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Newsmax host claims that Spike Lee and Al Sharpton identify with criminals}:

:{08/20/25

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Reynolds American, the U.S.'s largest seller of menthol cigarettes, is invoking the memories of the deaths of George Floyd and Eric Garner in a campaign to fight against laws that would ban it from selling its biggest cash cow product.

An almost year-long investigation by the Los Angeles Times and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found that the company is paying a vast team of Black lobbyists and consultants, including former congressman Kendrick Meeks of Florida and Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network, to protect its multi-billion-dollar menthol cigarette market.

The company's message is that government efforts to prohibit the sale of menthol cigarettes unfairly target the Black community and equate to a new layer of racism in America.

The Times reports: "About 150 cities and counties have placed some sort of restriction on the sale of menthol cigarettes, most issuing an outright ban. If California votes to prohibit the sale of menthols in November, it would follow Massachusetts as the second state to do so. The Food and Drug Administration has drafted a national ban that could follow in the next few years, which estimates suggest could save more than 600,000 lives, including almost 250,000 Black lives."

This investigation has revealed that individuals and organizations working on Reynolds’ behalf have not properly declared their ties to the company.

“The web that keeps menthol present in cities is not an accident. It’s not driven by some kind of innate Black taste for menthol,” said Keith Wailoo, a history professor at Princeton University and author of “Pushing Cool,” a book about menthol cigarettes. “It is a byproduct of a complex and relentless story of how markets were built and sustained.”

In response to a list of questions, Reynolds American told reporters it believed that “regulating menthol cigarettes differently than non-menthol cigarettes would result in numerous troubling unintended consequences, including significant growth in contraband menthol cigarettes sold through an already widespread underground market.”

Sharpton and Meek did not respond to multiple inquiries from The Times. In the past, Sharpton has cited the 2014 death of Eric Garner, who New York City police detained for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes.

“They killed him over ‘loosie’ cigarettes,” he said at a 2016 forum held in an Oakland church, referring to allegations that Garner was illegally selling single cigarettes. “How many of these kind of situations are we going to have if we keep having these kind of engagements around criminalizing of low-level offenses?”

https://pando.com/2015/08/11/behind-scenes-donald-trump-roger-stone-show/

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In early 2004, with former Vermont governor and articulate antiwar candidate Howard Dean electrifying Democrats and antiwar voters and posing a potentially deadly threat to the Bush campaign, Roger Stone secretly funded and staffed Al Sharpton, and sent him into the Democratic Party primaries to smear Howard Dean and suck the life and joy out of his campaign. It worked.

Again, quoting the great Village Voicereporting by Wayne Barrett from 2004:

While Bush forces like the Club for Growth were buying ads in Iowa assailing then front-runner Howard Dean, Sharpton took center stage at a debate confronting Dean about the absence of blacks in his Vermont cabinet. Stone told the Times that he “helped set the tone and direction” of the Dean attacks, while Charles Halloran, the Sharpton campaign manager installed by Stone, supplied the research. While other Democratic opponents were also attacking Dean, none did it on the advice of a consultant who's worked in every GOP presidential campaign since his involvement in the Watergate scandals of 1972, including all of the Bush family campaigns.

The Timesquoted Trump in 2004 taking credit for introducing Al Sharpton to Roger Stone. But it was Barrett’s merciless reporting on Sharpton’s “blackface bucks”—the legions of race-baiting Republicans who donated cash and resources to Sharpton’s anti-Howard Dean run—that is something worth re-reading today, as we’re already seeing stunts like usingblack Tea Party activists to play the same old racism card and thereby sabotage and suck the life out of another popular Vermont candidate, Bernie Sanders....

The last thing white liberals and lefties want to be caught doing is criticizing any black political leader, even if that leader is a rightwing mole and FBI snitch like Al Sharpton. As Barrett reminded readers in 2004,

Sharpton and Stone are, in a sense, brothers under the skin, outlandish personalities too large to be bound by the constraints that govern the rest of us. Stone was the registered agent in America for Argentina's intelligence agency, sucking up spy novels; Sharpton was a confidential informant for the FBI, wiring up on black leaders for the feds. Stone is a fashion impersonator, dressing like a hip-hop dandy; Sharpton, having shed his gold medallion and jogger suits, now looks like a smooth banker. Stone was involved in Watergate at the age of 19; Sharpton was a boy-wonder preacher. Stone's mentor from the days of his youth was Roy Cohn; Sharpton's was James Brown. Sharpton is a minister without a church; Stone is almost as rootless, having left the powerhouse Washington firm he helped form years ago. Each reinvents himself daily, if not hourly, as if nothing in their past matters.

