My name is... (what?) My name is... (who?)

In the world of social networking for young adults, MySpace is one of the leaders in the field. Sharing pictures, comments, videos, and music is incredibly easy. MySpace profiles can be personalized in hundreds of different ways, letting people express their individuality freely, if sometimes chaotically. Indeed, looking at some pages is enough to bring on an instant migraine.

With all of the fun to be had at the click of a mouse, it’s easy to forget the warning: don’t post anything on the Internet that you wouldn’t want your mother (or, for that matter, your spouse, boss, or local law enforcement agents) to see. During the past week alone, MySpace use has contributed to the investigation of an animal control officer in Virginia,

http://www.wvec.com/news/norfolk/stories/wvec_local_032609_peta_ani...

the arrest of a 14-year-old girl for posting nude photos of herself,

http://www.nj.com/jjournal/stories/index.ssf?/base/xclude/123822159...

and a stabbing at a Texas middle school.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D973VKJ01...

Clearly, people post much on MySpace that, in retrospect, they may wish they had kept to themselves. Often, this information is viewable not only by those on one’s “friend list” but by the entire world, should we all care to look. Such is the case with the MySpace research on this blog. Everything to be published here was accessible to the general public at the time it was found. We have screen shots of all pages. Nothing was obtained by "hacking." Much of this information may still be public.

In order to make some sense out of the hundreds of comments received, we had to determine which (if any) had been left by Bristol and/or Levi. A curious aspect of MySpace is that comments posted are not necessarily deleted, even if the person who wrote the comments has cancelled his or her MySpace account. Many times, these comments remain visible for months, and, though the user name and picture may be gone, the anonymous comment will still link back to a page that contains the user’s MySpace ID number. Since there were no comments that clearly identified either Bristol or Levi right off the bat, the assumption was that we were dealing with deleted accounts.

In Bristol’s case, we received a tip on two comments that were made by a deleted account holder, but which linked back to the same MySpace user ID number:

Oct 12, 2006
surb what up?? haha yeah i know i know, you were right, but six days!!! waahoo, then ill be driving your lovley ass everywhere :)
love ya sruuuub - yo busump

June 19, 2007 (portion of comment)
ha ha yeah he changed my password on this to b-ris p. and I always think of him for sure.

In the first comment, the writer appears to be referencing her upcoming 16th birthday on October 18, 2006, which corresponds with Bristol’s 16th birthday. The second comment speaks for itself. There were other comments received as well that corroborate this particular account as belonging to Bristol.

At around the same time, we also received a tip on a comment left by a “levi” on the MySpace of a young man in the Wasilla area. It was a fairly routine comment, but it linked back not to a deleted account, but to a MySpace profile page that could only be described as “well-scrubbed”: no graphics, the barest of personal details, just three friends (two of which led to deleted accounts), and two comments (one of which was spam).

Although the personal details matched what we know about Levi (e.g., this “levi” is from Wasilla, his Zodiac sign matches Levi Johnston’s birthdate, and he states “I don’t want kids”), there was no easy way to tell if this was the Levi we were interested in. His is a popular name in Alaska, and after the news of Bristol’s pregnancy was released in September, fake Levi pages popped up on MySpace.

Then we realized that the only worthwhile comment remaining on this Levi’s page…came from the user ID number already identified as belonging to Bristol.

More on that to come in the next post.

Taking off the kid gloves

For some time now it has been the policy of this blog that although some teen pages on MySpace are open to the public and available for anyone to see, I would not allow comments that mention any teens - minor or not - by name, nor provide links to specific pages. This policy still remains the same and readers are most welcome to contact me at info@palindeception.com  if they discover anything which they believe to be pertinent to the investigation. 

However after the events of the past weeks and after a lot of consideration, I now believe that the situation with regard to Bristol Palin has substantially changed. Bristol is now eighteen and since she has placed herself directly in the media spotlight by allowing herself to be interviewed by Greta Van Susteren and since it appears that she may have deliberately misled viewers in that interview as to the state of her relationship with the father of her child (among other things) I have decided that it is time to take off the kid gloves and apply the same treatment with regard to her as I have applied to her mother.

