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| Artur Davis and his wife, Tara Johnson Davis |
The Web site gotnews.com, led by publisher Charles C. Johnson, broke the story about Davis as an Ashley Madison customer on August 21. The site produced additional evidence in a pair of followup articles (see here and here), which drew denials from Davis spokespersons.
Davis, at first, claimed his name appeared at Ashley Madison because someone stole his credit cards. He later said the information came from operatives for the campaign of Todd Strange, against whom he was running for mayor of Montgomery. He eventually stated: "I have never been a customer of the Ashley Madison site."
Our research shows that Davis is flat-out lying about that. (See summary of his Ashley Madison activity at the end of this post.)
Data shows that the first Davis account was created on May 10, 2011, at SNR Dentons, the Washington, D.C. law firm where he went to work after Ron Sparks trounced him in the Alabama Democratic primary for governor in 2010. A payment in July 2015 was made from the Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colorado, where Davis was speaking to a Republican group, after having switched parties.
The party switch didn't work out so well for Davis. After he moved to Virginia and became a Republican, there seemed to be little interest in his legal and political skills. He returned to his hometown, only to have Strange thump him in the race for mayor of Montgomery. Now, Davis wants to "return to his Democrats roots," which has drawn mostly yawns (or outrage) from party leaders, who remember that Davis alienated his liberal base in 2010 in order to side with the Business Council of Alabama and other conservative groups.
In fall 2007, Davis looked like a bright star on the Democratic horizon. He served on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and played a starring role when the committee investigated Bush-administration abuses of the justice system in late October of that year. Davis showed signs of being interested in addressing the firings of U.S. attorneys and unlawful political prosecutions, including the highly publicized case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
With his calm demeanor and smooth speaking style, Davis was seen by some as the "Obama of the South." It looked like Davis might prove to be a hero for those who believe in actual justice, the rule of law, and constitutional protections. But Davis let all of that slide, indicating he never was seriously interested in the issues to begin with. He gave up a safe Congressional seat to run a disastrous campaign for Alabama governor, and his political star has been in free fall ever since.
Now the Ashley Madison debacle reveals Davis to be both a cheater and a liar. Data shows that he had three accounts at the site and paid to have all of them deleted. But they still showed up when the site was hacked, and information was placed at the dark Web for public examination.
Under "What Turns Me On," Davis wrote the following:
What Turns Me On: Aggressive/Take Charge Nature, Confidence, Discretion/Secrecy, Imagination, A professional/well groomed, Stylish/Classy, Long Hair, Not Possessive, Good Communicator
Open To: Conventional Sex, Sex Talk, Extended Foreplay/Teasing, Good With Hands, Kissing, Sensual Massage, Someone Who Can Teach Me
Perhaps, Davis deserves credit for one thing: Unlike other prominent Ashley Madison clients we've outed from Alabama--Bradley Arant lawyer Rob Campbell and al.com reporter Charles J. Dean--Davis does not claim to be single. Under relationship status, Davis describes himself as:
Attached Male Seeking Females
Davis, however, earns demerits for his description of his physical appearance. After stating that he is 5'10" and 160 pounds, Davis says his physique is:
Shapley Toned
Aside from the spelling problem here (we assume Davis means "shapely"), when have you ever heard a man describe himself as "shapely"?
We will leave that question for another day, but for now, this much seems clear: Artur Davis' political career, thanks to a series of self-inflicted wounds, is in a shambles. Now that he's been outed in the Ashley Madison scandal as a cheater and liar, that career should be over--with no hope for resuscitation.
Readers are missing out on a real treat if they don't click on the Artur Davis summary below. Members of our Legal Schnauzer Computer Forensics and Accuracy Research Team (C-FART) have outdone themselves with this one. It is awesome, if we do say so ourselves. And it unmasks a prominent Ashley Madison customer in a way that, to our knowledge, no other news organization has done.
That's also true of our summaries for Rob Campbell and Charles J. Dean, which hackers have removed multiple times from the document-storage site Scribd. But the Davis summary is filled with all kinds of special flourishes that should make it must reading, especially for anyone who has suspected that Artur Davis is a fraud and a truly creepy guy.
Artur Davis unmasked! I love it.
ReplyDeleteParty jumper, wannabe humper, spin pumper - get the heck outta here Davis!
ReplyDeleteArtur Davis needs to write a book: "How I turned a promising political career into an absolute train wreck. And how you can do it, too."
ReplyDeleteThat sound you hear is the remains of Artur Davis' political career going down the drain.
ReplyDeleteLooks like someone has managed to delete the Artur Davis summary from Scribd. I'm sure that's because the information is inaccurate.
ReplyDeleteHah, yes, I'm sure that's the reason someone deleted it, just like with the Rob Campbell and Chuck Dean summaries. I had noticed that the summary went missing, and we are working on getting it back up. I'm confident it won't be missing for long.
ReplyDeleteI assume you tried to contact mr Davis prior to this report as you indicated you do before publishing any Ashley Madison story. What was his reply? How did you try to contact him? Here is what you said in comments to 9/23 post.
ReplyDeleteA reply to your question, @3:28--In both cases where I've reported on an Ashley Madison user, I contacted the individuals and gave them an opportunity to comment, explain, answer questions etc. Neither bothered to respond.
it might have been better if he had donated the money to a Veterans charity, a food bank, the local church, the local homeless shelter. How these self absorbed people ever get elected is beyond me. Might say a bit about the voters also.
ReplyDeleteHa...... His wife is the executive director of friendship mission Montgomery Al
DeleteRob Hilbert of lagniappe wrote that for AD.
ReplyDeleteIt says that the document was deleted by owner. It sounds like you need to change your password.
ReplyDeleteI also noticed while the document was up that none of the 3 accounts had Artur's correct birthday and none of the 3 accounts had the same birthdate as the others. Not sure what that means but it is odd.
Also your C-FART team missed the two ip addresses that setup the 2nd and 3rd accounts. And they only had an ip address of one payment (presumably the final payment) and that payment was not listed on your document. Were they not able to get any other ip address that a payment was made from?
And the 3 accounts also strike me as being odd. Especially considering the 2nd account was set up the same day that a payment was made on the 1st account.
The wrong birthdates, the multiple accounts (with the timing of the payments), those are oddities that make wonder if there is not something more going on.
I did not contact Mr. Davis, @3:04, because I did not break the story. Gotnews.com broke the story, and it has been widely covered at a number of news sites over the past few weeks. Davis already has issued various denials, and I referenced each one that I could find, and provided links to the original sources.
ReplyDeleteThe comment you reference on 9/23 involved two Ashley Madison stories that I broke, and neither individual had been given an opportunity to respond; I gave them that opportunity. The Artur Davis story is a very different situation. The story already had been broken by another news outlet, and Mr. Davis had issued multiple denials to multiple news outlets, which I reported.
My report provided numerous details that had not been published previously, and it adds to the growing body of evidence that Mr. Davis' denials do not hold water.
If you know Mr. Davis, you might tell him that he is welcome to issue a statement regarding my reporting, or better yet, we can arrange a time for an interview on the subject. Also, you might want to ask him if he knows who is behind my summary being removed from Scribd. Was he involved in that, and if so, why did he help have it removed?
ReplyDeleteThere is something else weird in the deleted document.
It said all three accounts were opened at the same geographic point, according to the locator data that is thought to be pretty reliable, but the IP addresses are all different: the IPS were supposedly Davis' law firm, this Colorado address in 2013, and another address that i ran a search on that comes back for New York City. Isn't that exactly what would happen if someone had hacked Davis' mobile and was running this account from a distance? They would be logging in from one geographic location and directing a payment from another, Davis' mobile, wherever that would be.
I also find it odd that the two places this account were opened were supposedly Davis' law firm and a hotel that he spoke at in Colorado two years ago. I ran a bunch of searches last night just for fun, and it so happens to be the only addresses fro 2011 to 2014 that show up are ..wait for it...a story about him speaking at the Hotel Jerome and his old law firm address. Kind of convenient, one would think.
Also the credit card numbers: assuming these are Davis' accounts, didn't I read somewhere that the bill did not show up as Ashley Madison but as some other descriptor? If Davis had 700,000 to spend on his mayoral campaign, and had a bunch of auto bills like most of us do, could he missed small transactions on a statement instead of catching them?
