Disgraced Former MO Gov Eric Greitens Shouts LOCK HER UP In Pathetic Attempt To Get Trump Nod
Lord these people are vile.
Has there ever been a pack of more gullible numpties than the Trump family? A crew of more reliably un-self-aware and craven marks for the shadiest, most transparently self-serving charlatans?
That was a rhetorical question obviously. But just look at the big, dumb failson.
\u201cThe Trump-obsessed Letitia James openly campaigned on a promise to falsely prosecute the Trump organization. Soros-funded prosecutors like Ms. James should not only be disbarred; they should also be in prison.\u201d The Washington Timeshttps://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jan/27/targeting-trump-nothing-more-dangerous-than-politi/\u00a0\u2026— Eric Trump (@Eric Trump) 1643373762
How very dare this person campaign on a promise of investigating their political enemies, wonders man whose father led chants of LOCK HER UP and told Hillary Clinton to her face that he was going to put her in jail if he got elected. The invocation of George Soros, the Jewish supposed mastermind behind a Black lawyer elected by 62 percent of New York voters, makes it a perfect tweet.
But wait, there's more! Let's click through to that article, shall we?
"Today, Letitia James, the Soros-funded radical left New York Attorney General, is weaponizing the criminal justice system as an instrument of political attack on former President Donald Trump," the author howls, before briefly and perfunctorily touching several wingnut erogenous zones.
We've got "an evil effort to frame U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn," "Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was viciously targeted," and of course "hysterical Trump-Russia collusion hoax." Plus four mentions of philanthropist George Soros in a 550-word article. Oooh, daddy, that's just how Eric Trump likes it.
"Mr. Trump is right to sue Ms. James for her massive abuse of power and if any fairness remains in the American judicial system, he will win," the writer fumes, referencing the Trump family's preposterous lawsuit seeking to have a federal judge seize jurisdiction from the state court and order New York Attorney General Tish James to quit investigating the Trump family for crimes.
"There is nothing more dangerous in America than a corrupt, politically motivated prosecutor," concludes the writer. "Soros-funded prosecutors like Ms. James and Ms. Gardner should not only be disbarred; they should also be in prison."
Can you guess who the author of this screed is? Hint: It's someone who's really mad at Saint Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner.
That's right, it's disgraced former governor and current US Senate candidate Eric Greitens! In 2018, Greitens resigned after a woman he'd had an affair with accused him of various abuses, including tying her down and taking a photograph of her naked, which he threatened to send to everyone she knew if she exposed their affair. He's right that Gardner's office didn't manage to successfully prosecute him. But a committee of state legislators, led by his fellow Republicans, conducted their own investigation and found the accuser totally credible. The same committee also found that Greitens had improperly used the donor list from his veterans' charity to fundraise for his political campaigns.
Incidentally, he didn't resign because of the sex part. He finally tapped out because Josh Hawley, who was then Missouri's attorney general, announced that he was investigating Greitens for campaign finance violations. The matter was eventually dropped after Hawley had put enough distance between himself and Greitens to take out Claire McCaskill, although it'll still be awkward if Greitens wins the Republican nomination and then heads to DC as Missouri's junior senator.
But that's exactly what he's hoping will happen, and this ridiculous op-ed in the Washington Times is a transparent attempt to win Trump's endorsement. What better way to get the old man's attention than to cast himself as a fellow victim of a Black female prosecutor and call to jail Trump's nemesis? It's probably just a coincidence that Don Jr.'s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle is national chair of Greitens's Senate campaign, right?
Maybe he felt like he had to take drastic steps after Hugh Hewitt begged Trump not to give him the nod, saying "Please don't, please don't endorse Eric Greitens. That's a nightmare, Mr. President. We'll lose that seat."
And here he is getting RT'd by the president's dumbest son, although not name-checked. Frowny face!
Trump hasn't endorsed yet, but Greitens is clearly swinging for the fences, hoping he can be the Herschel Walker of Missouri.
And PS, it's really, really gross for Greitens, who is Jewish, to invoke the specter of a Jewish Holocaust survivor secretly controlling American government officials, particularly on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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Wrap Your Feet In Aluminum Foil And Pull Out The Toxins!, Tabs, Wed., Jan. 19, 2022
What are we mad about today? More like what aren't we mad about, right?
It's Wednesday, and we're already in the mood to punch this week in the face. YAY!
Late last night New York Attorney General Letitia James dropped a motion to compel testimony by Donald Trump, Don Jr., and Ivanka Trump. In it, she laid out all the reasons she's investigating the family business, the same way she did back in 2020 when Eric Trump refused to testify. Kinda makes you wonder what these brain geniuses thought was going to happen when they did the same thing in 2022.
