Israeli politician Gideon Saar, head of the New Hope Party, talks to a reporter during a visit to an outdoor shopping center in the city of Raanana near Tel Aviv, on Feb. 8, 2021, as he campaigns ahead of the March 23 general elections. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images) (The Media Line) The beating of a butterfly’s wings in Washington, D.C. politics quickly reached the shores of the Mediterranean on Tuesday when Israel’s New Hope Party, headed by right-wing lawmaker Gideon Saar, distanced itself from the Lincoln Project group of advisers, recently embroiled in a troubling sexual harassment scandal.
“Due to financial considerations, the contract with the consultants is under review and, in the coming days, we will examine the possibility of further cooperation,” a New Hope spokesman told The Media Line.
Saar, long a member of parliament and senior minister for the Likud Party, left his political home of over 20 years in December and formed a new party aimed at unseating Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the upcoming elections.
After a scathing press conference in which he accused Netanyahu of fostering a “cult of personality” within the Likud and using the party as a “tool” to escape his criminal trial, Saar quickly enlisted the help of the US-based Lincoln Project.
The highly popular political action committee, formed in 2019 by top former Republican strategists, took credit for helping defeat former President Donald Trump in the November presidential elections.
Similar to Saar’s charges against Israel’s long-serving prime minister, the group of veteran conservative operators accused Trump of hijacking the Republican Party, and his supporters in Congress of enabling his conduct. Employing a bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred approach to their campaign, the Lincoln Project gained a mass following.
The group’s founders – Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, Stuart Stevens and Reed Galen – reportedly were invited by Saar to visit Israel before the March 23 elections, and were hired to advise and consult the upstart right-wing Israeli party.
Yet allegations that surfaced recently about the project’s co-founder John Weaver have significantly sidelined the PAC’s operations. Weaver is accused of sexual misconduct, after over 20 men have come forward claiming he offered them professional assistance in return for sexual favors.
In recent days, the project’s other co-founders, who renounced Weaver as a “predator and abuser” and claimed they had no prior knowledge of his conduct, have been ensnared in the scandal themselves. Some of Weaver’s accusers refuted the prominent strategists’ claims that they did not know about Weaver’s behavior, saying they were made aware of – and ignored – the allegations long before the story broke.
The group’s top brass also has been accused of pocketing millions of dollars in donations to the PAC.
Schmidt, perhaps the most outspoken and brash of the four consultants hired by Saar, stepped down from his position at the Lincoln Project this week.
The spokesman for New Hope attempted to downplay the project’s role in the campaign.
“We have never worked with the Lincoln Project. The party engaged four senior consultants who were connected with the project. The individual in question (Weaver) is not known to us, we have never had any contact with him and certainly have not worked with him,” he said.
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