Patrick Murphy May Not Lie As Gracefully As Trump, But PolitiFact Finds A Clear Pattern Of Willful Deception

Chuck Schumer, in a mad rush to placate the Wall Street banksters angry about Elizabeth Warrem and Bernie Sanders being mean to them, promised he would deliver the Florida Senate nomination to their most dependable errand boy in Congress, Patrick Murphy. In doing so-- without adequately vetting the fatally flawed Murphy-- Schumer would be handing the competitive seat over to the GOP... if not for Alan Grayson, although Schumer and Harry Reid have worked long and hard to smear and destroy the House's most independent-minded and effective member. If Schumer misses becoming Majority Leader he'll have no one but himself to blame. The Republican ad above isn't something that could be deployed against any other Democrat running for the Senate from any state. This is pure Patrick Murphy-- and Schumer should have known about it before he hoodwinked half his colleagues into backing the deceitful, unqualified and incompetent Murphy.

It's gotten so bad that on Wednesday Tampa-based PolitiFact ran a guide to the attacks on Murphy's resume to determine who's lying Murphy or Murphy's detractors. Short version: Murphy's lying; his detractors are simply reporting the facts.

Here are a few claims in the ad:

"Patrick Murphy says he was a small business owner. First, it is now clear Murphy was not a small business owner."

In summary: By only citing these lines from the TV report, the ad omits that Murphy did have a leadership role at Coastal Environmental Services. But ownership of a private company is difficult to prove, so we have little to evaluate beyond the word of Murphy and the company president. There appears to have been multiple owners along with Murphy.

For years, Murphy called himself a "small business owner," but he was clear that it was affiliated with Coastal Construction, the firm of his father Thomas P. Murphy, Jr.

During a debate in 2012, Murphy said:

"I rejoined the family business, which is Coastal Construction and I decided to start a small affiliated company called Coastal Environmental and that was because of the BP Oil Spill. ... So I decided to start a small fleet of oil skimmers, put them to work in the Gulf of Mexico. That is a small business, and it's affiliated to a larger parent company."

Incorporation records in 2010 list Murphy being on the board of directors along with his father and Dan Whiteman, president of both firms. (Murphy is listed in records as Erin Murphy, his middle name.)

Annual reports show Murphy was a director in 2011 and 2012. Once elected to Congress, he remained an owner but no longer a director.

State records don’t show if someone is an "owner," and Murphy hasn’t said if he financed the firm.

By "owner" Murphy presumably meant that he had an economic interest, said University of Florida corporate law professor Stuart Cohn.

"Records filed with the state do not require listing those who had such an economic interest, whether as a shareholder or otherwise," Cohn said. "So, it is not possible from the state records to determine who owned what economic interests and in what percentages."

The Murphy campaign shared an IRS document with PolitiFact Florida which showed that Murphy, his father and Whiteman were shareholders in 2010. (The campaign blacked out the percentage each owned, as well as the names of three additional shareholders.)

Whiteman told PolitiFact Florida that as vice president Murphy "managed the company’s affairs."

"It's typical for business partners to have multiple ventures together, so it’s not unusual for some of the owners of Coastal Construction to also be owners of Coastal Environmental," Whiteman said.

"Murphy said his company had contracts to clean up the Gulf oil spill. Neither Patrick Murphy nor Coastal Environmental Services were awarded a single contract to clean up oil in the Gulf."

Summary: Coastal Environmental didn’t get the contracts. The ad omits what the TV report explained, that another company, Crescent SR, got contracts in June and July 2010. Murphy started working with Crescent informally in June and Coastal bought out the firm in August.

The Tampa Bay Times reported in May that there were questions about whether Murphy exaggerated his claims that he spent six months in the Gulf leading cleanup efforts.

The Murphy campaign refused to provide to the Times the firm’s contracts.

"Patrick's company acquired two subcontracts to perform near-shore skimming operations in Louisiana," spokesman Joshua Karp wrote in an email to the Times in May. "Contracts to skim oil were all subcontracts originating with BP, who funded the skimming cleanup operation."

