Steve Schmidt: The Lincoln Project is full of unethical people and should be reformed or shut down

(AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File)

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.

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He’s making it pretty clear that he does not think the current incarnation of the Lincoln Project is ethically sound.

He also goes after Rick Wilson.

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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.

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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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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | December 16, 2024
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