When I wrote in @USAToday about JD Gordon of Trump camp national security team strong-arming the RNC platform committee to change language on Ukraine to favor Putin, JD (pal/partner w/Michael Caputo) contacted his rightwing editor pal at the paper to pull the piece and fire me 1/
He accused me of being paid by Ukraine, said I was compromised, that my little PR firm was funded by Ukraine. The rightwing editor accused me, pressured me harder when I said I was NOT paid by Ukraine, had NO foreign clients & never had. I asked where this was coming from. 2/
JD Gordon made the claim. When I asked what his evidence was, I was told he had none. I was shocked the editor didn't ask for evidence b4 accusing me. It seems b4 accusing a columnist, you'd ask your pal JD for evidence. I was then told NOT tweet about it and to just let it go 3/
I then knew there was a target on my back. FBI was already investigating hacking of my email but I couldn't tell anyone. But it was clear JD Gordon had access to info from my hacked email. He likely did not know its origin, as his friend who provided it, didn't tell him. 4/
I immediately contacted my FBI agents on the case. I couldn't tell my editor - he was in bed w/ JD and unethical. FBI obvi then spoke to JD but made him think they were investigating ME so that he'd give them his source on my "work" for Ukraine, to lead them to the hackers. 5/
A few years before, a client who couldn't pay me gave me 4.4% ownership of his worthless software company. Later, he was asked to submit a proposal to be a sub-sub-defense contractor to do identification verification for devices for military of an unnamed foreign country. 6/
There were NDAs and I was not told the country. I knew it was a U.S. defense contract. Eventually we wrote in my little PR firm for part of the contract work so we cld promote our software to other countries & companies. I was then covered by the NDA & cld be told the country 7/
The proposal was to do identification verification for Ukraine military devices after Putin's cyber attack. To help protect against another Russian attack. We ended up not getting the job. I was disappointed but never heard/thought anything more about it or spoke of it bcs NDA 8/
Most of our contact was by text & phone BUT THERE WAS JUST ENOUGH EMAIL TRAFFIC SO SOMEONE WITH ACCESS TO MY HACKED EMAIL WOULD SEE REFERENCES TO UKRAINE. JD Gordon. My email was hacked summer 2016 after I filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump, was catfished and exposed it 9/
The catfishing began the day I publicly confirmed Trump had a superPAC and was lying when he said he did not. Washington Post did a report on it (I was not the source -- talk to Nunberg and Stone) but when I saw Trump & Lewandowski deny it, I went public.10/
FOX canceled on me that day and immediately banned me obviously upon Trump's orders and it was still only the primary. CNN did the same a few months later -- Zucker was bff's w/ Trump. Trump defamed me on twitter. Got a cease and desist from my lawyer. 11/
Don McGahn said Trump wld delete his defamatory tweets if I signed NDA never to speak of it again and promised not to sue. At that time I realized the catfisher was them & that the damage was already done to my TV punditry. I pulled out of the deal & basically told Trump gfy 12/
Fast forward to JD Gordon. Months into FBI investigation into my hacking and knowing they had talked to JD, I expected indictments soon. I got tired of being silent so I challenged JD on twitter about his claims to USA Today about my working for Ukraine. He seemed surprised 13/
He was led to believe (by the FBI) that I was the one under investigation. My tweets made him realize he'd been played and that whomever gave him the info about me re: Ukraine knew it came from my hacked email and didn't tell him. btw JD has deleted his 1/5/2018 tweets to me 14/
JD was pissed at his source. Shortly thereafter his pal Michael Caputo started paying his legal bills. I'm sure JD had his lawyer with him when under questioning by FBI. But now JD knew there was an FBI (SDNY) investigation into hacking of my emails and leading to Team Trump 15/
JD worked under Jeff Sessions on the Trump campaign national security team. Sessions was now Trump's AG. JD could pick up the phone and tell Sessions to order Geoffrey Berman at SDNY to kill the investigation. Like SDNY IC whistleblower hacking investigations were killed. 16/
SDNY (cyber crime division) later claimed the investigation had gone beyond mere computer intrusion and that they passed info to Mueller. I now know that was obviously a lie. IC whistleblower lawyers contacted me and found similarities & direct connections btwn our hackings 17/
JD & Caputo were emboldened. Next time they targeted me, I'd told @USAToday I was on a brief break because my dad was in the hospital, ICU for 18 days, and months long nursing home rehab. Then my brother had a heart attack and was in surgery the day of Caputo's attack on me. 18/
Caputo had been hauled before Congress to testify under oath abt Russian interference & collusion. He screamed/cursed at Congress bcs he had to pay a lawyer. He held a press conference exploiting his daughters for cash, claimed he'd used their college funds to pay lawyers 19/
Yet he managed to keep his Florida vaca home. Mueller caught Caputo lying under oath to Congress about his contact & collusion w/Russian national (goes by Henry Greenberg) w/"dirt" on Hillary. Caputo had a mailbox in a tiny Miami rent-a-mailbox joint, inches from Greenberg's 20/
They clearly knew each other, and hatched a $2 million plan that failed. Caputo clearly lied. Collusion. He again repeatedly dragged his daughters into the spotlight, exploiting them to get money for himself.
