Friday, January 27, 2023

Memphis Police Release Video of Five Officers Assaulting Tyre Nichols

via RedState

On Thursday, the Shelby County (Tennessee) District Attorney’s office, along with other local and federal authorities, held a press conference on the disturbing incident during an arrest involving five Memphis police officers, as CBS News and the Associated Press reported:

Five fired Memphis police officers were charged with second-degree murder in the death of Tyre Nichols, Tennessee authorities announced Thursday. Nichols died three days after a violent arrest by police earlier this month.

“This was wrong. This was criminal,” Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch said during a press conference announcing the charges.

A grand jury handed down indictments against Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills, Jr., Emmitt Martin III and Justin Smith on charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said.

Mulroy said although the fired officers each played different roles in the death of Nichols, “they are all responsible.”

During the press conference, “Rausch said he saw the video and found it ‘absolutely appalling.'” Authorities added that video of the assault would be released Friday. Now, as promised, it has been–and it’s as awful as Rausch described.

Warning: the video below contains graphic and violent images.

Within the past hour, the White House also shared a new statement from President Joe Biden on the horrendous, body-cam video:

As with all breaking stories, community members are encouraged to provide further updates in the comments.




Commonsense Advice for Trump 2.0


The unadulterated havoc created, and almost blissfully sustained, by the Biden administration has put a spotlight on attributes of this president that many Americans find reprehensible.

Two years have passed since Joe Biden dubiously ascended to the White House on the promise of ushering in a new era of moderation, transparency, and globalism.  Instead, his ham-handed policies, whether conjured up from what remains of his feeble mind or from his cynical cast of puppet masters, are blazing a nationwide path of destruction on the American economy and psyche.  Why not, then, spare ourselves the collective misery of the present and ponder what might rectify our national embarrassment in a hypothetical Donald Trump v.2.0 presidency?  For the calculating and common sense–minded Trump, the below should be no great surprise.  It is for the sake of bringing greatness back to America that such well intended reforms should be implemented prior to or upon his triumphant return to Washington, D.C.

"Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are."

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A simpleton may lay blame at the feet of Trump's insatiable social media bombast for his failure to secure victory in the 2020 election.  Rather, one could argue that his first term in office was undone by the company he kept.

Trump's inner circle was no reboot of Lincoln's Team of Rivals; rather, it was a conglomeration of subversive Obama holdovers, ruling-class politicians owed electoral favors, and glad-handing lackeys doing the bidding of the ever-watchful GOP.  Plain and simple, the disparate efforts of this group, whether by nefarious design or through sheer bureaucratic ineptitude, crippled Trump from the onset.

Russiagate alone was enough of an internal coup de force to oust almost any Republican president.  In 2025, Trump would be best served relying on those trusted agents around him who left the political establishment and who are loyal to his vision of American exceptionalism.

He should also consider a drastic culling of the herd from the top down, slashing the size of his National Security Council and vetting its personnel, as well as removing politically motivated sycophant military leaders from positions of influence in the Pentagon and throughout the Combatant Commands.  Obama infamously purged the military ranks of conservative-minded general officers, replacing them with many enlightened academic liberals in uniform, who, in some circumstances, had never commanded troops in a combat role.  The US military is a critical part of the foundation on which the American experiment was built; it must be spared the destructive yoke of wokeness and restored to its former greatness.

The same sentiment can be applied the U.S. Intelligence Community, where liberal bureaucrats hide out for many decades, seething at the notion of a Republican administration.  In places like the CIA, where human intelligence is collected, synthesized, and published, there should be no question of personal animus or ideology being woven into products consumed at the highest levels of power in Washington.

A Right Jab

As the COVID-19 pandemic stubbornly grinds on through executive fiat alone, more and more data are exposing the real dangers the hastily approved and distributed "vaccines" brought to the forefront.  While many dismiss the "#diedsuddenly" social media phenomenon as yet another vast right-wing conspiracy to impugn the scientific community, by the time Trump returns to office, we could very well possess definitive proof of the destruction of the human immune response wrought by government-mandated or coerced injection of gene-altering mRNA shots.

