Man Behind Obama Attacks-N.Y Times- with Update
The N.Y Times article was posted just a few minutes ago online, and should be on the front page tomorrow. His name is Andy Martin*, and his background, associations and character explains the root of a venom as vicious as it is surreal.
The article begins:
The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that arguably set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”
.....The press release was picked up by the conservative FreeRepublic.com Web site and spread virally and steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and, ultimately, books.
It continues....
Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyber-whisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs where he is a bête noir.
But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The Fox program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.
While this article is mostly an indictment of Mr. Martin, Fox News, who knew of his background, became his patron last week. Rather than being a fringe radical that his career should have defined him to be, he was given a platform to spew his hatred to those who were eager to hear the worst about the Democratic candidate.
And what a career he had:
An examination of legal documents and election filings, and interviews with those from Mr. Martin’s past, revealed a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims, who has left a trail of animosity – including anti-Jewish comments -- among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over the course of more than 30 years.
A law school graduate, his admission to the Illinois state bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.” Though he is not a licensed lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he also made various unsuccessful attempts to run for public office in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as an author and writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.
It seems like the party of tort limitation could have made a major contribution by exposing rather than enhancing this individual, who seemed to have used his legal training like a blunt instrument of terror.
The CBS News program “48 Hours” devoted an hour-long program to his legal prowess in 1993 entitled, “See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits.” He has filed so many lawsuits – and paperwork containing anti-Semitic slurs – a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court house without preliminary approval.
He prepared a run for Congress in Connecticut – where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew Power.” He ran for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he showed a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of cocaine use.
In the mid-1990s he was jailed in relation to an assault case in Florida.
His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack -- updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases -- amazes those from his past.
From this article, we get a picture not so much of an extreme partisan, but of someone who has the skills, unhampered by any need for truthfulness, to spuw calumny just short of being actionable libel. I guess he did get something out of going to law school after all.
I will be sending this around to my right wing friends who hear these libels so often that they feel it must be true. Perhaps when they learn of the nature of the person who started it all, it might give them some second thoughts.
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*Update from comments:
The subject of this diary originally was named Anthony Martin-Trigona, but he became so notorious under that name that he change it to Andy Martin. Several people, including some attorneys, give specific examples of his gross abuse of the legal system, their personal experiences with him and the response of the judiciary to this abuse of process.
Here are the links to some relevant comments:
This is an extensive report on the legal trail of destruction left by this man.
Here is the top comment from a lawyer who describes defending media companies against Martin's meritless suits of intimidation.
----------Barack Obama, Smears, Andy Martin, Fox News, Recommended
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452 comments, 903 recs
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