Democratic Congressman Mike Honda (CA-17) filed a lawsuit in Federal court accusing challenger Ro Khanna and his campaign manager, Brian Parvizshahi of stealing campaign donor data and using it to contact Mike Honda’s supporters. The data included donor information of over 10,000 contacts, as well as campaign notes and donors’ personal information. This data represents years of campaign research and strategy the Honda campaign called “invaluable.”
The Honda campaign provided logs with “digital fingerprints” apparently showing Parvizshahi accessing the data since the 2014 election to the current election, and examples of Parvizshahi and Khanna contacting people from the Honda data using their private email accounts. While the Honda lawsuit appears to be concise and focused with the goal of quickly obtaining a court order to stop Khanna’s continued use of the data, I have found this to be only part of the story. The other part of the story is the campaign’s harassment, invasion of privacy, and intimidation of Honda’s supporters and other private citizens.
RevUp
Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show the Khanna campaign uses software based on a fundraising strategy created by Karl Rove to avoid the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulations banning corporations from giving directly to Federal candidates. RevUp is a high-tech automated software version of Rove’s strategy. The software created by Ro Khanna’s Campaign Chair, Steven Spinner, spiders through consumer data, political and charitable contributions creating profiles of possible donors. Khanna has used this software very effectively by claiming he doesn’t take PAC money yet bundles large amounts directly from Hedge Fund managers, Venture Capitalists, and Corporate executives. While he takes no money from lobbyists, he does take it directly from the owners of lobbying firms.
Here are some of the easily found examples:
$31,200 — Accel/KKR venture capitalists
$21,200 — Blackstone Group hedge fund managers
$22,600 — Sutter Hill Ventures venture capitalists
$27,600 — Wilson Sonsini corporate attorneys
This is a very small sample and only goes through 6/30/16, last quarter’s reports won’t be public for another week. Out of the many hundreds of Congressional candidates in the country Ro Khanna is #1 with Wall Street type funders. Read more at the Center for Responsive Politics.
While this should be concerning to those supporting Khanna who claim to be working to get money out of politics, I believe it should be a concern to all citizens of his district and beyond that may have found themselves caught up by his campaign of harassment and intimidation. Below I will share stories that I believe voters need to hear. The invasion of privacy at this level, by a congressional candidate is unsettling.
First, who am I? As Khanna well knows because we discussed this at a meeting he requested after the last election, my name is Glen, and I am a plumber. He asked if I was connected with South Bay Labor, Cindy Chavez and Ben Field. No, I’m not. He asked if I worked for Daily Kos. I do not. And although my wife, 12 year-old daughter and I canvass for and blog about Congressman Mike Honda, I do not work for his or any campaign – we are novice volunteers. My articles are based on public records or events; FEC reports, news articles, Facebook posts, forums, etc. I requested to receive press releases from the Honda campaign, but don’t believe they send them all to me. I proudly do my own research anyway.
While I’ve heard many rumors of the Khanna campaign’s possible theft of email addresses it wasn’t until February 4, 2016 when I found myself added to Khanna’s email list that I started to dig into this story. I was able to trace it back to the Santa Clara County Democratic Club, which my wife and I are members of. A club officer contacted the Khanna campaign to inquire how this happened and I received this explanation:
“On the morning of January 27, Bill sent out the official CD-17 club endorsement vote results to the entire membership.
The problem was that instead of a "blind email" (e.g., to "The Members"), his email accidentally showed ALL the members' emails. The recipients’ list was public. Oops. It happens.
What happened then (as explained by Ro’s campaign manager Brian Parvizshahi) is that all of the recipients from Ro’s personal Gmail account that he’s ever sent emails to go into his contacts list, and his contacts list in turn automatically gets run through a program [*] and is put on the campaign email list. That is what happened here too. “When a mass email goes out like the one below where names aren't bcc’d, the emails get caught up as well.”
