Fraud Claim Falls Short of Definition

Aaron Park circulated a series of campaign tracts to members of the CRA Board and then posted them on his blog on April 17th. This begins my analysis of Aaron Park’s political tracts.

CRA Coup Attempt Exposed – Part One
http://www.rightondaily.com/2015/04/cra-coup-attempt-exposed-part-one/

Why the push for a May 30th Board Meeting to Oust George and Aaron?

The push for the May 30th meeting was begun by John Briscoe. He backed down and seven of the CRA VPs and some others felt that the meeting was overdue. The meeting after the CRA Convention was not valid—no quorum was established—and the necessary appointments needed to fill Committees created by the Bylaws were left vacant. The Parks were not invited to this conference call because their fate was part of the discussion.

Prior to resigning, Briscoe had asked the Parks to resign several times.

I go thru all this to say that Aaron does have reason to feel that the May 30 meeting is to oust him and his brother. They can still resign from the Board, that way they might stay in CRA but be confined to Placer County. Some say they have burned that bridge too and they just need to go.

And this brings us to the main topic of this tract, the alleged fraud of Santa Clarita RA. Aaron proclaims:

Massive Fraud in Santa Clarita RA!

It is simple. Alice Khosravy, Wendy Albright, David Gauny, Dana Schlumpberger and John Rogers from the Santa Clarita Valley RA are hiding something huge. They along with Mark Gardner, Tim Thiesen and Carl Brickey want George and Aaron Park out of CRA badly:

Why, because – “over 10% of the SCVRA’s Membership is fraudulent.”

Ok, let’s define terms and then see if Aaron’s claim holds up.

Fraudulent: The description of a willful act commenced with the Specific Intent to deceive or cheat, in order to cause some financial detriment to another and to engender personal financial gain.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fraudulent

The same website also defines Specific Intent: The term specific intent is commonly used in criminal and Tort Law to designate a special state of mind that is required, along with a physical act, to constitute certain crimes or torts. Specific intent is usually interpreted to mean intentionally or knowingly.

So, if we combine the two then fraud is: The description of a willful act commenced with the state of mind to intentionally or knowingly deceive or cheat, in order to cause some financial detriment to another and to engender personal financial gain.

I will stipulate that “financial” is not the type of gain that Park is alleging here so what can it be?

I don’t think bragging rights to who has the largest CRA chapter is the issue so I can only conclude that the fraud that Park is alleging is related to Convention delegates.

The important question, is Park’s allegation true?

Look at the CRA Bylaws:

Section 11.06. Representation and Quorum. Each chartered Republican Assembly in good standing shall be entitled to select Delegates to each CRA Convention as follows: three Delegates for the first fifteen members and one Delegate for each ten additional members. Representation shall be determined by the records maintained by the Membership Secretary, as of thirty days prior to the Convention.

So for each ten members, Santa Clarita Valley is entitled to another Convention delegate. Assuming Aaron it correct that twenty odd folks should not be on the Santa Clarita rolls, then The Santa Clarita could send an extra two delegates to the convention.

So at this point I think it is fair to ask, did Santa Clarita send delegates to the Convention that they were not entitled to send?

Membership Secretary George Park determined that Santa Clarita could send sixteen delegates to the convention. So if fraud is the motivation for the inflated membership numbers that Park alleges then a reasonable person would expect that Santa Clarita would have maxed-out on their Convention delegates to take advantage of the fraud they are perpetrating, right?

Unfortunately for Park, Santa Clarita could only muster twelve delegates. Therefore, Park would have to rule out all other possible errors in the membership records and then disqualify fifty members before the delegate count might qualify as fraudulent. Plus he would still have to prove knowingly deceiving or cheating.

Now please remember that the Credentials Committee was not allowed access to the membership records to verify any delegate counts because George Park did not want the privacy of member records to be breached and for any membership information to become public.

Or was it just to keep the Placer RA records from scrutiny? You see this issue cuts both ways. Credentials had reports that Placer was the group cooking the books and when folks expressed interest in their records that’s when Park pulled the plug on any access.

