Podcast: iPost reporting on Michael Joseph




Two weeks ago, Investigative Post’s Geoff Kelly reported on allegations of “racist and illegal practices” by one of the region’s biggest real estate development and management firms. In a federal lawsuit, a former employee accused the company of racially profiling communities where it was thinking of building senior housing complexes. 

Clover executives were caught on audio discussing the practice, using the code word “Canadians” to refer to Black people and “the Canadian factor” to describe the company’s reluctance to build in communities where the population was more than 20 percent Black.

We followed with a profile of Clover’s civically and politically engaged president, Michael Joseph, as well as a piece on whether his apparent move to Florida disqualified him from his long standing role as chair of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. J. Dale Shoemaker added a report on the millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies Clover has received over the years.

All this scrutiny led to Joseph’s resignation from Roswell’s board last week.

In this latest episode of Investigative Post’s Reporter’s Notebook, host Garrett Looker sat down with Kelly to discuss our reporting on Clover, Joseph’s subsequent fall from grace, and what other shoes are likely to drop in the coming weeks and months.

The post Podcast: iPost reporting on Michael Joseph appeared first on Investigative Post.

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CPAC attendees stun host as they cheer for Trump impeachment: ‘That was the wrong answer’



Conservative activist and lobbyist Matthew Schlapp was left speechless Friday after attempting to “hype up” the crowd at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference in Texas, only for the effort to backfire spectacularly.

“How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?” Schlapp asked the massive crowd at the annual conservative event.

To Schlapp’s surprise, a wave of cheers erupted from the crowd.

“No,” Schlapp responded, shaking his head and smiling awkwardly. “That was the wrong answer. Let me try it again: how many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?”

Schlapp’s second attempt garnered a more mixed response, with some still cheering while others booed.

Schlapp again laughed off the unexpected response.

“Can someone bring some coffee out for the people at CPAC?” he said.

CPAC was founded in 1974, with President Ronald Reagan delivering the organization’s first-ever inaugural keynote speech. It’s held regular annual conferences in years since, with President Donald Trump delivering a speech at the organization’s conference in 2024.

Schlapp, 58, has long been involved in Republican politics, having served as President George W. Bush’s deputy assistant. Schlapp previously served as CPAC’s chair, and currently runs a lobbying firm with close ties to the Trump administration.

The Independent reporter Andrew Feinberg flagged the moment in a post on social media, describing Schlapp’s attempt to “hype up the CPAC crowd” as having gone “horribly wrong.”


MAGA county clerk will get new sentence in 2020 election plot



An appeals court tossed out a nine-year sentence for discredited Colorado election clerk Tina Peters.

The Donald Trump ally will be re-sentenced by a district court judge after the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her conviction but found that Mesa County District Court Judge Matthew Barrett had wrongly based part of his sentence on Peters’ exercise of her right to free speech, reported the Denver Post.

“Notwithstanding the fact that some of the trial court’s considerations were tied to proper sentencing considerations, when the court’s comments are viewed in their totality, it is apparent that the court imposed the lengthy sentence it did because Peters continued to espouse the views that led her to commit these crimes,” the opinion states.

The "tenor" of Barrett's original sentencing order indicates that he "punished" Peters for her persistence in insisting the 2020 election had been fraudulent and that keeping her in prison was necessary to prevent her from espousing views the judge felt were "damaging," and the appeals court sent the case back to him for a resentencing.

The appellate court found there was sufficient evidence to convict Peters and that she was not immune to state prosecution, and the judges also found that a purported pardon from Trump carried no authority under Colorado law.

The court denied Peters' request that a new judge resentence her, saying that issue should be raised in a lower court, and ruled that a prosecutor’s description of her case during closing arguments had no impact on the verdict.

“The evidence of her knowledge of the illegality of her conduct is so overwhelming, we simply cannot say that the prosecutor’s statement (even if improper) had any impact on the verdict, let alone an impact so great as to cause serious doubt about the reliability of the judgment of conviction,” the panel found.

Peters, now 70, was convicted by a Mesa County jury of four felony and three misdemeanor crimes for plotting to sneak unauthorized individuals into a secure area to examine voting equipment to look for evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

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‘Womp womp’: Trump’s ‘obsession’ with crowd sizes rubbed in his face over low CPAC turnout



MS NOW host Catherine Rampell took a sharp jab at President Donald Trump on Sunday for skipping the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) convention for the first time in nearly a decade, suggesting he did so to avoid embarrassing optics tied to his “obsession” with crowd sizes.

“If we know anything about Donald Trump, it is his obsession with a handful of fairly specific things: gold plating, the Village People, and of course, crowd sizes. So you can only imagine how he must feel seeing this split screen,” Rampell said on MS NOW’s “The Weekend Primetime,” queuing up a split-screen video of the massive No Kings rallies and the CPAC event in Texas.

“On the left side, you have the absolutely massive No Kings day protests which took over small towns, big cities all over the place, all around the world. Organizers say at least eight million people showed up. And then on the right side of your screen you have CPAC. Womp, womp. Notice a difference?”

This year’s CPAC conference notably does not have either Trump or any of his children speaking at the event, often a strong draw for conservatives to attend the event. Turnout appears to have suffered as a result, Mother Jones reported.

“It’s sh----,” said GOP delegate Warner Kimo Sutton of the event’s turnout, speaking with Mother Jones. “Last time this place was packed.”