American Doom

Dispatch #7: Happy Independence Day: The MAGA movement will end

Happy Independence Day weekend! A few thoughts today on what’s coming as we reach both the half point of the year and are getting closer to the midterms. Also, make sure you check out Chloe and Ava’s reporting on Trump’s recent failures — the Iran peace agreement [https://www.american-doom.com/p/trumps-peace-agreement-has-already] and the Reflecting Pool debacle [https://www.american-doom.com/p/trumps-reflecting-pool-renovations]. Things aren’t going great! Elsewhere, I was on the American Friction podcast to discuss my book, which you can order here [https://www.ugapress.org/9781588385734/if-i-am-coming-to-your-town-something-terrible-has-happened/]. Listen to the podcast on your preferred platform at this link [https://linktr.ee/americanfriction]. Also, my book won an Independent Publisher Book Award [https://ippyawards.com/about], which I am contractually required to brag about. (Kidding — this is exciting!) So, thank you to everyone who supported my work by buying my book and reminder: if you want to support the independent, adversarial journalism we perform here at Doom, consider a paid subscription or dropping a few bucks in our Coffee Fund [https://www.american-doom.com/p/the-doom-coffee-fund]. In the coming months, we’ll be blowing the lid off Trump and Republican efforts to overturn the midterms, which unfortunately is coming right down the pike. Hold fast… - jg If there is a single statement that sums up what American life can feel like under President Donald Trump’s second term, it may be this: “We control everything.” That’s what Trump said Wednesday during a speech at the Teddy Roosevelt presidential library. Trump is correct in some ways — it certainly does feel like the president, his authoritarian regime, and its enablers possess vast control over the government, the economy, and the media. But like all fascist movements, this power is brittle. Trump and his people may feel like they control everything because they live in a hyper-curated echo chamber where even the remotest dissent from anyone within their ranks is not allowed, but their movement is broadly unpopular. That’s because it’s obvious to anyone who is not a committed member of this movement that Trump and his people are no better than the corrupt Washington insiders they were elected to ostensibly replace. The Epstein stuff, the war in Iran, the constant self-dealing, the wasting of taxpayer dollars on frivolous construction projects to feed Trump’s ego — there remains a large swath of conservative American voters who look at all of this and, at minimum, will decide to stay home in November. Some of them may have even had enough of the corruption, waste and incompetence of Trump’s second term to go out and vote for Democrats. This group of voters will doom Republicans for one very simple reason: it is becoming quite clear that Trump and his people are getting obscenely rich off the backs of everyday Americans. Deluded by the belief that the white rage that fuels their fascistic policies on immigration gives them a free pass to loot the government, Trump, his family, and his administration have developed a massive blind spot that is preventing them from seeing what’s coming. But it’s coming, and that’s because of very clear and obvious things like this: What you see here is the result of deep reporting from Reuters [https://www.reuters.com/investigations/under-trump-crypto-playbook-family-always-wins-investors-dont-2026-06-09/], showing that Trump and his family’s crypto ventures are nothing more than a scam that enriches those at the top. In a way, this graph perfectly illustrates American life under Trump because it shows the decline of the many — and the rising prosperity of the few. Making gobs of cash is as American as apple pie, as they say. But this is something different than your run-of-the-mill, hyper-capitalist cash grab. As president, Trump has enacted policies that have helped the crypto industry gain a foothold in global markets. (He’s also directly helped other industries in which he is heavily invested.) The crypto company run by Trump’s sons, World Liberty Financial, has benefitted from investments from the United Arab Emirates, a regional ally, and the founder of Binance, who Trump pardoned. These are the exact type of swampy, jet-setting conflicts of interests that fueled Trump’s political rise. Now they’ll help usher in his movement’s downfall. Still, instead of this being a universally-accepted understanding of the perversion of American values that it is, a solid third of the country sees nothing wrong with the profits Trump, his family, and the world’s richest people have made directly as a result of Trump’s election to his second term. But a recourse is probably coming — this time in the form of a sweeping rebuke of Republicans in November. *** Trump, the billionaires who populate his cabinet, the tech industry titans that have cozied up to Trump’s authoritarianism, and anyone and everyone who has access to the president and is cashing in on federal government contracts are the few who have gained massive profits since Trump took office. Americans making less than six figures a year are no better off — at best. There is simply no amount of immigrant fear-mongering that can make up for the fact that the lives of working class Americans look no better now than they did before Trump took office. Of course, this should have been obvious to them from the very start, but we’ll have to take what we can get. The many millions of white, working class voters who will likely stay