VOAT

A couple of days ago, I created an account at voat.co. Amazing progress on #pizzagate seeing the light of day there. While Voat beats other web sites in terms of cooperation and dedication by its members to go at the bottom of the whole of #pedogate, the platform lacks in elegance when presenting information. This is when a blogger on Steemit can use findings there, add its personal touch and research, and then put it in a comprehensible form in order to present it in a much more appealing matter to the general reader.

Remember about David Brock and James Alefantis making the headlines over a triangular love affair dispute?

^{Media Matters founder accuses gay ex-lover of blackmailing him for $850K after breakup}

^{In May 2010, Brock says his lover sent an e-mail to him and his new partner James Alefantis that read: 'David, You and James pulled this same kind of sick nonsense in 2008 to try to hide your financial malfeasance. Next step is I contact all of your donors and the IRS. OK? Do you understand?'}

^{David Brock celebrating with James Alefantis the paperback edition of his right-wing transfuge book}

^{"Blinded by the Right" Book Party - Photos by Zaid Hamid for Washington Life Magazine}

The Lawyer

Well, it seems that someone at Voat realized that the lawyer acting as counsel to the Alefantis & Brock couple in that 2010 court case is on the board of directors of the Friends of the Orphans.

As shown in the court document:

Max Maccoby

Who is Max Maccoby? He is a Shareholder at Butzel Long and ''He is on the board of directors for the nonprofit charity Friends of the Orphans and is an advocate for their cause.''

Laura Silsby and Pizzagate

Although I have a great deal of respect for redberries' findings on this new Maccoby family connection, let me explain why I diverge in opinion when reading on the net about all the hasty conclusions claiming that Laura Silby's New Life Children's Refuge case is directly linked to Pizzagate.

In this instance, the parts submitted in bold text and presented as the crux of the matter on both of the Voat trends are where I believe precisions need to be made.

Credible source of info?

The specific parts where I got a problem with are the followings:

''...Friends of the Orphans, the orphanage which child trafficker Laura Silsby was given children from...''

''...Friends of the Orphans, the charity Laura Silsby was given children from...''

Where this information does comes from?

It comes from a rush transcript from "On the Record," February 1, 2010:

^{VAN SUSTEREN: Where did they find these 33 children? How did they get these children?}

^{PUELLO: There was an orphanage that collapsed in Haiti. It was called friends of the orphans of Haiti. And there was somebody over there that told them that the orphans had no place, no room to place them.}

I found the original news clip and Puello precise quote about the orphenage is: ''...It was called I believe friends of the orphans of Haiti...''

Not only the ten American citizens' lawyer is not sure about this bit of information, but he has also himself been characterized as a suspect in a human trafficking ring affair and possibly as a pathological liar in a New York Times' article:

^{Mr. Puello has been acting as a spokesman and legal adviser in the Dominican Republic for some of the detainees.}

^{The head of the Salvadoran border police, Commissioner Jorge Callejas, said in a telephone interview that he was investigating accusations that a man with a Dominican passport that identified him as Jorge Anibal Torres Puello led a human trafficking ring that recruited Dominican women and under-age Nicaraguan girls by offering them jobs and then putting them to work as prostitutes in El Salvador.}

^{Mr. Puello said he did not even have a passport. When Mr. Callejas was shown a photograph taken in Haiti of Mr. Puello, Mr. Callejas said he thought it showed the man he was seeking. He said he would try to arrest Mr. Puello on suspicion of luring women into prostitution and taking explicit photographs of them that were then posted on Internet sites. “It’s him, the same beard and face,” Mr. Callejas said in an interview on Thursday. “It has to be him.”}

^{Judge Saint-Vil also said he thought that the photo of the trafficking suspect in a Salvadoran police file appeared to be the same man he had met in court. He said he intended to begin his own investigation into whether a trafficking suspect had been working with the Americans detained in Haiti.}

^{“I was skeptical of him because he arrived with four bodyguards, and I have never seen that from a lawyer,” the judge said in an interview. “I plan to get to the bottom of this right away.”}