For Trump to succeed in any campaign for his return to the presidency, he must immediately consider a shift in his public stance on the jabs and Operation Warp Speed.  A change of this magnitude would be a difficult one for Trump to accept, as a leader who has doggedly boasted of his administration's life-saving prowess through the advent of the vaccine rollout in 2021.  This stance is quickly becoming unsustainable, as seemingly every news cycle is littered with unexplained deaths of young adults, celebrities, and athletes in peak physical condition.

As excess deaths and non-COVID-related mortality statistics become more appealing for American mainstream media to report on, it will behoove Trump to embrace the sentiments of his voting base.  Among the anti-vaxxers, vax-skeptical, vax-injured, and of late the vax-remorseful, a cacophony can be heard, and they demand that Trump end his reticence to acknowledge potential adverse effects of his signature first-term achievement.

Any adviser paying attention to polls and social media could craft a simple yet effective pivot in message for Trump to hammer home: it's Dr. Fauci's fault.  With Fauci's trustworthiness in the toilet and increasing scrutiny on his motivations and astronomical pandemic profits, Trump could claim a P.R. victory using the tried and true tactic of plausible deniability.

Does it hurt Trump's image in any way to state to the American people something like this?  "Look, we were in the midst of a global pandemic, one that we had little understanding of at first.  Not being a scientist, I deferred to the career experts who provided me the best courses of action as they knew it at the time.  They were wrong."

The COVID saga is far from over, and blame will abound for many years.  The vaccine issue has the real potential of grounding a second Trump nomination for the presidency before it even begins.  It is not too late to course-correct.

"It is well that war is so terrible ... lest we should grow too fond of it."

—R.E. Lee

It goes without saying that American foreign policy under Joe Biden is an abject failure, replete with human loss of life and tragedy, displaced millions, and a significantly diminished stature on the world stage.  The humiliation of the abandonment of Afghanistan, seared into American minds as bodies fell from retreating U.S. military aircraft and flags were lowered for the fallen U.S. soldiers, cannot be forgotten.  Where once America enjoyed hegemony in the world, it now finds itself in a proxy war with Russia and on the brink of another with China.

Trump turned to his Art of the Deal tactics in his first term, and if he isn't already holding back-channel discussions with world leaders, much like what John Kerry did in an unofficial capacity to broker then–former president Obama's Green New Deal, he should strongly consider it.  The world has not witnessed this level of brinkmanship between East and West since the Cold War, and the feckless Biden regime is one overplayed hand from a nuclear conflict.  Trump can cement his strategic relationships with leaders like Putin and Xi, while simultaneously averting serious threats to the American homeland and undermining Biden's unceasing and hideously expensive weaponization of Ukraine.  He can once again proclaim himself a peacetime president, a distinction rarely enjoyed by U.S. presidents.

Many commonsense approaches that Trump could take in his second presidency need no explanation.  Americans who vote for Trump expect, and will likely see to completion, the fulfillment of his promise of a wall on the southern U.S. border.  For the preservation of our national security, economic well-being, and identity, the resumption of Trump's border policy is paramount.  Other actions that go without saying include the outright gutting of the DOJ and FBI, once-proud institutions rankled by liberal activism and corruption perpetrated by political extremists in the ranks.  In a society so deeply rooted in law and order, the existence of a two-tiered system of justice is intolerable and must be reformed or systematically dismantled.

The rot and decay that Donald Trump attempted to abate in his first term, only to see his efforts reversed by Joe Biden, can still be exorcised from Washington.  The most critical question remains: is Trump capable of tempering his hubris and embracing commonsense but perhaps personally humbling reforms that may invigorate his base and propel him to a second, thoroughly transformative return to the White House?  The state of American greatness depends on it.




X22, And we Know, and more- Jan 27

 




Been a real slow news slog all week. 😩 Here's tonight's news:


Inside the Nazi Whitewash of Ukraine

The uniparty warmongers are whitewashing these Nazis in order to justify their treachery and fool the public.


