The full list is on the website at a link at the bottom of the article.
Miriam
THIS IS THE FULL MEMBERSHIP LIST OF THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT'S SECRETIVE AND
POWERFUL COUNCIL FOR NATIONAL POLICY
MAX BLUMENTHALAUGUST 30, 2020
RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM
Donald Trump previewed his RNC acceptance address before the influential
Council for National Policy. The membership list of this Christian Right
cabal was a carefully guarded secret - until now.
President Donald Trump's appearance in Arlington, Virginia on August 21
before the Council for National Policy (CNP), a hyper-secretive Christian
Right powerhouse that helps set the movement's agenda, offered an hour-long
preview of the stem-winding speech he would deliver several nights later on
a balcony in front of the White House to the Republican National Convention.
Joined by his acting and still-unconfirmed Department of Homeland Security
Secretary Chad Wolf, the longtime corporate lobbyist who guided federal
troops against anti-racism protesters, the president proclaimed, "China very
much wants Joe Biden to win."
Next, Trump inspired gales of applause by boasting, "I could run in Israel,
and I think they set up probably a 98 percent approval rating in Israel. And
you know who appreciates it the most are the evangelical Christians."
The president earned more cheers when he previewed a line he deployed a few
nights later at the RNC: "Nobody has done more for the black community or
the Hispanic community than we have. Nobody. Nobody. I guess, maybe Lincoln.
Questionable."
Trump's recent event with the CNP was his second appearance before the
group. The first encounter came during an October 2015 CNP forum, as
candidate Trump was surging ahead of his Republican primary rivals and
emerging as the Christian Right's foul-mouthed Chosen One.
Several CNP members went on to serve in Trump's White House, including
Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon. But this appearance was different.
This time, in contrast to other Republican presidential hopefuls who had
addressed the CNP, the White House videotaped Trump's speech and proudly
disseminated it online. Conspicuously missing from the footage, however,
were any clear images of the audibly enthused crowd.
That is because the CNP's membership is a carefully guarded secret; its
meetings are private - off limits to the public and the press - and even the
location of the gatherings is carefully protected.
Literature distributed to members at the entrance of meetings instructed
attendees not to disclose the names of fellow members and forbade them from
distributing the membership list to outsiders in order "to maintain the
quality of membership communications."
The Grayzone obtained the Council for National Policy's October 2018
membership list and has published it in full at the end of this article.
Pages 1-72 show the names and bios of members; 72-87 contain CNP literature,
including official policies and guidelines, as well as details about future
meetings.
The release of the CNP's membership list represents the first time in the
Trump era that the Christian Right powerhouse has been exposed, and the most
recent disclosure since a copy of its 2014 member roll was published.
The CNP's personnel comprise a blend of conservative movement leaders,
industry moneymen, foreign policy hardliners, and culture war activists
enforcing right-wing unity at the base of a Republican Party that has
cohered around the doctrine of ultra-nationalist Trumpism.
As I documented in my 2009 book, Republican Gomorrah, the Council for
National Policy was founded in 1981 with seed money from T. Cullen Davis, a
Texas oil billionaire who found his way to Jesus and the Christian Right
after a high-priced lawyer secured his acquittal on charges that he hired a
hit man to kill his ex-wife and her family, then attempted the job himself,
murdering his step-daughter and his ex-wife's boyfriend while paralyzing an
innocent bystander and wounding his ex-wife in the process, according to
prosecutors.
When the CNP was first established, one of its founding fathers, the
Louisiana ultra-conservative politician Woody Jenkins, vowed to a Newsweek
reporter, "One day before the end of this century, the Council will be so
influential that no president, regardless of party or philosophy, will be
able to ignore us or our concerns or shut us out of the highest levels of
government."
Under the watch of his protege, Tony Perkins, who also directs the Christian
Right policy factory known as the Family Research Council, Jenkins' pledge
was fulfilled. The CNP secured promises from both George W. Bush and Trump
to appoint exclusively anti-abortion judges to high courts, and recently
helped Trump allies coordinate their response to the Covid-19 pandemic while
astroturfing a series of anti-lockdown protests.
The secrecy maintained by the Council for National Policy throughout its
decades-long history has been strictly enforced by Perkins, who demanded my
ejection from an October 4-6, 2018 conference after learning I was in
attendance. I had secured an invitation to the gathering from an anti-war
member who no longer belongs to the Council, enabling me to report on a
speech that former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley gave to
the group, in a feature for Harper's Magazine.
Perkins recognized me because I had published an article in 2005 reporting
his signing of a check for $82,500 to David Duke - the former Ku Klux Klan
leader and failed Republican gubernatorial candidate - to purchase Duke's
mailing list on behalf of the senate campaign of his mentor, Woody Jenkins.
I had also noted Perkins' 2001 speech before the Council of Conservative
Citizens, a white nationalist and neo-Confederate organization that racist
mass murderer Dylan Roof partially credited with his radicalization.
