Updated: Team Romney Did Not Quietly Fire Social Media Director Bill Murphy

Update 12/3: The Pre-General report for Romney For President Covering Period 10/01/2012 Through 10/17/2012 shows that Bill Murphy received $5,541.66, so he was not "quietly fired" as I speculated might have have happened in September. The Social Media Director stopped tweeting @BillMurphy a day before Mitt Romney gave his speech at the RNC in late August, a few days after I reported he had made some controversial tweets about race. On August 26 I tweeted, "Fact @BillMurphy used 'race war' to link to Buchanan op-ed that never even uses that term should concern @TeamRomney" link. He also had been using the account to hype @Ali Akbar, his colleague in many political related ventures over the last few years, a convicted felon who just got off probation in May.

(Editor's note: I also updated this article's original title "Did Team Romney Quietly Fire Social Media Director Bill Murphy?" which is why the title is what it is, if this is your first time reading it. Mr. Murphy took his personal blog off the Internet and removed his resume from LinkedIn and replaced it with a slightly edited one, after I first asked him if he was working for Team Romney in early August. Other than blocking me on Twitter and mysteriously not tweeting @BillMurphy for the campaign from August 29 to November 6, Murphy and the rest of his former colleagues on the losing side have ignored all my questions.)

Update 11/10: Just after MSNBC called the election for Obama on November 6, Bill Murphy began tweeting again at his eponymous Twitter account, pretending like his radio silence for nearly three months wasn't bizarre. "What a team. Great job tonight. #RomneyRyan2012," Murphy tweeted after Romney lost. And his sycophantic buddy, Ali Akbar, oddly tweeted the next morning, "@billmurphy You built THAT!"

On November 9, the Social Media Director who stopped tweeting after I reported his tweets about a "black-on-white race war", then announced, "Just got off the phone with @JWBritten, @MattLira and @KarlRove. Stay tuned. @tvuljaj: @billmurphy is back!"

October FEC filing indicates Murphy may have been terminated after I reported he used same Twitter account he was getting paid to promote Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to tweet about "black-on-white race war"; Salary dropped from $8,294.76 in September to $2,770.83 in latest filing.

On August 13, I reported an exclusive story called "Former Leadership Institute operative linked to a convicted felon now works for Romney campaign" about Social Media Director Bill Murphy, a day after he scrubbed his blog and temporarily took down his LinkedIn resume after I tweeted him. Aside from a few bloggers seemingly tied to Democratic consultant Neal Rauhauser - who now has a blog devoted to "Hypertrolling The Wingnutosphere" - the media completely ignored my reporting. I contacted a handful of reporters during the RNC, and tweeted links to many others, but my reporting was largely ignored.

Even after I reported that Mitt Romney's Social Media Director Bill Murphy had used the same Twitter account @BillMurphy to tweet about "black-on-white race war", not one reporter would touch my story.

But my reporting evidently produced results, regardless.

Early in the morning on August 29 at 12:39 AM, Bill Murphy stopped tweeting at his eponymous Twitter account. It was a day before Mitt Romney delivered his speech at the RNC.

"A July 20th tweet by the official @TeamRomney twitter account (http://twitter.com/TeamRomney/status/226361975628767232) indicates that Bill Murphy is the Social Media Director for Mitt Romney, even though he has ducked questions, blocked me on twitter, scrubbed his resume, and deleted his blog since I started reporting on him August 12," I reported in August.

My story continued, "The latest monthly filing by the Romney for President campaign to the Federal Election Committee reveals that a William Murphy was paid $2,770.83 for his work in July (http://query.nictusa.com/pres/2012/M7/C00431171/B_PAYEE_C00431171.html). Since another Team Romney member - who was just recently hired in June - has been earning precisely double that amount, the FEC filing suggests Bill Murphy joined the campaign in mid-to-late July and is getting paid $5,541.66 a month."

The August filing did indeed show that Murphy was getting paid $5,541.66 a month, and the September filing indicates that his salary was boosted to $8,312.49.

