In the bizarro universe of the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson, Thursday’s report from the leftist Associated Press is a “hit story from Trump world.”
AP reported that project founders knew about the homosexual stalker in their midst and did nothing to stop him. But the wire service also dug up financial records. More than half the $90 million the group raised, AP reported, went to companies controlled by LP’s founders.
The stalker was John Weaver, a GOP pro who worked for presidential candidates John McCain and John Kasich, and used his project position to solicit at least 21 men for sex. One was just 14 when Weaver began grooming him.
AP’s report backs Tuesday’s story in the Washington Blade, an “LGBT” newspaper in the D.C. area.
Responding to AP, the project inadvertently revealed why an employee might not have wanted to disclose Weaver’s behavior. Employees signed nondisclosure agreements.
Ever since Ryan Girduksy exposed Weaver, evidence has been mounting that project founders knew he stalked young men on Twitter.
The Latest
The two latest reports are the most damning evidence yet that project founders knew Weaver was a lubricious pervert.
Project founder Ron Steslow received an e-mail about the stalking in June, AP reported, “detailing numerous cases … involving Weaver that spanned several years.”
AP did not see the e-mail, but four people who saw it confirmed the content.
Steslow took the problem to a former legman for McCain, Reed Galen, and the project’s attorney, Matthew Sanderson. “Steslow also encouraged his colleagues to remove Weaver from the organization,” AP reported.
“Employees,” AP reported, “were assured that the alleged incidents would be investigated.”
But “despite the initial warning in June, the group took no action against Weaver.”
The Blade’s report cited “electronic communications” that said LP principals knew all about Weaver.
“These electronic messages, which date back to August 2020 and include Lincoln Project co-founder Mike Madrid, showed that leadership was made aware of allegations about Weaver from reporters who were investigating it, and had begun discussions of how to respond to any fallout,” the Blade reported.
That means the project’s claims that it was ignorant of Weaver’s predations is false.
Reported the Blade:
The existence of those earlier alerts, regardless of the source, were about sexually aggressive messaging in which gay men were survivors and contradict the Lincoln Project’s assertion that its leaders were only made aware of Weaver’s indiscretions in the last month as the story gained traction.
Money Games
AP also dug into the group’s finances and found material that might interest its hate-Trump contributors: “Of the $90 million Lincoln Project has raised, more than $50 million has gone to firms controlled by the group’s leaders.”
The financial revelations suggest that project founders spotted a get-rich-quick scheme in the anger and hatred that Trump provoked in the Deep State and the leftists who did its bidding.
- “Only about a third of the money, roughly $27 million, directly paid for advertisements.… 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.”
- “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.”
- The project “adopted a strategy, much like the Trump campaign they criticized, to mask how much money they earned.… Weaver and Wilson are not listed in publicly available records. They were likely paid as subcontractors to those firms, an arrangement that avoids disclosure. [Founder Steve] Schmidt collected a $1.5 million payment in December but quickly returned it.
The project used the millions it raised from gullible contributors to bail out “some founders who have spent much of the past decade under financial distress.”
Weaver is a tax evader and deadbeat, AP reported. Schmidt bought a mountain hideaway:
Over the past decade, Weaver has repeatedly failed to pay taxes, defaulted on loans and faced lawsuits from creditors seeking to collect. In October, he paid off $313,000 in back taxes owed to the IRS dating back to 2011, records show. A separate case in Texas is still pending over $340,000 back rent his family owes after shuttering a children’s boutique they operated, records show.
Others used the money earned during their time with Lincoln Project to refinance homes, or purchase a new one. Schmidt purchased a $1.4 million “Mountain Modern” custom home in Kamas, Utah, with five bedrooms, seven baths and a “stunning” view of the Uinta Mountains, according to property records and real estate listings. He is currently trying to resell the home for $2.9 million.
Blacklisters Reply
Project leaders are terrified.
“Another day, another hit story from Trump world,” Wilson tweeted.
That silly claim — that leftist AP is part of “Trump world” — suggests that Wilson’s Trump Derangement has finally peaked.
Founder George Conway, whose wife was a top White House official and who spent four years attacking everything Trump said and did, was completely in the dark.
“No one ever told me of these complaints being made to the Lincoln project,” he protested, “and the first I ever heard that Weaver may have done anything questionable were rumors I heard well after the election, and long after I ceased active involvement with the organization.”
Conway also thinks “political professionals” who “did amazing work” deserved all those millions.
The project released a combative statement.
“Recently published stories about The Lincoln Project are filled with inaccuracies, incorrect information, and reliant exclusively on anonymous sources,” the group wrote.
But then it confessed that the “board” has retained an “outside professional to review Mr. Weaver’s tenure with the organization and to establish both accountability and best practices going forward for The Lincoln Project.”
The project also revealed that it required employees to sign nondisclosure agreements, which explains, perhaps, why some employees were afraid to speak out.
“Any person who believes they are unable to talk about John Weaver publicly because they are bound by an NDA,” the statement says, “should contact The Lincoln Project for a release.”
H/T: Ace of Spades
