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December 26, 2008
Death of GOP IT Consultant Raises Questions
An IT pro who worked with leading Republican candidates since 1998 and enjoyed a front row seat to the 2000 and 2004 elections of President GW Bush is dead. Now, questions are being asked whether or not his death might be related to something bigger than a mere accident: did Michael Connell, in fact, know anything about voter fraud in major national elections?
Connell died in a plane crash December 19 while piloting a small plane traveling from the Washington, DC, area to Akron, Ohio. His affiliations with dozens of major GOP campaigns had earned his companies tens of millions of dollars and, in November, Connell had been deposed as a witness in a legal dispute over alleged voter fraud during the 2004 election in Ohio.
The suit claims that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell allocated election resources in a racially discriminatory manner that led to the tampering and dilution and/or cancellation of votes, mechanical difficulties with voting machines, and unclear precinct boundaries. Connell apparently denied any knowledge of tampering with the voting process or efforts to manipulate 2004 Ohio vote counts, but some who knew him say he may have had more to say then he disclosed.
So far, the national news media has treated Connell's death as a local story but it seems to be climbing up the chain of greater national interest.
Thomas B. Edsall writes in Huffington Post:
After first emerging as a web consultant during the 1998 gubernatorial campaign of Jeb Bush, Connell quickly became a key member of the Republican brain trust and quickly became part of a small network of political consultants and lobbyists favored by (Karl) Rove. He advised both Bush-Cheney campaigns, and was a regular consultant to the RNC and other GOP committees.
Whether or not skullduggery exists remains to be seen. Federal investigators claim to be investigating.
Meanwhile, Velvet Revolution ("VR"), a non-profit that has been investigating Connell's activities for the past two years claims that a person close to the IT consultant has recently been discussing how he can tell all about his work for President GW Bush. In a VR press release posted on the New York Times website, VR claims:
Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that George Bush and Dick Cheney would "throw [him] under the bus."
Still, Edsall raises a very tangible question about the impact of Connell's death whether innocent or not:
How much will Connell's death, even if the accident was entirely without malfeasance, impede congressional committee investigations into the more controversial activities of the Bush administration over the past eight years - including the ongoing investigation into thousands of missing White House-RNC emails sent and received by some 22 White House political aides, including Rove. These emails are believed likely to shed light on the political firings of U.S. Attorneys, and to show if the White House had any role in controversial decisions to prosecute former Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman.
Posted by davidphinney at December 26, 2008 04:22 PM
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