Internet Troll Chuck Johnson

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Internet Troll Chuck Johnson

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jun 15, 2018 1:43 pm

Patrick

https://twitter.com/TrickFreee/status/9 ... 0820184069


Chuck Johnson worked with Peter Thiel on the Gawker case and the Trump transition.


What Did Internet Troll Chuck Johnson Know About Peter Thiel’s Secret War on Gawker?

06/17/16 04:05PM


Earlier this week, Forbes revisited the tale of the notorious right-wing internet troll Charles C. Johnson and his $55 million defamation lawsuit against Gawker Media. The lawsuit, which concerns a series of stories Gawker and Deadspin published in late 2014, was dismissed in Missouri earlier this year; a similar complaint has languished in California with no action for several months (Gawker Media expects that it will be dismissed as well). What makes Johnson’s litigation particularly noteworthy, however, is the circumstantial evidence surrounding it. According to Forbes, some of this evidence suggests that Johnson had knowledge of Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel’s secret, decade-long legal attack on Gawker prior to its exposure last month.

The magazine cites three pieces of evidence:

1. A Facebook post from October 2015 in which Johnson claims that “Gawker will cease to exist in a year’s time,” an assertion he presented as based on some kind of insider knowledge:

2. Johnson’s alleged communication with the law firm of Hulk Hogan’s litigation attorney, Charles Harder (who has also served as Thiel’s legal proxy):

Sometime after filing his initial complaint against Gawker in Missouri last year, Johnson contacted Hulk Hogan’s Los Angeles-based law firm, according to a source familiar with the situation. That person said that Johnson had a phone conversation with lawyers at Harder Mirell & Abrams–the law firm that was paid by Thiel to represent Hogan–and that the two parties exchanged notes.

(Harder didn’t confirm or deny this allegation, but Johnson denied it to Forbes.)

3. Johnson’s alleged negotiations with a different, unnamed law firm in Los Angeles, in which he apparently characterized his lawsuit against Gawker as part of a broader campaign against Gawker Media:

Representatives for Johnson have also talked to other LA-area law firms, another source told FORBES, and his case was pitched to at least one of them as part of a wider litigious plan against Gawker.

Gawker was able to independently confirm that Johnson approached a Los Angeles law firm about representing him against Gawker shortly after a Florida jury awarded Hulk Hogan $110 million in damages (which would later rise to $140.1 million) in March of this year, and that he characterized his lawsuit as part of a broader legal campaign. According to a source with knowledge of Johnson’s approach, he was apparently cryptic about what this campaign entailed.

Johnson is, of course, a well-known troll, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he had pitched his lawsuit against Gawker as something other than what it really was—that is, a legally dubious and poorly prepared claim. Furthermore, Johnson has denied any ties between either Charles Harder or Peter Thiel, and told Forbes that he has paid his own lawyer fees.

In a separate statement to Gawker, Johnson wrote, “Forbes got a lot wrong and made up some stuff. Do you think I should sue them?” He directed further questions to his Missouri-based attorney, Jonathon Burns.

The evidence cited by Forbes does not prove that Johnson is being bankrolled by Thiel (either via Harder or some other party). But it does raise questions about whether Johnson and Thiel, or Thiel’s representatives, have communicated about the latter’s vendetta against Gawker. Indeed, according to Johnson’s former account on Twitter—which took the extraordinary step of permanently banning him from the platform in May 2015—he’s been a Thiel fanboy for a number of years:

“Peter Thiel is probably the second smartest man in America.”
“When I finish with the media I’ll move on to higher education. Peter Thiel being shouted down was a disgrace.”
“I love Peter Thiel. Monopolies are good. You shouldn’t go to college. Let’s create new countries, build rocket ships, & live forever!”
In a tweet dated March 12, 2015, Johnson claimed that, as a student at Claremont McKenna College, he attended a dinner where he talked with Thiel, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, and Claremont professor Mark Blitz:


In a subsequent tweet, Johnson revealed the topic of discussion:


Charles Johnson refused to elaborate on the details of the dinner in response to a request for comment from Gawker. Bill Kristol, however, denied that the dinner took place. “I’ve never had a dinner with Peter Thiel and Charles Johnson,” he told Gawker. “I don’t remember anything like that.” Referring to Johnson, he added, “He’s the one who attended Claremont as an undergraduate, right? I may have met him then. But then he went crazy. I haven’t met with him since then.” (The other two attendees, Mark Blitz and Peter Thiel, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

Considering the evidence at hand—Johnson’s boasts on social media, the Forbes report about his contact with Thiel’s proxy attorney, his apparent contact with Thiel in college, and both men’s shared political ideologies—it’s not hard to imagine that Thiel and Johnson are at the very least familiar with one another. Indeed, Thiel has a history of funding attention-seeking young conservatives who use the tools of journalism to achieve notoriety and political ends—he provided right-wing provocateur James O’Keefe with a $10,000 contribution in 2009.

If the men do have such a relationship, Thiel might not want anyone to know about it—especially after his New York Times interview, in which he posed as a guardian of ethical journalism, a concept with which Johnson has often struggled. “Much of what he publishes is either wrong or tasteless,” the Times reported in 2014, referring to his involvement in inaccurate stories about U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, whom Johnson baselessly accused of paying for prostitutes, and Times reporter David Kirkpatrick, whom Johnson accused of posing nude for Playgirl after misinterpreting a satirical article published when Kirkpatrick attended Princeton. U.S. News & World Report described Johnson’s attempts to out an alleged rape victim as “appalling” and argued that his reporting “contributes heavily to the reluctance on the part of sexual assault victims to come forward.”

An alliance with Johnson would also undercut Thiel’s purported disdain for outing public figures. At Claremont McKenna, Mother Jones has reported, he retaliated against one of his classmates by disclosing the classmate’s homosexuality in the comments section of the student newspaper’s website. He has claimed on Twitter that Barack Obama is secretly attracted to men and that America’s culture of political correctness punishes those who question the President’s public image as a straight, married man of two children.
http://gawker.com/what-did-internet-tro ... 1782110939



Chuck Johnson helped set up Weiner so the FBI could access his laptop and restart the Clinton email investigation.

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Chuck Johnson's WeSearchr funds domestic terrorism and information warfare.

http://www.socialmatter.net/2016/05/30/ ... iveOldPost


Chuck Johnson and Weev were involved in hacking the DNC. They enlisted Russia and pro-Russia Ukrainians to help.


Two Notorious 'Alt-Right' Figures May Play Key Roles in Russia Investigation

The alt-right’s presence seemingly pervades every corner of the Donald Trump administration, so perhaps it’s no surprise that key players in the extremist white nationalist movement are turning out to be involved in the president’s scandals as well — namely, the ongoing investigation into potential collusion between Russian intelligence and members of the Trump campaign.


Charles C. Johnson/Twitter
Two major alt-right figures — Charles C. Johnson, the white nationalist “Trump’s Troll” who reportedly acted as an adviser to the administration’s transition team, and notorious neo-Nazi hacker Andrew “weev” Auernheimer — have been implicated in the Russia investigation, according to a recent piece by Ben Schreckinger in Politico.

Their role became public when a Republican activist named Peter Smith, 81, committed suicide shortly after detailing for the Wall Street Journal his attempts to track down hackers he believed might possess the 33,000 emails Hillary Clinton deleted from her private servers, the controversy over which was a major campaign issue raised by Trump during the election. Smith’s involvement could be a key to the investigation if evidence can be found that he acted as a conduit between Russian intelligence operatives seeking to affect the 2016 election outcome and Trump adviser Michael Flynn, Sr., the onetime National Security Adviser who resigned over his meetings with key Russian officials.

Johnson, a onetime Breitbart News writer who told Schreckinger he met Smith in 2013 while conducting “opposition research” on President Obama, had been in touch with Smith throughout the 2016 campaign, discussing “tactics and research,” including Smith’s efforts in tracking down Clinton’s emails.

“He wanted me to introduce him to [Trump’s chief adviser, Stephen] Bannon, to a few others, and I sort of demurred on some of that,” Johnson said. “I didn’t think his operation was as sophisticated as it needed to be, and I thought it was good to keep the campaign as insulated as possible.”

Schreckinger reported that Johnson instead contacted a “hidden oppo network” of alt-right researchers (who he declined to identify) and urged them to back Smith’s efforts. Moreover, he suggested to Smith that he get in touch with Auernheimer.


Andrew Auernheimer/Daily Stormer
Auernheimer, claiming he is contractually prohibited from speaking to reporters, would not confirm to Schreckinger that Smith had contacted him.

