At the beginning of a video posted online last month, “James,” a plaid-wearing thirty-something with a five o’clock shadow, turns to his companion and asks, “What you got there, E?” Next to him on a couch, “Elizabeth” stares intently at a paper map.
“I am designing an escape plan for Thunder Gov Phil and Mayor Miro,” she says.
James raises an eyebrow skeptically and looks at the camera.
“OK, I’ll bite. Why do they need an escape plan?”
Elizabeth, appearing shocked at James’ ignorance, explains: “Trump and the feds are closing in” on Vermont Gov. Phil Scott and Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger for limiting cooperation between local police and federal immigration authorities.
“Well, maybe they should have thought of that before they started flaunting [sic] the law,” James replies.
The exchange is a typical dig at Republican Scott by an anonymously funded online media brand, News Done Right. Also known as Fan Club, its yearlong series of videos, tweets and Facebook posts has recently taken on other Vermont politicians, as well.
While the videos are billed as political satire from a conservative viewpoint, they have prompted a complaint to the Vermont Attorney General’s Office that they constitute “electioneering communications” — meaning the makers should be required to disclose who is paying to distribute the videos and other News Done Right material as sponsored content on YouTube and Facebook.
A spokesperson for Attorney General T.J. Donovan confirmed that the office is reviewing the complaint but declined to say whether there would be a formal investigation.
News Done Right launched in March 2017 as the Phil Scott Fan Club, and its two hosts repeatedly characterize Scott as hopelessly liberal. After Scott recently announced support for new gun-control measures, for example, News Done Right took to Facebook and posted a mock certificate purporting to “certify” Scott as a “full-fledged Democrat.” Another episode ridiculed Scott’s approval of marijuana legalization with a video that portrayed him and his chief of staff, Jason Gibbs, as pot dealers. News Done Right hosts irreverently call Scott “Thunder Gov,” a reference to his auto racing at Thunder Road Speedbowl in Barre.
At times, James and Elizabeth — the duo reveal no last names, though emails sent from their Gmail account identify the sender as “James Hunter”— have made straight-faced misstatements of fact. Last June, Elizabeth said Scott had a plan to pass “his” carbon tax, though Scott strongly opposes such a tax. In a November episode, James declared that Scott has “banned Columbus Day.” In fact, Scott declared October 9, 2017, Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Vermont but did not “ban” anything.
As News Done Right’s brand shifted from Phil Scott Fan Club, its hosts turned their attention to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In one video, James claims that a brain scan of Vermont’s junior senator showed that “80 percent of Bernie’s cognitive matrix is filled with ways to try and get other people to pay for his stuff.” The other 20 percent, James explains, is “full of ways to try and hide financial documents from federal election commissions … try and defraud banks with your wife, and, oh — latex fetish.”
The video series also pokes fun at Vermont’s high cost of living and progressive politics. “You know how they say Vermont will lose half its population once … progressives get their carbon tax?” Elizabeth asks James in a video posted last month. She offers a solution: “800,000 illegal aliens” should be relocated to Vermont, where they could be employed installing solar panels.
While James and Elizabeth claim to live in and tape their videos in Vermont — and have even casually displayed a print copy of Seven Days as apparent bona fides — the two turned down repeated email requests for in-person interviews and last week declined to speak on the telephone.
The only person who professed to Seven Days any knowledge of News Done Right’s operations is Bradford Broyles, a former Rutland County Republican Party chair and filmmaker who splits his time between Los Angeles and Vermont. Broyles said in December that he knew people involved with News Done Right. “I know about it and I’ve seen it, and that’s all I’m gonna say,” Broyles said then. “I’m a ‘no comment’ on it.” Broyles did not respond to further inquiries last week.
As late as June 27, 2017, the domain name — newsdoneright.com — was registered to Howard Wall, director of the John W. Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo., where he is a professor of economics. According to a Whois report about the domain obtained in December — which includes information about who has paid to register a web address — the website was registered to Wall’s name and home address as of the June date. There is no evidence that Lindenwood is connected to News Done Right. More recent reports show the owner is using a privacy feature to conceal his or her identity.
In an email exchange with this reporter, Wall said he sold the domain “months ago” and knows nothing about News Done Right. He declined to identify the buyer. Asked why his name was still listed as the owner in December, he responded: “No, I was not [the owner] … Your information is incorrect. Go fuck yourself.”
Several people first raised questions about News Done Right and its origins last year on Reddit, the online news and discussion site. When News Done Right began posting its videos on Reddit, lifelong Vermonter Ed Schlak took notice.
His take? “Not funny, was, I think, the big one,” he said. Schlak, 27, lives in Burlington and works at the University of Vermont. He said the videos were full of false accusations and half-truths.
“They just would make stuff up,” Schlak said. “So my initial reaction was just kind of offense, as somebody who appreciates comedy and politics. It was just weird. They were aggressive and insulting and deceitful.”
