Her Felony Sentencing Will Come on June 20

 

On her Facebook page before the 2020 Republican primary in the NC11, which she ultimately lost to Madison Cawthorn, Lynda Bennett gave herself these tags: "Pro Trump. Pro Gun. Pro Life. Committed Christian Conservative Woman."

But now this (hattip: News&Observer):

The candidate who former Rep. Mark Meadows handpicked to replace him in Congress, after he became former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to a campaign finance charge. 

Lynda Bennett, 65, of Maggie Valley, appeared in federal court in Washington, D.C., accused of knowingly taking $25,000 from a relative and doing so in another person’s name. 

Federal authorities said Bennett borrowed $25,000 from a family member, saying she needed the money for personal expenses because she had to spend so much on her own campaign, then deposited the money into her personal account and loaned a total of $80,000, including the $25,000, to her campaign. She did not report that it was a third-party contribution, and the amount far exceeded the $2,800-per-election limit set by federal law and just crossed the threshold to make it a felony charge. 

Bennett pleaded guilty to accepting contributions in the name of another person.

Must Be Something in the Water in CD11 ... Blood?

 

From Politico.com:

A family friend of Mark Meadows has agreed to plead guilty to accepting an illegal campaign contribution during an ill-fated 2020 run to succeed the former Trump White House chief of staff in Congress, according to newly-released court papers.

Lynda Bennett, who lost in a 2020 Republican primary campaign to Madison Cawthorn, accepted a contribution from a family member exceeding $25,000, according to charging paperwork filed by prosecutors. That contribution was given “in the name of another person,” according to the papers, signed by U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves and Corey Amundson, chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section....

2020 Sucks. So Does Mark Meadows

The "death march" on June 1, 2020.
Meadows is 3rd from right, next to Trump.

Former Congressman Mark Meadows (NC-11) has left a trail of political havoc pretty much everywhere he's been. One of his earliest fender-benders was the 2013 government shutdown to stop Obamacare. That did not gild the GOP with glory. In 2018 (still in the House as leader of the Freedom Caucus) he helped get Trump a little more money for "border security," which certainly endeared him to Twitterman, and soon (March 8, 2020) Mark Meadows was elevated to White House Chief of Staff (Trump's 4th).

But to get to the White House, Meadows needed to extricate himself from his North Carolina congressional seat. Hmmm. 

Mark Meadows' To Do List, December 2019

1. Find a trustworthy successor, someone you know will play ball. (Ah, wife's personal friend and Tea Party debuttante, Lynda Bennett of Maggie Valley.)

2. Advantage Lynda Bennett's campaign every underhanded way you can.

3. Take the P.R. heat from a crowd of Republican primary candidates running with Bennett who think you crossed the line in advantaging her. Especially critical of you is young Madison Cawthorn, one of about 15 candidates vying for the office. Also Jim Davis, NC Senate member, favored by the Republican establishment.

4. Hide and watch Bennett get only 21% of the primary vote (though finishing as Number 1) and face a run-off against -- surprise! -- Madison Cawthorn.

5. Get Trump to endorse Bennett in the run-off. Check.

6. Watch in shock as Slickster Cawthorn runs away with the election, fueled partly by his Bachelor vibe and partly by widespread Republican resentment at the way you sprung your retirement on the district.

Meadows attempted to repair all this damage to his reputation back home by immediately pivoting to wholehearted endorsement of Cawthorn, shoveling corporate help his way and getting him into the presence (though carefully distanced) of Donald J. Trump along with star billing at the Republican National Convention. Reality show stuff. Maybe good TV, but the whole saga smells situationally tawdry, like a bacteria-laden swamp. Plus Golden Boy has turned leaden, sandblasted by a series of unfortunate revelations.

This morning WashPost reporter Josh Dawsey published "Meadows Under Fire as Trump Chief of Staff," and we learn again the hallmarks of the Meadows touch. He's criticized anew for being "ineffective," a "bungler," a sender of mixed messages, secretive. He claims to rely on -- as a kind of job manual -- “The Gatekeepers,” a book on presidential chiefs of staff by Chris Whipple. Chris Whipple, though, went on the record to say this: “It’s hard to count the ways Meadows has failed as chief of staff. It’s been an unmitigated disaster.”

Photo by Amanda Volsard,
for the WashPost

But Meadows thrives because he's attached himself to Trump as fawning sycophant, the one who agrees and enables, the one willing to take a bullet -- whether hot lead or hot virus. He jumped into the helicopter with Trump to Walter Reed, the only staffer to do so. Then he practically slept at Trump's feet in the hospital. He wasn't afraid of COVID. In fact, he'd already survived one self-quarantining the actual day after he was named chief of staff. So what's this flu-like chest cold to one so devoted to the leader? He even apes Trump's dress style. It's embarrassing.

