One Year Ago Today: June 30, 2011
Ron Brynaert tweeted this to me:
Brynaert also told me on the phone that there was a suspicious person with a British accent that I needed to know about.
I was very interested in these two pieces of information, because I knew that Mike Stack had been SWATted on June 23, 2011. I knew that the caller from Mike Stack’s June 23, 2011 SWATting had been (incorrectly) described by the police as having a British accent. And I knew that some suspected that a woman in Boston named Jennifer George was behind some of the fakery that could be related to Mike Stack’s SWATting — and that she had accused Lee of threatening her.
It is little wonder that I wanted to speak with Ron Brynaert on the phone on the night of June 30, 2011.
The same night, in a post that generated 3765 comments, I speculated on another possibility: that perhaps Jennifer George really was threatened, but that the threatener had merely pretended to be Stranahan.
And I mentioned Neal Rauhauser. Stack and I had discussed Rauhauser, and the possibility that he might have something to do with the Stack SWATting episode. We knew that Rauhauser had a history of using sock puppets. If someone had impersonated Stranahan to Jennifer George, we wondered if Rauhauser might be responsible.
I ended the post that night in this way:
UPDATE x2: I’m feeling better about the theory with each passing second.
Hi, Neal!
And my first comment said:
Maybe Neal Rauhauser could come explain to me why this could not be possible.
The post quickly became filled with sock puppets, including Alicia Pain, who had threatened me a week earlier. She said things like:
Everyone is getting threatened these days. What’s the world coming to?
And
Wonder who threatened Patterico and Ace?
Remember the great Dan Wolfe/John Reid “rivalry”? They tried to convince people that they were separate people by speaking in a nasty manner about one another and saying they hated each other. Despite that, their tactics were similar, and many of us concluded they were the same person. They just used heavy-handed “I hate the other sock puppet” tactics to throw people off the trail.
It is an instructive exercise to wonder whether Brynaert and Alicia Pain were doing the same thing when Alicia Pain posted information about an arrest of Brynaert’s that night — information which I deleted and told Brynaert about on the phone. Or whether Rauhauser and Brynaert were doing the same thing in days leading up to my SWATting, when Rauhauser wrote me and Lee Stranahan to complain that Brynaert was mentally ill, or when Brynaert told me that he had suspicions about Neal Rauhauser that night.
Did they all hate each other? Or did they just want to convince people that they did?
I tried to get information from Brynaert about the Stranahan report, and about the man with the British accent. But Brynaert ranted and raved and shouted, and it was almost impossible to get him to answer any questions. (Anyone who has ever spoken with Brynaert on the phone has likely had a similar experience.)
And he was still on the phone with me in the early morning hours of July 1, 2011, when police showed up at my door. But that’s tomorrow’s post.
As a reminder, here is a 12-second clip combining the end of my SWATting call with a few seconds from an interview with Ron Brynaert:
Tomorrow I will talk about July 1, 2011.
Patterico (feda6b) — 6/30/2012 @ 6:47 pmWOW.
@ParisParamus (5eb74d) — 6/30/2012 @ 6:54 pmIt’s one of the elements of the “long con.” I only learned that from watching “Lost.” But two people working the con pretend not to know one another in order to get a 3rd party to accept what at least one of them has to say or offer.
Brandon (d777af) — 6/30/2012 @ 6:57 pmI tried to get information from Brynaert about the Stranahan report, and about the man with the British accent. But Brynaert ranted and raved and shouted, and it was almost impossible to get him to answer any questions.
I was wondering – do you think it is possible that for part of the time, you were speaking to a recording?
Maybe for steadily lengthening periods of time as Ron Brynaeart got you used to that?
Sammy Finkelman (976d9e) — 6/30/2012 @ 7:21 pmBingo Brandon!
Joe B (a60bae) — 6/30/2012 @ 7:22 pmSammy,
The thought has occurred to me.
Patterico (8da1a7) — 6/30/2012 @ 7:23 pmI speculated on another possibility: that perhaps Jennifer George really was threatened, but that the threatener had merely pretended to be Stranahan.
I always considered that idea (that there was a real threat but somebody had impersonaed Lee) to be implausible.
Did you get that idea from Ron Brynaert?
Sammy Finkelman (976d9e) — 6/30/2012 @ 7:23 pmJust deleted a more skeptical than thou post. I figure, what’s the point, it’s just being. bratty.( I’m in a foul mood with high temps and power outage, and I’m sorry it’s leaking out)) Itf it should have been obvious from the outset it is now.
I do wondee why they had it in for Weiner and sidled up to his followers and brought so much attention to his bad habits.
T. Nobles ex boy pal said she was actively shopping her story before the tweet of infamy. Broussard seems to have been lying a honey trap for the most helpless of pathetic narcissist bears.
The socks precipitated his departure from public office, and the Weiner was hacked gambit seems designed to cover that that up, whether it was on purpose or a failure I haven’t decided.
Sarahw (0e60e9) — 6/30/2012 @ 7:25 pmBrandon: indeed. Ron uses his alleged hatred for Rauhauser and Kimberlin to give himself faux credibility. I have several screenshots of him saying things like “I hate Kimberlin but Patterico cyberstalked him” or “I hate Neal Rauhauser but Patrick Frey should be fired.”
Patterico (8da1a7) — 6/30/2012 @ 7:25 pmFrom Dan Wolfe, actually. But I discussed it with Brynaert and as I recall we agreed it was consistent with Rauhauser’s MO.
