Archive for July 16th, 2010
URGENT UPDATE: Affidavits obtained today prove Cook County GOP Chair Lee Roupas knew about date rape complaint filed against CYR board member in 2009, but did not act on it for an entire year. Claims he did not know about the complaint until June 2010, but has been caught in his lie.
Crook County GOP Chair Lee "Pinocchio" Roupas, pants afire, lying about the fact he knew about a date rape complaint filed against a Chicago Young Republican board member a full year before he decided to act on it, or acknowledge he knew what was going on in his own county. Shame, shame, shame on Roupas for not only lying, but for being so damn terrible at it. In Chicago, this is actually the worst crime of all.
UPDATE 1121pm CST 7/16/10: We have just secured an affidavit from a prominent Republican who is swearing under oath that Lee Roupas was not only informed about the complaint against “The Prophet” in July or August 2009, but that he was read the entire complaint over the telephone.
As we suspected, Roupas is being deliberately lawyerly in his use of the word “received” in terms of this complaint. He is, in essence, insisting he never TOUCHED the complaint until June of 2010…but he RECEIVED the information in the complaint verbally in July or August 2009, as we have maintained.
This is the first of several affidavits we foresee being secured in the coming week that will prove Lee Roupas to be a liar.
All Republican Committee Members in Cook County need to step up to the plate and challenge Roupas to put in writing that he never:
(1) spoke about the complaint in July or August of 2009
(2) had the complaint read to him in July or August of 2009
(3) had a telephone conversation about the complaint in July or August in 2009
Let’s give Lee Roupas the chance to clear this up, before more affidavits roll in to prove him a liar.
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Lee Roupas’ mouth has been moving all day today, though he won’t answer calls and isn’t speaking to the media. He’s been hunkered down in a secure and undisclosed location somewhere, writing this email to Republicans in Cook County:
Click above to embiggen.
Pay attention to that last point, (5), above.
Roupas starts off by admitting he is being represented by counsel at this point…counsel that apparently helped him write this very lawyerly paragraph of parsed words (and poor grammar, so our guess is “counsel” is either someone who went to correspondence school or is a sock puppet Roupas MacGyvered to keep him company in his bunker).
(a) Roupas states he received a letter from Eloise Gerson dated June 11th, 2010
(b) Roupas claims “the first time I received the actually complaint was upon receipt of Chairman Gerson’s letter in June of 2010″
Can you spot a few interesting things in the above?
For starters, Roupas does not acknowledge when he KNEW about the alleged assault on a young female CYR member by a current Cook County employee. We maintain Roupas knew about this matter since July of 2009, August at the latest, which means he knew about this almost a full year before he is owning up to.
He is very lawyerly saying that sometime after June 11th 2010 he RECEIVED THE ACTUALLY COMPLAINT. What’s an “actually complaint”? Does it make a sentence legally null if nonsense words like “actually complaint” are used in them? IE, is this a typo or did Roupas deliberately misphrase this to build wiggle room for himself in the future, allowing himself the option of reworking the whole sentence for later clarification to give him whatever meaning he will want this to have next week or the week thereafter?
What is the “actual complaint”, if we grant Roupas the human spelling error and assume he meant to say he “received the actual complaint” in the letter from Gerson? What defines the “actual complaint”…is it a formal document prepared by someone and notarized…is it a document printed on special paper…would a regular home printer version qualify as “actual”, or did someone need to go to Kinko’s and use “good paper” for it to be “actual”…is it a signed version of the complainant’s account or is it the first July 1, 2009 email she sent to various parties initially informing them of what took place (which subsequently led to her being interviewed and other papers generated).
We were not copied on whatever Gerson sent to Roupas in that letter dated June 11th, 2010 so we don’t know what “actual complaint”, or “actually complaint”in Roupas-speak, means to Lee Roupas. We do, however, know for a fact he was sent the July 1, 2009 document prepared by the complainant that was the initial blush of a problem with the CYR board member known as “The Prophet”. We know this because Lee Roupas was the acting Cook County GOP Chair at the time, and that July 1, 2009 document was sent to him by USPS. This statement was sent to GOP National and the Young Republican National Organization as well.
That statement was then taken to the YR National Convention in Indianapolis where it was given to other Republicans in leadership positions. It was during this Convention we were told the document was hand-delivered to Roupas. That means he should have received it TWICE in July of 2009, one in the mail, and one in person.
