Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Breitbart: Campaign knew about video weeks ago

Breitbart published additional information on THE story yesterday.  Mark Boyle reported:


On Saturday, April 26, at 8:54am, Melanie Sojourner, campaign manager for Mississippi state senator Chris McDaniel's primary challenge of Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), sent an irate email.

“Someone has created a video about Thad and Kay,” Sojourner wrote in the email, a partially redacted version of which was provided to Breitbart News. “It must come down ASAP. Does anyone know where this came from?”

Sojourner was responding to a video posted online by Clayton Thomas Kelly, 28, a blogger who had been compiling documents and other information about Cochran's relationship with his executive assistant, Kay Webber.

Kelly was arrested Friday night for illicitly entering the residence of Cochran's wife Rose at a retirement home in Madison, MS. The photo Kelly allegedly took was in the video that Sojourner said she was angry about.

“If I find out anyone associated with our staff had anything to do with this it is immediate grounds for dismissal,” Sojourner wrote in the April 26 email. “We have to know we cannot engage in these attacks.”

Kelly's arrest has upended the race between six-term incumbent Cochran and McDaniel, providing Cochran a moment of sympathy when he needed it most, while putting McDaniel on his heels about what he knew and when he knew it.

The incident helped national GOP establishment figures swoop in to attack McDaniel, and offered a public exhibit of an inexperienced grassroots campaign in crisis mode. But the initial war over the incident has operated without a key fact: the McDaniel campaign knew about the video when it came out, and sent out a wide call to aides and volunteers to find the person who posted it and get them to take it down.

Hours later, a campaign aide contacted two local Republican activists who had been posting about the video on social media, who in turn talked to Kelly, relaying the message that the campaign wanted the video down. Kelly complied...

According to documents reviewed by Breitbart News, a campaign aide contacted two local Republican activists who had been posting about the video on social media, who in turn talked to Kelly, relaying the message that the campaign wanted the video down. Kelly complied.

The campaign did not contact Cochran about the video, which included a photo of his wife in her residence, or the police. Officials said they thought the matter was over when Kelly un-published his video.

It wasn't. After the video was briefly published, a rumor began to spread: there was a photo of Cochran’s wife circulating around the internet and Clayton Kelly was the first man who posted it.

As word about the existence of Kelly’s photographs and video spread, even this reporter learned of it.

Several Mississippi conservative activists not affiliated with the McDaniel campaign told this reporter of the video, how it came to be and what it contained. On May 11, I asked Kelly about the matter on Facebook, the first and only time I contacted him.

“I heard you may have had a video of Rose Cochran,” this reporter wrote to Kelly.

“Yep,” he replied, to my surprise.

“Any way you can send to me?” this reporter followed up.

“I can send you the info, but I don't want that picture of Rose to get out,” he answered. “I can give you the one of her sign though.”

He followed up by sending a photograph of the sign outside the door to Rose Cochran’s room at St. Catherine’s bearing the name “Rose Cochran.”....

Kelly was arrested for his actions late Friday night. The news hit quickly on political blogs—the Jackson Jambalaya political blog was the first to break it.

Though the Jambalaya's Friday evening post did not mention the victim of Kelly’s alleged crime, comments that quickly appeared on the blog post suggested a relatively wide universe of Mississippi politicos knew what Kelly did, who he did it to, where and perhaps a bit of why he did it.

Noel Fritsch, McDaniel's spokesman, said campaign Sojourner—who is, like McDaniel, a state senator—first learned of Kelly’s arrest via blog posts about it around 1 a.m. central time on Saturday. She was “alarmed that it was likely Ms. Cochran who had been photographed based on the preponderance of evidence, including the name of the rest home and the comments on the blog,” Fritsch said in an email.

Fritsch said around 7:30 a.m. central time on Saturday, McDaniel himself “was notified only briefly of the incident and the need to personally reach out to Sen. Cochran.”

Around 7:45 a.m., Sojourner left a voicemail for Cochran’s campaign manager Kirk Simms. According to The Hill, on the voicemail Sojourner “emphasized that their campaign was appalled, and that McDaniel himself was disgusted by Kelly’s actions and wanted to speak to Cochran directly to express his outrage.”

At 9:24 a.m., the Jackson Clarion-Ledger picked up on the story, breaking the news of who the victim of the crime was—Rose Cochran. For an update shortly thereafter to that original 9:24 a.m. story, two McDaniel aides were quoted—both Fritsch and Scott Brewster, McDaniel’s coalition director.

“I've never even heard his name,” Fritsch said.