Patterico (8da1a7) — 6/30/2012 @ 7:28 pmI deleted my early impressions of the cavalcade of socks, that is.
Sarahw (0e60e9) — 6/30/2012 @ 7:29 pmThink I will go out to a bookstore with ac and wifi. Boy am I crabby.
Sarahw (0e60e9) — 6/30/2012 @ 7:31 pmIs it possible that Neal is the “private detective” Weiner hired to find the real tweeter?
If I were writing a movie about a corrupt politician who was involved in a sex scandal, maybe that politician would enlist the help of censorious thugs with histories of fraud/violence. Maybe in that movie, corrupt politician realized he opened pandoras box, but, like the mob, you can’t just walk away from political favors. Seeing his only options are the truth or violence, maybe in this movie, the politician comes clean before someone actually gets hurt. Unfortunately, the aforementioned censorious thugs are too heavily embroiled in this to let it go.
Sorry to go off topic and talk about movie ideas… I’m just sayin… (feel free to delete this if I stepped over any lines)
Ghost (6f9de7) — 6/30/2012 @ 7:55 pmwhen Alicia Pain posted information about an arrest of Brynaert’s that night — information which I deleted and told Brynaert about on the phone.
This is a bit of news. Was this before the swatting? If so, it could have been calculated as another push to get you to talk to Ron B.
I think Alicia Paine first appeared around June 23. Both you and Ace had received the same email from an Alicia Paine: (except Ace kept talking
https://patterico.com/2011/06/23/mail-i-get-mail/
http://minx.cc/?post=317993
There were some jokes about that here by some people in later threads: by Happyfeet, by Sarahw (who said in apparent reference/reply to to goatsred, that if he turned to be patriot she was coming after him and taking Alicia with her) and by somebody else who wondered if Alicia was Bill or Hillary.
Now I am pretty confident the motive was not to protect Genette. It was so you would not come to the conclusion that Anthony Weiner could not have intentionally sent that tweet that night to Gennette. He was not in conversation with her at the time. That’s what I believe.
Sammy Finkelman (976d9e) — 6/30/2012 @ 8:00 pmYes, it was hours before the SWATting.
Patterico (8da1a7) — 6/30/2012 @ 8:04 pmIt had occurred to me at the time that the private detectives AW had hired to get to the bottom of the hacking might just be the kind of people who would rather be steering/scaring interested bloggers away from the story.
I suppose NR and RB might be those kinds of people, given their behavior online.
CausticConservative (b29599) — 6/30/2012 @ 8:12 pmI think Caustic is on the right track.
Dustin (330eed) — 6/30/2012 @ 8:26 pmComment by Sarahw — 6/30/2012 @ 7:25 pm
I do wondee why they had it in for Weiner and sidled up to his followers and brought so much attention to his bad habits.
Most logical idea, given their general politics, is that they were trying to eliminate him as a candidate in the 2013 New York mayoral race (and also had plenty of time)
Most likely candidate they wanted to help was John C. Liu, who had connections (and supporters) in China, particularly in Shandong Province, the center of Chinese hacking. I wouldn’t want to go further and speculate as to who in China might have been behind this or paid for this.
the Weiner was hacked gambit seems designed to cover that that up, whether it was on purpose or a failure I haven’t decided.
I kind of feel that the Weiner was hacked gambit was designed to cover up the fact…that he was hacked, just not at all by the people or in the way they said it was.
The socks were probably trying to both 1) break up relationships Weiner had with women – that was “Dan Wolfe’s job and 2) befriend the jilted women – and obtain pictures!
They may have already discovered Weiner’s Yfrog account where he kept pictures
Then came Weiner’s probably accidental tweet – because he didn’t understand how Twitter worked, when a picture was uploaded to Yfrog from a non-logged in computer (unless it was a 100% hack of a real picture the hackers had) and Dan Wolfe captured the tweet, and other pictures whose location he should not have learned from the tweet, because if he learned about them from a tweet he should have learned about them from an earlier tweet, and he tried to get attention called to it. Weiner did not immediately delete the tweet, but only did when he was alerted to it by Dan Wolfe’s recreated tweet because he had no idea it had gone out.
Sammy Finkelman (976d9e) — 6/30/2012 @ 8:26 pmPeople should just admit Weiner screwed up. Those rabid astro turfers that can’t come to that conclusion should ask themselves if they are sane. The focus probably needs to be on butterfly nets. And the problems will all get easily solved then.
scable (40a8c6) — 6/30/2012 @ 8:32 pmIt’s hard to imagine how rauhauser has ever obtained a job. I can’t foresee his personalty holding up in any environment where he and his peers are evaluated. A huge amount of his work is an attempt to avoid having a lens focused on himself. Probably only varmits would give him money. But does that include soros, streisand, other democratic donaters?
scable (40a8c6) — 6/30/2012 @ 8:36 pmI am still mixed at Seth Allen. Here seems to be a person mad at Patterico only because Patterico didn’t fork money over to him. In retrospect that seems like a wise choice. Seth feels entitled. Not sure why. And it brings his ugly side out that his mom wouldn’t like.
scable (40a8c6) — 6/30/2012 @ 8:39 pmComment by CausticConservative — 6/30/2012 @ 8:12 pm
It had occurred to me at the time that the private detectives AW had hired to get to the bottom of the hacking might just be the kind of people who would rather be steering/scaring interested bloggers away from the story.
