Maui tragedy fans the flames of conspiranoia

It should come as no surprise to anyone who is even marginally in tune with contemporary culture that the tragic wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui have sparked an explosive round of conspiracy narratives by -- in no particular order of significance -- (1) climate change deniers; (2) anti-government keyboard warriors; (3) conspicuous contrarians who, like teenagers rebelling against Mom and Dad, automatically reject anything reported by the "mainstream" or "legacy" media; and (4) random worshipers at the Universal Church of Conspiranoia. Many if not most of these folks reside quite comfortably in all four groups.

You've no doubt heard some variation on the saying, "Never let a good crisis go to waste," an aphorism variously attributed originally to Winston Churchill, Niccolo Machiavelli, and several others. Today's cynics like to haul out that saying and brandish it like a weapon in the service of blasting pretty much any contemporary person or group (usually political) whose opinions or actions, in response to the crisis du jour, they oppose. (And many like to put the saying into practice themselves; witness the barrage of criticisms, most of them politically motivated, of President Biden regarding his administration's responses to the Maui disaster.)

In any event, while the identity of the individual who coined the phrase is a matter that will probably never be settled, what is certain is that the conspiranoid crowd will never, ever let a crisis such as a natural disaster or other tragic event go to waste. The moment the news breaks, the hysteria is flying around social media and blogs and chat forums.

DEWs and dont's
Some experts who have weighed in about the Maui disaster have indicated that extreme weather, driven by human-induced climate change, has contributed to the fires -- if not outright causing them, then making them far more severe than they might have ordinarily been. Others have said pish-posh to that, claiming instead that decades of poor land management and declining agriculture are to blame. I think it's reasonable to speculate that it's not an either-or situation and is very likely a combination of those factors. (Which is congruent with most credible analyses I've seen so far of the Maui fires.)

But that's not good enough for the conspiranoids, many of whom are stalwart climate change deniers and will reflexively argue against any explanation that even remotely suggests climate change. One of their pet narratives is that the fires were deliberately set though government use of Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs). And these folks are more than willing to share photographic "evidence," even if some of those photos are bogus.

This just raises the question of why the big bad gummit would be doing such a thing to the innocent residents of Maui. Apparently it's all part of a plot to turn Maui into a "smart island," and/or to transform the city of Lahaina -- which has been devastated -- into a "15-minute city." From Vice.com, August 15, 2023:

For the Maui wildfires, the conspiracy theorists have added a new twist to their claims, asserting baselessly that the fires were purposely started to fulfill the World Economic Forum’s goal of creating a smart island on Maui or a 15-minute city in Lahaina, depending on which conspiracy theorist you listen to.

Some social media users pointed to a conference that took place on Maui in January, where scientists discussed the idea of 15-minute cities—an urban planning concept where all amenities would be available within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

While the claims about the government seeking to create a smart island or turn the fire-razed city of Lahaina into a 15-minute city are new, the idea that laser weapon systems developed by the government have been used to start the wildfires are nothing new, dating back to at least the devastating wildfires that raged across California in October 2017.

These claims merge two distinct conspiracy narratives: a deep distrust of governments, and claims that undermine the role of climate change in the dramatic increase in the number of wildfires raging across North America in recent years.

And, as noted above, the conspiranoids don't care about facts, and they'll share photographic or video "evidence" for their claims, even if that "evidence" is totally made up. Also from the Vice article:

On X, where much of the conspiracies have been spread, video claiming to show a “direct energy weapon” or DEW being fired in Maui was viewed 10 million times before a Community Note was added pointing out that the footage actually showed a transformer explosion in Chile earlier this year.

Another post on X showed what appeared to be a laser beam pointing at a burning church in Maui, but a review of the original image taken by an Associated Press photographer shows the image had been doctored. That post racked up 9 million views.

One claim made by the conspiracy-minded to reinforce their argument is that a "smart city conference" was held in Maui in January 2023, presumably in preparation for an attack later in the year. Another related claim is that the upcoming Hawaii Digital Government Summit, scheduled for September 25, 2023, will include the formulation of plans to make Maui the first "smart" island. Those claims have been debunked, but that has apparently done little to discourage the conspiranoids.

In a further attempt to validate their accusations, some of those embracing the DEWs narrative have shared links that offer valid information about the weapons, accompanying their posts with some comment such as, "See, Directed Energy Weapons are REAL!" But that's a straw-man argument, as nobody credible is arguing that these weapons are not real. The US government has been researching them for decades, spending billions of dollars on the research, but so far nobody has been able to get them out of the lab and into the battlefield (or onto Maui, as the case may be).

"That's what they WANT you to think," I can hear the conspiranoids and contrarians sniffing now. Unlike we the sheeple, they refuse to be placated.

One small book for Amazon, one giant leap to conclusions for the conspiranoids
The conspiracy buzz has only heightened with the publication of a "book" titled Fire and Fury: The Story of the 2023 Maui Fire and its Implications for Climate Change, by someone (or something, if you lean towards the theory that it was AI-generated) going by the puckish pseudonym of "Dr. Miles Stones." (Milestones, get it?) So far the book has a one-star review average on Amazon, with some reviewers being indignant climate-change deniers who know beyond a doubt that this work is socialist propaganda. Nevertheless as I write this, Amazon lists it as the #1 bestseller under the category "Natural disasters."

Beyond their resistance to climate science, what has so many of the "netizens" up in arms is the fact that the book was generated so quickly, while the tragedy is still ongoing. To those folks, the work clearly had to have been prepared ahead of the (deliberately-set) fires. Typical of the responses I've seen to this book is a Facebook post where the poster asked:

Who on Earth can write a book and get it out four days after such a tragedy? Oh, the rulers.Guess what the angle is...

Who on Earth can write a book and get it out in four days? I think the answer is, pretty much anyone with an Amazon account and a valid payment method, due to something that is commonly called "technology." Currently this title is listed as being available in two formats: e-book (Kindle) and a paperback print version. Amazon’s well-oiled self-publishing machine allows for rapid publishing of an e-book, and print versions are print-on-demand, meaning that if there’s an order for a print copy, a copy will be printed and shipped. Even if there are no orders for the print book it will still be listed as an option if the author is willing to pay for that option. If the author of this book had been willing to spring for a hard bound print copy, that would have been listed as well.

And Amazon, of course, doesn’t care about the merits of a work. Even if it’s crap that was hammered out in a half hour and uploaded, as long as the writer also provides valid payment information to Amazon, a book is born.

