A20 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 , 2020
BY DREW HARWELLIn her legal quest to reverse the
reality of last month’s election,
President Trump’s recently dis-
avowed attorney Sidney Powell
has gained a strange new ally: the
longtime administrator of the
message board 8kun, the QAnon
conspiracy theory’s Internet
home.
Powell on Tuesday filed an affi-
davit from R on Watkins, the s on of
8kun’s owner Jim Watkins, in a
Georgia lawsuit alleging that Do-
minion Voting Systems machines
used in the election had been cor-
rupted as part of a sprawling
v oter-fraud conspiracy.
Powell has claimed that a dia-
bolical scheme backed by global
communists had invisibly shifted
votes with help from a mysterious
computer algorithm pioneered by
the long-dead Venezuelan dicta-
tor Hugo Chávez — a wild story
debunked by fact-checkers as a
“fantasy parade” and devoid of
proof.
No real evidence was included
in Watkins’s affidavit, either. But
Watkins, who said in the affidavit
that he lives in Japan, neverthe-
less speculated that — based on
his recent reading of the Domin-
ion software’s online user guide —
it may be “within the realm of
possibility” for a biased poll work-
er to fraudulently switch votes.
Watkins’s affidavit marks one o f
the first official connections be-
tween a notable player in the
QAnon conspiracy universe and
Trump’s muddled multistate legal
campaign, which some of t he p res-
ident’s allies have labeled, in the
words of Chris Christie, a “nation-
al embarrassment.”
Many similar Trump-QAnon
overtures have already played out
on TV and social media since the
election nearly one month ago.
Watkins made similar allegations
in an unchallenged segment on
the far-right One America News
network, which Trump retweeted
to his 88 million followers last
month.
Powell and her client Michael
Flynn, Trump’s former national
security adviser, are effectively ce-
lebrities to QAnon loyalists, who
posit online that both will soon
help “release the Kraken” and ex-
pose a bombshell that could sal-
vage a Trump second term, van-
quish his enemies and unveil the
hidden machinations o f a commu-
nist conspiracy.
Since claiming to have resigned
last month from 8kun, Watkins
has devoted much of his onlineactivity to claims about unfound-
ed suspicions regarding Domin-
ion, an 18-year-old voting-
technology company whose com-
puter programs, ballot printers
and other products are used by
election officials in 28 states.
Trump and his supporters have
loudly attacked the Denver-based
company as having contributed in
some unproved way to steal the
vote.
In a lengthy rebuttal last week,
Dominion said that Powell’s
claims were nonsensical: Manual
recounts, machine tests and inde-
pendent audits had reaffirmed
that the voting systems had given
accurate, undistorted results. Her
“wild and reckless allegations,”
the company added, were “not
only demonstrably false” but had
“led to stalking, harassment, and
death threats to Dominion em-
ployees.”
In his affidavit, Watkins called
himself an information security
expert with nine years of experi-
ence as a “network and informa-
tion defense analyst” and security
engineer. But he did not mention
that his experience had come
largely through 8kun, the site
once called 8chan, which was
knocked offline for nearly three
months last year.The message board is infamous
for its anonymous threads of rac-
ist bile and extremist threats, and
the site was used by gunmen to
announce and celebrate three fa-
tal attacks l ast year — at a n El Paso
Walmart, a San Diego-area syna-
gogue a nd a New Zealand mosque.
Major Web services providers
that form the Internet’s backbone
have refused to work with the s ite,
with one executive telling The
Washington Post last year that
Watkins’s site had facilitated
“mass shootings and extreme hate
speech with intolerable conse-
quences.”
Ron Watkins holds an exalted
role in QAnon’s online sphere of
influence: He and his father are
some of the only people who can
verify posts from Q , the conspira-
cy theory’s unnamed prophet —
and a self-proclaimed govern-
ment agent with top-secret clear-
ance — who claims to post solely
on 8kun. The strange arrange-
ment has fueled unproven theo-
ries that the Watkinses have
helped write Q’s posts, or are Q
themselves, which b oth m en deny.
Watkins and his supporters
have c ontinued to hunt for clues to
support the unproved claims of a
secret Dominion scheme.
Shortly after midnight Tuesday,Watkins posted what he called “a
smoking-gun video” of a Domin-
ion worker manipulating Georgia
voting data by “plugging an elec-
tions USB drive into an external
laptop ... then suspiciously walk-
ing away.”
The undated video — which
was recorded at a distance and
includes a man and woman offer-
ing ongoing commentary on the
“nerd boy” as he works inside an
election office — shows nothing
even remotely conclusive of voter
fraud: The man uses a computer
and a thumb drive, all of it very
obviously caught on camera.
But Watkins’s messages never-
theless kicked QAnon-echoing ac-
counts and o nline Trump s upport-
ers into conspiracy-theory over-
drive. Many began sharing the
name of a Georgia man they be-
lieved had been captured on the
video, after they’d zoomed in on
the man’s identification badge. A
number of accounts on Twitter,
8kun and other pro-Trump web-
sites shared links to the man’s
possible LinkedIn profile, phone
numbers, home address and per-
sonal details, including a photo of
him as a groomsman in a friend’s
wedding in 2018.