Vladimir Putin is holding a gun to Ukraine's head and threatening to shoot if Europe won't promise to roll back the 20th century. Axios says that Russia is using joint military exercises in its client state Belarus as a cover to station troops near Ukraine's northern border in preparation for an invasion. NYT has a story about Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's upcoming meeting with his Russian counterpart on Friday.
Over at the Supreme Court, Sen. Ted Cruz continues to prove himself the most useless git in Washington. He's the plaintiff in a campaign finance suit to vindicate the sacred right of donors to put money directly into the pockets of candidates because that is "free speech. There's a good rundown at Law & Crime and you can listen to oral argument at 10. Don't worry, you won't hear Ted Cruz's voice.
Chuck Schumer is doing ... something??? Is the plan to embarrass Manchin and Sinema into agreeing to a carve out in the filibuster for voting rights? Well, as everyone's favorite notary public Peggy Hill would say, "I hope those cats know how to run a toy store." [Politico]
Have we mentioned that Justice Gorsuch is a dick? Oh, we have? Well, let's mention it more, shall we? Because yesterday, he referred to the "so called separation of church and state," and then he had a total shitfit after the court wouldn't step in and force the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia to allow a church to take a tax deduction reserved for ministerial housing on property occupied by lay staffers. Discrimination against Christians is EVERYWHERE, insists the guy who refuses to see racial discrimination in the most insane racial gerrymander.
And while I am being mad about a thing, I was very mad yesterday at my other gig about Bill Barr's upcoming memory hole memoir and a lawsuit filed by inmates at an Arkansas jail who thought they were getting vitamins, antivirals, and steroids to treat their COVID, but were instead being dosed with horse dewormer. GRRRRR ARRRGHHHH!
In the category of still mad about a thing, there's a fun follow up story at the Chronicle of Higher Education on the ongoing saga of the University of Florida's quest to stop its professors from testifying against the DeSantis administration as it tries to ratfuck elections and cancel free speech. Is it a good thing when the judge threatens to haul the lawyer in to Tallahassee to answer questions under oath? Asking for the University's lawyer.
So you know that hostage situation in the Texas synagogue over the weekend? The one where Gov. Gregg Abbott raced to take credit the second it was over, despite the fact that the FBI was the one handling the negotiations? Just to be totally clear, the credit belongs to Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who made sure the coast was clear and threw a chair at the attacker while the other hostages ran out the door.
In first TV interview since crisis, Rabbi Charlie Cytron Walker says he and other 2 hostages were terrified in last hour of standoff as Akram \u201cwasn't getting what he wanted" After making sure others were ready, he told them to go, threw chair at Akram and they fledpic.twitter.com/rj9FuOTXf1— Jacob Magid (@Jacob Magid) 1642431173
KOL HA KAVOD!
And speaking of religion, over at Flux our pal Matthew Sheffield had an interesting conversation with Bruce Wilson about the links between Christian nationalism and the January 6 Capitol Insurrection.
Lest you think it's all bad news, Atlanta's NBC affiliate has a fun story on Brian Kemp and David Perdue kicking the shit out of each other in the Georgia gubernatorial primary. More than a year after the election which saw him booted out of the senate, Perdue filed this dumbshit lawsuit rehashing a bunch of debunked fraud claims, and now Kemp is suing the Perdue campaign alleging campaign finance violations. Hey, if these two assholes want to bloody each other up before one of 'em faces off against Stacey Abrams in November, who are we to argue?
And HOSANNA the January 6 Select Committee finally got around to subpoenaing Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell. Oh pleasepleaseplease let there be public testimony for us to liveblog!
Finally, a follow up to Monday's post on DirecTV, which is owned by AT&T, dropping OAN from its lineup. Media Matters reports that OAN "personality" Dan Ball is asking viewers to dig up dirt on AT&T's chairman William Kennard, in light of the cancelation, which is a potential death blow to Trump's propaganda sidepiece.
Yesterday OAN host Dan Ball asked viewers to dig up dirt on AT&T's board chairman\n\n"Cheating on his taxes, cheating on his wife, saying racial slurs towards white people, folks do that, whatever it may be, find it for me"\n\n h/t @mount_bees, @Emmamae143 http://mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/after-directv-dropped-channel-oan-host-asked-viewers-dig-dirt-atts-board\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/86xHltQL0L— Madeline Peltz (@Madeline Peltz) 1642542693
LOLOL, CRY HARDER, WEIRDO.
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How Is Gabby Giffords Being A Hero Today?
When Donald Trump closes a door, Gabby Giffords opens a window.
Former Rep. Gabby Giffords is kicking ass and taking names in a lawsuit filed this week against the National Rifle Association. In it, her eponymous non-profit alleges that the NRA engaged in a years-long scheme to violate campaign finance laws by illegally coordinating ad spending with the campaigns of President Donald Trump and Senators Josh Hawley, Thom Tillis, Cory Gardner, Matt Rosendale, Tom Cotton, and Ron Johnson. The complaint, first flagged by the Daily Beast, points to $35 million in illegal expenditures and demands that the court assess that amount as a fine payable to Uncle Sam.