Oh, it occurred to me that the private detective agency might have had another client already or been “John Reid” “Dan Wolfe” “Nikki Reid” they might have been that private detective agency already, and Neal.
I suppose NR and RB might be those kinds of people, given their behavior online.
This went on after Weiner had resigned. I think maybe even the private detective agency might have helped persuade him to resign.
Weiner hired them to lie – or create a plausible story as to how the picture might not be his. Because Weiner did know he hadn’t intentionally sent it. So if someone could figure out how it technically was sent without him sending it, he would not have to admit it was his actually.
Of course if that private detective agency had something to do with it, they wouldn’t want him to know.
There’s a reasonable chance he’d hire the same agency that had done it. After all how many dishonest law-breaking private detective agencies with Democratic ties can there be?? That’s the only kind Weiner would hire, of course.
Sammy Finkelman (976d9e) — 6/30/2012 @ 8:44 pmBy the way, Weiner is dipping his toe into the water to get back into the public eye.
Exclusive: Ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner Applauds Health Care Decision
Sammy Finkelman (976d9e) — 6/30/2012 @ 8:46 pmComment by Ghost — 6/30/2012 @ 7:55 pm
Is it possible that Neal is the “private detective” Weiner hired to find the real tweeter?
Not just that. He could also have been the real tweeter. Although I would say that Neal wouldn’t be the agency – just work for or with it. And it could be also actually that Weiner really did tweet it – unintentionally – but it was only because of people following him that something significant happened – the Yfrog cache, for one thing, must have been known to “Dan Wolfe” before.
If I were writing a movie about a corrupt politician who was involved in a sex scandal
There was such a movie, “State of Play” (2009)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473705/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Play_%28film%29
and Ben Affleck, who played Congressman Stephen Collins, and was also the director, spent a lot of time talking with Anthony Weiner in preparation for his work on the film.
The Curious Friendship of Weiner and Affleck by Michael Barbaro Published: May 6, 2009 (New York Times)
So when he needed to research the character of Stephen Collins, a young, overtly ambitious congressman in the new thriller “State of Play,” he turned to Mr. Weiner. Over the past year, they have met repeatedly, over dinner in Washington and New York, as Mr. A
The newspaper story says Affleck had said to Weiner in 2004, that if he ran for Congress he’d run for the Massachusetts seat held by a friend and roommate of Weiner’s; also they differed on the Middle East and Clinton versus Obama (in 2008, when this first started, Weiner was for Clinton, Affleck for Obama, and the first meeting did not go well)
Maybe in that movie, corrupt politician realized he opened pandoras box, but, like the mob, you can’t just walk away from political favors. Seeing his only options are the truth or violence, maybe in this movie, the politician comes clean before someone actually gets hurt.
Not quite like that:
Collins reveals that he had been suspicious of Sonia, and that he hired the assassin to watch her. The assassin is U.S. Army Corporal Robert Bingham (Michael Berresse), whose life Collins had once saved. Collins says that Bingham hated PointCorp more than he did and he killed Sonia with no authorization from him.
Cal tells Collins that he has three minutes to leave his office before the police arrive, as he has already contacted them. As he leaves the building, Cal is confronted by Bingham. Officers arrive and shoot Bingham before he opens fire. Cal leaves and goes to his office. There, Cal and Della type up their own story with an altered version of Bingham’s death (the story indicates that Bingham had committed suicide), noting that Collins was secured and arrested
The movie does differ somewhat from your idea.
Sammy Finkelman (976d9e) — 6/30/2012 @ 9:28 pmSammy, the movie was based on a Brit mini series of the same name that was much better IMHO.
Gazzer (b175a1) — 6/30/2012 @ 10:12 pmDidn’t aliciasock have some rather silly-yet-belligerent argument about law? I seem to remember something like that.
Sarahw (0e60e9) — 6/30/2012 @ 10:17 pmNR seems way too personally invested in Weiner.
Ghost (6f9de7) — 6/30/2012 @ 10:34 pmI forgot to mention another key element of the “long con,” which is an ongoing theme in “Lost.” The 3rd party is deliberately led to believe that they are choosing to do something, when in actual fact it’s one of the two cons who is choosing it for them.
Just beware!!!
Brandon (d777af) — 6/30/2012 @ 11:12 pmAnd yes, “Lost” is a brilliantly manipulative show.
Brandon (d777af) — 6/30/2012 @ 11:19 pmPatterico,
Spammers at Breitbart do the same thing. They post an innocent looking plagiarized (copied and pasted) sentence from upthread to make them look relevant, followed by the malicious link. They get all kinds of “likes” for the copy and paste job. Very few people flag them as far as I can tell.
Brandon (d777af) — 6/30/2012 @ 11:31 pmJeez, this has been going on a whole year. At the least, everything seems a lot clearer than it did back then.
Also, it is my opinion that the SWATter sounds like Ron.
Noodles (3681c4) — 6/30/2012 @ 11:42 pmOh, also beware of male posters who pretend to be female. They get a lot more sympathy than actual male posters. That happened on a blog I frequent, with a person who was of an opposite POV than the blog, but was very cordial in presenting “her” views. This went on for almost a year, and the moderators decided to allow “her” to actually write “her” own posts occasionally due to “her” “civil” behavior and in order to have an interesting discussion.
Well, as it turned out, with a bit of sleuthing following some slightly amiss posts we found on other blogs involving this person, we discovered that “she” was a “he,” and the “he” was posting on several other blogs with an opposing POVs and had gained quite a reputation in a good way for “her,” since she was keeping up the disguise elsewhere as well.