That money later was also used to pay JD Gordon's legal bills. 21/
I'd tweeted about Caputo using/exploiting his daughters for money. He launched an attack on me with the #BitterChildlessAlone memes (samples below). This was as I had 2 family members in hospital beds a continent apart, almost losing both, and was on a break from USA Today. 22/
Caputo and white nationalist Jack Posobiec launched a bot/troll army attack and their editor pal at USA Today was all in. I then told him (editor) there was more to this, an FBI investigation that now included JD & him re: Ukraine from months before. He ignored it. Fired me. 23/
I figured this editor withheld key details from his bosses & legal dept. Last year as I was undergoing cancer tests, I heard he was to be promoted. I gave all the info w/receipts & importantly, context, to his boss. No promotion. No longer an editor. Don't know if that's why. 24/
There is more, esp about others (law firm that also does "other" work -- unethical work) hired by Trump to fraudulently try to confirm info he got from my hacked emails to try to use against me in my defamation lawsuit against him. FBI was on that, too. More on that later. 25-end
Caputo had to buy his little buddy off after getting him in trouble where he had to pay to have a lawyer with him.
JD and this editor used to be at the same paper. But when JD came to him with the accusation about me, his reply should've been "do you have any evidence?" and when the answer was "no" he should have said to his pal, JD "then this conversation is over". Instead, he accused me.
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2016: Manafort gives Kiliminik internal campaign polling data to lay out where to prepare to "move" on election night.
ABC's Chris Vlasto gives Trump camp secret media consortium exit polling data at 5:01 election night showing he'd lost (and in which states) while polls were still open. Pretty sure Team Trump (Manafort) got it to Team Putin.
77k votes perfectly spread across 3 battleground states then showed up, giving Trump the Electoral College win.
Whistleblower once testified that Karl Rove told her if a state is within 3% on election night, you can cheat undetected. It's why Trump freaked out about mail-in voting in 2020 (due to pandemic) and had Louis Dejoy rip mailboxes out of the ground in heavily Dem neighborhoods, then dismantle $2 million mail sorting machines just before the election. Panic. Harder to cheat with mailed paper ballots. And it's why Trump lost.
As outlined in The Mueller Report, Manfort gave internal Trump campaign polling data to Kiliminik, who then shared it with Russia/Putin. Russia knew where Trump might need "help" on election night. apnews.com/article/donald…
ABC News' Chris Vlasto (in line to be Trump's White House Communications Director), gave secret exit polling data to Trump deputy campaign manager, Dave Bossie, on election night at 5:01 showing he'd lost -- and where. So "if" Putin was generally set up to "act" based on what Manafort have Kilimnik, this info would enable them to be surgical in battleground states on eelction night while polls were still open. rawstory.com/2017/12/top-pr…
An olf friend of mine in politics told me of a night decades ago when Sen. Biden was in New Orleans visiting (pre-Jill, he was dating a women from there) and they were at someone's home for a dinner party. They talked politics well into the night -- policy, foreign policy, 1/5
foreign policy, state and local politics, federal budget -- literally everything you could think of. Some of the men went and even sat napping on sofas in this large home as Biden and the serious folk got deeper into it.2/5
The sun starts coming up, but the conversation was still going on -- serious smart people who loved thier country, and were steeped in the details of solving our problems, setting priorities, even if they disagreed on how to do both. 3/5
In 2008 I was a GOP strategist and pundit on TV several times a week. Things were different then. GOP and Dems were not "enemies". On inauguration day I did some TV. That night I was at an inauguration party at a neighbor's home to celebrate the first Black President -- Obama 1/6
I was one of only 2 or 3 white people. The older Black people struggled to walk to the Capitol that day but would not have missed it for the world. It was so deeply moving for them. Some of them went to bed early that night. The youngers were heading out to late parties. 2/6
The rest of us partied at the house. I was struck at the difference between the oldsters who had fought the civil rights fight, and how deeply meaningful this was, and the youngsters who understood, but who had it better than their grandparents because of how they had fought.3/6
h/t Fred M. Baer
History You Should Know (must read thread)
It was late at night in the Jersey City railroad station in 1864, and Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s son, was in a crowd of people trying to buy tickets for a berth in a sleeping car. 1/8
Robert, a student at Harvard Law School at the time, was jostled against the side of the railroad car and when the train began to move, he was pulled off his feet and over a crevice that would drop him onto the tracks. 2/8
Suddenly someone in the crowd grabbed Robert by the collar and pulled him to safety. When Robert composed himself and turned to thank the man who had saved him, he saw that it was Edwin Booth.
3/8
Real TV and movie stars are a dying breed (literally). With so many viewing options to opt in or out, the days of "everyone" knowing "all" the actors/stars are pretty much are gone. If you don't get Netflix, you don't know who half the winners are at the awards shows. 1/5
Same with every subscriber TV channel. In fact, the Netflix's, Starz, HBOMax, etc all need to plug in at least one or two "stars" from the era of 3 TV networks and movie theaters to pull it together. Anchor it. To pull us in w/ familiar faces from TV/movie era we grew up on.2/5
Because many Americans have never heard of many of the actors on top shows winning Golden Globes. The balkanization of TV entertainment was inevitable, but presents a problem for the industry. I expect they'll cross-pollenize" across services or find a way thru social media.3/5