The Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees

[swag]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/the-slime-machine-targeting-dozens-of-biden-nominees?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_SpecialReport_041622&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tny_daily_recirc&bxid=5db70ba03f92a422ea001db4&cndid=51997917&hasha=ffa856fc9c79b445bbc1b051d02219a1&hashb=0058c2f611b70e23df2224630359d8df184653b3&hashc=fd4d225909da2cf007a981ff299963ed11a762307de09d44c73ad0a235a30722&esrc=Auto_Subs

In an escalation of partisan warfare, a little-known dark-money group is trying to thwart the President’s entire slate.
By Jane Mayer
April 16, 2022

During the autos-da-fé that now pass for Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate, it’s common for supporters of a nominee to dismiss attacks from the opposing party as mere partisanship. But, during the recent hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, Andrew C. McCarthy—a Republican former federal prosecutor and a prominent legal commentator at National Review—took the unusual step of denouncing an attack from his own side. When Republican senators, including Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn, began accusing Jackson of having been a dangerously lenient judge toward sex offenders, McCarthy wrote a column calling the charge “meritless to the point of demagoguery.” He didn’t like Jackson’s judicial philosophy, but “the implication that she has a soft spot for ‘sex offenders’ who ‘prey on children’ . . . is a smear.”

In the end, the attacks failed to diminish public support for Jackson, and her poised responses to questioning helped secure her nomination, by a vote of 53–47. But the fierce campaign against her was concerning, in part because it was spearheaded by a new conservative dark-money group that was created in 2020: the American Accountability Foundation. An explicit purpose of the A.A.F.—a politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity that doesn’t disclose its backers—is to prevent the approval of all Biden Administration nominees.

While the hearings were taking place, the A.A.F. publicly took credit for uncovering a note in the Harvard Law Review in which, they claimed, Jackson had “argued that America’s judicial system is too hard on sexual offenders.” The group also tweeted that she had a “soft-on-sex-offender” record during her eight years as a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. As the Washington Post and other outlets stated, Jackson’s sentencing history on such cases was well within the judicial mainstream, and in line with a half-dozen judges appointed by the Trump Administration. When Jackson defended herself on this point during the hearings, the A.A.F. said, on Twitter, that she was “lying.” The group’s allegation—reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that liberal élites are abusing and trafficking children—rippled through conservative circles. Tucker Carlson repeated the accusation on his Fox News program while a chyron declared “jackson lenient in child sex cases.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist representative from Georgia, called Jackson “pro-pedophile.”

Mudslinging is hardly new to American politics. In 1800, a campaign surrogate for Thomas Jefferson called Jefferson’s opponent, John Adams, “hermaphroditical”; Adams’s supporters predicted that if Jefferson were elected President he would unleash a reign of “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest.” Neither the Democratic nor Republican Party is above reproach when it comes to engaging in calumny, and since at least 1987, when President Ronald Reagan unsuccessfully nominated Robert Bork to be a Justice, the fights over Supreme Court nominees have been especially nasty. Yet the A.A.F.’s approach represents a new escalation in partisan warfare, and underscores the growing role that secret spending has played in deepening the polarization in Washington.

Rather than attack a single candidate or nominee, the A.A.F. aims to thwart the entire Biden slate. The obstructionism, like the Republican blockade of Biden’s legislative agenda in Congress, is the end in itself. The group hosts a Web site, bidennoms.com, that displays the photographs of Administration nominees it has targeted, as though they were hunting trophies. And the A.A.F. hasn’t just undermined nominees for Cabinet and Court seats—the kinds of prominent people whose records are usually well known and well defended. It’s also gone after relatively obscure, sub-Cabinet-level political appointees, whose public profiles can be easily distorted and who have little entrenched support. The A.A.F., which is run by conservative white men, has particularly focussed on blocking women and people of color. As of last month, more than a third of the twenty-nine candidates it had publicly attacked were people of color, and nearly sixty per cent were women.

. . . more

[2naSalit]

1. They are...

Weaponizing every aspect of our Constitution and culture and they will push to destroy this country until they are successful or crushed.

[c-rational]

4. +1

[eppur_se_muova]

2. The "American Accountability Foundation" -- which is accountable to no one but themselves.

Conservatives are no more sensitive to irony as to neutrinos.

[KPN]

8. Their whole fucking schtick is one giant facade. They are the Facade Party -- nothing is genuine

about them.

[Midnight Writer]

3. Money is now speech and corporations are people. Insanity. And they claim to be "originalists".

Moscow Mitch claimed, in the immediate aftermath of the Citizens United decision, that he had no problem with unlimited money in politics, as long as the people contributing the money were identified, and thus accountable for their "speech". He claimed he would pursue legislation to shine light on the donors, so they could not hide behind anonymous organizations.

Then he promptly fought against any disclosure of donor information.

[Mr. Evil]

6. Moscow Mitch...

The master of talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.

[KPN]

9. It is absolutely frightening how quickly the Citizens' United decision has destroyed the political

norms that existed for decades or longer in our country.

[Peregrine Took]

5. Jaw dropping article by the great Jane Mayer.

Tom Jones isn't worthy to lick the chewing gum from the soles of her boots.
And so freaking arrogant and personally insulting.
Why do these devils always go there?
I have one in my family (through marriage) and, after spewing a string of horrible personal comments about a family member, years later she tried a BIT to explain her comments at that time by saying if she feels she is being criticized she will come back at that person like a VAMPIRE- even a family member!!

What kind of mental illness is this? Narcissism+persecution complex?

[erronis]

7. Thanks for the link to Jane Mayer's article. Suggest you strip tracking stoff from the URL.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/the-slime-machine-targeting-dozens-of-biden-nominees

If this is behind a paywall, it has been archived at: https://archive.ph/KIIbG

[Celerity]

10. Of course Manchin is in there

Just as the Democrats on the Banking Committee were preparing to confront the A.A.F.’s claims about Bloom Raskin, West Virginia’s Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, announced that he, too, would not vote for her, effectively capsizing her nomination. In a phone call, Manchin—who has grown rich from the coal industry, and who during the current election cycle has taken more donations from fossil-fuel interests than any other senator—admitted to Bloom Raskin that her position on climate change had turned him against her. She recalls Manchin telling her, “Don’t take it personally—it’s the industry.” (A spokesperson for Manchin declined to comment on the senator’s “private discussions.”) President Biden called Bloom Raskin, too, and described the attacks on her as unfair.