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I am a great fan of yours. Your reporting about the Jack Goldmsith and the secret cabal at the DOJ defending the constitution gave me much-needed reassurance that there were at least a few people in DC who still cared about civil liberties.
Re the National Republican Trust PAC – I have been digging into their financial reports filed with the FEC and I’m not sure the NRT PAC Trust is on the up and up.
It was registered on 9/29 and at 1015, it had raised $460k and had $205k in cash on hand. The NRT PAC then spent $5.2 million in the next three weeks on mdeia buys. $3.1 million for television ads and $2.1 for who knows what. (Some of the $2.1 million may have gone to Drudge.)
My first questin is whether the NRT PAC raised $5.2 million in less than two weeks and if it didn’t, who extended credit or guaranteed the debt?
What also caught my eye is the firm placing the $5.2 in media buys, the Philipse Brook Group, Inc. which was only registered in NYS on 8/19.
The address of the firm is the home of Joe and Jennifer Mercurio. Joe has been a political consultant in the NYC area for more than thirty years and is oft-quoted in the media. Sometimes, he is described as a Dem, other times as a Republican. But never as an extreme right winger or neocon. He claims that he recently was a media consultant on Joe Biden’s primary bid.
Joe Mercurio probably is best known in NYC for having been fired by C. Virginia Fields, a 2005 mayoral candidate, when a campaign group photo was found to be doctored to include an Asian couple for diversity.
Jennifer Mercurio is a lobbyist who, up until a couple of years ago, lobbied at the state level. She claims to be an Obama fan on her web page at MyObama.
If Philipse Brook Group was registered on 8/19 specifically to place those despicable ads, the Mercurios must have been in on what seems to have been a secret project.
The Obama/Atta ad was not only sleazy, as FactCheck.org wrote, it was false. That ad should never have been broadcast on television. Linking a presidential candidate to one of the world’s most infamous and well-known terrorists was disgraceful and inexcusable.
Yet the Mercurios apparently had no problem taking money to get them on the air and no problem getting them on the air.
Why would the well-connected wingnuts running the NRT PAC hire the Mercurios? Wheeler and Leitner could have given the work to any number of their right wing pals. Instead, they apparently trusted the Mercurios, two seemingly center or center left NYers. Doesn’t make sense.
I posted some info about the NRT PAC at TPM and Kos. Follow the link and read the comments.
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