Previous Comments On Earlier Versions Of The Palin Birth Hoax Story

Trig Palin in photos posted by his mother in January 2015

Franetta McMillian said...

While I wouldn't be surprised if Sarah Palin faked a birth, there's just one question I have about all this. There were two babies. If Sarah's baby was Bristol's, where did Bristol's baby come from?

That's the problem with conspiracy theories. They always leave more questions than answers.

7:47 AM  

 

Shaun Mullen said...

Hi Fran:

Good point. My supposition is that either Trig or Tripp was not born to a Palin, which pretty much takes care of the math problem. There is another active rumor in Alaska to the effect that Todd Palin had an affair and fathered a child. Might that child be either Trig or Tripp?

10:07 AM

Frank said...

My question is, "Why?"

This is a supremely self-interested, likely borderline narcissistic personality person (and I know something about borderline persons).

What was in it for her?

10:08 AM

Shaun Mullen said...

Hi Frank:

What was in it for her?

While concocting a birth hoax is rather more dramatic than endlessly polishing your narcissism, you are making a provocative connection here. (Or, as the case may be, I am making it for you.)

Palin's "blood libel" outburst after the Tuscon rampage was entirely unnecessary and caused her grievous political harm among an already shrunken core of supporters, but she obviously felt aggrieved because the Giffords bulls eye graphic at her website exposed her to criticism -- justified or not -- and could not leave well enough alone.

She also has repeatedly raged against people who would violate her family's privacy while repeatedly using her husband and children as stage props, most dramatically in her short-lived reality TV show, which was another miscalculation because it further revealed her to be a phony.

No making sense of this lass.

12:10 PM

Frank said...

This seems a little more than spur of the moment shoot your mouth off, though.

Notice that I'm not taking a position one way or the other on whether she did it, just wondering, if she did it--she's certainly capable of something so irrational and pointless--what the heck she hoped to prove.

1:04 PM

Anonymous said...

The subject wears me out, but your pursuit of it is admirable journalism.

1:53 PM

Floyd M. Orr said...

I am quite shocked that I have never heard of you before, Shaun, at least within the context of Babygate.

Floyd M. Orr, author of PARADIGM SHIFT: THE PALIN MATRIX, released 1/1/11

9:47 PM

Shaun Mullen said...

Good to hear from you, Mr. Orr. Would you care to add or disagree with anything to my essay?

7:13 AM

Floyd M. Orr said...

Thank you for responding, Mr. Mullen. First of all, I think your essay is one of the best summaries of Babygate that I have come across, and I have read a lot of them! You covered the subject brilliantly. You will note that you have probably never heard of my book before now. That is because most of the Babygate bloggers suppressed it as much as possible.

There are two key differences between the other Babygate bloggers and me. I am quite possibly the only lifetime Democrat in the bunch and I have lived in the South and observed the effects of The Southern Strategy for decades. My book is about national economics and political history as much as it is about Babygate. I had been working on the project years before Sarah Palin entered the national consciousness. The basic intent of the book, as far as Palin goes, was to dare her to either come after me to force a denial of the story or to have the established media pick up the story. Neither of these things occurred, however, one contact I had, apparently a person close to the Palin inner circle, claimed that Palin was fully aware of the book and thankful that few were paying any attention to me.

The most shocking part of the story to me has been the research I have done after the book was released. I have accumulated countless pages of data on the leaders of the Babygate movement. What I have discovered is truly appalling. I have been keeping this material in case I want to publish it at some later date. I am not the only one aware of this material. There are a number of others, but they all deny any direct knowledge of it. The last word I have published concerning my most likely Babygate theory is here: http://floydmorr.blogspot.com/2012/05/diabolical-plan.html

Thank you for your interest, Mr. Mullen! Any further communication should probably be continued through my direct e-mail, ice9 at nctv.com. Thank you again!

7:57 AM

Shaun Mullen said...

The comments following this one were received after publication on 5/28/14 of an update version of my original post.

12:50 PM

Patrick said...