Brewster said he did “remember when it came out,” referring to the video Kelly posted online on April 26 with the photograph of Rose Cochran contained within.

“I think people made some phone calls [to have the video removed],” Brewster said. “I didn't personally -- nobody personally talked to [Kelly]. I don't know if anybody made phone calls about it. I'm not sure. Just, I remember all of a sudden it was gone.” Rest of the article

Much more in this story and worth reading. The reporter did some real digging and deserves credit for his work.

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, so is this what can be proven so far:

1. Queen of Hearts flips over and Kelly goes and gets the video.

2. McDaniel campaign finds out.

3. McDaniel works through operatives to get video removed quickly because they will get blamed for it.

4. Video removed but rumors swirl.

5. Comes to a head and Kelly is arrested.

6. McDaniel campaign goes into a poorly executed crisis mode, denying knowledge.

7. Content of denials and timing of denials don't seem to match.

8. Sojourner wants someone's head a month ago but support staff seem to "know nothing." McDaniel can't put fire out.

Is that where we are?

Anonymous said...

When will McDaniel's campaign get their story straight?

Separately, (state) senator McDaniel sounded horrible on Gallo this morning. I can't stand Gallo. Still, if they were in prison together, McDaniel would be holding on to Gallo's pocket.

Anonymous said...

Yet Cochran's campaign knew about the video, too, on the day it came out. So McDaniel looks to save face for Mrs. Cochran, and the Cochran camp looks like chumps because they didn't tell the Senator for a couple of days. This story was reported on The Hill - "Cochran Campaign knew of Wife's taping for weeks"

Anonymous said...

Gallo was horrible, wasted no time cutting CM off, but only when CM would stop responding to Gallo's question and start spouting his own preferred testimony. I bet he said "I can explain..." at least four times and never explained anything except to claim his campaign had nothing to do with Kelly. His voice was strained and tense and very defensive. He claimed it wasn't his "job" to maintain order in his organization, and the seeds of throwing Soujourner under the bus were planted and watered.

Anonymous said...

So, since he deserves credit for his work ... omit the reporter's name from the post?

Matthew Boyle, right?

Unknown said...

Who stands to benefit most from this video? Certainly not Chris McDaniel or anyone working to get him elected. No, this has the odor of the RNC and the MS republican power machine. (and I think we know who that is...) Pretty pathetic that you've been in D.C. 40+ years and have to stoop to this level to steal an election.

Unknown said...

So just how did Clayton Thomas Kelly gain access to the ward where Rose Cochran lives? I wouldn't think you could just waltz into St. Catherine's and meander though the halls. So--

1. Will St. Catherine's be held liable for negligence?

2. Was there an "insider" that helped him?

3. Did he have permission from the family?

Many questions not addressed.

Anonymous said...

This Is The Single Nastiest Campaign Fight In America

"You think it's a coincidence they held the nutjob blogger story 'til now?" one campaign operative close to McDaniel told Business Insider.

McDaniel supporters have also questioned the Madison Police Department and wondered whether the cops coordinated with the Cochran campaign.


Anonymous said...

The most amazing thing I found so far in this thread is that some people still openly admit to listening to WJNT.

I had thought about tuning in, but there was a good episode of Spongebob Stinkpants on T.V.

Anonymous said...

I have to confess somethings I know about thad. He saw that he would be unmasked as a raging liberal who was cheating on his wife. In march he flew in from Washington on a SR76 with a group from the agency who were involved with mkultra and picked an ex pizza delivery man. The took him to a black camp in Bosnia for programming. they then returned him to Brandon and instructed him to blog about Mcdaniels and Abel in St Catherine to take pictures and the rest is history.

Anonymous said...

In any event, I hope Mr Kelly has a long time to think about Mrs. Cochran's rights as he wastes away in the slammer. Whatever political motivation there was: one thing is sure--an elderly lady with dementia is the victim.

Anonymous said...

A misdemeanor 12:53 PM.

Anonymous said...

@12:45 - Gallo on WJNT? Wrong station.

Anonymous said...

1) No one listens to Supertalk anymore since it became the Phil Bryant show.

2) It is easy to access St. C or any other nursing or living facility. All you have to do is say you're a visitor, just like at a hospital. The issue is not access, but whether Kelly committed a crime by vilating the privacy (i.e. abusing) a patient there. It seems he did.

3) McD's campaign staff is a joke. Kids playing an adult game. Hopefully someone will run against Sojourner in 2015.

4) None of this matters. Cochran will win re-election with room to spare, even before this event.

Anonymous said...

I bet Madison PD is in cahoots with Thad and they get one of them big all-terrain assault vehicle thingies from the federal gubment once he gets re-elected. It will spice up the Christmas parade a little this year.