Also worth noting is that, according to the product descriptions on Amazon, this particular title is a mere 44 pages if you print out the Kindle version, and only 86 pages in the actual print version. If you're a prolific or long-winded writer, writing that much in a day, or even a couple of hours, is NBD. It's also entirely possible that in creating this work, the author simply copied and pasted material he/she/it had already composed elsewhere since news of the disaster broke, and then cobbled it into something he/she/it could sell as a book, and then uploaded it to the big Amazon self-publishing machine. Or, as several folks have mentioned, AI could have been used to generate the content. These days you never know.

Is it exploitative to publish a book about a tragedy while it's still raging on? No doubt. But it doesn't take any paranoid conspiracy narrative to explain how this work could have gotten published so quickly.

Oprah did it! (Along with Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, et al.)
For various reasons, I'm not a big fan of Oprah Winfrey. But I'm not at all willing to believe, as some apparently do, that she was part of a conspiracy of "elites" who own property on Maui and were responsible for the fires, presumably in order to force indigenous people and other less fortunate folks to sell their properties. Nevertheless that's one of the other pet narratives that the conspiranoids are pushing. Their key "evidence" is their (false) claim that all of the properties belonging to the celebs has remained mysteriously undamaged, as reported on, among other sources, news.com.au (August 15, 2023):

Twitter user Matt Wallace, who has 1.2 million followers on the social media platform now officially known as X, claimed on Sunday that “locals in Maui were refusing to sell their land to the elites”.

“The part of the island mainly destroyed by the fires was prime area right next to lavish mega-mansions,” he wrote in the post which has been viewed nearly 12 million times. “Now, a lot of those locals are forced to sell their land and many tragically died in the flames.”

He claimed “Oprah Winfrey has a luxury mansion in Maui — it’s completely fine”, repeating the statement for Jeff Bezos, Lady Gaga, Bill Gates, Morgan Freeman, Will Smith and Julia Roberts.

There have also been reports that investors have been calling victims who had to evacuate their land, with offers to buy that land. Now that is one claim that I'm willing to believe; unfortunately, these tragedies attract scummy opportunists. But the celeb-blaming? Just more conspiranoia fiction.

Into the fiery archives...
Of the various conspiracy narratives that are swirling around the Interwebs about the Maui fires, it's the celebrity-focused one that interests me the most, especially the suspicious harrumphing about homes of "the elite" mysteriously being untouched by the flames. That puts me in mind of a long-ago online conflagration ignited by none other than career huckster Joe Vitale, one of this blog's former favorite subjects, who years ago and apparently without irony took on the nickname "Mr. Fire."

Waaaay back in the autumn of 2007, back in the daze when the crassly materialistic new-wage moviemercial The Secret was still the rage, Mr. Fire, one of the "stars" of that big hit, wrote a controversial blog post about the devastating San Diego wildfires. His post generated so much heat, so to speak, that not long afterward he scrubbed all of the critical comments to the post, and has since wiped that post, and a followup, from his archives altogether. Since his original writings are long gone, you'll just have to take my Whirled's word for it, starting with this October 26, 2007 post (see the first item, "How to avoid getting your house burned down").

If you don't feel like following that link, I'll just quote myself, and quote myself quoting Joe, right here.

There has been an incredible amount of pain, suffering, and loss of life and property on the Left Coast this past week or so, what with those pesky wildfires. But much of this could possibly have been avoided if only all of the residents had been Law Of Attraction hustledorks. How do I know? I know because it’s all there in black and white on the blog of Mr. Fire himself. Apparently if you have a fire in your soul and are focused on that, your house won’t burn down. To me this sort of contradicts the "like attracts like" idea so popular with LOA-ers, but then again, it does fit in nicely with that whole concept of "fighting fire with fire." Or even with "like cures like," which is the basis of the well-respected science of homeopathy.

Mr. Fire tells us that while 45 homes burned near the home of Secret star John Asshat Assaraf, John’s home is safe! And so are the home and office of another Secret star, James Earl Ray…oops, I mean James ARTHUR Ray. (James EARL Ray is deceased, and so, because of him, is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sorry; I keep getting my James Rays mixed up.) Furthermore, the manager of yet another Secret star, Lisa "Hairdo" Nichols also escaped the fires unscathed.

"Instead of wondering why they attracted a fire," writes Mr. Fire, "it might be wiser to wonder how they didn’t attract a fire." Mr. Fire says he has spent the last day or so with Lisa and John, who, he says, "are not focused on fires. They are focused on the fire in their soul." What sets them apart from others, apparently, is that they "spend their time working, making a difference, writing, speaking, and changing lives." Same goes with Dr. John Demartini, yet another Secret star and a friend of Joe’s for more than 20 years. Like the others, Dr. Demartini lives a life of passion and purpose.

"Fires," says Mr. Fire, "don’t stop people like this."

Given the content of his post, and in the context of Joe's many other declarations about the magic of the "Law of Attraction," it's hardly a shocker that the message most people took from Joe's words was that these Secret stars -- who were of course experts in the Law of Attraction -- were somehow able to lasso said law and keep it from damaging their homes. And lots of folks called Joe on that.

In an indignant and defensive followup post, which I wrote about in my own followup (but which, like the original Mr. Fire post, is long gone), Joe said that his post had been a sort of Rorschach test for his readers. He essentially declared that if people had a problem with his original post, that was purely a result of their own bias/limited vision/spiritual flaws. And he also explained that he had deleted most of the comments to that original post because too many of them contained "personal attacks, insults, wild claims, and dark negativity."

In retrospect, the old online battles over The Secret and the ridiculous hype by flopportunists such as Mr. Fire seem like such innocent times. Given the milieu of "alternative facts" and formerly-fringe-but-now-mainstream conspiranoia narratives in which we now live, I'm almost nostalgic for the good old daze when the ludicrousness of The Secret, and the foibles of its cast of hustledorks, were the most pressing issues on this Whirled.

Addendum, August 23, 2023: The other day I was discussing the Maui wildfires with a good friend who said she was sure that the rethuglicans would find a way to blame President Biden for the disaster (or for making it worse). I added that they would probably blame "wokeness" too. Both my friend's and my predictions were no-brainers, of course; Biden had already been catching flak from the reich, and it seems that the reich blame wokeness for virtually every bad thing that happens these days. Regarding the latter, on August 16, 2023 The New Republic ran a piece about -- yes, far-reich figures blaming the wildfires on wokeness. Or at least, they're accusing wokeness, specifically DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) ideas and policies of being responsible for a five-hour delay in diverting water to firefighters in Lahaina.

