Terror at Burt’s Pumpkin Farm: Gasp! Someone is recording the speeches!
by Bill Simon
Introduction
If you are not “up” on the bullshit that happened over the weekend on August 23rd at Burt’s Pumpkin Farm in Dawson County, where someone was thrown-out and subsequently arrested for videotaping speeches, these are the links for you to read to get-up to speed very quickly so you can follow along with the side I am going to be presenting:
Story 1, written by the AJC’s Jim Galloway & Greg Bluestein (and copied into a PDF version here in case this article disappears): http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2014/08/25/videographer-ousted-from-gop-event-and-sam-olens-speaks-up/
Story 2, published by Brian Pritchard of FetchYourNews.com (which is the source for most of the AJC’s story): http://pickens.fetchyournews.com/archives/4611-Video-Journalist-Forcefully-Removed-From-Republican-Meeting!.html (and copied into a PDF version here in case this article disappears)
Story 3, published by DawsonNews.com on 8/26/2014 (and copied into a PDF version here in case this article disappears): http://www.dawsonnews.com/section/5/article/15480/
Discussion
There are several things that trouble me about this incident, not the least of which, according to Johnny Burt’s claims (owner of Burt’s Pumpkin Farm, the location of the GOP rally), it was he and he alone who decided Nydia Tisdale was trouble ALL by himself, and he claims he acted to get her to stop filming and subsequently told the security officer to toss her out.
Was he not aware that there OTHER people filming the speeches? Why did he, specifically, go pick on Nydia? If Johnny Burt did not want the event filmed, why not instruct EVERYONE to stop filming and stop taking pictures?
You want to know what the answer to that question is? I do not know for sure, but I will tell you what I suspect: The answer is that his story claimed in the DawsonNews article is a cover story to protect Clint Bearden, and Bearden’s actions against Nydia Tisdale.
Who is Clint Bearden? Bearden lives in Dawsonville and is the law partner of David Ralston…the guy under investigation by the Georgia State Bar for multiple violations of state bar rules. Actually…a guy under investigation for violating bar rules who has admitted he violated the rules but “didn’t mean to do so.”
So, according to Brian Pritchard’s observations of the events, it was Clint Bearden who instigated the ENTIRE process to throw Tisdale out. I know that because I read his story, and this is how Pritchard described the play-by-play:
“Tisdale told FYN in an interview that, upon arriving. she introduced herself to Kathy Burt. She arrived early and sat on the front row with her video camera in plain view of everyone. No one approached her and no one asked what she was doing with a camera.
Clint Bearden stood in front of the crowd and said let’s get this kicked off as he introduced Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens. With Tisdale’s camera rolling, Hudgens started making his campaign stump speech. When talking about Democratic Candidate for U.S. Senate Michelle Nunn, referring to the Chamber of Commerce debate between Perdue and Nunn, Hudgens said listening to Nunn “I thought I was going to absolutely puke.â€
Hudgens looked at Tisdale and said “I don’t know why you’re video taping?†(Full audio recording of the meeting is below.)
This comment from Hudgens noticeably changed the mood in the room about Tisdale recording the event, especially for Bearden. Hudgens introduced Richard Woods. While Woods was speaking, Bearden went and sat next to Tisdale, and according to Tisdale, he asked her to stop videoing or she would have to leave. Tisdale told him that she was invited and would not stop. When FYN asked Bearden for a comment, he referred us to the authorities that arrested Tisdale for comment.
As Woods continued to speak, Bearden went to Deputy Wooten for assistance. I then watched Bearden go and speak to the property owners Johnny and Kathy Burt. By this time, Labor Commissioner Mark Butler had started speaking. Bearden returned and said something to Wooten. At this time both Bearden and Wooten approached Tisdale. Wooten told her she had to turn the camera off. Tisdale refused and continued to video. Wooten started to try to remove the camera from Tisdale’s hands. When she refused and struggled to keep the camera running, Wooten began to physically remove her from the event. Tisdale physically resisted being removed turning the camera on Wooten screaming, “Identify yourself, who are you?â€
NOW…contrast Pritchard’s view of events with what Johnny Burt described to the DawsonNews.com reporter:
“According to Johnny Burt, he instructed Wooten to get Tisdale to stop.”
Wow…so, did Pritchard just imagine that Bearden acted the way he did, and tried to get Tisdale to stop, and when she didn’t, that was when Bearden went to bitch to Burt to get someone to throw her out? Was that all just a mirage that Pritchard saw and wrote about and it didn’t happen that Clint Bearden was the insitgator?
Or, did Burt lie to the DawsonNews to help cover-up things for Clint Bearden?
Someone IS lying, that is for damn sure. And, I don’t think it’s Pritchard, and I don’t think it’s Tisdale either.
BUT…since the good Sheriff of Nottingham….err….Sheriff of Dawson County Billy Carlisle has Tisdale’s video camera in his possession, perhaps he’d be good enough to share the video with the world to see if, indeed, Sheriff Deputy Wooten “politely” (as Johnny Burt claimed to the DawsonNews.com) asked Tisdale to turnoff the camera?
