More Gray-Gorman lies - Watchdog Retracts Nothing

When will the campaign of David Gray and Kathleen Gorman stop pretending that they are this website?  More importantly, when will Gray and Gorman start obeying New Jersey election law and put a disclaimer on their ridiculous attempts at impersonation?

The election is less than a week away.  Here's what you need to know:

Freeholder candidates David Gray and Kathleen Gorman were recruited to run by the three Freeholders who voted for the taxpayer-funded bailout of the Sussex solar project that went bust last year.   That is a fact that nobody disputes.

http://www.njherald.com/story/29199152/solar-project-payments-may-have-skirted-federal-law

Then, those same three Freeholders (Vohden, Crabb, and Mudrick) held a big fundraiser for Gray and Gorman.  Insiders from Morris County showed up to lend their support, making Gray and Gorman the candidates of the corrupt Morris County grease machine.  That's another fact beyond dispute.

Gray is being sued under New Jersey's Conscientious Employee Protection Act.  The plaintiff, Juliette Bresnahan, is a single-mother of three who worked full-time as the office manager of David Gray's law firm.   Here's what the lawsuit alleges: 

". . . around mid-October 2015, Gray informed Bresnahan that he received a tax bill for around $62,000.  Gray indicated that he was unsure how he would pay this bill. . .

. . . Gray's directive was aimed at intentionally falsifying and fraudulently increasing the bills to generate more revenue to the firm to extricate it from its current financial predicament."

Read the entire complaint against Gray here.

Candidate Gorman outs self as impersonator

The 2016 race for two Sussex County Freeholder seats has proved to be the strangest and most dysfunctional in memory.  Yesterday evening took a new turn, when an email blast purportedly from "Watchdog" turned out to have been signed by Freeholder candidate Kathy Gorman.  The blast also contained a false address -- either that or the Sussex County candidate has moved south from Wantage, New Jersey, to New Hope, Pennsylvania.

So now we know who at least one of the figures are behind those fictitious email blasts that claim to be coming from us.  The longer-term problem for candidate Gorman is that it looks like at least one of those blasts broke the law.

On Tuesday, March 30, 2016, an email carrying the same identifiers as the one signed by Kathy Gorman was published and distributed -- claiming to be from Freeholder George Graham.   George Graham did not send this email.  The email was designed to harm Freeholder Graham's candidacy, did not include a disclaimer, and a fake address was listed.

New Jersey law prohibits the impersonation of a candidate:

NJSA 19:34-66. Knowing production, transmittal or dissemination of mass communication which appears to originate from or be on behalf of campaign of candidate for purpose of impeding campaign

No person shall knowingly produce, transmit or disseminate any election advertisement, literature or other mass communication in any medium, including but not limited to newspapers, magazines, printed circulars, television, radio, movies, telephone, telegraph, billboards and signs, which purports to or appears to originate from, or be on behalf of, the campaign of a candidate for public office or party position, for the purpose of impeding the campaign of such candidate while failing to reveal specifically in such communication that he is acting under the instructions of, or on behalf of, another candidate or such other candidate's paid or volunteer campaign staff; provided, however, that this section shall not apply to any owner, manager, editor, publisher, reporter or employee of any newspaper, magazine, periodical or other publication or of any radio or television station who, in the course of his duties, publishes or broadcasts any such advertisement, literature or mass communication.

L.1975, c. 190, s. 3, eff. Aug. 16, 1975.

This could be a very serious matter for candidate Gorman.  This email actually used Graham's identity so that it appeared as if it had been sent from him.  Two recent cases, one involving a campaign in Passaic County, the other a campaign in Monmouth County, illustrate the pitfalls of hijacking a candidate's identity.

Man pleads guilty to deceptive phone calls (The Record, February 21, 2012)

Prosecutors: 4 A.M. Robocalls In NJ Senate Race Were Placed By Rival Campaign (CBS, New York, August 12, 2014)

Will there be another guilty plea?  Stay tuned. . .

Freeholder candidate in serious trouble?

Another email was circulated yesterday claiming to be from Watchdog.  Only we didn't authorize it or send it.  The physical address that appeared on the email was false.  It included the town of New Hope, Pennsylvania, in an apparent effort to implicate Senator Oroho's consultant.

In past emails, the address of an attorney from Somerset County, Frank Whittlesey, was listed as the physical address.  Whittlesey works for the Somerset County Freeholder Board and is affiliated with that county's improvement authority -- the same agency connected with the solar deal that has cost Sussex County taxpayer's millions. 

Watchdog has been the victim of several of these emails.  Freeholder George Graham likewise had his identity stolen.  These emails always carry the same message of hate for Freeholder Graham.  He is their target.

Yesterday's email contained a copied column from another blog -- CNJ Politics -- that was pasted into the body of the email.  Watchdog contacted one of the owners of the CNJ Politics website, which no longer operates.  Watchdog explained what was happening and the owner told us that CNJ Politics used advanced software for tracking and identifying its readers.

The owner checked for us and found that CNJ Politics had only been accessed twice since December 31, 2015.  Just two people on planet earth had gone to that website and guess what they had accessed?  Yep, they accessed the exact same column that was copied and pasted into yesterday's email.

Every computer has its own fingerprint.  It's called the IP address.  Using the IP addresses of the two people who had accessed the CNJ Politics website, the owner found that one IP address was connected with the Alcatel-Lucent Corporation and that the other was connected to a location in Sparta, New Jersey.

Alcatel-Lucent was recently in the news, having merged with Nokia in January of this year.

The owner could tell us that the column that was lifted from his website and pasted onto yesterday's email was accessed by the Sparta IP address at 11:48 AM, March 23, 2016, and by the Alcatel-Lucent IP address at 12:04 PM, March 24, 2016.

Below are screen shots of some of the other identifiers CNJ Politics turned over to us.  First, let's look at the Alcatel-Lucent IP address:

Note that the following appears in connection with the Alcatel-Lucent IP address:

URL: file://C:\Users\kgorman\, avg.

Curiously enough, there is a Kathleen Gorman running against George Graham in the Freeholder race.  According to Rob Jennings of the New Jersey Herald (April 3, 2016), "Gorman works as a buyer and planner for Nokia, located in Murray Hill."

Now here is the information associated with the Sparta IP address:

Note that the following appears in connection with the Sparta IP address:

 URL: file://C:\Users\fvohd_000\

We would rather not comment on who this might be.  Sigh.

This could well be a serious matter, especially if Freeholder George Graham chooses to make it so.  Remember that one of these emails actually used Graham's identity so that it appeared as if it had been sent from him.  Two recent cases, one involving a campaign in Passaic County, the other a campaign in Monmouth County, illustrate the pitfalls of hijacking a candidate's identity.

Man pleads guilty to deceptive phone calls (The Record, February 21, 2012)

Prosecutors: 4 A.M. Robocalls In NJ Senate Race Were Placed By Rival Campaign (CBS, New York, August 12, 2014)

Happily, there is no evidence that candidate for Freeholder Dave Gray, of Byram, has any connection to this matter.