In his first tweet since Jan. 8, 2021, 2 days after the Capitol riot, Trump shared a his mugshot and wrote underneath it, “Election Interference, Never Surrender, donaldtrump.com.” Minutes later, QAnon message boards and Telegram channels lit up with messages seeking to analyze its meaning. Their conclusion, as it nearly always is, was that “the storm is coming.”

“It’s always darkest before the storm,” a Trump supporter tweeted alongside the former president’s mugshot.  “Tsunami Trump is coming for the swamp.” 

Though none of this, of course, is happening, the “storm” in QAnon lore is the moment when Trump will rise up against his “deep state” enemies and retake control, expose a global pedophile ring run by Democrats and elites, conduct mass arrests, and ultimately execute his enemies in public. 

But supporters quickly claimed there was a secret code within Trump’s tweet, pointing out that the three letters at the beginning of each line spelled out END. This was then linked to a message posted by Q in 2019, that reads: “There is no step five. End.”

A Telegram post about Trump's mugshot and tweet.

For QAnon fans who have been waiting for years for the conclusion of this conspiracy, this claim was too enticing to ignore. “The crime is complete, they have finally arrested the president after they stole the election, now the military can't ignore this anymore,” one users of a QAnon-focused message board wrote. ”Their job is to protect the constitution and not the politicians. Now the crime is complete, the entire bait has been swallowed. Brothers and sisters… Welcome to act III.”

This interpretation ignores the fact that for years, QAnon influencers have been predicting that Trump would signal his return by returning to Twitter and writing: “The storm is upon us.” They have also told their followers that Trump was going to return to the Oval Office. Now, millions of people continue to believe in this conspiracy despite all the evidence to show that it was not orchestrated by a government insider revealing top secret information, but was instead run for the most part by a former pig-farmer in the Philippines and his son.

Some people focused on other aspects of Trump’s tweet, including the time it was posted at, which was 9.38pm. This was quickly converted to 21.38, which was linked to Q drop 2138, which reads: “Battlestations ready. WWG1WGA” a reference to the QAnon slogan, “where we go one we go all.”

The decoding didn’t stop there, however. Some focused on Trump’s self-reported—and likely completely false—weight of 215lbs and height of 6 foot 3 inches. As a number of QAnon supporters have pointed out, when you add up all these numbers, you get 17, which is a reference to Q, the 17th letter of the alphabet.

A Telegram post about Trump's self-declared height and weight.

Others figures in the movement claimed the mugshot was fake, pointing to a lack of shadow, the fact the Fulton County insignia is much smaller in Trump’s photo than others arrested as part of the same investigation, and the fact Trump looked much thinner in his mugshot than he did as he walked into the jail.

But as usual, QAnon figures and followers missed the real message in Trump’s tweet: the link to his campaign website where he is using his arrest as a way to raise donations and sell merchandise like t-shirts, mugs, and beer koozies that feature his mugshot.

Glower power 

There’s a ton of movement on the criminal indictments of Donald Trump and his many co-conspirators, including but not limited to the movement of his very-oversized-for-the-cameras motorcade to the Fulton County Jail for processing last night. I want to get right to the big developments from Fulton, Mar-a-Lago, and DC, so just a brief word on where we’re at: 

Republicans with institutional power in the House are once again attempting to interfere in a criminal indictment. Republicans with messaging power are once again threatening civil war if Trump is held accountable. 

Republican base voters who’ve been indoctrinated by Trump’s claims of victimization will tolerate no substantive discussion of the merits of the cases against Trump, nor the potential political liability he—and they—represent to their party. 

That blinkered demand all but guarantees the right will be blindsided when general election voters very much care about the charges, and any guilty verdicts that might follow. Which in turn will make them all the more eager for Trump, aka booking number P01135809, to lie to them about what went wrong.

Enough of that… let’s get down to cases.

But first, don’t forget to sign your friends up for Breaking the Vote! 

Personal news: I’ll be a guest on PBS’s Washington Week this eve, talking indictments and the GOP primary debate. Tune in! 

Also, I guest-hosted 1A on NPR on Monday and Tuesday and the talk was right over Breaking the Vote’s plate. Check out the shows for really good discussions about the Georgia indictments and the role of cable news in forming and deforming our democracy. If you’re here because you heard about the newsletter on the air, welcome! We accept you, one of us!

Motional intelligence

Two big hearings in Trump indictment world are coming up Monday. In the Fulton County indictment, Mark Meadows goes before a judge in his attempt to remove his case to federal court. Meadows, along with Jeffrey Clark (of “make me AG and I’ll use DOJ to help you lie about the election” repute), tried to get out of arrest and booking this week by claiming his federal status exempted him from Fulton County’s criminal procedures. Both guys were denied. 

The hearing is a big deal because it could signal whether Meadows, Clark, and especially Trump might succeed in moving their cases to more favorable jury pools in the federal Northern District of Georgia. But it could also give us a glimpse of some of the evidence Fani Willis plans to use against Meadows for his part in the alleged conspiracy. 

Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger and three other witnesses are subpoenaed to appear at Monday’s evidentiary hearing, so we’re bound to hear a lot about the Jan 2, 2021 phone call (“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have”), which Meadows facilitated. At issue: Was any of this in Mark Meadows’ scope of work as a federal employee, or was he just a guy doing illegal things to advance his boss’s personal political interests? 

Also on Monday, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan holds a scheduling hearing to set a trial date in the four-count federal coup case against Trump. Jack Smith has requested a January 2, 2024 trial date. Trump’s lawyers countered with a proposed April, 2026 date—aka safely in Trump self-pardon territory.  

Fulton prison blues

There was a lot to take in during the cavalcade of co-conspirators getting booked at the Fulton County Jail on Rice St. The most remarkable for me, besides Trump, was Rudy Guiliani. What started just four days after the 2020 election with a conspiracy-filled press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, across from a sex shop in North Philly, ended at A 2nd Chance Bail Bonds next to the jail, where Rudy and his eight-times-a-felon buddy Bernie Kerick stepped in for a bail bond after Rudy’s arrest and mugshot. The how-it-started, how-it’s-going of it all just really hits you. 

Just Security keeps hitting home runs in keeping all the charges straight, including this super-helpful quick-reference guide on who’s charged with what. Use it as alleged co-conspirators start to flip, try to move their cases to federal court, or otherwise sever their fates from Trump’s. 

How it started, how it's going: Rudy Giuliani speaks to the media at a press conference held in the back parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping on November 7, 2020 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images) / Rudy Giuliani poses for his booking photo on August 23, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Fulton County Sheriff's Office via Getty Images)

Swap team

Speaking of severance! Donald Trump yesterday parted ways with defense attorney Drew Findling, the “Billion dollar lawyer” who repped him throughout the grand jury investigation and indictment stages in Fulton County. Trump’s new lawyer is Steven Sadow, an experienced criminal defense attorney with an aggressive courtroom rep. 

Why change lawyers now? It’s unclear, though Sadow does have experience defending clients in RICO cases in Fulton County. That includes rapper Gunna, who Sadow currently represents in the YSL RICO case also being prosecuted by Fani Willis. 

Findling once told VICE’s Greg Walters that he’d quit if Trump ever asked him to do anything unethical. You’ll know more if we hear more. 

More like Speedbro

Fani Willis yesterday filed a request to start her RICO trial against Trump and 18 co-defendants on October 23. That’s crazy fast, but if granted it would mean Willis’s case would jump to the front of the line before the federal coup case Jan. 2, 2024 (for now), and the Manhattan hush-money case on March 25, 2024. 