As Hawaii reels from devastating wildfires and considers how to rebuild, far-right figures are… blaming wokeness for the whole thing.

The conspiracy theory essentially goes like this: An Obama-backed Hawaii official delayed the diversion of water to firefighters during the wildfires in Maui, because that official is a native Hawaiian who respects how water is used...

...“[W]e’re learning that the official who delayed the approval is an Obama Foundation ‘Asia Pacific Leader’ & a climate activist,” [GOP presidential candidate Vivek ] Ramaswamy tweeted. He’s a “climate activist who believes water should be ‘revered’ first and foremost. The DEI agenda is literally costing people their lives.” 

Ramaswamy and his fellow fascists based their entire blame-DEI narrative on the fact that in 2022, as a member of a panel on sustainability, the official in question, M. Kaleo Manuel, had made comments about how native Hawaiians consider water to be one of the "earthly manifestations of God." Somehow this got twisted into Manuel declaring that water itself is more important than human lives. Just take a look at some of the recent comments on the YouTube video linked to in this paragraph. The same types of comments are littering Twitter/X too, with reich-wing hysterics blaming DEI and liberals and so forth for the fact that little children were burned alive. They're calling for imprisonment or even the death penalty for Mr. Manuel and other scapegoats.

As is very often the case, the real story is much more nuanced than reich-wing pearl clutchers tell it. Battles over water rights have been raging in Maui for generations, but access to water for firefighting is a priority even among the "woke." And in this case, there's no clear evidence that it would have made any difference even if the request for diversion had not been delayed for five hours. Other factors, such as melted pipes and powerless pumps, not to mention winds that were too strong to drop water from helicopters, made reservoir levels moot.

A series of blunders and miscommunications probably did hamper the firefighting efforts overall, costing people their lives. But to blame "wokeness" for this is either stupid or cynical or both. But that's the American reich for you.

Note: If you want to help the victims of the Maui fires, here is a list of resources.

Related on this Whirled:

• August 31, 2017: Harvey is bringing out the conspiranoids -- Wildfires are far from the only conspiranoid attractants; hurricanes bring 'em out too. In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey devastated my former hometown of Houston, Texas, as well as numerous smaller cities in southeast Texas. Even other states were affected. For their part, the conspiranoids claimed that Hurricane Harvey was engineered as a "weather terrorism" weapon, and they provided all sorts of "evidence" to prove it.
• August 9, 2019: Conspiranoid claptrap & manipulative manifestos cloud narrative about El Paso & Dayton shootings -- Mass shootings are also magnets for conspiranoids, and the El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio shootings, which took place in early August 2019, were no exception. From conspiracy-porn crapitalists like Alex Jones and Mike Adams to republican "leaders" including then-president Trump, the American reich was out in force with a variety of conspiracy narratives and targeted scapegoating. Many of them blamed "antifa" and/or "the Deep State" for the shootings, while accusing Democrats/liberals/gun safety advocates of exploiting or even engineering the tragedies in efforts to advance a nefarious gun-control agenda.
• September 11, 2011: Farces of nature -- Back in 2011, during a terrible drought and a plague of Texas wildfires, Ron and I experienced firsthand the awful fear that happens when fires hit much too close to home. We were fortunate that the fire didn't reach our house, but we and our multiple fur babies did have to evacuate, and it was a very stressful time. Many of the people around us fared much worse. Meanwhile, Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale was working his McSpirituality magick on his blog and other forums, offering spiritual explanations for the fires that were raging across Texas. He also invited his readers to help him stop the wildfires, the way they had previously helped him "stop" a couple of hurricanes (or so he claimed), using only the awesome power of their collective minds. Of note, he has so far not made a similar public invitation to help stop the Maui wildfires -- at least not that I've seen; perhaps he issued the invitation on more exclusive forums, having learned his lesson from being so soundly ridiculed for previous such missives.

Sound Of Freedom funders' hall of shame, and the Utah/Mormon huckster connection

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and his fellow Mormon Tim Ballard, who is the inspiration for the highly fictionalized summer hit movie Sound Of Freedom, are good buds, not to mention devoted Trumpsters.

Much of this post was originally part of the August 7, 2023 Whirled post about the arrest of Fabian Marta, one of thousands of participants in the crowdfunding of the hit movie Sound Of Freedom. I decided that it works better as a separate post, with additional content and links.
~ CC

Twitter/X user, podcaster, and former alternate-reality game developer Jim Stewartson, who describes himself as an anti-disinfo activist, was the first source I know of to report on the late July 2023 arrest of a guy named Fabian Marta, who helped crowdfund the highly fictionalized hit movie about child sex trafficking, Sound Of Freedom. Marta was charged with being an accessory to felony child kidnapping. I wrote about that on my previous post on this Whirled.

Most of the mainstream press, and Stewartson himself for that matter, framed their reporting, or at least their headlines, around the fact that Marta was a funder of Sound Of Freedom. The big hook, of course, was that a financial backer of this passionately anti-child-trafficking movie was himself (allegedly) involved in felony child kidnapping. In my post I tried to draw a middle ground, stressing that Marta was only one of thousands of participants in the P&A (prints and advertising) campaign ahead of the movie's release.

But I also emphasized that Marta's arrest had become a story in the first place because of his own public bragging about his role in bringing the movie to audiences after Disney had shelved it. And I also noted that even if Marta is ultimately exonerated of the child kidnapping charges, he's still an unsavory character with ties to the sexually exploitative sugar daddy/sugar baby culture, and to top it off, he's apparently a reich-wingnut.

Credibility is not an all-or-nothing thing
Regarding Jim Stewartson, I am well aware of assertions that he is not the most credible of sources. For example, a May 2023 Vice article claims that in his extensive writings about disgraced former national security advisor and loyal Trumpcult member Michael Flynn, Stewartson has so far failed to produce credible hard evidence of his declarations that Flynn is for all practical purposes the infamous "Q" (of QAnon infamy), or that Flynn is part of a Kremlin-funded psyop to destroy U.S. democracy. (If you want to go a little further back in time, a May 2021 Vice article gives more background info about Stewartson, focusing on his involvement with fighting QAnon, via an organization he founded called The Thinkin Project (the name is a pun on the anti-Trump org The Lincoln Project).)