From the outset of this investigation we have focused on casting serious doubt on whether Sarah Palin was pregnant in 2008. To that end I think that we have achieved that through photo analysis, by the close scrutiny of her many conflicting statements regarding the pregnancy, by noting her contradictory behavior on numerous occasions and lastly through the revelation of the sheer implausibility of the wild ride.

Despite these considerations, and because Sarah has the benefit of doubt on her side, some people remain unconvinced that she did not give birth to Trig and that she is indeed his natural birth mother. Because of this I have no choice but to try to prove something more difficult, which is, who actually did give birth to Trig. 

I believe that we have some compelling evidence which, at least, points us in the correct direction as to who did.

Over the months Palin Deceptions has received a vast amount of information from readers gleaned from MySpace pages which have provided remarkable insider views of the circumstances and happenings in Bristol Palin’s group of friends and acquaintances from 2006 until recently.

My research assistants have spent many hours evaluating the information to determine what could be presented publicly on this blog. Indeed some of the comments have been substantiated by corroborating evidence taken from the Palin family travel expense accounts and Palin’s Financial Disclosure Form for 2007 which were both recently released. Of course, all this information was publicly available on MySpace pages at one time, and some of it still is as I write. However, we must remember that many MySpace pages were changed to private and/or scrubbed when Sarah Palin became the GOP Vice presidential nominee at the end of August 2008 – and, remarkably, additional scrubbing took place after the end of the campaign in November. More recently, in February many previously public MySpace pages suddenly switched at the same time to private ones and so we cannot take it for granted that those that still do remain public will not switch to private accounts.

Bristol, Levi and Mercede have all spoken publicly to the press; and since they have chosen to do so, I feel no need to shield them from disclosure of the content of their own messages or those that refer to them. To address our concern for the privacy of the rest of the kids, who are caught up in this situation not of their own choosing, but because they are (or were) friends with Bristol or Levi, the research group has assigned codes to the people who are not already known publicly. This makes everything a bit more confusing, but we feel it is necessary. The researchers have also paraphrased or scrubbed some comments to remove or condense long parts that are not essential to this investigation. We are releasing only a small portion of the information, rather than all. Undoubtedly, those close to the situation in Alaska will be able to figure out the identities of some of these kids, but it is our request that their identities not be revealed.

There is more than the usual number of caveats with the post. First, the research group has tried to retain as much original text (even with many misspellings) as possible, but has paraphrased some messages; these are in italics. Second, most of the messages are akin to hearing only one side of a telephone conversation, so we do not claim to know the full context or response. Third, although Bristol and Levi put their own sites on private and scrubbed their messages or used anonymous profiles, we discovered some information that enabled us to verify their identity in the posts that we will present. Fourth, there are two boys named Levi in this group of friends; we have tried to be careful not to mix them up; we believe all the comments here refer to Levi Johnston. Finally, please bear in mind that the comments sometimes betray strong feelings of the moment or may be the product of an “altered state” – but let’s remember that these are (or were) kids and MySpace is an outlet for them to blow off steam. They may be angry with someone one day and in love the next. Let he (or she) who never made a mistake cast the first stone.

Stay tuned. MySpace material to follow shortly....

So Many Discrepancies, So Little Time...

There are so many discrepancies in the pregnancy and birth stories of both Trig Palin and Tripp Johnston that it is sometimes hard to keep up with them all. You'd need a whole section in your Day Planner just to keep track of most of them. And lots of note cards and spread sheets and.... oh yes, that IS my desk.

Anyway...

When you least expect it, a new clue (or clues) seems to emerge that helps to clear the fog away from earlier statements. Happily, the recent publication of an unauthorized biography of Sarah Palin, Trailblazer by Lorenzo Benet, along with Greta Van Susteren’s interview of Sarah…er… Bristol Palin, offered us some new information that allows us to put a few more pieces of the birth-hoax puzzle together. (Who would have thought that the pro-Palin biography OR Greta’s interview would HELP us make our case? Is this poetic justice, or perhaps divine intervention, or what?)

