Thread: Democratic heads roll after video shows agitators planted at Trump rallies

People were hired by Democratic strategists to stir up trouble at rallies for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Officials with Democracy Advocates and Americans United for Change stepped down after a video by Project Veritas Action confirmed their political chicanery. ..

By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times - Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Two top Democratic strategists have exited the presidential campaign after explosive undercover videos showed them discussing voter fraud and their roles in planting paid agitators at campaign events for Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Robert Creamer, founder of Democracy Advocates and the husband of Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky, Illinois Democrat, stepped down from the campaign Tuesday, a day after Scott Foval was fired from his post as national field director of Americans United for Change.

Mr. Trump, who has long complained of a “rigged” election system, said at a Tuesday rally in Colorado that the video released by the conservative group Project Veritas Action confirmed his suspicions of Democrat-sponsored political chicanery.

“The protesters are paid a lot of money by the [Democratic National Committee], and they kept saying, ‘I wonder why those people are here, because they never seem to have much on their mind other than stand up and protest,’” Mr. Trump told a crowd in Colorado Springs. “And yesterday it came out, but it was barely covered by the media. But it’s all over the internet. They were busted.”

Brad Woodhouse, Americans United for Change president, said in a late-Monday statement that Mr. Foval “is no longer associated with Americans United for Change.”

He insisted that the Democratic political consulting firm has “always operated according to the highest ethical and legal standards.”

Mr. Creamer, a four-decade Democratic strategist who pleaded guilty in 2005 to charges of bank fraud and tax violations, said in a statement that he was “unwilling to become a distraction to the important task of electing Hillary Clinton.”

“We regret the unprofessional and careless hypothetical conversations that were captured on hidden cameras of a temporary regional contractor for our firm, and he is no longer with us,” said Mr. Creamer, who is also featured in the videos.

The two 16-minute videos were released Monday and Tuesday after a yearlong undercover investigation headed by Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe, known for his hidden-camera probes into Planned Parenthood, ACORN and voter fraud.

Mr. O’Keefe said the investigation reveals “compelling evidence of a dark-money conspiracy” and that he would continue to release videos as part of a series titled “Rigging the Election” until voters go to the polls on Nov. 8.

The first video shows Democratic strategists discussing how they hire agitators — including union members, homeless people and the mentally ill — to incite violence by provoking Trump supporters on camera at campaign stops.

Project Veritas released a second video Tuesday showing Mr. Foval brainstorming over ways to commit voter fraud, such as by busing people from one state to another, while appearing to indicate that it had already been done in Iowa.

“It’s a pretty easy thing for Republicans to say, ‘Well, they’re busing people in,’” Mr. Foval said. “Well, you know what? We’ve been busing people in to deal with you f–ing assholes for 50 years, and we’re not going to stop now. We’re just going to find a different way to do it. So, I mean I grew up with that idea. They used to bus people out to Iowa. If they needed people, there we’d bus people out to Iowa.”

The same video shows Mr. Creamer discussing a proposal by a Project Veritas investigator to register people to vote illegally by setting up a shell corporation.

“I’m going to write down these options,” Mr. Creamer said. “Let me see if I can chat with the people who are most involved in Hispanic voter registration.”

Mr. Foval, who has worked for the George Soros-funded People for the American Way, said his paid agitators fueled a Chicago protest in March that forced the Trump campaign to cancel its event.

“They’re starting confrontations in the line, right?” said Mr. Foval. “They’re not starting confrontations in the rally. Because once they’re inside the rally, they’re under Secret Service’s control. When they’re outside the rally, the media will cover it no matter where it happens. The key is initiating the conflict by having leading conversations with people who are naturally psychotic.”
Inciting Trump supporters was easy, he said.

“I mean, honestly, it’s not hard to get some of these assholes to pop off,” Mr. Foval said. “It’s a matter of showing up, to want to get into the rally, in a Planned Parenthood T-shirt. Or, ‘Trump is a Nazi,’ you know. You can message to draw them out and draw them to punch you.”

Another operative, Aaron Black, who identified himself as “deputy rapid response director for the DNC for all things Trump on the ground,” said he was with Mr. Creamer’s group Democracy Partners but that his work was supposed to be a secret.

“Nobody’s really supposed to know about me,” Mr. Black said. “So the Chicago protest, when they shut all that, that was us. It was more [Mr. Creamer] than me, but none of this is supposed to come back to us because we want it coming from people. We don’t want it to come from the party.”

He said the idea is for the protests to appear spontaneous, not orchestrated by the DNC.

“So if we do a protest and if it’s branded a DNC protest, right away the press is going to say, ‘partisan,’” said Mr. Black, also known as “Aaron Minter,” according to the video.

