Romney Staffer Committing Charitable Fraud

[Velvet Revolution]

Source: The Democratic Daily

Bill Murphy, Mitt Romney’s Social Media Director, and his colleague Ali Akbar have ripped off a lot of people. They ripped off the Tea Party with the American Liberty Alliance. They ripped off movement Conservatives with the National Bloggers Club. They even ripped off Andrew Breitbart. But their days of making it rain misbegotten right-wing dollars may be numbered.

In 2009 Murphy and Akbar worked together at American Liberty Alliance, an organization which collected “donations” throughout the summer while claiming they were just waiting for their 501(c)3 application to go through. It never did. Then they worked together at National Bloggers Club, a group which solicited “donations” for the past six months while actually calling itself a non-profit (status pending). But according to the IRS, they never bothered to file the necessary documents.

Which means the National Bloggers Club is NOT a non-profit. Not only that, it was NEVER a non-profit.

Murphy and Akbar started NBC with seed money from Foster Friess, the conservative billionaire who single-handedly kept the Rick Santorum campaign shuffling along far past its expiration date like some rotting, remote-controlled corpse. Currently Akbar functions as President, and prior to joining the Romney campaign, Murphy was NBC’s Director. They filed for incorporation on January 27th – in Texas, for some reason. The company is listed as a non-profit.



Read more: http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2012/09/01/romney-staffer-committing-charitable-fraud/

[SoapBox]

1. Dirty as they come...

wow...scum in the Thug, Bully and Bagger Party...imagine that!

[Frustratedlady]

2. I have a feeling those two aren't the only one running scams.

They could make enough in one campaign season to live on the rest of their lives.

Christie O'Donnell probably rode the wagon, as well. I see she has her own PAC.

What about Ms. Palin and her clan?

They may not be identical or even close, but I sure wouldn't trust any of them with a penny of my money.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

3. SarahPAC was about the crookedest outfit ever

You may have heard this before, but most of the money they took in was used to buy copies of her book, which were then donated to outfits like the National Review and Current Events to give away as free gifts with subscriptions.

[russspeakeasy]

25. Good point ..

[WhoIsNumberNone]

28. Yeah, and people wonder why conservative authors sell so well

Apparently this is common practice.

[wordpix]

34. maybe that's why Faux canceled her commentary

They're all a clusterfk of dangerous moronic thieves, anyway

[freshwest]

4. James O'Keefe another dirty bird. They get away with this repeatedly. If prosecuted, like Tom Delay,

They scream that they're being 'politically persecuted.' Slippery as greased pigs.

[Diclotican]

9. freshwest

freshwest

Don't insult pigs - even greased pigs - they are a least honest - the thief's here is far worse than a pig can be..

And at least you can teach a pig - to do something, A pig have, almost the same intelligence as most dogs, and can with proper training learn to do a lot of things.. And on their own, they can find out a lot of things, like breaking out of where they live.. I have "hunted down" enough pigs who wanted to go on a venture .. And they run fast when they will also... But as most animals, they think with their belly, and as long as you have a treat at hand, they will come back after a while..

- this fellows, know only one thing steal and plunder - and do it well...

Diclotican

[freshwest]

16. Slippery as a greased pig isn't an insult to swine; it's hard to catch them. They do have primitive

Last edited Sun Sep 2, 2012, 04:00 PM - Edit history (1)

Events where people intentionally put grease on pigs and chased and try to catch them. Not pretty at all. Worse than a rodeo.

[Diclotican]

43. freshwest

freshwest

I see

I have never experienced that myself - so I guess it is something that slips true the grease here somehow... I have always been learned to treat animals with respect... After all, they are living creatures who experience a lot of the same feelings as we do.. Happiness, and fear...

Diclotican

[beezling]

5. Cheers

Thanks for the hat tip

ABZ

[Turbineguy]

6. I guess the question then is:

Is ripping off teabaggers a crime?

[beezling]

7. Nobody deserves to get ripped off

People are trying to good, whatever their conception of that is, and they're getting humped in the butt by Akbar, Murphy et al.

Whoops... phrasing...

[Turbineguy]

10. You are correct.

And welcome to DU!

[beezling]

15. Thanks much.

I appreciate the hospitality!

I've been writing about these jerks and their dubious financial dealings since 2009!

