More than is usually the case, the time I spent with this morning’s New York Times made me want to withdraw my membership in the human race.
- Julio Herrera Velutini, a billionaire Venezuelan, was last year facing a felony bribery charge in the US. He struck a sweetheart deal and pled guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance violation. He then set to work on extinguishing the misdemeanor. His lawyer, Christopher Kise, a former Trump lawyer, began lobbying the administration for clemency. Herrera’s daughter, an American citizen, greased the wheels of her dad’s appeal with a $3.5 million donation to Trump’s super PAC. When the pardon was not immediately granted, the Herrera family last fall hired Alina Habba, another Trump personal lawyer who was employed at the Justice Department, to work as general counsel for a recently formed company, Concord Partners. She was to be paid $10 million dollars per year, plus bonuses that would raise her pay to at least $50 million for four years. No one knows what Concord Partners does, but Habba took the offer, and began earning her first $10 million last January 1. The lucrative work for the Herrera business empire did not impose a sufficient burden to make her quit working for our federal government. She had become an advisor to Attorney General Pam Bondi when Herrera was granted a full and unconditional pardon earlier this year. The Times article notes that “Ms. Habba denied any role in the pardon” and “declined to discuss her work for Concord.”
- Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor in Ohio, has produced an ad in which the mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, says that her daughter is a liar who can’t be trusted and that Ohioans shouldn’t vote for her. But there’s some missing context: Acton’s parents divorced when she was young, her mother remarried, and the stepfather abused Acton and her brother. The abuse included the sexual molestation of Acton starting when she was 9. Her mother nevertheless remained married to the stepfather even while Acton and her brother were removed from the house and the stepfather indicted and charged with crimes. Acton has not spoken with her mother since 1978, when she was 12 and had to testify in court against her stepfather after her birth father had raised an alarm. There are journalistic, court, and social service records verifying all this. Nevertheless, the Ramaswamy campaign continues to run the ad and put out a statement that says, “We don’t know what happened between Amy and her mother, who first spoke out about Amy in 2020, but we know that Amy Acton is a serial fabulist who has some serious problems with the truth.” But we do know what happened between them. The mother and her second husband are monsters. Today, campaigning for Republicans in Ohio, Vice President Vance defended the ad, asserting that it “calls it out like it is, and calls Amy Acton a liar.”
People speak of corruption but the word is too mild. How about total depravity at the top levels of our federal government? Reading the news makes you want to take a shower, but it’s a beautiful fall day, and first I’m going to walk the dog.
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