Trump Turning Point group paid Guilfoyle’s $60,000 January 6 speaking fee, sources tell CNN
The payment to Guilfoyle was disclosed Monday by Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot at the US Capitol has evidence that former President Donald Trump’s family members personally benefited from money raised based on Trump’s false election claims.
Lofgren spoke after the committee’s hearing on Monday highlighted $250 million raised by the Save America PAC and Trump campaign. But those entities did not pay Guilfoyle’s fee, the people familiar with the payment told CNN. The payment came from Turning Point Action, an affiliate of Turning Point USA, the youth organization started by Charlie Kirk, who is a close friend of Trump Jr.
On Tuesday, Lofgren defended her previous comments about Guilfoyle’s fee during an interview with Wolf Blitzer, saying she didn’t think she mischaracterized the payment since it came from part of the network connected to Trump.
“The question is, are Trump individuals benefiting from this whole enterprise of raising money around the so-called stop the steal,” Lofgren told Blitzer. “And the answer is yes.”
Neither Guilfoyle nor her attorney responded to requests for comment. Turning Point declined to comment.
During Monday’s hearing the committee showed a video presentation from a senior investigator to lay out how Trump used the false claims of election fraud to raise the $250 million from donors. According to the investigator, the fundraising emails indicated the money would go toward an election defense fund, but the investigator said most of the money was routed to Save America, a pro-Trump PAC.
Lofgren appeared on CNN soon after that presentation and disclosed the payment to Guilfoyle as an example of “grift.” Tapper asked whether the committee has found “evidence that Trump and his family ‘personally benefited’ from donations.”
“For example, we know that Guilfoyle was paid for the introduction she gave at the speech on January 6. She received compensation for that,” Lofgren said. “I’m not saying it’s a crime, but I’m saying it’s grift.”
Chairman Bennie Thompson was asked by CNN late Monday to clarify if Guilfoyle was paid with “Stop the Steal” funds.
“I did not say that,” Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, told CNN, adding: “It was strictly paid out of expenditures that came from people who came to the Stop the Steal rally.”
Thompson noted that the payment was still something the public, including Trump supporters, was not aware of at the time of the speech.
“First of all, we think the majority of the public would be concerned that if the girlfriend of Donald Trump (Jr.) made $60,000 for a few minutes speech, that they had no idea. She had to get paid to speak at something everybody else was coming to because they thought it was the right thing to do,” he said.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the name of the organization that paid Guilfoyle for her January 6, 2021 speech.
Pro-Trump organizer agrees to cooperate with DOJ in Jan. 6 probe
Pro-Trump organizer Ali Alexander confirmed Friday that he is cooperating with the Justice Department’s investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Politico reports.
Why it matters: Alexander, who was connected to permit applications for the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Capitol attack, claimed to have been in communication with the White House and Congress members about events planned to coincide with the certification of the 2020 election, according to the Jan. 6 select committee, which subpoenaed him in October.
- Leading up to Jan. 6, Alexander “made repeated reference during Stop-the-Steal-sponsored events to the possible use of violence to achieve the organization’s goals,” the select committee said in an October release.
What he’s saying: Alexander said in a statement Friday, per Politico, that a federal grand jury recently subpoenaed him for information on several groups of people linked to pro-Trump rallies in D.C. after the 2020 election, including “Women for America First” and the “Save America March.”
- He denied talking with the White House about security groups or coordinating plans with the Proud Boys. “I don’t believe I have information that will be useful to them but I’m cooperating as best as I can,” he said.
- “I did nothing wrong and I am not in possession of evidence that anyone else had plans to commit unlawful acts,” he added.
- “I denounce anyone who planned to subvert my permitted event and the other permitted events of that day on Capitol grounds to stage any counterproductive activities.”
The big picture: Alexander’s cooperation could offer insight into the White House officials and lawmakers who may have been involved in the attempt to block the certification of President Biden’s win.
