Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed “secretary of retribution” has been given a pass to the Republican National Convention despite calling for the former president’s enemies to be executed, the Daily Beast has learned.
Ivan Raiklin, a former soldier and intelligence official, is free to roam the Milwaukee venue despite being described by one prominent congressman as a “clear and present danger to American democracy” for his plans to round up hundreds of Trump enemies.
He also claimed in February that an assassination attempt on Donald Trump would benefit the MAGA movement.
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“If they [assassinate Trump], option 2, behind Trump, is going to be so much better for us and so much worse [for] them,” Raiklin said on Alex Jones’ show in February.
Raiklin, one of the architects of the “Stop The Steal” movement who predicted a political assassination attempt would benefit Republicans is promoting his “Deep State target list” at the RNC.
The list of roughly 450 officials includes: Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker; James Comey, the director of the FBI fired by Trump; Paul Ryan, the Republican House speaker for the first two years of Trump’s first term and James Clapper, Pres. Obama’s final director of national intelligence. Raiklin has said he wants them rounded up by county sheriffs on charges of treason and sedition, which carry the death penalty.
In secret video footage obtained by the Daily Beast, Raiklin bragged about his scheme and said Musk has “dirt on every person” with an X account on his list.
He claimed that the evidence of treason would be released by Musk, although he acknowledged that only 100 of his 450 targets had accounts on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Raiklin, who is attending the Republican National Convention this week, claimed he has plans to work with Elon Musk to unearth private direct messages on X from members of the “target list” by the end of the summer.
“Once Elon Musk discloses what I call the mother of all Twitter files — Remember, Elon Musk purchased a dataset of information and evidence,” Raiklin on Wednesday. “He has now dirt on every person that has a Twitter account that used to be, and are, in the deep state. I’ve created a list of individuals who that is: 450. About 100-plus of them have Twitter accounts.”
Raiklin gave an interview to an unidentified camera crew just outside the Secret Service perimeter around the convention space, openly bragging about his scheme as someone in a rat costume meandered behind him.
Five months ago, Raiklin told his more famous fellow conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that a political assassination attempt would benefit Republicans.
“My assessment … is that if you assassinate any political, presidential candidate, whether it’s RFK [Jr.], whether it’s Trump — guess what? America will do the following,” Ivan Raiklin, a former Green Beret and right-wing personality said on InfoWars in February. “Immediately, they will respond in kind. And they know who you are, because we’ve created the list.”
Raiklin, an early proponent of “the Pence card,” the flimsy legal theory that former Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the 2020 election by sending it back to the states, was referring to his alleged “deep state target list” of, ostensibly, enemies of Trump.
Raiklin, like other fringe characters in the MAGAverse—from Roger Stone to fake electors—was able to secure a credential to attend this week’s GOP convention in Milwaukee and has been roaming about the secure perimeter. Somehow, Raiklin—who has previously billed himself as Trump’s “future secretary of retribution”— ended up as an invited guest at the RNC.
The Daily Beast is not sharing the full surreptitiously filmed video in order to protect the identity of our source.
In the video, Raiklin went on to espouse false claims about the 2020 presidential election, saying once the alleged trove of DMs from X users are made public “the American public will then see the election of 2020 was completely illegally run and illegitimate.”
Raiklin and a spokesperson for the RNC did not immediately return a request for comment on his past remarks promoting political violence, his alleged “deep state” list or how he got a credential.
In his February appearance with Jones, Raiklin said an assassination attempt would enable, in his view, legitimate political violence to be unleashed by the right. “Oh, it’s going to be the best cleansing and the fastest cleansing that we’ve ever seen in my lifetime,” he told Jones.
“I guarantee—I assess, with almost certainty, with the highest level of confidence,” he continued, “that if they assassinate Trump, it is so game over for them.”
