Vulnerable Oregon Democrat Rep. Kurt Schrader appears in a video to be avoiding his “district work” period again to fix a fence his horses knocked down near the stables of his wife’s Maryland residence.
Schrader, who recently gained a Republican opponent in the upcoming midterms, posted the video on his campaign account to show his “special bond” with the horses by fixing the fence the congressman said the horses tore down. However, Schrader outed himself since the video he posted appeared to be taken at his wife’s residence in Maryland, not in Oregon where he is an elected member of Congress and collects a taxpayer-funded salary.
His wife, Susan Mora Schrader — a self-described “political insider” — has been registered to vote in Clarksburg, Maryland, since March 1984. She also takes a “primary residence” tax credit, according to the Maryland Department of Taxation and Assessment.
The video was posted on Monday, the first day of the “district work” week, according to the congressional calendar approved by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD). The calendar approved by Hoyer shows that the last votes were conducted on January 20 since the votes were canceled the following day.
The blue Chevrolet truck and the horse trailer in the video appear to be the same truck and trailer he and his wife used last summer when Mora Schrader blogged about the two using his “district work” periods to train horses for a cross-country trip. Additionally, the barn in the background of the video appears to be the same barn seen in pictures from Mora Schrader’s blog.
“Taking off from Clarksburg MD to land near Clarksburg, WV.” (susanmoraschrader.com).
Breitbart News reported last year that Mora Schrader started a blog to document all the couple’s travels and show their progression of getting ready and training for their cross-country trip. Mora Schrader frequently blogged about their trip plans and which route to take during the couple’s trip preparation. In the blog, she also outed Schrader for training instead of working and lamented the times it was “unfortunate” he had to work in Oregon — at his job in the district he represents — instead of training the horses.
The two’s cross-country trip ultimately was cut short when Hoyer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) decided to sacrifice vulnerable House members to come back to Washington, roughly a month early from their “district work” period to advance their partisan agenda items.
Breitbart News reported that Schrader in the past had tried to shrink his duties in elected office:
In January 2017, [Schrader] skipped his swearing-in ceremony for his honeymoon with [Mora Schrader], and it appeared the couple traveled to Argentina and rode horses. In addition, he also skipped the vote to elect the speaker of the house in 2017. Interestingly enough, Kurt was the only member to miss the 2017 swearing-in.
The congressman missed the first procedural vote in the 115th Congress and missed the four subsequent roll call votes because he was technically not a Member of Congress, as he had not yet been sworn into the new Congress. “He wasn’t listed as voting or not voting on the four subsequent roll call votes because, technically, he is not a member of the new Congress until he is officially sworn in,” USA Today reported.
Breitbart News also reported that Schrader’s taxpayer-funded congressional office, in August, sent a “Congressional Update” email to his constituents that included pictures from his time visiting constituents in July, over a month before he sent his August email. This happened while the couple was gallivanting across the country on their four-week-long horseback riding vacation.
ProPublica reported that during Schrader’s time in office, he has missed four percent (202) of the votes while in office and has only given an explanation for why he missed 13.9 percent (28 out of 202) of the ones he has missed.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.
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