OMG! MSNBC: Can Kerry make the case Bush Broke the law? READ!

[xyboymil]

Oh my! It just keeps getting better!

From MSNBC:

Can Kerry make

a case that Bush

broke the law?

WASHINGTON - Can Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry prove his allegation that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group airing ads denigrating his service as a Navy officer in Vietnam, are nothing more than "a front for the Bush campaign"?

snip-

If Kerry’s team can establish that Bush adviser Karl Rove or any Bush campaign operative coordinated in some way with donor Perry or with Swift Boat veterans officials, that might result in legal penalties and damage the Bush re-election effort

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5772722/

:toast: Can you feel the tide turning on this story?

Go mainstream media go!

[lovedems]

1. There isn't a doubt in my mind that KKKarl is behind this ad.

This is his style, completely. We all know he crawled out from a gutter somewhere. I would love it if all of this could be proved but I am pretty sure if KKKarl is behind it, he has covered his tracks well. Slimeballs are good at that.

[neuvocat]

2. Kerry is driving a wedge.

Smart move. Bush will have to distance himself from this "independent" group even as it proclaims to support him.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. Whoever was behind the McCain and Cleland attacks

is the same person behind the Kerry attack.

This has Rove's MO all over it.

[starroute]

5. Merrie Spaeth is one of the linking figures

http://peterhansen.com/smear_boat_veterans_for_bush_the.htm

Behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are veteran corporate media consultant and Texas Republican activist Merrie Spaeth, who is listed as the group's media contact; eternal Kerry antagonist and Houston attorney John E. O'Neill, law partner of Spaeth's late husband, Tex Lezar; and retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, a cigar-chomping former Vietnam commander once described as "the classic body-count guy" who "wanted hooches destroyed and people killed."

<snip>

Spaeth's partisanship runs still deeper, as does her history of handling difficult P.R. cases for Republicans. In 1998, for example, she coached Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, to prepare him for his testimony urging the impeachment of President Clinton before the House Judiciary Committee. She even reviewed videotapes of his previous television appearances to give him pointers about his delivery and demeanor. The man responsible for arranging her advice to Starr was another old friend of her late husband's, Theodore Olson, who was counsel to the right-wing American Spectator when it acted as a front for the dirty-tricks campaign against Clinton known as the Arkansas Project; he is now the solicitor general in the Bush Justice Department. (Olson also happens to be the godfather of Spaeth's daughter.)

In 2000, Spaeth participated in the most subterranean episode of the Republican primary contest when a shadowy group billed as "Republicans for Clean Air" produced television ads falsely attacking the environmental record of Sen. John McCain in California, New York and Ohio. While the identity of those funding the supposedly "independent" ads was carefully hidden, reporters soon learned that Republicans for Clean Air was simply Sam Wyly -- a big Bush contributor and beneficiary of Bush administration decisions in Texas -- and his brother, Charles, another Bush "Pioneer" contributor. (One of the Wyly family's private capital funds, Maverick Capital of Dallas, had been awarded a state contract to invest $90 million for the University of Texas endowment.)

When the secret emerged, spokeswoman Spaeth caught the flak for the Wylys, an experience she recalled to me as "horrible" and "awful." Her job was to assure reporters that there had been no illegal coordination between the Bush campaign and the Wyly brothers in arranging the McCain-trashing message. Not everyone believed her explanation, including the Arizona senator.


http://www.american-partisan.com/cols/hall/030700.htm

In response to the ads, the McCain campaign filed a complaint with the FCC about the anonymity of Republicans for Clean Air, and some television stations expressed concern about its sudden appearance in a closely contested race. On Friday the financial backers of Republicans for Clean Air stepped forward to identify themselves as Charles and Sam Wyly, investment bankers from Texas. They announced that they had purchased 2.5 million in ads in California, Ohio, and New York.

<snip>

Such close connections arouse suspicion that Republicans for Clean Air are connected to the Bush campaign, which would be illegal under campaign finance laws. Appearing on CBS, Bush defended his supporters: "That's part of the American process. That's what free speech is about. The allegation that I'm somehow involved with this is just ridiculous. It's uncalled for. There is no truth to it."

Perhaps not; but there's a whiff of something in the air. According to the Associated Press, the woman who bought the ads for Republicans for Clean Air also works on a political action committee led by US Representative Henry Bonilla (R-Texas), a longtime Bush ally. The ads were placed by Multimedia, an agency that has done work for Bush allies, and Jeb Hensarling, who is close to the Bush campaign staff, served as a consultant to the Wyly brothers and helped connect them to the maker of the ads.

[katusha]

4. i get the feeling that..

kerry spent all this time preparing to respond to the swift ads and now he has his ducks lined up. hope so at least, probably had the goods on rove yesterday but wanted bush on record for not disavowing it b4 the knife thrust.

[michigandem2]

6. doing the dance of joy!

this is going to be a good show for us..we have had to stomach those liars for 2 weeks...ahhh sweet revenge!!!!

:bounce:

[librechik]

7. watch& see--the ads will be withdrawn before this ever gets near a judge

they know their goose is cooked during deposition and discovery. They will melt away and the WH will try to pretend it never happened, and furiously try to change the subject. What was that "Kerry Girlfriend" story again?

Will they get away with it?

[Bluebear]

8. Just remember * had every chance to denounce the ad & refused

nt

[MissB]

9. That sneering picture at the bottom of your post

((shudder))

I know who she is.

[TheRovingGourmet]

10. The picture freaks me out. Reminds me of the Exorcist.

[democrat_patriot]

11. Bush BUSTED!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=643766&mesg_id=643766

[blondeatlast]

12. Kerry's camp has something solid; here's what it takes:

To prove, for example, that an outside group’s ad was coordinated with a candidate’s campaign, any one of the following is required, according to FEC spokesman Bob Biersack:

The ad being aired by the group was broadcast at the request or suggestion of the candidate, his campaign or an agent of the campaign.
The group suggested the ad and the candidate or his agent assented to the ad, for example, by saying something such as, “That sounds like a good idea to me.”
The candidate or his agent was materially involved in decisions about the content of the ad, the times and places where it would air, the medium used, etc.
The ad was aired after what the FEC calls “substantial discussion” between the person or outside group paying for the ad and the campaign. If, for example, a campaign manager said to the head of a 527 group, “Over the next two weeks, our campaign’s ads will focus on the loss of textile jobs in this state,” and the outside group then ran its own ads buttressing that message, it would be coordination.
"It's very difficult" to prove coordination, said former FEC general counsel Larry Noble, who is now head of the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington. A case "is very much reliant on showing that certain types of discussions took place and the only way to get that (evidence) is from the people involved."


Our guys are both VERY successful lawyers.

They're gonna be squirming in Craswfors or wherever the hell he is now.