BEYOND THE NORM WITH STORMY DANIELS by Audio Up

My next guest spent 11 months undercover with these people. When Amanda Moore lost her job, she decided to go undercover in MAGA land, attending QAnon events and CPAC, hanging with Neo-Nazis and “blood-and-soil fascists,” and palling around with Proud Boys at Harry's Bar in the lead-up to the January 6 Capitol Riot. But what her new friends didn’t know was that she was often recording them, and the result is a chilling portrait “of what the right looks like from the inside.

Here’s what Amanda said about her journey in the article she wrote for the Nation. 

“I was motivated by my belief that the fascist threat to the country was misunderstood by much of the press and far more dangerous than what was being reported. At first, I had planned only to sell the audio from “Stop the Steal rallies to a podcast and write a couple of blog posts. But I found myself wanting to get a behind-the-scenes look at the far-right movement—to go to events from which the press was barred and observe extremists when they felt they were in their “safe space”—so the project grew into something far bigger: a long-term infiltration of the network of young white nationalists in America.”

Stormy discusses the hypocrisy of the American Justice system and how she can be the star witness for the prosecution of Donald J. Trump in NY DA Alvin Bragg’s “Hush Money Case,” but her own lawsuit against the former president can be thrown out of court. “They made a moral judgment,” she says. “Because I’m a porn star I don’t deserve the same protection under the law.” But Stormy refuses to give up. “I’m a pain in the ass,” she says. Later, Stormy welcomes Kris Goldsmith to the show. The founder of Task Force Butler, Goldsmith is an Iraq veteran who has dedicated his life to hunting NEO NAZIS and helping veterans escape the grasp of right-wing extremism. 

Its end result, for Goldsmith, of a hard-lived life. Entering the Army as a teenager, he’d quickly risen to the rank of sergeant. But the horrors of the Iraq War left him with crippling, undiagnosed PTSD. A suicide attempt on the eve of being re-deployed in 2007 got Goldsmith booted from the service with a less-than-honorable discharge.

Stripped of his rank, community, and G.I. Bill benefits, Goldsmith entered a dark spiral, which included sinking down rabbit holes of online extremism. With his one remaining lifeline — healthcare through the V.A. — Goldsmith clawed his way back to the surface. He became a veterans advocate, earned a degree from Columbia, and (four appeals later) finally got an upgrade to an honorable discharge. Along the way, helped secure congressional reforms in 2017 that enabled thousands of other vets to get medical help and challenge their own “bad paper.” 

During the Trump years, Goldsmith worked as chief investigator for Vietnam Veterans of America where he exposed a sophisticated Russian op that targeted U.S. veterans on Facebook to sow racial and political division. For Goldsmith, that open-source intelligence expertise soon gave him a leg up in exposing domestic threats, including fascist groups targeting American youth like Patriot Front.

In the aftermath of the insurrection of Jan. 6, Goldsmith saw a need to give patriotic veterans a positive mission — uncovering extremists and insurrectionists in our midst. Task Force Butler’s work centers on exposing the inner workings and public wrongdoing of neo-nazi groups through deep-dive intelligence reports that can give prosecutors the evidence they need to go after the hatemongers in court.  The work takes a toll. Goldsmith has been sued, and doxxed by white supremacists. But he refuses to give up.