☕️ SMOKING GUNS ☙ Wednesday, August 19, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Vindman spent $16 million and lost to a socialist with a bookstore; Fauci's top aide pleads guilty and may be singing; and the Dads Caucus founder draws an ethics investigation over a pickle. Sort of.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Wednesday! Your roundup includes: Florida’s primary night, in which sixteen million dollars, a national resistance hero, and every prediction market in America all lost to a woman who owns a Marxist reading room; Fauci’s top aide pleading guilty and possibly singing; another married Democrat can’t keep it in his pants; and the founder of the Congressional Dads Caucus inheriting an ethics investigation from his best friend.

😂 Before we begin, enjoy a quick update from Michelle’s trip to Germany. She alertly spotted this vandalized truck in a parking lot (somebody daubed some silver paint over part of the ‘e’):

Never say Germans have no sense of humor. It’s just sometimes hard to detect.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍

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Yesterday was primary voting day in Florida. Michelle, who’s out of the country, voted by absentee ballot. I visited my voting precinct, which on every other day is called ‘the church.’ In Florida, we check photo ID, require a live signature comparison to vote, and definitely do not allow ‘vouching,’ which could be the dumbest political idea since the citizens of Troy signed for that horse thingy they didn’t order. (Great job, Minnesota.)

I live in one of Florida’s few blue counties. (Since Reconstruction, only two Republicans have ever been elected to our county commission.) But under Governor Ron DeSantis’ stewardship, the Sunshine State shed its purple hue and became one of the most reliably red states in the country. It was no accident that President Trump moved here when he fled New York.

Yesterday saw primaries in Florida, Alaska, and Wyoming. The most entertaining election development appeared in Broward, Florida— the state’s second-bluest county (after mine), where Kamala got 58% in 2024 (compared to Trump’s 41%). During the wee hours last night, CNN reported, “Florida Democratic socialist Angie Nixon will defeat Alex Vindman in Florida’s Democratic Senate primary.” Buckle up. This story has everything.

Remember Aleksandr (“Alexander”) Vindman? If his name sounds disquietingly familiar, it’s because he was the National Security Council’s Ukraine expert —born in Kiev— and the prosecution’s star witness against President Trump during Impeachment One (RussiaGate). Vindman, an Army Lt. Colonel, soberly testified that, in his view, Trump’s request that Zelensky investigate Joe Biden and Burisma was “improper.”

As much as Vindman, to the Right, is an infamous scoundrel and a hound of the first order, he is a beloved and adored resistance hero for the Left, especially to the babbling TDS mental patients on the Democrat establishment (eDem) side. After the Impeachment failed, Vindman was removed from his high-ranking NSC job and escorted out of the White House. He wasn’t fired. The Army just reassigned him to a less interesting post far away from trouble.

But his lawyer called it “retaliation.” A few months later, in July 2020, Vindman resigned from the Army. In a curious historical footnote, two years after that, Vindman sued, alleging a vast right-wing conspiracy to intimidate him and retaliate against him. His complaint was dismissed as lacking merit by none other than corpselike DC Judge James Boasberg. Which says a lot.

A year later, Vindman packed up his rucksack and moved his family to … where else? Florida. Specifically, to its largest blue county: Broward. He told obsequious reporters that he wanted to “move his wife and kids away from politics.” So when he arrived in the Sunshine State, he immediately moved away from politics by getting deeply involved in politics.

In short, having failed to ‘save’ the country from Trump in DC, the bloated bureaucrat came to save Florida from Republicans.

🔥 In February, 2025, President Trump tapped then-Senator Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State, creating a senatorial vacancy. Governor DeSantis, exercising his statutory powers, filled that vacancy with Ashley Moody, our then-Attorney General. As an appointee, Ashley was allowed to finish Marco’s term, but was required to run in this cycle.