Smith’s confession to the Journal corroborated other aspects of the Russia investigation that have been uncovered by reporters. It explained: “The operation Mr. Smith described is consistent with information that has been examined by U.S. investigators probing Russian interference in the elections. Those investigators have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the intelligence.”

Smith killed himself in a Minnesota hotel room on May 14, days after talking to the Journal reporters. He left behind a carefully arranged stack of documents explaining his suicide and a note exclaiming, “NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER.”

Johnson rose to notoriety in 2014 as an alt-right troll who led social-media harassment campaigns against people who were involved in mainstream news stories, including journalists, publishing their home and private information online and leading to threats at their residences. He also was notorious for using overtly racist language on his Twitter account, though he was permanently exiled from Twitter in 2015 for using threatening language.

In July 2016, Johnson was a guest on the racist radio show Fash the Nation, in which he claimed that he got interested in “race realism” — a phrase white nationalists use to refer to their racist ideology — at a young age. On the show, he maintained that ethnic and racial stereotypes are “largely true” and he admitted to factoring them into hiring practices, predicated on the principle that blacks are dumber than whites.

And at a certain point you … If we’re all the same, you would have statistically expected that if blacks are 15% of the population, they would make up, you know, 15% of honors winners, you know, honor students or whatever. And yet that’s never the case. And so you have to sit … You have to believe — that every single school on the planet, and in every single environment that’s run by white people — that they’re systematically discriminating against blacks for some reason. Or you have to believe the more obvious thing which is that they’re dumber. And enough experience with them kind of persuades you that the dumber thing is probably true.

He claimed in December that he had been “doing a lot of the vetting for the administration, and the Trump transition.” Forbes reported that Johnson didn’t have an official position, but was working behind the scenes with members of the transition team’s executive committee.

Auernheimer, who became famous in 2010 for exposing a hole in AT&Ts security system and wound up serving prison time for it before converting to outright neo-Nazi ideology, has been closely involved in the activities of the overtly racist “1488” segment of the alt-right. He helped Andrew Anglin set up his bulletin-board system for the neo-Nazi outlet Daily Stormer, and has been involved in sending threatening fliers out to Jewish community centers and colleges.

Johnson and Auernheimer had previously teamed up in 2015 in an effort to release hours of covertly filmed interviews with Planned Parenthood officials.
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/201 ... estigation



Chuck Johnson used to work for Breitbart and is close with Bannon.

Trump Official Met with Palmer Luckey, Chuck Johnson to Discuss the Wall, For Some Reason [Updated]

5/22/17 9:22pm

Image: AP Photo/Eric Risberg
On the day he assumed his new job as head of the US Interior Department (DOI), Ryan Zinke rode a horse through the streets of Washington. It seems only fitting now that we should find actual horseshit in the retired Navy SEAL’s office.

Last month, Zinke, the man who runs 59 national parks and oversees more than 500 million acres of federal land, managed to squeeze in a half hour for America’s own shitlords, Chuck C. Johnson and Palmer Luckey, to discuss President Donald Trump’s plans for building a wall along the US-Mexico border.

The man who arranged the meeting was the secretary’s friend, “American Sniper” author Scott McEwen, who also coauthored Zinke’s own biography “American Commander.”

Johnson, you might recall, is the notorious troll who managed to secure a lifetime ban from Twitter after asking for funding to “take out” activist DeRay McKesson—far from the first time he’d harassed someone online. He’s also the founder of the highly partisan, often spurious, and achingly irrelevant GotNews. Johnson’s most recent belt-notch is the alt-right crowdfunding platform Wesearchr, a site which frequently experiences outages and is currently pooling money for the legal defense of neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer. Though largely out of the spotlight, Johnson has repeatedly touted his own proximity to the Trump administration in recent months.

Luckey is, at this point, as well known for founding virtual reality company Oculus as he is for being slowly pushed out of it. It was revealed that the 24-year-old multi-millionaire had secretly funded an anti-Hillary shitposting political action committee called Nimble America with Milo Yiannopoulos as a silent partner; later it was discovered he’d funneled $100,000 to the Trump campaign after claiming he voted for Gary Johnson. Now, no longer employed by Facebook, Luckey seemingly spends his days getting into flamewars with Redditors.

Neither of these men, to the best of our knowledge, has any particular expertise on wall construction, immigration, or policy, foreign or domestic.

A log of Zinke’s meetings last month, published recently to the DOI website in response to several Freedom of Information Act requests, reveals that on April 12—between lunch and a briefing on DOI revenue streams—Zinke held a meeting with Johnson and Luckey on the topic of “Border Wall building plans.” Four other DOI employees, all of whom are Trump beachhead team members, were present for the meeting, including Megan Bloomgren, Zinke’s acting communications director.


“The Secretary had a brief meeting where he listened to their ideas about using technology on the border and referred the gentlemen to the Department of Homeland Security,” a spokeswoman for Zinke told Gizmodo. Asked whether the Secretary was aware of Johnson’s “extremely inappropriate and abusive behavior” prior to the meeting, she said he was not.

“Regarding setting up the meeting, a friend of the Secretary’s suggested he talk with them about their technology,” she said. “As a result, they had a very brief meeting with the Secretary. There was no action after.”

Asked which of the secretary’s friends had set up the meeting, the spokeswoman replied: “The friend is Scott McEwen.”

Johnson did not reply to multiple requests for comment. Luckey, reached via Twitter DM, responded “same answer as last time,” a reference to Gizmodo’s last attempt to secure comment from Luckey, in which he replied, “I could give you an answer, or I could tell you to fuck yourself.”
https://gizmodo.com/trump-official-met- ... 1795450059




Chuck Johnson is close to Assange and Rohrabacher

Aug. 17, 2017, 12:13 p.m.

By CHRISTINE MAI-DUC
Rohrabacher on meeting with WikiLeaks’ Assange: We talked about ‘what might be necessary to get him out’

Julian Assange in 2016 (Carl Court / Getty Images)
Far-right blogger and provocateur Chuck C. Johnson said on Thursday that he helped arrange a highly unusual meeting between Orange County GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this week.
Rohrabacher said in a statement that he plans to bring information to President Trump from the three-hour meeting, which took place Wednesday in London at the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Assange has been living in asylum since 2012.
He would not detail that information to The Times, but in an interview Thursday morning with the Daily Caller, Rohrabacher was more explicit, saying he and Assange talked about “what might be necessary to get him out” and suggested they discussed a presidential pardon in exchange for information on the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee, which were published by WikiLeaks before the 2016 presidential election.
“He has information that will be of dramatic importance to the United States and the people of our country as well as to our government,” Rohrabacher told the Daily Caller. “Thus if he comes up with that, you know he’s going to expect something in return. He can’t even leave the embassy to get out to Washington to talk to anybody if he doesn’t have a pardon.”
Johnson, who is known for being banned from Twitter after he asked users for help “taking out” a civil rights activist, said that he and Assange attorney Jennifer Robinson also were in the meeting.
Johnson wrote in an email to The Times that the meeting was the result of a “desire for ongoing communications” from both Rohrabacher and Assange. Rohrabacher spokesman Ken Grubbs said the congressman alerted the White House about his planned trip to visit Assange. The White House has not confirmed whether it was aware of the meeting ahead of time.
Rohrabacher’s office said that during the meeting, Assange repeated his claims that the Russian government was not involved in the theft of Democratic emails.
The release of the emails put Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on the defensive and are among the incidents that led to investigations by the Justice Department and multiple House and Senate committees into potential ties between President Trump’s campaign and election meddling. Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies think Russia was involved in the theft of the emails.
In a statement, DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said, “We’ll take the word of the U.S. intelligence community over Julian Assange and Putin’s favorite Congressman.”
Assange, who has been criticized by many U.S. officials for WikiLeaks’ alleged ties to Russia, remains in asylum at least in part because British authorities have threatened him with arrest for jumping bail after Sweden made sexual assault allegations against him. Those allegations since have been dropped, but Assange, who is Australian, also could face legal problems in the U.S. The Washington Post reported in April that federal prosecutors were weighing whether to bring charges against members of WikiLeaks, in part over information leaked by Chelsea Manning, the U.S. soldier convicted of handing over diplomatic cables to the organization.
Rohrabacher, who has long been criticized for his fondness for Russia, believes he is the only congressman who has visited Assange.
Shortly after the trip was revealed, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called for Rohrabacher to step down from his post on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he chairs a subcommittee on Eurasian affairs.
Grubbs called the Democratic committee’s call “absurdly but predictably partisan.”
Grubbs also said Rohrabacher paid for the trip to London — which he took while many of his House colleagues are working and holding town hall meetings in their districts — with personal funds.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/essenti ... story.html




Chuck Johnson used to work for @AlanDersh, bringing Pizzagate into a completely new light. @Cernovich also worked with Alan on Silenced.

