OPINION: Sarasota’s role in the downfall of democracy
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Democracy, the sacrosanct foundation on which this country has stood solid for centuries, is now closer to crumbling than anyone dared dream, an alarmingly fragile ideology corroded by slipshod claims and unfettered greed, both as a means of political and personal survival.
The shock of this lies in the simplicity, as world wars have not threatened democracy’s entrenchment as much as mere words have, absurdities spewed by a delusional ex-president and the retired military general he pardoned for lying to the FBI.
You can trace democracy’s ever-expanding cracks to Sarasota, where Donald Trump once stood at a podium and, barely two minutes into a 50-minute speech, wagged his finger in the air and said, “Folks, the system is rigged.”
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This was not 2020, mind you, but the day before the 2016 election. Trump’s evidence may have come from a Bazooka Joe bubblegum wrapper, but it was in Sarasota where he attempted to soften the worldwide ridicule of a certain loss. Only he won. And he learned.
Because it was the same nonsense before the 2020 election, and after he was defeated too: Folks, the system is rigged. Arizona swallowed the Big Lie’s hook at face value, hardly caring Trump was just trying to save face.
Now, for a Lie to become Big, you need people to promulgate it, which is what happened when the Republican-led Arizona Senate funded an election audit thinly veiled as an attempt to return Trump to power and hired Sarasota-based Cyber Ninjas to conduct it, never mind the computer security company had no experience.
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After months of national ridicule, from talk of bamboo in ballots to catching COVID, the Ninjas determined no fraud took place. Trump, in fact, actually lost votes. But that’s not what was important here because, even now, people still believe the election was stolen, and nothing is going to change that notion.
This end-around is going to reverberate through every local and national election going forward, and yes, that makes the Big Lie a threat to our very democracy. Don’t like the winner? Not in your party? Just scream it was rigged. This strategy even sets up Trump for a 2024 presidential run. He can’t lose. Even if he does.
They always say follow the money, and that applies here too. All the way to Sarasota. The Cyber Ninjas, led by a conspiracy theorist named Doug Logan, was paid only $150,000 for a job more experienced companies bid millions for. Then it was revealed the Ninjas received $5.7 million from five outside groups.
One of the groups is a charity called America’s Future, led by former U.S. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, who at one point in 2019 owed nearly $5 million in attorney’s fees from the Mueller investigation, according to court records. His family set up a defense fund, and he even sold a house to pay the fees.
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Flynn’s fortunes seemed to have changed. He now owns two homes in Englewood worth nearly $1 million and travels around the country spreading misinformation about the “rigged” election to those gullible enough to donate to the cause.
America’s Future, the charity Flynn runs, gave Cyber Ninjas a reported $976,000 for the Arizona audit. The charity is not registered in Florida, though on its website it solicits checks to a North Port P.O. Box, the same town where Flynn’s sister, not to mention the Laundrie family, owns a home.
Nikki Fried, Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture, did not respond to requests to address the legality of the charity’s activities as they pertain to the Arizona audit and the Ninjas, but it does raise questions. There are other questions as well.
Logan, for example, purchased a home in Sarasota County for $422,750 in 2017, and the mortgage was paid off in January 2021, a few months before the audit began. Logan reportedly has 11 kids, and his business needed a PPP loan of $98,327 for payroll last year. Is it reasonable to think he paid this mortgage off himself?
Logan may have determined fraud did not occur in Arizona, but his recent report still cast doubt on the system, and the U.S. House Oversight Committee is requesting his presence this month concerning what it termed a “questionable audit.”
Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com who stepped down after claiming an affair with Russian agent Maria Butina but not before cashing out $90 million worth of stock, is another conspiracy theorist whose group gave $3.25 million to Logan and the Cyber Ninjas and continues to claim election rigging.
Byrne recently purchased four homes, a condominium, and a medical building worth more than $10 million in Sarasota County through a company called Manatee Investments, though he went to great lengths to stay anonymous.
Dominion Voting Systems has filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against Byrne for continually claiming its voting machines are flawed. Could it be possible those purchases are tied to the lawsuit?
Like everything else dating back to the Earth’s cooling, the Big Lie is about money and power.
Trump needs the Lie to hold onto power, and perhaps to run again, and Flynn has an audience to spread it, which he readily does. Why? Because Flynn owes Trump for pardoning him after he pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI during the Mueller investigation.
And people like Flynn, Byrne and Logan need the Lie to make money. They have mortgages to pay, 11 kids to feed, legal bills to settle, and trips to take to keep this hamster wheel spinning.
It is this simple.
It is this shocking.
But who cares if our democracy is crumbling?
Folks, the system is rigged.
Contact columnist Chris Anderson at chris.anderson@heraldtribune.com. Please support local journalism by purchasing a digital subscription.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: How the Big Lie threatens democracy | Opinion
