In case you missed it …
USA Today’s Susan Page interviewed Nancy Pelosi for her book Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power. The conversation hit on the accusation from the 1950s where her brother was accused of being in a group that gang-raped two underage girls.
In that interview, Pelosi proved she is selectively a feminist. She never believes the woman when the predator is a Democrat or a close relative.
A group of young men including Franklin Delano Roosevelt D’Alesandro, Pelosi’s brother. Pelosi said she never believed the accusers. But the thing is that every one of the boys was convicted, except Pelosi’s brother.
Did I mention that the mayor of Baltimore at the time was Pelosi’s father? I guess corruption runs in the family.
Her brother has since passed away, and the scandal had not been mentioned in a long time prior to the interview.
These revelations are potentially politically explosive. Pelosi should have avoided discussing it all. It dredges up the entire sordid affair and people will wonder why the mayor’s son is the only one who was not convicted of the crimes.
At this point in time, no one really knows what happened, and he might have been innocent of the crime. But the real point of this story is why in the world did Pelosi dig up old skeletons?
These revelations are potentially politically explosive for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, they bring to the forefront of political discussion the gruesome details of the allegations against her now-deceased brother yet again—which have not been explored in decades.
They were briefly mentioned in a Baltimore Sun obituary for Pelosi’s brother in 2007, but the facts of the case—including the fact that everyone else charged was convicted and the judge’s curious instructions to the jury ahead of their deliberations on the charges against the then-mayor’s son—have not been fleshed out in the modern era politically.
Perhaps more superficially, Pelosi’s comments about the matter also undercut a key Democrat talking point in the MeToo era where powerful men have gone down over allegations against them from women. Democrats have claimed they want to “believe all women.”
