A taped phone conversation released yesterday captures Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley calling your humble blogger a "slimy guy." Bentley also makes a negative reference to attorney Donald Watkins. The tape adds another level of authenticity to reports that Bentley used state and federal resources to target Watkins and me -- the two citizen journalists who broke the story last summer of Bentley's extramarital affair with advisor Rebekah Caldwell Mason.
It becomes more intriguing when you consider this timeline: I broke the story of the Bentley/Mason affair on August 31, 2015, the same date Bentley and State Rep. Allen Farley (R-Bessemer) talked in the evening, with Bentley calling me a "slimy guy." Nine days later, on September 9, my wife, Carol, and I were violently and unlawfully evicted from our apartment in Springfield, Missouri, and Carol was left with a shattered left arm that required trauma surgery. We've already asked this question: Were Bentley and/or Mason involved in arranging the bogus eviction in Missouri? Was that part of their plan to target me? Was having us roughed up and brutalized also part of the plan?
The new audio suggests the answer might be yes.
Yellowhammer News yesterday released the audio, and al.com followed with a report that Farley made the tape and released it, in part because recent events had caused him not to trust Bentley. The tape captures Farley saying he wants to take information from an "avalanche" of press reports about misconduct in the Bentley administration and ask Attorney General Luther Strange to conduct an investigation.
"I want the AG to step up and make sure state dollars were properly spent by the governor," Farley says. "This is a bombshell, but we have to deal with it."
Bentley seems less than enthused about the idea. "Allen, I don't think you need to get Luther in it, personally. There's nothing we're trying to hide . . . Whoever is doing this is using rumors and innuendos that are not fact. . . ."
Who does Bentley think is throwing around these "rumors and innuendos"? He makes that abundantly clear. "Casino gambling people are feeding this story. . . . They want to use the divorce to feed the story and get it out because they are trying to discredit me. . . . This didn't cause my divorce, although it did in part . . . they fed my wife this stuff."
Get a load of that arrogance. Bentley actually is blaming "casino gambling people" -- whoever that is -- for his own abominable behavior with Mason, which caused his divorce. Talk about "slimy."
On a personal level, it's quite a "blow" to be called a "slimy guy" by someone as slimy as Bentley -- by a guy we know spent time caressing Mason's boobs and exploring her nether regions, even though he marched into office as a "Christian, family values" candidate. His values were so strong that his wife of 50 years, former First Lady Dianne Bentley, filed for divorce last August and more or less told the "Luv Guv" to take a hike -- after she was finished taking him to the cleaners.
My given name never comes up in the Bentley-Farley conversation. But my blogging name is front and center. Consider this back and forth from Farley (AF) and Bentley (RB), early in the tape:
AF: There is an avalanche of speculation across the media. . . . When these people are contacting me, I say the governor is my friend, and I've been over a couple of times and prayed with him. This is devastating. When they say, "What do you think of this allegation about trips taken by the governor on the jet, and overtime by people who guarded him, and personal things that have been alleged . . .
RB: I read some of that stuff from Donald Watkins. . . .
AF: There is this guy Legal Schnauzer, or something . . .
RB: Legal Schnauzer is the one who accused Rob Riley and got sued . . . he's a slimy guy.
That last part is laughable. Rob Riley might be the most unethical and oily individual ever to engage in American politics. And I'm a "slimy guy" because Riley filed a bogus defamation lawsuit against me -- a case where, by law, my reporting was shown to be neither false nor defamatory? Sounds like the people who think Bentley is mentally losing it might be right.
Bentley reveals himself to be both a liar -- repeatedly claiming, falsely, there was no affair -- and an idiot. He apparently thinks it's lawful, and routine, for a journalist to be kidnapped (taken without a warrant) and thrown in jail for five months because of a civil case that alleges publication of defamatory matter. We have a governor, it turns out, who knows absolutely nothing about the First Amendment.
Perhaps Bentley needs to take a refresher course in the meaning of the word "slimy." A quick Google search reveals this definition: "disgustingly immoral, dishonest, or obsequious."
