Herschel Walker’s End Run Around Finance Laws

Former Georgia Bulldog, New Jersey General, and The Apprentice TV loser Herschel Walker told lots of lies during his failed MAGA senate campaign, but his secret lie to a billionaire donor was worth over half a million dollars and, possibly, a federal conviction for wire fraud.

Instead of transferring the payments to his senatorial campaign fund, Walker asked Montana billionaire Dennis Washington to wire $535,200 directly to his private company, HR Talent, LLC. Mr. Washington did so, thinking this was a legitimate political contribution. Not so.

The hidden ball trick is legal in football, but not in campaign finance, or any kind of finance, except maybe organized crime. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has asked the referees, The Federal Election Commission (about the campaign donation violation and Attorney General Garland (about the wire fraud issue), and it sure looks like a personal foul by Herschel Walker.

More:

“Emails Reveal ‘Jaw-Dropping’ Herschel Walker Money Scandal,” Roger Sollenberger, Daily Beast

“Emails show Herschel Walker nicked billionaire Dennis Washington for $500K,” Zoë Buchli, Missoulian

“Report: Herschel Walker’s Very Embarrassing Campaign May Have Also Committed Wire Fraud,” Caleb Ecarma, Vanity Fair

Top image: 1984 Topps bubblegum card. The New Jersey Generals team owner was Donald Trump. 

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Senate Passes Same-Sex Marriage Protections

The US Senate voted 61-36 to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, protecting same-sex marriage nationwide. Twelve Senate Republicans joined Democrats in the vote. The bill will be sent to the House, where it is expected to easily pass before it is sent to President Biden’s desk.

The bill was crafted in response to a Supreme Court opinion by Clarence Thomas questioning the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges precedent, which legalized same-sex marriage. A July 2022 Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans support same-sex marriage.

More:

“Senate passes bill to protect same-sex marriage,” Andrew Solender,” Axios

“Senate passes protections for same-sex marriages,” Michael Macagnone, Roll Call

“U.S. Senate passes bill to protect same-sex, interracial marriage,” Sheri Walsh, UPI

“Respect for Marriage Act: Senate passes same-sex marriage bill,” BBC News

“Senate passes landmark protections for same-sex marriage,” Al Weaver, The Hill

“Landmark same-sex marriage bill wins Senate passage,” Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press

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Image (“The Wedding Couple, after Abbot Handerson Thayer and Richard E. Miller”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Trump’s Ex-Employee Hershel Walker Stumbles Downfield

Georgia’ GOP candidate for the US Senate is Hershel Walker, a former University of Georgia Heisman winner, All-American, and  NFL veteran. He was endorsed by Donald Trump, who was his pre-NFL employer as the owner of the failed New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League. In just a few short years, as Mr. Walker raced down the field, Mr. Trump managed to tank the entire USFL.

Hershel Walker and Donald Trump have something else in common: they are both phenomenal liars. Mr. Trump told over 30,000 lies while he was in the White House, and continues to lie about losing the 2020 election. Mr. Walker lied about graduating from college, then lied about lying that he graduated from college. He lied about being a policeman and an FBI agent. He lied about his business ventures, including his “mini-Tyson’s chicken empire“. And while Dr. Oz can’t remember all the houses he owns, Walker can’t recall all the children he’s sired.

Despite his sports celebrity and Trump endorsement, the drip of revelations has raised been understandable questions about Herschel Walker’s electability. All that lying doesn’t help when you’re running against an incumbent who’s a Baptist minister. Weird statements blaming China for US air pollution, evolution denial, claims the US has 52 states, and accusations of spousal abuse should raise even more concern that the ex-Georgia Bulldog is a dog of a candidate.

Herschel Walker was a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice TV show in 2009. Donald Trump fired him. He might want to fire him as a Trump-branded political endorsee, too.

More:

“Herschel Walker declines invitation to debate Senator Warnock in Macon,” Justin Baxley, WMAZ-TV

“Herschel Walker’s ex-wife recalls him threatening to ‘blow my brains out’ in campaign ad released by opponents in Georgia Senate race,” Dave Goldiner, NY Daily News

Related:

“Republicans rue price of fame as celebrity Senate candidates struggle,” Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian

“Donald Trump’s Less-Than-Artful Failure in Pro Football,” Joe Nocera, New York Times

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Image (“Commander-In-Chief of the Jersey Generals”) by Mike Licht. Download copies here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.

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Angus King: Democracy is In Danger

Senator Angus King (Ind., Maine) addressed the U.S. Senate last Tuesday on behalf of the Freedom to Vote Act. Republicans later blocked consideration of the bill, but his words (above) deserve a hearing.

Excerpts:

“It’s important to remember that most failures of democracy started with legitimate elections, but once in office, the leader manipulated the electoral process to consolidate their hold on power, just as was attempted here last winter. And once power is seized, the control and reach of the modern surveillance state is truly terrifying. Ask the Uighurs in China, or members of the opposition in Russia, if you can find any alive.”

“Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, and Hungary are examples of the slide into authoritarianism just in our lifetimes; those countries still have elections, but they don’t mean much.

And what if the current wave of voter suppression legislation succeeds and keeps tens of thousands of people from voting, or what if in 2024 a partisan legislature in a swing state votes to override the election results and send its own set of electors to Congress? Then it won’t just be Republicans who distrust elections, and we will be left with a downward spiral toward a hollow shell of democracy, where only raw power prevails and its peaceful transfer becomes a distant memory.”

Read the full transcript here.

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Samantha Bee Kills the Filibuster

The pernicious Senate filibuster is clogging the arteries of democracy. Smantha Bee suggests ways to ream it out.

