(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Launchpad Strategies: More GOP Sex Crime Coverup Money [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-20 I have a theory on the Launchpad Strategies story. I’m no expert, but I think part or all of it’s a payoff. Specifically, I think it’s a payoff from Trump and Trump’s campaign to a key ally who just got done quashing a lawsuit that, if it had gone to trial, might have reignited the GOP’s civil war. To understand this, we have to go back a few years to when the Stormy Daniels hush money story was still unfolding. See, Trump has a history of using Delaware registered LLCs specifically for the purpose of paying people off, and that’s exactly what he did with Delaware registered Essential Consultants, LLC, which was seemingly created for the express purpose of paying Daniels’s lawyer a hundred thirty thousand dollars to make her accusations go away. Per Delaware Online, linked above: The Wall Street Journal published its report on Thursday [in January 2018]. It stated Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, opened a bank account in the name of Essential Consultants LLC, after he had registered the company in Delaware. He then allegedly sent the $130,000 through the new bank account to a lawyer representing the actress, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels, according to the report. Cohen has denied allegations of an affair or a payoff. The article goes on to discuss payments received by Trump operatives from totally not Russian operatives based from the Ukraine back in 2016. Again, these payments were made to limited liability corporations, registered in the state of Delaware. And what do we know about Launchpad Strategies so far? That it’s a Delaware LLC that's already taken more than three million dollars in payments from Trump’s campaign. Three million plus dollars is a lot more than a hundred and thirty thousand. And it’s probably not going to actual electioneering efforts because even by dark money standards this is being well concealed. Whoever registered Launchpad Strategies did so through domains by proxy, one of those services that will make you get a court order at the very least before revealing the domain owner. But I don’t think they were chosen at random. Domains by Proxy is GoDaddy’s privacy service, owned by Bob Parsons who, while he’s soured on Trump, has a lot of things in common with him, including golf, real estate, and doing business with scammers. Domains by Proxy has been sued plenty of times over the last decade for protecting the identities of scammers using established business names to con people out of money (see the arbitration cases against “maxwell-house.coffee” and “nissan.email” for good examples of this). Yes, it’s a very popular service to protect domain owners’ identities online, but it’s also a service that’s willing to protect scammers. Exactly what Trump needs. Launchpad Strategies is also using a registered agent service. And why would it be doing that? Because of what a registered agent is. Taken from the website of the same registered agent service used by Launchpad Strategies: A registered agent acts on a company's behalf in receiving legal documents such as Service of Process (i.e., Lawsuits, Liens, Subpoenas, etc.), Annual Reports, Tax Correspondence, and other mailings from regulatory agencies. In some jurisdictions, a registered agent may be referred to as a resident agent or statutory agent. A registered agent must maintain a physical presence (street address) within the state and be available during all business hours so that consumers may properly serve claims upon a company. A post office box (PO Box) does not constitute a physical presence by statutory requirements. So if anyone wanted to subpoena anyone associated with the company, say, for an illegal payoff, the document wouldn’t go to their physical address. Same with press inquiries and lawsuit documents. In some ways this is standard protection for many LLCs associated with larger businesses especially. But most businesses worried about being sued have something in common: they actually offer services. Launchpad Strategies is, by all indications, a shell company. It doesn’t offer any services (and it really shouldn’t go into digital consulting; its website sucks and bleeds memory like crazy). As of now, it’s just a place to put a lot of money. And it’s being created and its bank account filled in the exact way other companies have been created by Trump’s lawyers to pay someone off before. So the question is: who is Trump paying off and why? Right now, the most likely candidate is the one couple in the rightwing world that links the key parts of their coalition together: fascists who want to ban books and indoctrinate kids, misinformation operatives working hard to get Trump the Latine vote, anti-immigration people, and the CPAC machine. I’m talking about Matt and Mercedes Schlapp. These are the people whose fingerprints are on most of the Trump cultpaign’s efforts to keep its vassals in line no matter what’s on the news. To a large degree, these two are responsible for Donald Trump’s current public persona. Mercedes has been working in GOP communications since the 2000 election in Florida (yeah, I know, every time we turn over another rock from the Florida 2000 rubble a demon bursts forth in fire straight from hell itself). She’s also worked in communications for the Trump administration and has been a key rightwing mouthpiece ever since. Matt is chair of the American Conservative Union, which is literally the organization that runs CPAC. He was also at one time on the NRA’s national board. They basically oversee the Republican astroturf factory. If anything were to happen to them, especially during an election year, a major part of the conservative machine would be thrown into chaos. Surely, though, with their decades of experience in politics and lessons no doubt learned from scandals like, just for example, Larry Craig accidentally soliciting a federal agent for sex while representing a famously homophobic political party, the Schlapps wouldn’t need to pay anyone off for their own political survival. Right? Enter Carlton Huffman. Huffman is a typical modern GOP operative; that is to say, a chaos agent in the same vein as Roger