Sean Hannity and His Bigot Friend

This past weekend was the second part of Sean Hannity's exposé on the "real" Barack Obama entitled, "Barack Obama: A History of Radicalism." In this two-part series Hannity sought to expose who Barack Obama really is (i.e. a radical with ties to terrorists and other extremists who will overthrow the government from the highest seat in the country) by weaving together all of Obama's connections and showing images of Obama next to images of people like Louis Farrakhan, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while playing imposing music.
Many people saw the viral video of Barack Obama’s campaign advisor Robert Gibbs on Hannity and Colmes Tuesday, Oct. 7 turning the guilt-by-association table on Hannity. When Hannity asked Gibbs about Obama’s association with former Weather Underground terrorist, and current college professor William Ayers, Gibbs turned the questions on Hannity and asked if he was an anti-semite. His reason for the question was because Hannity had as a guest on this past week’s Hannity’s America, a very vocal anti-semite named Andy Martin. Hannity apparently was prepared for this coming back to bite him as he immediately began shouting over Gibbs once Martin’s name was mentioned. Hannity’s defense was that he has had plenty of people on his show that he strongly disagrees with–mentioning New Black Panther Malik Shabazz, Al Sharpton, and other controversial figures.
(Notice on the bottom on the screen the results of the Fox News poll of viewers as to who won the debate. Despite the general consensus among the sane that Barack Obama won the debate, 86% of Fox News viewers thought McCain won.)



But he didn’t mention that Martin was not brought on the show because Hannity disagreed with him. Instead, Andy Martin was brought on the show to serve as an expert source of information on Barack Obama. Hannity must have thought he could get away with nobody noticing that one of his big sources of information is essentially a nutjob who has had it out for Obama for several years now.



