🍻 In This Week’s Hill Spill: Egregious Political Facetune Fails, Murdaugh Fallout and Runoff Drama in Georgia

Welcome to this week's Hill Spill, your favorite Thirsty Thursday political newsletter! We’re hitting your inboxes late today because we were too busy stalking politicians' Instagrams for poorly done Photoshop—and as you're about to see, there is absolutely no shortage of content on that front.

Once you get through the warped backgrounds, we’ve got the fallout in South Carolina after the Murdaugh conviction got tossed straight into the governor's race, a messy Georgia runoff completely derailed by campaign staff drama, a New York candidate dropping a cool million of his own cash while sharing some surprisingly warm feelings about George Santos, and a Minnesota consultant whose 30-year-old rap sheet is causing a major Republican headache. So grab a glass of something heavily filtered and buckle up, friends! 🍹

Washington has a new transparency crisis... and it has nothing to do with classified documents.

Public figures on both sides of the aisle have finally found something they agree on, and unfortunately for all of them, it is aggressively editing their photos and hoping nobody notices.

We want to be clear about something. We over here at Sources Say do not really care what your politics are. If you are egregiously Facetuning to the point where the background is warping, the furniture is bending, or you have smoothed yourself into a different species entirely, we have no qualms about calling it out. It’s nothing personal — it just needs to be said.

Last July, we flagged House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) for posting photos where the backgrounds were snitching on him — warped benches, bent poles. Physics was not consulted. He later deleted them — a move we supported. We all make mistakes at times!

But this week it's happening again. The chair is warped, the gold fringe on the flag is bent in toward his arms and the skin is unnaturally smooth. Sir, respectfully, you don't need it.

But before we go any further, we need to establish The Cardinal Rule of Facetune, which this town keeps violating like it's a campaign finance disclosure.

If you smooth one face, you must smooth ALL OF THEM. (We’re looking at you Callista Gingrich.)

When one person in a two-shot is starting to look like a Bitmoji version of themselves and the other is just a normal human being standing in a room, you have not achieved subtlety. What you have created is a before-and-after in a single frame. There are many high-profile Washingtonians who apparently have not realized this fatal photoshopping flaw.

U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein Callista Gingrich's Instagram has been active lately, and as you can see from the screenshots above, the comments section has been lively.

"The design is very human and completely normal as always." "Normal, smooth queen." Our personal favorite: "At this point it's an art form."

The group shots alongside Newt from the SelectUSA Investment Summit are where The Cardinal Rule comes into play. If you are going to smooth one person in the frame, you have to smooth everyone, otherwise it looks completely insane.

U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle recently posted from Mykonos, the caption was substantive, the photo was its own entirely separate diplomatic work. The former Fox News star is standing next to a Greek official who looks like a completely normal person, and the contrast is, one might argue, noticeable.

Another prime example: Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) posted a teletown hall announcement featuring a suspiciously smooth complexion for a 71-year-old man promoting a dial-in event. Why, folks?

We are not anti-yassification, but we are pro-knowing when to stop, and we will unapologetically laugh at the comments section regardless of political affiliation when it gets out of control. And fabulous readers of this newsletter, we can confirm it has gotten out of control. If you are a public figure, someone is always watching, likely screenshotting, and probably sending it to us. Just be cognizant of overdoing it. 🤷‍♀️

The South Carolina Supreme Court's decision to toss Alex Murdaugh's murder convictions has become a flashpoint in the state's governor's race, and Wilson is coming under fire from his opponents and their allies.

State Rep. Gil Gatch, a Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette ally, told us he believes Wilson's push to retry in Colleton County and suddenly put the death penalty back on the table is less about justice than saving face.

"He wants a conviction," Gatch said in an interview. "The prosecutors are supposed to seek justice, not convictions. Now that he's saying he's going to seek the death penalty, when nothing has changed, the crimes are the same, the people are the same, it's the shiny object, it's the red herring to distract people from the real headline, which is that the conviction was thrown out, and part of it was due to him."

Gatch also raised eyebrows over Wilson's relationship with disgraced court clerk Becky Hill, who the Supreme Court found had improperly influenced the jury, noting Wilson had publicly called her "Becky Pooh" on television. "That's concerning as it relates to the case," he told us.

A South Carolina Republican, speaking on the condition of anonymity, alleged Wilson made a deliberate choice to charge Hill with unrelated crimes rather than jury tampering specifically to avoid triggering a mistrial. "He decided when they found out he would indict her and charge her with an unrelated crime," the source told us. "If he had charged her with jury tampering, he'd have to redo the trial all over again. It's all his fault, that's just a fact." Sources Say could not independently verify the claim, and Wilson's office did not respond to a request for comment.

Worth noting: Wilson declined to pursue the death penalty the first time around, and critics are now asking what exactly has changed. Murdaugh's own attorney Dick Harpootlian has been blunt, accusing Wilson of floating capital punishment as a campaign sound bite and warning it could backfire since the law bars the death penalty if a court finds it amounts to vindictive prosecution. Wilson's office has pushed back, arguing the calculus is different now given that South Carolina had not carried out an execution in over a decade when the original case was brought.