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Chuck Johnson was involved in the Macronleaks with Jack Posobiec. See a picture yet?


What Is Chuck Johnson, and Why? The Web’s Worst Journalist, Explained

12/09/14 11:25AM

If you were active on social media this weekend, you may have noticed frequent references to a website called “GotNews” and a writer named Charles C. Johnson. Often these references took the form of tweets like these:




Who is @ChuckCJohnson, and why do people want him banned from Twitter? This guide is for the lucky few who haven’t caught up on the story of Charles C. Johnson, and are curious why so many people, particularly in the mainstream media, despise him.

Who is Charles C. Johnson?

Johnson is a California-based 26-year-old independent journalist and proprietor of GotNews.com, where he publishes the majority of his articles. According to his online biography, he’s written for a litany of conservative publications in the past, including The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and The New York Sun. He is also the author of two books, one of which is enthusiastically blurbed by Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

He’s a conservative journalist?

Not exactly. Johnson rejects being labeled as “conservative,” and describes himself instead as “a radical” and “a revolutionary.” He frequently feuds with other conservative journalists. In a tweet published earlier this month, Johnson wrote: “I’m going to enthusiastically burn down the entire political establishment for fun. It’s time someone did.”

So he’s a crazy conservative journalist?

Sort of. Johnson is well-known for ending the career of a foreign policy analyst named Elizabeth O’Bagy, who among other things misrepresented her academic credentials to her employer, The Institute for the Study of War. More recently, he’s drawn attention for his (flawed) reporting in the Senate Republican primary race in Mississippi.

If he’s just another crazy conservative journalist, why has he become so internet-famous?

Johnson is equally well-known for publishing stories that fall apart under the slightest scrutiny. The list of Johnson stories that have been proven wrong is long, but his greatest hits include:

Falsely accusing a New York Times reporter of secretly posing for Playgirl (after that reporter, David D. Kirkpatrick, published a story that deflated a few Benghazi conspiracy theories).
Erroneously reporting that former Newark mayor Cory Booker didn’t actually reside in Newark.
Contributing reporting to the Daily Caller’s infamous story about New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez allegedly soliciting prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. The story turned out to be a complete fabrication, and may have even been planted by the Cuban government.
He also thinks Obama is gay.

What?

Behold:

I know we aren't supposed to talk about this but Obama is clearly gay, guys. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) December 3, 2014

Why did Obama have an openly gay activist man as his mentor at Occidental? Why did he travel with gay man in Pakistan?

— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) December 3, 2014

Why did Obama live with several openly gay men if he's not gay? Why can't we find any women who had sex with OBAMA & will talk? (Fixed it!)

— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) December 3, 2014

(He had previously tweeted: “Why can’t we find any women who have had sex with me & will talk?”)

Once you accept the premise that Obama is gay a lot of things start to make sense.

— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) December 3, 2014

Note how closed minded my critics are tonight. They haven't wondered if maybe, just maybe, Obama is gay. And I'm the one that's a bigot?

— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) December 3, 2014

Johnson seems pretty clearly incompetent. But why do people loathe him?

Johnson’s work for larger news organizations is mostly inept rubbish. But the stuff he publishes on GotNews.com tends to be intensely hateful—bizarre, non-sequitur, victim-attacking bile directly from, and directly for, the online right-wing’s id.

Johnson likes to publish articles, for example, insinuating that victims of police violence—particularly black victims—pretty much had it coming. Earlier this year, he collected screenshots of murdered teenager Michael Brown’s Instagram account. “Brown’s Instagram account also shows a violent streak that may help explain what led to a violent confrontation with Police officer Darren Wilson,” Johnson wrote. In other words, Brown deserved to die.

He gave a similar treatment to a pregnant woman named Dornella Connors, who was blinded by a bean bag fired by police officers in Ferguson, Mo. to quell protestors. Since Connors apparently lacked a criminal record, Johnson went after her boyfriend, Deangelas Lee, in an article titled “BREAKING: Blinded Pregnant Ferguson Protestor’s Boyfriend Tried Killing Cops With Car, Is Criminal.” To drive the point home, Johnson embedded a video of Lee rapping.

That’s really racist.

Yes. And these articles also put a lie to Johnson’s self-spun image as a radical patriot fighting against the political establishment. In article after article, he props up the interests of one of the most powerful political lobbies in the country: the police.

It’s not just Johnson’s attitude toward people of color who’ve been victimized by cops. Johnson in general likes to retaliate against certain individuals by publishing their personal information (a.k.a. doxxing). A recent example: After the New York Times published a copy of former Ferguson cop Darren Wilson’s marriage certificate, and named the street on which he used to live, Johnson published the home addresses—down to the house and apartment numbers—of the pair of reporters who authored the Times story. The headline read: “Why Can’t We Publish Addresses Of New York Times Reporters?”

Is that why people want Twitter to permanently ban him?

The most recent calls for Johnson to be banned from Twitter arose from Johnson’s decision to publish what he claims is the full name of “Jackie,” the woman who spoke to Rolling Stone about being raped at a U.V.A. fraternity in 2012. It’s not yet clear whether the name Johnson published is “Jackie’s” real name. But Johnson was so sure that Jackie lied about being raped that he began issuing threats on Twitter to publish more information about her:

I'm giving Jackie until later tonight to tell the truth and then I'm going to start revealing everything about her past.

— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) December 7, 2014

Last night, he attempted to deliver on that promise by publishing a picture of a woman—who may or may not be Jackie—“proudly displaying a sign suggesting yet another rape” at a 2011 SlutWalk rally. Within hours of publication, Johnson updated the post to clarify that he didn’t actually know whether the woman in the photo was actually Jackie—thereby retracting the claim that Jackie “cried rape BEFORE #UVAHoax.” Still, he later promised even more news about Jackie:

Thank you to everyone who corrected me. Now I'm going to break more news that blows this wide open, okay?

— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) December 9, 2014

That’s all really fucked up.

Yes, it is.

I’m having difficulty understanding why he’s writing this stuff.

There are a number of theories. Many think he simply craves attention; outspoken conservatives regularly accuse him of being insane. Here’s an email Sean Davis of The Federalist sent Johnson earlier this month:

This is how the well fed right responds to you questioning their 'reporting' on #EricGarner & fake chokehold story. pic.twitter.com/6MWQEaqKfv

— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) December 4, 2014

Far more noteworthy than any of Johnson’s journalism stunts, however, is his intellectual pedigree.

What do you mean?

Johnson isn’t really a marginal or peripheral figure in mainstream conservatism, as his critics often make him out to be. Here’s his auto-biography:

He has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New Criterion, The American Spectator, The Claremont Review of Books, City Journal, Reason.com, National Review Online, Tablet Magazine, The Weekly Standard, Powerline, and The New York Sun.

His work has been featured on Real Clear Politics, the Drudge Report, Hotair.com, The Blaze, Breitbart.com, Rush Limbaugh’s Show, and the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web. He has been on Fox News with Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity, and Lou Dobbs and numerous radio programs, including Rush Limbaugh, Larry Elder, John Batchelor, Rusty Humphries, Dennis Prager, Larry Elder, Mark Levin, and Larry Kudlow. [...]

Charles has worked for Alan M. Dershowitz at Harvard Law School, Seth Lipsky at the New York Sun, Carl Schramm at the Kauffman Foundation, and Charles Kesler at the Claremont Review of Books.

The outlets and individuals named here aren’t InfoWars or Alex Jones. Indeed, Johnson’s biography describes someone raised by the intellectual right—his Calvin Coolidge biography was enthusiastically endorsed by John Yoo—and offered a platform by some of the most influential conservative publications.

Why does that matter?

It is certainly true that Johnson has alienated a wide swath of prominent conservatives with his tactics. But it’s disingenuous to argue that he’s disconnected from, or doesn’t represent, the main threads of conservative politics. (The same day Johnson published Jackie’s full name, National Review writer Kevin D. Williamson wrote an essay titled “We Should Name Rape Accusers.”) So the next time Johnson shits the conservative movement’s bed, for whatever reason, it’s important to remember exactly where he came from.
http://gawker.com/what-is-chuck-johnson ... 1666834902




Chuck Johnson met BakedAlaska when he was Milo's manager. Chuck spent Christmas with BakedAlaska.

