Steve Schmidt, the co-founder of the Lincoln Project who quite the group last February, went on a Twitter rant today about the group’s ongoing ethical challenges. The thread singles out a couple of the group’s current members including Reed Galen and Rick Wilson. Schmidt wants both of them to step down.
I would like to see the following things happen.
1. @reedgalen must step down from the @ProjectLincoln board because his lie and coverup destroyed the organization as much as @madrid_mike @ronsteslow and @madrid_mike @JenniferHorn did with their fame seeking and narcissism.
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) October 12, 2022
3/ @ProjectLincoln Board of Directors that follows best practices and operates at the highest ethical standards. I have complete confidence in the integrity, competence and judgement of @JoeTrippi and @stuartpstevens. LP donors can also. I wouldn’t give a penny while Galen is in
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) October 12, 2022
He’s making it pretty clear that he does not think the current incarnation of the Lincoln Project is ethically sound.
5/ I want this organization, that I founded, to operate at the highest ethical standards. The reason I left @ProjectLincoln was because I gave them an ultimatum. @reedgalen or me. Galen had appointed himself chair of the Board and controlled all the bank accounts that I told him
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) October 12, 2022
He also goes after Rick Wilson.
7/ @TheRickWilson is a brilliant ad maker who clearly should never have any leadership or management responsibilities whatsoever in an organization. His talents should be properly directed. There is another issue that I found troubling and was a big factor in my departure from
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) October 12, 2022
9/ deal. Ethics matter. Integrity matters. I urge @TheRickWilson to find a way to return that money and make this right. No one is perfect and Rick has a lot going on. I have never met anyone who works harder. He has to fix this. I hope the donors to @ProjectLincoln will demand
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) October 12, 2022
11/ I would like to see the @ProjectLincoln taken down to the studs after the midterms and made ready for the great fight ahead. I won’t be on board but for those that are they deserve competence, honesty, integrity, transparency and leadership. That means @reedgalen must leave
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) October 12, 2022
To be clear, I don’t believe a word out of Steve Schmidt’s mouth. He’s claiming Reed Galen saw this as a way to get rich and famous but it was Schmidt himself who reportedly said he saw LP as a vehicle to achieve “generational wealth.”
As for Rick Wilson never making the movie he raised funds for, this was reported by Fox last February. It’s 21 months later. Has Steve Schmidt ever spoken up about it before? Why is he suddenly concerned about it now?
As Schmidt’s first tweet indicates, all of this is apparently prompted by a Lincoln Project documentary that is currently airing on Showtime.
Steve Schmidt stares straight into the camera, his eyes cold. “Make no mistake,” the former top Republican strategist says. “The idea that the Lincoln Project story is a story of the good people against the bad people is a very naive take on this.”
Five hours of behind-the-scenes backstabbing, big-money hardball, and the creation of piercing attacks on then president Donald Trump—all of which unspools in Showtime’s The Lincoln Project documentary series, which premiered October 7—make Schmidt’s words come across as an epic understatement. “We thought we were going to be telling a story like The War Room,” says Fisher Stevens, a codirector of the new five-part series, referencing the classic 1993 film that chronicled the strategists running Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, a movie that helped turn George Stephanopoulos and James Carville into political cult heroes. “Little did we know the story would turn.” Fisher and his directing partner, Karim Amer, ended up capturing two brutal wars: the external, intended one against Trump’s reelection, and the internal, unexpected one among Schmidt and the other Lincoln Project principals, when ego, tens of millions of dollars, and a sex scandal set off bitter infighting.
The Daily Beast’s review of the documentary says it eventually becomes a story about “greed, abuse and treachery.”
While the Lincoln Project portrayed itself as noble, its conduct turned out to be less so. The Lincoln Project eventually becomes a story about greed, abuse and treachery. Co-founding member John Weaver—who’s rarely seen in the docuseries, ostensibly because he was recovering from a heart attack at the time—is accused of sexually harassing and grooming dozens of men, including one who he started talking to when the kid was just 14, and accusations fly that the other co-founders covered it up. Reports emerge that $27 million in funds were transferred to Galen’s Summit Strategies firm, possibly to be used for a post-election media company that Galen, Stevens, Schmidt and Wilson were looking to create. Angry charges of grifting and massive in-fighting ensue, leading to the departures of Horn, Steslow, Madrid, and valued executive director Sarah Lenti.
So I guess Schmidt is embarrassed at what he sees in this documentary about the group he founded. He’s also clearly still trying to settle some old scores with his former colleagues. None of that means he’s wrong about Galen and Wilson. The fact that Schmidt is a dishonest hack doesn’t mean the remaining members of the Lincoln Project are any better. They may in fact be worse.
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