On January 1, the world celebrated New Year’s Day—a holiday of self-reflection, self-renewal, and hope. In Ukraine, the focus was different. There, January 1 marks the birthday of  Stepan Bandera, Ukraine’s Nazi national hero. 

Bandera is the founding father of Ukrainian Nazism and his birthday is a national holiday. In Ukraine, paying homage to their most famous antisemite and leading Nazi collaborator of World War II, is a very big deal.

Calling All Nazis

Under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the level of Nazi influence and control in Ukraine has been unprecedented. Zelenskyy outlawed all 11 independent and opposition political parties but left the parties and organizations of his Nazi partners and allies intact and in power. So, it’s not surprising that on Bandera’s birthday, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament (with nobody but Nazis left in it)—erupted into wild cheers. Later, General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s military commander in chief, posted a photo of himself proudly posing in front of Bandera’s portrait. 

The message from Ukraine’s top lawmakers and general was clear. Have no doubt as to who and what our government and army are fighting for in NATO’s proxy war with Russia.

The commemoration of Ukraine’s top Nazi didn’t go over well in Poland. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki angrily denounced Ukraine’s “continued glorification of (the) Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera . . .”

So, why the outrage? 

To understand the reason for Polish fury over Ukraine’s Bandera worship, we must briefly review what happened in Ukraine during World War II—and separate facts from propaganda.

“Unimaginable Bestiality”

Bandera was the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)—Ukrainian Nazi collaborators who dreamt of a racially pure Ukraine, free of Jews, ethnic Russians, and Poles. During World War II, primarily in the Wolyn region of the Ukrainian countryside, the OUN massacred at least 100,000 Poles.

To make it appear that the homicidal rampage was a spontaneous peasant uprising (and out of sadistic pleasure), the OUN’s preferred modus operandi was to kill with axes, hatchets, scythes, knives, hammers, steel bars, and pitchforks. Banderites shoved victims by the hundreds into buildings and barns and burned them alive—a method still preferred by Ukrainian Nazis today.

Banderite mobs roamed like rabid dogs. Poland’s The First News recounts the barbarism: 

In the blood frenzy, the Ukrainians tortured their victims with unimaginable bestiality. Victims were scalped. They had their noses, lips and ears cut off. They had their eyes gouged out and hands cut off and they had their heads squashed in clamps. Women had their breasts cut off and pregnant women were stabbed in the belly. Men had their genitals sliced off with sickles.

The 2016 Polish film, “Hatred,” (also titled “Wolyn” or “Volhynia”), is an historically accurate account of the Banderites’ crimes. The movie is shockingly graphic—many scenes are almost impossible to watch. Because of the truth it tells, Ukrainian authorities have banned its showing. 

Bandera and the Holocaust in Ukraine 

One in every four Jewish victims of the Holocaust—1.5 million people—was murdered in Ukraine. The Germans didn’t build gas chambers to murder Jews in Ukraine—they didn’t need them. The extent of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis was colossal. More than 250,000 Ukrainians volunteered for German SS and other military formations. Thousands more served as willing executioners both as auxiliary police in Ukraine and as death camp guards in Poland.

This was the “Holocaust of Bullets.” One and a half million Jews were rounded up and shot to death in fields, forests, and ravines. Banderites played a major role. OUN forces operated overtly on their own, integrated into police units, and served as highly motivated auxiliaries in the Einsatzgruppen, the German mobile extermination units.

The Germans invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, capturing the Ukrainian city of Lvov within a week. OUN Banderites distributed flyers instructing the Ukrainian population, “Don’t throw away your weapons yet. Take them up. Destroy the enemy. . . . Moscow, the Hungarians, the Jews—these are your enemies. Destroy them.” OUN also distributed flyers to Lvov’s Jews declaring, “We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet”—which is exactly what they did. In the subsequent Banderite-initiated pogrom, 7,000 Jews were murdered in two days. Thousands more followed. 