The untold story of Baked Alaska, a rapper turned BuzzFeed personality turned alt-right troll

Apr. 30, 2017, 7:59 PM 75,930
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Baked Alaska
Tim "Treadstone" Gionet, aka "Baked Alaska."
Baked Alaska
Tim "Treadstone" Gionet was not always a supporter of President Donald Trump.
The 29-year-old internet troll, most widely known as Baked Alaska, seemed to be an unlikely person to wade into the real-estate mogul's camp at the start of the 2016 election season.

Back then, Gionet identified as a carefree, easygoing libertarian. He supported Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's bid for the White House, firmly opposed the war on drugs, and championed the cause of Black Lives Matter, actively participating in the movement's street demonstrations.

And he worked at BuzzFeed, hardly an incubator for Trump supporters. But Gionet was the exception. As he put it, "BuzzFeed turned me into a monster." Specifically, a monster who opposed what he saw as political correctness gone amok. He found refuge with those who voraciously supported the freewheeling, brash antics of Trump.

"I'll never forget this story," Gionet said, recalling to Business Insider the "aha moment" that drove him toward Trump. "I was talking about the new Justin Bieber album. And I was like, 'Dude, that new Justin Bieber album is dope. I have to admit, I love Justin Bieber. He is totally my spirit animal.' And someone came up to me and was like, 'Hey bro, you can't say spirit animal, that's culturally appropriating Native American culture and that's not cool.'"

"I was like, 'What? What the f--- are you talking about?' I had heard … about the dangers of political correctness, but I thought this was just exaggerated," Gionet said. "I thought there was no way people in real life could be like this."

Gionet said the incident, and others like it, sent him down a path that ultimately led to his resignation from BuzzFeed and eventual transformation into one of the internet's most notorious alt-right trolls.

"The thing that really attracted me to Trump was his stance against political correctness," he said.

Gionet is something of a Forrest Gump of politics. He surfaced in a number of places in the far-right universe during the 2016 presidential election. Upon leaving BuzzFeed, Gionet went on the road as manager for right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos's college tour. He spent Christmas with blogger Chuck Johnson. And he finished the campaign working with "new right" personality Mike Cernovich.

During this time, his influence in the far-right internet community grew. In addition to forging connections with the right's top internet celebrities, Gionet saw accelerated growth on his own Twitter account. He gained thousands of followers, arriving at the approximately 160,000 figure of people who follow him today on the social media platform. Gionet also became one of the de-facto leaders of the alt-right meme army, using images of characters like Pepe the Frog to bait those in opposition to Trump.

And yet, despite the person he projected on the outside, some of those closest to Gionet had reservations about how much he really bought into the politics he now hawks. Many were surprised at how far right he has veered. His politics strained personal and professional relationships.

In conversations with friends, family, and former co-workers, an image of a kind but often lonely social-media genius emerged. One who had reinvented himself several times in his life in a desperate quest to fill the void of loneliness with fame and attention — irrespective of the cost.

"I've seen him happy, I've seen him sad, I've seen him doing well, I've seen him doing bad, but his whole thing is he wants people to like him. So he wants to be famous," said Joe Hood, a former friend and colleague who worked at BuzzFeed Video with Gionet. "To me, his conflict now is that it was easier to get famous without people liking him. And now he's famous, but no one likes him."

Baked Alaska
Baked Alaska
'I need a name. I need an industry name to be known by'

Gionet was born in Anchorage, Alaska, to a family of of eight children, five of whom were adopted from Russia. His father, Paul, is a pharmacist. Susanne, his mother, is a nurse. They are devout Christians and raised their children as such.

The family also operates a non-profit organization, Russian Encouragement Ministries, which aims to spread the gospel and provide medical supplies to orphanages in eastern Russia — a cause his father said Gionet actively participated in during his youth.

"Tim has come to Russia with us probably 15 times," Paul said, adding Gionet even speaks "a little bit" of Russian. "As a kid, teenager, and young adult."

Upon graduating high school in 2006, Gionet left Alaska for Los Angeles to attend Azusa Pacific University and study film and marketing. During his time there, he said he scored a position at Warner Bros. Records, where he was spotted by Kevin Lyman, the founder of Warped Tour. He offered him a job.

"He was a nice guy. And I said, why don't you come work for me for a bit?" Lyman said. "He wasn't 'Baked Alaska' at that point."

In fact, it was Lyman who helped give Gionet his now-infamous moniker.

"He's like, 'You're in the entertainment business. You need to have a name. All anyone cared about is you're from Alaska. Your name is 'Alaska,''" Gionet said. "I was like, "OK?' He was like, 'Trust me, you're from Alaska, that's all anyone is going to want to ask you about. That's your name.' He's like, 'You need a name. No one cares about Tim. They care about Alaska!'"

"I was like, 'Damnit, this guy is a genius! This guy is right. I need a name, I need an industry name to be known by," he continued. "So my name was 'Alaska.' After a while I realized just being called Alaska worked, but I needed to differentiate myself. I needed to be more unique than Alaska. That's like someone being named 'Texas' or 'Kentucky.' You have to brand yourself a little more. So I came up with 'Baked Alaska,' because at the time I was a stoner. So I was like the baked kid from Alaska. And it's also a double meaning because it's a dessert."

Lyman said Gionet started as an intern but "worked his way into a paid position" doing social media and marketing with the Warped Tour. Eventually, however, Gionet left. He said he briefly worked in 2011 for Capitol Records before deciding to pursue a career of his own in music.

Gionet developed a rap persona which he described as a "wild, redneck, kick-ass" character designed to take the "web by storm." He filmed music videos for songs like "Alaska Vacation" and "I Climb Mountains," which featured him wearing outlandish clothing items while rapping alongside scantily clad women.

"He literally … turned up as this artist, 'Baked Alaska.' I couldn't believe it," Lyman said. "I didn't think he had aspirations of becoming an artist when he worked with me. He never mentioned it."

The music videos, despite their rich production quality, failed to achieve viral success. Nevertheless, word did get back to Gionet's deeply religious father, who expressed strong disapproval at the content of the music.

"I have seen some of his stuff in the past," Paul said. "Of course, that makes us but heads because I don't approve of the language. He knows I'm at odds with his language."

Gionet was also not happy with his life as a rapper. He said he became involved in the Los Angeles party scene and struggled with drugs and alcohol, eventually seeking professional help to get sober. He was also "discouraged with how things were going" with his career and decided to search for other opportunities in the Los Angeles area.

That's when he came across a job opening at BuzzFeed.

"BuzzFeed Motion Pictures needed a social media strategist," he said, "and I happened to be the perfect fit for them."

He got a call about six months later.

'A new chapter'

Gionet had hit a low point in his life. He made the decision to leave Los Angeles for Alaska. Bags packed and on his way to the airport, his phone rang.

"I literally had my suitcase packed up, wheeling it down the stairs," he explained. "I called the Uber, I was going to move back to Alaska, and I had my suitcase bringing it into my Uber. And as I am putting my suitcase into the Uber car, I get a call, and I'm like, 'What?' And the call was from BuzzFeed."

Gionet said it came as a "complete surprise." He "didn't even remember" applying for the job.

"And I was like, 'If you guys are really serious, I'll cancel my ticket and go interview with you. But if you guys aren't that interested, I don't want to waste my time,'" he said. "And they were like, 'No, no. We're really interested. You really fit what we are looking for. And we promise you it won't be a waste of your time.' So I was like, 'OK, cool.' So I canceled my plane ticket, went in and interviewed. They loved me and I got the job right away. And this opened up a new chapter in my life."

Initially, Gionet said he loved working for the digital outlet. As a social-media strategist, he was responsible for growing BuzzFeed Video's social-media accounts, including Tasty, its food-video staple that had just launched. Colleagues who worked with him said he was brilliant at his job.

"He did amazing things. He made the Tasty Instagram and Tasty Twitter. And it became like the top 10 accounts in six months," Hood said. "Some of that is BuzzFeed's brand but he is really f---ing good at social media. Like, it's insane."

Working at BuzzFeed Video, Gionet also appeared in the outlet's web videos. With his mullet and distinct clothing style, he became a regular personality. He starred in BuzzFeed's "If You're Life Was 'Making a Murderer'" video, in addition to taking roles in more traditional productions like "Guys Swap Phones For A Day."

But as politics moved from the backdrop to the forefront of media during election season, Gionet said he became frustrated with the direction of the outlet.

"When I started BuzzFeed, I was making videos about cats and beer pong, OK? By the end of it, it was about feminism and white privilege," he said. "I don't know when the shift happened, but something happened in the culture where they were pushing these anti-white, anti-male agendas."