I know these guys are usually lying, but the details don't add up and they seem inconsistent, on top of Brian's point about one account being opened when an identical account was closed the same day. I am just not sold, especially without seeing the metadata, as opposed to relying on a summary.
The document that was taken down is a summary not something pasted from in the actual data dump: this stuff is very hard to sort through
A response to Brian, from a member of our C-FART team:
ReplyDeleteBirthday: That is correct. The Birthday is supplied by the user at the time of registration. All information contained in the analysis was copied directly from tables imported from dumps to MySql server. The only exception is weight and height. Those were converted from cm and grams to feet/inches and pounds. It is not surprising that a user on a website of this nature would not provide accurate information.
IP addresses: Only a few payments had an IP address associated with them. I listed the two IPs that I was able to confirm the ownership of. It is very difficult find the history of non-static IPs.
Timing of Payment/ Multiple Accounts: Artur was a paid delete customer. I assume that he created an account, deleted it and then decided he wasn’t done.
Oddities that make you wonder: Not sure if Brian is computer savy or not. I would encourage him to find this data and analyze it for himself. I will say that the credit card transaction history is not disputable and proves clearly that I Artur had not be truthful. Tell you what Brian, if you prove that none of those payments were made by Artur, I will donate $2104.89 to a charity of your choice.
Computers are not my problem, it is the behavior of people which I don't fully understand. Such as, why would somebody being willing to lie about their birth date but list their true name. Why not get a prepaid visa or mastercard and use an alias?
ReplyDeleteThe IP addresses of the computer that set up the 2nd and 3rd accounts both tied back to AT&T mobility. One leads to the New York City area, the other shows as Houston, Texas / Washington D.C. / Herndon, Virginia.
Now after further research, two things do stand out. First is that if he did delete his account, which all 3 were deleted accounts, there are a couple of things that are replaced with the string . They are email address, first name, last name, street address, zip code, phone numbers, profile caption, abstract, turn ons, looking for. Those are all replaced. What is left is latitude and longitude, birth date, height, weight, city, state to name a few critical details. So how did C-FART rebuild the missing info? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/25/us_class_action_ashley_madison/
2nd is that Ashley Madison's site was not designed to store credit card information. From the Register "Raja Bhatia, Ashley Madison's founding CTO who today consults for the website's team, is not convinced this leak is real. He told investigative journo Brian Krebs this evening that the site does not store credit card numbers. "If there is full credit card data in a dump, it’s not from us, because we don’t even have that," Bhatia added."
Another response from a member of our C-FART team:
ReplyDeleteDynamic IPs regular change. 198.228.206.42 may show New York now but that does not mean it was in New York a few years ago. It’s very difficult to get historic information on dynamic IP addresses. He made a payment in Colorado not an account sign up.
They use Google GEO Lookup, it is not that great. I would say 10 miles or so. It really depends.
“Isn't that exactly what would happen if someone had hacked Davis' mobile and was running this account from a distance? They would be logging in from one geographic location and directing a payment from another, Davis' mobile, wherever that would be.” Perhaps in a movie not but not in the real world.
Ashley Madison payments are billed as “ADL Media Inc – TDS”
What do you mean by meta data? The payment files have some but that’s it. Not sure if you know what you want to see or if you are using wrong terminology. The data is easy to analyze in my opinion. You just need to have some knowledge of MySQL.
Sounding a little defensive there...your now deleted chart actually did say that the Colorado IP address was where an account was opened..the problem is the locator information does not match that address..and that same locator is where all three accounts were opened, if your chart was right
ReplyDeleteAlso, I dug a little more..your summary chart showed Davis used this account at the Hotel Jerome on July 15 this year..there is a local newspaper story that says Davis was at a Montgomery mayoral candidate forum the night before. There is a story from a Colorado paper about him speaking at the Hotel Jerome in July 2013..I get you may have typed the wrong date on your summary, sort of like you may be confused on the account open v. transaction paid distinction.
And ADL Media Inc--If I saw that on a billing statement, that sure would have said Ashley Madison to me!
Unlike Brian, I think you guys succeeded in proving that two credit card in Davis'name ran up expenses on Ashley Madison (I get that because the transactions were apparently all approved and if I understand the stories on these accounts, the name comes from the billing info)and that each account was opened up in the exact same GEO location. But you lose me when your crack research team also says each account was opened at three completely different IPs in three different cities. Not to say you guys are making up but if the date is so easy to analyze, seems like you struggled to do it.
