RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Free Speech in the Era of Obama

by Joe Newby
Spokane Conservative Examiner




On Friday, Melaleuca CEO Frank VanderSloot told Fox News' Greta van Susteren that his children have apparently become targets of the President's allies.

"There’s been a ton of electronic media… that have lodged all kind of innuendo in my direction, accused me of all kinds of bad things. People have called my children. They’ve been surfing their LinkedIn sites. They’ve been asking interviews of my kids,“ he said.

VanderSloot, one of the eight Romney donors targeted by Obama's re-election campaign on a website in late April, made the allegation in a phone interview from Idaho Falls, ID. The reason for the scrutiny: VanderSloot contributed $1 million to Romney's Super PAC.



In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Kimberley A. Strassel wrote:

• About a week after that post, a man named Michael Wolf contacted the Bonneville County Courthouse in Idaho Falls in search of court records regarding Mr. VanderSloot. Specifically, Mr. Wolf wanted all the documents dealing with Mr. VanderSloot's divorces, as well as a case involving a dispute with a former Melaleuca employee.

According to Strassel, "until a few months ago," Wolf worked as "a law clerk on the Democratic side of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations." Now, Strassel adds, it seems Wolf has found new work with a company called Fusion GPS, which Strassel says, "describes itself as providing 'strategic intelligence,' with expertise in areas like 'politics.'"

"That's a polite way of saying 'opposition research,'" she added.

Since then, she wrote, "[b]loggers have harassed his children, visiting their social media accounts and asking for interviews and information."

"Although there are no records indicating Fusion or Wolf have been paid by the Democratic National Committee, Strassel notes that 'it is not uncommon to hire a less controversial third party, which then hires the researchers,'” Becket Adams wrote at The Blaze.

As a result of the scrutiny brought to bear by the President's allies, Vandersloot says his business has taken a beating.

"Those people that I know well weren't affected by this [attack]," he said. "But for people who didn't know me, who are members of our business or customers, and they were reading this, then we got a barrage of phone calls of people cancelling their customer memberships with us."

According to Vandersloot, about "a couple hundred" cancellations have taken place as a result of the attacks.

"Do you have any grounds to sue?" van Susteren asked.

"I suppose we do," he replied.

He added that the allegations of being "anti-gay" could not be farther from the truth, and he is not backing down.

"I'm going to support [Romney] more than I was originally," he said.



"Still. If details about Mr. VanderSloot's life become public, and if this hurts his business or those who work for him, Mr. Obama will bear responsibility. This is what happens when the president makes a list," Strassel wrote.