R.I.P. “Not Larry Sabato”

The afternoon of May 31, 2007, the blog known as Not Larry Sabato passed away after suffering from a giant spasm.  The cause of death is believed to be reality crashing into delusions of grandeur.

Okay, seriously now.  The headline of “Was RPV Involved in Tate Charges?” and the attempt to implicate RPV Communications Dir. Shaun Kenney in this is just plain sad.  In doing so, Ben Tribbett admits that he will blow a source’s confidentiality in order to further his party’s political prospects.  No one should ever trust Ben Tribbett again that he will maintain their confidentiality and that my friends is the death of a blog such as his.

May 2nd- Shaun Kenney (RPV Communications Director) leaks to me that Ed Gillespie, Ken Cuccinelli, and Mike Farris all have asked Mark Tate to drop out if his indicted. He also gives me the date of May 22nd when Tate will be indicted. I put the update to this post up (no names crossed out at the time- see below for why).

May 2nd (2 hours later)- Mark Tate calls me and confirms that Ed Gillespie (RPV Chairman) has called him and asked him to drop out if he is indicted, but he knows nothing of any potential indictment other than what he has read on the internet. Tate also tells me that Ken Cuccinelli and Mike Farris did not call him.

Here’s something to consider.  It was no secret that complaints had been made against Tate and an investigation was underway.  Guess what else?  Grand juries meet only on specific days and they have expiration dates.  While I don’t know when this particular grand jury was scheduled to meet or when its expiration date is/was, it is entirely possible to determine when an indictment could be handed down based upon a grand jury’s schedule.  While everyone is running around saying there must have been a leak, it is equally if not more likely that people were able to do simple math and put the pieces of this puzzle together.  (Didn’t anybody else read The Hardy Boys or Encyclopedia Brown when they were kids?)  Not everyone has to be spoonfed all their information.  In fact, quite a few people still use something called “deductive reasoning.”  (One other possibility does exist — the target of an investigation can speak about it even though the prosecutor and grand jury are bound to silence.  Tate’s campaign manager has been quoted heavily in many of these stories.  Coincidence?)

Take note — Ben claims that Tate is asked to drop out by these individuals only if he is indicted.  They do not unconditionally ask him to drop out.

Next up –

May 3rd- A document that RPV claims has nothing to do with Mark Tate is drafted. It is “procedures if a candidate is indicted”. Details of that are in Leesburg Today article.

May 21st- Mark Tate receives a call from a friend in the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office telling him to be at the courthouse the next morning.

May 22nd- Mark Tate indicted on eleven felony counts.

Soon After- RPV claims their new policy has nothing to do with Tate and was drafted before he became an issue. However it is in a Microsoft Word Document which shows a “created” time-stamp of May 3rd.

RPV would have been STUPID if they hadn’t drafted such a document in advance of this happening.  They would also have been STUPID if they had said this was in response to the investigation into Tate and a likely indictment.  What if Tate wasn’t indicted and went on to win the nomination?  RPV did exactly the right thing here.

Week of May 23rd-May 29th- I confer with local reporters and tell them what I know and where I know it from in order to allow Mark Tate to defend himself from these anonymous attacks.

May 30th (Afternoon)- Local media contacts Shaun Kenney and he denies speaking to me since the “anti-semitic flyer” and “macaca” last year. He especially denies talking to me on May 2nd.

May 30th (Evening)- I forward emails showing he was lying about that contact.

May 31st- Kenney’s story changed when reporter calls him back.

This is where Ben’s bubble bursts.  Point one — what anonymous attacks against Tate?  At this point, he has been indicted, it is public and everyone knew who brought the complaint.  What other “attacks” is he talking about?  Point two — did no other reporter think this was newsworthy?  That is the feedback that we’d heard from news sources that had already spurned what Ben was peddling over the past week.  Point three — of course Shaun would initially deny he had spoken with Ben.  He had provided Ben with this information as a confidential source and if he did not know that Ben had violated that confidentiality, then he would have been protecting Ben’s story by denying this contact.  Upon learning that Ben had violated that confidentiality, Shaun freely admitted to having provided him with that information.

It is clear that the only mistake that Shaun Kenney made in this entire process was trusting Ben Tribbett and treating him like a reporter.  Republican elected officials, candidates, party officials, bloggers, etc. should all keep this instance in mind when deciding if they should even deal with Ben Tribbett anymore.