The executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) resigned Monday after the revelation that an arm of his group sent out robocalls promoting the “Stop the Steal” rally last week that turned into a bum-rush attack on the nation’s legislature.
NBC News first reported Monday evening on Adam Piper’s resignation from RAGA and its dark money affiliate, the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF).
“Serving Republican attorneys general has been the honor of a lifetime and honestly a dream job,” Piper said in a statement shared with TPM.
Both RAGA and RLDF were at various times listed as participating organizations in Wednesday’s demonstration, according to archived copies of a now-disappeared website for the event. And RLDF released robocall advertising the gathering, as the watchdog group Documented reported.
“At 1:00 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal,” a voice said on the call. “We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections.”
RLDF’s chairman, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, claimed ignorance of the groups’ involvement in the event — referring to “unauthorized decisions made by RLDF staff” in an interview last week with the Montgomery Advertiser.
The irony of the Republican group’s involvement in the Capitol riot goes back months: Among other things, RAGA controls the website “lawlessliberals.com” and has long warned against “lawless liberals” like… Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (D), who had a long history as a prosecutor before being elected to Congress.
The site includes more than a dozen videos bashing Democratic politicians for the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that swept the country over the summer, featuring jarring images of violence and property destruction.
When one representative video was released in November, Piper said in a press release that Americans must “defend the United States Senate and stop the lawless liberals from having unchecked federal power.”
“Lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by Antifa and other leftist individuals who spent much of 2020 burning down buildings, rioting, looting, and calling for the police to be defunded,” he added. “If we put these people in charge of running the country, our families will be less safe because our communities will be subjected to defunding the police, sanctuary cities, and gun confiscation.”
Last week, responding to the Capitol riot that followed the pro-Trump event his group had advertised, Piper called the violence at the Capitol “despicable and anti-American.”
“Over the last seven months, RAGA has consistently condemned political violence across the country, regardless of partisan strife,” he said.