Vindman’s political instincts had been honed by years of close-range knife fighting in the White House. Ashley was a zero-term freshman Senator who’d never been elected to that office. So Rubio’s seat is basically ‘open.’ Vindman smelled blood.

In January, Vindman changed his name again, this time to just plain old “Alex,” registered to run for Rubio’s old seat and, over the last handful of months, raised an eye-watering $20 million, which is especially impressive when you consider that the former NSC testifier had never run for or won any other political office.

Not even dog catcher. Not even library board. So far as we know, Vindman wasn’t even 10th-grade student council vice-president. Of course, that kind of resume gap doesn’t matter in this election cycle. Vindman was white, male, and ex-military. His pudgy fingers fit the eDem template like a crocheted mitten.

But when the fates inflicted the horror of Alexander Vindman on Florida, they also spun up his surprising, serendipitous nemesis, Angie Nixon.

🔥 Angie Nixon, 42, was born in Jacksonville, Florida. She was first elected to Florida House District 13 during the initial year of the pandemic. She is a proud DSA member and runs some kind of progressive bookstore. Around here in North Florida, she’s considered a kook or, if you prefer a more technical description, a nut job.

Angie is a stunt Democrat who, for instance, gets thrown off the House floor for capers like yelling at her co-legislators through a bullhorn. Headline from Jax Today, May:

Calling Angie Nixon a long shot for Rubio’s open U.S. Senate seat is a wild understatement. Unlike Vindman, Angie raised only about $500K, with reports calling her spend only one-sixteenth of the Ukrainian’s deployed war chest. The betting markets for the primary had Vindman at 98.7%+ and Angie Nixon at under 1%. One Florida poll supposedly showed Vindman up +2% over Ashley Moody, never mind Angie Nixon.

But, behold— the fliperoo:

Here in Florida, we always know the election outcome by the next day. (Well, except for that hanging chad thing. But we’ve come a long way since then.) So anyway, we already know that among Democrat primary voters, Vindman washed out. The Democratic Socialists of America just scalped another eDem. It was never even close:

In other words, an unserious socialist candidate who was mostly unknown outside of her Jacksonville precinct just beat one of the Democrats’ most beloved resistance heroes —who outspent her 16-to-1— like a drum.

Only 29% of registered blue voters turned out for the primary. Thank you, Democrat primary voters.

🔥 The polls failed spectacularly. They never even saw Nixon coming. The betting markets failed, too, but of course they can easily be manipulated in small races. Vindman had $20 million. It’s very possible he bet on himself.

The New York Times called the outcome the latest victory for the party’s “ascendant left wing,” though it also wondered whether Nixon’s DSA roots may be a “substantial general-election liability” in Florida, which features large Latin American communities of Cubans and Venezuelans that are allergic to communists owing to bitter personal experience with them.

I’ll go further than the Times: Nixon’s roots aren’t merely a liability. She is a scratched-at-the-post nonstarter. She’s running in a solidly red state that despises socialists. The Senate seat is Ashley Moody’s seat to lose. The opposition scripts write themselves. In her victory speech late last night, Ashley said, “We are staring down crazy and the socialists today.”

Once again, I argue this is not any ‘normal’ midterm cycle.

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Prepare for more terrific accountability news. Yesterday, Fauci’s top toadie, David “Don’t use Email” Morens pleaded guilty in a generous deal with the DOJ. That can only mean one thing. Reuters reported, “Former Fauci adviser pleads guilty in US to conspiring to conceal COVID-19 records.”

Morens, 78, was indicted back in April. Now he faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison— for a single confessed count in his five-count indictment. His sentencing is scheduled for November 12th. Morens’ lawyer said the moronic government scientist has “accepted responsibility.” Uh huh.

“Anticipating their communications would be sought through Freedom of Information Act requests,” Reuters reported, “Morens and others agreed to correspond using Morens’ personal Gmail account instead of his government one.” In one email cited in his indictment, Morens told the others, “We are all smart enough to know” —maybe not as smart as he thought— “to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails and if we found them we’d delete them.”