Hi Shaun, many thanks for writing this post. It takes courage to write about this subject, as this is considered to be "birther" territory. In the end, you, Andrew Sullivan, Brad Scharlott and the others will be proven right, because Sarah Palin's "big secret" cannot be hidden forever.

This is an excellent summary. However, I personally don't agree with the claim that a "stand-in-baby" was used at the beginning, I don't think that this was the case.

To the commentator above who asked how the baby could have been Bristol's, as she also gave birth to Tripp in December 2008: The answer is rather simple, yet "hard to believe." Trig was not born on April 18, 2008, but much earlier. When exactly, has never been conclusively established, but December 2007/January 2008 would be the best guess. From February 2008 onwards, Bristol appeared in public again.

There would be many more things to say to this. "Babygate" is a highly complex issue, and the complexity has helped the Palins to conceal the truth. However, it was the unwillingness of the mainstream media to take this issue seriously in the first place which prevented an exposure of this scandal - with the media believing that it could backfire on the Democrats (or others).

For further reading, our most important posts about "Babygate" can be found at the right sidebar of our blog:

(Collection of posts about "Babygate", Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy with Trig)

http://politicalgates.blogspot.com/

Many thanks again, and keep up the good work.

5:16 PM

Shaun Mullen said...

Patrick:

Thank you for the kind words. Your view regarding the "stand-n" baby is plausible.

5:21 PM

Anonymous said...

Like you, I remain interested in the hoax, but not because of Palin. I am interested because this hoax was surely known to McCain, Schmidt, and other top GOP folks. Those who did not know before the election surely knew after it, if they could read and chose to understand what happened.

What happened is a hoax meant to sway an election, taking advantage of a disabled child to do so, and a cover-up that persists to this day, abetted by the mainstream media. Scharlott quotes the late Christopher Hitchens as saying that the hoax and its sordid details was common knowledge to him and his top-tier journalist pals. Which implies that it must be the true decision-makers of our national media that have chosen to leave this hoax unreported.

Why? Because to report it would mean that lots of VIPs would have really unpleasant explaining to do. And it would reflect so badly on the GOP's "family values" that the hoax was supposed to symbolize, that it was all based on a lie. As we know it is anyway.

So, this remains a very important issue in terms of freedom of the press to report chicanery, even at the top levels of our wanna-be leaders.

(By the way, the "hasty return" from the talk in Texas, with the alleged amniotic fluid leak, was hasty only per Palin's own account. There is no other supporting evidence that calls were made, plane tickets were changed, or any haste whatsoever demonstrated. Ditto re the alleged phone calls with the MD in Alaska, who has corroborated nothing: we know about these phone calls only from Sarah Palin, a well-documented and chronic liar.)

Good for you to keep raising this issue. It is waaaaaay more important than Sarah Palin. I believe the photos prove she was not pregnant: there are too many photos that show her flat profile too close to the "birth" and immediately following or preceding other photos that show her with a watermelon-sized belly. You can put on a fake "empathy belly" at will, but you can't take off a real pregnancy and then have it intact a day later. I believe the proof is in the photos. Until more people decide to talk. Tick tock.

6:25 PM

Anonymous said...

I have followed this hoax from the beginning and I'm very happy that you have done this terrific recap of it. Perhaps my comments will help you pursue it further.

-- Although the question of Trig's bio-parentage is interesting, as is Bristol's role, it is very easy to go far afield with various conjectures. Trig's bioparentage is irrelevant to the fact that PALIN WAS NOT PREGNANT WITH TRIG. That is the key fact re the hoax. All else is interesting red herrings in terms of unmasking the hoax, including the multiple babies issue. Her tubal ligation after Piper and before Trig, even, is not as relevant as the simple question: was she pregnant or not pregnant?

-- I was one of those who pressed McGinniss on his blog to come off the fence re his "trignosticism," and he made it clear at one point that he was sure there was a hoax but if he said so his book would be marginalized as being written by a crazy person. As it turns out, his book had enough well-documented negative info about Palin to be marginalized anyway.

