Ben Tribbett’s Red Herring

Ben Tribbett, better known as Not Larry Sabato, has finally gone too far with yet another red herring.  After peddling a story to reporters that most were too smart touch, he finally has found an audience with Charlie Jackson from Leesburg Today (while reading the story, try not to get a headache from the poor grammar and sentence construction.) 

Ben is getting all self-righteous here:

Major story about to break about RPV’s involvement in the charges against Mark Tate…

I want to say one thing in advance. Under normal circumstances I always protect my sources. However I will not sit by while someone is charged with felonies and not reveal information that is critical to their defense. In this case that outweighs my source and their confidentiality.

Right…  This is all about correcting a miscarriage of justice.  No, professional poker player Ben Tribbett (yes, that is how he is described in several news accounts) is looking to take down RPV and Shaun Kenney all in an effort to advance an opportunity for Democrats to win a state senate seat.  This has nothing to do with Tate whatsoever and everything to do with who will control the state senate.

RPV is not involved “in the charges” against Mark Tate.  They didn’t bring the accusation.  They didn’t hand down the indictment.  At worst, they heard a leak (leaking is illegal, but not hearing it) and were trying to prepare how to deal with it.  I fail to see how this information would aid Tate in his defense against charges that he committed perjury and election fraud, let alone be “critical” to his defense.  (But hey, what do I know?  I’m just an attorney admitted in three jurisdictions and before the U.S. Supreme Court, not a professional poker player.)  This is nothing but a red herring being perpetrated by Ben in an attempt to get back at Shaun in advance of an upcoming story where Shaun slams Ben on blogging ethics.

We’ve known this was coming for several days having heard about it from those who spurned the story and knew he would be trying to pull this stunt no later than this coming Monday if he couldn’t get a newspaper reporter to bite.  Sources close to Shaun have told us that this is

an outright lie and serves no purpose but to help Ben’s ego and destroy the career of a good man. Why? Because Ben’s been called out numerous times by Shaun in the past. Because Ben wasn’t allowed special access to the 28th District Primary. Because Shaun has been quoted as questioning Ben’s blogging ethics.

But also because Ben has never passed up the opportunity to destroy a Republican. “Felix Macacawitz”, McDonnel’s “Jiffy Law” Degree, . . . and on and on and on. He gets away with it time and time again because there has been no concentrated effort to truly call him out . . .

For his part, Shaun Kenney is quoted in the article as saying

“[We were] hearing it from activists on the ground on both ends,” Kenney said today. “We’d hear it from the campaign staff on both sides. We heard it from unit committee volunteers. We’d hear it from outside the district … and Democrats kind of licking their chops as well.”

There is one way to find out exactly what Shaun wrote to Ben.  Release the email, Ben.  Let’s see it and judge for ourselves. Even then, whatever Shaun may have known or may have passed along, he was under no legal obligation to maintain secrecy.

Shaun put it best in the article when he said

“There is only so many people that can know about [a pending indictment],” Kenney said. “The direct routes are [Loudoun] Commonwealth’s Attorney, [Jim Plowman], [special prosecutor] Matt Britton and anybody on the grand jury. All three of those parties go to jail if they talk.”

If there was a leak, then that is the real story here, not RPV or Shaun Kenney.