Groundswell group

Groundswell is the name of a group of prominent American conservative activists, including Virginia "Ginni" Lamp Thomas, who began meeting in 2013 in order to fight progressivism and the GOP establishment.[1][2][3]

According to leaked documents, in 2013 the group had started staging "a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation"[1] by such goals as undermining the power of former GOP strategist and Fox News analyst Karl Rove[4] along with the Benghazi bombing and the Operation Fast and Furious gun-running issue,[5] repealing the Affordable Care Act, working behind the scenes to enact voter ID laws, and blocking Obama administration nominees.[1]

Groundswell went on to be influential in the White House of former president Donald Trump, conducting an effort to rid the White House and other government agencies of so-called "deep state" opponents of Trump.[6][7][3]

In 2021, Barbara Ledeen was named as a member of Groundswell in connection with her involvement in an undercover campaign by Project Veritas to discredit H.R. McMaster when he served as Trump's national security adviser in 2017 and 2018. Ledeen, longtime staffer for Senator Chuck Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee and wife of neoconservative foreign policy analyst Michael Ledeen, said she passed on information about McMaster's social calendar to Project Veritas which then used the information to plan an operation to secretly record McMaster making comments that would cause him to resign or be fired. Ledeen admitted passing on the information but said "I am not part of a plot."[6]

References
  1. Corn, David (July 25, 2013). "Inside Groundswell: Read the Memos of the New Right-Wing Strategy Group Planning a "30 Front War"". Mother Jones.
  2. Fang, Lee; Surgey, Nick (June 4, 2019). "Ginni Thomas Plans New Conservative Supergroup to "Protect President Trump"". The Intercept. First Look Institute. Retrieved July 6, 2021. Ginni Thomas has been involved in an ad-hoc coalition known as “Groundswell,” touted as a plan to wage a “30-front war” on left-wing activists and the GOP establishment.
  3. Haberman, Maggie (May 3, 2021). "Among Those Pressing Trump to Weed Out Disloyalty: Clarence Thomas's Wife". The New York Times. Retrieved July 6, 2021.
  4. Corn, David (July 25, 2013). "Groundswell's Secret Crusade to Crush Karl Rove". Mother Jones.
  5. "Facing a 'Groundswell'". The Rachel Maddow Show. MSNBC. July 25, 2013.
  6. Goldman, Adam; Mazzetti, Mark (May 13, 2021). "Activists and Ex-Spy Said to Have Plotted to Discredit Trump 'Enemies' in Government" – via NYTimes.com.
  7. Swan, Jonathan. "Exclusive: Trump's "Deep State" hit list". Axios.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.