In 2015, Murphy told DeFede that he had secured "several" contracts.

The Murphy campaign ultimately agreed to show CBS4 the contracts as long as the station did not name the companies that hired Coastal or the dollar amounts.

The records showed contracts awarded in June and July 2010 between companies and an oil skimming company called Crescent SR, a Louisiana-based firm owned by Kenneth Taylor Beery. Coastal Environmental and Murphy were not mentioned in the two contracts.

On Aug. 9, 2010, Coastal Environmental services bought Crescent SR.

After working informally with Beery to develop the skimming operation, Murphy officially founded Coastal Environmental Services and assumed responsibility for the subcontracts held by Crescent SR, Karp told PolitiFact Florida.

Beery told CBS4 that he developed the concept with one boat, and when he was looking to buy a second boat he was introduced to Murphy. A team of engineers from Coastal worked on coming up with a new line of oil skimmers.

Beery later told Politico in a statement: "Patrick was a vital part of the management and success of our small business."

The number of months that Murphy worked in the Gulf is in dispute.

Murphy's bio says he spent "six months" but it depends on how you count it.

The campaign said that Murphy moved to Louisiana in May and started looking for cleanup opportunities. In June, he started working with Beery. He began cleanup in July, formed Coastal in July and ceased operations in "late September." Dispersants caused oil to sink, the Coast Guard called off oil skimming in October, and Murphy left that month.

So we get to six months if we start the clock ticking when he arrived in the Gulf and end it when he left. If we only count the months of the cleanup, it would be more like three.

"Murphy says he is a CPA. Murphy has never been a licensed CPA in Florida."

Summary: This one has some nuance. Murphy started at Deloitte in Miami 2007 as an "audit assistant." The ad omits that he did get his CPA license-- but in Colorado. He could not sign off on audits in Florida since he didn’t have his Florida license, but he still was a CPA.

  Murphy often touted his work as a CPA and acknowledged during his 2012 campaign that his license was from Colorado after his opponent attacked him for it.

Murphy’s 2016 campaign website said that after college, he "went on to work as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for Deloitte and Touche, auditing Fortune 500 companies."

He started at Deloitte in Florida 2007 as an audit assistant. He applied for his CPA license from Colorado in 2009; at the time Colorado required fewer semester credits than Florida.

After he obtained the license in September 2009, he was promoted to "audit senior" and left in May 2010.

To get the license, Murphy took a test through the state of Vermont (The exam is the same everywhere, so he wouldn’t have had to travel to Vermont to take it.)

There are four sections: auditing, business environment, financial accounting, and regulation. It takes at least two days to complete it.

The test records show that he took portions of the exam nine times between 2006 and 2008 but don’t clearly show how many times he took each portion.

CBS4 initially reported that Murphy took the exam "nine times" before passing the four portions but later updated the written report to also say "multiple times," although the references to the nine times also remains. (Politico also reported on Murphy’s record as a CPA.)

"The average number of sections per candidate is six, but nine is certainly not unusual," Jeannette Faber, who works for the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, told PolitiFact Florida.

The Murphy campaign said that Murphy took the whole exam twice and then retook one section of the CPA exam. The national passage rate for the CPA exam in 2009 was just under 50 percent.

CBS reported that Murphy "never worked a day in his life as a Certified Public Accountant." This is a matter of semantics: He did work while a CPA for several months at Deloitte, he just worked in Florida while holding a Colorado CPA license.

Gary McGill, director of the Fisher School of Accounting at the University of Florida, told PolitiFact Florida that Murphy’s path-- starting as an audit assistant at Deloitte, taking the CPA test multiple times and getting licensed in another state and then being promoted-- would have been a common path.

Many new hires at firms such as Deloitte have not passed the CPA exam. These non-CPA assistants can’t sign audit opinions or tax returns; however, they still can do audit work without having a CPA license from any state, McGill said.

Murphy was promoted to "audit senior" after obtaining his license. That position is "very important," McGill said.

"They are the boots on the ground doing the actually work."

