Daily Dot data analysis indicates right-wing extremist Ali Alexander is running for cover, but his efforts might be futile in the wake of massive hack at Epik

Ali Alexander (YouTube)

Part Two

Right-wing extremist Ali (Akbar) Alexander and his allies have made it a habit to harass and threaten progressive voices in Alabama, where he has a base of operations that includes Montgomery lawyer Baron Coleman. Two of the favorite targets for Alexander & Co. have been attorney/activist/whistle blower Dana Jill Simpson and yours truly. Simpson has stated that she suspects Alexander or his allies have been involved in a number of alarming attacks against her, including a fire on her property.

Could a massive hack of the website-hosting firm Epik lead to revelations about Alexander's activities in Alabama -- and elsewhere, given that he was organizer of the Stop the Steal rally that turned into the Jan. 6  assault on the U.S. Capitol? The answer is "maybe" -- partly because it could take months or even years for tech experts to sift through the data. (See Part One.)

Alexander reportedly has been in hiding since Jan. 6, but he might be running scared, according to an article at dailydot.com, under the headline "After the Capitol riot, ‘Stop the Steal’ organizer Ali Alexander was scrambling to hide his digital footprint":

Just days after supporters of former President Donald Trump violently stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Ali Alexander, one of the primary organizers of the rally that day, appeared to be busy, attempting to hide his ties to dozens and dozens of websites calling the 2020 election stolen.

Domains tied to Alexander that pushed Stop the Steal, which the Daily Dot reviewed, including ones he publicly posted on as himself, were scrambled in the wake of the riot to hide ownership. But hacked documents show they trace right back to Ali and an anonymize service from the web hosting company Epik.

In the run-up to the failed insurrection, which was sparked by weeks of false allegations regarding widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, Alexander had positioned himself as the movement’s de facto leader with his “Stop the Steal” campaign.

At a Dec. 19 rally in Arizona that he spoke at, Alexander made his intentions for Jan. 6 clear: He and his legion of followers would do whatever was necessary to stop Congress from certifying the electoral votes of President Joe Biden’s victory.

According to the Washington Post and Daily Beast, Alexander was already working with far-right Republican legislators to plan the Jan. 6 rally.

“We’re going to convince them to not certify the vote on Jan. 6 by marching hundreds of thousands, if not millions of patriots, to sit their butts in D.C. and close that city down, right?” Alexander said that December day. “And if we have to explore options after that…”

How did Alexander, with his well-documented criminal record, become a national figure in the GOP, which used to be known as the law-and-order party? Perhaps it is a case of "the right thug, at the right time":

Alexander has been a prominent backchannel in Republican politics for nearly two decades. He’s also pled guilty to felony charges under a previous name, when he was known as Ali Akbar. He’s been friendly with far-right operatives like Laura Loomer and Jacob Wohl. He also has ties to Roger Stone, who is under investigation for his role in fomenting the Capitol riot. At the time of the Capitol riot, Alexander had almost a quarter of a million Twitter followers.

On the night before the riot, Alexander was filmed chanting “Victory or Death” to an enthusiastic crowd. He’d also dubbed himself an official co-ordinator of the Jan. 6 event, and was filmed on a roof during the rally glowing about its success.

Has Alexander been anxious to take credit for his role in launching the deadly Jan. 6 attacks? Not exactly, reports Daily Dot: 

When the dust finally settled on Jan. 6, Alexander had already seemed to start an effort to obfuscate his ties to the movement. With five deaths, hundreds of injuries, and extensive damage to the Capitol, the conspiracy theorist would find himself facing permanent suspensions across social media before eventually going into hiding.

As the national outrage over the riot intensified, work appeared to be happening behind the scenes. On Jan. 15, just nine days after the failed insurrection, Alexander, or someone working with him, took steps to anonymize his personal information on the registrations for more than 100 domains. Nearly half of those domains are directly related to Stop the Steal. Domains such as stopthestealmovement.com, stopthestealnews.com, and stopthestealupdates.com were all scrambled in the wake of the riot.

Alexander had opted to entrust his web addresses with the domain registrar company Epik, which offers a domain privacy feature known as “Anonymize.” The decision would, theoretically, keep the public from discovering which domains he owned.

Yet on Sept. 13, the hacking collective Anonymous announced that it had pilfered a decade’s worth of data from Epik, a company known best for hosting extremist websites. Although the company initially claimed to be unaware of a breach, Epik CEO Rob Monster later said in a bizarre, four-hour-long video conference that hackers had obtained a backup of its data.

Released online in a torrent, the 180-gigabyte data cache included, among other things, domain registrations and account credentials as well as the personal details of individuals who had registered some of the internet’s most notorious far-right domains.

Has the hack left Alexander vulnerable? From Daily Dot:

Analysis of the data by the Daily Dot was able to link an email tied to Alexander to 122 separate domains. On Jan. 15, the far-right figure received an email to a ProtonMail address thanking him for setting up an Anonymize account.

“Dear Ali A,” the email begins. “Thank you for signing up with us. Your new account has been setup and you can now login to our client area . . .

By searching through the hacked data for the ProtonMail address used to register the account, the Daily Dot was able to locate Alexander’s Anonymize profile. The data includes Alexander’s username and hashed password as well as a phone number and address. The address appears to be that of a UPS store in Texas. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram previously tied that UPS address to Alexander.

The Daily Dot made repeated attempts to reach Alexander over the phone number and email address found in the breach but did not receive a reply by press time.

The account creation date listed under Alexander’s account information, Jan. 15, matches the date of the email that says he signed up for the Anonymize service.

The account for Alexander was assigned a unique ID, that would take the place of his actual name on his public domain registrars. The Daily Dot is not disclosing Alexander’s ID.

As for the ugly events Simpson and i have experienced, apparently at the hands of Akbar and/or his associates, we addressed those in a Sept. 2 post:

Closer to home, Alexander has bragged about his ties to the Alabama legal world, perhaps through his friendship with Baron Coleman, who once practiced with Alabama State Bar official Tripp Vickers.

Simpson and I know what it's like to be the target of Alexander and his right-wing goons. Alexander once threatened  to sue me for reporting accurately and fairly about a letter  Simpson wrote to Obama re-election counsel Robert Bauer in 2012. My wife received notice of the lawsuit threat shortly after my "arrest for blogging" in October 2013. Was that a coincidence, considering that Alexander's NBC buddies were in a blogging frenzy when word broke of my incarceration. Does that mean they know who caused the unlawful loss of my freedom, the loss of our Birmingham home via wrongful foreclosure, and perhaps my wife's severely broken arm in 2015 at the hands of deputies in Missouri (where we now live)? Let's just say we haven't ruled out Alexander and NBC's knowledge of, and perhaps involvement with, any or all of those events.

