whitewash

Here is the whitewash article: "unwanted attention to the county Attorney’s Office." Definitely unwanted. I mean, if you're stealing millions of dollars, you usually don't want attention, right?

This "article" is the press release for the whitewash in the works by the "joint investigation"of the comptroller, the DA.





Czajka has no business on the case because of his close connections to Fitzsimmons and Grattan and company. Every supervisor in Columbia County and many in Greene County are potential targets of the investigation. Why did the supervisors let Rappleyea steal from the taxpayer, both in their roles as town supervisors and as voters at the CCBOS? Would Czajka ask that question? And the comptroller seems not to want to bother stirring the pot. So they are willing to kind of sort of participate... not really going to push it if the DA isn't interested... and he most certainly is not interested in the rule of law when it comes to his friends.

Czajka and Grattan and Co. essentially called the Register Star. The bunch conspired to write the article the cronies wanted. No self-respecting reporter would agree to put their name on a whitewash/non-journalism exercise this blatantly biased against the basic facts. But the self-respecting reporters already quit, so there you go.

You will note that Patrick Grattan was willing to speak to the Register Star but not the Times Union. Why? When you talk to your employee/lap dog/step-and-fetch-it reporter, you can control how your quote is used. When you talk to a journalist, he might just report the truth. Grattan does not want an open discussion of the truth. He refused to meet with me to discuss the ONGOING criminal activity under his watch. Rappleyea quit in a panic after I posted the first Sleepergate blog post but others are stealing as surely as he did.

Here is the comment I submitted to the Register Star. Watch and see if they run the comment:

As the guy who broke this story after two years of work and many thousands of dollars spent on FOIL requests and two FOIL lawsuits, I can assure that this article misses the whole point and is the ground work for a whitewash. The first fact to consider is "part-time" = 6 hours? That's just the beginning. A terrible piece of journalism. Will Pflaum, author of Sunshine on the Hudson blog, where the story first broke on January 12, 2012.

If the Register Star uses my research for a story and then does not let me comment, to call this operation something journalistic would be ridiculous. You have to use my name in the story and you have to let me comment if you don't note that the whole issue is based on my work.

UPDATE: They ran the comment.

The Times Union used my name.  The Register Star did not. The Register Star did not mention the Times Union, who was two weeks earlier on the story.

The Times Union was a fair piece. The Register Star shows me how the cronies are going to try to spin their way out of this, but if I get to a fair trial, that won't work. I know the corrupt and willfully incompetent law enforcement forces who are working with the Register Star to spike the investigation think they can get out of this.

Tal Rappleyea is guilty of many counts of fraud, embezzlement, larceny, filing a false instrument and he is not alone.

The evidence of criminal activity is overwhelming.