These other bloggers were all mocking our blog and actually outing and threatening people who were using aliases. So one of the moderators made the decision to out him, which actually blew up in their faces (the moderators), and since then the blog has diminished dramatically in readership.
You see, the blog had gained an undeserved reputation among opposing POVers that they held different standards towards them than they held towards same POVers. So the mods determined to lighten up on dissenting posters, and they started coming en masse. So when “she” showed up, “she” had many supporters on the blog itself. My advice is to never let that happen.
Lesson? We learned that at least for our blog’s purposes, we would no longer out people, but simply block/deport them once we find out that they aren’t who they say they are. It’s worked well, and readers are starting to come back after a mass deportation about 6 months ago of those who supported him and were continuing to troll, mock and disrupt.
I don’t think that would work here, because you want to find out identities and demonstrate what these folks are up to. But be aware of what can happen.
Brandon (d777af) — 7/1/2012 @ 12:21 amNR seems way too personally invested in Weiner.
Comment by Ghost — 6/30/2012 @ 10:34 pm
— Is that a Freudian slip?
Icy (9332cf) — 7/1/2012 @ 1:39 am32-so jd is female? Biff…buffy?
tye (0b3fa9) — 7/1/2012 @ 4:44 amThat’s the same voice.
Beto (7a12ae) — 7/1/2012 @ 5:17 amMost logical idea, given their general politics, is that they were trying to eliminate him as a candidate in the 2013 New York mayoral race (and also had plenty of time)
I don’t know about that. Wouldn’t Breitbart’s effort and those of others have been useful in that regard, allowing them to keep their finger prints off any Weiner resignation? Why go after Breitbart and Patterico when they were supposedly doing the job that they wanted done?
CausticConservative (b29599) — 7/1/2012 @ 5:54 amBrandon… very interesting. So… tye is really tyena?
Colonel Haiku (029938) — 7/1/2012 @ 6:24 amWas there really a Jennifer George? Or was she another NN type?
MayBee (5e4ceb) — 7/1/2012 @ 8:17 amIf lee really spoke to Lew Hunter, there is such a person. Whether that person is the liar Preston and Lee dealt with is another question.
I always thought that was in doubt, because referral to a writing professor is an odd way to establish identity.
Sarahw (a522ec) — 7/1/2012 @ 8:38 amThat was hardly the only red flag, but was one of the top squirrely things about that.
Sarahw (a522ec) — 7/1/2012 @ 8:41 amNo, tye. JD is not female.
Icy (c18630) — 7/1/2012 @ 10:22 amSF: Most logical idea, given their general politics, is that they were trying to eliminate him as a candidate in the 2013 New York mayoral race (and also had plenty of time)
Comment by CausticConservative — 7/1/2012 @ 5:54 am
I don’t know about that. Wouldn’t Breitbart’s effort and those of others have been useful in that regard, allowing them to keep their finger prints off any Weiner resignation?
Breitbart wasn’t interested in Weiner. They wanted to enlist Breitbart in the effort to get Weiner, and make it look like it all had originated with (boo!) Breitbart. Later on Breitbart was interested in clearing himself from the charge of having hacked Weiner. Noobody was going to destroy or shut down Breitbart that fast that he would not be plausible as a the person who wanted to take Weiner down. Anyway they didn’t for the most part want to get rid of Breitbart as make him (mostly) irrelevant. Or someone to be ignored.
Why go after Breitbart and Patterico when they were supposedly doing the job that they wanted done?
They only went after Breitbart and Patterico after it was all over for Weiner. Now the important point was to hide their own role and Patterico was interested in finding out who was Nikki Reid.
Th thread that if pulled was most likely to begin unraveling the whole truth was Gennette Nicoles communications with Weiner.
For I think the following things are true.
1) Weiner did not intentionally send a public tweet that @mentioned Genette.
2) Weiner did not mistakenly send a tweet instead of a direct message to Genette.
(He was not “live” with her at the time of te tweet)
3) Weiner did not mistakenly sent a tweet that @mentioned Gennette when he intended one that @mentiond Ginger or a intended a DM to Ginger
4) Weiner did not immediately delete the tweet, as Dan Wolfe claimed, but let it stand because he didn’t know it had been sent, and he only saw it when “Dan Wolfe” manually retweeted it. Manually so the ReTweet would not be deleted when the original was.
5) Dan Wolfe did not become aware of the Yfrog cache of Weiner pictures because of the May 27, 2001 tweet. If the Yfrog address gave him access to it, then a previous tweet also should have, and if the previous tweet did not, then this one wouldn’t have either, and he obtained knowledge of the contents of the cache some other way. In either case “Dan Wolfe” knew about the other Weiner pictures before May 27. He didn’t mak it public because he couldn’t do it without being traced. And he wasn’t ready.
6) Dan Wolfe and company probably thought Weiner had a real live mistress, and was probably doing something not quite legal. They wanted to force him to break up with te mistress or mistresses and then have the mistress help the case against Weiner. They didn’t realize he had no mistress – he was only trying to keep in good form for seduction and maybe have some women available on standby in case his marriage to Huma broke up.
Sammy Finkelman (c08134) — 7/1/2012 @ 10:29 amComment by MayBee — 7/1/2012 @ 8:17 am
Was there really a Jennifer George? Or was she another NN type?
JGCA is real. JGMA is a real person but a fake name.