The May 2023 Vice piece about Stewartson and Flynn was published in the wake of a defamation lawsuit that Flynn had filed in Florida against Stewartson. Vice basically presented the saga as being a case of conspiracist vs. conspiracist. (If you're willing to take a peek down the rabbit hole, here's a February 2022 post from Stewartson about the Flynn/Q connection.)

But there's no doubt that whether or not he is actually "Q," the loathsome Flynn is a fierce conspiracist who isn't afraid to embrace QAnonsense and other wackadoodle conspiracies, not to mention that he's a big supporter of Donald Trump's efforts to destroy American democracy. He may be a lunatic, but he's a dangerous one. And while I am not, at this point, willing to go all the way down the Flynn-Kremlin-psyops rabbit hole with Stewartson, I agree with his basic premise that Flynn is a peril to America.

More importantly to this post and my previous one, I will say that in my opinion, Stewartson's reporting on what some journalists have described as the "Q-adjacent" film Sound Of Freedom does have credibility. That's why I've cited him in my blog posts about the movie and its principals and funders.

One of Stewartson's X posts that caught my eye was his response to a post by Angel Studios, the distributor of Sound Of Freedom, following Fabian Marta's arrest. Angel Studios expressed gratitude towards law enforcement for their fine work in collaring child traffickers and kidnappers. Stewartson wrote:

Hey @AngelStudiosInc if you are so grateful to law enforcement for arresting “Sound of Freedom” funder Fabian Marta, did you screen your funders, producers, and actors before putting them in the credits? Are you going to now? If Fabian Marta was the only funder with problems, that would be one thing. He’s isn’t.

• Eduardo Verastegui, producer/actor, disciple of one of the worst pedophiles in Mexican history, Marcial Maciel, and current member of infamous pedophile-ridden child trafficking Catholic congregation Legion of Christ
• Alejandro Monteverde, director, whose only two other films were with Verastegui, including the last film in 2015 called “Little Boy” which was a small budget movie about a dwarf teenager which required more than a thousand prepubescent boys to audition for some reason
• Former richest man, Carlos Slim, funder, a Mexican mafia warlord who enables drug and human trafficking at scale
• Tony Robbins, funder, MAGA self-help fraud in business with international terrorist Erik Prince, and credibly accused of sexual harassment of underage girls
• Lee Severino, producer, who admits to grooming his wife while she was an underage high school girl and he was her church guidance counselor, and did a film with Verastegui and Monteverde while infamous pedophile Marcial Maciel was still alive
• Tim Ballard, producer/alleged subject of the film, says he has watched thousands of hours of CSAM [child sex abuse material] and can’t watch his own movie, and raised money by spreading the lie that children are sold in Wayfair cabinets
• Jim Caviezel, actor, brainwashed QAnon/Pizzagate propagandist who can’t find work anywhere else and makes a living lying to people at QAnon conferences

So Angel Studios, this entire production is dirty and you know it. Are you going to distance yourself from the rest of your cast and crew? I will wait.

I won't comment on that entire list, though I urge you to research some of those names in more detail, and I can't wholeheartedly agree with Stewartson that "this entire production is dirty." I do, however, want to mention that Alejandro Monteverde, the director and screenwriter of Sound Of Freedom, seems to be trying even more desperately than Angel Studios has been doing to distance himself and his film from QAnon conspiracy narratives, as well as from the furious and deeply divisive U.S. political angle. That's according to an August 14, 2023 article in Variety, which among other things quotes Monteverde as saying, in reference to Jim Caviezel and Tim Ballard, "There's people that are too close to the film that are in politics. So it's like, I love you, but I have to keep my distance." (Monteverde did not attend the July screening of Sound Of Freedom at Trump's Bedminster golf resort.)

In his interview with Variety, Monteverde also provides insight into the gigantic ego of Tim Ballard. The piece is worth a read, though I also need to point out that in listing Monteverde's previous film accomplishments, it does not mention Little Boy, the movie Stewartson cited in the X post quoted above.

Regarding another name on the list, this one much more familiar to most folks, I also want to note, as I also had on a previous Whirled post, that it's true that selfish-help huckster Tony Robbins, the subject of several posts on this blog, is a major investor in Sound Of Freedom. That's in contrast to Fabian Marta, who, as noted above, was just one of thousands of crowdfunders.

Not surprisingly, Robbins is a good buddy of Tim Ballard, who is of course the inspiration for Sound Of Freedom. The two of them were even involved in a murky rescue op together; Vice.com spilled the details in an August 12, 2021 article that's pretty eye-opening. (Note that the investigation of Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.) that was mentioned in the article has since been closed, but a newer investigation into same is apparently still ongoing, and may have been related to Ballard's recent departure from O.U.R. But O.U.R. is being very tight-lipped about that one so far.)

In addition, allegations of sexual harassment and other types of abuse have been leveled against Tony Robbins. Regarding those allegations, see the "Related on this Whirled" links following this post for background information.

Moreover, not all of the unsavory characters funding the film have a connection to human trafficking or pedophiles. Some are just plain fraudsters. Consider one of the movie's executive producers, Andrew McCubbins, who in 2020 pleaded guilty to defrauding Medicare of $89 million. From Insider, July 13, 2023:

Sound of Freedom executive producer Andrew McCubbins, a Utah serial entrepreneur, ran a telemedicine company that paid kickbacks to physicians and nurses in exchange for unnecessary prescriptions for genetic screening tests, which were processed by a lab McCubbins owned, according to charging documents and an Insider interview with McCubbins. Medicare reimbursed up to $8,000 per test, according to the federal indictment.

Hollywood scoundrels v Mormons on a mission
I know what some defenders of Sound Of Freedom and its principals may be thinking. The movie biz -- in particular, the mainstream Hollywood system that has so firmly entrenched itself in our culture -- is not known for being a paragon of morality and ethics. If every producer/investor/financier were required to be a choir boy or girl, tons of movies would have never gotten off the ground. And that is a valid point. Some of my favorite films bear the name "Harvey Weinstein" in the production credits. Honestly, seeing that name in the post-#MeToo era makes me wince...but not enough to make me stop enjoying the movies.

However, Angel Studios' entire mission, where film is concerned, is framed in their determination to do better than Hollywood in every way, most particularly spiritually and morally. They're all about spreading love and light, Jesus-style, to a "faith-based" audience egregiously under-served by Hollywood. So maybe, just maybe, their standards should be a little bit higher.

