A Former Obama Operative Built a New Anti-Republican Attack Machine

[babylonsister]

John Burton
Photographer: Michael Friberg for Bloomberg Businessweek
A Former Obama Operative Built a New Anti-Republican Attack Machine
John Burton hopes an army of dirt diggers can deliver an October surprise for Democrats.
By Joshua Green
October 4, 2018, 4:00 AM EDT


One evening in September, Tanya, a consultant at a big New York firm, was on her laptop scrutinizing public records and reading posts on VKontakte, the Russian social network, involving Representative Dana Rohrabacher, the Republican congressman from California. She was looking for dirt. On the other side of the country, Genevieve, a science teacher in San Diego, was doing the same. So was Vadim, an insurance representative in Phoenix. And they weren’t alone.

Tanya, Genevieve, and Vadim have never met and probably never will. But they have two things in common: They’re members of the so-called Resistance, working to oust Republicans. And they’re being directed by a former J.P. Morgan banker named John Burton, who’s become a field general of sorts in the liberal opposition—and soon, he hopes, the cause of consternation and, ultimately, unemployment for dozens of Republican lawmakers in races from Maine to California.

Before he was a banker, Burton, 38, was a practitioner of the dark art of opposition research, or “oppo”—digging up and surreptitiously deploying damaging information about politicians. As it did for so many people, Donald Trump’s election turned Burton’s life upside down. He quit his job, joined a Resistance group, and devoted himself to returning his country to the path he’d believed it was on when he worked for Barack Obama’s campaign a decade ago.


Burton has organized what may be the most audacious grass-roots project in the age of Trump.
Photographer: Michael Friberg for Bloomberg Businessweek

Some Resisters march or knock on doors; others raise money or run for office. Burton felt his gifts lay elsewhere: namely, in tearing down political opponents. Over the past year, backed by mysterious donors, he’s organized what may be the most audacious grass-roots project in the age of Trump. Burton has amassed an army of 16,000 amateur sleuths who, with professional guidance, have spent months ferreting out damaging material on scores of vulnerable Republicans in Congress and state legislatures. Now he’s ready to unleash it just in time for the midterms. As he told me, “We’re going to do with real information and real Americans what the Russians tried to do with fake information and fake Americans.”

Oppo works best when its target is unaware, so Burton’s project, dubbed Citizen Strong, has operated by stealth, waiting until just now to publicly declare its existence as a 501(c)4 “dark money” group with three affiliated political action committees. Even this step doesn’t reveal much. Dark money donors can give unlimited sums anonymously, and Burton won’t identify his benefactors or even the three operatives he’s hired to help run the group.

But you needn’t know the source of his funding to see the potential of his army to upend close races. Rohrabacher presents a ripe target. The Orange County congressman has been so friendly to Moscow, in 2012 the FBI warned that Russian spies were trying to recruit him. Rohrabacher is also one of the least wealthy members of Congress, but he’s developed a pair of odd and remunerative sidelines: He invested in an obscure biotech company that shot up 100-fold in value; and he’s sold screenplays with names like The French Doctoress for tens of thousands of dollars, including one to a man later sent to prison for fraud. (None has been made into a movie.) In a statement, a Rohrabacher campaign spokesman says, “It’s October and Democratic super PACs are flush with cash. Every dirt digger on the left has a fistful of contracts and a bag of tricks and treats they are shopping to reporters. Most of it is old news, and the questions have been asked and answered long ago.”

more...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/a-former-obama-operative-built-a-new-anti-republican-attack-machine

[underthematrix]

1. He has the vibranium of opp research and I'm totally here for it.

Now I'm gonna go watch Black Panther

[underthematrix]

2. BTW, from now I'm gonna call him by his code

name - M'Baku

[Scurrilous]

3. K&R

[eleny]

4. "There's so much just sitting out there that's been made available through sunshine laws, ...

... through states posting personal financial disclosures and putting lobbyist disclosures online, and through social media,” Burton says. “There’s just a ton of content, far more than there was when I was starting out 10 years ago.”

rec'd

[MrScorpio]

5. As long as he ferrets out truth and fact...

Instead of some liberal version of RWNJ conspiracy theories, I wish him well.

[eleny]

6. I just wonder if this group is partly responsible for the NY Times's expose about the Trump finances

After all, it's October.

That's not the only reason for my wondering about this. It just smacks of intense research like Burton's group who work behind the scenes and pass their info along to public outlets. Burton is a serious inspiration and deserves our awe.

[babylonsister]

7. Could very well be. 16,000

sleuths gives me hope!!

[eleny]

8. I would love to work for him

I did investigative work for decades. But seeing the kind of backgrounds people have who work for him I might not have the chops. Kudos to him for for how he puts his shoulder against the storm.

[babylonsister]

9. Good morning!

Here's more info on this; hope springs eternal!!!

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211235887

[liberalla]

10. I want to pay attention to this... watching & waiting

Thanks for posting.