But, is that document not the “actually complaint” Roupas is referring to? Depends on how counsel advised him to look at it, actually.
We’re prepping a little study guide and timeline on all of this to show the myriad opportunities Lee Roupas was given to view the “actually complaint” almost a year before he ultimately admits to finally “receiving the actually complaint”. NOTE: ”receiving” is a lawyerly word…it does not mean “see”, as in Roupas could have seen a document but then claims he never touched it, so he never “received” it…it also does not mean “read”, as Roupas could have viewed the document on a crackberry, iPhone, or other computer device that had been opened by someone else, so he didn’t “receive” anything in that case either. Roupas could have been “told” about the document, but that’s not “receiving” in his counsel’s eyes either.
For years, Republicans have mocked President Clinton for his gymnastic abuse of the meaning of the word “is”. Conservatives in Illinois, meet Lee Roupas, student extraordinaire of Clintonian verbiage.
The timeline will establish that either Lee Roupas is lying about when he “received the actually complaint”, and should be removed as the Cook County GOP Chair, or he willfully avoided “receiving” the “actually complaint” because he wanted to have implausible deniability, in which case he should be removed as the Cook County GOP Chair for gross incompetence and dereliction of duty.
As Roupas notes in his email, the event in “The Prophet’s” apartment happened before Roupas hired the man named in this “actually complaint” to work for the Cook County GOP as a subordinate of Roupas’. That means, once it’s clearly established that a reasonable person in Roupas’ position should have had a working knowledge of the “actually complaint” by the time the decision to hire “The Prophet” was made, and that Roupas hired “The Prophet” while having said working knowledge of the “actually complaint” — and did not bother to launch an investigation into the merits of the “actually complaint” before hiring “The Prophet” to represent the Cook County GOP — then the question needs to be asked whether or not this is acceptable professional behavior on the part of a Republican County Chair in today’s GOP.
What did Lee Roupas know, and when did he know it?
That’s the question we hope to answer with some measure of reasonable certainty tomorrow. Anything you can contribute to help sort this timeline out, please let us know, since a graphic visually representing all the opportunities Roupas had to become familiar with this “actually complaint” blows his round of lies today right out of the water.
Lee Roupas is lying: he claims to have only been made aware of the date rape complaint against the CYRs on June 10th, 2010 — but he had the complaint since the summer of 2009
Cook County GOP Chair Lee Roupas lied on 7/16/10 that he did not know about the date rape complaint until 6/10/10. He was in fact given a copy of this complaint during the Young Republicans National Conference in Indianapolis in July of 2009. This is amateur hour lying in an increasingly more bungled cover-up.
Today, Lee Roupas has apparently entered damage control, sending out an email blast claiming he was only made aware of the behavior of “The Prophet” on June 10th, 2010.
Republicans in Illinois need to stop lying, stop engaging in cover-up, and cut their losses in this scandal.
We know for a fact Roupas received the complaint at the Young Republican Convention in Indianapolis in the summer of 2009, ironically enough when the Chicago Young Republicans were poised to receive a major award at the convention for being one of the best YR chapters in the country.
Instead of owning up to what he’s done, Roupas is lying and playing the “I was not aware of this” game.
Well, the Cook County GOP just got in even more trouble today because of Roupas’ continued attempts to cover all of this up. Not only did Roupas have that complaint a full year ago, but others in the Illinois GOP such as Matt Murphy, Andy McKenna, and even current Illinois GOP State Chair Pat Brady all had the complaint prior to the day Roupas now claims he received it.
Conveniently, he’s claiming to have only known about the date rape allegations one day before Eloise Gerson herself obtained this complaint, and raised the question of why this was not being investigated.
The way Roupas and the Cook County GOP is handling this matter is deplorable.
They keep lying, enlarging the cover-up, and committing a bigger and bigger unforced error that has the potential to bring down the Brady and Kirk November campaigns.
Someone in the Illinois GOP needs to put a stop to this. If there was any hope of Lee Roupas saving his political career, he just blew it by lying about when he received this complaint.
Because we know people who still remember which one of his many blazers Roupas was wearing, as he stood in that hotel back in the summer of 2009, and was first apprised of the date rape complaint…the complaint he ignored and did nothing about…the complaint he tried to cover-up…until Eloise Gerson blew the lid off this scandal on June 11th, 2010.
Just like with Nixon, it’s never the crime, but the bumbled, fumbled cover-up that dooms Republicans.
