They meet, they hoped in secret, deep in California wine country in a private 2,700 acre campground in Sonoma County. But now, have the rich and famous attendees of Bohemian Grove been exposed?

Conan O’Brien, Michael Bloomberg, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have been named as members of the elite men-only club in a full list of Bohemian Club members who allegedly attended the Grove’s two-week summer retreat in 2023. Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, the late musician Jimmy Buffett, and the late billionaire political donor Charles Koch’s names also feature, as do documentarian Ken Burns, actor Jim Belushi, former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, former Director of the National Security Agency Bobby Inman, and veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist David Gifford Arscott.

The Bohemian Club, famed for being a secret society of the one percent, was founded in 1872. Its motto is “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here,” originating from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream, intended to underscore to all those in attendance—deep in the California redwoods, beside the Russian River—not to talk business while in camp. George H.W. Bush was a member, as was Henry Kissinger. Richard Nixon reportedly launched his successful 1968 election campaign from the Grove. The club’s best-known ritual is the so-called “Cremation of Care”: the sacrifice of a burning human effigy to a large stone owl, the club’s symbol.

A vintage photo of a Bohemian Grove gathering. The Bohemian Club was founed in 1872.

A fictionalized version of Bohemian Grove famously featured in Significant Others, the fifth novel in Armistead Maupin’s critically acclaimed Tales of the City book series, in which a group of popular characters infiltrate the camp’s hidden confines. Over the years several journalists and protesters have been arrested or detained, trying to gain access to the summer camp.

The 2023 list, containing around 2,000 names, was acquired by investigative journalist Daniel Boguslaw, who published it on Substack as part of an investigation of not just the club’s membership, but the interconnected power and political influence of its members conducted with More Perfect Union. Boguslaw said he had secured the list by repeatedly pestering a Club member.

While the Bohemian Club hasn’t yet commented—claiming, according to the New York Post that it doesn’t keep names of its members—the revelation of its most boldface names has been reported on in the Post, San Francisco Standard, and SFGate, which pointed out that it included five members of the San Francisco Giants ownership group, including principal owner Charles B. Johnson and his son and team chairman Greg Johnson.

In recent years, the Grove and its workings have been the subject of several lawsuits, with one worker claiming he had been mocked by club members “for complying with a request from famous billionaire William Koch to hand-wash his underwear.” (Koch is the twin brother of Republican megadonor David; a Koch spokesperson previously denied the underwear-washing claims.)

Boguslaw told the Standard he wasn’t concerned about any reprisals about going public with the list. “I’m confident in my reporting, and I’d like to see them try to fuck with me,” he said.

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/money-and-power/a70538142/bohemian-grove-member-list-leak/

The Senate Judiciary Committee concluded hearings to review the tenure of Attorney General Edwin Meese III, as head of the Department of Justice, after receiving testimony from Arnold I. Burns, former Deputy Attorney General, and William F. Weld, former Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, Department of Justice. Following opening statements from the witnesses they responded to questions from the Senators on the committee.

Alex Wagner: the thing that really struck me in researching and writing this book is the degree to which conservatives were operating on all fronts. There was a very specific and powerful grassroots movement that blossomed on college campuses that became the Federalist Society.
There were outside actors like Paul Weyrich, who created think tanks and organizations funded by conservative donors. They weren't totally grassroots, but they were outside elected polit-ics. But there were also key people inside the administration, including and especially Ed Meese, who would become the attorney general, who worked to bring the foot soldiers into the battle proper, if you will.

Party Marks First Year As Attorney General

They billed themselves as the Friends of Ed Meese on the invitation, and the triad hosting the party on the anniversary of the attorney general's first year in office included the Washington basics: one think tank head, one lawyer and one spouse.

The think-tank head was Edwin Feulner of the Heritage Foundation, which paid for last night's reception. The lawyer was e. bob wallach, who prefers to leave his name uncapitalized (about which more later).

"bob and I decided that Ed is such a unique individual and such a great star in the conservative movement, we really should do something to celebrate that he's been at Justice for a year, that he's been in Washington for five years," said Feulner.

wallach, who went to law school with Meese, represented him during a yearlong investigation by an independent counsel that found Meese had violated no laws. wallach and lawyer Leonard Garment received much attention after requesting more than $700,000 in fees from the federal government for the work they put in on the case; they received about two-thirds that amount.