The good news from their perspective is that Davis & Campbell won't be losing their law licenses over the sex or the associated lies, if any. What will happen is you & any non-lawyer who chooses to talk about it will be jailed, sued, garnished & have your property sold to satisfy judgments, be refused gainful employment & be generally crapped on by the legal mafia. That's how all this works. Haven't you figured that out yet? Trickle down economics didn't trickle, but there is another way. You can read all about how a small group of determined men & women overthrew the crooked lawyers in their country & built a new world for themselves at https://www.marxists.org/subject/bolsheviks/index.htm
ReplyDeleteA response to @3:38 from a member of our C-FART team. Our replies are listed after "Reply." Would like to bold the replies, but I'm not sure you can bold in the comments section.
ReplyDelete(1) "Sounding a little defensive there...your now deleted chart actually did say that the Colorado IP address was where an account was opened..the problem is the locator information does not match that address..and that same locator is where all three accounts were opened, if your chart was right"
Reply: That is incorrect, We have never said that the Colorado IP address was associated with an account sign up.
(2) "Also, I dug a little more..your summary chart showed Davis used this account at the Hotel Jerome on July 15 this year..there is a local newspaper story that says Davis was at a Montgomery mayoral candidate forum the night before. There is a story from a Colorado paper about him speaking at the Hotel Jerome in July 2013..I get you may have typed the wrong date on your summary, sort of like you may be confused on the account open v. transaction paid distinction."
Reply: You are correct, we did provide the wrong date. The correct date is 2013-07-15 00:40:58. We will update that document and note our correction.
(3) "Unlike Brian, I think you guys succeeded in proving that two credit card in Davis'name ran up expenses on Ashley Madison (I get that because the transactions were apparently all approved and if I understand the stories on these accounts, the name comes from the billing info)and that each account was opened up in the exact same GEO location. But you lose me when your crack research team also says each account was opened at three completely different IPs in three different cities. Not to say you guys are making up but if the date is so easy to analyze, seems like you struggled to do it."
Reply: That is correct on the names coming from the billing information. It's important to remember that geo locations are not exact. For example, there are 1990 accounts with the geo location of 38.905386, - 77.030988.
The data is not difficult to analyze if you are knowledgeable with sql. We are working on a document that outlines the procedures and practices used to compile this data in a presentable form. Also included in that document will be an explanation of what the raw data looks like and how it was stored. I am happy that you are questioning the data and our method used to compile it... it keeps us on our toes. At the end of the day you have to make a determination on what you believe.
It’s interesting that this thread became active again. Before he passed, the Late Steven Noles related the story of how now Attorney General & then Marshall County DA, Steve Marshall & other “safe for business” & pro-GOP Democrats allegedly encouraged Artur to run for Governor knowing it would be a train wreck & ensure the election of Robert Bentley, who subsequently elevated Marshall to Attorney General. Steve and his pals laid it on Artur smooth and thick; telling him everything he wanted to hear. As soon as Artur left the room, some of his fellow Democrats in the room called him a dumb Ni%%er behind his back & laughed about how stupid & naive they thought he was. They got rewarded by Bentley with Steve Marshall getting probably the biggest prize. Steven Noles was a real Liberal Democrat & not a pretender like so many of them. He was a dear friend & Steven left lots of good intelligence with people he trusted so he could continue to be an activist from the grave. RIP Steven Noles, Esquire.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is interesting that this thread has taken on new life. I've seen that happen a few times before, but it's unusual.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your comments on Steve Marshall and Robert Bentley; I consider them truly bad actors on the Alabama political scene. As you probably know, we've written numerous posts that broke the Bentley scandal -- in fact, Donald Watkins and I wrote about it for 6-7 months before the MSM took interest. Bentley has threatened retaliation against both of us, and the public should not tolerate such statements from political figures.
I also appreciate your comments about Steven Noles and the intelligence he left with those he trusted. If you know of anyone who believes this information would be important for the public to know and would be willing to share, I would be glad to discuss. My email address -- rshuler3156@gmail.com -- is published down the right side of our home page.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts.