WASHINGTON — Raw Story walked with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Capitol Hill Tuesday as she trashed members of her own party over a bipartisan border control bill looking unlikely to pass.
Senate Republicans have spent weeks hammering out a landmark legislation on border security and immigration but its future looks bleak as far-right Republican in the House condemn it and those in the Senators threaten a filibuster.
Raw Story asked Greene if MAGA Republicans trust Sen. Mitch McConnell, one of the leading forces behind the bipartisan bill.
"Nobody trusts Mitch McConnell," Greene said. "Let's just say that."
She then went off on an attack against the Senate legislation, saying it "legalizes a daily invasion."
The Senate bill, she argued, "brings more illegals into the country."
"That is the most America-last — it's like they're traitors — anybody who voted for it would be a traitor," Greene continued.
When asked if this shows that Trump is running the House and Senate Republican caucuses, Greene argued it isn't about Trump, it's what the American people want.
WASHINGTON – Maxwell Frost has not been shy about criticizing Joe Biden’s administration – from climate change to border policy to Israel’s war in Gaza.
But the nation’s first Gen Z congressman has nevertheless seen his profile inside the Democratic Party rise. And despite Frost’s concerns, the 27-year-old Floridian is becoming an increasingly essential surrogate for the 81-year-old Biden.
To Frost, that push and pull is part of any relationship, and he doesn’t know why it should be any different in politics.
“I just refuse to fall for this, ‘I hate you or I love you thing,’” Frost said in an interview. “I'm going to be honest with you. And if I think that our values align, I'm going to work with you. And I think my values align with President Biden.”
That dichotomy between publicly dissing Biden and supporting him, while unusual for a presidential campaign surrogate, reflects how Gen Z broadly feels about a certain Silent Generation commander-in-chief who’s off seeking a second term.
It also helps explain Frost’s appeal among young voters who are wary of Biden but aghast at the prospect of Donald Trump returning to power. Frost stands as a willing bridge to a new and skeptical generation of voters that the president urgently needs for general election success.
Much like Biden, Frost also sees a second term for former President Donald Trump as an “almost existential threat for this country,” one reason he is motivated to reelect Biden.
Florida is “the epicenter of fascism rising in this country,” Frost said of the home state he shares with Trump, and the former president “obviously represents that movement on such a larger scale.”
‘See themselves reflected in this administration’
While backing Biden is an easy decision for Frost, he said he realizes it might not be for other voters.
That’s why he wants to engage with them as he did recently in Southern Nevada, a state that will be a presidential battleground in 2024 — and one where an uptick in youth turnout during the 2022 midterms proved key in the state’s three competitive House contests and pivotal Senate race. The congressman headlined a roundtable with students at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas who had experienced the December 6 mass shooting at the school. He then held a happy hour with other college Democrats, where he spoke about Biden and addressed concerns the students had about the Biden administration.
“He is a symbol for Gen Z that they can see themselves reflected in this administration and in Congress and in Washington,” said a Nevada Democrat who worked with Frost on the trip.
Biden’s age creates an understandable distance with these young voters, the Democrat added, but the people Frost met with came away saying, “If this guy, who is like me, is saying we should get on board, then we should get on board.”
Frost’s ability could become a campaign super-weapon for Biden, the oldest president in American history who, upon serving a complete second term, would be 86 years old the day he leaves soffice in early 2029.
Polls show younger voters are unsure about Biden, citing many of the same critiques – climate change and Gaza, primarily – as reasons to question him. Some are considering third-party candidates, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Cornel West. Others are open to not voting at all, an outcome that top Democrats think could lead to losses nationwide.
That’s why Frost, who has said he will do whatever he can to re-elect Biden, wants people to understand the effect of non-participation.
“The main opponent here for me is not even Donald Trump,” he said. “As a campaigner, what I'm thinking is, ‘Our main opponent is the couch,’ it is no action at all. And that's how Republicans win, right?”
U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) gives a thumbs-up outside the Capitol after voting to continue funding the government for 45 days. Philip Yabut/Shutterstock
People who have worked with Frost said he gives younger voters cover for their anti-Biden feelings and demonstrates how you can both criticize a man who is old enough to be your grandfather and support him for four more years in office.
“Maxwell Frost gives younger voters the opportunity to see both sides of the coin,” said Jasmine Burney Clark, founder of Equal Ground Education Fund and Action Fund, a civic engagement organization in Florida that has worked with Frost. “The congressman has been critical of this administration and has applauded this administration at the same time. He has made that complexity available for other folks who are sitting in their [own] complex situations as well around whether to support or not.”
The congressman has “Gen Z gravitas,” added Burney Clark, who has seen Frost campaign with young voters.
Gen Z — four generations removed from Biden’s Silent Generation — is defined by the Pew Research Center as anyone born between 1997 and 2012. When voters elected Frost in 2022, the then-25-year-old became Congress’ first Gen Z member ever.
Frost’s victory, therefore, became a milestone that garnered considerable attention, landed Frost on cable news and led Biden, then president, to call and congratulate him. He was also one of the few bright spots for Florida Democrats in that cycle, which otherwise saw the state’s ranks decimated by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ political operation.
“He is one of the few positive things out of Florida right now,” said a Democratic operative working in Florida who requested anonymity to speak openly about the shabby state of Democrats in the state.
Bashing — and boosting — Biden
But his election was not the first time Frost found himself in the public eye.
Frost grew up as an organizer, volunteering for Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. He survived his own brush with gun violence in 2016 at a Halloween event in Orlando, eventually leading him to become the national organizing director for March for Our Lives, the gun control organization sparked by the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 people.
And Frost was a Biden critic long before he came to Congress.
In 2019, while working for the American Civil Liberties Union, Frost reportedly filmed a colleague confronting Biden about the Hyde Amendment, which significantly restricts federal funding for abortion.
“The goal of the program is to impact candidates,” Frost reportedly said at the time.
That would not be the last time Frost has confronted Biden.
When the Biden administration approved a large new oil drilling project in Alaska, Frost said he was “very disappointed” and argued that Biden was disrespecting young voters.
“Youth voter turnout was at its highest in 2020 & young folks supported him because of commitments such as no more drilling on federal land,” Frost wrote. “That commitment has been broken. We deserve a livable future.”
When the Biden administration decided to build additional miles of border wall, Frost called the decision “equivalent to sticking our heads in the sand,” adding he was “deeply disappointed in the Biden Administration for this hazardous move as the climate crisis looms and the humanitarian crisis deepens.”
After war between Israel and Hamas broke out in Gaza, Frost called for an “immediate ceasefire,” a position that directly opposes the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,200 people.
It would be hard to imagine a campaign surrogate speaking out against Trump’s positions and remaining on Team MAGA.
But part of the reason Frost said he’ll work to get Biden reelected is that administration officials have “never” asked him to tone down the rhetoric.
“In fact, they’ve said, ‘Talk to us, tell us what's up!’ They've listened to us,” he said. “It hasn't been some sort of House of Cards thing, where it's like you're shunned or you're blacklisted or you're strong-armed.”
In 2023, Biden opened the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, an idea Frost helped spur. In the announcement of the office, Biden thanked Frost for his work as they stood together in the Rose Garden, said he was a “big reason why I’m so optimistic about America’s future” and joked, “I remember when I was young.”
Frost said the office is doing “amazing things” and his city of Orlando received about $1.5 million in federal funds for community violence intervention.