Simpson has experienced all kinds of unsettling incidents related to her house, vehicle, and property -- some involving fire. She has stated publicly that she suspects Akbar and/or his colleagues' involvement in at least some of these evens.From a November 2018 LS post: 

Simpson's interactions with the right-wing crazies go back several years, to the beginnings of the Don Siegelman case:

The NBC, as we call them, came to my attention when they harassed and told false stories about Siegelman activists. The NBC is a vicious group. What is such a hoot is that is how I first learned about crazy Steve Bannon's bunch. I started getting a master's degree in philosophy and religion, and the nuts in the National Bloggers Club started following me around in D.C. and California. The idiots were making a film for Andrew Breitbart and were trying to falsely claim I was a ring leader in Anonymous, as they were friends of mine, and that I was dating a guy who they believed was in Anonymous. The dimwits offered me all kinds of things to say I was part of it, through him.

Simpson knows these creepy wingers can get both scary and personal. She also says they are behind -- at least in part -- some of the abuse (false arrest and imprisonment, theft of house) that has been directed at my wife, Carol, and me. . . . Says Simpson:

Even as late as 2013 they were threatening me and called my boyfriend (now husband) trying to advise him not to marry me, telling him I was going to jail. The GOP National Blogger bunch in 2014, due to me having a neck injury, worked with their Alabama State Bar buddy, Tripp Vickers, and his former law partner,  Baron Coleman and a federal judge to try to set me up -- when in all likelihood it was them who set my office yard on fire and burned up my car and my shed with all my files in it. They spent months trying to frame me with all kinds of things. They were not successful. I might add, in my opinion, they were responsible for what happened to Shuler as well -- as some of their members bragged about it at their Web sites and were working with Rob Riley who first used a #MeToo deal in the Doug Jones-Roy Moore race.

Alexander also has threatened legal action against Simpson. Consider this from one of his online comments:

Jill Simpson should lawyer up buddy. Tell her not to worry about coming to Texas. I can come to Alabama. I'll dine with the Governor and then spend the afternoon cashing in favors with Alabama lawyers.

This raises some questions that hit close to home: The governor at the time was Robert Bentley, who I helped bring down by breaking the story about his extramarital activities with senior aide Rebekah Caldwell Mason. And what kind of favors was Alexander cashing in with Alabama lawyers? Is this a reference to the Alabama State Bar? What implications might this have for Carol and me, given that Missouri deputies  shattered her arm during an unlawful eviction that occurred about the time I was breaking the Bentley story? We will ponder that question in a future post.

Meanwhile, we note that Alexander and Coleman have a history of making sport of others' legal misfortunes. Consider this repartee under the LS headline"Tweet suggests Ali Akbar and attorney Baron Coleman know who's behind my arrest and our foreclosure

 

Akbar starts the festivities by tweeting about Matt Osborne, the editor of Breitbart Unmasked, and me--with a reference to a $3.5-million default judgment against me in the (Jessica Garrison case). The default judgment, by law, is void and due to be overturned, and that process is ongoing.

Removing extraneous comments from a couple of other folks, here is the conversation between Akbar and Coleman:

Akbar: Matt Osborne sure helped Roger Shuler out. Hahaha. $3.5 M libel mishap. Idiots flock together.

Coleman: The last three year's of that guy's life is a fine example of what not to do.

Akbar: His whole existence.

Coleman: He's judgment-proof, has nothing. No reason to bother fighting it. $1 might as well be $10 million to him.

In the wake of the Epik hack, Akbar and Coleman might not find legal difficulties so amusing.

Ali Alexander and his lawyer, Baron Coleman of Mongomery, are defendants in U.S. Capitol Police lawsuit against Trump and others over Jan. 6 riot

Ali Alexander

 

Ali Alexander, a right-wing extremist with ties to Alabama, organized the Stop the Steal rally that turned into an assault on the U.S. Capitol. Alexander now finds himself among defendants in a lawsuit brought by U.S. Capitol Police officers seeking damages for injuries sustained in the deadly Jan. 6 riot. Baron Coleman, Alexander's Montgomery-based attorney who incorporated Stop the Steal as an LLC in Alabama, also is named as a defendant.

Leading the list of defendants is former President Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump for President Inc., according to a report at Salon. In fact, Stop the Steal (c/0 George B. Coleman) and Alexander (a/k/a Ali Abdul Razaq Akbar, a/k/a Ali Abdul Akbar) are right below Trump and Trump for President in the lawsuits' list of defendants. The 71-page complaint was filed by Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a civil-rights organization founded in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy; it is based in Washington, D.C. Also among the defendants is Roger J. Stone, a longtime Florida-based Trump supporter and GOP dirty trickster, who reportedly helped lead a cyber attack and stalking campaign against Legal Schnauzer via fraudulent Facebook accounts. 

Alexander reportedly has been in hiding since Jan. 6, but the lawsuit lists his address as 5125 Pinellas Avenue, Fort Worth, TX, 76244. It will be interesting to see if the Lawyers Committee manages to serve him, perhaps via the U.S. Marshals Service. Could the service process and the possible involvement of U.S. marshals increase the likelihood that Alexander will face criminal charges related to Jan. 6? We will be watching with interest.

Stone is not the only defendant in the Capitol Police lawsuit who has a history of threats and harassment against this blog and its publisher, yours truly. Alexander, along with his former colleagues in the National Bloggers Club (NBC), has made a number of threatening statements and actions against progressive voices in Alabama -- especially Legal Schnauzer and activist/whistleblower/attorney Dana Jill Simpson.

The NBC reportedly helped launch a smear campaign in 2018 against Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Alexander's ties to GOP money men, such as Robert Mercer and Foster Friess, apparently helped him rise in the right-wing media galaxy, despite his history of trolling for Gay Sex on Grindr and a substantial criminal record (the likely reason for his name change, from Ali Akbar to Ali Alexander).

Closer to home, Alexander has bragged about his ties to the Alabama legal world, perhaps through his friendship with Baron Coleman, who once practiced with Alabama State Bar official Tripp Vickers.

Simpson and I know what it's like to be the target of Alexander and his right-wing goons. Alexander once threatened  to sue me for reporting accurately and fairly about a letter  Simpson wrote to Obama re-election counsel Robert Bauer in 2012. My wife received notice of the lawsuit threat shortly after my "arrest for blogging" in October 2013. Was that a coincidence, considering that Alexander's NBC buddies were in a blogging frenzy when word broke of my incarceration. Does that mean they know who caused the unlawful loss of my freedom, the loss of our Birmingham home via wrongful foreclosure, and perhaps my wife's severely broken arm in 2015 at the hands of deputies in Missouri (where we now live)? Let's just say we haven't ruled out Alexander and NBC's knowledge of, and perhaps involvement with, any or all of those events.

