MotherJones: GOP Hatchet Man "Predicted" Spitzer's Downfall (Roger Stone)

[seafan]

GOP Hatchet Man "Predicted" Spitzer's Downfall



Roger Stone


Posted by Daniel Schulman on 03/17/08
Mother Jones Blog

Robert Novak's column yesterday carried this interesting nugget: Apparently Spitzer-nemesis and longtime GOP operative Roger Stone predicted the New York governor's political downfall a good three months before it came to pass, telling a talk radio host in early December that ''Eliot Spitzer will not serve out his term as governor of the state of New York." This would seem to suggest that Stone can either see the future—or had a hand in shaping it. According to Novak, though, the former is closest to the truth: "Stone had nothing to do with the investigation and said he had not heard about it when he made a prediction based on his general view of Spitzer."

However, Stone was coy when asked point blank by Newsday columnist Ellis Henican if he had any role in outing Mr. Clean as Client 9:

"No comment on that," Stone said. "I will say I knew it was coming. That's why I wasn't too upset about the results of the special election," where a Democrat grabbed a supposedly safe Republican State Senate seat, leaving Democrats just one vote shy of control.

According to Henican, Stone has been "shopping anti-Spitzer stories for months" and "warning darkly about some 'really ugly' stuff to come."

Not that anyone deserves more credit than Spitzer for engineering the destruction of his promising political career, but it's not terribly hard to believe that Stone, a seasoned political hit man, was more than a spectator. He got his start working for Richard Nixon's reelection campaign—and recently got a portrait of the disgraced president tattooed on his back. (Really.) He went on to work for the campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, where he was reportedly linked to the infamous Willie Horton ad that some credit with costing Michael Dukakis the election. More recently, Stone served as a consultant to the the New York State Senate Republican Campaign Committee—that is, until he was accused of leaving a threatening phone message for Eliot Spitzer's elderly father and abruptly resigned. Described by the Weekly Standard's Matt Labash as a "professional lord of mischief," Stone is not one for subtlety. Earlier this year, he launched an anti-Hillary Clinton 527, Citizens United Not Timid, whose tasteless acronym really says all you need to know about Stone's brand of below-the-belt politics.

It's unclear what role, if any, Stone played in ensuring Spitzer got Spitzered, but he has warned Newsday's Henican, ominously, that his "work isn't done there."

"Everything's about to change," he told the columnist. "Just watch."

(H/T Raw Story)

(This piece has multiple embedded links to additional information.)


Keep digging into this, people.

[DS1]

1. Wow. There's another GWB, only 15 years younger.

Just look the features, compare to

[calimary]

8. Remarkable how that face keeps getting uglier and uglier and uglier every time I see it.

If I were president, I'd move his official portrait down into some basement bathroom - and let it get lost down there.

[zazen]

2. Is that his real hair? He'd have to be 55 at least.

Since he'd be the first to attack Hilary's appearance, I'd say his is fair game.

Maybe he has a pact with Satan. That hair looks like it should be on a 23-year-old Santa Monica surfer.

[zazen]

3. Or maybe he worked for Nixon as a child.

Probably the part of filming for The Omen that they edited out.

[elehhhhna]

5. try a "Swinger". Google him & his wife & LYAO!

[GOPEC]

4. Stone and wife had ads in swinger magazines

Stone was involved in a scandal of his own in 1996, when it was revealed that he and his wife had ads in swinger magazines. He does look like Bush and he's almost as old. That is not his hair.

[zazen]

6. Oh, I found it. Gross! But what a great hair plug job.

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x853802>

[acmavm]

7. This guy should do time just because of his hair.

[suffragette]

9. Roger Stone and Michael Caputo

Two nasty ones to watch.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/nyregion/23stone.html

Political Consultant Resigns After Allegations of Threatening Spitzer’s Father


By DANNY HAKIM and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: August 23, 2007

ALBANY, Aug. 22 — The Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, forced one of his top political consultants to resign on Wednesday after allegations that he left a threatening telephone message at the office of Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s father.

During the Florida recount in 2000, George W. Bush’s campaign enlisted Mr. Stone and his wife, Nydia, who is of Cuban ancestry, to rally support among Cuban exiles in Miami, according to Jeffrey Toobin’s “Too Close to Call,” a book about the recount battle. Mr. Stone was also instrumental in organizing the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot, the book said, when hundreds of Republican activists stormed a county election office in Miami and demanded that workers there cease recounting presidential ballots.