“When I was protesting in Orlando, and I was tear-gassed and I was maced and I went to jail in the district that I represent, one of the things I was protesting for was money to communities to end gun violence, and President Biden has done that,” he said.
While he has disagreed with him on climate policy, he also credited Biden for pausing approvals of liquefied natural gas exports and for signing the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s signature law to fight climate change.
“Some of us joke that the Inflation Reduction Act is the downpayment of the Green New Deal,” he said, referring to the preferred climate change proposal of the far-left. “I care about that, and that’s a huge win.”
National Democrats have noted this balancing act, believing that Frost – unlike some other progressive members of Congress – represents the views of America’s youngest voters.
“It is normal to have disagreements. You can’t expect anyone to be with you 100 percent of the time,” said a national Democratic strategist close to the Biden campaign. “What’s important is that you can have these disagreements and still be on board, and that’s reflective of the strength in the diversity of the Democratic Party.”
That ability to balance criticism with help has helped Frost navigate internal Democratic politics. In just a few years as an elected official, top Florida Democrats say, Frost is now seen as a “power center” in Florida Democratic politics.
“He is essential to the party apparatus in the state,” said Nikki Fried, chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2022.
“He ran a very grassroots campaign when he first got elected in 2022. And he created an atmosphere of hope,” said Fried, who has been open about how Florida Democrats were in a troubling place when she became chair in early 2023. “He's really important to not only energize our base, but to show the rest of the elected in the state of Florida what it looks like to be a true public servant.”
WASHINGTON — After protecting – and studying – lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol for the past 15 years, Harry Dunn turned his service revolver over to the Capitol Police at the end of 2023.
He then entered the 2024 race to represent residents of Maryland’s 3rd congressional district, which curls through the suburbs south and west of Baltimore, as a Democrat.
Dunn found his life upended during the 2021 Capitol insurrection as he protected then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s staffers from militia group the Oath Keepers and other violent attackers.
In the three years since the Capitol attack, Dunn has made it his mission to raise the alarm about what he sees as the greatest threat to American democracy: former President Donald Trump.
He offered gripping testimony about the day to the U.S. House’s select January 6 committee.
“I was distressed, I was angry, and I was scared," Dunn testified to the select committee in 2022. "During the event, it was just about surviving."
He also became a New York Times bestselling author with his book “Standing my Ground.”
In this Raw Story exclusive, Dunn discusses more than his newfound ambitions as a politician – “Don't think of me as one! I’m a public servant.” He also pulls the veil back on how his fellow officers reacted to his accidental activism and what he views as the hypocrisy of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“I refuse – win or lose this election – to let the story of January 6 and the narrative go in any other direction than the truth. Hell, that's been my mission since I started speaking out three years ago,” Dunn told Raw Story.
The distinguished former Capitol Police officer also discussed his personal interactions with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and other lawmakers – “a lot of the people that are holding those seats shouldn't be there” – including House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who has supported imprisoned Jan. 6 attackers and seems to be auditioning to get the vice-presidential nod from Trump.
Raw Story’s conversation with Dunn is lightly edited for length and clarity:
Raw Story: “So now you are running…”
Harry Dunn: “I know. What the hell am I thinking, right?”
RS: “Exactly! You’ve looked at all these politicians from the other side and, to now to be running — how's that change feel?”
HD: “Maybe ‘inspire’ is the right word. I've been up close and personal with them every day of my life for the last 15-plus years, and I feel like I see what they're doing and I'd say, ‘I could do it a little better’ – or not necessarily better but different or more effective. I've watched them. I've heard the things that they said, specifically the MAGA faction of the Republican Party that has kind of downplayed everything since January 6. Now, obviously, Jan. 6 was the catalyst that brought me to this point, but I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things.”
RS: “Even before we jump into January 6, just seeing lawmakers every day, you kind of get a takeaway, like, ‘oh, wait, they're just humans.’”
HD: “I love that part of it, man. Because that's what public servants, to me, are supposed to be: just people – average people that aren't on a pedestal. But my job is to give a voice to the members of the community that I represent, and that's what your job is as an elected official. Your job is to represent those people, and you should be an everyday American because that's what the government should be made up of.”
RS: “Now to get to January 6, especially this year with the anniversary, it just had a different feeling at the Capitol, almost like it never happened.”
HD: “Because that's what Donald Trump wanted. Everything that Donald Trump has said — slowly but surely it starts trickling down into Congress. Everything that Donald Trump has said they are saying – ‘they’ meaning the subordinates of him in Congress parroting his talking points – and that's not how Congress is supposed to work.”
RS: “You'd expect it more – I'd expect it more from someone like MTG – but how is it watching…”
HD: “Do I expect more? At the Capitol, we would see these individuals every day so maybe we expect more from the position that they hold but not necessarily the person. Like, I don't expect more from Donald Trump, I expect more from the presidency. And that's how I was able to do my job. I was able to separate that, the institution of Congress – I marvel at it; I respect it – but a lot of the people that are holding those seats shouldn't be there.”
RS: “I've been with MTG to the D.C. jail for her to advocate for J6 prisoners, and it's been a part of her rhetoric. But now to hear Elise Stefanik – who’s been in Republican leadership – say, ‘January 6 hostages,’ that's new.”
HD: “So what is Elise Stefanik right now? She’s vying for a VP nod, right? So it's anything to stay in Trump's graces. We've seen it all the way from the beginning of January 6 with Kevin McCarthy when later that night he went on the floor and condemned Donald Trump. Few days later, he’s down at Mar-a-Lago changing his tune, right? [Sen.] Lindsey Graham, same thing with him. Elise Stefanik. The list goes on and on and on. He has that much of a hold over the people that it's dangerous and very counterproductive in Congress.”
RS: “We see Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party, how would it be serving with those folks?”
HD: “The same way it was for me protecting them. This isn't just something that I'll have to get used to being able to see them and say ‘hi’ to them every day. I did that January 7th – the day we went back after the attack at the Capitol, because I revere the institution. I hold it in high regard. I think the world of it, and I expect great things to come from Congress. The fact that we haven't been able to doesn't mean that we shouldn't still strive to get greatness out of it.”
RS: “Have you been surprised watching the rhetoric of MTG and that faction trickle into the leadership?”
HD: “I'm disappointed. I'm not surprised, because Donald Trump has this stranglehold over these individuals. It's very important to acknowledge, though, what Congress is supposed to do. I believe in it, and maybe that's crazy on me for believing in something that hasn't functioned well for a long time.”
RS: “How important is this election just for the legacy of January 6, because it feels very tied to Donald Trump and his future?”
HD: “It's very important, not necessarily for the legacy of it, so to speak. I refuse – win or lose this election – to let the story of January 6 and the narrative go in any other direction than the truth. Hell, that's been my mission since I started speaking out three years ago. But I think what this election will show is how important the threats to free and fair elections are and holding on to our democracy is to people. Donald Trump said it himself that [he] wants to be a dictator on day one. He said that. So I think what the election will show is how many people think that what we have now is worth preserving and worth fighting for it.”
RS: “When you were on the force, what was the reaction from Capitol Police brass – but then your fellow officers – to you speaking out?”
