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|url=http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/10/weekinreview/may-3-9-a-top-aide-resigns.html?src=pm |accessdate=2012-01-21
|url=http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/10/weekinreview/may-3-9-a-top-aide-resigns.html?src=pm |accessdate=2012-01-21
|quote=Under pressure from Speaker Newt Gingrich, Representative Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican who heads the House Government and Reform Committee, accepted the resignation of the aide, David N. Bossie, a dogged anti-Clinton sleuth.}}</ref>
|quote=Under pressure from Speaker Newt Gingrich, Representative Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican who heads the House Government and Reform Committee, accepted the resignation of the aide, David N. Bossie, a dogged anti-Clinton sleuth.}}</ref>

# During the 1992 presidential campaign, Bossie got into a fistfight with a Little Rock, Arkansas private investigator, Larry Case, who said he had damaging information on Clinton. Bossie told police that Case had punched him after Bossie refused to pay Case a $10,000 advance as they were preparing to board a flight at Little Rock National Airport.

# That same year, Bossie set out to prove that a young pregnant woman named Susan Coleman had committed suicide in 1977 after having an affair with Clinton. Coleman's mother told CBS that Bossie hounded her relentlessly with his false story, even following her to an Army hospital in Georgia, where she was visiting her husband, in recovery from a stroke. Bossie and another man, Jim Murphy (a retired D.C. policeman) "burst into the sick man's room and began questioning the shaken mother about her daughter's suicide," CBS reported.

# Also in 1992, President George H.W. Bush, repudiating Bossie's tactics, filed an FEC complaint against Bossie's group after it produced a TV ad inviting voters to call a hotline to hear (almost certainly doctored) tape-recorded conversations between Clinton and Gennifer Flowers.

# In 1994, Bossie traveled to Fayetteville, Arkansas with an NBC producer, where the two allegedly "stalked" and "ambushed" Beverly Bassett Schaffer, a former state regulatory officer and a lawyer who had played a small role in the so-called Whitewater conspiracy. The two confronted Schaffer outside her office and, after she refused an on-camera interview, reportedly chased her across town, until she found refuge in the lobby of an office building.

# In February 1996, Citizens United mailed out a fundraising letter bragging that it had "dispatched its top investigator, David Bossie, to Capitol Hill to assist Senator Lauch Faircloth in the official U.S. Senate hearings on Whitewater." Another mailing reported that Bossie was "on the inside directing the probe." Democrats subsequently cried foul that a federal employee was actively raising money for a partisan group, so D'Amato forced Bossie to submit an affidavit proclaiming his independence from Citizens United.

# In November 1996, Bossie improperly leaked the confidential phone logs of former Commerce Department official John Huang to the press. And he did that by deceiving other GOP congressional aides, according to an account published in Roll Call, which quoted one Republican aide comparing Bossie's deceptive presence to "Ollie North running around the House."

# In July 1997, James Rowley III, the chief counsel to the House Government Reform Committee, which was investigating allegations of campaign finance wrongdoing by the Clinton administration, resigned his position after committee chairman Burton refused to fire Bossie. In his one-page resignation letter, Rowley, a former federal prosecutor employed by Republicans, accused Bossie of "unrelenting" self-promotion in the press, which made it impossible "to implement the standards of professional conduct I have been accustomed to at the United States Attorney's Office." (Bossie's habit of self-promotion paid off; during one four-week stretch in early 1994, Bossie and Brown were profiled by the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times and the Washington Post, each marveling at the power the activists were wielding.)

... When the Clintons exited the White House, Bossie seemed rudderless as he jumped from one political target to the next. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he coauthored another quickie attack book, "Prince Albert: The Life and Lies of Al Gore," but it didn't seem to play much of a role in the disputed election. During the summer of 2001, Bossie played the Gary Condit game, going on cable TV to tie the Democratic congressman to a dead intern. ("Gary Condit doesn't have much credibility left," Bossie said.) No evidence linking Condit to the murder ever emerged, and he was never charged. The next year, when the Enron scandal broke, Bossie appeared on Fox News and repeated GOP talking points that both political parties deserved blame because, after all, Enron's former CEO, Kenneth Lay, slept in the Lincoln bedroom once while Clinton was in office. But that, in fact, never happened. Also that year, Bossie appeared on TNN's late-night show, "Conspiracy Zone With Kevin Nealon," where he dissected, yet again, the supposed mysteries surrounding the suicide of Clinton aide Foster. Plus, Bossie guaranteed that Sen. Hillary Clinton would run for president in 2004.