- The subpoena delivered to him is an “indication that the inquiry could reach into the Trump administration and its allies in Congress,” the New York Times notes.
- Alexander voluntarily sat for a deposition with the House committee in December and handed over documents related to its investigation.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with Alexander’s statement.
Pro-Trump activist Ali Alexander to cooperate with Capitol attack inquiry | US Capitol attack
Ali Alexander, the prominent pro-Trump activist, will cooperate with the justice department investigation into the Capitol attack, making him the first high-profile political figure to agree to assist the government’s criminal inquiry into the events of January 6.
The move is likely to give initial momentum to the newly expanded justice department investigation running in parallel to the House select committee investigation examining Donald Trump and the Capitol attack.
An attorney for Alexander – the organizer of the “Stop the Steal” movement – told the Guardian that he had agreed to cooperate with the justice department after being issued a grand jury subpoena but informed he was not a target of the investigation.
The news of his cooperation was earlier reported by the New York Times.
In a lengthy statement through his attorney, Alexander denounced the process as “hostile” but indicated he would comply with the grand jury subpoena asking about Women for America First’s “Save America March” events that immediately preceded the Capitol attack.
“I did nothing wrong and I am not in possession of any evidence that anyone else had plans to commit unlawful acts,” Alexander said in the statement. He has also denounced anyone who took part in or planned violence on 6 January 2021.
Alexander said he did not think he could provide prosecutors with anything useful for the inquiry, noting he had not financed the equipment used for the Save America rally on the Ellipse near the White House and had not discussed the security for the event with the Trump White House.
The statement added that he had not coordinated any movements with the Proud Boys militia groups and he had only accepted an offer from the Oath Keepers militia group to act as security for a separate event he had planned near the Capitol, which ultimately did not take place.
It was not clear what assistance Alexander might furnish. But he was deeply involved in efforts to invalidate the results of the 2020 election and had contacts with members of Congress and, according to the House select committee, White House officials.
That is now of interest to the justice department, which recently expanded the scope of its January 6 inquiry to include Trump’s push to return himself to office, after spending months focused purely on the rioters that stormed the Capitol.
A spokesperson for the justice department declined to comment.
The subpoena to Alexander from the grand jury empaneled by federal prosecutors suggests the justice department investigation could go beyond that of the select committee, to which he testified voluntarily for about eight hours last December.
It also indicates that the criminal inquiry could reach Trump’s inner circle, with the subpoena demanding information about members of the legislative and executive branches who were involved in efforts to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.
Pro-Trump lawyer who boosted election-reversal bid under investigation by the California Bar
The State Bar announced its investigation of John Eastman in a statement Tuesday, noting that the probe began in September and is focused on whether Eastman violated California law or ethics rules governing attorneys in relation to the 2020 presidential election.
“A number of individuals and entities have brought to the State Bar’s attention press reports, court filings, and other public documents detailing Mr. Eastman’s conduct,” the State Bar’s chief trial counsel, George Cardona, said in the statement.
“We want to thank those who took the time to bring to our attention this information, which serves as the starting point for our investigation. We will be proceeding with a single State Bar investigation in which we will continue to gather and analyze relevant evidence and go wherever it leads us.”
Cardona told CNN he could not discuss the details of any particular investigation. CNN has reached out to Eastman’s attorney for comment.
The review marks the latest example of Trump’s legal allies being exposed to potential disciplinary actions for their involvement in his election reversal gambit. Last week, a federal appeals court rejected a request by other Trump-aligned attorneys that the court block some sanctions they’ve received for bringing a frivolous post-election case making unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
Eastman had spearheaded an unsuccessful scheme to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence that he could overturn the election results.
Among those who had called on the California Bar to investigate Eastman was a bipartisan group of former public officials and lawyers who said the Bar should look at whether Eastman “violated his ethical obligations as an attorney by filing frivolous claims, making false statements, and engaging in deceptive conduct.”
