Michael Gaynor is at it again. In a piece that starts out attacking Breitbart, moves to attacking Marcel Reid and ACORN 8, he ends up attacking me, though he never mentions me by name.
The scurrilous claim promoted by the ACORN 8 and its blogger tools that Ms. MonCrief has not been back because Fox News suddenly discovered that Ms. MonCrief had put some personal expenses on a company credit card without permission is demonstrably false.
I am the "blogger". The facts are the facts. It's true that Moncrief had mentioned her theft before April however, Fox News didn't know it until Beck's people discovered after more rigorous research. In fact, Beck was willing to let all of it go when Moncrief told him she couldn't be on his show and wound up on another the same day. Then, he cut her off and Fox News cut her off with it. That comes from two sources that have spoken with Beck and his staff fairly regularly.
In fact, most of the piece is a response to this piece of mine in which I ask a series of questions of Gaynor, Michelle Malkin and Anita Moncrief. He once again tries to pad the so called ACORN resume of Anita Moncrief. Moncrief is the former employee of Project Vote that spoke to New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom about email lists that were shared between ACORN and the Obama administration.
Moncrief is also the source of the only seven pages in Michelle Malkin's book, Culture of Corruption, that you couldn't read anywhere else. Both Malkin and Gaynor have written obsessively about Moncrief since May, for Malkin, and April, for Gaynor, of this year.
This is all the latest reincarnation of what started as an investigative series by me into media corruption between Anita Moncrief, Michelle Malkin, and Michael Gaynor and it devolved into a pseudo blog war between Gaynor and myself. That's because everytime I wrote a piece in the series, it was Gaynor acting as the protector, defender, and attacker. Malkin has continued to, in my opinion a totally cowardly manner, sit idly by and allow Gaynor to speak for her in all of this.
This all started when I commented on an October 5th piece by Michelle Malkin. In that piece, Malkin both dishonestly propped up Anita Moncrief and quoted Michael Gaynor in attacking a third party, Michael McCray of ACORN 8.
Former ACORN/Project Vote worker Anita MonCrief — the independent whistleblower who worked closely with NYTimes reporter Stephanie Strom on exposing ACORN financial shenanigans last year before Times editors “cut bait” just weeks before Election Day — informed Strom that the true figure was $5 million.
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Michael Gaynor noted at the time in response to McCray: “Tellingly, Mr. McCray did NOT complain about keeping the information from prosecutors and the public. Perhaps that is because ACORN 8 leaders also kept important information from prosecutors and the public and put off the possibility of legal action to protect then presidential candidate Obama’s election prospects. Incredibly, Mr. McCray essentially claimed that bad leadership is ACORN’s only problem. Mr. McCray admitted that the ACORN 8 are out to replace the current ACORN control group, but the ideological difference is limited…Mr. McCray and the ACORN 8 did not complaint that ACORN has functioned wrongfully as an unofficial arm of the Democrat Party for many years. Instead, Mr. McCray celebrated ACORN’s “effectiveness” and complained only about ACORN leadership corruption.
The true figure is NOT $5 million. It might be five million dollars, but in fact, only the very top of the ACORN hierarchy know how much the embezzlement was. That figure was one of many mentioned at an ACORN board meeting. Anita Moncrief isn't on the board of ACORN. So, she only knows about this figure because someone on the board told it to her. Her information is second hand and it's not definite. Neither of those things were mentioned by Malkin as she systematically mislead her audience.
On top of this, she never identified who Michael Gaynor is. He's attacking Michael McCray and it's a tough attack. The audience needs to know what his standing is to attack McCray. In fact, besides being someone that has attacked McCray, Michael Gaynor has no standing. Michael McCray is a former ACORN board member and current ACORN 8 communications director. Michael Gaynor is a blogger that speaks to Anita Moncrief often. So, besides being someone that attacks Michael McCray, there's absolutely no reason to quote Gaynor here.
That's the sort of systematic misinformation that Gaynor and Malkin have routinely put up on their websites in support of Moncrief and in attacking Moncrief's enemies, real or perceived. Both have claimed that Moncrief is of major significance to the ACORN story. In fact, she was a low level staffer, a development associate, in an office of Project Vote. The former chief organizer, Wade Rathke, told me that he may have met her but didn't remember it. In other words, while both claim that she's the key to the story, she wasn't actually known by the head of the organization.
Both have claimed that Moncrief is a major source for media like Fox News, the Washington Examiner and others. In fact, Fox News cut her off months ago after discovering her theft, fraud, and subsequent firing from Project Vote. The Washington Examiner will quote her from time to time but she's often the second or third person quoted and almost always at the end of the piece where most don't even read. That's of course BECAUSE SHE WAS A LOW LEVEL STAFFER.
More than that, both claim that the key to the ACORN story runs through Anita Moncrief because she provides the connection between the Obama administration and ACORN. In fact, she claims to have email lists shared by both. I say claims because while both refer to these lists neither will release them. (ironic since Gaynor then demands that other groups like ACORN 8 release all sorts of documents) Even if this is true, this is the key to nothing. That's a violation of FEC rules. I won't minimize the corruption. It's there. Yet, it would lead to a fine of $1 million. That's it. ACORN has been implicated in a mountain of wrongdoing, and if all you have on Obama are these lists, you don't have much. Beyond that, the only person that can corroborate what Anita Moncrief is saying is Anita Moncrief. No one else is making these charges or claiming to have this evidence.
Then, there's Anita Moncrief's theft, fraud, and firing. Both conveniently almost never mention any of the three. When Malkin mentions it, she links to Anita Moncrief explaining them. She never details herself what happened. In fact, Anita Moncrief was working for Project Vote when she falsely applied for a Project Vote credit card, used that credit for personal purchases, and then was fired. Only after she was fired did Moncrief begin to "blow the whistle" as both Malkin and Gaynor call it. Both Malkin and Gaynor use the term "whistleblower" to apply to Moncrief in a courageous manner. In fact, Anita Moncrief blew the whistle in a manner that was no different than Henry Hill and Sammy The Bull. Unless both are willing to call them "courageous", they are misleading the audience when they refer to her as a whistle blower.
This has been the game they've been running and the entire thing is for the benefit of Anita Moncrief. It's also for the benefit of Michelle Malkin. After all, if Anita Moncrief isn't viewed favorably, a lot of people would sour on her book. It's for the benefit of Michael Gaynor because no one of importance will speak to him besides Moncrief. That's why, suddenly, Michelle Malkin has written 30 blog posts about Anita Moncrief since May and Gaynor is at near 100 since April.
You'd think that such blatant corruption would be something a lot of media would cover. Instead, I'm the only one. Now, you could say that's because I am seeing ghosts, but that would assume that our media isn't corrupt itself. Instead, Michael Gaynor uses every opportunity to attack me. Michelle Malkin ignores me, sort of. Since I started this series, she's written about Anita Moncrief 5 times. That's in nearly two months. In the month prior to the series, she wrote about her 13 times. That also just happened to be a critical time for her book. She's also only called her a whistleblower twice out of the five times prior to that she referred to Moncrief as a whistle blower about 90% of the time. Once she referred to her as a "development associate". So, either Malkin suddenly, and coincidentally, lost her appetite to write about Moncrief, and call her a whistle blower, or she's taking her marching orders from me, all while pretending not to acknowledge me. Like I said, Malkin is the height of journalistic cowardice.
That brings me back to Gaynor's latest piece. In it, he starts out talking about Breitbart and ends up talking about Anita Moncrief. What's the connection? There is none, except an excuse for Gaynor to again point out how courageous Anita Moncrief is. In a similar fashion, Michelle Malkin quotes Anita Moncrief, who talks about the New York 23rd district race though that's really an excuse for Moncrief to attack ACORN 8.
ACORN is a Democrat scandal and it is hard to separate one from the other. Corruption is the overriding theme and it comes mostly from the left. Another particularly odd pairing continues to be the radical reformers of ACORN and top Conservatives and Republicans. The ACORN 8, a group of former ACORN board
members, have formed a Scozzafava-like partnership with the Republicans. In attempting to expose ACORN, some appear to have ignored key facts and overlooked a pattern of withholding key information to coincide with opportunistic timing aimed at aiding Democrats. An example of this is the complete removal of two longtime Obama ACORN cronies from a complaint filed with the United States Justice Department last January by the ACORN 8. Madeline Talbot is described by Stanley Kurtz of the National Review Online as “the woman who first drew Obama into an alliance with ACORN.” And Keith Kelleher is Talbot’s husband, the Chief Organizer of SEIU Local 880 in Chicago
Some conservatives ask me why I write this series. Look at this corruption. Only Jayson Blair on his worst days could have boasted to being more corrupt. Michelle Malkin just quoted Anita Moncrief as Anita Moncrief attacked ACORN 8 during the course of a piece on the New York 23rd election. To be clear, ACORN 8 had nothing to do with the New York 23rd district race. They're an activist group working to reform ACORN and also working on behalf of whistleblowers. Just as support for Anita Moncrief has no business in a piece on Andrew Breitbard, so to an attack on ACORN 8 has no business in a piece on New York's 23rd. Why is Anita Moncrief attacking ACORN 8? It's because they wouldn't support her when she wanted to link Obama to ACORN and they soured on her after they found out about her theft. For this, Moncrief turned on ACORN 8 and Malkin allows her to use Malkin's pages to attack them.
Conservatives should be furious. If this what passes for journalism on our side, we have no business criticizing the left. On their worst day, the New York Times couldn't dream of anything this corrupt. It's not only corrupt but amateurish. It isn't some small time journalist, but the mainstay conservative blogger, Michelle Malkin. She's broken every rule. When Gaynor attacked McCray, she never reached out to McCray for comment. When Moncrief attacked the ACORN 8, she never reached out to ACORN 8 for comment. She uses Anita Moncrief both as a source and as an author. She routinely lies about Moncrief's worth to the ACORN story. She routinely refers to Moncrief as a "whistleblower" without providing context to that description. She does all this knowing that the fate of Anita Moncrief's reputation is intertwined with the fate of her book, and her own reputation with it. She never discloses the plethora of conflicts all of this creates. (all while criticizing other's conflicts with righteous indignation and all while criticizing the left media for their corruption) To top it off, she gets into bed with a total hack that passes off gibberish for journalism. (that's Gaynor)
All the while, Malkin sits back while Gaynor attacks me and pretends to know nothing about it. Just conveniently, she changes entirely her pattern of reporting on Anita Moncrief in response to my writing. What a coward? What a totaly disgrace to the profession that's made her. If this were happening on the left, she'd be screaming for heads from every mountain top. Instead, she engages in the worst sort of media corruption all while having the gaul to write a book called Culture of Corruption. If she had an ounce of integrity, she'd immediately do a Mea Culpa and donate all that she's made on the book to her favorite charity. Instead, she sits knowing exactly how corrupt she is and pretends she didn't do anything wrong. She hopes that some hack, Gaynor, attacking me a few times will make it go away and hopes my stature doesn't grow so that some people actually notice what I'm writing. Like I said, it's exactly the sort of corruption that the same Michelle Malkin would be screaming about if it happened on the left. So, besides cowardly, she's also a total hypocrite.
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