I know there is an interest in everyone in the RNC who just jumped up and threw everything they had behind endorsing Trump in the 2016 General Presidential Election.
I know we are on the road to Detroit!
#sayhisname
Nature of the Review
Representative Duncan D. Hunter’s congressional campaign committee, Duncan D. Hunter for Congress, reported expenditures that may not be legitimate and verifiable campaign expenditures attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes. Rep. Hunter may have converted tens of thousands of dollars of campaign funds from his congressional campaign committee to personal use to pay for family travel, flights, utilities, health care, school uniforms and tuition, jewelry, groceries, and other goods, services, and expenses. If Rep. Hunter converted funds from his congressional campaign committee for personal use, then he may have violated House rules, standards of conduct, and federal law.
Rep. Duncan Hunter’s affairs with congressional staff raise sexual harassment concerns
California Republican denies groping another staffer at a 2014 event
Republican Party leaders have demurred on whether Rep. Duncan Hunter should resign in light of revelations that he pursued relationships with two congressional staffers, including one of his own aides.
But that does not mean allegations that the California Republican had “intimate relationships” — as U.S. attorneys described them in a recent court filing — with two staffers, including a direct subordinate, will not trigger consequences on Capitol Hill.
Hunter began a romantic relationship with one of his staffers not long after she joined his office in January 2015, according to the Justice Department. And he had a three-year relationship with an aide to another lawmaker in congressional Republican leadership after they met at the Republican National Convention in 2012.
The relationships were revealed Monday in a motion filed in federal court in San Diego in connection with Hunter’s upcoming trial on felony charges, alleging he misused campaign funds for personal expenses.
Hunter dipped into campaign coffers to pay for drinks out, couples’ trips and Uber rides from the women’s homes to his congressional office, prosecutors say.
A third congressional staffer, Rory Riley-Topping, who at the time was an aide to the House Veterans Affairs’ Committee, told RT America on Wednesday that Hunter groped her while visibly intoxicated at an event in 2014.
"Rory hopes that Congressman Hunter can get himself the help that he needs. Congressional staff deserve better. The people of the San Diego area deserve better. America deserves better," her spokesman said in a statement Friday.
Two friends of Riley-Topping said in interviews with Roll Call that she described the incident to them soon after it happened in 2014.
Riley-Topping’s husband said in a tweet that she told him about Hunter’s behavior the same night.
“We had the same discussion so many families have about whether reporting it would make any difference,” he said.
On Thursday, Hunter said the story was “baloney.”
The House Ethics Committee declined to comment on whether it plans to open an investigation into allegation of sexual harassment, and whether Hunter’s apparently consensual relationships violated House rules. Ethics panels in Congress routinely defer to the Justice Department when criminal charges are involved.
In its most recent public statement about the Hunter case, from May, the committee said that it had established an investigative subcommittee to review his conduct, but that the DOJ requested that it defer consideration of the charges involving misappropriation of campaign funds.
The initiation of both relationships predate a 2018 law that amended the House’s code of conduct to prohibit members of Congress from dating subordinates, among other measures aimed at reducing sexual harassment on Capitol Hill.
But Hunter’s behavior still raises ethical concerns, experts say.
“When you have big power disparities like that … when you are in a position of power over someone’s livelihood, over their career opportunities, consent can get pretty muddy,” said Emily Martin, a vice president at the National Women’s Law Center and an adviser to Congress on the 2018 update to the rules.
“For me, these concerns are heightened when it comes to Congress, because if you’re a member of Congress, you’re one of the most powerful people in the country,” Martin continued.
The first clause of the ethics code states that every member of the House “shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.”
The code of conduct has also long applied private sector employment discrimination laws, including sexual harassment laws, to Congress. And while not every company in the U.S. forbids relationships between bosses and their employees, it has been a common standard since the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Hunter has been criticized by political rivals for abusing the power of a congressional office, and allegedly misappropriating campaign funds, to enter into relationships.
“Duncan Hunter Jr. betrayed voters and family by illegally using campaign funds and the power of his office to initiate inappropriate relations in the workplace,” Ammar Campa-Najjar, a Democrat challenging Hunter for his 50th District seat, said in a statement Tuesday night.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalisehave not said whether Hunter should step down.
The offices of McCarthy and Scalise did not reply to requests for comment about whether the groping allegation had changed their stance on the embattled congressman remaining in office.