Stone. Huffman was, at one time, drinking the Trump Kool-Aid by the jug. In the run-up to the 2020 election, Huffman conspired with Wisconsin GOP aristocrat Andrew Iverson to shut down "Souls to the Polls" with phony phone calls from Trump supporters (quote from article below): Iverson told Huffman he was “excited” about that plan, and to “(w)reak havoc.” Huffman later suggested that Trump supporters flood the group’s phone lines with phony requests. Certified homophobe and absolutely not in the closet Carlton Huffman But don’t let Huffman’s brashness fool you; he’s an experienced operative. His LinkedIn page shows he’s had extensive experience: in North Carolina as a young Republican, a grassroots staffer in Wisconsin, and a regional field director for Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign. Granted he’s had his challenges. In early 2023 he was forced to resign from his job with the North Carolina General Assembly when a recording of a political podcast episode surfaced where Huffman talks about “cultural genocide” in the South. In 2011 he distributed an anonymous letter slamming Reconstruction era governor William Holden for daring to defend black voters in the face of KKK election intimidation. In other words, if this was a movie about the Trump GOP and casting needed a believable dirtbag operative, one hundred percent the call would go out to this guy. But fast forward to this month and suddenly Huffman can’t stand Trump. He’s writing on his Substack in April that he’s walking away from the GOP. He’s on Wisconsin radio in June saying he's glad he doesn't have 34 felony counts against him and following up with a full-throated endorsement of GOP rebel Nancy Mace (along with the creepiest and most forced picture I have ever seen). Did something happen that changed his outlook on things? Maybe something right before April that happened to involve our other characters, Matt and Mercedes Schlapp? Absolutely. Last fall, Huffman, originally anonymously, sued Schlapp for groping and fondling him while "discussing his political future." The trauma from the experience was so bad, Huffman and his wife divorced over it and felt the need to share that publicly (just in case anyone might have thought they divorced for a much more sensible reason, for example Huffman’s actual sexuality). To put this in perspective, Matt Schlapp, pinnacle of the modern and definitely anti-gay conservative movement, was being sued for apparently offering Huffman career advancement in exchange for doing some very gay stuff. If Schlapp were brought down, the whole CPAC machine would be without a leader at its head. If people started thinking the Schlapps’ marriage wasn’t all it appeared to be, their carefully cultivated image as a right-wing power couple would fall apart. The leadership vacuum at the heart of conservative organizations would only be the beginning. The Schlapps are a big reason why so many establishment GOPers got on board with Trump: they provided a playbook and an onramp for how to do so. So what did they do? They hired Benjamin Chew to represent them and go after the accuser. Yes, the same Benjamin Chew Johnny Depp hired. Mr. Chew’s tactics evidently worked because in late March of this year Huffman suddenly dropped the case, calling the whole thing a “misunderstanding,” in exchange for a hefty settlement. And Schlapp needed to settle, because his legal costs were adding up fast. In August 2023, his defense had already blown through more than a million bucks. The lawsuit was getting so expensive that the American Conservative Union’s treasurer (who later resigned) wrote that a settlement of more than two million dollars would break the organization. The organization that’s responsible for CPAC and all the organizing and propaganda that results from it. Clearly neither party is satisfied about the outcome of this case. Huffman’s out of favor; no one in the GOP sucks up to Nancy Mace unless they have nowhere else to go and their name with everyone else is mud. And Schlapp? Well, his organization’s in the hole for the settlement plus legal costs that were over a million in August 2023. Given that lawyers usually take a third in fees even when something’s settled out of court, and given that Johnny Depp paid Chew and his legal team five and a half million for a case that went to trial, I’m betting that Schlapp might owe somewhere in the neighborhood of three million. And of course CPAC and the conservative union and Mercedes Schlapp’s constant efforts spread lies in Spanish can’t take a financial hit in an election year. No, Matt can’t pay for his sexual assault himself. That’s out of the question. But maybe, given how important he is to Trump’s election effort, and given how important it is for Huffman’s sexual assault to be buried before it can cause a scandal that would force multiple people to resign and thereby gut the Republican Party’s efforts to build their Trump stormtrooper force, he could get a little help. A little help like just over three million dollars paid to an LLC for the vaguest of purposes. There are a million possible things the money funneled to Launchpad Strategies could go to. But if there’s one thing that’s always brought down high profile conservatives, on thing they’re terrified of, it’s gay sex stuff. And if there’s one thing Trump’s afraid of right now, it’s losing key figures in his re-election effort to scandals. Trump has demonstrated in the past he has no issues paying people off. His lawyers have used the exact same tactics via Delaware LLCs to do so. Maybe he’s paying Schlapp’s fees and Huffman’s settlement more or less directly. Maybe he’s paying Schlapp back. But I’d bet that’s what this is about. Everything else aside, as much as Carlton Huffman is a shameless, neo-Confederate opportunist, I hope he takes this month to admit to himself what his ex-wife likely already knew. And if he is a victim of sexual assault, I hope he gets justice for that specific thing just as much as I hope he suffers for his other hatreds. And I definitely hope he has a change of heart and decides to go after the Schlapps with everything he has. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/20/2247634/-Launchpad-Strategies-More-GOP-Sex-Crime-Coverup-Money?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/