Based on an (undocumented) birth date of December 27th, Tripp was conceived no earlier than April 2008, and arguably later as he was not presented to the world until mid-February (exactly as I predicted). So even Bristol could not have been aware of the pregnancy until late-April 2008, at the earliest.

Yet we know that rumors of the pregnancy preceded this time frame, so much so that Sarah herself tried to dispel the rumors prior to March 2008. The Anchorage Daily New wrote a story about the rumors on August 31, 2008 and as we now know, they pursued the story about the rumors again in the fall. We also know that, almost a year ago, a poster on reddit.com reported on the Bristol pregnancy rumor and said she was going to high school in Anchorage. Wasilla caterer Sue Williams stated on the record that Willow Palin's boyfriend was telling people in Wasilla before Trig was born that Bristol was pregnant.

In fact, there is so much to discuss regarding rumors of the pregnancy that I have decided to go into more detail on this subject in an upcoming post – today I am just going to focus on the question of when Bristol moved to Anchorage.

Why? Because this is important. Because it shows that in spite of months of time to get it right, this whole dumb bunch STILL just can't get their stories straight. First Dude has had his slip ups, including telling Greta Van Susteren that three of their children had traveled to the VP nomination announcement. Ooops. What about little number 4, Triggy Bear? Sarah - Lord knows - has changed her stories on Trig's pregnancy so many times we can't even list all of the blunders and even direct contradictions. And now... both Sarah Palin's sister, Heather Bruce, and Bristol Palin seems to have joined the ooops club.

First, let’s reintroduce Heather Bruce, Sarah’s sister, who lives in Anchorage near the West High School, where her daughter Lauden is a student. There seems to be no dispute that Bristol Palin lived with Heather Bruce during her pregnancy AND there seems to be no dispute that Bristol Palin lived with Heather Bruce in January and February of 2008, but somehow those two facts don't seem to collide into a simple conclusion in most people's minds: that a high likelihood exists that Bristol Palin WAS pregnant in January and February of 2008.

There is a plausible reason for this: That she had lived with Heather Bruce while pregnant was reported at the same time that Bristol’s pregnancy with Tripp was publicized, and many people assumed that the Tripp pregnancy was the pregnancy in question.

But now, adding to the earlier statements (which, it appears, some in the Palin camp may have forgotten were still floating around out there ), we have some new statements from both Heather Bruce and Bristol Palin that help clarify that this extended stay with Aunt Heather could not have been during Bristol’s pregnancy with Tripp. It was much earlier. Really big oops.

Let’s start by looking at some of the published reports on Bristol’s time living with Heather Bruce.

There is a report by Inside Edition, which says: “Halfway through the school year, about the time Bristol discovered she was pregnant, she transferred to another high school.” This report was aired on 9/2/2008, meaning it had to refer to a prior school year. This states explicitly and openly that Bristol found out she was pregnant "halfway through the school year." Unless Bristol Palin had the longest pregnancy on record, halfway through that school year, Tripp had not yet been conceived, but of course "someone" had to be pregnant with Trig. Half way through the school year would have been around December when "someone" would have been around twenty weeks. A very plausible and logical time for a first time mother to find out (or at least reveal to her family) that she is expecting. Why this statement has not received more scruitiny has always mystified me.

Another report, this one by the Washington Post, states that Bristol went mid-school-year to live with her aunt in Anchorage, finishing at the city's West High School.

The assistant principal of the Wasilla High School also confirmed that Bristol transferred from there halfway through the 2007-2008 school year: “Mark Okeson, the assistant principal at Wasilla High School told the Chicago Tribune that Bristol started her junior year last fall, in the town where Sarah Palin grew up. He said Bristol inexplicably transferred to an Anchorage high school midyear, leaving Levi behind. ‘I never heard the story why,’ he said.”

Not to be outdone, the National Enquirer reported this as well, with some additional details: “When Sarah found out the teen was pregnant by high schooler Levi Johnston, she was actually banished from the house. As part of the cover-up, Palin quickly transferred Bristol to another high school and made her move in with Sarah’s sister Heather 25 miles away!”