Simpson has experienced all kinds of unsettling incidents related to her house, vehicle, and property -- some involving fire. She has stated publicly that she suspects Akbar and/or his colleagues' involvement in at least some of these evens.From a November 2018 LS post: 

Simpson's interactions with the right-wing crazies go back several years, to the beginnings of the Don Siegelman case:

The NBC, as we call them, came to my attention when they harassed and told false stories about Siegelman activists. The NBC is a vicious group. What is such a hoot is that is how I first learned about crazy Steve Bannon's bunch. I started getting a master's degree in philosophy and religion, and the nuts in the National Bloggers Club started following me around in D.C. and California. The idiots were making a film for Andrew Breitbart and were trying to falsely claim I was a ring leader in Anonymous, as they were friends of mine, and that I was dating a guy who they believed was in Anonymous. The dimwits offered me all kinds of things to say I was part of it, through him.

Simpson knows these creepy wingers can get both scary and personal. She also says they are behind -- at least in part -- some of the abuse (false arrest and imprisonment, theft of house) that has been directed at my wife, Carol, and me. . . . Says Simpson:

Even as late as 2013 they were threatening me and called my boyfriend (now husband) trying to advise him not to marry me, telling him I was going to jail. The GOP National Blogger bunch in 2014, due to me having a neck injury, worked with their Alabama State Bar buddy, Tripp Vickers, and his former law partner,  Baron Coleman and a federal judge to try to set me up -- when in all likelihood it was them who set my office yard on fire and burned up my car and my shed with all my files in it. They spent months trying to frame me with all kinds of things. They were not successful. I might add, in my opinion, they were responsible for what happened to Shuler as well -- as some of their members bragged about it at their Web sites and were working with Rob Riley who first used a #MeToo deal in the Doug Jones-Roy Moore race.

Alexander also has threatened legal action against Simpson. Consider this from one of his online comments:

Jill Simpson should lawyer up buddy. Tell her not to worry about coming to Texas. I can come to Alabama. I'll dine with the Governor and then spend the afternoon cashing in favors with Alabama lawyers.

This raises some questions that hit close to home: The governor at the time was Robert Bentley, who I helped bring down by breaking the story about his extramarital activities with senior aide Rebekah Caldwell Mason. And what kind of favors was Alexander cashing in with Alabama lawyers? Is this a reference to the Alabama State Bar? What implications might this have for Carol and me, given that Missouri deputies  shattered her arm during an unlawful eviction that occurred about the time I was breaking the Bentley story? We will ponder that question in a future post.

Meanwhile, we note that Alexander and Coleman have a history of making sport of others' legal misfortunes. Consider this repartee under the LS headline"Tweet suggests Ali Akbar and attorney Baron Coleman know who's behind my arrest and our foreclosure 

You can read the first part of the Twitter conversation at the beginning of this post, and the second part is at the end.

Akbar starts the festivities by tweeting about Matt Osborne, the editor of Breitbart Unmasked, and me--with a reference to a $3.5-million default judgment against me in the (Jessica Garrison case). The default judgment, by law, is void and due to be overturned, and that process is ongoing.

Removing extraneous comments from a couple of other folks, here is the conversation between Akbar and Coleman:

Akbar: Matt Osborne sure helped Roger Shuler out. Hahaha. $3.5 M libel mishap. Idiots flock together.

Coleman: The last three year's of that guy's life is a fine example of what not to do.

Akbar: His whole existence.

Coleman: He's judgment-proof, has nothing. No reason to bother fighting it. $1 might as well be $10 million to him.

Now that they are targets of a lawsuit from the U.S. Capitol Police, one that could eventually have criminal implications, Alexander and Coleman might not find such matters so amusing.

Does Doug Jones' past suggest his future should include a role as U.S. attorney general? Nope, says journalist-lawyer-author Andrew Kreig

Doug Jones

 

Part One

Is U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) cut from the cloth that indicates he has the right stuff to be U.S. attorney general. In a post dated 12/14/20 at the Justice Integrity Project -- under the headline "Sen. Doug Jones As ‘Confirmable’ Biden AG? Bad Idea!"-- Andrew Kreig answers with a firm no. Writes Kreig -- a journalist, lawyer, and author:

Alabama’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Doug Jones has been reported recently as at the forefront of President-elect Joe Biden’s prospects to lead the Justice Department as Attorney General.

That’s in part because Jones has served as a presidentially appointed federal prosecutor, holds a longtime relationship with Biden — and also is considered more readily “confirmable” by Senate Republicans than other top options.

A closer look at the senator’s career suggests that these supposed strengths do not meet the requirements of the job  — and are likely to blow up into controversy.

At first impression, the moderate and sometimes pro-Trump Jones voting record in the Senate confers confirmable status, especially coupled with Jones's former work as a Judiciary Committee Senate staffer.

But some in the Democratic base are already complaining about Jones as too moderate. That could escalate with wider recognition that he tilts to “go-along-to-get-along” careerism. It hardly helps that he is a white man and that reform pressures are coming most heavily from minorities and civil rights groups, including the NAACP.

Most relevant here is that Jones's connections failed to save his client in one of his biggest legal cases, aside from his duly-praised successes in leading a 1990s civil rights federal prosecution of 1960s Alabama church bombing murderers.

This case, the Bush Administration prosecution of Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, became a worldwide human rights scandal. Another related matter enriched Jones, helping make it possible for him to secure the support enabling his ongoing leadership in the fractured, cash-strapped and largely ineffective Alabama Democratic Party.

Jones thus ascended in 2017 to the Senate seat, which he lost in November’s elections. He is now positioning himself as a frontrunner for the AG post.

What about Jones' weaknesses? Kreig has studied them for years:

My conclusions endorsing those criticisms of Jones are based on more than a decade of in-depth investigation by the non-partisan Justice Integrity Project of mind-boggling abuses in Alabama where Jones built his career with only occasional demonstrations of extraordinary commitment to rectifying the state's massive official corruption.

I first learned of these abuses in 2007 from an Alabama attorney, Dana Jill Simpson,. She was a longtime Republican political operative who became a whistleblower about a nationwide plot to use the Justice Department and scandal opposition research dossiers to destroy the careers of selected targets for political purposes.

Such allegations were so prevalent and concerning after the so-called “U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal” of 2007 that, following my career in business law and trade association work in Washington, I began a reporting fellowship with Brandeis University beginning in 2009 to research the scandal. The focus was on  the harms to communities where prosecutors undertook abusive methods.

The special danger for the Biden-Harris administration going forward is that Jones was close enough to such activities in relevant times, although not personally implicated, that his Justice Department could be regarded as part of a pattern of cover-up that included the Obama-Biden administration and less as a reformer of Trump-era abuses.

These decade-old issues remain far off the Beltway radar screen, as indicated by media coverage of the Biden Transition and the rosy prospects for Jones to advance to the top Justice Department post, as indicated by recent Washington Post stories.

That's partly because Alabama politics and related civic life is so dominated by the Republican Party and media. One commentator, communications lawyer, commentator and law professor Scott Horton, has described both the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility and Alabama's media, for example, as part of the overall problem in both the Alabama cases and nationally. Digging beneath the surface takes more effort than national parties or media are able to provide. Rectifying that is the purpose of this column.