However, to avoid unwanted campaign emails, the campaign voluntarily went through Bill’s (non-BCC) email recipients’ list and is now removing from the campaign email list anyone who is either a known Honda supporter or with an unknown preference in this race. Brian told me that they would be doing those removals tonight. So you should not be getting any more such emails.”
* Note that Brian admits to Khanna using this software on his personal email account. This is important.
Despite Parvizshahi’s promise, I and other Honda supporters were never removed and one told of trying to unsubscribe only to find himself added back to the campaign’s system. A note of irony: the second email I received sent through the campaign was from District Attorney Jeff Rosen with the subject line, “Integrity We Need.”
While some may see this as an innocent mistake or claim they often receive unsolicited emails from candidates, they may not understand from where those emails come from. I receive emails from Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton even though I’ve never donated or signed up to their campaigns. But if you read at the bottom you will find these were “Paid for by” and sent by the GOP, DNC or other groups. It seems to me the use of personal accounts by Parvizshahi and Khanna for campaign purposes may be or should be a violation of FEC rules.
In March it all started to become clearer with another example of possible theft of contact information and a Bloomberg article explaining the software, RevUp. On March 3rd Rep. Honda’s new field director sent an email to their list of volunteers. About 5 hours later people began receiving an email sent by Parvizshahi using his personal email account, “We have always respected Mike Honda's service to the country. But […]” with a link to volunteer at the Khanna campaign. A few days later they found themselves added to the campaign’s email system.
Then on March 23 Bloomberg published an article on Steve Spinner and his RevUp software.
After a year of beta testing, RevUp recently launched its data analytics software, into which anyone—candidate, staff, volunteer fundraiser—can upload a list of personal contacts from Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn, or other sources, along with the candidate or cause for which he is raising money. The software then spiders through records aggregated from thousands of public and private websites and databases, checking the names against everything from dozens of public-election databases (such as the Federal Election Commission’s), to political groups (the Federalist Society, the Sierra Club), to thousands of charities and nonprofits (Boys & Girls Clubs, the Ms. Foundation for Women), even to colleges and universities.
You may know that your colleague drives a Prius and seems like she might support Sanders. RevUp can tell you that she also went to Stanford, joined the Sierra Club, loves skiing and poodles, and wrote Bernie a $500 check last fall.
While this level of intrusion may be unnerving even to the donors and those who willingly signed up to the Khanna campaign, it appears he may have also used this software on others without their knowledge.
One story shared with me involves a commenter on the Khanna Campaign’s Facebook page who disagreed with his post. The comment was deleted by Khanna but the individual received a “friend request” from Khanna’s personal Facebook page. The request was denied. The person made another comment on the same page, which was again deleted. This person later began receiving campaign emails at their personal account and an account used through a non-profit; an account not permitted to be used for political purposes. I’m withholding this person’s name. However, they did share part of their story publicly on my wife’s MoveOn petition requesting the Mercury News withdraw their endorsement of Ro Khanna. This is not the only story told to me of Khanna using his personal Facebook page to contact people. He even sent me a “friend request” after the last election but I denied that request.
I’ve seen on social media and in person Khanna asking people to contact him at his personal email address. Once you email him he can create a profile of you to better frame his message. Maybe you are a Bernie Sanders supporter, you might get, “The DNC and establishment is trying to keep me from winning, I need your help […].” Or perhaps you buy a lot of tech gadgets or work at a tech company; you might get, “I have wide support from Silicon Valley and the Tech industry […].” And if you’re a Honda supporter you get, “I’ve always respected Mike Honda, but […].”
One can only wonder how many people accepted requests for a “private conversation” from this congressional candidate. How many were excited and thought they were having a casual conversation, person to person, with this congressional candidate? How many were left feeling they had experienced some kind of personal connection with this congressional candidate that really seemed to “understand” them?
If the idea that a congressional candidate would use this software on somebody that posted a dissenting comment on Facebook is not disturbing enough, the Khanna campaign of intimidation goes even further. When I saw a comment posted on an article at East Bay Citizen, “I was a victim of Khanna's troll army in 2014. After I criticized his ties to Ron Conway. Khanna's campaign manager contacted my employer, a small non profit, that could be subjected to funding issues if powerful interest of the kind that back Ro wish it so.” I reached out to Guillermo through a mutual friend. Here is the story he shared with me.
