Dan Backer from DB Capitol Strategies is a player of sorts when it comes to lawsuits. In a BU Exclusive we dig into Backer’s associations with the venerable Ladd Ehlinger who goes by the nickname Filmladd and who tweets as @Filmladd.

Ladd Ehlinger is a film maker of sorts who associates with the conservative Republican SuperPac machines, and Dan Backer is one of his employers. Digging around the internet BU came across a lawsuit that Mr. Backer has filed against the Federal Election Commission in July 2012. This lawsuit is quite complex and deals mostly with Carey accounts and Citizen United type of material. Going through it is a slog through a maze of sleaze and kickbacks and demands on the FEC to allow employees to donate unlimited amounts of money through an Employee Leadership Fund (ELF) which is another type of Pac that Mr. Backer is running through an organization called Stop This Insanity. The lawsuit is overly complex for us here at BU to go through, so we post only excerpts here for clarity.

The gist of it as we at BU read it is that Mr. Backer hired Ladd Ehlinger to produce some videos for the Stop This Insanity organization; whereby he was contracted to produce them for 10,000.00 dollars. The scheme or contract then called for Ladd to kickback 1500.00 of those wages to the Stop This Insanity Pac so Mr. Backer could then sue the Federal Election Commission for not allowing them to open a non contribution account or Carey account:

Backer has been heavily involved in Citizens United type of work. In this case here they decided to fund Ladd Ehlinger to produce a number of videos for their organization so they could consider Mr. Ehlinger an employee of the Stop This Insanity organization all so they could sue the Federal Election Commission. His contract then states the terms of his contractual employment:

So the terms and conditions of payments for these videos was 10,000.00 dollars, minus what is termed as an “AGENCY Fee” that was then kicked back to the Stop This Insanity Pac which then allowed Mr. Backer to sue the Federal Election Commission over it:

 

 

That is a pretty nice deal and a great job for Ladd Ehlinger. All he had to do is produce a few videos for them at a very high rate of pay and then kickback 1500.00 dollars to them out of his pay in order to become part of the lawsuit. I wonder what the Federal Election Commission would say if they knew what is really going on? Well, the funny thing is they included this part in their lawsuit, so it stands to reason that the FEC already knows about this. Only part they don’t know is Mr. Ehlinger’s involvement with the whole Brett Kimberlin/Aaron Walker affair, and the Donate to our super clean Bloggers Defense Team fiasco.

The thing about this scheme is not how scummy it looks, rather it is Mr. Ehlinger’s outrage at Ali Akbar and his desire to see Ali Akbar removed from the National Bloggers Club, and how Dan Backer was used as the replacement of the National Bloggers Club when it came to donations for the get rid of Brett Kimberlin campaign they have been running for a number of months. You see, it was Mr. Ehlinger who had come out strongly against Ali Akbar when it was disclosed here on BU that he was a convicted felon and ghetto thief. Then at about the same time it was revealed by the Liberal Grouch that Mr. Akbar had been running a fake 501c3 charity for the purposes of accepting donations for this Kimberlin campaign that Ali Akbar started. Mr. Ehlinger upon realizing that Akbar had been found out decided to abandon ship and called for others to do the same thing when it came to Mr. Akbar. However as we have seen in an earlier post here on BU, Mr. Backer, who took over the duties of Ali Akbar and the National Bloggers Club by forming a new club called the Bloggers Defense Team, had been in a long professional and financial association with Mr. Akbar and his Vice and Victory organization whereby Mr. Backer had been funneling tens of thousands of dollars to Mr. Akbar for services rendered.

So the question we have here at BU is this: was this some sort of fake outrage on Mr. Ehlinger’s part against Ali Akbar?

 

When I read these posts I had come to the conclusion that Mr. Akbar had some enemies in his camp and they were finally coming together to either boot him out or get rid of him. Yet now that I read the above I am not so sure that this was real outrage at all. Rather I now believe that it was fake outrage to cover for Mr. Akbar and make it look like he was being booted out so Dan Backer and DB Capitol Strategies could move in with the so called clean hands and steady ship strategy that many con men use on unsuspecting victims. The gist is when the mark feels he is being taken for a ride and starts to back out a new scam is put into motion by bringing in a guy with clean hands and an impeccable reputation to run the show. That way the mark gets all warm and fuzzy again because he feels that the new guy can’t possibly be connected to the other more sinister guy. In this case however it appears that this is a classic scam of bait and switch. Primarily because BU ruined the initial guy by exposing his criminal record which was closely followed up by the Liberal Grouch finding out that Mr. Akbar had never filed the paperwork for his 501(c3) non profit status with the IRS while claiming he was in fact a non-profit which gave those who donated to their fund a tax deduction. Thus it appeared to many to be nothing more than a scam for dollars when those issues concerning Mr. Akbar were revealed. Then steps in Mr. Ladd Ehlinger to state that yes, Mr. Akbar was in fact a bad guy and needed to go, and then just as quickly in steps Dan Backer and his DB Capitol Strategies firm to take up the slack while Mr. Akbar was apparently given the boot.

The issue is that Dan Backer probably wouldn’t be feeling like giving Mr. Akbar the boot, especially since he had been paying him large money for services rendered in the recent past, and Mr. Ladd Ehlinger being nothing more than a mere employee of Mr. Backer as we see above, would probably not be allowed to just come out against Mr. Akbar since he was employed by Mr. Backer who had also been giving money to Mr. Akbar. One can quickly see that something doesn’t quite smell right with this crew of misfits. The key here is money and donations to the Bloggers Defense Team, and also whether anyone should be donating to this organization or not?

In this case there appears to be more to all this Brett Kimberlin outrage than what is being shown. Mr. Backer has had a vested interest in Mr. Ali Akbar. He also has a vested interest in Mr. Ladd Ehlinger. Both seem to be financially connected to one another. And all of them have been after one man, and that is Brett Kimberlin, and their goal is to destroy him by any means necessary. As for schemes and scams one has to ask themselves if Mr. Backer’s outrage and that of Ladd Ehlinger and even that of Aaron Walker, is actually real outrage or imagined outrage cooked up to make money fast? Is all this outrage directed towards Brett Kimberlin just another way to find a wedge issue and get people to back it and donate so the tricksters and schemers can get one over on the public and profit at the same time?

You be the judge of that…..

6 thoughts on “Dan Backer: The Film Ladd Stratagem”
  1. Another terrific post BU. Sounds to me like you have an insider ratting these con artists out. I hope you are making sure this stuff is going straight to the feds. They need to open a broad based grand jury investigation into the whole bunch. Creating fake outrage in order to scam money from fellow Republicans. Incredible.

  2. “This is too complicated for us to understand, so it must be evil!”

    If the paper the lawsuit is printed on floats, does that make Dan Backer a witch?

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