January 1, 2018

"And the NYT runs the story on New Year's Eve Sunday."

"Clinton backers David Brock & Susie Tompkins Buell steered a total of $700k to @LisaBloom’s firm to try to bring forward sexual misconduct accusations against Trump before Election Day" (Instapundit).

The headline on the NYT story is "Partisans, Wielding Money, Begin Seeking to Exploit Harassment Claims."

The photograph at the Times article is freaky. Gloria Allred, looking grim and evil, seems to be carrying a Summer Zervos robot.

The Times article makes the problem about "partisans," and not specifically Democrats. Paragraph 5 quotes a "Republican lawyer":
“I approach this with a pure heart,” said Jack Burkman, a flamboyant Republican lawyer known for right-wing conspiracy theories who is seeking to represent sexual harassment victims. “I don’t want to see it politicized, even though, in a democracy, you see the political weaponization of everything.”
Very funny — a lawyer asserting that he has "a pure heart."

You've got to go way into the article to find the $700,000 donation that Instapundit talks about:
Ms. Allred’s daughter, the lawyer Lisa Bloom, seized on the political potency of sexual harassment charges against Mr. Trump not long after he clinched the Republican presidential nomination. She said she reached out to a pro-Clinton “super PAC”... for money to help her vet a sexual misconduct claim against Mr. Trump....

Ms. Bloom would not identify the donors. But two Democrats familiar with the arrangements said a nonprofit group founded by [Democratic activist David] Brock, American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, gave $200,000, while the fashion entrepreneur Susie Tompkins Buell, a major donor to Mr. Brock’s suite of groups, gave $500,000 to Ms. Bloom’s firm for the last-ditch effort....

Ms. Buell, a longtime friend and financial supporter of Mrs. Clinton who helped found the clothing brand Esprit, would not comment on the financial arrangement....
ADDED: This story got me thinking about Larry Flynt. Here's a NYT column by Felicity Barringer from January 1999:
If a tree falls in a forest, is it news? Does it become news only if Geraldo Rivera, Larry King, Sam Donaldson, Matt Drudge, eight talk radio shows, five World Wide Web sites, four newspapers, three cable channels, two wire services and a late-night talk-show host take notice? Or, to be less metaphorical, can Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, get the press to give him a platform for his campaign of offering cash to anyone who can expose the sexual transgressions of a politician seeking to remove President Clinton from office?

Last week's coverage of Mr. Flynt's latest revelations showed that yes, he can get attention. But it also showed that, unless the target of his attacks responds, making news himself, self-appointed newsmakers like Mr. Flynt can't necessarily keep the press's attention very long....

Many of the filters that once kept such news from the American public are easy to bypass. It is now conventional wisdom that the Internet, talk radio and late-night comics provide a conduit through which half-baked news, gossip and innuendo flow to the public. Now new kinds of grass-roots editing seems to be evolving. When people hear purportedly scandalous news that doesn't meet their criteria of newsworthiness, they don't react. Since the whole rationale for putting out scandalous news is the potential for public and political reaction, no reaction means no story.

To put it another way, the generation that is learning to invest its own retirement money is now doing more editing of its own news....
Ha ha. And look where we are today, 2 decades later. We no longer have to say "World Wide Web sites" or capitalize "internet," but we're hungrier than ever for news about sex and still trying to build some competence at using our own brains to filter the real and the fake.

67 comments:

tim in vermont said...

Whatever you do, don't believe that lying whore Juanita Broaddrick, though.

MayBee said...

Lisa Bloom seems to be on every side of the sexual harassment hysteria, making money, giving out money.
Is she discredited yet?

FIDO said...

Of course it is way at the bottom of the page. One frequently hears that to see the Times as a Republican newspaper, you need to read it backward, starting at the bottom of the article and working one's way to the top.

It is also at the bottom that they save the most informative stuff.

Carol said...

Meanwhile, NBC news assured me this morning that the Mueller investigation is still "looming large" over the Trump Administration.

Is this true? I hadn't really noticed any significant looming in quite awhile.

FIDO said...

This, by the way, is a binary form of burying the lede: they put the relevant information WAY at the bottom of the page...and they release the information at a time when absolutely no one but nerds and obsessives will spend any time on following the news.

The Times can say they covered it (albeit in a perfunctory, superficial and willfully incurious and under informative way) and so can, with clearish conscience, drop the matter entirely, as is their wont.

Matt Sablan said...

Wait. This conspiracy theory.... Was true? I remember the heady days of December 2017 when we were assured no one offered money for accusations against Trump or other Republican politicians.