The massacre of Jews in Lvov was duly recorded by the Nazi collaborators themselves. The photos are shocking. But today in Lvov, a $47 million monument stands to honor Bandera and one of the city’s major streets has been named after him. 

Zelenskyy Is A Willing Accomplice

For more than 70 years, Ukrainian Nazis and their apologists both within and without the country have conducted a disinformation campaign to whitewash Bandera and rewrite history. Their primary objective has been to fabricate Bandera the Nazi into a “freedom fighter.” This effort has increased with Ukraine’s accelerated Nazification under Zelenskyy. Across Ukraine, more than 50 monuments and statues have been built in Bandera’s honor and 500 streets named after him. 

Ukraine’s Jewish president is a willing accomplice in the Bandera deceit. Zelenskyy has completely ignored Bandera’s antisemitic Nazi legacy and complicity in the murder of more than 1.6 million Ukrainian Jews, Poles, and Russians. He has stated that if Ukrainians revere this Nazi murderer as a national hero then, “That’s normal. That’s cool.” That’s cool because in Zelenskyy’s book Bandera was “one of those people who defended freedom for Ukraine.”

Zelenskky’s idea of freedom is different from that of most Americans. In addition to extinguishing freedom of the press, outlawing all non-Nazi political parties, and banning the Russian Orthodox Church, Zelenskyy has overseen and directed Nazi infestation into every level of the Ukrainian government and military. Zelenskyy’s significant promotions of Nazis include awarding the “Hero of Ukraine” medal to a Right Sector commander, appointing Right Sector co-founder Dmytro Yarosh, as advisor to the commander in chief of the Armed Forces, and replacing the head of the Odessa Regional Administration with a commander of the Nazi Aidar Battalion.  

Ukrainian Jews Supporting Nazis

Can Jews support Nazis in Ukraine? 

When questions about Ukraine’s Nazi regime started to surface, the media rushed in to silence them and prevent discussion. The stock response from media across the political spectrum was to repeatedly state Zelenskyy’s Jewish ancestry—as if that made the very question of Ukrainian Naziism absurd. The implied “logic” of this dodge was—“Zelenskyy is Jewish. It is impossible for a Jew to support Nazis. Therefore, there are no Nazis in Ukraine.” Zelensky was bulletproof—no talk about Nazis could touch him. In fact, since he was president, Nazis in Ukraine couldn’t even exist. 

But as I have previously documented, not only is his a thoroughly Nazi regime but Zelenskyy has done more to support and institutionalize Nazis in Ukraine than any president before him.   

His Jewish critics provide other insights. Zelenskyy does not identify as a Jew. He only mentions his Jewish heritage when politically profitable to do so—as when concealing the truth about his Nazi regime. 

Zelenskyy doesn’t practice Judaism, married a Christian woman, had his children baptized in the Orthodox Church, and observes Christian holidays. In fact, during his campaign for president, he and his press spokesman refused to even confirm if he was Jewish. 

Zelenskyy mocks Jewish culture. Hava Nagila, “Let us rejoice,” is a revered Hebrew folk song performed at Jewish celebrations worldwide. Zelenskyy’s idea of honoring this piece of Jewish cultural heritage was to perform Hava Nagila with his penis as an on-stage comedy act. 

Finally, during his world tour to demand billions more in money and weapons, Zelenskyy outraged members of the Israeli Knesset with a shameful Ukrainian Holocaust denial speech. Refusing to acknowledge Ukraine’s history of Banderite-Nazi collaboration, Zelenskyy absurdly claimed that the Ukrainians’ significant war effort against the Germans was that “they rescued Jews.” Jewish critics blasted him for his “distortions of the Holocaust.” 

His presentation to the Greek parliament was also disgraceful. It included a speech by an Azov Nazi Zelenskyy had brought to appear alongside him. Some lawmakers walked out in disgust, describing Zelenskyy’s performance a “Nazi fiesta.”