Earlier this week, both McCarthy and Scalise said court proceedings should take their course. They emphasized that Hunter has already been booted from his committee assignments.
“He has a day in court... So the courts will decide,” said fellow McCarthy, a fellow Californian, told reporters Tuesday. “You’re always innocent until proven guilty.”
“I don’t like playing hypotheticals because you don’t know if this is going to turn out to be true or false, if it’s correct, if it did or didn’t happen,” Scalise added Tuesday. “It’s going to get resolved in the courts. I hope it gets resolved quickly.”
That sort of response makes Congress a more hazardous place to work, Martin said.
“Among other things, Congress is a workplace. And in other workplaces, we would not find it satisfactory for leadership to say, ‘We don’t have to do anything about violations of our rules or potential harassment or legal issues related to harassment. … We’ve got no responsibility here,’” Martin said.
Asked if Congress should look into the allegations raised by prosecutors, Scalise also raised the possibility of an ethics investigation.
“I know the House Ethics Committee plays roles oftentimes in these kind of allegations. I don’t know if they’re involved in this,” the Louisiana Republican said.
In 2017 and 2018, amid the #MeToo movement, several sexual harassment complaints by staffers against members of Congress surfaced. Accused lawmakers included Republican Reps. Patrick T. Meehan of Pennsylvania, Trent Franks of Arizona and Blake Farenthold of Texas and Democratic Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan.
They faced pressure to resign, and all eventually stepped down.
Then this happened....Duncan Hunter ‘Marital Spat,’ Italian Vacation Photos Exposed in New U.S. Filings
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| Duncan and Margaret Hunter are shown during November 2015 Italian trip the government says was a family vacation financed by his campaign fund. |
“I’m starting to wonder what I’m getting out of all this,” Rep. Hunter told his wife in an email revealed by the government Saturday.
“A family trip,” replied Margaret, his wife of 17 years at the time. “I love you and I will make this weekend up to you. I know it really sucked and I was out of it in some way.”
Government details what it calls Hunter’s family vacation in Italy. (PDF)
What sucked? That’s not clear.
Also not certain is whether Margaret Hunter knew at the time that Hunter was engaged in what prosecutors call “intimate personal activities” with a women the government calls Individual 17 — “a lobbyist Hunter knew both professionally and through the D.C. social scene.”
Or that when she began planning the trip in April, Hunter had already begun “a romantic relationship” with a worker in his congressional office, labeled “Individual 16.”
But the government says the purpose of the trip was obvious.
“From the start, this was intended as a family vacation,” prosecutors say. “When an associate of Hunter’s asked in September why he couldn’t go to Miami in November, Hunter explained, ‘Going to Italy over [T]hanksgiving with the family.'”
In a legal response to Hunter’s lawyers filed Saturday, the San Diego-based U.S. attorneys say the Constitution’s “Speech and Debate” clause doesn’t protect Hunter from prosecution.
Duncan and Margaret Hunter and their three children are shown during November 2015 Italian trip the government says was a family vacation financed by his campaign fund.
Hunter says the Italy trip was a “legislative activity” — a planned visit to a U.S. naval base in Naples (even if the visit didn’t happen).
The government says: “The Hunters began planning the Italy trip in April 2015, but did not attempt to schedule any visit to a military base until early November, barely two weeks before their departure.”
By that time, prosecutors say in a 24-page filing ahead of a federal court hearing Monday, the Hunters “had belatedly realized that their lavish family vacation to Italy would be difficult to justify as a legitimate campaign expense, and scrambled to generate a pretextual ‘legislative’ purpose for what was in reality purely recreational travel.”
With airline reservations as evidence, the government says the Hunters flew to Italy on Nov. 21, 2015, and stayed through Nov. 28.
Other prosecutor responses filed Saturday in response to Hunter legal motions.
“While there, they charged thousands of dollars in campaign funds for hotels, restaurants, train tickets, museum fees and shopping. … They visited Positano, Pompeii, Florence, Naples and Rome. … They posted on social media to show their friends and family the highlights of their trip.”
In an email, Margaret Hunter described the trip as “amazing. Truly our best family trip so far. Like that saying ‘if traveling was free you’d never see me again’!”
In her guilty plea of June 13, Margaret Hunter says the couple spent more than $14,000 in campaign funds on the trip. (Hunter has said he paid that money back as part of a $60,000 reimbursal of his campaign fund.)
“As if to prove the point that the base visit idea was simply an artifice, Hunter never even took the trouble to make the visit happen,” prosecutors say. “On November 25, when the family was in the midst of their vacation, Hunter’s chief of staff [Joe Kasper at the time] texted him to follow up on Margaret’s November 2 email.”
Kasper told Hunter: “Navy can only do 25 November,” according to a prosecution exhibit.
Hunter texted back, “Rgr. I’ll talk to [M]ag,” meaning Margaret.
“But in the end,” the government says, “it appears the Hunter family was having too much fun in Italy to rearrange their itinerary around a base visit, even for the purpose of generating a pretext for their embezzlement of $14,000 in campaign funds.”
Then in a text shown Saturday for the first time, Hunter 40 minutes later wrote Kasper: “tell the navy to go f— themselves.”
According to Hunter’s legal team led by Gregory A. Vega, the government’s August 2018 indictment violated the “Speech and Debate” clause.
Prosecutors respond that the base tour, even if had come off, would not be a “legislative act” protected by that privilege.
“Hunter planned to take his wife and kids on a tour of a navy base during their family vacation,” prosecutors said. “He was not engaged in the work of any committee, nor was he finding facts relating to any House inquiry. At best, he might claim he was conducting his own independent, ‘individual’ investigation. But ‘the Supreme Court has never recognized investigations by an individual Member to be protected.’”
Government exhibits include photos of the Hunters in various tourist venues, along with a family photo with the faces of their three children blacked out.
Also rejected by prosecutors is Hunter’s request to move the trial on account of prejudicial pretrial publicity.
“Where disgraced CEOs, terrorists, Watergate conspirators and drug lords have failed, Hunter offers only a half-dozen news articles and editorials, and backs up his request with completely irrelevant presidential election results,” prosecutors said.
“Worse still, he demands the Court transfer the case to a nonadjacent district for no other reason than that then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump fared better there than in this district in the 2016 presidential election.”
To support his argument that he can’t receive a fair trial in San Diego, Hunter cited six articles and editorials published by The San Diego Union-Tribune and a single political cartoon.
“Hunter provides no evidence of how pervasively these seven publications have been consumed or even noticed by the jury pool, nor does he produce any evidence of the affect these publications have had on potential jurors’ sentiments towards him,” prosecutors said.
Hunter failed to demonstrate a “barrage” of negative or inflammatory media coverage or a “wave of public passion” against him, the government said, calling his motion “long on superlatives and short on supporting facts.”
Series of texts the government says shows Duncan Hunter discussing a Naples Navy base visit with Chief of Staff Joe Kasper.
In fact, noted the government, a change of venue even was denied Robert Alton Harris, executed in 1992 for the 1978 murders of two San Diego teens — despite 136 media references entered into the record.
“Courts routinely reject motions to transfer venue where defendants introduce dozens of examples of adverse local media coverage,” the prosecutors said. “Hunter’s evidence can be tallied on one hand.”
In an aside, the government also drops a floppy-eared bomb.
An exhibit released Saturday shows how Hunter aide Kasper answered accusations of the Office of Congressional Ethics in the wake a watchdog group’s critical report and stories in the Union-Tribune.
“With the OCE Report now being made public today, the office of Rep. Hunter is responding to expose its errors, mischaracterizations and exaggerations,” says Kasper’s undated four-page critique.
One error regarded the cross-country-flown rabbit recently identified as Eggburt.
“Any suggestion that a fee was knowingly paid for with campaign funds for the pet rabbit of Hunter’s children — which couldn’t be left alone for extended periods of time — is not accurate,” Kasper wrote. “OCE is right to state that travel was facilitated on reward miles, which are permitted for use.”
(The government says in a footnote that the rabbit’s airfare fees in fact were paid with campaign funds.)
But Eggburt wasn’t the only Hunter cottontail.
“This is a tale of two rabbits,” Kasper wrote. “One rabbit was kept in Hunter’s official office and another rabbit was owned by Hunter’s children. OCE is absolutely wrong to connect cabin fees associated for the transport of the rabbit paid for with reward miles to a rabbit that was kept in the office by Hunter’s former chief of staff.”
The fluffy animal was under the care of Hunter’s then-chief of staff [apparently Vicki Middleton], “who paid expenses personally,” the Hunter aide wrote.
That rabbit’s name?
Cadbury.
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