^{The judge said he would request assistance from the Department of Homeland Security to look into Mr. Puello’s background. A spokesman for the department said American officials were playing a supporting role in the investigation surrounding the Americans, providing “investigative support as requested.”}

^{An Interpol arrest warrant has been issued for someone named Jorge Anibal Torres Puello, according to the police and public documents.}

^{There were questions about whether Mr. Puello, the adviser, who said the Central Valley Baptist Church in Idaho had hired him to represent the Americans, was licensed to practice law. Records at the College of Lawyers in the Dominican Republic listed no one with his name.}

^{Mr. Puello said he had a law license and was part of a 45-member law firm. But his office in Santo Domingo turned out to be a humble place, which could not possibly fit 45 lawyers. Mr. Puello’s brother Alejandro said that the firm had another office in the central business district, but he declined to provide an address.}

^{Mr. Puello said in the interview that he had been representing the Americans free of charge because he was a religious man who commiserated with their situation. “I’m president of the Sephardic Jewish community in the Dominican Republic,” he said. “I help people in this kind of situation. We’re not going to charge these people a dime.”}

^{But other lawyers for the detainees said that the families had wired Mr. Puello $12,000 to pay for the Americans’ transportation out of Haiti if they were released, and that they had been told by Mr. Puello in a conference call late Tuesday that he needed an additional $36,000. Mr. Puello said that he had not participated in a conference call.}

^{One lawyer for the families said that Mr. Puello had told him that he was licensed to practice law in Florida, but the lawyer said he had checked and found no such record. Mr. Puello said in the interview that he had never said he was licensed in Florida.}

^{Mr. Puello said that he had been born in Yonkers, N.Y., and that his mother was Dominican. He said that his full name was Jorge Puello and that he had no other names. But then in a subsequent interview he said his name was Jorge Aaron Bentath Puello. He said he was born in October 1976, and not in October 1977, which the police report indicates is the birth date of the suspect in the Salvadoran case.}

^{The report said the police had found documents connected to the Sephardic Jewish community in a house in San Salvador where the traffickers had held women.}

Hard to know what really happened in Haiti

It's hard to make heads or tails of a story when people contradict each other, but the general consensus of how the Baptists group got the 33 children seems to involve two men, Pastor Jean Sainvil and Isaac Adrien.

From CNN:

^{Pastor Jean Sainvil told CNN he rounded up 20 children from a camp in the Delmas neighborhood of the capital.}

Jean Sainvil saying he was the one who provided permissions to take the kids from the parents (starting at 1:31):

According to the AP Archive:

^{Prosecutors also asked for six months prison time for Jean Sainvil, an Atlanta-based pastor born in Haiti who allegedly helped find the children for the missionaries.}

^{He is not in Haiti and is being tried in absentia.}

I spent many hours trying to figure where the kids were snatched and who took them, but the media are all over the place about this.

From the Associated Press:

^{A reporter's visit Saturday to the rubble-strewn Citron slum, where 13 of the children lived, led to their parents, all of whom said they turned their youngsters over to the missionary group voluntarily in hopes of getting them to safety.}

^{Similar explanations were given by parents in the mountain town of Callabas, outside Port-au-Prince, who told the AP on Feb. 3 that desperation and blind faith led them to hand over 20 children to the Baptist group.}

^{The day after he met Silsby, Sainvil collected the 13 children from Citron. A day after that, the missionaries" bus was halted at the Dominican border and they were arrested. Sainvil, meanwhile, became sick with vomiting and diarrhea and decided to fly back to the U.S. on a military transport plane, he said.}

From NewsOne:

^{In Callebas, parents said a local orphanage worker, fluent in English and acting on behalf of the Baptists, had convened nearly the entire village of 500 people on a dirt soccer field to present the Americans’ offer.}

^{Isaac Adrien, 20, told his neighbors the missionaries would educate their children in the neighboring Dominican Republic, the villagers said, adding that they were also assured they would be free to visit their children there.}