Guillermo worked with a renters’ rights organization during the previous election cycle. He knew some of Khanna’s field staff from working on Obama’s ’08 campaign. Based on their suggestion, he decided to give “Ro a shot,” but found he was not impressed with his platform. Not living in the district and time limited due to work, he took to social media in support of Rep. Honda. But at the request of a Khanna staffer he had a “friendly relationship” with he backed off.
When his friend left the field operation, he no longer had incentive “to ignore Ro saying he was a progressive while owing his financials to the likes of Peter Thiel and Ron Conway,” and made his feelings known on Twitter. Andy Wong of 270 Strategies and Khanna’s previous Regional Field Director took notice of Guillermo’s tweets.
Guillermo became uncomfortable when Andy mentioned his boss and claimed he “was putting [the non-profit] at risk of defunding.” After Guillermo discussed this with his boss, he was advised to stay away from that conversation all together, effectively silencing him.
Guillermo said he emailed Ro Khanna asking for an explanation, but Khanna never replied.
Khanna has many powerful backers in the Indo-American community. I’ve been told he applies high levels of pressure to gain their support and continues with pressure if they don’t switch to him. One person shared a story of Khanna personally threatening his “career and future” if he didn’t help Khanna win the election. This person provided documentation of Khanna’s attempts to apologize in which Khanna claimed, “this [the election] is very important to me.”
During the previous election I wrote many articles covering the race and was a very active Khanna dissenter on Twitter. I understood that some I was tussling with were Khanna’s paid staff but later realized almost all of them were. For the most part it seemed fairly innocent even if heated at times, it was never personal. But this election has a darker feel.
Early in this election Khanna announced the hiring of Shallman Communications from Southern California. A quick Google search brought up many stories about the firm and its President, John Shallman. As a citizen blogger one story gave me pause. In 2013 a small community newspaper obtained documents showing that a client of Shallman Communications had used her government office to hold campaign related meetings, including with John Shallman. At the press conference somebody from Shallman Communications provided reporters with an envelope containing the arrest records of the reporter that broke the story. Not a story I wanted to hear as I was gearing up to cover the 2016 election.
Despite this and some other disturbing stories I heard, I remained determined to cover this race. And honestly, I’m just too stubborn to stop anyway. In May, I with another witness filed an FEC complaint against Khanna for stealing our email addresses. Khanna having received a copy was very aware that I was on to his abusive and possibly illegal use of the RevUp software and would have good reason to discourage or discredit me.
Pushback from the Khanna Campaign, supporters and media has increased this election, some getting aggressive and personal. Here are just a few recent examples:
Recently the group, FUN Progressives accused me of being a “Honda payroll troll.” I even found attacks on my wife at a news site, “Oh the Honda trolls are out in full force!! LOL!!! I feel sorry for GlenThePlumber and his wife, LF. The police will likely need to do a wellness check on both of them in November […].” The thing is, the LF mentioned in this comment is not my wife, although those are her initials and mine are GS.
When I wrote my article based on many hours of research detailing the right-wing money flooding into the Khanna campaign - $500,000 in the first 9 months, San Jose Inside countered with an article within days. With a likely nudge from the Khanna Campaign they reported that Honda too had received money from right-wing donors, a whooping $120,000 over five years. Sorry, but that doesn’t even begin to compare with what I found. One local journalist called the SJI article, “embarrassing.”
Not long after I posted an article using “exclusive” in the title because it was based on my own research, Politico posted an announcement of a Khanna endorsement as “exclusive.” I’ve never seen a serious reporter claim “exclusive” when reporting a simple endorsement. Maybe it would be appropriate if it were God endorsing. But the announcement seems to have backfired anyway when Khanna linked it to a fundraiser for himself.
What do you want to bet Andrea has now been run through Khanna’s software?