In their latest incarnations, Al Sharpton is an MSNBC black liberal and Democratic Party loyalist; Roger Stone is a Libertarian prankster fighting the two-party stranglehold; and Donald Trump is a right-wing populist shaking up the system because by gum, he just doesn’t care and he doesn’t need to care.

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Now, in his current presidential campaign, Sharpton has been revealed as a wholly owned Republican subsidiary. Sharpton has been used by Republican operatives to discredit real contenders for the Democratic nomination. And the more prominent a place on the Democratic stage Sharpton can command, all the way to Boston, the more the Republicans can use the wisecracking but polarizing preacher-without-a-church as a bogeyman to frighten moderate voters away from the Democratic ticket. That?s the story behind the blockbuster report in the February 5 Village Voice ? the L.A. Weekly?s sister paper ? in which veteran Voice investigative reporter Wayne Barrett and his team unveiled the malevolent forces keeping Sharpton?s campaign alive: ?Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami?Dade County recount and helped make George Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Rev. Al Sharpton.?

Who is Roger Stone? A slash-and-burn Republican black-bag election tamperer and consultant whose mentor was the repulsive Roy Cohn ? the redbaiting hatchet man for Senator Joe McCarthy. Stone first made news in the Nixon Watergate scandal, when it was revealed that the 19-year-old apprentice McCarthyite had infiltrated George McGovern?s 1972 presidential campaign as part of CREEP?s sabotage plan. A few other highlights of Stone?s career as the boastful black prince of Republican sleaze: Stone helped Ollie North raise money for the Nicaraguan contras, and was a close associate of the notorious Lee Atwater (the GOP hit man who created the race-baiting Willie Horton TV spots for Bush p?re?s 1988 presidential campaign).

The New Yorker?s Jeffrey Toobin ? in his excellent book, Too Close To Call, about the 2000 Florida election ? details how Stone was summoned by Bush recount chief James Baker to disrupt the vote counting (Stone and his Cuban wife, Nydia, organized a screaming mob of Miami Cubans outside the headquarters of the canvassing board ? Stone directed the mob by walkie-talkie from across the street ? and intimidated the board into ending the count). On the stump, Rev. Al has frequently denounced the theft of the presidential election in Florida ? which depended in large measure on invalidating black votes. For example, he told a Democratic National Committee meeting last October that ?We are witnessing a nonmilitary civil war ? it started with the recount in Florida.? So, hopping into bed with Stone might strike many African-Americans as ?ungodly? hypocrisy. But the tale gets worse.

When Sharpton launched a vicious attack on Howard Dean for his supposed ?anti-black agenda,? the man behind the curtain was Stone, who crowed to The New York Times that he ?helped set the tone and direction? of the blast at Dean, while the research for it was provided by the man Stone had installed as Sharpton?s campaign manager, Charles Halloran, one of a half-dozen top aides to Sharpton who worked for Stone in previous campaigns.

A member of Stone?s stable who stays at Stone?s Central Park South apartment in New York while working for Sharpton, Halloran ? just before taking over the Sharpton campaign ? had been managing the parliamentary campaign for one of Stone?s numerous foreign clients: the United Bermuda Party, a white-led party trying to oust the resort island?s first black government. Since Rev. Al?s presidential campaign is really all about trying to succeed Jesse Jackson as America?s premier black political leader, the installation of Halloran is thus an odd choice indeed, one that can be explained only by Sharpton?s dependence on the money funneled into his campaign by Stone. (Halloran?s wife works for the infamous Carlyle Group, the military-industrial-complex giant of which Bush p?re was a longtime officer.)

