The Daily Beast recently ran the smear story, “Disgraced Obama Aide is Working for RFK Jr. Super PAC” by their senior researcher, William Bredderman. Bredderman, displaying the little investigative prowess the Beast has at its disposal, began his headline by reminiscing incorrectly about the glory days when his target, PR consultant Trevor FitzGibbon was falsely tried in the media for rape and his accuser was investigated after for lying about it.
Because it’s an election year, Bredderman accused FitzGibbon of working for former President Obama as a lead-in toward stabbing at RFK Jr.’s campaign. FitzGibbon never worked for the Obama administration and was never an aide. My best guess is the author forgot to employ his Google finger while researching, and I’m being as kind as I can be about it at this point.
The headline is the highlight of the Daily Beast’s editorial commitment to fact-checking for this article and reasserts itself as one of the DNC’s finest private strategic communications and propaganda platforms.
Gearing up for the 2016 elections, the DNC went after FitzGibbon because he was backing Bernie Sanders’s campaign, not Hillary Clinton’s. With 2024 heating up, the media war environment looks like it is gearing up against supporters of RFK Jr. and Donald Trump since direct narratives against the candidates are failing miserably so far.
Let’s face it, Slow Joe Biden’s popular support is in dire need of CPR and a shot of adrenaline at this stage.
The only constant in FitzGibbon’s corner has been award-winning journalist Sharyl Attkisson and you can get updated on the story through her work. Unlike the Daily Beast or its junior fact-checker, Bredderman, Attkisson built her name on hard-hitting investigative stories solidly based on facts & evidence. Her work on this includes an interview with FitzGibbon called “Shades of Grey.”
FitzGibbon was targeted because his clients were the who’s who of progressive and centrist politics. At the top of this list was Clinton’s 2016 nemesis, Julian Assange. Like Assange and Wikileaks alumni Yakov Appelbaum, FitzGibbon was also falsely accused of sexual predatory crimes.
In FitzGibbon’s case, the #MeToo accusations piling up on him at the time quietly faded when his accusers realized they had legal and monetary liability issues as attorney Jesselyn Radack found out the hard way.
FitzGibbon wasn’t just found not guilty; his main accuser was countersued successfully and the judge’s decisions in two separate courts tossed the case because Jesselyn Radack lied. This means Bredderman and his editors lied throughout the article by building it from the accusations instead of relying ever so slightly on the facts or evidence.
Following their logic, we could accuse Bredderman and the Daily Beast of dealing crack cocaine or molesting sea urchins in the company fishbowl. It’s the outside-the-pale narrative that makes interesting headlines and cover art.
Should people’s lives or competitive political campaigns get soiled or ruined because of this low-life style of content creation? It can’t be classified as journalism.
On April 20, 2017, US Attorney Channing D. Phillips decided to close investigations of FitzGibbon, opting not to pursue any further actions against him. No civil lawsuits were ever filed against him or his firm, leaving many questioning the validity of the accusations.
This left Radack’s attorney, Gloria Allred, a little red in the face because in this case, the court sided with the law, not political memes.
In August 2018, Radack attempted to obtain multiple civil protection orders against FitzGibbon in a separate Washington D.C. court, arguing in one such attempt that the documentation of Radack’s text messages to FitzGibbon in the latter’s complaint amounted to “revenge porn.” These attempts were dismissed, in one such instance by Associate Judge J. Michael Ryan, who wrote:
Attorney Radack broke court orders and took the trial into social media. The Huff Post junk article damning FitzGibbon broke his business and he lost everything.
“In the instant case, Petitioner [Radack] apparently invokes sexual assault
as a jurisdictional basis, however offers no proof of a sexual assault.
Respondent’s [FitzGibbon] complaint from the Eastern District of Virginia
(EDVA) case, however, demonstrates a romantic relationship involving the
exchange of sexually explicit text messages during a certain period of
time. Moreover, Respondent’s testimony corroborated such an ongoing
romantic relationship. Petitioner fails to establish intent or malice as
required by Virginia’s criminal statute. Respondent credibly testified that
he filed the lawsuit in order to clear his name.”
