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UPDATE BELOW*
US Rep. Darell Issa denied any knowledge of the unfolding Weinergate scandal as emails surfaced purporting to link two of his staffers to Andrew Breitbart's original source for the sordid cyber-saga, one pseudonymous Dan Wolfe.
Breitbart editrix Dana Loesch tried and failed to get the mysterious Mr. Wolfe to step into the center ring of the media circus, as did Wolfe's colorful online pal Mike Stack who maintains Wolfe (aka @PatriotUSA76) masterminded the whole thing and "conned me".
Though most believe it all began with Weiner's "boner" on May 28, screenshots show Wolfe relentlessly taunted Weiner weeks earlier with foreknowledge of a dirty pics scandal. But Wolfe persuaded Mike Stack to first tweet the bombshell and then heralded it himself, cleverly referencing Stack (as @goatsred) as if Stack was the original source.
Wolfe has always concealed how he first learned that explicit pics of Weiner existed in early May. Wolfe decided to hibernate to avoid more "legal trouble" as the public tries to put the puzzle pieces together. Meanwhile, Breitbart and Loesch try to dispel accusations they were secretly involved in a sinister plot with Wolfe's pack.
Mike Stack appeared on Dana Loesch's radio show Wednesday, grumbling Dan Wolfe threw him and the rest of the loosely cobbled-together #BornFreeCrew "under the bus". He said he met Wolfe online and they had common anti-Obama interests but Wolfe seemed to obsessively retweet and mock anything Weiner tweeted, drawing complaints of harassment from Weiner followers.
Much more revealing than Loesch's interview with Stack was an earlier one done by another Breitbart columnist Lee Stranahan but Wolfe also reportedly did an extremely lengthy interview via livechat which revealed dark personal details along with his reasons for going underground.
Last week, The Smoking Gun exposed emails Mike Stack sent to Wolfe boasting he had the ear of two people close to CA Rep. Darrell Issa, one Seamus Kraft and another Ashley Swope who he said worked on a committee under Issa.
Following coverage by WaPo, HuffPo, MSNBC and the Daily Beast in which Issa assures he knows nothing about the claims in the emails, the allegations made about Swope remain unanswered and unresolved as we wait for someone at the Daily Caller to confirm or refute the claim.
It seems Wolfe must have provided the emails to TSG but Wolfe denied this, according to a later interview. TSG also published sensitive emails Wolfe wrote to Breitbart who denies he exposed his source.
Issa says he didn't know about the Weiner watchers, but it would be of concern if it turns out Swope did enlist Stack to provide dirt to Issa's staff "around the clock" regarding "ethics" issues and "BHO" (Barack Hussein Obama). If so, it would call into question Swope and/or Kraft's associations with Stack, whose own history includes time as a vitriolic blogger on a XXX porn site along with other embarrassing past indiscretions.
If Weiner needs to step down because he mixed politics with adult-only smut, I'm sure Issa would loathe being linked to Stack, a self-described "pervert". As it is, TSC reported Issa's aide Kraft confirmed he had exchanged emails with Stack. Stack, seemingly jazzed to be helping Issa's staffers, allegedly called Kraft "awesome".
If true, Kraft did not tell Issa, his boss, that he had earlier confabs with Stack. Issa's published denials slyly say only that Stack's message regarding "the Grey Boner" shot went unanswered, which was never disputed anyway. Wednesday's none too penetrating "The Dana Show" interview of Stack glossed over the TSG allegations.
Loesch also ignored the claim that Mr. Stack wanted to take the Weinergate evidence to Kraft and she completely dropped the ball as Stack himself tells Loesch live on the air "as [Weinergate] was coming together, I asked [Wolfe] to be part of a conference call for certain things".
This indicates that Loesch knew from pre-interviews that Stack wanted to keep the identity of the third party on that call (presumably Mr. Kraft) secret - or else she is the most oblivious, slow-witted and non-researching interviewer in the world (she's not). The problem seems to be partisan politics (protecting against the spread of the Issa rumor) got in the way of the professional objectivity of the hostess.
