WND Peddles Convicted Felon's Tales
Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Art Moore once again does the bidding of Clinton-hater and convicted felon Peter Paul in an April 25 article that, as Moore has done before, repeats Paul's accusations without fact-checking them and whitewashes Paul's criminal record.

The only people Moore talked to for this article are Paul and his attorney from the United States Justice Foundation (failing to disclose that WND is a USJF client). Once again, Paul blames the Clintons for his legal problems; Moore writes that Paul "insists he would not be in the legal predicament he faces if not for Clinton reneging on the deal."

Paul sounds like a guy who refuses to take responsibility for his own behavior, even after he has pleaded guilty to defrauding investors. Yet, that's not how Moore describes Paul's felony record:

He has pleaded guilty to a 10(b)5 violation of the Securities and Exchange Commission for not publicly disclosing control of Merrill Lynch margin accounts that held Stan Lee Media stocks.

Moore's legal gobbledygook makes the crime sound less severe than it is. Here's how Paul's prosecutors described Paul's crime:

PAUL admitted orchestrating a scheme in which he and others manipulated Stan Lee Media stock, trading it through numerous nominee accounts that hid from the investing public PAUL's ownership and control of large volumes of stock that were being traded. PAUL also admitted that to further the scheme, he sought to inflate and stabilize the price of the stock by instructing market makers in Stan Lee Media stock to execute trades that created a false appearance of constant demand and that concealed from the investing public the fact that PAUL had arranged for large blocks of stock to be sold at substantial discounts in after-hours trading. Finally, PAUL admitted that he had secretly borrowed millions of dollars on margin using as collateral the stock that he had traded through the nominee accounts; in this way PAUL concealed from the investing public that he was effectively liquidating a substantial part of his stock holdings in Stan Lee Media.

Moore also claims that Paul "already has served 43 months in prison in Brazil." That's false for two reasons: 1) Paul was in jail in Brazil -- where he fled after Stan Lee Media started collapsing -- from March 2001 to September 2003, which is 31 months; and 2) he spent that long in a Brazilian jail because he was fighting extradition to the U.S.

Has Paul so bamboozled Moore that the WND reporter can't do his own fact-checking? Or are they both so in sync with their Clinton-hating that the facts simply don't matter?