Radack and her minions stalked Fitzgibbon over the course of years, Raymond Johansen took photos of FitzGibbon outside his home and posted them on social media in a threat campaign. This was only the beginning.
Does the Daily Beast’s William Bredderman know all this? Could Bredderman know all this? Should his editors have checked the accusations? Fortunately for the Daily Beast’s liability concerns, the answer is yes.
The Daily Beast’s minions then set out to spread the fire and enlisted another DNC mouthpiece, actor John Cusack. This wasn’t that weird until I noticed Cusack, whom I’ve never had contact with, preemptively blocked my twitter account so I couldn’t ask him about it.
John Cusack’s best known and highest regarded film to date remains the 1985 “Better off Dead” where he showcased his talents but was upstaged by the comedy relief newspaper boy.
Why John Cusack?
“In 2014, he traveled to Russia with Arundhati Roy and Daniel Ellsberg to meet with Edward Snowden. Roy and Cusack wrote a series of essays about their conversations with Snowden which they formed into the book Things That Can and Cannot Be Said. Cusack is still devoted to activism and it’s obvious he’s not happy just resting on his celebrity; he wants to make a real difference.”
At the time, Fitzgibbon worked for the Julian Assange Defense Committee as PR. He worked for Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald setting up media for Assange and Snowden around their disclosures.
Radack and others were trying to hijack the “Free Assange” movement and one way to do it was to get rid of Fitzgibbon who was handling PR and media appearances. The entire group Radack leveraged included over 70 activist groups that publicly defamed Fitzgibbon.
If Cusack is only familiar with their story, his position is understandable. This is a man who threw away his own Hollywood standing for his principles. Whether or not I agree with him on anything else is mute.
He helped set up the Freedom of the Press Foundation in response to Snowden & Assange’s situations. Going back to his article:
“The Foundation’s main goal is to keep hard-hitting journalism alive and protect the privacy of the journalists willing to deal with potentially dangerous subjects. Through crowdfunding, they help different press organizations stay afloat regardless of outside pressures. Cusack has written articles for the site and is clearly passionate about the issue of freedom of speech.”
This time, Cusack, not in film, but in real life, can keep his two dollars, look up the evidence, and offer up an apology showing he’s grown enough over the years to understand the damage he’s joined Bredderman in dealing to an innocent man and attempting to soil a political campaign.
Ultimately, the attempt to damage FitzGibbon is an attack on RFK’s campaign by the Democrats. The follow-up story, just a few days later, makes the point clear.
The tactics DNC mouthpieces use these days are getting out of hand. Whether or not you support RFK Jr., Donald Trump, or even Joe Biden, journalists and publications are supposed to have their feet held to fire when it comes to claiming 4th estate priority.
Is bias possible? It’s expected. Corruption is supposed to be disgusting. Criminal actions should evoke anger. But, and it’s a big but, we are expected to stand on facts, on evidence, not narratives.
Going forward, when does liability factor in for the gutless rehashing of old lies for bloggers like Bredderman and his editorial board?
This is the 3rd attack on members of Intelligencer’s editorial board using lies designed to ruin reputations through social media campaigns by mainstream publications. Why?
Trevor FitzGibbon is a member of the editorial board at Intelligencer. Producer Igor Lopatonok is another board member currently under attack.
We’re not sitting this one out and letting it happen.
How many of these add up to more politically driven legal investigations starting and eventually sputtering out again after they go nowhere, but costing everything for innocent people forced to defend themselves? Consider Donald Trump, Manafort, Papadopoulos, Stone, and the others.
Tony Lyons and American Values 2024 (the RFK Jr. super PAC) are standing behind FitzGibbon during this attack. How many other people would have taken the easy road instead?
We can’t afford the easy road anymore. It’s time to clean this mess up or bow down, give up, and watch more people raked over the coals, ultimately, because they dare to stand up for you.
George Eliason
