It’s puts a candidate in an impossible position to get a hypothetical about how they’ll approach losing. But it’s a question candidates can and do learn how to deflect. But it’s no coincidence that Bernie Sanders quickly pivots to claims that the Democratic primary process was and is rigged against him. Or, as Sanders put it: “That’s what some people say.”
TPM’s Matt Shuham obtained internal emails among law enforcement in New Mexico earlier this year as officials grappled with how to respond to reports that a right-wing so-called “militia” was taking it upon itself to detain border crossers. “In any other circumstance this could/or would likely be a crime,” the head of New Mexico State Police wrote in one thread.
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.