Elephants may never forget, but they never seem to learn, either.
QUESTION: Will indulging millionaire cougar Beth Christie cost Republicans the governorship and Senate seat in Illinois?
How much will Beth Christie's large donations ultimately cost Republicans?
As a scandal involving both the Cook County GOP and the Chicago Young Republicans metastasizes into a major problem for Republicans here in Illinois (one that candidates Bill Brady and Mark Kirk are going to have to address in the coming days, considering how many appearances they have made with embattled Cook County GOP Chairman Lee Roupas), millionaire cougar Beth Christie emerges as the unintended root of this unforced error that could very well cost the GOP what should be two easy races against terrible Democrats in the fall.
In retrospect, Republicans wondering why this all happened will trace the losses back to the overindulgence of one generous but demanding donor, whose pet projects and passions clouded better judgment and oversight from Republican leadership. Because this one large donor wrote so many checks, and forever threatened to put her checkbook away if vexed, what would have been a minor hit to Republicans in Chicago has now reached a point where Cook County Chair Roupas will be forced to resign, with candidates Brady and Kirk doing major and distracting damage control.
In a TV dramatization of everything that led to this mess, Christie would be played by Jennifer Coolidge, with direction from Christopher Guest and wardrobe by Coach. Expensive-looking, with steeled elegance, Christie is a commanding, and demanding, presence in any room she enters. “Whatever Lola Wants” loops from imaginary speakers wherever she treads. The former CEO of Avent Baby Feeding Products, Christie nursed many pet projects in Chicago GOP circles — including the development of a young blond man she took an inexplicable shine to (a man who’d become known to CYRs as “The Prophet”, because of his delusions of grandeur and cult of mostly females used heavily for his self-aggrandizing purposes). Unable to see his dark side, Christie became his personal ATM and protectress, cutting large checks to cover his extravagant expenditures with the CYRs and bailing him out when he’d overdrawn the politically-flavored social networking club’s operating accounts.
The Elizabeth K. Christie Trust made a whopping $20,000 donation to the Cook County Republican party in December of 2009, at the exact time payback of a controversial $25,000 loan to the Chicago Young Republicans was causing major roadblocks for “The Prophet” to land a job with the Cook County GOP. In what many see as a quid pro quo, Christie’s check cleared in early December, which zeroed out the balance left on the CYR’s loan, and by the end of the month Roupas hired “The Prophet” to a high-paying job as his subordinate in the Cook County GOP.
In 2009, Christie also gave over $30,000 to the RNC itself, making her the political fundraising equivalent of what casinos call “whales” in Atlantic City and Vegas. Much sought after and indulged, these donors are what really control government in this country. Politicians depend on these people to fill their election year coffers and the political parties, especially the underfunded GOP in Illinois, rely on them to keep the lights on and fund day-to-day operations. Whatever the whales want, the whales get, by and large, and not just in terms of the regular photo ops and backstage access to events that come with making the occasional sizable donation to a particular fundraising.
When someone of Christie’s giving penchant appears on the Chicago scene, the Republican Party falls over itself to keep her pleased. If she likes someone, that person becomes untouchable for all intents and purposes, because the party does not want to upset Christie and risk losing access to her generosity.
It’s not difficult at all to see where this got the GOP in trouble here in Chicago.
“The Prophet” was identified as a brewing political problem as far back as 2008, before he’d claimed a prominent position in the CYR organization, and before he’d worked for failed Lt. Governor candidate Matt Murphy or Roupas at the Cook County GOP. Unbalanced, vainglorious, and vindictive, yet exceedingly charming and bisexually attractive, “The Prophet” was fired by the Murphy campaign at the insistence of gubernatorial candidate Andy McKenna as a condition for Murphy to assume the Lt. Governor spot on McKenna’s ultimately unsuccessful bid against Bill Brady for the GOP nomination. Murphy was provided with a copy of the attempted date rape complaint filed against “The Prophet” by a young Chicago woman back in July 2009; Murphy received that complaint while he was still attempting a gubernatorial bid of his own, running with a staff comprised squarely of “The Prophet” and other young, relatively inexperienced “Romney Guys” (all veterans of the failed Romney 2008 campaign, and its subsequent off-the-radar 2012 successor). Murphy chose to ignore the complaint and keep “The Prophet” on staff, but McKenna forced “The Prophet” out, since McKenna had received a copy of the complaint in July or August of 2009 and did not want “The Prophet” to damage his own bid for the governorship once this scandal finally broke in Chicago.