Sammy Finkelman (c08134) — 7/1/2012 @ 10:31 amSammy,
Some of what you say is true, and some of that is even insightful. But you state a lot of “facts” that aren’t.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 7/1/2012 @ 10:34 amComment by Sarahw — 7/1/2012 @ 8:38 am
I always thought that was in doubt, because referral to a writing professor is an odd way to establish identity.
If that writing professor is just about the only disinterested party who knows you in person by that name (not some other person or sock you bring in to vouch for you) then, you’d have to use that writing professor. The only other things would be things that related to JGCA. It was JGMA who apparently went to Nebraska (while possibly adopting some part of JGCA’s biography or resume)
JGMA also was the one who originally established the Twitter account that became the account of Nikki Reid.
Sammy Finkelman (c08134) — 7/1/2012 @ 10:44 amNotice –
1) There’s a real, but different, Alicia Pain (heavy metal artist nickname)
2) There’s a real, but different, Jennifer George (in California)
3)There’s a real, but different Nikki Reed. (well-known actress with different spelling of last name)
Sammy Finkelman (c08134) — 7/1/2012 @ 10:46 amSammy- There are jg’s in MA, but it’s never been clear that a “real” one…instead of someone passing for such a person, ever spoke to Lee.
No, the writing professor thing is a red flag. The person who spoke to lee and Preston made up many details, was caught, and then confessed to lying about those details and made excuses.
That’s still a strange business, and lots of info still held back.
Sarahw (c23a3a) — 7/2/2012 @ 10:06 amComment by Sarahw — 7/2/2012 @ 10:06 am
Sammy- There are jg’s in MA, but it’s never been clear that a “real” one…instead of someone passing for such a person, ever spoke to Lee.
What I mean is the same person who created the Twitter account spoke to Lee and New York Times reporter Jennifer Preston. Actually maybe not exactly the same person. But the person who created the Twitter account used the name Jennifer George, and we can be fairly certain, she’s connected to the Nikki sock. Somebody probably connected with all that spoke to Lee.
This is almost certainly not the person’s real name!
This person had originally created the Twitter account as part of an effort to impersonate JGCA a year or so before. Maybe not actually impersonate her, but appropriate some part of her background or resume.
I don’t think there’s actually a “real” JGMA whose name is really Jennifer George, but there may be a “real” JGMA who has a different name. I don’t know that there is, or was, any evidence at all, that the person who called the police in Massachusetts had the real name Jennifer George.
Yes maybe somebody called Jennifer George complained to the police, but probably not using her real name.
Possibly she even rented a place under that name, or somebody else did for her, or installed telephone service but even if that happened, it is still not her real name.
No, the writing professor thing is a red flag. The person who spoke to lee and Preston made up many details, was caught, and then confessed to lying about those details and made excuses.
I’m not sure about that. Where did he confess to lying or being mistaken? I mat not be up to speed about that.
There was a lot of speculation (which I also had) as to whether or not this professor was real, and the answer came back that he was and had retired toi Nebraska and ran seminars there.
It kind of makes sense JGMA would have gone there to lend some credibility to being the same person as JGCA. Otherwise, really, why bring him in?
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/2/2012 @ 10:47 amI thgink the proiblem was taht some facts the professor said (about JGCA?) did not turn out to be true. And they wouldn’t have been true if JGMA had been pretending to be JGCA.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/2/2012 @ 10:48 amComment by DRJ — 7/1/2012 @ 10:34 am
Some of what you say is true, and some of that is even insightful. But you state a lot of “facts” that aren’t.
I said in 42
I think the following things are true.
Some of these things I have more reason to believe are true than others. But I more or less have to state things this way to lay out a reasonably coherent picture.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/2/2012 @ 10:51 amThis is my timeline for the tweeting as of early September 2011, when I stopped work on this. It relies a lot on what other people did, but I added some things, including reasonable speculation. I went back earlier than when I started, so it startd with negative numbers:
Weinergate timeline?
There are many mysteries here.
Here is a proposed timeline of the central events:
-4. Weiner announces on Twitter he is leaving for 30 Rockefeller Plaza to be on the Rachel Maddow show, where he is a frequent guest. The show starts at 9 PM. Which isn’t exactly 5:45 in Seattle, as he states in the tweet, but that’s his idea of a joke. His hashtags frequently are supposed-to-be-one-step-or-two-away-from-the-truth jokes.
-3. Weiner doesn’t actually leave right away, but sticks around to see the beginning of Game 7 of the semi-final to the Stanley Cup playoffs between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Boston Bruins, and start his Tivo recording the game.
The game (or rather the show) starts at 8 PM.
He won’t be able to watch it live if he wants to be on the Rachel Maddow show, and he doesn’t want to miss an opportunity to go on the show. He plans to see it all upon his return home, so he probably doesn’t even try to sneak a few minutes while he’s waiting, and besides that didn’t work too well on April 13 when he was on The Last Word.
Tivoing the whole game is a better idea.
Before he goes, he sees something on his computer from Twitter and replies with exaggerated thanks and then he leaves after 8:07 PM.
-2. Weiner goes to NBC, is on the air, leaves, and goes home. Although Versus is also owned by NBC, and is a sister channel of MSNBC, that is
not much help to him. He can’t really see anything while he’s there.
-1. Weiner arrives back home, just about as the game is ending but the cablecast is still going on, and it looks like the game was very interesting and exciting. Tivo is still recording and it looks like this will go on for another 15 minutes.
