Rape Allegation Against Moms for Liberty Is Starting to Cost Them

A local chapter of the far-right Moms for Liberty has taken a step back from its national entity amid a swirling rape allegation against the husband of one of the group’s co-founders.

The Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, chapter announced Monday that it will distance itself from its parent organization, citing a difference in values.

“The journey has always been the strength of our local community and we found all the support we need among us,” chapter chair Clarissa Paige told The News Item on Monday. “We are going to continue to champion parental rights with dignity and integrity.”

Last week, Florida GOP Chair Christian Ziegler, the husband of Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman involved in threesomes with him and his wife.

The rape accusation became public after the Florida Center for Government Accountability published an explosive report that included a heavily redacted police report and search warrant affidavits detailing the assault.

“It’s hard to advocate for parental rights when the co-founder is caught up in the scandal,” Paige told The News Item. “Our values are not aligning with the national organization.”

The Ziegler couple are rising stars in the Florida GOP who seem unlikely to keel to the allegations. Christian Ziegler has rejected calls for his resignation, refusing to give up his seat at the helm of the state’s conservative party.

Meanwhile, Bridget Ziegler has been personally endorsed and backed several times by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, including for a school board seat and an appointment to a state board that oversees the special district previously run by Disney World. That’s in large part due to her vocal opposition to progressive education policies, including critical race theory and LGBTQ+ friendly policies. Zeigler has said she aims to bring “religious values” to public schools that are “indoctrination centers for the radical left.”

Yet her stringent moral values appear set on restricting everyone’s sexualities except her own.

“As leaders in the Florida GOP and Moms for Liberty, the Zieglers have made a habit out of attacking anything they perceive as going against ‘family values’—be it reproductive rights or the existence of LGBTQ+ Floridians,” said Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried in a statement. “The level of hypocrisy in this situation is stunning.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson just accidentally obliterated the Republican Party’s favorite conspiracy theory: that the January 6 insurrection was carried out by undercover federal agents and members of antifa.

Johnson told a press conference Tuesday that the GOP is editing footage of the insurrection to prevent the Justice Department from potentially identifying rioters.

“We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ,” he said.

And with just one sentence, Johnson has given away the entire game. Republicans have spent the past nearly three years insisting that the riot was caused by antifa, Black Lives Matter protesters, and even undercover FBI agents. But if that’s true, then why would the GOP want to shield those people from identification?

Republicans have thrown out conspiracy after conspiracy in an attempt to divert blame from their supporters—so much so that it’s hard to capture the full scale of it in this piece. In 2021, Texas Representative Louie Gohmert said that federal agents had embedded in extremist groups and then “egged on” rioters to incite the January 6 attack.

Just last month, Representative Clay Higgins said “ghost buses” packed with “FBI informants” descended on Washington, D.C., the night of January 5, so they could pretend to be supporters of Donald Trump.

One Trump supporter, Ray Epps, sued Fox News in July for defamation. Prominent right-wing figures on the network, including former Fox host Tucker Carlson, repeatedly claimed Epps was an FBI agent.

In reality, hundreds of people arrested for participating in the January 6 attack said they went to Washington because they felt Trump had personally told them to. And now, Johnson has revealed that Republicans don’t want any more people who tried to overthrow the government to face any repercussions.

Before joining Congress, Representative Mike Johnson was a lawyer for conservative Christian causes. And one of his regular clients was a violent radical Christian activist who described himself and Johnson as “brothers.”

Johnson worked for years alongside anti-gay activist and former radical Christian preacher Grant Storms, The Daily Beast reported Tuesday. Storms told the Beast that Johnson had done copious amounts of legal work for him in the early to mid-2000s, all for free.

“We were brothers on the path,” Storms told the Beast. “He always had our back.”

Storms met Johnson in the early 2000s when the latter was working at Alliance Defending Freedom, the far-right Christian group that has recently sought to ban the abortion medication mifepristone and public drag performances. Johnson worked at the ADF for nearly a decade.

Storms initially reached out for help removing what he called “lewd” imagery from a bus station ad. He claimed the ad included an image of men having sex.

Johnson continued working with Storms after that, and he helped convince New Orleans officials to grant Storms a permit for a protest against an annual Pride celebration. Storms’s protest ended up getting national attention when an anti-gay protester attempted to murder a man with a steak knife. Storms said the attacker was not part of his organization, but the assailant later told police he went to Storms’s event because he wanted to “kill a gay man.”

