Saturday, May 12, 2007

FBI Planted Fake Dem Candidate in 2004 W. Virginia Legislature Campaign [Updated]

Updated below.

No, you did not read that wrong. About the candidate, Thomas E. Espositio.

Esposito dropped out of the race a month before the election, and the operation resulted in the convictions of a handful of Democrats, and rightly so it appears. But as many asked at the time, how do you justify investigating election corruption by corrupting an election? Good question.

Thi happened under the watch of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, Karl "Kasey" Warner, who now claims he was fired by the Justice Department during an important investigation.

Sounds like Warner did good by the Bush JD for a while, but maybe went a bit too far and was let go. Is he trying to get on the AttorneyGate wagon now to get back at them?

And you can see in the article that Warner's brother Kris was the Republican state party chairman.

UPDATE: The WaPo did a big story on the fake candidate in 2005. Kasey Warren isn't mentioned, though one of his assistant attorneys is, and he says the decision to run the scam was "approved by his office, the local FBI special agent in charge and the agency's Criminal Undercover Operations Review Committee in Washington."

Considering it was Dems in the noose, I bet it was. And I wonder how politicized the Criminal Undercover Operations Review Committee has become in the last six years - and if it's chaired by Alberto Gonzales.

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