Stone has acknowledged that he ?helped Sharpton? meet the 20-state, $5,000-contribution threshold required for federal matching funds. Example, according to The Voice: ?In Florida, Stone?s wife, Nydia; son Scott; daughter-in-law Laurie; mother-in-law Olga Bertran; Stone?s executive assistant Dianne Thorne; Tim Suereth, who lives with Thorne; and Halloran?s mother, all pushed Sharpton comfortably over the threshold, donating $250 apiece in December. Jeanmarie Ferrara, who works at a Miami public relations firm that joined Stone in the ?90s fight on behalf of the sugar industry against a tax to resuscitate the Everglades, also gave $250, as did the wife of the firm?s name partner . . . Another lobbyist, Eli Feinberg, a Republican giver appointed to a top position by the Republican state insurance commissioner, also gave $250.? Hired guns for ultraright evangelical GOP Florida Senate candidate Larry Klayman also kicked in to Rev. Al. Similar patterns of GOPers giving to Sharpton and phantom donors have been found in other states.

Sharpton?s almost penniless campaign has been sustained only by money given or raised by Stone or by Stone-arranged credit with consultants ? without which the campaign would collapse. The Voice alleges that Stone loaned some $270,000 to Sharpton laundered through Rev. Al?s National Action Network (NAN), and that Stone rang up $18,000 on his credit card for Sharpton?s campaign-travel and other expenses. In the wake of these revelations, the Federal Election Commission is about to consider whether the Sharpton campaign expenses picked up by NAN with the money provided by Stone, and other unpaid-for campaign services provided by Stone and his chums, constitute illegal campaign contributions, according to The New York Times.

his 2003 autobiography, Al on America, the Rev. Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. admits, ?I have been guilty of letting ungodly things around me.? And that was never more true than with the latest revelations about Sharpton, who has now been exposed as a cat?s-paw for the national Republican Party.

Rev. Al has a long and sordid history of posing as the champion of the have-nots, while renting himself out to the greedy have-everythings, which predates his ?04 GOP-funded presidential campaign. In 1986, he endorsed N.Y. Senator Al D?Amato for re-election ? although D?Amato, a conservative Republican pit bull, was anathema to more issues-attuned black leaders. In 1994, he helped dampen down the black vote for Governor Mario Cuomo by making a media-hyped appearance with successful conservative Republican candidate George Pataki just days before the election. In the 2001 New York mayoral campaign, he connived with GOP billionaire Michael Bloomberg in the defeat of the Democratic candidate, Mark Green.

But Sharpton has not limited himself simply to supporting candidates considered by most to be inimical to the interests of the impoverished black community. A 1988 investigation by the Long Island daily Newsday revealed that Sharpton, who denounces African-American leaders who disagree with him as ?yellow niggers,? had been a longtime FBI informant in a scheme to entrap black leaders and personalities on drug-related matters, even going so far as to wear a wire to record their conversations for the feds.

How did the FBI turn Sharpton into their bitch? Why, they caught Rev. Al up to his hairdo in a drug-money Laundromat in which Don King, the much-indicted boxing promoter and a longtime pal of Sharpton?s, was a central figure. What?s more, the drug deal was an FBI sting ? and the feds had it all on videotape, too. Just two years ago, Bryant Gumbel ? the second most popular black on television next to Oprah ? aired on his HBO Real Sports show an FBI videotape of Sharpton discussing laundering money from a South American drug dealer via King with Michael ?Sonny? Franzese, a former Colombo family captain. Sharpton was going to arrange a meeting with King and the coke peddler to set up the deal. But the ?South American? was an FBI agent, Franzese had already been turned by the feds into an informant ? and Sharpton fell right into their trap. Sharpton became a sting artist for the feds when he was himself stung. After the tape aired, Sharpton announced he was going to sue HBO for a billion bucks. Nothing has been heard of the lawsuit since then.

Now, in his current presidential campaign, Sharpton has been revealed as a wholly owned Republican subsidiary. Sharpton has been used by Republican operatives to discredit real contenders for the Democratic nomination. And the more prominent a place on the Democratic stage Sharpton can command, all the way to Boston, the more the Republicans can use the wisecracking but polarizing preacher-without-a-church as a bogeyman to frighten moderate voters away from the Democratic ticket. That?s the story behind the blockbuster report in the February 5 Village Voice ? the L.A. Weekly?s sister paper ? in which veteran Voice investigative reporter Wayne Barrett and his team unveiled the malevolent forces keeping Sharpton?s campaign alive: ?Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami?Dade County recount and helped make George Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Rev. Al Sharpton.?