At least one defendant looks ready to go by October 23. A judge granted a request from Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro (pictured here with Alex Jones at the Capitol on Jan. 6), for a speedy trial for his seven-count indictment in the fake-electors section of the conspiracy. 

Willis has said she wants to try all 19 co-defendants together. Former fed prosecutor Ryan Goodman says an early trial for Chesebro would certainly put more pressure on Trump if he’s convicted, and on TV, no less. If he’s acquitted, that’s a bonus for Trump. Either way, the case would telegraph evidence and strategy for later trials. 

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows poses for his booking photo on August 24, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Fulton County Sheriff's Office via Getty Images)

The Full Cassidy

Let history never forget that former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson had a Trumpworld lawyer early her part in the January 6 committee investigation. Then she dumped him, got a new lawyer, and told the truth about what she’d seen and heard. Which brings us to Mar-a-Lago Employee 4, Yuscil Taveras. In filings this week. Special Counsel Jack Smith revealed that a Taveras, a key witness in the cover-up of the cover-up portion of the case, has done exactly the same thing. 

This all goes back to Judge Aileen Cannon’s insistence that Smith account for a second grand jury in Washington, D.C. investigating Mar–a-Lago-related events, even while the Miami grand jury had already indicted Trump and his alleged co-conspirators. Smith wanted to do that under seal, but Cannon refused. So it all came out in the open. 

Turns out, Taveras initially lied to the grand jury when he was asked about deleting Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage after the feds subpoenaed it. But then, advised that he was under investigation for perjury, Taveras fired his Trumpworld lawyer, the one and only Stanley Woodward. With new counsel, a public defender, Taveras told the truth, is slated to testify, and is not charged in the Mar-a-Lago case. 

Did Taveras get the sense that Woodward wasn’t representing his interests to the best of his ability? It matters, because Jack Smith is currently pursing motions questioning whether Woodward's representing valet Walt Nauta and another Trump-supplied lawyer who is representing maintenance manager and co-defendant Carlos De Oliviera have irreconcilable conflicts of interest. 

Here’s a great explainer of how Smith may have out-maneuvered Cannon and Woodward to show Trump’s co-defendants the luxurious benefits of a lawyer who looks out for your interests by counseling the truth. 

Ouch, that Smarts-matic

A Delaware judge is allowing voting machine company Smartmatic to expand its defamation lawsuit against right-wing network Newsmax. The company’s suit alleges a pattern of defamation as Newsmax broadcast a torrent of lies about Smartmatic’s role in rigging the 2020 election against Trump. Now the judge is allowing 26 new instances of alleged defamation into the suit. 

Smartmatic is also suing Fox for $2.7 billion. 

Goodbye, Chef

Long before his plane mysteriously dropped out of the sky in eastern Russia, Yevgeniy Prigozhin was spearheading Vladmir Putin’s campaign to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election. Revisit, if you will, the Mueller Report, page 16, for the executive summary on how Prigozhin, a former caterer also known as “Putin’s Chef,” got indicted by Mueller for running the Internet Research Agency that interfered on Trump's behalf.

“There’s very little evidence of people being arrested for being armed that day.”

— GOP presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, speaking about Jan. 6, where dozens of people have been charged for being armed, including at least three with guns.

That’s unto Ward — Eleven Arizona Republicans signed fake elector forms in December, 2020. Now the state attorney general’s criminal investigation into their activities is heating up. At the center—lately, anyway—appears to be former state GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward, who was already known to be a ringleader of the AZ fake elector plot. According to indicted Trump campaign lawyer Ken Chesebro, she was also super concerned that the whole thing was “treason.” 

Fake electors have already been charged in Michigan and, of course, Georgia. Recall that Ward fought to keep her phone records away from the January 6 committee, then took the Fifth when she appeared. 

Dangerous liaisons — The US Secret Service was in regular contact with the Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes before the Jan. 6 attack that led to Rhodes and other Oath Keepers’ convictions for seditious conspiracy. 

Watchdog Group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released a report detailing how an agent messaged other agents in 2020 that he was the “unofficial liaison to the Oath Keepers (inching towards official).” Rhodes said during his trial that he had been in regular touch with the Secret Service. 

If you’d like to know more about what Secret Service agents might have said or known about the insurrection, it's really too bad that all the agents’ text messages from Jan. 6 were deleted. But it’s also good that Jack Smith said this week that he’s got 3.1 million pages of USSS emails. 

Mishandling doxx — As good as it is that Fani Willis put the attempted intimidation of two Fulton County election workers at the center of her case, the truth is law enforcement doesn’t go after the vast majority of harassment like this. Now local law enforcement—and, notably, the FBI—say they’re investigating threats to Fulton County grand jurors after Trump supporters posted their personal information online. There are three other criminal trials that will involve Trump, not to mention another election staffed by volunteers and officials. Protecting people under threat for doing their civic duty is only going to get more important as these cases go to trial.

Drawn out — Now that the newly GOP-dominated North Carolina Supreme Court overturned its own ruling to enable Republican gerrymandering, Dem Rep. Jeff Jackson realizes he’s probably toast. So he’s taking the opportunity for some real talk to his constituents (and anyone else on the internet) about the antidemocratic evils of partisan power-grabs.  

Maybe don’t riot — When people finally grok that political violence can mean jail. 

Here’s a story — Of a rule called Brady. 

How Mark Meadows pursued a high-wire legal strategy.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

The conservative case that Trump lost and Biden won.

FROM LOST, NOT STOLEN

The Constitutional case for barring Trump from the presidency.

FROM THE NEW YORKER

Amy Kremer, the organizer of the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, is so desperate to be part of the group that on Wednesday night she posted a photo of herself superimposed on the gray background from ​​Fulton County Jail, where mugshots of the nine defendants who have so far handed themselves in were taken.

“I stand with my colleagues fighting for election integrity,” Kremer wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “The 2020 election was stolen and I’m not afraid to say so.”

Despite her dodgy photoshopping skills, some of Kremer’s supporters were fooled into believing that she had joined the likes of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Kraken lawyer Sidney Powell in surrendering to authorities in Fulton County.

“God bless! I had no idea you were one of the defendants,” one follower wrote in response to the fake mugshot, before Kremer replied: “I’m not…for the time being, but I stand with them! They are coming for all of us, eventually.”

Some of her followers seemed even more confused, with one asking: “Who is that Amy?” to which Kremer responded: “It’s me.”

Kremer may have been inspired by David Shafer, one of those who signed documents falsely claiming to be Georgia’s 2020 presidential electors. On Wednesday morning Kremer shared a post from Shafer indicating that he had updated his profile picture on X with the mugshot image released by authorities in Georgia.

It’s unclear if other Trump supporters will join Kremer and create another MAGA meme, but they could be inspired to do so on Thursday when Trump himself turns in and his own mugshot is set to be published.

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Travis Ikeguchi, 27, shot Laura Ann Carleton, 66, on Friday after “yelling many homophobic slurs” about the store’s pride flag, San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus said at a news conference Monday.

The shooter fled the scene but police officers tracked him down later on Friday. When confronted, police said in a press conference, the 27-year-old fired at multiple patrol vehicles with an unregistered semi-automatic handgun before he was shot in what was described by officials as a “lethal force encounter.”

Authorities said they are continuing to investigate the murder as a possible hate crime. While they believe the shooter acted alone, authorities are continuing to look into the possibility that he was affiliated with  a hate group.

