As PJ Media’s Debra Heine reported on Tuesday, Ed Buck finds himself in a bit of hot water. Buck, an LGBTQ activist and prominent Democratic donor in California, had another dead black man discovered in his home this weekend. Note that operative word: “another.” This is the second time in two years that Buck has had a black man overdose in his home, prompting a protest outside his residence and accusations that he has a fetish for injecting black male sex workers with drugs before having sex with them.
Of course, it took an outcry from protesters in the black community and the gay rights community for the media to take notice. Voters and the media turn a blind eye when one particular party is involved. Ask yourself if the reaction would have been similar if the man in question were a Republican.
Indeed, many double standards exist for Democratic donors, fundraisers, activists, foundations, PACs, and other non-profits. The corruption in progressive politics is rampant. I detail much of this in my forthcoming book, Behind the Curtain, out in February 2019 and available for pre-order now.
Ed Buck’s issues bring to mind several similar scandals that have engulfed prominent progressive activists and Democratic politicians, and the willingness of voters and the media to sweep them under the rug or diminish the importance of the stories. Many of these stories involve victims under the age of majority. Do such activists use the Democratic Party and progressive politics to normalize their deviant behavior?
1. Sen. Bob Menendez
During the course of his bribery trial, federal prosecutors found evidence indicating that Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) may have taken trips to the Dominican Republic and had sex with underage prostitutes. The Los Angeles Times reported at the time:
The case has a strange history, beginning with allegations in 2012 that Menendez and Melgen were having sex with underage prostitutes. No basis was found for those reports, and Menendez later charged that he had been the subject of a smear campaign, either by Republicans or Cuban intelligence agents unhappy with his fierce opposition to the Castro regime.
But a federal investigation of those charges turned up evidence of the trips and other benefits.
2. Jeffrey Epstein
Famous for the “Lolita Express,” Jeffrey Epstein is a billionaire hedge fund manager who donated extensively to Democrats. He is now a convicted sex offender, and an American ex-pat living in the Virgin Islands. In December 2018, he settled the many lawsuits he faced over his sexual exploitations, too numerous to list here. According to Open Secrets,
Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire hedge fund manager, settled in court Tuesday more than a decade after his saga of sexual exploitation of underage girls was revealed by the Palm Beach police in 2005.
According to an investigation by the Miami Herald, from at least 2001 to 2005, Epstein lured underage girls to his Palm Beach mansion to partake in a network of sexual exploitation.
Epstein, whose friends included Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and a constellation of other high-powered politicians and businessmen, donated extensively to Democrats throughout the nineties and early 2000s up until the investigations into the allegations of sexual coercion of a minor began.
Epstein’s donations to the Democratic Party halted in 2004 when the federal prosecutor for his trial was Alex Acosta, a conservative Republican who is currently Secretary of Labor under President Donald Trump.
3. Terry Bean
A pioneer in LGBTQ activities, Bean founded the Human Rights Council in the 1970s, and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund in 1991. A prominent Democratic bundler and fundraiser, he has raised funds for the DNC Convention Committee, Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, and Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration ceremony. Bean was indicted by a grand jury in Lane County, Oregon, in 2014 on charges of sodomy and sex abuse of a 15-year-old boy. The sexual encounter occurred when Terry Bean was 65. The charges were dropped after the victim refused to testify, but the Willamette Week later reported that Bean knew full well the age of his victim:
The indictment followed WW‘s publication of a cover story (“Terry Bean’s Problem,” WW, June 4, 2014), detailing a dispute between Bean and his former boyfriend, Kiah Lawson. Bean told the Multnomah County district attorney that Lawson and others were trying to extort money from him.
Bean’s complaint led to a six-month police investigation that ironically turned up allegations against him. Most damaging were police interviews with Lawson, now 26, and a teenager who told police that, at age 15, he had a 2013 sexual encounter with Bean and Lawson in Eugene.
A Lane County judge dismissed the case Sept. 1, after the alleged victim refused to testify. Prosecutors expressed frustration, noting that Bean had earlier offered the alleged victim a substantial payment if he agreed to drop the charges.
4. Ed Murray
The former mayor of Seattle, Murray resigned in 2017 due to at least five credible accusations of sexual assault of underage boys. As I noted at the end of 2017 for PJ Media:
Worst Politician of the Year
Disgraced ex-mayor of Seattle, Ed Murray. In 2017 alone, Murray:
- Allowed Antifa to riot unchecked, as a proxy for his sense of desolation over the election of President Trump;
- Pushed for a municipal income tax on people who made more than $250,000 per year, which was later found unconstitutional;
- Had to resign over several accusations of sexual assault by young men.
You know you’ve had a bad year when Amnesty International requests an investigation of your trip to Belfast and Wales in which you were a chaperone… in 1974.
5. Jacob Schwartz
Not quite as prominent as the previous examples, Schwartz nevertheless qualifies as part of this trend. An up and coming under-30 (at the time) Democrat activist and employee of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Schwartz was arrested in 2017 for possession of pornographic images and videos involving girls as young as six months old.
6. Anthony Weiner
The former New York congressman was convicted of transferring obscene material to a minor after yet another Twitter DM showing off a pic of his junk.
7. David Wu
Around the same time that Weiner faced an intense public backlash, another Democratic politician on the opposite coast also resigned. Wu, a congressman from Oregon, resigned in 2011 after several allegations of sexual abuse, substance abuse, and erratic behavior. Wu, who now serves as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., allegedly held a pillow over his girlfriend’s face and raped her while in college at Stanford in 1976, made unwanted sexual advances toward the daughter of a prominent Democratic fundraiser, and most famously, had a mental break during which he abused substances and donned the ill-fated tiger costume for Halloween.
8. Backpage.com
The online classifieds site was taken down in 2017 after federal charges that it was involved in child sex trafficking. The site contained an adult section that allowed ads for prostitution and other adult services. At the time, the Daily Wire noted,
The co-owners of backpage.com, a website allegedly directly linked to child prostitution and trafficking, gave lots of money to Democrats recently, including donations to:
- David Garcia — a Democratic candidate for governor in Arizona
- A political action committee backed by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
- The Arizona State Democratic Executive Committee
- The Colorado Democratic Party
- The Democratic Party of New Mexico
- Two separate donations to Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO)
- Two separate donations to Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ)
This doesn’t even include the recent scandals surrounding Rep. Keith Ellison or the ever-present knowledge of the misdeeds of Bill Clinton. In the #metoo age, progressives have a real problem on their hands. It remains to be seen if they will recognize and deal with it, or if they’ll continue to receive cover from a complicit media.
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