Trump Adviser Accused of Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial
One of Donald Trump’s five foreign policy advisers, Joseph Schmitz, is being accused by senior intelligence and Pentagon officials of antisemitic comments and Holocaust denial.
And the hits just keep on comin’.
The revelations feed two themes that his opponent Hillary Clinton has used to erode Trump’s credibility: That he is a foreign policy neophyte, and that his campaign, at times, has offended Jews and other minorities.
Schmitz, who is a lawyer in private practice in Washington, says the allegations against him are lies. All three people who have cited the remarks, including one who testified under oath about them, have pending employment grievances with the federal government.
Daniel Meyer, a senior official within the intelligence community, described Schmitz’s remarks in his complaint file.
“His summary of his tenure’s achievement reported as ‘…I fired the Jews,’ ” wrote Meyer, a former official in the Pentagon inspector general’s office whose grievance was obtained by McClatchy.
Meyer, who declined to comment about the matter, cited in his complaint another former top Pentagon official, John Crane, as the source and witness to the remarks. Crane worked with Schmitz, who served as inspector general between April 2002 and September 2005.
In his complaint, Meyer said Crane also said Schmitz played down the extent of the Holocaust.
“In his final days, he allegedly lectured Mr. Crane on the details of concentration camps and how the ovens were too small to kill 6 million Jews,” wrote Meyer, whose complaint is before the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).
LGF contributor Nyet has unearthed another interesting fact: Schmitz’s father was a well-known Holocaust denier himself.
Schmitz’s father, John G. Schmitz, may have been the only person ever expelled from the John Birch Society for being too extreme.
This story gets even weirder, because Schmitz’s sister is also notorious: Mary Kay Letourneau.
Mary Kay Fualaau (née Schmitz, formerly Mary Kay Letourneau; born January 30, 1962) is an American former schoolteacher who pleaded guilty to two counts of felony second degree rape of a child, her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau. Her plea agreement called for six months in jail, with three months suspended, and no contact with Fualaau for life.