It would be SO nice to see something finally come of it.

"What's Wrong With American Liberty Alliance?"

"Anatomy of the Tea Party: American Liberty Alliance"

[demobabe]

41. Hey welcome!

Glad to see you here.

[beezling]

44. Well, thank Velvet Revolution for that.

They're already starting to vilify me. I can't wait to find out how much of an evil bastard I am.

"$200 on pedophile, can I see pedophile? NOPE, it's terrorist."

We should organize a tontine regarding aspects of my credibility.

[russspeakeasy]

27. A misdemeanor at best.

[Balmer Liberal]

8. Akbar would prefer you not mention butt humping.

Nice job on the story!

BOO YAH!

[beezling]

45. Cheers big-ears

Much appreciated sir. Glad you liked it.

[Sunlei]

11. 'tax free' political charities are why real USA charities have lack of donations n/t

[wordpix]

35. exactly, like Norquist's outfit

what total BS that it's a nonprofit. Of course, it was probably OK'd by a repuklican doing the oversight when the application came in

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. "like some rotting, remote-controlled corpse."

great imagery there.

[beezling]

14. Cheers m'dear!

Flattery will get you everywhere.

I like to call Foster "Between-The-Knees Friess"

[central scrutinizer]

13. Does Jeff know?

This money might have kept the Tofu Hut open?

[Tikki]

20. Ha, ha...First thing I thought of, also.

Tikki

[Berlum]

17. Romney has a wicked case of Republican Grifter Values

Some dark dark shit with this dude and his cronies...

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. Does Akbar have an official position with the Romney campaign?

If he does, then a lot of havoc could be wreaked by putting that fact in front of a lot of the islamophobic conservatives thinking of voting Romney. They would exacerbate the civil war inside the conservative movement.

Then let it be known that Romney speaks French and likes the French people.

[cosmicone]

19. Ali Akbar is a convicted felon

of Pakistani descent.

http://www.breitbartunmasked.com/rogues-gallery/national-bloggers-club-founder-ali-akbar-convicted-felon/

[OccupyUnmasked]

21. This is just the first bit

This is just the first peek DU has had at this problem. It goes on and on and ON>


Romney's Racist Retainers

Hynes Communications: Swatgate

Brandon Darby: Murder of Riad Hamad

Brandon Darby: Swatgate

Brandon Darby Dox

Maybe we should be posting this here? Oh, and those wankers got @OccupyUnmasked suspended FOUR TIMES in the last three days. They really don't want people to know what they are all about.

[OccupyUnmasked]

22. How do I include a Twitter ID?

They got @OccupyUnmasked suspended four times in the last two days - I can't get the 'link' thing to work with it

[OccupyUnmasked]

24. Off Twitter, but still have our Tumblr

Here is a fine photo of Bill Murphy and Ali Akbar.

[starroute]

37. Oh, Patrick Hynes, the "crushkerry.com" guy -- I remember him from 2004

Looking at this old thread, it seems like he was tight with Karl Rove even back then. He was also employed by Marsh Copsey and Scott, which was a firm spun off in 2002 from Russo Marsh Copsey and Scott. The other half of that firm became Russo Marsh and Rogers, which founded the GOP front group Move America Forward.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x898040

Dan Backer, who I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, also has some kind of connection to Move America Forward. Someone named Deborah Johns, who was being touted for a while as the Tea Party's answer to Cindy Sheehan, was getting $2000 a month from the One Nation PAC for consulting at the same time as she was associated with Move America Forward (and the Tea Party Express, which is part of the same operation).

Are Karl Rove, the 2004 dirty tricksters, the Tea Party, and this new stuff all going to turn out to be part of one big ball of dirty tricks?

[starroute]

38. More on Hynes in 2004 from the Wayback Machine

He's a classic GOP dirty trickster and it's no surprise to see his name come up. Hynes was an alumnus of Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, the same as Rove, and his crushkerry.com blog was heavily involved in promoting both the Swiftboat Veterans and "Rathergate."

http://web.archive.org/web/20041106222523/http://surrealcafe.motime.com/archive/2004-09

Thursday, September 23, 2004

GOP CONSULTANT RUNS A DIRTY TRICKS BLOG TO SABOTAGE DEMOCRATIC ELECTION TURNOUT

A senior executive from a leading GOP consulting firm, uses a web log called CrushKerry.com to discuss campaigns to suppress black and liberal voters through dirty tricks. Patrick Hynes a senior account executive with Marsh, Copsey and Scott operates the CrushKerry blog.

