The Other McCain

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

‘Independent Journalist,’ My Ass!

Posted on | April 10, 2026 | No Comments

Joe Biden (left) with Democrat activist Christopher Hale (right)

The tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) was founded in 2005 by two Democrats, Tom Perriello and Alexia Kelley. CACG “received at least $450,000 in financial support from the massive George Soros philanthropy network from 2006-2010.” A memo that leaked in 2016 credited CACG with shaping President Obama’s 2009 speech at Notre Dame university in which he sought to “reframe” the debate about abortion. Kevin Jones of Catholic News Agency reported in October 2016:

[T]he site Wikileaks has posted alleged 2012 emails involving Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, who appears to state that Catholics in Alliance was founded to aid a “Catholic Spring” political revolution within the Church.
Christopher Hale, who became Catholics in Alliance’s executive director in late 2013, distanced himself from accusations he and his colleagues aimed to split the Church.
“We don’t concern ourselves with the internal politics of the Catholic Church,” Hale told CNA Oct. 17.

Four years later, in 2020, when Christopher Hale ran for Congress in Tennessee, his tenure with CACG became controversial:

The former executive director of a progressive Catholic political advocacy organization, who is now vying for a Congressional seat in Tennessee, has denied a former board member?s allegations that he defrauded the organization and eventually left it bankrupt.
“I’m speaking publicly now, with very little interest in scoring points. I’m simply here to speak on the record, to establish a fact pattern, to help explain to the public the disappointing experience I have had with Chris Hale,” said James Salt, a former board member of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, in a livestream announcement Aug. 3. . . .
Hale is running in the Democratic primary in Tennessee’s 4th Congressional District. His opponent in that race, Noelle Bivens, hosted a livestreamed event with Salt on Monday evening, after local media reported that Hale is accused of misusing email lists from his former employer to fundraise for his own benefit.
Salt said the political advocacy group, which aimed to advance Democratic candidates and policy initiatives by appealing to Catholics, was financially and legally harmed by Hale’s leadership of the organization.
“My job is simply to be on the record saying he did a great disservice to everyone who has worked with him.”
After Hale was hired as executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good in 2013, Salt said, “we began to see a pattern of Chris obfuscating and avoiding any kind of accountability.”
Eventually, Salt said, Hale lied about filing financial records, and once told colleagues he was having surgery, which was apparently not true, in order to excuse missed work.
Hale was fired from the group in 2017, Salt said, and the group was dissolved. Hale disputed that he was fired, saying he left on good terms with the board, because he was ready to “move on and have different adventures in life.”
He is accused of leaving with the organization’s mailing and email donor lists, and using them after he was fired to fundraise for an initiative he started later that year, called The Francis Project.
According to documents obtained by the Murfreesboro Voice, Hale was asked repeatedly to stop using those lists for fundraising, but continued to do so as late as December 2019.
In a Jan. 24 letter to Washington, D.C’s attorney general, Lawyers for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, and the related Catholics United organization, said that The Francis Project was not actually a non-profit, but was instead a trade name connected to a Washington, DC for-profit corporation incorporated by Hale, and registered as “Christopher Hale.”

Are you with me so far? There can be no doubt that (a) Christopher Hale is a member of the Democratic Party who was (b) associated with a left-wing group that got hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Soros network, but (c) was accused of unscrupulous dealings after he left that organization and ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2020. Hale won the Democratic primary that year, but lost the general election by a 33-point margin to incumbent Republican Rep. Scott DesJarlais.

All of this is preamble to a weird story this week:

The Pentagon and White House are refuting reports that high-level U.S. defense officials told Pope Leo XIV and the Vatican to take the United States’ “side” when it comes to matters of military influence and Western Hemisphere oversight.
Allegations stem from interactions that originated in January, according to the Free Press, which reported that Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby allegedly summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s ambassador to Washington, D.C., to deliver a “bitter lecture” during a closed?door meeting characterized as tense.
Colby purportedly told Pierre that “the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world,” adding: “The Catholic Church had better take its side.”
On Wednesday, independent journalist Christopher Hale on his Letters From Leo webpage confirmed that the meeting took place, adding “that some Vatican officials were so alarmed by the Pentagon’s tactics that they shelved plans for Pope Leo XIV to visit the United States later this year.” The pope, 70, who hails from Chicago, was expected to come to the U.S. this July as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration.
“The Free Press’ characterization of the meeting is highly exaggerated and distorted,” a U.S. Department of Defense spokesperson told Military.com on Thursday. “The meeting between Pentagon and Vatican officials was a respectful and reasonable discussion. We have nothing but the highest regard and welcome continued dialogue with the Holy See.” . . .
Officials in the Vatican saw the official’s purported remarks as referencing an Avignon papacy, viewed as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.

This story is just wild beyond words, but what infuriated me was the reference to “independent journalist Christopher Hale,” when anyone could have done a Google search and learned what I have told you about Hale, that he is a Democratic Party operative, with a shady reputation and no credentials whatsoever as a “journalist.” Furthermore — and I should hope my Catholic friends see this as I do — what are we to make of the fact that George Soros has expended vast amounts of money to influence (or perhaps a better verb is subvert) the Catholic Church?

Being a Protestant myself, I don’t take orders from the Vatican, but we live in a world where everything has become political, and this story (which the Pentagon has basically called a pile of bovine excrement) is just another example of how the left-wing billionaire Soros poisons everything he touches. Everyone needs to wake up and pay attention.



 

Category: Catholics, Democrats, Journalism

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