For Immediate Release
July 30, 2013
Contact: admin@agendawise.com
Austin, TX – Yesterday, as reported by Quorum Report, Salem Abraham, a wealthy investor, public official and political donor from Canadian Texas, issued a statement regarding the judicial dismissal of Abraham’s lawsuit against Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans. The early judicial dismissal of Abraham’s lawsuit against Sullivan comes several months after a duplicate lawsuit was filed and similarly lost by Abraham against AgendaWise and against AgendaWise‘s Executive Director, Daniel Greer. Abraham has since appealed the judicial denial of his claim against AgendaWise and Greer.
AgendaWise seeks to correct several false statements made by Abraham in his statement about the judicial dismissal.
First, Abraham alleged that Daniel Greer was scheduled to go off of the payroll at AgendaWise. In fact, Greer has never been off AgendaWise payroll.
Second, contrary to Abraham’s assertions, AgendaWise and Daniel Greer have never admitted to or been found to have libeled Abraham.
In an attempt to avoid early judicial dismissal of his suit, Abraham offered into evidence a video his employees shot of him at the Levelland Pie Shop political event in which Gov. Rick Perry was helping Jim Landtroop get out the vote. The video is available at the following link. Readers are invited to judge for themselves how best Abraham’s actions at the Levelland event should be characterized.
AgendaWise notes several facts apparent from the video:
Abraham identifies himself as a public official, specifically a member of the Canadian ISD school board. It has long been established under American jurisprudence that the First Amendment affords citizens and media the opportunity to openly comment about public officials.
Abraham rises at the conclusion of the event to make his point and is told by the moderator to “save it for another day”. Salem testified at the hearing that he thought the event moderator interrupted him, not the other way around.
While Abraham is speaking, what is believed to be a DPS officer or possibly a member of Governor Perry’s security detail is seen walking across the frame towards Abraham’s direction. He’s the gentleman in a cowboy hat and suit, indoors, in Texas in the middle of July.
At the conclusion of his monologue, Abraham’s accomplices who are filming the incident instruct him to stop, saying “that’s plenty.” We believe that this statement and the fact that Abraham brought his own fliers and was being filmed by two cameras during the incident suggest that he attended the event that day with the intent of disrupting the event and making a political statement on behalf of his preferred candidate.
As the video picks up again outside, Abraham and his accomplice are seen rudely berating campaign staff.
While outside, an event organizer again instructs Abraham that his disruption to the event was upsetting to the guests and asks him to leave.
At the conclusion of the video, Abraham is being spoken to by what appears to be a member of Governor Perry’s security detail while a uniformed officer looks on before he finally walks away from the incident.
AgendaWise believes that video supports the eye witness reports of the incident.
In Abraham’s statement, he took the opportunity of his latest legal defeat to attack the character of Tim Dunn and Michael Quinn Sullivan. During the past legislative session and for the last six years, Dunn and Sullivan have worked to involve and inform the Texas electorate and have been attacked by establishment politicians whose plans to expand cronyism and big government have been impacted. Abraham’s two frivolous suits are examples of such attacks. Texas’ Anti-SLAPP law, designed to protect free speech against frivolous and abusive lawsuits, was created for just these sort of cases. AgendaWise believes that people should be free to comment on and criticize public officials. In this situation, Abraham put himself out as a public official in three ways, first as a school board member and also as a leader in West Texas and as a major campaign donor.
Furthermore, Abraham has admitted not being damaged in this case. In a hearing on the case in Canadian, Abraham acknowledged that he has personally suffered no damages as a result of the original AgendaWise publications. This point is magnified by the fact that Abraham has done more to bring attention to this publication than AgendaWise ever did. What initially was acknowledged by merely a few lines in an AgendaWise article, Abraham has amplified by filing suits and issuing statements and press releases after each development in the ensuing litigation.
AgendaWise is pleased that, once again, a Court has determined at the outset of litigation that Abraham does not have a justiciable claim.
AgendaWise Texas is a web-based, non-profit 501(c)(3) research and information organization committed to providing transparency in the Texas political discourse. AgendaWise understands the era of naiveté in media and public life is over and information is shaped by messengers. Seeking to aid the desire of Texans to become more intelligent information consumers, AgendaWise seeks to uncover associations of actors in the political discourse including donors, media sources, and charities; analyzing themes and choices made by such actors. In addition to being an information outpost, AgendaWise is a responder to unfair political attacks. We seek to clarify misdirection, bring perspective to bias, and illuminate untruths in Texas political discourse.