Oh, For Goodness Sake

The GOP Ops Behind Birther Lakin

Anyone paying attention during the 2000 presidential will remember this merry band:

In 2004, there were those fake John Kerry-Arlen Specter yard signs in Philadelphia.

LURKING BEHIND those mysterious John Kerry-Arlen Specter yard signs in Northeast Philadelphia is yet another spectre: Notorious national GOP consultant Roger Stone.

A political operative with some ties to Stone told the Daily News last night that the consultant – who chaired the Pennsylvania Republican senator’s abortive 1996 presidential bid – had been actively recruiting people to join a group called the Philadelphia Education Project.

The group’s lawyer, who contacted the Daily News yesterday, is a political operative named Paul Rolf Jensen who has worked closely with Stone on several campaigns. Jensen is also known for his efforts to oust gay and gay-friendly Presbyterian ministers.

And you may remember, in the 2008 presidential, the smear job on Michelle Obama, which promised the release of a “Whitey Tape” would blow up the race. This was made much of by the PUMAs, but the tape never appeared, because it didn’t exist.

The tricky dick who takes credit for this political mayhem, Roger Stone, bears a tattoo of Richard Nixon’s face on his back, which seems appropriate since his dirty tricks career began with CREEP and Watergate.

In 2008, Jeffrey Toobin profiled Stone for The New Yorker:

The capstone of Stone’s career, at least in terms of results, was the “Brooks Brothers riot” of the 2000 election recount. This was when a Stone-led squad of pro-Bush protestors stormed the Miami-Dade County election board, stopping the recount and advancing then-Governor George W. Bush one step closer to the White House.

Toobin mentions Stone’s lawyer in relation to Stone’s claims of involvement in Eliot Spitzer’s downfall:

The brouhaha over the phone call did little to faze Stone. Some weeks later, he was approached by a pair of F.B.I. agents who may have been in the early stages of an investigation of Spitzer. (Stone says that he doesn’t know why the F.B.I. sought him out.) Stone declined to speak with them, but on November 19, 2007, Stone’s attorney wrote to the agents and recounted the story that the woman had told him at Miami Velvet, including the part about the socks. (“Perhaps you can use this detail to corroborate Mr. Stone’s information,” the letter states.) Four months later, Spitzer resigned, after it was revealed that he was a client of the Emperors Club V.I.P., a prostitution ring.

Stone’s attorney, who wrote the letter on behalf of his client, was personal injury lawyer Paul Rolf Jensen.

Margaret Calhoun Hemenway is LTC Lakin’s spokesperson and represents the American Patriot Foundation, which has taken on Lakin’s cause, including paying his legal bills:

A former Congressional and Pentagon staffer, Hemenway currently writes for outlets such as Family Security Matters, a Web site affiliated with the Center for Security Policy, run by influential neo-conservative Frank Gaffney. (Gaffney himself has expressed some solidarity with the Birthers, and wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times in which he pronounced Obama our first Muslim president.)

One of the members of Congress Hemenway worked for is former Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., who served two terms before losing a reelection bid in 2002. Smith, who’d flirted with a run for Senate in his new Florida home recently but dropped out of the race, also happens to be the founder of the American Patriot Foundation.

Paul Rolf Jensen, whose law office is located in Orange County, California, as is the American Patriot Foundation, also worked for Senator Smith and is now representing Lakin.

In February, 2009, National Journal’s Under the Influence described Jensen and Smith as friends:

Former Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H, has a new project, called Americans for Accountability, or A4A, which debuted yesterday with a Freedom of Information Act request seeking “all Obama Administration documents and data pertaining to Sen. Tom Daschle’s tax evasion.” See here.

The group, which styles itself as an ethics watchdog, is described as a project of the American Patriot Foundation, a 501(c)(3) group, and is soliciting tax deductible contributions. That foundation was set up in 2003, by Smith and his friend Paul Rolf Jensen, a Costa Mesa, Calif. personal injury lawyer whose law office and the foundation share an address.

Smith told Salon’s Alex Koppelman that he has no current connection to the group. But the contact person for American Patriot Foundation is Sue Corrigan, the wife of Ed Corrigan, who was Smith’s Legislative Director. Margaret Hemenway’s father-in-law, John D. Hemenway, a Birther lawyer, whose case Hollister v. Soetoro recently lost on appeal, is listed as “registered agent” of the American Patriot Foundation. Paul Rolf Jensen is listed as Director/Secretary/Executive Director.

(Jensen and Margaret Hemenway also have homophobia in common.)

Yesterday, on G. Gordon Liddy’s show, (yes, that G. Gordon Liddy):

“Today, Lakin appeared on Liddy’s show with his attorney, identified as Paul Jensen.

Jensen said that Birther litigation around the country has been dismissed because of lack of standing. He then hinted — while declining, on the advice of his “good friend” the GOP operative Roger Stone, not to publicly detail his defense plans — that he would try to use discovery to demand birth documents from Obama.”

Other guests on the show included WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi, the activist behind the swift boat attacks on John Kerry in 2004.

What a cozy nest of vipers this is. Connect the dots, people, it’s a conspiracy!