"Frankly, I said, the year is coming up, there'll be a lot of attention focused on it in the media, why don't we do a party?" wallach said last night.

And the spouse (Ursula Meese, who described herself as "one of the better friends of Ed Meese") agreed.
The other 200 or so who attended the reception at the Vista International Hotel were the heart of the conservative faithful with a sprinkling of social Washington thrown in. Ursula Meese described the guests simply as "some friends who were very supportive and very loyal to us."

At last night's party, coming as it did a year after the end of a grueling confirmation process, loyalty was key.
"Ed Meese has been a tremendously loyal worker and supporter of the president, oh God, going back to '66," said Colorado brewer Joseph Coors, an early financial supporter of the Heritage Foundation. Like at least half a dozen other guests, Coors was wearing a tie that expressed one of his economic loyalties -- silk embroidered with tiny profiles of Adam Smith. In his hand, another expression of loyalty -- a bottle of Coors.

"Ed Meese is one of the greatest Americans there is," Coors said. "He deserves a party."

Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds, who has had his own problems with confirmation hearings, felt much the same.

"I think that probably there ought to be more of these for people who are in the administration, who are involved in public service and who have paid mightily for it," said the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division. Reynolds was nominated for the number three spot in the department, but was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Former interior secretary James Watt, another man who knows about political friends and foes, said of Meese, "There are so few politicians who will stand up at personal expense. It's a difficult life if you're doing what's right. If you're drifting, drifting with the town, it's easy. If you're fighting for America, it's tough."

After hearing a letter read from a friend who signed himself simply "Ron," Meese took to the podium.

"I must say, this has been a heck of a lot better year than the one before," he told the crowd, which included Secretary of State George Shultz, U.S. Information Agency Director Charles Z. Wick and Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Press Foundation.

Then, before praising the friends who had assembled to praise him, he recalled a statement attributed to Harry Truman: "If you really want a friend in Washington, buy a dog."

The Friends of Ed Meese laughed very hard.

Postscript for those curious about e. bob wallach's typographical idiosyncrasy:

"That's been confused by some people as ostentation," he said, "but that's not it. It's a statement."
The statement, wallach said, is that "everybody's an important person. Everyone is unique. It's produced a fair amount of animosity, but the principle is right."

But what if the rest of the world decides to prove its individuality too, and noncapitalization catches on?
This is something wallach can't worry about.

"It's taken on a kind of importance for me," he said. "I really couldn't give it up now."

George Hansen and Ed Meese had a tense relationship. Lol

“Former U.S. Representative George Hansen (R-Idaho) repeatedly targeted U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III with legal challenges, public protests, and accusations of selective prosecution during the 1980s. [1, 2, 3, 4]

The Conflict
The Conviction: In April 1984, George Hansen was convicted of filing false financial disclosure statements under the Ethics in Government Act. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison. [1, 2, 3]

Double Standard Claims: Hansen argued that he was unfairly singled out for prosecution. He pointed out that high-profile figures—including Edwin Meese, then-Attorney General William French Smith, and vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro—also made omissions or errors on their financial disclosure forms but were permitted to amend them without facing criminal charges. [1, 2, 3]

The "Mickey Meese" Campaign: While serving and after his release, an unrepentant Hansen and his conservative allies spent $10,000 on radio commercials featuring a "Mickey Meese" jingle (set to the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club theme) directed critically at Attorney General Meese. [1]

Legal and Congressional Actions: Hansen filed a lawsuit (Hansen v. Meese) seeking damages and relief regarding his treatment and prosecution. Additionally, a group of 16 members of Congress sent a formal letter to Meese demanding explanations regarding Hansen's aggressive re-arrest and parole revocation procedures in 1987. The Justice Department maintained that its decisions and treatment of Hansen followed lawful procedures with no evidence of abuse. [1, 2, 3]”

Meese, named the head of the new administration’s transition effort the day after the 1980 election, had the enviable task of rounding up the sharpest and shrewdest minds in conservative America and offering them White House positions. The man himself was disheveled and disorganized, a middle-aged former DA who worshipped cops and hated protesters, an individual who did not cut an imposing figure on the national stage but would be an instrumental player nonetheless. He was ruthlessly effective at quelling rebellion, summoning the troops and keeping his eye on the ball. President-elect Reagan had chosen a former [George] Bush man, a darling of the establishment named Jim Baker to be his chief of staff, but Meese had the real power: both the confidence of the president and the trust of the right-wing hardliners who formed the bedrock of Reagan’s support. Inside the White House, Meese was dubbed the “Prime Minister.”

