A Conspiracy Promoter At Newsmax

Michael Dorstewitz has used his Newsmax column to push the usual right-wing conspiracies about the 2020 election and the Capitol riot.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 7/15/2024

Michael Dorstewitz

“I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd said. “I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”

There’s no question but that he was frightened. Most people would be under those circumstances. But Babbitt clearly didn’t even know Byrd was there. Had she known a gun was trained on her, it’s doubtful that she would have taken another step.

[...]

Any other officer working for any other agency under similar circumstances would have been indicted by now, and have been given a public trial.

Dorstewitz concluded by huffing, “Byrd shouldn’t be given special treatment just because he works for Nancy Pelosi.” In fact, Pelosi was never a part of the Capitol police governing board.

Dorstewitz laid it on thick in whitewashing another rioter in a May 2022 column, starting with the introduction: “After a 16-month hiatus due to a series of setbacks, Brandon Straka is restarting the #WalkAway campaign, a movement he launched in 2018 to encourage former fellow liberals to #WalkAway from the Democratic Party.”

Those “setbacks,” of course, are directly linked to Straka’s participation in the Capitol riot. First, according to Dorstewitz, was Facebook shutting down the page for Straka’s WalkAway campaign which claims to encourage people to quit the Democratic Party and become Trump MAGA types. For the second, Dorstewitz cranked up the whitewashing drama:

The second setback came 17 days later when “an FBI team in tactical gear [raided] my apartment Monday morning, January 25th at dawn, came in and [took] me out of bed, put me in handcuffs, [took] me to jail and [presented] me with a search warrant for a team of FBI agents to start stripping my apartment of computers, hard drives, phones, iPads, camera equipment, clothing, etc.”

Straka’s crime was accepting an invitation, as the head of #WalkAway, to speak at the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021. While there, he shot a video at the east entrance to the Capitol.

Straka observed that “It was on the west side that people were breaking windows and struggling with officers.”

After shooting about eight minutes of video, he turned around and left.

The camera caught a brief scuffle between an officer and a demonstrator. When Straka got home he posted the video to social media without bothering to look at it.

He told Newsmax that:

• “I never went inside of the Capitol.

• “I was never accused of going inside of the Capitol.

• “They know I didn’t engage in any violence, any vandalism, in any theft, or any destruction.”

Nevertheless, he was charged with two felonies: knowingly occupying restricted grounds and impeding an officer in the line of duty.

By contrast, as a more honest media outlet reported, Straka “admitted to recording himself telling the mob to ‘go go go’ as they reached the Capitol and telling rioters who were wrestling a shield away from a US Capitol Police officer to ‘take it, take it.'” Straka also tweeted in the midst of the riot, “Patriots at the Capitol- HOLD THE LINE.” Further, the judge — a Trump-appointed one at that — pointed out that “He still persists in this idea that it is okay to storm the Capitol to contest an election, and that’s not what we do in this country. People who do that are not patriots.”

Meanwhile, Dorstewitz was fully invested in making Straka into a victim:

Then Justice Department lawyers dragged the case out with five continuances during the course of a year before offering to drop the felonies in exchange for a guilty plea on the misdemeanor — but it came with a catch. He had to make several false admissions of “fact.”

“I can’t even describe into words what that has done to me,” he said. “It’s just destroyed my reputation.”

When Straka is asked why he made the admissions and pled to the misdemeanor, he responds, “Are you paying attention? Are you seeing how these cases are being handled?”

Jan. 6 defendant Matthew Perna is a case in point. His family said he was “bullied to death” by government lawyers despite having committed no violent crime. He eventually took his own life for basically entering the Capitol building wearing a MAGA cap.

Yes, participating in a violent insurrection does tend to destroy one’s reputation. Dorstewitz apparently didn’t ask Straka what statements he made under oath he has decided are now false (something that might put him in further legal trouble for lying to authorities). Also, if Perna’s only offense was “wearing a MAGA cap,” there would have been no need for him to kill himself. In fact, he was a QAnon conspiracy believe who did violate the law by entering the Capitol, and videotaped himself while there.

In addition to whitewashing Straka’s participation in a violent insurrection, Dorstewitz’s other purpose was to hype the relaunch of the WalkAway campaign, touting how Straka says he’s “working with a development company to build our own social platform” that will be “a cancel-proof platform where we can rebuild that community,” as well as an upcoming rally, after which he quoted Straka enthusing, “We’re coming back!” That rally was apparently such a bust that ConWebWatch could find no news coverage of it, even in right-wing media.