The Senate Republicans appeared newly emboldened in the weeks after Mr. Stone’s arrival, which coincided with the emergence of more aggressive Web-based activity opposing Mr. Spitzer. Reporters and others around the capital began receiving e-mail messages from addresses like SpitzerFile.com and NYFacts.net, most of them reprinting newspaper stories critical of Mr. Spitzer or containing political cartoons attacking him. Those two services are run by Michael Caputo, a Buffalo-area Republican who has worked with Mr. Stone in the past but who has said he is working on his own now.

The phone message left at the office of Bernard Spitzer, who is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, said that Mr. Spitzer, a wealthy real estate developer, would be “compelled by the Senate sergeant-at-arms” to testify about “shady campaign loans” he made to his son during his unsuccessful campaign for attorney general in 1994. (Senate Republicans have said they might investigate those loans.)



http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2007/09/eliot-spitzer-a.html

September 18, 2007

Eliot Spitzer and Hometown Democracy

What do NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Hometown Democracy have in common?

A Republican political strategist named Michael Caputo who is working to defeat them both.

Caputo has made Florida news as the executive director of an anti-Hometown Democracy group Floridians For Smarter Growth. But he has also made regular appearances in the New York press, because Caputo runs an anti-Spitzer website, and he has a long-standing relationship with Roger Stone, the man accused of making that nasty phone call to Spitzer's father; Stone has denied the charge.

Despite their denials, it looks like a long concerted effort to bring Spitzer down.

It's particularly interesting in light of this info on firedoglake about the investigation.
http://firedoglake.com/2008/03/17/memo-to-michele-hirshman-you-may-have-mike-garcia-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place/

Although there has been all kinds of talk in the press about the possibility of charging Spitzer for "structuring" his movement of money, presumably under the Bank Secrecy Act and the Money Laundering Control Act, the facts as reported thus far in the press would not support such charges. As I previously explained the MLCA requires that the money in question be the proceeds of unlawful activity.
Whoever, knowing that the property involved in a financial transaction represents the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, conducts or attempts to conduct such financial transaction which in fact involves the proceeds of specified unlawful activity

That's why right now the feds are busy trying to find any evidence that he used campaign or government funds in these transactions.

investigators are looking into whether he used any public or campaign funds or services to pay for or facilitate any illegal activities, including hiring prostitutes, the sources said. An affidavit filed in federal court as part of the investigation into the prostitution ring details what is said to be his use of personal bank funds to pay for prostitutes.
f the money is merely his own perfectly legal personal money, the government lacks an essential element necessary to charge him with money laundering.

~snip~Makes you wonder when it all shakes out, who's going to come out looking worse in this incident. The guy who used his own private money to betray his wife, or the guy who filed an affidavit saying that Spitzer used his own private money and is now using how many hours of FBI time going through every financial record they can think of to try and find some way around the fact that all they have Spitzer on is the most technical violation of the Mann Act, without any of the underlying serious circumstances that make a Mann Act prosecution look like something other than panty sniffing?

Of course, if they find evidence that Spitzer used the "proceeds of unlawful activity," all bets are off.


It looks like they have been gathering and shoveling dirt on this for awhile and now this type of dirt is just what the NY DOJ is digging for. And they want us to believe they're not working together on this?

[seafan]

11. Thanks for those links, suffragette. These guys have been hunting Spitzer for a LONG time.

This whole mess is coming out.

[suffragette]

13. And they've been at the center of some of the dirtiest schemes

out there.

Stone was involved in the whole Indian gaming scheme:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0416,barrett,52802,1.html

The longtime GOP consultant's reward for fomenting the "Brooks Brothers mob" that shut down the Miami-Dade recount in 2000 was an invitation within days of Bush's election to serve on the Department of Interior transition working group—helping, in his own words, to staff its Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Stone has since used this unannounced perch to market himself to tribes and developers from Louisiana to California, earning fat fees and contingent percentages of future casino revenue. Just two of the five deals examined by the Voice are projected to pay him at least $8 million, and perhaps as much as $13 million.

Time, The Washington Post and The New York Times have published exposés about Bush's BIA, with a February story highlighting $45 million in payments to two GOP lobbyists from four tribes since 2001. But no one has focused on Stone's profiteering, which, unlike the payments to registered lobbyists, is not reported on any public filings. He is routinely brought into casino deals in part because of his perceived ability to win Bush and/or Republican congressional support, a role ostensibly inconsistent with his financing and staffing of the Bush-bashing reverend's campaign.


Speaking of which, what has happened with the Abramoff investigation/case? It's been quiet on that front even though it seems there was still much to do on it. DOJ too busy following marching orders to go after Dems?