But perhaps also the Biden transition is simply floating names, hoping to “crowd source” research efforts before committing a nomination. Having participated as a volunteer for high-level operatives in previous presidential campaign and transition research, I’ll provide relevant background for others to assess.

This column contains an unusual feature: A detailed rebuttal near the end by Jones against the central allegations. This kind of response is highly unlikely for actual nominees before a hearing.

What about details of the Jones track record? Kreig provides them:

Doug Jones is an Alabama native, born in 1954. He began his professional career after law school working as a staff counsel for U.S. Senator Howell Heflin, an Alabama Democrat, before Jones became an assistant U.S. attorney in Alabama from 1980 to 1984.

Appointed by President Bill Clinton to become U.S. attorney for Alabama’s Birmingham-based district, his most prominent cases were the successful prosecution of two Ku Klux Klan members for a 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four African-American girls and the indictment of domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph, a white supremacist.

Jones, moving to private practice at the conclusion of Clinton's presidency in 2001, represented clients who included former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (1999-2003), a Democrat whom Republicans prosecuted in two highly dubious federal prosecutions in 2004 and 2006 on corruption charges. Jones did not represent Siegelman in the trial stage of either case, and has told us that trials "are where the rubber meets the road" in cases.

In 2007, the 2006 convictions resulted in an 88-month prison sentences for Siegelman and his co-defendant in the second case, Republican businessman Richard Scrushy. Acting as a lead co-counsel, Jones had also been representing with Siegelman's approval plaintiff investors in a civil fraud class action suit against Scrushy's company, HealthSouth, that resulted in a $455 million settlement in 2006 of a $2.7 billiion accounting fraud that almost bankrupted HealthSouth.

Scrushy was acquitted of criminal wrongdoing involving those frauds, which served largely as a backdrop and not a key element for his corruption trial with Siegelman. The charges centered on prosecution claims that Scrushy made a $250,000 donation in 1999 to the Alabama Education Foundation (which Siegelman had founded) in order for Scrushy to remain on governor-appointed Certificate of Need regulatory board overseeing hospitals.

Trial and conviction on those bribery and extortion charges prompted years of popular outcry in appeals, petitions and the media over what appeared to many as serious human rights violations. Scrushy and Siegelman asserted, for example, that Scrushy didn't even want to remain on the regulatory board and that the chief prosecution witness, Nick Bailey, perjured himself in suggesting otherwise.

The trial irregularities were even more striking to civil rights experts, in a sense, because the defendants were white men, who were well-positioned and well-financed for defense counsel. Yet even their millions of dollars in defense spending failed to find relief for highly disputable convictions affirmed up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Why the disputes? Because, among other reasons, trial evidence failed to show a “quid pro quo,” or explicit agreement, that Scrushy’s donation to the Alabama Education Foundation, a non-profit advocating better funding for the state’s K-12 public schools, was in return for Siegelman’s reappointment of Scrushy to the regulatory board. Scrushy, a Republican, had served under three previous governors, all Republicans whose campaigns Scrushy had financially supported with massive donations. But Scrushy resigned from the board at the time of Siegelman's election and Siegelman has always said that it was he who wanted the businessman on the board because of his perceived stature in 1999, and not Scrushy's own desire to serve as a volunteer on a relatively low-level board.

Why does the Siegelman-Scrushy case still stand out as an example of prosecutorial overreach?

The Siegelman-Scrushy imprisonment stands in stark contrast to what has long been standard practice at the local, state and federal level whereby political donors receive appointments (obtain ambassadorships in return for multimillion dollar contributions) and favorable federal contracts and policy consideration on a routine basis, according to critics of the Alabama prosecution.

These critics include former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, a Republican who was also co-chair that year of GOP nominee John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. That year, Woods spoke out to a nationwide audience on CBS “60 Minutes” (Did Ex-Alabama Governor Get A Raw Deal? Scott Pelley, Feb. 21, 2008.60 Minutes Reports On Bribery Conviction Of Don Siegelman In A Case Criticized by Democrats And Republicans.)

"I haven't seen a case with this many red flags on it that pointed towards a real injustice being done," Woods said as he led, in addition to his other duties, an unprecedent effort that grew to 113 former state attorneys general (the chief law enforcers in more than 40 states) who asked Congress and the Supreme Court to investigate the case.

"I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square. This was a Republican state and he was the one Democrat they could never get rid of," Woods says.

The Jones role in this raises wider implications and concerns.

Back in Alabama, the state Democratic Party has been shattered and ineffective for the most part in the years after Siegelman’s removal from politics.

His prosecutions, imprisonment and “scandal” consumed much of local activist energy after the disputed 2002 election of his Republican rival Bob Riley, right,who benefited from the mysterious late-night switch of some 6,000 electronic ballots in Republican Baldwin County in the late hours after Siegelman had been announced as statewide winner.

Gerrymandered congressional districts each year generate one Democratic seat, currently held by Rep. Terry Sewell in a “Black Belt” seat that stretches from Birmingham through Selma to the outskirts of Mobile.

But other Democrats face almost impossible odds aside from the remarkable situation in 2017 when Jones narrowly defeated sex scandal-plagued Republican Roy Moore in a special election after Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions was appointed Attorney General.

Here’s what happened to Siegelman, with reactions by Jones, one of his lead attorneys. Siegelman himself has documented his two-decade ordeal in a memoir this year, author of Stealing Our Democracy: How the Political Assassination of a Governor Threatens Our Nation, published in June by New South books and in a documentary film produced by Steve Wimberly, Atticus vs. The Architect.

Chief U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon the presiding judge of Siegelman’s first corruption trial in Birmingham, would force prosecutors to drop it soon after it began in 2004.

In 2009, I invited Clemon to appear at a 2009 forum at the National Press Club I organized about abusive prosecutions exposed in the U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal. The then-retired judge travelled to the nation’s capital at his own expense to speak at the event, which was cablecast for three hours by C-SPAN because of public interest in the national scandals.

In advance, the retired judge wrote Attorney General Eric Holder sharing a copy with me, that the Siegelman prosecution had been “the most unfounded criminal case” that he had presided over during his nearly three decades on the federal bench. Because there is a racial component to concern about fairness in the justice system it is worth noting that Clemon was a pioneering African-American member of the federal bench in modern times in the Deep South.

Did Jones undermine his own client? Kreig reports:

One big problem, though, was that the five-year statute of limitations for Siegelman’s 1999 and 2000 actions was set to expire.

Jones convinced Siegelman to waive the statute of limitations because of prosecutors’ supposed benign intentions, thereby subjecting defendant to indictment, imprisonment and financial ruin for his and Scrushy’s families.

There’s more, much more, and way too much to mention here except in passing.