On the other hand, Angel Studios, along with the entire Angel empire, is a Utah-based organization, and Utah is infamously "the land of bilk and money," in the words of one of the world's most ignored bloggers (that would be me). A much less ignored blogger, in his day, is Jason "Salty Droid" Jones, who years ago did a lot of impressive, groundbreaking work regarding Utah boiler rooms and multi-level marketing scams and state government corruption and whatnot, and who once said to a reporter for a Utah alternative weekly, "Fraud built Utah like cocaine built Miami."

I suspect things haven't changed much since that 2012 article. If there's one thing I learned from all of Jason Jones' posts on this general topic, it's that the huckster circles in Utah are pretty tight, often supported by grifting Utah politicians, and arguably reinforced by the fact that almost all of the participants share the unique bond of Mormonism.

I linked to this May 2021 Substack post in a resource list at the end of a previous Whirled post, but it's appropriate to bring it up again. Titled "A cult within a cult: Operation Underground Railroad, the Mormon church, and me," the post illuminates how Tim Ballard exploited that Mormon bond to persuade gullible people to support his mission. It's very well worth reading.

None of the above is an attack on Mormonism per se, just an acknowledgment of those undeniable bonds that, while undoubtedly inspiring good deeds, can also inspire or validate bad or at least misguided ones (and are even a major factor in the coverup of truly horrendous deeds such as sexual abuse within the Church community, including child sex abuse). And unfortunately, due to the tight bonds within Latter-day Saints culture, innocent Mormons are uniquely vulnerable to fraud such as Ponzi schemes perpetrated by other Mormons. This is known as "affinity fraud."

To give a contemporary example of what I suspect is a Mormon-based bond among the not so innocent and vulnerable -- if you'll pardon a brief but pertinent digression -- Utah's current attorney general, Sean Reyes, who has been described as a confidant and friend of Tim Ballard, has scoffed at "media attacks" on Ballard and says Ballard is "a true hero." According to the July 14, 2023 Faithwire article linked to in the previous sentence, Reyes added that anyone doubting Ballard's experience and credibility is doing so from "absolute ignorance." Clearly, Reyes is conflating legitimate criticism, questioning, and clarification of his true hero with "attacking."

It's not a real big stretch to imagine that Reyes might possibly have exerted undue influence in Davis County, Utah DA Troy Rawlings' decision in March of this year to close out the two-and-a-half-year criminal investigation into Ballard and O.U.R. I linked to an article about this matter above, in the part about Tony Robbins and Ballard being buds, but here's that link again. From the article:

The reviewed charges by Rawlings’ office included communications fraud, witness tampering and retaliation against a witness, victim or informant, according to a declination statement which Rawlings confirmed was authentic.

The determination to close the investigation came after Rawlings’ office received and reviewed financial audits of Operation Underground Railroad and information supplied by law enforcement agencies including the Utah Attorney General’s Office, the document says.

Rawlings’ office also took into account details provided by Operation Underground Railroad about the organization’s domestic and international initiatives and “the current prosecutorial priorities of the Davis County Attorney’s Office” in making the decision, according to the document.

“In sum, the Davis County Attorney’s Office does not believe that the decision to pursue charges against O.U.R. or any individuals associated with O.U.R. is prudent,” the declination reads.

"Prosecutorial priorities" and the belief that pursuing charges against O.U.R. wouldn't be "prudent"... well, that could cover a wide range of possibilities. Of course, there's always the possibility that they actually did do a thorough investigation and honestly found no wrongdoing. But I find myself running low on benefits of the doubt to give.

Of note, AG Reyes, like his good buddy Tim Ballard, is also apparently a staunch Trumpster, and is one of 11 GOP attorneys general who used their offices to defend Trump, following the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, by filing an amicus brief in September 2022, accusing the Biden administration of "ransacking" Trump's home. Also in September 2022, a group called The 65 Project filed an ethics complaint against Reyes with the Office of Professional Conduct over his "concerted" effort to overturn legitimate 2020 presidential election results.

To round out his far-reich creds, Reyes also believes that women who travel out of state to get an abortion should be tracked, because otherwise states' rights to enforce their own abortion laws would be unlawfully hindered. (States' rights only go so far with him, though. A few years ago he and his fellow rethuglican gun-nut AGs were campaigning for legislation that would allow people with a concealed-carry permit in one state to legally carry a gun in any state, because they claimed that to prevent permit holders from carrying outside their home state infringes on the Second Amendment.)

But I don't want to go too far down the Reyes rabbit hole right now. (If you want to, check out this August 21, 2022 video by journalist Lynn Packer, featuring best buds Sean Reyes and Tim Ballard.)

Getting back now to Angel Studios and Sound Of Freedom, the point I wish to make is that regardless of any given business's lofty mission statements, when push comes to shove it's generally all about the Benjamins, and the Harmon brothers, co-founders of Angel Studios, are no exception. They're nothing if not serial entrepreneurs, having made bucketloads of bucks by, among other enterprises, creating viral ads for products such as the Squatty Potty, which starred a cute little unicorn pooping out rainbow-colored soft-serve ice cream and had a  coprophagia theme, all in good fun, of course. Then there was a thing they had going for a while, VidAngel, where they committed serious copyright violations by taking feature films, decrypting them and "sanitizing" them for a wholesome (Mormon) audience, and streaming them. They ended up paying $9.9 million in settlements to various movie studios, and founded Angel Studios in order to create and distribute original content.

Notwithstanding the straw-man criticisms often leveled against anyone who dares to criticize aggressively capitalist (or crapitalist) entrepreneurs, I'm not claiming that there's anything intrinsically wrong with being motivated by the desire to make money. And the Harmon bros are apparently very good at doing just that, even if they have crossed legal lines in the process. What I am saying is that the money making mission appears to be their top concern, and in that regard they're not all that different from the Hollywood establishment.

Sound Of Freedom was already completed by the time Angel took over the advertising and distribution. Due to various issues regarding the original studio's merger with Disney, the movie was lying in limbo until Angel Studios acquired the rights for $5 million. But the Harmons, with their eye$ on the prize, apparently didn't think that the unsavory backgrounds (including pedo connections) of some of the principals involved in the film's production -- not to mention the lunatic Q-ravings in real life of the movie's lead -- were a big deal.

It's also not inconceivable that their fellow Mormon, the relentlessly self-aggrandizing and egotistical Tim Ballard, exerted some influence in Angel's decision to take on this tribute to Ballard's own (exaggerated) courage and heroism. Angel Studios says that through its platform, thousands of "Angel" investors choose which titles will be created, funded, and distributed, and that decisions are driven by creators and audiences. But this doesn't rule out any ties between Ballard and the Harmons, nor does it invalidate my point about the deeper, behind-the-scenes bonds among Utah/Mormon hucksters (and politicians, for that matter). If Salty Droid were still blogging, he'd very likely be on this like a rainbow on unicorn poop, but I guess you'll just have to settle for me for now. Or do your own research, and feel free to share it here.