Wilson's supporters have dismissed the accusations as wrongfully politicizing the murders. At this week's debate, Rep. Ralph Norman went after Wilson over the cost to taxpayers of a retrial. "The money on the Murdaugh trial, at least he's costing all these taxpayers having to retry it," Norman said. Wilson didn't flinch: "Two people were brutally murdered. They deserve justice, and I will spend whatever it takes to deliver them justice." Wilson remains a serious contender in the race, but with the court's rebuke fresh and his rivals sharpening their knives, the Murdaugh case has gone from his calling card to his biggest headache.

Mike Collins entered the home stretch of Georgia's Republican Senate primary leading former Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley in the polls, but he's spending the final weeks before the June 16 runoff in damage control over a string of staffing scandals.

Last week we scooped that Collins fired Brandon Phillips, his longtime chief of staff and senior adviser, after the campaign's "War Room" account attacked Luke Thompson, a strategist close to Vice President JD Vance who had argued Collins' slipping poll numbers made him the weaker candidate against Jon Ossoff, with a crude reference to Thompson's wife, Brooke Nevils, who has alleged she was raped by Matt Lauer. Collins apologized and promised the behavior wouldn't happen again.

In less than a week, a new problem emerged. Ben Jacobs reported today that current chief of staff Kip Talley had been participating in a group chat that included white nationalists Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer, where he described using his congressional office to intervene on behalf of Holocaust denier Charles Johnson while Johnson was incarcerated late last year. I

n a statement to Slate, Talley said he acted solely in a personal capacity after hearing concerns that Johnson was being mistreated in custody and denied medical care, and that he did not act at the direction of Collins, use official resources, or coordinate with others in the chat.

The Dooley campaign was pointed in its response, arguing that every staffer at the center of these controversies was someone Collins himself chose to hire.

Three weeks out from the runoff, Trump still hasn't endorsed, and Collins keeps making headlines for reasons that have nothing to do with Jon Ossoff.

This week on the pod, we sat down with Greg Hach, an Air Force vet, attorney, and guy who is not vibing with the Nassau County party machine. We got into the crypto scandal swirling around his primary rival, why he's betting a million bucks of his own money on this race, and his surprisingly warm feelings about one George Santos. Grab a bev and tune in!

In other Senate campaign staffing problems that have emerged this week: Adam Schwarze's Minnesota Senate campaign has a consultant problem.

That consultant is Jonathan Aanestad, who has been working with the campaign since at least July 2025. The Star Tribune first reported in November 2015 that Aanestad faced abuse allegations from two ex-wives and two ex-girlfriends, a bankruptcy trustee investigating more than $1.1 million in unaccounted funds, hidden vehicles, a brother's sworn court affidavit alleging fraud and neighbors who alleged he harassed them, their kids and their dog.

His second wife alleged in the Tribune that he was physically violent throughout their marriage, with one fight leaving her with a broken collarbone. His brother's sworn affidavit alleged his third wife fled with their two daughters in 2005 citing abuse. She didn't dispute it.

One Republican operative argued that the campaign's decision to bring on a consultant with past legal troubles should raise red flags for voters: "Hiring campaign staff with baggage like this is a great way to lose any statewide race. Every Republican should be questioning Schwarze's character and his competence."

Sources Say reached Aanestad, who pushed back on allegations of wrongdoing. He said he pled guilty to fifth-degree misdemeanor assault on the original felony charges — which included burglary, kidnapping and terrorist threats — saying it was "overcharging to try to get the defendant to cop to something." The neighbor restraining orders were "dueling neighbors with restraining orders against each other" over lake access, though a judge sanctioned him for filing a defamation suit against those same neighbors. His brother's fraud accusation he argued was “water under the bridge."

"I've never seen anything go back 30 years, 31 years,” he said of the allegations resurfacing.

Then he called back.

"That borders on defamation," he said. Those allegations came from a sworn affidavit filed in Hennepin County court that were reported on by the Star Tribune a decade ago.

In a voicemail, Aanestad warned us against publishing his brother's allegations, arguing it came from a “disgruntled sibling” and that the affidavit was “illegally placed in the file by him and not the court” and was ”taken out of the file later.”

On Schwarze, he told us: "It has nothing to do with him at all. Nothing. I didn't even know him when all this transpired."

(This section has been updated with an additional quote.)

Between the Facetune discourse, campaign staff drama and plenty of people trying to get the final say this week, we figured a Last Word felt appropriate.

It’s sharp, a little herbaceous and stronger than you expect, which we are vibing with this evening.

¾ ounce gin
¾ ounce green Chartreuse
¾ ounce maraschino liqueur
¾ ounce lime juice

Shake with ice, strain into a coupe and cheers! 🍸