NeverTrump Lincoln Project top brass knew of John Weaver’s allegations last June

Ever since the John Weaver story broke, leaders of the Lincoln Project have been scrambling to do their best Sergeant Schultz impersonation from Hogan’s Heroes. “I see nothing, I know nothing,” they’ve all been proclaiming.

It turns out they were lying. They didn’t learn about John Weaver’s sexual misconduct with underage boys when the rest of us learned last month. According to the Associated Press, they’ve known about at least 10 incidents, including two with people associated with the Lincoln Project itself, no later than last June, just seven months after the group officially formed:

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Last June, the Lincoln Project was on a high. Led by several prominent former Republican consultants, its slickly produced ads attacking President Donald Trump made it perhaps the best known of the so-called Never Trump organizations. The group tried to claim a higher moral ground in an effort to purge Trump from the GOP. Money flowed in by the tens of millions of dollars from donors eager to help.

But within the organization, a grave threat was emerging. In June 2020, members of the organization’s leadership were informed in writing and in subsequent phone calls of at least 10 specific allegations of harassment against co-founder John Weaver, including two involving Lincoln Project employees, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the situation. The email and phone calls raise questions about the Lincoln Project’s statement last month that it was “shocked” when accusations surfaced publicly this year. It’s also the first known suggestion that Weaver targeted a Lincoln Project staffer.

Despite the early warning, the group took no action against Weaver and pressed forward with its high-profile work. For the collection of GOP consultants and former officials, being anti-Trump was becoming very good for business. Of the $90 million Lincoln Project has raised, more than $50 million has gone to firms controlled by the group’s leaders.

There is no evidence that the Lincoln Project buried the allegations against Weaver for business reasons. But taken together, the harassment allegations and new revelations about spending practices raise significant questions about the management of one of the highest-profile antagonists of Trump. The revelations threaten the stature of not just the Lincoln Project but the broader coalition of establishment-oriented Republican groups hoping to pool their resources to excise Trump from the party.

Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt insisted that he and the rest of the group’s leadership were not aware of any internal allegations of wrongdoing involving Weaver.

“No Lincoln Project employee, intern, or contractors ever made an allegation of inappropriate communication about John Weaver that would have triggered an investigation by HR or by an outside employment counsel,” Schmidt said. “In other words, no human being ever made an allegation about any inappropriate sexualized communications about John Weaver ever.”

Weaver declined to comment for this story, but in a statement released late last month to Axios he generally acknowledged misconduct and apologized.

“To the men I made uncomfortable through my messages that I viewed as consensual mutual conversations at the time: I am truly sorry,” he wrote. “They were inappropriate and it was because of my failings that this discomfort was brought on you.”

The Lincoln Project launched in November 2019 as a super PAC that allowed its leaders to raise and spend unlimited sums of money.

The Lincoln Project is an opportunist cabal designed to take money from hardworking Americans and redirect it into the business interests of the Establishment Republican co-founders. Of course they weren’t going to blow their gravy train over something like accusations of sexual misconduct by one of their fellow co-founders. Their hope was to sweep it all under the rug and continue to keep the money flowing in.

Anyone in the organization that claims ANY of the leaders of the Lincoln Project were unaware of the allegations are lying. They knew. They didn’t care. “Orange Man Bad” superseded “Sick NeverTrumper Hurts Boys.”

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