Author: pyeager

We have been told many times that NCGOP Chairman Hasan Harnett’s email account had to be disabled because of some nebulous “security threat”.

NC4Hasan.com has cast significant doubt on that claim in this article.  When we did so, we promised there would be more to come.  Here is what may be only the first installment of additional information on that topic.

Note:  This article contains links to recorded audio.  We have edited these – one to remove from the recording time the Chairman spent on hold, and another that represents a key moment in the conversation.  No further editing, such as to change the actual content or meaning of the recordings was done.  A copy of the recording as we received it has been linked to at the end of the article.

On March 9, when the Chairman discovered that he could not access his email he placed a phone call to Computer Plumber, the firm that manages NCGOP’s email.  The Chairman spoke to Linda, who answered the phone.

The Chairman inquired as to why his email account was not available. After waiting on hold, he was told this:

The Chairman was told:

We would need you to call Greg (Greg Fornshell, NCGOP Staff Accountant) and talk to Greg about that, because he had us suspend your account yesterday.

When the Chairman asked Linda if she knew the reason that the account was disabled, she replied:

I don’t. We only do what he says, so you would need to uh, if he will contact us and tell us, we will, you know we’ll do whatever he says.  Just following instructions.

Hmmm… seems to me that if there was some sort of security threat, Linda might have known about that.  Furthermore, had the account been disabled due a security threat, it is more likely that it would have been done by the firm that manages IT resources for NCGOP, rather than by the staff accountant.

Here is the entire conversation, edited only to save you from having to endure too much of the music on hold.

Please note that we do not intend to in any way malign Linda or anyone else at Computer Plumber.  We’re sure they didn’t ask to become part of this drama.

Edit: We also have no intent to impugn the character of Greg Fornshell, NCGOP Staff Accountant.  As an employee of NCGOP, we suspect he was just doing as he was told.

For those who want every last second of the recording, here it is:

Rather than post the entire story here, I’m going to just quote portions and respond.  A link to the original News & Observer story is below.

Harnett says the state convention delegate election in May is part of the reason why members of the party’s Central Committee are trying to oust him. If no presidential candidate enters the July national convention with enough delegates to be nominated on the first ballot, many delegates would then be free to support any candidate on subsequent ballots.

Harnett said he’s concerned that establishment forces might try to elect delegates for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz who won’t support them after the first ballot.

“There are grave implications that are going to take place based on who the delegates are,” he said.

On March 20, the Central Committee took a vote of “no confidence” in Harnett, cut him off from party email and banned him from the GOP’s Raleigh headquarters. But as the smaller of the party’s two governing bodies, the Central Committee doesn’t have the power to remove the chairman.

Which I am sure is just one of the reasons the Chairman has such broad support from the grass roots.

The rift between Harnett and Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse first became public earlier this month when Harnett’s email account was shut off amid what Woodhouse described as a “security” problem.

We have started to provide evidence that the story about the “security problem” is a lie, and will continue to do so.  Read more here.

(Garry) Terry said the party has hired armed security guards to keep staffers “safe” at the Hillsborough Street headquarters since Harnett was banned from the building.

Really?  Armed security guards?  On one hand they claim not enough money has been raised, and on the other, they hire armed security guards?

The party’s attorney, Tom Stark, said he’s been investigating allegations that Harnett ordered someone to hack into the party website to change details about the June convention. Stark said he has not finished the probe yet but has found evidence that “suggested that there’s someone out there that meant to cause damage” to the website.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article69105917.html

NCGOP District 1 Chairman Garry Terry has resigned.

His letter of resignation cites as reasons “a completely unqualified person attempt to lead the state party as chairman” and “vice chairman who cannot control her anger.”

We do not wish to further embarrass Mr. Terry by posting his entire letter of resignation, which it would certainly do.  Things went rather downhill from the quotes cited above.

However, we are proud to present the Vice Chairwoman’s statement acknowledging Mr. Terry’s resignation.

Statement on the Resignation of District 1 Chairman Gerry Terry
Michele Nix, Vice Chairwoman

In the absence of Chairman Harnett and with a heavy heart, this morning, I received the resignation of District 1 Chairman and Central Committee member Gerry Terry. His email is attached and has been forwarded to the NCGOP General Counsel’s office for dissemination.

I have had the pleasure of working with Mr. Terry for the past year and while we have had our disagreements, I have found him to be a man of principle. His service to the GOP and to our state has not gone unnoticed and I greatly appreciate all he has done for the NCGOP and District 1.

Unfortunately, we are at a time where tensions are running high within the GOP. I am continually working quietly in the background to find a resolution to the issues currently plaguing the NCGOP that could undermine what should be a stellar 2016 election for the Republican Party. I can understand the stress Mr. Terry and other members of the Central Committee are currently under and continue to urge them to find an amicable resolution so we can all begin working together to defeat Democrats this Fall.

Despite the stream of negative comments directed at me, I am not seeking Chairman Harnett’s job and continue to urge caution and patience in all matters regarding the NCGOP. My primary goal is to spread the great news about Republican solutions and candidates in North Carolina.