A few weeks ago I began to receive pushback at Daily Kos. I believed in violation of site rules some of the comments were from people not disclosing their connections to the Khanna campaign. You can see in this linked comment thread the commenter at first wasn’t completely familiar with the case. But as the conversation continued it was as if they were being fed information from the campaign. Eventually they posted a comment using different phrasing, a use of language I was very familiar with because it was said to me before, almost verbatim. The person who had said it to me is not the person connected to that account.
It was in my next article, “Evidence points to campaign finance fraud by Khanna’s Campaign Co-Chair” that the site finally caught Khanna’s Campaign Manager creating sock puppet accounts to attack me. The site’s owner, Markos Moulitsas publicly called out campaign manager Brian Parvizshahi and banned the accounts. Just a few days ago another account was banned after again being suspected as connected to the Khanna campaign.
Following the announcement of Rep. Honda’s lawsuit, Khanna filed a motion asking to delay the trial until after the election. The motion was denied, but while reading through Khanna’s motion I found this, “it [the Honda Campaign] held a press conference before it served the complaint, and started an email petition requesting that the Mercury-News withdraw its endorsement of Ro Khanna […].” The petition mentioned was not an “email petition” and was not created by the Honda Campaign. It is a MoveOn petition created by my wife and I; her name is clearly listed on the petition as its creator. As explained above, Khanna is very aware of who we are, and that we do not work for the Honda campaign.
My wife and I believe this was an effort to discredit and intimidate us. By calling us the “Honda Campaign,” people would read my articles based on my own research as the work of a “Honda payroll troll.” My wife was very disturbed and concerned that she might be called into Federal Court to defend herself against Khanna’s bogus claim.
Being but a plumber and not a lawyer, I’m struggling to find the proper legal term for what appears to be a “willful untruth.”
I know that lawyers are very careful with the words they use: shall, may, has, etc. They all have specific legal meanings. So if I were to find in Khanna’s motion that his campaign “has taken” voluntary remedial steps to support a delay, including creating a new email list “only from sources it can immediately verify”, this would mean the emails would stop. Except I and other Honda supporters were still receiving emails from his campaign even after the motion was filed.
Here are some questions that I think deserve answers:
The Khanna Campaign admitted to running the members of the Santa Clara County Democratic Club through this software, how many others have unknowingly been run through it?
Did they run the contacts they stole from the Honda Campaign through the software?
How many names acquired on Facebook and other social media sites did they run through the software?
How many dissenters did they run through the software?
Did Khanna violate his TOS agreement with NGP VAN when he added us to their system without permission?
Will NGP VAN look into this?
Will the local media look into this?
Will the FEC look into this?
Who will protect the privacy of those added to Khanna’s software system without their permission?
To be clear, I’ve seen no indication that Steve Spinner or anybody else besides Brian Parvizshahi was aware of Khanna’s questionable use of the RevUp software. But I do hope that he and other Khanna endorsers denounce this behavior that I find – to quote one of Brian’s sock puppets – “inappropriate and unbecoming of being a Dem.”
::drops mic::
Update: Less than two hours after posting this I received another Khanna email.
Please sign our petition.
San Jose Mercury News: Withdraw your endorsement of Ro Khanna
Residents of Silicon Valley have had their privacy invaded and been harassed by the Ro Khanna campaign. As the paper of record for Silicon Valley, your endorsement betrays the community’s trust in you. We ask you to withdraw your endorsement of Ro Khanna.
Learn more about the CA17 race at these links:
Ro Khanna reveals an ideology seemingly known by his funders, but maybe not the voters ~ Glen The Plumber
How can Ro Khanna handle the duties of Congress if he can’t even pay his staff ~ Glen The Plumber
Exclusive interview with Honda whistleblower ~ East Bay Citizen
No, Ro Khanna you are not like Bernie Sanders ~ Glen The Plumber
Judge Denies Ro Khanna’s Motion to Delay Hearing on Charges Stemming from Mike Honda Lawsuit ~ India-West
I can be contacted at GlenThePlumberDK@gmail.com