Call for transparency
I'm thinking that in light of all of the buzz about Fabian Marta and other funders and financial backers, Angel Studios needs to publish and make easily accessible a complete list of all of the major investors, crowdfunders, and others who helped finance Sound Of Freedom ahead of its release, as well as the amount of money each one contributed. I don't mean that I think the names of and other info about individual "Pay It Forward" participants should be publicized; that would be an invasion of privacy. But I do think there should be disclosure of the names and amounts involved in the film's production as well as those who contributed to the crowdfunding before the movie was released. This might not do much to stop the swirl of speculation and wild rumors on "both sides," but it would be another step towards some much-needed transparency.

Transparency appears to be a big issue with Sound Of Freedom, though. According to The Hollywood Reporter (August 8, 2023), Angel Studios isn't exactly being forthcoming about how much of the film's $164 million (and counting) domestic take has come from donated tickets through the studio's innovative "Pay It Forward" scheme -- which allows people to buy and donate tickets for others to use -- and how much comes from those bought directly by a moviegoer.

A spokesman for Angel Studios says that the vast majority of tickets are being bought by humans and that only redeemed tickets are counted when reporting grosses to Comscore, the industry record-keeper of box office grosses. But many in the film industry continue to be skeptical, especially given the standard disclaimer on the Angel Studios web site that "Angel Studios becomes the owner of all funds upon receipt and may use them at its sole discretion to further the Angel Studios’ mission of amplifying light through impactful stories.”

In a recent-ish Facebook conversation with an ultra-right-wing friend who's a fan of Sound Of Freedom, I commented that where this film is concerned, I think Angel Studios' intentions are good and that despite the negative press, they're not overtly trying to promote political divisiveness or Q-lunacy through the movie. I stand by that opinion, but would like to amend it: Angel Studios' intentions may be good, but overall those intentions are not all that much better than those of the Hollywood establishment that the American reich, particularly the "faith-based" sector, so loves to vilify.

Related on this Whirled:

• August 7, 2023: Sound Of Freedom funder Fabian Marta's arrest: juicy scandal or dry nothingburger?

• July 22, 2023: Unholy Moses! Sound Of Freedom star Caviezel wets himself kissing up to Donald Trump while amplifying his own QAnon convictions

• July 17, 2023: Sound Of Freedumb: God's children are not for sale, but they're perfect little pawns for reich-wing agendas

• May 29, 2019: Tony baloney: Buzzfeed's Robbins exposé only a shocker for those who weren't paying attention

• June 22, 2019: Heat is still on Tony Robbins, but don't cry for him

• December 8, 2019: Flawsuits and bad whines and fake Xmas wars: a few Sunday leftovers (see first item, "Tony Baloney banks on luck o'the Irish to stifle BuzzFeed News and Twitter)

Sound Of Freedom funder Fabian Marta's arrest: juicy scandal or dry nothingburger?

The now-infamous Fabian Marta, Sound Of Freedom crowdfunding participant who was arrested in late July 2023 and charged with being an accessory to felony child kidnapping (please do see updates below, however).
The "Sugar Ball" image (left) and the screenshot of Marta's boasting about his participation in funding Sound Of Freedom (right) were shared on Twitter (X) by "anti-disinfo activist" Jim Stewartson, who to my knowledge was the first to report Marta's July 2023 arrest, as well as being the first to report on Marta's various other misdeeds.

Spoiler alert/update: Nothingburger regarding the felony child kidnapping charges, as charges against Fabian Marta were dropped on September 25, 2023. (More details at the end of this post.) That said, see the section, also in this post, with the subhead, "Even if he's not a child kidnapper..."
~CC, September 26, 2023

I had thought I'd written everything I wanted to write about the highly fictionalized and politically/culturally divisive summer hit movie about child sex trafficking, Sound Of Freedom (see here and here) -- but after news broke on August 4 that one of the film's financial backers, Fabian Marta, had been arrested for felony child kidnapping, that started a whole new round of controversies about an already controversial film. So of course I had to chime in.

Newsweek was apparently the first mainstream media outlet to report Marta's arrest. Numerous other news outlets soon followed, and noted blogs such as Jezebel picked up the story as well. Even the fact-checking site Snopes.com weighed in.

But a Twitter X user named Jim Stewartson, who describes himself as an anti-disinfo activist, had reported the arrest first, on August 2. And he had actually been on Marta's case well before Marta's arrest, as a perusal of his X feed will reveal. More about that in a while.

Here's that "n" word again: nuance
On the same day that Marta's arrest was made public by mainstream outlets, which were running wild with the theme that a "funder" of or "investor" in Sound Of Freedom had been arrested for felony child kidnapping, Deadline attempted to put things in perspective. Also from August 4, 2023:

Now just to be clear, we’re talking one person who contributed an unidentified amount of money to the $5M P&A crowdfunding campaign put together by Angel Studios. The person charged, 51-year-old Fabian Marta of Chesterfield, Missouri on July 23, was not a financier of the actual feature production. Deadline confirmed the arrest with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police per Case # 2322-CR01608.

Note child kidnapping and sex trafficking, the latter subject which Sound of Freedom focuses on (via the story of former Homeland Security agent Tim Ballard, who took rescuing abducted children into his own hands), are two different types of crimes...

...Marta is a landlord to a woman who was involved in a custody dispute with her aunt. Marta was allegedly providing living arrangements to said woman and her child, the former who is involved in rehabbing the rental property.

"P&A" means "prints and advertising." That's what the crowdfunding campaign was about. And while that campaign helped rescue Sound Of Freedom from feature film purgatory, Marta and thousands of other crowdfunders, as noted on the Deadline article, were not major financial backers of the original production.

Here's a link to a Missouri courts site that offers more details about the case. This page also has a link ("Track This Case") allowing you to sign up for notifications about docket entries, though it doesn't provide links to actual documents, for which you most likely have to pay, which I'm not willing to do.

And I can't access the police report, but if you want to try, here's a link to the records department for the St. Louis Metro Police. It looks like you'll have to pay for that report too, if you're even allowed to access it. Share it here if you can get it.

Newsweek and other outlets also reported that Marta's bail was set at $15,000 but that he was released on his own recognizance on July 24 after a brief court appearance. His next court date is August 28, 2023.

