Thursday, May 27, 2021

Gov Half-Whit's Jet Jaunt Story Changes Yet Again

One of the problems with lying is the inability to get your story straight.

Combine layers of lies upon lies and it becomes harder and harder not to dig yourself in even deeper.

It also makes you appear less than credible, as your story keeps changing to cover the consequences of your last lie in the series that you used to spin your tall tale and get out of the fallout from your prior lies.

The Detroit Free Press: Whitmer's campaign will pay for controversial Florida flight

The Detroit News:  Whitmer's Florida flight cost shifted to campaign after FAA concerns

Yep, her last explanation that her non-profit paid for it created all sorts of problems with both the FAA and IRS.  It wasn't legal for her non-profit to "pay" for the March flight -but recall that they only helpfully paid it in May after details of it came to light.  

Now, in the latest round of obfuscations, it's being shifted directly to her campaign fund which likely will be a campaign funds violation.  On the upside for Whitmer, this changes the crime from an IRS violation with the non-profit inappropriately paying for it to a state campaign finance violation .

That changes the enforcement agency back to the state rather than the feds which is most convenient. 

Since she's best buddies with both AG Nessel and Secretary of State Benson, who would be the ones "investigating", you can predict the investigation will be duly done and found nothing occurred, or that at most there will be a minor slap on the wrist rather than a real penalty applied.

This likely still doesn't fix the FAA violation, but that only affects the airplane owner/operator and not Whitmer.

On the upside, we now learn that the 4-day (not 2 as originally claimed after the initial denial) trip included her daughters and allegedly a security detail.  Of course, it doesn't explain how the campaign can now pickup the bill.  After all a  Michigan governor doesn't typically campaign in Florida for re-election, especially as she's stated repeatedly the trip was for person reasons to visit her very sick dad who was "in failing health", and suffering form chronic illness" and had naught to do with her campaign.   Of course, the sick dad excuse has also been shown to be rather dubious as he was been seen in public back in Michigan quite soon after her trip being rather spry.

In short it's likely this was a massively hypocritical spring break trip out of state and she really needs to quit lying about it as she just keeps digging in deeper.

Expect further story changes as the consequences of the latest change come to light.

5 comments:

B said...

is the plane owner a part 135 charter operation?
If he's 91 then getting paid fpr the flight (Other than shared expenses like fule and parking) is a no-no.

Aaron said...

B: Nope it's not a Part 135 Op, and hence the problem as it certainly wasn't a pro-rata share but either a quid pro quo or a unlawful charter flight.

ProudHillbilly said...

More and more I regret that Torrington and feathering has gone out of favor.

ProudHillbilly said...

Drat autocorrect. TARRING.

Aaron said...

B: To follow up, the latest plan of her having the campaign pay for it rather than her non-profit is the exception under the Part 91.321 exemption. The problem of course is its rather thin as she is not currently a "candidate" for any federal state or local office shes the actual governor - and Michigan governors or even candidates don't make a habit of campaigning in Florida.

In short she's trying to dig out of the issues her series of lies have caused.

We'll see if they let this fly especially as they already announced and in fact did commit an IRS and FAA violation by having the non-profit charter it. But I suspect Democrat enforcement of the laws against such a stalwart Democrat may be less than enthusiastic and even-handed.