-- There is a rumor that there was a comprehensive story about the hoax ready to go to press at the ADN just before the election, but it was pulled by management at the last minute. If true, there is surely a copy of it around somewhere. More interesting than its contents are the lines of force that kept it from being published.

-- The "Gusty photos" (showing Palin in watermelon-sized-belly mode) appeared on the web only in August. Could they have been taken then (in Aug 2008) rather than before Trig's birth? a video appeared after the election saying no, the Gusty photos were taken when the legislature finished the budget on a "Live at 5" broadcast. However, the alleged 5 o'clock taping shows a dark glass panel in the door behind Palin, her styling is more like that done by the RNC than her own efforts (hair combed, down, no scarf, giant belly, thinner face). The video serving as "proof" of the date of the photos has multiple splices in it and should be inspected closely.

-- The medical letter has so many more oddities than you list, notably the MD's signature in two colors of ink, suggesting sloppy Photoshopping.


With your near-Pulitzer background, I wish you would go for it: solve this hoax and win the prize. But even more important, bring the real facts of the 2008 election to the fore.

10:11 PM

Patrick said...

Addressing the previous anonymous commentator:

The claim that the "Gusty-pictures" which were taken on April 13, 2008 could be photoshopped was intensively investigated by the "Trig Truthers" in 2008/2009 and proved to be a dead end. No real evidence could be found that these photos were manipulated, and Andrea Gusty herself published a forceful rebuttal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzyZkl4GyrM

It is true however that these pictures were published on flickr on August 31, 2008 in an obvious attempt to silence the "fake pregnancy rumours" - and this attempt was successful, as these photos were immediately used to discredit the "doubters." This is the real significance of these photos, I wrote a recap of this issue for example here:

http://politicalgates.blogspot.com/2011/04/shameonyou-julia-omalley-and-anchorage.html

These pictures were even used by a website like "factcheck.org" (as well as Huffington Post) as absolute proof that the pregnancy was not faked. That fact that somebody who fakes a pregnancy needs to look pregnant at some point (in order to be convincing) was simply ignored.

Crucially however, just 18 days before, on March 26, 2008, Sarah Palin's belly was flat.

http://politicalgates.blogspot.com/2013/06/steve-flesher-aka-snorp73-founder-of.html

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZdfWKaWXDvnXVFSiao-ZOHWr9ZK3Xbw7aHVMtCT3kKGI6j3L8nsoAqp6dXeBEz62hXDlyVFZ8WaaK08uCx-Vz02CEL_OGgaGBJVaQdVh2WbuNHThmdMf6tqcv6gL39CHL6r5rHg/s1600/Nail++in+the+coffin+picture+-+LARGE+-+face+of+child+blurred.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYxESsPDHLK6xSD7gEsWoAlCHsuUjUj4b69Y1OtA3Xvhhd7V7EPcbjN4RGOBQWM9ue_XyC30RZr0u1fTzeTizMYtKmMUcJ6dTwL7LUOZgT65YCVL-ilOQ68vzH9LwTyRu_l1e7/s1600/Palin+-+comparison+26+March+and+13+April+2008.jpg

On April 13, 2008, Sarah Palin wore in fact a pregnancy belly, but this "claim" seems to be so unbelievable and outrageous (from the perspective of a "sane person") that it is virtually impossible to believe. It's the "big lie" that Sarah Palin got away with: We ourselves would never do anything like that - and this is why Sarah Palin got away with it, in combination with the well-documented reluctance in the media to touch the subject...

(see the leaked journolist-emails: http://politicalgates.blogspot.com/2011/04/justin-elliotts-definitive-debunker-of.html )

...due to the fear of a political backlash against the "accusers."

So here we are now, five years later, the truth is still in plain sight, and yet, nobody can openly talk about it.

Finally: When I had an email exchange with a well know liberal journalist in April 2013, this person told me that "everyone" that this person knows is well aware that Palin faked her pregnancy. Apart from Sarah Palin being a fraud, the other scandal is the fact that the media rejected to expose her, despite the fact that they know the truth.

