Founders of the disgraced hate-Trump Lincoln Project have lied in claiming they knew nothing about the LP homosexual stalker who groomed young men on Twitter, news reports suggest.
Evidence continues mounting that the blacklist outfit’s leaders knew about John Weaver’s deranged pursuits — and that the story was about to explode.
The latest clue surfaced on Monday at Axios, which reported that two LP founders bailed out of the organization in December.
As well, responding to LP leaders who plead ignorance, New York scribe Yashar Ali stated that Weaver’s perversions were common knowledge. That comports with what GOP strategist Karl Rove told Newsweek: Weaver’s been at it for three decades.
Ali’s claim fortifies the reporting of Ryan Girdusky, the conservative writer who broke the Weaver scandal.
The Latest
The Axios dispatch suggests that two LP founders, Ron Steslow and Mike Madrid, just happened to have left the outfit a few weeks before the revelations about Weaver surfaced.
Girdusky’s first report appeared in the American Conservative on January 11. Then came the New York Times’s revelation that Weaver stalked 21 men. Weaver, the Times reported on Sunday, began grooming one young man when the boy was 14.
“It comes amid transition and crisis for Lincoln Project, a hugely successful anti-Trump advocacy group started by Republicans and former Republicans, which raised millions of dollars for viral ads and memes advocating Joe Biden’s election,” Axios reported.
Steslow and co-founder Mike Madrid resigned from the Lincoln Project in December.
George Conway, another co-founder, said he was taking a leave of absence from the group in August.
On Sunday, Girdusky tweeted the screenshot of a young man’s claim that he told three LP leaders about Weavers’ predations. They did nothing.
Those three were Madrid, Keith Edwards, and Sarah Lenti.
LP Statement, Ali and Rove
Of course, the LP blacklisters were clueless.
“John Weaver led a secret life that was built on a foundation of deception every level,” the outfit claimed:
He is a predator, a liar, and an abuser. We extend our deepest sympathies to those who were targeted by deplorable and predatory behavior. We are disgusted and outraged that someone in a position of power and trust would use it for these means.
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. We are grateful beyond words that at no time was John Weaver and the physical presence of any member of the Lincoln Project.
They might be grateful Weaver was never around anyone at the office; they were less disturbed that he was married — to a woman — and had kids, and might have been around them. An LP founder told the Times they thought he might have been a homosexual, but other than that, they saw nothing “inappropriate.”
LP founder Rick Wilson also said he and LP’s founders were “shocked” and “disgusted”
Not so, says Ali.
“EVERYONE knew for years what John was about,” he tweeted:
The challenge was the young men wouldn’t talk to reporters even on background (which I understand, they feared retaliation).
But this was no secret. Everyone talked about it
And again, that was Girdusky’s claim after the Times story appeared on Sunday.
“There is only one problem with this story about John Weaver,” he tweeted. “Members of the Lincoln Project absolutely knew about his predatory behavior.
Girdusky also claimed an editor at the Daily Beast knew about it and did nothing.
And if “everyone knew for years,” as Ali wrote, Weaver’s victims must wonder for how many.
That’s where Rove comes in. He told Newsweek he’s known about Weaver — a top hand for presidential candidates John McCain and John Kasich — for 30 years. When he said something about it in 2000, the New Republic called the claims a lie, that Rove was a “gay-baiter.”
Surely Rove isn’t the only one who knew. Other top Republicans, including those in the McCain and Kasich organizations, had to have at least heard rumors.
So, too, with the Lincoln Project people.
