Followup on Burgess Call for McCain Campaign Apology

Here's a quick followup to Tuesday's posts, which were copies of e-mails I'd received.

Pittsburgh Councilman Reverend Ricky Burgess charged that last Thursday a McCain-Palin campaign official in Pennsylvania had been feeding reporters a version of the Ashley Todd hoax that was "far more explosive" than details confirmed by police at the time. Burgess called for an apology from the Republican ticket.

20-year old McCain field representative Ashley Todd later admitted on Friday that she'd made the whole thing up; there was no black robber who carved the letter 'B' -- as in "Barack Obama" -- into her face because she is a McCain supporter. Now, Burgess cites reports on the Talking Points Memo website in making his case that the campaign stoked the later-disproven controversy. TPM quoted KDKA-TV's News Director as saying the McCain campaign's Pennsylvania communications director gave one of his reporters details of the false report -- including the fake quotes from the imaginary attacker -- all before police confirmed any details. KDKA-TV's News Director did not return our call for comment.

Meanwhiile, MSNBC quoted a WPXI reporter who confirmed getting that information from a McCain campaign spokesman as well. WPXI's News Director tells us his station did not air any details of Todd's claims until they were confirmed by police as appearing in a police report.

Councilman Burgess accuses the McCain campaign of "inflaming the divisions of this country." He says "I don't know why they chose to push this story, but it just seems suspicious to me that they would target this story which has a fictional African-American person harming a non-African American person in this city."

McCain campaign spokesman Jeff Sadosky tells Channel 4 Action News:

"The liberal blog post that the councilman cites has no basis in fact. The McCain campaign had no role in this incident. We hope the young woman involved in the incident gets the help that she needs, It's disappointing that Pittsburgh law enforcement time and resources were wasted by her false allegations."

WTAE News Director Bob Longo says Channel 4 Action News confirmed all of its information about what was in the crime report with Pittsburgh Police before it aired the story. The McCain campaign did not comment to WTAE about the case until after our story based on police information had aired.

.

[The Burgess letter. Click images to enlarge.]

Read More...

Summary only...

McCain Campaign Responds

A response from McCain campaign spokesman Jeff Sadosky to the call by Pittsburgh Councilman Burgess for an apology:

"The liberal blog post that the councilman cites has no basis in fact, the McCain campaign had no role in this incident. We hope the young woman involved in the incident gets the help that she needs, it's disappointing that Pittsburgh law enforcement time and resources were wasted by her false allegations."

--
Blog post sent from my mobile device

Read More...

Summary only...

Pittsburgh Councilman Calls For McCain-Palin Apology

This post is being filed via BlackBerry.

The following open letter concerning the Ashley Todd "B" hoax was released by City Councilman Ricky Burgess:

October 27, 2008

Dear Senator McCain and Governor Palin:

On Thursday, October 23, 2008, there was a report of a robbery, an assault and a mutilation filed by a volunteer for your campaign.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"She said a man armed with a knife demanded her money. She gave it to him, then began walking to her car, which had McCain stickers on it. She told police that although the robber had moved away from her, he became agitated when he saw her car, punched her in the back of the head, pushed her to the ground and carved a B into her face."

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told Talking Points Memo's Election Central that your Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Mr. Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack.

The Post-Gazette went on further to say:

"Ms. Todd told police during at least five hours of questioning last night that her attacker said to her, "You are going to be a Barack supporter." She told police the man then sat on her chest, pinning both her hands down with his knees and used what she believed was a dull knife with a roughly 5-inch blade to carve the B."

Your volunteer told the police that she was robbed, attacked, sexually assaulted, fondled and mutilated by an African-American man. However, we all now know that this tragic story was totally fraudulent. I am deeply troubled by the facts of this story. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"Mr. Garcia took the widely published picture of Ms. Todd with her injuries. He said he took several photographs with a digital camera to document what had happened. He said he only gave copies of the photos to police and Ms. Todd's employer, the College Republicans. One photo appeared on The Drudge Report on Thursday, setting off a storm of media attention."

This much was true: A McCain-Palin official was pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.

All too often in the halls of justice around the world, people are accused of crimes they did not commit. That one of your campaign spokespersons would spread such an incendiary story before any confirmation of the facts is both irresponsible and runs counter to our nation's Constitutional guarantee that no one be denied life, liberty or property without due process. Moreover, that a representative of the McCain-Palin campaign would be so careless and in the process of doing so, cast aspersions on African-Americans, is unfair.

On behalf of the City of Pittsburgh and its' African-American community, I respectfully request an apology from your campaign to the city for the conduct of your staff and volunteers. Both of you wasted little time in sending your wishes and prayers to Ms. Todd when the news reports were initially circulated, and so I trust that neither of you will waste anymore time leaving this issue unresolved. I would also ask that you send my personal prayers and well wishes to Ms. Todd and her family. I am certain these are trying times for them.