"Unmitigated Disaster"

Among the other torn sheets of Meadows' tenure in the White House, none is more galling and life-threatening than his hand in getting Scott Atlas, the "herd-immunity" king, into intimate contact with Trump. Dawsey reports that Meadows "helped empower Scott Atlas," a single act that will eventually be credited for tens of thousands more preventable deaths from the coronavirus.

Meadows has also (and rather notoriously) flirted with young-Earth creationism, the ultra-conservative belief that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. Anyone who encourages that will also believe any cockamamie medical theory in 2020 and be a lethal threat to all of us.

The "Wow" Factor

Two primary candidates in two different states made us go "wow" last night when we checked voting results, one of them here in the 11th Congressional District of North Carolina, a Republican, and the other, a Democrat, in the 5th Congressional District of Virginia.

Madison Cawthorn

Republican Madison Cawthorn buried Lynda Bennett in the 11th CD, 30,444 to 15,806. Bennett had been endorsed by President Trump and by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, but maybe the Republican voters in the 11th District were unamused by the way the former holder of this seat, Rep. Mark Meadows (now of the White House staff) tried to engineer a coronation for Bennett.

Cawthorn is a paraplegic from a catastrophic car accident in 2014 when he was 18 years old. He told the story to the Washington Examiner: He was riding back to the North Carolina mountains from a springbreak beach trip. His friend was driving. Cawthorn was asleep in the front seat. Unfortunately, so was the driver, who hit a concrete barrier going 70 miles an hour: "...the impact snapped [Cawthorn's] spine. The accident burned him, shattered his ankle, broke his pelvis, and cost him a kidney. His internal organs were pushed up into his chest, crushing his lungs. 'Both my lungs collapsed, so I couldn't speak for a very long time,' he said, recalling how he learned to communicate with sign language. Only his head escaped injury. The doctors were amazed he survived."

He says he was left with over $3 million in medical debt, which is why improving the healthcare system has been his number one issue. How he intends to improve the system remains vague, especially as his number two issue is protecting the U.S. from "socialism." He also loves him some Donald Trump, the endorser of Lynda Bennett. (The ironies are piling up!)

He lists his "occupation" as "motivational speaker." If elected, he would be the youngest member of the U.S. Congress, barely old enough to serve, in fact. The Democrat in the race, Moe Davis, has a distinguished background of military and legal service and is about three times older than Cawthorn. I don't know what knowledgeable Democrats are now saying about Davis's chances (Cook Political Report still rates the district "solid Republican" at R+14), but a knowledgeable Republican, Judge Bob Orr, was leading the cheers for Moe Davis on Twitter last night: "Moe Davis ... [is] the clear favorite now. Opponent barely qualifies to run - turns 25 before the election; virtually no work experience; the 11th now has Asheville back in it; and Trump's getting rolled. National $$ headed Moe's way."

Cameron Webb

A little over a week ago I profiled the Democratic primary candidates in the Virginia 5th District. Lord have mercy! Dr. Cameron Webb absolutely buried all three of his rivals:

Updated June 23, 2020100% reporting

Candidate	Votes	Pct.
Cameron Webb	36,232	66.0%
Claire Russo	10,154	18.5
R. D. Huffstetler	5,457	9.9
John Lesinski	3,088	5.6

54,931 votes, 328 of 328 precincts reporting

The district is rated "lean Republican." But it's also an open seat, and the Republican candidate presents as stark a contrast to Webb as you could get. The question remains: Will the 5th CD of Virginia elect a Black man to Congress? We're tingling all over at the prospect.

Un-Trumping North Carolina: Democrat Moe Davis in the 11th Congressional District

I've been an enthusiastic supporter of retired Air Force Colonel Moe Davis who's trying to take the congressional seat in western North Carolina that Trump toady Mark Meadows held until very recently. Davis is perhaps the strongest Democratic Congressional candidate in North Carolina not supported by the Democratic Congressional Candidate Committee (DCCC). The DCCC opted to support Pat Timmons-Goodson in the NC8 as a part of its "Red-to-Blue" campaign, the only Democratic congressional candidate in North Carolina singled out for that kind of financial and tactical support (and I'll be profiling Timmons-Goodson soon).

If anyone can do it on his own steam, it's Moe Davis. He's got a adamantine spine from years of "gut-check moments," when as chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay he refused to use evidence obtained from torture during the Bush admin and later came out publicly against the handling of prosecutions by the Obama admin. An equal-opportunity pain in the ass. We like that in the age of Trump.

He's a graduate of AppState and lives in Asheville.