(Note here as well the interesting use of the phrase "cover-up." Nowhere has it ever been suggested that any attempt was made to cover up Tripp's pregnancy.)

This has been confirmed to me by several people in Wasilla - that there were definitely rumors in the area by December 2007 that Bristol Palin was pregnant. (Whether the rumors were TRUE is an open question, but that the rumors EXISTED is, in my opinion, NOT open to question or debate.)

These statements have been left to languish by the MSM for months, despite the obvious implication that Bristol Palin was pregnant by late 2007. I think that everyone can agree on one thing: this could NOT have been any pregnancy that ended on December 27, 2008 with the birth of Tripp Johnston. There are only two possibilities. The rumors were all false, or Bristol was pregnant in late 2007 with another child.

Now, in the recently published biography as reported in People Magazine, we have new info from Heather Bruce confirming that Bristol lived with her while pregnant and while going to Anchorage West HS. "While Bristol was pregnant last year, she was living in Anchorage with her aunt and uncle, Heather and Kurt Bruce, and working at two espresso shops – while also attending West High School. Levi was 40 miles away in Wasilla, but, ‘there was certainly no ban on them dating,’ reports Trailblazer. ‘Levi used to drive to Anchorage to take Bristol out.’”

We also have a confirmation from "Misty" in Anchorage that Bristol attended West High School in January and February, leaving sometime around mid to late February.

But let's do a little granny finger counting here. IF the birth date of Tripp Johnston is as reported (December 27th) and he was full term (reasonable considering his birth date) he would have been conceived around April 1st. A quick perusal of the Anchorage West High School's calendar from the 2007-2008 school year shows us that the last day of school was May 23rd. The earliest Bristol could even have suspected she was pregnant was mid to late April. So when would she have lived with Auntie Heather (while pregnant) and gone to school and worked? A week or so in May 2008? Who transfers someone to a new high school with, oh, three weeks left in the school year and then gets two jobs? Come on...

Adding support to our skepticism, we now also know from the Greta Van Susteren interview that Bristol claims to not have told Sarah and Todd Palin of her pregnancy with Tripp until the summer of 2008, after school was out. It's never been suggested anywhere that last fall during the campaign when she would have been pregnant with Tripp was she living in Anchorage, working and/ or attending school.

All of this makes it crystal clear that Bristol’s banishment to Anchorage could not have been for the Tripp pregnancy. As our perceptive bloggers have already pointed out, this also could explain why there are two vastly different accounts of how Bristol told Sarah she was pregnant, one of her sitting her parents down on a couch, the other of her chasing her mother around with a positive pregnancy stick.

So.. what's the truth here? As I have been forced to admit so often on this blog, I don't know. I do know that it is not biologically possible for a woman to have a baby on April 18th and have another (full term) on December 27th. That I can state with confidence.

This, then, leaves us only two possibilities.
A. If the same woman gave birth to both babies, the birth dates we have been given for the two children cannot be correct.
B. If the birth dates are correct, Trig and Tripp cannot have the same mother.

I vote A.

Coming Soon...

I can't think of two more promising words for Palin Deception readers given Audrey's absence. Like so many of us, she leads a very busy life, and sometimes priorities warrant that she turn her attention to other things. These past few weeks have been especially busy for her, and just when she thought she was getting things back under control along comes The Flu.

I just spoke to her, and she wants you all to know that she's feeling more like herself and is preparing a new post with some very interesting photos that are sure to poke holes in more of Sarah's carefully crafted claims.

Until Audrey gets the post prepared and up, please consider this an open thread. But as moderator let me gently remind you that an open thread should not be considered a free-for-all. The general rules of civility apply, as does the long-standing restriction against topics that have been deemed forbidden by the blog owner. 

I noted in an earlier thread that in Audrey's absence, Patrick, Kathleen, Mary G. and other members of the PD research team have done a marvelous job in keeping the discussion moving. There are other members of the team hard at work, too, and if there was ever a group that deserved a round of virtual applause it is these people.

So as Sarah Palin would say, give them a shout out. And look for Audrey to be back soon.

Morgan 

PD Moderator