Matt Sablan said...

What relation does the FBI have to these groups? I thought it was dumb to ask that about Fusion GPS, but I learn not to burn myself twice on the same oven.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Very funny — a lawyer asserting that he has "a pure heart."

LOL!

And don't forget the best part - it was a "Republican lawyer!"

FleetUSA said...

Might these donations qualify as illegal campaign donations?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

It takes big money to manufacture victims.

Michael K said...

Iowahawk says it best.

"Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving"

I wonder if we will find out who paid for the Moore allegations ?

Lewis Wetzel said...

Why, just over a month ago, the Times bureau chief in Iran published a lengthy story explaining how Trump's hostility to the Iranian regime was resulting in the Iranians flocking to support their government: Long Divided, Iran Unites Against Trump and Saudis in a Nationalist Fervor
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/26/world/middleeast/iran-nationalism-saudi-arabia-donald-trump.html
Looks like the writer fellow got played by the Iranian foreign secretary. Fake news begins with gullibility.

gspencer said...

Is there a Mr. Allred? I've yet to hear ever of Lisa's father.

FIDO said...

I wonder if we will find out who paid for the Moore allegations ?

Well, if a politically appointed IRS agent leaked what exactly Yearbook Girl made last year, it might be...enlightening.

Live by the leak, die by the leak.

All of this is horribly bad for society, but I can't see how one side being disarmed is not equally as horrible an outcome, at least for me.

Matt Sablan said...

"Might these donations qualify as illegal campaign donations?"

-- Doubtful. They used the PAC as a go-between most likely to protect themselves from that possibility.

Michael K said...

"Is there a Mr. Allred? I've yet to hear ever of Lisa's father."

There was and I recall being amazed that someone would marry her.

He either divorced her or he is confined in a dungeon somewhere on her property,

Skipper said...

Where'd the money go? Pure profit for Aldred & Bloom or bribes to potential liars?

Curious George said...

"gspencer said...
Is there a Mr. Allred? I've yet to hear ever of Lisa's father."

I forget his full name. He goes by Satan.

Ray - SoCal said...

http://articles.latimes.com/1992-02-26/local/me-2875_1_bill-allred

2nd divorce was messy...

Not sure what the final result was.

Gilbert Pinfold said...

The money angle is that Allred and/or Bloom get 1/3 of any monies coming to a client for settlement, book deal, or television appearance. Basic pimping...

Leslie Graves said...

If Ken Vogel, the NYT reporter on this story, had better sources in the Republican Party, he'd know whether any Republican donors were trying the Susie Tompkins Buell move earlier in the year when Trump didn't yet have the nomination sewed up.

Michael The Magnificent said...

Ms. Allred’s daughter, the lawyer Lisa Bloom, seized on the political potency of sexual harassment charges against Mr. Trump not long after he clinched the Republican presidential nomination.

Which was the plan all along.

"Operation Pied Piper" (see the Attachments)).

Elevate Donald Trump, getting the press to go along in promoting him, "We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them (sic) seriously," which the lapdog press was more than willing to do, and then once he'd secured the Republican nomination knock Trump down with these paid-for accusations.

The strategy didn't work sufficiently on Trump, although it worked just fine on Roy Moore.

FIDO said...

f Ken Vogel, the NYT reporter on this story, had better sources in the Republican Party, he'd know whether any Republican donors were trying the Susie Tompkins Buell move earlier in the year when Trump didn't yet have the nomination sewed up.

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. This 'Republicans do it too' does not exonerate incredibly dodgy, if not potentially illegal action.

But I can see why you are desperate to change the subject to Republicans.

Michael K said...

I read that LA Times article. It sounds like Lisa is not his daughter but was adopted and put through law school by him.

They rolled him like a drunk.

Good practice, I guess,

bagoh20 said...

I really wonder about people who would chose to spend that kind of money on such a thing.

God could have really done a lot better if he just made being decent a prerequisite for wealth.

cubanbob said...

Anyone who has Allred as a lawyer is almost certainly shady.

CWJ said...

"Partisans, Wielding Money, Begin Seeking to Exploit Harassment Claims."

"...not long after he clinched the Republican presidential nomination"

So Summer 2016 equals "begin" a year and a half later.

William said...

