Category: Alabama 2017 Special Election

In my last post, I left you with the expectation that I was looking into if the Federal Election Commission was doing anything regarding Attorney General Marshall’s formal request that Project Birmingham be investigated by the FEC.

Since no other news outlet is reporting on this at the moment, I thought my readers would at least like to know whether or not the FEC is in fact looking into this matter.  I recently sent a request for information to the FEC and they replied quickly.  FEC Deputy Press Officer, Christian Hilland, responded with the pasted text below.

 

A provision of federal campaign finance law requires that any Commission action on an enforcement matter be kept strictly confidential until the case is resolved.  Therefore, to comply with this provision and to protect the interests of those involved in an enforcement case that is before the agency or on a matter that has the potential to come to the agency, we are unable to comment.

Potential violations of federal campaign finance law may be brought to the Commission’s attention through the complaint process. This process enables anyone to file a sworn complaint alleging violations and explaining the basis for the allegations. A description of the complaint process is available here. Each complaint is reviewed on a case-by-case basis, and therefore, the length of every case will vary.

Note that a vote of at least four Commissioners is needed at every stage, including whether to (1) find reason to believe and initiate an investigation, (2) find probable cause that a violation has occurred or is about to occur, (3) settle a matter, or (4) authorize filing a lawsuit.  If there are not four votes at any stage, the Commission will not proceed to the next step of the process.

Okay, I’m going to take that as a yes.  The FEC is currently investigating Project Birmingham.  I wonder if the media outlets, that reported to have documents from the September and December 2017 meetings, are cooperating?

I welcome your comments and invite you to follow via email below.

I wanted to write a follow up to my prior post, where I listed what I thought were questionable circumstances surrounding Project Birmingham and how the leaked documents show possible coordination between the project and the media attacks on Roy Moore during the 2017 Special Election in Alabama.

I’m focusing this post on what I like to call the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room, the allegations of sexual assault made against Moore beginning on November 9th, 2017.  In my view, and according to the polls at the time, no other attacks against Moore damaged his double digit lead over Doug Jones like those allegations did.  Prior to November 9th, 2017, Judge Moore enjoyed an 11 point lead over Jones and even remained in the single digits for a time after The Washington Post article.

Given what we know about Project Birmingham, and the allegations that are still just… well… allegations, that gorilla may be even bigger than we know.

I went back and read the original article that was published on November 9th in The Washington Post. I also studied the leaked documents from Project Birmingham’s December “After Action” meeting.  In addition, I took another look at a recent article and listened to a podcast that NPR has published.

In light of these things, allow me to give you my ideas about why I think there is a possibility that the allegations of sexual assault made against Judge Moore during the Special Election could be connected with Project Birmingham.

Based on what we can glean from the leaked documents, Project Birmingham acknowledged at least twice that the allegations affected their “experiment” as well being detrimental to the outcome of election.  An outcome that ended up exactly as the project intended.

The above image is part of the leaked documents from the December 15th, 2017 “After Action” meeting held by Project Birmingham members and associates. Notice the second bullet point in the image.  They mention the “Wapo Report” and how they “provided major news outlets” with data that indicated “anti-Moore articles were popular.”  Also notice that they provided this information to the media “Prior to the WaPo report on Moore’s alleged child molestation.”

Now take a look at another leaked document from the December 15th meeting.  This one is a timeline that shows what actions were taken and when.

You can see in this above timeline that October, the month that the writers of the November 9th Wapo article were in Alabama working on a story about Moore supporters, is also the month that Project Birmingham experimented “with tactics to push narratives from one social media platform to another and ultimately into the press.”

These documents show me that the project was definitely shaped by the November 9th Wapo hit piece and actions were adjusted accordingly after it was published.  Notice in the timeline again how they pushed the write in candidate in December just before the election and after the allegations have been published.  Promoting a write in was far more effective after the public had been fed a litany of disgusting accusations against Moore.   Republicans would have been far more likely to look elsewhere for a candidate in December than October.

We do know from the recent reporting that Project Birmingham members claim to have also acted as “media advisors,” where they arraigned interviews between the write in candidate they were promoting and the media.

