Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General
Trying to find another avenue to push his baseless election claims, Donald Trump considered installing a loyalist.
Jeffrey Clark, who led the Justice Department’s civil division, had been working with President Donald Trump to devise ways to cast doubt on the election results.Credit...Susan Walsh/Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results.
The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump’s continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark.
The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?
The answer was unanimous. They would resign.
Their informal pact ultimately helped persuade Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Rosen in place, calculating that a furor over mass resignations at the top of the Justice Department would eclipse any attention on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis.
The previously unknown chapter was the culmination of the president’s long-running effort to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda. He also pressed Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels, including one who would look into Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election equipment that Mr. Trump’s allies had falsely said was working with Venezuela to flip votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
This account of the department’s final days under Mr. Trump’s leadership is based on interviews with four former Trump administration officials who asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation.
Mr. Clark said that this account contained inaccuracies but did not specify, adding that he could not discuss any conversations with Mr. Trump or Justice Department lawyers because of “the strictures of legal privilege.” “Senior Justice Department lawyers, not uncommonly, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties,” he said. “All my official communications were consistent with law.”
Mr. Clark categorically denied that he devised any plan to oust Mr. Rosen, or to formulate recommendations for action based on factual inaccuracies gleaned from the internet. “My practice is to rely on sworn testimony to assess disputed factual claims,” Mr. Clark said. “There was a candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president. It is unfortunate that those who were part of a privileged legal conversation would comment in public about such internal deliberations, while also distorting any discussions.”
Mr. Clark also noted that he was the lead signatory on a Justice Department request last month asking a federal judge to reject a lawsuit that sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election.
Mr. Rosen refused. He maintained that he would make decisions based on the facts and the law, and he reiterated what Mr. Barr had privately told Mr. Trump: The department had investigated voting irregularities and found no evidence of widespread fraud.
But Mr. Trump continued to press Mr. Rosen after the meeting — in phone calls and in person. He repeatedly said that he did not understand why the Justice Department had not found evidence that supported conspiracy theories about the election that some of his personal lawyers had espoused. He declared that the department was not fighting hard enough for him.
Mr. Trump declined to comment. An adviser said that Mr. Trump has consistently argued that the justice system should investigate “rampant election fraud that has plagued our system for years.”
The adviser added that “any assertion to the contrary is false and being driven by those who wish to keep the system broken.” Mr. Clark agreed and said that “legal privileges” prevented him from divulging specifics regarding the conversation.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, as did Mr. Rosen.
When Mr. Trump said on Dec. 14 that Attorney General William P. Barr was leaving the department, some officials thought that he might allow Mr. Rosen a short reprieve before pressing him about voter fraud. After all, Mr. Barr would be around for another week.
Instead, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Rosen to the Oval Office the next day. He wanted the Justice Department to file legal briefs supporting his allies’ lawsuits seeking to overturn his election loss. And he urged Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels to investigate not only unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud, but also Dominion, the voting machines firm.
As Mr. Rosen and the deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, pushed back, they were unaware that Mr. Clark had been introduced to Mr. Trump by a Pennsylvania politician and had told the president that he agreed that fraud had affected the election results.
ImageElection workers performing a recount in Atlanta in November. Mr. Trump focused on Georgia’s election outcome after he lost the state.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times
Mr. Trump quickly embraced Mr. Clark, who had been appointed the acting head of the civil division in September and was also the head of the department’s environmental and natural resources division.
As December wore on, Mr. Clark mentioned to Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue that he spent a lot of time reading on the internet — a comment that alarmed them because they inferred that he believed the unfounded conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump had won the election. Mr. Clark also told them that he wanted the department to hold a news conference announcing that it was investigating serious accusations of election fraud. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue rejected the proposal.
As Mr. Trump focused increasingly on Georgia, a state he lost narrowly to Mr. Biden, he complained to Justice Department leaders that the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, Byung J. Pak, was not trying to find evidence for false election claims pushed by Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and others. Mr. Donoghue warned Mr. Pak that the president was now fixated on his office, and that it might not be tenable for him to continue to lead it, according to two people familiar with the conversation.
That conversation and Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him votes compelled Mr. Pak to abruptly resign this month.
Mr. Clark was also focused on Georgia. He drafted a letter that he wanted Mr. Rosen to send to Georgia state legislators that wrongly said that the Justice Department was investigating accusations of voter fraud in their state, and that they should move to void Mr. Biden’s win there.
Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue again rejected Mr. Clark’s proposal.
On New Year’s Eve, the trio met to discuss Mr. Clark’s refusal to hew to the department’s conclusion that the election results were valid. Mr. Donoghue flatly told Mr. Clark that what he was doing was wrong. The next day, Mr. Clark told Mr. Rosen — who had mentored him while they worked together at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis — that he was going to discuss his strategy with the president early the next week, just before Congress was set to certify Mr. Biden’s electoral victory.
Unbeknown to the acting attorney general, Mr. Clark’s timeline moved up. He met with Mr. Trump over the weekend, then informed Mr. Rosen midday on Sunday that the president intended to replace him with Mr. Clark, who could then try to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results. He said that Mr. Rosen could stay on as his deputy attorney general, leaving Mr. Rosen speechless.
Unwilling to step down without a fight, Mr. Rosen said that he needed to hear straight from Mr. Trump and worked with the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, to convene a meeting for early that evening.
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Mr. Clark asked Mr. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen, the acting attorney general.Credit...Ting Shen for The New York Times
Even as Mr. Clark’s pronouncement was sinking in, stunning news broke out of Georgia: State officials had recorded an hourlong call, published by The Washington Post, during which Mr. Trump pressured them to manufacture enough votes to declare him the victor. As the fallout from the recording ricocheted through Washington, the president’s desperate bid to change the outcome in Georgia came into sharp focus.