I wrote about it here:

http://politicalgates.blogspot.com/2013/04/sarah-palins-pregnancy-with-trig-email.html

Many thanks again, Shaun, it is so rare that anyone dares to touch this issue (apart from Andrew Sullivan). Any journalist seriously investigating the topic would quickly find out that there is no doubt that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy. I myself for example talked to several Republican politicians in Alaska on the phone in 2009 (for example Lyda Green and Randy Ruedrich), and they are all well aware that Sarah Palin's pregancy wasn't "real." Lyda Green for example herself saw Sarah Palin when she made the pregnancy announcement on March 5, 2008, and saw her again later, and Lyda said to me that Palin did not look pregnant at all (however, she also made it clear that she doesn't know the "truth" about the pregnancy).

I am just feeling bad about the fact that for example Andrew Sullivan's reputation has been damaged due to his courage on this topic, and Joe McGinniss had to suffer as well, and it really is about time to finally reveal the truth.

8:50 AM

Shaun Mullen said...

Patrick:

Thank you for the additional information and perspective.

I do take mild exception to one thing you wrote: Not only do I not believe that Andrew's reputation was damaged in the long run, when and if the smoking gun is found or someone credible with ties to the Palin family confirms the false pregnancy, it will be noted that people like Andrew -- and you and I and a small handful of others -- refused to let the story die.

1:12 PM

Patrick said...

Hi Shaun, yes, my remark regarding Andrew Sullivan was not properly worded. What I meant was that at this moment in time, Andrew has to live with the fact that quite a number of people feel free to label him a "conspiracy theorist", and this is one of the milder terms. Right now, I am pretty sure that Andrew feels that this is a very unpleasant situation.

Joe McGinniss, who wrote about the pregnancy hoax in his book "The Rogue" and there made it absolutely clear that he had not much faith in Sarah Palin's reassurances that nothing was wrong with her pregnancy, was in a similar situation. It's very tragic that he has already passed away.

Yes, in the end, the handful of people who didn't let the story die will be the winners. I just hope that it won't take decades for the truth to be revealed to the public.

11:21 AM

Anonymous said...

Proof that Palin uses body padding:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/23926026@N08/8696308921

There are many photos of her obviously padded/not padded in this area on a regular basis...

10:52 AM

Anonymous said...

Two issues:

One, Palin's return flight home was not "hastily changed" after the "contractions" started. Palin took her ORIGINAL flight, the details of which are public record. There was no last minute changes made by Todd as Palin wrote in her book; they never intended to stay for the black tie ball that night in Texas. Why? Because one cannot camouflage a non-pregnant silhouette in a formal ball gown. They flew home on the originally booked flights.


Secondly, Catherine Baldwin Johnson DID indeed utter a lone but pivotal statement regarding Trig's maternity- after being met with multiple "no comment" answers in regard to Palin's pregnancy, a frustrated editor in chief of the anchorage daily news exasperatedly demanded "can you please just confirm the child we know as Trig Palin was born to governor Sarah Palin on April 18 of 2008?"

And with her lawyer present, Baldwin Johnson stated "I cannot confirm that".

Not "I refuse to speak about the issue". Not "I won't confirm that".

"I CANNOT confirm that".

I take this to mean she literally was not able to confirm the details.

There is a simple reason for her inability to confirm Palin's narrative- Baldwin Johnson was not at Mat Su Regional Medical Center on 4/18/08. She was not even in the same town. She was at another hospital, her presence logged in with her key card.

7:36 PM

Anonymous said...

These photos are horribly captioned and displayed in a hodgepodge mess, but I think they offer some unique insights into the facets of this hoax.
https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/palinproject/

7:51 PM

Shaun Mullen said...

Anonymous:

The CBJ stuff obviously is explosive.

Can you provide anything additional, as in a link to the "I cannot confirm that" interview and details as to where the doctor had logged in?