But why isn't the Federal Election Commission bringing this suit, you are asking? Yes, you are very wise! And the answer is that Republicans really don't want there to be any cops on the beat policing campaign finance, so Trump left the FEC without a quorum between July and December 2020, i.e. during the election. Also, Republicans hate campaign finance laws, and they make sure to deadlock votes on any serious enforcement action. And so it was hardly surprising that when Giffords (the organization, not the hero) filed four FEC complaints in 2018 and 2019 alleging that the NRA had engaged in massive violations of campaign finance law, nothing happened.
Then Giffords sued the FEC in April of 2019 demanding that the agency get off its ass and make a determination as to the merits of the claim. And still nothing. The parties went back and forth with US District Judge Emmet Sullivan getting madder and madder until this week when he'd finally had enough, issuing an order Monday deputizing Giffords to sue the NRA itself. Which is exactly what it did, filing this complaint on Tuesday in coordination with the Campaign Legal Center. And because it's designated a "related case," it's on Judge Sullivan's docket. Ha ha ha.
The complaint is a bit complicated, but in essence it alleges that the well-known media company OnMessage developed a sham alter-ego known as Starboard to make it appear that the NRA wasn't coordinating ad spending with the campaigns themselves in violation of election law. The NRA would route its ad buys through Starboard, while the campaigns would pay OnMessage, but the two entities were functionally indistinguishable, even sharing addresses in Alexandria, Virginia, and Annapolis, Maryland.
OnMessage, together with Starboard, acts as a single common vendor for advertising content development and media strategy. Similarly, National Media, together with Red Eagle and AMAG, acts as a single common vendor for advertising placement and strategy. Using the OnMessage/Starboard and the National Media/Red Eagle/AMAG common vendor schemes, the NRA has engaged in an ongoing effort to conceal up to $35 million in contributions to at least seven candidates for federal office since 2014.
"Beyond some Starboard-labeled thumb-drives lying around, I don't recall anything within our office that was called or associated with Starboard," one former employee told reporters from The Trace and Politico.
The ad buys were allegedly funneled through similarly twinned sub-vendors, with Starboard routing the NRA's money through a company called Red Eagle (subtle!), and OnMessage spending campaign money through a company called AMAG. But Red Eagle and AMAG were affiliates of a company called National Media, according to the complaint.
Here's a graphic from the suit:
Federal law prohibits campaigns from coordinating with the PACs, which are not subject to campaign finance limits. And while that prohibition is honored somewhat more in the breach than in the observance, what the NRA did here seems especially brazen. The campaigns were able to tap almost unlimited funds from the NRA and coordinate a massive ad campaign using unregulated dollars.
From Politico and The Trace in 2018:
Two former FEC chairs, one Republican and the other Democrat, reviewed the findings of Politico Magazine and The Trace, and said they found them troubling. "This evidence raises substantial questions about whether OnMessage and Starboard Strategic were used as conduits for coordination between the NRA and the candidates it was supporting," Trevor Potter, the Republican, said. "It's pretty serious," added Ann Ravel, the Democrat. "It doesn't seem right." Both former chairs independently came to the same conclusion: "The FEC should investigate."
But of course, the FEC did not investigate, which is how we got to where we are today. Presumably Giffords will investigate via discovery, which is perhaps a worse outcome for the NRA than whatever a toothless FEC would have done.
"The NRA has long acted like it is above the law, and it has done so flagrantly in the last several election cycles. This lawsuit demonstrates that the NRA broke the law by illegally coordinating with federal campaigns and funneling millions of dollars to candidates who supported their extremist, deadly agenda," Giffords Law Center Senior Staff Attorney David Pucino said in a press release announcing the suit. "We are suing the NRA to finally hold them accountable for actions that corrupted politicians and undermined our democracy."
God bless.
[The Trace / Politico / Giffords v. NRA, Docket via Court Listener / Beast]
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TN State Senator Indicted For Hilarious Campaign Finance Hijinks
And the feds seem awfully, awfully interested in our old pal Matt Schlapp.
Get in the car, kids, it's time for a road trip! We're off to Tennessee to visit a political scandal so tiny and perfect in its sleaziness that all who behold it are filled with joy, or at least an extremely satisfying case of schadenfreude and hope that it'll come back around to bite a familiar villain in the ass. (Wait for it!)
Yesterday the US Attorney from the Middle District of Tennessee announced an indictment of state Sen. Brian Kelsey and "social club owner" Joshua Smith on campaign finance charges. It is a delightful document full of fun little Easter eggs like:
Unindicted Coconspirator 2 ("UCC 2") was a practicing attorney and member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from in or around January 2013 to in or around September 2016, when he was expelled by a vote of the House.