Gionet also morphed into a vocal Trump supporter and started to wear his "Make America Great Again" hat around the office. (He even later had Trump's face tattooed to his arm.)

"Let's just say I got a lot of dirty looks and a lot of people stopped invited me to the meetings. I'm not f---ing joking," he said. "It was really weird once I came out public as a Trump supporter at BuzzFeed. It was like I was a heretic, I was like the guy no one wanted to talk to. All their opinions about me had completely reversed and it was difficult."

Former colleagues seemed to corroborate his claims, telling stories of Gionet, who they described as having social anxiety, being the subject of jokes around the office.

"Definitely he was bullied in his department. It was all girls — so like they would laugh at him and stuff like that," Hood said. "You don't wear a MAGA hat to an office where like 30% of the people are gay. It wasn't the right thing to do and he was doing it to instigate something."

Will Neff, who worked with Gionet at BuzzFeed, also said "a few of the girls in the office started joking that he looked like a pedophile." Neff said the pushback Gionet received for his views seemed to push him further to the right.

"I think working at BuzzFeed made him eventually more Republican," he said.

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for BuzzFeed disputed Gionet's claims of political discrimination, saying that "any suggestion that this former employee was treated unfairly for his political beliefs is completely false."

Baked Alaska
Baked Alaska
'I got to meet Donald Trump'

Amid mounting tension with colleagues, Gionet left BuzzFeed for a job managing Yiannopoulos's college tour in 2016. He traveled the country with the right-wing provocateur, keeping his schedule and planning the logistics for various events.

"It was a great experience," Gionet said. "I got to tour around and go to all the different college stops and put together the tour budget and the press stuff."

As an assistant to Yiannopoulos, Gionet also traveled to the Republican National Convention, receiving special access, through the right-wing outlet Breitbart, to various functions in Cleveland.

"I got to meet Donald Trump," Gionet said. "He's a great guy. Got to shake his hand and talk to him."

When Trump met him, he signed the tattoo of his face that Gionet had inked to his arm.

"He was like, 'Wow, that's great!' And he thought it was great," Gionet said. "He looked a little surprised. It's probably a little funny to see your face on someone else's body."

Gionet and Yiannopoulos ultimately went their separate ways. A person familiar with the matter said Yiannopoulos fired him for an undisclosed reason.

It was suspected Gionet had become a liability for Yiannopoulos, as he had begun drifting further and further to the right. His former colleagues took notice of Gionet's increasingly extreme views.

"If you are going far-right of Milo, then you are in a very extreme, extreme demographic," said Neff, who also worked at the libertarian Reason magazine and is familiar with the political landscape on the right. "There aren't many people that are right of Milo. And there certainly aren't many people that are so far right of Milo, that Milo felt the need to coach them back."

Others doubted how sincere he was in his views.

"He never was political," Lyman said, speaking of his relationship with Gionet. "That's something he's invented for attention more than anything."

"I don't think Tim believes in anything," said another former employer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity over fear of reprisals. "I think Tim just wants someone to love him."

Briefly on his own after parting with Yiannopoulos, Gionet remained active in the Trump movement. He drew on his musical background to write songs and produce music videos aimed at exciting Trump supporters. His most successful was a song called "MAGA Anthem." It featured Gionet rapping lyrics like, "Build the wall, it just got 10 feet higher, build and build and build, just build the wall" and, "I just want to make America great, I just want to have a Trump steak on my plate."

Gionet's profile continued to rise, and he forged relationships with many others on the right. One was Cernovich, who was quickly growing his own brand as a right-wing provocateur on Twitter.

"He was on Twitter," Cernovich said, explaining how he first encountered Gionet. "He had been working with Milo and after he had been finished working with him, I thought it would be cool to have him do some of the same kind of event organizing while he was working with Milo."

Cernovich hired him for an undisclosed amount of money and the two worked on a project called MAGA3X until Election Day. The idea was based off of Grant Cardone's book, "The 10X Rule" — a self-help book aimed at teaching readers how to 10X their life. In the case of MAGA3X, the idea was to have each Trump supporter take three fellow Trump voters to the polls on Election Day.

And after Trump's surprise electoral victory in November, Gionet traveled to central California to spend Christmas with notorious right-wing blogger Chuck Johnson.

"We are friends," Johnson said. "He came up to visit me for Christmas. I knew he wasn't going home for Christmas, back to Alaska, so he hung out with me for a few days."

"He stayed at my place for a few days. We played Monopoly a bunch," Johnson added. "I'm big into board games."

Gionet also led other social-media campaigns. Perhaps his most famous was getting #TrumpCup to trend on Twitter and become the subject of national headlines. The idea behind the hashtag was for patrons of Starbucks to tell the baristas that their name was Trump so that the employees would write it on the cups. The campaign was prompted by a customer who said a Starbucks employee refused to write "Trump" on his cup.

Trump signs Gionet's tattooed arm after a rally in San Diego in May 2016.
REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
'I'm alt-right. I've always been alt-right'

The alt-right descended into civil war following Trump's surprise victory — and Cernovich and Gionet were at the center of it.

In celebration of Trump winning the presidency, Cernovich organized the "Deploraball," a party aimed at celebrating the new breed of Republicans who had helped usher the billionaire into the Oval Office.

The party, which took place the night before Inauguration Day, was initially set to feature several luminaries of the alt-right. But Cernovich said he wanted to ensure that the Deploraball remained free of the racist elements for which the alt-right had become known. Moreover, he wanted to use the night to launch what he has dubbed the "new right," a collection of nationalist, populist Trump supporters who reject calls for a white ethno-state.

Meanwhile, Gionet continued to radicalize. He openly questioned the role of Jewish people in society and media— comments that were widely criticized as anti-Semitic and that he now says he regrets making.

Cernovich tried to tame Gionet, but it was to no avail. Eventually, Cernovich chose to take action. In late December, Gionet and white nationalist Richard Spencer were disinvited from the event.

The move to exclude him from the Deploraball infuriated Gionet. He recorded a Periscope video, lashing out at Cernovich.

"Mike got upset that I was tweeting some things about Jewish people," he said. "I don't hate Jews, but there are some things that I like to talk about. I'm alt-right. I've always been alt-right. I've never said I'm not alt-right, unlike Mike Cernovich, Paul Joseph Watson, Milo, and these other cucks. I've always been alt-right."

Gionet stressed he regretted the comments he made about the Jewish community, saying he was "heated and misspoke."

"It didn't come out how it was supposed to come out," he said. "I have nothing but respect and love for people of all faiths, including people of the Jewish faith. And I would never want them to think that I think otherwise. And it does break my heart. It's not my belief at all. I have no problem with Jewish people."

Months later, Gionet says he has mended his relationship with Cernovich and matured as a person.

"I took things too far," he said. "I wasn't very mature and I wasn't thinking about the consequences and so I realized that."

"I've been working on the last few months on humbling myself and restoring relationships," Gionet added.

Neff said he was not sure what to make of the apology.

"Is it genuine? I don't know," he said. "I haven't really spoken to the kid in forever. I know there are some good things in him. I know that that he's not just a f---ing asshole in a vacuum. There are some good things about this kid."

Most surprisingly, however, Gionet said he no longer associated with the alt-right.

"Here's the thing," he said. "The definition has changed so much. I don't know if that describes me anymore."

"Everyone seems to have a different definition of it," Gionet continued. "To me, it means alternative-right. It means right-leaning, different from neo-conservatism, and there's trolling and all that. But some of these other people say alt-right means you are a Nazi or a white supremacist or white nationalist. And I'm like, 'No, I'm not down with that. I'm not a white nationalist.' So I don't know. When people are asking me now, I just say I don't like any labels. I am not going to subscribe to any labels."

Baked Alaska
Baked Alaska
'It didn't fulfill the void in my soul like I thought it would'

Gionet's rise in the right-wing universe has certainly brought him a level of fame and celebrity that he lacked before. But it doesn't seem to have fulfilled him as a person.

"When I was a kid all I dreamed about was being famous," he wrote in an email earlier this year, "but once it happened I realized it didn't fulfill the void in my soul like I thought it would."

Since the election, Gionet has looked to start making other people famous. He launched the 907 Agency, a public-relations firm that specializes in helping clients increase their presence on the internet. His partner, David Bullock — who, coincidentally, goes by the name "Alaska" — said he works with Gionet about three days a week.