However, the October filing shows that Mitt Romney's Social Media Director Bill Murphy only received $2,770.83 for - assumingly - the month of September. This might mean that he was fired in late August, but received a few weeks severance pay. Hopefully, a reporter for a major media outlet will contact Team Romney and find out if it's true, since the campaign officials ducked all my questions and blocked me on Twitter.

In an August 16 update I asked, "Did @TeamRomney even know @BillMurphy worked for 'charlatans' at American Liberty Alliance since he left it off his resume?"

More from my August article:

"Aside from working for years with a convicted felon who was on probation until May, Mr. Murphy has been closely involved with Tea Party lawyers involved with Super PACs who are working with the RNC to overturn donation limits. (See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gop-lawsuit-challenges-campaign-contribution-caps/2012/06/27/gJQAqtVf7V_story.html and http://www.iwatchnews.org/2012/03/15/8416/gop-super-pac-men-seek-overturn-donation-limits ) Murphy also is linked to sketchy charities and groups that skirt FEC regulations.

Mr. Murphy and his colleague Ali Akbar also worked for the American Liberty Alliance when it was founded in June of 2009. ALA launched a Liberty Tour in late 2009 which sought to teach conservative activists to use deception and commit dirty tricks on the Internet in order to "control the dialogue," as I will soon be reporting.

Together, Murphy and Akbar have worked for at least five groups over the last three years, four of them while straddling opposite sides of the Mitt Romney for President debate. In 2012, New Jerseyite Murphy worked in Akbar's Texas-based Vice and Victory firm, and also with a group called Blog Bash that organizes parties at conservative conventions, while serving as Director for the National Bloggers Club and the National Finance Director for the Breitbart Scholarship Fund, all alongside Akbar who was on probation until May.

On Tuesday, Romney Digital Director Zac Moffatt blocked me on Twitter - even before Murphy did - rather than reply to simple questions about Team Romney's Social Media Director, such as when he was hired and how much he is paid.

After discovering tweets between Moffatt and Akbar, and Murphy before he joined Team Romney, I tweeted, "No wonder @MittRomney Digital Director @ZacMoffatt ignores my tweets. He apparently is pals with @BillMurphy and convicted felon @Ali Akbar!"

"MT @billmurphy: @ali save us all the trouble and come on board tonight. we have a lot of work to do. cc @justin_hart," Moffatt tweeted on January 29, 2012 ( http://twitter.com/ZacMoffatt/status/163832573561274368 ). This was in reference to Akbar's leadership in the NotMittRomney protest campaign, at the time.

Moffatt blocked me immediately after I tweeted, "Why did convicted felon @Ali MT Romney Digital Director @ZacMoffatt plea for resumes days before forming NotMittRomney?" On March 11, at a blog he purchased last October, Akbar wrote, "I lead the most prominent and largest contiengent of “Not Mitt” folks over at NotMittRomney.com" before declaring, "It’s over though." Akbar also paid "special thanks to "some Romney supporters: Bill Murphy, Austin James, Zac Moffatt, Saul Anuzis, and Chandler Epp for keeping your heads screwed on tight while [Akbar] lobbed cannon balls at [their] castle." As others have observed, the www.notmittromney.com website now goes to the official campaign site, and some speculate there may have been a "pay-off" involved.

I tweeted, "More tweets between Romney Digital Director @ZacMoffatt and convicted felon @Ali Akbar: http://topsy.com/twitter.com/zacmoffatt/status/177261205273067521 … How long have they been pals?"and "Convicted felon @Ali Akbar was psyched 441 days ago when @MittRomney campaign hired @ZacMoffatt to be Digital Director."

The latest monthly filing by the Romney for President campaign to the Federal Election Committee reveals that a William Murphy was paid $2,770.83 for his work in July (http://query.nictusa.com/pres/2012/M7/C00431171/B_PAYEE_C00431171.html). Since another Team Romney member - who was just recently hired in June - has been earning precisely double that amount, the FEC filing suggests Bill Murphy joined the campaign in mid-to-late July and is getting paid $5,541.66 a month."