But Zelenskyy wasn’t the first rich and powerful Ukrainian Jew to support the Nazis. Ihor Kolomoyskyi is the Jewish Ukrainian billionaire oligarch and original financial sponsor of the Azov and Aidar Battalions. He also bankrolls other Nazi militias. Kolomoyskyi was Zelenskyy’s principal financial backer for president. And as owner of Burisma Holdings, he was Hunter Biden’s boss.

So can Jews support Nazis in Ukraine? Clearly, they can and do.

The Western Media’s Nazi Whitewash

Ukraine is the world’s first openly Nazi state since 1945. But for the past year, the Western media has launched a propaganda blitz to whitewash Ukrainian Nazis—as if they never existed. There are two reasons for this attempt to erase and rewrite history. 

The first is the warmongers’ need to control information and manipulate public opinion. 

Americans hate Nazis. We fought a world war to defeat German, Italian, and Japanese national socialism and militarism, and 420,000 Americans died to help win it. The ruling elites of the military-industrial-congressional complex know that if the American people got wise to the truth about Zelenskyy and his Nazi regime, Ukraine wouldn’t get another dime. 

The second reason is Vladimir Putin. 

Putin declared that one of the primary objectives of Russia’s Special Military Operation was to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. This is a big problem for Joe Biden, NATO, and the warmongers in Congress. 

For 20 years, the military-industrial-congressional complex and their media have painted a picture of Vladimir Putin that is evil incarnate. It wouldn’t play well for the warmongers if after all this demonization, Americans found out that Putin had been telling the truth about Nazis in Ukraine all along.  

Before receiving their orders to erase history, the Western media had been telling the truth about Nazis in Ukraine. Here’s a short list of their reporting before the whitewash. 

The Hill: “The Reality of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine Is Far from Kremlin Propaganda”  

Time: “Inside A White Supremacist Militia in Ukraine

BBC “Newsnight”: “Neo-Nazi Threat in New Ukraine

Al-Jazeera: “Ukrainian Fighters Grease Bullets Against Chechens with Pig Fat

BBC: “Ukraine Underplays Role of Far Right in Conflict

BBC (again): “Ukraine conflict: ‘White power’ warrior from Sweden” 

The Guardian: “Welcome to Ukraine, The Most Corrupt Nation in Europe

Newsweek: “Ukrainian Nationalist Volunteers Committing ‘ISIS-Style’ War Crimes

BBC “Newsnight”: “Ukraine: On patrol with the far-right National Militia

Globalist Elites Are All In

The Western globalist elites are all in with their exuberant support of the Washington-led proxy war. During the recent meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, there was no talk of peace in Ukraine, but only of escalation and carrying on a “forever war.”

Big Tech is also taking the disinformation of the Nazi whitewash to the next level. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta announced that Facebook has removed the designation of “dangerous organization” from the Nazi Azov Battalion. The white supremacists now have full access to the platform. 

In a nation saturated with Nazi militias, organizations, and political parties—the Azov Battalion remains Ukraine’s most notorious. Azov ideology is pure Nazism, and its emblem and symbols are straight from Hitler’s SS. 

The Azov Battalion’s street-fighting wing has been absorbed into the national police. Because of Azov’s high Nazi profile, the Western media disinformation campaign to rehabilitate their image has been intense. Easier said than done. 

Even NATO’s Atlantic Council concludes that Azov’s connections with other white supremacist organizations remain intact. Azov is an international hub for white supremacists with a global recruiting network. White nationalists go to Ukraine to gain combat experience and return to their home countries with lethal tactical skills. 

The Azov Battalion is proud to display its Nazi pathology. In May, Russian forces captured the city of Mariupol and took 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers prisoner—most of them Azov Nazis. Video of the prisoners being searched reveals their extensive Nazi tattoos. Seeing is believing. 

Congress Knows The Truth About The Azov Nazis 

The national socialist roots of the Azov Battalion have never been a secret in Congress.

In 2015, Representative John Conyers (D-Mich.) introduced an amendment to stop the United States from providing further military aid and training to the Azov Nazis in Ukraine. The amendment passed but was rescinded under pressure from Obama’s Pentagon.