"I saw him setting trends on Twitter and he saw me on Kanye West's Saint Pablo Tour," Bullock said in an email. "We were both making waves in different industries so we decided we would be able to greater maximize results if we pooled our resources."

Gionet said he couldn't yet disclose clients of the agency, saying only that it included musicians and actors.

Moving forward, Gionet said he does not see himself "as some sort of intellectual" in politics, but more as an entertainer.

But he has continued to remain active in the political scene. Most recently, Gionet has been making trips to the University of California, Berkeley, to support the rights of conservatives to speak on campus.

The right-wing personality has also started working on a book titled, "Meme Magic Secrets Revealed."

"I've been a big part of putting together meme armies that helped win an election, a presidential election," he said. "So many people asked me about it. … So I decided to write a book about it. This is in essence like the magicians revealing their secrets. It's me a meme magician, telling people my story."

Gionet's book is set to be released on July 7, 2017 — or 7/7/17.

For Gionet, that's no accident.

"Seven is God's number and I'm a Christian," he explained. "Seven is the number of completion in the Bible."
http://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-b ... ump-2017-4



Chuck Johnson personally started the fundraiser for James Damore immediately after Damore was fired from Google.

https://www.washingtonpost.com

Chuck Johnson is very close with Richard Spencer. They have worked together on many occasions. Seeing the big picture yet?

Image


Chuck Johnson paid Bill Clinton accusers to attend the presidential debate for Trump.

Notorious Troll Chuck C. Johnson: I Sent a Clinton Accuser to the Debate

Infamous right-wing troll Chuck C. Johnson raised $10,100 to send Kathy Shelton to Sunday’s debate—and he did it long before Friday’s infamous Billy Bush leak.

When Donald Trump threw a press conference on Sunday night flanked by women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault and harassment and Hillary Clinton of mocking a rape victim, he had some help putting the event together from Charles C. Johnson, the Twitter-banned provocateur who Gawker once dubbed “the web’s worst journalist.”

Johnson’s most notable claim to infamy came when he wrongly identified a photo of a woman whom he believed to be the centerpiece of a Rolling Stone article about an alleged rape at the University of Virginia.

On Monday, Johnson claimed his website raised thousands of dollars to send one of those accusers to the “front row” of the debate two weeks before Sunday night’s hastily planned pre-debate press conference.

The publicity stunt took place directly before the start of his second presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, as the Republican nominee’s campaign frantically sought to change the subject from a recently leaked tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault to allegations against the Clintons, particularly sexual-assault claims leveled against the former president.

At the press conference, which was streamed live on his Facebook page, Trump sat at a table with several of Bill Clinton’s accusers. One of those in attendance was Kathy Shelton, an Arkansas native who says she was raped at age 12 in 1975 by Thomas Alfred Taylor—a man whom Hillary Clinton represented as a public defender.

“Hillary Clinton took me through hell,” Shelton told The Daily Beast in 2014, accusing Clinton of going to extraordinary lengths to discredit evidence of her rape, and later laughing about the alleged child rapist’s guilt on audio recordings.

“At 12 years old, Hillary put me through something that you would never put a 12-year-old through and she said she’s for women and children,” she said at Sunday’s presser, where she said she was in attendance to support Trump.

“You went through a lot,” Trump told her.

The event was reportedly masterminded by Trump campaign “CEO” and former Breitbart CEO Stephen K. Bannon, along with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. But Team Trump reportedly owed Shelton’s presence to none other than Chuck Johnson, the notoriously mean-spirited, Trump-loving owner of the right-wing website GotNews, who now is trying to directly lend his efforts to the presidential campaign.

“So, I’ll be at the #debate today... BIG thnx to @WeSearchr for flying me out!” Shelton tweeted on Sunday.

WeSearchr is a crowdfunding site founded by Johnson and Pax Dickinson, a “brogrammer” and Business Insider’s fired CTO who had a penchant for racist and sexist tweets. Since late September, WeSearchr has been raising money to “fly Hillary's rape victim… to the next debate” in order to “say Hi.” The $10,000 “bounty,” as the website calls it, was met—and even exceeded by $100, according to the site—on Oct. 5, two days before the release of Trump’s 2005 conversation with Billy Bush.

NEXT #DEBATE is almost here! Let's fly @HillaryClinton's rape victim #KathyShelton to the front row to say Hi: https://t.co/MIgnzF5PwK pic.twitter.com/nxmjMDKE2I

— WeSearchr (@wesearchr) September 30, 2016
On Sunday, the AP reported that Shelton was also paid $2,500 in May by a PAC founded by Trump ally and longtime adviser Roger Stone.

Johnson was quick to claim victory for making Shelton part of Trump’s stunt, writing in a Facebook post on Monday night that “Trump won the debate because WeSearchr brought Kathy Shelton and helped bring the other women.”

As Johnson tells it, the funds raised for Shelton’s appearance at debate-night forced the Trump campaign’s hand to hold the event as a whole.

“Wesearchr flew Kathy Shelton and her lawyer Candice Jackson to the debates,” Johnson said in a Facebook message to The Daily Beast. “An ally of mine took care of the tickets and brought the rest of the women. The Trump campaign didn’t want to do [the press conference] until Saturday night when they had no choice.”

Johnson would not disclose who this “ally” was when pressed.

As for the rest of the women in attendance (or the Trump camp’s supposed reticence), the details and logistics remain unclear.

After the debate, Juanita Broaddrick, one of the women in attendance, said that the website Breitbart had paid for her travel to the event. This was quickly disputed by the Trump campaign itself, which claimed the money came from them. (Bannon, of course, has served as both the head of Breitbart and Trump’s campaign.)

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, told The Daily Beast in an email that she had not spoken to Johnson. She has not responded to further questions about whether any member of the team was in talks with him, and a Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment regarding Johnson’s exact involvement.

Johnson’s newfound association with the Trump campaign is a big get for Charles, a conservative online presence who has been repeatedly banned from Twitter and no longer writes for the mainstream conservative outlets that once published him. (He used to write often for Bannon’s Breitbart.)

Johnson is a relentless supporter of Team Trump, and in May asserted that “Donald Trump is running the Chuck C Johnson campaign & he will win.” But Johnson is more widely known as a prolific internet troll and wannabe alt-right provocateur with bigoted and overtly racist tendencies.

Among many other low points, he falsely identified a young woman as “Jackie” (the character at the center of the University of Virginia Rolling Stone firestorm), prompting her to announce she would pursue legal action against him. Johnson also published the addresses of New York Times reporters after he falsely claimed that the newspaper had released the address of Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Johnson has previously mused about how President Barack Obama is a covert homosexual. He enthusiastically tried to use his “journalism” to smear both Tamir Rice, the unarmed 12-year-old black child who was gunned down by a Cleveland police officer, and Rice’s grieving mother. He relishes hanging out with Trayvon Martin’s killer George Zimmerman, who Johnson said was “among the finest men I have ever met.”

In April, Johnson wrote that he wouldn’t mind joining anti-communist African dictators for dinner to “eat watermelons or fried chicken or whatever,” and also that “among the CIA’s best accomplishments was working to jail that communist Nelson Mandela.”

Nowadays, Johnson is doing whatever he can to assist in Trump’s home-stretch, scorched-earth campaign. And he has only one month left to pitch in.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/notorious ... the-debate



lot's more to come
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
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Re: Internet Troll Chuck Johnson

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 13, 2018 11:45 am

I should have kept up with this guy before this but now I will

Wendy Siegelman

Two Republican congressmen hobnob with an alleged Holocaust denier. Again - Reps. Matt Gaetz & Dana Rohrabacher just can’t quit Charles C. Johnson - all attended a July 20 fundraiser for Matt Gaetz on a yacht in Newport Beach, CA, by @DavidCornDC


Two Republican Congressmen Hobnob With an Alleged Holocaust Denier. Again.

Reps. Matt Gaetz and Dana Rohrabacher just can’t quit Charles C. Johnson.

David CornSep. 13, 2018 10:52 AM


A Republican congressman who earlier this year got into trouble for hobnobbing with an accused Holocaust denier held a small fundraiser this summer, and the attendees included, yes, the very same alleged Holocaust denier. Also at the event was another GOP congressman who, too, had previously been criticized for associating with this fellow.

In January, Rep. Matt Gaetz, a conservative Republican firebrand from Florida, invited right-wing troll Charles C. Johnson to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech. Johnson, a notorious social media figure accused of being a white nationalist, had been permanently banned from Twitter for declaring that he wanted to “take out” a leader of Black Lives Matter. And in early 2017, Johnson had come under fire for denying the Holocaust. During an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit’s alt-right section, Johnson had been queried, “what are your thoughts on the Holocaust, WW2, and the JQ in general?” (“JQ” is neo-Nazi shorthand for the Jewish Question.) Johnson replied, “I do not and never have believed the six million figure. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic. I think the Allied bombing of Germany was a ware [sic] crime. I agree…about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real.”