The author of the blog is anonymous but the Surreal Café leaned that Hynes was the proprietor of the web log in an ongoing investigation of the GOP’s use of Internet blogs. Surreal Café has uncovered a network of GOP blogs to promote unethical or illegal dirty tricks campaigns to suppress the vote on election day. Most of the blogs are run by GOP operatives anonymously.

Hynes discussed a dirty trick that would create a fake antiwar organization to spread the rumor that Kerry was planning a “Lyndon Johnson style plan to escalate the war in Iraq.” Hynes suggested that planting that false information in key liberal districts would suppress the turnout of Kerry voters.

Hynes also played the race card by suggesting that black communities in key swings states be bombarded with information the information that John Kerry opposes slavery reparations. Hynes believes that black voters would lose interest in voting for Kerry if the GOP repeatedly reinforced Kerry’s as an anti-black candidate.

[starroute]

40. And Brandon Darby's name is also part of the mix

I was actually thinking about Darby just last night, when I read the story posted here at DU about the Austin Police using provocateurs to entrap members of Occupy Austin.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014214860

Darby, of course, was an FBI provocateur who got two young protestors convicted of felonies at the time of the 2008 GOP convention by prodding them into making Molotov cocktails. He's also been attacking the Occupy movement -- and last fall was seen sniffing around both Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland in the process of making his film. And Austin appears to be his home base.

A string of coincidences? Maybe. But putting Darby together with Hynes, it strongly suggests that the right is looking for something they can use to Swiftboat Obama, and they'd be equally happy with either Occupy or Swatgate, whichever seems more handy.


http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/brandon-darby-anarchist-fbi-terrorism

How a Radical Leftist Became the FBI's BFF
By Josh Harkinson
September/October 2011

Since only a few people knew about the firebombs, fellow activists speculated that someone close to McKay and Crowder must have tipped off the feds. Back in Texas, flyers soon began appearing at coffeehouses urging leftists to beware of Brandon Darby, an "FBI informant rat loose in Austin."


www.austinchronicle.com/news/2009-01-23/729400/

Jan. 23, 2009

Some people who worked with him are frankly suspicious that Darby's acknowledged collaboration with the FBI hints of something much larger and more sinister. Some Austin activists have formed the Austin Informant Working Group; currently focused on the McKay and Crowder cases, they are also considering the wider implications. The term "Green Scare" (by analogy to earlier anti-communist "Red Scares&quot refers to the federal government's growing interest in prosecuting environmental activist groups, particularly the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. Austin Informant Working Group member Simon Evans points to a report by former University of Texas law student Elizabeth Wag­goner, who said that FBI agent Charles Rasner announced to her class that Food Not Bombs and Austin Indymedia were on the bureau's terror watch list. "It doesn't seem unreasonable to question," says Evans, "whether or not something larger is at play here."

[Spitfire of ATJ]

23. While Bush and Cheney made money on war, Romney is making it on hate of a black man.

[starroute]

26. Oh yeah, those guys

I've kept running into mutterings about them online, but what's more interesting to me is something called the One Nation PAC that this Ali Akbar was formerly associated with.

In April 2010, when Ali was working for a Tea Party candidate named Ray McKinney, questions came up about McKinney's finances. (http://m.savannahnow.com/share/blog-post/larry-peterson/2010-04-27/mckinney-shows-us-money-sort)

A couple of months later, McKinney's opponent in the GOP primary accused him of violating federal election law by coordinating with a California PAC and presented documents showing that Ali was both McKinney's campaign manager and a board member of the One Nation PAC. Ali responded that he was just a volunteer in both cases and in any case had resigned from the PAC in April. (http://savannahnow.com/news/2010-07-26/12th-district-runoff-smith-accuses-mckinney-coordination-pac#.T-zZepGPOjI)

However, the following winter, Ali was listed as a chairperson for a party that the One Nation PAC put on at the Conservative Political Action Conference. (http://www.scribd.com/doc/47891615/Scotch-Cigars-Reception-for-One-Nation-PAC)

But it's the PAC that really interests me, not Ali. Its FEC filings suggest that it's a classic direct-mail fundraising scam, the kind that solicits lots of contributions but doesn't spend much on its supposed cause and mainly pays bloated fees to its directors. If you google around, you find that even the tea partiers supposedly helped by the PAC have been accusing it of being a scam.

