David Corn: The Man Behind Saturday's Pro-Trump Rally Once Praised a Far-Right Assassin

[babylonsister]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/09/matt-braynard-january-6-rally-capitol-insurrection/

5 hours ago
The Man Behind Saturday’s Pro-Trump Rally Once Praised a Far-Right Assassin
Matt Braynard, the mastermind of the upcoming protest supporting the Jan. 6 rioters, also tried to overturn the 2020 election.
David Corn


A conservative outfit has announced it is organizing a rally on September 18 at the US Capitol to—get this—seek “justice” for the rioters arrested during the insurrectionist raid on Congress on January 6. The man behind this event is a former Trump 2016 campaign aide who after the 2020 election tried to cast himself as an independent elections expert and data analyst who had uncovered evidence of significant voter fraud. He also happens to be someone I’ve done a bit of reporting on.

Matt Braynard is the executive director of Look Ahead America, which describes itself as “an America First nonprofit dedicated to standing up for patriotic Americans who have been forgotten by our government.” Last month, he appeared on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Bannon’s War Room, and said that his group would be holding a demonstration at the Capitol “to push back against the phony narrative that there was an insurrection” on January 6. He insisted the mob that assailed Capitol Hill was “largely peaceful,” claiming that “this was a crowd that was egged on in many ways by Capitol police throwing flash-bang grenades into a relatively peaceful crowd.” Egged on? Did he not see even one of the videos from that day? More absurd, Braynard stated that this protest would “demand justice for ­­these political prisoners”—a reference to the seditious marauders, some of whom pleaded guilty, who have been pursued and prosecuted by the FBI and the Justice Department. His statement echoed Trump’s recent comments about the 1/6 rioters in which he said the people arrested were “military people, and they’re police officers, and they’re construction workers. And they’re tremendous, in many cases, tremendous people, tremendous people.” Trump remarked that it was “not right” that so many of them were “currently incarcerated.”

As for the rally on behalf of these “tremendous people” who brutally attacked cops, threatened to lynch Vice President Mike Pence, tried to thwart a constitutional proceeding, and threatened House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Braynard vowed, “It’s going to be huge…We’re going back to the Capitol, right where it started.”

Link to tweet

So now the Trump gang’s effort to whitewash this day of infamy and treason has a grassroots component that will try to replicate January 6. (Peacefully, of course, right?) I have no idea if Braynard and his organization, which doesn’t have much of a track record, can pull off a major event. (The group has fewer than 6,500 Twitter followers.) But this move further shreds Braynard’s already tattered credibility as a self-proclaimed elections expert whose work was frequently cited by pro-Trump forces to prop up Donald Trump’s Big Lie.

more...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/09/matt-braynard-january-6-rally-capitol-insurrection/

[Grins]

2. An assassin? Anyone seen Raphael Cruz lately...? NM

[Bev54]

3. How the hell does a group of insurrectionists get non-profit status??

Time to re-think non profit groups.