Eight months later, these remarks caused a political stir. In October 2017, news reports revealed that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) had welcomed Johnson to a Capitol Hill meeting with Sen. Rand Paul. In response, the Anti-Defamation League urged Rohrabacher to “discontinue any association with Johnson and repudiate his views.” The ADL, citing Johnson’s “Ask Me Anything” statements, noted that it considered him a Holocaust denier. (In August 2017, Johnson had helped arrange a meeting between Rohrabacher and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and weeks later he donated $5,400 in Bitcoin to Rohrabacher’s reelection campaign.)

Rohrabacher did not heed the ADL’s call to disassociate himself from Johnson. In a letter to the ADL, he said Johnson had been “allowed to sit in [on the Paul-Rohrabacher meeting], only in the sense that no one said no and told him to go.” Rohrabacher noted that he “strongly” disagreed with Johnson on some issues—including “those same beliefs you mention in your letter”—and that he hoped to have a “positive influence” on Johnson.

Gaetz’s decision to provide Johnson a ticket to the State of the Union rekindled the controversy over Johnson’s Holocaust remarks and earned Gaetz plenty of unflattering headlines. The ADL now excoriated the Florida congressman, noting, “It is an insult to the memories of those killed in the Holocaust, to their families, and to the Jewish community to bring to the State of the Union as your guest a Holocaust denier whose business has reportedly profited from donations for a notorious neo-Nazi.” (The group was referring to a crowd-funding website Johnson had founded that had been used to raise more than $150,000 for the legal defense fund of the editor of a neo-Nazi website.)

Gaetz insisted Johnson was not a Holocaust denier. But the Republican Jewish Coalition called on Gaetz to acknowledge that this label did fit Johnson. Gaetz, who claimed he had been unfamiliar with Johnson prior to meeting him the day of the State of the Union, did not yield on that, but he conceded, “I should’ve vetted him better before inviting him to the State of the Union. I regret that I didn’t.”

Meanwhile, Johnson declared, “I am not, nor have I ever been a Holocaust denier.” In an online statement, he insisted, “Even when I was poor, I supported charities dedicated to Israel, Jewish faith and Holocaust education.” Johnson, though, acknowledged his comments “could fairly be characterized as Holocaust denial.” But he maintained that he had made these “anti-Semitic” remarks only as part of an ongoing project to determine what speech would be limited or smothered by the tech companies that manage popular social media platforms. He was asserting that his Reddit comments were part of a secret trolling experiment he was running.

Eventually, the controversy over Johnson attending the State of the Union passed. But two months ago, Gaetz and Johnson were together again—this time on a yacht in Newport Beach, California. The occasion was a July 20 fundraiser for Gaetz’s reelection campaign. According to people familiar with the event, Johnson was among the group on the boat. And Rohrabacher was there, too. The event was being held in Rohrabacher’s district, and Rohrabacher spoke on behalf of Gaetz.

Referring to Johnson’s presence at the event, Jason Pitkin, Rohrabacher’s campaign finance director, who attended the fundraiser, tells Mother Jones, “I don’t remember who invited him there.” Asked whether Johnson had come at the invitation of Gaetz, Kip Talley, the chief of staff for Gaetz’s reelection campaign, replied in an email, “It was a private event and you’re welcome to check the FEC reports to see who donated. Thanks for reaching out.”

Johnson declined multiple requests for comment.

In a June 21 Facebook post, Johnson referred to Rohrabacher as “my friend and adopted congressman.” Six days later, he suggested on his Facebook page that his connections on Capitol Hill were significant: “I met with about fifteen members of Congress today and I will meet with a Cabinet member later to talk about tech censorship issues.” He did not identify the members or the Cabinet official. (This week, Johnson apparently deleted his Facebook account.)


The July 20 fundraiser for Gaetz, according to an invitation obtained by Mother Jones, was hosted by Alfred Balitzer and Rod Wilson, founders of Pacific Research & Strategies Inc., a California-based public relations and consulting firm. The yacht, named Burning Daylight, was owned by Balitzer, who had been on the faculty at Claremont McKenna College, Johnson’s alma mater, for 34 years and who has a long record of involvement in Republican politics. In his online defense of his Holocaust comments, Johnson had called Balitzer his “mentor” and noted that Balitzer had been “an advisor to the Simon Wiesenthal Center and served Ronald Reagan.”

Balitzer and Wilson did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the Gaetz fundraiser.

According to campaign finance records, Gaetz’s reelection account raised $2,750 from donors in the Newport Beach area about the time of the fundraiser. Nick Kovacevich, the CEO of Kush Bottles, which sells packaging, containers, and other products for the cannabis industry, was one of the attendees, and he gave $500 to Gaetz. He says he “wrote a check for Matt but Dana Rohrabacher was also there and that’s the reason I was invited.” (Rohrabacher is a supporter of cannabis legalization, and Gaetz has backed various marijuana reform initiatives.) One person familiar with the event said that Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR and an alt-right ally, was on the yacht. Luckey has been a donor for numerous Republican candidates, including Rohrabacher. (Luckey’s company did not respond to a request for comment.)

A spokesman for the ADL says, “Charles C. Johnson is a known Holocaust denier, who has suggested the number of Jewish victims was inflated and has posited that neither the Auschwitz concentration camp nor the gas chambers ever existed. ADL is extremely troubled by reports that Rep. Matt Gaetz allegedly hosted Johnson at a recent fundraiser. ADL previously called on Gaetz to discontinue his associations with Johnson and to publicly repudiate his views after it was revealed Johnson was Gaetz’ guest at President Trump’s 2018 State of the Union address. We renew those calls in light of this new report, as it is completely inappropriate for a sitting U.S. member of Congress to continue to knowingly associate with an anti-Semite and bigot like Charles Johnson.”

Gaetz was elected to the House in 2016 and has since been involved in multiple controversies; most notably he has defended Trump in the Russia investigation and claimed the president is a victim of a Deep State conspiracy. It was hardly unexpected that Rohrabacher, who has been dubbed “Putin’s favorite congressman” and who has pooh-poohed the Trump-Russia scandal, would help Gaetz shake the money tree in his own district. But Johnson’s attendance has surprised some Republicans who have been told about it. Gaetz and Rohrabacher just can’t seem to quit this guy.

Image credits: Paul Zinken/DPA/ZUMA; Tom Williams/CQ/ZUMA; YouTube
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... hrabacher/



An ADL spokesman said "Charles C. Johnson is a known Holocaust denier, who has suggested the number of Jewish victims was inflated and has posited that neither the Auschwitz concentration camp nor the gas chambers ever existed"
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... hrabacher/
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Charles/Chuck Johnson was involved with helping the late Peter Smith in his search for HRC's missing emails


Smith met Charles Johnson (ex-Breitbart writer) in 2013 and Pax Dickinson - co-founders of alt-right fundraising platform WeSearchr


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Johnson suggested Smith contact convicted hacker Andrew Auernheimer (aka "Weev")

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Royal O’Brien, a Jacksonville-based programmer & dark web expert, advised Smith about the use of PGP keys for encryption

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https://twitter.com/WendySiegelman/stat ... 0434053121
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Internet Troll Chuck Johnson

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 19, 2018 4:28 pm

A website run by a notorious “Trump Troll” that served as an outlet for racist false news and conspiracy theories has shut down.

GotNews.com went offline sometime Monday, pulling down all of its content and posting only “So Long, Farewell auf Wiedersehen, Good Bye On to other pursuits” over a picture of snow-covered mountains.

The site was one of three run by Charles “Chuck” Johnson, a figure in the racist “alt-right” who reportedly acted as an adviser to Donald Trump’s White House transition team, to shutter this year.

It isn’t clear why GotNews.com ceased operations. The website had been active as recently as Sunday, when it posted a full complement of headlines and stories and solicited tips and fundraising for the site and the legal defense of Johnson.

The group’s Facebook page was still online as of Tuesday but had not been updated since January.

Johnson’s activities have been controversial in the past. The website and Johnson had a history of making false allegations, including one that led to a lawsuit.

Johnson and GotNews agreed to a settlement with Joel Vangheluwe and his father, Jerome Vangheluwe, in a federal lawsuit against Johnson and nearly two dozen other people and businesses over a false allegation that Joel Vangheluwe was the owner of a car that killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer during the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. Vangheluwe did at one point own the car but sold it years earlier. It had been resold several more times before 21-year-old James Alex Fields Jr., of Maumee, Ohio, took possession of it.

