Pollak: The ‘Lincoln Project’ Listmakers Find Themselves on Lists

The petty totalitarians of the Lincoln Project, the so-called Republican effort to drum up opposition to President Donald Trump’s re-election and then to the party as a whole, once made lists of Trump staff and supporters for retribution.

Now they find themselves on “lists,” as the scandal surrounding Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver begins to widen.

Weaver faces claims of sexual harassment after reports that he send “explicit messages to nearly a dozen young men, offering them career advice and jobs in exchange for sexual favors,” some allegedly underage, Breitbart News reported.

Members of the Lincoln Project and the media allegedly knew of the allegations and did nothing. Initially, the Lincoln Project attempted to cover for Weaver, then tried to distance itself from him, once the New York Times was involved.

Now the leaders of the project, as well as its donors, are under the kind of intense public scrutiny they directed at others. The difference: the Lincoln Project’s targets had done little more than work for the Trump administration, represent him in legal challenges to election results he had every right to make, or support the president nominated by their party.

In November, the Lincoln Project attacked lawyers from the Jones Day and Porter Wright firms, pressuring them to resign in protest of the firms’ representation of the resident. Under pressure, Trump’s lawyers did quit in Pennsylvania.

Last month, the Lincoln Project announced that it was building a database of Trump administration officials to hold them “accountable” — accountable for what, the Lincoln Project did not say. As co-founder Stuart Stevens tweeted:

At @ProjectLincoln we are constructing a database of Trump officials & staff that will detail their roles in the Trump administration & track where they are now. No personal info, only professional. But they will be held accountable & not allowed to pretend they were not involved https://t.co/DkpxpaWaWB

— stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) January 9, 2021

Now the spotlight is on the Lincoln Project — and its vast array of donors, both Democrats and Republicans, in Silicon Valley, in Hollywood, and on Wall Street.

The game of guilt-by-association is an ugly one, which conservatives have argued against for years. But those pleas fell on deaf ears. And President Joe Biden has done nothing thus far to pursue the “unity” he promised in his Inaugural Address, nor has he discouraged even the most aggressive of his supporters from seeking retribution from their political rivals.

Now that the Lincoln Project is in the crosshairs, their would-be targets are determined to teach them — and others — a lesson.

Those who make lists will find themselves on lists. Revenge is a form of politics the country cannot endure.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.