Or this:
Individual 1 was the Director of Government Affairs for Political Organization 1 and a member of Political Organization 1's senior management team from in or around late 2015 until in or around March 2017. In that role, Individual 1 managed Political Organization 1's political expenditures during the 2015-16 federal election cycle. Individual 1 and KELSEY became engaged in or around July 2017 and married in or around January 2018.
That egg is chocolate!
Naturally, the "social club" run by Defendant Smith has a PAC, as all your better single-outlet eating establishments do. (LOL, wut?) And according to the indictment, the defendants used this PAC to move $106,000 from Kelsey's state campaign coffers to support his 2016 run for the US House — an illegal use of so called "soft money" because the state campaign donations are not subject to federal campaign finance limits. So to disguise the transfer, these two geniuses moved the cash from Kelsey's state campaign to the "social club" PAC, and thence on through one more PAC until it wound up at the American Conservative Union, which immediately dropped $80,000 on radio ads endorsing Kelsey's federal campaign.
What an amazing coincidence, right? Or maybe not.
Political Organization 1 reported to the FEC that, on or about July 20, 2016, it made a $30,000 independent expenditure for the purpose of a "radio media buy" to support KELSEY in the 2016 primary election when, in truth and in fact, the expenditure was coordinated with KELSEY and his agents and was not independent.
Political Organization 1 reported to the FEC that, on or about July 22, 2016, it made a $19,480 independent expenditure for the purpose of "radio media buy" to support KELSEY in the 2016 primary election when, in truth and in fact, the expenditure was coordinated with KELSEY and his agents and was not independent.
Political Organization 1 reported to the FEC that, on or about July 26, 2016, it made a $30,520 independent expenditure for the purpose of "radio/digital media" to support KELSEY in the 2016 primary election when, in truth and in fact, the expenditure was coordinated with KELSEY and his agents and was not independent.
If the American Conservative Union is ringing some bells, it's because it's that asshole Matt Schlapp's shop.
"It is often difficult to cut through confusing campaign rhetoric to figure out which candidate is the best conservative in a race, but we think this is actually an easy call. If voters in western Tennessee are looking for a proven leader with a conservative track record, the decision is easy. Brian Kelsey is the real deal," Schlapp said back in 2016.
Indeed, the feds have been poking around the ACU lately, as reported by The Dispatch earlier this month.
"They asked me about Matt Schlapp and [ACU Executive Director] Dan Schneider's involvement within the organization, how they were involved with the disbursements of money and the decision of who to financially support," one source said. "One of the questions that really stuck with me was, 'Was Matt Schlapp in those meetings when they decided who to endorse?' I said yes. And they said, 'So was he directly involved with the decisions to financially support the candidates?' I said, I don't know. And they said, 'But would it be weird if Matt Schlapp didn't know?' I said yes."
Well, well, well! We'd also note that the ACU took in $95,800 that originated from Kelsey's state campaign — ALLEGEDLY — and only dropped $80,000 on ads. So ... make of that one what you will.
The feds' interest seems to have been piqued by reporting in the Tennessean and an FEC complaint filed by the Campaign Legal Center, which closely mirrors the DOJ's indictment. Support your local paper! CLC's complaint is also chock full of delicious little tidbits like this one.
On April 29, Kelsey's state PAC gave $1,000 to the campaign of Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga. On May 3, Gardenhire personally gave $1,000 to Kelsey for Congress.
On December 28, 2015, Kelsey's state PAC gave $1,000 to Sen. Steve Dickerson, R-Nashville. On February 10, Dickerson personally gave $1,000 to Kelsey for Congress. On April 27, Kelsey's state campaign committee gave $3,000 to Dickerson's campaign. On June 23, Dickerson personally gave $500 to Kelsey's federal campaign committee.
On April 22, 2016, Kelsey's state PAC records show a $1,000 contribution to Rep. Ron Gant, R-Rossville. On June 23, Gant personally gave $1,000 to Kelsey for Congress.
Subtle.
So now Kelsey and Smith are facing a five-count indictment for conspiracy, exceeding campaign finance limits, and illegally transferring soft money to a federal campaign.
Naturally, Kelsey knows who is to blame for this whole mess, and it is President Joe Biden.
(1/2)This is nothing but a political witch hunt. The Biden Administration is trying to take me out because I’m cons… https://t.co/r6gpp2oi6j— Brian Kelsey (@Brian Kelsey) 1635186640.0
Cool story, bro. Oh, sorry, we mean cool story Senator. Because Kelsey remains a member of the state legislature, not the US House after coming in fourth place in that fateful 2016 congressional bid. Womp womp.
[Tennesseean / Tennesseean / Dispatch / CLC Complaint / US v. Kelsey, Docket via Court Listener]
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