But a review of 27-year-old’s social media accounts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and the far-right social network Gab, show that the shooter had fully embraced a wide range of conspiracy theories—from claiming the 9/11 attacks were staged to suggestions that former first lady Michelle Obama is a man to denying climate change. He also posted content opposing gun control measures.

The shooter spent much of his time online sharing anti-LGBTQ content, reposting and responding to content shared by right-wing figures like commentator Matt Walsh and fringe networks like One America News. His pinned tweet, posted in June, simply showed a rainbow flag on fire with the caption: “What to do with the LGBTQP [sic] flag.”

On Gab, one of his pinned posts was even more explicitly threatening to the LGBTQ community. “We need to STOP COMPROMISING on this LGBT dictatorship and not let them take over our lives,” he wrote. “Stop accepting this abomination that the government is forcing us to submit to these mentally disordered tyrants.”

Another pinned post on Gab featured a link to a video entitled: “When Should You Shoot a Cop,” along with the caption: “There will come a time that we have to do this.” While the shooter’s X profile remains active, his Gab profile was removed late on Monday. X and Gab did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The majority of the suspect’s posts are infused with an overt Christian nationalism, which quickly gives way to virulent antisemitism in much of the content he shared online.

The shooter only followed 19 people on X, including One American News, former President Donald Trump, and conspiracy theorist David Knight, who once worked with Alex Jones. The shooter also followed and boosted rightwing professor and conspiracy theory promoter Jordan Peterson, antivax activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and the right-wing satirical website the Babylon Bee.

While law enforcement continues to look into why the shooter carried out the attack, Carleton's daughter, Ari Carleton, told NBC on Monday that her family “doesn’t care” about him.

“We will continue to steer the narrative away from him and towards my mother and honoring her. He is irrelevant,” she told the broadcaster. “The media must stop glorifying these individuals by giving them this platform.”

Laura Ann Carleton, who was a well-known fashion designer in Los Angeles and operated two clothing stores, was also known  for supporting the LGBTQ community. 

“[She] spent her time helping and advocating for everyone in the community,” the Lake Arrowhead LGBTQ group said in a tribute on their Instagram page. 

Carleton, who preferred to be called Lauri, showed her support by putting small rainbow flags in flower pots outside her store and when they were stolen, she would replace them with even bigger ones, her friend Melissa Lawton told CBS.

Carleton is survived by Bort Carleton, her husband of 28 years, and nine children.

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In a video viewed by VICE News shared in a neo-Nazi group chat, an unseen man expresses disgust while unwrapping a package: “This is the package I was supposed to deliver to our EAC [Evergreen Active Club] guys in Idaho,” he said. “Let's look inside!” 

The man throws a repackaged Amazon box onto a bed and uses a knife to open it up. Inside, he shows black athletic gear, and black sweatshirts punctuated with the logo for the Pacific Northwest neo-Nazi cell. But hiding underneath the clothing, he highlights some orange and white boxes, bags full of pills, and a freezer bag full of glass vials.

“Fucking steroids, dude. Fucking drugs,” the man says before pulling out a t-shirt from the bottom of the box. “Oh more evergreen merch buried by the drugs.” 

This video could be some of the first evidence that these neo-Nazi fitness groups may be committing major crimes. The Evergreen Active Club is but one cell in an international network of neo-Nazi groups called Active Clubs that were formed around getting fit and training in martial arts. The Anti-Defamation League describes them as a “nationwide network of localized white supremacist crews” that “see themselves as fighters training for an ongoing war against a system.” 

Images from the unboxing video of the drugs found at the bottom of the box.

VICE News was able to identify some of the names of the drugs shown in the video and was able to confirm they are illegal steroids including dianabol and ZyhCG, a drug that increases testosterone production. VICE News was also able to identify ​​bacteriostatic water which is used in steroid use to dilute the drug so it can be injected. Steroids are considered a Schedule III controlled substance in Idaho, meaning that bringing the drugs across state lines can result in five years in prison. The FBI told VICE News in an email they could neither confirm nor deny any investigation into the situation.

If you have any information regarding neo-Nazi organizing or active clubs, we would love to hear from you. Please reach out to Mack Lamoureux via email at mack.lamoureux@vice.com or on Twitter at @macklamoureux.

The unboxing video was shared inside a Telegram group chat populated by Active Club leaders across the United States. Active Clubs are one of the fastest-growing neo-Nazi movements in America, with cells in almost every single state. The group can also be found in Canada, France, Australia, and Sweden and you can find an in depth breakdown of the network, how the cells form, and how they recruit and organize in this article. The network is deeply connected to other white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups like White Lives Matter, Patriot Front, and the Hammerskins, the latter of which have a history of crime.  

The movement was founded by Robert Rundo, a prominent neo-Nazi with a history of violence, in 2021. Rundo was just extradited from Romania to  the United States where he will be facing several conspiracies to riot charges he’s been running from for years.  

The Evergreen Active Club is led by a man named Daniel Rowe, a violent neo-Nazi who spent four and a half years in prison for stabbing an interracial couple. A local anti-fascist writeup on Rowe reports that during his time incarcerated, he joined up with a neo-Nazi prison gang. Following his release from prison Rowe continued his racial activism and networking. This eventually led to him forming and leading the Evergreen Active Club in 2023 and becoming a prominent figure in the Pacific Northwest's white nationalist scene.

An antifascist known as FashFreeNW aided in the research of the article on Rowe. They spoke to VICE News on the condition of anonymity and said the Evergreen Active Club is one of the most connected to Hammerskins. “Those OG skinheads (the Hammerskins) have always been involved in drugs,” they told VICE News. “I’d guess that other (Active clubs) are also trafficking steroids… They certainly use them.” 

Violent felons, such as Rowe, are prohibited from owning body armor in the United States, though images of Rowe wearing body armor and drinking beer have been posted on social media and Telegram.

Daniel Rowe pictured wearing body armor. (Telegram)

Spanning across several states in the Pacific Northwest, the Evergreen Active Club is one of the more prominent cells in the country. Prolific in its actions, the group routinely can be found postering, banner drops, and showing up to LGBTQ+ events to intimidate protestors. In late 2022, his group organized an MMA tournament they dubbed the Martyrs Day Rumble. Held in a Pasco, Washington, event center on December 3, the “rumble” was in honor of neo-Nazi terrorist Robert Mathews whose group The Order left a bloody trail of crimes in the 1980s.

Physical activity and aesthetics are guiding tenets of Active Clubs (in addition to neo-Nazisim, of course), so the use of steroids by these neo-Nazis is not surprising. A source with knowledge of the inner workings of the network told VICE News that in some Active Clubs steroid use is accepted and encouraged, but the cells are relatively autonomous so it’s not consistent across the board. 

Many neo-Nazis have been connected to steroids in the past: Anders Breivik, the neo-Nazi terrorist who killed 77 people in a horrific attack in 2011, wrote in his diary that aspiring mass murderers should begin doing steroids six weeks before their massacre. Christopher Hasson, a member of the coast guard, was arrested and charged with plotting a domestic terrorist attack in 2017. When police raided his home they found not only a trove of neo-Nazi memorabilia but also a container with over 30 vials of human growth hormone. Justen Watkins, a leader of the neo-Nazi terror cell the Base, who was just sentenced to years in prison for multiple charges related to his time in the Base was also charged with having methandienone, an illegal anabolic steroid. 

