Yet another interview/profile of Larry Summers where the word “Epstein” never appears and where he’s never asked how many times he visited Epstein’s private island. I’m genuinely fascinated by how he’s *so* good at avoiding that question. https://t.co/xItFzoIgED
— Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) June 25, 2021
There is a LOT in this seemingly innocuous question.
Liberty University has just sued Jerry Falwell Jr. for ten million dollars, claiming that his behavior ran counter to his obligations as an officer of the school.
I only hope that there is a way for both of them to lose:
Liberty University filed a lawsuit this week against its former president Jerry Falwell Jr., alleging that he breached his contract and fiduciary duties to the school as he sought to cover up a personal scandal.
The evangelical Christian university in Lynchburg, Va., is seeking more than $10 million in damages from the man who led it for 13 years. The suit filed Thursday in Lynchburg Circuit Court marked another twist in the saga of Falwell’s messy departure last year from Liberty.
………
Later that month he agreed to resign after news reports emerged about a young man Falwell and his wife, Rebecca Falwell, had befriended who allegedly was sexually connected to the couple. Falwell has said that his wife, who also goes by Becki, had a brief affair with the man.
Falwell, 58, filed a defamation suit against Liberty in October, alleging the school accepted without verifying what he called false statements made by the young man. He later dropped the lawsuit.
In its lawsuit, Liberty contends that Falwell failed to return university-owned computers, devices and confidential information to Liberty and that he failed to disclose to the university alleged threats of extortion he had received in connection with potential personal scandals.
………
The 38-page complaint alleges that Falwell deliberately sought to hide the affair. “Despite his clear duties as an executive and officer at Liberty, Falwell Jr. chose personal protection,” the suit alleged.
Further, the suit alleged: “Falwell Jr.’s actions in breaching the fiduciary duty he owed to Liberty were willful and wanton and disregarded the rights of Liberty.”
………
When Falwell resigned in August, he said he was entitled to $10.5 million in severance. Liberty, in its lawsuit, disputes that claim.
His severance package is a major issue in the suit. Liberty alleges that Falwell concealed information about extortion threats from the governing board when he negotiated a new contract in 2019 that included a higher salary and a provision for two years of severance pay, under certain conditions, worth a total of $2.5 million. The suit indicates that Liberty agreed to that level of payout on Aug. 28, 2020.
It appears that everyone involves worships Benjamin Franklin. Isn’t there something in the bible about worshiping false gods?
………
Falwell’s father, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., was a prominent leader of the religious right who founded Liberty University and a nearby church.
Under Jerry Falwell Jr., who became Liberty’s president and chancellor after his father died in 2007, the school grew enormously and became a frequent stop for Republican politicians and others who wanted to connect with conservative evangelical Christian audiences.
………
Liberty recently announced that Jonathan Falwell, senior pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church and Falwell Jr.’s brother, will become the school’s campus pastor at the end of the semester.
That last bit has gotta hurt.
I hope that this case burns through decades and consumes millions of dollars from both institutions.
Matt Gaetz is everything the Republicans were looking for in Hunter Biden.
— Dr. Antifa Rioter-Elect, Esq (@AntifaRioter) April 2, 2021
I have not been writing about the rapidly metastasizing web of sex, drugs, and money laundering surrounding Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz because it’s too weird for me to get a real handle on the whole thing.
But if I were to boil it down to one sentence, I would just quote Dr. Antifa Rioter-Elect, Esq, so I am quoting Dr. Antifa Rioter-Elect, Esq.
Man, to hell with this story. Even schadenfreude has some limits.
—Charlie Pierce, responding to allegations that Ted Cruz engaged in marital infidelity
I agree. I want no part of any discussion that juxtaposes Ted Cruz and sex.
**shudder**
In The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time, Hunter S. Thompson relates the following tale:
This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.
“Christ, we can’t get a way calling him a pig-f%$#er,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”
“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”
Well, right now, the UK is transfixed by the tale of PM David Cameron and Piggate:
Late last night, the Daily Mail published an astounding excerpt of an unauthorized biography of UK Prime Minister David Cameron, alleging that he placed a “private part” of his body into the mouth of a dead pig’s head while at Oxford University.