The Florida primary isn't until the very end of August. Wall Street has goven Murphy more money than any other candidate-- from either party-- running for the Senate who isn't already a member of the Senate... and by a lot. He's their top choice because there is no one more corrupt running for the Senate from anywhere. So far the Finance Sector has given him $1,413,950 this cycle, even more than what they've given endangered Republican allies like Ron Johnson (WI), Mark Kirk (IL), Richard Burr (NC) and John McCain (AZ). He's also the top choice of the Saudi Al-Rashid billionaire family and of numerous crooked businessmen like Nick Mastroianni II. We still have time to help Grayson overcome the $7,710,830 is sewer money Murphy had raised by the March 31 FEC filing deadline. How? Here; please click and contribute what you can. And, while you're doing that, you might enjoy watching this Murphy exposé from CBS News:

Funding War And Domestic Spying

This week I literally marveled at how deftly Alan Grayson was able to use congressional procedures beyond the ken of garden variety congressmembers to get five amendments to the defense-spending bill passed without controversy particularly one prohibiting torture. “This amendment," explained Grayson to any Members who might not be paying attention, "makes the intent of Congress clear; it makes the law clear: We. Don’t. Torture. The United States military is prohibited from torturing any human being, at home or abroad.” Another very important amendment he got through is being referred to as the "contractor death penalty," which disqualifies companies-- no matter how many contributions they've given Buck McKeon, John McCain or Steny Hoyer-- from government contracting work for 3 years after being indicted or convicted for any one of 12 offenses defense contractors are often guilty of-- from fraud, embezzlement, theft and forgery to tax evasion, bribery, or violations of federal or state law in connection with obtaining public contracts. The other 3 amendments Grayson got passed were for research for prostate cancer by the Pentagon, a 50% increase on research on Gulf War Syndrome (which was opposed by many of the Military Industrial Complex Democrats) and a cap on the number of generals at the current level. (Keep in mind that each new general costs tax payers over a million in staff per year). There is literally no Democrat in Congress who has managed to work more productively with Republicans on passing good legislation. That's VERY different from sell-outs like Patrick Murphy, Kyrsten Sinema and Sean Patrick Maloney who just vote with Republicans on their agenda. That isn't bipartisanship; it's cowardice.

The House passed-- by voice vote-- Trey Radel's and Peter Welsh's amendment to require Obama to come to Congress personally and make the case for going to war against Syria if he decides to do anything so foolish. Also passing by voice vote was the amendment banning funds to pay for any military operations in Egypt.

Another amendment I was watching closely was Jerry Nadler's proposal to free Guantanamo detainees who have already been found to have been held without any valid reasons. It failed 176-242, all but 6 Republicans opposing it. It sickened me to see 22 Democrats cross the aisle and vote with the Republicans on this-- all the regular conservative shitheads and cowards like McIntyre, Sinema, Gallego, Barrow, Patrick Murphy, Foster, Barber, Kirkpatrick, Bera, Sean Patrick Maloney, Lipinski, Cuellar, Owens... and Pennsylvania gubernatorial wanna-be Allyson Schwartz who ignore the Democratic grassroots in their own districts and cater to Republicans who aren't going to vote for them anyway. What passed instead, 238-185, was Indiana reactionary Jackie Walorski's mean-spirited and genuinely stupid amendment banning the transfer of innocent detainees from Gitmo to Yemen, a shameful and pointless act that defines what kind of a flaming asshole Walorski is. 14 Democrats voted for her amendment, all the usual suspects: worthless garbage like Barber, Barrow, Kirkpatrick, Lipinksi, Sean Patrick Maloney, Matheson, McIntyre, Owens, Gary Peters, Peterson, Ruiz, Sinema...

The big amendment, of course, was Justin Amash's and John Conyers' Amendment #100 which was meant to stop the NSA’s blanket surveillance of Americans. That really divided the wheat from the chaff-- and not along party lines. The amendment failed 205-217. Both parties' corrupt leadership whipped frantically against the amendment. Democrats were more willing to break from their leaders than Republicans were of course and 134 Republicans voted no, while 83 Democrats voted no. 111 Democrats voted for the Amash-Conyers proposal which would have limited the government’s collection of records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act to those records that pertain to a person who is subject to an investigation under that provision. According to Amash, the amendment has three important practical effects. 