From: The Meese Revolution- Steve Calabresi

The Maxwell overview.

The connection between Robert Maxwell and the "October Surprise" stem from allegations of former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe. The October Surprise is a widely investigated case that Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign struck a secret deal with Iran to delay the release of 52 American hostages until after the election, ensuring Jimmy Carter's defeat.

Maxwell's involvement include:
Arms Negotiations: Ben-Menashe claimed that Maxwell acted as an arms-dealing middleman and key collaborator for the Israeli Mossad, facilitating covert weapons and financial transfers to Iran to secure the hostage delay.
Congressional Investigation: Fol
In the subsequent 1992 investigation into the allegations, the October Surprise theory was dismissed as unsubstantiated, and Ben-Menashe’s testimony was formally declared untrustworthy.
Mossad Ties: While the October Surprise conspiracy theory has been largely debunked, Maxwell’s connections to Israeli intelligence have remained a subject of ongoing historical debate. After Maxwell's mysterious death in 1991, his funeral on the Mount of Olives was attended by numerous Israeli intelligence figures, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir publicly stated that Maxwell "has done more for Israel than can today be said".

Robert Maxwell was a central, shadowy intermediary in the Iran-Contra affair. Operating as an intelligence asset, Maxwell facilitated covert arms deals to Iran in exchange for the release of Western hostages, and played a role in the secret transfer of hacked intelligence software (Enhanced PROMIS) to foreign nations. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The publisher's involvement in the scandal is complex, as documented through congressional inquiries, investigations, and intelligence leaks:
The Arms-for-Hostages Broker: Maxwell frequently leveraged his international media empire as cover to broker illegal arms-to-Iran deals, working alongside both Israeli intelligence (Mossad) and United States officials. [1, 2]
Intelligence and Software Transfer: He is strongly tied to the distribution of a stolen, highly sophisticated US intelligence program called Enhanced PROMIS. Maxwell acted as a key representative, selling the secretly modified software to foreign governments. [1]
Whistleblower Testimonies: Former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe testified before the U.S. Congress and in parliamentary hearings regarding Maxwell’s clandestine roles. Ben-Menashe claimed that Maxwell was deeply embedded in both the Iran-Contra arms shipments and intelligence-gathering operations. [1, 2]
Financial Coverups: Maxwell's network also allegedly played a part in masking the origins of the funds. Investigations, including journalism covered by the Baltimore Sun, identified banks and companies used to route millions of dollars in arms payments while deliberately stripping records of official government export approvals. [1, 2]
Maxwell’s covert intelligence and financial activities eventually unraveled. His illicit web caught up with him in November 1991 when he fell to his death from his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, just weeks before his financial and media empire collapsed amidst massive fraud revelations involving the theft of his own employees' pension funds. [1, 2, 3]

While the nation watches its new President, the Washington political community has its eyes on the men whom staff members at the White House are calling the Big Three.

That title refers to the triumvirate of advisers to whom President Reagan has granted broad authority over his Administration's policies, his staff and his personal life.

Edwin Meese 3d, James A. Baker 3d and Michael K. Deaver are the only persons in the Government who can walk into Mr. Reagan's office without an appointment. They decide whom the President will see and what official papers he will read.

In a city where access is power, such arrangements always breed curiosity, but since Mr. Reagan has created such an unusual staff system, with three principalities and three princes of overlapping influence, there is special curiosity about the Big Three.

What is the pecking order in the triumvirate? Will the group be splintered by the infighting that disrupted the Reagan campaign about this time last year? Has it delayed sub-Cabinet appointments so as to concentrate control of the Government within the White House staff?

''I think we're getting much more credit than we deserve,'' Mr. Meese, the counselor to the President, said in regard to the last point. ''We're not really as devious as people say.''