When another Reddit user shared a video of James and Elizabeth with one of the site’s larger “Subreddit” communities, one of its 700,000-plus members posted a “fun fact” in response. “This girl’s name is Rachel Alig, and she gets naked in a movie called Bikini Spring Break,” wrote a user going by Stezmyster. Indeed, actress Rachel Alig’s online photos and video clips bear a striking resemblance to Elizabeth.
According to multiple social media profiles using Alig’s name and photograph, she is an actress who lives in Los Angeles. Her IMDb page shows she’s been in 73 productions, including commercials, horror movies and a feature-length comedy called Last Call at Murray’s. Alig’s Twitter, Instagram and Facebook profiles portray the life of a 30-year-old actress trying to make it in LA. According to a LinkedIn profile in her name, she worked as a reporter at WTOK-TV in Meridian, Miss., from 2009 to 2010.
Her social media accounts make no references to News Done Right, and attempts to reach Alig for this story were unsuccessful.
Asked about Alig, Elizabeth responded from an email address that News Done Right posted on Twitter: “A lot of people look like a lot of people. I prefer to think I look more like Gal Gadot, minus the French accent of course,” the email said, referring to the actress who stars in Wonder Woman and who is, in fact, Israeli.
Schlak said he sees the videos as more worrisome than entertaining. Besides not being funny, he said, the News Done Right effort reminds him of a hometown version of the Russian election-meddling allegations.
“When it’s your state and your town, and they’re talking about your politicians, it felt personal. It felt scary in the way that the larger story unfolding didn’t,” Schlak said.
After Reddit users spent the better part of a year trying to figure out who’s behind News Done Right, UVM graduate student Caleb Goossen filed a formal complaint on March 1 with the Attorney General’s Office.
“It seemed that they were trying to get involved with campaign discussions,” Goossen said, “and any other time I’ve seen that from a paid advertisement, [it] has the really familiar ‘paid for by’ etc., etc. language at the end of it. And they clearly didn’t.”
Vermont law defines an “electioneering communication” as something that “refers to a clearly identified candidate for office and that promotes or supports a candidate for that office or attacks or opposes a candidate for that office, regardless of whether the communication expressly advocates a vote for or against a candidate.”
Such communication must include information about who paid for it. News Done Right gives no hint as to who is funding it. Goossen said that regardless of the political views they are pushing, that feels wrong.
“I filed the complaint because I had been aware of their presence, and I was pretty certain they were not who they claimed to be,” he said. “And, essentially, [I] felt that they were not trying to positively affect Vermont politics but that they were trying to divide Vermont’s civil discourse.”
Will Senning, the director of elections and campaign finance for the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office, said there’s not much legal wiggle room.
“The law is really clear: If it is an electioneering communication, it requires the ‘paid for by’ — the disclosure language,” he said.
Senning didn’t offer an opinion about whether News Done Right is violating the law — that’s the job of the attorney general, he said — but he added that the videos clearly identify Gov. Scott and cast him in a negative light, “so I think you can check that box.”
Under campaign finance law, Scott qualifies as a candidate even though he hasn’t announced a bid for reelection because he’s received and spent more than $500 in contributions during the current election cycle.
Rebecca Kelley, spokesperson for Scott, said the administration hasn’t really noticed News Done Right and that, if anything, the content reinforces Scott’s image as a governor who puts Vermonters’ needs ahead of partisan politics.
“However, if someone is spending a lot of money to try to influence the political outcome in Vermont, that’s something the attorney general and secretary of state would no doubt look at closely, if they thought there was a potential violation of campaign finance or electioneering laws,” Kelley said in an emailed statement.
Vermont Democratic Party staff have taken notice. Rob Hipskind, who coordinates the party’s efforts with campaigns, acknowledged that News Done Right has largely avoided criticizing Dems.
“But there’s no reason to think it’s going to stop there,” he said. “If we start to see this money coming in with no accountability, that’s bad for democracy.”
Correction, March 16, 2018: A previous version of this story misstated the last known date that the News Done Right domain name was registered to Howard Wall. It was June 26, 2017, according to a WhoIs report.
This article appears in Mar 14-21, 2018.
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I had a feeling a story like this would be coming down the pipes. Great job
Should be noted that she’s holding a map of the San Francisco Bay area in that video… something I would venture to guess would difficult to come by in Vermont, but easily purchased at the gas station down the street in California.
I became aware of them because rather than having advertisers pay to sponser their content, “Fan Club” pays to have their videos play as an advertisement before my normal YouTube content. It seems certain that they have financial backing. Regardless of political bias, the content is poorly presented and devoid of intellectual merit.
Great comments and reportage. Indeed, according to my sources, it’s Bradford Boyles, a Republican who resides in California and Vermont who is behind News Done Right. News Done Right along with their surrogate trolls including “Bert McGert” whom John Walters has reported also to be a fake alias both have attacked me on Twitter suggesting I was a “crazy” and a “loon” because of the 2.5-year investigation of the Retreat has yet to reveal any public outcome. That said, the VTGOP and their surrogates are well known for their nastiness as they even have created a fake website for gubernatorial candidate James Ehlers with false references to him and his alleged past social media engagement. Boyles has the financial resources and video production background to create exactly the type of production that News Done Right employs. Sadly, the Republicans in Vermont and nationwide have trouble debating the issues on merit so they revert to falsehoods and tabloid style trash to belittle others when if they had any courage they would engage others in a public way without cowering behind their fake personas.