He does not yet know who his Republican opponent will be in November because there's a second runoff primary on the Republican side on June 23rd (postponed from May 12 because of COVID) between Trump-endorsed Lynda Bennett, a middle-aged real estate developer, and upstart Madison Cawthorn, a very young 20-something who has the looks of a movie star. Bennett's baggage includes the ill will generated by Mark Meadows' trying to prearrange her assent to the seat. Bennett is standard-issue Tea Party. Cawthorn represents a much younger, perhaps less encumbered generation. If there's resentment of Bennett for her closeness to Meadows, and Republican backlash against Trump, Cawthorn may be the winner.

Judge Bob Orr

NOTE: Republican Judge Bob Orr, who has a moral compass and who lives now in Asheville, already announced on Twitter that he would be voting in the runoff for Madison Cawthorn, propelled by Trump's endorsement of Bennett, but that he'll be voting for Moe Davis in November.

Mark Meadows, Finally Rising To the Level of His Incompetence

Congressman Mark Meadows (NC-11) will resign his seat early and go to the White House to be Twitterman's Chief of Staff. Good luck with that, Bro!

Meadows leaves plenty of wreckage in his wake. He waited until the day before the end of candidate filing last December to announce he wouldn't be running for reelection, but he had his wife's BFF Lynda Bennett all prepped to step up and run for the seat. Turned out, about a dozen others also wanted a shot at it, and their dyspepsia grew as they discovered how Meadows had tried to manipulate the results.

Lynda Bennett did come in first in the primary but with only 22.72% of the vote. She'll face a run-off on May 12th against second-place finisher Madison Cawthorn who evidently spoke for many 11th District Republicans in his anger at Mark Meadows:

“I am calling for a runoff,” he said. “There’s no doubt in my mind the people of Western North Carolina are sick and tired of watching the politicians trying to force their will upon us and every single vote that was cast against Lynda Bennett was a vote against what Mark Meadows has done.”

Third-place finisher and long-time member of the NC Senate Jim Davis said, “I don’t get Mark Meadows claiming she [Lynda Bennett] was the best-qualified candidate in the race, which is total hogwash, but he has the right to do that,” he said. “This just reeks of the coronation of a candidate, and one of the less qualified candidates in the race,” he added.

During his time in the US House, Meadows was pretty much single-handedly responsible for two government shutdowns and for the ousting of House Speaker John Boehner. "In 2013, he engineered a shutdown in an attempt to strip funding from the Affordable Care Act. In 2018, Meadows encouraged President Donald Trump not to accept a bill to fund much of the government without $5 billion in wall money and rallied others on the right to do the same" (Joel Burgess, Asheville Citizen Times).

Freedom Caucus vandal inside the Oval Office with the stable genius. A match made in pandemonium with plenty of gall.

The Most Interesting Congressional Race in North Carolina

Following Tuesday's primary in North Carolina, two Democratic women in CD 2 and 6 look poised to take seats in the US House that have been held by Republicans. Deborah Ross in CD2 absolutely buried her Democratic primary contenders, taking right at 70% of the total vote against three rivals. In CD6, Democrat Kathy Manning took over 48% of the vote against four rivals, beating her nearest competitor,  Rhonda Foxx, by 33,361 votes. The Cook Partisan Index rates both districts as "Likely Democratic" for 2020.

But I'm looking also to CD11 for my 2020 excitement, even though Cook still considers it "Solid Republican" even with all of Asheville restored to the district after being previously gerrymandered out. I'm looking that way because of the Democrat who won Tuesday's primary against four rival candidates, Moe Davis, who doubled the votes of his nearest second-place contender.

I've been following Davis since he burst out into the public soon after his (admittedly late) filing for the office. Morris "Moe" Davis retired from the US Air Force at the rank of colonel and already had a high pre-candidacy national profile. He served two years as Chief Prosecutor of the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay and resigned in protest because his superiors in the Air Force Judiciary and the General Counsel of the Department of Defense overruled his decision to disallow evidence obtained via CIA torture. In resigning his position, Davis declared that he wasn't going to take orders from people who think "waterboarding is A-Okay."

In other words, he's a commendable hard-nose. He's got a clear pattern of courting controversy, or at least not skirting around it when it blocks his path of moral certitude (he said the Supreme Court was "meddling" when it chose to review the Military Commissions Act). He's not afraid to defy authority when he thinks he's right, and you've got to admire his fortitude. He's been on all the broadcast and cable news programs as a recognized expert in national security, especially security from terrorists who he thinks should be prosecuted the fair way and not via the CIA torture wheel, but he's also defended Guantanamo as a "humane" detention center (which makes him suspicious to some liberals).