In 2018, Congress passed a spending bill preventing the United States from providing arms and training assistance to the “neo-Nazi Azov Battalion fighting in Ukraine.”

In 2019, 40 House Democrats signed a letter asking the State Department why they had not placed Ukraine’s Azov Battalion on the U.S. list of “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs). Signers included Representatives Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). The Democrats drew the connection between Azov Nazis in Ukraine and white supremacist terrorist incidents around the world including Christchurch, New Zealand and El Paso, Texas. 

But that was then. 

Today, every Democrat and corporate Republican belongs to the uniparty—warmongers committed to implementing the interests of the military-industrial-congressional complex through permanent war. This is why Congress voted to send $100 billion to support the Nazi regime in Ukraine and support the Azov Battalion—a group they know is a white supremacist, terrorist, Nazi organization. The uniparty warmongers are whitewashing these Nazis in order to justify their treachery and fool the public. 

Last Fall, a delegation of uniformed Azov Nazis was welcomed as heroes into our Capitol building to meet with 50 representatives and senators. Special hosts included Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.  

The Nazi parade continued across the United States with stops including New Jersey, Detroit, Chicago, and Stanford University. Azov stormtroopers met with audiences including many children, spread their disinformation, and raised money. Auctioning off their Nazi uniform patches and battle flags, they welcomed Americans to the Nazi club—“Now, all of you are Azov.”

A National Disgrace 

Is there a more dishonorable cause than America supporting Nazis? The whitewash and support of Ukrainian Nazis by American media and lawmakers is a national disgrace. 

Joe Biden, the military-industrial-congressional complex, State Department neocons, and Western globalist elites have put the United States and NATO at war with Russia. Ukraine is merely their disposable proxy.

The warmongers have no interest in the wellbeing of Ukraine. 

Their real objective appears to be overthrowing Putin and breaking up Russia—and they are willing to see millions of Ukrainians die in order to achieve it. 

Ukraine is the perfect proxy to fight and die against Russia. Its political parties and military are already driven by a racist, Nazi ideology that hates Russians. And in Zelenskyy they have the perfect puppet—a corrupt shill for the globalist elites willing to sell out his people and needlessly prolong the war—even if his country is completely destroyed.  

The warmongers have no interest in the well-being of the United States either. 

They have funneled $100 billion to conduct a war that is not in our national interest. The war they should  be fighting is here at home. Our country has been invaded by millions of illegal aliens, our cities are being destroyed by out-of-control crime, and 100,000 Americans are killed yearly by fentanyl shipped in by Mexican cartels. 

The war in Ukraine could end today with a single phone call.

Zelenskyy is a puppet, and Washington pulls the strings. The war would end the minute that Biden picks up the phone, tells Zelenskyy the game is over, and that it’s time for peace.

It’s time that Republicans in Congress demand that Biden pick up the phone. 




McDaniel vs. Dhillon: RNC Candidates Weigh In On Election Integrity

It is ultimately up to the 168 national committee members to decide who they want as chair.



Today Republican committee members decide who will lead the national party into 2024 and beyond, the party’s two frontrunners, incumbent Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel and California lawyer and RNC committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon, must make their case for why they are uniquely suited for the job. While many issues plague the national party, there is one item both candidates must wrestle with: election integrity.

For almost 40 years, the RNC was unable to oversee poll watcher operations or litigate elections due to a 1982 consent decree. In 1981, Democrats accused Republicans of voter intimidation in a New Jersey governor’s race. The case was settled after the GOP agreed to a court-ordered consent decree limiting Republican involvement with any poll-watching operations. Little did Republicans realize that Dickinson Debevoise, the Jimmy Carter–appointed judge behind the consent decree, would prove to be such a partisan; he never let the GOP out of the decree, and repeatedly altered and strengthened it at Democrats’ request. After Debevoise formally retired from the bench, he stayed on for 21 years in senior status, a form of semi-retirement allowing judges to keep serving in a limited capacity, and kept enforcing the decree. Only after Debevoise died did an Obama-appointed judge let the agreement expire at the end of 2018.