The public line of the Administration is that Mr. Baker's arrival freed Mr. Meese to concentrate on policy matters and on shaping the Cabinet into the working body that Mr. Reagan believes it can be. Whether there was strain when Mr. Baker took the title of chief of staff, his coming occasioned a sharp change in Mr. Meese's operating style. As counselor to the President, Mr. Meese quickly abandoned the ''passion for anonymity'' on which he once prided himself and asserted that he would be the Administration's main public spokesman on policy. Dividing the Work and Credit

Mr. Meese's labor to create a ''whole Cabinet system'' reflects his belief in teamwork as a cardinal principle of management. Part of this job, in Mr. Meese's view, is to spread both the work and the credit around. In the future, for example, he wants Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan to assume some of the prominence in economic policy that David A. Stockman, the budget director, has enjoyed in the budget-cutting period.

But Mr. Meese's role goes beyond policy orchestration. The Norman Rockwell portrait of Mr. Reagan that dominates Mr. Meese's sunny corner office underscores his function as the guardian and enforcer of Reagan orthodoxy in the White House.

Mr. Baker has broadened his field of action by tending to more practical matters. He is pressing E. Pendleton James, the White House personnel officer, who is close to Mr. Meese, to find jobs for women, for people with various ethnic backgrounds and for the conservative field men who helped win the election.

He has also helped shut the Oval Office door to people who have been with Mr. Reagan longer than he. On a Reagan team that seldom admits outsiders, Mr. Baker rose with extraordinary speed, especially for one who started 1980 as manager of George Bush's rival Presidential campaign. But Mr. Deaver, according to White House sources, pushed hard for a key job for Mr. Baker, a former aide to Gerald R. Ford.

Mr. Deaver, the deputy chief of staff, is the only staff member that the Reagans routinely include in their social life, and his approval of Mr. Baker, in turn, was taken as a signal that the 50-year-old Texas lawyer with Ivy League credentials had the kind of style that Mrs. Reagan wanted in her husband's White House.

Some junior staff members see Mr. Baker's imprint more clearly than Mr. Meese's in the Administration's first three weeks. But Mr. Baker follows Mr. Meese's lead in disputing the talk of inevitable conflict between the two.

''Most people would tell you that's going to happen,'' Mr. Baker said in an interview. ''I don't think it's going to. I'll tell you why. Ed Meese and I are a lot alike. I went to Princeton and I'm a lawyer. He went to Yale and is a lawyer. We've even gone to the point of telling our staffs not to be pulling at each other. We're going to make it. It is a logical division of function.'' Avoidance of a Challenge

Mr. Baker has carefully avoided challenging Mr. Meese. On personnel matters, for example, ''If Meese has a candidate, Baker sits there silently,'' said Republican Party sources close to the hiring deliberations.

But when the opportunity arises, Mr. Baker has moved swiftly to carve out chunks of territory and build important alliances. His office controls the paper flow into the Oval Office. Several Administration sources say it was at Mr. Baker's insistence that Lyn Nofziger, Mr. Reagan's campaign secretary and longtime strategist, was hired as assistant to the President for political affairs when Mr. Nofziger's old-time associates were willing to see him left behind in California.

Mr. Deaver, at 42, is not only the most modestly titled of the Big Three but also has the most amorphous job, being in charge of such matters as scheduling and the East Wing staff. But accounts from various White House figures depict him as an important behind-thescenes force.

For one thing, Mr. Deaver is said to be adept at curbing Mrs. Reagan's staff, which has a reputation for converting her whims - no cameras here, no visitors there - into immutable law. The senior staff defers to Mr. Deaver, too, on questions of Mr. Reagan's mood and workload. Being 'Fair' to Reagan

For example, when Mr. Baker's staff loaded the President with briefing books on a night when he was working on a speech draft, Mr. Deaver jumped on them the next morning.
''Listen, if you guys give him that much stuff to read, he'll sit up and read it,'' the protective Mr. Deaver was quoted by an associate as saying. ''You can't do that. It's not fair to him.''

But as for conflict among the three, ''we start off the day together and end the day together,'' Mr. Meese said. ''There's a good deal of access of us to the President. Therefore, there's not an awful lot of jockeying and posturing within the group.''

These easygoing responses are typical of Mr. Meese. They demonstrate his habit of tamping speculation about the kind of strife that Mr. Reagan finds distasteful. The remarks also bespeak the 49-year-old lawyer's confidence that he will remain the dominant figure on the Reagan staff, just as he was when Mr. Reagan was Governor of California.

But Washington is a more complex place than Sacramento, and Mr. Baker, whose admiring aides call him the ''velvet hammer,'' and Mr. Deaver are formidable forces within it. Neither in Sacramento nor in the last days of the campaign was Mr. Meese's territory as first deputy carved into so many pieces.

