The Lincoln Project might soon belong to the ages.
The hate-Trump blacklisting group that helped elect Joe Biden, and now seeks to ruin anyone who supported or worked for the 45th president, has deactivated its donations page.
The move is no surprise given the revelations of the past 30 days. A month ago, conservative writer Ryan Girdusky pulled the sheets back on project founder John Weaver, a confessed homosexual who stalked young men on Twitter.
Late last week, The Associated Press confirmed that project founders knew about the stalking and did nothing to stop it. The wire service also revealed that more than half the project’s contributions went to companies controlled by the project’s founders.
That last revelation suggests the project’s real purpose was lining the pockets of the founders. But even if that isn’t the case, it likely won’t be long before founders pull the plug.
Pages Disappear
News of the the ominous adjustment to the project’s website appeared in Monday’s New York Post. Clicking the “make a donation” button at the group’s home page does not offer potential donors a secure contribution portal.
Instead, they land on a page with this message: “Inactive … This form is no longer available.”
The site doesn’t explain why the page is inactive or why “this form is no longer available,” although a good guess might be that the founders are too embarrassed to continue asking for money.
The donations page wasn’t the first to go.
Shortly after Weaver’s predations went public, the project memory-holed its “about” page that offered biographies of its principals.
The question is when the rest of the site will go dark, given what appear to be the project’s fatal wounds.
Top Founders Knew About Weaver
The trouble began for the hate-Trump outfit when Girdusky revealed Weaver’s perversions in The American Conservative.
Unsurprisingly, Weaver’s cofounders claimed they knew nothing about the stalking, although Steve Schmidt, a founder who quit the group last week, told the New York Times they knew Weaver was a homosexual because of his social-media posts.
For that story, 21 men said Weaver harassed and hectored them. One was 14 years old when Weaver began grooming him.
Responding to the Times, the project claimed project principals knew nothing about Weaver’s predations.
“This statement by the @ProjectLincoln is an absolute lie,” Girdusky wrote.
New York writer Yahar Ali tweeted likewise, and GOP strategist Karl Rove told Newsweek that he knew about Weaver in 1988.
But the latest blow came from AP and the Washington Blade, which confirmed last week that top founders knew about Weaver’s stalking.
“Employees,” AP reported, “were assured that the alleged incidents would be investigated,” but “the group took no action against Weaver.”
The Blade reported that electronic messages “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.”
“Leadership” didn’t respond.
Amusingly, founder Rick Wilson called the stories “another hit story from Trump world.”
Money Flow
Yet project founders might be more worried about AP’s disclosure about their spending. Given the project’s name, you might call that news a head shot.
“Of the $90 million Lincoln Project has raised, more than $50 million has gone to firms controlled by the group’s leaders,” the wire service reported:
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.
As well, the group also used the money to bail out “some founders who have spent much of the past decade under financial distress.” Schmidt pocketed enough to buy a mountain home in Utah, AP reported:
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.
Fighting Donald Trump, it appears, was a lucrative endeavor.
H/T: Breitbart
