More on @Shoq-gate, where the cover-up is worse than the crime.

Matt Osborne has been busy since June actively covering up a crime; specifically, @Shoq’s recording of a phone call in violation of Florida’s two-party recording law. As I’ve written previously:

Shoq is a well-known progressive new media activist whose Tweets are often featured on The Huffington Post. He is also one of the main forces behind The Stop Rush Project, aimed at censoring conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Based on the material I was given, it seems that Shoq / Edelstein — who lives in Florida — violated the state’s wiretapping law; Fla. Stat. ch. 934.03. According to the Citizen Media Project:

Florida’s wiretapping law is a “two-party consent” law. Florida makes it a crime to intercept or record a “wire, oral, or electronic communication” in Florida, unless all parties to the communication consent. Florida law makes an exception for in-person communications when the parties do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the conversation, such as when they are engaged in conversation in a public place where they might reasonably be overheard. If you are operating in Florida, you may record these kinds of in-person conversations without breaking the law. However, you should always get the consent of all parties before recording any telephone conversation and any in-person that common sense tells you is private. In addition to subjecting you to criminal prosecution, violating the Florida wiretapping law can expose you to a civil lawsuit for damages by an injured party.

I am told that the conversation or conversations were private and did not take place in a public location.

In order to cover up this crime, @Shoq and Matt Osborne worked together on a number of blog posts that denied what they knew was true; that in fact @Shoq had not only made the illegal recording but he emailed it to a number of people. One of those people was Imani Gandy, a liberal activist who blogs as Angry Black Lady. She’s often referred to as ABL. She objected to both Shoq’s violation of the law and his emailing the evidence of his crime to her and other liberal activists.

And so now Matt Obsorne is attacking here. In a long, rambling, and bizarre post, Osborne expresses disbelief that ABL didn’t shut her damn mouth. (Emphasis added.)

Prior to my burn notice for his “Randy Hahn” hoax personality, many people in the StopRush movement were discussing whether ABL had impulsively made a mostly self-serving statement about an alleged illegal phone recording of “Randy.” The perception of some was that she appeared to be throwing @Shoq and several members of his StopRush team under the bus without even the courtesy of a consultation with anyone else so she could indemnify herself and Heather against any appearance of impropriety.

Had she consulted with the other volunteers, @Shoq tells me, they would have pointed out that she had done nothing wrong, and that responding to a lot of nutty right wing bloggers waving a few leaked emails was a bad idea. She was simply named as a recipient of an email

Parse that. Slowly.

Matt Osborne is STILL pretending there’s some doubt that @Shoq aka Matt Edelstein illegally recorded Randy.

There is no doubt. That happened. It’s a fact. Matt Osborne knows it, since he was CCd on those emails.

So what Matt is saying is that ABL should have kept quiet and not objected. Then everything would be fine.

Awful.