GOP Now Stands for “Gang of Predators”

Trump and JD Vance Defend Vivek’s Indefensible Embrace of a Child Molester; They Should All Resign

It is both shocking and totally on brand for Donald Trump and JD Vance to defend Vivek Ramaswamy’s vile, million-dollar ad campaign weaponizing a child molester’s wife to attack Dr. Amy Acton, his opponent in Ohio’s gubernatorial race.

That wife, Donna Arthur (then Stearns), gave birth to Amy in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1966. In 1978, Donna fled the state with her fugitive husband, Cledith Arthur, after he was indicted on criminal charges of raping Amy, his stepdaughter. According to records in the investigation, his sexual abuse began when Amy was just 10 years old.

Ten. Years. Old.

He continued to sexually abuse her until he was arrested when she was 12. The state took Amy and her little brother, Phil Stearns, away from Donna and Cledith. Phil stands by his sister, noting that Donna “stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died” in 2004.

Back in 1974, the year before he married Donna, Cledith Arthur had been charged with “incest” of a different child. That charge was two years before he began raping Amy.

That’s not all that is relevant and totally appalling.

In 1996, Donna Arthur–going by the last name “Hollopeter”--was found guilty of felony theft and passing bad checks. That is, the woman who Ramaswamy has lifted up to call her daughter a “liar” was literally convicted of the crime of “theft by deception,” which is stealing by lying. Donna–who lost custody of her children for neglect and for not protecting her daughter from a sexual predator–was also convicted of animal neglect, too, just five years ago in 2021.

You cannot make up such wretchedness.

In any sane universe, a candidate for governor would never run an ad featuring a child molester’s lover, a woman complicit in his abuse and also his after-the-fact accomplice.

Vivek’s action in taking her side is utter depravity.

Sure, Cledith Arthur pleaded “not guilty” before jumping bond and fleeing Ohio for Pennsylvania with his wife. Their flight from justice prevented a trial and his conviction as a monstrous pedophile, but I consider his evasion to be more evidence of his guilt.

And I will not call that woman Amy’s “mother” or “mom.” In my opinion, she forfeited that title when she betrayed her young daughter instead of protecting her from the predator she had invited into their lives. Now she has wormed her way out of the shadows to harm Amy, again, this time with the help of Vivek and his enormous wealth. There is a special place in hell for such betrayers of their sacred parental duty, like Alice Munro.

In any normal timeline, a candidate’s top advisors would resign if their boss insisted on running an attack ad siding with a child molester and his lover against the child who survived such horrifying abuse. Instead, Vivek’s spokesperson, Connie Luck, defended the ad and again attacked Dr. Acton’s character. That’s shameless, and I have a right to wish that Luck never has the good luck to get a good job ever again.

In any healthy administration, the president and the vice president would condemn the ad, urge Ramaswamy to take it down, and call on him to step down from the race.

But this is not a healthy administration. It is deeply unwell. It is morally sick.

I say this all in my personal capacity, not on behalf of any organization. Trump is wicked, a magnet of corruption, who attracts and collects the iron filings of men and women willing to trade their integrity for power, wealth, and fame—people like JD Vance.

Vance should have been unwelcome back in Ohio after telling foul lies about innocent, hard-working Haitian immigrants living in the state in 2024. After his defense of Vivek’s ad, Vance should be disowned by the state.

Despite his own track record, Vance—a recent Catholic convert—had the audacity this summer to try to lecture the Pope on Catholic tenets after Pope Leo rebuked the warmongering of Trump and Vance. Vance even published a memoir this year telling his tales about “finding my way back to faith,” a faith that includes the Ten Commandments, which expressly condemns bearing false witness. This week, rather than denounce Vivek’s ad featuring the child molester’s paramour, Vance assailed Acton’s character and dismissed any Republican critics, telling them to “stop whining.”

Vance should be ashamed. Instead, he is doubling down.

This would all be bad enough… but there’s more.

The Republicans installed a man who continues to act like Donald Trump’s personal defense attorney as Attorney General of the United States. That man, Todd Blanche, has expressed more sympathy for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell than for the victims and survivors of her schemes with Jeffrey Epstein. To this day, under Blanche’s direction, numerous Epstein-related records mentioning Donald Trump remain hidden. On Blanche’s watch, Maxwell was moved to a country club prison camp with more lenient conditions, and DOJ is investigating none of the other men named in the Epstein files.

I suppose we should not be surprised by how low they have sunk. Trump himself was found legally liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, and then defamed her about it repeatedly. More than a dozen other women—and at least one child—have also accused him of sexual assault, charges he denies.

His Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, was accused of raping a woman, who said she suspected he roofied her. Hegseth denied the claim before ultimately settling the case.

Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh also faced an accusation of sexual assault from his former classmate, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. He bombastically denied it and was confirmed to the nation’s highest court with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) casting a pivotal vote in his favor, alongside nearly every other Republican senator.

Kavanaugh joined a Supreme Court where Republicans had previously installed Clarence Thomas, who was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a woman who had worked for him. Thomas loudly denied the allegations too, but I found Anita Hill’s testimony compelling, just like Ford’s.

And this is only a partial accounting of the rot involving GOP men accused of being sexual predators. Then there are the high profile men, like Ramaswamy and Vance, actively defending men credibly accused of rape, including the rape of children, as with Amy Acton’s case.

As I have said repeatedly since 2018, when Trump and his loyalist Republicans jammed Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court (though he should have been impeached from the judiciary instead), America does not face a crisis of false accusations by women and girls. Most cases of rape are never reported. The real problem is false denials.

We have an epidemic of false denials.

That is partly because men accused of rape lie and deny that they did anything wrong.

And, in America, those who are accused have the right to plead not guilty, whether they are guilty or not, and face a trial with their neighbors as jurors. While most of those charges for sexual assault result in convictions or guilty pleas, we do not make an accounting of just how many of those men made false denials from the outset. Rarely do such trials result in acquittals or hung juries, but it sometimes happens after the defense tries to put the accuser on trial, scrutinizing what they wore, what they drank, or how they behaved.

Rarer still are the cases in which a man accused of molesting a child becomes a fugitive from justice, like the predator Donna Arthur repeatedly chose over her only daughter.

I hope justice prevails and the guy fueling these attacks–who I am going to call “Vivek Reallyslimy” from here on out–loses big time.

People of integrity and good conscience must take a stand against the dirtiest of dirty politics that he, Trump, and Vance are playing here.

I really hope a giant wave of justice breaks through and politically wipes out those who defend rapists and pedophiles and their enablers. And, I hope that wave also washes out any candidate for any office anywhere who refuses to condemn Reallyslimy’s ad and does not call on him to step down from the race.

The rest of us have had enough of this wickedness.

The time for accountability is well past due.

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What I’m Reading or Rereading:

• Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre

  • In her book, published shortly after her death, Giuffre names some names but says others were so powerful she feared it would be unsafe to identify them.

• Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson

  • This book was written by two heroes of mine shortly after Thomas was installed on the Supreme Court. Jane and Jill are such excellent investigative reporters and writers. I look forward to their newest works.

• Dissent: The Radicalization of the Republican Party and Its Capture of the Court by Jackie Calmes

  • I spoke with Jackie at length about Brett Kavanaugh and the right-wing capture of the Court as she was writing this book. She, too, is an excellent investigative reporter.

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Get the full receipts every Monday in The Cover-Up

Accountability starts with the record. COURIER’s new Contradictions Tracker compares testimony to the Epstein files, with every source linked. Follow along every Monday in The Cover-Up.