THE SEASON FOR GOP POLITICAL SMEAR CAMPAIGNS HAS BEGUN

…The fairy tale teller himself, Peter Schweizer.

Peter Schweizer and Breitbart are the kings of GOP political smear campaigns.

Well, we now have the official starting of the 2016 presidential election campaigns. 

No, it’s not the announcement speeches by the individual candidates.  And no, it’s not for following the reporters that have been assigned to follow these candidates all over Iowa and New Hampshire. 

But, yes, it is the announcement of the first bogus book for smearing the various Democratic candidates that have announced their candidacy.

Because the GOP is so afraid of the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton, of course the first smear book has been announced claiming to show the Clinton’s and their conflict of interest through their Clinton Foundation.  The conservatives were so excited about this book, it was announced a number of weeks before its actual publication.

The name of this questionable publication is “Clinton Cash”, and it was authored by a Republican propagandist, Peter Schweizer, whose smears about Democrats have been repeatedly and consistently debunked by a number of major newspapers. Schweizer is known as a long-time conservative operator living in his own imaginary world of crony capitalism.

It is unfortunate that the New York Times and The Washington Post had early on made the mistake of citing and drawing on Schweizer’s book, giving it undue credibility for its attacks on the Clintons.  After referring to information from Schweizer’s book, these legitimate news organizations had to withdraw their references because the book was stating claims that were very long on guilt by association and extremely short on any real proof.  There was and is absolutely zero proof that Secretary Clinton had traded any government favors while she was Secretary of State for donations to the Clinton’s global foundation.

In fact, after the reports against Ms. Clinton were published, Schweizer appeared on several weekend network TV shows where, when pressed, he could not produce one item of proof about his allegations and smears against the Clintons.   It was total supposition by Mr. Schweitzer.

But, let’s look a little closer at Mr. Schweizer. 

The notion that Schweizer is an independent journalist investigating corruption is a total farce. According to the political watchdog group, Media Matters for America, they show that Schweizer worked as a speech writer for the George W. Bush’s White House in the last year of his presidency.  He was also paid over $100,000 by Sarah Palin’s PAC in 2011 and 2012, just to advise her on foreign policy. (And we all know how well that worked out.)  He was a ghost-writer for Republican Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal’s 2010 autobiography and he contributed to Glenn Beck’s 2010 book: Broke.

Just for showing where he got his credentials for falsifying political information, he also worked as an editor for the notorious conservative liar, Breitbart, which is a major Republican-boosting misinformation operation.  His conservative badge of courage is confirmed from his association with the ultra-conservative Hoover Institute at Stanford University.  And finally, he speaks regularly at conservative organizations including the Charles Koch Institute, the National Conservative Student Conference, and many others.   

But these are just Mr. Schweizer’s extracurricular activities.

Schweizer’s day-job is that he is paid over $200,000 a year as the president, treasurer and secretary of the Florida-based, Government Accountability Institute (GAI).  The institute’s charter says that GAI, “produces detailed investigations of cronyism and government corruption to educate citizens on the need to protect free markets. GAI produces reports and partners with national media.” And that’s all a bunch of Bull.

GAI is actually a glowing example of a crony operation—where success depends on insider favors. The institute’s chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, is paid $100,000 a year, and he is also chairman of Breitbart News Network, Inc.  For the 2012 election, GAI bought $102,500 in political ads from Breitbart that year. Mr. Bannon is also a member of Groundswell, a secretive right-wing political strategy group run by Ginni Thomas.  Ms. Thomas is the wife of the conservative US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.  Bannon, was also the writer and director of a 2011 film, Undefeated, promoting the GOP’s 2008 vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

Mother Jones’ Washington Bureau Chief, David Corn, reported that this, “cadre of conservative activists, journalists, and aides has been meeting privately to coordinate messaging in a fight against progressives and the GOP establishment, according to documents obtained by Mother Jones. Groundswell’s participants include D.C. power players like Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, along with journalists from Breitbart News, the Washington Examiner, and the National Review.”

The publishers’ description of the Clinton Cash book on Amazon.com says it is “meticulously researched and scrupulously sourced, filled with headline-making revelations, Clinton Cash raises serious questions of judgment, of possible indebtedness to an array of foreign interests, and ultimately, of fitness for high public office.”  Yeah, right.

The Clinton Cash book should instead be listed under Amazon’s “Fairytale Section”…….but I digress.

The Clinton book is published by HarperCollins.  What that the book’s description does not say is, HarperCollins is owned by NewsCorp, which is headed by Rupert Murdoch and is the sister company of Fox News parent, 21st Century Fox. In other words, it is just another example of the right-wing echo chamber, where GOP propagandists are featured on partisan programs where Democrats are smeared and Republicans lauded—or just more of Schweizer’s political cronyism.  And these are the very things that he accuses the Clintons of doing.

As more proof of Schweizer’s smear techniques, the Providence Journal forced him to retract an allegation of insider stock trading by Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. USA Today had to run a correction after he smeared Al Gore in a column. Even the Post has at least twice slammed Schweizer for his big lies. The Post fact checker blog, as well as ABC News, found that GAI’s allegations that Obama skipped intelligence briefings was false. Post columnist Erik Wemple wrote that Schweizer’s allegations that Obama only met former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius once in three-and-a-half years was false, never fact-checked, and was “a fatal shortcoming akin to what one finds in Journalism 101.”

Even with all this evidence, Schweizer has the gall to say that he is being victimized for all his political daring.

The reality is that Schweizer is serial fabricator of falsehoods and conspiracies about Democrats that consistently do not hold up to scrutiny by legitimate mainstream journalists, fact-checkers and news organizations.  

Nuff-said.

Copyright G.Ater  2015