Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Photo / AP
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Photo / AP
Agents working for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign paid professional agitators to incite violence at Donald Trump rallies, an explosive investigation has revealed.
In a new hidden-camera sting by conservative activist group Project Veritas, undercover journalists infiltrated two political consulting companies with ties to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.
Despite the claims, mainstream media outlets are yet to pick up on the story.
In the 16-minute video, Democratic operatives are caught out describing how paid agents "infiltrate" to stage fake grassroots protests to create a sense of "anarchy" at Donald Trump events.
The agents notably lay claim to the violent Chicago protests in March, which forced Trump to cancel his rally and left two police officers seriously injured.
"It doesn't matter what the friggin' legal and ethics people say, we need to win this motherf*****," Scott Foval, founder of consulting firm the Foval Group told an undercover journalist.
"I'm saying we have mentally ill people, that we pay to do s***, make no mistake.
"Over the last 20 years, I've paid off a few homeless guys to do some crazy stuff, and I've also taken them for dinner, and I've also made sure they had a hotel, and a shower. And I put them in a program.
"Like I've done that. But the reality is, a lot of people, especially our union guys, a lot of our union guys ... they'll do whatever you want. They're rock'n'roll.
"When I need to get something done in Arkansas, the first guy I call is the head of the AFL-CIO [American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organisations] down there, because he will say, 'What do you need?' And I will say, 'I need a guy who will do this, this and this'. And they find that guy. And that guy will be like, 'Hell yeah, let's do it'."
Remember, all year the media blamed violence secretly planned by Hillary's campaign on Trump. https://t.co/XHASw6rFyf
Foval explained that he is "contracted to" Bob Creamer, founder of Democratic consulting firm Democracy Partners, but answers to "the head of special events for the DNC and the head of special events and political for the campaign".
"The [Clinton] campaign pays DNC, DNC pays Democracy Partners, Democracy Partners pays the Foval Group, the Foval Group goes and executes the s***," Foval said.
In the video, Foval also referenced Shirley Teeter, a 69-year-old woman on an oxygen tank who claimed she was punched in the face outside a Trump rally in North Carolina last month. "She was one of our activists," Foval said, explaining Teeter was trained to "bird dog".
"So the term bird dogging: You put people in the line, at the front which means that they have to get there at six in the morning because they have to get in front at the rally, so that when Trump comes down the rope line, they're the ones asking him the question in front of the reporter, because they're pre-placed there," he said.
"To funnel that kind of operation, you have to start back with people two weeks ahead of time and train them how to ask questions. You have to train them to bird dog."
In another undercover interview, Democracy Partners' Creamer explained that "wherever Trump and Pence are going to be, we have events and we have a whole team across the country".
One operative, Aaron Black, described himself as "basically deputy rapid response director for the DNC for all things Trump on the ground".
"Yeah, and nobody is really supposed to know about me," Black said in the video.
"So the Chicago protest when they shut all that, that was us. It was more him [Bob Creamer] than me, but none of this is supposed to come back to us, because we want it coming from people, we don't want it to come from the party.
TWEET
"So if we do a protest and it's a DNC protest, right away the press is going to say partisan. But if I'm in there co-ordinating with all the troops on the ground and sort of playing the field general but they are the ones talking to the cameras, then it's actually people.
"But if we send out press advisories with DNC on them and Clinton campaign it just doesn't have that same effect."
On Monday, Black posted a photo on Twitter from what appeared to be another staged protest. "A large crowd of Women are in front of #Trump Tower this morning holding signs that say Trump Demeans Women and Make Misogyny Great Again," Black tweeted.
Exclusive: "O’Keefe Video Sting Exposes ‘Bird-Dogging’ — Democrats’ Effort to Incite Violence at Trump Rallies"
Another Democracy Partners employee, Zulema Rodriguez, admitted to being behind the Chicago protests and a protest in Arizona which shut down a major highway.
"I just had a call with the campaign and the DNC, every day at one o'clock," Rodriguez said. "So B and I did the Chicago Trump event where we shut down, like all the yeah ... Oh then, we also did the Arizona one where we shut the highway down."
According to publicly available Federal Election Commission data, Zulema Rodriguez was paid a total of $US1640.24 ($2140.10) by the Hillary For America campaign on February 29, two weeks before the violent Chicago protests.
The divisive rhetoric and encouragement of violence we're hearing from Donald Trump isn't just wrong—it's dangerous.https://t.co/RMWoqHNU5u
In March, Trump blamed the violence on Clinton and Bernie Sanders. "It is Clinton and Sanders people who disrupted my rally in Chicago - and then they say I must talk to my people. Phony politicians!" he tweeted.
The following day, Clinton pinned the violence back on Trump. "The divisive rhetoric and encouragement of violence we're hearing from Donald Trump isn't just wrong - it's dangerous," she tweeted.
The Republican presidential nominee, who has repeatedly claimed the election is being "rigged", has not commented on the Project Veritas revelations, but linked to the story on his Facebook page.
The latest Project Veritas release comes after a video last week in which a Democratic electoral commissioner admitted there was rampant voter fraud in some minority areas, with campaign officials loading up buses full of illegal voters and going from "poll site to poll site".