Jones went on to co-chair with Gov. Riley’s son, Rob Riley, a plaintiff’s class action fraud suit against HealthSouth, a company that Scrushy had founded. With the Scrushy and HealthSouth defense hindered by his criminal conviction and imprisonment without bond, plaintiff lawyers won a reported $455 million judgment, with legal fees doubtless enriching the key lawyers.

In February 2008, the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes expose helped make the case a national and global human rights scandal.

The reporting by CBS correspondent Scott Pelley implicated via Republican attorney Jill Simpson Bob Riley’s campaign manager Bill Canary, head of the Alabama Business Council and a longtime ally of then-White House Senior Advisor Karl Rove, in a plan to use Canary’s “girls.” Simpson, in those days a Republican opposition researcher and attorney for contractors, said the “girls” meant Canary’s wife, Montgomery-based U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, and Birmingham-based U.S. attorney Alice Martin, who prosecuted Siegelman’s first trial, before Judge Clemon.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller of Montgomery, was the presiding judge for the second Siegelman-Scrushy trial in 2006. He made a number of key, pro-prosecution rulings generating considerable controversy at the time and through the years. For example, he held secret ex parte meetings just with prosecutors and declined to find significant error in communications between the jury and prosecutors, perhaps most notably a potential flirtatous interest expressed by a juror about a prosecutor who seemed attractive to her.

Separately from the CBS broadcast, Simpson showed researchers via documents that Fuller secretly owned nearly 44 percent of the shares of Doss Aviation, a federal contracting company that received $300 million in no-bid Bush contracts without disclosure to the defendants or others appearing before the judge.

This reporter broke that story in 2009 on Huffington Post, which ran it for days on its front page under this headline: Siegelman Deserves New Trial Because of Judge’s ‘Grudge’, Evidence Shows….$300 Million in Bush Military Contracts Awarded to Judge’s Private Company.

The rarely photographed Fuller invited Alabama photo-journalist Phil Fleming after the verdict to take portrait shots in chambers, which Fleming shared, bought by the Justice Integrity Project. Fuller, later forced to resign his lifetime appointment after a misdemeanor arrest for assaulting his then-wife, a court clerk assisting in the Siegelman-Scrushy trial, has declined our invitation for comment.

I used Simpson’s evidence and other materials for a front-page Huffington Post story in 2009 reporting that Fuller “hated” Siegelman because the governor had tried to expose corrupt practices by Fuller in 2002.

The other materials included a 150-page recusal motion filed by Missouri attorney Paul B. Weeks III in Fuller’s court in 2003 charging the judge with corruption in a scheme to bilk Alabama’s pension fund while Fuller was a state prosecutor, thereby generating an investigative effort by Siegelman.

The court record shows that Fuller refused to recuse himself and suppressed the text of Weeks' ethics complaint from the federal records PACER system that he controlled as his district’s chief judge. Appellate courts found no basis to grant defendant evidentiary hearings despite astonishing prosecution breaches of required procedures.

To be continued

 

Doug Jones' effort to take over the Alabama Democratic Party includes assistance from lawyer Barry Ragsdale, who tried to keep wife-beating, Siegelman-railroading judge Mark Fuller on the bench

Doug Jones

A faction of the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDLC), led by U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) has aligned itself with a Birmingham attorney who represented former U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller in proceedings that led Fuller to resign from the bench over charges that he beat his wife in an Atlanta hotel room in 2014. Until the wife-beating episode became public, Fuller perhaps was best known as the George W. Bush appointee who handled the prosecution of former Democratic governor Don Siegelman so corruptly that it resulted in a prison sentence of more than six years for what we have described as "a crime that does not exist" and obviously could not have been committed.

Despite Fuller's unsavory conduct, Barry Ragsdale (of Sirote and Permutt in Birmingham) stepped up to represent Fuller in the wife-beating case, in which judicial investigators described Fuller's conduct as "reprehensible."

The Jones-Ragsdale-Fuller connections provide more evidence that Jones is a DINO (Democrat in Name Only), according to a veteran state political activist. A prominent commentator says the Fuller case is a classic example of the corruption that is rotting America's foundations.

Jones essentially is trying to take over the Alabama Democratic Party (ADP) with the assistance of a lawyer who supported a Republican-appointed judge -- one who engaged in demonstrably corrupt actions on the bench, with a history of abusive actions toward women in his personal life. Fuller faced allegations of physical, verbal, and substance abuse from two ex wives, but Ragsdale did his best to sweep Fuller's actions under the carpet and protect a spot for the Siegelman "hanging judge" on the federal bench.

Barry Ragsdale

Those actions failed, but now Doug Jones has sought Ragsdale's help to fight off legal challenges to his attempted takeover of the ADP. Bringing Ragsdale on board -- with his history of protecting a corrupt, wife-beating, right-wing judge -- is supposed to represent progress in Alabama? Do integrity, decency, and the rule of law have any place in Doug Jones' vision for the Democratic Party in Alabama? Is the alliance with Ragsdale another sign that Jones is beholden to his Republican boosters more than the mostly black, female voters who put him in office? From a report at al.com about this past weekend's SDLC meeting in Montgomery, where the Jones faction approved new bylaws in a major step toward replacing current party leaders Nancy Worley and Joe Reed:

The Alabama Democratic party has been deeply split over leadership for more than a year. The SDEC reelected Worley as chair in August 2018. Some Democrats challenged the results. The DNC decided there were irregularities and in February ordered the SDEC to adopt new bylaws followed by new elections for chair and vice chair.

After deadlines were missed, the DNC invalidated the national party credentials of Worley and First Vice Chair Randy Kelley. The DNC has withheld money from the state party and has not yet approved the state’s delegate selection plan for next year’s Democratic National Convention.

Worley has said those who wanted a different result in the August 2018 election for party chair are to blame for the dispute, including Sen. Doug Jones, who backed her challenger last year. . . .

Worley said the turnout at today’s meeting shows a lack of broad support for what was approved.

“While 78 attendees show ‘loyal opposition,’ that number does not show a groundswell of support for the DNC’s agenda,” Worley said in a text message. “I look forward to the October 12 meeting, at which time the SDEC members will discuss the negative effects of the Doug Jones/DNC Bylaws.”

Where does Ragsdale enter the picture? Here is more from al.com about this past Saturday's meeting:

Attorney Barry Ragsdale attended today’s meeting and said he would represent the position of the SDEC members who attended in any legal challenge to the legitimacy of the new bylaws.

Ragsdale said members at today’s meeting should attend the Oct. 12 meeting called by Worley if they wanted to.

“But it’s important to note that meeting will be guided by the bylaws that we adopted at this meeting,” Ragsdale said. “Their failure, if there is a failure to follow those bylaws, that meeting will be subject to legal challenge.”

Is the Jones-Ragsdale alliance a ruse that could trip up progressives in Alabama? We have addressed that question in several posts, including this one, showing that Jones has a history of stabbing fellow Democrats in the back:

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) engaged in a heated political discussion shortly before Siegelman was forced to go to the doctor and wound up having heart surgery, sources tell Legal Schnauzer.

