This isn’t from an evil reich-wing source, but the liberal Associated Press:
How a leading anti-Trump group ignored a crisis in its ranks
By Steve Peoples and Brian Slodysko | February 11, 2021
WASHINGTON (AP) — Last June, the Lincoln Project was on a high.
Led by several prominent former Republican consultants, its slickly produced ads attacking President Donald Trump made it perhaps the best known of the so-called Never Trump organizations. The group tried to claim a higher moral ground in an effort to purge Trump from the GOP. Money flowed in by the tens of millions of dollars from donors eager to help.
But within the organization, a grave threat was emerging.
In June 2020, members of the organization’s leadership were informed in writing and in subsequent phone calls of at least 10 specific allegations of harassment against co-founder John Weaver, including two involving Lincoln Project employees, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the situation. The email and phone calls raise questions about the Lincoln Project’s statement last month that it was “shocked” when accusations surfaced publicly this year. It’s also the first known suggestion that Weaver targeted a Lincoln Project staffer.
There’s more at the original.
Many have publicly mused about how co-founders George Conway, Steve Schmidt, Reed Galen, Jennifer Horn and Rick Wilson could not have known about Mr Weaver’s activities. Twenty-one young men, including one who claims that things began when he was just 14, have accused Mr Weaver of sending unwanted sexually provocative messages, sometines including solicitations for sex, often in exchange for the promise of career help, to which Mr Weaver admitted once caught.
Weaver has been on a medical leave of absence from the Lincoln Project since last summer and said he would not return to the organization.
On Sunday, the Lincoln Project noted that Weaver was never around other members.
“The totality of his deceptions are beyond anything any of us could have imagined and we are absolutely shocked and sickened by it. Like so many, we have been betrayed and deceived by John Weaver,” the group’s statement said. “We are grateful beyond words that at no time was John Weaver in the physical presence of any member of The Lincoln Project.”
Oh, really?
On Twitter Sunday, (the American Conservative’s Ryan) Girdusky — who broke the story earlier this month — blasted the Lincoln Project’s statement as false, saying the group had been made aware of the allegations when he was reporting them out last year.
Girdusky, who has also worked as a political consultant for about 15 years, told The Washington Post that Weaver’s past was like a “worst-kept secret” and that several men reached out to him after Weaver followed him on Twitter last May.
“Three young men DMed (directly messaged) me and said, ‘Please be careful, this is what he did to me,’ and sent me their DMs with John Weaver,” Girdusky said.
Girdusky said several of the men who told him privately about Weaver’s behavior had also contacted Lincoln Project members as recently as last August “and it was ignored across the board.”
Steve Schmidt, a co-founder of the group, told the New York Times that they had heard “chatter” last summer Weaver could be in relationships with men, but denied they knew it was inappropriate.
Uhhh, Mr Weaver was married, so Mr Schmidt had to know that such relationships were “inappropriate.”
The Post article detailed Mr Weaver’s behavior and how the Lincoln Project denied any knowledge. The Associated Press article went further:
Since its creation, the Lincoln Project has raised $90 million. But only about a third of the money, roughly $27 million, directly paid for advertisements that aired on broadcast and cable, or appeared online, during the 2020 campaign, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosures and data from the ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG.
That leaves tens of millions of dollars that went toward expenses like production costs, overhead — and exorbitant consulting fees collected by members of the group.
“It raises questions about where the rest of the money ultimately went,” said Brendan Fischer, an attorney with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. “Generally speaking, you’d expect to see a major super PAC spend a majority or more of their money on advertisements and that’s not what happened here.”
The vast majority of the cash was split among consulting firms controlled by its founders, including about $27 million paid to a small firm controlled by Galen and another $21 million paid to a boutique firm run by former Lincoln Project member Ron Steslow, campaign finance disclosures show.
Emphasis mine.
The AP article was careful not to accuse the Lincoln Project of actual illegality, but noted that several of the members had serious financial problems, problems which seemed to be at least partially resolved by the success of the organization:
The Lincoln Project parted with one co-founder, Horn, last week, claiming in an unusual public statement that she was seeking a $250,000 signing bonus and a $40,000-a-month consulting contract. Horn declined to engage publicly, but public records reveal that the unexpected success of the Lincoln Project has extended a lifeline to some founders who have spent much of the past decade under financial distress.
Financial help also came to Messrs Weaver and Schmidt.
There has been a lot of coverage on Mr Weaver’s sexual messages, and even the AP article spends a lot of bandwidth on them, but, at heart, the Lincoln Project turned out to be a corrupt organization to benefit its founders financially. Yes, the evidence indicates that the members lied about what they knew and when they knew it concerning Mr Weaver, but that appears to be the least of it.
The AP article refers to Mr Conway as “conservative attorney George Conway,” but in his hatred for Donald Trump, he showed that he is no conservative. Supporting Joe Biden just to get rid of President Trump also meant supporting Mr Biden’s policies. Mr Conway, and the other #NeverTrumpers, have wound up supporting:
- Characterizing conservatives as ‘extremists’ and supporting them being banned from social media;
- Supporting President Biden’s allowing the ‘transgendered’ into the military, including the government paying for their medical ‘transition’ costs;
- Supporting President Biden’s moves to allow illegal immigrants into the United States;
- Supporting President Biden’s policies allowing the ‘transgendered’ to be treated as the sex they claim to be, including in athletic competitions;
- Supporting President Biden’s rejoining of the Paris Climate Change agreement;
- Supporting President Biden’s attempt to rejoin the Iran nuclear weapons agreement;
- Supporting President Biden’s not just unlimited abortion license policies, but supporting having the federal government pay for abortions;
- Canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline; and
- Supporting legislation restricting our Second Amendment rights.
All of these things, and more, come with supporting Mr Biden’s presidential campaign!
Bad causes attract bad people, and supporting Joe Biden, because he is a nicer guy than Donald Trump, is a bad cause. Not everyone who supported Mr Biden is necessarily a bad person, but it certainly seems like his cause has attracted more than his share of bad people.
I don’t have to like Mr Trump as an individual; I’ve never met the man, never met any President, and the odds are vanishingly small that I ever will. His personality means nothing to me. What matters in a President is his policies, because it is his policies which affect every American, and President Trump’s policies were far, far better for the United States than those of the guy who succeeded him.