Even just the bare-bones details about this case should be enough to stop a headlong leap into a full-blown scandal narrative. Being an accessory to felony kidnapping of a child is a serious charge, but again, this does not appear to be a sex-trafficking case. Here's more, from St. Louis, Missouri CBS affiliate KMOV.com, August 4, 2023:

A probable cause statement against Marta, 51, alleges he helped somebody who had unlawfully taken her children and interfered with the return of the two children to their lawful parent “by refusing to allow police access to the residence and impeding the kidnapping investigation.”

The probable cause statement says the children were taken from an address near Midtown in St. Louis City and taken to an address in the Fountain Park neighborhood about 10 minutes away. It alleges Marta helped harbor the children at the Fountain Park address. Both children are under 14 years old.

Marta’s attorney, Scott Rosenblum, confirmed to News 4 in an interview that Marta was “one of many investors” of “Sound of Freedom.”

Rosenblum said Marta was providing living space to the other suspect in the case in exchange for rehab on some of the properties Marta owned. He claimed his client is completely innocent of the charge.

“These charges are completely unfounded,” Rosenblum said. “I believe they are conflated and I believe Mr. Marta will be exonerated.”

So at its core this might possibly be little more than a very acrimonious custody battle, with Marta caught in the middle. As I said, all of the details have yet to be made public, and I'm too lazy/cheap to dig for them now. If/when I find out more, I will be sure to update this post. And if you find additional details, feel free to drop a comment to this blog, and I'll publish it. I can't do all of this stuff by myself; it takes teamwork to make a dream work.

Angel Studios on the defensive, once again
After the news of Marta's arrest broke, Angel Studios was fairly quick to throw him under the bus From MSN, August 4, 2023:

Angel Studios has responded to the arrest of "Sound of Freedom" investor Fabian Marta on charges of child kidnapping. Marta was charged with felony child kidnapping in July...

..."Angel Studios adhered to the requirements of federal and state laws and regulations in allowing 6,678 people to invest an average of $501 each into the launch of 'Sound of Freedom,'" Angel Studios CEO Neal Harmon states. "Just as anyone can invest in the stock market, everyone who meets the legal criteria can invest in Angel Studios projects. One of the perks of investing was the ability to be listed in the credits."

The statement continues, "We're grateful to brave law enforcement officials who have already arrested dozens of traffickers in the weeks following 'Sound of Freedom's release. Our film speaks to this globally-pervasive problem, and it is our hope that perpetrators everywhere will be brought to justice no matter who they are and that even more people will see the film to raise awareness."

Initially, however, Angel Studios co-founder Jeffrey Harmon called the case a "nothingburger" and said that it must have taken a lot of work to extract one name from a list of more than 6,600 random crowdfunders. But that seems a bit disingenuous, as Marta probably wouldn't have been on anyone's radar, even disinfo activist Jim Stewartson's, if he hadn't publicly boasted about being a funder who helped save Sound Of Freedom from oblivion after Disney shelved it. Not only did Marta brag about his contribution, but he also appeared to exaggerate his role, insinuating that he was a major investor who had the vision to see the potential of Sound Of Freedom.

Jim Stewartson had previously highlighted Marta's boasts, and posted about them again recently. Attached to the linked Twitter/X post are screenshots of Marta's posts about being a funder of the film. Stewartson also clarified:

Since I keep getting asked about Fabian Marta’s Facebook account being down, it isn’t. He just made it private after all the attention I’ve given him. Here is his post about “Sound of Freedom” from July 9th. I exposed him on July 10th. These were taken less than an hour ago.

The point is that, contrary to Jeffrey Harmon's implications, Marta put himself on the radar. He made himself the low-hanging fruit. It wasn't the doing of Jim Stewartson or any mainstream news media outlet.

And while we're still on the subject of the Angel Studios statement, I have an issue with that part where it says, "We're grateful to brave law enforcement officials who have already arrested dozens of traffickers in the weeks following Sound of Freedom's release." It seems pretty clear that this is an insinuation that the film's release was somehow responsible for those arrests. Whether or not that was the intention (and I'm really not all that willing to give the benefit of the doubt in this instance), the film's devotees in the reich-wing media are only too happy to take this notion and run with it. For instance, the headline on an August 7 piece on the ultra-reich Daily Signal crowed, "Child-Trafficking Bust Proves the Left was Wrong About 'Sound of Freedom.'"

The premise of the Daily Signal piece rests on a ludicrous straw-man argument (and gaslighting tactic) that the "left" and "liberals" and most especially the evil "legacy media" don't believe that child trafficking and human trafficking in general are actually problems. This claim is not at all true; instead, what the critics have asserted, in most cases citing credible sources involved in fighting human trafficking, is that Sound of Freedom distorts the very real problems of trafficking, and in some ways may be doing more harm than good. Here is but one example of one of those "legacy media" citing some of the film's potentially dangerous distortions. That piece, from USA Today (July 28, 2023) fully acknowledges that there is indeed a horrific and widespread human trafficking industry, but that Sound Of Freedom misleads audiences about the problem.

But these crucial points do not matter in the far-reich narrative. According to the Daily Signal article, the naysayers on the left and in the legacy media were proven wrong about Sound Of Freedom -- which the writer of the piece inaccurately describes as a "child sex-trafficking docudrama" -- when the FBI recently announced the arrests of suspects in a massive child-trafficking investigation. Take that, lib'ruls and lefties!

Note that among the major participants in this heroic bust that was celebrated on the Daily Signal is the FBI: the very same FBI that the reich-wing lunatics want to defund and dismantle along with the rest of the "Deep State." And note the article says that this bust was announced by Attorney General Merrick Garland in a prepared statement on August 1 -- yes, the AG whom the reich-wingers want to oust, and who was appointed by President Joe Biden, the latter of whom the wingnuts claim is enabling pedophilia and trafficking, and whom many of them want, for various reasons, to impeach/imprison/execute.

Even if he's not a child kidnapper, Marta is icky
Even if the case for which Fabian Marta was arrested does turn out to be a big nothingburger, at least in regard to it having anything remotely to do with sex trafficking of minors, and even if Marta is ultimately exonerated as an accessory to felony child kidnapping, there appears to be plenty that is objectionable about the man. As mentioned towards the beginning of this post, Jim Stewartson was on Marta's case weeks ago, Among other matters, Stewartson revealed the latter's participation in the sexually/financially exploitative sugar baby/sugar daddy culture. (Here is a 2018 piece on Medium about the exploitation and "grooming," even of underage girls, that can go on in these circles.)