“As the discipline and sanctions already meted out to other Trump attorneys demonstrate, a lawyer representing a politician and dealing directly with courts and third persons is not free to ignore reality. Instead, a lawyer must avoid speech that is intentionally false or deceptive,” the group wrote last year.
Cardona said Tuesday that “speaking generally, every lawyer admitted to practice in California takes an oath outlined by statute: to support the Constitution of the United States and the California Constitution, and to faithfully discharge their duties to the best of their knowledge and ability.”
He added, “California statutes and the Rules of Professional Conduct require lawyers to exercise honesty, integrity, and accountability in the course of their professional practice. Failure to adhere to the rules and statutes that govern the practice of lawyers may result in them being subject to discipline, in keeping with the State Bar’s public protection mission.”
Eastman is currently engaged in a legal battle with the House select committee as it, too, investigates his work for Trump leading up to the Capitol insurrection. He is holding back thousands of his emails from those investigators, saying those emails should remain confidential under attorney-client privilege protections. A judge will ultimately decide.
It’s not clear yet how much questions about his behavior as an attorney for Trump will play into the dispute.
CNN’s Devan Cole and Paul LeBlanc contributed to this report.
Giuliani, other pro-Trump lawyers hit with subpoenas over Jan. 6 attack
WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) – The congressional committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol issued subpoenas on Tuesday to three lawyers who joined former President Donald Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to overturn his election defeat: Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis.
The House of Representatives committee demanded the pro-Trump lawyers hand over documents and sit for depositions on Feb. 8.
Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, said in a statement that the panel expects the lawyers to join the nearly 400 witnesses who have spoken with the Select Committee as part of its investigation into the causes of the deadly attack by Trump supporters.
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The committee also subpoenaed Boris Epshteyn, a Trump political adviser.
Robert Costello, a lawyer for Giuliani, said in an interview that the subpoena was “political theater” and that his client was constrained by the legal doctrines of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.
“I don’t think there’s anything here he can testify about,” Costello said.
Powell, Epshteyn, and Ellis did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks about the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, during an appearance on the John Catsimatidis radio show in New York City, New York, U.S., September 10, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
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“The four individuals we’ve subpoenaed today advanced unsupported theories about election fraud, pushed efforts to overturn the election results, or were in direct contact with the former president about attempts to stop the counting of electoral votes,” Thompson said in the statement.
Powell, Giuliani, and Ellis jointly spoke at a Trump campaign news conference on Nov. 19, 2020, where they vowed to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory. Powell promised to “release the Kraken,” likening their effort to a mythological sea monster.
The Trump campaign distanced itself from Powell after she claimed without evidence at the news conference that electronic voting systems had switched millions of ballots from Trump to Biden.
Giuliani’s New York law license was suspended in June, after a state appeals court found he made “demonstrably false and misleading” statements that widespread voter fraud undermined the election, won by Democrat Joe Biden.
The committee is aiming to release an interim report in the summer and a final report in the fall, a source familiar with the investigation said last month.
CNN reported on Tuesday that the committee has subpoenaed and obtained records of phone numbers associated with one of Trump’s children, Eric Trump, as well as Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is engaged to Donald Trump Jr.
The Select Committee’s members have said they will consider passing along evidence of criminal conduct by Trump to the U.S. Justice Department. Such a move, known as a criminal referral, would be largely symbolic but would increase the political pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to charge the former president.
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Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Scott Malone, Bill Berkrot and Bernard Orr
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Judge sanctions pro-Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and several others who brought ‘frivolous’ election fraud lawsuits
US District Judge Linda Parker, of the Eastern District of Michigan, said the lawyers had “engaged in litigation practices” that were “abusive and, in turn, sanctionable.”
“Sanctions are required to deter the filing of future frivolous lawsuits designed primarily to spread the narrative that our election processes are rigged and our democratic institutions cannot be trusted,” the judge wrote in a 110-page opinion.