Sincerely,

Reverend Ricky V. Burgess

President Pro-Tempore

Pittsburgh City Council

--
Blog post sent from my mobile device

Read More...

Summary only...

SLAPP?

Bill Peduto claims that the lawsuit Lamar Advertising filed against him and his fellow Councilmen Shields, Burgess, Kraus, and Dowd was a SLAPP. He seems to suggest the city law department opinion about their legal expenses has the sting of a SLAPP, too.

What's a SLAPP?

I didn't recall the term, but apparently SLAPPs have a long and contentious history.

SLAPP stands for "Strategic lawsuit against public participation".


Wikipedia defines it as:

"a form of litigation frequently filed by organizations or individuals to intimidate and silence critics or opponents by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense so that they abandon their criticism or opposition."

California passed a law to protect against SLAPPs. So have more than two dozen other states. That includes Pennsylvania, though our state's has been described as a "significantly weakened version passed into law in 2000." It was designed to deal only with environmental law cases, and reportedly was passed "after a coal baron sued an elderly constituent for filing a complaint with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection when her home suffered acid mine-water damage."

That's from this article in Philly area newspaper that quotes a critic complaining that a court ruling created "an unduly narrow interpretation that destroys any value or purpose of the statute."

It seems that SLAPPs are an international phenomenon. Here' s a YouTube video report by CUTV. Concordia University Television is Canada's oldest student-run television station. I'm linking to it here for some interesting background. As they say on the DVD extras, this is for entertainment purposes only, and does not necessarily reflect the views, etc.




Here are some PG articles in which the term "SLAPP" appears.

Developers sue Franklin Park, residents for losses
Suit cites neighbors' 'frivolous objections' to townhouse plan


The dash to SLAPP is chilling


Judge drops neighbors from townhouse lawsuit

Meanwhile, I ran into Lamar Advertising's attorney Sam Kamin as I was leaving the City County Building after Tuesday's council meeting. He told me he had just finished dictating the court filing to withdraw Lamar's lawsuit against the city council members, as agreed to in the arrangement signed before the zoning board.

A check of the county court's website shows that the lawsuit has now been "Discontinued without Prejudice".

What the significance there is (if any) of the lawsuit being discontinued "without prejudice" in this case, I do not know.

.

Read More...

Summary only...

Notes & Quotes -- Alleged Mayoral Threat Edition

I'm continuing on the jury watch at the Wecht trial, but got to report on the clash with council and the mayor after the jurors went home for the day without reaching a decision.

My reporting was based on video gathered by WTAE Channel 4 Action News reporter Amber Nicotra and photographers Dan Pratt and TJ Haught.

Here are some quotes from the council meeting, followed by highlights from Mayor Ravenstahl's response to our questions later in the day .

[* For background, see note below.]




Councilman Ricky Burgess: "I'll be clear. I'm a grown man. if you want to punish me, bring it on."..."But no, they're not strong enough, brave enough to punish me personally. But what they have to do is, they take their punishment on the majority of council. Shame on you."




Councilman Jim Motznik: "Let's put it out there, and lets hear who's making threats and who's trying to punish and deal with it accordingly. To me this is about good government."




Councilman Bruce Kraus: "I was threatened directly from the mayor -- last week at Councilman Motznik's fundraiser-- that these very actions would be taken if this bill were to pass to take away the cars."



Motznik: "It wasn't a threat at all. It was about letting a new council member know about--" Council President Doug Shields: "If Mr. Kraus decided he was being threatened, I'm sure he's capable of making his own assessment. If you want to be the apologist for the administration, you go right ahead."








Mayor Luke Ravenstahl: "To suggest that I made some sort of threat is ridiculous. Certainly, Councilman Kraus and I had a discussion. And I suggested that if City Council want to live by the Act 47 plan, that they themselves should be willing to make amendments to their budgets to reflect Act 47. So that was the conversation that we had. It was in no way a threat. It was simply a policy discussion around the need for -- and what we believed Act 47 should represent."

..."I'm somebody that always has discussions and has an opinion. And I voiced that opinion to Councilman Kraus. He certainly didn't agree, but I think he's being disingenuous to suggest that somehow he felt threatened by me. I have no authority to tell him what to do. He's an independently elected city official. I have no authority to threaten him with anything because he is, you know, an elected city official in his own right. And to suggest that is unfortunate. But we certainly did disagree and we do disagree on the issue, but I wouldn't escalate it to that of threats being made."


* (If you hadn't been following this story, here's a quick recap. Over the objections of the mayor, council approved Councilman Burgess' bill to cut in half the number of "take home" cars for city employees. Later in the same meeting, the mayor's ally Councilman Motznik introduced a proposal to slash the council's budget for its staff. Talk had been simmering for some time of alleged threats against council and it's staff that would be carried out if the number of take home cars were reduced. During the public meeting, Councilman Kraus said that the threat of political contribution came straight from the mayor's lips to his ears. He said the mayor told him "we're coming after you" and "there's more where that came from".)

.

Read More...

Summary only...