In 2013, Governor McCrory inherited from the Democrats a state government plagued with the fifth highest unemployment in the nation. Since taking office, Governor McCrory and our Republican-led General Assembly have presided over an economic engine in North Carolina. Our state has added 260,000 new jobs, and is now 6th in the nation for most jobs created. Governor McCrory and our fellow Republicans have lowered taxes, improved educational choice, provided teachers with better pay, cut tons of government waste, cut job killing regulations, and they continue to strengthen North Carolina families.

As Vice Chairman of the NCGOP, I am proud to carry our conservative message across the state and I look forward to working with all of our Republican candidates to get elected and re-elected in November. Let’s get back to work spreading the good news of the Republican Party!

The above was written by a person with class.  Someone I am proud to call a fellow Republican.

Edit:  We now hear that Mr. Terry wants to rescind his resignation.  Decorum restrains us from sharing our opinion of that.

We have been told that NCGOP Chairman Hasan Harnett’s email had to be shut off due to some sort of “security threat”.  For example, here is a quote from Deputy Secretary Scott Cumbie’s Facebook Note:

Within a few days a more serious act occurred. Since the details have not been made public, I will summarize what happened to the information that has been made public. The NCGOP staff was informed that an attack on the NCGOP servers and website was eminent. In an effort to protect the NCGOP’s electronic presence, remote e-mail IDs were disabled; websites were shut down; ISPs, hosting companies, ASPs and financial institutions were all contacted about a possible eminent threat.

This evening, while perusing the Chairman’s posts on Twitter, I found this:

The Chairman had tweeted the above screenshot on March 8 when he discovered his email was disabled. His comment on the image was: “My NCGOP Google email account is disabled. Really!!?? Normally I wouldn’t say anything but that is a bit much.”

Indeed, it was a bit much.  But they HAD to do it to secure assets against http://www.ccapac.org/2016/02/07/somebody-hit-a-nerve/an attack, right?

WRONG!

First, let me explain that I have been employed as a software engineer and in various other information technology capacities in industries from aviation to finance to material handling for about 30 years, and have been focused on web development for the past seven years.

When I saw that screen shot, I thought “hmmm… they use Google for their email, and had to shut it down due to a security threat?  That just doesn’t make sense.”  When Google is threatened by a security threat, that is BIG news, the kind that the world hears about if it requires that email accounts be disabled. The chances that Google email accounts would have to be disabled due to a “security threat” are slim to none.  Slim left town last week, and None has been gone for ages.

If my technical description that follows makes your eyes start to glaze over, please, rather than leaving this page, scroll down and read the last two paragraphs.

My suspicions caused me to see what I could find out about NCGOP’s email server.  Guess what I found?  Google is NCGOP’s email server!  Now, what follows is a bit of “inside baseball” tech stuff, but it reveals the evidence.  I will do my best to explain it so that folks who aren’t computer geeks like me can grasp it.  It may omit some steps for clarity, but the essentials of the process are there.

First, it is useful to understand what Domain Name Service (DNS) is.  It is a worldwide network of servers that translate domain names such as google.com or NC4Hasan.com to an IP (Internet Protocol) address.  It is something like the phone book we all once used on a regular basis.  If you wanted to call someone, you looked under their name in the phone book, and found their number.  DNS is like a phone book where one server looks up the host name of another server to find its IP address.

If you send an email to someone at ncgop.org, your email server asks it’s DNS server “what is the IP address of the mail server for ncgop.org”.  The DNS server replies with the IP address, something like 173.194.207.27.  The email server then contacts the server at 173.194.207.27 to transfer your email message to that server.

Now, if I haven’t lost you, give yourself a pat on the back.  Thanks for hanging in there.  If I have lost you, don’t feel bad.  Just remember to scroll to the end of the article before you leave.

If I sit down at my computer and open a terminal window (I use Linux, on a Windows machine this is a “command window”) and run the command “dig mx ncgop.org”, the command tells me the host names of the email servers that handle mail for ncgop.org.  It looks like this:

Let me help you with the gobbledegook above.  Under the header “ANSWER SECTION”, we see that there are five servers that can handle mail for ncgop.org.  Notice anything there?  For all five, the domain name is either google.com or googlemail.com!

Under the heading “ADDITIONAL SECTION”, we see the IP addresses of two of those servers.  If we need any confirmation that these are in fact servers operated by Google, we can go to domaintools.com (and other sites who offer WHOIS lookups) to find who owns those IP addresses.  Here is what domaintools.com has to say about IP address 74.125.24.27:

If you are wondering about the other address shown in the earlier screenshot, check the line titled “NetRange”.  You will see that the information in the image above applies to IP addresses from 74.125.0.0 to 74.125.255.255.  In geek terms, that is an entire Class B network that includes both of the addresses shown in the earlier screen shot.

One thing has been proven above:  NCGOP uses Google for email.  There is not a thing wrong with this, but it casts significant doubt on the claim that email accounts were disabled due to some “security threat”.

