The Corvette Papers 🌻 🌻 🌻

Everyone Does It? Last week as the Republicans did their clown thing on the House floor, all the Democrats had to do to look good was sit still and stay united and they did that well with California Representative Katie Porter even interjecting some humor into the process by reading a book titled “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-ck.” Fun while it lasted but now reality has set in.  Though his hold may be tenuous, Kevin McCarthy is Speaker and his insurrectionist crowd of nihilists are now running the House, chairing committees and beginning to do all the things they threatened they would do, like voting to further limit abortion rights, defunding the IRS, putting teeth to their very real threat to hold up raising the debt ceiling absent any offsetting cuts in Medicare, Social Security and the like and investigating everything from Justice Department “bias,” to Anthony Fauci and the Biden family.  Unfortunately, President Biden has now given them something legitimate to scream about as it turns out that he, like Trump, mishandled government documents some of which were marked confidential. What’s with these guys? Didn’t anyone learn from the Email Lady’s mistakes? Yesterday we learned that there weren’t just a dozen documents stuffed into a box in a closet at Washington’s Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, there were also a few more in Biden’s Delaware garage near his Corvette and one in his home office.  Biden appears to be fully cooperating with investigators, his purloined cache is small and since he appears to have turned over everything his lawyers have found to the National Archives, he hasn’t been subjected to a Trump-like raid, still the optics suck bigly which explains why Attorney General Merrick Garland announced yesterday that he’s appointed another Special Counsel.  The newest Special guy is Robert Hur, a Gibson Dunn partner with lots of Republican cred. He served as the US Attorney for the District of Maryland in the Trump administration, previously worked for Chris Wray and clerked for Justice William Rehnquist.  Hur’s assignment is far smaller than that of Jack Smith, the Special Counsel looking into Trump’s misdeeds, so hopefully he’ll complete his task quickly, reporting back that Biden’s document mess was unintentional and not nefarious, at least that’s what is hoped, but still it’s just so stupid and frustrating and will feed the Republican grievance machine, and to be fair it should even if Biden’s screw up pales in comparison with Trump’s coup attempt and attempted cover-up. As to Trump, instead of just saying, see I told you so, everyone steals documents, he spent his day attacking his Special Counsel Jack Smith, calling him a terrorist and a Trump hater while also going after his “conflicted” wife.  Naturally.  He also continued to slime Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman and Elaine Chao because, of course.

Santos Saga:  George Santos is still running loose through the halls of Congress with his newest aide, Steve Bannon henchman Vish Burra running interference and if Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise and fellow New Yorker Elise Stefanik can pull it off he’ll remain there for his full term because a vote is a vote and they wouldn’t care if he were Jeffrey Dahmer or the Idaho killer, they need his.  Unfortunately for Santos, a growing number of his New York Republican colleagues want him out. They’re concerned that his continued presence ruins their “brand,” jeopardizing their chances of winning reelection, especially in the swing districts they picked up in November which explains why Nassau County Republican leadership held a press conference on Wednesday where they called for Santos to resign.  Six members of NYS’s Republican House contingent, including Representatives Anthony D’Esposito, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, Brandon Williams, Mike Lawler and Mark Molinaro are now also on record telling him to vamoose ASAP.  Meantime the Santos myth keeps growing.  The NY Times published his resume which isn’t just embellished but so chock full of lies that it’s hard to find anything that’s true.  For example, he didn’t graduate Baruch College with a 3.89 GPA largely because he never attended Baruch.  He didn’t double his group’s revenues at Goldman Sachs because he never worked there.  Also, despite his questionable claim to Nassau County’s Republican leader that he’s a great athlete, he wasn’t a star player on Baruch College’s volleyball team, because, again, he did not attend Baruch.  The NY Times has uncovered a few things related to his questionable finances that may be real.  They report that details about how he likely violated campaign finance laws to fund his campaign.  Also, the Washington Post reports that despite Santos’ assertion that he was long gone from Harbor City Capitol, one of the firms he really did work for, he continued receiving compensation from them for longer than he admitted, a problem because Harbor City turned out to be nothing but a Ponzi scheme. While lying about spiking the ball on court is tacky, breaking finance laws could be the thing that lands him in a court of law, well maybe. On the subject of bad acts, Santos isn’t the only Republican having a bad week.  CNN has confirmed and added details to the Daily Beast bombshell about Matt Schlapp’s “alleged” predatory sexual behavior.  The victim of Schlapp’s unwanted crotch grab still hasn’t come forward publicly but says that he’ll come out of hiding if Schlapp tries to deny his accusations which could explain why though Schlapp’s wife, former Trump communications team member, Mercedes and his organization, the American Conservative Union, have defended him, Schlapp has not spoken out in his own defense. 

2024 Beckons:  Katie Porter hasn’t just been reading “F you” books on the House floor, she’s now announced that she’s running for Diane Feinstein’s Senate seat, news to the almost 90-year-old Feinstein who hasn’t confirmed that she’s not running for reelection in 2024 even though everyone knows she won’t be running again.  Porter won’t be alone, Barbara Lee, a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus told her caucus colleagues that she plans to compete for the seat as well and it’s highly likely that Adam Schiff will also throw his hat into the ring.  The race among Democrats could get even more complicated if Feinstein steps down before the end of her term as Governor Gavin Newsom is on record saying that he plans to appoint a Black woman to fill her seat if it opens before the election, giving that person, Lee maybe, a leg up in any subsequent primary.  Here in New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has announced that she’ll be seeking reelection when her term is up in 2024 and in red state Nebraska, Republican Governor Pillen announced that he’s appointing former Governor Pete Ricketts to serve out the rest of Republican Senator Ben Sasse’s term.  Sasse is stepping down to become the president of the University of Florida. Ricketts says that he’s in it for the long term and plans to seek a full term, something that pleases Mitch McConnell because Ricketts is his kind of reliable Conservative.  And that other Florida guy, Trump, he’s hitting the campaign circuit starting with a trip to South Carolina.