home in November will do so because they will have finally learned that Trump doesn’t actually give a solitary fuck about them. Between now and then, Trump will probably only make this dynamic worse. The golden age is not already here and it is not coming because it never was. It’s here for Trump, his family, and the richest people in the world — but not for me, you, or any of the white working class masses who thought that kicking out immigrants would solve all their problems. By November, if deportation levels keep going the way they are, there will hardly be any undocumented immigrants left to blame. That’s why, in recent days, you’ve seen Republicans shift to a new scapegoat: “communists” running for office against less left-wing Democrats. Trump has called these “communists” — also known as members of the Democratic Socialists of America, or just plain old Democrats — the “biggest” threat the United States has ever faced. Bigger than World War II, Pearl Harbor and 9/11, Trump has said. This makes the leftists currently winning elections across the country just the latest “biggest threat” of the Trump era. China, Mexican immigrants, immigrants in general, the news media, Democrats in Congress, judges — all have had their turn as the biggest threat facing the nation. After 10 years of proclaiming whatever person or entity Trump was able to focus on for more than 10 consecutive minutes the “biggest threat,” what are Americans to actually believe? Even some of Trump’s supporters understand that, at a certain point, you can’t just keep claiming that everyone else is ruining things for the president you elected to make your life better. After 10 years of this, and with Republicans in control of “everything,” even some Trump voters will begin to question why it is that Trump can’t seem to make things better for the white working class. Then, those voters might catch a glimpse of some news that Fox or their algorithms aren’t feeding them. Something like, since taking office in 2024, Trump’s net worth has doubled, from $2.4 billion to $6 billion. Even some Trump supporters who would otherwise brush this off with, “he’s a businessman” won’t be able to countenance the news of Trump’s obscene profits during his second term. They elected him to make the country richer, to make them richer, not himself. Recall that, from the beginning, one of Trump’s biggest selling points was that he couldn’t be bought — he was already rich, so he wasn’t in it for the money. Tens of millions of Americans elected him on this very idea. Now, even with the powerful forces of right wing media and Trump-slanted social media algorithms, they won’t be able to avoid the truth that Trump has bilked his voters and everyone else to the tune of godly sums of money. Some of these Trump supporters will feel lost and confused. And in that moment they’ll have to decide between what are really the only three choices in life: freeze, fight or flee. The ones who freeze simply won’t show up in November. The ones who fight will buy the new line about “communists.” The ones who flee will come to the other side or go farther to the right. The MAGA movement will end because of its greed, hubris and brittleness. They don’t actually control everything — at least not yet. Trump and Republicans’ constant lies about election fraud are proof of this: they don’t have complete control over elections because that’s not how our founders set it up — but they sure do want that control, and are doing everything they can to try to get it. That’s another reason they’ll lose in November. Not only will lots of Trump’s people stay home — bored with his nonsense, fed up with the corruption, the lies about Epstein, or the war he started — but many, many millions of Americans who aren’t particularly politically engaged will come out of the woodwork to stop what is the actual biggest threat to American freedom: Trump and Republicans themselves. *** Doom socials: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social [https://bsky.app/profile/americandoom.bsky.social] * TikTok - @americandoom_ [https://www.tiktok.com/@americandoom_] * YouTube - @americandoom_ [https://www.youtube.com/@americandoom_] * Instagram - @americandoom_ [https://www.instagram.com/americandoom_/] * Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/americandoom] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe [https://www.american-doom.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Trump’s MAGA “pitbulls” sowed doubt in Georgia election results before a single vote was counted

You’ll read lots of pieces today about last night’s election results but this is the only publication where you’ll learn about the following. To support our work, you can subscribe for $6 a month or throw a few dollars in our Coffee Fund [https://www.american-doom.com/p/the-doom-coffee-fund]. Georgia’s election denial network of public officials, unhinged online personalities and average citizens spent yesterday ricocheting between joy and despair — and it had nothing to do with the results that began to roll in last night. Led by Trump allies on the State Election Board (SEB) and a handful of far-right state lawmakers and political candidates, election denial forces here have spent weeks fear mongering and successfully placing clips in right-wing media over the Secretary of State’s election night operation center that the election deniers have deemed a “secret bunker.” In fact, the “Election Night Reporting Center,” as the Secretary of State’s Office calls it, is not, and never has been, a secret. Nor are any votes actually counted there, as SEB members and