He put his nob in a pig’s mouth. Popped his todger into the poor swine’s gob.
It’s crucial when dealing with such an important and weighty story to have all the facts, so please let this Brit guide you through the revolting tale of prime ministerial pig porkery.
It is claimed that there are pictures, but this could be a, “Make the sonofabitch deny it,” moment.
In either case, this is a profoundly weird moment in politics.
What you will notice in passing is that Hasterd made his money in real estate investments by earmarking money for a massive highway project that ran past his real estate investments, which jacked up the price of the land. (Prior Link)
Now though, we have allegations that Denny Hastert tried to evade the money laundering statutes and then lied to the FBI:
J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in the history of the U.S. House, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges that he violated banking laws in a bid to pay $3.5 million to an unnamed person to cover up “past misconduct.”
Hastert, who has been a high-paid lobbyist in Washington since his 2007 retirement from Congress, schemed to mask more than $950,000 in withdrawals from various accounts in violation of federal banking laws that require the disclosure of large cash transactions, according to a seven-page indictment delivered by a grand jury in Chicago.
The indictment did not spell out the exact nature of the “prior misconduct” by Hastert, but it noted that before entering state and federal politics in 1981, Hastert served for more than a decade as a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Illinois.
In 2010, confronted about the “prior misconduct,” the former speaker agreed to pay $3.5 million to the person “to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct against Individual A,” prosecutors alleged.
That person, whose identity was shielded by prosecutors, has known Hastert most of his or her life, growing up in Yorkville, the city next to Hastert’s home town of Plano, in the exurbs west of Chicago. Prosecutors said the actions “occurred years earlier” than the 2010 meeting that sparked the payments.
The investigation began in 2013, by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service, which cited “possible structuring of currency transactions to avoid the reporting requirements.”
First thing to be noted here, if law enforcement (particularly the FBI) wants to have an innocuous discussion with here, tell them no.
Politely let them know that you are asserting your constitutional rights, and will not talk without a lawyer.
It is important to specifically mention your constitutional rights. Recent courses by the perfidious Roberts Court have allowed a person’s silence against them in court unless they specifically invoke the 5th amendment.
The second thing to be noted is that the prosecutors are being remarkably circuitous about the nature of Hastert’s “Prior misconduct” against “Individual A.”
I’m not sure whether the prosecutor is giving Hastert a pass because he was House Speaker, or if the US Attorney will use that as a lever to get a guilty plea
The indictment provides some tantalizing clues though:
My guess is that he sexually abused a student when he was a teacher, but it’s just a guess, based on the amount of the blackmail and the above facts.
The interesting thing here is that it is likely, though not certain (Republicans are a perverted bunch), that whatever you and I imagine is far worse than the reality of the situation.
In any case, it’s nice to see Tom Delay’s sock puppet going down.
Bill Stepien, Chris Christie’s former campaign manager has now officially stated that the Governor knew what were going on as it happened:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) told the press that no one on his senior staff had prior knowledge of the plan to close access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in September. But a lawyer representing Christie’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien now says that was wrong.
The claim was included in a letter sent in early April — and made public Wednesday — by attorney Kevin Marino. The letter was sent to Randy Mastro, the high-priced defense attorney who led the governor’s internal review of the scandal.
The letter demanded corrections to a report produced by Mastro and his team, which cleared Christie of any role in the scandal. Among Marino’s demands: that Mastro retract the portion of the report claiming that Stepien had falsely assured Christie that he had no “prior knowledge of the [GWB] lane realignment.”
“[T]he Report itself acknowledges — albeit obliquely — that Mr. Stepien advised Governor Christie on December 12, 2013, that he (Mr. Stepien) did have prior knowledge of the lane realignment,” Marino wrote, later adding: “When the Governor asked Mr. Stepien directly whether he had prior knowledge of the lane closures, Mr. Stepien truthfully told the Governor that [former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive] David Wildstein had come to him with the idea, to which Mr. Stepien responded that Mr. Wildstein would have to run the idea by normal channels in Trenton (i.e. the Governor’s Office).”
