Advocacy group releases leaked emails from White House adviser Stephen Miller to Breitbart

WASHINGTON – Stephen Miller, a senior White House policy adviser, pushed white nationalist material to staffers at Breitbart, a right-wing website, through 2015 and leading up to the 2016 election, according to a report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The report released by the SPLC is the first installment in a series. More than 900 emails between Miller and Breitbart were examined by SPLC’s Hatewatch. “More than 80 percent” of the emails “relate to or appear on threads relating to the subjects of race or immigration,” the report says.

Miller is one of Trump’s main influences on immigration policies, including restrictions on travel from Muslim-majority countries and family separation policies at the southern border.

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"Miller’s perspective on race and immigration across the emails is repetitious. When discussing crime, which he does scores of times, Miller focuses on offenses committed by nonwhites. On immigration, he touches solely on the perspective of severely limiting or ending nonwhite immigration to the United States," the nonprofit group wrote.

Katie McHugh, a former Breitbart editor who leaked the emails to the SPLC, said, "What Stephen Miller sent to me in those emails has become policy at the Trump administration." McHugh renounced her far-right views after being fired from the site in 2017 for anti-Muslim tweets.

Some of the findings published by the SPLC include evidence that Miller pushed links from white supremacist site VDARE as an editorial basis for Breitbart articles, including links to articles about conspiracy theories such as "white genocide," which claims nonwhite people are trying to eliminate the white race.

Miller touted a French novel that warns of a migrant invasion. “The Camp of Saints” is a popular book among white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

The report says Miller directed McHugh to “draw information” from articles published in "American Renaissance," a white supremacist online publication, about crimes committed by minorities and immigrants.

“It was after lunchtime. I was sitting at my desk with my MacBook, and as Miller was speaking, I was looking away … to better concentrate on what he was saying,” McHugh told Hatewatch. “Miller asked me if I had seen the recent ‘AmRen’ article about crime statistics and race. I responded in the affirmative because I had read it. Many of us (on the far right) had read it. I remember being struck by the way he called it ‘AmRen,’ the nickname.”

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Miller’s name appeared in "American Renaissance" as an author in 2005, according to the SPLC, when the site republished a piece he wrote for "FrontPage Magazine," a far-right online publication.

Hatewatch said Miller was angry at retailers who stopped selling Confederate flags after the Charleston church shooting when white supremacist Dylann Roof slaughtered nine African Americans in 2015.

The SPLC highlighted Miller's mentions of President Calvin Coolidge, who signed the eugenics-era Immigration Act of 1924 that limited immigration from certain parts of the world into the USA, as a foundation for why the United States should stop immigration altogether. The SPLC noted that scholars said Hitler portrayed this policy in his book “Mein Kampf” as a potential model for Nazi Germany.

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted that Miller “has been exposed as a bonafide white nationalist” and called for him to resign.

White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said officials had not seen the report but called the SPLC “a far-left smear organization” whose members “libel, slander and defame conservatives for a living. They are beneath public discussion.”

The SPLC wrote on Twitter that “the only appropriate response is to fire Stephen Miller. Hate doesn’t belong in the White House,” and it included a link to a petition.

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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is vying for the 2020 Democratic nomination, said Miller’s “white nationalist views are a danger to the American people. We are going to defeat this hateful administration and everything it stands for.”

According to the SPLC’s report, Miller was successful in shaping multiple stories that appeared on Breitbart regarding race and immigration when Steve Bannon was executive chair of the site. Bannon later served as White House chief strategist in the Trump administration and as the chairman for Trump's 2016 campaign.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Advocacy group releases emails from Stephen Miller to Breitbart