{"id":182578,"date":"2015-08-05T20:38:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-06T01:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/08\/05\/bummer-of-a-birth-mark-rand\/"},"modified":"2015-08-05T20:38:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-06T01:38:00","slug":"bummer-of-a-birth-mark-rand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/08\/05\/bummer-of-a-birth-mark-rand\/","title":{"rendered":"Bummer of a Birth Mark, Rand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/hd41K.jpg\" rel=\"lytebox\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/hd41K.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"250\" \/><\/a>The Department of Justice has just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/jesse-benton-john-tate-charged-indicted-rand-paul-2015-8\">unsealed a criminal indictment naming three close Rand Paul aides conspiracy for fraud and bribery relating to the 2012 Republican primary<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Two top allies of presidential candidate and US Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) were charged with violating campaign finance laws during the 2012 presidential campaign, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Jesse Benton, who worked on the presidential bid of Paul&#8217;s father, Ron, was named as one of three political operatives in the alleged scheme to conceal payments to an Iowa state senator.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">According to a National Journal report last April, Benton was tapped to run a Paul-sanctioned super PAC, America&#8217;s Liberty PAC, supporting the senator&#8217;s 2016 presidential bid.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">John Tate, who is listed as the group&#8217;s founder and president, was also named in the charges. The other operative named was Dimitrios Kesari, a former deputy campaign manager on Ron Paul&#8217;s campaign.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The indictment was based on six counts, including conspiracy, filing false records, false statements, and obstruction of justice.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Though the indictment did not name which 2012 presidential candidate Benton, Tate, and Kesari worked on, there is little doubt that it is referring to former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Rand Paul&#8217;s father.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Note that one of these people, Jesse Benton, is married to Rand Paul&#8217;s niece, so it is all in the family.<\/p>\n<p>At the rate that this is going, the Republicans are going to nominate Donald Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Justice has just unsealed a criminal indictment naming three close Rand Paul aides conspiracy for fraud and bribery relating to the 2012 Republican primary: Two top allies of presidential candidate and US Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) were charged with violating campaign finance laws during the 2012 presidential campaign, the Department of Justice &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,963,972,977,1019],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-donald-trump","category-justice","category-presidential-campaign","category-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}