Mr. Rosen and Mr. Donoghue pressed ahead, informing Steven Engel, the head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel, about Mr. Clark’s latest maneuver. Mr. Donoghue convened a late-afternoon call with the department’s remaining senior leaders, laying out Mr. Clark’s efforts to replace Mr. Rosen.
Mr. Rosen planned to soon head to the White House to discuss his fate, Mr. Donoghue told the group. Should Mr. Rosen be fired, they all agreed to resign en masse. For some, the plan brought to mind the so-called Saturday Night Massacre of the Nixon era, where Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and his deputy resigned rather than carry out the president’s order to fire the special prosecutor investigating him.
The Clark plan, the officials concluded, would seriously harm the department, the government and the rule of law. For hours, they anxiously messaged and called one another as they awaited Mr. Rosen’s fate.
Around 6 p.m., Mr. Rosen, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Clark met at the White House with Mr. Trump, Mr. Cipollone, his deputy Patrick Philbin and other lawyers. Mr. Trump had Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark present their arguments to him.
Mr. Cipollone advised the president not to fire Mr. Rosen and he reiterated, as he had for days, that he did not recommend sending the letter to Georgia lawmakers. Mr. Engel advised Mr. Trump that he and the department’s remaining top officials would resign if he fired Mr. Rosen, leaving Mr. Clark alone at the department.
Mr. Trump seemed somewhat swayed by the idea that firing Mr. Rosen would trigger not only chaos at the Justice Department, but also congressional investigations and possibly recriminations from other Republicans and distract attention from his efforts to overturn the election results.
After nearly three hours, Mr. Trump ultimately decided that Mr. Clark’s plan would fail, and he allowed Mr. Rosen to stay.
Mr. Rosen and his deputies concluded they had weathered the turmoil. Once Congress certified Mr. Biden’s victory, there would be little for them to do until they left along with Mr. Trump in two weeks.
They began to exhale days later as the Electoral College certification at the Capitol got underway. And then they received word: The building had been breached.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.
YouTube-hit: de hoogleraar die coronavaccins fileert. Zes uitspraken beoordeeld
Al haast een miljoen keer werd het internet-interview bekeken: een ongekende hit, voor een Nederlands filmpje dat vaccinatie ter discussie stelt. De spreker is dan ook geen doorsnee ‘vaccinscepticus’, maar een parasitoloog met veertig jaar ervaring. Welke knuppel heeft Theo Schetters precies in het hoenderhok gegooid?
De coronavaccins van Pfizer en Moderna? ‘Een groot experiment’.
Bijwerkingen? ‘De kans dat dit vreselijk misgaat, is enorm’.
Trouwens, vaccins tegen corona? ‘De urgentie zie ik niet.’
Was getekend: Theo Schetters, immunoloog en parasitoloog, bijzonder hoogleraar aan de Universiteit van Pretoria en al veertig jaar betrokken bij de ontwikkeling van dierenvaccins.
Hoewel het op internet wemelt van de belijdenissen van mensen die de wetenschap achter corona en vaccinatie ter discussie stellen, valt die van Schetters extra op. Een keurige, welbespraakte academicus, met publicaties in bladen als International Journal for Parasitology en Veterinary Parasitology, die nota bene zelf vaccins ontwikkelt – het is niet direct iemand van wie je schrille vaccinkritiek verwacht.
Zelf wil de man die erover klaagt dat de ‘mainstreammedia’ (zijn woordkeuze) niet met hem willen praten geen interviews geven. Een ‘mediapauze’, heeft hij ingelast. Even bijkomen van alle commotie rond zijn gesprek met het dwarse YouTube-kanaal Blckbx, dat bij afronding van dit artikel liefst 898.094 keer was bekeken. ‘Feit is dat ik een lont heb aangestoken. Ik ben geen complotdenker, maar ik vind dat mensen dit moeten weten’, is het enige dat hij er aan de telefoon nog wel over kwijt wil.
Een lont die tot een explosie heeft geleid. ‘Ik was zeer verbaasd’, zegt hoogleraar immunologie Huub Savelkoul (Wageningen Universiteit). ‘Hij maakt een aantal conceptuele fouten. Dat snap ik niet, want hij is gepromoveerd. Hij moet er wel iets van weten.’
‘Ik ben hier erg van geschrokken’, zegt farmaco-epidemioloog Miriam Sturkenboom (UMC Utrecht). ‘Vooral omdat hij dit toch allemaal zegt vanuit het beeld van de wetenschapper die geloofwaardig zou zijn. En vervolgens komt hij met allemaal ongefundeerde claims. Dat is heel schadelijk. Want het publiek kan dit niet zomaar weerleggen, daarvoor moet je best veel kennis hebben.’
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Ook wetenschappers uit Schetters directe omgeving, die alleen op achtergrondbasis met de krant willen praten, zijn verbaasd. Een ‘goeie vent’, ‘iemand van de data’, ‘niet iemand die kwaad in de zin heeft’, zo omschrijven ze hem. Maar ook op drift geraakt en bij de alternatieve kanalen beland, vermoedelijk nadat een kritisch stuk van hem werd verwijderd van LinkedIn, en hij bij een landelijke krant (niet de Volkskrant) geen podium vond, zeggen mensen uit zijn entourage.
Dat hij nu in één filmpje verschijnt met wetenschapsfraudeur en uit het register geschrapt arts Andrew Wakefield – die hij ook nog eens bijvalt – verbaast de mensen om hem heen. ‘Ik denk dat Theo niet eens in de gaten heeft gehad wie dat is’, zegt een onderzoeker die met hem werkte. ‘Volgens mij probeert hij uit te leggen dat hij een voorkeur heeft voor meer traditionele vaccins.’
Maar zou Schetters’ kritiek niet gewoon hout snijden? Zes van zijn uitspraken over coronavaccins langs de meetlat.