And there's more. The executive director of One Nation PAC is Kelly Eustis, a 23 year old former College Republican whose own consulting firm has been a major beneficiary of the PAC's expenditures. Its treasurer is Dan Backer, the founder of DB Capitol Strategies. And that's where it gets really interesting, because according to SourceWatch (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Dan_Backer):

In January 2011, Dan Backer, Esq. of DB Capitol Strategies PLLC filed suit against the Federal Election Commission on behalf of National Defense PAC, Rear Admiral James J. Carey [Ret.], and Kelly S. Eustis 'to protect the free speech rights of individuals - ensuring that Americans remain free to contribute to political groups who speak out about issues and candidates without government imposed limits.'

The basis for the case was Kelly Eustis wanting to give $10,000 to National Defense PAC (NDPAC) to run attack ads against Democratic Representative Anthony Wiener. Since NDPAC was a traditional PAC, not a Super PAC, Eustis could only give $5,000, the maximum acceptable contribution. Plaintiffs argued that NDPAC should not have to create a separate entity to exercise its constitutional rights.

This suit was successful and led to the creation of something called Carey PACs, which are particularly insidious because they can collect both hard and soft money donations -- as long as they keep them in separate bank accounts -- and therefore undermine campaign finance regulations.

Backer is currently involved with a suit by another associate of his, Shaun McCutcheon, that aims to completely overturn the limits on how much individuals can donate to federal candidates, on the grounds that any kind of restrictions violate freedom of speech. In other words, Citizens United on steroids.

All very strange and disturbing stuff -- and it goes well beyond the question of whether one bunch of right-wingers has been ripping off another bunch of right-wingers.

[OccupyUnmasked]

32. Did someone just say "Anthony Weiner"??

Brandon Darby swatted Mike Stack after they left him holding the bag for Weinergate.

Hynes Communications Brandon Darby Swatgate Conspiracy Theory


They were after Weiner because he turned Mike Grimm NY-13 in for extortion. This resulted in a grand jury and a week ago Grimm's top fundraiser was arrested at a campaign function, but on unrelated charges.
Ofir Biton, Mike Grimm Fundraiser, Arrested

Grimm and Darby have received a lot of attention over this stuff:

Butthurt Alert: Mike Grimm & Brandon Darby

It is funny to me to see the name Kelly Eustis on the wrong side of this business.

[OccupyUnmasked]

29. If you want more information on this

Liberal Grouch - Bill is funny as heck and all over this issue.

Breitbart Unmasked - most dangerous researcher on this issue.

Osborne Ink - another heavy hitter.

Alex Brant Zawadzki - long time Tea Party watcher.

Hackers & Fake Newz - Ron Brynaert is absolutely relentless in his digging, and he brings a unique perspective to the matter - a Breitbart troll named Pat Frey aka Patterico tried to set him up for criminal charges - swatting - last year.

[OccupyUnmasked]

30. Oh My Gosh! They SWATTED Grouchy

How The Fuck About That: I've Been Swatted


Grouchy is in his late fifties and he's got Parkinson's. What kind of a scumbag pulls something like this? Lee Stranahan? Yeah, pretty scummy.

[DeSwiss]

31. Fraud, you say?

- K&R

[WhoIsNumberNone]

33. I've actually been watching this story since June

I wonder what Michelle Malkin's cut is?

[beezling]

46. Hopefully low

I kid! I kid! It's terrible the way women in the media are objectified. Just can't resist a cheap gag.

[oldsarge54]

36. Wasn't there?

Wasn't' there a story some weeks ago about how the financial world is a culture of "cheating?" Would this be a confirmation that the story was true?

[lunasun]

39. Fools and their money ....

they picked a group of people that believe all kind of BS so easy pickins

[blkmusclmachine]

42. Too Big To Fail

[beezling]

47. That's what SHE said

I am a weak and juvenile man. I tried to stop myself from posting that. Really.