Fields faces first-degree murder charges in Virginia and is scheduled for trial in late November. He also faces three dozen federal hate crime charges.

The story caught fire on right-wing media, resulting in the Vangheluwes getting death threats. They later sued GotNews.com, Johnson and others in federal court in Michigan over the false allegation.

In July, the sides agreed to a settlement in which Johnson would pay $4,990 each to Joel and Jerome Vangheluwe. GotNews will also pay Jerome Vangheluwe $19,990.

Attorneys for the Vangheluwes were waiting for U.S. District Judge Laurie J. Michelson to issue judgments as of Tuesday.

Johnson also ran the crowdfunding site Wesearchr.com, which offered the opportunity to raise “bounties” for various right-wing conspiracies and stopped taking donations in January.

WeSearchr raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for alt-right leaders, such as Andrew Auernheimer’s bounty to raise money for the Daily Stormer’s legal defense fund and Defend Europa’s bounty to raise money to charter and staff a ship led by European white nationalists seeking to disrupt humanitarian vessels in the Mediterranean Sea that the group falsely claimed were smuggling migrants into Europe.

WeSearchr also promoted campaigns launched by white supremacists on its official Facebook page. The Daily Stormer Legal Defense fund was promoted via postings 13 separate times, in addition to other campaigns like a legal defense fund for Jason Kessler, organizer of the deadly “Unite the Right” demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Johnson also ran Freestartr, which stopped raising funds this summer after Stripe and PayPal stopped processing his funding requests.

Freestartr raised money for alt-right golden boy Richard Spencer and far-right activist Tommy Robinson as well as Johnson himself.

Johnson rose to right-wing prominence in 2014 as an alt-right troll who led social-media harassment campaigns against people who were involved in mainstream news stories, including journalists, publishing their home and private information online and leading to threats at their residences. He also was notorious for using overtly racist language on his Twitter account, though he was permanently exiled from Twitter in 2015 for using threatening language.

In July 2016, Johnson, a one-time Breitbart writer, was a guest on the racist radio show “Fash the Nation,” in which he claimed that he got interested in “race realism” — a phrase white nationalists use to refer to their racist ideology — at a young age. On the show, he maintained that ethnic and racial stereotypes are “largely true” and he admitted to factoring them into hiring practices, predicated on the principle that blacks are dumber than whites.

While GotNews.com is gone, Johnson’s history suggests he won’t be offline for long.
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/201 ... xplanation
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: Internet Troll Chuck Johnson

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jan 17, 2019 11:59 am


GOP Congressmen Meet With Holocaust-Denying Troll Chuck Johnson



The two Republican lawmakers say they didn’t know about the alt-right troll’s past.

01.16.19 10:03 PM ET
As Donald Trump tries to pass legislation to fund the government and finance the construction of a border wall, the problem he’s encountered on Capitol Hill is not that his powers of persuasion are lacking. It’s that it appears he’s barely trying at all.

According to numerous Hill sources, both the president and his team have done remarkably little to try and win over votes for the administration’s proposal to include more than $5 billion in wall funding as part of a bill to end the government shutdown. Trump has ventured down Pennsylvania Avenue to meet with Republican leadership and had lawmakers at the White House, though sometimes just to leave abruptly. On Wednesday, he hosted a group of centrist-minded House Democrats to discuss the impasse.

But beyond that, his fingerprints have been largely missing on the legislative process.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) laughed when asked whether the White House had reached out to his office. “You’d think they would since I’m from a Trump district,” he said. “I guess I didn’t make the cut.”

Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) said his office hadn’t heard from the White House for at least six months, but noted the president’s staff has turned over since then.

“I don’t even know who is assigned to my office in the White House, that’s how bad their outreach team is,” he said.

In fact, only two of the Democrats from districts Trump won in 2016 contacted by The Daily Beast said the White House had reached out for a meeting. Reps. Tom O’Halleran (D-AZ) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, were invited with other members of the group to the White House on Wednesday for a meeting between the president, the vice president, and his aides. O’Halleran didn’t end up attending. Gottheimer did and described it as “productive” but declined to give details about what solutions were discussed.

“My impression was that we had a productive conversation, and I think we both agree that there is a way forward here and it starts with both sides talking to each other,” he said.

While the president’s outreach to House Democrats has been slim, his attempts to win over Senate Democrats have been almost non-existent. None of the Democratic Senators who hail from states Trump won in the 2016 election said that they had heard from him or his staff.

“Senator Tester has not spoken with the President,” a spokesman for Montana Democrat Jon Tester said, “nor have any White House officials reached out to discuss a solution to the shutdown with his office.”

“Neither President Trump, nor his senior staff, have reached out to Senator Casey for any conversations,” said John Rizzo, a spokesman for Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA).

“Not a word,” said a spokesperson for Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). “The White House has not reach out to our boss,” a spokesperson for Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) added.

“The White House has not reached out to our office for a meeting regarding the shutdown,” said Zade Alsawah, a spokesman for Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), “which the Senator repeatedly has called for an end to immediately.”

“Nope,” Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) told The Daily Beast when asked if he’d heard from the president.

A spokesperson for newly elected Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) declined to comment. A spokesman for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) told The Daily Beast that the senator had heard from the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, about a week-and-a-half ago. But the aide characterized it as “a courtesy call” and a “brief conversation.”

The inability of Trump and his team to effectively move Democratic votes on the wall stands in stark contrast to the reputation that the president struck—both during the campaign and his early months in office—as the consummate schmoozer and deal-maker. And it has had a profound impact on the course of the current shutdown, which is the longest in U.S. history. Unable to move Democratic votes, Trump has been left in an increasingly difficult political position: unable to show momentum for his preferred legislative outcome and shouldering much of the blame in public opinion polls for keeping the government closed.

Aides and advisers to the president maintain that Democratic recalcitrance, not poor Hill outreach, is the underlying reason a shutdown resolution hasn’t been reached.

“They met with Democrat staff, the vice president did, his [and Trump’s] door is open, he’s been up to the Hill… I know they’ve been reaching out, but since when do senators have to be sitting around like schoolgirls waiting to be asked to dance?” former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), a current Trump surrogate, said. “They’re grown adults, they can call the president and the White House,” he said. “It’s a two-way street. You can’t just sit in your corner.”

However, some close to Trump do concede that he and his team’s internal tumult has harmed its ability to operate on the Hill. “The way the invitations have been extended is more a function of the chaos than a lack of true desire to get Democrats to participate,” a former senior White House official said. As evidence of that tumult, Kingston told The Daily Beast that he was going to the Hill on his own accord—and not at the instruction of the White House—on Wednesday to meet with “a couple freshman” Republican lawmakers about the shutdown.

Trump and his senior staff have attempted to alleviate some of the discord by hosting surrogates at the White House to coordinate strategy and messaging. Last Monday, an array of supporters spent roughly an hour and a half meeting with Vice President Mike Pence in the Roosevelt Room, during which Trump joined for about 45 minutes to discuss the government shutdown, according to two people who attended. And in the subsequent days, attacks against Democrats for being absent from negotiations have grown noticeably more aggressive.

But those efforts have not yet had a demonstrable effect. If anything, Hill aides say, they’ve shown a misunderstanding of the opposition, with White House officials wrongly predicting that they could divide Democratic leadership over border wall funding and miscalculating that House members would get frustrated by having their agenda overtaken by talk of the shutdown.

All the while, the center of the debate has moved away from the president. Instead of building momentum in the Senate by flipping Democrats and getting closer to the 60 votes needed to move border wall funding through that chamber, the opposite has occurred. A number of Senate Republicans have publicly encouraged Trump to open the government for a short period of time during which lawmakers would negotiate over the wall—a position the president has vehemently rejected because, as he’s stressed privately, it would sap whatever political leverage he has.

In the House, meanwhile, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) grip on her caucus appears to be growing tighter. On Tuesday, a group of moderate House Democrats that the White House was hoping to pitch on border wall funding turned down invitations to have lunch with the president. And on Wednesday, Pelosi informed Trump that his State of the Union address would no longer take place on Jan. 29 if the government remained closed.

Fellow Democrats said she was universally well received in the caucus meeting when she alerted members about the rescinded invite. One House Democrat gleefully predicted that it would enrage the president by depriving him of a primetime audience. Another responded to a text about Trump being livid with a smile emoji.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-congr ... ck-johnson
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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