HD: “That was tough to navigate, because Capitol Police officers aren't allowed to give press conferences or speak to the media. So when I spoke, I was speaking as a citizen. I wasn't representing Capitol Police. So it was difficult to navigate, because those things are tied together – the Capitol Police and January 6 – so I was in a tough bind. I never went rogue or anything like that. I was respectful to the department. I said, ‘Listen, this is what I want to do. I'm not here to bash the department. I'm here to get the people responsible and hold them accountable.’ Period. There were a couple head bumps about me speaking out. I respect the Capitol Police leadership, and they were great. And obviously, when you talk about frontline — my co-workers — a lot of them were indifferent. A lot supported me, and said, ‘keep going.’ And there were a few that hated it – you know, ‘I'm making it about me’ – which kind of sucks, but it’s expected. If you look, the FOP [Fraternal Order of Police], the last few times Donald Trump ran, they endorsed him, so there's a lot of police officers that support Donald Trump, even after January 6. So I expected all types of mixed reactions. But I know what I'm doing, I'm standing up for what I believe in.”
RS: “What do you make of seeing law enforcement come around Trump or, more so, seeing Republicans still try to wear the mantle of law enforcement when they threw y'all literally under the bus?”
HD: “Does that make me dislike Donald Trump more or does that make me have to face the sad reality of what our country is? I don't think that necessarily makes me hate Donald Trump even more, I think it makes me have an awakening to, ‘hey, this faction exists, and it's not a small faction – it's a large population of people.’ We have to figure out how to navigate that, because they're here and clearly aren't going anywhere.”
RS: “When it comes to the lead up of January 6, have your questions been answered? For one, on congressional leaders – Pelosi and [Sen. Mitch] McConnell — for the pre-planning. But then also the agencies. Are you sure we can’t have a repeat?”
HD: “I don't believe in any conspiracy that McConnell or Pelosi wanted to see the Capitol attacked. I don't believe that at all. I believe in incompetence, versus it was a setup or some s— like that. Somebody dropped the ball, and they need to be held accountable. I don't know where that is, but somebody did. But I don't believe it was the leadership. I think they trusted people that they put in positions to answer for those things, and those people need to be held accountable.”
RS: “Seeing groups like Moms for Liberty take root on the right, are you worried about — maybe January 6 not repeating itself in a physical assault but them kind of taking root at the local level and trying to really take control of the reins of democracy at voting stations, etc.?”
HD: “We have to realize this faction – this chokehold that Donald Trump has – it's not just limited to members of Congress. It's triggered all the way down to local school board elections, like Moms for Liberty. And that's why it's so important to have truth tellers, individuals that really understand what is at stake right now. Obviously, we all want, in the long run, the same things, but I don't think that a lot of people realize the dire situation and how urgently we need to fight for it right now. Because it is a clear and present threat right now and we have to take it seriously. I left my job early. Meaning, I was there 15-plus years, four years short of being able to collect a full pension, because it's that important to me. It can't wait.”
RS: “How's that been going? Because it's hard for me to think of you as a politician, but, I guess, technically on paper, you are.”
HD: “Don't think of me as one! I’m a public servant. You saw me at the Capitol every day. You saw me interacting with people, ‘how can I help you?’ My job was to help people, and that's what I did. I've been doing that for the last 15 years of my adult life, and that won't change.”
RS: “But now you gotta dial for dollars and stuff like that. How's the campaigning?”
HD: “That sucks. I hate asking people for stuff. It’s difficult, but it's necessary. It's not like I'm raising money and putting it in my pocket. It’s for messaging, and I want to reach as many people as I can. Obviously, to win the election, but, the bigger picture, to educate and inform people of what is at stake right now.”
RS: “I'm from Chicago, which is very much like Baltimore, you got these old political machines. How's it been navigating Maryland Democratic politics?”
HD: “It's a lot to learn, but I've cared about politics, so it's not like, ‘who is the lieutenant governor?’ I'm engaged. Before I'm a candidate, before I'm a police officer, I'm a proud citizen of Maryland – and I have been my whole life – who wants to see the people and the state thrive. So running for office or not, that is always how I felt. But being a player now, so to speak, I don't want to lose the essence of who I am, which is a public servant.”
RS: “You obviously get a lot of focus from January 6, but what are the other things you're running on that you think – especially coming from law enforcement – that you can really bring to the table?”
HD: “Since you said it, let’s talk about that, law enforcement and police reform. There's been a long time where Cory Booker and Tim Scott, two black senators, were working together to create a bill to address police reform of criminal justice reform. They were unable to come to an agreement through a consensus, so the talks stalled and now it's just tabled. But the change can't wait … I've been very vocal about mental health. I think we need to reallocate funding to fight the war on mental health right now and the stigma that is associated with it. We all are struggling in some capacity every single day, and we need to make accessibility to mental health way more accessible … Lower health care costs. Obviously, I agree with the majority of the Democratic principles: the woman's right to choose, common sense gun reform. That's the stuff that I agree on, and those issues fall under the umbrella of democracy to me, because, you know, if Trump is elected back into the White House, do those issues even matter? They’ll be gone just like that.”
RS: “You have a presence, and it's usually a smiley, happy presence at the Capitol, but knowing that you were one of our boys in blue but then if you're wearing a suit and wearing that congressional pin, what signal would that send to the MTGs, the Matt Gaetzes, the Boeberts, the people trying to whitewash January 6th?”
HD: “That I can't be dismissed. It's easy to dismiss me when I was an officer, right? As just some ‘angry liberal plant,’ right? It's easy to dismiss me as that. But actually, I'm your colleague, now, I'm your equal. You can't dismiss me. You have to listen. I can bring an issue to the table and force it to be addressed.”
RS: “What would the lawmakers tell you like, personally off the record, post January 6?”
HD: “Well, the ones that I got to talk to, the ones who would dare talk to me about it – and that’s how bad it was – a lot of those members aren't in Congress anymore. That’s just a symptom of being a truth teller in a Donald Trump Congress, so to speak. It sucks. It’s unfortunate. But you mentioned MTG, I mean, she was a very friendly person. When I saw her on the Hill, she would always wave. She would always say hello. I don't know if she knew who I was, but she would always say hello. So I don't have anything bad to say about her about that.”
RS: “You get that southern nice but then it seems like some of those policies are very harmful but then they're cloaked in this smile. Like, does that worry you?”
HD: “I think it's disingenuous – smiling without even having your pulse on what's going on.”
WASHINGTON — Arguably the most bipartisan – nonpartisan, really – committee in the Senate is also, arguably, the biggest laughing stock on Capitol Hill.
For at least 17 years and running, the Senate Ethics Committee — tasked with confidentially investigating allegations of misconduct by the chamber’s austere members and staffers — has failed to formally punish anyone at all, a
Raw Story analysis of congressional records indicates.
That amounts to 1,668 complaints alleging violations of Senate rules with exactly zero resulting in disciplinary action.
In 2023 alone, the Senate Ethics Committee on Wednesday
disclosed accepting 145 separate reports of alleged ethics violations. Of them, 19 merited preliminary inquiries by committee staff. Of those, the committee dismissed 12 for “a lack of substantial merit” or because they deemed a violation to be “inadvertent, technical or otherwise of a de minimis nature.”
None resulted in a “disciplinary sanction.”
And senators seem to know it.
“Maybe it's the equivalent of a warning ticket when you're speeding, like the police,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) – the former number two Republican, or whip, in the Senate – told Raw Story through a laugh this week.
