As “Liberty Summer” Campaigns Implode, Young Americans For Liberty Leaders Continue To Push Them On Activists

The fallout from the “Liberty Summer” campaigns continues on. Young Americans for Liberty leaders have been selling their activists on these campaigns all summer (and continue to do so), but they have not turned out as expected. The “Clean Mi Govt” part-time legislature initiative headed by Brian Calley continues to receive terrible press in Michigan while Luther Strange, a Mitch McConnell crony who is receiving help from YAL activists as well for his Senate campaign, has a bevy of scandals to deal with as he tries to keep his seat against more conservative opponents.

For “Clean Mi Govt,” the entire campaign imploded after numerous reports of fraud and incompetence surfaced from YAL activists and other observers. Every signature for the part-time legislature that was captured by YAL activists was scrapped, making their work a complete waste of time. Each signature they collected was thrown out, and activists were sent home early with very little to show for their efforts. The campaign was funded almost entirely by dark money, and some of that money ended up in the pockets of a felonious Democrat. Shawn Wilmoth, a long-time member of the Michigan Democratic party, is listed as an employee of Signature Masters, a firm that was paid $2,625 for their work on the “Clean Mi Govt” campaign. Wilmoth pled guilty to two felony counts of election fraud in Virginia back in 2011, and had to serve over five years in prison as a result of his misdeeds.

The dark money was circulating to many seedy interests with infamous political consultant, John Yob being at the center of it all. Yob had five separate entities located in different suites at his Grand Rapids business receiving money through the “Clean Mi Govt” campaign. According to reporter Chad Selweski, “$13,000 was awarded to a campaign-related firm that is based at a residence in a chic neighborhood of Grand Rapids. That address, according to Realtors.com, is the location of Yob’s $2 million, 10,000-square-foot home.” The Detroit News reported that “$200,000 of the $202,956 the Clean MI committee raised in the first 10 days of the petition drive” came from the “Fund for Michigan Jobs,” a dark money not-for-profit connected to Calley that is run by veteran lobbyists. Seeing these numbers, it becomes obvious that “Clean Mi Govt” was just a lobbyist money dump from the start. The campaign finance records tell the whole story, but showed no payouts to YAL brass. Yob was listed as paying $66,800 in hotel fees to lodge YAL activists, so it is quite possible that Yob, who has ties to the liberty movement after running Sen. Rand Paul’s 2016 presidential campaign in Michigan, hid payouts to Maloney Jr. and Greiss through one of his various shell organizations to maintain the guise of plausible deniability.

Meanwhile, in Alabama, middlemen are funneling YAL activists into a campaign for Luther Strange to keep the Senate seat he was appointed to by disgraced former governor, Robert Bentley. Already mired in scandal from the start due his close association with that governor (Strange was his Attorney General), recent news has broken indicating his involvement in a new bribery scandal related to the coal industry. Oliver Robinson, a state legislator, owned up to receiving hundreds of thousands in bribes from coal interests. Another state lawmaker, John Rogers, told investigators that he was offered a bribe by the same company, Drummond Coal, during a meeting in which Strange was in attendance. Rogers was later pressured into recanting his story, but Strange’s ties to the coal industry are apparent. After then-AG Strange issued a letter saying that the state would not fund the cleanup of the Birmingham Superfund site (which would have cost Drummond Coal millions in clean-up fees), he received an additional $25,000 in campaign contributions from that same company. YAL activists are helping this crony capitalist fend off Mo Brooks, a tea party champion who is apart of the House Freedom Caucus alongside Justin Amash, in a primary battle. Thanks in part to the work of YAL activists and out-of-state Mitch McConnell PAC money, Strange is leading Brooks in the polls and expected to win the special primary election later this month.

That is not the only “Liberty Summer” activity going on throughout the country. The usual suspects within YAL are now offering activists $100 per day to supposedly keep Right to Work in Missouri. The line that is being sold to activists that they are helping to defeat a leftist-backed signature campaign that would put Right to Work to voters. This is arguably a laudable case of activism, but judging from previous “Liberty Summer” deceptions, this could just be another ruse. It could easily be a Brian Calley-esque data mining campaign to help Libertarian Party washout Austin Petersen’s campaign for Senate. Petersen was featured prominently at YALCON and had his campaign launch party filled with out-of-state YAL activists. We are watching this campaign in Missouri intently to make sure that this isn’t another disaster in the making. If you have information about any other “Liberty Summer” campaigns that are going on throughout the country, please let us know. Young liberty activists being used like cattle, and put through the meat grinder to aid self-serving lobbyists, bureaucrats, sellouts and other parasites of the political sewer is an affront to everything the liberty movement is supposed to stand for. Stopping this corruption begins with shining a light on exactly what is happening, and full transparency of YAL and their related “Liberty Summer” campaigns is clearly in order.