By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--October 18, 2016
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And we have a whole team across the country that does that. Both consultants and people from the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party apparatus and people from the campaign, the Clinton campaign. And my role in the campaign is to manage all that.Creamer founded Democracy Partners in 2011. He explains, “Just for a little orientation, Democracy Partners is kind of a group practice of a variety of consultants that do, essentially, a wide variety of different kinds of political consulting.” Foval says that he works “with Bob Creamer one to one. I’m the white hat; Democracy Partners is kind of dark hat.” He adds, “Bob Creamer is diabolical and I love him for it.” “We are contracted directly with the DNC and the campaign both,” Foval says. “I am contracted to him [Creamer], but I answer to the head of special events for the DNC and the head of the special events and political for the campaign.” “The campaign pays DNC, DNC pays Democracy Partners, Democracy Partners pays the Foval Group, the Foval Group goes and executes the # on the ground,” Foval says. “We are the primary mechanism as a team. Democracy Partners is the tip of the spear on that stuff.” Foval explains that his teams use “a script of engagement” to taunt and provoke Trump supporters. “Sometimes the crazies bite and sometimes the crazies don’t bite.” The goal is to bring about a physical confrontation that will make it into media reports. “If you’re there and you’re protesting and you do these actions, you will be attacked at Trump rallies,” he says. “That’s what we want.” “The whole point of it is that we know Trump’s people will freak the # out, his security team will freak out, and his supporters will lose their #.” It is important to getting the confrontation started in the lineup waiting to get in to the rally, Foval says.
Because once they’re inside the rally they’re under Secret Service’s control. When they’re outside the rally, the media will cover it no matter where it happens. The key is initiating the conflict by having leading conversations with people who are naturally psychotic. I mean honestly, it is not hard to get some of these assholes to pop off. It’s a matter of showing up, to want to get into the rally, in a Planned Parenthood t-shirt. Or, Trump is a Nazi, you know. You can message to draw them out, and draw them to punch you.”Foval brags about the rent-a-mobs he keeps on standby across America.
We have to have people prepared to go wherever these events are, which means we have to have a central kind of agitator training. Now, we have a built-in group of people in New York who do this. We have a built-in group of people in D.C. who do this. We have a group of people in Vegas. We have a group of people in Colorado. We have a group of people in Minneapolis.Foval says that “We have to be really careful because what we don’t need is for it to show up on CNN that the DNC paid for X people to, that’s not going to happen.” Events perceived as partisan by the media are far less likely to get worthwhile coverage, he says. “It’s something that Bob and I obsess about is we’re not going to go to an effort to just do an event and not have anybody show up or not have it covered,” he says. “We have to get coverage.” Foval continues:
You remember the Iowa State Fair thing where Scott Walker grabbed the sign out of the dude’s hand and then the dude gets kind of roughed up right in front of the stage right there on camera? That was all us. The guy that got roughed up is my counterpart who works for Bob.Shirley Teeter, the 69-year-old lady who claimed to have been assaulted at a Trump rally in North Carolina, “was one of our activists,” Foval says. She “had been trained up to birddog.” He explained what “birddogging” is.
So the term birddogging, you put people in the line at the front, which means they have to get there at six o’clock in the morning because they have to get in front of the rally, so what when Trump comes down the rope line they’re the ones asking him the question in front of the reporters, because they’re pre-placed there. To funnel that kind of operation, you have to start back with people two weeks ahead of time and train them how to ask questions. You have to train them to birddog.Foval bragged about exploiting homeless people and people with psychiatric problems.
I’m saying we have mentally ill people that we pay to do #, make no mistake. Over the last 20 years I’ve paid off a few homeless guys to do some crazy stuff, and I’ve also taken them for dinner, and I’ve also made sure they had a hotel, and a shower and I put them in a program. Like I’ve done that. But the reality is, a lot of people, especially our union guys, a lot of union guys, they’ll do whatever you want. They’re rock ’n roll.Foval explained how the super PACs communicate with each other and how their information finds its way to the DNC, likely in violation of federal law.
And then there’s the DNC and the campaigns and Priorities [Clinton’s super PAC]. Priorities is a big part of this too. The campaigns and DNC cannot go near Priorities, but I guaran-damn-tee you that the people who run the super PACs all talk to each other and we and a few other people are the hubs of that communication.“We’re consultants,” Foval says, “so we’re not the official entity and so those conversations can be had between consultants who are working for different parts.” An undercover journalist asks, “So there’s like a Morse code between the DNC and the super PACs?” “It’s less of a Morse code than it is a text conversation that never ends,” Foval says. “It’s like that. It’s kind of like an ongoing Pony Express.” The process is “not as efficient as it could be but that’s because the law doesn’t allow it to.” He adds:
The thing that we have to watch is making sure there is a double blind between the actual campaign and the actual DNC and what we’re doing. There’s a double blind there. So they can plausibly deny that they knew anything about it.A group Foval works for and repeatedly references in the video is Americans United for Change, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit headquartered in Washington, D.C. It had a $4 million budget in the year ending June 30, 2015. Ploughshares Fund Inc., which was instrumental in the Iranian nuclear nonproliferation pact process, gave Americans United for Change $64,971 in grants in 2014. From 2010 to the present, AUfC has paid one of Creamer’s firms, Chicago-based Strategic Consulting Group, $955,132 as a contractor, according to IRS filings.
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.