April 27, 2022 08:44 AM UTC

From Vote Fraud To Pedo-Curious, GOP Is Their Own Boogeyman

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• by: Colorado Pols

The latest in our semi-recurring “At Least He’s Not Your Lawmaker” series, AP reporting on the downfall of the state of North Dakota’s longest-serving state senator, Republican Ray Holmberg of Grand Forks–caught up in what reads like a “QAnon” urban myth:

North Dakota’s longest-serving state senator announced Monday that he would resign following a report that he had traded scores of text messages with a man jailed on child pornography charges. [Pols emphasis]

Republican Ray Holmberg, who rose to become one of the state’s most powerful lawmakers in a career that spanned 46 years, said he would resign effective June 1. His term was scheduled to end on Nov. 30 and he already had announced in March that it would be his last.

“Recent news stories have become a distraction for the important work of the legislative assembly during its interim meetings,” Holmberg, 79, said in a statement announcing his resignation. “I want to do what I can, within my power, to lessen such distractions.”

The exact contents of Sen. Holmberg’s 72 text messages exchanged with Nicholas James Morgan-Derosier, accused of kiddie porn possession as well as smuggling two children under the age of ten from Minnesota “with the intent of sexually abusing them,” aren’t at this point known. But Rolling Stone picked up this local report that suggests strongly it wasn’t to castigate him for these horrible allegations:

North Dakota’s Democratic Party is pressuring Holmberg to release the texts – but The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, got some clues through a public records request. From their story:

“According to a transcript of Morgan-Derosier’s Jan. 4 detention hearing, federal prosecutor Jennifer Puhl laid out to Magistrate Judge Alice Senechal a pattern of Morgan-Derosier exploiting individuals. That included text messages exchanged between Morgan-Derosier and an unnamed 77-year-old Grand Forks man who asked or told Morgan-Derosier that ‘he wants him to bring (Morgan-Derosier’s boyfriend) over to his house to give him a massage,’ Puhl told the judge. The boyfriend was 19 or 20 years old at the time, according to the transcript.”

After appropriately making the decision to step down Mr. Holmberg can work this all out as a private citizen, which we think everybody can agree is for the best. The only thing we can add is that, much like the Republican Party’s obsession with “voter fraud” that when it only very rarely is attempted always seems to involve Republicans, here we have a Republican caught in the very kind of scandal that the party’s “QAnon” conspiracy theorists believe Democrats and a global cabal of all-powerful pedophiles engage in on a grand global scale.

In both cases, what Republicans say they fear most is coming from inside the proverbial house.