A Dominion representative
said the company wouldn’t com-ment on alleged employee matters
or safety issues, but that it was
working to report all threats to
law enforcement. Watkins did not
respond to questions, and a wom-
an he had thanked on Twitter for
sharing the o riginal video said she
had “no comment about any-
thing.”
The man’s name and identify-
ing information are still bouncing
around the Web, with some people
calling for his imprisonment, tor-
ture or execution.
Gabriel Sterling, a top official
with the Georgia secretary of
state’s office, addressed the threat
in a fiery news conference Tues-
day afternoon and called out
Trump and Republican senators
for not condemning the violent
language. Sterling said the man
caught on camera had been trans-
ferring a report to a county com-
puter so he could read it.
“This 20-year-old contractor
for a voting system company
[was] just trying to do this job,” he
said. “His family is getting ha-
rassed now. There’s a noose out
there with his name on it. And it’s
not right.”
[email protected]Alice Crites and Julie Tate contributed
to this report.Former Trump lawyer finds an ally in operator of QAnon’s Internet home
BY DAVID J. LYNCHPresident-elect Joe Biden’s
choice of economic advisers
highlights a commitment to
spend whatever is needed to
restore a full-employment econ-
omy, setting up a clash with
Senate Republicans who are
sounding alarms over a national
debt they helped President
Trump increase by nearly $7 tril-
lion.
As the economic recovery
shows signs of faltering amid
rising coronavirus caseloads,
even members of Biden’s eco-
nomic team who have called
rising government debt a prob-
lem support a generous new
rescue package. Former Federal
Reserve chair Janet Yellen, a
deficit hawk Biden picked for
treasury secretary, said earlier
this year that the United States
could afford new borrowing to
help a wounded economy and
would save money in the long
run by preventing lasting dam-
age to the labor market.
The Biden team’s push for
government borrowing to fill the
pandemic-size hole in the econo-
my also reflects a broader shift in
some leading economists’ view of
public debt. By cutting interest
rates to near zero — and all but
exhausting its conventional tool
kit — the Federal Reserve has
made such borrowing more at-
tractive and left the nation’s
fiscal authorities in Congress
with a greater role in propping
up the economy, they say.
But prominent Republican
lawmakers are balking at Demo-
crats’ $2 trillion proposal for
additional pandemic relief, say-
ing annual budget deficits that
add to the government’s debtbulge must be trimmed.
At stake in the debate are the
hopes of millions of jobless
Americans for an early return to
the workforce along with the
economy’s long-term health,
economists said. Failure to pro-
vide additional government
stimulus would probably drag
out the recovery, threaten more
small businesses with closure
and force state and local govern-
ments to proceed with major
layoffs, economists said.
“We need a bridge to the
vaccine, and fiscal stimulus can
provide that bridge,” said Nathan
Sheets, chief economist for
PGIM Fixed Income. “Are there
issues in the long term with the
level of debt? Yes, but we need to
make it through these short-
term challenges with the econo-
my intact.”
When the pandemic hit inMarch, Congress and the admin-
istration moved quickly to pro-
vide roughly $3 trillion to cush-
ion the blow. But subsequent
talks over additional money for
extra unemployment benefits,
small-business loans, and budget
aid for state and local govern-
ments have run aground.
Prospects for resolving a
months-long stalemate between
the two parties may turn on the
outcome of two Senate runoff
elections in Georgia on Jan. 5. If
Republicans win at least one of
the two seats, as expected, they
will retain control of the Senate,
dimming hopes for an additional
multitrillion-dollar measure.
“The politics of a divided
Washington are going to make it
very difficult to agree on much of
anything,” said Eric Winograd,
senior economist for fixed in-
come at AllianceBernstein in
New York. “Republicans in the
Senate seemed reluctant to pass
more stimulus when there was a
Republican president. They are
likely to be even more reluctant
with a Democratic one.”
Indeed, Sen. Lindsey O.
Graham (R-S.C.), slated to chair
the Senate Budget Committee if
Republicans maintain control of
the upper chamber, told report-
ers after the Nov. 3 election that
he wants to “finally begin to
address the debt.”
Likewise, Sen. John Thune
(S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republi-
can, said he expects to focus next
year on curbing spending on
entitlement programs, adding: “I
think that’s kind of getting back
to our DNA.... I think spending,
entitlement reform, growth and
the economy are all things that
we’re going to have to be focused
on.”
To p Democrats scoff at Repub-
licans’ renewed debt fears after
years of their support for
Trump’s budget-busting policies.
In 2017, for example, every Re-
publican senator voted in favor
of the president’s signature tax
cut, which added $1.9 trillion to
the debt, according to the non-
partisan Committee for a Re-
sponsible Federal Budget.
Government spending under
Trump, who once crowned him-
self “the king of debt,” soared to
$6.6 trillion in the fiscal year that
ended Sept. 30 — up m ore than
70 percent from $3.8 trillion four
years earlier, according to the
Congressional Budget Office.
“It is hard to take the Republi-
can senators seriously,” said Wil-
liam Spriggs, chief economist of
the AFL-CIO labor union. “We
still have very rough days ahead
of us.”