Infuriated by my presence in the inner sanctum of Christian Right
networking, Perkins and his lieutenants ordered me to immediately exit the
Charlotte, North Carolina hotel where the conference took place.
On my way out, I passed by Herman Cain, the former Godfather Pizza CEO and
Republican presidential candidate, holding court in the hotel lobby. Cain
died this July 30 after contracting Covid-19 at a Trump rally in Tulsa,
Oklahoma.
Within hours, I was on a flight out of Charlotte with a thick CNP members'
list and a pile of official Council literature in hand - materials that were
forbidden for outsiders to view and off-limits to the public until now.
A few notable Council for National Policy members are described below. The
full membership list follows.
Shawn Akers - Akers is the vice provost of Liberty University, which is
currently reeling from the exposure of the bizarre sexual peccadilloes of
its chancellor, Jerry Falwell Jr., and his wife, Becky. Akers' colleague at
the CNP, journalist Warren Cole Smith, recently hammered the board of
Liberty University, where his daughter is enrolled, for its failure to hold
Falwell accountable over the years. The "trustees failed the school's
students, faculty, administration, and parents," Smith wrote. "They failed
donors and alumni. They failed to hold the one member of the Liberty staff
that reports to them to the Biblical standards of leadership, or even to the
standards that every member of the Liberty community must live up to."
Jerry Boykin - Boykin is best known as the US Delta Force general who led
the disastrous peacekeeping mission to Somalia depicted in the book and
blockbuster film "Black Hawk Down." During the US invasion of Iraq in 2003,
he declared that his god "was bigger" than that of the Muslim warlords he
battled in Somalia, and that Muslims hated America because they worshiped
Satan. Boykin current serves as executive vice president for Tony Perkins'
Family Research Council in Washington.
Elsa Prince Broekhuizen - The Michigan-based mother of Blackwater mercenary
corporation founder and Trump Inc. consigliere Erik Prince and his sister,
Trump secretary of education and school privatization advocate Betsy Devos.
Prince Broekhuizen has plowed her family's auto parts fortune into various
anti-gay initiatives over the years.
Stuart Epperson - The co-founder and president of the right-wing evangelical
broadcaster Salem Media, which is tied with CBS News as the fifth-largest
radio broadcaster in the US. Epperson's stations play host to right-wing
personalities like Michele Malkin, Sebastian Gorka, Hugh Hewitt, and Dennis
Prager.
Mike Farris - A lawyer and homeschooling advocate, Farris founded Patrick
Henry College as a training ground for Christian Right cadres seeking jobs
in Washington's halls of power. Vice President Mike Pence addressed Farris's
Alliance Defending Freedom in 2019, praising the group for guiding the Trump
administration's agenda.
Tom Fitton - The president of the right-wing legal advocacy group Judicial
Watch, which has battled Covid-19 lockdown policies, sued climate
scientists, and helped guide Trump's messaging against the Democrats'
Russiagate onslaught.
Frank Gaffney - The Center for Security Policy founder is a foreign policy
militarist who emerged from neoconservative circles to become a leading
voice of anti-Muslim conspiracism while clamoring for US military action
against Iran and Syria. Gaffney has claimed that Hillary Clinton aide Huma
Abedin was a Muslim Brotherhood agent, warned that that American Muslims
were engaged in a "stealth jihad" to place the country under the control of
Sharia, and helped influence Trump's so-called Muslim ban.
Donna Rice-Hughes - Famous for bringing down former Democratic Senator Gary
Hart's presidential campaign after a possible set-up, when tabloids
published photographs of her perched on the candidate's lap while carousing
on his yacht, Rice-Hughes (formerly known only by her birth name, Rice) came
to Jesus and founded the anti-pornography group, Enough is Enough! Today,
she markets herself as a "progressive leader" and expert on "preventing the
exploitation of children online."
Jon Lenczowski - Founder of the Institute for World Politics, a
Washington-based training institute for hardline interventionists,
Lenczowski takes a leading role in setting the CNP's foreign policy agenda.
In recent months, he has been particularly focused on reinforcing the Trump
administration's new cold war narrative against China.
Herman Pirchner - The founding President of the American Foreign Policy
Council (AFPC), Pichner served on Trump's foreign policy transition team in
2016. The Grayzone reported Pirchner's role in hosting Andriy Parubiy, a
Ukrainian ultra-nationalist politician who co-founded the far-right Social
National Party, for a series of Capitol Hill meetings. Researcher Moss
Robeson has documented Pirchner's activity as a key liaison between the
Washington foreign policy establishment and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists.
Virginia "Ginni" Thomas - The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,
Ginni Thomas was part of the Groundswell network that compiled lists of
"disloyal" Trump administration officials to be fired. Her involvement with
the CNP is an extension of a long history of ethical entanglements that
prompted 74 House Democrats to issue a letter demanding Clarence Thomas
recuse himself from ruling on the national healthcare overhaul, which she
lobbied against.