Stewartson also wrote about Marta's girlfriend, one Jessica Laurent Clark. Marta and Clark apparently met at one of those sugar baby/daddy events back in 2020. Here, from Stewartson again, is more about Ms. Clark, highlighting her "Sugar Boot Camp" for prospective sugar babies, for which there was apparently "no age limit." Hmmm. Here is an "unrolled" version of Stewartson's thread about Marta and Clark and their sugaring" activities.

But don't just take Stewartson's word for it. Others have weighed in too. An April 18, 2022 opinion piece on the Uexpress.com site offers some additional insight into Clark's "boot camp" and the hypocrisy of the culture warriors on the reich who are pearl-clutching over "grooming" until one of their own does it. It's worth a read.

And here, from August 2022, is something from St. Louis CBS TV affiliate KMOV about Clark's illustrious career as a school board member for the Rockwood School District in St. Louis. Speaking at a conservative radio station event, she engaged in the kind of political hate speech that's typical of reich-wing "conservatives," jeering about "libtards," kids in wheelchairs, "transgender crap," gays, critical race theory, and so forth. (Stewartson also mentioned this in his thread on Twitter/X.)

Riverfront Times in August of this year -- August 7, 2023 to be exact -- has more about not only Fabian Marta's arrest but also about Clark's "sugar baby" background. She was exploiting her sugar baby status as part of her "brand" for a while.

...the more interesting local angle of the story is Marta’s connection to controversial Rockwood School Board member Jessica Clark, who was elected in April 2022. Clark’s claim to fame was that she was the first person elected to a school board after proudly holding the title, “Sugar Baby.”

It turns out, from all appearances, that Marta was her first “Sugar Daddy."

In a since-deleted Facebook post dated February 10, 2020, Clark – posting under the name “Jessica Laurent” – displayed photos of herself with Marta. Under the heading “Jessica Laurent is with Fabian Marta,” there was this:

“On this day last year, I walked into this weird-ass party and met that weird-ass man (heart emoji). Now we spend our days being weird all day. It was pure magic. Cheers to the sweet life.” On the same day, Clark/Laurent also posted an invitation to “Sugar Ball” – “the finest sugar party experience” – at a place called “Elmo’s Love Lounge” in University City.

Still, Rockwood voters elected Clark to shake up their school district. And Marta, himself a Rockwood parent, has supported her efforts in social media and as a frequent front-row attendee at school board meetings, according to a reliable source (and fellow Rockwood parent).

The article also notes that Marta defended Clark when she was blasted for her hate speech. He said that she was being persecuted for her "conservative values." Sounds like these two would fit right in with more high-profile folks connected with Sound Of Freedom -- most notably lead actor Jim Caviezel and the film's inspiration, Tim Ballard. Not to mention fitting in with one of the devoted fans of Caviezel, Ballard, and Sound Of Freedom: the undisputed king of incendiary, violent-insurrection-inciting hate speech himself, Donald John Trump. Turds of a feather...

In any case, regarding Fabian Marta, I think it's worth saying again that this most likely wouldn’t have even been a story at all, at least not one that went beyond local St. Louis news media, if Marta himself had not publicly boasted about and exaggerated his role in financially supporting Sound Of Freedom. Even though his name is on the closing credits on the movie, it more than likely wouldn’t have been picked out from a scrolling list of hundreds of names. But he bragged, and now it’s a story.

So the question remains: is the Marta arrest case a juicy scandal or a dry nothingburger? The story hasn't ended yet, but I think I can say with confidence that, as with most hot-topic narratives, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Update, September 26, 2023: Fabian Marta no-billed (charges dropped) in felony child kidnapping case
The short memorandum, filed electronically on September 25, 2023 at 02:27 PM, says it all:

Now comes the State of Missouri and enters a memorandum of Nolle Prosequi in the above-styled cause for the reason that this matter has been presented to the St. Louis Circuit Court Grand Jury and the State has insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction.

"Nolle Prosequi" is simply pretentious Latin legalese meaning "to be unwilling to pursue" -- in other words (and in alternative translations), "to no longer prosecute." In this case, both a grand jury and the State of Missouri determined that there wasn't enough evidence against Marta to obtain a conviction.

As I write this during the late afternoon of September 26, the reporting on this latest development has so far been sparse to the point of being nearly nonexistent. National outlets such as Newsweek, which reported the arrest and the charges back in August, haven't yet reported the dismissal of the case, at least not that I've seen. (I recognize that it's still fairly early in the news cycle, so this could change.) And a local (St. Louis) news outlet, KSDK, having also reported the original story in August, posted an update on September 25, that, while factual in a bare-bones way, didn't actually mention Marta's name (except in the context of a quotation by Marta's lawyer); it only referred to him as a "Chesterfield (Missouri) man." Google "News" search results (again, at the time of this writing) yielded only the KSDK story on page 1, while all of the other page 1 results just linked back to the original stories in August about the Sound Of Freedom funder's arrest.

From the time this story first broke, various reich-wing media sites, such as the American conservative Spanish-language news outlet Voz Media, slammed the "leftist media" for making far too big a deal out of Marta's arrest, and doing so as another means of attacking the producers of Sound Of Freedom. To a certain extent they had a point about the spin, particularly when you consider the details of the case against Marta, and in my own post above, I tried to include the nuances in the story. Nevertheless, I stand by my original opinion that Marta is a reich-wingnut with an unsavory resume, and I reiterate my point that this never would have been a big national (and international) story if Marta hadn't gone on social media in the first place, publicly boasting about helping to fund Sound Of Freedom.

Maybe the no-bill development is being ignored because Sound Of Freedom's big moment has passed and few give a hoot anymore about the legal saga of one of the film's thousands of minor funders. Nevertheless I believe that to gloss over the dismissal of the Marta case would have been irresponsible on my part, and while I may be snarky, redundant, and occasionally obnoxious, I am not irresponsible.

You can read more details of the case against Fabian Marta by following this link.

Related on this Whirled:

•  August 13, 2023: Sound Of Freedom funders' hall of shame, and the Utah/Mormon huckster connection
  

  July 22, 2023: Unholy Moses! Sound Of Freedom star Caviezel wets himself kissing up to Donald Trump while amplifying his own QAnon convictions

• July 17, 2023: Sound Of Freedumb: God's children are not for sale, but they're perfect little pawns for reich-wing agendas