REP. SCHAKOWSKY’S HUSBAND ‘ STEPPING ASIDE’ AS DNC CONSULTANT AMID TRUMP RALLY FLAP
In wake of video, Dem consultant Creamer leaves firm but denies it stoked violence at Trump rallies
WASHINGTON — Robert Creamer, whose consulting firm is a Democratic National Committee contractor, said Wednesday he was “stepping aside” from that role after an undercover video from a conservative group suggested his workers had a hand in triggering confrontations outside and inside Donald Trump rallies.
Creamer, an Evanston resident, is the husband of U. S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D- Ill. He appears, along with others, in the undercover video posted by a conservative investigative not- fot- profit organization, Project Veritas Action.
The video, which had more than 4 million views as of Wednesday afternoon, surfaced as Trump stepped up his assertion that the election system is rigged against him.
The video focuses on another Trump complaint: that outside agitators — not Trump’s backers — trigger fights at his rallies.
Project Veritas Action, founded by James O’Keefe, has been criticized for selectively editing videos from its undercover operations aimed at liberal or Democratic- allied organizations.
Hours before the final presidential debate, O’Keefe said in a statement, will Clinton “disavow her lieutenant, Bob Creamer, whose foot soldiers have been inciting violence at political rallies?”
Creamer told the Chicago SunTimes that O’Keefe’s allegations “are completely untrue.” But he also said he is stepping aside because “I do not wish to be a distraction to the important task of electing Hillary Clinton and defeating Donald Trump.”
During the presidential debate, Trump — while not mentioning Creamer by name — accused Clinton and President Barack Obama of paying people to incite violence ahead of his planned rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago earlier this year.
“She caused the violence,” Trump said of Clinton.
A female activist in the Project Veritas Action video identified as Zulema Rodriguez told an unidentified interviewer using a hidden camera that she had a hand in organizing protests at a Trump rally at the UIC Pavilion last March.
Trump ended up canceling the rally, days before the Illinois primary, when skirmishes broke out between his supporters and protesters.
Creamer said Rodriguez was organizing anti- Trump protests around the UIC event but wasn’t working for him at the time.
Trump set his sights on Creamer earlier Wednesday, too, retweeting a Daily Caller story about Creamer headlined, “Dem Operative Who Oversaw Trump Rally Agitators Visited White House 342 Times.”
White House logs show Creamer has made 340 visits since Obama took office.
Creamer told the Sun- Times, “The Obama White House has regular meetings of progressive organizations every week. Lots of people go, including me.”
Explaining the video scenes that included him, Creamer said he thought he was talking to a man who was a potential large donor to Democratic causes. In reality, that man was posing as a donor and secretly recording Creamer.
In the video, Creamer says he is part of a daily call with the Clinton campaign “to go over the focuses that need to be undertaken.”
Project Veritas also was able to plant an intern in Creamer’s Washington, D. C., office to secretly video workers. Creamer said she posed as the niece of the fake potential donor and asked Creamer to give her a job.
The sting operation apparently ended last Friday after a lunch with the fake donor, Creamer said. Afterward, that person disappeared, and the “intern” was gone when he got back to his office.
Most of the allegations of triggering incidents with Trump backers in the video came from Scott Foval, a Creamer subcontractor fired in the wake of the video being released. Foval was taped by a Project Veritas undercover operative posing as a Democratic activist, Creamer said.
On the video, Foval claimed to have arranged for mentally ill people, homeless people and others to spark violence at Trump rallies. “I mean, honestly it’s not hard to get some of these ( expletive) to pop off,” Foval says.
Foval told The Associated Press in an email that he was set up.
Creamer told the Sun- Times Foval was “bragging” about events that never actually happened.
Creamer said his contract with the DNC, with a firm he runs called Mobilize, did not start until June 8 and is now voided. The DNC had paid Creamer’s firm $ 42,000 a month to cover the equivalent of seven or eight full- time workers.
Creamer’s specialty is grass- roots organizing and political messaging. In 2006, he pleaded guilty to federal check- kiting charges stemming from 1996, when he juggled money to keep Illinois Citizens Action afloat. He served five months in prison.
DNC Interim Chair Donna Brazile said in a statement, “We do not believe, or have any evidence to suggest, that the activities articulated in the video actually occurred.”
Zac Petkanas, the director of Rapid Response for the Clinton campaign, said in a statement, “While Project Veritas has been known to offer misleading video out of context, some of the language and tactics referenced in the video are troubling — even as a theory or proposal never executed. We support the Democratic National Committee’s appropriate action addressing this matter. . . .”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, asked about the video at his daily briefing, said, “I’ve tried to urge people to take those reports not at face value and not just with a grain of salt, but maybe even a whole package of salt.”
Attempts to reach Rep. Schakowsky late Wednesday were unsuccessful.