If you want to talk about slimy qualities, Governor, try looking in the mirror.
If the Luv Guv called me a slimy guy, I'd take that as a badge of honor and wear it proudly.
ReplyDeleteJust want to make clear that, in my reporting, I never spoke with a "casino gambling" source about the Bentley-Mason affair.
ReplyDeleteRight on, @8:59. The last thing you want is someone like Bentley calling you a good guy.
ReplyDeleteDonald Watkins calls Bentley the biggest liar since Richard Nixon:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/donald.v.watkins/posts/10210159057715079?notif_t=mention¬if_id=1471009866090222
Bentley looks awful on this, but Farley doesn't look much better. He prays for the Guv as he's planning to knife him in the back. Swell guy!
ReplyDeleteCongrats to you and Watkins, Mr. Schnauzer. I don't think this story ever sees the light of day without the two of you.
ReplyDeleteThanks, @9:27, and I agree. Al.com tried its best not to publish the story, mainly by focusing on bashing me for several months.
ReplyDeleteIs Bentley saying Milton McGregor was the one who made a practice of coming up behind Mason and fondling her boobs? I bet that's news to Uncle Miltie.
ReplyDeleteWho recorded the call? Farley? Or someone on the Governor's side?
ReplyDeleteoh, never mind, I see Farley released it...
ReplyDeleteLet me guess, Bentley has moral objections to "casino gambling people."
ReplyDeleteYes, they are the same "moral objections" Rob Riley had while he was involved with Crimsonica, trying to start a lottery in Russia. The same ones David Barber had while he was driving to play "games of chance" in Mississippi.
ReplyDeleteHey, Schnauzer, you know where I can get a good deal on some slime? I figured you'd be the guy to ask.
ReplyDeleteBentley's got to be one of the creepiest guys on earth, but Farley's not much better. That "prayer" gave me the willies. Bentley's too dense to say this, but he should have said. "Allen, I can live without prayers from 'friends' like you.'"
ReplyDeleteI don't call Bentley"Governor Pussyhound" for nothing. If anyone good came out of this, the"Luv Gov" just publicized your site. You're getting a bigger fan base and I hope it helps you with your finances.
ReplyDeleteExcellent job!
Aboard the Eliza Battle, Dr. Foreman was introducing his daughters ;Ophelia and Mary Mac who was escorted by her friend Sheldon Toomer.Ophelia addressed the gathering." Gentlemen of the Elizia Battle's crew and our honored guests, Admiral Tryon and Governor Bentley. As you might guess by my given name, my father is a fan of Shakespeare. My sister and I would be honored to recite some poetry."
ReplyDeleteDr.Dr.Bentley with a apricot scarf around his neck, a bottle of Bernkasteler Doktor under his belt and number 1 lead in his pencil, injected himself into the conversation. "I want the title of a poem one of my sisters read to me over the phone. It goes like; And twisting like a serpent on hot stones- And straining her white breast from their imprisonment-My lips are moist and yielding and I know the way- For him who sees me naked,even the angels would be damned for me.
Sheldon Toomer told Bentley the poem was "Metamorpheses of the Vampire" by Charles Baudelaire and it was highly recommended that Bentley read the second stanza.
The stranger in the shadows asked Mary Mac to recite "Le Jeu".
Ophelia read one stanza from a poem by Florence Coats.
Thou latest victim of an ancient hate!
In agony so awfully alone.
The world forgets thee not,nor can forget:
Such martyrdom she feels to be her own,
And sees involved in thine her larger fate:
She questions, and thy foes shall answer yet!
Admiral Tryon responded; Ophelia, thank you very very much. Mike! I have you a new battle plan. I must contact Emile."
Is this how things work in BentleyWorld: If Rob Riley sues you, whether his allegations have any truth or not, you are a "slimy guy." So if Spencer Collier sues Bentley, that makes Bentley a "slimy guy," too, right?
ReplyDeleteOh, but no, Bentley is a fine family man who is so busy working 12-14 hours (much of it spent massaging RCM's boobs) that he alienates his wife of 50 years. And it's all caused by "casino people."
This guy is really warped, disturbed. I guess he thinks anyone who files a lawsuit is always right, and anyone who has a lawsuit filed against him is always wrong -- unless, of course, the suit is filed against Bentley, and then he's protected by sovereign immunity.
In a few weeks, there will be no Governor Bentley & no Chief Justice Moore. Mike Hubbard has already been removed & assholes are puckering. As has been mentioned in previous comments, I would also bet there are some civil lawsuits under seal influencing good behavior on the part of those who remain in office. Those who have wronged you should be very afraid of what an Alabama not influenced by Riley or Bentley is going to look like. If I were them, I would stop fucking with you. These are the assholes who probably cut off my unemployment & my late mother's meals on wheels. They deserve to have their man boobs caressed & their nether regions explored in prison. Wait, a federal prison is too good for them. Let them serve the first three years in the Etowah County Jail where the reduced rations will weaken their bodies & the $25 phone calls will isolate them from all their friends & supporters before they are sent to Kilby State Prison where they'll drop the soap in the community shower. Hopefully, the guards, they gave no pay raises to will ignore their screams as an STD infected inmate who couldn't get Medicaid, uses his nine inches to explore their "nether regions" before tickling their tonsils. That shit they threatened us with when we worked for the government is good enough for them & then some. Maybe the prisoners will riot while they're in there. They better hope & pray to their God, they do federal time until they die because state time is going to be a bitch! Don't let 'em fool you. Everything is not well in Montgomery. They wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat from the nightmares of what could happen to them & it paralyzes their thinking. They are on meds for high blood pressure & anxiety. Your reporting is slowly killing them because they know they're guilty. They want to confess it all, but they are too proud. I've heard the accounts. Don't let up until the People of Alabama are free from their unlawful reign.
ReplyDeleteThese White Men who rule unlawfully have harmed not only you, but the Children of the Sun as well. Great Spirit Unetlanvhi will not be pleased & I ask that He guide your work in journalism that it may destroy their unlawful rule & begin a new era in Alabama for the Red Man, all People of Color & the Poor White. For the things the Great Spirit will do for us, I am grateful. As my ancestors said:
ReplyDeleteGa lu lo hi gi ni du da
Sky our grandfather
Nu da wa gi ni li si
Moon our grandmother
E lo hi gi ne tse
Earth our Mother
Ga li e li ga
I am thankful
Si gi ni gé yu
We love each other
O sa li he li ga
We are grateful
One thing for sure: If there wasn't so much slime in the Statehouse, LS might struggle to find material. As it is, however, he could work all day and night and still not find time to expose all the money laundering, dirty law firms, insurance company shenanigans, power company shenanigans, oil company shenanigans, organized crime connections, gambling interests, cover-ups, and convenient (or not so convenient) suicides...
ReplyDeleteI bet Governor Pussyhound will be totally paranoid to use the phone now because there's bo telling who is listening
ReplyDeletePerhaps that Bentley guy could get a job somewhere as a comedian. Like you are responsible for his divorce? You weren't married to his wife, you didn't have sexual relations with another woman while "married" to the Govenor's wife. O.K. perhaps the Govenor is a tad delusional. So if the Govenor is reading, here is some information: if you have been married for as long as you were, your wife knows your act and has decided to put up with it a long time ago. Wives only leave when their husbands are "fucking" around, having affairs, if it goes on for a long time and they get public about it. You did, so your long time wife divorced you, L.S. didn't have anything to do with it. Its nice to be delusional, but I'm afraid its not a good trait in a governor in this instance. Time for the Govenor to get a new line and move on.
ReplyDeleteI still think there is enough material to write a nice book about all of this and then a screen play. You can't make this type of stuff up. if it weren't so awful, it would be very funny: governor has affair, blames blogger for his divorce because he wrote about it.