Now, the critical reader might well argue that while I have provided significant evidence, I haven’t yet conclusively proven that anyone lied about why email accounts were disabled.

Stay tuned.  There is more to come.

Edit:  The “more to come” is here.

By: Paul Yeager
Often, significant things are revealed to us as we prepare for bed.  As I perused Facebook last night, I came upon the following post by fellow Patriot Lynette Crump Ramsey:

So, reading the Plan of Organization tonight…you know, bedtime stories and all…anyway, it jumped out at me…the part about the state finance committee. The COMMITTEE is tasked with raising the money to properly finance the business and affairs of the Party. This committee consists of the State Finance Chair, The Congressional Finance chairs, and the State Chairman. If raising money is an issue….maybe they should look at what the Plan says… My question is “do they really even know what their rulebook says?”

Lynette raises an excellent point.  Just what does the Plan of Organization say on the matter?  Article VI contains the following on page 21:

D. STATE FINANCE COMMITTEE
1. Membership
The Finance Committee shall consist of the State Finance Chairman, the Congressional District Finance Chairmen and the State Chairman. The State Finance Chairman shall serve as the Chairman of the State Finance Committee. Other Officers as may be deemed necessary may be elected by the Members of the Committee.
2. Powers and Duties
It shall be the duty of the State Finance Committee to develop ways and means to properly finance the General Election campaigns and other businesses and affairs of the Republican Party. The Committee shall manage a united fund-raising effort in cooperation with the State Central Committee and District and County Organizations for effective fund-raising campaigns. Said Committee shall not, directly or indirectly, raise or collect funds for the benefit of any candidates in Primary Elections. All persons making contributions to the State Party of $100.00 or more shall be furnished with a receipt thereof.
Contributions going directly to the National Committee or to any candidate shall not be acknowledged by the State Treasurer or recorded as a regular contribution to the Republican Party of North Carolina. A permanent record of all contributions shall be maintained by the State Chairman and the State Treasurer, and such records shall be available, upon request, to the appropriate County and District Chairmen.

Note the sentence “It shall be the duty of the State Finance Committee to develop ways and means to properly finance the General Election campaigns and other businesses and affairs of the Republican Party.”

It would therefore appear that at least one of the claims that have been made against the Chairman are disingenuous and/or ignorant of the facts. As astute followers of this web site have seen, there are others.

And in response to Lynette’s question posed in her Facebook post, my reply is “They probably know, but I have seen scant evidence that they care”.

GREENVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) – More than a week after North Carolina GOP Central Committee members voted to censor Chairman Hasan Harnett, controversy continues to grow.

The committee originally gave eight reasons to censor the chairman, including fee differences for tickets to the GOP Convention and publicly posting things that discredited the party.

New details have emerged linking a Pitt Community College employee to the situation that eventually led to Harnett being censored and restricted by his own party.

After being locked out of his account, Harnett received a message from PCC instructor, and GOP district 3 webmaster, Ken Robol.

In the message, Robol told Harnett that he could hack into the website to give the chairman access.The two continued to communicate, eventually leading to a phone call.

Robol said he never meant to harm anyone or do anything illegal.

“I thought they were in crisis situation that I could help, just, that’s it,” Robol said.

Robol said the phone call with Harnett lasted just a few minutes. Harnett said he never accepted Robol’s offer to hack into the website, and Robol said he would have never gone through with it.

Robol said he didn’t agree with some of the reasons why Harnett would want access to the website again. Following the phone call, he alerted Tom Stark, the NC GOP’s legal counsel, to the situation.

“There could be some potentially unethical things, and I just didn’t want to be a part of it,” Robol said.

On Monday, WNCT confirmed there is an investigation at PCC into Robol. However, the details of the investigation were not able to be released.

Harnett said he thinks there is an underlying conspiracy in the NC GOP that has led to the current state of the party.

“We just need to come together, and this is not the time continue down the path of witch hunts,” he said.

With an important election year in North Carolina, Harnett said the drama is distracting from their main mission of getting Republican candidates elected.

Dallas Woodhouse, the executive director of the NC GOP, agreed. However, Woodhouse blamed the attention the party was getting on Harnett.

“The proper place to work through these issues is not through the media. The Chairman’s insistence in airing internal party business in public is purposefully harmful to electing republicans,” Woodhouse said in a statement to WNCT.

Harnett said it was Woodhouse and the committee who first made the rift in the party public after censoring him. He said his mission remains being open and honest, and doesn’t approve of other party members hiding behind non-disclosure agreements. He said voters in the state deserve to know the truth.

“The current behavior, as exhibited by the person who wrote that statement, clearly it goes opposite of what they believe in,” Harnett said.

Harnett has called on the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to investigate a possible conspiracy in the NC GOP party. He also is calling on other party leaders to release all of the documents pertaining to the case to the public.

The NC GOP will meet again in April, where Harnett could be completely removed as chairman of the party.

The Republican Convention in the state is scheduled for early May. The convention is when delegates are selected to eventually nominate the Republican Presidential candidate.

From Brant Clifton at The Daily Haymaker: