This epic boondoggle feels like a bad Victorian novel, with about nineteen hundred players, most of them ruthless bastards who lie and cheat their way to the top. In this case, the very top, as in The President of the United States. What links these devious pricks, from the current White House occupant to garden-variety criminals, is former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the racist policies he’s most identified with: immigrant bashing and birtherism.
That old turd’s stink just won’t go away, even after his bigly drubbing at the ballot box last year. This week Arpaio announced a new organization that’ll do something—“what” he isn’t sure—if nativists everywhere just send him money. Now another debunked Arpaio stunt, one that’s right up there with birtherism (he’s still a believer), has resurfaced on “InfoWars” to justify Trump’s claim that Obama spied on him.
Last month, March 19 and 20, Alex Jones took time out from pissing on Sandy Hook victims to hawk another wacko theory—this one concocted by Sheriff Arpaio’s flunkies, probably to disguise their incompetent, obviously unethical and perhaps illegal “investigative” work. Although this nutter conspiracy was disproven by the press and disavowed by the people who once believed it, Jones now calls it proof that “they were spying on Trump.”
According to the theory, Arpaio's office had proof that Trump was under federal surveillance during the mid-2000s. Trump's name was among millions of phone records and bank transactions that the government supposedly harvested from major telecommunications companies and banks, according to the claim.
All of the dots in this story, from Arpaio to Trump and everyone in between, are connected by one racist line: at one end is anti-immigrant BS, at the other birtherism. Not just your standard GOPer who blabbers about getting tough at the border and may have flirted with the birth certificate hubbub. No, this bunch is hardcore Mexican haters and the emperors of Birther Nation.
- Joe Arpaio, Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona; warm-up act for Trump’s Arizona appearances; self-appointed birther king; convicted criminal
- Tim Blexith, very conservative, very wealthy businessman who despises Obama
- Jerome Corsi, Partner in Arpaio’s birther investigation; author of Where’s the Birth Certificate? Current D.C. Bureau Chief for Alex Jones’ “InfoWars”
- Larry Klayman, Lawyer and Arpaio supporter; founder of Freedom Watch; Fox News talking head
- Alex Jones, disturbed person with a microphone; friend of President Trump
- Dennis Montgomery, Con-man masquerading as computer and intelligence expert
- Judge Murray Snow, Judge for the two trials that convicted Arpaio of racial profiling and contempt of court
- Donald Trump, Peckerhead-in-Chief, says Joe Arpaio is a “good man” (like Bill O’Reilly)
- Mike Zullo, Lead investigator for Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse; brother birther
Except for Judge Snow, there’s less than one degree of separation for every dorp on the list, and Trump-Arpaio bookends them all. Trump stepped onto the political stage this cycle telling us we “won’t believe” what his investigators in Hawaii are discovering as they look into Obama’s birth certificate (answer: zilch), then he rode down an escalator to Trumpsplain Mexican rapists and murderers.
At the other end of the country, Sheriff Joe Arpaio anointed himself, a county sheriff in a distant state, the Grand Inquisitor of presidential birthplaces, using men like Corsi and Zullo to research Obama’s background and documents. He still maintains the birth certificate is fake. The 84-year-old former (yea!) lawman is mostly known, of course, as a bonkers anti-immigrant shitstain.
Birthers and Mexican haters, Trump and Arpaio, joined at their bigoted hips. Together again on “InfoWars.”
Phoenix New Times exposed this crackpot scheme in a series of 2014-15 stories. Almost everyone involved eventually disavowed their belief in the theory. Now Alex Jones is digging it up and promoting the lie, because that’s what he does.
Here’s a Reader’s Digest version, omitting a lot: Wealthy conservative Obama-hater Tim Blexith told Arpaio in 2013 that he knew a former government employee who had proof the Feds are collecting data on millions of Americans. Blexith identified his contact as Dennis Montgomery, who was once featured in a 2009 Playboy article titled “The Man Who Conned the Pentagon.” That should’ve been a hint to Arpaio. Blinded by his hatred of Obama, it wasn’t.
Blexith said he saw Montgomery’s list of surveilled Americans, a huge database of hundreds of millions of names: politicians, judges, entertainers and business tycoons like Donald Trump. When the story broke in 2013, Trump was just another name on the list, a TV personality and world class cheat. Today Alex Jones says Montgomery’s database proves that Trump was right when he tweeted last month that Obama is a “Bad (or sick) guy!” for spying on him.
