Exposing the Corruption of the "Family Values" Party
Steven Muñoz worked on Rick Santorum’s campaign and was hired by the Trump Administration for a job in the State Department making arrangements for official visits of foreign heads of state. He was a graduate of The Citadel, a military college. While he was at The Citadel, five freshman claimed that Muñoz used his power…
Todd Kincannon was the Executive Director of the Republican Party. He was arrested in 2015 for domestic violence when his wife called in fear for her life. He claimed it was a side effect of his cold medicine benzonatate.
In 2018, he was arrested for killing his mother’s dog and terrorizing his mother. His father called the police. He may be mentally ill. He was also a Twitter troll who tweeted things like this:
Ralph Norman is a Republican Congressman from South Carolina. In 2018, he made a rape joke during a debate. This was in the midst of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process and he made a malicious joke claiming Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she was groped by Abraham Lincoln.
Frederick Wall ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for South Carolina House District 27. That same year he was arrested for possession of child exploitation material. He denied, threatening a reporter who questioned him. However, a man of his name, age, and address was arrested. The several charges are still pending. New charges seem to have been added in February, 2022.
Christian Hine was President of the Charlotte, South Carolina, Tea Party and active in Republican campaigns. He had a long history of activism on behalf of conservative issues such as opposing the Affordable Care Act to opposing local tax measures. He also looked at child exploitation materials, sharing hundreds of images over ten years.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison with eight years suspended. In a novel and disgusting attempt to avoid any prison time, he claimed he viewed child sexual exploitation media because he was depressed and autistic. In gross malfeasance, the Charlotte Observer wrote an offensively credulous article accepting that.
Will Folks was Governor Mark Sanford’s spokesperson. In July 2005, he resigned on a Friday, planning to open his own political consulting firm. That night he kicked the door in at the home he shared with his fiancée and pushed her down, leaving her bruised. The resignation had been announced earlier and could have nothing to do with the incident. A warrant was issued for criminal domestic violence. He turned himself in on Saturday. Though he originally denied the charge but he changed his plea to guilty in what he claimed was a chivalric desire to protect her from private details that would come out in a trial.
He was given a 30-day suspended sentence.
He is also the blogger who claimed to have an affair with Nikki Haley which she denied. Now he runs the web site FITSnews.com which claims to be independent and unapologetic. It certainly is as happy to highlight Republican corruption as Democratic corruption so it is no FOX or Breitbart disinformation site.
Thomas Ravenel was the State Treasurer of South Carolina when he was convicted of buying cocaine to distribute. In 2008, he was sent to prison for ten months. He then went on to star in the reality TV show “Southern Charm.” He ran for the US Senate in 2014. In 2018, one woman alleged he sexually assaulted her mother but she amended her suit to withdraw that accusation. She also accused the other woman who came forward of lying.
Ravenel’s children’s nanny, accused him of sexual assault and rape. Ravenel pled guilty to 3rd degree sexual assault and was given a 30-day suspended sentence and fined $500. He also settled a civil suit with the nanny by donating to a charity for sexual assault survivors so she supported his minimal sentence. Another woman shared allegations of him flipping a switch and trying to physically intimidate her.
Thad Viers was a committed conservative. As a teen, he was a page for South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond. He went to The Citadel. He worked for the Heritage Foundation. He was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2003. He was planning a run for Congress in 2012. But things began falling apart.
In 2008, he pleaded no contest to threatening to beat up and sexually assault a man who was dating his ex-wife. He paid a $500 fine. In 2012, he suspended his run for Congress and decided not to run for re-election, and then resigned after he was arrested for stalking an ex-girlfriend. She brought an entire binder of letters sent after she broke up with him in mid-2011. He even contacted her father. She went to the police reluctantly because she didn’t want to harm his career. A police officer called and told him to stop contacting her on Dec 16, 2011. He contacted her twice more, on the 22nd and the 31st using someone else’s phone to evade a block on his number. He resigned in March 2012.
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Nelson Hardwick was a South Carolina state representative. In the middle of his sixth term he resigned for health reasons that turned out to be a pending criminal investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and assault and battery. He was accused of harassing a legislative staffer whom he lured to his office where he touched her against her will. He pleaded guilty to assault and battery in the criminal case.
Bob Jones University has a long history of blaming the victims of sexual assault–even when they were assaulted elsewhere. In 2011, the role of BJU board member Chuck Phelps in covering up the rape of a 15-year-old and his demand that she apologize to the congregation for allowing herself to be raped.led to some BJU students speaking up about the University’s blaming victims of sexual assault.
In response, BJU hired an independent organization, GRACE, Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment, to investigate the matter in 2012. They let people make reports online and promised to protect students from repercussions when they did interviews. As they neared completion of their report, they were fired. The backlash led to rehired GRACE whose report disclosed a pattern of covering up sexual assault and punishing victims.