Please feel free to email me privately at kikokimba@gmail.com

Thank you.

7:53 AM

Anonymous said...

Shaun,

The "I cannot confirm" was, at some point, on the anchorage daily news site, linking to a video of CBJ looking nervous and resentful, with her attorney hovering about six feet behind her. I'm sorry I don't have the time to run it down today but I'll go digging for it tomorrow.

As for the other issue...no, I cannot provide the details you would like. I'm sure you are smart enough to figure out why. I truly want nothing more than to shout it from the rooftops- CBJ wasn't at mat su; I know this because she was working a shift WITH ME!

However, I'm perilously close to HIPAA grey areas...and in this economy, I need to keep my very good job which provides the sole support for my family and the benefits which care for my disabled child. (Whom I actually did give birth to without benefit of pre-labor air travel.)

I really keep hoping if I leave the bread crumbs, someone with less to lose than myself with follow them to the door and kick it down.

I notice there is another poster on IM who also is saying CBJ wasn't there. I'm hoping the two of us are but the beginning in a line of swiftly falling dominoes, the last one of which will be Palin herself, tipping over into oblivion.

12:21 PM

Orange said...

This is a great article, many thanks.

I want to comment further on the issue of how such hoax could possibly go forward, without someone going public to denounce it as a lie.

A good comparison to make, is the case of fake memoirs. Several high profile memoirs have been found to be fakes, which flourished in the public eye for some years, despite the fact that many people knew of the true identity of the authors. Binjamin Wilkomirski's Fragments, a supposed Holocaust memoir which received several prestige awards, is one example. Mischa Defonseca, Survival with Wolves, which flourished for years despite the doubts of a small minority, is also worth considering.

Casting doubt upon a personal story seems cranky and illmannered. People like Wilkomirski and Sarah Palin know how to take advantage of this, and portray themselves as brave and truthful. They are anything but.

6:40 AM

tozca sudirman said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

10:02 AM

Ann Grimes said...

Actually, there is zero evidence that Trig is Sarah's grandson. No clue why people desperate wish to believe this, though it's not like it's a new concept.

But to have a secret baby, one would have to be hidden. None of Sarah's kids have been hidden from public view, nor have any of them been out of school, save the election when the campaign was active.

I wish these morons who push the grandson theory would shut up because it just causes people to close their minds.

10:16 PM

Ann Grimes said...

Also, since people reference certain times of the year, please recall the now public emails from Dec 30th 2007 where Sarah tells close staffers that her family will be at their cabin enjoying her oldest son's last few days in Alaska. That and the whole family was in Juneau in mid December 2007. You'd think that if they were trying to hide a pregnancy, the person in question wouldn't be SO public. AND in school.

You all need to "up" your thinking skills.

10:29 PM

Anonymous said...

so the claim is that the first baby was born to sarah April 18, and the second baby was born to bristol December 28. bristol could have had the first baby on April 18th (or a few days earlier) after hiding a pregnancy from her family and thinking she wasn't as far along as she really was (explaining why sarah would have claimed to not be as far along). she could have gotten pregnant again immediately after (seriously, i know people with kids that are 9-10 months apart) and then either induced labor early to keep up the charade, just gone into labor early, or pretended that the baby was born slightly earlier than it was. if she got pregnant right away, the baby would have been due in Jan so late december wouldn't be ridiculously early. it seems much more likely that the first baby was the product of her husband having an affair and that his birth mom didn't want to keep him once she found out he had downs, though. to me, it seems very unlikely that sarah was pregnant based partially on photos but primarily on her behavior leading up to his birth.

3:40 AM

pajack25 said...

Actually this went away a LOOOOOOOONG TIME AGO! well for normal people! the psychotic Palin Haters of course can't let it go. But no one pays any attention to their babbling crap! lol

10:38 PM

Bscharlott said...

Ann Grimes - Ypu've called me, if I am not mistaken, in order to cast doubt on efforts to uncover Babygate, What exactly is your interest in all this? Is it pecuniary?

7:15 PM