Even though: a) Montgomery’s database was worthless junk, which Arpaio, Zullo and others admitted in court; b) the reported surveillance occurred between 2004 and 2007, when Barack Obama was a US Senator from Illinois and Donald Trump was pitching wine, long ties and useless diplomas; and c) no credible person or agency, including the FBI, backs Trump’s phony tapp claim.
But in 2013 Arpaio didn’t know Dennis Montgomery’s data was bogus, and, importantly, at the time the sheriff was in the middle of another big court battle, one that would result in a conviction and help to end his 24-year assault on the Constitution. Arpaio probably didn’t give a hoot about Trump appearing in the database, but when Blexith told him that Judge Murray Snow’s name was also there, the sheriff bit, because Judge Snow was presiding over Arpaio’s contempt of court trial, and things weren’t going the sheriff’s way.
Now Arpaio really wanted the damaging info that Montgomery had in Seattle, so he dispatched Mike Zullo to the Northwest to collect 50 hard drives that supposedly contained the incriminating data. Arpaio’s office would eventually pay Montgomery around $120,000 for this “evidence.” As payments dribbled in, Montgomery probably had every incentive to keep the investigation alive, so he promised even more sensational discoveries, like proof that the president’s birth certificate is forged.
Even more enticing, Montgomery said he had evidence that Judge Snow was conspiring with AG Eric Holder to take down the Arizona sheriff! Arpaio bit even harder because he really needed Judge Snow removed from his contempt trial. In a previous hearing Judge Snow had ruled that Sheriff Arpaio’s office was guilty of racial profiling, and he clearly was no fan of Arpaio’s police state tactics. Here Arpaio was again before Judge Snow, arguing that he should not be held in contempt for disobeying Judge Snow’s earlier order to quit being a racist dick. He failed.
A Bush appointee to the federal bench, Judge Murray Snow has never been threatened by Arpaio’s previous assaults on the judiciary, and the sheriff certainly considered him the enemy, so Arpaio would’ve been all ears when Montgomery said he had evidence of a Snow-Holder illegal conspiracy. Arpaio couldn’t let up, going so far as to spy on the judge’s wife to get dirt on her husband. And then Sheriff Arpaio had to confess to that bombshell revelation in Judge Snow’s courtroom. You can’t make this shit up.
When Arpaio’s extra-curricular activities came out at the trial, like his birther BS, sending investigators to Seattle and spying on a judge’s wife, it was inevitable that Dennis Montgomery’s name would pop up. So when the story of 50 hard drives chock full of damaging evidence surfaced in court, Arpaio told Judge Snow that Montgomery didn’t provide any helpful data, just names that meant nothing. Montgomery had conned Arpaio just like he conned the Pentagon. Earlier an exasperated Mike Zullo, who’d been hounding the Seattle sleuth for the promised implicating data, finally sent Montgomery an email saying the material he had sent “was all BS.” Zullo also forwarded testimony from former NSA employees who examined Montgomery’s computer drives and found his story “a complete and total FRAUD.”
So, Montgomery provided nothing, which Arpaio and Zullo testified to during the sheriff’s 2014 contempt trial. Montgomery’s computer drives held gibberish—no massive government surveillance of US citizens, no evidence Trump was spied on by the Feds, nor any proof that Judge Snow and Obama’s DOJ were plotting to get the sheriff. And certainly nothing that vindicates lying White House tweeters.
Still, those findings didn’t stop Arpaio’s pal Larry Klayman from spewing the lie about the NSA and CIA spying on Trump during a Fox Business News interview on February 15, citing Dennis Montgomery’s discredited database as evidence. Then last month, just a few days after Trump tweeted that “sick guy” Obama was spying on him, Mike Zullo was on “InforWars” for two episodes, explaining to Alex Jones that Montgomery’s list of names, which he previously called “all BS,” vindicates Trump. The previous history was ignored. Jones then hired Jerome Corsi, Arpaio’s partner in the birther bullshit, to head his Washington DC bureau and write the “InfoWars” story about Obama’s surveillance of Trump.
This all-boys club of birthers and immigrant haters includes other key figures, from Arpaio’s deputies and lawyers, to poopyhead Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobash, co-author of Arizona’s “papers please” law, whose 2010 passage probably gave Arpaio one of his last hard-ons. All of the players in this saga, though, scratch at the same racist scab, and beneath festers Donald Trump.
He likely first heard about the Obama wiretap story on “InfoWars,” and now that same cesspool of hate broadcasts bogus bullpuckey to justify Trump’s tweets, which simply parrot Alex Jones. A perpetual circle jerk of hate.