“But if I’m in there coordinating with all the groups on the ground and sort of playing field general but they are the ones talking to the cameras, then it’s actually people, but if we send out press advisories with DNC on them and Clinton campaign, it just doesn’t have the same effect,” he said.

The same day the video was released, Mr. Black posted a photo on Twitter showing protesters outside Trump Tower holding signs with messages such as, “Trump Demeans Women.”

Keeping the protesters’ connection to the DNC hidden from the press was a priority, Mr. Foval said.

“We have to be really careful because what we don’t need is for it to show up on CNN that the DNC paid for X people to — that’s not going to happen,” he said.

Mr. O’Keefe said the first video raises questions about whether the Clinton campaign is coordinating with super PACs and independent expenditure committees in violation of campaign finance rules.

The Clinton campaign, DNC, Americans United for Change and Democracy Partners did not return requests for comment Tuesday.

The only public criticism of the videos has come from foes of Mr. O’Keefe’s past work such as Salon’s Brendan Gauthier, who said Project Veritas has been criticized for “strategically editing footage to make false accusations.”

In the video, Mr. Foval made clear his connections to the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

“We are contracted directly with the DNC and the campaign both. I am contracted to [Mr. Creamer]. But I answer to the head of special events for the DNC and the head of special events and political for the campaign,” said Mr. Foval.

He goes on to say, “The campaign pays DNC, DNC pays Democracy Partners, Democracy Partners pays the Foval Group, the Foval Group goes and executes the sh— on the ground.”

Mr. Creamer indicated that he was in close contact with the Clinton campaign, saying, “We have a call with the campaign every day to go over the focuses that need to be undertaken.”

“Wherever Trump and Pence are going to be, we have events,” Mr. Creamer said. “And we have a whole team across the country that does that. Both consultants and people from the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party apparatus and people from the campaign, the Clinton campaign. And my role in the campaign is to manage all that.”

Another activist, Zulema Rodriguez, told the Project Veritas investigators, “I just had a call today with the campaign and the DNC. Every day at 1 o’clock.”

She also took credit for being involved with two anti-Trump events in March: the Chicago rally and another in Arizona in which anti-Trump protesters blocked a highway.

Federal Election Commission records unearthed by Project Veritas show that Ms. Rodriguez was paid nearly $2,000 on Feb. 29 by the Hillary for America campaign.

In conversations with Project Veritas reporters, Mr. Foval described his operation as “bird dogging,” meaning that he places hired protesters in key positions at Republican campaign events, often in front of rallies or lines.

He said he has training centers in New York, Washington, Las Vegas, Colorado and Minneapolis, and that trainees include the mentally ill and homeless people.

“I’m saying we have mentally ill people that we pay to do sh—, make no mistake,” Mr. Foval said. “Over the last 20 years. I’ve paid off a few homeless guys to do some crazy stuff, and I’ve also taken them for dinner and I’ve also made sure they had a hotel and a shower and I’ve put them in a program. I’ve done that.”

He also has contacts with unions such as the AFL-CIO. “But the reality is, a lot of people, especially our union guys, a lot of union guys, they’ll do whatever you want,” Mr. Foval said. “They’re rock ‘n’ roll.”

Mr. Foval also made it clear that he viewed Mr. Creamer as a mentor.

“I work for Bob Creamer one to one,” Mr. Foval said in the video. “I’m the white hat. Democracy Partners is kind of dark hat. Bob Creamer is diabolical, and I love him for it.”

(Note: Graphic language in the video.)


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ng-they-hire-/

‘How to Commit Voter Fraud on a Massive Scale’: Part II of Project Veritas Investigation into Clinton Network

by Rebecca Mansour18 Oct 2016
The second video in James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas investigation of the 2016 election reveals what O’Keefe describes as “Democratic Party operatives tell[ing] us how to successfully commit voter fraud on a massive scale.”

Part one in O’Keefe’s investigation unraveled what appears to be an elaborate web of Democrat-trained provocateurs who have been instigating violence at Republican events nationwide throughout the 2016 election cycle, including at several Donald Trump rallies, using a tactic they called “bird-dogging.” O’Keefe’s team has also uncovered evidence that Democratic consultants may have been relaying messages to and from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and super PACs using a system one consultant called “the Pony Express.” Campaigns and Super PACs are not permitted by law to coordinate with each other.
In the preface to the second video, O’Keefe states that the first video “blew up on social media, but sources have told us that several large corporate media outlets are afraid to cover our discoveries for fear of future retribution from a Hillary Clinton administration. Truth is dangerous especially when it challenges power.”
This second investigation features an undercover Project Veritas reporter posing as a Democratic Party donor brainstorming an elaborate voter fraud scheme to fraudulently register people to vote in various states using the lax voter registration policies currently in place.
Like O’Keefe’s first video, the second also prominently features Democratic operatives Robert Creamer and his colleague Scott Foval, who was removed from his position at the leftwing advocacy group Americans United for Change on Monday as a result of O’Keefe’s investigation. O’Keefe notes that at the time the second video was shot, Foval “worked for People for the American Way, an organization funded in large part by George Soros.”
In the video, Foval is heard saying, “We manipulated the vote with money and action, not with laws.”
He then explains:

It’s a pretty easy thing for Republicans to say, ‘Well, they’re bussing people in!’ Well, you know what? We’ve been bussing people in to deal with you ****in’ assholes for fifty years, and we’re not going to stop now. We’re just going to find a different way to do it. So, I mean I grew up with that idea. They used to bus people out to Iowa. If they needed people there we’d bus people out to Iowa.