So I guess that it is going to be a Jeb Bush/Hillary Clinton race in 2016. **shudder**
Crap. Monica Lewinsky is back, and Dick Cheney’s wife is suggesting that it’s some sort of Clinton plot.
Kill me.
Just kill me.
Case in point, NJ Spotlight’s lead sentence, “Christie-watchers, the Bridgegate scandal is the inevitable outgrowth of a governorship built on an Outsized cult of personality.”
Seriously, we are talking about a sociopathic bully who abused his authority, and then obstructed justice to cover it up.
Why the f%$# do they need to go with the fat jokes?
If the NYT really cared about keeping the newspaper business profitable they wouldn’t be calling for Anthony Weiner to get out of the Mayor’s race.
It turns out that he took a bribe from Richard Nixon to fire Archibald Cox during the Watergate scandal:
Robert Bork says President Richard Nixon promised him the next Supreme Court vacancy after Bork complied with Nixon’s order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973.
Bork’s recollection of his role in the Saturday Night Massacre that culminated in Cox’s firing is at the center of his slim memoir, “Saving Justice,” that is being published posthumously by Encounter Books. Bork died in December at age 85.
Bork writes that he didn’t know if Nixon actually, though mistakenly, believed he still had the political clout to get someone confirmed to the Supreme Court or was just trying to secure Bork’s continued loyalty as his administration crumbled in the Watergate scandal.
President Ronald Reagan nominated Bork to the high court in 1987. The nomination failed in the Senate.
Robert Bork, in addition to being f%$# nuts, was a corrupt Cox sacker.
Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that he die not make it to the Supreme Court.
Herman Cain has ended his campaign.
The loss of comedic material is a tragedy. Send a condolence card to The Daily Show.
The following image has been floating around Twitter (hash tag #wordingfail). I added the emphasis.
It appears that CNN thinks that any accusations of sexual impropriety against a Republican is “false”.
I’m not sure how much is the increased corporate ownership/consolidation and how much of this is 40+ years of the ‘Phants playing the ref.
FWIW, the this time, it’s not just an allegation of sexual harassment, it’s an allegation of a 13 year long affair that ended a few months before he entered the Presidential race, and she has records of repeated cell phone calls and text messages.
Jon Stewart is rejoicing.
So, Joe Paterno has been fired, and is alleged to have hired a criminal defense attorney, and a Pittsburgh radio host is alleging that some of the young boys were pimped out to rich donors.
You know, this is what happens when you have an organization like the NCAA which creates a multi-billion dollar money machine on the backs of what are little more than slaves.
Division I sports is a mass of corruption, hypocrisy, and immorality which has as much to do with education as a prostate exam does with haute cuisine.
Or, more accurately Jerry Sandusky and Joe Paterno are both registered Republicans, which is not as odd as it sounds, as coaching staffs tend to lean that way (with the notable exception of Bill Belichick).
Let is cede the fact that Republican does not equal pedophile, nor does it imply that Republicans support Pedophilia, though the abuse of power and self-entitlement bit, where Paterno and the Penn State sports program let it slide because Sandusky was one of them, does seem to be symptomatic of Republican party registration.
The point that the author makes in the article, and the one that I agree with, is that if either Sandusky or Paterno were Democrats, you would hear Rush Limbaugh making animal noises and Deliverance references while implying that Democrats support pedophilia.
FWIW, I agree with Olbermann, Paterno should be filed.
Because it is the Republican presidential primary, and it’s so whacky that all I can do is make fun of them.
Unfortunately, the reality that is Herman Cain simply beyond my meager literary gifts to ridicule. I can’t beat the straight news.
A quick search of The Onion reveals that they haven’t covered it either, to their (far better) writers appear to be flummoxed by this as well.
Will Rogers I ain’t.