Tivo has a feature called “trick play” which allows the viewer to pause live television, and go
back – but you can only go back half an hour and AW wants to go back to the beginning of the game.
He can’t, and then maybe he tries to stop the recording, but he botches things up in such a way so that he loses the entire show.
Now the hockey game he recorded is not there anymore.
Frustrated by not being able to see the hockey game, he turns his attention away to other things, and…. [We need some special melodramatic music here.]
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/2/2012 @ 10:58 am0. Weiner now gets the idea for another Twitter joke. He’ll take one of the pictures he made for Meagan Broussard, crop it a bit, and upload it to Yfrog, where it will sit, ready for an instant reply, in case Genette Nicole Cordova mentions (again?) that he needs a better avatar – i.e. it shouldn’t be his picture when he was 13 years old. He will then quickly shoot that picture over to her as an alternative avatar.
The tweet will be somewhat like tweet number 310 on the list of AW’s tweets counting backwards from June 2, only it will be sent as a DM. The idea is a sort of a play on words on the meaning of the word “weiner”
1. Weiner uploads the picture to Yfrog from his desktop, where he is not logged in to Yfrog because *that* computer doesn’t remember his password and neither is it in his head, or perhaps the log-in is automatic when it is done from his blackberry. Yfrog creates an URL for the picture, but does not store the URL on its site, but instead emits it as a tweet that mentions Gennette, because he put @GenetteNicole on the subject line of the e-mail he sent to Yfrog.
(Or perhaps it is actually Tweetdeck that issues the tweet which is also copied to Yfrog. This needs further investigation.)
According to what looks like a screen capture done after the tweeted picture and some other Weiner Yfrog pictures were deleted, which is online at http://twicsy.com/i/3uChF,
(Only the “clean” ones are still there – July 2 2012 and probably also last Sept.)
the Yfrog picture was tweeted at 11:31:50 PM Eastern daylight time, or 2011-05-28 03:31:50 GMT.
This is also approximately the time deducued from Tweet Congress, which places it 4 minutes earlier than Weiner’s next tweet, which happened at 11:35:07 PM on Friday, May 27, 2011. (a difference of 3 minutes and 17 seconds.)
2. Weiner goes onto Twitter and tweets about his missing hockey game.
(The fact it is misisng means he can’t comment about the play of the game like he wanted to.)
“just kill me now” tweets Weiner. [Ominous music needed here]
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/2/2012 @ 11:04 am3. “Dan Wolfe” notices the tweet, and checks to see what it is. At least ten minutes have gone by since the tweet.
Dan Wolfe does not want to alert AW to the tweet -and/or to the fact that it is a problem. “Dan Wolfe” reasons that Weiner clearly hasn’t noticed anything wrong yet, or else he’d have aleady deleted the tweet, so the chances that he would realize it within the next few minutes are small, so there probably is some time to do other things first, and he screencaps everything related to the tweet that he can find.
When he is finished…
He does not make an official retweet because he knows that doing so would mean that his retweet would disappear whenever Weiner deletes his original tweet. Dan Wolfe knows much more about how twitter works than the average person. More even than the average geek. If he didn’t, he never would have even seen the tweet in the first place! Tweets that start with @mention were never ordinarily shown to anybody who doesn’t follow both the sender and the addressee.
See http://tinyurl.com/2e8jhz7.
Dan Wolfe said he didn’t follow Repweiner, and probably in fact didn’t, because he doesn’t want Weiner to know. But he is in fact following him in a way. He has a window on AW’s twitter page, which is one way of seeing such tweets (searching is another)
4. Dan Wolfe makes a manual retweet and includes @weiner in it. It is now safe to alert AW. (The @weiner is there to alert other people *about* Weiner, not to alert Anthony Weiner himself, although it has that effect.)
5. Weiner’s Tweetdeck program shows him the tweet and he clicks on it, sees the picture and is shocked to see it there.
6. Weiner drops what he is doing, and deletes the tweet, thinking that that deletes the picture too, and then tries to log into Yfrog because he realizes all hosted pictures are public – all you need is the URL, of course. It’s meant to be shared. He doesn’t remember, or never even really knew, the name Yfrog, and he doesn’t remember the password, but he knows the type of thing it is and sort of how to get there.
He hardly knows what he is doing. He has trouble getting in, or even finding the place really. But he manages to get in anyway after a while.
(There’s a way to do it. If he’s logged into Facebook or Twitter or something he can transit over to Yfrog. It could be he went through Facebook. Before, when he uploaded the picture, he hadn’t been logged into anything but probably had some sort of a macro to do it.)
AW deletes the tweeted picture, kind of surprised he has to do it all over again, then looks for other bad pictures on Yfrog and deletes them too.
(Dan Wolfe and company, of course, had had all these pictures back on May 5, but he didn’t know who they were for, and wanted to find the identity of the mistress he presumes AW has and get more evidence.)
Keeping the fact that they had had a lot of pictures all along a secret later becomes a big priority to him. He mostly succeeds.)
7. Finished, Weiner attempts to find out about what happened in the hockey game by watching the post game show. He doesn’t get much information. It tantalizes him more than it informs him.
There’s not much he can get a full sense of, beyond the fact, of course, that the Bolts lost the game by one goal scored very late in the game.
8. At 12:30 am AW begins tweeting what he can about hockey, which isn’t much. This is merely an occasional tweet in between doing other things, as are, really, most of his tweets. It’s mostly complaining about the fact he didn’t get to see the game. In the second of these very late night tweets he alludes to previous hockey tweets.
