“The DSU team”? What DSU team?, says Dakota State University in response to AP’s queries about their involvement in the TenHaken/Rounds 2013 political troll-hunt:
Dakota State University says no faculty worked with now-Sen. Mike Rounds’ 2014 campaign to try to identify who was behind anonymous Twitter accounts that attacked Rounds during the Republican primary.
…Dakota State University says an “extensive investigation” shows no staff or students worked with the campaign on the Twitter issue [“DSU: No Staff Helped Rounds Team Try to Identify Tweeters,” AP via U.S. News & World Report, 2018.03.23].
“Extensive” investigation in 24 hours? Boy, the DSU team really is good at analyzing data quickly.
This blanket denial—no faculty, no students, no qualifier leaving room for such personnel to have helped Rounds ferret out mean Tweeters on their own time—increases the possibility that someone is stretching the truth. In his email to the other members of Rounds’s campaign team on November 6, 2013, at 08:18 CDT, Rounds campaigner Paul TenHaken referred to “the DSU team.” TenHaken didn’t say “a DSU team,” as if he were brainstorming who could help investigate the online data he was harvesting with his scam links. He had some specific entity in mind, consisting of folks affiliated with DSU. The only people besides students and faculty to whom he could be referring could be alumni.
We thus continue to wonder: who was “the DSU team” that DSU says did not exist?
There seem to be any number of accurate emails talking about the “team” from Cardboard Mike’s crew to have DSU claim there is no there there.
What happened to the guy Montgomery thinks might be rinomike?
Team Rounds, which hired TenBaken for his expertise as a digital spook, put tremendous resources into shoving back on the Richard Benda “suicide,” the unethical handling of millions in EB5 investments and the complete lack of transparency and disinformation involved with the Aberdeen beef plant fiasco. Team Rounds did that to buy time and wait out the election … and it worked.
TenBaken was a major hired gun for Team Rounds. His job was to seek out critics so they could be crushed in state court.
Now, TenBaken and Team TenBaken are pouncing on Jolene’s Facebook page with a fury to declare his role on and the hacking done as Team Rounds as a “nothingburger.” What did Jolene do that was so wrong to receive “the treatment?” She read the same Argus story that we all read and suggested that her opponent will need to explain his role to the public which is demanding transparency, not secretive snooping on critics.
There are some decent choices for Sioux Falls mayor. The most toxic choice is TenBaken. We’ve had that nothingburger served up before. TenBaken’s off the list of safe choices.
The most likely scenario is that it was a small group of students (who would have almost certainly graduated by now) acting on their own accord and not in any official capacity as representatives of the university, if anyone did help them at all. Clearly the university or any of its leadership members didn’t sanction anyone to help uncover the identity of “RINOMikeSD”. We both know it’s impossible to prove a negative, so what more do you all want from the University to “prove” that DSU wasn’t involved in this matter?
Is it possible that a crew of cyber sleuthing employees who matriculated at DSU and perhaps graduated were at work for the government in South Dakota where Mr. Rounds could still put them into action with a simple phone call?
Didn’t I read recently about Cardboard Mike congratulating hisownself for securing federal funding for DSU because of their outstanding work on cyber threats? Coincidence or payback?
How would students do the work without the computer systems at the school? I doubt they alone had the sophisticated equipment to do the work and they were not supposedly allowed to use the schools stuff.
Like all mysteries involving South Dakota pols, missing monies and equipment, there are too many questions left unanswered at the end of the day.
So far with this scandal, no bodies have been discovered.
Matthew, I’m not telling DSU to prove a negative. DSU claims no faculty or students were involved. Assuming AP quoted them correctly, DSU didn’t qualify that statement with any “as far as we know” or “in any official capacity.” So DSU just got done denying what you call the most likely scenario.
The question thus remains: to whom did TenHaken refer, and why does DSU say no such team existed?
Nothingburgers tend to prove themselves: we gobble it up, find ourselves still empty, and go, “Yup, nothingburger.” We don’t need campaign flacks to tell us it’s a nothingburger.
Thankfully we have a media probe…right here..Great work Cory. Now, with a report like that, shouldn’t there be some kind of official inquiry made by authorities? Or is that just what the British would do?
Cory,
You have the word “scam” in your title. What scam was there?
DSU is conservative as far as colleges go so I could certainly believe this would happen.
The scam was TenHaken’s creation of a fake link promising to identify the Twitter troll but really serving to collect data that the subject of the scam was trying to keep from TenHaken’s boss Mike Rounds.