by Robert Stacy McCain
Let me begin by thanking Ace of Spades for inspiring this little contest.
Both of the two men pictured above are liberal journalists. One of them is a frequent guest on the MSNBC program Morning Joe, and the other one was recently arrested on child pornography charges:
Court documents cited by the Berkshire Eagle earlier this week allege that [the suspect’s] phone contained disturbing video clips showing boys believed to be as young as 3 years of age being raped and forced to perform sex acts by adults.
Assistant District Attorney Marianne Shelvey said this was one of the most “egregious” cases of its kind she has come across.
If convicted, [the suspect] faces mandatory minimum sentences of 10 years in state prison if convicted of dissemination of child pornography and five years if convicted of possession of child pornography.
While I could keep you in suspense a while longer, I’ll go ahead and tell you that the suspect charged with child pornography is Slade Sohmer (the one in the photo on the right above), and not frequent MSNBC guest John Heilemann (in the photo at top left). However, the two men had a past business relationship. In 2019, Heilemann co-founded a video-news website called The Recount. Slade Sohmer was editor-in-chief of The Recount. More than $30 million in investment capital was plowed into The Recount before it went broke in December 2022. Two months later, it was announced that The Recount would be acquired by another video-media startup, the News Movement. Burning through $30 million in venture capital in four years is not a crime, but it certainly raises questions about Heilemann’s judgment, beyond the fact that his choice to be the site’s editor-in-chief is now facing child pornography charges.
By the time Sohmer was arrested, however, Heilemann had apparently exited The Recount — a site so obscure that I hadn’t even heard of it — and I wouldn’t have known of his connection to Sohmer if Ace hadn’t stuck Heilemann’s mugshot into his post.