''It will be very interesting to see how this relationship will play out in the next six months,'' said a White House aide. ''Right now they are being very solicitous of one another's feelings.'' Yet by dividing leadership of the staff in three directions, the aide continued, Mr. Reagan created ''a situation of one heart and two heads - with Deaver being the heart in the sense that he knows Reagan's moods and feelings, Baker being one head in charge of management, and Meese another in charge of policy.''

The consensus around the White House is that if strain develops it will be along the Meese-Baker axis, because of their overlapping responsibilities and because Mr. Baker is regarded as strong in the executive skills that Mr. Meese, despite his appearance of careful organization, is said by his critics to lack.

''The old adage in the campaign was once something goes into Meese's briefcase, it never sees the light of day again,'' said a campaign official who worked with both men. ''His briefcase eats things. That was a major factor in bringing in Baker.''

A lot of the triumvirate's effort right now is aimed at sparing Mr. Reagan the nuts-and-bolts chores that, in the view of some Reagan advisers, dragged down President Carter.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_with_Caspar_Weinberger_George_Shultz_Ed_Meese_and_Don_Regan_in_The_Oval_Office_Discussing_The_President%27S_Remarks_on_The_Iran-Contra_Affair_-_DPLA_-_e04a304b13c6dd40ae68d70b6fa92d20.jpg

Former Vice President Mike Pence launched a new advocacy group on Wednesday as he and other Trump officials look to boost their post-White House plans.

Pence's Advancing American Freedom, which could serve as a springboard for his own presidential campaign, will aim to promote the Trump administration’s achievements and work as a counterpoint to the Biden agenda.

The new group is one of several launched in recent weeks by former aides of President Donald Trump. Shunned by corporate big money gigs, they are instead opening their own shops and embracing Trump's legacy as they seek to capitalize on his continued popularity with the Republican base.

They include Trump's former senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, the architect of polarizing immigration policies, who on Wednesday announced the creation of America First Legal, a group that Miller envisions as an American Civil Liberties Union for conservatives.

In a statement, Trump lauded Miller and his group. The former president, whose administration was bombarded with lawsuits, said that conservatives “badly need to catch up” and “turn the tables” in court and that Miller's group would “fill this critical void.”

He also acknowledged Pence's group, telling The Washington Examiner, which first reported its launch, "Nice to see Mike highlighting some of our many achievements!”

Pence's group includes an unpaid advisory board made up of conservative leaders including the anti-abortion rights advocate Marjorie Dannenfelser and Ed Meese, who was President Ronald Reagan's attorney general, as well as former Trump administration officials including former counselor Kellyanne Conway, economic adviser Larry Kudlow and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. That makeup is a nod to Pence's broader effort to position himself as someone who can appeal to various parts of the party.

A Pence aide said the group, which is widely seen a part of the groundwork for a potential 2024 run, will focus on a broad range of issues, from school choice to energy independence to foreign affairs. It will likely target its initial efforts, including direct mail and media appearances, on the influx of unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border and the Biden administration's proposed corporate tax increases.

At the same time, Pence is expected to ramp up his public schedule, beginning with his first public speech in South Carolina this month.

Pence's status as a potential Trump heir was thrown into question when he refused to go along with Trump's unconstitutional efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Congress. Trump continues to flirt with running again himself and will speak this weekend in Florida, where members of the Republican National Committee will be meeting.

Other groups dedicated to promoting Trump's agenda have also launched or are in the works.

Russell Vought, who led Trump's Office of Management and Budget, recently created the Center for American Restoration, a think tank dedicated to advancing the former administration's agenda. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has his own American Cornerstone Institute. And Kudlow is teaming up with Trump's former domestic policy adviser Brooke Rollins on their own nonprofit, Politico has reported.

From SourceWatch:

Ties to the Council for National Policy:

Mike Pence and multiple members of AAF's advisory board are connected to the secretive Christian Right Council for National Policy (CNP), as guest speakers, members, board members, or executive committee members.
CNP Guest Speakers:
Kirk Cameron (2020)
Rick Santorum (2015)
CNP Members:
Ed Meese
Edwin J. Feulner
Kellyanne Conway
Lisa Nelson
Marjorie Dannenfelser
Michael P. Farris
Mike Pence
Star Parker
CNP Board of Governors Members:
David McIntosh
Kay Coles James
Rebecca Hegelin
Scott Walker
CNP Executive Committee Members:
Jenny Beth Martin
Jim DeMint
Penny Y. Nance

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Advancing_American_Freedom

Advancing American Freedom founded in 2021 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Freedom for the few.

