All of these attacks exemplify pushback against inclusion and welcome for ‘the other’: “The first and most fundamental way in which white Christian nationalism threatens American liberal democracy is that it defines ‘the people’ in a way that excludes many Americans. White Christian nationalism is a form of what is often called ‘ethno-nationalism.’ Liberal democracy rests on what is usually called ‘civic nationalism’ It defines the nation in terms of values, laws, and institutions.’” (The Flag and The Cross, p. 114)
Throughout the book the authors explore and re-explore the meaning of the deep story of white Christian nationalism: “White Christian nationalism is our term for the ethno-traditionalism among many white Americans that conflates racial, religious, and national identity (the deep story) and pines for cultural and political power that demographic and cultural shifts have increasingly threatened…. (T)he term Christian in white Christian nationalism is often far more akin to a dog whistle that calls out to an aggrieved tribe than a description of the content of one’s faith.” (The Flag and The Cross, p. 44)
Alexander Smirnov was paid $600,000 in 2020 – the same year he allegedly began lying to FBI about Bidens’ role in Ukraine business
A sketch of defendant Alexander Smirnov in federal court in Los Angeles on 26 February 2024. Photograph: William T Robles/AP
An American company that paid the now indicted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov in 2020 is connected to a UK company owned by Trump business associates in Dubai, according to business filings and court documents.
Smirnov is now accused of lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden and his father, President Joe Biden, alleging that they engaged in a bribery scheme with executives at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Smirnov’s accounts to the FBI, beginning in 2020, that federal prosecutors now say are fabrications, served as a major justification of the House impeachment investigation into the Bidens.
Republican lawmakers have repeatedly touted Smirnov as a reliable informant, and the chairman of the House oversight committee, James Comer, even threatened to hold the FBI director, Christopher Wray, in contempt unless he “handed over” a June 2020 FBI form with Smirnov’s claims to the committee.
Back in 2020, Smirnov was paid $600,000 by a company called Economic Transformation Technologies (ETT), prosecutors said. That same year, Smirnov began lying to the FBI about the Bidens, according to the indictment. There is no suggestion the payment was linked to Smirnov’s alleged fabrications.
ETT’s CEO is the American Christopher Condon, who was also one of three shareholders in ETT Investment Holding Limited in London. Other shareholders in the UK company, now dissolved, included the Pakistani American investor Shahal Khan and Farooq Arjomand, a former chairman and current board member of Damac Properties in Dubai who is also listed as an adviser on ETT’s American website.
Last month, Smirnov was charged with lying to the FBI, and is being held without bail. Prosecutors argued he posed a flight risk because of his contacts with Russian officials in the Middle East and access to millions of dollars.
Smirnov’s indictment alleged that the assertions in a document, known as a 1023, and other statements made to his FBI handler beginning in 2020 and continuing until December 2023, were factually impossible.
The exact business model of Texas-based ETT is murky. Its mission statement reads in part: “ETT set up the chess board to bring in top notch executives from those sectors to help implement its vision of love and social impact to improve the quality of human existence through the application of ‘new age’ technologies.”
The current CEO, Condon, is a California man who has been involved in several civil lawsuits, including a civil Rico case in 2010 that he won on appeal. Condon’s official biography says he is “a former professional tennis player, financial advisor, and currently is an entrepreneur focused on social-impact projects, public-private partnerships, and creating smart communities that benefit both individuals and governments”.
Condon, Arjomand and Khan registered ETT Investment Holding Limited in the UK on 6 March 2020. Khan, an investor who purchased the Plaza hotel in 2018, and Arjomand have ties to Donald Trump through Trump associates and Damac, a major Middle East developer that has partnered with Trump for a decade. Arjomand, Khan and Condon owned 34%, 33% and 33% of ETT Investment Holding Limited respectively, according to UK business filings. No other information on the UK company is readily available.
The former Damac chairman Hussain Sajwani is also close to Trump and has been described as his friend in multiple news reports. Trump has called the billionaire a “friend” and a “great man”, and his family “the most beautiful people”.
Hussain Sajwani, far right, with Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in February 2017. Photograph: AP
Sajwani attended Trump’s 2016 inauguration, and Trump’s sons Donald Jr and Eric Trump attended the 2017 ribbon-cutting of the Trump International golf club in Dubai, licensed by Damac in 2014. Sajwani and his family also attended a party in 2017 at Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s sons would go on to attend Sajwani’s daughter’s wedding in 2018.
