https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/pence-to-speak-to-secretive-council-for-national-policy-friday-cnp-members-involved-in-saturdays-stop-the-steal-rally/
As the results of the 2020 presidential election came rolling in, Vice President Mike Pence was notably out of sight and had even planned a Florida vacation for this week. But with the ratcheting up of Trump’s campaign to contest the outcome of the election, CNN reported that Pence canceled his getaway, remaining inside the Beltway to address the Council for National Policy, a highly secretive organization that includes some of the most powerful conservatives in the country.
As Pence stands at the podium before marquee names in conservative politics Friday, pro-Trump, far-right activists are making their way to Washington, D.C., for a rally organized and supported by some of the very right-wing leaders likely sitting in that room.
And they wouldn’t be on their way without the leadership and support of current and past Council for National Policy members for the Stop the Steal campaign. The CNP, which has been around since the Reagan administration, holds closed-door meetings, tells members not to speak to the press about the council, and has tried to keep membership rolls private, but its members’ names have leaked over the years.
Notable CNP members include Ginni Thomas, the influential wife of Clarence Thomas, and Tony Perkins, a former president of the organization and the current president of the Family Research Council, according to a 2020 membership directory published by Documented. CNP has also welcomed far-right figures like neo-Confederate Christian Reconstructionist Michael Peroutka, a major funder of former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s advocacy and political career.
CNP also counts among its members Ed Martin of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who has allied himself with dominionists and Christian nationalists in the past year—all of whom have pushed Stop the Steal messaging since Alexander launched the campaign and called on them to join it. Martin has led sparsely attended D.C. rallies and blasted Phyllis Schlafly Eagles’ email list with Stop the Steal talking points, while Kirk attended a rally in Phoenix and took to conservative media to promote it. Though it does not appear Fitton has used the #StoptheSteal hashtag, he has echoed the campaign’s language, alleged an “electoral coup,” accused states of voter fraud, and called for votes to stop being counted in others.