Related:

“The Fake History of the Filibuster Won’t Die,” Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine

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‘Filibuster’ Means That Losers Rule the Senate.

“Filibuster” (from the Dutch word for “pirate” or “freebooter”) is a parliamentary rule the U.S. Senate adopted by accident. These days it has nothing to do with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Alvin Chang explains how the filibuster broke the Senate. A Vox video.

More:

“Make the Filibuster Difficult Again,” Burt Neuborne and Erwin Chemerinsky, New York Times

“What is the Senate filibuster, and what would it take to eliminate it?” Molly E. Reynolds, The Brookings Institution

“All the Lies They Told Us About the Filibuster,” Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine

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The Trump Coup: It’s Coming From Inside the House! And Senate.

Clearly, the chief instigator of the rioting mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol was one Donald John Trump, who summoned the mob with a December 20th tweet (“Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”) and gave them their marching orders on the day of the insurrection, inciting the riot.

 It’s Coming From Inside the House! And Senate.

Terrorist Trump had allies, and some of them were already inside the Capitol, blocking the purely ceremonial recognition of the presidential election results, a rite required by the Constitution, which usually takes two hours. The falsehood-spewing, Trump-abetting obstructionists seeking to overturn the will of the electorate, all Republican members of the Senate and House, helped incite the MAGA mobs. Their names can be found here. Chief among them were Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who used their unconstitutional, unconscionable ploy to send out fundraising emails at the very time mobs were vandalizing the Capitol building.

While some of these congressional coup plotters have already faced loss of political donors and publishing contracts, Congress itself needs to act. Tepid measures like censure seem inadequate; perhaps expulsion under Article I, Section 5, clause 2 of the Constitution, expulsion from the Senate and House, should be invoked, since precedents have concerned disloyalty to the United States and its Constitution.

But of course, of these 147 insurrectionists, all but two (Byron Donalds and Burgess Owens) are White, so they may escape any punishment whatsoever, just like all but a handful of the Capitol-desecrating MAGA mob and its Instigator-in Chief.

More:

“Never Forget the Names of These Republicans Attempting a Coup,” Tom Friedman, New York Times

“The Disgrace on Capitol Hill,” Wall Street Journal

“The Republicans Have an Insurrectionist Caucus,” Jordan Weissmann, Slate

“Here Are The Republicans Who Objected To The Electoral College Count : Insurrection At The Capitol,” Barbara Sprunt, NPR News

“The long list of Republicans who voted to reject election results,” Alvin Chang, The Guardian

Updates:

“Some GOPers Blame Colleagues’ Anti-Democracy Scheme For Fueling Capitol Riots,” Summer Concepcion, Talking Points Memo

“Lawmakers who voted against Biden are denounced back home,” Jeffrey Collin, Associated Press

“Letters signed by House Republicans objecting to election results,” Jesse Byrnes, The Hill

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Lindsey Graham, Man of His Word

South Carolina’s Senatorial Trump toady Lindsey Graham once professed to be a man of principle. In 2016, when President Obama nominated Judge Merritt Garland to the Supreme Court, Mr. Graham pontificated:

“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president … and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.”

In 2018, he further specified:

“If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election.”

In 2020, now that a Supreme Court vacancy has opened six weeks before the election, however, he says he will support confirming Mr. Trump’s nominee to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ginsburg. Mr. Graham says this time is different, probably because he’s in a tight re-election race himself.

Surprise! Lindsey Graham is not the only GOP hypocrite in the senate who pledged not to confirm a Supreme Court nominee during an election year. Cory Gardner, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jim Inhofe, Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis, David Perdue, Tim Scott, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Richard Burr, Roy Blunt, John Hoeven, and Rob Portman did as well.

Mitch McConnell Faces the COVID-19 Crisis By Going On Vacation

Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th Street SE, Washington DC

On Thusday, the Senate Republican leadership decided to go on their paid summer vacation, euhemistically called “August Recess,” without agreeing on a new COVID-19 relief bill.

“”If the speaker of the House and the minority leader of the Senate decide to finally let another rescue package move forward for workers and for families, it would take bipartisan consent to meet for legislative business sooner than scheduled,’ Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday.

The reality is that any senator, including the roughly 20 members of McConnell’s own conference who are of the belief that enough action has already been taken to respond to the pandemic’s economic consequences, could block action before Labor Day.”

— “Senate breaks for August recess with no coronavirus deal in sight,” Niels Lesniewski, Roll Call

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Girls! Roy Moore Is Back.

He’s back! Shopping mall romeo, twice-defrocked Alabama judge and gun-slinging theocratic racist homophobe Roy Moore wants to be Alabama’s Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2020. Sure, he lost his 2017 bid due to some pesky talk about hitting on teenyboppers, but Mr. Moore reasons that if Brett Kavanaugh could get through his Supreme Court hearing last year, he can get to the Senate this time.

More:

“Roy Moore, Accused Child Molester, Announces Second Senate Run,” Scott Bixby, Daily Beast

“Roy Moore announces 2020 Senate run, vows to ‘make more personal contact with people,'” The Week

“‘This place has enough creepy old men’: GOP vows to crush Roy Moore,” Burgess Everett, Politico

“Roy Moore is running for Senate again, and there’s nothing Washington Republicans can do about it,” Amber Phillips, Washington Post

“Donald Trump Jr. mocks Roy Moore after campaign announcement, reigniting criticism,” Sam Dorman, Fox News

“How Roy Moore Could Actually Win Alabama’s Republican Senate Primary,” Geoffrey Skelley, FiveThirtyEight

Related:

“Roy Moore’s lawyer Trenton Garmon arrested on drug charges,” Ivana Hrynkiw, AI.com

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Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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