In 2017 FEC filings, Trump disclosed making up to $5m from the Damac licensing deal, but said he would no longer do personal business deals when he became president. The two continued at least talking business into his presidency, however, according to multiple reports.
“Hussein, Damac, a friend of mine, a great guy. I was offered $2bn to do a deal in Dubai, a number of deals, and I turned it down,” Trump said in 2017.
Arjomand was the vice-chairman of Damac when the Trump International golf club, along with adjoining Trump-branded luxury homes, opened, and he replaced Sajwani as chair in 2021 when Sajwani stepped down to privatize the company.
Khan, who owns Dubai-based Trinity White City Ventures, is a New York native who partnered with New York City developer Kamran Hakim to buy the Plaza hotel in 2018 for $600m. He was a board member of ETT from 2019 to June 2020, according to his LinkedIn page, appearing in event photographs with Condon in Miami that year.
Khan is involved in a range of business from AI to mining to cybersecurity, according to his official biographies. In 2019, he was one of a dozen Pakistani American business owners invited to meet the then Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan, the day before Imran met with Trump and Mike Pompeo, then the secretary of state, in Washington DC. The group was there to discuss the expansion of business in Pakistan.
In 2017, Khan reportedly approached Brad Zackson, dubbed Paul Manafort’s “real-estate fixer”, to help him broker a deal to buy the Roosevelt hotel in Manhattan, owned by the Pakistani government via its national airline, for $500m, according to the Real Deal. When the real-estate publication asked Khan about the reports, he denied that Zackson and Manafort, a former Trump campaign chairman, were involved. Khan purchased the Pakistani embassy building in DC in 2022 for $6.8m.
Khan is also CEO of BurTech Acquisition Group, a “blank check company”, or public shell company. Patrick Orlando, listed as a “special adviser” and shareholder of BurTech in 2021, was the CEO and chair of Digital World, another blank check company, from September 2021 to March 2023. When it began a merger with Trump Media & Technology Group in 2021, it was held up by an SEC investigation until given the green light last month.
The finalization of the merger may garner Trump as much as $4bn in shares, and help bolster his finances after his recent civil litigation losses. Orlando has known Trump since at least 2021, according to news reports.
Arjomand and Khan’s relationship is unclear. Arjomand, a former HSBC banker from the United Arab Emirates, also invests in hospitality businesses, including the celebrity Wahlberg brothers’ restaurant chain Wahlburgers, and owns a coffee company called Reborn Coffee.
ETT Investment Holding Limited was dissolved in 2021. Condon and Arjomand also registered a company called Atlas UK Group Limited the same day they registered the UK ETT, now dissolved.
The American ETT, then called Pandora Venture Capital Corp, was first registered in Florida in 2014 by a Wisconsin resident, Boris Nayflish, according to Florida business filings. Ukrainian American Nayflish is the ex-husband of Smirnov’s current partner, according to a Wall Street Journal report, which also claimed Nayflish stayed close to his ex, Diana Lavrenyuk, and Smirnov after the divorce.
Smirnov, born in Ukraine, lived in Israel before coming to the US in 2006.
Pandora changed its name to Skylab in 2017, then in 2018 Skylab seemed to split from what is now ETT, according to a lawsuit, when Condon first registered ETT websites and appeared on ETT’s Florida filings.
An unnamed former business associate told the Wall Street Journal that the $600,000 payment from ETT to Smirnov was “in exchange for a stake in an Israel-based crypto trading platform, called Bitoftrade, [that] Smirnov was working on launching”.
Calls and emails to Condon, Arjomand, Sajwani and Smirnov’s lawyer, and to Trump’s team, were not returned.
Khan told the Guardian: “I was on the board for a very short period, [and] there was no connection on my part.”
ETT responded after publication saying the company had “no involvement with Alexander Smirnov” and that “his association with ETT was a direct result of a merger with another company, making him a shareholder”.
“His introduction to ETT was strictly professional,” the company said, “and any money sent to a corporation called Avalon Group Inc., a Delaware corporation, related to ETT’s investment in a cryptocurrency platform, Bitoftrade”.
“This investment, like all ETT’s investments, was made following standard due diligence processes” and was “a straightforward business investment in the technology sector and had no connections to any political figures … ETT has never had any ties to President Biden or President Trump or their associates, or any political campaigns,” it said, adding that Christopher Condon has never met Biden or Trump or members of their families.