a pair of Republican candidates who filed a lawsuit to gain access to the “bunker” have alluded. Votes are counted at county offices of elections, which then send those totals to the Secretary of State. There, the totals are put online for the public to see. But Georgia’s election denial wing of the Republican party does not trust Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as part of their demands that all elections be administered and all votes be counted by those who pass a litmus test that includes abject support for Donald Trump and a fervent belief in lies and conspiracies about widespread election fraud. That wing includes the MAGA majority on the SEB and figures like Greg Dolezal, a state senator, and Christopher Mora, a candidate for one of Georgia’s U.S. House seats. Dolezal and Mora filed a lawsuit this week demanding that the SEB and Republican poll watchers be granted access to the reporting center at the Secretary of State’s Office. On Tuesday, a judge briefly ordered that that access should be granted before rescinding the order on a technicality, thus prompting the back-and-forth emotions on display by Georgia’s vast network of election denial officials and activists. While much of the coverage of these developments has covered the lawsuit, opposing judicial orders and the reporting center under the both sides framework, key context has been absent: the SEB (and its MAGA “pitbulls,” as Trump has called them [https://www.american-doom.com/p/in-atlanta-trump-confirms-that-georgias]), Dolezal and Mora have had months — years, really — to make their claim that poll watchers and other observers should be legally allowed to oversee election night proceedings at the Secretary of State’s reporting center. The simple and obvious reason that they did not file their lawsuit until this week is that it would not have benefitted them from a political and media-savvy standpoint to do so. By filing the lawsuit this week, Georgia’s election deniers took advantage of public interest in Tuesday’s primaries to gin up further distrust in elections. Raffensperger has a secret bunker where he could manipulate votes! He’s running in the very election that his office is charged with overseeing! He won’t let us into the bunker to ensure he isn’t stealing the election for himself and other people who are bad! In the last 48 hours, these have been the stupefyingly insincere arguments that Dolezal, Mora, the SEB and others have made. Maybe many of them actually believe their own nonsense, but just as many understand that the best way to secure elections for MAGA candidates is to sow as much doubt as possible in all elections. By doing so, election deniers think they can convince the public that they, and only they, should be allowed to administer elections, make rules about voting and polling locations, and effectively control all levers of government in order to ensure that real Americans are in charge. You see this mindset reflected in statements from Trump administration officials and Republican members of Congress every single day when they say things like how they want to pass the SAVE Act to ensure that “the right people” are voting. It’s part of a playbook that includes the aggressive redistricting of the South to dilute Black — and in turn mostly Democratic — voting power. From this week’s nonsense over the “secret bunker,” to efforts across the country to purge voters based on false and misleading claims about undocumented immigrants voting in elections — every policy and talking point about voting and elections pushed by the vast majority of Republicans is aimed at a singular goal: using the levers of power to ensure that they maintain their grip on it, regardless of what American voters say at the ballot box. Other election night takeaways: Massie vs. whoever Rep. Thomas Massie lost to a man whose name most voters probably did not even know until they arrived at their polling locations in Kentucky yesterday. That’s because the majority of those voters were simply doing what Trump told them to do — get Massie out of office by voting for the other guy. Why was Trump so adamant that Massie had to go? Because Massie had the gall to be one of the only elected Republicans in the country to ask serious questions about the president’s ties to Jeffery Epstein. Just a few years ago, nailing politicians and powerful figures with Epstein ties was a huge deal for Republican voters! But what they actually meant was that they wanted to imprison people like Bill Clinton, not Donald Trump. It’s sort of like all the MAGA folks you see with the Gadsden flag. They don’t really mean Don’t tread on me; what they really mean is Tread on them. But don’t believe the hype Massie’s loss — it was a primary in a very Trumpy state. Considering Trump’s dismal approval ratings, this is like winning a preseason football game. Jones (Trump) vs. Jackson (cash) Lt. Gov. Burt Jones will head to a runoff with billionaire Rick Jackson to become the state’s next governor. If you’re not in Georgia, this race may not seem important but here’s why it matters: Jones has been instrumental in not just spreading Trump’s lies about election fraud but propagating rules and systems that have allowed the MAGA wing of his party more control over elections here. Considering Georgia’s role as something close to a swing state, Jones becoming governor stands to have an important effect on how elections and voting are run here — and how those rules will help and hurt Republicans and Democrats. Jones was responsible for appointing Salleigh Grubbs to the SEB, where she has quickly become the most forceful