Money-Grubbing Smear Merchants Rex Butler and Tank Jones Target Governor Palin

Some of our readers have emailed us wondering what Dennis Zaki at the Alaska Report website is alluding to with his teaser headline:

An iceberg is heading toward the Palins. Can it be stopped? I don't think so. Will it sink the ship, all signs say yes. Stay tuned...

We decided to do a little research. It is clear that the Alaskan leftwing blogs are working together to destroy Sarah Palin and her family. First their work centered on frivolous ethics complaints, and now they are moving on to the Palin family itself.

Apparently there's some coordination going on among the anklebiting Alaskan blogs. (Surprise!)

Who do they think they are fooling? One day they post an anti-Palin article on their blog, and the next day an ethics complaint is lodged using the very same language as the anti-Palin article?

On the day that Bill McAllister went on Eddie Burke's show to announce that Governor Palin had launched a Twitter account, the lefty Alaskan blogs seemed convinced that some bombshell would be dropped -- and made posts with "hints" as to what it would be about, kind of like The Riddler in a Batman movie. See Mudflats and Celtic Diva and judge for yourselves.

Anyway, lets get back to the teaser headline on the "Alaska Report." It took about three minutes to discover where this headline originated -- the Immoral Minority blog. Our readers should be aware, if they are not already, that the operator of the Immoral Minority blog, "Gryphen," is a "Trig Truther," meaning somebody who does not believe that Trig Palin is Governor Palin's son. Examples of his "Trig Trutherism" can be found here, here and here. Gryphen also believes that Bristol Palin is pregnant again, and that Levi Johnston has been fathering children with other teenage girls.

Being a "Trig Truther" is the ultimate sign of Palin Derangement Syndrome. We were successful in our efforts to stop the Anchorage Daily News from linking to this nutjob's website.

So this guy is not the sharpest tool in the shed. The operator of the Immoral Minority blog admits that he is in regular contact with Rex Butler and Tank Jones. Rex Butler is the high-priced attorney who is handling legal issues for the Johnston family. Butler magically appeared in court to defend Sherry Johnston on her drug-dealing related arrest -- she originally was so broke she had to get a public defender. Butler is apparently also representing Diana Palin in the proceedings on her criminal charges.

How does Sherry Johnston afford an attorney like Rex Butler? How do the Johnstons get the money to zoom around the United States giving interviews? How do they pay their rent/mortgage or even the payments on Levi Johnston's truck (judging from this video, Levi's truck seems to be a Ford F-150 SuperCrew, which sells for about $30,000)?

Airplane tickets from Anchorage to Los Angeles and New York run a minimum of around $700 per person, and that doesn't include hotel stays and other transportation. Trips from Anchorage to Florida, where Mercede Johnston claimed (on Larry King's show) to have traveled in March, are running around $1200 round trip.

They have claimed on television that they are not receiving compensation for their appearances. So what gives? Levi has no job, his mother has no job, his sister has no job, so who is paying for this "Smear Palin" tour? If you recall the Larry King interview with the Johnstons, you will remember that Mercede Johnston mentioned that she had recently returned from Florida. Why Florida? Well, Florida is where Star Magazine has its headquarters. Hold on a second, Mercede gave an interview to Star Magazine!

So while Rex Butler is handling the Johnston publicity schedule, Tank Jones is the private investigator whose job it is to dig up dirt on the Palin family. Together they are "Butler and Jones" specializing in ambulance chasing and infidelity claims.

Check out Tank Jones' MySpace page, specifically the "Who I'd Like To Meet" section:

Who I'd like to meet:
You... If you believe that your signigicant (sic) other is having a fling and/or affair, call us. We'll unleash the truth.

Here are his MySpace Friends.

Here is Gryphen admitting to being in contact with Butler and Jones and also admitting to working with other bloggers to smear Governor Palin:

By the way I was also happy to hear "Tank" Jones receive that shout out from the Johnston family. Tank was the man who graciously answered my questions about Levi and let me know, and therefore all of you, that he was safe.

[...]

P.S. I have shared some of the more sensitive information with my fellow bloggers so do not worry that I am in any danger or that this information will not be made public at some point, it will. That is what makes us such a formidable community of bloggers.

Having the proof that Gryphen is in contact with Jones and Butler, we can now establish that Butler and Jones are the people behind the Levi Johnston "media tour across America," based on this next comment by Gryphen:

Now we all have to sit back and see what Rex Butler and Sherman "Tank" Jones have in mind for future Levi television appearances.

Ah, so there you have it. The lawyer and the private investigator are pushing the Johnstons to appear on television programs. This flies right into the face of Levi Johnston's claim that he is simply trying to clear his name in the media and that he is not "white trash." Levi can care less about giving his side of the story, he appears on these television shows because his attorney tells him to appear on the television shows. Unless of course, telling his side of the story involves getting an acting gig:

Johnston said he's working odd jobs and hopes to be an electrician. Or perhaps the publicity surrounding his relationship with Bristol will lead to an acting or modeling gig.

Levi Johnston claims that he wants to clear his family of the allegation that they are "white trash," and yet the allegation itself came from his sister's interview with Star Magazine, in which she claims that Bristol Palin called the Johnstons "white trash." Bristol Palin never called Levi or his family that. His own sister aired that. It's as if they created the slur and then presented their media tour as the solution to the slur they created.

All that talk about this not being about publicity is nonsense. This has never been about Levi's son, it is about smearing Governor Palin, which is something Rex Butler himself took part in during the 2008 campaign. Is this Rex Butler or Al Sharpton?:

Blacks don’t have the levels of access to the governor and state commissioners as with past administrations, said attorney Rex Butler, an Alaska resident since 1983. It seems the posture of (Palin’s) administration with Blacks is: Don’t need them—don’t worry about them.

Apparently Butler is doing such a fine job of scheduling the Johnston's media circus that Sherry Johnston, currently awaiting trial for selling drugs, was able to skip out of the state without notifying the prosecutor in the case. This is, of course, a sure sign of innocence.

It should also be noted that Rex Butler is a consistent donor to Democrats.

UPDATE: There is also this interesting comment at the end of Gryphen's "iceberg" post (the one in which he teased his readers about some major scandal that would sink the Palins):

I am also going to put a PayPal button on this site in the next few days. I have resisted doing this for a long time because I just don't like to ask people for money, but information has proven costly and I am going to run out of funds in the near future. If I am going to continue forward I am going to have to be able to pay for access.

The information is "costly"? Is he bribing people? Or is he just trying to make money off of his sordid little smear campaign?

Please note: The Immoral Minority is a Google Blogger site, and he still has "blogspot" in his web address. That means that he has not paid for his domain name (as C4P has. You'll notice that we do not have a "blogspot" in our web address). Blogger does not charge for bandwidth. It's free. In other words, there is no overhead for Gryphen's website. He already has Google ads (which C4P does not), so he is already making money off of his blog. The only reason to have a tip jar is for tips. (We do not have one at C4P, but when we finally move to a WordPress format, we will have to because we will have to pay for bandwidth.)

So, the question remains: Why does he need more money?