Anonymous said...

She has been aborted.

Anonymous said...

Penalty for HIPPA violation - " A person who knowingly obtains or discloses individually identifiable health information in violation of the Privacy Rule may face a criminal penalty of up to $50,000 and up to one-year imprisonment. The criminal penalties increase to $100,000 and up to five years imprisonment if the wrongful conduct involves false pretenses, and to $250,000 and up to 10 years imprisonment if the wrongful conduct involves the intent to sell, transfer, or use identifiable health information for commercial advantage, personal gain or malicious harm. The Department of Justice is responsible for criminal prosecutions under the Privacy Rule."

Anonymous said...

via The Hill
Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-Miss.) legal team apparently held onto information concerning a man’s taping of the senator’s bedridden wife for as many as two weeks before turning it over to the police. Cochran’s campaign spokesman, Jordan Russell, told The Hill Monday that the campaign was made aware of a video allegedly taken by local political blogger Clayton Kelly of Cochran’s infirm wife on the day it was posted, April 26. He said the campaign conducted its own investigation of the video before alerting Cochran to it and deciding to bring it to an attorney… “We were made aware of [the video] that morning because people were emailing us saying, ‘Did you see this?’” Russell told The Hill. “We conducted our own review for a few days and then went to Sen. Cochran about it, and that was when the decision was made to turn it over to the attorneys.”… It’s unclear why Cochran’s attorney, Don Clark, held the information for two weeks before alerting police. Clark did not respond to a request for comment.

Via HotAir
“They investigated for a few days, got the green light from Cochran to go to their lawyers, and then the lawyers … sat on it. How come? Did they have a legal reason to do so or was this a matter of waiting until we were a bit closer to the June 3rd primary before pushing this to the media? If Team Cochran had gone to the cops at the start of May, the political mudslinging at McDaniel would have played out during the first half of the month, giving him time to recover. By waiting until late May, voter perceptions can be shaped with less time for repairs– even though, as noted above, there’s no evidence at all that McDaniel’s team was complicit in the videotaping. Also, why would they have conducted their own investigation before telling Cochran what happened? He deserved to know ASAP, if only to make sure his wife had extra security around to keep creepers from peeping through her windows.”

Anonymous said...

2:13; poor try. This is NOT a HIPAA violation.

Question: Since not many Madison crimes appear in the 'crime report' shown on this site periodically, do we expect this one to? Of course, their 'out' usually is 'It's under investigation'. That's the way it was when someone attempted to torch Hamil's Restaurant.

Anonymous said...

Louisiana the number one state for dirty politics has led Ms, a close second. This may by the precedent that gives Ms. the lead, if only for a short while, or maybe forever. While I never considered Cochran a statesmen, certainly CM cannot fill his shoes. For me, CM came out with the dirt to begin with, making accusations he could not justify, and certainly offered no solutions. In regard to Cochran's alleged "mistress", unless you have been married to someone in Mrs. Cochran's condition, or had a close relative, such as a mother, in her condition, remove the speck from your own eye.

Joseph said...

Hmmm...2:48, I'm not sure I follow your logic. Were Senator Cochran engaging in an extramarital affair (and I have no idea if he is or is not), would it somehow be hypocritical of a person who has not been personally involved with a dementia patient to point out that such a relationship would, indeed, be wrong? That doesn't quite make any sense if one works under the assumption that objective moral values exist, and that, furthermore, it is objectively wrong to engage in an extramarital affair. Of course, if one is under the impression that moral values are dependent on time, place, and various other circumstances, then your argument would make a little more sense.

Wilson Carroll said...

2:13 again. It was NOT public knowledge that Rose Cochran convalesces at St. Catherine's village. Clayton's wife is on video saying Clayton was contacted - by somebody - and told where to go and what to do. Should be easy enough to trace those calls back.

HIPPA violations are a federal felony, and whoever called Clayton was engaged in a conspiracy. Oh, and Thad's only one of the ten or twelve most powerful people in Washington. The charges pending in Madison County are peanuts compared to what's coming down the federal pike.

Anonymous said...

Of course the McDaniel campaign sat on information until the arrest was made and didn't report it either. McDaniel is a lawyer, and undoubtedly other lawyers were available to the campaign, yet they did nothing to report a possible crime of which the campaign was aware.

If anything, the handling of the whole episode makes one question whether McDaniel is ready for the big time political world of DC, regardless of whether one likes Cochran. The answer seems to be "no." A smart politician would have gotten out in front of the story, but instead we get an amateur's handling of something that could have been a blip on the screen weeks ago.

