The turmoil around a Maine Senate candidate this week handed conservative media a target bigger than one campaign. In a widely shared column headlined 'My Platner Prediction Just Came True. Here's What's Next - Including the Death of the Dem's Brand,' PJ Media's Scott Pinsker wrote that Democrats 'are simply anti-Republican' and 'will say and do ANYTHING to regain political power, because that's all they really care about' [1]. In the same days that leading Democrats, from Chuck Schumer to Bernie Sanders, called on the candidate to withdraw [6], a string of commentary made the same leap: from one man's troubles to a verdict on an entire party. Democrats are the party of scandal, the argument goes, and character belongs to the right.
Two things are worth separating. Whether the specific allegations against that candidate hold up is a question for the reporting and the courts, and this piece does not adjudicate them. The checkable claim is the broader one - that scandal is a Democratic trait and accountability a Republican one. That is a factual assertion about the public record, and the record does not support it.
Start with the scandal half, honestly. Democrats have real corruption in the recent past, and none of it is minor. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey was convicted in 2024 on federal bribery, extortion and foreign-agent charges and sentenced to eleven years in prison [4][3]. Representative Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania was convicted of racketeering and fraud; Representative Corrine Brown of Florida was convicted of fraud tied to a sham charity [3]. Naming them is the point. A fair accounting does not pretend one side is spotless.
The same decade indicts the other side just as plainly. Representative George Santos of New York pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, was expelled from the House, and was sentenced to more than seven years [5][3]. Representative Duncan Hunter of California pleaded guilty to misusing campaign funds; Representative Chris Collins of New York pleaded guilty to insider trading; Representatives Michael Grimm and Steve Stockman were convicted of financial crimes [3]. Corruption, on the adjudicated record, is bipartisan. Neither party owns it, and neither party is free of it.
The high-ground half fares worse still, because it runs straight into the pardon power. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington counts nine former members of Congress to whom President Trump has granted clemency for corruption offenses. Every one of the nine is a Republican: Santos, Grimm, Hunter, Collins, Steve Stockman, Rick Renzi, Duke Cunningham, Robin Hayes and Mark Siljander [2]. Several are the same men listed a moment ago - convicted, then pardoned or commuted.
Data
| Republicans | 9 former members of Congress |
|---|---|
| Democrats | 0 former members of Congress |
A party can claim to hold its own offenders accountable, or it can pardon them. A clean sweep of clemency is hard to square with the first.
None of this makes Democrats the party of virtue, and that is not the correction. The correction is narrower and more useful. Corruption is a bipartisan problem, and the story that one side is clean is the story that lets the other side's version of it slide. Voters who look for it only across the aisle will keep missing it on their own. The public record does not hand either party the moral high ground. It hands both of them a warning.