Martin is careful to say things like, "I believe," and "I feel," and "In my opinion," while making claims which are exactly that, opinion. It is obvious that he has no actual knowledge of what happened or what the relationship was between Barack Obama and Ayers and others, and the claims are so outlandish that it is unbelievable that Hannity would have even considered putting this guy on his show.
Here’s a little information about Hannity’s source of information:
Since 1977 Martin has run for different elected office 13 times in three different states and at different times as a Democrat, a Republican, and as an Independent. He ran for President twice: first as a Democrat in 1988 and then as a Republican in 2000. He first ran in ’77 unsuccessfully for Mayor of Chicago and he is currently running for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. The New York Times reported that Monday that, “the Republican Party of Florida decided against backing his bid for the State Senate in 1996 after receiving documents from his Congressional race 10 years earlier in Connecticut listing the purpose of one of his political committees as ‘to exterminate Jew power in America and to impeach the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City.’” 1
Mr Martin is notorious in the legal world for filing frivolous lawsuits and has actually been barred by judges from filing further lawsuits without special permission from the court. His cases are usually brought under his legal name “Anthony R. Martin-Trigona” and Googling his name brings up numerous lawsuits brought by Mr. Martin. In one case the court stated he “had shown ‘an extraordinary pattern of vexatious and
harassing litigation pursued over several years.’” In the 1993 case Martin-Trigona v Shaw the court had this to say:
4 As amazing as the volume of Anthony Martin-Trigona's litigiousness has been, where he has truly distinguished himself has been in "the style of litigation he has adopted and by the cunning and malignant sophistication he has brought to his avocation." … Martin-Trigona has displayed an "ugly strand of personal animus and unjustifiable vituperation," id. at 1248, and he has used litigation as a cruel and effective weapon against his enemies, who are more often imagined than real. Id. at 1248-51 ("his choice of targets is not rational; rather, he is apt to fasten on anyone who has suffered the slightest contact with him.").
5 Anthony Martin-Trigona has sued literally hundreds, if not thousands, of attorneys, judges, their spouses, court officials, and other human beings. In summarizing the district court's findings, which it was careful to point out considerably understated his activities as a litigant, the Second Circuit said that:
6 Martin-Trigona is known to have filed over 250 civil actions, appeals, and other matters throughout the United States, which have been pursued with "persistence, viciousness, and general disregard for decency and logic." He has used legal pleadings to ventilate his contempt and hatred of persons of Jewish heritage and to level accusations which "have often been personal, have often emphasized racial or religious affiliations, and have often involved the members of ... judges' and counsel's families."
Martin currently has a warrant out for him to serve the 16 months in jail after mistakenly being let out of jail after only serving one month of a seven-month contempt of court sentence.
Gibbs, of course, mentions Martin’s history of anti-semitism, but fails to mention his personal history of attacks against Obama, which began after he ran against Obama for Senate.
In 2004 Martin created the rumor that Barack Obama is a Muslim. A June 28, 2008 article in the Washington Post about the rumor says, “In an Aug. 10, 2004, article, which he posted on Web sites and e-mailed to bloggers, (Martin) said that Obama had concealed his Muslim heritage. ‘I feel sad having to expose Barack Obama,’ Martin wrote in an accompanying press release, ‘but the man is a complete fraud. The truth is going to surprise, and disappoint, and outrage many people who were drawn to him. He has lied to the American people, and he has sought to misrepresent his own heritage.”’
On March 28, 2007 Martin Published an article on Newsmax.com entitled “Free Obama’s White Grandmother,” in which he postulated that Obama had imprisoned his white grandmother to hide the fact that he is mixed raced and not fully black. In the article Martin says, “She is the ‘Prisoner of Obama,’ and of Obama's racist myth that he is ‘Black’ and not ‘Black and White.’” He later says, “Barack Obama is one of the most racist politicians in America today. And we let him get away with it.” (Note: After Gibbs confronted Hannity I went to Newsmax one week ago where there story was easily accessible in the archives. Now a search of the article on Newsmax.com brings up a page that reads, "Sorry, the page you requested could not be found.")
None of these things was mentioned when Martin appeared on the Hannity’s America episode entitled “Obama & Friends: The History of Radicalism.” Instead Martin was identified as an “Internet Journalist,” and unlike the others Hannity mentioned, he never once questioned Martin’s views. As usual on Hannity’s (distorted) America no opposing viewpoint was offered and guests like Martin were allowed to claim that when Barack Obama was a community organizer it was “training for a radical overthrow of the government.” Hannity invited this notorious anti-semite and Obama smear-monger onto his show hoping that people wouldn’t know who he was. This is part of Hannity’s long campaign to destroy Barack Obama politically and personally. Just go to the Hannity and Colmes site to see all of the writers they’ve had as guests who have written books with their own agendas against Obama. He has made his career over the past year out of doing little more than spreading as fact rumors about Obama. And he has the nerve to say to Robert Gibbs, “I think it's deplorable that your candidate for president has not been honest with the American people.” I won’t mention all of the lies Hannity’s candidates have told over the past few weeks.
One more disturbing note about the interview with Robert Gibbs. In the interview with Hannity Gibbs quotes Martin from his 1983 Bankruptcy trial when he referred to the judge as a "crooked, slimy Jew..." I went to the Fox News website to see the transcript of the exchange and found that despite Gibbs' words being very clearly distinguishable, the quote had been changed to, "Andy Martin called a judge a crooked clammy dude who has..." It's possible that the person writing the transcript simply didn't hear what Gibbs said, but the rest of the transcript is fairly accurate and if you watch the video there is little doubt about what Gibbs says. Is it possible that Fox News tried to clean up a horribly anti-semitic quote so one of their experts wouldn't look so bad? This isn't the first time the network has tweaked what was said by someone on Fox News. And just to be clear, the whole quote (which would have been heard had Sean Hannity not shouted over Gibbs) by Martin was that the judge was, "a crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race." Maybe Hannity shouldn't be condemning Obama for his associations and should be a little more careful about his.