1. ‘Het probleem is dat je door middel van injectie mRNA in je lichaamscellen brengt. Je lichaam gaat het viruseiwit maken en op het oppervlak van je cellen expresseren, zoals wij dat noemen. (…) De kans dat hier een auto-immuunziekte ontstaat tegen gezond spierweefsel, is gewoon aanwezig.’
De eerste helft klopt. Wie gevaccineerd wordt met een van de nieuwe coronavaccins van Pfizer of Moderna, krijgt een soort nagebootste ontsteking. Het vaccin zet sommige lichaamscellen ertoe aan het uitsteekseleiwit van het virus te maken, waarna de cellen een stukje ervan op hun buitenkant plakken. Als uithangbord, zodat het immuunsysteem het leert herkennen: zó ziet het coronavirus eruit.
Maar het is de tweede uitspraak – dat daarbij een auto-immuunziekte kan ontstaan – die experts ‘absurd’, ‘echt totale onzin’ en ‘vreselijk misleidend’ vinden. ‘Toen ik hem dat hoorde zeggen, dacht ik echt: huh? Verbijsterend dat iemand die immunoloog is dit zegt’, reageert hoogleraar immunologie Marjolein van Egmond (Amsterdam UMC). ‘Onze cellen presenteren de hele dag door eiwitten. Dat is het alarmsignaal dat ze altijd afgeven bij een infectie. Als je daar een auto-immuunziekte van zou krijgen, zouden we dat van elk willekeurig virus krijgen, van allerlei andere vaccins en van het coronavirus zelf.’
‘Auto-immuniteit betekent dat je afweer ontwikkelt tegen gezonde, lichaamseigen cellen. En het punt van dit vaccin is nou net dat de immuunreactie zich richt op het spike-eiwit van het virus’, zegt Sturkenboom. Overigens is het vaccin vooraf gecontroleerd op ongewenste kruisreacties, zegt Leonoor Wijnans, vaccinexpert van het College ter Beoordeling van Geneesmiddelen (CBG). ‘Er is gekeken naar de homologie van dit eiwit, dus of het overeenkomt met andere eiwitten in het lichaam. Daar zijn geen risico’s uit gekomen.’
En, niet te vergeten: de vaccins zijn getest op in totaal 37 duizend mensen, en inmiddels toegepast op miljoenen mensen. Geen spoor van de problemen waartegen Schetters waarschuwt.
2. ‘Het is duidelijk dat de meeste mensen immuun zijn en helemaal geen corona of covid ontwikkelen. (…) Wat men zich niet afvraagt: hoe komt het dat de meeste mensen die geïnfecteerd raken met corona gewoon immuun zijn, en niet doodgaan of heel ernstig ziek worden?’
Van alle geïnfecteerden blijft 17 tot 20 procent zonder symptomen. De meeste mensen krijgen dus strikt genomen niet ‘helemaal geen corona’, zoals Schetters zegt, maar een griepachtige ziekte die ze thuis kunnen uitzieken.
Schetters doelt op iets anders: het feit dat ‘slechts’ zo'n 1,5 procent in het ziekenhuis, en 0,35 procent op de ic belandt. Alleen wil dat nog niet zeggen dat de resterende 98 procent dus ‘immuun’ zou zijn. ‘We spreken in algemene termen pas van immuniteit als het aangeleerde afweersysteem geheugencellen heeft aangemaakt tegen een indringer’, zegt Van Egmond. ‘En omdat dit virus nieuw is, heeft ons afweersysteem nog geen geheugen voor sars-cov-2.’
Denkbaar is wel dat sommige mensen enige bescherming ‘vooraf’ hebben tegen het virus, onder meer doordat ze besmet zijn geweest met een enigszins verwant verkoudheidscoronavirus. Bewezen is dat allerminst, zegt Van Egmond. ‘En het is ook niet logisch. Als een groot deel van de mensen al bescherming zou hebben, zou je bijvoorbeeld ook niet van die superverspreidingen zien, waarbij soms hele groepen mensen aangestoken raken.’
3. ‘De resultaten van de proeven gaan alleen over lichte klachten. De mevrouw van het CBG geeft aan: we kunnen niet zeggen of het vaccin beschermt tegen ernstige covid. (…) Als je het uitrekent, kom je op een bescherming van 75 procent.’
Schetters doelt op het vooronderzoek van het vaccin van Pfizer, op 44 duizend proefpersonen. Van hen kregen 170 mensen covid: 8 in de gevaccineerde groep, en 162 in de groep die een nepmiddel kreeg – vandaar 95 procent bescherming.
Maar haast allemaal werden die mild ziek. Ernstige corona kregen maar vier mensen: drie in de placebogroep en een in de gevaccineerde groep. Vandaar de 75 procent die Schetters noemt.
Maar wel of geen ‘ernstige corona’ was dan ook niet waarnaar men keek, zegt Wijnans, de ‘mevrouw’ van het CBG in kwestie. ‘Deze studies zijn niet groot genoeg om dat aan te tonen, dat wisten we van tevoren. Als we ernstige gevallen als uitkomstmaat hadden geëist, hadden we nog maanden moeten wachten tot het er genoeg zijn.’
Terwijl er alle reden is om aan te nemen dat het vaccin ook beschermt tegen ernstige covid, vindt Sturkenboom. ‘Als je covid voorkomt, verminder je logischerwijs ook het aantal ernstige gevallen, omdat dat de geëscaleerde vorm is van gewone covid.’
‘We blijven altijd bij de data. Dus kunnen we niet zeggen: het zal ook wel werken voor ernstige gevallen’, zegt Wijnans. ‘Maar in dit geval is er eigenlijk geen enkele twijfel over. Als een vaccin beschermt tegen ziekte, is dat ook tegen ernstige ziekte. Dat is zo’n open deur dat ik me hier echt een beetje over verbaas.’
