John Morgan – Attorney, principle partner in Morgan and Morgan;  the law firm who hired former governor Charlie Crist and the legal firm of Pigford II payout coordinator Greg Francis.  Close friend of Mark O’Mara and Mark Najame.   Morgan is the Democrat bundler/fundraiser who has hosted several Barack Obama campaign events.

Mark NeJame – Legal counsel to Alan Grayson, friend of Mark O’Mara, Senior CNN legal analyst and the person who recommended Mark O’Mara to George Zimmerman in order to secure a CNN contract.  NeJame is a also a close personal friend of Pigford Attorney Greg Francis, and socially friendly with Natalie Jackson and  Ryan Julison. 

(Orlando Sentinel – Jeff Weiner) The behind-the-scenes turbulence of U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson‘s family life continued to spill into public view Wednesday as his attorneys worked to combat his wife’s recently revealed domestic-violence allegations.

The congressman’s lawyers revealed video of the domestic incident that played out at the Grayson home Saturday, which they said proved that Lolita Grayson committed an attack, not her husband.

“He was hoping that this matter would stay in the courts and outside of the press, but since horrendous accusations have been made against him … he believes that the truth must come out,” Grayson’s attorney Mark NeJame told reporters during a news conference in downtown Orlando.

(more…)

Just when you think the Trayvon Martin story has apex’d away from insufferable you read something blood boiling LIKE THIS MIT media research study, replete with Ryan Julison interview smarm, and the blood pressure cuff needs another replacement.

Martin’s family was able to enlist the legal services of civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump on a pro bono basis. Crump had taken on a previous civil rights case and failed to convict, which he attributed to an inadequate media strategy prior to the trial itself (Caputo, 2012). Crump brought on local lawyer Natalie Jackson, who enlisted the pro bono services of publicist Ryan Julison.

Julison’s pitch did not emphasize the racial element to the story, but underscored agreed upon facts: a neighborhood watch vigilante, who was carrying a gun, shot an unarmed teenager, and was not arrested. Julison was particularly struck by the fact that a neighborhood watch captain would be carrying a firearm with no training of any kind other than a concealed weapons permit (Julison, 2012). Our manual analysis of stories confirmed that this detail had not appeared in most of the local coverage following Martin’s death. Later, Crump, when interviewed about the case, introduced racial framing around the story as the national media began to pay attention (Boedeker and Comas, 2012).  (link)

(more…)

Trayvon’s Foundation:  Following the Paper Trail

(A Guest Post By Treeper: Big Jim)

Not long after George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin in self-defense, Trayvon’s family created a charitable, tax-exempt organization, the Justice for Trayvon Martin Foundation, Inc.
Given the volume of smaller donations that have been generated during the public appearances of Trayvon’s parents, and that some larger organizational donations have been received by the Foundation, I wanted to find out how much money had flowed into and out of the Foundation.
In order to find the money I needed to follow the paper trail, and as you will see below, in following the paper trail I ran into a few surprises.
For a tax-exempt organization the paper trail starts with its incorporation.  In order for an organization to have tax-exempt status (a “501(c)(3)” organization) it must comply with Internal Revenue Service regulations. (more…)

The slow motion *public* train wreck continues.   Shellie Zimmerman and her attorney Kelly Sims sit down with Ryan Julison’s pal, Matt Lauer.  
D’oh….  
…And Sims, good grief….. look at the noggin’ on that Sims fellow and tell me he’s not trying out for a part in Alien Nation, the TV series.
(New York Daily News) Shellie Zimmerman, 26, told NBC’s ‘Today’ she is conflicted about what happened the night her controversial husband fatally shot the unarmed 17-year-old. Her doubts surfaced after an explosive domestic violence incident at a family home in Florida, she said. But she stopped short of claiming Martin was a victim of racial profiling.

