Greta Van Sustern and Karl Rove
Karl Rove is having a bisexual affair with the president of a conservative bloggers' group, and concern about being outed sparked Rove's falsehood-filled diatribe last week on Greta Van Susteren's Fox News program.
Rove's lover is Ali Akbar, president of the National Bloggers Club, an umbrella group that grew from the activism of the late right-wing publisher and pundit Andrew Breitbart. A left-leaning Web site called Breitbart Unmasked recently disclosed that Akbar has a criminal record that includes convictions for credit-card fraud, theft, and burglary.
The stunning allegations about Rove and Akbar are included in a letter sent yesterday from Alabama attorney Dana Jill Simpson to Robert Bauer, counsel for President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. The letter also includes an appeal for a presidential pardon on behalf of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
Rove, appearing with Van Susteren on the June 20 edition of On the Record, took a question about the tax-exempt status of certain PACs and turned it into an attack on Simpson, Bauer, and Siegelman--who was the target of perhaps the most notorious political prosecution in U.S. history.
Simpson, a former GOP operative, is best known as a whistleblower in the Siegelman case. She has stated under oath and testified before Congress that she participated in a telephone conference call with prominent Alabama Republicans who discussed plans to bring bogus criminal charges against Siegelman, apparently with Rove's approval.
Rove told Van Susteren that Bauer represented Simpson in her 2007 testimony before Congress and that Simpson did not testify under oath. It's a matter of public record that Simpson made sworn statements about the Siegelman prosecution on multiple occasions. And Simpson included in her letter to Bauer yesterday an affidavit stating that he has never represented her, and the two have never met. (See the affidavit and letter at the end of this post.) Bauer has sent a letter to Rove demanding a retraction, according to a report in Huffington Post.
Ali Akbar
Why would Rove become so wildly disengaged from the truth, on a national television program where he was asked a question that had nothing to do with Jill Simpson? The Alabama lawyer says in her letter to Bauer that Rove became unhinged because he knew she had damaging information about his personal life--and it soon might become public knowledge.At the heart of Rove's discomfort is his relationship with Ali Akbar. And how did that come to light? Simpson spells it out in her letter to Bauer:
About a week and a half ago, I was contacted by a political operative on the left who gave me a copy of Ali Akbar's advertisement on an adult website. This advertisement suggested that the National Bloggers Club President, Mr. Akbar, was looking for bisexual sex with men who were Republican, political, and loved to discuss politics and philosophy and just wanted to hang out and chill with them.
Simpson has an e-mail list on which she periodically shares inside information on politics and international affairs. The Akbar ad became a subject for discussion on the list. Andrew Kreig, of the D.C.-based Justice-Integrity Project, briefly referenced the Akbar angle in a major piece about Rove's statements on the Van Susteren show. Kreig did not mention Akbar by name, but he did write the following:
In a similar vein, Rove critics active in the blogosphere have been claiming over the past week that one of Rove's colleagues is an ex-con who might be outed soon in a sex scandal. This is part of the ongoing back-and-forth war of nerves that political activists wage continually against one another, with lawsuits and claims of outrage by each side. Among the latter are GOP members of Congress seeking Justice Department prosecutions of liberal opponents.
In this context, it made sense for Rove to deflect attacks by claiming to Fox listeners that he has been cleared from any suspicions by previous investigations and that critics are partisans allied unfairly against him.
In her letter to Bauer, Simpson says she took the Akbar ad and used it to unearth information about his ties to powerful Republicans. One of those, the letter suggests, is Rove:
I took [the information] back to my blogging group and showed them that Karl had gotten himself a new friend from the information and evidence I had received and that this guy was alleged to be the possible new boy wonder and lover of Karl Rove.
Simpson tells Bauer that she has no concerns about Rove's sexual preferences, but she is alarmed about his multiple false statements on Fox News:
It is believed by many of us that Karl thought we were going to use this for the benefit of President Obama, which was never the case. We do not care if [Rove] is bisexual or not and have many times ignored information that was given to us that suggested that he is. In fact, we find nothing wrong with being bisexual, as it means people just love both sexes at the same time. All of us are LBGTQ supporters, so we elected to not out this information on him. However, I think this is why he went berserk on national TV on Fox Network and said that I am a liar and have disappeared. He also lied when he said I had never testified under oath, as I have. It is Mr. Rove who insisted on executive privilege so as to not have to testify under oath about the Siegelman case.
Simpson states that something positive could come from Rove's appearance on the Van Susteren program:
With all that said, I am very grateful that Mr. Rove was hung up about having his alleged bisexuality possibly released that he pointed out on National TV, not once but twice, that you are a man who can possibly get things done in the Obama Administration. For that reason I am asking you to please consider joining us . . . [in] asking President Obama to pardon Don Siegelman. As you may recall, I was the individual that Karl Rove asked to follow Don Siegelman to a party in Alabama to try to catch him cheating with a gay man in his administration named Nick Bailey.
Does all of this have national implications? Simpson says the answer is yes, and she urges Bauer to take action:
In closing, I just want to say that I am sad you got dragged into this, but I am happy that you now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Karl Rove lied on you, me, and Mr. Siegelman. It is time that someone in the Obama Administration stopped this monster maniac from hurting innocent people--and I hope that man is you.Simpson Bauer Letter