Bij het vergelijkbare vaccin van Moderna waren de cijfers overigens al anders: in de placebogroep werden 30 mensen ernstig ziek, in de gevaccineerde groep niemand.
4. ‘Gaat dit vaccin nu helpen de situatie zo te krijgen dat we elkaar weer kunnen knuffelen? (…) Deze mevrouw (Wijnans) zegt dat het niet duidelijk is. Ik zeg dat het niet het geval is. Het beschermt niet 100 procent tegen circulatie van het virus. In de gevaccineerde groep waren toch nog 8 mensen geïnfecteerd.’
Inderdaad is onbekend of de coronavaccins ook ‘steriliserend’ zijn – in staat het virus helemaal weg te houden uit het lichaam. Goed denkbaar is dat iemand die is ingeënt nog wel geïnfecteerd kan raken, zij het op een laag pitje. Dat is overigens geen geheim, maar een nadrukkelijke kanttekening die alle beoordelaars en betrokken onderzoekers maken.
Alleen wil dat nog niet zeggen dat de vaccins dus niet ‘helpen’, zoals Schetters zegt. Vaststaat immers dat het vaccin bij de proeven in elk geval 95 procent van de ziektegevallen voorkwam. Dat alleen al maakt de kans op doorgifte van het virus vele malen kleiner. ‘Met enig gezond verstand kun je begrijpen: als mensen niet meer hoestend en niezend rondlopen, zal er ook minder doorgifte van het virus plaatsvinden’, zegt Wijnans.
En het is de optelsom der dingen: ‘Deze vaccins zijn veilig, zorgen ervoor dat er minder mensen ziek worden, er minder druk op de zorg komt en dat het zorgpersoneel blijft rondlopen. Dat is heel nuttig in deze pandemie, denk ik dan’, zegt Wijnans.
Irritatie is er over de laatdunkende manier waarop Schetters, en vooral interviewer Flavio Pasquino, praten over Wijnans: ze zou ‘niet lekker geslapen’ hebben en ‘behoorlijk onzeker’ zijn omdat ze ‘een lastige boodschap’ moest brengen. ‘De manier waarop ze hier met een expert van het CBG omgaan die transparant uiteenzet wat er wel en niet bekend is vind ik totaal niet kunnen’, zegt Sturkenboom.
Wijnans zelf reageert laconiek. ‘Ik begrijp best dat mensen kritisch zijn en vragen hebben. Dat is precies waarom we proberen zo veel mogelijk informatie beschikbaar te maken en waarom we heel duidelijk laten zien wat we weten en wat niet.
‘Maar dan moet dit natuurlijk niet uit context gehaald worden – misbruikt worden, eigenlijk. We zijn juist superkritisch tegenover de farmaceutische industrie. Dat is ons werk. Maar dit filmpje trekt van alles uit zijn verband en zaait onnodig onrust.’
5. ‘Een mRNA vaccin is eigenlijk genetische manipulatie. Dat is wat het is.’
Geen citaat van Schetters zelf, maar van Andrew Wakefield, van wie tijdens het interview een gespreksfragment wordt getoond. Schetters stemt met nadruk in: ‘Ik onderstreep volledig de risico’s die hij schetst.’
En dat steekt. Wakefield is namelijk de frauderende Britse arts die de vaccinscepsis sterk heeft aangewakkerd, door een verband tussen het bmr-vaccin tegen bof, mazelen en rode hond en autisme te bepleiten. Fraude, zo bleek achteraf: de twaalf kinderen die Wakefield beschreef hadden hun verschijnselen niet kort na vaccinatie, maar veel later en soms ruim ervoor gekregen.
‘Ik snap echt niet dat iemand met zo’n achtergrond als Schetters zich laat associëren met Wakefield’, zegt hoogleraar Savelkoul, die de zaak-Wakefield goed kent. ‘Wakefield is uit het artsenregister geschrapt, vanwege fraude’, zegt Sturkenboom. ‘Daarover wordt hier met geen woord gerept.’
En, zo zeggen de universitaire experts eenstemmig, van genetische ‘manipulatie’ is bij het nieuwe vaccin geen sprake. Het boodschappermolecuul rna waaruit het vaccin bestaat, wordt immers niet opgenomen in het dna van de gastheer, maar binnen enkele dagen afgebroken. ‘Dit is moleculaire biologie volgens het boekje’, zegt Van Egmond. ‘Om het rna van het vaccin om te zetten in dna zijn enzymen nodig die onze eigen cellen helemaal niet aanmaken. Dat gebeurt dan ook niet.’
Als het vaccin werkelijk werd ingebouwd in het dna in de celkern, zou dat nog sterker gelden voor allerlei andere rna-moleculen in de cel, zegt hoogleraar coronavirologie Eric Snijder (LUMC). ‘Gewone door een virus geïnfecteerde cellen zijn letterlijk afgeladen met viraal rna. Coronavirussen en nog een aantal andere groepen maken zelfs extra mRNAs. Dus als dit echt een probleem was, dan zou het ook een probleem zijn voor iedereen die natuurlijk geïnfecteerd raakt, met welk rna-virus dan ook’, zegt hij. ‘Miljarden mensen, duizenden jaren lang, tientallen infecties per jaar.’
En dat niet alleen: ‘Het zou ook opgaan voor iedereen die gevaccineerd wordt met een klassiek vaccin tegen polio, bof, mazelen, rode hond of gele koorts, waar toch al heel wat ervaring mee is’, vervolgt Snijder. ‘En het zou ook schering en inslag zijn met de gewone mRNAs van de cel zelf.’
Van Egmond zucht hoorbaar aan de telefoon. ‘Mensen die dit soort dingen beweren, snappen maar niet dat het vaccin hetzelfde doet als het virus zelf. Maar dan in sterk verminderde vorm, op een gecontroleerde manier, zodat je wel immuun wordt, maar niet ziek.’