Smirnov is scheduled for a jury trial in April, according to court filings.
Did you know that governments and courts don’t make laws? Yes according to Christian Nationalist trying to turn our democracy into their church doctrine theocracy. These are the people running that state. The state where Nex Benedict was bullied to death. Hugs. Scottie
“The government doesn’t make the law. The people rise up, power rises up from the people and the people make the law. And that law should be in accordance with God’s word and the conscience. And these federal laws are restricting both of those things. So when this authority – namely the federal government – commands what God has forbidden or has not required, second – whenever it forbids what God commands or has not forbidden, third – whenever it oversteps its constitutional jurisdiction, or fourth – binds the conscience that God alone has jurisdiction, we – those who are their authority – we are the authority for the federal government in this situation, we are not to obey them whenever they take tyrannical action.” – Rabidly Christian nationalist Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers.
OK State Sen. Deevers (R) says federal permit requirements are against God's will:
"So, when [the federal government] commands what God forbids … whenever it forbids what God commands … [or] binds the conscience that God alone has jurisdiction … we are not to obey them." pic.twitter.com/86B7XJyXUS
Dusty Deevers is a Christian nationalist pastor running for a seat in the Oklahoma state Senate in order to apply "the word of God to every issue" by abolishing abortion, pornography, no-fault divorce, and even instituting the public shaming of adulterers. https://t.co/5vIvsVfnbUpic.twitter.com/TbsvKUNEUz
We can't really come up with a better example of Christian nationalism than Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers explaining that he wants to change a law just so that its punishment aligns with various Bible verses. https://t.co/a00MHR3B1wpic.twitter.com/YYoznTrKQe
Christian nationalist Dusty Deevers, a state senator in Oklahoma, takes exception to those who accuse him of wanting to take this nation back to the 1800s. He actually wants to go *much further back* than that, like to the 1600s. https://t.co/FD3hMpK3Sfpic.twitter.com/7JSjfeHres
The problem with this extremist is that he doesn’t understand Scripture. The Bible is a set of rules for the person reading it. In other words, it tells ME how I should behave. It’s not meant to be something you force on everyone else. And this is what the theo-fascists don’t understand.
It goes beyond not understanding scripture. They haven’t read the Bible. Many of them seldom attend church. Their familiarity with scripture begins and ends with a few key clobber passages they use to hurt other people. They don’t really believe in the teachings of Jesus. How could they? They don’t even know what he said. For them, Christianity is a weapon they wield to force their will onto other people.
Even if God complains directly, she gets one vote, like the rest of us.
There’s an old Jewish joke about four rabbis who’d regularly get together to debate various religious points. Without fail, the same three would end up agreeing against the fourth, who’d shrug and say, “Three to one, majority rules.”
One day, the fourth rabbi wasn’t willing to accept his opinion being wrong, and prayed for a sign from God that he was right. Out of a clear sunny day, black clouds suddenly gathered above the four of them, then dispersed. “You see! You see? It’s a sign! I’m right!” The other three dismissed it as a chance weather occurence.
Again he prayed for a sign, a bigger sign that would convince the other three that he was right. Again clouds gathered out of nowhere, darkening the sky and raining all around, but not on, the rabbis. After a minute they dispersed and the bright sunshine returned. Once again the other three dismissed it as a random weather happening.
So a third time he prayed for a sign, an unmistakable sign that the other three couldn’t deny. No sooner did he finish than thunderclouds gathered, rained around but not on them, multicolored lightning flashed around them, the ground shook, and a voice boomed from the heavens, “HE’S RIGHT!”
After the sun returned, the vindicated rabbi asked the others, “Nu?” “Well?”
Trump is so vain and narcissistic that he can’t point at some of Biden’s accomplishment and say “That, good for our country” The ony reason is because he is lazy and doesn’t like to do the work. That is why he appointed all those a$$ kissers to do his bidding. If it was unpopular, he all of a sudden didn’t know that person very well, he was a low level employee, and most importantly, IT IS NEVER HIS FAULT!
Another great video by the Rev. Ed Trevors. He shoots down the need of some who claim that Christ is king and all powerful lord to then go on constant screeds of outrage and making claims that god is being taken away. He shows how this is not Christian, he shows how this is simply using people and doing what the bible says not to do. I love this man’s message. Hugs. Scottie
To those using the Constitution to justify why we should be living under outdated & archaic laws. The Constitution was created to evolve, you might want to try the same…