Johnson represented Storms a few more times until 2005, when Storms said they lost touch. But just four years later, Johnson represented Storms’s son Jason in a violent anti-abortion case.

Jason Storms is the head of Operation Save America, one of the largest—if not the largest—militant anti-abortion groups in the country. The group made national headlines in 2009 when it was linked to the murder of Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas abortion provider. The group, then called Operation Rescue, said the killer was not a member. But he had been in touch with an Operation Rescue official about Tiller’s whereabouts.

That same year, Johnson represented Jason Storms and several other anti-abortion extremists, arguing their free speech rights had been violated when a federal court barred them from protesting outside abortion clinics.

Jason Storms also participated in the January 6 insurrection—almost fitting given that Johnson led the amicus brief that more than 100 Republicans signed in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

It is, unfortunately, no longer a shock that Johnson supports far-right beliefs. He has described abortion as a “holocaust,” blamed the fall of Rome on LGBTQ people, and cited the “great replacement theory,” the far-right theory that white people are being replaced by nonwhite immigrants. Johnson flies a Christian nationalist flag outside his office and speaks regularly at far-right events.

But it is shocking—and terrifying—that Johnson is able to espouse these beliefs with no pushback on Capitol Hill. His ideological leanings suggest that the issues he supports and plans to prioritize in legislation will stray further and further into the fringes. And that could come at the cost of democracy.

Republicans are leaving nothing up to interpretation. On Tuesday, Speaker Mike Johnson unequivocally admitted that the conservative party is doctoring footage of the January 6 insurrection to prevent the identification of the rioters in an investigation by the Justice Department.

“We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ,” Johnson said.

“That’s a slow process to get it done, we’re working steadily on it. We’ve hired additional personnel to do that and all of those tapes ultimately will be out so everybody can see them and draw their own conclusions,” he added.

The blur could also be an attempt to stop armchair sleuths on the internet from identifying the rioters—a process that could help expedite the lengthy investigation required to process more than 40,000 hours of footage and put names and histories to the 2,000 rioters in attendance that day.

Johnson previously claimed he would release the footage so people could see for themselves what happened on January 6. But apparently, he didn’t mean without edits.

Liz Cheney is dishing everything Donald Trump–related in a new book—including details on a phone call that unraveled a “chilling” plan to stop Vice President Mike Pence from ratifying the election, mere days before January 6.

“I had heard, obviously, there had been talk about having these electors meet, but it wasn’t clear to me what the contours of this particular part of the plan were until I got onto that phone call,” Cheney said on The Rachel Maddow Show.

“Listening to them describe how these fake electors would be used, and the fact that they anticipated that Vice President Pence was going to use them to count legitimate electors, was certainly a moment of intense concern,” she added.

As Cheney tells it, she “ran” to the Office of the Parliamentarian of the House to inform them, but little could be done by then.

“If you’re in a joint session of Congress, you’re not in a position where there are a lot of legislative steps that you can take except to basically move to adjourn, so it was a very dangerous and chilling moment,” Cheney said. “I learned later through the investigation that Vice President Pence and his counsel were having discussions with the Senate parliamentarian and that the vice president ultimately, of course, did his duty bravely.”

Cheney’s latest book, Oath and Honor, comes paired with the news that the former Wyoming representative is weighing the possibility of running as a third-party candidate in the 2024 presidential election—a choice that could skim some moderate Republican votes away from Trump.

“Several years ago, I would not have contemplated a third-party run,” Cheney told The Washington Post. “I happen to think democracy is at risk at home, obviously, as a result of Donald Trump’s continued grip on the Republican Party, and I think democracy is at risk internationally as well.”

During an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning, Cheney warned that the U.S. would be “sleepwalking into dictatorship” if it chose to reelect Trump for a second term. She has also come down on Speaker Mike Johnson’s new role as the highest serving member of the House, noting that she would not want to see Johnson in a leadership position come 2025.

“What I learned was he was willing to do things he knew to be wrong in order to placate Donald Trump,” Cheney told Maddow on Monday. “And again, a situation where you have a speaker of the House, who … so clearly set aside what he knew to be the facts, what he knew to be the law, what he knew to be our obligations under the Constitution in order to try to help Donald Trump in his efforts in 2020.”

Representative James Comer is doubling down on his claim that Hunter Biden repaying his father for a loan is proof that the president is corrupt.