The larger scandal is that this is not a large scandal. Lisa Bloom will never be mocked by Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert.......What with the reckoning, it's gotten better for those victims who were assaulted by esteemed Democrats. It wasn't so long ago that they were dismissed as bimbos. Still, the best victimhood status is attained by those assaulted by Republicans. You not only get Joan of Arc status, but all kinds of money is exchanged under the table.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Summer Zervos could use a top that left a little more to the imagination. Yes, I realize that I am part of the problem and an antifeminist if I think that a woman who doesn't want to be treated like a sex object should maybe not wear a top that opens to her belly button for the TV cameras.

cronus titan said...

Follow the money.

pacwest said...

"Doubtful. They used the PAC as a go-between most likely to protect themselves from that possibility."

They probably have more than one layer of protection/deniability. Allred has been in this busuness a long time. Wait til the Hillary shit hits the fan. The layers go so deep even Alexander couldn't cut through that Gordian knot.

Jersey Fled said...

Funny how using cut-outs to pay for illegal things when the Mafia does it makes the crime worse (conspiracy), but when Democrats do it it makes the crime go away.

Michael K said...

Conservative Tree House has a good explanation of the role of FBI/DOJ in the Russian "Collusion" story.

There were two big projects to stop Trump. One was the outside group with the Allred types.

The other was the internal "Dossier" operation that was "An Insurance Policy."

In October 2016, immediately after the DOJ lawyers formatted the FBI information (Steele Dossier etc.) for the FISA application, the head of the NSD, Asst. Attorney General John P Carlin, left his job. During his exit John Carlin informed the FISA court the DOJ-NSD frequently provided false information to the court to gain FISA warrants – Read Here.

The New York Times never wrote about the admission by the Obama DOJ to the FISA court. The court itself declassified their opinion of the DOJ conduct, in May of 2017, and that’s the way the public discovered the 2016 admissions by the DOJ National Security Division.


CTH is the best source for unravelling these complex stories that the MSM lies about.

The best fried we have in government is the OIG, Horowitz, who is seeking real evidence,

Responding to a 2015 request by the DOJ Office of Inspector General, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told the internal watchdog they cannot investigate the National Security Division. That’s right, there was essentially no oversight on any activity happening inside the NSD.

That's where they hid the Trump "insurance policy" operation.

cubanbob said...

Summer Zervos and Gloria Allred: fake tits and fake lawyer, no there is a truthy match made in scam heaven.

David said...

No surprise here. Also no surprise that it has taken over a year to be revealed.

tim in vermont said...

Funny how using cut-outs to pay for illegal things when the Mafia does it makes the crime worse (conspiracy), but when Democrats do it it makes the crime go away.

You mean like paying a foreign spy for dirt on Trump through a law firm, and calling it “legal expenses”?

David said...

Please follow Michael K's link to Conservative Tree House at 11:09. Remarkable article.

Original Mike said...

"CTH is the best source for unravelling these complex stories that the MSM lies about."

I've started going there after you suggested it MK. It's a great resource.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

“Summer Zervos could use a top that left a little more to the imagination.”

The same thing struck me, in a purely objective not-blaming-the-victim kind of way. It used to be that if you wanted to convince the public of the wounded innocence of a woman you did everything you could think of to make her look like Elizabeth Warren, instead of a porn star in her off-hours.

Original Mike said...

"In October 2016, immediately after the DOJ lawyers formatted the FBI information (Steele Dossier etc.) for the FISA application, the head of the NSD, Asst. Attorney General John P Carlin, left his job. During his exit John Carlin informed the FISA court the DOJ-NSD frequently provided false information to the court to gain FISA warrants – Read Here."

So, the problem with this is "Read Here" links to a 99 page document. Anyone know where the relevant passage is?

Achilles said...

This is why the plutocrats want net neutrality and to try to neuter the internet and newfound freedom it has given us all.

walter said...

Get with the times.
To show her true outrage, she needs to remove the top.

Michael K said...

The 99 page document includes a side note explanation. The document itself does not allow copy-paste.
The side note,which is next to the pertinent section says this:

A newly released court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) found that the National Security Agency, under former President Obama, routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall. In describing the violations, the FISA court said the illegal searches conducted by the NSA under Obama were "widespread" and created a "very serious Fourth Amendment issue." These new discoveries come from a recently unsealed FISA court document dated April 26, 2017 and center around a hearing dated October 26, 2017, just days before the 2016 election, in which the FISA court apparently learned for the first time of "widespread" and illegal spying on American citizens by the NSA under the Obama administration.

Gk1 said...

