DL Open Thread: Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024

RNC Set To Pay Trump’s Legal Fees?  Looks like that’s what’s behind Trump’s choices for RNC leaders:

Several senior Republican officials are concerned that Donald Trump’s expected takeover of the RNC will ultimately pave the way for the committee to once again cover his legal bills.

Those fears come in the aftermath of Trump endorsing a trio of officials, including his daughter-in-law, to take on top roles at the RNC. While those endorsements have been well-received by many committee members — who note that it is customary for a presidential candidate to put his imprint on the party’s main campaign apparatus — others fear a potential misallocation of party resources.

Henry Barbour, a Mississippi committeeman, said he believed “most RNC members will go along” with Trump’s vision for the committee, “unless there is a play to use RNC funds for President Trump’s legal bills.”

Oscar Brock, another committee member who has been critical of Trump, said the budget that the RNC passed two weeks ago during a meeting in Las Vegas did not allocate any money to cover Trump’s legal fees. But he acknowledged the possibility of the committee eventually amending its financial plan to do so, were Trump to ask — a measure Brock, the Tennessee committeeman and a member of the RNC budget committee, said he would not support.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for the committee to pay the legal bills for things done outside the work of the committee,” Brock said.

If Trump Is A First-Class Grifter,  RFK Jr. Wants To Be A Contender.  A campaign in disarray:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign is in disarray amid an exodus of campaign workers who say disorganization, lavish spending, amateurish leadership, and a severe disconnect between the campaign and the candidate’s values have led the long-shot bid for the presidency astray.

Fourteen members of Kennedy24 have resigned since the start of the year, including 12 field staff and two main staff, according to multiple sources who spoke with Mediaite on the condition of anonymity. One source close to the campaign pinned the turmoil on two leaders: Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, campaign manager and Kennedy’s daughter-in-law, and Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist who serves as the campaign’s communications director.

The source described Fox Kennedy and Bigtree as “self-serving” operatives who were “making decisions based on their own personal advancement opportunities, and not acting in the best interest of the candidate.”

The source said “lavish” spending of Bigtree and others is also a “point of contention among campaign workers,” recalling one incident when Bigtree joined a Zoom call from a skiing resort.

“Del is running around spending money lavishly,” another source said. “He’s doing Zoom calls from the slopes with champagne while many people are volunteers and not getting paid.”

Fox Kennedy, meanwhile, “hired her nanny” Brigid Rasmussen as chief of staff, which was seen internally as a sign of incompetence for the director of a presidential campaign.

A second campaign worker also griped about the hiring of Fox Kennedy’s nanny as the campaign’s chief of staff. “Although Brigid is a nice young woman, she has no idea how to operate in her role and is inexperienced. This is merely one red flag that indicates incompetence,” they said.

Gee, ya think concerns about RFK Jr. as a spoiler might be overblown?

Ex-R Strategist Stuart Stevens Pretty Much Nails Rethuglican Problem:

A party led by a rapist that believes it can fix its problem with women by attacking Taylor Swift, with weird little creeps like Mike Johnson as a public face in Congress, that has no serious policy, that has decided to abandon decades of support for freedom in Europe to back a genocidal dictator, a party that is 85% white in a 59% white country, a party that has decided higher education is a gateway drug to Socialism, that believes public health policy should be set by random freaks on the internet and not doctors, a party that is still fighting cultural wars of gender politics the rest of America ended a decade ago, a party that has replaced American optimism with anger and fear of the future.

“My Father Was A White Slave.”  Thus spake a Rethug legislator from Kentucky.  Spoiler Alert:  He wasn’t:

A Kentucky Republican politician made an audacious claim on the first day of Black History Month, according to a local report: her white father, she said, was a slave.

State Rep. Jennifer Decker made the comments, first reported by the Louisville Courier Journal, while speaking to a local chapter of the NAACP on Feb. 1 about why she’d introduced a bill seeking to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at public colleges and universities, which she has said make schools “more divided, more expensive, and less tolerant.”

KMG Still Suing In Court.  Maybe it’s just me, but shifting from Steve Wood to Ron Poliquin is a downgrade:

Though the recent ruling by the Delaware Supreme Court could mark the final chapter in the criminal case against former state Auditor Kathy McGuiness, the ‘Kathy-v-Kathy’ saga will continue to some extent in civil court.

On Tuesday, the state’s high court upheld McGuiness’ conflict of interest criminal conviction and overturned her other misdemeanor conviction, giving prosecutors the choice to try that charge in front of a new jury or drop it.

Whatever prosecutors decide, a separate court is now set to evaluate Attorney General Kathy Jennings’ effort to have a judge toss the civil defamation case filed by McGuiness against the attorney general as well as prosecutors and an investigator responsible for the criminal case.

Earlier this month, an attorney representing Jennings and the other defendants filed motions seeking to McGuiness’ lawsuit tossed.  “This is not a case about protecting and vindicating fundamental rights,” the brief states. “Instead, this case has been brought merely as revenge.”

Ron Poliquin, McGuiness’ attorney, has not responded to the motion to dismiss in court filings. (Editor’s Note: Some things never change.) McGuiness declined comment when reached by text message. 

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