Who is Roger Stone? A slash-and-burn Republican black-bag election tamperer and consultant whose mentor was the repulsive Roy Cohn ? the redbaiting hatchet man for Senator Joe McCarthy. Stone first made news in the Nixon Watergate scandal, when it was revealed that the 19-year-old apprentice McCarthyite had infiltrated George McGovern?s 1972 presidential campaign as part of CREEP?s sabotage plan. A few other highlights of Stone?s career as the boastful black prince of Republican sleaze: Stone helped Ollie North raise money for the Nicaraguan contras, and was a close associate of the notorious Lee Atwater (the GOP hit man who created the race-baiting Willie Horton TV spots for Bush p?re?s 1988 presidential campaign).

The New Yorker?s Jeffrey Toobin ? in his excellent book, Too Close To Call, about the 2000 Florida election ? details how Stone was summoned by Bush recount chief James Baker to disrupt the vote counting (Stone and his Cuban wife, Nydia, organized a screaming mob of Miami Cubans outside the headquarters of the canvassing board ? Stone directed the mob by walkie-talkie from across the street ? and intimidated the board into ending the count). On the stump, Rev. Al has frequently denounced the theft of the presidential election in Florida ? which depended in large measure on invalidating black votes. For example, he told a Democratic National Committee meeting last October that ?We are witnessing a nonmilitary civil war ? it started with the recount in Florida.? So, hopping into bed with Stone might strike many African-Americans as ?ungodly? hypocrisy. But the tale gets worse.

When Sharpton launched a vicious attack on Howard Dean for his supposed ?anti-black agenda,? the man behind the curtain was Stone, who crowed to The New York Times that he ?helped set the tone and direction? of the blast at Dean, while the research for it was provided by the man Stone had installed as Sharpton?s campaign manager, Charles Halloran, one of a half-dozen top aides to Sharpton who worked for Stone in previous campaigns.

A member of Stone?s stable who stays at Stone?s Central Park South apartment in New York while working for Sharpton, Halloran ? just before taking over the Sharpton campaign ? had been managing the parliamentary campaign for one of Stone?s numerous foreign clients: the United Bermuda Party, a white-led party trying to oust the resort island?s first black government. Since Rev. Al?s presidential campaign is really all about trying to succeed Jesse Jackson as America?s premier black political leader, the installation of Halloran is thus an odd choice indeed, one that can be explained only by Sharpton?s dependence on the money funneled into his campaign by Stone. (Halloran?s wife works for the infamous Carlyle Group, the military-industrial-complex giant of which Bush p?re was a longtime officer.)

Stone has acknowledged that he ?helped Sharpton? meet the 20-state, $5,000-contribution threshold required for federal matching funds. Example, according to The Voice: ?In Florida, Stone?s wife, Nydia; son Scott; daughter-in-law Laurie; mother-in-law Olga Bertran; Stone?s executive assistant Dianne Thorne; Tim Suereth, who lives with Thorne; and Halloran?s mother, all pushed Sharpton comfortably over the threshold, donating $250 apiece in December. Jeanmarie Ferrara, who works at a Miami public relations firm that joined Stone in the ?90s fight on behalf of the sugar industry against a tax to resuscitate the Everglades, also gave $250, as did the wife of the firm?s name partner . . . Another lobbyist, Eli Feinberg, a Republican giver appointed to a top position by the Republican state insurance commissioner, also gave $250.? Hired guns for ultraright evangelical GOP Florida Senate candidate Larry Klayman also kicked in to Rev. Al. Similar patterns of GOPers giving to Sharpton and phantom donors have been found in other states.

Sharpton?s almost penniless campaign has been sustained only by money given or raised by Stone or by Stone-arranged credit with consultants ? without which the campaign would collapse. The Voice alleges that Stone loaned some $270,000 to Sharpton laundered through Rev. Al?s National Action Network (NAN), and that Stone rang up $18,000 on his credit card for Sharpton?s campaign-travel and other expenses. In the wake of these revelations, the Federal Election Commission is about to consider whether the Sharpton campaign expenses picked up by NAN with the money provided by Stone, and other unpaid-for campaign services provided by Stone and his chums, constitute illegal campaign contributions, according to The New York Times.