We’ve gotten a number of emails making the same basic argument on the Duncan Hunter/Shagfund mystery aas TPM Reader TP. And I’m starting to think they are on to something …
I think the more interesting part of the Duncan Hunter mystery get-togethers is likely to be the guest lists.
Big new development in the census citizenship case: Appeals court throws another roadblock in the path of the Trump administration. Tierney Sneed is working through the order and its implications here.
I note below that the Hunter filing ends with a minor mystery. After listing off multiple instances in which Hunter used campaign funds to pay for his affairs, the filing concludes by noting other non-work or campaign related activities paid for with campaign funds which are so prejudicial that prosecutors fear disclosing it might taint the jury pool. Since they’ve just listed off numerous extramarital affairs Hunter expensed to his campaign, these other activities must be pretty prejudicial!
So what are they?
Let’s start again with the passage in question.
I’ve read through the new Duncan Hunter court filing. And it’s rather remarkable. Prosecutors list five extra-marital affairs Hunter carried on with various GOP lobbyists, operatives and congressional staffers (one of whom worked in his own office) and funded out of his campaign funds.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, now facing charges alone after his wife elected to change her plea to guilty, allegedly used his campaign account as a personal shag fund to pay for at least five separate extra-marital affairs since he inherited his House seat from his father in 2008.
Hunter originally blamed his wife for the misappropriation of funds.
Unsurprisingly, after a week of discussion of Joe Biden’s conversations with segregationist Southern Democrats in the 1970s, the controversy appears to have done precisely nothing to affect his standing in the primary race. Twitter is not real life. The activist-centric political conversation seems to have very little traction with the broader Democratic electorate. And yet, the race does seem to be changing. At least its contours are starting to come more clearly into view.
With the right wing extremists, you often end up not just with the toxic rhetoric and vigilanteism. There’s frequently something else. In the case of Jim Benvie, the new criminal charge of allegedly impersonating a federal agent fits the bill given his fixation with the border. But the alleged child cancer scam in Oklahoma (not a border state!) takes it to a whole other level. TPM alum Nick Martin has been on the case, and we catch you up.
On Friday, a New York Times article made the rounds which profiled the Concerned Community Citizens (“or C-Cubed”) of Saint Cloud, Minnesota, an Islamophobic group obsessing over the local population of Somali refugees and fretting about white replacement. “I think of America, the great assimilator, as a rubber band, but with this — we’re at the breaking point,” Kim Crockett, vice president of a think tank called the Center of the American Experiment, told the Times. “These aren’t people coming from Norway, let’s put it that way. These people are very visible.”
This morning, the Saint Cloud Times, the local newspaper, hit back at the Islamophobia in its community.
As we survey the strange scene this morning of Trump’s Iran policy, a helpful thread from former American diplomat Brett McGurk:
In an obscure move that hasn’t garnered much attention, President Trump has begun the process of withdrawing from the international postal union that establishes protocols for global mail delivery, a move which threatens to jeopardize the ability of Americans overseas to cast absentee ballots.
As recently as last week, the White House convened a meeting of stakeholders who work with overseas voters to discuss the exit, TPM has learned. But voting advocates remain apprehensive that the federal and state governments are unprepared for the ramifications of a U.S. withdrawal from the postal union, which could come as soon as this fall.
Tierney Sneed has our exclusive report.