Siegelman had heart-bypass surgery on Feb. 9, the same day that his son, Joseph, qualified to run as a Democrat in the 2018 race for Alabama attorney general. Joseph Siegelman's political plans were at the heart of a tense conversation between Jones and Don Siegelman, sources say.

Don Siegelman, apparently under the mistaken impression that Jones would be supportive of the younger Siegelman's plans, asked the senator for an endorsement. Jones declined, which should not have been a surprise considering the evidence of his support for the other Democrat in the race, Bradley Arant lawyer Chris Christie.

Jones' negative reaction to the idea of a Joseph Siegelman endorsement should not have been a surprise for several other reasons:

(1) Jones clearly has been aligned with the so-called "Alabama Gang" of Republicans -- including Rob Riley, Bill Canary, Jeff Sessions, and Karl Rove -- dating at least to the work Jones and Riley did together in the early 2000s on a lawsuit against HealthSouth and related entities, a case that generated more than $50 million in attorney fees.

(2) Jones was Don Siegelman's defense attorney for a time in the federal bribery case that wound up unlawfully sending the former governor to federal prison for roughly six years. Jones inexplicably extended the statute of limitations for the government to build a case it obviously didn't have at the time. Jones also charged Siegelman $300,000 while doing relatively little legal work -- and then bailed out of the case before trial because of a conflict on Jones' end. We've seen no sign that Jones returned any of the money, and he has refused to answer our questions on the subject. To add insult to insult, Jones went before a Congressional committee in 2007 and talked glowingly about Bill Pryor, the current federal judge who, as Alabama AG in the late 1990s, launched the Siegelman investigation before the new governor's fanny barely had hit the office chair.

Mark Fuller mugshot

 (3) Jones apparently favors Chris Christie, even though a prominent spokesperson for the Christie campaign is Sirote Permutt lawyer Barry Ragsdale. That's the same Barry Ragsdale who helped former U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller fight charges that he beat his wife in an Atlanta hotel room -- events that led to Fuller's forced resignation from the bench. Fuller, of course, is the judge who oversaw the Siegelman trial, repeatedly making unlawful and one-sided rulings that helped ensure a conviction. Jones essentially supports a candidate whose campaign has ties to wife beating and the kind of judicial corruption that sends innocent people to prison.

Alabama progressives should be leery of the Jones-Ragsdale tag team, veteran political activist Jill Simpson said on her Facebook page yesterday. Simpson noted that three individuals who helped unmask Fuller -- herself, attorney-blogger Donald Watkins, and yours truly -- came under attack from right-wing forces aligned with Jones and Ragsdale:

What a hoot, corrupt former Republican Judge Mark Fuller's lawyer, Barry Ragsdale, is going to represent the renegade Dixiecrats' new Democratic party for Doug Jones's bunch against Joe Reed and Nancy Worley's real Alabama Democratic Party. That should be a wake up call to Alabama progressive Democrats that Doug's new party has hired the lawyer of the wife-beating judge that threw Don Siegelman in prison. 

Barry Ragsdale is who the Alabama Progressive Resistance fought tooth and toenail to remove wife beater Mark Fuller from the bench. Roger Shuler, Donald Watkins , and I worked hard day in and day out to get that crooked Republican wife-beating Judge Fuller off the bench. It was Barry Ragsdale who was trying to keep him on the bench and was our foe. 

That said, you all in the new party of Doug have a lawyer that helps a wife-beating judge, who crookedly threw your last Democratic governor in jail -- what the hell are you nitwits thinking? Now you all are getting a dose of what Doug is about -- and his Alabama Gang is about playing all sides and y'all are their blind sheep. 

Yep, I still remember Barry Ragsdale representing the wife-beating judge that mistreated Gov. Don Siegelman; it was hard for us progressive Democrats to beat him, but we beat him on Fuller and got the judge bounced off the bench, and we spent a lot of time due to Ragsdale protecting Fuller, but we got Fuller's ass thrown off the bench under the leadership of Nancy (Worley) and Joe (Reed), with Obama. All the time, Doug was behind the scenes helping Ragsdale against us. As many of you know I wrote Obama the first open letter about Fuller, the wife beater, and the need for zero tolerance for such behavior. The letter was published in a lot of places, including OpEdNews, and it asked to have that terrible wife-beating judge removed -- and I heard in D.C. that Doug and Ragsdale were trying to keep Fuller from being removed. Shortly after that is when the Alabama Bar forced me on to disability status. . . .

Now maybe you folks will start to see why we did not want Doug Jones in that Senate seat; he was playing both sides, and burning candles on both ends eventually is going to burn him in the meddle.

Jill Simpson has ideas on why Dry Alabama scammer Matt Osborne sought access to our home after my "arrest for blogging" -- and there is evidence, related to a radio interview with Bob Kincaid, to back her up

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Dry Alabama con man Matt Osborne resorts to insulting my wife, who allowed him and a female friend into our home after my "arrest for blogging"

Matt Osborne

We've shown that political activist Matt Osborne, the "brains" behind the Dry Alabama false-flag scam, often resorts to insults when he can't win an online argument on the merits. Osborne even hurled an insult at my wife, Carol, who allowed him and a female companion into our home just days after I was "arrested for blogging" in Shelby County, Alabama. Osborne seems to become particularly unglued when the subject of his female companion -- Carol has emails and photos to suggest it was D.C.-based social-media strategist Melissa Brewer -- comes up.

Jill Simpson, a veteran Alabama political insider, recently wrote on Facebook that Osborne has worked for years with Doug Jones, whom the Dry Alabama scam was designed to get elected. That enhances the likelihood that Osborne and his friend came to our home at Jones' direction, for reasons that had nothing to do with trying to help. Writes Simpson:

Matt Osborne I hear is spreading once again lies about me starting the Liberty Duke-Rob Riley love story and Luther Strange and Jessica Garrison love story that they have been attacking me over for several years now, which I was not involved in. . .

So you all know once and for all, Osborne and Doug have worked together for years. he is part of Doug's network of very ugly operatives running such things as Breitbart Unmasked for Doug. I might add he has screwed with me for years saying all kinds of crazy things about me for Doug and also screwed with Breitbarters claiming I did this and that when it was him and Doug Jones, his rotten Russian-bot buddy.

As for Melissa Brewer, how sensitive is that subject? Let's consider some of our interactions with Osborne on Twitter, which came after we had shown Osborne's claims that he acted within the law on Dry Alabama were false. In fact, Osborne's actions violated 18 U.S.C. 371, the same statute that Special Counsel Robert Mueller used to indict Russian nationals for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. From our back-and-forth with Osborne on Twitter, where he uses the handle "Stephen Miller's Fright Wig":

Matt Osborne sez:
The person who drove to Birmingham with me is my girlfriend. Her name is not Melissa and at no time did she say that was her name. Catol is simply misremembering her name. Melissa is the name of the person who started that fundraiser for you. I don't think it raised a lot but she was not involved in Dry Alabama. Neither was my girlfriend, who is apolitical. She told me after that you two struck her as looney tunes. I defended you at the time but now I can see that she was right.

