Here’s Something For You To Do
Okay, I need to tend to some business for Momma this afternoon, but here’s some mess you can get into.
Customer Nancy let me know that an Annapolis Republican consulting firm was raided by the FBI this morning. Now I’m not saying this is where they built the Trump Russian clone or anything like that but you never know.
Here is their website. And to be honest, it does look way too generic (Strategic Campaign Group?) and developed too cheaply for them to be totally legitimate.
Here’s a list of the partners. Kelley Rodgers, Chip O’Neil, and Dennis Whitfield. Nose around the internets and see what you can find.
Thanks to Nancy for the heads up.
Update: a trusted friend tells me that it’s Manafort’s former firm.
UPDATE 2: Maybe.
UPDATE 3: When you keep hitting dead ins, always see the comments at Reddit – usually wrong but always entertaining.
None of the 3 suspects rates so much as a Wikipedia page. But searching Dennis Whitfield produced a little guilt by former association. Dennis was once Exec VP of the American Conservative Union (ACU) the group now chaired by Matt Schlapp. Where there are fumes and stench there could be more with his past association(s). Dennis was also in the Reagan administration. Chip was a former House staffer.
What the 3 allegedly do is offer Telephone Town Hall services.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-raids-office-of-republican-consulting-firm/ “Strategic Campaign Consulting was among several defendants named in a 2014 lawsuit filed by former Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, who accused the defendants of running a nationwide campaign donation scam. Cuccinelli said the defendants raised $2.2 million from donors who believed the money would go to him, but his campaign received only $10,000 of that money.”
1http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/5/11/1661338/-Strategic-Campaign-Group-FBI-Raid
Only name I recognized was Cheney bud John Bolton-the walrus.
2http://strategiccampaigngroup.com/about-scg/kelley-rogers-president
3https://www.palmerreport.com/news/first-raid-annapolis-fbi/2755/
This outfit seems to think this is FBI payback for Comey’s firing and this is just the first of a number of Drumpf/Russia connected raids.
4Field guys going in before they get a shut-down order while they can? or am I watching to much NCIS?
5http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/fbi-executes-search-warrants-at-gop-consulting-firm-with-lobbying-ties-to-casino-industry/
Apparently SCG has some connection to gamblong with a Drumpf outfit. I didn’t read the whole article. They are still trying to decide if Manafort was connected.
6They say that they have been in business for 10 years but The Hill is reporting that they started in 2008. So clearly math challenged.
7Roger Stone is partner with Manafort at their casino lobbying firm that also acts as a GOP fund raising operation…money laundering issues seem to be the impetus to the raid. Ties are between the firm and Trump via casino firm Penn Natl. Gaming. It seems rooted in Trump’s Taj Mahal money laundering ongoing case.
Dennis Whitfield used to be a director at Manafort, Stone, & Black’s lobbying firm.
FYI: The Native American tribe that owns Hard Rock recently purchased the Taj Mahal at 4-cents on the dollar. Since Trump despises Native Americans…the irony is delicious!
Stone has been boasting on MSNBC and Alex Jones show….that it was he who convinced Trump to fire Comey…Trump says he hasn’t talked to Stone in months. Stone was animatedly stating he wants the Senate Intel to question him in a public hearing.
8Good find, Susan on the Left Coast. Much appreciated.
9NY Mag says Manafort connection is tenuous at best:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/fbi-raids-gop-consulting-firm-setting-off-alarms-online.html
FEC beginning to crack down on “scam” PACs, i.e. raising money to promote candidates but keeping the bulk of it for themselves:
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/05/scam-pacs-drawing-fec-attention/
Strategic Campaign Group linked to scam PACS:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fbi-raids-gop-consulting-firm-tied-to-conservative-scam-pacs_us_5914b924e4b00f308cf3c410
Of note is the fact that so far these scam PACs appear to be mostly associated with conservative Republican candidates. Color me NOT surprised.
10NY Mag was wrong. The director of Strategic Campaign Group has ties to Trump’s Taj Mahal casino and a senior advisor for Strategic Campaign Group is a director of Manafort’s political consulting firm.
http://www.newsweek.com/comey-firing-poll-disapprove-trump-action-607946
11Today’s ‘casino lobbyist/GOP fund raisers the FBI targeted had founded 2 Bolton PACs, which are funded by white supremacist Mercers, and which use Firtash/Mercer-owned vile venomous Cambridge Analytica…propagandists of the lowest caste.
Cambridge Analytica–operated by Bannon, funded by the Mercers & Russian Dmitry Firtash was used heavily by Bolton. Cambridge Analytica operatives use data to change audience behavior via stealth data mining/micro-target political ads.
FYI: Trump’s protege, Mark Brown, now owns a casino – Imperial Pacific – on lonely isolated Saipan that was raided by the FBI recently. The casino has very few customers, empty gambling tables yet claims $3.9 billion in bets at the casino. A front for money laundering? The “casino” sits between a laundromat & cell phone shop in a strip mall. Several flag pinned pols have sit on the board: ex-CIA Woolsey, Ed Rendell, Gov Haley Barbour, ex FBI Louis Freeh, etc. Rendell says “if I find out it’s a shell company, I’ll resign”…and stop receiving $5,000 a month from the empty casino.
12Annapolis is one of my favorite towns. Love it a lot! the main drag is a hoot! Start at the State House and it will eventually have you end up in the bay – via a classy marina, of course. The town just does not need such celebrity. SCG sounds deliciously wicked in the worst sense. Surprised but glad to hear of all the other raids elsewhere. Yuppers. The Rethugs have a mortal lock on nefarious cash dealings. Always have. Go FBI!
13Okay, this is important even though it’s not about Annapolis, which I have been to once. A really wise woman has decoded Comey’s goodbye letter to his FBI pals. It’s right here:
themarysue.com
14Wait till they get to his(Trump’s) mob connections, Russian and otherwise!
15The Annapolis raid got coverage in this morning’s Washington Post. I would like to see press coverage of other such raids wherever they happened. Yuppers. Where there is a cover up, there sure is fire.
16Thanks for the wonderful info, Susan on the Left Coast. Kinda makes one wonder about Ed Rendell’s Democratic bona fides. Of course this isn’t the first time we’ve had cause to question Rendell’s self serving.
Here is a good article about Cambridge Analytica which is guaranteed to terrify:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy
17Is Dennis Whitfield related to my old military school chum and H.S. classmate, Exxon-Eddie Whitfield – congress critter non-parriell from Madisonville and Hopkinsville in Kentuckies.
He’s also associated with ‘some-guy’ from Exxon who is named for an otherwise unidentified king. I hear he’s been lobbied by .45 to anoint .45 as ‘another’ Rex.
It should be noted – Exxon-Eddie has lived in Hollywood since completing law school, has not beem a voting resident of kentucky since law school, but repped the First Kentucky as a republi-con, showing his address as his daddy’s garage, since the early days of Senator turtle mcconnel, occasionally called missy by his peers from loo-a-vill law skule – who also hasn’t lived in the state since sometime soon after being elected to Congress as a seen-8-t-or.
Time to dig up some more dirt.
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