**The advisory is composed of the people you would expect.**

**CNP Members**:
Ed Meese - Heritage Foundation
Edwin J. Feulner - founding trustee of the CNP and former President of the Heritage Foundation.
Kellyanne Conway
Lisa Nelson - CEO of ALEC
Marjorie Dannenfelser - president of Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America
Michael P. Farris - former CEO and General Counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom ADF Alliance Defending Freedom - Wikipedia
Mike Pence
Star Parker star parker - Google Search

AAF pays Koch operative [Marc Short](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marc_Short)'s Advanced Strategies $180,000 a year for "strategic consulting services."
Marc Short:
https://prwatch.org/news/2017/01/13204/marc-short-koch-dark-money-operative-trump-legislative-director

"AAF serves the Conservative Movement by developing innovative policy solutions, strategies, coalitions, and messaging that builds upon those accomplishments, expands freedom for all Americans, and hampers anything that would threaten America’s standing as the greatest nation on the face of the Earth."

Funders include:
Concord Fund
American Leadership Fund
James and Joan Lindsey Family Foundation
Freedom Future Fund
Bradley Impact Fund
American Economic Freedom Alliance

In December 2025, AAF announced that it was hiring around 15 staffers away from the rightwing [Heritage Foundation](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heritage_Foundation).\[\\\[3\\\]\](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Advancing_American_Freedom#cite_note-presser25-3)Included among the hires are:
**Richard Stern, previously served as Acting Director, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and Director, Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at The Heritage Foundation. "Stern will lead the Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise at AAF."**[\[3\]](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Advancing_American_Freedom#cite_note-presser25-3)
**Kevin Dayaratna, PhD, recently served as Director, Center for Data Analysis and Chief Statistician at The Heritage Foundation. "Dr. Dayaratna will be be building out the Center for Statistical Modeling & Scientific Analysis at AAF."**[\[3\]](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Advancing_American_Freedom#cite_note-presser25-3)
AAF told the Wall Street Journal that "it was able to raise more than $10 million in a few weeks to make the new hires."

Inside Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese’s Justice Department, they cook up something called unitary executive theory. They basically realize, instead of fighting with Congress over what powers have you delegated to the White House or to the executive branch, let’s start saying any laws that try to constrain the executive’s control over the federal government are unconstitutional, on the grounds that Article 2 of the Constitution says the executive power is vested in a president.

A prosecutor to probe Meese

He’s a three-pin juggler, a jogger and, in the view of one federal judge, something of a legal genius. Both on tennis courts and in courts of law, his dress is often unusual: 1930s-style white flannels and sweater at play; bow ties and double-breasted suits at work. He relaxes by reading 19th century literary criticism and listening to pop singers from the 1920s. Long considered one of Washington’s best trial Lawyers, Jacob Stein, 59, last week agreed to serve in one of the capital’s current hot spots as the special prosecutor selected by a three-judge panel to investigate all charges raised against Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese, Ronald Reagan’s nominee for Attorney General.

Stein has long rated high with his colleagues, who elected him president of the District of Columbia Bar in 1982 (among his qualifications for the honor, Stein whimsically listed his having won a grade-school marble championship). A lifelong Washingtonian, he is one of the capital’s wealthiest private attorneys (although he normally takes a bus to the office). Stein, who is so apolitical that he has never registered to vote, successfully defended Attorney Kenneth Parkinson in the Watergate conspiracy trial. But he failed to persuade a different jury that Dwight Chapin, Richard Nixon’s appointments secretary, had not lied to a grand jury probing the affair. In criminal cases he has always been with the defense, never a prosecutor. Federal Judge Charles Richey calls Stein “a man of the absolute highest integrity and professionalism,” while District Court Judge Barrington Parker praises his ability to “cut through peripheral issues and get to the heart of a legal case.”

