Trump lawyer forwards email echoing secessionist rhetoric

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer forwarded Wednesday an email to conservative journalists, government officials and friends that echoed secessionist Civil War propaganda and declared the group Black Lives Matter “has been totally infiltrated by terrorist groups.”

The email forwarded by John Dowd, who is leading the president’s legal team, painted Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in glowing terms and equated the South’s rebellion to that of the American Revolution against England. Its subject line — “The Information that Validates President Trump on Charlottesville” — was a reference to comments Trump made this week in the aftermath of protests in the Virginia college town.

“You cannot be against General Lee and be for General Washington,” the email reads, “there literally is no difference between the two men.”

The contents of the email are at the heart of a roiling controversy over race and history that turned deadly last weekend in Charlottesville.

In a fiery news conference Tuesday, Trump blamed “both sides” for violence. He said many of those who opposed the statue’s removal were good people protesting the loss of their culture, and he questioned whether taking down statues of Lee could lead to monuments of Washington also being removed.

His words were widely criticized in Washington but were praised by white supremacists, including a former Ku Klux Klan leader.

Dowd received the email Tuesday night and forwarded it Wednesday morning to more than two dozen recipients, including a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security, The Wall Street Journal editorial page and journalists at Fox News and The Washington Times.

“You’re sticking your nose in my personal email?” Dowd told The Times in a brief telephone interview. “People send me things. I forward them.” He then hung up.

The email’s author, Jerome Almon, runs several websites alleging government conspiracies and arguing the FBI has been infiltrated by Islamic terrorists.

Almon’s email said Black Lives Matter, a group that formed to protest the use of force by police against African-Americans, is being directed by terrorists. Almon blamed the group for deadly violence against police last year in Texas and Louisiana.