(Note: I was in jail at the time, so not sure how Osborne's girlfriend could conclude I was "looney tunes." Carol, just a few days earlier, had come upon a scene in our basement that made her think I had been murdered, so a reasonable person might conclude she was a bit stressed. But Osborne's girlfriend concluded Carol was "looney tunes." Sounds like the GF is as caring and empathetic as Osborne himself.)

Legal Schnauzer sez:
We have photos of Melissa Brewer, and she's the same woman who came to our house. Carol isn't misremembering anything. Not sure why you persist in lying about this, but I guess that's become a way of life for you. Perhaps your careless actions have put Melissa in a pickle, and she's not going to be happy about it?

Matt Osborne sez:
LOL Melissa Brewer is not my girlfriend. She lives in Washington, DC, has married a completely different man and taken his surname. LOLOLOL. You are totally proving my point by insisting on this. They look absolutely nothing alike. For one thing, Melissa is about 100 lbs heavier! LOLOLOL

Legal Schnauzer sez:
I didn't say Melissa Brewer was your girlfriend. I'm saying Carol was there, we have photos of Melissa Brewer, and Carol says Melissa Brewer is the woman in our home. You aren't "proving" anything about me because I wasn't there; I was in jail, if you recall. You can take it up with Carol if you want, but she -- understandably -- thinks you are a creep. Carol has told me for several years -- long before Dry Alabama came about -- that the woman who came with you to our home said her name was Melissa Brewer, and she was the one in photos we've seen. Your insistence on lying about this makes me suspect the two of you came into our home under false pretenses, at a time of extraordinary stress, and attempted to pull a con job of some sort -- and we now know you have a taste for that kind of thing.

Melissa Brewer

This is where Osborne comes thoroughly unhinged and even insults Carol. It's classy stuff, especially for a fellow who poses online as a supporter of women's rights:

Matt Osborne sez:
Right, it's a huge CONSPIRACEE!!! against you, one in which we delivered groceries and spent an hour chatting and left, all to FOOL HER into... what, exactly? What was the objective of this nefarious scheme?

Carol is borderline personality. She's so borderline that she gets kicked out of borderline support groups, she's so borderline. She can't remember my girlfriend's name so she latched onto the name of the woman who generously started a fundraiser for you while you were in jail.

I sent Melissa an email this morning. She find this as hilarious and ridiculous as I do.

So go ahead, Roger. Make a police report about a visit you got under "false pretenses" six years ago. Go ahead, I freaking DARE YOU, you have no hair on your ass if you fail to do this. CALL THE FBI. I want you to! LOLBUCKETS

(Note: Osborne again shows his ignorance of the law. I'm not talking about a criminal complaint for trespassing; the statute of limitations on that long has run, and it's not a federal matter, so I wouldn't call the FBI. I could, however, file a civil complaint for trespassing, which has a six-year statute of limitations in Alabama, so there still is time for that.)

Matt Osborne further sez:
Melissa says her name was on the food basket she sent Carol, that's probably how she got Melissa's name. "No good deed goes unpunished" they say. 

(Note: Osborne, again, is clueless. Carol did not receive a food basket from anyone -- Melissa Brewer or otherwise. Osborne and his female companion handed Carol a bag of groceries, and that was it. Carol doesn't remember seeing a name on it.)

Matt Osborne further sez:
Feel free to call me at (931) 452-1571 if sanity overtakes you for a moment.

Why would I want to call an admitted con artist like Matt Osborne? I can't think of a reason.

Jill Simpson blasts Doug Jones operative Matt Osborne and lays out backstory on reports about extramarital affairs involving GOP stalwarts Rob Riley, Liberty Duke, Luther Strange, and Jessica Garrison

Jill Simpson

An Alabama political insider has fired back at a Doug Jones operative who claims she was the source for several major stories we broke here at Legal Schnauzer. Matt Osborne, who dreamed up the Dry Alabama scam to help Jones get elected to the U.S. Senate, also claimed that our reports (apparently referring to the Rob Riley-Liberty Duke and Luther Strange-Jessica Medeiros Garrison extramarital affairs, along with U.S. Judge Bill Pryor's ties to 1990s gay pornography) were false. Jill Simpson, confirming what I already knew, said the stories were accurate, but she was not a source for them -- and that is true.

As a legal aside, Riley-Duke and Garrison sued me for defamation, and as a matter of law. my reporting never was found to be false or defamatory. In both instances, there was no discovery, no jury trial (as required in defamation cases), and no requests in original filings for money damages (the lawful remedy for alleged defamation). In both cases, crooked Alabama judges -- Claud Neilson and Don Blankenship -- acted as one-man censors, contrary to long-standing law that prohibits such actions. As for Blankenship, he found for Garrison and issued a $3.5-million default judgment, which clearly is void because I received no notice of the default application or hearing. The judgment can be attacked as void at any point, with no time limit under Alabama law.

As for Matt Osborne, he apparently is flustered at our reports that, contrary to his own claims, the Dry Alabama scam violated federal law. Seemingly unable to counter that indisputable fact, Osborne threw an online tantrum and resorted to name-calling against Simpson and me. One of his efforts included this pearl, sent directly via Twitter to me: "Good luck with your demented career regurgitating Dana Jill Simpson's libels."

First, as shown above, my posts were not libelous -- either in reality or as a matter of law. Second, Jill Simpson did not take kindly to Osborne's barb, as she expressed in a Facebook post dated 4/4/19:

The batshit crazy nut Matt Osborne, who in his own press meeting contends he did the fake Russian-bot deal to get Doug Jones elected, smearing Roy [Moore] with a fake site called Dry Alabama, is once again smearing me with lies about stories I did not do, and I believe [the stories originated] with his boss, Doug Jones. 

For some reason, Osborne keeps claiming I am responsible for the Rob Riley-Liberty Duke story. So I have decided to address a few things. I did not have anything to do with the Rob and Liberty story being told. In fact, Shuler needs to say it did not come from me again so everyone is clear. It came from old law enforcement boys, as I tracked it down since I keep getting blamed for it.

(Note: I'm not going to disclose sources, but I can say individuals connected to law enforcement were part of my sourcing on the Bill Pryor gay-porn story, and I have reported that several times. As for the Riley-Duke story, I'm not aware of any of my sources being tied to law enforcement, unless it was second- or third-hand. Simpson is correct that she was not involved as a source on any of the stories noted above.) 