First, it ends the mass surveillance of Americans. The government no longer is authorized under Sec. 215 to hold a pool of metadata on every phone call of every American.  Second, the amendment permits the government to continue to acquire business records and other “tangible things” that are actually related to an authorized counterterrorism investigation. The government still has access to this tool under the amendment, but it’s forced to comply with the intent of Congress when it passed Sec. 215.  Third, the amendment imposes more robust judicial oversight of NSA’s surveillance. The FISA court will be involved every time NSA searches Americans’ records, and the court will have a substantive, statutory standard to apply to make sure the NSA does not violate Americans’ civil liberties.

...The amendment does not affect foreign surveillance. FISA simply does not apply to the surveillance of purely foreign communications... The amendment does not restrict the types of records that the government can collect under Sec. 215.  NSA and the FBI can continue to collect telephone records, car rental reservations, hotel receipts, and any other “tangible thing” under Sec. 215. NSA can continue to collect telephone metadata without a warrant and without probable cause that a crime or other statutory violation has been committed. The amendment simply requires that there be a reasonable connection between the documents sought and the person under investigation.

This is what Amash sent his colleagues in the House: "As you go home for August recess, you will be asked: Did you oppose the suspicionless collection of every American’s phone records? When you had the chance to stand up for Americans’ privacy, did you?"

Rush Holt (D-NJ) immediately introduced the the Surveillance State Repeal Act to repeal federal surveillance laws that the government abused by collecting personal information on millions of Americans in violation of the Constitution.

“As we now know, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been collecting the personal communications of literally millions of innocent Americans for no legitimate reason,” said Holt. “Instead of using these powers to zero in on the tiny number of real terrorist threats we face, the executive branch turned these surveillance powers against the American people as a whole. My legislation would put a stop to that right now.”   Holt’s bill, the “Surveillance State Repeal Act”, would repeal the PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act, each of which contains provisions that allowed the dragnet surveillance.  The bill would reinstate a uniform probable cause-based warrant standard for surveillance requests, and prohibit the federal government from forcing technology companies from building in hardware or software “back doors” to make it easier for the government to spy on the public. Additional features of the bill include the true legal protections for national security whistleblowers, as well as changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to give it greater expertise in reviewing and challenging executive branch applications for surveillance operations.

“The executive branch’s groundless mass surveillance of Americans has turned our conception of liberty on its head. My legislation would restore the proper constitutional balance and ensure our people are treated as citizens first, not suspects.”

The overall Pentagon budget passed 315-109, 8 Republicans and 101 Democrats, primarily progressives, voting against it. Progressive Caucus co-chairs Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) released this statement:

Republicans passed a bloated defense budget today that spends money on weapons programs the Pentagon doesn’t want. This comes a week after they voted to cut funding to feed America’s neediest children. The United States needs a leaner but more capable military able to defeat 21st-century threats. We also need to invest in jobs, education and affordable healthcare for working families. Republicans wrongly decided today that we can’t have both.

The Republican bill spends $47 billion more than the sequester-prescribed cap on defense spending allows and includes an additional $85 billion for overseas contingency operations, primarily to fund the war in Afghanistan. The bill increases spending on outdated programs and does little to help the 650,000 civilian Defense Department employees already being furloughed.

This bill is a missed opportunity to invest in what we need and cut what we don’t. In real terms, we actually spend more on defense today than we did on average during the Cold War. The Cold War is over. Our troops are out of Iraq. The war in Afghanistan is winding down. The security landscape we face today is radically different from 30 years ago, yet Republicans still want to spend like it’s 1985.

Republicans have asked working Americans to give up early education for their children, routine doctors appointments for their families and income security for their grandparents, while they spend billions on programs the Department of Defense doesn't want or need. Preparing for wars that have already ended won't feed our children. Investing in working families will.