In particular he thinks of the predictions he made, like in Weiner tweet number 129, way back on April 19 before the Stanley cup playoffs
started. (Hockey, like basketball, has fewer games in the regular season than baseball, and a very extended playoff schedule. The playoffs last about one third of the length of time of the regular season and include more than half of all the teams – 16 out of 30.)
At 12:54 AM, in his third post-midnight tweet, he tweets again about his Tivo not working (although it’s more likely he just botched it up, not that it’s entirely his fault, because systems should be made idiot-proof, and he wasn’t even that much of an idiot.)
This time he also includes in the tweet a mention about his Facebook being hacked, which is probably the best idea he has for what
happened.
That is his last tweet of the evening.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/2/2012 @ 11:10 am9. “Dan” is tweeting online to everyone he can think of, and calling the image X-rated, which it isn’t exactly, and includes in his tweets and retweets some online journalists.
He sends Dana Loesch, Breitbart’s editor, several pictures including some that really are X-rated.
Dana Loesch says these are the same pictures she has and that’s very weird. (because she has them from a totally different source, not screencaps)
10. First BigJournalism story goes up at 12:21 and 12:24 (Pacific time, which is 3:21 and 3:24 Eastern time) The time can apparently be confirmed by Facebook. It mentions the Yfrog picture is gone – and claims the whole account was closed, which it wasn’t even later, and claims all the photos were gone by 11 PM Eastern, which is actually before the time of the original tweet!
It does not mention any claim by Weiner to having been hacked. He didn’t make that claim until
12:54 am (Eastern)
Dan decides he had better start covering things up.
AW is not aware that there is a problem. And, in fact, it isn’t a problem until late the next afternoon. AW finally up. AW is not aware that there is a problem. And, in fact, it isn’t a problem until late the next afternoon.
The first Wikipedia edit (a malicious one) occurs
only after 4 PM. (What time zone is Wikipedia in?)
AW finally mentions it again at 5:08 PM.
Otherwise, he continues business as usual on Twitter until Tuesday morning May 31. But he gets
a tremendous number of new followers, passing Michelle Bachman, and adds about three or so new accounts to follow between shortly after midnight Saturday May 28 and sometime Tuesday May 31.
Many of the Internet posts about this contain important errors because writers attempt to fill in what they don’t know with factoids that would make the incomplete story they heard make sense, and because maybe soembody’s misleading people.
They get the time of the tweet wrong; claim a change of only one character would make a Dierct Message public (spoil the DM, maybe, but to change it into a @mention message you need more than one alteration); get the text of the tweet wrong, confusing it with the retweet; say that the entire Yfrog account was deleted rather than only some pictures, (which hides the fact other bad pictures were there and stops anyone from asking the question how do you view the whole
account); say that Weiner was watching the hockey game, when actually he left to go on TV and taped it, except that he did something wrong and couldn’t watch it; say that Weiner complained about being hacked immediately; and say that Weiner said that Twitter was hacked when he said that his Facebook account was hacked and never
explicitly said that his Twitter account was hacked or hijacked.
No he didn’t. A staffers said later: Well obviously, all acoounts..
Nor did he refer on Twitter to the picture, which almost nobody saw, and not because he deleted it immediately, which he didn’t, because he didn’t know about it until it was retweeted.
But of course they are right about the fact that there was such a tweet and (probably) about the content of the picture (unless Dan was circulating a different version of the picture) and that Weiner deleted it, and that Weiner had claimed he was hacked.
And that’s the center of the controversy that ensues.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/2/2012 @ 11:25 amIn subsequent days, Weiner dances around some questions, especially whether the tweeted picture is, or could be, one of him, nor does he seem to be as interested as you would think he should be in getting to the bottom of this, although he steadfastedly insists he didn’t send it. And he starts using some bad arguments. This attracts more and more attention to the matter.
He goes round and round with reporters, never giving any kind of coherent explanation as to why he would not want to make an official request for a federal investigation. Weiner says he has called in people himself to find out, without quite describing them (who they are) or what they are doing.
Reporters tell him that government investigators could subpoena Twitter and find out almost instantly what the IP address was from which the posting of the picture was made, but this can’t
be done by anyone Weiner calls in himself, who have no such legal power to do this.
All that Weiner keeps on saying in response is that he doesn’t have to call for an investigation, and the whole thing isn’t really important, it’s just a prank or hoax, he says. There was no government computer involved, so in this respect, he’s just another citizen. He says he doesn’t know if the picture is his, adding that pictures can be manipulated etc. But he says there’s no picture of him like that floating around there.
Nevertheless he will not state that the picture is not of him.
On June 1, he tells Rachel Maddow that he’ll let the audience make up its own mind about whether the picture is of him.
This leads to the idea that it did come from his computer and maybe he knows it, and perhaps doesn’t want to punish the person who did it, but Weiner won’t acknowledge as possibilities any of the ideas that reporters come up with as to who could have sent it if it wasn’t him, even in the most general terms. And there’s the further idea that he doesn’t want his computer examined because there’s other bad or embarassing things on it.
Weiner explains whom he was following by claiming he picked many at random. On Friday May 13, Weiner had asked for any of his followers who wanted to be followed in return to tweet a message
with the hashtag #WeinerYes and he tweeted on May 15 that he had started adding them. He claims that he looked for people whom he guessed were from New York, and another criterion I forgot, but it’s not people with avatars of pretty girls.