Kris Goldsmith, the CEO of Task Force Butler, a non-profit that gives veterans open-source intelligence tools to combat hate, told VICE News he’s not at all surprised by the steroid use. Task Force Butler just investigated a New England Nazi group and found that one of their more prominent members was juicing. Goldsmith said he’s also heard of several neo-Nazi influencers pushing their followers to juice,even at times giving instructions on podcasts. 

"They're all small, insecure men who make a lifestyle out of tormenting others because they're just so insecure with themselves,” said Goldsmith.

Goldsmith said he hopes the news of the Active Club's seeming involvement in moving drugs will push the authorities to take action, adding that “motorcycle gangs started getting treated like gangs” only after law enforcement realized they were involved in drug running.  

“When cops start to realize, 'Oh, well, you know, in order for these guys to be all jacked up on steroids, they’ve got to be getting it from somewhere. And more likely that they're getting it from their friends who they trust, wearing the same colors,’ so it's time to start treating active clubs like a gang,” said Goldsmith.

“Hopefully it'll help law enforcement with their shift in the way that they need to start thinking about these Nazi gangs and recognize that they meet the statutory definition of gang. And just because they're white and they call themselves NSC-131, it doesn't mean they're different from MS-13,” he added, referencing the international gang started in Los Angeles by Salvadoran immigrants.

Beyond this unboxing video, Active Clubs like Evergreen have recently experienced a few embarrassing incidents. 

In June, a smattering of EAC neo-Nazis gathered at a Pride event in Lewis County, Washington, to attempt to intimidate LGBTQ activists. It quickly turned south for the racists when a neo-Nazis was challenged to a push-up contest and was thoroughly destroyed by one of the Pride attendees on video. At one point as the neo-Nazi's pushups slowed dramatically, the LGBTQ supporter decided to rub it in with a few clapping push-ups. 

Just a few weeks later, the Rose City Nationalists, a group that was closely connected to the Evergreen Active Club through a now-defunct neo-Nazi network called 3N, were assaulted and chased off by Proud Boys at an event—something that led to a nationwide schism between the far-right groups. 

But despite the embarrassing videos, the infighting, and possible drug running, the Active Clubs are only growing. Odds are incidents like the one in the "neo-Nazi unboxing gone wrong" are going to become more and more frequent. 

Personal news: I’ll be guest-hosting 1A on NPR Monday and Tuesday, and Monday will be all about indictments. You should listen, and let me know what you think!

Be there, will be filed! 

Fulton County DA Fani Willis is seeking to kick off arraignments the week of Sept. 5. And with officials’ assurance that Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants will be booked just like everyone else in Fulton, that means a likely visit to infamous 901 Rice St. jail for processing. 

Willis is gunning for a very ambitious March 4, 2024 trial date. But before she even gets close, we’re in for many months of pre-trial motions, attempts to change venues, and, if this is like many other RICO cases, a rush to see which of the alleged anti-democratic co-conspirators can cooperate first. 

I called up University of Michigan Law professor and former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade and asked her what to expect as Fulton’s coup conspiracy case heads to trial. 

The last time we talked was back in March, 2022, when everybody was wondering if Merrick Garland even had the stomach to prosecute Donald Trump. 

Yeah, a lot has happened since then! 

Mark Meadows has already asked to remove his Georgia case to federal court. How does that affect the interplay between the Georgia case and the federal coup case?

It may be that other defendants who were federal officials at the time will join him. Donald Trump and Jeffrey Clark may have an argument, though I don’t know if it is a winning argument, that their case should be heard in federal court. The test is whether they were acting within the scope of their official duties when they committed the alleged conduct. My guess is that Fani Willis will argue that they were exceeding the scope of their authority when they engaged in this conduct, and therefore the cases should remain in state court. 

Isn’t there a risk that evidence in the federal case clashes or undercuts evidence in the Georgia case? 

Absolutely. I think the interplay between the federal election interference case and this case, is that you could see a conflict in witness testimony and cooperation. Any lawyer worth his salt is going to want protection for his clients in both forums. Mark Meadows is a prime example. The fact that he was excluded from the federal case made me believe he was cooperating there. But now we see him included in the state case, and that causes me to reconsider that conclusion. Because if he were to testify in the federal case in exchange for an immunity agreement from the federal prosecutors, that would not necessarily have to be honored in state court. So he would say, “I don’t want to testify at all.”

So you’re skeptical that Meadows was cooperating at all because he’s charged in Georgia, and he would have cooperated in both places?

It may be that he was gaming out that he would not be charged in Georgia. And so he was focusing solely on the federal case. And now that he has been charged in Georgia, it's not too late for him to decide to cooperate there. He may still do that. But it would seem odd to me that he would actually testify in one forum when he faces exposure in the other.

Trump is charged in both places, but what about others who could be? John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Ken Chesebro, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark… they’re not charged in the federal case, yet. How does being charged in Georgia affect their incentives to plead guilty, or not? 

If I’m the lawyer for one of those defendants I really want to get a global resolution here. And that’s going to require coordination between Fulton County and the Special Counsel. As a defendant I want to resolve my case, but I want to resolve all the cases. It doesn’t do me any good to plead guilty and work with Jack Smith only to get hit hard in the other forum. So what can you promise to do for me? And sometimes, when people come to cooperate late in the game, prosecutors say, “no thanks, I’ve got all the evidence I need.” So the best time to cooperate is usually before you get charged with a crime. 

How quickly would you expect the 18 co-defendants in Georgia to start clamoring to explore a deal?

There’s often value in being the first one in the door. But not every one of these people is going to know a lot about the heart of the investigation. This enterprise starts at the very top (with the President of the United States), it has some mid level people and then it goes all the way down to lower level people. Those are the people who are fake electors or those who tried to intimidate Ruby Freeman. Some of them may believe they’re innocent and want to go to trial. But the sooner you get in the door, the better the deal gets, because as time goes on, the prosecutor is more likely to say, “look, I got 18 other people who’ve already pled guilty, you don’t add much value to me.” It’s best to get in the door fast.

Speaking of deadlines, how do you rate the chances that Fani Willis gets her March 4 trial date that she’s requested? 

I think it’s a fine place for her to start, but I think it seems unlikely that it will really go on March 4. With 19 defendants, that’s a lot of discovery. That’s a complex case. They may set that as an initial trial date, just to keep the heat on, and I imagine that some of those 19 will plead guilty. But it appears at least some of the defendants are going to trial. They could break down into smaller groups of 5 or 6 who are tried together. But trial dates are made to be broken. The RICO cases I've had a chance to handle in my career have taken years, not months.

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Fani pack

As Barbara McQuade said, RICO conspiracies really draw a crowd! Getting a trial date on March 4 is likely to be aspirational for Fani Willis, given that she’s got 19 co-defendants and 30 (!) unindicted co-conspirators. 

Speaking of, here’s a great list of the identities or probably identities of those 30. They range from the Trumpists you know, like Boris Epshteyn and Mike Flynn (maybe) to a bunch of lesser-known fake electors, campaign operatives, and others. 

One of the higher-profile people on there is Georgia Lt. Gov Burt Jones. Willis was blocked from prosecuting Jones on conflict of interest grounds; she co-hosted a fundraiser for Jones’ Dem opponent in the 2022 midterms. Now Georgia’s Prosecuting Attorneys Council is getting ready to appoint a special prosecutor to see if Jones, like the other non-cooperating fake electors, merits charges. 

How about never, is never good for you?