6. ‘Er zijn ontwikkelingen, bijvoorbeeld het gebruik van ivermectine, om mensen die echt ziek zijn te helpen daar overheen te komen. Het probleem is: het is daar niet voor geregistreerd. (…) Ik pleit daarvoor. Omdat je ook direct resultaat hebt.’
Schetters haakt hier in op een populair thema dat rondzingt in meer complotdenkende kringen: er bestaan wel degelijk werkzame geneesmiddelen tegen corona, maar gezondheidsautoriteiten houden die onder druk van de industrie tegen, om zo vaccins te kunnen doordrukken.
‘Dat klopt al meteen van geen kanten’, zegt CBG-beoordelaar Wijnans. ‘De ontstekingsremmer dexamethason werkt ook hartstikke goed. En die is meteen geregistreerd tegen covid toen uit de onderzoeken duidelijk werd dat hij patiënten kan helpen.’
Momenteel spitst veel discussie zich toe op ivermectine, een middel tegen parasitaire worminfecties. Maar wat Schetters zegt, klopt niet: artsen kunnen het onder bepaalde voorwaarden wel degelijk voorschrijven, ‘off-label’, zoals dat heet. ‘Het gebeurt vaker dat een bestaand middel voor andere indicaties of groepen wordt aangewend’, zegt Sturkenboom. ‘Mochten er goede aanwijzingen zijn dat het werkt en veilig is, en er zijn geen alternatieven, dan mag een arts dat op eigen verantwoordelijkheid na instemming van de patiënt doen.’
Dat komt niet in de laatste plaats doordat het middel volgens vroege celproeven alleen tegen het coronavirus zou werken in extreem hoge, voor de mens schadelijke concentraties. Dat maakt experts onzeker: kan het dan wel werken bij normaal gebruik? ‘Er is reden voor hoop, maar off-labelgebruik vereist een zorgvuldige afweging van de risico’s en de baten, zeker bij ernstig zieke patiënten’, vatte een Spaans-Zwitsers team daarom samen.
Sturkenboom kan zich erover verbazen. ‘Het rare is: er worden hier enthousiast middelen aanbevolen die voor covid nog niet goed zijn getest op effectiviteit. Terwijl men een vaccin dat na onderzoek in 40 duizend mensen effectief en veilig is bevonden, niet wenst te omarmen.’
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Trump's useful thugs: how the Republican party offered a home to the Proud Boys
Early in Trump’s presidency, emboldened neo-Nazi and fascist groups came out into the open but were met with widespread revulsion. So the tactics of the far right changed, becoming more insidious – and much more successful
In March 2018, on a cold, grey Monday afternoon in East Lansing, Michigan, about 500 militant antifascists gathered in a car park with the intention of stopping Richard Spencer, the high-profile white nationalist, from speaking at Michigan State University (MSU). Spencer had not been asked to come by any student group on campus, but had instead invited himself. After the university denied his initial request to speak a few months earlier, Spencer sued. As part of the settlement agreement, Spencer agreed to speak in the middle of spring break at the MSU Pavilion for Agriculture and Livestock Education, a venue more than a mile away from the main campus.
There in the parking lot, the antifascists kept one another warm, dancing to hardcore and hip-hop played over a wheeled-in guitar amplifier, sharing cigarettes and news from elsewhere. Some people talked about the leaked chat logs of the fascist gang Patriot Front, members of which were on their way to campus that very moment. Others discussed the arraignment of one of Spencer’s followers the night before on weapons charges after he pulled a gun on protesters. About 40 police officers in riot gear huddled at the far end of the car park. Bike cops on patrol swirled by.
Now and then, organisers affiliated with Stop Spencer at MSU – a coalition that included the MSU chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, Redneck Revolt, and Solidarity and Defense (SnD) – addressed the crowd. “Spencer is here because the MSU administration allows him to be here,” said Bob Day, a greying local anarchist and member of SnD’s Detroit chapter. “Spencer is here because the state of Michigan pays all these fucking cops to come out and protect the fascists – the same MSU administration and the same government that’s allowing Spencer to come in here, and is allowing fascists to attack our communities, and is protecting those fascists.”
The day wore on and the light grew harsher. Rumours surged that police planned to deploy a water cannon in the freezing weather. Armoured trucks idled nearby. A caravan of cars and trucks crawled up the road, stopping at a police barricade before inching back. Minutes later, a band of about 50 fascists came marching in a tight column led by Traditionalist Worker party (TWP) chair Matthew Heimbach – his tall, heavyset figure recognisable from a distance – and Spencer’s right-hand man, Gregory Conte. They were here. There was a brief pause as the column came up against the amassed antifascists, who swarmed past the barricades to meet it.
Scuffles broke out, and then a brawl. Spencer was nowhere to be seen. Police intervened sporadically, mostly at the periphery, pulling combatants off those who fell. Intermittently, a line of bike cops cut across the melee, which would reconverge elsewhere. I don’t know how many times this process repeated itself. In some moments, I felt the whole affair take the shape of an absurd pantomime – a symptom of having watched this exact scene play out in person, on YouTube and on Twitter so many times over the past few years.
The sense of absurdity receded as soon as I looked into the fascists’ eyes, dull with hatred and fear, or listened to their racial slurs and sieg heils, or when I saw, amid it all, Heimbach’s delighted smile. You could read in it all the smug arrogance of a man who believes himself untouchable, his victory inevitable, and history his judge – only faltering once, at the sight of some brass knuckles heading his way.
