Chris Suprun, the Republican “faithless elector” from Texas who says he will not vote for Donald Trump when that state’s electors gather in Austin on Monday, “was apparently not a first responder on September 11, 2001, as he has stated for years and has a questionable career history, according to an investigation by WFAA.”
WFAA reports:
Suprun, 42, portrays himself as a heroic firefighter who was among the first on the scene after the third plane flew into the Pentagon on 9/11.
In a heavily-publicized editorial this month for the New York Times, Suprun stated that as a member of the Electoral College he will not cast his ballot for Trump because the president-elect “shows daily he is not qualified for the office.”
Suprun, a Dallas resident for more than a decade, even used his résumé to establish credibility in the Times piece, writing in the second paragraph: “Fifteen years ago, as a firefighter, I was part of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks against our nation.”
But, WFAA reports, that claim cannot be confirmed.
“He claimed to be a first responder with the Manassas Park [Virginia] Fire Department on September 11, 2001 and personally told us stories ‘I was fighting fire that day at the Pentagon.’ No, I was on a medic unit that day at the Pentagon and you make a phone call to Manassas Park and you find out that he wasn’t even employed there until October 2001,” a source who claimed to be “a first responder who knows Suprun,” told WFAA on the condition “his identity was concealed”:
The City of Manassas Park confirmed to WFAA that it hired Suprun on October 10, 2001, one month after the 9/11 attacks.
The fire chief there added that his department never even responded to the Pentagon or any of the 9/11 sites.
The WFAA report cites several other instances in which “Suprun’s résumé raises even more questions.”
Read the full story here.
Suprun did not respond to inquiries from WFAA about his background:
He never responded to multiple emails from WFAA and calls to his telephone go to a recording which says his voicemail is full.
Two public relations firms he has hired – Megaphone Strategies and Fenton Communications – responded to our requests for an interview saying: “Suprun’s schedule is jammed packed.”
Breitbart News contacted Megaphone Strategies to confirm or deny WFAA’s report about Suprun, but received no response to that inquiry.
Breitbart News also asked Megaphone Strategies if it will terminate its representation of Suprun if reports that he has falsely represented his role as a 9/11 first responder are true, but received no response to that inquiry, either.
Breitbart News posed the same two questions to Fenton Communications, but received no response from the second firm WFAA says represents Suprun.
In June, Adweek reported that “CNN political contributor Van Jones and strategist Molly Haigh team up to launch Megaphone Strategies, which bills itself as a “social justice media strategy firm run for purpose, not profit”:
Jones will serve as chairman of the board while Haigh will lead an initial staff of five as president.
“Everywhere we look, we discover courageous people finding ways to break down barriers and solve tough problems. We need to hear their voices, and we need to elevate their work,” said Van Jones of the reason behind the firm’s creation, which will offer strategy, publicity, media training and event/social justice campaign planning services.
The firm’s current roster of progressive clients includes Vote.org, the Working Families Party and Demand Progress.
CNN recently promoted Van Jones to anchor of a special one-hour live program.
On December 6, CNN aired The Messy Truth, a one hour “special program hosted by CNN political commentator Van Jones.”
According to the company’s website, “Megaphone Strategies will work with you to build your story and share it with the media. We help connect the stories that matter to people who want to tell them. We work to connect our clients and spokespeople with the top media outlets and influencers across media platforms.”
Company co-founder Molly Haigh was a field organizer for the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama. She received a B.A. in “Sociology and Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality” from Concordia University in 2007, according to her LinkedIn account.
In The Federalist Papers No. 68, Alexander Hamilton expressed the qualities sought in a person selected to be a presidential elector:
It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.
It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.
Hamilton also argued that “it was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder”:
This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief. The choice of SEVERAL, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of ONE who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.
Breitbart News asked executive director Kyle Whatley if the Texas Republican Party will ask Suprun to resign as an elector if reports that he has falsely claimed to be a 9/11 responder are confirmed, but has not received a response.