Unsurprisingly, Dorstewitz was not happy with the House committee that looked into the Capitol riot. In a June 2022 column, he ranted that the hearing “has nothing to do with fact-finding, and has everything to do with winning elections,” huffing: “Democrats are using an arguably illegitimate committee to prevent a former president from reelection, to nationalize all future elections and possibly trash the Electoral College — the final two in violation of the Constitution. And they hired a TV expert to make it sound perfectly reasonable. It all sounds kinda insurrectiony.”

Dorstewitz spent a January 2023 column complaining that the committee “illustrates why we have an adversarial system of justice” -- and getting a couple things wrong right off the bat. First, it was a legislative committee that never claimed to be anything else, which means that the “adversarial system of justice” does not apply. Second, Republicans were given the opportunity to appoint members to the committee, but then-House minority leader Kevin McCarthy refused to participate at all after then-House leader Nancy Pelosi refused some of his appointees for being pro-insurrection. (Would Dorstewitz have demanded that members of Al-Qaeda be appointed to the 9/11 Commission?)

Dorstewitz then complained that some witness testimony will not be made public, which prompted him to go into conspiracy mode:

Would they include the testimony of former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who said it was the failures of the Pentagon, FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security that led to the tragedy of Jan. 6?

Would those records include information that someone from the inside had to have opened “the 20,000-pound Columbus Doors that lead into the Rotunda” that “are secured by magnetic locks that can only be opened from the inside using a security code”?

All of this and more would have been public record had the Jan. 6 Committee been formed as an adversarial body, as committees normally are.

As evidence of Sund’s claims, Dorstewitz linked to an article featuring ... Sund promoting his new book in which he presumably detailed exactly that, arguably making release of his testimony redundant. Regarding the Columbus Doors stuff, that’s a bogus conspiracy theory. As a fact-checker found:

No evidence exists to support the claim that an electronic mechanism locks the doors from the inside. For one, the heavy damage sustained by the interior rotunda doors does not indicate that the doors were willingly unlocked to permit the rioters’ entry. And while the Capitol Police declined to comment to The Dispatch Fact Check on security measures at the U.S. Capitol, other sources have suggested that the doors could not have been locked from the inside because of fire evacuation and safety rules.

It wasn’t until nearly the end of his column that Dorstewitz finally admitted McCarthy’s snit about refusing to participate in the committee after Pelosi rejected his pro-insurrection nominees, which he benignly described only as “strong Trump supporters.” He then declared: “Although he was criticized for this, McCarthy was right in pulling his remaining committee choices.”

Dorstewitz concluded by whining; “It’s un-American when any ‘fact-finding’ body acts as judge, jury and prosecutor, and the results are always predetermined.” Yet pro-insurrection Republicans never set up a credible alternative, something Dorstewitz makes sure not to mention.

Dorstewitz ranted in a March 11 column:

Committee investigators interviewed Deputy Chief of Staff and career Secret Service official Anthony Ornato on Jan. 28, 2022.

He testified that he overheard then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows request Bowser’s approve to deploy as many as 10,000 National Guard troops.

Cheney was present at and participated in that interview, the transcript of which was suppressed from the public.

“The former J6 Select Committee apparently withheld Mr. Ornato’s critical witness testimony from the American people because it contradicted their pre-determined narrative,” said Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., and chairman of the U.S. House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight.

“Mr. Ornato’s testimony proves what Mr. Meadows has said all along: President Trump did in fact offer 10,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. Capitol, which was turned down,” he added.

That narrative isn't true. PolitiFact reported that Ornato’s January 2022 interview transcript was not publicly released until recently for security reasons -- not because of any partisan motivation -- and that when it was released, the transcript aligned with the select committee’s conclusion that Trump didn’t order the deployment of 10,000 National Guard troops before or during the riot. Newsmax had to update another article making that claim to reflect reality.

Nevertheless, Dorstewitz harped on the claim about National Guard troops further:

From the start, Trump and White House officials claimed that the administration requested National Guard troops to protect the Capitol when the electoral vote was counted and certified by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

But the members of the since-disbanded Jan. 6 Select Committee, including former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, maintained that they found “no evidence” to support those claims.

The Federalist revealed Friday that Cheney’s claims were not only false, but that committee members actually suppressed evidence that the Trump White House made the request, and that Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser turned it down.

