Robert Spencer has a post discussing SIOA’s relationship to John Joseph Jay. He acknowledges that Jay is a “member of the SIOA board”, but tells us that
Jay is, contrary to the hysterical claims that are circulating now, not a founder or co-founder of SIOA. He has no role in the running of the organization. And he does not advocate carte blanche killing of one’s liberal relatives, nor of Muslims.
Spencer asserts that Jay has been “misrepresented”, and he links to a lengthy and semi-coherent response by Jay himself. I suppose on reflection it is inaccurate to call Jay a “co-founder” of SIOA, despite my previous post’s headline; Geller and Spencer actually inherited SIOA from Kendra Adams a few months ago, and the articles of agreement on which Jay’s signature appears are for the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which runs SIOA, rather than for SIOA itself. But, curiously, while complaining about “hysterical claims”, neither Spencer nor Jay explain the actual reason why Jay appears on the document. This leaves the impression that they are dodging the main point.
As for Jay’s complaint of “misrepresentation”, he simply asserts that his views amount to self-defence. He ends with a birther flourish, accusing “Daisy Cutter” – who noted his link to SIOA and brought his writings to wider attention – of working
for the very man who promulgated the fraud on barack obama’s birth certificate.
Presumably this is a reference to the fact that she’s a diarist for the Daily Kos, which published Obama’s short-form birth certificate in 2008.
UPDATE: Jay’s background is as an attorney, and Geller confirms in an American Thinker article that he gave her advice about Rifqa Bary:
Now that Rifqa has turned eighteen, one of her lawyers, Kort Gatterdam, has done an interview with Tom Trento, an activist with the Florida Security Council. Trento has in turn sent around an e-mail raising funds on the name of Rifqa Bary and excoriating “so many friendly ‘arm-chair’ lawyers and bloggers who so viciously attacked their own side.” By “arm-chair lawyers,” Trento means my associate, the attorney John Jay, and by bloggers, he means me.
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