The Concord Monitor is reporting that NH Democrat Maureen Mann staffer Carl Robert Gibson’s lawyer is trying to get the election tampering charges against him dropped based on the premise that Gibson’s hoax email is protected by the first amendment.
Gibson’s attorney, Michael Iacopino, filed a motion Jan. 22 to dismiss the charges. He wrote that Gibson’s right to free speech was being violated because the press release can be “construed as protected speech and a commentary on the young age of a candidate as well as a comment on distractions such as being a college student that would detract from a candidate’s ability to do a good job as a public official.”
Here’s a question. Isn’t it a bit unusual for a professional left-wing activist, obsessed with being seen as such, to so deliberately hide the source of his commentary? Gibson wrote a formal press release. He used Yvonne Dean-Bailey’s name, email address, and contact phone number. He titled it “Yvonne Dean-Bailey concedes campaign.” He puts words in her mouth as a direct quote. He sent it to several press outlets. He tried to hide the source but was tracked down because he’d left some digital breadcrumbs.
The press release was written to advantage NH Democrat Maureen Mann’s campaign; to fool people into thinking that NH Democrat Maureen Mann’s opponent had dropped out just days before the vote, so that NH Democrat Maureen Mann would win the election.
When Gibson got caught, and then admitted to it, Mann’s campaign immediately distanced itself from Gibson’s protected “political speech,” insisting they had released their twitterer-in-chief ages ago over disagreements about how far left the campaign should go.
It is difficult to imagine anyone who could run farther left than NH Democrat Maureen Mann.
It is almost more difficult to imagine the press-loving rhetorical brick-thrower Carl Robert Gibson trying to hide his political speech.
But what I find hardest to believe is that Gibson did all this on his own, days before the election, to advantage a campaign and candidate that later claimed to have kicked him off their operation.
Gibson didn’t need to show them what he could do. He already considered (considers) himself a big deal in left-wing politics. This was one house race in a tiny state for a seat with 1-400th of a voice in the lower chamber of its legislature. I don’t think Gibson is the sort to just freelance that sort of thing on a whim, not even if he ‘had a few beers’ and was just making a joke.
It is much more likely that he was pulling a Billy Shaheen. Long time Clinton boot-licker Bill Shaheen (his wife is US Senator and Clinton boot-licker Jeanne Shaheen), made outrageous public statements about Barack Obama just days before the 2008 New Hampshire Primary to advantage Hillary Clinton. Bill didn’t hide, of course, but he did ‘step-down’ from his mostly honorary public perch in the Clinton Campaign as penance, but the feint worked. Hillary won New Hampshire and that was the point.
I believe Gibson was working for Maureen Mann and the state Democrat party and this was all orchestrated. If he got caught, and he was not supposed to get caught, the odds were that he’d get some free press for his edgy-activism and a slap on the wrist by a NH AG’s office notoriously soft on election law crimes, long after NH Democrat Maureen Mann had effectively stolen the election because of his efforts.
It didn’t work out that way and now Gibson has resorted to claims that he was just exercising his first amendment right…to commit identity fraud just days before an election (coincidentally) in which the candidate for whom he once worked would be the sole beneficiary.
Maybe the AG should try him for identify fraud on top of election tampering? While they are at it, isn’t impersonating a woman to keep her from elected office some sort of rape-like, war-on-women-misogynistic hate crime?
You’d think the Democrat women in New Hampshire would have been all over that?
[update – changed the picture and tweaked the text for clarity.]
Gibson’s fake press release.
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