Turns out that claim is false too. According to Just Security, that request came out of “concerns about violence ‘out on the mall area or at the event’ but ‘not anywhere near the Capitol,'” and the discussion involved seeking troops to protect Trump and his supporters – not the U.S. Capitol — and, again, no order or formal request was ever made for Bowser to turn down. Further, Trump had authority over merely 2,000 Guardsmen, so he could not have offered 10,000 troops even if he had actually done so.

Dorstewitz tried his hand at another whitewash campaign for a Capitol riot participant in his April 8 column:

Any doubt that this Justice Department administers a 2-tier system of justice should have been cleared up last week in how it handled two separate cases.

On Thursday a Washington, D.C. jury found Rebecca Lavrez, a 71-year-old Colorado woman known as the “praying grandma,” guilty of all four federal misdemeanor offenses she was charged with.

The charges are all related to a 10-minute period she spent inside the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, during the Capitol Hill riot.

Throughout that brief period she didn’t damage any property, she didn’t take any “souvenirs,” she neither harmed nor threatened to harm any police officer or member of Congress.

Nope, she noticed that the Capitol Police were permitting other demonstrators to enter the building, so out of curiosity she followed them in.

Surveillance footage showed her entering the Rotunda, speaking with a Capitol Police officer, then leaving.

[...]

Lavrenz got the moniker “praying grandma” because she was seen praying on the Capitol grounds for President Trump, and that members of Congress would vote wisely.

Of course, nobody accused Lavrenz of violent or destructive behavior. Unauthorized entry into the Capitol, however peacefully, is still a crime. Lavrenz continues to refuse to admit guilt and was fighting the charges. Indeed, after her conviction, Lavrenz was fully engaged in her own victimhood narrative, ranting: “They are trying to stop our voices, put fear in our hearts and take away inalienable rights given to us by God. But I will not let that happen to this praying great-grandma as long as I have breath.”

By contrast, Dorstewitz complained about delays in the case of Nicholas Roske, who is “accused of the attempted murder of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.” In fact, the firearm he brought with him outside Kavanaugh’s house was unloaded, and he turned himself in before he actually did anything. Still, Dorstewitz concluded by mischaracterizing the cases:

Apparently that’s how the Biden Justice Department operates.

If you’re a 26-year-old male who wants to murder Supreme Court justices that the administration, by and large, disagrees with, let’s give the kid a break.

But if you’re a 71-year-old grandmother who prays for your political opponent, let’s throw the book at her.

And this is what they call “the adults are back in charge”?

Dorstewitz spent his April 19 column cheering that a claim that some riot participants committed obstruction made it to the Supreme Court. He describe petitioner Joseph Fischer as merely a “former Pennsylvania police officer”; in fact, prosecutors said that Fischer had a physical encounter with police at the Capitol, urged on rioters during the Capitol attack, and said that he wanted to go “to war” and take “democratic Congress to the gallows,” though he spent only about four minutes inside the Capitol building. Dorstewitz then hyped claims by Timothy Nick, a member of the National Guard in the District of Columbia who he claimed “destroyed the entire ‘insurrection’ narrative” in testimony friendly to Republicans:

“I can say unequivocally that the Inspector General’s Review is riddled with inaccuracies, misstatements, and perhaps false flags and narratives regarding how critical Pentagon senior officials responded when our republic was under great stress,” he testified.

Independent journalist Kyle Becker concluded from his testimony that, “The U.S. government allowed the January 6 riots to happen in order to frame Donald Trump and his supporters as ‘insurrectionists.’ It is simple as that.”

For speaking the truth Nick also probably destroyed his military career.

In fact, Becker is no “independent journalist”; he’s a right-wing activist whose level of credibility ranks rather low and who got suspended from a different publication for spreading conspiracy theories about Barack Obama. None of that bodes well for Nick’s credibility. Still, Dorstewitz tried to finish with a grand flourish:

When Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as America’s 38th president following Richard Nixon’s resignation,he announced “our long national nightmare is over.”

Perhaps other nightmares are now coming to a close — for Trump, the Jan. 6 defendants, and for the American people.

Dorstewitz didn’t explain why people who commit crimes should be allowed to escape consequences for doing so.

Election conspiracy-mongering

With this kind of record, it's no surprise to learn that Dorstewitz was very much into conspiracy theories after the 2020 election. In a column a couple weeks after the election, for instance, he uncritically repeated Rudy Giuliani’s claim that voting-tech company Dominion “actually is a company owned by two Venezuelans that’s been in business for about 20 years and been disqualified in so many places it would make your head spin.” That’s not true, and it’s one of the claims Newsmax had to walk back in an attempt to avoid getting sued for defamation by Dominion and another voting tech company, Smartmatic.