Simpson says the roots of at least some of these stories originated in the now-defunct Haskell Slaughter la firm, of Birmingham. Doug Jones once was a member of that firm, along with Montgomery-based attorney Tommy Gallion. Simpson also says that Jones pretended to be Rob Riley's friend, while behind the scenes, helping to release unflattering stories about the son of former governor Bob Riley. Again, I'm not aware of the Riley-Duke story coming from anyone tied to Doug Jones, unless it was at a significant distance. Writes Simpson:

Matt [Osborne] is a long-time DNC-Netroots paid operative type, and according to Republicans all across the state, was hired by Doug Jones' bunch to smear Roy Moore. What I really think is that Jones is trying to cover up that the Riley-Duke story came from investigators working for his Haskell Slaughter firm at the time, and he was a ring leader of the story to get close to Rob Riley and cast shade on me. The Haskell Slaughter firm had hired a lot of old ABI [Alabama Bureau of Investigation] boys to follow Rob,  which Doug would snitch about to Milton McGregor and Tommy Gallion -- where Rob was going while acting like Rob's friend.

They followed Rob often to a condo on an island near Mobile, I was told by Milton which is where the stories came from -- and where the pictures were taken by some guy named [Bill] Rhegness, who worked for Doug and Tommy -- who worked for the Gaming Kings of Alabama and considered the pictures to be insurance. It was Doug's firm's gaming clients, hiring former retired ABI guys, who were following governors, their sons, and AGs to get the dirt about their girlfriends and or boyfriends (in the case of Pryor). That is how the Pryor pictures were obtained, as well. All these pictures belonged to Doug's firm, not mine, and were obtained for their clients, not mine.

Photos that go to the Luther Strrange-Jessica Garrison affair also are in circulation, Simpson says, and have been used in curious ways. Montgomery attorney Priscilla Duncan is tied to the "Alabama naughty pictures" story, especially in the case of Bill Pryor. Writes Simpson:

Rob Riley is nuts if he thinks I give one hoot who he screws, as is Luther Strange. Tommy Gallion showed me his picture collection, as he is quite proud of it, and as you all know, Tommy is an accomplished Republican political operative.  He let Doug, for $1 million, buy into Haskell Slaughter, as Doug wanted to be the next political master, like Tommy, in our state. It is their damn pictures, and they need to leave me out of their shit. I want zero part of it.

I know Tommy and Doug had the Pryor pictures that Roger ran, as Tommy showed them to me after Priscilla [Duncan] showed me the Bad Puppy pictures and asked if my friend [Wayne] Madsen would run them years before, which he did for her. Priscilla has denied it,but those were her pictures, not mine -- and that caused Tommy to show me his, trying to determine if he had a leak, which I believe he suspected was Doug Jones.

In 2018 (or '17?), Priscilla worked for the Jones bunch, trying to put a patch on the election machines in Alabama, which [SOS John] Merrill refused. 

As for the Luther Strange pictures with Jessica Garrison . . . well when Lowell Barron was charged, I heard from Milton McGregor that [Montgomery lawyer] Joe Espy and Doug and Tommy had pictures from ABI and were threatening to release them, but Luther decided to drop the charges.

Once again, I heard Doug was saying I had these pictures, when it reality, they belonged to his gaming kings. I complained loudly about this back in 2016 when I heard I was being punished for Doug's gambling king's nasty pictures of Rob and Luther. I even called Luther's office and spoke to an investigator and said I am sick of being blamed for Doug and Tommy's Haskell Slaughter picture collection. I additionally went to the FBI, which was not interested in hearing my story in Gadsden and said it was me, Jill, with all these pictures, and I was like nope it is them.

Osborne is dancing in dangerous territory, Simpson writes, given that he clearly is ill-informed about the origins of these stories :

Now Doug's boy Matt Osborne is once again blaming me for stories I did not tell Roger. So everyone knows, I told Roger, who I like, "I might not do those stories, if I were you, because Rob Riley might have you hurt. I knew already, from telling the Siegelman political-prosecution story that Doug Jones caused my house to blow up on one end, and my car to get blown up, and I did not want anything to happen to Roger, as he had helped protect me telling the stories about those incidents.

Tommy Gallion

 As for the Rob and Luther sex stories, they belong to Doug Jones, who I think used me to get his "Republicans 4 Jones" signs and support from the Rileys. Now he is trying to make  me the big, bad wolf , via Matt Osborne, but those pictures belong to gambling king clients of one Doug Jones.

That is my opinion, and Matt Osborne needs to stop throwing shade at me for Doug Jones -- and Matt should think long and hard what he is doing. It may buy him a very long time in jail. What. he did to Roy Moore was wrong; he participated in a campaign to smear Roy with fake Russian bots we tracked right to him and Jones. He also has been smearing me as the "aggrieved girlfriend of Bob Riley," so I hear -- and, well, it is him and Doug Jones who do these kooky, crazy stories, not me.

He needs to leave me alone. I might add I am happily married to my husband and not going to put up with his and Doug's nonsense any longer. Doug needs full credit for all the pictures he collected for his gaming kings at Haskell Slaughter.

Jones' back-stabbing ways even extend to national political figures, such as Hillary Clinton, Simpson writes. Ironically, it was the Bill Clinton administration that appointed Jones as a U.S. attorney in the late 1990s:

I have always liked Gallion, and I think he probably is the best political operative the state has ever had. But when things started going toward Doug Jones . . . well, he was just downright the meanest, nastiest political operative our state ever has seen. Matt Osborne keeps slapping at me, as he knows that I know his boy Doug is a snitch and troublemaker -- and I've been outing it.

Osborne needs to leave me alone; my patients with him is wearing thin. I also want to make real clear that Doug Jones has been a long-time Democrat snitch to Republicans, one who would run to Gallion and tell him everything he knew. Jones even joined Gallion's firm, paying in and snitching on Democratic presidential campaigns, such as the one for Hillary Clinton in 2008, while Gallion was helping the John McCain campaign.

I hung around and watched, until June 2008, when I went to Russia to help elect President Obama. I was working to uncover. as a press operative, what was going on with the McCain camp. Tommy Gallion liked me, but got really mad when I helped Obama's  bunch out Mccain's involvement with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. But I really switched parties and was always honest with Gallion. I could no longer help the GOP because of Saudi and Russian stuff, due to my FEMA and state clients.

Doug Jones, on the other hand, was yapping a storm about Hillary to McCain bunch, and Tommy shared as he thought he could beat Obama easier than Clinton.I hung around,  taking it all in to help Obama. I was secretly at the time leaking to Madsen all McCain was doing, plus Hillary. You can look back at his articles and see it.

I love Tommy, but we were no longer operatives for the same party. As for Doug Jones, he snitches for all sides and is a creep. But Doug and Tommy were helping McCain. I told you all that Jones was a closeted Republican.

Matt Osborne needs to wake up; his guy is a closeted Republican. I am thankful for all I learned from Republican operative Gallion. I feel like I was taught by one of the best GOP operatives how to get info from all sides -- and I have taken all I learned to the Progressive Democrat team.