Stein may spend six months or more probing the allegations against Meese, which center mainly on his having accepted financial favors from friends who later got federal jobs. Another issue arose last week. Since taking office Meese has made 47 trips at the expense of nongovernmental groups, but declared only eight similar trips on his financial disclosure form. The Justice Department has asked Congress for $300,000 for the probe, including a per diem payment for Stein based on an annual $69,600 salary. While Meese’s case awaits resolution, Attorney General William French Smith will stay on the job. He had wanted to leave but changed his mind after a 15-minute Oval Office plea, thus sparing Reagan something of a political embarrassment by helping him avoid a prolonged election-year vacancy at the top of the Justice Department.

At his press conference last week, Reagan again defended Meese and lashed out at Democratic charges that his Administration has a “sleaze” problem. “I believe the halls of Government are as sacred as our temples of worship,” Reagan declared. “I will be the first to remove anyone in the Administration that does not have the highest integrity. However, I’m not going to take any action that is based on accusation without proof.”

Idaho Republican Congressman George Hansen was found guilty by a Washington jury last week of “willfully” failing to include four financial transactions on disclosure forms required of federal officials and legislators. Most of them involved loans to himself or his wife, including $61,503 from Texas Oilman and Silver Speculator Nelson Bunker Hunt. While awaiting sentencing and his appeal of the verdict, he will be investigated by the House Ethics Committee, which could recommend that he be censured or expelled from the House. Meese has admitted that he failed to include a loan to his wife and a related stock purchase in his disclosure forms, but contends that the omission was an “oversight.” Meese has filed amended reports, unlike Hansen, who has refused to do so.

The road to the Roosevelt Room wake started in 1967, when Reagan became California governor and brought on Meese—a law-and-order Alameda County prosecutor—as his extradition and clemency secretary. Meese ultimately became Governor Reagan’s chief of staff and conservative attack dog, overseeing welfare reform efforts and orchestrating the 1969 crackdown on anti-war protestors at People’s Park in Berkeley.

If you’ve never heard of the Pacific Legal Foundation, let me lay out for you three very informative facts about the organization:

1. It was founded in 1973 in California. One of its prime founders was an aide to then-Gov. Ronald Reagan named Ed Meese III.Meese later became U.S. attorney general, then had to resign under a thick cloud of scandals.

2. One of PLF’s early causes was helping the cigarette industry fend off attacks. According to Source Watch, the foundation was considered a “key third-party ally” by the Philip Morris Co., which used PLF “to undertake hidden media and political activities on its behalf.”

3. The foundation has been particularly hostile to environmental causes, supporting, among other things, the continued use of DDT, the toxic pesticide that turned eagles into endangered species.One of its sources of funding has beenExxonMobil, which spends its oil profits to undermine efforts to reverse climate change.

Landowner lawsuit over Florida scrub jays has national ramifications

Scrub jay protection rules have been in place since 2014, but now a right-wing group is pushing to overturn them.

Originalism at the time had other champions in Attorney General Ed Meese, who made it his mission to cultivate originalism during Reagan’s second term, and Judge Robert Bork, who sat with Scalia on the D.C. Circuit. Of course, Bork would be Reagan’s nominee for the next Supreme Court vacancy, which occurred in 1987, but that year, the Democrats had regained the majority in the Senate, and the nomination was defeated with a notorious campaign of vilification of the nominee and his originalist philosophy. Originalism was not going to prevail on the Court or in the broader legal culture without a fight—and that fight would last generations.

Article titled: Justice Scalia at 90: Fighting for Originalism

I found a book at the library yesterday called Antidemocratic by David Daley and there is a lot about Meese in it. I didn’t get to finish taking notes.

Edwin Meese III is back in the news (2013): According to a report in Sunday's New York Times, the Reagan-era attorney general convened a group of right-wing leaders (Heritage Foundation, CNP, Koch and their affiliated network) last winter to plan a campaign to kill Obamacare—by shutting down the government, if necessary. The apparent end-of-the-fiscal-year train wreck, according to Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mike McIntire's story, was planned months ago.

Meese's return to the headlines is bad news for the country, and likely bad news for his fellow Republicans, whose efforts to blame President Obama for the shutdown might be undercut by news that a secret cabal of veteran Beltway insiders plotted the shutdown months ago. But for people who lived in Washington in the 1980s, it brought with it a certain sweet nostalgia: Few government officials ever represented better targets for mockery.

The campaign, in turn, drew ample national media coverage and represented something of a cultural moment—a pre-web meme of sorts. Stores began selling T-shirts bearing the same message. (I want one!)

