Cotton cites hateful beliefs; refunding gift

Senator calls Conservative Citizens group ‘hurtful’

U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton announced Monday that he will return donations from the leader of a group whose work was cited in a racist manifesto attributed to Dylann Storm Roof, who is accused of nine killings in South Carolina.

In the manifesto, Roof said he learned about "brutal black on white murders" from the Council of Conservative Citizens website.

Cotton received a total of $1,500 in 2013 and 2014 from Earl Holt, the leader of the Missouri-based Council of Conservative Citizens, according to data posted on OpenSecrets.org.

Holt lives in Longview, Texas, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

"I have returned Mr. Holt's donation because I do not agree with his hateful beliefs and language and believe they are hurtful to our country," Cotton said in a statement.

In a statement on the Council of Conservative Citizens website, Holt said the council "does not advocate illegal activities of any kind, and never has."

"The CofCC is hardly responsible for the actions of this deranged individual merely because he gleaned accurate information from our website," said Holt, who compared last week's massacre to another mass murder committed by a black man more than two decades ago.

"We are no more responsible for the actions of this sad young man, than the Olin Corporation was for manufacturing the ammo misused by Colin Ferguson to murder six whites on the Long Island Railroad in 1993."

The council has 17,800 members, according to a 2013 tax form required by the Internal Revenue Service for nonprofit organizations.

In a statement of program service accomplishments on the 2013 tax form, the organization said it spent $29,016 on "civil rights programs" and another $18,020 on "civil rights, social action & advocacy programs."

"The CofCC is one of perhaps three websites in the world that accurately and honestly report black-on-white violent crime, and in particular, the seemingly endless incidents involving black-on-white murder," Holt said.

Holt has made $55,000 in campaign contributions since 2004, including donations to black, white and Hispanic Republican candidates.

Arkansas Ties

The Council of Conservative Citizens has an Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas chapter. The chapter's website uses words like "sub-human" to describe black women. A black man is depicted as a monkey in one cartoon.

A phone number listed on the website had a busy signal throughout the day. Other chapter leaders could not be reached Monday.

John Casteel of Newport resigned as Jackson County Republican Party chairman in 2011 after refusing to give up his membership with the council. A 2011 council newsletter said he was among the "national leaders of the CofCC."

"They're saying this is a racist organization, and it's not. To say that, they must not be looking at the bylaws," Casteel told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 2011.

"This is the Democratic Party digging things up, and making controversy. The committee wanted me to stay and they thought it would end with me, but I don't think it will."

The Council of Conservative Citizens used to operate more openly in the state.

More than 20 years ago, then-Lt. Gov. Mike Huckabee canceled plans to speak at a council luncheon at Little Rock's Camelot Hotel because he objected to another speaker on the schedule, attorney Kirk Lyons. Lyons, who was married at the Aryan Nations compound in Idaho, had been accused by the Nazi-hunting Simon Weisenthal Center of defending white supremacists and collaborating with Holocaust deniers.

The Council has since been critical of Huckabee; it referred to him on its website as "the socialist from Arkansas."

National Scope

Besides Cotton, Republican presidential candidates, GOP lawmakers and the lone black Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives are also returning donations from the leader of the Council of Conservative Citizens.

The campaigns of presidential hopefuls Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Rick Santorum said they would donate the money received from Holt to a fund set up by Charleston's mayor to assist the victims' families.

"I abhor the sentiments Mr. Holt has expressed," Santorum said in a statement. "These statements and sentiments are unacceptable. Period. End of sentence."

Rep. Mia Love of Utah, a black Republican woman who was elected to the House last year, said through a spokesman that she had returned $1,000 in donations.

Holt also donated to the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004, and to several current and former GOP members of Congress, including Iowa Rep. Steve King, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and former Minnesota Rep. and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, according to data posted on OpenSecrets.org.

Flake's press secretary said Monday that the senator is donating his $1,000 to the fund set up in Charleston to help the shooting victims' families.

Information for this article was contributed by The Associated Press.

Metro on 06/23/2015

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