An August 17 update added, "Team Romney still ducking questions about their Social Media Director, but FEC filing suggests Bill Murphy was hired in mid-to-late July and is getting paid $5,541.66 a month. Digital Director Zac Moffatt avoids questions about his relationship to both Murphy and his frequent colleague, convicted felon Ali Akbar, who just got off probation in May." Murphy has been working since at least 2009 with Ali Akbar, who Slate recently reported was "convicted of credit card fraud in 2007", and just got off of probation in May for a reported "crime spree," which he has lied about. (More to come on Akbar's crimes, which are alluded to in the Slate article on the battle between convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin and right wing bloggers: http://www.salon.com/2012/07/10/brett_kimberlin_versus_right_wing_bloggers/ )

On August 26 I tweeted, "Fact @BillMurphy used 'race war' to link to Buchanan op-ed that never even uses that term should concern @TeamRomney" link.

"4/24/12 @BillMurphy 'joked' it's 'obviously racist' to note 'blacks don't score as well as whites' on firefighter test https://t.co/Pl3fAdHm," I tweeted that same day.

Other tweets I made included, "Does @TeamRomney agree with @BillMurphy who linked to @RushLimbaugh "Jared Loughner Has Full Support Of Dems" story? https://t.co/GTp8EOun" and "@EWErickson contacts FEC & blasts ALA - which @BillMurphy & @Ali Akbar helped raise cash for - as "charlatans" http://t.co/CUY7anpm."

In May, Pat Dollard tweeted a link to a copy-and-paste of the first ten paragraphs from a commentary published at Townhall called "A Censored Race War?" which he renamed "Thomas Sowell: Those Who Deny The Black-On-White Race War Do So At The Nation’s Peril" at his blog.

Sowell's article didn't even include the word "peril" or suggest that the nation was at risk. At worst, his strongest sentence suggested an "explosion of white backlash."

"If and when that pressure leads to an explosion of white backlash, things could be a lot worse than if the truth had come out earlier, and steps taken by both black and white leaders to deal with the hoodlums and with those who inflame the hoodlums."

Bill Murphy was one of 18 to retweet the 5/15/12 PatDollard tweet, and he added hashmarks #TCOT (top conservatives on Twitter) #P2 (progressives 2.0) and #GOP.

However, he must have changed his mind - before or after being hired by the Romney campaign a few months later - because Bill Murphy scrubbed that tweet when I first discovered it at Topsy.com in August.

A few days before that tweet, Murphy retweeted a tweet by Michelle Malkin's TwitchyTeam, "Race-baiting Al Sharpton @TheRevAl: GOP has 'war on blacks, time to fire back.'"

On April 1, Bill Murphy tweeted, "Trayvon: Race war over justice http://j.mp/H24hrU," and on Jan 1, he tweeted, "If a conservative made a racial comment about a heavily minority region imagine the backlash http://t.co/OPhM7Lpx #CrackerCountry #FLprimary," which linked to a Rush Limbaugh article, about how Politico's Jonathan Martin said on MSNBC's The Daily Rundown, "As you know, Chuck, a lot of those counties in the Panhandle, in north Florida, the "cracker counties" more resemble Georgia and Alabama than they do Florida" (Martin was one of the reporters who ignored my tweets about Murphy). Murphy's tweet - ironically, I presume - included the hashmark #CrackerCountry even though Martin was only talking about counties in Florida.

This is a cache of one page from the blog Bill Murphy took offline the first day I began reporting on him:

This March 2, 2011 response to a tweet by Ali Akbar, who would start a group called NotMittRomney months later before redirecting it to the official Mitt Romney campaign site at some point this year, is interesting, since it shows that Murphy evidently changed his mind, too.

"Romney is the guy no one wants to touch twice," Ali Akbar tweeted, referring to Romney's unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid. "Noticing that?"

Future Social Media Director Bill Murphy responded, "More people coming to that conclusion every day."

On June 1, 2011, Murphy tweeted - and Ali Akbar retweeted - a link to an article called "Democrats admit Herman Cain is for real," so Cain might have been his chosen candidate at the time. However, he scrubbed that tweet before I found it on Topsy in August.

Much more on Bill Murphy can be found at my original article, "Former Leadership Institute operative linked to a convicted felon now works for Romney campaign."