Had she been vetting Stack's claims, she'd have gotten some answers for enquiring minds and the public good. Is it any wonder that speculation has abounded as Salon and Daily Kos saw massive traffic by theorizing Loesch retouched what turned out to be Weiner's handiwork. I'll bet money Mr. Issa was hoping Loesch would have elicited a denial by Stack, but he instead expressed anger at Wolfe for providing his emails to TSG.
Also muddying the dirty, murky waters were questions asking whether Loesch had actually been the one that screencaptured the "hockey night" underwear pic. Dan Wolfe says it was hers, not his, that first broke the story in an hours-long text-chat interview that filmmaker Ladd Ehlinger Jr. claims he conducted on the FilmLadd blog. This claim may again be Wolfe trying to shift attention from himself as the sole primary leaker.
Pressed on this, Wolfe claims "his" Born Free crew noticed Weiner following a lot of nubile young women on Twitter, which, unlike Weiner, rubbed him the wrong way.
Wolfe describes his sensitivity to online predators as someone in his own family was victimized, leading to a fierce custody battle. This is Wolfe's justification for begging out of this gigantic national mega-tabloid bombshell (and if true, may well be the right thing to do).
Tailing Weiner, Wolfe noted one strange public tweet where he thought Weiner was sending coded signals to a female follower in Seattle. Watching closely that night, he hit the jerkpot when a fumble-fingered Weiner publicly mis-tweeted a link to a snapshot of his own arousal to his yfrog stream.
Wolfe retweeted the link to pals but it was swiftly removed as Weiner's blood rushed back into his brain. "That night Dana Loesch saw this unfold too and got her own screenshots" Wolfe told Ladd, adding Breitbart never used the images he sent. So Loesch saw them before Weiner deleted them.
Asked why he Wolfe picked on Rep. Weiner's wife, Wolfe admitted it was just to "tweak" Weiner.
But the burning question still baffling the blogosphere is how Wolfe knew about Weinergate way back on May 5. This excerpt from the interview tries to get to the bottom of it:
Filmladd: "How did [you] know that a "top 5 blogger" had some sex scandal on Weiner, two weeks before this incident? I know [you say] it was a retweet; but what did [you] know of this? Who floated this, and did [you] have further details about it? If no details, what did [you] suspect?"
danwolfe7676: A rumor came floating around the net and I am actualy surprised more people didn't get it - don't know where the original source was - It got forwarded of a forward of a forward of a forward to me - It looked like it was spreading around for a while so I'm actually surprised others weren't talking about it .
This non-answer only added fuel to the fire. Some answers came from Stack in Lee Stranahan's interview, offering that Wolfe said he had a friend who worked with Matt Drudge that gave him this exclusive senses-shattering sex scandal to leak online - provided it was a blind item. Stack describes how Wolfe was "overly friendly" with him initially, and persuaded him to be the first to tweet the worldwide exclusive scoop.
The NY Times also attempted to publicize this, reporting Wednesday:
"On May 5, Mr. Wolfe told [Mike Stack] that he had a friend who knew Matt Drudge who had said that a scandal involving a member of Congress was coming soon. The same day that Meagan Broussard, 26, of Texas, said that she had received an e-mail from Mr. Weiner with a photo she had asked him to take, while holding up a white piece of paper that said "me."
This seemingly implies Broussard may have been working with the original leaker, perhaps receiving the explicit erection shot in that same series from Weiner. Broussard has received over $10,000 for her media appearances. Weiner might know for sure, but I doubt Weiner will be leaking anything in the near term. Perhaps all's fair in partisan media, and Weiner deserves his fate, but us taxpayers just want to be sure it wasn't happening on our dime.
Stack is not the only "crew" member asking Wolfe to step out into the light, however, with @madmike59 imploring "Dan time to stand up. The crew is now being affected and nice people like Redrivergirl are suffering for your silence. What say you!"
*UPDATE: NY Times reports other fake Twitter identities were set up to lure Anthony Weiner and his contacts into divulging private info. #BornFreeCrew member Mike Stack claims he didn't know who the user pretending to be 16 year old "Nikki Reid" was, as well as another account "vouching" for the first one.