Gosh. In other words, transparency! If, that is, you define transparency as hiding everything important.

We have come a long way. First, Dr. Morens just admitted that a cover-up occurred. He agreed that he “knowingly and willingly joined the conspiracy:”

Morens also confessed to taking bribes —“gratuities”— from grant recipient EcoHealth Alliance. Taken together, this is the first admission of criminal conduct by a high-profile pandemic bureaucrat.

That is a massive milestone worthy of celebrating.

But second, and much more tantalizing, is the fact that Dr. Morens, as consideration for his deal, may become a cooperating witness. The next step is for the government to file a sentencing memo. If any part of that memo is sealed, we’ll know the former NIAID bureaucrat is singing like a drunken canary. And his co-conspirators will know it, too.

Morens traded five total counts for a plea on a single conspiracy charge— a structure that suggests a broader bargain with prosecutors and potentially more to come. These kinds of deals are common in cooperation scenarios, as it is the DOJ’s classic technique of starting with the weakest defendant and then rolling the conspiracy up from there.

We haven’t yet seen Morens’ personal emails, which the DOJ almost certainly now has. Add that to the pile of covid shoes that yet to drop.

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At times, one wonders whether the Democrats in Washington are running a country or a brothel. On Monday, the New York Times reported, “House Panel Investigates Charges a Democrat Had Sexual Contact With Aide.” It’s another California Democrat, this one linked to recently resigned Eric “Fang Fang” Swalwell.

“Representative Jimmy Gomez of California acknowledged making ‘personal mistakes’ outside his marriage,” the subheadline mildly explained. Mistakes were made. Rep. Gomez, 51, married, with children, is accused of having an affair with Eric Swalwell’s former Chief of Staff, Yardena Wolf, 30.

Yes, that Swalwell. Swalwell, you may recall, survived a decade of investigations into his relationship with an attractive young Chinese spy, but was forced to resign this April after new disclosures followed his decision to run to replace Gavin Newsom as California governor.

It happens that Mr. Gomez is also running this year, for re-election to his House seat. Back in July, the five-term incumbent won his primary in California’s 34th district. That leaves Democrats with bad options if Gomez has to drop out.

It’s not clear how Republicans found out. “The Ethics Committee did not provide details on what prompted its investigation,” the Times reported drily. Ms. Wolf —evidently a very popular young lady— is often called “a rising star in Democratic circles.” She also co-founded an AI-powered fundraising company with… Eric Swalwell.

Mr. Gomez, for his sordid part, founded the “Dads Caucus” in Congress and often champions fatherhood. Democrats, double standards, what’s the difference?

Note that Mr. Gomez was politically and personally very close to Eric Swalwell. Gomez served as co-chair of Swalwell’s 2026 gubernatorial campaign, and resigned that campaign role after the new allegations against Swalwell surfaced. Reports often describe the two as friends and allies.

Gomez says he will “fully cooperate” with the Committee’s ethics investigation. He says it was all “consensual.” But he’s got trouble. Under House Rule XXIII, clause 18(a), members may not engage in sexual relationships with any House employee who works under the member (ahem) or under any employee of any committee on which that member also serves.

🔥 In October, 2024 Elle Magazine published a glowing writeup about Democrat staffers. In the article, Elle gushed, “These are not your parents’ chiefs of staff. Instead, a group of young, diverse, stylish women fills the room… One wears a denim set and faux-cowhide mules, her platinum blonde hair perfectly blown out. Another is in silver vegan leather capris, a black silk button-down, and oversize teardrop earrings.”

That is not, historically, how men do politics. (Well, maybe Gavin Newsom. But he doesn’t count.) Most men don’t even know what capris are, never mind vegan ones. Anyway, I’m just observing things. Don’t cancel me.