No surprises here but it is amazing to see the dems battle field prep evaporate so easily when exposed to a modicum of sun light. So I guess its just down to the 25th amendment and declaring trump "crazy" in order to overturn an election. Good luck with that.

n.n said...

she needs to remove the top

The feminist directive: show that you're just one of the guys, Mother Nature be damned.

rhhardin said...

we're hungrier than ever for news about sex

A female interest born of resentment of men. Finally maybe something can be done about men!

Sex news doesn't interest guys.

Original Mike said...

"These new discoveries come from a recently unsealed FISA court document dated April 26, 2017 and center around a hearing dated October 26, 2017, just days before the 2016 election, in which the FISA court apparently learned for the first time of "widespread" and illegal spying on American citizens by the NSA under the Obama administration."

Thanks MK. I don't see the side note. Maybe I'm missing it, or maybe the iPad isn't showing it. I'll have to look later.

The October 26, 2017 date is a typo, right? Assuming it refers to "the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall." it would have to be 2016.

Michael K said...

I think it is and the date above it was April 2017 so I think that was the source of the mistake.,

Jim at said...

Is this true? I hadn't really noticed any significant looming in quite awhile.

Just because he isn't looming today doesn't mean he isn't getting closer.

Bruce Hayden said...

The other side of the Bloom issue is that she was recruiting, and offering to pay substantial sums (> $100k in at least one instance), to women who would testify against Trump in the last weeks before the election. That is where that $700k was apparently going - to hire women to say that Trump sexually harassed them. This was their October surprise, that nay fizzled out because at least the one woman who had agreed to take the money backed out, and refused to testify, despite frantic calls by Bloom, and her flying most of the way across the country for a last minute push, the weekend before the election.

Yes, it was probably technically illegal, but if it had switched several thousand votes in four states, Crooked Hillary would have been President, and she could have had the investigation assigned to the same cabal of DoJ attorney’s and FBI agents who whitewashed her server and foundation issues, and then went after Trump with their bogus Russian collaboration investigation.

tim in vermont said...

Didn’t she represent Harvey Weinstein against those lying whores? Following in the footsteps of St Hillary?

Michael K said...

"This was their October surprise, "

The Billy Bush tape was the October surprise. This was to be the November surprise. Too late to refute.

The trouble with these things is that early absentee voting makes it harder.

The most successful thing of this sort was the Bush drunk driving story which resulted in a tied election.

I blame Karl Rove for that mistake and have not believed anything he said since,.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

This is why the plutocrats want net neutrality and to try to neuter the internet and newfound freedom it has given us all.

What the fuck? Net neutrality is precisely how the web got to its current state in the first place, you cable monopoly shill.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

We no longer have to say "World Wide Web sites" or capitalize "internet," but we're hungrier than ever for news about sex and still trying to build some competence at using our own brains to filter the real and the fake.

Speak for your own party, please.

tcrosse said...

Net neutrality is precisely how the web got to its current state in the first place

Since 2015, anyway.

Kathryn51 said...

Michael K, I read the Treehouse link and also the document referenced w/r/t to Carlin. Did a search of the document and there was no mention of Carlin; moreover, I couldn't find anything that indicated that the NSD specifically lied to the FISA court - the wrongdoing was "violation of privacy protections".

Just as the Trump Haters have survived 2017 only because they are convinced that Mueller is going to find the goods on Trump, the conservative side is convinced that the IG's review is going to uncover malfeasance at the top levels of the FBI/DOJ. Trump wasn't that stupid and neither are the top folks at the agencies.

If you can point to the Carlin statements, I would love to see them - I'm tired of my lib friends blathering on about "truth" and "facts" as if their side has a monopoly.

Michael K said...

Did a search of the document and there was no mention of Carlin;

The former head of the NSD, Asst. Attorney General John P Carlin, admitting their intentional misuse of the FISA court process is actual evidence of why Sally Yates kept the NSD operating without oversight.

During his exit John Carlin informed the FISA court the DOJ-NSD frequently provided false information to the court to gain FISA warrants – Read Here.

A newly released court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) found that the National Security Agency, under former President Obama, routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall. In describing the violations, the FISA court said the illegal searches conducted by the NSA under Obama were "widespread" and created a "very serious Fourth Amendment issue." These new discoveries come from a recently unsealed FISA court document dated April 26, 2017 and center around a hearing dated October 26, 2017, just days before the 2016 election, in which the FISA court apparently learned for the first time of "widespread" and illegal spying on American citizens by the NSA under the Obama administration.

The document, itself, is full of jargon but I believe he is referred to as "The Government" in it.