^{Many parents jumped at the offer.}

^{Adrien said he met Silsby in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 26. She told him she was looking for homeless children, he said, and he knew exactly where to find them.}

^{He rushed home to Callebas, where people scrape by growing carrots, peppers and onions. That very day, he had a list of 20 children.}

From The Ledger:

^{Murphy, associate director of the HEART Institute, a missionary training facility at Warner University, was briefly mentioned in a story in Wednesday's New York Times about the detained Americans. He was incorrectly identified as "a Baptist minister, Philippe Murphy, who runs an orphanage in the area" of Fermathe, Haiti.}

^{The story said villagers trusted the 10 Americans, who mostly belong to Southern Baptist churches in Idaho, and gave them custody of their children because they arrived with Murphy's recommendation.}

^{But Murphy said he is neither Baptist nor a minister, and the orphanage he and his wife founded in 1986, House of Blessings, is in the village of Callebasse.}

^{The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that the Baptist Americans, led by Laura Silsby of Meridian, Idaho, met Isaac Adrien in Port-au-Prince on Jan. 26. Adrien was raised in the House of Blessings orphanage and now is coordinator for a program called Children of Promise, Murphy said. Silsby said her group wanted to take orphaned and homeless children to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.}

^{Adrien took Silsby's group to House of Blessings, which houses about 20 children, but the director, Joana Jean Marie Desir, turned them away, Murphy said.}

^{"She locked the door and said no, we don't know who you are," he said.}

Where in Haiti?

Now, where are the Friends of the Orphans' facilities in Haiti?

A lot of programs come out in the NPH USA (Friends of the Orphans) Wikipedia article linked above, but the only location mentionned is the Tabarre area.

I did found what looks like the St. Hélène Orphanage for Children on the Friends of the Orphans Canada web site:

^{The NPH home in Haiti is located in Kenscoff, 6000ft above Port au Prince, about two hours drive from the airport. Saint Hélène is home to over 350 children from age 5 to secondary level students. The children attend elementary and secondary schools on the premises along with 450 children who live within walking distance.}

And I also found an adress in the Tabarre region.

Here are all of the above mentionned places where the illegal change of kids' custody could have happened (note: the only result coming out on Google Map for a place called Citron in Haiti hits a westward location unrelated to Port-au-Prince). The names I've added to the map are all only a couple of kilometers away from each other.

Note: I'm not saying that the Friends of the Orphans organization had nothing to do with it. I only wanted to point out that it was way more complicated than merely believing Puello's word.

The Clintons

But surely the Clintons are tied with Silsby, right?

Well, again, it's not that obvious.

Bill

The only piece of information I saw mentionning Bill's involvment with the case is a The Sunday Times article which I don't have fully access to:

^{The intervention of Bill Clinton, the former president, who is co-ordinating relief efforts in Haiti, may accelerate the resolution of an affair that has embarrassed the US government, dismayed relief agencies and angered many Haitians who believe their plight is being exploited by unscrupulous foreigners.}

Hillary

As for Hillary, first let's ask ourselves: what are the duties of the United States Secretary of State? Two of them are relevant to the question at hand:

Participates in high-level negotiations with other countries, either bilaterally...
Ensures the protection of the U.S. Government to American citizens...

So there is nothing really suspicious with the fact that Hillary would have been interested in the case because it was part of her department responsibilities to ensure that the country would not loose face amid this diplomatic crisis and, of course, to make sure that the ten American citizens were righfully treated.

As for believing (InfoWars video anyone?) that Wikileaks dated 2001-01-01 03:00 (https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/3741) (https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/3776) are proof that HRC was interested in Laura Silsby's NLCR a decade prior to the earthquake, we should ask ourselves: how would someone know about an organization and an event ten years before they both emerged and happened? If you still blindly believe the date of the NLCR copied/pasted material's emails to be correct, I won't try to convince you otherwise, but you sure won't have my Reddit upvote on that.

But don't get me wrong, there is at least irony (or at worst sinisterness) with the idea of Mrs. Laura Silsby-Gayler as VP of Marketing for AlertSense, a company providing ''child abduction public alerting'' solutions.