The Elle article described how Swalwell and Yardena first met. In 2021, Swalwell hired her with zero chief-of-staff experience, making the young woman —then 27— “the youngest woman to hold the position at the time.” At the time. “Wolf,” the article continued, “said she and Swalwell ‘just clicked.’” I bet they did.

I sense a trend.

Eric Swalwell was barely cleared of canoodling with Chinese spies by the Biden-era House Ethics Committee in 2023. But this year, he was forced all the way out of politics, striking another blow to national Democrat ambitions. At the time, talk was spreading about a possible 2028 presidential run for the photogenic Representative. But it seems that Mr. Swalwell may have traded more than a staffer with his best friend in Congress, Mr. Gomez.

Swalwell didn’t just lend Mr. Gomez an attractive young assistant. Swalwell also traded him an ethics investigation. Right before the election. An investigation not run by Democrats this time.

🔥 The timing is fascinating. On Monday, the White House Transparency Task Force released classified FBI investigatory materials about Eric Swalwell. Apparently, the FBI interviewed him twice during 2015-2016. In those interviews, Swalwell admitted having sex with Christine Fang ‘several times’ —it’s so hard to keep track of these things— including during the first two years he was in Congress. Swalwell called the relationship casual, called their encounters “hookups,” and offered Ambien-fueled excuses for why he couldn’t remember many details, such as what he may have told her.

Public safety note: Ambien is indicated for difficulty falling asleep. It is not indicated for difficulty recalling what you may have told a foreign intelligence asset.

The FBI documents also show that Fang funneled illegal foreign donations to Swalwell’s campaign and held fundraisers for him —why?— and “referred prospective interns to Swalwell’s political operation.” He hired them.

The FBI was required to run its investigation through the DOJ’s “Public Integrity Section” —the same group designed to squash investigations into sitting Democrats, which Trump shut down— and which, at the time, was run by Jack Smith, who would later be appointed as Trump’s special prosecutor during the Lawfare days. Unsurprisingly, the FBI closed its Swalwell investigation saying it found no evidence of a quid-pro-quo between the donations and the interns.

I couldn’t find any historical precedent for the Task Force’s declassification and release of FBI counterintelligence material concerning a sitting or recently sitting congressman. It seems to be unprecedented. If Swalwell dreamed of going to detox and resuming a political career, he’s wide awake now; his comeback dreams are quickly becoming impossible to remember. (It might also be the Ambien. Who knows.)

🔥 To remind you, Eric Swalwell served as one of Nancy Pelosi’s chief prosecuting House managers during Trump Impeachment Two (incitement of insurrection). Eric had a starring role, delivering the fiery evidence package.

The Senate voted 57-43 in favor of convicting Trump— too close. It was just ten votes shy of removing him from office.

Now Swalwell is gone. Here’s the tie-back to Gomez: On April 13, 2026, while Swalwell remained a top Democrat House member and a gubernatorial candidate, the House Ethics Committee opened a new ethics case against him.

Get this— on the same day the House Ethics Committee issued that press release making the reopened investigation official, Eric Swalwell fled the scene faster than Fang Fang had raced back to China after the FBI tossed her apartment. In one 24-hour period, Swalwell heard about the new investigation, immediately resigned his long-held Congressional seat, and promptly ‘suspended’ his California governor’s campaign. Rats. Sinking ships. And so on.

Associated Press, same day as the Ethics Committee press release:

Apparently, Eric concluded the Republican-led Ethics Committee would not be as understanding as the 2023 Democrat-led Committee was when it originally ‘cleared’ him with a limp finding of “no further action.”

Now that same 2026 Committee —the one that made Eric Swalwell jump like a scalded frog— is investigating Eric’s bestie Jimmy Gomez. We will watch the investigation’s progress unfold with great interest.

The Dads Caucus could not be reached for comment.

Have a wonderful Wednesday! Get back here tomorrow for more essential news and caffeinated commentary. I wouldn’t take the MILFS van, but do what you need to do.

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