The Tell

Folks... it's all  coming  into focus. 

A tell in poker is a change in a player's behavior or demeanor that is claimed by some to give clues to that player's assessment of his hand. A player gains an advantage if he observes and understands the meaning of another player's tell, particularly if the tell is unconscious and reliable.

A Tell at Hoboken City Council...

Let's start here:

It looks like Klaussen threw us a few clues here. Ones he didn't mean to.

Here's what GA believes happened.

Some weeks ago, Mayor Zimmer, suspicious that the source of leaks of confidential City documents and private communications were from City Hall's IT office called in a team of independent investigators to do  a forensic review of the It Department's hard drives. 

GA believes the investigation results prompted the employee 'gag order'- not only to contain the data leakage that Zimmer had independently verified and to put employees on notice, but to establish individual liability should anyone participate in the transfer of leaked material.

GA believes Zimmer took her results to the FBI and surveillance of the IT Office activities under IT Department head Patrick Ricciardi began-- months ago.

Concurrently, before and during the FBI surveillance, GA believes emails had been illegally transferred to a member of this data theft ring (DTR).

GA believes that a determination was made by the ringleader- the recipient of these emails- and her political operatives that one or more of these emails needed to go 'public'.   Pick a reason: to embarrass the mayor and/or selected members of her administration (Dan Bryan and Juan Melli), to embarrass the other party- a reform blogger, perhaps one holding a municipal board position, or an administration critic, to damage the effectiveness or credibility of the critic.  GA guesses the pathological obsession of a known political operative, a DTR member,  drove the whole scheme.

How can illegally-obtained emails go public?

A member of the DTR-- an elected public official on the Hoboken City Council, uses the power of her office to legislate the release of these email communications.  

In other words, legitimize stolen goods by resolution.

The Tell.

Hence, the (first)  Beth Mason-sponsored, Mike Russo co-sponsored resolution demanding the release of ALL email communications between Juan Melli and Dan Bryan.  GA believes that these 2 employees were chosen BASED on the emails that were already illegally obtained and NOT before.  Because those were the ones that City Council member wanted to release. 

As soon as GA saw the resolution, I believed Mason already had the emails. And the F.B.I.'s  computer forensics will confirm it, if true.

Now, after this (first) Mason resolution was roundly criticized as being highly wasteful  due to the extraordinary volume of communications, a SECOND version was issued with a list of 12 names. Only THOSE  12 were targeted to have their emails released. 

Any rocket scientists on board?    

GA believes the emails warming the hands of this City Council member and her obsessed minion belonged to names on that list. Maybe one or two and the rest of the names were 'padding'.  So here was the Mason  plan:

STEP 1: Pass the resolution and publicly obtain the emails.
STEP 2: Leak selected emails to Hoboken411.

But this plan was kneecapped by Mayor Zimmer.  She outsmarted them.  Mason showed us her cards with the resolution that was so transparently cobbled together.

The Tell.

And a lawyer friend of mine who'd just read the Mayor's press release said the most significant line in it was the last one:

The FBI and the City request that anyone with information that may be relevant to this matter call the FBI’s Newark office at 973-792-3000. 

Why?

Because the F.B.I. is sending out a message that it's open season. They're warning ANYONE who knows ANYTHING to be the first one to get there before the next shoe drops on THEM.

That's going out to members of the DTR.  Better lawyer-up.