Parker is ordering the lawyers to reimburse the attorneys’ fees that the city of Detroit and Michigan state officials paid in seeking the sanctions. The lawyers must also take legal education classes, the judge said, and she is referring her decision to the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, and “the appropriate disciplinary authority for the jurisdiction(s) where each attorney is admitted,” for potential disciplinary action.
Wood referred CNN to his attorney when asked for comment. Powell and the attorney who was representing them in the sanctions dispute did not immediately respond to emails from CNN requesting comment.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, praised the judge’s ruling on Wednesday, saying in a statement that it “sends a clear message: those who seek to overturn an American election and poison the well of American democracy will face consequences.”
The lawsuit filed in Parker’s court last November by Powell, Wood and others was one of dozens of suits brought last year as part of an early, major attempt by then-President Donald Trump to claim that the presidential election results in November were illegitimate. His team and supporters lost all of their attempts in court to gain traction on voter fraud.
Last month, Parker grilled the attorneys over their election fraud claims during a six-hour hearing in which her line-by-line questioning yielded a painstaking recounting of the thinness of those claims.
The city of Detroit — whose lawyer had argued that the Trump lawsuit was solely meant to spread lies about the election — as well as the state of Michigan had asked the federal court to sanction the lawyers who had brought the case.
The punishments handed down on Wednesday are not the first for a pro-Trump attorney who brought election-related lawsuits. Earlier this summer, Washington, DC, and New York state temporarily suspended Rudy Giuliani’s law license for pushing election lies.
This story has been updated with background information and further developments.
CNN’s Paula Reid and Devan Cole contributed to this story.
Jihadists flood pro-Trump social network with propaganda
It underscores the challenges facing Trump and his followers in the wake of his ban from the mainstream social media platforms following the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots.
Islamic State “has been very quick to exploit GETTR,” said Moustafa Ayad, executive director for Africa, the Middle East and Asia at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks online extremism, who first discovered the jihadi accounts and shared his findings with POLITICO.
“On Facebook, there was on one of these accounts that I follow that is known to be Islamic State, which said ‘Oh, Trump announced his new platform. Inshallah, all the mujahideen will exploit that platform,’” he added. “The next day, there were at least 15 accounts on GETTR that were Islamic State.”
While GETTR does not provide access to its data to track the spread, or virality, of such extremist material on its platform, POLITICO found at least 250 accounts that had posted regularly on the platform since early July. Many followed each other, and used hashtags to promote the jihadi material to this burgeoning online community.
In the months since he was kicked off Twitter and suspended from Facebook, Trump has sought alternative ways to engage with his base online. While his supporters decamped to other online venues — including the social network Parler, where they could express themselves without facing increased scrutiny — Trump’s own effort to create an internet bullhorn has stalled.
In May, he launched a blog — titled “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” — but it was taken down just weeks later amid widespread ridicule and poor readership.
So far, GETTR has been the highest-profile pro-Trump platform launch, given the names behind it: Jason Miller, former Trump spokesperson, is its chief executive, and the site is partially funded by Miles Guo, the business partner of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Trump, himself, is not directly involved in the operation, nor has he officially signed up to the platform. The social network has touted a “free speech” policy that, purportedly, would allow users to fully express themselves without the censorship of tech giants.
Yet this MAGA exodus to fringe social networks that champion unfettered speech has also caught the attention of supporters of Islamic State and other jihadist groups, according to extremism experts.
In response to questions about jihadi material being shared on GETTR, Miller told POLITICO that ISIS was attacking Trump because the former president had destroyed the group militarily. “The only ISIS members still alive are keyboard warriors hiding in caves and eating dirt cookies,” he said in a text message.
These terrorist communities have similarly faced widespread removals from the largest social networks, which have often promoted their clampdown on Islamic extremists as an example of how the tech companies are policing their global platforms for harmful content.