In one interview he stops the interviewer short with the argument that the implication that that there was some kind of sexual motive for his follows is outrageous and unreasonable.
It is misreported that Weiner followed 91 accounts, which may be based on an old screen capture. An email on The Smoking Gun site said to come from Dan Wolfe on the night of the tweet, said the number of people he followed went down from 195 to 194 when he unfollowed Genette Nicole. On Wednesday June 1, 2011, the New York Post reported he followed 198 people. It also said most of them were connected to politics, the media or professional sports. (Article by S.A. Miller in Washington with Perry
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/2/2012 @ 11:26 amChiaramonte and Chuck Bennett in New York, on pages 4-5 of the Wednesday, June 1, 2011 New York Post.)
In the meantime, as Dan Wolfe disappears, and some women who been in contact with Anthony Weiner step forward with information.
In at least one case the woman is forced out by stories that are irculating about her or threats by other people to write statements in her name (a porn actress who uses the name “Ginger Lee”.)
Especially important is the fact that an obscure Internet journalist get contacted what is spposed to be a 16 or 17-year girl who for a very brief period was followed by Anthony Weiner, and by her family.
She had also started a public campaign for him to be her prom date.
This account also was in contact with several other female Weiner followees, and a supposed friend of hers was in contact ith one of the people who was following Weiner’s activities.
The statements issued both by her, her parents, and a friend, as well as a telephone conversation by her mother, who supplies what later turns out to be false IDs, are to the effect that nothing untoward happened between the girl and Anthony Weiner, and, what’s more, nothing untoward happened between Anthony Weiner and anybody else either, including the porn actress
whom he followed, who is actually a perfectly respectable person. And the friend who had said there was more information about Weiner lied.
(The girl is named Betty by the person they were in contact with but the account actually used the name Nikki Reid. And much more is to happen later, especially after June 17, when a New York
Times story written by Jennifer Preston breaks, including the sending of both true and false screen captures to Patterico, and carefully worded threats, and claims of threats, as great
efforts are made to conceal who was behind this account and what exactly was going on there and to conceal some very basic facts about what happened.
Attempts are made to get people to believe that that Gennette was sexting with Weiner, so that it would have been a reasonable thing for him to send such a picture to her that night, or that Weiner and Genette really were running the Nikki Reid account or that Weiner was in long contact with Nikki and actually told her to ask him to her prom..)
On June 6 other pictures are about to be released by Andrew Breitbart, and Weiner decides to admit the picture is of him, noting that he asked Nancy Pelosi and others and they told him to say the truth.
The pictures are explicit pictures that Anthony Weiner had sent to Meagan Broussart in May. They are sent to Breitbart after May 18, and Meagan Broussert perhaps encourages Anthony Weiner to send her some more after contacting Breitbart.
Wary of a trap, Breitbart doesn’t initially use them, particularly since he can’t actually get Meagan on the phone, and also because this doesn’t look like such a big story.
Before making them public, Breitbart involves ABC News. The worst one he keeps private for a while, saying it is not the right thing to release and maybe also describing it as insurance against
his reporting being attacked, but is tricked into letting it be photographed by two satellite or Internet radio hosts.
Before Weiner arrives, he is upstaged by Andrew Breitbart, who wants all reporters to know he wasn’t lying. He is encouraged to go on stage by Marcia Kramer of WCBS TV Channel 2 in New York, who had earlier been kicked out of Weiner’s office at a time when he was answering questions only from the national press.
In a statement that bears signs of a lot of rewriting, (he repeats his admission twice for one thing) Weiner very carefully claims that he intended to send it as a direct message (Nota Bene: not saying when he intended to send it – not necessarily right when he did send it!) as part of a joke. He says that the woman it was sent to was unwittingly dragged into it and bears no responsibility. (a hint maybe that she was not direct messaging him that night, but so re-written that the point is obscured. It could also mean he was going to send it to her out of the
blue, although you could also read that as a protective lie.)
He says he was sending pictures to about six women over the last three years, and that his wife knew about this before they got married because – and he thinks better of explaining why and when and what he told her.
It doesn’t entirely make sense, and is not complete, but reporters stop asking questions after the press conference.
He also says his apology is principally to his wife, and that he wasn’t drunk that night (as had been speculated) or taking any drugs, and he was not lonely and he loves his wife.
And then some more pictures become public, of Weiner in a gym, and Weiner many years ago while in college. By this time, no one is asking questions about where they came from and who
had them, but only maybe if they are genuine, and Weiner’s not denying any of this and his face is in some.
Pressure now gets put on Anthony Weiner to resign from Congress, which he resists. President Obama states that if it was him, he would resign.
Weiner’s credibility is shot, and nobody wants
him to debate anyone about issues. Congress is in recess for that week. Reporters start wondering when and if Weiner is going to show up in Congress and what he’s going to do then. Weiner
has to show up if he doesn’t want to miss votes, and missing votes have become a big campaign issue and in general a big no-no for a member of Congress.
Weiner takes a “leave of absence” from Congress on the grounds he needs to go to rehab.
Weiner starts going round and round with reporters about entering a possible sex addiction rehab program, and speculation begins as to whether he can afford to resign, and what would happen to his district anyway. Slow motion progress is made towards starting an ethics investigation.
Weiner never shows up on the floor or in committee.
Who knows what threats and promises are made, but after about a week of this Weiner decides to resign from Congress, and after a few more days, he finally does.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/2/2012 @ 11:28 am