The estranged wife of George Zimmerman said that since the couple’s spat at a family home in Florida she now has doubts about her husband’s innocence for killing Trayvon Martin.
Shellie Zimmerman, speaking publicly for the first time since she told cops her husband threatened her with a gun on Sept. 9, told NBC’s ‘Today’ that the man she loved changed dramatically after he was acquitted for the murder of the unarmed 17-year-old.
“This person that I’m married to, that I’m divorcing, I’ve kind of realized now that I don’t know him,” she told Matt Lauer on Thursday. “And I really don’t know what he’s capable of.” (more…)

OCALA, Fla., September 17, 2013 — George Zimmerman’s highly controversial prosecutor, Angela Corey, is now under state investigation for firing Ben Kruidbos, the Jacksonville Times-Union reports.
“Kruidbos received a letter from the Florida Commission on Ethics earlier this week saying the investigation was occurring,” the T-U’s Larry Hannan wrote last week. “Investigator Specialist Kathleen Mann, who sent the letter, declined to comment on the investigation when contacted by the Times-Union on Friday.”
Kruidbos was the information technology director in Corey’s office until earlier this summer. (more…)

Some are aghast, not me.  
What could be a more appropriate name for a cold hard object, all alone, travelling in dark empty nothingness, without purpose or self controlled direction;  wandering aimlessly amid the vast unfriendly world of solitude, while devoid of life and hope, just waiting to destruct amid an encounter of another object of similar disposition ?
Yep, that’s the Martin Kid.
(AZ Daily Sun) Albert Einstein. George Takei. Jerry Garcia.
All of those men and many others have had an asteroid named after them. And if William Lowell Putnam III, trustee of Lowell Observatory, has his way, another name will be added to that list: Trayvon Martin.
The retired broadcast executive, alpinist, author and Flagstaff resident believes that Martin has not received justice. (more…)

I said a few months ago we would return to the issue(s) surrounding the Trayvon Martin phone mysteries.   Given the retrospect of Jack Cashill’s latest book and construction – Perhaps this is a good time to do so.

During the George Zimmerman trial, there was a “proffer hearing” for evidentiary issues about the content of Trayvon Martin’s telephone.   Most, if not all, of the substantive issues were never discussed by the media.   Instead they clouded their reporting by focusing on Judge Debra Nelson walking out of the courtroom at 10:30pm;  but the substance of the Richard Conner testimony did not evaporate with her running away from it.
In addition to discovering that Trayvon Martin’s father, Tracy, was texting him about guns and ownership, there were issues about the deleted phone content itself.   These deletions were never addressed, and the issues behind them could shake the foundation of the prosecution.
if you will watch the video, and watch e.x.a.c.t.l.y. what Conner says, with specificity, you will note he is actually confirming – and stating – without actually confirming and stating, the phone records were deleted by hardware function.

Thanks to Stella I was able to download and read Jack Cashill’s  book about the Zimmerman case this past weekend.   I very much enjoyed his presentation and found the book to be a solid, fact based, presentation.   Perhaps later in the week I’ll get around to writing a review about it – but suffice to say it’s a soup-to-nuts delivery of the entire case.    A very good read – pulling together a very complex dynamic into digestible form.
We talked to Mr. Cashill several times in the lead up to the trial as he was deep in research and filled with inquiry about how we, as a group, discovered so much information.  Mr. Cashill’s initial contact was based on all the prior research assembled here by all of you.  As a consequence he found the research approach fascinating.  Y’all should feel really proud of that.  It seems from the reading he also followed along thereafter.
As noted by some comments, and inquiry over the weekend, there are many aspects of the Zimmerman case -mostly side issues- we are still researching and putting together.   We have roughly 33 questions we are seeking to answer through FOIA submissions both relating to Jacksonville SAO and the prosecution, as well as Miami-Dade. (more…)

…. and people ask me: why not try to engage the guys on “our team”?…. 

As you will see, I have actually tried not to write this.   However, it must be done.
Most of you are now aware for some reason a journalist named Lee Stranahan, representing the Andrew Breitbart media community, took occasion yesterday to attack The Conservative Tree House in general, and myself particularly.

Stranahan used his Twitter feed yesterday to announce his intentions, starting around 9:30 am on Sunday August 25th.
The actual construct of the slander began early in the morning….

@JDreamer731 I have a very specific example but I'm not talking explicitly about it. Yet.

— Lee Stranahan (@stranahan) August 25, 2013

…..then increased throughout the day, and culminated in his airing a radio broadcast with Ryan Julison, the Trayvon Martin family Public Relations Spokesperson and Media consultant, joining Stranahan for the show.
What transpired, and the truth behind the backstory -which drove the attack- is quite alarming.  It also reflects just how vulnerable the media and journalists are to selling Media Consultant storylines and becoming willful accomplices to fraud.
Their promotion of the fraud makes them willful accomplices. (more…)

You might want to refresh on the story behind it HERE.
Because, well…. (more…)