A week later, Dorstewitz touted: “Trump-Pence campaign lawyers claim they can prove election fraud and other acts of misconduct on a massive scale. Also, state courts, secretaries of state and election officials made eleventh hour changes to election procedures that constitutionally may only be made by state legislative bodies. Too many people just aren’t buying it.”

In a January 2021 column — promoted at one point as the top story on Newsmax’s front page — Dorstewitz wrote:

Each time a member of the big media reports on someone referring to acts of fraud or even irregularities in the Nov. 3 presidential election, they describe them as “baseless claims” or “unproven.”

Such words are included in almost every wire story since election day published by the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg, and others.

Actually, there are many examples of vote fraud that took place during the 2020 election, and serious evidence of voting irregularities relating to the mail-in ballots.

Dorstewitz then cited a bunch of claims, scrupulously ignoring the evidence that most, if not all, of them have been discredited.

A couple days later, Dorstewitz touted the Republican attempt to deny Biden from being certified by the Electoral College:

Ever since Republican lawmakers announced they intend to mount an objection to the Electoral College vote when a joint session of Congress meets Wednesday, Democrats and mainstream media have denounced it as undemocratic.

But the caterwauling from the left brings to mind a line from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” that “The lady doth protest too much,” and thus loses all credibility. Are they really that afraid of the truth?

At least a dozen senators and 140 House members are expected to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory as the 46th president.

They’re calling for an electoral commission to go over the results in key states for 10 days before they’re certified.

Dorstewitz then attacked Joe Biden:

In addition to evidence the 2020 election may have been rigged, it doesn’t pass the smell test. It doesn’t make sense that Biden, who hasn’t had an original thought in 78 years and 45 days, won the election, despite the fact that:

• His party lost at least 11 House seats
• He lost heavily in the bellwether states of Florida, Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa
• He lost nearly every bellwether county in the country
• He bested Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance in only a few cities

He offered no evidence to back up his “bellwether county” claim; his claim that Biden largely underperformed Hillary is a lie.

In a December 2020 column, Dorstewitz played the "Manchurian candidate" card against Biden:

Life imitates art. “The Manchurian Candidate” was a 1962 political thriller that depicted an American soldier who was captured during the Korean War. He was brainwashed to later assassinate a political figure as part of an international Communist conspiracy.

In this case former Vice President Joe Biden wasn’t brainwashed — he’s a willing participant. And the assassination isn’t of a political figure but of the United States.

Biden will most certainly reverse the Trump administration’s policy of holding the Chinese Communist Party responsible for its past misdeeds, either by underestimating the threat that China presents, or out of a desire for monetary gain. He’ll allow China to increase its influence on the United States and would permit manufacturing to migrate back to China, taking American jobs with it.

[...]

Today, the Electoral College meets to officially elect the president. Biden is expected to receive 306 votes; Trump, 232.

Assuming that holds until the January 20 Inauguration Day, the Manchurian President will be sleeping in White House that night.

A week later, Dorstewitz attacked Biden’s religious faith:

But it’s one thing to spend an hour in church once a week. It’s another thing altogether to actually live your faith, and with Biden, it’s all showboating. In reality, Biden’s neither honorable nor devout. Biden has aligned with his party’s stance on abortion for decades, notwithstanding the church’s belief that life begins at conception, and destroying that life is murder. He at least supported the Hyde Amendment for decades, which in most cases prevents public funds from being used to pay for abortions.

But that fell by the wayside last year when he realized he had to fall in line if he had any hope of winning the Democratic presidential nomination. A desire for power trumped adherence to his faith.

Dorstewitz even brought up petty, nearly 50-year-old attacks on how Biden met his wife, Jill, first advanced by her bitter first husband and later promoted by the Media Research Center.

Dorstewitz ranted in his Dec. 28 column:

If Joe Biden has his way, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms could be nearly legislated out of existence.

And that would have the blessing of the Communist Party of China.

The New York Post’s Nels Frye observed back in March that President Xi Jinping and the People’s Republic of China were rooting for former Vice President Joe Biden to emerge victorious in November’s general election.

Yeah, quite Manchurian.

Dorstewitz’s record of dishonesty and fraud doesn’t bode well for Newsmax’s attempt to frame itself as a reasonable alternative to Fox News (not to mention trying to keep from getting sued over publishing said falsehoods).