It sounds like you don't want to believe it.

Michael K said...

The October 2017 date is a typo as we have previously discussed.

Bill said...

Gloria Allred, looking grim and evil

Thou sayest.

Big Mike said...

To paraphrase James Carville, drag a hundred thousand dollars through downtown Manhattan and who knows what you’ll find.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Conservative Tree House has a good explanation of the role of FBI/DOJ in the Russian "Collusion" story.”

Interesting. Things may be getting ready to unravel big time. We have Congress setting Wed. as a deadline, and McCade announcing his retirement. We now know who (Baker) assigned the same people to first clearing Crooked Hillary, and then magically to Mueller. Evidence now that the DoJ and FBI intentionally failed to inform the Gang of Eight in Congress of the Trump counterintelligence probe, as they are legally required to do (at the insistence of Bill Priestap, Peter Strzok’s immediate boss at the time).

Someone is leaking right now, Putting increasing pressure on the DoJ and FBI players involved, and it looks like it is probably coming from the OIG. Notably, it was apparently Priestap who convinced AG Lynch to exclude the FBI counterintelligence group (headed by him) from OIG oversight, and it was only when she was replaced by AG Sessions that they could again do their statutory duty. And, notably the time when OIG was not allowed oversight included the time when they went, twice, to the FISC to get FISA warrants, presumably using the Steele Dossier, that they knew was paid for by the Clinton campaign, to surveil Trump’s team. Could the OIG investigation of that be why AG Sessions has, essentially refused to provide cleared members of Congress (including the Gang of Eight) with the FISA warrant applications? My guess is that either Priestap has flipped, and is working with the OIG, or will be going to prison. My guess is the former, since his name is so consistently and conspicuously missing, despite being one of the most central players in the entire scheme. We shall see - very quickly. The House deadline is Wed (1/3/18) and the OIG has promised revelations in the next couple of weeks.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

"Net neutrality is precisely how the web got to its current state in the first place"

Since 2015, anyway.


Thanks for the half-truth. The fact is that before 2015 violations of a net neutrality standard occasionally took place, but not without threat of FCC fines. But that was back when the FCC took public sentiment more seriously than it currently does and replaced that incentive with doing whatever the cable monopolies want.

Michael K said...

it looks like it is probably coming from the OIG.

The IG, whose name is Horowitz, sounds like the hero.

Obama has fired other IGs who got too nosy, Maybe this guy realizes the new sheriff is in town.

Kathryn51 said...

Michael K. said: It sounds like you don't want to believe it.

Just the opposite - I want to "believe", but I insist on verifiable facts if I'm going to get in a battle with lib friends. Many years ago in my career, I dealt with the FBI and US attorneys from time to time - they might cross the vague lines (withholding information), but always left enough wiggle room so that there were no direct lies.

I like Mr. Hayden's theory: My guess is that either Priestap has flipped, and is working with the OIG, or will be going to prison. My guess is the former, since his name is so consistently and conspicuously missing, despite being one of the most central players in the entire scheme.

Original Mike said...

"We shall see - very quickly. The House deadline is Wed (1/3/18) and the OIG has promised revelations in the next couple of weeks."

Congress can set a deadline but they don't seem to have any means of enforcing compliance.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Congress can set a deadline but they don't seem to have any means of enforcing compliance.”

I would only disagree in that your statement is absolute, and not relative. For one thing, they have the power of the purse. They could cut off the salaries, or even eliminate the jobs, of those who stonewall them. And, indeed, I hoped, to little avail that they would have cut off pensions for any employees who took the 5th Amdt about their official duties (aimed, of course, at Lois Lerner, but maybe applicable in the near future with Andy McCade). Or eliminated their jobs, and denied them bumping rights. Should maybe extend that to anyone found in contempt by both houses of Congress. Which is to say that it would be hard, just not impossible, to do anything to enforce compliance.

Next step is probably going to be to hold those (below the AG) who are stonewalling in contempt of Congress. My understanding is that that requires the DoJ to start prosecution (or some such) against them. We shall see. If the DoJ and FBI people involved continue their stonewalling after Wednesday, it will be interesting to see what the Republicans in Congress do. If they don’t push fairly quickly for contempt, I think that there would be a decent chance that IG Horowitz had assured them, somehow, that things were about to break from his investigation. Either that or AG Sessions had personally assured them of something similar. Maybe wishful thinking, but, as I said above, things seem to be moving quickly right now on the OIG front.

Original Mike said...

Congress doesn't have the balls to do any of that, IMO.