What was really slimy was your not getting a jury trial & in the Riley case, you didn't even get an elected judge. I'd think you'd have standing to bring a federal case for violation of your 7th Amendment right to a trial by jury & a civil rights/due process claim because your bench trial was by a judge who was unelected & unaccountable. Who stood by while all that went down? Robert Bentley & Roy Moore.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing a very important legal point, Rob. I also was denied a jury trial in the Jessica Garrison case. In fact, in both the Riley and Garrison case, I was denied a trial, period. There was no adversarial proceeding in either one.
ReplyDeleteGoing back even further, I was denied discovery in my UAB employment case, by the obscenely corrupt William Acker. Still trying to figure out how one comes up with a tough/competent/ethical lawyer to pursue issues such as these.
I'm convinced many lawyers care absolutely zero about notions of justice, fairness, the law etc. I don't know why they go into the field. I guess they think it's a way to make serious dough without having to be good at math.
Why do you think all of these judges and people in general are so unfair to you...deny you a trial, won't give you a fair trial, wrongly arrest you, break your wife's arm, put you in jail, etc. Is it all because of your reporting and investigative journalism?
ReplyDeleteThere is no 7th Amendment jury trial right in state court. That has never been incorporated into the 14th amendment so it applies only in federal court. And the federal courts disfavor jury rights.
ReplyDeleteThe civil jury trial is practically dead in America. Between the federal arbitration act, alternate dispute resolution, and costly pre-trial discovery that only favors lawyers, very few civil cases make it to a jury. Very under reported problem.
Good questions, @6:22, but you probably are asking the wrong guy. Asking Rob Riley, Jessica Garrison and their colleagues would be the best way to get an answer -- although the likelihood of them telling the truth probably is small. In my view, the answer is "Yes, this stuff has happened because of my reporting, especially because I'm a solo blogger who cannot be controlled the way an MSM journalist can be controlled."
ReplyDeleteAnother factor? Karl Rove and like-minded individuals have ushered in an era where our justice system is essentially an organized crime enterprise. A journalist like myself poses a pretty serious threat to the way they want things done.
What is your view? Can you think of another explanation?
I hope Robby Scott Hill will respond to your comment, @10:54. That could lead to an interesting discussion. Aside from the Seventh Amendment, case law long has held that defamation cases require a jury trial. I had no trial at all, in either the Riley or Garrison cases.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that the 7th Amendment has not been incorporated into the 14th by a SCOTUS ruling. However, most states have voluntarily guaranteed the right to a jury trial in their state constitutions, thereby recognizing the 7th Amendment in the federal Bill of Rights, which Alabama did with its Constitution of 1901, in its Declaration of Rights in Article One:
ReplyDelete11. That the right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate.
12. That in all prosecutions for libel or for the publication of papers investigating the official conduct of officers or men in public capacity, or when the matter published is proper for public information, the truth thereof may be given in evidence; and that in all indictments for libel, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts under the direction of the court.
13. That all courts shall be open; and that every person, for any injury done him, in his lands, goods, person, or reputation, shall have a remedy by due process of law; and right and justice shall be administered without sale, denial, or delay.
Keep in mind that this was done at a time when the 14th Amendment & its "rights for Negroes" was not very popular in Alabama.
And, meanwhile, The U.S. Justce Department's Public Integrity Section lists Alabama the 4th most corrupt state in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of sounding funny, I just can't"picture" Bentley "naked". He would look like a death camp survivor at Auschwitz.
ReplyDeleteRoger, you are a slimy guy.
ReplyDeleteThanks for chiming in, @10:12. How are things in Ottawa? Thanks for giving me your IP address. That will come in very handy.
ReplyDeleteIf he's Ottawa, he's probably RCMP spying on behalf of USDOJ or FBI. US Agents are legally prohibited from spying on American Citizens. So, they get Canadians or British Agents to do their dirty work for them. I know some Irishmen who would love to party with some Canucks.