He's a "risk" candidate at a time when too many Democrats want "safe." He endorses universal health care ("whether it is called Medicare For All or any other name"), access to abortion, legalizing marijuana, and confronting income equality. His website is no-nonsense and straight to the kisser, sort of like his military career. He says this:

He stood up to the Bush Administration on torture. He stood up to the Obama Administration to defend the right to free speech. Moe Davis risked his career to do the right thing for our country. That’s the kind of character he will bring to Washington as Congressman in North Carolina’s 11th District.

He was born and grew up in Shelby, NC, studied criminal justice at AppState, graduated in 1980 and earned his Juris Doctor from NC Central in 1983. He immediately joined the Air Force as a JAG officer where he served with distinction.

(Full disclosure. I contributed a little to Davis during the primary and will likely do so again.)


The Republican Moe Davis Will Be Running Against

Madison Cawthorn

There will be a hot run-off on May 12th between front-running (and Mark Meadows endorsed) Lynda Bennett and the very young Madison Cawthorn (born in 1995). There were a dozen Republicans running in the primary (listed and described here), and most of them are mightily pissed off at how Meadows kept his decision not to run for reelection a secret until the day before the filing period ended and then advantaged his wife's best friend Lynda Bennett for the seat.

On Tuesday, Bennett took 22.72% of the vote to Cawthorn's 20.40%, and Cawthorn has already called for the run-off, drawing endorsements from several other trailing candidates. Cawthorn was quoted in the press:

There’s no doubt in my mind the people of Western North Carolina are sick and tired of watching the politicians [Mark Meadows] trying to force their will upon us and every single vote that was cast against Lynda Bennett was a vote against what Mark Meadows has done. Republicans in the race were furious that Meadows endorsed Bennett, a close friend of him and his wife, after telling other candidates he would not endorse anyone in the primary.

The odds are rarely on the side of second-place finishers in run-offs, but in this case the odds are hard to figure because of anger in the district at Meadows' trying to manipulate the outcome.

More Intrigue in the 11th Congressional District of NC

We previously followed the speculation by conservative blogger Brant Clifton that Rep. Mark Meadows' sudden decision to retire from his NC-11 congressional seat might have been an effort to advantage one of his own staffers, Wayne King.

Lynda Bennett

If new reporting by Ally Mutnick for Politico is true, that theory was all wet -- soaking, saturated, and dripping. Mutnick is reporting that Meadows' actual scheme was meant to advantage his wife's friend, Lynda Bennett, who appears to have had advance notice of Meadows' decision:

Online records revealed her campaign website domain had been registered on Oct. 28 by a Scott Meadows, who appears to be the brother of the congressman. The campaign's Facebook page was created on Dec. 18, a day before the retirement. And shortly after midnight on Dec. 19 — about five hours before Meadows announced — Bennett posted photos of herself with the congressman and his wife at local GOP events in the state.

After launching her run, Bennett was quickly endorsed by the Asheville Tea PAC, a local organization which said in a release that its board convened for a 6:15 a.m. conference call on the day of Meadow’s announcement to throw support behind a successor.

"It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how this happened. It just doesn’t," said Jeff Miller, a city councilman in Hendersonville, who was the 2010 GOP nominee in the district. "It just looks very suspicious."

"It was very discourteous to other Republicans who were respecting Congressman Meadows and not primarying him for him to pull out this close to it and leave everybody in a lurch," Miller said.

So what about Meadows' own deputy chief of staff Wayne King, who registered to run just after Meadows announced his retirement and who doesn't actually live in District 11?

Meadows' plans were kept so secret that Wayne King, the congressman’s deputy chief of staff and district director who has been eyeing the seat, did not learn about the retirement until shortly before the public announcement. He said he was asked to break the news to the district staff on Dec. 18, a Wednesday and the day the House voted to impeach Trump.

So Lynda Bennett is the chosen one. We'll see if Republicans in the 11th District agree on March 3rd.

Who's the Frontrunner in the 11th CD Republican Primary?

Wayne King

Last post down-column about all the Democrats and Republicans (not to mention Libertarian and Green) candidates who want to represent the 11th Congressional District in Congress:

Turns out (according to conservative blogger Brant Clifton) that incumbent Congressman Mark Meadows timed his super-late withdrawal from the race to advantage the candidacy of his congressional aide Wayne King, who doesn't even live in the 11th District. He's from Gaston County, which is now in the 5th.

Wayne King, according to Clifton, is disqualified because he's an establishment type who's got a history of being hostile to true conservatives.

Whatever.

What does appear obvious by now is that Meadows was working behind the scenes to set up King as The Chosen One. Minutes after King filed to run last Friday, eight county sheriffs in the 11th came out with endorsements.

Maybe King's the frontrunner in the Republican primary. Dunno. The Tea Party wants Lynda Bennett. Probably the old-line party regulars will be more comfortable with former state Senator Jim Davis. And maybe that Asheville investments manager Matthew Burril will spend the money and sneak up on everybody.