The senators who make up the secretive six-member ethics panel will neither confirm nor deny their work.
“We don’t – I don’t discuss that,” Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) told Raw Story.
Fischer’s
far from alone, with Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Chris Coons (D-DE) previously declining to comment to Raw Story about the committee’s work.
Senate ethics vs. House ethics
While members of the Senate Ethics Committee refuse to discuss their work — and lack thereof — some members of the House Ethics Committee are aghast at what their senatorial counterparts aren’t doing.
"What's the point of having ethics rules if there's no teeth?" Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) – a member of the House Ethics Committee – told Raw Story.
“Without accountability, we're not going to have compliance,” Escobar said. “If you expect people to abide by ethics rules, there has to be trust in the process and trust that the outcome is fair. But if there's no outcome, then there’s no faith in the system and people will operate with impunity, because there’s no consequences.”
Historically, at least, it would be laughable to look to the House Ethics Committee as a beacon of efficiency — or anything. But in recent months, the committee has changed.
Case in point: Now former-Rep. George Santos (R-NY), who allegedly lied himself both into and out of office.
George Santos yelling at reporters (C-SPAN).
Before Santos was expelled in
December, he survived expulsion votes in May and then November.
But some two weeks later, on November 16, the House Ethics Committee spoke in one loud and bipartisan voice when they dropped their
damning 55-page report that pulled the veil back on the web of lies, greed and corruption they alleged surrounds Santos most anywhere he goes.
The committee interviewed 40 witnesses — after issuing 37 convincing congressional subpoenas — while also thumbing through upwards of 170,000 pages of records, as new nonprofit newsroom
NOTUS pointed out in its helpful historical primer on Senate ethics inaction, which built on a 2023 Raw Story investigation.
By the time the House took up its third Santos expulsion measure on Dec. 1, 2023, the tides had turned even in the full House of Representatives, where Republicans were holding on to a razor thin
222-213 seat majority. While all five GOP leaders in the House voted against expulsion, rank-and-file Republicans voted to oust their camera-loving colleague.
“That was a tough vote for them given the margins that were so small,” Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) – another member of the House Ethics Committee – told Raw Story. “Democrats too, because, I think, there were two votes before but he wasn’t expelled. When the report came out, I think, people were able to look at the body of evidence,”
In the end, based on the ethics report,
73% of the House voted to expel only the sixth member in the storied history of the rowdy chamber.
"At the end of the day, to me, what it did was, it allowed for due process," Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told Raw Story. “It allowed for due process for him, but it gave us the ability to move ahead with the expulsion.”
Lawler and other New York Republicans led earlier efforts to oust Santos — in part because
his constituent’s were calling their offices for assistance — and he says the Ethics Committee report was the gamechanger.
“A lot of people felt that they had enough due process and information,” Lawler said.
The nation’s founders wanted the two separate branches of the legislative branch to police themselves. That’s about it. In the Constitution, the details of said policing were left to be written by future generations of lawmakers themselves.
"Each House [of Congress] may determine the Rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member," according to the
Article I, section 5 of the Constitution.
Historic Senate inaction
The House and the Senate are different. And that extends to ethics, too.
In its 235-year history, the U.S. Senate has expelled 15 members. The first came in 1797 — less than a decade since the chamber’s inception — when
Sen. William Blount (R-TN), a founding father who signed the original Constitution before being expelled by a vote of 25 to 1 for committing treason.
The other
14 expulsions came in 1861 and ‘62 when roughly 20 percent of senators were expelled after they joined the Confederate rebellion against the United States of America.
But during the ensuing 162 years, the so-called “
world’s greatest deliberative body” has, when it comes to ethical matters, done a lot of … deliberating.
All of those cases of historic corruption came before the Senate Ethics Committee. Some of those inquiries seem to have scared some senators into resigning early, but not one elicited an expulsion vote. Most senators emerged from these and other tribulations without even receiving a formal punishment.
While Santos was the gadfly of the House, there’s still a senior senator buzzing about that even some members of his own party say should be expelled.
In September, responding to numerous requests for information about freshly indicted Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), the Senate Ethics Committee released a rare statement.
In essence: The Senate Ethics Committee said it wasn’t going to say anything, and that it would let criminal investigators take the lead.
“[T]he Senate Select Committee on Ethics does not comment on matters pending before the Committee or matters that may come before the Committee. Also, absent special circumstances, it has been the long-standing policy of the Committee to yield investigation into matters where there is an active and ongoing criminal investigation or proceeding so as not to interfere in that process.”
The closest the Senate Committee on Ethics got to formally reprimanding one of its own during 2023 came on March 23, when it issued a “
public letter of admonition” to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for soliciting campaign contributions in a federal building.
Specifically, Graham in November 2022 asked the public, via Fox News, to contribute money to the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Herschel Walker, who ended up
losing his midterm race to incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
In admonishing Graham, the Senate Committee on Ethics noted that Graham had previously violated the prohibition on soliciting campaign donations in federal buildings when he raised money for his own campaign in 2020.
But for all that, Graham’s letter isn’t much more than ink, paper and embarrassment.
Such letters “shall not be considered discipline,” according to the Senate Committee on Ethics’
Rules of Procedure, and they fall well short of actual acts of internal discipline such as censure, denouncement, condemnation, restitution payments or — in the most extreme of cases — expulsion.
The last time the U.S. Senate formally disciplined a senator?
That came on July 25, 1990, when the Senate
voted 96-0 to denounce Sen. Dave Durenberger (R-MN) for “unethical conduct in personal business dealings, Senate reimbursements and using campaign contributions for personal use.”
“I commend the members of the Ethics Committee for their commitment and their dedication to the most difficult task in this place,” Durenberger told his colleagues from the Senate floor following the vote.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), currently the Senate’s youngest member, was three years old at the time.
‘Different set of rules’
Senators maintain the two chamber’s ethical standards are on different planes. They say it’s like comparing apples to, well, the House of Representatives.
For starters, the House doesn’t allow outside parties to initiate ethics complaints, while the Senate does, argues Cornyn of Texas.
“So just a different set of rules,” Cornyn said.
Cornyn loves throwing the book at the deserving, he maintains. Before coming to Congress, he served as an
associate justice of the Texas Supreme Court. He also served as the Lone Star State’s attorney general under then-Govs. George W. Bush and Rick Perry.
The Senate Ethics Committee isn’t just about crime — of which there’s been a lot of on Capitol Hill — it also acts as a guide to senators, Cornyn said.
“To keep us ethical, hopefully,” Cornyn said. “Hopefully to provide guidance, so that people don't get in trouble in the first place. That's, I think, one of the roles.”
Raw Story asked Cornyn what its like serving with Menendez, noting that the
allegations against him — fraud, conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit extortion — are quite serious.
“I’m a believer that there's a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, so we'll wait and see how that process plays out,” Cornyn said. “I'm sure it's a miserable experience.”
Misery loves company. And, unlike Santos, who’s busy
photobombing Trump victory parties, Menendez remains in office and has lots of Senate colleagues keeping him relatively warm these days.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) literally ran away from Raw Story's reporter, who was asking her about the comments she made about Jan. 6 attackers.
In a lighthearted conversation with a reporter, Stefanik was asked about being a possible Donald Trump running mate. Her response was silence. The two walked together "awkwardly" through the Capitol tunnel, Raw Story's Matt Laslo relayed.