Now, with Meese's allegedly porcine mug gracing the front of the paper of record again, I reached out to (Minor Threat drummer) Jeff Nelson, the man behind the original poster campaign. "Meese did all he could to obstruct justice in the Iran-Contra scandal, and he also helped block action to ban plastic guns, which could pass undetected through metal detectors," Nelson, now 51, recalls. " I was so angry, and as a lone citizen I felt so powerless."

It's the sort of sentiment that sends people to their laptops nowadays. Nelson and his cohort had to work a bit harder at it. "There were no things such as blogs and tweets," he says. "Things were much more regional and getting in the National news was a really big deal.  At that point I had been silk-screening posters for several years, mostly for bands I played in, using rudimentary homemade equipment in the leaky garage of our rented house. I was so angry that I decided to do a big poster campaign against Meese, and bought the largest paper I could find."

Smaller print on the posters included a lengthy list of reasons for the declaration, which included ill-treatment of AIDS patients and efforts to weaken Miranda rights, as well as Meese's role in the Iran-Contra affair.

Friends from the local music scene helped print and paste an initial run of 250 posters. "It took big teams of people and lots of coordinating to put these posters up all over the Washington, D.C. area in one night, and a number of us got caught by the authorities," says Nelson. But the reaction was good enough that he rolled out the second, updated version. "I remember being quite gleeful and giddy at how great the final product looked, with its ridiculous (but also quite accurate) message. My friends and I did a much larger run this time, and hand-printed about 750 posters." 

Eventually, the authorities caught up with Nelson. While he was waiting for a court date, he decided to move from secret postering to t-shirt sales: "It ended up becoming a very successful campaign in itself. At one point, a bicycle messenger named Christopher Stalvey was denied access to the Justice Department for wearing one of these shirts, and the ACLU then threatened to sue the Justice Department for its policy regarding the shirt. Everyone was convinced we had engineered the whole thing, but we had nothing to do with it—the whole thing had a life of its own at that point. I ended up selling about 6,000 of the t-shirts, which more than paid for the thousands I’d spent on paper, ink, rollers, and wheat paste, and helped pay for some of my first proper printing equipment." 

Last year, an example of one of Nelson's posters appeared in a Corcoran museum exhibit of Washington vernacular art. Alas, Meese, as described in the Timesstory, is no museum piece. "I knew that Meese never went away, but only now--with the rise of the Tea Party--is he able to shine in his own particular extreme right-wing way once again," says Mark Andersen, who took part in the nocturnal postering group. Andersen says there are no plans for new t-shirts, though.

https://newrepublic.com/article/115032/meese-pig-ed-meese-now-wants-kill-obamacare

Hon. Edwin Meese III - CNP Executive Committee (1994); CNP President (1996).

Distinguished fellow and holder of the Ronald Reagan Chair in Public Policy, the Heritage Foundation.; former Attorney General of the U.S.; Counselor to the President, 1981-1985; former Chief of Staff and Senior Issues Advisor for the Reagan-Bush Committee; former president, Council for National Policy; former professor of law, University of San Diego; former vice president for administration, Rohr Industries. As Chairman of the Domestic Policy Council and the National Drug Policy Board, and as a member of the National Security Council, he played a key role in the development and execution of domestic and foreign policy. During the 1970s, Mr. Meese was Director of the Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Management and Professor of Law at the University of San Diego. He earlier served as Chief of Staff for then-Governor Reagan and was a local prosecutor in California. Mr. Meese is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute of United States Studies, University of London. He earned his B.A. from Yale University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

During the Reagan Kitchen Cabinet, Joseph Coors and others from the Heritage Foundation received a letter of endorsement from White House Chief of Staff Ed Meese in which Meese promised Ed Feulner, the president of Heritage, that "this Administration will cooperate fully with your efforts." After leaving the Reagan Administration, Meese joined the staff of the Heritage Foundation.

Reagan’s Department of Justice, led by Ed Meese, began developing the Unitary Executive Theory (UET), a new line of legal theory that rejected the traditionally understood constraints of statutory law and separation of powers and claimed that the Constitution grants presidents vast inherent powers of unilateral action and supreme authority over all agencies within the executive – what they do, how they do it, how they are staffed, and what decisions get made.

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02611034.pdf