John Weaver (political consultant)

Weaver worked for Republican congressmen Phil Gramm and Tom Loeffler, as well as Bill Clements.[6] Weaver was executive director of the Republican Party of Texas (in which capacity he worked with Rick Perry); was a Texas leader in George H. W. Bush's campaigns for president in 1988 and 1992; and worked for Gramm in his unsuccessful 1996 bid for the presidency.[6]

For a decade, Weaver was a senior adviser to Senator John McCain of Arizona.[6] He was described as one of McCain's "closest advisers" and "an architect of McCain's 'Straight Talk Express.'" Weaver left the McCain campaign in July 2007, along with campaign manager Terry Nelson, political director Rob Jesmer, and deputy campaign manager Reed Galen, following several consecutive months of poor fund-raising.[7]

In 2004, Weaver appeared in the documentary film (based on the 2003 book of the same name) Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, which alleges that Karl Rove, former campaign manager and Deputy White House Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush, was behind a South Carolina push poll during the 2000 Republican primary that used racist innuendo to undermine support for McCain by asking voters: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"[8]

In 2008, Weaver made headlines within the Washington beltway during the John McCain lobbyist controversy when some American media personalities speculated about his involvement in an article published by The New York Times that questioned the propriety of McCain's relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. Weaver denied speaking to the paper without the campaign's approval.[9]

Weaver and Mark Salter are viewed as two of the aides who were closest to McCain.[10]

Weaver served as the chief strategist for Jon Huntsman's 2012 presidential campaign.[11] After Mitt Romney's defeat in the November 2012 general election, Weaver tweeted, "In our party, intolerance can no longer be tolerated".[12]

By June 2015, Weaver had been hired to work on the prospective presidential campaign of Ohio Governor John Kasich.[13] Acting as Kasich's strategist viewing the February 2016 South Carolina primary, Weaver said, "We want to do well enough to keep Jeb [Bush] from doing well. If we knock him out of the race, it's a victory."[14] Ultimately, according to The New York Times, Kasich's message "never caught on" and he "found himself stuck in fourth place in a three-man race."[15] Kasich suspended his campaign in May 2016, leaving Donald Trump as the only candidate remaining in the Republican field and hence the party's presumptive nominee.[15]

In 2019, Weaver and fellow Republican operatives George Conway, Steve Schmidt, and Rick Wilson wrote an op-ed published in The New York Times, calling for Donald Trump to be defeated in the 2020 presidential election. The four wrote, "The president and his enablers have replaced conservatism with an empty faith led by a bogus prophet."[5] Weaver co-founded The Lincoln Project, a super PAC organized by current and former Republican operatives opposed to the re-election of Donald Trump in 2020.[5]

Weaver took a medical leave of absence from The Lincoln Project in the summer of 2020 and did not return to the organization.[16]

In April 2019, Weaver signed a six-month $350,000 contract with a subsidiary of Rosatom, a Russian state corporation that specializes in nuclear energy, to lobby on “sanctions or other restrictions in the area of atomic (nuclear) energy, trade or cooperation involving in any way the Russian Federation”[17] and submitted FARA registration form.[18] However, after a report of the contract was published, Weaver cancelled the contract.[19]

In January 2021, responding to a magazine article accusing him of sexual misconduct spanning a period of years, Weaver acknowledged having sent inappropriate sexual messages to multiple men, for which he apologized.[20] According to The New York Times, Weaver offered young men professional support in exchange for sex; that report also accused him of cultivating a non-sexual online relationship with a 14-year-old boy and then engaging in "sexual banter" with him after his 18th birthday.[21] Speaking to Axios, Weaver said, "The truth is that I'm gay and that I have a wife and two kids who I love. My inability to reconcile those two truths has led to this agonizing place."[16] Following the revelations, The Lincoln Project said "John's statement speaks for itself".[1] It later issued a follow-up describing him as "a predator, a liar, and an abuser", and denouncing his "deplorable and predatory behavior".[20]