===Citizens United===
===Citizens United===

Revision as of 11:53, 3 September 2016

David Norman Bossie
Head shot of dark haired young man with some five o'clock shadow, wearing blue shirt, red striped necktie, and dark jacket.
Bossie in February 2011
BornNovember 1, 1965 (1965-11) (age 59)
Boston, Massachussets, U.S.
Known forConservative journalist-activist
Political partyRepublican
Board member ofCitizens United
SpouseSusan
Children4
Awards1999 Ronald Reagan Award from CPAC

David N. Bossie (born November 1, 1965)[1][2] is an American political activist. Since 2000, he has been President and Chairman of conservative advocacy group Citizens United.[3]

Early life

Bossie grew up in Massachusetts to parents he has described as "apolitical". When he first registered to vote he left the political affiliation box blank. When an employee explained to him that it was a requirement for registration in Massachusetts, he said that he wanted to be whatever Ronald Reagan was. The employee said that she wasn't permitted to tell him but gave him a newspaper and said, "Here, read this, figure it out and fill in the appropriate box."[2]

Bossie attended Towson State University and the University of Maryland.[citation needed]

Career

Congressional investigator

After the Republicans won control of the United States House of Representatives in the 1994 elections Dan Burton, (R-IN), became chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. In 1997, he hired Mr. Bossie as chief investigator to look into a possible campaign finance abuses by U.S. President Bill Clinton.[4] By May 1998, Burton came under intense partisan pressure; even fellow Republicans complained that committee staff had published redacted tapes and transcripts of former United States Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell's prison telephone calls omitting some exculpatory passages. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich pressed Burton to seek Bossie's resignation.[5] Shortly thereafter, Burton accepted Bossie's resignation.[6]

Citizens United

During his tenure at Citizens United, the organization focused increasingly on producing feature film documentaries through its Citizens United Productions division. Their films have included:

Citizens United hoped to begin distribution of the feature film Hillary: The Movie in January or February 2008. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 made that an unlawful electioneering communication.[citation needed] They sued, unsuccessfully, for an injunction to prohibit the Federal Election Commission from enforcement of those provisions of BCRA on first amendment grounds.[7]

In a 2010 landmark decision, the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission for Citizens United. For-profit and not-for-profit corporations may now advertise and broadcast messages of a political nature without limits on how much they can spend and with few limits on the timing and nature of the messages.

Citizens United supported Newt Gingrich in the 2012 Iowa caucuses.[8]

Trump campaign

In September 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump hired Bossie to be his new deputy campaign manager.[9]

Publications

Bossie is the author of The Many Faces of John Kerry, a critical look at the Democratic nominee in the 2004 presidential election, then-Senator John Kerry. He has also written Intelligence Failure, a piece alleging failings on the part of the national security apparatus during the Clinton Administration in the years before September 11, 2001. Bossie is also the author of the 2008 publication Hillary: the Politics of Personal Destruction and co-author of the 2000 release Prince Albert: the Life and Lies of Al Gore with Floyd Brown.

At the Tea Party Convention, Bossie debuted his documentary Generation Zero, focusing on the 2008 financial crisis, and its basis in the selfishness of the Baby Boomer generation.

Awards and honors

Bossie received the Ronald Reagan Award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 1999.

Personal

Bossie has served for 20 years as a Montgomery County, Maryland volunteer firefighter. He lived in the firehouse for several years before his marriage.[citation needed] He met his wife, Susan, through his political work. They reside in Montgomery County with their four children.

References

  1. ^ http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n00087102.html
  2. ^ a b Bossie, David (20 February 2010). (Interview) [rtsp://video1.c-span.org/project/c04/c04_wj100304_bossie.rm rtsp://video1.c-span.org/project/c04/c04_wj100304_bossie.rm]. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite interview}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |callsign= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |program= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |subjectlink= ignored (|subject-link= suggested) (help) (date not verified)
  3. ^ David N. Bossie biography, Citizens United official website (accessed September 21, 2008)
  4. ^ Clines, Francis X. (March 9, 1997). "'Pit Bull' Congressman Gets a Chance to Be More Aggressive". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-01-21.
  5. ^ Alvarez, Lizette (May 11, 1998). "Top Democrat Issues Threat To Head of House Inquiry". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-01-21.
  6. ^ Schmitt, Eric (May 10, 1998). "May 3–9; A Top Aide Resigns". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-01-21. Under pressure from Speaker Newt Gingrich, Representative Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican who heads the House Government and Reform Committee, accepted the resignation of the aide, David N. Bossie, a dogged anti-Clinton sleuth.
  7. ^ *U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (January 15, 2008). "Memorandum Opinion, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" (PDF). Civil Action No. 07-2240. Retrieved 2012-01-21.
  8. ^ Confessore, Nicholas (December 28, 2011). "Third-Party Groups Are Gearing Up in Iowa". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-01-21. Citizens United, has begun showing a television commercial in Iowa that features Mr. Gingrich and his wife, Callista, talking about Ronald Reagan. The group is run by David Bossie, a longtime friend and ally of Mr. Gingrich.
  9. ^ Garrett, Major (September 2, 2016). "Donald Trump hires longtime president of Citizens United David Bossie to be new deputy campaign manager". CBS news. Retrieved September 2, 2016.
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