While Democrats such as Sen.
Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) accuse
Republicans of rediscovering
their debt phobia only to impede
Biden’s agenda, Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)
began flagging government debt
as “a matter of genuine concern”
in April.
Republicans back a $ 500 bil-
lion package targeted to small
businesses and the jobless and
resist a blank-check approach
because the economy has healed
faster than expected, said Brian
Riedl, a senior fellow at the
Manhattan Institute. The cur-
rent 6.9 percent unemployment
rate is well below the double-dig-
it levels many Wall Street econo-
mists initially expected for the
end of this year.
“A n economy with unemploy-
ment below 7 percent requires a
different solution than if unem-
ployment stayed above 10 per-
cent,” he said.Biden this week filled out his
economic team with experts who
have called for rebuilding the
economy first and dealing with
deficit concerns later. Among
them are all three members of
his Council of Economic Advis-
ers: Princeton University econo-
mist Cecilia Rouse, the incoming
chair; Jared Bernstein, who ad-
vised Biden on economic policy
during his vice presidency; and
Heather Boushey, head of the
Washington Center for Equitable
Growth. Neera Ta nden, presi-
dent of the Center for American
Progress who was nominated to
head the Office of Management
and Budget, also supports defer-
ring deficit action.
While Republicans cite the
economy’s progress in recent
months, Democrats point to a
mounting toll of hardship and
loss. Existing federal programs,
including extended unemploy-
ment benefits and a moratorium
on evictions, are scheduled to
expire at year’s end. Roughly
3.6 million Americans have been
unemployed for more than six
months, four times the number
at the end of April.
“You’re going to get the recov-
ery starting in April, May, wheth-
er or not we get this package,”
said economist Adam Posen,
head of the Peterson Institute for
International Economics.
“Whether we get stimulus in
December or January is about
how much human suffering
there is between now and then.”
Democrats’ stimulus push is
driven by lessons of the last
financial crisis as well as subse-
quent shifts in the economic
climate.
After Republicans took con-
trol of the House in 2010, they
pressed President Barack Obama
to accept spending limits that
contributed to the weakest re-
covery since World War II. Lead-
ing Republicans at the time,
including then-House Budget
Committee Chairman Paul Ryan,
warned o f soaring inflation and a
collapsing dollar if deficits
weren’t quickly corralled.
“We’ve gone through this be-
fore,” said Sam Bell, policy direc-
tor for Employ America, a left-
leaning think tank. “We didn’t
have spikes in interest rates. We
didn’t have ruinous inflation. It’s
hard to overstate how much the
mainstream academic consensus
has moved.”
On Tuesday, a pair of promi-
nent Democratic economists —
Lawrence Summers and Jason
Furman — delivered a new paper
that underscores that shift. The
former Obama administration
officials, appearing at a virtual
Brookings Institution event, a r-
gued that persistently low inter-est rates require a “revolution” in
thinking about debts and defi-
cits.
The implications for govern-
ment tax and spending policies
“are as profound as those that
occurred in the wake of the
inflation of the 1970s,” wrote
Summers, a former treasury sec-
retary, and Furman, who led
Obama’s Council of Economic
Advisers.
The government’s borrowing
spree since the 2008 financial
crisis has not had the effects —
rising bond yields or higher in-
flation — that traditional eco-
nomics would have predicted.
Private businesses have not been
“crowded out” of bond markets
by government agencies or faced
higher borrowing costs. Con-
sumers expect inflation even a
decade from now to be a tame
1.4 percent, according to the
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleve-
land.
The $21.2 trillion national
debt — up from $14.4 trillion on
the day Trump was inaugurated
— is now slightly larger than the
U.S. economy, a nominal mile-
stone that has not been reached
since World War II and yet seems
to have little real-world impact.
The Biden team will take office
with the government able to
borrow for 10 years at 0.8 per-
cent, compared with roughly
4 percent in late 2008.
That explains why even as the
federal government is expected
to rack up an additional $10 tril-
lion in debt from 2021 to 2028,
Washington will pay less each
year in interest charges than it
paid in 2019, according to the
CBO’s latest projections.
At the American Economic
Association conference in Janu-
ary, Yellen pronounced the inter-
est burden “manageable” and
said low interest rates provided
the government with greater fis-
cal firepower.
“Even under current condi-
tions, I think we can afford to
increase federal spending or cut
taxes to stimulate the economy if
there’s a downturn,” she said,
adding that low rates also made
“a strong case” for new spending
on infrastructure, research, edu-
cation and climate change miti-
gation, which could boost the
economy’s long-term potential.
Yet in recent years, Yellen also
has expressed the concern over
government debt that worries
liberals who fear it as a justifica-
tion for cuts in Social Security or
Medicare.
“The U.S. debt path is com-
pletely unsustainable under cur-
rent tax and spending plans,” she
said during a Feb. 4 Bipartisan
Policy Center event.
david.ly [email protected]Biden economic team backs robust rescue bill as GOP raises debt concerns
DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST
Treasury chief nominee Janet Yellen, a hawk on deficits, says low
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