There was a single vote in the House Thursday and members meandered on and off the floor. Some walked through the Cannon House Office Building tunnel, casually shooting the breeze with reporters.
"Do you think there are still Jan. 6 hostages?" Raw Story asked.
That's when she whipped out her cell phone.
"I'm going to vote. This is about to close," Stefanik complained.
In reality, they were only about halfway through a 15-minute vote.
Stefanik raced away, putting her cell phone away once she fled from the reporter.
Ahead of the vote, about five other lawmakers fearlessly spoke to Raw Story about Taylor Swift, George Santos' ethics questions and even the recent UFO hearings.
"The reality is that most of the alleged rioters, particularly those charged with misdemeanors like parading through the Capitol, have been released pending trial," the NBC report explained after her controversial comments. "The overwhelming majority of those incarcerated have either pleaded guilty to crimes or been found guilty by juries. Others were ordered held pretrial because they presented a threat to the public, violated pre-trial conditions, or are considered a flight risk."
The husband of staunch anti-abortion Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) sold up to $15,000 of stock in a biotechnology company that uses human embryonic stem cells for medical treatments — at the same time she and her husband are suing the government over the use of stem cells in developing COVID-19 vaccines, according to a Raw Story analysis of federal financial records.
Luna reported the Jan. 2 sale of stock in Lineage Cell Therapeutics, valued between $1,001 and $15,000, according to a Jan. 29 financial disclosure report.
In June, Raw Story first reported on her husband’s ownership of the stock in the California-based company that uses “specialized, terminally-differentiated human cells,” to treat traumatic injuries, degenerative diseases and cancers, according to its website.
Concurrently, Luna and her husband, Andrew Gamberzky, are alleging in a lawsuit that the government violated their religious beliefs by requiring military members to get COVID-19 vaccines, some of which were developed using fetal cell lines.
Luna’s congressional office did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
Luna spokeswoman Edie Heipel previously toldRaw Story that Luna’s anti-abortion stances are “blatantly clear" and that the congresswoman “has no and has never had affiliation" with Lineage Cell Therapeutics "to include owning stock." Heipel did not respond to several follow-up questions, including why Luna's husband purchased Lineage Cell Therapeutics stock, what she thinks of her husband's stock holding and whether he planned to sell it.
“Hypocrisy is the name of the game for Anna Paulina Luna,” said Lauryn Fanguen, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in response to Raw Story’s investigation last month. Time and time again she says one thing and does another, lining her own pockets along the way. It’s hardly shocking how quickly Luna’s supposed deeply-held moral beliefs fall away when there’s a profit to be made.”
The lawsuit against the government
Luna and Gamberzky are suing the National Guard Bureau, Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force and Oregon Department of Military. They allege “significant financial injury” upon Gamberzky’s resignation from the Oregon Air National Guard over his objection to getting the COVID-19 vaccine “based on his sincerely held religious beliefs,” the lawsuit said.
“Plaintiff is unable to receive any of the COVID-19 vaccines due to what they believe and understand is a connection between these vaccines and their testing, development, or production using fetal cell lines,” Raw Story reported from the lawsuit.
The lawsuit continued: “Plaintiffs hold the sincere religious belief that they must not take anything into their bodies that God has forbidden or that would alter their body functions, such as by inducing the production of a spike protein in a manner not designed by God.”
According to UCLA Health, “The COVID-19 vaccines do not contain aborted fetal cells. However, Johnson & Johnson did use fetal cell lines — not fetal tissue — when developing and producing their vaccine, while Pfizer and Moderna used fetal cell lines to test their vaccines and make sure that they work.”
The National Academy of Sciences states that “cell lines are established by culturing fetal cells in such a way that they continue growing and multiplying in laboratory dishes.”
Luna’s pro-life and anti-stem cell stance
Luna called the use of stem cells for research “morally wrong” and “no better than the Nazis” in terms of human testing, Raw Story reported.
Back in 2019, Luna wrote on Facebook that pro-choice and “pro-woman arguments” are “b-------,” and “abortion was never intended for women’s rights,” but rather “born in eugenics.”
WASHINGTON — If the titans of Silicon Valley have blood on their hands — as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday — then how much blood is on federal lawmakers’ hands for congressional inaction on measures to protect the nation’s children online?
Raw Story posed that question to 15 members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee as they exited their high profile hearing with the heads of TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, X (formerly Twitter) and Meta where senators, like Graham, the committee’s top Republican, blamed the CEOs for the issue Congress has yet to address.
“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands,” Graham said as the room erupted with applause.
Graham's argument: Social media companies have failed to adequately combat online sex predators, bullies and harassers, as well as the proliferation of content that glorifies violence, exacerbates eating disorders and elevates unrealistic beauty standards."
Raw Story caught up with Graham in the hall outside the hearing, and offered his accusation back to him as a question.
“If there’s blood on their hands,” we inquired, “how much blood is on Congress’ hands for inaction?”
“It's fair to say that we need to do better. Yes, absolutely. I think you can say it eventually becomes our problem,” Graham told Raw Story.
Graham says the solution is easy: Pass the legislation he wrote with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to set up a new regulatory commission overseeing Big Tech.
“It’s very simple: Let them be sued,” Graham said. “Pass the bills. Pass a regulatory commission.”
It’s not that easy though, or so it seems from the deafening sound – and empty feeling – of congressional inaction for years on end.
In 2021, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen warned Congress “lives were in danger,” while also divulging thousands of pages of internal documents to back up her dire warnings.
Last year, Haugen’s testimony was supported by a second Meta whistleblower, Arturo Bejar, who testified that he warned Zuckerberg and other executives – “they knew and they were not acting on it” – about the pitfalls of the platform to teens and children to no avail.
Congress, however, has taken no significant action.
‘For good or for evil’
In his opening remarks Wednesday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) touted five measures that have passed out of his committee aimed at protecting kids online.
They include slapping an up to $850,000 fine on tech companies that fail to report child sexual abuse content and giving the Department of Justice enhanced prosecutorial tools to go after those who spread child porn online.
But Durbin didn’t mention that the measures have languished, never coming before the entire Senate for a vote.
Blood on Congress’ hands?
“We've tackled this markup a year ago, so this hearing is a follow-up for that,” Durbin – the whip or number two most powerful Democrat in the Senate – told Raw Story.
“But it’s never seen the light of day on the floor?” Raw Story pressed.
“Not yet,” Durbin said.
So, when will it?
Crickets from Durbin.
There will be blood
Many senators on the Judiciary Committee disagreed with Graham’s characterization — at least when the charge of “blood on your hands” was leveled at Congress.
“I don’t necessarily think of it, or express it, in that way,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) told Raw Story. “But we all have responsibility, and to the extent we can change the laws that will provide safety for our children, then that’s what we should do.”
It wasn’t just Democrats — who are in the majority and thus control votes on the Senate floor — who took umbrage with the characterization and question of Congress having blood on its hands.
“I don’t think that’s helpful,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told Raw Story. “As you know, social media can be used for good or for evil, and that’s a huge challenge.”
One member of Graham’s party asked not to be named so he could candidly discuss his colleague.
“It’s very productive for getting attention, but I don't like it,” the senior Republican senator on the Judiciary Committee told Raw Story. “I certainly don't buy the idea that blood is on our hands for not prohibiting something, particularly something that does have legitimate uses.”
