The Healing America Summit 2024: alt-health, reich-wing politics, conspiranoia, and utter lunacy

 

I have written repeatedly on this Whirled about the unholy marriage between Scamworld and (reich-wing) politix, but the Healing America Summit -- which began May 16 and lasts through May 22, 2024 -- is not only serving up steaming piles of MAGA politix and Scamworld (particularly the alt-health sector of Scamworld), but also a hefty dose of conspiranoia and outright lunacy.

As we collectively and apprehensively grope our way through what millions of folks, for various reasons and with a wide range of emotions, view as the End Times, we can take profound (dis)comfort in knowing that there is no shortage of "experts" (i.e., grifters, scalawags, and scoundrels) offering to take us by the hand and the wallet to lead us out of fear and darkness and into their sales funnels. With increasing frequency, and more often than not under the auspices of a central grifter, these unsavory players are joining forces to pummel us with their propaganda.

There was, for example, The Truth [sic] About Cancer Live! convention back in October 2021, which featured Eric Trump and several alt-health/conspiracy crapitalists as speakers. And there's the ongoing ReAwaken America Tour, a conspiranoid Christofascist movement that was born in Oklahoma during the height of the pandemic, and has continued to spread its virulence in the years since.

And now we have the Healing America Summit, which began on May 16, 2024 and continues through May 22. The English-challenged web site says it all in the opening blurb:

USA & THE WORLD GOT CRAZY LIKE NEVER BEFORE AND WE ARE EXPERIENCING A CHALLENGING TIME!
Vaccines, Immigrants, Transhumanism, War, NWO... Bible Prophecies of End-Time & 5D consciousness rising...
The Summit offers you true science, real insider knowledge, natural medicine & Energy healing for YOU to SUCCEED in this time!
Join for FREE. www.HealingAmericaSummit.com

A smirking German huckster and "healer" named Michael König-Breuss is the host of this to-do. Here's what he tells us about himself on the Healing America Summit site:

Why do I organize this Healing America Summit?
I work as a spiritual healer like my grandfather. I knew in 2006 already, that „the mandatory vaccination with nano chips to track, manipulate or even switch of people“ will come. I saw presentations of this technique on TV already in 2014. I heard of plenty Pharma insiders how Pharma companies reduce people on purpose, how the money system is working, how Rockefeller / Rothschild are giving orders to politics in the USA & worldwide, how Chemtrails & Frequency manipulation is used and so on…. I always wanted to help people. With Covid it was enough and the Idea was born, to organize an Online-Summit to inform and wake up the people that are ready to be awakened. NOW it’s time to WAKE UP and take ACTION.

On a "Get To Know Michael" link, he adds more autobiographical details.

After living a life as spiritual Skiguide & Tourguide, I started 2006 as an energetic therapist – healer. Already my grandfather was a healer for over 40 Years, who helped even people in the hospital when Dr. couldn´t help anymore.

I am specialized expert in clearing – releasing peoples energy field of KARMA & foreign energy (old death experiences, fears, curse, black magic, demons…) and teacher for SOUL LANGUAGE – LIGHT LANGUAGE – TALKING IN TONGUES, probably the oldes [sic] Frequency healing technique on planet earth!

Since the COVID plan-demic started, I realized the ability, to significantly alleviate COVID-vaccination & COVID-testing sideffects. In the best case, i was able to eliminate them altogether.

Autum [sic] 2020 a client with migraine, aggression, depression, inner darkness, sucidal [sic] thought [sic] got a distance treatment of me via Zoom.

During the treatment I could see with my „inner eye“ a small black „Nano-Chip“ in her troght [sic]/ neck! Shocking in the first moment. But it could get taken out by SOULLANGUAGE ENERGY-HEALING work. After that happened, ALL her problems were gone in the same moment!

After that, I have helped many people with problems, that started AFTER PCR testing & COVID vaccination. These were people with enormously distressing physical, emotional and mental symptoms & problems. Depression, aggression, suicidal thoughts, headaches, migraines, foreign body feeling in the troat [sic] and whole body, unsuccessful clearing of throat, meaninglessness in life, inner darkness and restlessness, being cut off from the source, sweating, trembling and many more were symptoms that could be solved.

These things and the health problems associated with them were largely gone afterwards.

My endeavor is that with my help and gifts, people can be freed from their vaccination symptoms and can live “normally” again, AND realize the power of ENERGY, BELIEVE, HEALING & DIVINE POSSIBILITIES.

…and realize, that it seems to be a BIG plan of the divine, to wake us people UP! To get us MOVE FORWARD, UPWARD to our „true potential“.
From heart to heart,
Michael

With creds like that, you just know you're in good hands.