ReplyDeleteIt's hilarious how these government officials get caught lying. We've got people everywhere. From now on, everybody in Montgomery is going to have to be on their best behavior or face the consequences. During the VANPAC investigation, the mafia had the temporary headquarters of the FBI inside the bank building bugged & my mentor, now retired FBI Agent, Louis M. Harris did even know it. There were lots of lies in the official findings of the Judge Vance investigation, just like there were in the JFK & RFK murders. Like how did Sirhan Sirhan shoot RFK from the front when the bullet wounds were from the rear? And how did Oswald shoot JFK from the Sixth Floor of the Texas School Book Depository when he was photographed in the first floor doorway after the first bullet struck JFK? The Zapruder Film frames were exposed 1/18th of a second apart & there just isn't enough time in those frames for three bullets to come from a single shot, bolt action rifle. There was more than one shooter in both Kennedy Assassinations & allegedly, Governor Don Siegelman's law partner, Judge Vance, was also killed by a conspiracy.
ReplyDeleteBobby Hill Scott, 1:47 pm.:
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of Americans in Ottawa. Ottawa is the capital of Canada and as such has a lot of Embassies and assorted hanger "oners".
He might not be RCMP. It might political operatives and yes we have more than a few. They might be interested in Alabama because when ,who live in B.C., typed in politics, corruption, coal and gambling up popped Alabama. Now why would I be looking at those things? Well in B.C., Canada we have similar problems to Alabama and we have politics, corruption, coal, and gambling. We have corruption i.e. like how one rail way company was "purchased" by another--the then Premier's bag man headed up the purchasing corporation and the corporation which was purchased, B.C. Rail, was a provincial railway, as in the government owned it. We have an ever expanding gambling industry with casinos. Both Alabama and B.C. have coal.
The Premier of this province, Christy Clark, she has 200 people on staff whose job it is to monitor the media, which includes bloggers
(Some bloggers "catch" them having a peak and can follow them back to their computers.) Some of her key people came from Ottawa, where they once worked for the former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper. He is quite friendly with some Republican out of Los Vegas, whose name escapes me right now, but he is old, a billionaire, and not dreadfully attractive. The Los Vegas old man had a conference to deal with "problems" in the Republican party over how divided it was and "invited" our former P.M. to speak to them. So its quite interesting how the right wing in one Country might have connections to the right wing in another country and it never being the RCMP or CISIS.
B.C. like Alabama has poverty. In B.C. we have had the highest rate of child poverty in Canada for 14 of the last 15 years, all the while the current political party being in power, (B.C. Lieberals) never to be confused with the federal Liberal Party of Canada.
so just because something pops up from Canada, it most likely isn't RCMP, its politics.
Whether you like Governor Robert Bentley or not, there is one common denominator shared by Bentley, the imprisoned Don Siegelman & his law partner the late Judge Vance, & the late Kennedy Brothers, they all had personal knowledge of cocaine being smuggled past US Customs & Alabama law enforcement inside offshore oil drilling equipment. Before President John F. Kennedy refused to provide air support to the Bay of Pigs Invasion, future President George H. W. Bush owned the Zapata Oil Company which drilled in offshore waters in the Gulf of Mexico. In a break with Kennedy, Governor John Patterson of Alabama provided state-owned aircraft for the invasion of Cuba, at least one of which was shot down in the fighting, making Alabama the only state in American History to deploy its Air National Guard in a foreign war without permission from the White House & fight a war that the US Armed Forces were not involved in.
ReplyDeleteGreat analysis e.a.f. Your scenarios could be on the mark. Alabama & the South have had close contacts with Canada since the Civil War. We raided Vermont from Canada.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know they used Canada to stage a raid in Vermont. I do know Canada is the only foreign country to have burnt down the White House. Now if we could only win Stanley Cup back.
ReplyDeleteAmerican political operatives have done some the "finest" work in world. It comes from the American experience with advertising. Many Canadian political operatives have "studied" with the American political operatives and the Conservative Party of Canada, when Stephen Harper was the leader and P.M. "borrowed" from the teabaggers experience and some Republican experience.
When it comes to Billionaire and millionaires in north America, its just such a small community, they all know each other and being a small community they do like to help each other out in their "times of need". Next time of great need will be if Trump is elected.