The political campaign of Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw negotiated to buy the website of a critic of his administration who also happens to be under criminal investigation, Gossip Extra has learned.
Dougan
According to several sources, Brashaw’s campaign — which has more than $1 million in its coffers — talked to pbsotalk.com owner Mark Dougan about buying then shut down his site, which publishes documents about alleged waste at the sheriff’s office.
I’m told by someone close to the negotiation that Dougan demanded $80,000 at first. But talks broke down when the sheriff’s campaign offered less than $20,000.
The campaign’s goal was to wipe anti-Bradshaw postings off the web.
Dougan acknowledged he would like to sell the site but didn’t confirm or deny talks with Bradshaw’s campaign. Dougan said he signed a confidentiality agreement with a potential buyer and couldn’t comment.
“The site is running as it always had,” Dougan said.
In the past, Dougan complained to friends that the website took too much time and cost too much.
Rick Asnani, Bradshaw’s campaign chief, hasn’t responded to repeated requests for comment. One of the questions I asked in voice mail was whether he saw the negotiating with Dougan as a conflict of interest.
Why?
Dougan was named in an arrest affidavit filed days before the resignation of then-Palm Beach County State Attorney Michael McAuliffe last month. The affidavit justified the arrest of PBSO Internal Affairs Lt. Dean Johnson for allegedly leaking information about the sheriff’s office to Gossip Extra and pbsotalk.com. The affidavit makes it clear the investigation targeted Dougan, although it didn’t explain why. Records show the investigation hasn’t been completed, and no charges have been filed against Dougan — even though PBSO brass told me after Johnson’s arrest that Dougan would be arrested “within days.”
Another Bradshaw critic said today the public can’t afford to lose Dougan’s site.
“The Internet is the only medium that Sheriff Bradshaw isn’t controlling,” said police-oriented radio talkshow host Rick Sessa. (I appear on Sessa’s Seaview 960 AM show, The Beat) “Mark Dougan’s documentation online shows the sheriff used taxpayer’s money to take out television executives. He owns the mainstream. But for the sheriff to try to get rid of a website that shows his administration’s true colors would be disastrous.”
pbsotalk.com allows mainly anonymous tipsters who obviously work in Bradshaw’s administration to post rumors and little-known facts about the county’s largest law enforcement agency.
But Dougan also spent thousands of his own money to obtain public records from the administration that showed, among other things, that PBSO spent $60,000 to buy barbecues.
The Florida Commission on Ethics just responded to a complaint by Dougan about Bradshaw spending his agency’s money to take political supporters and mainstream media bosses out for dinner by saying the sheriff shouldn’t have done. The Commission, however, declined to pursue the case because Bradshaw was following PBSO procedures by taking supporters like Palm Beach Gardens business John Staluppi and Cheney Bros. food distributor CEO Byron Russell to dinner.
For more:
— Did State Attorney sleuth attempt to break into pbsotalk.com?
— Sheriff Ric Bradshaw critic targeted in arrest of Internal Affairs lieutenant
– Former PBSO SWAT boss loses command
– PBSO drug scandal: Ex-SWAT commander stole drugs from deputy dying of cancer
– Ex SWAT commander arrested in drug scandal