and unhinged voice of Georgia’s election denial movement who has any position of power (albeit very little). You might remember Grubbs as the woman who chased a garbage truck in 2020 because she thought it contained shredded ballots. As this week’s madness over the “secret bunker” played out, Grubbs was out front on the issue, appearing on Mike Lindell’s “news” channel. Jones is also one of Trump’s fake electors who was never fully punished for, you know, fraudulently trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Rick Jackson is just another loaded guy who thinks his billions entitles him to run things. Not great choices! One of the two will face former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in the general. Who will lose to Jon Ossoff? A pair of MAGA backbenchers — Rep. Mike Collins and Derek Dooley — are headed to a runoff for the honor of probably losing to Sen. Jon Ossoff. Collins is most famous for his work on the Laken Riley Act, a classically regressive piece of legislation built, more than anything, to give him an “I hate immigrants more than most” talking point on the campaign trail. Dooley was once the head football coach for the University of Tennessee, so is therefore obviously qualified to join the United States Senate. No paywalls here, but that means we need your paid support. Subscribe and spread the word. *** Doom social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social [https://bsky.app/profile/americandoom.bsky.social] * TikTok - @americandoom_ [https://www.tiktok.com/@americandoom_] * YouTube - @americandoom_ [https://www.youtube.com/@americandoom_] * Instagram - @americandoom_ [https://www.instagram.com/americandoom_/] * Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/americandoom] This is a public episode. 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A permanent majority

Quick reminder that Doom was the only publication to nail the DOJ on its efforts to mess with elections here in Georgia. That work takes a lot of time and resources. If you want to support our hard-nosed, adversarial journalism, the best way to do so is through a paid subscription or dropping a few dollars in our Coffee Fund [https://www.american-doom.com/p/the-doom-coffee-fund]. Now, on to the news… In just the last few days, Republican threats to democracy have exploded. Using legal, quasi-legal and legislative means, Republicans from Washington D.C. on down to state legislatures have enacted widespread measures to secure what they hope will be a permanent majority of American power, voters be damned. That’s because the goal of the election denial movement — which forms a major part of the Republican base of voters — has never been to “secure elections.” It’s always been about ensuring that only Republicans can win elections, as I explained on the Signal Fire podcast today. You can watch our conversation here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erSGInYKuto]. With Republicans asking the Supreme Court to purge voters very close to the November midterms under the guise that scores of undocumented immigrants populate voter rolls (they do not), this plan to not just sow distrust in an election Republicans are set to lose, but to ensure that the rules prohibit anyone else from winning it, has become more clear. Not satisfied with these efforts — and helpfully backed by a Supreme Court decision two weeks ago — Republicans throughout the South have begun to legislate Black lawmakers out of their elected positions. Quite literally, Republicans are using the tools of democracy to undo it. Already, several elections have been outright cancelled [https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/scotus-voting-rights-act-racial-gerrymandering-elections-south-20260512.html] as Republicans draw new maps that will solidify their political power. Again, not satisfied with this historic power grab, Republicans in Tennessee have gone a step further, stripping Black lawmakers of legislative roles [https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/tennessee-republicans-strip-democrats-from-committees-after-protesting-anti-black-gerrymander/] that allow them a say in how their state is run. Helping Republican politicians along are their foot soldiers in the election denial movement, who continue to file voter roll challenges and harass election offices with lawsuits, demands for public records based on their conspiracies about election fraud and, in the case of someone here in the South this week, threaten election officials who refuse to tow President Donald Trump’s line on non-existent widespread election fraud. Someone mailed a four-page manifesto [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/us/politics/raffensperger-bomb-georgia-campaign-governor.html] threatening Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to a sheriff’s office in Mississippi, bizarrely. The letter preceded a bomb scare at a campaign event in Georgia on Monday, where Raffensperger was speaking to voters about his bid to become the state’s next governor. Raffensperger famously refused to help Trump overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, and as a result has been the target of constant harassment from his fellow Republicans. If you appreciate the clarity of this rundown in addition to our exclusive reporting here, please throw us a few bucks. Your support directly funds the adversarial journalism we hope holds power to account in these troubling times.d Meanwhile, Trump is again floating the idea of sending the military to voting locations in November, just as he did in 2020 when he considered