When last we left you with Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the purported Illinois “Republican” was literally promising he’d soon be producing the “receipts” he said he had against X Strategies CEO Alex Bruesewitz, who Kinzinger went after earlier this week after Bruesewitz had the nerve to criticize him on the Twitter machine for his double standards and for calling millions of Trump supporters “un-American.”
To quickly recap, instead of taking the criticism like a man and making his case one way or the other, Kinzinger’s response on Sunday was to accuse Bruesewitz, whose organization “promotes, advocates for, and helps elect” MAGA Republicans, of fraudulently acquiring a PPP loan back in 2020 when the pandemic first started here in the U.S.
But as Bruesewitz’s attorney Jeff Clark pointed out in a cease and desist letter which gave Kinzinger five days to retract his “defamatory” statement and apologize, the “receipts” the departing Congressman said he had at the time were deceptively edited to leave out the fact that contra to Kinzinger’s claim, Bruesewitz did indeed have two employees to support at the time the loan was approved. Further, Clark asserted that he acted with “actual malice” because he had in the past interacted with X Strategies employees on Twitter.
On Tuesday, the self-important Never Trumper responded to Bruesewitz and Clark by again claiming he had “the receipts” and said he would be posting them sometime Wednesday because he “always has the receipts.”
Well, it’s Wednesday, and in a development that will shock absolutely no one familiar with Kinzinger’s machinations, he confirmed in so many words in a lengthy thread that he did not have any such “receipts,” and instead tried to move the goalposts in predictable fashion by insinuating without evidence that the only “employees” at the time of the loan were Bruesewitz himself and business partner Derek Utley, neither of who could be considered actual employees.
But it was in the latter part of his thread where Kinzinger conveniently changed his argument, making it about a political operative receiving government money and suggesting that the real issue is not whether what he alleged Bruesewitz did was “legal or illegal.”
This is the text from tweets six, seven, and eight of his thread combined (bolded emphasis added, typos and bad punctuation are his):
Xstrat basically created online content and trolls to swamp the RINO types. Other clients include MTG and Tom Massie. Nothing wrong with that, maybe not the healthiest for democracy however. Anyway. To attain PPP loan applicant must testify that it’s necessary for continued operation. To attain forgiveness they must attest to not lay off any employees and the loan was necessary to that end.
By sept at least only two employees were listed, both the founders of x-strat. The loan was eventually forgiven, and publically listed … [T]he issue isn’t whether it was legal or illegal. I really don’t know and more than likely this isn’t an exceptional situation. The question is, with profits increasing after the loan and with the company being focused on POLITICAL consulting, is that the best use of taxpayer money?
In his next tweets, Kinzinger pushed the goalposts out even further by trotting out the tiresome and stupid argument that Bruesewitz is a hypocrite because he obtained a PPP loan but opposes Biden’s student loan bailout plan. Later, Kinzinger preposterously proclaimed that because Bruesewitz had gotten a government loan and used it to criticize the government that he deserved to have his financial affairs “openly discussed” (bolded emphasis added by me, typos and grammatical errors are his):
Alex had repeatedly hammered the forgiveness of student loans which i agree wasn’t wise policy, and has gone so far as to call for SEIZING endowments, a quite communist proposal… but in the future, maybe political consultants with increasing profits based on division and anger should not benefit from taxpayer money. Particularly when the only two employees listed are the founders. You enter the public sphere and become a public person like Alex.. you shouldn’t get free government money to further divide us. And you shouldn’t be surprised when you rail against government spending to have your public affairs discussed. It was taxpayer money.
To summarize here, Adam Kinzinger, who loves to brag about his military service in defense of American ideals or whatever is using his vast power to try and silence private citizens who disagree with him (and this isn’t the first time he’s tried it). When he got called out for failing to produce the receipts on a statement that indeed appears to be defamatory, he then tried to change the parameters by claiming the real issue wasn’t whether or not what happened was illegal, but whether or not it was cool for someone who is a critic of the government to be getting a loan from it.
No matter how you slice it, Kinzinger is absolutely using the power of his office to try and shut down someone who committed the crime of calling him out on Twitter over his nonsense. Bruesewitz should sue him into oblivion over this because if he doesn’t, Kinzinger will just keep right on doing it.
To reiterate another point I’ve made about Kinzinger, remember that he’s same guy who has said he loathes Donald Trump because he believes he engaged in rampant abuses of power during his time in office by in part by allegedly targeting his political enemies. And yet what does Kinzinger do? Exactly what he’s accused Trump of, except with Kinzinger’s abuses, the “receipts” are plentiful and expose him for the kind of snake he truly is.
Flashback: Adam Kinzinger Hardest Hit as J6 Committee Faces Another Self-Inflicted Conundrum