(Editor's note: I wrote this story on June 1st, and it's mostly based on prior blog posts. I'm working on a follow-up story, but I think this is probably the best version of what I've reported, so far. However, I still need to add some screenshots.)
A consulting firm's website tied to a blogger who collaborated with Guccifer 2.0 - the alleged DNC hacker that has been accused by many US intelligence officials of working for Putin and Russia to help sway the 2016 election for Trump - was scrubbed to remove the Republican Party of Florida as a client, perhaps on election eve. His name and biography were also erased, along with the firm's president and founder.
According to his LinkedIn resume, the once-anonymous blogger from HelloFLA.com who the Wall Street Journal outed last week as "a Republican political operative in Florida named Aaron Nevins" has been a partner at Richardson Partners, since November of 2012..
At some point in the last week, Nevins updated it, and it now says he left the firm in April. But his LinkedIn page still lists www.richardsonpartners.com as his company website.
As an archive.org link from October of 2013 reveals, the website once claimed the Republican Party of Florida was one of "[p]ast and current Richardson Partners clients" that "include a diverse group of corporations and candidates throughout Florida and across the nation."
However, at some time between April 1st, 2016 and November 7, 2016, the website was scrubbed to remove the Florida GOP as a client. There aren't any saved screenshots between those dates, so it's possible that the reference was removed on the day before the 2016 election.
Before it vanished, the Guccifer 2.0 collaborator's biography stated: "Aaron Nevins is founder and managing partner of Chelsea Road Consulting. He brings to Richardson Partners almost a decade of experience serving in senior level positions in both bodies of the Florida Legislature. His relationships with key policy makers in both chambers of the Legislature, as well as local government, helps to provide our clients with a direct line of communication with legislative, executive, and municipal leaders, and their staff."
"He has a candid ability to review, evaluate, and provide an assessment of upcoming legislative actions, and his extensive knowledge of the Legislative process provides our clients with a critical advantage when dealing with governmental entities," it said.
Currently, the About page only shows a message stating, "No Results Found."
Nevins and Richardson haven't responded to queries over Twitter asking why all these changes were made to their website before last year's election, and the HelloFla! blogger wouldn't explain why he made the change to his LinkedIn page.
It wasn't until December 13, 2016 that the New York Times reported that "Guccifer 2.0's most important partner was an obscure political website run by an anonymous blogger called HelloFLA!, run by a former Florida legislative aide turned Republican lobbyist," and he "sent direct messages via Twitter to Guccifer 2.0 asking for copies of any additional Florida documents."
The May 25th WSJ article adds that "Nevins confirmed his exchanges after The Wall Street Journal identified him first as the operator of the HelloFLA blog and then as the recipient of the stolen DCCC data", which included documents that "analyzed specific Florida districts, showing how many people were dependable Democratic voters, how many were likely Democratic voters but needed a nudge, how many were frequent voters but not committed and how many were core Republican voters—the kind of data strategists use in planning ad buys and other tactics."
Nevins claims to the WSJ journalists, that "he didn’t use any in his consulting business, which includes running grass-roots-style campaigns for corporations and wealthy landowners seeking to influence local politics."
According to his Twitter profile, Todd L. Richardson is the "[p]resident of Richardson Partners, a South Florida based public affairs & communications firm". In 2014, a Tampa Bay, Florida third-party political organization tied to Richardson called "Floridians for Integrity in Government" released flyers against a Florida candidate, who allegedly rejected a bid by Todd to handle his city council campaign. "It has received nearly $1.4 million in donations since it started in 2012," and "[m]ost of its recent donations have come from the "Florida Leadership Committee", the Sun-Sentinel reported.
In another 2014 race, Republican Ellyn Bogdanoff lost to Democratic state Sen. Maria Sachs, even though Richardson's group helped pay for advertising that "blanketed the airwaves", since the Florida GOP gave her "no direct support", and she entered the race late. "The Floridians for Integrity in Government political committee got most of its funding from another PAC, the Florida Leadership Committee," Dan Sweeney reported for the Sun-Sentinel on November 11, 2014. "And that PAC, in turn, is closely associated with state Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater."
At his LinksTraveler website, Richardson blogged that he "had an opportunity to visit Trump Turnberry two days before the opening round of the 2016 Open Championship at Royal Troon." He said new renovations "easily puts this legendary links course, on the west coast of Scotland, into one of the top courses in the world."
On January 17, 2017, Richardson Partners collected $2,500 and on February 3, 2017 was paid over $3550 for communications for the successful Scott Singer City Council 2016 campaign in Boca Raton. Singer won his seat unopposed three years ago, and his "challenger" last year, was - according to a Sun-Sentinel editorial endorsing him - "Patti Dervishi, a mostly retired Realtor who rants about development and whose rambling, unfocused answers show that she has not prepared herself for a council race," who was "unqualified."
The firm also earned over $9,000 working for the unsuccessful Joseph JB Bensmihen for Congress campaign in Palm Beach County in 2015.
On November 12, 2016, in response to a question "Could hackers hack each state's voting system so that Donald Trump is elected president?" posted in August, Nevins responded, "The fact that it would be much harder to hack 50 separate state systems, or even enough of them in the key places where it would matter (and not get caught) is reason enough to keep the electoral College."
He added, "If we went with the national popular vote, you would only need to ballot stuff in one sympathetic state to cheat."
On October 20, 2016, Brittany Wallman reported for the Sentinel, "Aaron Nevins, a 35-year-old Republican voter in Broward and former staffer for ex-state Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, said he's going to shut down U.S. 441 on Election Day for an automobile race."
Before the shut down was canceled, Nevins told the newspaper he wasn't a supporter of Trump, and that he is "not coordinating with the Republican Party or Roger Stone or any of those people." The Wall Street Journal reported that Guccifer 2.0 "sent a link to the blog article to Roger Stone, a longtime informal adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump, along with Mr. Nevins’ analysis of the hacked data." Nevins told the Sun-Sentinel that "he didn’t have any dealings with Stone about the material," but "he had a group dinner with Stone three or four years ago and hasn’t seen or spoken to him since."
The Florida paper also noted that Nevins "doesn’t believe he is facing any legal jeopardy over the matter, and he has not been contacted by any investigating authorities." He said, “The way I look at it, I was acting as a journalist," and that he forwarded the stolen data to journalists, not to political campaigns", because he "felt forced to publish it.”
But Nevins does believe that if he "used it for a political campaign without releasing it" or only sent "it to political operatives around the state we would be having a different conversation, probably from a jail cell.”
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