Jack Smith designed his federal coup indictment for speed, and has already requested a trial date of Jan. 2, 2024. Donald Trump’s counter-offer? April, 2026. Conveniently, that’s after the statute of limitations likely has run out all of his co-conspirators! US District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s scheduling hearing is set for Aug. 28. Cable’s having fun.

Tell overture

You’ve probably heard that X, when it was Twitter, went to the mat to be able to tip off Donald Trump that Jack Smith was sliding wayyyy into his DMs. It was all part of the legal battles over a search warrant for Trump’s Twitter activity the Special Counsel sought and secured back in January.

So, while Elon Musk was fighting to alert Trump, why was he simultaneously meeting with Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy? 

The violence section

What’s the big deal if Trump intimidates witnesses or makes references to violence as he rails against judges and prosecutors? 

By now you can set your watch by the threats that fall on anyone whose civic or professional duty involves making Trump accountable. In Georgia they publish grand jurors’ names once an indictment is issued, and it took about a day for the doxxing and violent intimidation to begin. 

Meanwhile, Judge Chutkan hasn’t even scheduled Trump’s trial in the federal coup case yet, and already a Texas woman has been arrested for threatening to kill her. Abigail Jo Shry, of Alvin, Tex., was charged after threatening to kill Judge Chutkan, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who is also Black, and “all Democrats and all people in the LGBTQ community.” 

“You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” Shry said in a voicemail left at Chutkan’s office in Washington, according to a criminal complaint. 

Groundskeeper wily 

Carlos De Oliveira, the Mar-a-Lago property manager and Trump’s co-defendant in the “cover-up of the cover-up” portion of the classified records case, finally has a lawyer, and was finally arraigned. 

De Oliveira pleaded not guilty to four counts of conspiracy, obstruction, and false statements, after dragging his arraignment out for weeks. And just like that… prosecutors are raising concerns about De Oliveira’s attorney, John Irving. The issue is that Irving also represents three witnesses in the case, which could be a conflict of interest for De Oliveira. Prosecutors raised similar concerns with lawyer Stanley Woodward, who reps co-defendant Walt Nauta and also several witnesses. 

Trying time

Former Trump advisor and unindicted coup cheerleader Peter Navarro tried, again, to delay his imminent contempt trial for snubbing January 6 committee subpoenas. It didn’t work, the trial starts Sept. 5. 

Same goes for unindicted (federal coup case) and indicted co-conspirator (Georgia) John Eastman, who asked the California State Bar Court to delay his ongoing disbarment trial, arguing his criminal troubles could prevent him from mounting a strong defense as he fights to keep his law license. The court denied Eastman’s application, and the trial, held over from June, is set to resume next week. 

Going long 

Federal prosecutors are aiming way over the horizon for Enrique Tarrio and other Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy. The feds are asking the judge for 33 years for Tarrio and Joseph Biggs, and 20 years for Dominic “Spazzo” Pezolla, who was acquitted on sedition but convicted of a bunch of other charges. 

And DOJ is seeking one of its longest sentences yet for a Jan. 6 rioter at a hearing scheduled for today. The government is asking a judge to sentence convicted Proud Boy Chris Worrell to 14 years for assaulting officers, profiting off of his pre-trial detention, perjuring himself at trial, and showing no remorse for the whole thing. Worrell’s lawyers are asking for 30 months home confinement. . 

Crimson chide

Alabama Republicans’ attempt to defy the Supreme Court’s order that they expand Black voting power in the state’s congressional districts was back in front of federal judges Monday. It all comes from Allen v Milligan, an opinion earlier this summer where the justices backed up the lower courts in telling Alabama GOP’s that their single majority-Black district violates the Voting Rights Act. 

Alabama lawmakers responded by tinkering with their map, but decidedly not creating a second Black-majority district, or one close to a majority, as the courts had ordered. 

Judges seemed skeptical on Monday of the legislatures’ intentions, and their contention that they couldn’t fully obey the courts without violating the Constitution. (It was either that, or another riff in Alabama’s long history of defying courts and disenfranchising Black voters.) The case could be headed right back to the Supreme Court, but the map has to be settled by October if it’s going to be used for the 2024 election.  

Cal. rippin’

It’s getting wild in Shasta County, Calif., where GOP officials spent $1 million of taxpayer money to replace Dominion voting machines, and now the voter fraud seems to be popping up elsewhere.

“You can quote me to say, ‘they’re f-----g thrilled.’”

— Veteran mob lawyer Murray Richman, asked how his clients feel about former U.S. Attorney and O.G. racketeering prosecutor Rudy Giuliani being charged with RICO violations in Georgia.

Planet Reno — Nevada has its own Mike Lindell, and he can’t stop, won’t stop, using his millions to push stolen election claims in the courts. Robert Beadles, a wealthy ex-construction firm owner and congressional candidate, was threatened with sanctions for using lawsuits to harass officials and tie up courts. He withdrew one federal suit this week but says he’s headed back into state court to prove election fraud even Trumpist GOP state officials don’t buy. 

Vos deference — Now liberals have won control of the state Supreme Court, and now that a lawsuit challenging the GOP’s years-long gerrymandered stranglehold on district maps is in play, Republicans are prepared for a legal fight on the merits. Psych! GOP Senate leader Robin Vos is threatening to impeach the newly elected liberal justice who ran on the argument that the maps are unfair. 

Three out of four ain’t bad — “I voted for you. I worked for you. I campaigned for you. I just won’t do anything illegal for you.” That’s former Arizona GOP House Speaker Rusty Bowers getting all Meatloaf on Donald Trump, during one of Trump’s overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy alleged in the Fulton County indictment. 

Just desert — First the fake electors in Michigan, then Georgia. Could Arizona be next? 

What the heck happened in Coffee County, Georgia? 

FROM LAWFARE

Roger Stone pushing the elector plot, on tape.

FROM MSNBC

What is the plan, Republicans?

FROM NATIONAL REVIEW

It appeared to be a coordinated effort, signaling a dramatic escalation in the insurgent movement’s year-long efforts to quietly return to Meta’s Facebook, despite the company labeling the Boogaloo a “dangerous network” in 2020 and banning it after its adherents were linked to several incidents of real-world violence, including murder. 

And it wasn’t just 80 pages. 

The Tech Transparency Project, a social media watchdog that’s been monitoring the Boogaloo on Facebook since its inception in late 2019, compiled a database of more than 200 pages, two-thirds of which were created just this spring. Its findings offer some sense of scale to the recent report by NBC News that found the Boogaloo movement was back on Facebook despite long-standing bans, raising questions about moderation failures. Days after that report came out, Facebook appeared to crack down on the Boogaloo network, axing around 100 pages. 

But members of the Boogaloo community, who are bonded by their shared fantasies of a bloody civil war or uprising, had prepared for this moment. Within 24 hours of that crackdown, dozens of pages were already back up and running. Some of the movement’s top lieutenants used a web of dormant back-up pages to coordinate what they dubbed “Operation Boomerang” to reinstate the network—despite Facebook supposedly having mechanisms in place to prevent what they call “recidivism.” 

More than 60 pages were created in the last two weeks of July. “They will absolutely be looking for our new pages etc,” wrote The Grey Man, one of the most influential accounts in the Boogaloo network (prior to the latest purge, he had thousands of followers across six different pages). “Avoid pit vipers and using our terms as the algorithms may be targeting them. Remember what got hit in the last purge and assume those conditions apply again.” He also assured his followers that he and other leaders were “working diligently to come back, identify algorithmic triggers, the cause and methods used to purge us.” 

Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, thinks the Boogaloo have little to fear. Facebook has shown time and again that it takes a whack-a-mole approach to content moderation, said Paul, rather than a proactive one. And these days, it often takes an unflattering news article or report to directly flag those pages to the company, in order for them to take action, she added. 

After VICE News contacted Meta for this story, many more pages disappeared. A spokesperson for Meta declined to offer comment though, instead pointing to a statement that the company put out in 2020, in which it pledged to continue studying the Boogaloo movement and continue to remove content or pages that violate their ban from the platform. “So long as violent movements operate in the physical world, they will seek to exploit digital platforms,” Meta wrote at the time. “We are stepping up our efforts against this network and know there is still more to do.” 

But despite this commitment, the Boogaloo movement has been able to operate openly on Facebook for nearly a year, building a vast network of pages while making almost no effort to conceal their ideological affiliation. In her dataset, Paul coded pages according to whether they used explicit Boogaloo iconography in their banner photo, profile picture or page name—such as their flag, which has an igloo in the top left corner and a strip of Hawaiian print running across the center. She found that, prior to the latest purge, more than 100 pages (over half of the entries in her database) used those symbols. 

These symbols act as the glue in what continues to be a sprawling ideological movement, that’s drawn in hardline libertarians, shitposters, militiamen, firearm fanatics, anti-government extremists, anarchists, accelerationists, white supremacists, and these days, some Christian nationalists. 

In 2020, the movement made its way offline and into the real world by way of what they saw as clear examples of government tyranny. First it was proposed gun laws in Virginia. Then it was lockdown orders designed to keep people safe from the deadly spread of COVID-19. Then, after a white cop killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, the Boogaloo Bois tried to co-opt the ensuing national unrest to advance their own goals—accelerating the collapse of America. 

While the movement’s core today looks and sounds a lot like the original network in 2020—such as generalized anger towards the government, violent rhetoric targeting lawmakers or federal agents, and memes glorifying guns—for now, it lacks clear focus and the impetus to actually return to the streets. 

Members of the movement have become increasingly nihilistic or “blackpilled.” One page with 10,000 followers recently posted an image of a noose, with the words “I’m past the point of just wanting them in prison.” “I have been at that point for quite some time,” someone replies.

Screenshot of Boogaloo Facebook page showing ongoing threats against government officials.

There have been, however, recent efforts by a few prominent voices in the movement to streamline the Boogaloo’s goals. Earlier this year, some pages started circulating a newly drawn “manifesto” that resembled a more extreme Libertarian political platform, demanding the legalization of drugs, an overhaul of the tax system, and the demilitarization of police agencies, all while making vague complaints about tyranny and personal freedom. “If it is radical and extreme to simply want to be left alone, then we will be radical, and we will be extremists,” the 22-page document stated. “One does not shake the hornets’ nest and complain of the venom.” 

Others have tried to find ways to monetize the movement, selling Boog merch—and even a Boogaloo-themed wine called “The Blood of Tyrants.” 

But the majority of the Facebook pages remain a noisy, chaotic rabble that glorifies violence and guns and takes a nihilistic view of the future. Some even continue to openly share instructions for making explosive devices. And on its fringes, the movement appears to be evolving in ways that Paul, the director of the Tech Transparency Project, finds alarming. 

Particularly troubling to Paul is the creeping overlap with Christian nationalism, whose adherents believe they’re fighting a spiritual war to make all American policies and cultural institutions reflect evangelical Christian values. 

The combination of Christian nationalism’s goals with the violent fantasies of the Boogaloo movement remind Paul of the types of propaganda she’d see promoted in ISIS networks on Facebook almost a decade ago. There’s also growing overlap between white supremacist content and Boogaloo content. Screenshot of page showing Boogaloo and Christian nationalist crossover, via Katie Paul, executive director of the Tech transparency Project

Screenshot of page showing Boogaloo and Christian nationalist crossover. (Courtesy of Katie Paul, executive director of the Tech transparency Project)

The first major action that Facebook took against the Boogaloo movement was in June 2020, after adherents of the movement had started racking up charges on all sorts of crimes, such as murder, bomb plots, and even attempting to sell weapons to the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. 

Then, Facebook declared the Boogaloo a “dangerous network” for “actively promoting violence against civilians, law enforcement and government officials and institutions.” The movement was banished, which resulted in it splintering across an array of fringe sites including MeWe and Telegram. The split intensified simmering divisions between Boogaloo factions, and cut off the movement’s ability to recruit “normies” on Facebook. 

Brian Fishman, who previously oversaw Facebook’s global counterterrorism policy, was closely involved with efforts to deplatform the Boogaloo movement back in 2020. The “strategic disruption” of the Boogaloo network that Facebook conducted that year was an “intense lift,” Fishman told VICE News, and a very manual process—meaning it required a lot of attention from multiple moderators in addition to AI tools. “We impacted the problem pretty significantly, and we kept it from being a surface level movement. We forced them to go underground, more or less,” said Fishman. 

After some half-hearted, short-lived efforts to rebuild on Facebook, the Boogaloo eventually retreated. The deplatforming was coupled with a crackdown by federal law enforcement, which stoked paranoia about infiltration. 

By Jan. 2021, the Boogaloo movement had disappeared from public view entirely. According to George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, there were 49 arrests of people affiliated with the Boogaloo movement from 16 states between January 2020 and July 2022. A trickle of Boogaloo arrests continue to the present day.

But last year, galvanized by rising anti-FBI sentiment due to the prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters and the raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, Boogaloo Bois started rebuilding on Facebook and plotting their comeback. 

A report by Tech Transparency Project flagged this development in September, resulting in a small flurry of page removals that failed to make any meaningful impact on the network. Then in March, VICE News reported about the Boogaloo movement’s continued efforts to rebuild, and highlighted their presence on Facebook, which again, led to a small removal of pages in the network. 

Boogaloo’s return to Facebook has coincided with massive layoffs at Meta, which resulted in the company ending more than 200 content moderators’ contracts earlier this year. Fishman doesn’t have any specific insight into any particular policy changes regarding moderation at Meta, but he did express concern about a lack of “surge capacity,” which leaves the company potentially unprepared for a fresh wave of extremist activity around what’s anticipated to be yet another highly contentious election season. 

The Boogaloo movement has always been good at finding creative ways to skirt moderation bans. The earliest example of this was their adoption of “Big Luau” and “Blue Igloo”—homophones of Boogaloo—as a way to evade early Facebook moderation. Those terms helped shape the Boogaloo Bois’ aesthetic, and explains why they often opted to wear Hawaiian shirts under their tactical gear. 

Those terms have continued to evolve, and the movement continues to find new ways to integrate in-jokes into their shared language. They’ll use synonyms for “luau” or “igloo” such as “fiesta” or “ice house.” They briefly called themselves the Alphabet Bois, in reference to federal agencies, which first evolved into jokes about Alphabet Soup, and later being simplified to soup in general. 

When Boogaloo Bois were arrested for attempting to sell weapons to Hamas, the movement began embracing the term “Boojahideen.” Following previous VICE News reports on the movement, they started co-opting VICE’s logo and changing their page names to reference it. 

Not only does their shared language continue to evolve, but they are actively trying to become more resilient to moderation efforts. They’ve posted instructions for how to create new accounts and ensure their identities are protected—which is why they use the Page function in particular, as opposed to Groups, which they primarily used in 2020, making it somewhat easier to identify members. 