“I don’t have anything for you on that,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Raw Story before the senator answered a question from a television crew.
Defensiveness aside, many members of the Judiciary Committee admitted Congress’ culpability.
“We’ve got some responsibility,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) told Raw Story.
Blood on Congress’ hands?
“That's a great question,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Raw Story. “We ought to do something … We need to vote.”
Hawley — who’s usually anti-regulation — has been one of the Senate’s most vocal advocates for policing Silicon Valley firms, especially when it comes to children who he’s proposed not be allowed on social media until they hit 16 years old.
Being pro-business, to Hawley, does not mean letting tech titans pave their own digital superhighways.
“Their view is, they’re for regulation, if they can write the regulation,” Hawley said. “I've just become — after working on this now for five years — I've become convinced that the best way to drive change is to allow people to get into a courtroom. That’s the key thing. It's what they hate. That's what they want the least. They would rather a new agency, than have the courtroom doors opened up to private citizens.”
Hawley’s been lonely for much of those five years, but these days — after two Meta whistleblowers in three years have captured Congress’ attention — other Republicans agree Congress is complicit in hurting children and has therefore stained its hands.
“I think through inaction, it’s a shared responsibility,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told Raw Story.
Time to un-friend?
While Big Tech has dropped tens of millions of dollars on lobbying efforts to defeat proposed regulations, Tillis is not alone in arguing that the companies need to change their tune before Congress is forced to change it for them.
“The industry needs to stop looking at safety as a competitive advantage and come up with a collaboration that they all use,” Tillis said. “I think the industry needs to realize you, you need to compete on features, you should all be looking for the same norm in terms of community safety.”
Blood on Congress’ hands? Some Republicans say they’re in the minority so don’t look at them.
“At the end of the day, Chuck Schumer controls what goes to the floor, and at least so far, he has not been willing to move this legislation. It should move,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Raw Story.
Schumer’s office didn’t reply to a request for comment on if — or when — measures aimed at protecting children’s privacy online may hit the Senate floor this year. But his rank-and-file believe this – just as last year was and the year before that – is the year.
“Leader Schumer has committed that he will work with us in bringing this bill and others to the floor,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told Raw Story. “Hopefully as soon as possible but before the election.”
As for whether Congress is covered in the same blood in which Silicon Valley is now — according to Graham — covered?
“Congress has a responsibility to act, and it must act,” Blumenthal said. “I’m not talking about blood on people’s hands, I'm talking about a basic responsibility.”
A thief nabbed a $3,000 check sent by a political committee led by former House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — the latest instance in an epidemic of thefts involving political committees, according to a Raw Story review of federal campaign records.
The committee paid the photographer, Doug Coulter, the $2,936.38 he was owed on Aug. 9, 2023, and the committee's bank provided reimbursement for the fraudulently cashed check on Oct. 19, 2023, according to the report.
The campaign committee did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
McCarthy, who was ousted as House speaker last year, submitted his resignation from Congress at the end of December 2023.
The McCarthy Victory Fund — a joint fundraising committee that benefits McCarthy’s campaign committee, his leadership political action committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee — still reported more than $950,000 in cash as of Dec. 31.
Political committee theft epidemic
This is hardly the first time thieves ripped off a political fundraising committee.
Over the past year, Raw Story reported that scammers stole millions of donor dollars combined from dozens of political campaign committees — which have experienced varying levels of success in recouping the stolen funds.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s political action committee reported theft of nearly $4,700 due to fraudulent checks in December, and the Oregon Republican Party was the victim of a fake check scam last summer.
Last year, the FEC questioned the campaign of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) about the fraudulent use of her campaign credit card by far-right agitator Milo Yiannopoulos, who purchased a campaign website domain for rapper Kanye West using Greene’s donor dollars, Raw Story reported.
In May, Raw Story reported that the Managed Funds Association PAC was targeted more than 20 times between Jan. 1 and March 31, initially losing $147,000 in fraudulent check payments, although it appeared to have since recouped the money, according to filings with the FEC.
The Retired Americans PAC, a super PAC that supports Democrats, recouped more than $150,000 it lost in late 2022 after paying fraudulent bills sent to the committee, according to an April 21 letter to the Federal Election Commission, Raw Story reported.
The FBI got involved when Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) was the victim of a cybertheft incident late last year that initially cost his campaign $690,000.
The problem isn’t unique to Republicans: In November 2022, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s campaign fell victim to check fraud worth $10,085, Raw Story reported, and President Joe Biden’s 2020 Democratic presidential campaign committee lost at least $71,000, according to Business Insider.
The political action committees of Google, National Association of Manufacturers, Consumer Technology Association, National Air Traffic Controllers Association, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, MoveOn.org, and law firms Akerman LLP and Blank Rome LLP have also experienced theft of various kinds, ranging from cyber theft to forgeries and check tampering, according to Business Insider.
Bikers for Trump, the group Donald Trump once bragged would get “tough” on his political enemies, is looking weak on its balance sheet.
Very.
A news Federal Election Commission filing indicates Bikers for Trump is more than $50,000 in debt with less than $2,900 in available cash, as of December 31.
What began as motorcycle riders supporting a political candidate morphed into bikers serving as a self-styled security force for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign events.
By 2017, Bikers for Trump established a federal political action committee and began raising money. Trump personally visited with Bikers for Trump as president. Chris Cox, the organization’s founder, has a photo with Trump in the Oval Office featured on his Facebook page.
But today, the Bikers for Trump website is woefully out of date, with a plea on its homepage to “draft” Trump for president in 2024. (Trump announced he was running in November 2022.)
The Bikers for Trump PAC timeline on X, formerly Twitter, hasn’t had a post since September 2022, although the Bikers for Trump page on Facebook features recent posts lauding the former president.
Cox couldn’t be reached for comment. A voicemail message left at a phone number on one of the group’s FEC filings was not immediately returned. The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to Wednesday’s FEC filing, Bikers for Trump owes $50,022 to Infocision Inc., of Akron, Ohio, a call center company with a political fundraising service.
Bikers for Trump reported $7,690 worth of income for the second half of 2023.
More than $2,000 of that came from Right Country Lists of Alexandria, Va., a company that sells access to mailing and text lists.
Just two people contributed more than $200 to Bikers for Trump during the second half of 2023, according to the organization’s financial disclosure.
Its biggest single expense during the second half of 2023: $1,600 in salary payments to Cox.
“It’s Josh Hawley. Do you have a second to pray with me?” reads the message sent today from the first-term U.S. senator and Donald Trump loyalist.
Click on the link and it goes to “My prayer for today - January 30th, 2024.”
“... let truth and justice prevail in this land once again,” Hawley’s prayer reads.
“Bless America with Revival!” it continues.
But the Republican from Missouri, who’s up for reelection in November, has an ulterior motive: money.
In bold-faced type highlighted in yellow, Hawley then asks his backers: “Your support means the world to me, can I count on you?”
Listed are a series of suggested donations, ranging from $25 — “Help bring faith back to America” it says next to that figure — to $3,300.
Any contribution will go to Hawley’s reelection campaign, the fine print notes.
“I’m not shy about my strong faith,” Hawley writes. “I’m beyond proud to be a man of God. We need to bring FAITH back into our government and I’m hoping you’ll stand with me.”
Then he hits another hot button: “Woke liberals have already started to attack me.”
