This is my official new favorite story ever. It’s from the Journal News, which covers three suburban counties just north of New York City, and it’s about local congressman Mike Lawler (R) and a raucous town hall which I actually covered back in May. It turns out that at that town hall, his deputy district director, Erin Crowley, was simultaneously patrolling the boisterous constituents who had showed up to express their opposition while also apparently egging the anti-Lawler crowd on to disrupt the town hall using a fake identity known as “Jake Thomas.”
The Journal News is careful to note that it is impossible to prove definitively that “Jake Thomas” is Erin Crowley — who is also a county legislator in addition to being Lawler’s staffer. But they’ve got hard proof that “Jake Thomas” used Crowley’s cell phone when “he” joined an anti-Lawler Facebook group and the Signal group it uses and used during the May town hall.
Many of you will probably remember the town hall. Lawler’s office changed the venue at the last minute, apparently to throw off anti-Lawler constituents who were planning on showing up and making their displeasure known. All sorts of security was at the event and at least a couple anti-Lawler constituents were bodily removed from the auditorium. Crowly was moving up and down the aisles during the event admonishing attendees to quiet themselves. But “Jake Thomas” — who, again, certainly appears to be Crowley and was at least using her phone number — was at the same time live-Signaling, encouraging attendees to disrupt the event and boo louder. After two attendees were bodily removed from the hall, “Jake Thomas” proposed a mass walk out of protesters to show their displeasure. “Should we walk out en masse?”, “Jake Thomas” suggested. “Make a point we won’t tolerate his bullshit anymore.”
As one of the real anti-Lawler constituents noted, this also raised some suspicion since obviously all the protestors spontaneously leaving is actually what Lawler’s office would have wanted (and apparently did want).
Reading between the lines, it seems like members of the anti-Lawler group got suspicious that night that “Jake Thomas” was actually Erin Crowley, largely because one member had Crowley’s number in her Signal list, so “Jake Thomas” showed up on her phone as “Erin Crowley.” The author of the article also had Crowley’s number in his address book from earlier reporting.
It seems like the local anti-Lawler constituents have been trying to get Crowley to admit it was her since then — or at least get “Jake Thomas” to meet in person to explain the confusion. The article details a series of lengthy conversations different members of the group had with “Jake Thomas” trying to get “him” to either meet in person or at least meet on Facetime to prove “he” was a real person. He never did, though he sent a lengthy message of disappointment after they finally removed him from the groups, convinced that “he” was, in fact, Crowley. “I have never experienced being thrown out of a group because I felt the same way. I’m a bit taken aback and bothered,” the message began.
There’s actually a whole “Jake Thomas” Facebook account with seemingly bipartisan and generally all-American credentials. At some point — again, reading between the lines of the article — it seems constituents looped in News Journal columnist David McKay Wilson, who made his own attempts to get Lawler’s office and Crowley to address the matter, the last time as recently as a week ago on July 1st, when Crowley ignored Wilson’s in-person question as a sheriff’s deputy escorted her to a Putnam County legislative meeting.
Do you know Putnam County resident and all-American non-ideological well-meaning 20-something “Jake Thomas”? Are you “Jake Thomas”? Please contact us to clear up this misunderstanding.