Donald Trump Advisor Joseph Schmitz Promotes Anti-Indian and Anti-Muslim Bigotry, Calls for End to the Vote for People Receiving Public Assistance.

Two-peas in a pod: Donald Trump and Joseph Schmitz, anti-Indian platforms
Published April 19, 2016
A top foreign policy advisor to Donald Trump is part of a Western Montana campaign against the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT). Joseph E. Schmitz’s involvement in a failed lawsuit attempting to block tribal management of a dam located on the Flathead Reservation (home to the Tribes) also demonstrates how anti-Muslim bigotry increasingly accompanies attacks on tribal communities.
Schmitz was named by Trump as one of five foreign policy advisors in mid-March. In September 2015, Joseph E. Schmitz joined Lawrence Kogan as co-counsel in Keenan et al v. Bay et al, a lawsuit filed on behalf of Montana State Senator Bob Keenan (R-Bigfork) and former state Senator Verdell Jackson (R-Kalispell). The lawsuit sought to block CSKT acquisition of the former Kerr Dam. The structure was renamed the Seli’š Ksanka Qlispe’ dam when the tribally-owned Energy Keepers, Inc. assumed its management.
Lawrence Kogan is closely allied with the anti-Indian Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA). CERA aims to terminate tribes and abrogate treaties between the United States and Indian Nations. Kogan hired longtime CERA leader Elaine Willman to assist with the case and has spoken at multiple events with the group’s leaders. Kogan and Schmitz’s brief in the anti-CSKT lawsuit gained infamy for alleging that the dam transfer could allow the Turkish government and terrorists to obtain nuclear materials and poses a threat to national security. Rejecting the lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras referenced the brief’s “somewhat perplexing arguments regarding the Turkish Government’s involvement with Native Americans,” concluding that “counsel for Plaintiffs conceded that no such evidence has been submitted relating to the Plaintiffs’ alleged economic harm.” (See American Lands Council and the Anti-Indian Movement). Kogan and Willman have continued to press the CSKT-Muslim terrorist conspiracy theory in 2016 (SeeBigoted Nationalism and CERA-allied Attorney Tours).
Joseph Schmitz is a founding partner of Schmitz & Socarras LLP, a Maclean, Virginia-based law firm that “serves multinational companies and investors worldwide,” representing them in regulatory and technology issues as well as mergers and acquisitions. Schmitz served as Inspector General for the Department of Defense under George W. Bush. After leaving the DoD, Schmitz became general counsel for the Prince Group, the parent company of the private mercenary firm Blackwater.[1]
Schmitz is also a “Insider” with the right-wing Newsmax. This Florida-based online publication hosts writers that run the gamut from paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan to libertarian Ron Paul and neo-conservative Charles Krauthammer. In his “Support and Defend” column, Schmitz assails Obamacare and writes on Middle East policy. In February 2016 Schmitz argued in a Newsmax article that people receiving public support should be barred from voting. Misleadingly citing the 27th Amendment (barring Congressional pay-raises from going into effect before another election is held) as precedent, Schmitz writes,
[T]he same type of obvious conflict of interest arises when individual citizens who voluntarily chose to be dependent on public welfare are allowed to vote. The good news is that the states, through legislation or state constitutional amendments, can and should enact common sense laws to protect the integrity of the voting process. A ‘Voter Integrity Amendment’ could be as simple as this: Section 1. The right to vote in this state shall be conditioned on the citizens not being voluntarily dependent on public welfare.[2]
Joseph Schmitz is well at home with the anti-Muslim tenor of Kogan’s anti-CSKT lawsuit, having supported Donald Trump’s call to bar Muslims from entering the United States, according to the Washington Post.[3] Schmitz is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a Washington, D.C-based think tank and leading force promoting the idea that Islamic sharia law is taking over the United States. A 2010 CSP report co-authored by Schmitz and titled Sharia: The Threat to America, stated,
Evidence of the extent to which sharia is being insinuated into the fabric of American society abounds … Few Americans are aware of the diversity and success to date of such efforts to insinuate sharia into the United States – let alone the full implications of the mortal threat this totalitarian doctrine represents to our freedoms, society and government… The net result of these combined forces is that the United States has been infiltrated and deeply influenced by an enemy within that is openly determined to replace the U.S. Constitution with sharia …Multiculturalism, political correctness, misguided notions of tolerance and sheer willful blindness have combined to create an atmosphere of confusion and denial in America about the current threat confronting the nation.[4]
Casting sharia as a singular and inherently evil set of ideas and practices is little more than a mask for bigotry and attacks on the civil and human rights of Muslims. Sharia is largely a system of personal religious and moral codes practiced by many Muslims. A small percentage of Muslims have used sharia to justify bigotry and violence – not unlike how the Christian Right deploys selective and distorted versions of the Bible to do the same. To date exactly zero U.S. jurisdictions have adopted sharia law. The same number can be expected to do so in the future.
Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy for Ronald Reagan, and notorious Islamophobe, wrote in March 16, 2016 that,
In remarks last week, Donald Trump once again made headlines about the threat we face from Islamic supremacism. As he succinctly put it, ‘Islam hates us.’…There is no getting around the fact that the practice of Islam as defined by the faith’s authorities …is hateful towards those like us, who believe that our government should be defined by a man-made Constitution, not by the dictates of a deity like Allah codified in a doctrine like sharia…[L]et’s hope that Donald Trump’s latest comments about Islam will be but the beginning of a serious and informed national debate. (italics in original)[5]
Joseph Schmitz’s role in the anti-CSKT lawsuit dovetails with Donald Trump’s own anti-Indian bent. The reality TV star cum ultra-nationalist bigot has displayed anti-tribal leanings most prominently in attacks on tribal casinos. Trump has assailed the right of tribes to create casinos under the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). Casinos have a played an important role for many tribes in economic development and funding social programs. While forming a casino is an act of inherent tribal sovereignty, the IGRA actually constrained tribal rights by giving states some leverage in casino development processes.
Speaking against tribal casino plans in Connecticut in the mid-1990s, Trump declared that tribal casinos were taking money from the State of Connecticut, churches and “old people.” Trump inaccurately alleged that tribal casinos would become centers of organized crime, disparaging that “an Indian chief is going to tell ‘Joey Killer’ to please get off his reservation.” “They don’t look like Indians,” Trump told a Congressional committee, speaking of tribal leaders in Connecticut where a then-planned Trump casino was in competition with the Mashantucket Pequot’s Foxwood casino.[6]
Trump has also defended the Washington, D.C. NFL franchise team name, stating in true racist-white-guy fashion, “Honestly, I don’t think they should change the name, unless the owner wanted to…I know Indians that are extremely proud of that name. They think it’s a positive.”[7] Multiple Native and non-Native groups have condemned team owner Dan Snyder’s commitment to keeping a racial slur as a team name.
Joseph Schmitz’s involvement in Kogan and CERA’s attack on the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe’s shows once again that the anti-Indian movement is part-and-parcel of a broader attack on civil and human rights.
NOTES
[1] Schmitz and Socarras, LLP. http://www.sands-llp.com/.
[2] Schmitz, Joseph E. Time to End Welfare Abuse. Newsmax. Time to End Welfare Abuse. February 19, 2016.http://www.newsmax.com/JosephESchmitz/welfare-abuse-unemployment/2016/02/19/id/715144/.
[3] Parker, Ashley and Maggie Haberman. Donald Trump Pushes Serious Image in the Capital. Washington Post. March 21, 2016.
[4] Center for Security Policy. 2010. Sharia: The Threat to America. An Exercise in Competitive Analysis—Report of Team B II.https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/upload/wysiwyg/article%20pdfs/Shariah%20-%20The%20Threat%20to%20America%20(Team%20B%20Report)%20Web%2009292010.pdf.
[5] Gaffney, Frank. Does Islam ‘Hate’ Us?.
[6] NBC Today Show. Donald Trump Fights Indian Casinos. August 8, 1994.https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/flatview?cuecard=36320; Noisecat, Julian Brave. Donald Trump Was Also A Dirtbag to Native Americans.The Huffington Post. August 12, 2015.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-was-also-a-dirtbag-to-native-americans_us_55cb9290e4b0923c12bf0688.
[7] Rappeport, Alan. Donald Trump and Jeb Bush Find Common Ground on Washington’s Football Team. New York Times. October 5, 2015.http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/10/05/trump-and-bush-find-common-ground-on-washingtons-football-team/?_r=0.
I WOULD LOVE TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO FORMALLY GO ON RECORD AND SAY, I DO NOT SUPPORT ANYONE RUNNING. THEY ARE ALL A BUNCH OF CORRUPTED CLOWNS REGARDLESS OF POLITICAL PARTY. I AM THANKFUL OF MIXED BLOOD WHITE AND CHEROKEE AND PROUD OF BOTH, THAT I DO NOT WANT ANY POLITICAL PARTY. I AM A CONSPIRACY REALIST, WE WHO ARE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS (ME: REALIST) DO NOT CARE FOR ANYONE OR ANYTHING, OTHER THAN ENDLESS SEEKING OF THE TRUTH, REGARDLESS WHO OR WHAT IS EXPOSED FOR EVIL AND CORRUPTION. WE ARE FACTUALLY A DIFFERENT BREED.
