Inside the Lincoln Project’s civil war
Secrets, side deals, scandal sidelined anti-Trump group
A few days before the presidential election, the leadership of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project gathered at the Utah home of Steve Schmidt, one of the group’s co-founders, and listened as he plotted out the organization’s future.
None of the dissident Republican consultants who created The Lincoln Project a year earlier had imagined how wildly successful it would be, pulling in more than $87 million in donations and producing scores of viral videos that doubled as a psy-ops campaign intended to drive President Donald Trump to distraction. Confident that a Biden administration was on the horizon, Schmidt, a swaggering former political adviser to John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger, pitched the other attendees on his postTrump vision for the project over a breakfast of bagels and muffins. And it was ambitious.
“Five years from now, there will be a dozen billion-dollar media companies that don’t exist today,” he told the group, according to two people who attended. “I would like to build one, and would invite all of you to be part of that.”
In fact, Schmidt and the three other men who started The Lincoln Project — John Weaver, Reed Galen and Rick Wilson — had already quietly moved to set themselves up in the new enterprise, drafting and filing papers to create TLP Media in September and October, records show. Its aim was to transform the original project, a super PAC, into a far more lucrative venture under their control.
This was not the only private financial arrangement among the four men. Shortly after they created the group in late 2019, they had agreed to pay themselves millions of dollars in management fees, three people with knowledge of the deal said.
A spokeswoman for The Lincoln Project insists, “No such agreement exists and nothing like it was ever adopted.”
The behind-the-scenes moves by the four original founders showed that, whatever their political goals, they were also privately taking steps to make money from the earliest stages. Over time, The Lincoln Project directed about $27 million — nearly one-third of its total fundraising — to Galen’s consulting firm, from which the four men were paid, according to people familiar with the arrangement.
Conceived as a full-time attack machine against Trump, The Lincoln Project’s public profile soared last year as its founders built a reputation as a creative yet ruthless band of veteran operators. They recruited likeminded colleagues, and their scathing videos brought adulation from the left and an aura of mischievous idealism for what they claimed was their mission: nothing less than to save democracy.
They also hit upon a geyser of cash, discovering that biting attacks on a uniquely polarizing president could be as profitable in the loosely regulated world of political fundraising as Trump’s populist bravado was for his own campaign.
Then it all began to unravel. By the time of the Utah meeting, the leaders of The Lincoln Project — who had spent their careers making money from campaigns — recognized the value of their enterprise and had begun to maneuver for financial gain. But other leaders had learned of the financial arrangement among the original founders, and they were privately fuming.
Another major problem was festering: the behavior of Weaver, who for years had been harassing young men with sexually provocative messages.
Allegations about Weaver’s conduct began appearing in published reports in The American Conservative and Forensic News this winter. In late January, The New York Times reported on allegations going back several years. The Times has spoken to more than 25 people who received harassing messages, including one person who was 14 when Weaver first contacted him.
Fresh reporting by The Times found that Weaver’s inappropriate behavior was brought to the organization’s attention multiple times last year, beginning in January 2020, according to four people with direct knowledge of the complaints, though none of the warnings involved a minor. The Lincoln Project’s spokeswoman, Ryan Wiggins, said it would not comment on issues related to Weaver while an outside legal review of Weaver’s actions was ongoing. The group has hired a law firm to conduct the review.
The crisis surrounding Weaver, and the splintering of the group’s leadership, have cast the future of The Lincoln Project into doubt.
Even people once associated with the group, including George Conway, have called for its dissolution. But Schmidt’s faction intends to continue it as a modern media campaign against global forces of authoritarianism, while also monetizing the movement.
Save for Weaver, the project’s top leadership — Schmidt, Galen and Wilson — has not changed. They are hoping that enough of its more than 500,000 donors will remain to keep its coffers filled.
Schmidt, in a recent interview conducted shortly before he took a leave of absence, said this was no time to quit.
“I want The Lincoln Project to be one of the premier pro-democracy organizations,” he said. “We believe there is a real autocratic movement that is a threat to democracy and has a floor of 40% in the next election. And the pro-democracy side cannot be the gentle side of the debate.”
Initially, the project operated much like a pirate ship. Typical workplace management practices were lacking. The organization has no chief executive. Two of its largest contractors, who were billing The Lincoln Project, were given seats on the three-member board of directors, a breach of normal governance practices.
As money poured in, robust cost controls were lacking, with founders reaping management fees. And while big payments are common in politics, other Lincoln Project officials and employees were shocked at the scale when federal records revealed that nearly $27 million had been paid to Galen’s consulting firm, Summit Strategic Communications. It is not known how much of that each of the four received. Their private arrangement shielded even from other senior officials the size of the individual payments.
Stuart Stevens, a longtime media consultant who has taken an increasingly prominent role in the project, cried during an interview while talking about his commitment to the cause.
“I helped create this monster that is the current Republican Party,” Stevens wrote in a follow-up email. He called the recent tumult at The Lincoln Project “a rough couple of weeks.”