We didn’t know it then, but looking back to that day, it seems clear that Heimbach and Spencer had already reached the height of their influence. Owing to a combination of relentless antifascist organising and their own hubris, both would soon withdraw to the margins of the movement they had, for a time, led. In time, new leaders would step into their place, experimenting with new tactics. Antifascists and numerous journalists raised the alarm, but it wasn’t until after the 2020 election – and especially 6 January 2021 – that the mainstream recognised the threat posed by the far right.
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ver the past few years, far-right groups, whether those growing out of the internet-based men’s rights orGamergatemovements, or the lingering remnants of the neo-Nazi movement of the 1980s and 90s – the base of what would come to call itself the “alt-right” – have begun publicly and semi-publicly organising under their own distinct banners.
Political and ideological differences aside, groups like the Proud Boys, the Traditionalist Worker party (now defunct), Identity Evropa (now called the American Identity Movement), and Patriot Front (a specific organisation, not to be confused with the older, decentralised Patriot movement) aggressively and self-consciously sought to stake out their own aesthetics, uniforms, rituals and identity markers. In the process of trying to build an autonomous political force, amid the factional jostling and the infighting, the “alt-right” revealed its true nature. It is a constantly shifting network of personality cults, animated by misogyny, racism and a libidinal desire for violence. Its politics are articulated by the reclusive but influential Andrew Anglin of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer: “The core concept of the movement, upon which all else is based, is that Whites are undergoing an extermination, via mass immigration into White countries which was enabled by a corrosive liberal ideology of White self-hatred, and that the Jews are at the centre of this agenda.”
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Dwindling enthusiasm for the militias and Patriot movement during the Bush era was transformed by the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and the development of the Tea Party, which according to the journalist David Neiwert, became “a wholesale conduit for a revival of the Patriot movement and its militias”. This convergence proved fertile ideological ground: the radical libertarianism of the Tea Partiers intermingling with the chauvinism of the militias and their white nationalist allies, bonded with the conspiracy theories of Alex Jones, Fox News propaganda and what the historian Greg Grandin once described as “an almost psychotropic hatred of Barack Obama”.
Many members of these groups would go on to become staunch Donald Trump supporters, and while the Republican party has traditionally sought to maintain a certain plausible deniability in its relationship with the fringe right, the Trump campaign threw open Pandora’s box, welcoming the avowed white supremacists, antisemites and fascists who stalked the ideological fringes of US politics.
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n the early years of the Trump administration, the more hardcore elements of the so-called alt-right – the neo-Nazis, the neo-Confederate Ku Klux Klan affiliates, the esoteric fascists and white separatists – sneered at the Proud Boys, the group founded by Gavin McInnes, who also co-founded the media organisation Vice. They were viewed as insufficiently radical: a drinking club for libertarian nationalists who liked to get into fights. For all their differences, white nationalist leaders like Anglin, Heimbach and Spencer could agree on one thing (other than the necessity of a white ethno-state), which was that the Proud Boys, with their silly initiation rituals and campy aesthetic, were ridiculous.
But as Heimbach and Spencer’s influence declined, the Proud Boys began to grow into something very few, either in the movement or outside it, had expected: a hegemonic force on the far right able to appeal to mainstream conservatives while also making space for white nationalists and fascists.
Anglin, Heimbach and Spencer built their movements hoping to not just influence the Republican party but wield political power in their own right. But after antifascist activist Heather Heyer’s murder in Charlottesville in 2017 and the mobilisations across the country that followed, the influence of this revolutionary tendency (while still active) began to wane. Less vigorously ideological groups such as the Proud Boys observed Spencer and Heimbach’s mistakes. Their more moderate strategies have, in turn, won them greater appeal by foregrounding ultranationalism and a vicious opposition to leftwing politics.
Gavin McInnes, centre, with supporters in April 2017. Photograph: Marcio José Sánchez/AP
Insofar as the Proud Boys were closer to the mainstream of American conservatism than Anglin, Heimbach and Spencer, this also made them even more dangerous. Anglin and Spencer weren’t getting invited to speak at Republican events, but McInnes was; members of the openly terroristic Atomwaffen Division weren’t running security for Republican Senate candidates, but the Proud Boys were. They received sympathetic media coverage from Fox News, while actively recruiting new members not only from the far right but from racist skinhead groupings across the country. A violently reactionary subculture that had in recent years remained relatively self-contained, racist skinheads (“boneheads” to leftist skinheads), under the leadership of charismatic demagogues like McInnes on the east coast and Joey Gibson of Patriot Prayer on the west coast, was spilling into the streets of the US’s most liberal urban centres. It’s no accident that the Proud Boys chosen uniform features black and yellow shirts by Fred Perry – a favoured skinhead brand.
The Proud Boys had been courting members of New York City’s skinhead scene for a long time; McInnes himself has a white power tattoo associated with the neo-Nazi punk band Skrewdriver, whose merchandise he has been photographed wearing.
At least three of those who participated in a gang assault in New York in 2018 were affiliated with racist skinhead crews long known to local antifascist and antiracist organisers, like the 211 Bootboys, a far-right skinhead gang based mostly in New York City, and Battalion 49, a predominantly Latino neo-Nazi skinhead gang. Early in 2017, McInnes had defended the 211 Bootboys after some of its members attacked two brothers on the Lower East Side when they noticed an antifascist sticker on one of their phones. Pragmatically sidestepping the question of race, the Proud Boys make their protofascist appeal in the language of patriotic individualism: pro-America, pro-capitalism and pro-Trump.
Around the country, the group has replicated this approach, appealing primarily to people’s class interests – as small business owners, for example, or as the children of families who fled socialist revolutions abroad – as well as traditionalist gender politics, temporarily deferring the white nationalist project in the interest of swelling their ranks. When a white nationalist podcaster tried to get McInnes to say the Fourteen Words, a totemic slogan on the far right – “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” – he did not refuse outright but replaced “white” with “western.”
