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Anatomy of a Grift: How a struggling PAC cashed in on convoys & lost it all on consultants and ...
Link to tweet
Molly
Jun 10 - 16 min read
Anatomy of a Grift: How a struggling PAC cashed in on convoys & lost it all on consultants and portapotties
On March 6, 2022, I drove to a small NASCAR track near Fredericksburg, VA. The event had not been well advertised in any of the dozens of trucker convoy groups I’d been reading across multiple social media networks. The Canadian trucker convoy phenomenon was catching fire among conservatives in the US, but it was not one singular entity, rather, a writhing mass of similarly named, alternately competing and cooperating factions. The main telegram chat boasted over 40,000 members and was rife with complex internecine squabbles, personal grievances, accusations of bad faith and fraud, and general confusion about what the movement actually intended to do. By that point in March, they had set up an encampment at the Hagerstown Speedway in Maryland and more or less coalesced around a small group of leaders.
But the Hagerstown Speedway was over 150 miles away from the abandoned stretch of track the woman at the gate directed me towards. I’d seen a few flyers for this event, although when they were posted in the main convoy channels, they were largely ignored and occasionally outright denounced as attempts to split the convoy. That morning, the convoy had announced their intentions to depart from the Hagerstown encampment and drive around the beltway, having backed off earlier plans to enter DC proper. When I showed the woman at the gate my registration, I asked her if the Hagerstown contingent would be driving south after their first circle around the city. Her smile faded and she squinted at me through my driver’s side window. “Did somebody say they weren’t?” She was offended.
My interest in this event was not entirely curiosity about the larger convoy movement. The flyers and website credited the weekend-long tailgate party to the Great American Patriot Project, a political action committee incorporated by a Virginia man with close ties to key figures in the Stop the Steal movement who I’d taken an interest in when the PAC first made the news in February. The PAC’s founder, Alex Phillips, had incorporated a company in Virginia in January 2018 with Ali Alexander as the co-director.
-----snip-----
Jun 10 - 16 min read
Anatomy of a Grift: How a struggling PAC cashed in on convoys & lost it all on consultants and portapotties
On March 6, 2022, I drove to a small NASCAR track near Fredericksburg, VA. The event had not been well advertised in any of the dozens of trucker convoy groups I’d been reading across multiple social media networks. The Canadian trucker convoy phenomenon was catching fire among conservatives in the US, but it was not one singular entity, rather, a writhing mass of similarly named, alternately competing and cooperating factions. The main telegram chat boasted over 40,000 members and was rife with complex internecine squabbles, personal grievances, accusations of bad faith and fraud, and general confusion about what the movement actually intended to do. By that point in March, they had set up an encampment at the Hagerstown Speedway in Maryland and more or less coalesced around a small group of leaders.
But the Hagerstown Speedway was over 150 miles away from the abandoned stretch of track the woman at the gate directed me towards. I’d seen a few flyers for this event, although when they were posted in the main convoy channels, they were largely ignored and occasionally outright denounced as attempts to split the convoy. That morning, the convoy had announced their intentions to depart from the Hagerstown encampment and drive around the beltway, having backed off earlier plans to enter DC proper. When I showed the woman at the gate my registration, I asked her if the Hagerstown contingent would be driving south after their first circle around the city. Her smile faded and she squinted at me through my driver’s side window. “Did somebody say they weren’t?” She was offended.
My interest in this event was not entirely curiosity about the larger convoy movement. The flyers and website credited the weekend-long tailgate party to the Great American Patriot Project, a political action committee incorporated by a Virginia man with close ties to key figures in the Stop the Steal movement who I’d taken an interest in when the PAC first made the news in February. The PAC’s founder, Alex Phillips, had incorporated a company in Virginia in January 2018 with Ali Alexander as the co-director.
-----snip-----
Read the rest at
https://medium.com/%40socialistdogmom/anatomy-of-a-grift-how-a-struggling-pac-cashed-in-on-convoys-lost-it-all-on-consultants-and-e2984e86bf05
4 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
She wove this convoluted story into a remarkable tapestry of right-wing rage, grift, greed. I'm going to bookmark her site for past and future articles. Thanks again. 
This post and the link included within should be a must read for everyone on DU. It would take maybe 20 minutes of their time, but it would be a well spent 20 minutes.
The right-wing rage and grift industry is extremely lucrative, once you pay the correct people to handle it, that is.
A fantastic read. Thank you, Yonnie3, for posting this. 