Now that we have this information, isn’t all reporting that occurred during this election suspicious?   Especially from The Washington Post?  I tend to think so.

I welcome your comments below.

By now, you have all heard of Project Birmingham, the disinformation campaign, aimed at preventing Roy Moore from winning the Alabama Special Election for U.S. Senate back in twenty seventeen.

I took particular interest in this story when it broke a few weeks ago. As you know, I covered that election more thorough than most since it was the only one going on at the time and I was able to focus my limited time blogging and podcasting (blogcasting) about it.

I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert on this election. At least an expert when it comes to knowing what transpired and when. I attended multiple rallies, including the one at the train station in downtown Montgomery where Moore appeared after his debate against Big Luther Strange. The atmosphere at that one was electric. A long list of nationally known pols were there. Names like Bannon and Palin spoke to the most fired up crowds that any politician saw in Alabama that year. There was a huge gathering of national press in attendance as well. I was there with my iPhone and monopod trying to capture what I could with what little battery life I had left on my device.

I was unable to attend the September 26th election night watch party where after a long road of running against a Trump-endorsed, McConnell-funded, Bentley-appointed Luther Strange, Roy Moore was finally on the downhill stretch to being elected to the United States Senate.

While I couldn’t attend every event, I could follow this election daily via news stories posted to the web and social media. When Moore won the primary, I correctly predicted he would win the runoff on September 26th. After that, it was supposed to be a no brainer. After all, Steve Flowers, the premier political columnist in Alabama, had said to me repeatedly on my podcast, “In Alabama, winning the Republican nomination is tantamount to winning the election.” Steve is usually right about that.

It was a given that Roy Moore was going to beat that democrat. What’s his name? Oh yes, Doug Jones.

Little did I know at the time, what I thought was a campaign coasting its way to victory, was actually a sitting duck about to get hit with the modern political version of a thermo nuclear bomb.

As I write this, all we know is there was a meeting in Washington DC in September of 2017 where the plan was hatched to take out Moore and create a path to victory for Doug Jones.   (Correction) There was no meeting  in September of 2017.  The meeting referenced in the NPR interview linked above occurred in September 2018 in Washington D.C.  The “experiment” was executed and then the group met after the election on December 15th to see what worked and how.

I read these reports linked above and looked over the leaked documents from the December meeting. 

 

I’m left with more questions than answers after looking at all of this. A few questions are:

 

1. Why did they “seed” the #NoMoore hashtag in September and not #NoStrange when the runoff wasn’t held until September 26th? Were they anticipating that Strange was going to lose or just out to get Roy Moore from the get go?
2. Why is The Washington Post trying to be out front and center with their reporting of Project Birmingham when this thing has WaPo fingerprints all over it? Specifically David Weigal’s prints. Weigal is mentioned in this article  and wrote another on September 27th, the day following Moore’s nomination, where he is among the first writers in the bunch to drive the narrative about Doug Jones prosecuting the KKK. Project Birmingham wanted to increase turnout among black voters by driving home that point and all of the media were more than happy to go along with it. Weigal appears to have either been the most eager to publish or first to get the memo from the project.
3. Was the November 9th WaPo story, the first of the allegations against Moore, connected with Project Birmingham? We know from the leaked documents that someone with the project reached out to major media organizations and presented data to show that Anti-Moore content was popular and lucrative. Did someone at the project reach out to Stephanie McCrummen in the same manner as was done with David Weigal? McCrummen wrote that she met with Moore accusers for three weeks before they finally agreed to go public. This would put her in Alabama circa October 19th. According to the leaked “After Action” documents, Project Birmingham was “experimenting, in October, with tactics to push narratives from one social platform to another and ultimately into press.” Was McCrummen’s story “pushed” to her from the project? The allegations have yet to be proven and Moore has recently taken a lie detector test that indicates he is telling the truth.

I’m calling on the media outlets that have the documents from both the September and December meetings of Project Birmingham to release them to the public! There is no reason to hold on to them unless they want to protect an ally or even one of their own. I’m continuing to watch this story and will update this post as more information becomes available.