Catholic | husband | dad | former Counsel to @VP, @FEC Commissioner, and Senate staffer | @NatlParkService fan. A personal account. Posts are my own.
Washington, D.C.
Joined December 2017
- Tweets1.4K
- Following1.8K
- Followers7.9K
- Likes708
If she can do it, so can you.
Angela Paxton is breaking her silence on Ken Paxton's Senate race, after accusing him of infidelity in divorce proceedings.
Without naming him, she told a group of GOP women to vote the ticket, "even when we're mad at them"
more from @birenbomb
texastribune.org/2026/09/22/…
Sean Cooksey retweeted
During the Garland years DOJ revised its policy on congressional subpoenas so that they’d have to be approved by the Public Integrity Section (PIN). When they told me this I was not nearly as pleased as they expected bc PIN is/was a notoriously lawless office, devoid of sound judgment. “Honestly,” I responded, “we’d rather Monaco have to sign off. At least she has a democratic mandate and political accountability for her partisanship, unlike the guys at PIN.”
Recall these are the guys who went after Ted Stevens over nonsense to give the Dems 60 votes in 2009 and then ruined Bob McDonnell’s political career in a case laughed out of the Supreme Court. PIN was well represented later in Jack Smith’s bizarro Elliot Ness cosplay. When Emil Bove took them to the woodshed on day one, I didn’t shed a tear.
I was reminded of all this with today’s “news,” a situation where PIN didn’t proceed during the very partisan Biden administration and somehow that *still* results in a shameless political hit job.
I don’t even know what the term for this would be. It’s not lawfare because PIN didn’t pursue it!
Attempted lawfare?
Lawfare by proxy?
Arabella lawfare?
Recall that Ryan was bending over backwards to minimize reporting about Graham Platner's sexual assault. But he's happy to take "a felon showed us an email; no you can't see it" at face value.
I know a little something about this case because I was an @FEC Commissioner when we investigated Navatek and its leadership for criminal-level campaign-finance violations. This slanted story reeks of self-serving lies from a convicted felon.
At no time did the FEC have any evidence that 1820 PAC or Senator Collins' campaign knew or did anything wrong. We dismissed or took no action on every potential violation against the PAC, and pursued significant civil penalties against the company. Those are the facts. Any suggestion otherwise is hackery.
The seven-year-old allegations made against Senator Collins and her staff in this piece are categorically false. There have never been any allegations of wrongdoing by the Collins for Senator campaign, and the campaign was never the target of the FBI investigation.
ProPublica took the word of someone who pled guilty to five counts of money laundering, three counts of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud, and making false submissions to the FEC. As Martin Kao was awaiting sentencing, he began making outlandish charges about the Collins office, deflecting blame from himself and placing it on Senator Collins, including alleging that our office required contributions before taking meetings and engaged in extortion, pay for play, and bribery. The FBI and the Court obviously did not believe Kao, and in 2025 he was sentenced in two separate cases to prison terms of seven years and three years to be served concurrently, as well as an additional five years of supervised release at the end of his prison term.
It is important to note that during the Biden Administration the FBI and the Department of Justice thoroughly investigated the Navatek matter. The Collins campaign cooperated fully with the FBI throughout the investigation, producing all of the documents it requested and serving as fact witnesses in official settings. In response to the allegations in the ProPublica piece, the FBI clearly stated that a suggestion of wrongdoing by Senator Collins or her staff is “totally false.”
These issues were resolved in 2021, and the FBI has not contacted us about Martin Kao since then.
"I never thought the schools would fail to educate MY child," sobs woman who voted for the Schools Not Educating Children Party.
President Trump understands the issue of AI regulation better than any other political leader today.
When an entire industry comes to Washington and says "Please regulate us, oh, and also give us an antitrust exemption," everyone's alarm bells should be going off.
Sean Cooksey retweeted
Gotta disagree with @AbdulElSayed campaign surrogate @hasanthehun here.
I do not think America is worse than al-Qaeda.
Lampoonishly stupid from the second paragraph on. Completely unserious people.
There's no bigger tell that you're about to get a midwit, bad-faith lecture than someone saying "I was raised Catholic."
Britain's first Catholic prime minister as a role model for American Catholics? My argument here-->
nytimes.com/2026/09/16/opini…
I need that Onion headline quoting de Blasio but it's Rahm instead.
It's official: @ChicagosMayor bets progressives will turn out to help reelect him. politi.co/4h2jvEN via @politico
There's a new version of this post