As a result, the Democratic National Committee had an almost four-decade advantage over the GOP. After spending a few years building out and developing poll-watching infrastructure since the consent decree was lifted, McDaniel told The Federalist the 2022 midterm was the first election cycle in which the RNC could fully operate. But in a recent op-ed for The Daily Wire, Dhillon blamed party insiders for using the consent decree as an excuse “for complete legal inaction on just about every front.” 

Some major GOP donors are putting their money behind Dhillon as they lobby for new leadership of the RNC, after McDaniel’s three consecutive terms as chair of the party.  Despite some influential support for Dhillon, McDaniel remains likely to be reelected after an endorsement letter signed by 107 of the 168 members of the RNC was circulated last month. 

Still, the incumbent chairwoman isn’t taking any chances. During an interview with The Federalist, McDaniel repeatedly praised and defended the RNC’s record in the past election cycle, while also offering next steps for the party regarding election integrity. “We had three million more Republicans turn out than Democrats,” she noted. 

Dhillon also spoke with The Federalist and talked about what has to change on the state and national level regarding the GOP’s election efforts.

Election Integrity Must Be a Year-Round Operation

Back in August 2021, after the RNC’s Committee on Election Integrity released a report on the comprehensive changes made to voting procedures in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the RNC announced a “year-round election integrity operation” would be created. This included hiring in-state election integrity directors, training poll watchers, and engaging in election-related litigation. 

But according to a letter sent to the RNC by the grassroots-organized Election Integrity Network, after the 2022 midterm elections, all state election integrity directors and field staff were terminated as of Dec. 15. While McDaniel reinstated four of the state election integrity directors after EIN officials expressed their concerns, those familiar with the matter say this is a symptom of a larger problem within the RNC: namely, that the RNC treated its election integrity division as a seasonal political operation, meaning any election integrity staff would be terminated after the election cycle was completed. 

“Going forward, the RNC’s Election Integrity staff must be exempt from the layoffs to which RNC political staff are subject after every election,” the EIN coalition wrote. 

In her Daily Wire op-ed, Dhillon wrote that the RNC’s election integrity operations were “a seasonal, vestigial effort grafted onto a political department itself staffed largely with less-experienced political operatives in the 2022 election cycle. And most of these operatives — even the handful of experienced ones – were laid off after election day, frittering whatever knowledge we had gained in this emerging field.” 

When asked about the RNC firing the in-state election integrity directors, McDaniel disagreed with Dhillon’s characterization that the RNC’s election integrity teams were treated as seasonal employees. “There is some attrition after an election and people move on. But Josh Findlay [the national election integrity director] was running our office and continued to run our office. We are keeping those election integrity directors — some of them, not all of them. There is always a little ramp down after an election, but our election integrity program has never stopped,” she said. 

As RNC chair, Dhillon said she would invest in a year-round Election Operations Department to help the party adapt to the post-2020 voting environment. 

McDaniel also said moving forward she would create a “standalone department for election integrity.” During the 2022 cycle, election integrity operations were housed between the legal and political divisions of the RNC.

“I think, to be more successful going forward, it should just be its own standalone department,” McDaniel said.

Litigate, Litigate, Litigate

The past midterm election cycle was the most litigious in RNC history. A representative for the RNC told The Federalist the GOP had engaged in 91 election-related lawsuits alone, and McDaniel repeatedly praised the RNC’s litigation efforts, citing many examples of how the national party’s legal presence impacted races across the country. “In Virginia alone, we had 500 lawyers on the ground and a war room of 30 lawyers triaging issues in real time,” she said. 

“The RNC has never done this before,” McDaniel declared. “And I put our investment and our resources to the test. But we did it. And everyone should be pleased with the results.” 

While Dhillon acknowledged the RNC’s expanded litigation efforts, she emphasized that the RNC is not doing enough and needs to be spending double what it currently does. Dhillon noted that during the past cycle, the RNC declined to file lawsuits over budget constraints.