More on Caputo's going after Spitzer:
http://www.observer.com/2007/new-anti-spitzer-site
Behind an Anti-Spitzer Site, an Ally of Roger Stone
BY AZI PAYBARAH | AUGUST 6, 2007 |
Here’s a link to a new-ish anti-Eliot Spitzer web site called SpitzerFile.com, which is supposed to be a one-stop shop for information (19 pages’ worth) about how the governor financed his 1994 and 1998 campaigns for attorney general.
After calling a number at the bottom of the page, I got to Michael Caputo, a former campaign aide to George H.W. Bush and public relations buddy of Republican operative Roger Stone.


Thanks seafan for posting the OP. It looks like Stone's hubris in wanting some credit for this may have opened the door for finding out what has really gone on. Found another link to a gossip site that states they were sent a pic of the escort from TA-DA - "a site associated with Michael Caputo" Even they were skeptical, given the source. I wonder how many sites were sent similar from him?



Here are two more pertinent links:
http://www.dailygotham.com/blog/bouldin/anatomy_of_a_partisan_coverup

Indeed. The laziness extends to media coverage of Emailgate, in which New York Progressive blogs conclusively proved that the so-called grassroots campaign of NYFacts.net and SpitzerFile.com is an astroturf operation launched and maintained by Joe Bruno's consultant Roger Stone. The evidence is startlingly clear, so let's take another look at it.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=14278&R=1157427EDC

Stone's business card features an elegant white-gloved man in top hat and evening clothes from a 1930s Esquire ad. He gave the card to a boy once, who looked at it and said, "Are you a magician?" His response: "Sometimes, kid." One gets the sense with Stone, a showman above all else, that he has both the vanity and frustration of the professional illusionist. The trick is only fun to pull so long as someone knows he's pulling it.

Theories abound as to what the trick might be. I float some of them by Stone. Perhaps it was a calculated risk. Make the call to Bernard Spitzer, knowing they'll leak it. It regenerates headlines and gives the loan scandal new life. Sure, Stone takes a hit, and even appears to lose money when Bruno throws him under the bus, but Roger Stone doesn't have to worry about sacrificing respectability, as he hasn't been considered respectable in some time.

Meanwhile, he can fall back into the shadows where he does his best work, perhaps even start a 527 in the form of a concerned-citizens front group to raise money from the throngs of wingnuts and Wall Street types who bear grudges against Spitzer. A group like, say, the Citizens Committee for Checks and Balances, whose fundraising letter I obtained, and who, among other things, wants to "expose the illegal activities of the Spitzer administration." A group like that could not only pay one's salary, but could also help one carry out the missionary work of blast mailings, email blitzes, and deep research that might eventually screw Spitzer to the wall (Spitzer's poll numbers are currently at an all-time low). When I run this thought past Stone, he won't confirm anything other than to say, "Shrewd theory."

[tanyev]

10. Were Stone and his wife involved in shopping the TANG forgeries that became Rathergate?

Speculation, but an excellent timeline at the link of all of the slimy things Stone has been involved in.

After February 12, 2004 - Rove and Bartlett, certainly alarmed at Burkett's appearance on Hardball, presumably hatch phony TANG documents plot and create forgeries with slight mistakes on the wrong typewriter, an electric typewriter. If it was them, they would have used the Olympia Manual memos Mrs. Knox said she originally typed for Killian in 1972 and 1973. They would then have called Stone and asked him to get them to Burkett, the perfect patsy for their scheme.

After February 12, 2004 - Bill Burkett says he starts receiving calls from a lady with a Latin accent named "Lucy Ramirez", who could be Nydia Stone, the Cuban wife of GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone . "Lucy" tells Burkett she has previously unknown memos from Col. Killian and that he Burkett should get them and give them to the Kerry campaign. She also convinces him to burn the originals so she can never be identified. Burkett thinks she is trying to keep an old sexual affair with Killian secret. Burkett arranges with "Lucy" to meet her at the huge Houston Livestock Show..

March 3, 2004 - According to Burkett's second story, the Unknown Man asks for him at Livestock Show, finds him and hands him envelope containing the CBS TANG forgeries without saying a word (source: Bill Burkett USA TODAY) USA TODAY confirms that ANOTHER person, an unnamed woman, said Burkett gave her papers that day which she held for him until the event was over in a box. Burkett and USA Today know who this woman is. So the likelihood is that Burkett is telling the truth when he said he was given the envelope by the Unknown Man. Burkett has never been given a photo of Stone to ID.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/27/151028/467

[seafan]

12. That is a very good bet. Thanks for adding that to this thread. n/t

[suffragette]

14. Sounds quite likely

While looking up the info I posted above, I found an OP-Ed by Caputo in the CS Monitor attacking Rather days after the 60 minutes report:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0914/p09s01-coop.html

Wouldn't be surprised if that was a tag team effort by Stone and Caputo to smear him. Seems to be their pattern.