Friday, December 7, 2012

The Attack on Revolution PAC and Tom Woods

A very curious attack has been launched against Revolution PAC, Gary Franchi and Tom Woods.

Revolution PAC was a PAC set up to promote Ron Paul as the Republican nominee for president.

Charges have been made that Tom Woods and Gary Franchi allegedly disguised personal expenses as "administrative costs" of Revolution PAC to the tune of about $1 million out of $1.2 million raised. Woods, who was merely honorary chairman of Revolution PAC, has responded and in part has stated:
Now comes this accusation, from someone who runs a competing PAC: “Tom Woods went on a tour making speeches, promoting ‘Rev PAC’ commercials that they never played and splitting the loot amongst themselves.Tom Woods was always trying to find any reason to beat up the campaign, evidentally [sic] not because he wanted Ron Paul to win it, but it very well might have been because he wanted to slander the campaign so people would give to his pseudo-organization which we now know they used to split the loot amongst themselves under the label ‘administrative costs.’ It’s shameful that they used the selfless help and efforts of the believers in this movement for their selfish personal gain.”

Every single sentence in this statement is untrue.

I gave one speech for RevPAC. (Some “tour”!)

I never promoted ads that did not run. The only ad I ever promoted was the Plastic Men ad, which ran several times the day of one of the Republican debates. Which ad that I promoted did not run? I demand an answer.

I never split any “loot.” You know how much I earned from Revolution PAC? A whopping $1200, $700 of which was expense reimbursements for an airline ticket, some books we used as premiums for donors, and shipping expenses for those premiums from the UPS Store. So I earned a whopping $500.
For the record, I was on the advisory board for RevPac, which means that I provided comments on strategy and had no involvement in the financial goings on. My total take from RevPAC, in any form, was $0.00.

I can tell you this, the time spent by those affiliated with RevPAC discussing strategy was significant. In fact, there were so many emails going back and forth on a daily basis, with regard to ideas, that I had to setup a separate folder in my email box and direct RevPAC emails there because they were cluttering up my general inbox. Here's a sample of one day's emails.



I was getting these on a daily basis until we switched to an online discussion room.

From what I could tell Franchi was working hard on RevPAC. Woods stated in his response that he is attempting to get more details:
I am trying to get to the bottom of this myself....Now these are serious accusations, to be sure, and I am reserving judgment until I hear Gary’s full and detailed response. If such a thing is not forthcoming, I will have to decide on a further statement. For now, I intend to give Gary the benefit of the doubt and proceed from there.
I have emailed Franchi and asked him to supply me with any documents and explanations he supplies to Woods. He has responded and agreed to do so. He also sent along a link to the below video where he publicly responds to the charges:




Now, here's where things get really interesting. It turns out the writer, "Alex Stenovsky," who extrapolated from a Bloomberg article to make the charges against Woods and Franchi, appears to be using a  fake name. A Google search for "Alex Stenovsky"  turns up only 91 results, almost all of them relating to the current controversy. Here's Woods on this turn of events:
Now what kind of person would have an incentive to write a hit piece based on falsehoods and fake anonymous quotations (no Romney campaign person would ever have said, “If Ron Paul had had an extra $1 million, he might be the president-elect today”; is that not the most laughable fake quotation in the history of the world?), and create a fake account to do it? Someone with a direct ax to grind against a campaign critic, perhaps? 
Woods complained to policymic.com, where "Stenovsky" posted his attack article, about the inaccuracies, here's what happened:
After I complained to the editors at policymic.com that I had obviously been a victim of libel, and that “Alex Stenovsky” had written an article worthy of a remedial junior-high class, they first ordered him to substantiate the charges and then, when that proved impossible, they took the article down altogether.
I'll report any further information Franchi provides to me. Now the focus should be on who really is "Alex Stenovsky" and the motive for this vicious attack on Franchi and Woods.

10 comments:

  1. I'm sure policymic.com has the offenders IP address.

    That might be a nice way for them to make good on the libel issue and perhaps even garner them a better story yet....

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  2. How is this a mystery guys? It's obviously Jesse Benton. Possibly Jack Hunter.

    /sarcasm

    Actually I have no idea but it sounds like a bunch of bologna to me.

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  3. No one who knows anything about Tom Woods would believe this for a second.

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    1. It doesn't matter because Tom Woods supporters were NOT the target of this misinformation attack. The best defense is a good and quick offense as Tom has shown. If you flinch, you'll likely bend over....

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  4. Woods should file suit to find out the IP address.

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  5. Its obvious that this is supposed to steal thunder away from Draft Judge Napolitano. DOUBLE DOWN ON DRAFT THE JUDGE!!!

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  6. I know after talking to some people in Iowa last December that Franchi is sketchy. It wouldn't surprise me honestly if there was some irregularities based on one particular story.

    However, I can't imagine Tom being involved or aware of any shenanigans.

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    Replies
    1. Tom has worked too hard, and put too much into a low paying, dangerous (re:NDAA) job to jeopardize it for a million bucks.

      I really hopes he sues the site to learn the IP address of the person that posted this libelous article. And I really hope it's not JBenton...just because I think it would break Dr Ron's heart. He's too good a man for him to find out someone he trusted, and someone his granddaughter loves, betrayed him so callously.

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  7. Gary discussed this with Ernest Handcock yesterday: http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Media/124028-2012-12-06-12-07-12-george-donnelly-gary-franchi-will-grigg-mp3.htm

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