Sunday, March 08, 2020

More Repugnant Dirty Tricks

Haunted by the undeniable fact that they represent a declining minority of "Mericans, the GOP (Greedy Old Plutocrats) has regularly resorted to dirty tricks to influence election results, perhaps the most famous being the burglary of the DNC's Watergate office. Fast forward to today* and the news is of Eric Prince, the GOP operative and brother of Betsy De Vos the Education Secretary. He was also the head of Blackwater Worldwide, the infamous security ops firm that was responsible for the massacre of Iranian civilians in Nasour Square during the US occupation of that country (2007).

New York Times reports that Prince helped recruit former spies for secret infiltration operations against labor organizations, Democratic congressional campaigns and other groups hostile to the Antichrist's regime.  An individual Prince recruited is a former MI-6 (British Foreign Intelligence) spy named Richard Seddon who ran an operation to infiltrate and copy documents at the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation's largest teachers' unions in 2917.  That same year, the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger,a former CIA agent herself was targeted for infiltration.  The agent was discovered and fired.  Both operations were funded by the infamous Project Veritas, a right wing organization which received notoriety for its sting operations against news organizations.  The latest revelations come from lawsuit discovery between the teachers' union and Veritas. Both Veritas and Prince have close ties to the Trump camp. Prince worked with former national security advisor Michael J. Flynn during the regime's transition period.  He also advocated privatizing the war in Afghanistan by deploying mercenaries instead of US soldiers.  The idea was rejected by the then Secretary of Defense, Gen. Jim Mattis.

Prince reportedly wanted to use former professional spies to train Veritas personnel in surreptitious data collection and recruiting sources against perceived enemies. Prince is supposedly under investigation by the Department of Barr for lying about meeting a Russian banker in the Seychelles Islands in January, 2017.  Veritas has gone from a shoestring operation to more than $8.6 million in contributions according to its latest available tax return (2018).  The Trump Foundation gave the group $20,000 in 2015, the year Don Trumpillini began his improbable presidential election campaign.  In 2018 the head of the organization, James O'Keefe, stated in a book he wrote that Trumpillini wanted his organization to infiltrate Columbia University to obtain records of Barack Obama, who was once a student there.

The operation inside the Michigan teachers' union, code named Liberty U after the undercover intern's alma mater, apparently netted a lot of documents.  These included statements by a local union leader about Betsy De Vos, who is ardently opposed to teachers' unions.  Prince and De Vos grew up in Michigan were there father made a fortune in the auto parts industry.  Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement: “Let’s be clear who the wrongdoer is here: Project Veritas used a fake intern to lie her way into our Michigan office, to steal documents and to spy — and they got caught. We’re just trying to hold them accountable for this industrial espionage.”  Veritas claims its activities are protected under the First Admendment.  The union has asked for more than $3 million in damages.

*Massive voter suppression took place in the 2019 Democratic primary in Texas.  Texas is run by Repugnants, and hundreds of polling places were closed down for this primary resulting in "punishingly" long lines to vote. Voting estimates in Harris County (Houston) and Dallas County show that Democratic turnout rose about 45 percent.