It would certainly do no good with women voters in Illinois if a Republican candidate was found to have a man involved in allegations of date rape working for him, and McKenna smartly knew that.
If not for Christie’s generous check to Roupas, it’s unlikely “The Prophet” would have landed a job with the Cook County GOP, no matter how good of drinking buddies Roupas and “The Prophet” are. But, with money like that coming in from a strong and reliable supporter of “The Prophet”, Roupas had the cover he needed to bring “The Prophet” aboard.
Since the complaint against “The Prophet” kept working its way up the ranks in Republican circles, Roupas then had a ticking bomb on his hands Christie prevented him from ever getting rid of. Since “The Prophet” was a pet project of Christie’s, and he often bragged in political circles he was “untouchable” because “one word to Beth and she’ll stop writing checks”, Roupas could never fire him; the only option then, it seems, was to instead remove anyone in the Chicagoland GOP who pushed for an investigation into the complaint against “The Prophet”.
That led to the bizarre chain of events last month where Chicago GOP Chair Eloise Gerson obtained a copy of the complaint, demanded an investigation into not only “The Prophet’s” behavior but also what led to his hiring by the Cook County GOP, and was then attacked by Roupas in an attempted coup to remove her for bringing this scandal into the spotlight.
Since the Illinois GOP is so terrified of alienating millionaire cougar Beth Christie, Roupas and the rest of the Chicago GOP lot used poor judgment and went after truthtellers instead of addressing the issue it had on its hands with “The Prophet”. Absent Christie’s protection, Roupas would have most certainly let “The Prophet” go and avoided the mess he’s now in. But, whatever Lola wants, as the song goes.
As with everything else involving this cover-up, this is an educational opportunity for the GOP in Illinois, and for conservatives nationwide. It’s a chance to understand exactly WHY the GOP is so seemingly incapable of making good decisions most of the time.
It’s, frankly, because of wealthy donors like Beth Christie who wield a disproportionately large amount of power for writing so many oversized checks. Clearly an excellent businesswoman who amassed millions running a major corporation, in retirement one of Christie’s hobbies became the professional development of a young man she took some sort of shine to. Whatever glamor “The Prophet” used on her kept Christie from seeing how toxic his presence was for the GOP in Chicago. The threat of losing Christie’s largesse prevented the Chicago GOP from taking actions against “The Prophet” and forced Cook County GOP Chair Lee Roupas to engage in a Byzantine cover-up for “The Prophet” that ultimately involved declaring open war upon a respected and well-loved Chairwoman who dared to call for an investigation into alleged criminal activity and impropriety committed by a paid staffer in the Cook County GOP.
This is why all Tea Party inclined Americans need to become intimately familiar with all FEC filings and campaign contributions made by big donors like Beth Christie. These wealthy people’s agendas are not necessarily what’s best for the parties, voters, or Americans in general. Candidate who depend on millionaires like Christie to stay in office often seem to find themselves doing the opposite of what common sense and prudence would dictate, because they have put themselves in positions where these big donors are calling the shots, and dictating courses of action that counter basic reason.
This explains why Democrats are driving themselves off a cliff with a radical Leftist agenda currently: large Democrat donors are pushing for this, because they don’t really understand the ramifications of everything that’s being rammed through legislatively; they just want to get their money’s worth and see some action.
On the Republican side, you have women like Beth Christie who want to get their money’s worth as well, and look at the mess that ultimately made for the Cook County GOP.
These unforced errors and donor-induced follies happen all across the country for both Democrats and Republicans.
It’s why we’ve been long-advocating a major educational initiative in the Tea Party ranks to identify and pressure these large donors to put a stop to the madness both parties are engaged in right now. If Americans directed their ire and attention at these wealthy individuals, who use politics as a hobby and pet project (or who, like Christie, give money to advance pets of another sense), then politics might be a much less desirable place for them to spend their mad money. If Christie took those big checks to Coach or Tiffany’s on Michigan Avenue, and had one heck of a fun time there instead, the Cook County GOP would be much better off today, counterintuitive to the party’s zeal to get as much cash from this blonde ATM as possible.
Friday Open Thread: July 16th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Friday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
What’s something YOU, personally, are going to do today to drive the Left crazy? Just one thing. It doesn’t have to be big. But be specific. How are you going to rattle a Leftist today?