Of course we've heard it all before. Along with the hackneyed hype about energetic healing and other pseudo-mystical arts, plus the requisite conspiranoia about nano-chips and the NWO, the core of König-Breuss's message is simply a post-pandemic variation on the traditional New-Wage/McSpirituality theme about a bold new era of human possibility and evolution -- you know, the eternal dawning of the Age of Aquarius that the conspicuously enlightened have been yammering about for at least three generations. (As quoted above, one of the opening blurbs of the Healing America web site mentions "5D consciousness." Hmmm... 5D: fith dimension? Hey, wasn't it The Fifth Dimension that made a top-40 hit of the song from the musical Hair, "The Age Of Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In?")

My rhetorical question, and I've asked it many times, is this: When is the dawn finally going to give way to actual sunshine? Your guess is as good as mine, and my guess would be "never."

Meanwhile there's still bank to be made by promoting oneself as a wayshower or lightworker or truth-teller or savior or bearer of exclusive life-saving (mis)information. And don't think that König-Breuss isn't going to take full advantage of that.

Only the best people
The speaker lineup for the Healing America Summit includes everything from anti-vaxxers to intergalactic ambassadors to American reich-wing traitors. Here's what it says about this list of luminaries on the "summit" web site:

Your speaker [sic] are leading experts from around the WORLD.

Medical doctors, scientists, lawyers, US-Sheriff, US-General, TV-speakers, medical researchers, WHO-experts, pharma insiders, historical & political experts, healer, coaches, fitness influencer and more… They will tell YOU:

HOW the „BAD BOYS & GIRLS“ harm YOU day & night, mentally, emotionally & physically.

DETOXIFICATION possibilities of the COVID-Vaccine / PCR-Tests / Shedding by a MEDICAL WAY and on an ENERGY HEALING WAY.

The plan of the DARK SIDE, and the higher plan of the „DIVINE“ & EVERYBODY'S SOUL.

The „NEW NORMAL“ of the pharma lobby, big tec, NWO...

HOW YOUR „NEW NORMAL“ for YOU can look, if YOU take responsibility for YOUR OWN BODY, MIND, SPIRIT and SOUL!

SOLUTIONS if YOU like to learn and RISE ABOVE!

This "summit" first came onto my radar when, though officially blocked from doing so, I took a peek at the Facebook feed of one of the featured speakers, another German huckster/"healer" named Leonard Coldwell, whose English writing rivals that of Michael König-Breuss in its illiteracy. If you've been hanging around here for a few years you probably know Coldwell as a cancer quack, conspiracy loon, racist, and neo-Nazi who tried for years to kill this blog and even, at one point, tried to get some of his more fanatical followers to harm me. Coldwell's topic for the Healing America Summit is... well, let me let him tell you himself. (Spoiler: Apparently there are bad people out there who are trying to eliminate the entire human race.)

Dr. Leonard Coldwell
Founder of Instant Based Medicine System. Cancer healing expert

Worldwide Conspiracy to eliminate the Human Race - and what we can do about it

I do this work for 52 years and have the highest cancer cure rate in the world

25 mega best selling books in 29 languages. My own TV and Radio shows 26 Million listeners and regular viewers.

Before censorship my videos on Youtube had 2.3 Billion views. I as the Keynote Speaker on EVERY Health Freedom Expo

If you like to see some testimonial videos: [links]

...I just got off a life interview in Australia with Kate Kate Shemirani kateshemirani@tntradio.live

Attached my latest book the only Cancer Patient Cure – Confidential   900 Million books sold

Here's a link to a video. It's just a teaser, but in that teaser you get the gist of Quack-o Coldwell's "medical" wisdumb: he claims that medicine is a belief system rather than a science and that doctors even admit they don't know anything, with the implication being that he has all of the solutions that medicine can't offer. Meanwhile his interviewer and fellow countryman König-Breuss, is nodding and smirking in agreement. By the way, if you want to know the truth about Coldwell's "credentials," you'll find it in a concise form here, and in a more expanded form here (scroll down to the section with the sub-head, "Lenny's creds, such as they are"). [Spoiler: Coldwell is not a doctor, and never has been.]

Other speakers at the "summit" include:

Storm Dillenschneider [not to be confused with Stormy Daniels ~ CC]
Daughter of The Most High God, Mrs. Elite Universe 2024, stand Advocate against Fentanyl

Alas, Storm's lofty description on the home page is just a setup for disappointment. Her actual "bio" is essentially an announcement of her [2022] campaign for city council in Lee's Summit, Missouri. Boooooring. And apparently outdated; I seriously doubt that her speech at the Healing America Summit will have anything to do with a two-year-old political campaign in Lee's Summit.

More than likely her spiel will be political, though, as one of Storm's other credentials, which I had to go Googling (actually, Bing-ing) to find, is that she is a Trumpette and is apparently very involved with the movement to re-elect the Mango Mussolini -- which comes as no surprise whatsoever. On a May 15, 2024 Facebook post Storm shared a meme celebrating a dinner party that included Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. The lead blurb on the meme said, "I feel the Presidential air again, everytime [sic] I enter Mar-a-Lago. Could it be my ESP is confirming what we all expect to be true?"