Months ago, I’d set out with the goal of trying to find out who was behind this network. I’d wanted to know whether a few people were diligently operating this massive web of pages or if the number of pages were representative of the movement’s actual size. 

I sent a fairly innocuous email to a handful of pages that featured email addresses, explaining that I’ve hoped to talk to them about the Boogaloo’s return to Facebook. But within days, the community was up in arms. Screenshots of my requests were posted on Boogaloo Facebook pages, along with instructions to bombard me with emails and dick pics. The campaign was coordinated with the hashtag #viceoffensive, and members photoshopped my face into unflattering memes, set up fake accounts pretending to be me, and spammed me with memes. 

After trawling through page after page, I noticed something odd. One Facebook user, named Travis Pugh, was leaving identical “reviews” on many of those pages. 

“I’ll have two number 9s, a number 9 large, a number 6 with extra dip, a number 7, two number 45s, one with cheese, and a large soda. and I recommend this page for its Based and Wholesome Content.”

For anyone who hasn’t been intensely enmeshed in memespeak and gaming lore from the past two decades, it’s a reference to a famous order at “Big Smokes,” a drive-thru to 2004’s Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas game. I decided to DM Pugh to ask him about this review he was leaving—and whether he knew who was behind the Boogaloo’s return to Facebook. 

He responded almost immediately. “Deep Russian Breath,” he wrote. “Now. What does a bankrupt news company journalist writer vant with Zis Man.” I told Pugh that I suspected he was building the dozens of Boogaloo pages that he was leaving reviews for. 

“I’m going to be Brutally Fucking Honest with you,” he replied. “NYET. I did not make those pages, I just recommended and commented on them just for the shits and giggles. “The lulz” 1 would say in 2008.”

He later conceded that he isn’t actually Russian—that was a bit. And he said he has no idea who was making those pages, but whoever it was, they were “really determined to get the Boogaloo started and going.” 

But instead, a new leader has seemingly emerged: a 13-year-old girl known to her followers only as “Tiny Teflon,” the name of the Telegram channel she uses to communicate with her followers. According to multiple live chats on Telegram reviewed by VICE News, Protzman appears to have groomed the girl as his protege, hosting her on his live chats on Telegram, where he had tens of thousands of followers.

Many of Protzman’s followers have permanently broken family relationships, emptied their bank accounts, and destroyed their lives to follow his wild conspiracy theories. And now it seems they are ready to do the same for a child, whose real identity is not known.

Tiny Teflon has created her own channel, conducted live streams with followers, and most worrying of all, has announced her plan to indoctrinate more children into the cult by teaching them how to decode real word events using the movement’s bastardized form of Jewish numerology, gematria.

“I definitely think I’m gonna have more kids involved in this,” Tiny said during a live chat on her channel on August 6. “Maybe they could share more code, because I don’t want to be talking the entire time when I do this show in the future. So I’ll definitely think of having kids share codes and teach what they know too.”

“It’s worrying to see this young girl be put on a pedestal by a bunch of adults after the passing of Protzman,” an open-source researcher who uses the nickname “Karma” to avoid being targeted by the members of Protzman’s cult, which she has tracked closely since its inception, told VICE News.

When alive, Protzman used gematria to convince his followers that he could see into the future and communicate with everyone from former president Donald Trump to JFK Jr. Before becoming a cult leader, Protzman was a demolition expert in Washington state. He first gained attention in November 2021 when he convinced his followers that JFK and JFK Jr. were going to reappear in Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. Around a thousand people traveled from across the country to Dallas only to be disappointed by the Kennedys’ failure to appear.

Despite this, many of Protzman’s dedicated followers remained loyal, and followed him across the country for the next 18 months. Many of them destroyed their families and finances in the process. Protzman continued to claim JFK Jr. was alive and continually changed his predictions, at one point claiming Trump was just JFK Jr. in disguise, and finally, shortly before his death, claiming he was in fact the reincarnated JFK Jr. 

Protzman died on June 30 in a Rochester hospital as a result of “multiple blunt force injuries” after he “lost control of his dirt bike” according to a report from the Southern Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner’s Office, which was obtained by VICE News.

While Protzman was the leader of the group, he introduced Tiny Teflon in March 2022 by featuring her on a live chat in his Telegram channels. During the chat, and in subsequent appearances, the pair would use gematria to make links between everything from the 2011 movie The Smurfs and the timing of Trump’s appearance in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York to conclude that Q’s predictions about the mass execution of the child-trafficking cabal is about to come true. It’s not known if there was any familial connection between Protzman or Tiny Teflon, or how they knew each other.

As a sign of her growing position within the group, Tiny Teflon was made an administrator of Protzman’s main Telegram channel, though she posted very little over the last 6 months. However, since his death, the teenager has re-emerged as a leading voice in the group.

In late July, she showed up at a Trump rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she was  photographed with multiple members of the JFK group.

Then she began to post again in the Negative 48 channel. As well as posting her “decodes,” on August 1 she shared a link to her new channel called ABC 123. The channel’s description says it will contain “Tiny Teflon’s Decodes, Research and Much More!” and in all caps, adds: “CHANNEL MONITORED BY ADULT.”

The description doesn’t mention who the adult is, but it is likely her mother, a Protzman devotee who has an account on Telegram as “Teflon Don.” Using this account she has promoted her daughter’s work as well as celebrating her birthday with a message posted in the main Negative 48 channel last year. 

During one live chat, Tiny Teflon went into more detail about how she would use her position to recruit more children into the cult.

“I definitely want help out with kids and teaching gematria, it’d be so much fun,” she said. She added that she plans to create a beginners’ guide for children on how to use gematria to decode real world events.

At the end of the chat some of the listeners effusively praised Tiny Teflon: “I think you inspire many, many adults and children. So thank you so much. We appreciate you. Love you so much,” said one.

Another added, “It was a pleasure listening to you and I hope my little girl can start listening to you and go from there.”

One listener responded to Tiny’s plan about including more children by saying: “I think that’s awesome because my daughter will be watching you so I’m sure we’ll be following you.” Seconds later her daughter also spoke on the live chat: “Thank you, you did so good stuff [sic], and I definitely can’t wait to hear more of you,” the girl said.

A listener identified only as “Beverly” said she thought gematria could help children with their reading and math, adding: “Can I just say great job to your parents. I mean, my gosh, I can’t imagine how proud they must be.”

While there are others who are vying to replace Protzman as leader, close watchers of the group view Tiny Telfon’s assertion that she wants to use her position to bring more children into the fold as deeply worrying.

“I believe it’s too early to see where she will fit into the group dynamics right now, it’s definitely something I will be keeping a close eye on,” “Karma,” the open-source researcher, told VICE News. “For a group who have claimed to be all about ‘saving the children’ using a child to push your own beliefs is disgusting and disturbing.”

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here. 

The posts have racked up tens of millions of views and many of them remain on the platforms without any warning that the claims being made in them are entirely false.

While the claims about the government seeking to create a smart island or turn the fire-razed city of Lahaina into a 15-minute city are new, the idea that laser weapon systems developed by the government have been used to start the wildfires are nothing new, dating back to at least the devastating wildfires that raged across California in October 2017.

These claims merge two distinct conspiracy narratives: a deep distrust of governments, and claims that undermine the role of climate change in the dramatic increase in the number of wildfires raging across North America in recent years.

