The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Another #NeverTrump Embarrassment: ‘Lewd and Lascivious Behavior’

Posted on | June 21, 2024 | 2 Comments

“The people who drafted McMullin to be the ‘Never Trump’ independent candidate are some of the Republican establishment’s most well-known operatives: Bill Kristol, John Kingston, Joel Searby, Rick Wilson. McMullin is an unknown congressional staffer who worked for the CIA, including 10 years undercover, and has no political experience whatsoever.”
— Washington Post, Aug. 22, 2016

You may have forgotten — or possibly never noticed — the “independent” presidential candidacy of Evan McMullin in 2016. For a while, McMullin was the darling of the #NeverTrump types (Kristol, David French, et al.), who tried to hype him up as a viable candidate. The campaign (with former GOP operative Mindy Finn as McMullin’s VP running mate) was a sad joke, which managed to get barely 730,00 votes (less than one-half of one percent of the total) and failed to achieve its only real goal, i.e., to take votes away from Donald Trump and thereby elect Hillary Clinton.

Did I mention — because it seems relevant — that the McMullin campaign cheated its employees and vendors to the tune of $669,330.95?

The “chief strategist” of that debacle was Joel Searby who, going from one grift to another, in 2022 became political director of the short-lived “Renew America Movement,” which subsequently merged into the Forward Party (founded by 2020 Democratic primary candidate Andrew Yang), but Searby’s Forward Party grift didn’t last long, and by August 2023, he had moved onto his next grift: “Newberry Education First,” which is (or at least was) an effort to convert three public schools in Alachua County, Florida, into charter schools.

Meanwhile, however, Searby kept busy in other ways:

An Alachua County judge ordered a Newberry Education First board member to be held without bond at a first appearance hearing Friday morning.
Joel Searby, 43, was booked into the Alachua County Jail on Thursday on charges of lewd and lascivious behavior, communication to lure a minor, communication to travel to meet a minor, and using a communication device to commit a felony. According to the arrest report, he solicited sex from an underage boy on Snapchat.
Searby was one of the people leading the charge to attempt to convert Newberry public schools into charter schools.
The arrest report from the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office transcribes a conversation that started on Wednesday between Searby and the victim on the messaging app Snapchat. In the message chain, Searby asked the 15-year-old if he has ever had a crush on an older man and then describes a sexual encounter he had as a teen with an adult man.
Searby sent the boy multiple photos of himself with his face obscured, including a photo of his hand in his pants. He then invited the boy to visit his home the next morning, secretly.
He suggested the victim should sneak out and go to Searby’s guest house. He would send the boy a text asking him to go over to help with yard work as an excuse for his parents.
“Evidence is pretty damning, and it’s scary for me as a parent,” shared parent Brandy Oldman.
On Thursday morning, law enforcement took over the boy’s account and continued the conversation with Searby. He confirmed the meet-up for “yard work” and a detective pretending to be the victim asked if they would be “jerking off” or something more.
Searby replied to the victim’s account, “I would like to do more but we can take it one step at a time and if I start doing anything you don’t want to do we can stop. I’ll walk you through it.”
Detectives then executed a search warrant at Searby’s home on Southwest 170th Street and he was taken into custody. Searby invoked his right to remain silent. He was booked into the Alachua County Jail and his bond has yet to be set.

“Allegedly,” I hasten to add, although I suspect Searby will be too busy trying to stay out of prison to be filing lawsuits against a blogger who forgot to use “allegedly” about these felony charges.

Probably the best-case scenario for Searby is that he can get a plea deal that lets him off with probation before November so he can then organize the “Convicted Sex Offenders for Biden 2024 Super PAC.”



 

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Category: Crime, Florida

Comments

2 Responses to “Another #NeverTrump Embarrassment: ‘Lewd and Lascivious Behavior’”

  1. Bad causes attract bad people – THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.
    June 22nd, 2024 @ 10:11 am

    […] good friend Robert Stacy McCain has covered, with some amusement, the fact that yet another of the #NeverTrump “Republicans” has […]

  2. Bad Causes Attract Bad People - American Free News Network
    June 25th, 2024 @ 8:01 am

    […] good friend Robert Stacy McCain has covered, with some amusement, the fact that yet another of the #NeverTrump “Republicans” has […]