Still, I think the Maccoby trail is an interesting one to be investigated. I have not putted everything together, but instinctively speaking and only by seperately watching the different piece of the puzzle it looks promising.

What could be of interest with the rest of the Maccoby family?

Butzel Long

Let's start with Max himself working at Butzel Long, historically being a Democratic activist leaning firm.

What caught my eye about Butzel Long is the fact that it was a founding member of Lex Mundi, the largest law firm network.

Talking about things getting my eye's attention, one particular logo of an organization having established a partnership with the Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation has made the cut for it, with let's say, its creative way of putting a dot on the letter i of children.

Now, here is a connection pizzagaters will find of interest. The Global Fund for Children is not only a partner of the Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation (Lex Mundi-Butzel Long-Max Maccoby-Brock & Alefantis) but also of the Clinton Global Initiative:

^{Clinton Global Initiative - U8 The Global Fund for Children launched its Under-8 Initiative (U8) at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2007. Through this initiative, GFC committed $10 million to programs worldwide that support early childhood education and development for children under age 8.}

I would encourage others to dig deeper into these big money funds with political connections that are aimed at saving the children. We might only be scratching at the surface of possible nefarious activities.

Michael Maccoby

^{''NPH Family: Present, past and future. Donna Egge, Dr. Michael Maccoby, and Ricardo Klayen''}

^{NPH International - NPH Family Services}

What about Max's father, Michael Maccoby?

Here is some interesting facts about him:

He personnaly supported COMET PIZZA on the topic of closing hours during a 2008 ANC3F meeting (31:40 of the second audio clip).
He conducted a study with Erich Fromm (associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory) on the NPH organization.
''He coaches leaders at Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, homes for orphaned and abandoned children, an orphanage in Mexico, Honduras, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, ElSalvador, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia and Peru.''
''He has served on the boards of... ...and Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (NPH), an orphanage in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries based on humanistic principles that stimulate development. He was a close associate of Father William Wasson, the founder of NPH.''
''At Harvard he worked with... ...B.F. Skinner, and McGeorge Bundy...'' (B.F. Skinner was a behaviorist who developed operant conditioning and McGeorge Bundy is Skull and Bones, CFR, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, and was involved with the Marshall Plan)
He is a member of the elitist Cosmos Club.

Izette Folger (Michael's daughter)

^{''James Alefantis, owner of Comet Ping Pong, with Izette Folger''}

^{Washington Social Diary - FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD AT CHEFS FOR EQUALITY

by Carol Joynt}

James Alefantis and Izette Folger are both on the Board & Advisory Council of transformer. They are respectively listed on the artist-centered organization's Board of Directors as Board President & Restaurateur (Alefantis), and Artist (Folger).

Nora Maccoby (Michael's daughter)

^{''Ms. Maccoby talked about the U.S. demand for Oil, reacting to President Bush’s State of the Union speech''}

^{C-SPAN - FEBRUARY 4, 2006}

''Nora Maccoby is an American artist, filmmaker, and environmental activist''. She can be seen performing at a 2015 Environmental Working Group Dinner Gala. The Environmental Working Group has been criticized in the media: ''My food paranoia wake-up call: The EWG wants us to be afraid of the food we feed our kids — here’s why I refuse''. There might be absolutely nothing to it, but look at the spiral shape and the small symbol embedded in a similar larger symbol's nature of the EWG logo.

Anne Berglof (Michael's daughter)

The other sister, Annie Maccoby Berglof, seems to be a least prominent public figure than the rest of the family, although I believe she is a contributor to the Financial Times.

I'm not saying that these people are guilty of anything. All I intended to do was to contribute in learning why James Alefantis is considered by GQ as number 49 of The 50 Most Powerful People in Washington and pointing out to the fact that the men at the center of Pizzagate is closely related to a family traditionally involved with an international non-profit corporation taking care of more than 3,700 children in the Americas.

Alefantis, Friends of the Orphans & the Maccoby family