OR, did Wooten just attempt to grab it out of her hands without identifying who he was or what authority he had, which is possible since Tisdale is heard on tape asking him, as he apparently started physically accosting her, “Identify yourself, who are you?”
Gee, I sure hope the good sheriff of Dawson County doesn’t “accidentally” delete the evidence…because that might actually put the sheriff in deeper manure due to his officer’s potential violation of this federal law’s restrictions on seizing things like video cameras wielded by someone who intended to upload the video to the web to broadcast it: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000aa
And, if the good Sheriff has been paying any attention to what Assistant Attorney General Sally Yates has been doing for the Northern District of Georgia, she has been on a hunt to find every, single crooked government worker in her district, whether they be elected or working in government. Violating a federal law AND destroying evidence would be music to her ears to wrap-up anyone involved in such a RICO conspiracy.
There was another comment made by Johnny Burt in the DawsonNews.com piece that really stuck-out to me as a problem, and that is when he made this statement: “If she had in the least cooperated, just cut her camera off, and sat there through the meeting and asked all the questions she wanted to at the end, it would have perfectly fine. But she misrepresented herself to start with,” he said.”
Do you folks have ANY idea of what the problem is, in logic, with that statement by Burt? Any idea at all? Well, it’s for certain that Johnny Burt doesn’t know…he doesn’t have a clue. But I do.
It is this: Typically, all Nydia Tisdale does is record public and political events on a videocamera, and then she uploads the video to her website and then she makes comments on her posts on Facebook and her AboutForsyth.net website. She does not engage like a reporter does. She does not heckle people. She would not be waiting “until the end to ask questions” because SHE DOES NOT ASK ANYONE QUESTIONS!
She, for the most part (unless someone actually interferes with her God-granted existence to simply RECORD an event) records events, and then uploads them, and comments on them on her own website and Facebook page. Really. That’s. About. It.
SO…the question becomes, where did Johnny Burt get the idea that she was going to throw a barrage of questions at ANY speaker? One of only two places: Either in his own imagination, or Clint Bearden spun a tale to him that was a bunch of lies about Nydia Tisdale.
And, me? I believe the latter is where Burt got that idea to start with. From Clint Bearden, who, as Brian Pritchard carefully described in his FetchYournews.com article, was the sole instigator in the process of throwing Tisdale out.
Finally…one tiny, concrete, clear as day, piece of evidence that demonstrates that Nydia Tisdale had absolutely nothing but the most honorable intentions of attending the event, and merely recording and enjoying the speeches of that day….her Facebook post promoting the event at Burt’s Pumpkin Patch…and engaging in inviting others to attend:
This is a link to what I captured in PDF: http://www.politicalvine.com/2014/dawsoncounty/FBNydia-Tisdale2.pdf
And, if you look down to the bottom of that first page, you will see a part of the graphic with Deal’s picture on it, and the spelling-out of the event SHE (Nydia) was helping to spread the word about that was going to take place on Saturday, August 23 at 3:30 PM. The 2nd page shows her promoting some other GOP events…so, she was not a member of the “opposition.” She was not a “tracker” for the Democrats. She was engaging in the activity she had been engaging in for over a year, all across the state, and was under the impression that she was welcome to do what she was doing because there were no signs or no announcement that stated she was prohibited from doing what she was doing.
And, if you’re Facebook friends with her, you can go to her page and scroll down to see the entire post: regarding HER promotion of it to get other people to attend: https://www.facebook.com/nydia.tisdale?fref=ts
Conclusion: Nydia Tisdale got shafted in a very big, very unfair way. I cannot speak to the criminal allegations against her, but someone else deliberately caused that series of events that led her to believe she was being illegally accosted and dragged out of an event PUBLICIZED to be “public.”
Personal Note to Clint Bearden: If your issue was with the event being recorded, you should have gotten everyone to turnoff their recording devices. That you chose, specifically, to go after Tisdale, and ONLY Tisdale, telegraphs the message that you stink as much as your partner David Ralston stinks from violating bar rules and basic moral laws of decency in his dealings with his clients.
Clint, you may think that as long as he’s Speaker and you’re his law partner that you have the biggest d*** in this state. You don’t, actually. And Karma’s going to take a special delight in paying you back 100,000 times worse for this BS you caused against Nydia Tisdale. How that comes back to a POS human being like yourself, only God knows. But, it is coming for you.
****** UPDATE *******
There was a second story written by Jim Galloway and published on 8/27/2014. Here is that link.
In it, Galloway describes things exactly how Brian Pritchard described events regarding the fact that it was Clint Bearden who instigated the process. I quote from this story as follows:
“Which is how we know what happened next. Clint Bearden, a local attorney and former Dawson County GOP chairman – and one of the organizers, asked Tisdale to stop her videography. She declined, pointing out that she had been invited to attend.”
SO, unless Clint Bearden writes to Jim Galloway asking for a retraction, then we can assume that what Galloway wrote IS the truth…and therefore, Bearden is the SOB who singled-out Tisdale and caused the ruckus.
August 29th, 2014 at 11:49 pm
Understand Deputy Wooten has been cleared of any wrongdoing….
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