having the National Guard seize voting machines. (In December, Trump said he regretted not doing that.) Trump saying something random to a reporter is one thing, but there’s more than that: multiple federal agencies are involved with efforts to “secure” the midterms. You might remember the inexplicable presence of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at the FBI raid of a Fulton County elections warehouse in January. Recent reporting makes clear that her presence there was part of an administration-wide effort to stay on top of false election fraud claims in order to exploit them for maximum benefit in November. Department of Homeland Security officials have been reaching out to state- and county-level election officials throughout the country. The DHS officials have demanded, among other things, voter history and registration information from these officials, Reuters reported [https://www.reuters.com/investigations/how-trump-is-moving-control-us-elections-one-state-time-2026-04-27/]. Keep in mind that counties are the frontlines of U.S. elections. It’s there that results are initially certified before being approved by state officials, which is why, as I reported on significantly back in 2024, Republicans tried to use their power at the county level to refuse to certify election results that showed Democrats winning. To my knowledge, no state has reformed its certification rules in the wake of those attempts, and there is no indication that efforts by election denial officials in counties across the country aren’t just as robust as they were two years ago. Meanwhile, those same county and state officials have fewer resources from the federal government to help them manage election threats and chaos this time around. That’s because the Trump administration has gutted agencies that provide help to state and local officials battling online threats, hacking attempts and other scenarios that states and counties might not have the tools to fight. “Nearly every program and capability to stop bad actors and support election administrators has been dismantled,” a former Biden administration official at the National Security Council who worked on threats to elections told ProPublica last month [https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-midterm-elections-takeover]. Whatever agencies and programs haven’t been purposefully destroyed by the Trump administration have had their missions completely perverted with the hiring of election conspiracy theorists to lead them. Already, this has (partly) resulted in things like the seizure of voting machines in Puerto Rico and, of course, the FBI elections raid here in Georgia. Seven months out from the midterms, the threats to Americans’ ability to actually elect who they prefer continues to rise. You hear a lot of hyperbole these days — and around the time of any election, really — but I don’t think it’s too alarmist to say that if Republicans succeed in their efforts to effectively gerrymander and rule-make their way into legislative majorities both in the states and the U.S. Congress, that’s power they’re never going to give up. Trump has said as much, urging states to gerrymander their way into power and chastising them when they don’t. He’s doing this because he’s terrified of being impeached when Democrats take the House and, possibly, the Senate after November. Even in his current state of severe cognitive decline, even Trump knows that Republican chances in the midterms are bad. He’s certainly not helping by driving up costs with a clueless war in Iran, spending tons of money we don’t have on vanity construction projects and a missile defense system we don’t need, and just generally not giving a shit what everyday Americans are going through as daily life becomes more and more expensive. There have always been two paths to power. The democratic one has always been more difficult. The authoritarian one is easier, if sometimes bloodier. *** Follow Doom on social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social [https://bsky.app/profile/americandoom.bsky.social] * TikTok - @americandoom_ [https://www.tiktok.com/@americandoom_] * YouTube - @americandoom_ [https://www.youtube.com/@americandoom_] * Instagram - @americandoom_ [https://www.instagram.com/americandoom_/] * Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/americandoom] This is a public episode. 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Dispatch #3: Light over darkness

You might have seen that American Doom beat the Justice Department in federal court last week. Trump’s DOJ will now have to officially reveal the names of some of the witnesses [https://www.american-doom.com/p/doom-wins-in-fed-court-judge-orders] in an affidavit that led to an FBI raid on an Atlanta elections office. Doom was the only publication in the country to motion the court to release the names. To support our work, please choose a paid subscription or drop a few dollars into our Coffee Fund [https://www.american-doom.com/p/the-doom-coffee-fund]. I do not think this summer will be as hot as the last one [https://www.american-doom.com/p/peaceful-protests-and-soft-targets?utm_source=publication-search], but what do I know? I’ve been wrong before. For whatever reason, it seems that many Americans have come to accept the daily drumbeat of chaos and corruption that emanates from Washington, as well as the more recent authoritarian machinations being heaped upon us by Trumpian legislatures throughout the country. Well, maybe accept isn’t the right word. Maybe people are just exhausted. And when I say us, I guess not all of us. Because lots