This strategy has allowed the Proud Boys to gain entry into the Republican mainstream – such as when McInnes was invited to speak at the Metropolitan Republican Club in upper Manhattan, the state GOP’s home base in New York City, in October 2018. McInnes “is part of the right”, said Ian Reilly, the executive committee chair of the club when talking to New York-based website Gothamist, and went on to compare him to previous guests Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter. “We promote people and ideas of all kinds from the right,” Reilly continued. “We would never invite anyone who would incite violence.”
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xcept this is exactly what they had done. McInnes had come to the Metropolitan Club to celebrate the 58th anniversary of the assassination of Inejirō Asanuma, the leader of the Japan Socialist party, by the ultranationalist Otoya Yamaguchi, on live television in 1960 – an “inspiring moment”, McInnes wrote on Instagram, which he reenacted with his employee (and fellow Proud Boy) Ryan Katsu Rivera. “Never let evil take root,” McInnes later told his audience, referencing a meme involving Yamaguchi that is popular with fascists online.
Outside, antifascist and antiracist demonstrators gathered to protest against McInnes’s appearance. As guests began to leave, a score of Proud Boys hung back and prepared for the coming brawl. Scuffles and beatings followed, as they seemed to wherever the Proud Boys went. A dozen members of the protofascist gang stomped demonstrators who had been caught in the open. “Do you feel brave now, faggot?” one yelled, according to the documentary film-maker Sandi Bachom and the photojournalist Shay Horse, who witnessed the attack. Bachom’s footage shows one assailant screaming “Faggot!” as he kicks someone curled up on the ground. Other footage includes a Proud Boy bragging, “Dude, I had one of their fucking heads, and I was just fucking smashing it in the pavement!” “That son of a bitch!” he continues. “He was a fucking foreigner.” One of his friends yells the Proud Boys slogan: “Fuck around, find out!”
A group of Proud Boys rally in Philadelphia to greet vice-president Mike Pence in July 2020. Photograph: Amy Harris/Rex/Shutterstock
Later, in an email to journalist Christopher Mathias, McInnes celebrated his fellow Proud Boys, writing that one of their victims had stolen one of their “Make America Great Again” hats and “was immediately tuned up”. Throughout all of this, the NYPD declined to arrest a single one of the violent reactionaries roaming the city’s streets. They did find time, however, to arrest three antiracist protesters. “I have a lot of support in the NYPD and I very much appreciate that, the boys in blue,” McInnes claimed on a podcast released soon after.
At a press conference a few days later, New York City councilman Donovan Richards, chair of the Public Safety Committee, described the NYPD’s response – and specifically that of the strategic response group tasked with keeping the peace – as “inept, incompetent and derelict in their duties”. The police subsequently released photographs of three persons of interest – all of whom were immediately identified as Proud Boy affiliates by antifascists, their addresses and contact information posted online – and announced that they intended to arrest 12 people altogether, including nine Proud Boys. (The following month, McInnes publicly quit the Proud Boys, saying, “I am told by my legal team and law enforcement that this gesture could help alleviate their sentencing,” referring to those nine, and that “This is 100% a legal gesture, and it is 100% about alleviating sentencing.”) New York Republicans, meanwhile, committed to their decision to welcome McInnes into the fold. “We want to foster civil discussion, but never endorse violence,” Metropolitan Club officials said in a statement. “Gavin’s talk on Friday night, while at times was politically incorrect and a bit edgy, was certainly not inciting violence.”
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his dynamic – Proud Boys and their allies careening through some unprepared urban centre, spoiling for a fight – has played out time and again in cities across the country, though nowhere more frequently or more violently than in Portland, Oregon, where every few months hundreds of ultranationalists, white supremacists, Trump supporters and other reactionaries come looking for a fight under the guise of protecting free speech, protesting against domestic terrorism, or campaigning for Joey Gibson, a notorious provocateur running for US Senate in Washington on a platform of Trump-inflected libertarianism backed by the street-fighting Proud Boys.
Since 2016, under the banner of Patriot Prayer, Gibson had been gathering together a coalition of evangelical Christians, Maga cultists, Qanon acolytes and fascist brawlers. One morning in the summer of 2018 – long before that same coalition, more or less, would storm the US Capitol – as riot cops fired flash-bang grenades at protesters, injuring at least two people and arresting four, Gibson led his supporters back and forth along the banks of the Willamette river, escorted by another contingent of armoured police. I asked him how his Senate campaign was going. “You’re looking at it,” Gibson replied.
His crew was visibly frustrated: the sheer size of the counterprotest on this day had foiled their plans to march through the city, so cheering on the police would have to suffice. “USA! USA!” they chanted. A bagpipe on the antifascist side droned, accompanied by a snare drum and the intermittent booms of police ordnance.
For all the digital chaos wrought by the so-called “alt-right”, open-air political violence remains the most immediate way to radicalise and recruit young men into far-right movements. Videos and gifs of Proud Boys beating up antifa, in turn, become digital propaganda. And, to broaden their appeal, groups sympathetic or adjacent to the far right are ditching racist rhetoric for more mainstream political language. This allows them to appeal to a bigger group of Americans who wouldn’t dream of joining the Ku Klux Klan, but harbour deep resentment toward immigrants and approve of other parts of Trump’s agenda.
Fighting breaking between far right groups and antifa in Portland, Oregon, in June 2018. Photograph: John Rudoff/Sipa/Rex/Shutterstock
They’re also shifting from ethnically defined nationalism to a version that purports to target outsiders based on their legal status, not the colour of their skin. Significantly, the presence of people of colour in this coalition allows Gibson and the Proud Boys to “prove” that they aren’t racists at all. Gibson, for starters, identifies as Japanese American. His deputy, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, is American Samoan. Both vehemently deny that either Patriot Prayer or the Proud Boys are white-supremacist organisations, though local antifascist and antiracist organisers have identified neo-Nazis and other organised white supremacists in their midst.
