The former wife of Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt has filed for a temporary restraining order against the famous political operative who has ties to Alaska elections, court records obtained by the Daily Caller show.
Schmidt denies the report and has demanded a retraction from the news group, which reports from the conservative side.
Schmidt is furious and has several times threatened on Twitter to sue the news group over the story. The Daily Caller, in response, stands by its story in this editorial.
“In our view, ‘litigation by Twitter’ is little more than public relations. Mr. Schmidt complained that we referred to The Lincoln Project as “his” organization. While he might like everyone to forget that he was in fact a cofounder, we again as a courtesy, corrected the story to clarify that he left the organization after it was embroiled in a scandal involving homosexual harassment,” the editorial says.
Angela Schmidt, Steve Schmidt’s ex-wife requested the temporary restraining order in mid-October in a Utah state court, according to a legal history of the Schmidts’ divorce. A hearing on her filing was held on Nov. 4, according to the records obtained by the Daily Caller. The partial divorce history is at this link.
In the years before and since the restraining order was requested, Schmidt has been a regular on social media accusing Republican candidates of inappropriate gestures or behaviors. He’s now facing accusations of being a perpetrator. Schmidt is a “never-Trumper” and a “never-Sarah Palin,” although during the 2008 presidential race, he took credit for bringing Palin to the ticket with presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain.
In 2020, one of the Lincoln Project top goals was flipping the Alaska Senate seat blue and propping up candidate Al Gross, a Democrat disguised as an unaligned candidate, to beat Sen. Dan Sullivan. The main attack on Sullivan was that he wasn’t Alaskan enough, unlike the “Bear Doctor” who has once killed a bear.
The Lincoln Project spent well over $1 million that year on ads romanticizing Gross, who ran with the Alaska Democratic Party’s endorsement.
In 2022, the Lincoln Project attacked Sarah Palin in her bid for Congress. But by then, Schmidt was out of the by-then scandal-ridden Lincoln Project and was attacking Palin on his own time.
In 2018, 10 years after running McCain’s campaign into the ground, Schmidt left the Republican Party, which he called corrupt and immoral: “29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of The Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life. Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump.” He became a Democrat in 2020.
Schmidt resigned from the board of the Lincoln Project in 2021 after another co-founder, John Weaver, was accused of sexually harassing young men for years.
Now, he is threatening the Daily Caller with a lawsuit for reporting on the restraining order, which appears to be in the court record in Utah and would be considered newsworthy, based on the fame and past habits Schmidt has had of attacking others for their behavior.
The Lincoln Project is a Super PAC developed by Schmidt and other former Republican political operatives, who are dedicated to opposing Donald Trump and any Republican candidate who is vulnerable. It nearly collapsed in 2021, but has been back in action during the 2022 cycle.
