Rick Davis, Lobbiest, McCain, Webservers, Oh My!

Quoted from Newsweek.

The McCain campaign told reporters the fees were irrelevant because Davis "separated from his consulting firm ... in 2006," according to the campaign's Web site, and he stopped drawing a salary from it. In fact, however, when Davis joined the campaign in January 2007, he asked that his $20,000-a-month salary be paid directly to Davis Manafort, two sources who asked not to be identified discussing internal campaign business told NEWSWEEK. Federal campaign records show the McCain campaign paid Davis Manafort $90,000 through July 2007, when a cash crunch prompted Davis and other top campaign officials to forgo their salaries and work as volunteers. Separately, another entity created and partly owned by Davis--an Internet firm called 3eDC, whose address was the same office building as Davis Manafort's--received payments from the McCain campaign for Web services, collecting $971,860 through March 2008.

In an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, a senior McCain official said that when the campaign began last year, it signed a contract with Davis Manafort "in which we purchased all of [Davis's] time, and he agreed not to work for any other clients." The official also said that though Davis was an "investor" in 3eDC, Davis has received no salary from it.

So I did some digging in the ways I can, which is to say, I gave the internets a colonoscopy.

The domain, 3edc.net, which is the company that received all this money from McCain, seems to be a bullshit site. My initial reaction was that it is not legit, and is a placeholder. A company that is doing web services for a large campaign should frankly have a pretty damn good website, or a very simple site because they are completely word of mouth, like mine. Not a light on info, thin, templated design, 5 page site. This set off the alarm bell for me. So I started digging deeper.

The IP for 3edc.net is 64.34.199.90 which returns a boatload of sites (some are not political in natures, but MOST are, and Most are republican tied from the looks of it), on a dedicated server at serverbeach. But the reverse IP, which is usually the main site of a server, is pointing at IWS which is an internet consulting firm, that seems to focus on political campaign sites, in particular for Republicans, one of which is John McCain. From their site:

Integrated Web Strategy (IWS) is an Internet consulting and development company that works with campaigns, non-profit associations, advocacy organizations, and corporations. We specialize in building email lists, raising money online, growing grassroots coalitions, lobbying using the Internet and interactively communicating using your Web site and email.

OK they lobby, eh, whatever, lets ignore that for now...

So, can someone explain to me why 3eDC, which is a supposed internet consulting company, needed another internet consulting company to host their website? I kind of think the prerequisite for an internet consulting company is to either, use some kind of cutting edge technology, like I do by hosting on Mosso, have their own dedicated server, or even host on something like GoDaddy, shared hosting, with 100's of other random websites, that would send up far fewer red flags for me. But, they don't. They host on the webserver of another internet consulting firm, which should be a competitor. It's not a shared host, it's at serverbeach.com and is dedicated, meaning IWS controls it and what go onto it.

So what are we to think? I will tell you what it looks like to me.

McCain needed to get Rick Davis on board and Campaign Manager.
Because Davis was/is a big lobbyist, and McCain is pushing his line of cutting greed and the Lobby bonanza, Davis couldn't get paid by David/Manafort.
So Davis, or McCain, had IWS create 3eDC.
McCain hires 3eDC to do "internet consulting" for $971,860, as of march 2008.
3eDC is located in the same building as Davis Manafort, and since he is an "investor", that makes sense.
The check comes in to 3eDC, gets cashed, and money is walked to the other office or into Davis' pocket, or another shell.
I'd be interested to see 3eDC's tax returns... I'm guessing they had a lot of consulting from Davis Manafort or IWS...

The information is there, all nice an neat on the tubes, ready for consumption. Newsweek did the offline digging, but didn't do the online digging it seems. The major "tell" of the whole poker bluff, is that 3eDC is hosted by IWS. Seriously guys, think a little more about how the tubes work, before you go and start trying to pull fast ones like creating bullshit companies...

I may be wrong of course, but I think it's a Duck. <quack quack>

Added because I just realized a different angle:
IWS is an internet lobby, by their own claim on their website. McCain of course can't hire them for that lobbying service, because that would make him a hypocrite. But, what if 3eDC is just a pass-through to IWS. That way, McCain could pay 3eDC for "consulting services" and 3eDC could pay IWS for "hosting", and IWS starts lobbying for McCain... Hmm... wonder who owns IWS? Max Fose, who was McCain's campaign treasurer in the 2000 campaign and is currently on McCain's campaign team. Hmmm... David and Fose know each other. It's a big happy family. BTW, Max used to be McCain's driver, and in the 2000 campaign became his campaign treasurer and internet consultant, figure that one out...