In response, Islamic State supporters have quickly shifted gears, looking for new spaces online where they can spread their hateful material, as well as piggybacking on tactics and platforms first used in the United States.
“Is Daesh here?” asked an account whose profile photo was of the Islamic State flag account, using the Arabic acronym for jihadi movement. The replies were in the affirmative, with some praising the social network for its willingness to host such content.
Days after GETTR was launched on July 1, Islamic State supporters began urging their followers on other social networks to sign up to the pro-Trump network, in part to take the jihadi fight directly to MAGA nation.
“If this app reaches the expected success, which is mostly probable, it should be adopted by followers and occupied in order to regain the glory of Twitter, may God prevail,” one Islamic State account on Facebook wrote on July 6.
Some of the jihadi posts on GETTR from early July were eventually taken down, highlighting that the pro-Trump platform had taken at least some steps to remove the harmful material.
Larger platforms like Facebook and Twitter now work via the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, an industry-funded nonprofit which shares terrorist content between companies — via a database of extremist material accessible to its members — so that the material can be taken down as quickly as possible.
GETTR has yet to sign up.
In the platform’s terms of service, it outlines how offensive or illegal content, including that related to terrorism, may be removed from GETTR. “This may include content identified as personal bullying, sexual abuse of a child, attacking any religion or race, or content containing video or depictions of beheading,” a clause reads.
Though the site has had notoriously spotty luck in moderating users on the platform — in its early days, it was flooded with a wide spectrum of pornography — Miller has drawn the line at doxxing, or sharing other people’s addresses, or advocating physical harm.
In interviews, GETTR’s chief executive has touted the site’s content moderation policy, primarily based on a combination of human monitoring and algorithms.
Four days after POLITICO submitted several requests for comment to GETTR, many of these accounts and videos are still up.
The overall amount of terrorist propaganda that POLITICO found on GETTR represented a mere fraction of the mostly right-wing content — which also includes the promotion of the Proud Boys white supremacist movement. More mainstream conservative influencers and policymakers like Sean Hannity and Mike Pompeo also regularly post on the platform.
Still, the fact that such jihadi material was readily available on the social network, and GETTR’s failure to clamp down on such extremism, underlined the difficulties that the company faces in balancing its free speech ethos with growing demands to stop terrorist-related material from finding an audience online.
“The content we’re coming across on small platforms is basically similar to the content that is being automatically removed from Facebook and Twitter,” said Adam Hadley, director of Tech Against Terrorism, a nonprofit organization that works with smaller social networks, but not GETTR, in combating the rise of extremist content online.
“Many of the smaller platforms do not have the resources to automatically remove this type of content,” he added. His organization’s membership includes Tumblr and WordPress, the blogging platform.
Extremism analysts who reviewed POLITICO’s findings said that Islamic State supporters’ use of GETTR appeared to be an initial test to see if their content would escape detection or be subject to content moderation.
In their ongoing cat-and-mouse fight with Western national security agencies and Silicon Valley platforms, jihadi groups are quickly evolving their tactics to stay one step ahead of online removals.
“The terrorist organizations are always experimenting, because they’re fighting a real battle to continue to have access to public spaces to spread their propaganda,” said Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab and the author of “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.”
So far, Islamic State supporters are enjoying their incursion into GETTR and the possible new audience they could reach. “We will come at you with slaying and explosions you worshippers of the cross,” wrote an account whose name referenced the extremist group, adding: “How great is freedom of expression.”
“ISIS is trying to attack the MAGA movement because President Trump wiped them off the face of the earth, destroying the Caliphate in less than 18 months, and the only ISIS members still alive are keyboard warriors hiding in caves and eating dirt cookies,” Jason Miller, CEO of GETTR, said in a statement. “GETTR has a robust and proactive moderation system that removes prohibited content, maximizing both cutting-edge A.I. technology and human moderation.”
Rym Momtaz contributed to this report from Paris.