Comer, who has spearheaded the investigation into the Biden family, released more of Hunter’s bank records on Monday, claiming they showed illicit payments to his father, Joe Biden. In reality, the documents likely showed repayments for a truck.

But Comer remained adamant that Hunter paying his father back in any form meant Biden had benefited from his son’s overseas business.

“You can loan people money. If they pay you back, then you benefited directly from the influence-peddling!” Comer insisted on Newsmax Monday night.

The Kentucky Republican also claimed no one in his family repays him after he loans money. “When my son needs help, or my daughter, who’s in college, needs it, I just give her money. Nobody ever pays me back!” Comer said.

Comer made no mention of his own business deals with his brother, which reportedly include Comer loaning his brother Chad $200,000 in 2019. His brother repaid him through land swaps.

The bank record released Monday shows Hunter transferred $1,380 to his father in September 2018, when Joe Biden was not in office. Comer’s accompanying press release does not mention that Hunter made only two additional payments to his father in the same amount, on October 15, 2018, and November 15, 2018—a total of less than $4,500.

Comer also does not mention the previously reported emails from Hunter’s laptop that indicate those transfers were paying his father back for a pickup truck. Instead, he makes it seem that Hunter has been making shady monthly payments to his father for years.

Republicans have claimed for months that Biden has benefited from his son’s foreign business dealings, but they have yet to produce any actual evidence of wrongdoing by the president. Ranking Oversight Committee Member Jamie Raskin slammed Comer for pushing the loan repayment as proof.

“Chair Comer is digging up old public reporting, distorting the facts, and presenting it as ‘breaking news,’” Raskin said on X (formerly Twitter).

“If Chairman Comer had any actual evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, he would not repeatedly resort to distorting the facts and recycling Trump-Giuliani conspiracy theories.”

A new House resolution condemning antisemitism isn’t quite what it seems.

House Resolution 894 doesn’t simply call for the public denouncement of antisemitic behavior. It also equates any and all anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

The four-page resolution “clearly and firmly” cements the false conflation that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” That would plaster any Jewish anti-Zionist as an antisemite, and would likely warrant character attacks on any lawmaker who objects to the current iteration of the bill.

The resolution, which could be voted on as soon as this week, condemns not just the October 7 assault that claimed 1,200 Israeli lives but also popular chants utilized by peaceful protesters that are plainly protected by the First Amendment, including “From the River to the Sea,” “Palestine Will Be Free,” and “Gaza Will Win.”

The resolution blatantly vilifies pro-Palestinian sentiment, including calls for the end of Israel’s 56-year occupation in the Middle Eastern country. As one example, it mischaracterizes a protest and candlelight vigil at the Democratic National Committee headquarters last month as “endangering” people’s lives.

As of Monday, more than 15,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed in the conflict since the initial attack by Hamas, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Fighting resumed on Friday after a weeklong truce to exchange hostages. Since then, an additional 800 Palestinians have been killed in a weekend ground offensive headed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza.

Meanwhile, Americans overwhelmingly support a cease-fire in the war-torn region. Last month, an Economist/YouGov poll indicated that 65 percent of surveyed Americans wanted a cease-fire, while only 16 percent said they didn’t.

Money poses another issue. While Congress battles to pass a foreign aid package to Israel, just 32 percent of Americans felt that the current level of aid to the right-wing government should continue, while 23 percent said they wanted less.

Newly ousted Representative George Santos already has a new job: making videos on Cameo. And at least there’s proof of this latest addition to his résumé.

Cameo is a website where people can pay for a personalized video from their favorite celebrities. Santos, who has dubbed himself a “former congressional ‘icon,’” is charging $200 for a video or just $10 for a personalized message.

In one of his first videos on Cameo, Santos says, “They can boot me out of Congress, but they can’t take away my good humor or my larger than life personality, nor my good faith and the absolute pride I have for everything I’ve done.”

Santos does not specify what he means by “everything I’ve done,” but if he’s referring to his work in Congress, then perhaps he should have less pride in it. During his 11 months on Capitol Hill, Santos introduced 40 bills or resolutions. All of them died in committee without a vote.

Santos also co-sponsored 152 bills. The only one that became law was an act creating a commemorative coin for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps.