The other issue that may be at play here is that George invoiced clubs all over the state for membership dues in 2015. These dues were based on old membership lists and his only instructions to the chapters was to add new members and pay the balance. He did not asked that people that had not paid dues be deleted or the list of members be verified before submission.

My chapter was invoiced for 35 members but only 24 had renewed their membership. Thus George’s membership roster contained a 31 percent error from 2014 to 2015. The membership difference in Santa Clarita seems to be within this margin of error.

But again, George was OK with the Santa Clarita delegate number 30 days prior to the Convention and had there been a problem it should have been given to the Credential Committee and not to his brother 30 plus days after the convention.

Park Family Shakedown: Money, Blogs, and Phony Members

In my last blog, we established that the dictionary definition of fraud involves intentionally or knowingly deceive or cheat, in order to cause some financial detriment to another and to engender personal financial gain.

And that got me to thinking. In his posts, Aaron often tells us more about his motivations than he actually does about the actions of others. Rush Limbaugh has the same observation about Democrats. They accuse others of what actually motivates them.

Over the last few weeks, Aaron’s whole campaign is that everyone in CRA commits fraud and only he and George can protect CRA from this evil. After posting my blog last night, I got to thinking about fraud and the Parks and the one name popped into my head and I said “gotcha.” That name is Igor Birman.

As we all know, much of the animosity that Aaron has with Nevada Republican Assembly concerns the endorsement or rather non-endorsement of Tom McClintock prior to the June election last year. Nevada RA thinks Tom McClintock is a rock solid conservative and Aaron helped to block McClintock’s endorsement by the local CRA endorsing convention. This was the “local” endorsing convention held at the CRA convention in southern California—the better part of 400 miles from CD-4. As you recall, John Briscoe was not happy with the result and had the CRA Board pass a resolution thanking Tom for being a great Conservative at the Board meeting on March 15, 2014 in Burlingame last year.

At the same time Aaron is going out of his way to throw “bricks” at Tom McClintock, Aaron is on his blog singing the praises of McClintock’s Chief of Staff, Igor Birman, who is running for congress in a neighboring Congressional District. On his blog, Aaron proclaimed over and over that Igor was the only true conservative in the race. The other conservative, Elizabeth Emken, was constantly portrayed by Park as a RINO despite the fact she was in agreement with Birman on most issues.

Can you see the logical dilemma here?
Igor’s claim to fame and qualification to run for Congress is his association with McClintock.
Simultaneously Park denies McClintock’s endorsement by CRA because McClintock is unfit.

How can both be true? What is the difference?

Money.

It is no secret that Park accepts money from candidates for favorable treatment on his blog. It also may be the case that refusal to utilize his “consulting services” might create unfavorable treatment on the blog.

But in the case of Birman there was more at work than favorable treatment on a blog.

During the same period of time that Park was singing the praises of Birman, a CRA chapter in the district in which Birman was campaigning experienced a sudden and unexplained growth spurt. This growth was so remarkable that at the March 2014 board meeting in Burlingame, George Park sang their praises as the largest percentage of growth in all of California. In fact, the Sacramento Republican Assembly doubled in membership in the first part of 2014.

Let’s look at this growth:
• None of these new members ever attended a meeting before joining.
• Only about two ever came to a meeting after joining. Both were associated with Birman.
• All paid cash for their memberships.
• No dues or membership applications were submitted to club officers. Not the President, VP, Secretary, or Treasurer.
• All money and membership applications were reportedly give directly to George Park.
• Park does not live or work in Sacramento County. The new members reportedly went to the offices of Park Family Insurance to pay their dues.
• This happened over 25 times.
• When Birman came in third in June, all these folks simply vanished.

The SRA membership drive seemed like an aborted effort to insure that Birman’s campaign had a stranglehold on the chapter for the purposes of an endorsement. If the newly created Investigative Committee wants to find some real fraud, I suggest that they dig into this matter.

When it comes to the Parks and fraud, Methinks thou dost protest too much.