Foval also discusses the problem of being caught, stating, “The question is, whether when you get caught by a reporter, does that matter? Because does it turn into an investigation or not? In this case, this state, the answer is no, because they don’t have any power to do anything.”
Foval suggests that the voter fraud scheme could potentially be implemented “on a much bigger scale. You implement a massive change in state legislatures and in Congress. So you aim higher for your goals, and you implement it across every Republican-held state.”
He then speculates on “the ripest environment to do it in”:

Honestly the ripest environment to do it in? Two, within striking distance. Michigan, Indiana. Least restrictive donation caps and campaign finance laws and investigative arms, and any of that. Like they have weakened it so bad in those three states, you could **** your mother in front of the governor and not go to jail. If you have enough money to do this.

Creamer, as Breitbart’s Joel Pollak reported, is “a veteran Chicago activist and convicted felon who is thought to have planned Democrats’ political strategy during the push for Obamacare in 2009 and 2010. Creamer is also the co-founder of Democracy Partners, a consulting group that, according to Project Veritas videos, apparently contracts directly with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, and that works with an array of super PACs and consultants to organize, film and publicize their provocations.”
Foval is heard in the second video saying:

Bob Creamer is diabolical and I love him for it. I have learned so much from that man over the last twenty years, I can’t even tell you. And he calls me to be his firefighter a lot of the time, because there are people who in our movement will not do what it takes to get shit done. And I’m not that person. I’m the one they send when everything has gone to shit. And so he spends a lot of time on the phone with my boss asking me to go places that I don’t wish to go.

While the second video captures Foval and the Project Veritas undercover reporter brainstorming about the voter fraud scheme, O’Keefe notes that “Creamer hesitated to help our ‘donor’ pull off the voter fraud scheme that Foval crafted.”
However, Foval did put the Project Veritas “donor” in touch with another leftwing operative who appeared more receptive: Cesar Vargas.
As O’Keefe explains: “Vargas is an interesting character. He is the co-founder of the Dream Action Coalition, a New York lawyer, and is a dreamer himself. Born in Mexico, Vargas is an undocumented alien. He has known Bob Creamer for years.”
In the video, Vargas is heard saying about the voter fraud scheme:

Like I said, this is not gonna happen this election. So I think it’s about, for us, let’s see who the next president is. If it – if it’s Donald Trump, it even makes more sense. The issue will be more credible and it’ll give us more opportunity to jump in there. If it’s Secretary Clinton, and the voter ID laws are losing and we have much more opportunity to vote, and we have immigration reform, it’s not going to be as significant, right?

When the Project Veritas reporter points out that this would be “voter fraud,” Vergas replies, “It’s civil disobedience.”
The video ends with a clip of Foval stating, “We have to do a better job of making our people do what they’re supposed to do. Not asking them. Making them. Not expecting them and taking them for granted, but beating the shit out of them.”
O’Keefe notes that more videos in this undercover investigation “will continue through the election.”
Update:
J. Christian Adams, the President and General Counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, has filed a legal complaint with the Federal Election Commission against “Hillary for America, the Democratic National Committee, Democracy Partners, Americans United for Change, and other known and unknown individuals and groups” based on O’Keefe’s second video investigation.
Adams issued the following statement to Breitbart News:

American voter rolls are corrupted with unacceptable numbers of aliens who are illegally registered to vote. Groups should not be coordinating with campaigns and political parties to exploit vulnerabilities in our election system. We hope this matter is fully investigated and that if aliens are voting, they are prosecuted by the Justice Department. That would mark a change in DOJ policies of the last 7 years.

As the complaint notes, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is “is a non-profit educational and legal foundation dedicated to protect the right to vote, preserve the Constitutional framework of American elections, and educate the public on the issue of election integrity.”

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/18/commit-voter-fraud-massive-scale-part-ii-project-veritas-investigation-clinton-network/



Read their complaint https://publicinterestlegal.org/files/PVA-FEC-Complaint.pdf

James O'Keefe is an American Hero. He really is. Thank you for all that you do for our country!

James O'Keefe is a real journalist, a true investigative reporter to his core.