Santos did, however, lie about his professional, academic, and athletic background. He has falsely claimed that his grandparents were Holocaust survivors, his mother died in the 9/11 attacks, and four of his employees were killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting. He also lied about founding an animal rescue charity and producing the disastrous Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

He was federally charged with 23 counts of various types of financial fraud. Santos pleaded not guilty to the initial 13 in May, and he has denied the additional 10 that were filed in October in a superseding indictment. Earlier this year, he agreed to a deal with Brazilian authorities investigating him for financial fraud so he could avoid prosecution.

Santos did become the sixth member of Congress ever expelled, when his colleagues finally gave him the boot on Friday. A House Ethics Report revealed Santos repeatedly used his campaign to solicit donations, only to use that money for personal expenses, including buying designer goods and makeup, getting cosmetic procedures, and “smaller purchases at OnlyFans.”

Santos told reporters last week that he plans to write a book and wouldn’t rule out a turn on the reality competition show Dancing With the Stars. But for now, he’s just on Cameo.

If you buy a Cameo video for him, though, maybe try to avoid giving him your credit card information directly. You could end up like Representative Max Miller.

House Republicans released more of Hunter Biden’s bank records on Monday, claiming they showed illicit payments to his father, Joe Biden. In reality, the documents likely showed repayments for a truck.

Republicans have claimed for months that Biden has benefited from his son’s foreign business dealings, but they have yet to produce any actual evidence of wrongdoing by the president. Monday’s revelation appeared to be yet another major miss.

“Today, the House Oversight Committee is releasing subpoenaed bank records that show Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden,” Representative James Comer, who chairs the committee and has spearheaded the investigation into the Bidens, said in a video.

“This wasn’t a payment from Hunter Biden’s personal account but an account for his corporation that received payments from China and other shady corners of the world.”

The payments did come from an account linked to Owasco, a company Hunter Biden set up to handle income from foreign business deals. The Oversight Committee released one bank statement showing Owasco transferred $1,380 to Joe Biden on September 17, 2018—when Biden was not in office.

What Comer does not say is that Hunter made only two additional payments to his father in the same amount, on October 15, 2018, and November 15, 2018, a committee aide told the Washington Examiner, speaking anonymously. (That’s a total of less than $4,500.)

Comer also does not mention the previously reported emails from Hunter’s laptop that indicate those transfers were paying his father back for a pickup truck. Instead, he makes it seem as though Hunter has been making shady monthly payments to his father for years.

In 2019, Hunter’s then personal assistant, Katie Dodge, sent multiple messages regarding his bills. In one, sent on January 17, she said that Biden would pay his son’s bills “in the short-term as Hunter transitions in his career.”

That email included a PDF of the payments Hunter needed to make. The document showed Hunter owed $1,380 to his father for a 2018 Ford Raptor truck. Dodge had reminded Hunter about the $1,380 truck repayment he owed his father in an email she had sent three days earlier.

“The truth is Hunter’s father helped him when he was struggling financially due to his addiction and could not secure credit to finance a truck,” Hunter’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement Monday. “When Hunter was able to, he paid his father back and took over the payments himself.”

Republicans repeatedly cite Hunter when arguing that the president is guilty of corruption. House GOP leaders could move this week toward a vote on formally opening an impeachment probe into Biden. But Republicans consistently fail to show that Biden is guilty of anything.

The National Republican Congressional Committee released a wildly xenophobic ad on Monday, depicting several national parks overrun with immigrants.

The ad used artificial intelligence to create images of different national parks in the style of vintage travel posters. The parks, which include the Grand Canyon and the National Mall, are filled with tents that supposedly belong to undocumented immigrants.

“More crime. Less tourism. No beauty,” the ad says. “Democrats’ National Parks.”

The ad is an attempted jab at Democrats who voted last week to block a bill that would prohibit using public lands for temporary housing for migrants applying for asylum. The bill passed in the House on Thursday by a vote of 224–203. Six Democrats joined Republicans to support the measure, which is unlikely to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Many Democrats have warned that the bill is a Republican messaging tactic ahead of 2024, when GOP candidates are expected to make draconian immigration policies a major part of their platforms.

Those critics were proven right Monday with the RNCC ad. The ad combines two popular Republican talking points: opposing immigration and accusing Democrats of being soft on crime. But not only is the ad deeply xenophobic, it’s also false. A study released in July by a team of economists from Stanford University found that immigration has not caused crime rates to increase in 140 years.