I'm thinking that maybe the "Presidential" air is actually something she smelt rather than felt, but what do I know?

Christie Hutcherson
Women Fighting for America to help take back America

[Topic] Enemies at the Gate- Can america [sic] Survive the Coming Conflict?

Christie Hutcherson is the Founder, President, and Spokesperson for Women Fighting for America LLC. (WFFA). She is widely recognized as a geopolitical security expert and sought-after speaker with broad connections into the Freedom Movement. 100+ Border Ops Missions. 2,500+ Miles on the Border.

Christie is a front-line fighter for freedom. She is one of the only Americans who has traveled the entire 2,000 miles of the southern border and hundreds of miles of our forgotten northern border in her quest to save America. Christie has led 100 plus border missions establishing Women Fighting for America as a clear leader in exposing and fighting the corruption on our borders.

She has seen firsthand the devastation of illegal immigration, child and human trafficking, organ trafficking, massive amounts of lethal drugs entering the United States, and the atrocities committed by the transnational criminal organizations.

Support the Fight with Women Fighting for America and Christie Hutcherson!

Sounds like a bad case of Border Derangement Syndrome, Christie.

She helpfully concludes her blurb with Paypal/Stripe/Venmo links, which I will not share here. Those dumb enough to want to pour money into Christie's grift machine can look up the links themselves.

Eesha Patel
Galactic Embassador [sic] for the Galactic federation

[Topic] Galactic Experiences for Visionary Leaders

Eesha Patel specialises in the field of Galactic Consciousness. Eesha is here to facilitate the connection between humans and our Galactic Family.

A profound awakening and contact experience in 2015 set Eesha on a journey of exploring consciousness. In her current role as Galactic Ambassador, Eesha liaises with over 20 different galactic races, humanoid and non-humanoid, and facilitates these connections for visionary leaders and pioneers of the New Earth. Through her powerful interdimensional connections, Eesha lends her services of activation and channelling to assist other leaders in bringing through powerful visionary tools, techniques, and technologies for healing and our greater evolution.

Eesha’s vision is peaceful open contact with our galactic family by 2027 and her mission is to lead this global level awakening through her teaching, speaking, facilitation, and courses. Eesha’s galactic contact work has been featured in prominent media worldwide. Eesha Patel is available for mentoring, consultancy, and speaking. You can connect with Eesha Patel at eeshapatel dot con. [emphasis and intentional typo mine. ~ CC]

And no reich-wing/alt-health/alt-facts grift-fest would be complete without...

General Mike Flynn
Retired United States Army lieutenant general. 24th U.S. national security advisor of the Trump administration.

[Topic] We are in WW 3. Nobody will come to rescue us! No General, no white heads [??? ~ CC], no Trump. WE, the people need to change it!

Michael Thomas Flynn (born December 24, 1958) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who was the 24th U.S. national security advisor^[3] for the first 22 days of the Trump administration.[Note to Mike: you forgot to take the Wikipedia footnote out. ~ CC]

Ret.  President @ Resilient Patriot LLC Special Assistant to the POTUS, National Security Advisor @ United Stat es Government Presidential Campaign National Security Advisor @ Republican Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump Chairman and CEO @ FLYNN Intel Group INC. Director and Commander @ Defense Intelligence Agency / Joint Force Component Command, ISR Assistant Director of National Intelligence, Partner Engagement @ Office of the Director of National Intelligence Assistant Chief of Staff, G2 @ US Army Director of Intelligence @ International Security Assistance Forces Director of Intelligence @ The Joint Staff Director of Intelligence @ United States Central Command

Someone forgot to add "traitor," "insurrectionist," and "QAnon nut" to Flynn's credentials. Flynn, by the way, is a co-fonder of the ReAwaken America Tour mentioned above.

And that's just a very small sampling of the featured shriekers at this gathering of grifters. For the complete lineup, see here.

Now, if you are concerned about costs, or about the hassle of making travel and lodging arrangements, you needn't be. The Healing America Summit is 100 percent online -- all you have to do is sign up -- and, best of all, it's 100 percent free.

And worth every penny, no doubt.

Before you leave...
This has been, through what is no apparent fault of her own (excluding, perhaps karmic matters that are quite beyond her ability to comprehend), a nightmare of a year for the ruler of this Whirled. Money, alas, cannot make the nightmare go away, but it can make it easier to bear. Now more than ever, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
  New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to Cosmic Connie's PayPal page.
  Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account of Cosmic Connie's husband, RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is a gift, which it is (as opposed to a conventional purchase, for which PayPal deducts a percentage for their fee).

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled.

 

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)