Hawley’s prayer is hardly the first time this campaign season that a MAGA-loving politico co-opted God in support of election goals. An extreme example came at a Donald Trump rally during October in Iowa, where pastor Joshua Graber asked God to “silence” critics of the Republican frontrunner for president and that the “horrendous actions against him and his family be exposed and struck down.”
Hawley’s Senate seat is rated “solid Republican” by the Cook Political Report.
His likely Democratic challenger, Lucas Kunce, touted a November poll from a primarily Democratic consulting firm showing him as only 4 percentage points behind Hawley — a gap within the polls margin of error. An October poll from Emerson College gave Hawley a double-digit lead.
Hawley is perhaps best known for pumping his fist in support of Jan. 6 insurrectionists and, when in potential danger from violence, running to safety.
Jared Young, an independent candidate running for Hawley’s Senate seat, wrote in the Kansas City Star that he gives Hawley a pass for running from what Young said was understandable concern.
But, Young added, “To someone like me who voted for Hawley in 2018, it is his actions in the weeksfollowing Jan. 6 that demonstrate he is completely unfit for his office.”
He continued, “For most Americans, Jan. 6 was a shocking and disturbing day. … But it wasn’t a wake-up call for Josh Hawley. … That is not what we heard from our senator. That is not what we heard from our senator. Instead, he doubled down and leaned into his role in the events of that day, believing it would endear him to the Republican primary voters he hopes will one day choose him as their presidential nominee.”
When Lincoln Memorial University received a $5,000 contribution in October, it came from a familiar source — the old campaign committee account of former Rep. John J. "Jimmy" Duncan, a Republican who last served in Congress five years ago.
Over the past 19 years, Duncan has given more than $48,000 in leftover campaign donations to Lincoln Memorial University, a private school in Harrogate, Tenn.
That money has helped sustain Lincoln Memorial University and the law school that bears Duncan's name, the John J. Duncan Jr. School of Law.
While federal law prohibits congressional candidates from using campaign cash for personal use, donor dollars may be given to charitable organizations, including nonprofit institutes of higher education.
But as Raw Storydetailed in-depth last year, campaign finance experts consider the practice as ethically murky when political donations — directly or indirectly — enhance former lawmakers’ legacies with “monuments to me.” It’s even more problematic, they say, when the lawmaker is still in office.
Raw Story reached out to Duncan’s campaign committee and separate political action committees to ask if the former congressman believes his one-time donors would approve — or even know about — their contributions being used to fund a law school that carries Duncan’s name. Neither committee responded.
According to Roll Call in 2009, the decision to name the law school after Duncan was unilaterally made by Pete DeBusk, a friend of Duncan’s who was serving as chair of Lincoln Memorial University's board of trustees.
“To my knowledge, there was no formal process in finding a name for that,” a school spokesperson told Roll Call at the time. “It was very informal. I don’t know that anyone else was considered.”
The law school is located in Knoxville, Tenn., which Duncan served as a congressman from 1988 to 2019. (His father, John Sr., held the congressional seat from 1965 until he died in 1988.) The Duncan School of Law ranks in the bottom 11 percent of law schools, according to the latest rankings by U.S. News & World Report.
The younger Duncan in part amassed a sizable campaign warchest because he did not have expensive, hard-fought election victories. Most of his elections were routs that Duncan won by as many as 87 percentage points. His closest election was his first — a win by 12 percentage points.
Duncan, now 76, left Congress with $656,257 in his campaign account, according to Federal Election Commission records. His campaign account still has nearly half a million dollars in it as of Dec. 31, FEC records indicate.
Duncan has kept his campaign committee open and technically active since leaving elected office, and there's little in federal law that compels him to shut this "zombiecommittee" down.
Duncan has several other options for his campaign committee's leftover money, including transferring it to other political committees, refunding donors, disgorging it to the U.S. Treasury's general fund and donating it to nonprofit organizations that don't maintain an entity named after the congressman.
Regular patronage
Duncan’s excess campaign money started flowing to Lincoln Memorial University in 2005 with relatively small donations to the school’s athletic department.
The donations came from Duncan for Congress and through his Road to Victory political action committee.
In 2009, the year the law school opened, Duncan for Congress gave $7,700 to Lincoln Memorial University.
Eventually, the donations went to the Lincoln Memorial University Duncan School of Law. That included a $10,000 donation in 2016 and $5,000 donations in 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023.
The total given to Lincoln Memorial from 2005 to 2023 was $48,125, according to federal records.
Duncan’s use of campaign money was called into question in 2017 by the Nashville Post, which detailed potentially inappropriate payments from the campaign to various family members of Duncan.
The publication said the payments “raise questions as to how much one family is profiting from its long-term grip on a congressional seat.”
Later that year, the Office of Congressional Ethics issued a report questioning Duncan’s campaign committee expenses, including $27,584 for sports and concert tickets and $24,000 for personal travel.
The Office of Congressional Ethics board voted 5-1 to refer the report to the House Committee on Ethics after it found ”substantial reason to believe that Rep. Duncan’s campaign committee and leadership PAC expended funds that were not attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes.”
Duncan denied the allegations in a letter to the committee submitted after he left office.
Duncan supported Donald Trump for president in 2016.
In an interview with NPR, when asked about Trump’s temperament, Duncan said, “I think that Donald Trump is a very nice man and because he hadn't run for office before that he at times maybe has overreacted to a little criticism.”
Independent presidential candidate Robert. F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign is defending the use of donor funds to pay Kennedy family members’ salaries, according to a Raw Story review of federal election records.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Kennedy, and the nephew of his wife, Jackson Hines, have appeared on the campaign’s payroll in recent months.
“Though Amaryllis and Jackson are family members of the candidate by marriage, their role is based on the functional business needs of the campaign and the work that they perform in the capacity of their role,” Team Kennedy Chief Operating Officer Matthew Sanders wrote to the Federal Election Commission on Jan. 19. “As shown above, Amaryllis and Jackson provided bona fide services to the campaign and the campaign's payments for their services were not in excess of fair market value.”
In a Jan. 9 letter to Team Kennedy, and first noted by CNBC, the FEC had questioned the campaign’s potential “personal use of the committee's campaign funds.”
Sanders explained that Amaryllis Kennedy — who he said previously worked as a head of product at Twitter and “built and sold a technology company” — switched from a Kennedy campaign volunteer to its chief of digital operations in May 2023.
She was then promoted in August 2023 to senior policy and strategic adviser as she “quickly began filling in political strategy gaps with her research and analysis of election data along with her policy research,” Sanders said.
The campaign paid Amaryllis Kennedy about $70,000 between June and October 2023, according to federal records.
“The Campaign Manager indicated Amaryllis Kennedy had been acting in this role during the June and July timeframe and so was entitled to back pay that came with the promotion. The pay was in line with industry benchmarks and other committee campaign filings,” Sanders wrote to Shannon Ringgold, a senior campaign finance analyst for the FEC.
The Jan. 19 letter from Team Kennedy to the FEC also noted that the Kennedy campaign hired Hines to serve as a travel aide and bodyguard. Hines began work on Sept. 25, 2023, after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “tried two other resources over the previous four months that had not suited his needs.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is married to TV director and actor Cheryl Hines.
The Team Kennedy campaign did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
In response to questions from Raw Story, Judith Ingram, an FEC spokesperson, referred to a 2001 FEC letter to then-Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) about using campaign funds to pay his wife as a consultant. The FEC advised that salary payments to family members are permissible so long as they’re for "bona fide, campaign related services.”