Anonymous said...

2:13, HIPAA doesn't apply to Joe on the street, that I can recall.

Anonymous said...

What kind of person decides that Cochran's campaign is the most important thing--they knew about it for several weeks but sat on it. and now you're trying to act all intolerant? KNEW ABOUT all of this for several weeks and DECIDED to try and use it for his campaign. Sickos.

You've gotten your attention but it seems that it may have backfired. It still didn't make us forget about Cochran's voting record, or the deficit, or Obamacare, or the Pork.....and it made us also realize just how sick Cochran's handlers are.

Anonymous said...

So it is a crime Wilson tell someone where another person resides?

What constitutes "public knowledge"?

Because Mrs. Cochran's whereabouts and status was no secret. Good luck proving otherwise.

Anonymous said...

I may have been limited public knowledge that she was at St. Catherines whoever the room number is the key for HIPAA violations. His wife said he was given the number by someone. It is how that person obtained that room number that will determine HIPAA violation.

Anonymous said...

Thad has dirt on McDaniels. He needs to release it because if McDaniels wins it will hurt Mississippi and if he doesn't win he will just run again in 6 years. Thad needs to release it for our own good.

Anonymous said...

@12:45 - Gallo on WJNT? Wrong station.
-------------------------------

No argument here....don't have much use for the A.M. dial anymore.

Anonymous said...

The crazy conspiracy theorists so common to the Tea Party are commenting, I see.

I don't buy the " outrage" as the push pole used Rose after.

They don't give a whit about Rose or the rest of the family.

No honor. It's all about slinging mud.

Besides, who can trust or take seriously any man who parts his hair in the middle like Alfred E Newman ?

Where is Wagon Wheel when you need him? Compared to McDaniel, he had class and style.

Anonymous said...

Come on guys. Both campaigns knew the day the video came out, and they knew each other knew. It was a game of chicken between them. Cochran's team was trying to get McDaniel to come out and apologize for the video, which in the process would bring heat on him. When he balked once and for all, that's when little Don finally went to the cops.

MKULTRA said...

Just to let everyone know that Thads black helicopter will be landing at Madison Airport to give the Mayor and Madison P.D. Their marching orders. Sealteam 6 is standing by in case they balk. The new antenia in the woods next to the airport was descriped as a FAA antenia when actually it was installed last year to send high frequency messages to Thads MKULTRA hit men. Hold on folks its about to get carzy.

Anonymous said...

"2:13, HIPAA doesn't apply to Joe on the street, that I can recall. "

Correct - the institution (St. Catherine's) is on the hook for a $50,000 penalty for allowing her privacy to be violated. It think it's a civil matter, not a felony, but I'm not sure about that.

No photos of any patient/resident in a medical/nursing facility can have their photo released by the institution without their explicit, written consent, or the consent of a guardian in a case like this. Obviously this was not granted.

Anonymous said...

Ok I have a question. Sojourner says that she heard this guy was arrested and shazzam she immediately knew it had to do with Thad. Ok lets say its possible. She also said she was fielding calls all night about it. This is my question-who was she talking with about it and who confirmed what the arrest was for. Was it a person associated with Madison PD? Brandon/Pearl PD?. She left a voicemail(stupid) on Thad system before the Madison PD officially released the info. Does McDaniels have law enforcement who would call with info? I quess I could add one more option for some of the McDaniels people.

Anonymous said...

Have to agree. Cochran hasn't dropped the real bombshell yet.

Anonymous said...

Who would presumably sue St Catherine's for a HIPAA violation? Wouldn't the Cochran family be the only people who would possibly have standing to sue? Do you really see that happening?

H.R. said...

HIPAA laws apply only to those in the pipeline of gathering, documenting, transmitting and maintaining private health information. HIPAA does not apply to a sportscaster who, over the P.A. system, tells the audience that the quarterback has a broken leg.

Nor does HIPAA apply to a private citizen who tells others that John Henry is in room 212 of the local hospital.

Nor does it apply to a blog writer who tells his readers that a lady is an altzheimers patient at St. Catherine's Village in Madison.

Nor does it apply to a person who releases a photograph of Julie in the rehab room at the V.A. hospital, unless, perhaps that person is employed there and releases it without Julie's consent.

If the health care provider institution, ST. C in this case, was complicit in this scenario, they 'could be' found in violation of HIPAA regulations.

"I know he's in there. I saw him check in. I took a picture with my phone. He's on the third floor!" That is NOT a HIPAA violation.

Anonymous said...

What is the real Bombshell on Chris?? Waiting..



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