Reports tie JD Vance to more extremists, conspiracy theories
Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has connections to at least two more extremists, according to reports this week. That’s in addition to being friendly with a far-right commentator who was exposed for his racist writings. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is reaching more than a billion people with his misleading election claims, a study shows. And federal prosecutions of public threats are on track to hit another high in 2024.
It’s the week in extremism.
JD Vance and the extremists
Former President Donald Trump’s running mate was in the news twice this week for his connections to extremists. The revelations come a week after USA TODAY reported that Richard Hanania, a far-right commentator unveiled last year as the writer of racist essays on white supremacist websites, was one of the contributors to the conservative manifesto Project 2025 – while also having a friendly relationship with Vance.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported on Vance’s 20 months of messages to Charles Johnson, a conspiracy theorist who has doubted the Holocaust and was banned from Twitter for veiled threats against an organizer of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The same day, it was revealed Vance endorsed an upcoming book authored by another far-right conspiracy theorist, Jack Posobiec. Posobiec was a major promoter of the discredited “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. The book praises fascist dictators and describes the far-left as “unhumans.”
Vance wrote the foreword for another forthcoming book written by Kevin Roberts, one of the key architects of Project 2025, the Associated Press reported. The publication of that book was postponed this week until after the election.
Trump has repeatedly distanced himself from Project 2025, a sweeping conservative policy effort decried by many experts as detrimental to Americans of color. Last week, the director of the effort stepped down amid criticism from the Trump campaign.
Report: Elon Musk spreads election falsehoods to a billion people
False or misleading statements about the U.S. election posted by Musk on his social media platform X have reached more than a billion people, according to a new analysis from the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, as reported by NBC News on Thursday.
Musk, who last month endorsed Trump for president, has spread at least 50 false election posts, according to the center’s analysis. The posts include claiming that non-citizens are voting in elections and posting a video of Vice-President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris that featured a “deepfake” of Harris’s voice.
Musk has also come under fire from five state secretaries of state who wrote X a letter this week urging Musk to fix the platform’s AI-generated misinformation. X’s AI chatbot Grok had falsely told users that Harris had missed the deadline to join the presidential election ballot in nine states.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has been highly critical of Musk’s management of X, was sued by the platform last year. A federal judge threw out the case in March.
Threats against public officials set to hit record
Late last week, a Virginia man was arrested and charged by the Department of Justice with threatening to kill Harris. So far this year, 69 people have been federally charged with threatening public officials, according to research from the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and Chapman University provided to USA TODAY.
This year is on track to exceed 2023 for the total number of such prosecutions. In 2023, there were 77 federal arrests for threats against public officials, according to the researchers.
Threats were focused on federal law enforcement including the FBI, but were also made against politicians, election officials and other public workers.
“Continuing a disheartening upward trend line, this year is on track to break yet another record for the number of federal arrests involving threats to public servants,” Seamus Hughes, a senior researcher on the University of Nebraska team, told USA TODAY. “It’s disconcerting, and there appears to be no end in sight for the sad normalization of violent rhetoric.”
Statistic of the week: 20 years
That was the sentence handed down to David Nicholas Dempsey of California Friday for his assault on police officers at the Capitol on January 6.
Dempsey, who has a history of political violence, attacked officers using a metal pole and a crutch. His is the second-longest sentence for a Jan. 6 participant after Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, the former national leader of the Proud Boys, who received a 22-year term for seditious conspiracy.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: JD Vance tied to extremists through messages, book endorsements