“All it takes for evil to flourish, is for good men to do nothing”. I forget who said that, but, IT’S TRUE. And we should all know that, our own history proves it. If we lived on another planet, where who gets elected here wouldn’t matter, I would agree with O.R.C.; because for the most part, it is true. BUT- and this is very important, we live in a land controlled by politics,whether we like it or not, and those politicians that we elect have an effect on our lives; sometimes small, sometimes big. For a long time Blacks, Indians, Women, & 18 yr. old’s were NOT allowed to vote. Not allowed to participate in this Democracy, as shaky & flawed it is. Now, women alone make up 53% of the electorate. Could it be better? OF COURSE IT COULD. But again, if we do NOT participate (vote) then we have no basis for complaint. Does anyone seriously think a Trump or a Cruz in the presidency is the same as any Democrat? Sometimes we actually do have to choose between the “lesser of two evils” merely to insure our own existence, to at least slow down (and yes, hopefully, someday end) the race to oblivion that awaits us, and is definitely a possibility when a Hitler or a Mussolini takes power. And don’t think for a moment that “It couldn’t happen here”.
Richard, I think Trump is this country’s historical hoax. Jesus warned us that things/events will take place that have never ever taken place in this world and never will, and we are living in an era of the biggest deception ever and this was also foretold. Whatever happen to mankind?
Sad to say this, but how sad we are a group known for handouts….it all started when we forbidden to be self sustainable and now they have made us dependent on them and their government. Really what do we truly want, independence or a handout? I am for being completely sovereign.
This article is BIG. We, First Nations, have absolutely no idea of what is in store for us. As I read this article and its links. I am in awe of what are lands are going to be USED for, however, we can take the quoted laws/cases and turn it around. We will be forced to learn our true historical background folks. We’ve been denied our true identity for decades and have allowed it! Never knowing about the Native American Code Talkers, truth about Lewis and Clark, all of our military warriors, their victories; all we know are the denials e.g. our participation to the “American Dream” is it really? I am learning the American Dream is just that “a dream” now under Agendas 2021 and 2030. These Agendas are difficult to comprehend, however, the near-riots at meetings all across America wherein Agenda 2021 is presented tells me there is danger. This article is explosive I just feel it is explosive and will understand why and it’s just a beginning of what is being shouted all across the marvelous internet. And it is not GOOD. Hoping my comment will be posted. I hate retyping!
The evidence indisputably proves there is a close relationship between the Islamic government of Turkey and the CSKT government. The alleged bigotry exists only in the eyes of the politically correct. Evidence can be viewed at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2704179
Would the Salamanca takeover in 1990 wherein 2,500 non-native property-owners lost everything they had after its 99-year lease expired be one perfect example of what your firm is fighting for? I truly doubt the tribe was totally behind this irrational and disheartening move. Native Americans are not as depicted in this move because we have always cared for mankind and evidenced by Squanto and the like throughout the decades. The prime motivation of the Salamanca was a political-oriented move all in the name of M-O-N-E-Y. Tribes have always been threatened to action. During the 1800s it was denial of food rations which lead to several military battles. Today its a combination of benefits, disenrollments and reprisals.
We fight for adherence to the rule of law. “Sovereign” federally recognized tribes (i.e. their governments) do not recognize US law, including the US Constitution; and also do not accord tribal members full constitutional protections. These governments often steal from tribal member trust accounts. Your avoidance of the evidence by referring to the Salamanca is typical of corrupt tribal governments empowered by the Obama administration which adhere to the rule of men. Federal recognition of tribes is a money racket reminiscent of Chicago mobs – a pervasive modus operandi of this administration.
Being Native American is a blessing to me. I am proud of my heritage and Donald Trump can kiss my Cherokee Ass!. Getting down to what I am saying….We Native Americans need to stick together and not let the Washishu take what little we have. One thing that I know I am sure of, Is I’m not voting for that ignorant babbling racist creep….If he does get to be President for some ungodly tally of the ballots, I’m packing my family up and moving back to Canada with my Canadian Husband…He can have the U.S, because he will be the one to destroy it!!!
Face the evidence which is indisputable. Denial and diversion don’t work.