One masked Proud Boy I met at a rally in Portland, ostensibly there to support Gibson’s Senate bid, told me that anyone in their crew who expressed racist views would be stomped out – but “not literally”, the Proud Boy, who said his name was John, quickly added. But for every John, there’s a “General Graybeard” – an older man who led members of the “Freedom Crew” and “Hiwaymen”, two patriot groups from Arkansas, wearing tactical gear and bearing shields emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag. He explained that the imagery was about honouring the south’s history. “We fly it so people know it’s not racist,” the self-proclaimed general said. “It’s about heritage. It’s about the constitution.” When I asked John whether he accepted this explanation, he shrugged. “I gotta take that at face value,” he said.
“We’re here to support the constitution of the United States of America, which is all about free speech and being able to assemble peaceably and talking about the things that we support,” a Patriot Prayer supporter also named John told me. What exactly those things are proved more difficult to articulate: “It’s a call to action. We believe this is a time to act in our country.” The second John kept gesturing at Lionel, a recent immigrant from Cameroon, to prove his point. “I believe in peace, freedom and everything else,” Lionel concurred. “Me, I’m Black. We are also human. We have our voice, too.”
While the majority of uniformed and armoured Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer affiliates were white, half a dozen people of colour (including Lionel) were happy to explain what brought them to the Freedom March. One 40-year-old Black man named James had been supporting Joey Gibson for about a year. “I admire people like Martin Luther King when they fought for civil rights and stuff like that,” he said. “These guys, they look like they’re taking a stand, and I want to take a stand with them.”
“There are no white supremacists here,” James told me. “I get nothing but love. White supremacists don’t let minorities into their ranks.” And about those Confederate battle flags? “All it represents is the southern states. It’s just a flag.” The left, he continued, was being paid by George Soros to spread disinformation. “I’m not getting paid for this. I’m here of my own accord. We’re a diverse group,” he continued. “We’re all Trump supporters.”
Leonor Ferris, a 75-year-old immigrant from Colombia, laughed when I asked about the accusations of white supremacists in Patriot Prayer’s midst. “I’m a Latina! How could they be white supremacists?” she asked.
Nearly everyone at the march seemed as worried about the threat of the rising left as they were about immigrants. “We don’t want communists,” Ferris told me. “I came here legally and I don’t want to see what happened to Venezuela.” She continued: “The only thing communism brings is poverty. They can’t even eat over there. They have nothing in Venezuela.”
Toese, Gibson’s deputy, and several others sported T-shirts reading “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong”, referring to the Chilean dictator under whose rule tens of thousands of socialists and other dissidents were murdered and tortured. “Make Communists Afraid of Rotary Aircraft Again,” read the back of the shirt. (Pinochet’s soldiers were notorious for throwing enemies of the regime out of helicopters.) On one of the sleeves, in red, capital letters, was the acronym RWDS, or Right Wing Death Squads. The Proud Boys sold these shirts to raise money through their online store.
According to the Cuban-American Enrique Tarrio, current chairman of the Proud Boys, small-business values were what drew him to the group in the first place. Most of the Miami chapter’s members run their own companies, he told me, and one of the fraternity’s primary tenets is Glorifying the Entrepreneur. “My family came from a communist country,” Tarrio said. “The only way to true freedom is entrepreneurship.” Then he invited me to follow him on Instagram. His page featured a link to his company’s website – and posts about killing communists.
Tarriowould later be named Florida state director of Latinos for Trump. As one Republican operative later said, “The Trump campaign is well aware of the organised participation of Proud Boys rallies merging into Trump events. They don’t care. Staff are to treat it like a coalition they can’t talk about.”
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hat is confounding about groups like the Proud Boys is also what gives them their potency: using illegal means (brawling with antifascists, beating up passersby, harassing nonviolent civilians, and calling for undocumented people’s heads to be smashed on concrete) to defend the status quo, including, in theory, at least, the forces of law and order. “We even obey traffic laws!” I heard one Proud Boy joke as he and his crew waited to cross the road after a Portland rally.
From one perspective, an organisation like the Proud Boys is dangerous because it functions as a “pipeline” to even more violent ideologies. In a 2018 survey conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center of users on the Right Stuff forums (long a haven for online fascists and white nationalists) 15% of respondents mentioned Gavin McInnes as either an important influence on their political development or as useful in converting others. While the top two sources of far-right radicalisation were the chaotic and anonymous /pol/ forum on 4chan and Jared Taylor of the “race realist” website American Renaissance, McInnes ranked fifth out of 24 – ahead even of Richard Spencer.
But treating membership in the Proud Boys as a transitional phase to something worse risks ignoring the threat that the Proud Boys themselves pose, especially given that on certain issues, like gender and immigration, there is little to no daylight between the “alt-right” (or “racial nationalists”) and the “alt-lite” (or “civic nationalists”). Moreover, there is little to no daylight between the far right and large swathes of the Republican party: even after the storming of the US Capitol, polling indicates that Donald Trump remains immensely popular with the Republican base, who still support his claim to the presidency and would no doubt cheer his candidacy in 2024.
Meanwhile, it is now becoming clear that the battle-hardened Proud Boys, told to “stand back and stand by” by Trump at a presidential debate last year, and their allies, acted as something like a disciplined cadre amid the chaos of the Capitol siege. In the face of a belated federal crackdown, these experienced exponents of political street violence are likely to beat a tactical retreat before making their next push. The movement they fight for now finds itself on new terrain: more organisationally developed than ever before, even with Trump out of office; a fracturing and reforming Republican party creating new alliances and coalitions to leverage and exploit; the multiplying pressures of the pandemic, the economic crisis, and the climate continuing to build. When or where, it is impossible to say – but soon enough, something is going to crack.