of people are very happy about the abject power grab that has occurred in recent days following the Supreme Court’s decision to allow Republican-led states to effectively rig the map so that only Republicans can win. Last summer saw fairly widespread protests over the Trump administration’s mass deportation regime as masked agents stormed American streets. The song of the summer this year seems to be a slightly less obvious one of rising authoritarianism: the quiet, plodding work of Republicans who are using the tools of democracy to undo it. There are many ways to create an authoritarian state. One of those ways includes the masked police that sparked outrage and protests last year. Another involves what we’re seeing now: duly-elected officials ensuring that no one else can come to power by using the very levers of government and elections that are supposed to ensure equal representation under the law. Simultaneously, Republicans are working to, once again, convince millions of Americans that any election that doesn’t result in a Republican victory is fraudulent. (This is the thesis statement of the election denial movement, whether they explicitly state it or not.) All of this — the war in Iran, Trump administration corruption coupled with a complete disregard for the economic concerns of Americans, attacks on voting rights, sowing distrust in elections — feels like the inevitable, if not openly-violent, end state of decades-long period of turmoil that I’ve reported on in one form or another my entire career. Today at Luke O’Neil’s Hell World, you can read about some of that chaos in an excerpt from my forthcoming book [https://www.welcometohellworld.com/if-i-am-coming-to-your-town-something-terrible-has-happened/], If I Am Coming to Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happened – The Life and Times of a Domestic War Correspondent. The book will be published in June by the University of Georgia Press and you can pre-order it here [https://www.ugapress.org/9781588385734/if-i-am-coming-to-your-town-something-terrible-has-happened/]. (Use the code 08TERRIBLE to receive 30 percent off.) Some folks have been asking me why I wrote this book, which also deals with my descent into and recovery from alcoholism, and the short answer is: I had to. Not only did I have to get all this shit off my chest, but I felt I had to put these events down so that other people who were watching the chaos and violence of American life — and who were wondering if it all was really as bad as it can sometimes seem — were not alone. First, you are not alone. Secondly, it certainly all has been very bad. Third, it’s going to get better. The pendulum never stops at the top, as my dad would say. If you appreciate this post, please consider sharing it with friends. We could also use your support with a subscription for a few bucks a month. All of this pressure and pain will go away if Americans stick to the principles of light, love, justice and progress. It can be hard in dark days to remember that those principles can win, but by remembering that they can defeat darkness we get closer to willing the darkness away. *** Please follow AD on our social media for a little more doom to scroll. That’s what we all need, right? * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social [https://bsky.app/profile/americandoom.bsky.social] * TikTok - @americandoom_ [https://www.tiktok.com/@americandoom_] * YouTube - @americandoom_ [https://www.youtube.com/@americandoom_] * Instagram - @americandoom_ [https://www.instagram.com/americandoom_/] * Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/americandoom] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe [https://www.american-doom.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Doom wins in fed court: Judge orders DOJ to reveal witnesses in FBI election raid

Big news out of federal court in Atlanta this week. American Doom was the only publication in the country that pushed the DOJ to release the names of the public officials who refused to have their identities unsealed in an affidavit that led to a historic FBI raid election raid in January. To support our work, please choose a paid subscription or throw us a few dollars at our Coffee Fund [https://www.american-doom.com/p/the-doom-coffee-fund]. A federal judge in Georgia has sided with American Doom and ordered the Justice Department to officially reveal the identities of three witnesses whose allegations led to the FBI raid of a Fulton County elections warehouse in January. I say “officially,” because the identities of the witnesses were more or less known immediately thanks to information provided in the affidavit about their positions as public officials — two are appointed members of the State Election Board (SEB) and the third is an elected member of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. But the officials — Dr. Janice Johnston and Janelle King of the SEB and Fulton County Commissioner Bridget Thorne — objected to American Doom’s motions to have their names un-redacted from the affidavit. Johnston, King and Thorne did not respond to a request for comment. What’s never been clear is why the three officials objected to the public release of their names. All three are clearly identified in the affidavit by their positions on the SEB and Fulton County commission, and all three are outspoken election skeptics who, for years, have amplified falsehoods and questionable claims about widespread voter fraud. For her part, Johnston was so enamored with the FBI raid in January that she made an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast from her SUV in the parking lot where, nearby, FBI agents were still pulling materials from the elections warehouse. Since at least late last year, King has publicly bragged about her solicitation of help from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to investigate specious claims of election fraud in Fulton County during the 2020 election, as I reported for the Guardian in November [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/14/georgia-2020-elections-justice-department]. Thorne has openly discussed her inclusion in the affidavit with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution [https://www.ajc.com/news/2026/02/fulton-commission-dems-mistrust-colleague-listed-as-witness-for-fbi-raid/]. On Monday, U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee ordered the Justice Department to provide an un-redacted version of the FBI affidavit that led to the January raid. That document will now officially name Johnston, King and Thorne as witnesses. Quite literally, no one else has done the work that American Doom has done here. But that can’t happen without your support. Boulee explained his order [https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.355452/gov.uscourts.gand.355452.102.0.pdf]: “In balancing the right of access versus Respondent’s interest in keeping the names of the witnesses confidential, the Court notes that many of the above factors weigh in favor of the right of access. For instance, it does not appear that Glawe is seeking the records for an illegitimate purpose or to promote public scandal. Moreover, it is undeniable that the 2020 election and the seizure of the election records are historically significant matters and that granting full access to the affidavits is likely to promote public understanding of these events,” Boulee wrote in his order. “The Court also cannot ignore that the redacted information concerns both public officials and a matter of public concern. Indeed, each of the witnesses currently holds a public office related to elections in Georgia and the underlying search at issue in this case involves a Georgia election.” The Justice Department had argued that the identifies of Johnston, King and Thorne must remain under seal due to “concerns over privacy, retaliation, and/or harassment associated with official confirmation of their providing evidence in a criminal investigation.” Boulee noted that the identities of the three are already widely known, and that “maintaining the seal in this case does little to protect the privacy of these witnesses.” Keep in mind that the information provided by Johnston, King and Thorne was already widely known as well. Their claims of “election fraud” are based on technical errors that occurred during the 2020 election — errors that have been the subject of much scrutiny and hand-wringing by the election denial movement in the ensuing six years. The case against Fulton County is largely viewed as specious by election experts, former judges and reputable lawyers, but that hasn’t stopped the Justice Department from pursuing criminal charges against the county for the technical errors that occurred in 2020 — and had no effect on the outcome of the election. Trump lost; Biden won. It’s as simple as that. But with the Justice Department acting as Trump’s personal law firm, election denialists within the agency have been aggressively pursuing debunked claims of widespread election fraud for two reasons: to curry favor with Trump, who simply cannot accept that he lost the 2020 election, and to lay the groundwork for forthcoming claims [https://zeteo.com/p/trump-groundwork-steal-elections-2026?r=qm779&triedRedirect=true] that the November mid-terms were beset with widespread fraud. Trump and Republicans need to create this narrative going into November because they’re likely to lose in significant fashion. The FBI raid in Atlanta, the subpoenaing of election records in Arizona and the personal information of election workers in Fulton County [https://www.ajc.com/politics/2026/05/fulton-fights-doj-demand-for-election-workers-personal-information/], the seizure of voting machines in Puerto Rico, and a recent demand that the Supreme Court allow Republicans to purge voters in Arizona [https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/04/politics/voter-roll-purges-election-day] under dubious claims that many undocumented immigrants are registered to vote — all of it is part of the narrative-building that Republicans and the Trump administration are performing in order to claim that an election they are set to lose was somehow stolen from them [https://zeteo.com/p/trump-threatens-election-2020-replay?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true]. Millions of Americans are being primed to believe this, and they’re being led by people like Johnston, King and Thorne, who now must officially take credit for their role in the affidavit — and their positions as leaders of a movement in Georgia aimed at convincing voters of fraud that simply doesn’t exist. *** Follow Doom on social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social [https://bsky.app/profile/americandoom.bsky.social] * TikTok - @americandoom_ [https://www.tiktok.com/@americandoom_] * YouTube - @americandoom_ [https://www.youtube.com/@americandoom_] * Instagram - @americandoom_ [https://www.instagram.com/americandoom_/] * X - @americandoom_ [https://x.com/americandoom_] * Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/americandoom] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe [https://www.american-doom.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]