The fires in Maui began on August 8 and have so far claimed the lives of 99 people, with 1,300 more still unaccounted for, making this the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in a century. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the fire, but there is no evidence so far that they were started deliberately. 

But almost as soon as they began, social media users were making up wild allegations about the origins of the deadly blazes. One Instagram video posted on August 11 shows footage from the aftermath of the fires, with the narrator claiming it looks like the aftermath of a bomb being detonated. It has racked up millions of views on Instagram and on other platforms where it has been reposted.

On X, where much of the conspiracies have been spread, video claiming to show a “direct energy weapon” or DEW being fired in Maui was viewed 10 million times before a Community Note was added pointing out that the footage actually showed a transformer explosion in Chile earlier this year.

Another post on X showed what appeared to be a laser beam pointing at a burning church in Maui, but a review of the original image taken by an Associated Press photographer shows the image had been doctored. That post racked up 9 million views.

Claims that DEWs have been deployed to purposely begin fires can be traced back at least six years. In 2017, a flat-earth YouTuber known as ODD Reality claimed DEWs were used to start the devastating wildfires that raged across California that October.

A year later, conspiracy theorists blamed Northern California’s Camp Fire, as well as the Woolsey Fire and the Hill Fire on direct energy weapons. In 2021, the same claim was made by Canadian conspiracy theorists who traveled to Lytton, British Columbia to witness the aftermath of a wildfire that destroyed 90% of the village and killed two residents.

Directed energy weapons or laser weapons are not an invention of conspiracy theorists; for decades the U.S. government has been attempting to get them to work on the battlefield, where they could be used to combat drone and missile attacks.

“The Department of Defense spends about $1 billion annually on directed energy--concentrated electromagnetic energy--weapons, including high energy lasers and high powered microwaves,” Jon Ludwigson, a director at the Government Accountability Office’s Contracting and National Security Acquisitions (CNSA) team, said in a video last April.

However, as Ludwigson said in the video, getting the technology out of the lab and onto the battlefield has proven difficult for the DOD, which has yet to deploy such a system in a real world scenario. 

For the Maui wildfires, the conspiracy theorists have added a new twist to their claims, asserting baselessly that the fires were purposely started to fulfill the World Economic Forum’s goal of creating a smart island on Maui or a 15-minute city in Lahaina, depending on which conspiracy theorist you listen to.

Some social media users pointed to a conference that took place on Maui in January, where scientists discussed the idea of 15-minute cities—an urban planning concept where all amenities would be available within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

While the idea of 15-minute cities have been around for decades, in recent years conspiracy theories have latched onto it claiming it is a method to allow governments control their populations.

“The governor did say this is climate change doing this,” the narrator of the August 11 Instagram video said. “Interesting. What they don’t talk about is in January how they had in Maui a smart city conference to turn Maui into an entire smart island, changing everything to electric, renewables, solar panels and pushing everybody into electric vehicles—15-minute smart cities.”

However none of the research papers presented at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, which has been held on the island since 1968, discussed turning Maui into a “smart island.”

The conspiracies about the Maui wildfires have been shared on all platforms, but they have found their largest audience on X, where they have been viewed millions of times and even promoted in search results despite the company’s claims that it has rid the platform of almost all disinformation. 

“By all objective metrics, X is a much healthier and safer platform than it was a year ago,” Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X told CNBC last week, adding that 99.9% of the content on the platform was what she called “healthy.”

But conspiracy theories around the Maui wildfires have spread unchecked on the platform and were among the top results returned when VICE News searched for terms like “Maui” and “wildfire.”

Many of those spreading the conspiracies are subscribed to the Twitter Blue service, which ensures their posts are promoted more heavily in search results.   

And one of those presented another twist on the “our government is using direct energy weapons to kill their own people” conspiracy, by claiming that soft drink maker Mountain Dew was in on the conspiracy from the beginning.

“The government has been lying,” one X user wrote. “The name of the weapon they used is a military plane and it’s called the D.E.W It’s no coincidence that mountain dew made a Maui Dew drink called burst, or should we say maui burst into flames? Think about it. People wake up.”

Trump was charged in Atlanta, Georgia late Monday night in a sweeping racketeering case along with 18 others over their alleged attempt to steal the Peach State’s presidential election in 2020. The fact that Trump’s now been charged with serious crimes at the state level means he can’t even try to pardon himself if he wins the White House again—because a president can only pardon federal crimes.

This time, high-profile advisors also joined him, including lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and “kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell. 

Trump faces 13 counts, including a violation of the state’s racketeering act (known as Georgia RICO), soliciting a public officer to violate their oath and conspiracy to commit forgery. The 98-page indictment lays out a litany of activities that amount to a sprawling plot to negate President Joe Biden’s victory, including various acts from Trump’s notorious phone call urging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” exactly enough votes for Trump to win the state, to an attempt to send a slate of fake electors to Congress.

Trump’s already been charged in two federal cases by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Legal experts say that if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election, he might be able to stymie the prosecution by ordering the Department of Justice to stand down, or by making a legally-untested attempt to pardon himself. He’s also a defendant in a false-documents case in New York that likely would not result in prison time even if he’s convicted.

But Georgia also makes it particularly difficult for local authorities to pardon away crimes. The pardon power in Georgia falls to a five-person panel, not the governor. And the rules say a defendant is supposed to serve at least five years of their sentence first, before they qualify for a pardon. 

All that is bad news for Trump—because the case he just caught in Georgia comes with a minimum five year sentence if he’s found guilty. In a late-night press conference on Monday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said a conviction in this case would not mean probation.

“RICO charges [have] time that you have to serve,” Willis said. “It’s not a probated sentence.” 

She added that she’s planning to ask the judge to set a trial date “within the next six months.” 

Georgia RICO

The new charges rely on Georgia’s racketeering law, which was originally designed to take down organized crime. Lately, the law has been used against alleged gangs and even the rapper Young Thug. 

Georgia RICO is the junior cousin of the federal RICO statute, an anti-mafia law created in 1970. In a nutshell, both laws prohibit anyone from using an organization to commit a series of crimes. This indictment accuses Trump, Giuliani, Meadows, Eastman, Powell and others of effectively forming an ad hoc “criminal organization” after Trump lost the election, which operated for a while towards a single purpose—attempting to secure Trump’s victory in Georgia by illegal means.

The original federal RICO statute was designed to make mob bosses accountable for crimes they ordered someone else to do, by letting prosecutors brand the entire organization as an ongoing criminal enterprise. After the federal law was passed, 33 states followed suit with their own versions. Since then, the applications of Georgia’s RICO law have expanded beyond traditional organized criminal networks. 

Building unorthodox Georgia RICO cases just happens to be Willis’ signature move. Before she was elected Fulton County’s top local prosecutor in early 2021, Willis was best known for leading a racketeering case against 12 public school teachers in Atlanta accused of falsifying their students’ scores on standardized tests to improve their schools’ standing. At the time, she argued that the teachers violated Georgia’s RICO law by using the school system, a “legitimate enterprise,” to engage in widespread cheating. Eleven educators were convicted.  

Trump’s attorneys blasted the prosecution for allegedly relying on politically biased witnesses in the grand jury process, and for somehow letting a mysterious document detailing the case against Trump become public earlier on Monday, before the charges were formally announced. 

“The events that have unfolded today have been shocking and absurd,” attorneys Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg wrote in a statement. “We look forward to a detailed review of this indictment which is undoubtedly just as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been.”

Willis said on Monday night that Trump and the rest of the defendants now have until Aug. 25 to turn themselves in for arraignment.