“Democrats have really downgraded the integrity of our elections through litigation,” Dhillon told The Federalist. “We have not met or matched that at all, and we have to start playing catch-up.” 

In the past election cycle, Dhillon observed, the RNC took a mainly defensive posture. “We intervened in a portion of the lawsuits filed by the Left, both for the RNC and on behalf of state Republican parties. We filed amicus briefs in litigation initiated by others. What we did not do is initiate much of our own litigation, put the Left on its heels, or leave any lasting marks on our opponents,” she wrote in The Daily Wire.

Because of the consent decree, Dhillon added, there is a critical shortage of GOP election lawyers, so the RNC must focus its resources on finding, funding, and training them so as to be competitive with their Democratic counterparts.

As RNC chair, Dhillon would allocate more resources to funding litigation — particularly offensive litigation. 

“We need to be filing lawsuits in blue states, and in red states where Democrats have successfully bastardized our election laws,” Dhillon said. “Right now, if I were RNC chair, I’d be working with the Arizona GOP to recall the Board of Supervisors in Maricopa County for violating the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of voters in their state by failing to properly test vote center equipment and train election workers.”

Building a Lasting Election Integrity Infrastructure

Building a year-round election integrity operation will take more than just doubling down on litigation efforts, however. 

Dhillon told The Federalist the RNC must invest significant resources in beating the Democrats on early voting. Now that Election Day has turned into ‘election week’ or ‘election month,’ Republicans must invest in personnel to chase early votes and cure ballots in states that allow for early voting. 

“In California, we’ve mastered it,” Dhillon said. “In targeted congressional races where every vote is going to matter, we go and chase those ballots and get signatures fixed with paid and volunteer staff doing it. That’s done with really no training input from the RNC and frankly, the RNC has shied away from talking about these issues because a lot of our Republican activists are opposed to early or mail voting in any form.”

As RNC chair, Dhillon said she would also bring that model to the rest of the country. “With a relatively small investment in the relevant states, we can initiate and track Republican vote-by-mail applications, outgoing ballots, and returns,” Dhillon wrote. “We can train volunteers in ballot harvesting to do it transparently and ethically wherever it’s legal.”

When asked about the RNC’s ground game, McDaniel said the RNC must focus on engaging communities that have historically voted Democrat. In the last election cycle, the RNC made inroads with black, Hispanic, and Native American voters through its establishment of 38 community centers across the country, according to a representative of the RNC. 

“The first office we opened was in Michelle Steel’s district in Little Saigon in California — one of the most diverse districts in the country, and a D+7 district,” McDaniel said. “And that engagement with the Vietnamese community sustained for over a year was a difference maker, and you can talk to Michelle about it. These are the types of things the RNC must be doing long term.” 

Cleta Mitchell, a senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute and founder of the Election Integrity Network, told The Federalist that winning elections isn’t just about how you collect votes.

“It’s about matching what the left has done in terms of building an infrastructure,” Mitchell said, mentioning, among other things, Democrats’ well-funded programs to register thousands of college students to vote every year.

“There’s just a complete cultural difference,” Mitchell said. “And nowhere is this more evident than the RNC putting its election integrity unit within the political division and then firing everybody six weeks after the election as though they were seasonal campaign operatives.”

What’s Next

It is ultimately up to the 168 national committee members to decide who they want as chair. While both candidates are strong leaders, they both acknowledge much has to be done on the election integrity front, including recruiting poll watchers and workers, dealing with ballot harvesting and turnout operations, as well as litigating election cases. 

Regardless of who wins on today, both candidates agree the culture of the Republican Party must shift to focusing on the entire election process, whether it is passing strong legislation, cleaning state voter rolls, embracing (or rejecting) new technology, or investigating error-ridden voting systems. The GOP is likely to go on offense and take an aggressive approach to litigating the country’s election processes, just like their Democratic counterparts. Now it’s up to the Republican committee members to decide who will be leading the charge on election integrity in the next presidential election.