JEFF LARSON’S OTHER CAREER…. We talked just the other day about McCain having hired FLS-Connect, a robocal firm led by Republican activist and Karl Rove protege Jeff Larson — the same Larson that Bush hired eight years ago to destroy McCain with scurrilous robocalls.
Today, Larson’s name came up in a very different context. Everyone now knows that the Republican National Committee spent more than $150,000 on clothes and accessories for the Palin family since late August. But guess who was doing the shopping?
[B]uried in the same FEC disclosure form that revealed Palin’s taste for the fine life is the name of the man who appears to have been her personal shopper: Jeff Larson.
Under FEC regulations, the RNC must file what is called a “Schedule F form,” which lists “expenditures made by political committees or designated agents(s) on behalf of candidates for federal office.” […] Along with the matching dates and dollar totals, note the “Transaction ID Number,” which clearly connects the questionable expenditures with reimbursement payments made to Larson. […]
What’s so incompetent about this from a political tradecraft perspective is that both parties ordinarily take the easy precaution of making sure such embarrassing material isn’t obvious to reporters, which they do by routing the payment through a law firm or consultant. Here they neglected to do so.
A different Jeff Larson, perhaps? No such luck. The New York Times confirms that the Republican consultant and robocall-firm executive bought Palin’s clothes and was reimbursed by the RNC.
But wait, there’s more. Noting the “six degrees of GOP sleaze,” Josh Marshall reminds us, “Jeff Larson is not only John McCain’s chief robocaller and Sen. Palin’s $150k clothes shopper, he’s also the guy who’s giving that sweetheart rental deal on his apartment in DC” to Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.).
Amazing.