“If a family member provides bona fide services to the campaign, any salary payment in excess of the fair market value of the services provided is personal use,” according to the Code of Federal Regulations.
“We cannot comment on specific candidates or committees,” Ingram told Raw Story via email.
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has repeatedly spread misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, is running for president as an independent after initially registering as a Democratic opponent to President Joe Biden.
One in five voters surveyed by Monmouth University said they would consider voting for Kennedy in the general election, according to a December 2023 report.
Kennedy is the son of the late-Attorney General and Sen. Bobby Kennedy and nephew of the late-President John F. Kennedy and late-Sen. Ted Kennedy.
WASHINGTON — We’re in the midst of the first deepfake election in U.S. history, and, if Congress keeps up at its current pace, expect to be bombarded with disinformation guised as the nation’s politicians.
"Republicans have been trying to push nonpartisan and Democratic voters to participate in their primary,” some New Hampshire voters heard a voice strikingly similar to President Joe Biden saying when they picked up their phone ahead of Tuesday’s primary. “What a bunch of malarkey.”
The generative AI-assisted fake president was convincing enough to alarm members of Congress who’ve been asleep at the digital wheel, but, now that we’re in the throes of the 2024 election, passing any election related measures has only gotten more difficult, which means this year’s real election may prove to be the fakest contest in history.
Realistically faking the president’s voice was surely a wake-up call in the Senate.
“I think all of us paid a lot of attention to that and we have members who've been warning about it for a while,” Sen. Tom Kaine (D-VA) told Raw Story at the Capitol this week.
Senators took notice, but that doesn’t mean senators are acting.
“I haven't heard discussion of Senate action about it,” Kaine said.
New Hampshire officials are investigating who made the Biden deepfake and whether it was an illegal attempt to depress voter turnout using artificial intelligence. By definition, a deepfake is an “image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said,” according to Merriam-Webster.
While the Biden deepfake could be the handiwork of a foreign actor — think Russia or even North Korea — generative AI platforms such as Chat GTP are now accessible to all people. Both major political parties would be foolish not to be experimenting with how the new tech, which is revolutionizing everything from wars to the workplace, can give them an electoral assist.
But with that opportunity comes great risk. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump learned that in December, when a shady, scammy business entity used an almost pitch-perfect replica of the former president’s voice to hawk Trump-themed — and unauthorized — “gold bars,” Raw Story revealed.
And that is what’s complicating congressional action.
“There's plenty of impetus to act, the problem is that people will act according to what's in their interests, you know, at the moment. So is there a broader impetus to act? I don’t know,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told Raw Story. “I don't think anybody likes it.”
Last year, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tried to compel senators to focus on generative AI. Schumer and a bipartisan group of senators even hosted rare all-Senate briefings that tackled AI issues. (The briefings were closed-press — and thus, closed to the public.
After those briefings — which included one classified briefing — Schumer and Co. hosted a series of AI forums, which were also closed to the press corps and public, even as the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and other titans of tech were, quite literally, seated at the head table — or dais, such as it was. Senators, meanwhile, sat in the audience looking more like middle schoolers than policy makers (at least for the minute or so photographers were allowed in at the top of the secret meeting).
With sarcasm dripping from his voice, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Raw Story: “All those forums, they were critical. That really built momentum. It's important to have those cocktail parties with all of the biggest companies in the world, because they always want us to take action.
“Those were a total joke,” Hawley added, all but rolling his eyes.
Pre-Chat GPT, Hawley was one of the loudest voices on Capitol Hill calling to overhaul the internet. He wanted to end the blanket protection from prosecutions tech companies are afforded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which shields websites from the content others publish in them.
Now, Hawley says the threat of lawsuits would force Silicon Valley’s finest to fall in line and finally police their content for, say, child porn and AI-driven deepfakes alike.
“We need a change in legislation to make it clear that AI companies cannot hide behind Section 230,” Hawley said.
Hawley says the Biden deeepfake in New Hampshire is nothing compared to what’s coming ahead of elections in November.
“The voice is bad, but the videos are going to be really bad because they're at a point … I mean, you can't tell the difference. A lot of them now they're gonna get better and better and better, more and more quickly, and when you add the voice with the video, I mean, it's gonna be impossible for people not to know,” Hawley said.
So why hasn’t Congress acted?
“The companies,” Hawley said. “What’s going to have to happen is public outrage.”
And those tech companies surely have allies in Congress, including the relatively powerful ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
While many AI innovators — such as Chat GPT founder Sam Altman, to name one of many — have called for smart, proactive AI regulations, Cruz and other Republicans reject calls for new regulations for these new, ever-evolving technologies.
“If the Democrats push through restrictions on innovation and AI, it would be disastrous for America,” Cruz told Raw Story last year after leaving one of Schumer’s AI briefings.
While Hawley and others on the Senate Judiciary Committee have focused on the broader battle to unwind Silicon Valley’s current litigation shield, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is the main sponsor of an effort aimed specifically at combating deepfakes.
“I guess it's gotten front page interest now,” Klobuchar told Raw Story. “This is what I've said — hair on fire. We can't wait until next year to get this done. This is just going to keep happening.”
Klobuchar’s measure is the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act, which would outlaw fake AI generated content.
While state officials hope to prosecute the presidential spoofer in New Hampshire, Klobuchar argued that if her measure was law, the Department of Justice would also have a role to play in the investigation.
“It would have been banned,” Klobuchar said. “So at least going into it, people that might think that they could participate in something like that would know that it was against the law from the very beginning.”
While Congress has dithered, Klobuchar says some states are being proactive.
“They've done it in states blue and red. They've done it in Texas like that, but those things only apply to state campaigns,” Klobuchar said, adding that she hopes it can be taken up alone or as a part of a broader — and yet to crafted or introduced — AI measure. “That’s why this has got to be a priority in our AI legislation is doing it on its own or doing it as part of a package.”
Much of the focus in the media, and even among lawmakers, has been on watermarking AI generated content — think of it as a permanent digital stamp so anyone can trace the origins of suspect online material.
But Klobuchar says that only goes so far.
“That is not going to be enough, you're not going to have a fake Joe Biden make a call — or a fake Donald Trump — and then at the end, you go, ‘Oh, by the way, this was created by AI.’ It's just, it's not gonna work,” Klobuchar said. “So that's why you have to ban the actual deepfakes.”
Klobuchar says there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, either.
“TV does this all the time. TV decides there's ads they can allow, they look at them and say ‘do they meet the FCC standards or not?’” Klobuchar said. “Well, this would be the same kind of thing for deepfakes.”
Thing is, senators were warned — if behind closed doors — about the potential for a tidal wave of deepfakes.
“We could all predict that this was going to happen, so I hope that this will be a bipartisan effort to make sure that people are not lied to in this way. It’s terrible,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) told Raw Story. “Since it's already upon us, we should do something about it to prevent this kind of abuse.”
While being in the midst of the 2024 election makes naysayers dismiss the efforts chances of passing this year, Hirono says the opposite should be true.
“I should think that there's more of an imperative to do something about it,” Hirono said.
U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) gives a thumbs-up outside the Capitol after voting to continue funding the government for 45 days. Philip Yabut/Shutterstock
George Santos yelling at reporters (C-SPAN).