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Note that I also called the author an asshole for contacting my employer with questions about my personal business.
They obviously arent Vermonters. Their set has grocery store maple syrup.
I think people are missing the bigger issue. Open questioning of our elected leaders is being threatened with action from the Attorney Generals office.
There is a difference between electioneering and questioning your govt.
News Done Right is questioning govt.
I can absolutely laugh at well done satire that doesn’t align with my own views.
This is… not that.
Finally! Thank you Seven Days. I’ve been getting these annoying, paid political advertisements pushed to my YouTube content for nearly a year now. Posing as cool, grassroots, native Vermonters being funny, they are actually none of the above. Failing to be funny or entertaining is not a crime, but apparently failure to disclose funding sources for this thinly-veiled political advertising is. I queried them about their funding as well, but they were similarly tight-lipped, and didn’t directly answer any of my questions.
In addition to failing to entertain, “James” and Rachel, I mean “Elizabeth” are representing a demographic that doesn’t actually exist in Vermont’s borders. I’m sure there are hip, social media savvy Vermonters, who think Bernie is a fringe lunatic, hate Phil Scott because he’s a stock car driving liberal, and don’t believe in conserving the environment, but we could probably fit them all the in the bathroom at Nectar’s. These mediocre actors come off as completely two-dimensional because they are portraying a stereotype, supported by nothing but reactionary ideology.
We are lucky to live in a state with enough genuine political discourse, honest politicians, and investigative journalism, to allow fishy smelling endeavors like this to be brought out in the daylight and exposed for what they really are; out-of-state, right-wing hoaxes meant to undermine our small state’s democracy.
I don’t know what’s more disturbing — the criminal unfunniness, or the idea they seem to sincerely believe they can influence Vermonters by pretending so cluelessly to be Vermonters. Surely there are 1,000’s of talented comedic actors looking for work, yet these 2 were hired?
These folks are engaged in 1st amendment protected free speech. Period. Where it is produced and how its paid for is irrelevant. Whether it is funny or not it is obviously subjective and irrelevant. It is protected political free speech. For the nazi-dems to consider using the power of the state to punish these folks is truly terrifying. But not terribly surprising.
You don’t get it. No one is trying to stop these people from making political content. If they were just posting videos to YouTube, no one would watch them and we wouldn’t be talking about this. However, this is PAID FOR political advertising and we are only seeing it because money is pushing it to us. Who is doing the paying does matter, both ethically and legally. Where the content is made is maybe trivial, but that they claim they are Vermonters, broadcasting from Vermont, while there is a decent amount of evidence that they are not, adds to the case the these are duplicitous shills, not real people. That is important to know.
Warheit’s comment is typical right-wing chicanery- trying to turn a legitimate criticism of a bogus media tactic into a free speech issue. Everyone can say what they want, but we get to examine who paid for it, why they are doing it, and whether they are telling the truth.
I agree that we cannot have government choosing what information we get. What we can do is make sure the purpose, sources, and funding of our media is transparent. “Fan Club” fails this test by refusing to make known their funding, and deceiving viewers about their identity and location.
Mercer money in action. Josef Goebbels would be proud.
Perhaps the only bit of actual comedy is Howard Walls’ response in this thread. Very classy. Boy, I bet your courses are just full of facts and wisdom.
Their kind of political BS is exactly the kind of stuff the Russian troll farms used to influence the last election, which we all know has given us the worst POTUS in history. When we get a real President this stuff should be made illegal. This is not at all about first amendment rights. This is about presenting false information and that should not be legal in the political arena. It is a GOP tactic, and it plays well with the less educated, but it is unfair and it should be ended.
What the are you afraid of is the Bernie Sanders column in Sevendays paid for political advertising?? One would assume so, No other politician in the country has a byline at the top of their home town papers this reaches beyond the limits of donations right? This is a canard who cares about this turn the sound off and dont watch it . I think the Sevendays crew is afraid very afraid let us covet our neighbors wealth some more Tim Ashe anyone the little fidget spinner in Montpelier whom the Seven days lauds as our lord and savior gimme a break.
Who cares about a some bad video. If you think a show with 2000 subs is a win hahaha get a life.
If you have any question about who this is – Check out Rachel Alig’s reel on youtube: (EXTERNAL LINK!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTtjKdLfLIU
Well, if you scroll through the comments on their YT channel, someone commented “I miss Rachel and Sam. When are they coming back?” The response was something about being on vacation. And here’s a post from FB:
Christopher Thibault Is the woman in this show single?
Judd Lamphere You mean actress Rachel Alig? She is! http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4131336/
Manage
Jim Frawley If that’s not incentive to binge watch all of 2017 again… nothing is.
Fan Club Thanks Jim Frawley for commitment
I’m not defending them, but it doesn’t seem like they are trying too hard to hide their identity.