Booker Insists T-Bone Is Real, Says He Put Drug Dealers Up In His House While Mayor

In an interview with NJTV’s On The Record with Michael Aron aired yesterday, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, insisted that T-Bone is a real person and not a composite or archetype as has been previously reported.

The mayor said the Newark police told him there are currently five people in the city using the alias “T-Bone.”  He went on to say that he, as an attorney prior to entering public office, “and after I became mayor”  would hold meetings with drug dealers, “100’s of guys involved in the narcotics trade,” in his house, ” even putting them up with me.”

The Booker interview can be viewed here.  Aron starts the T-Bone questioning at the 9:15 mark.  Booker talks about his meetings and his hospitality for drug dealers, while mayor, at the 11:29 mark.

Booker said he was dealing with non-violent drug dealers.  Aron did not ask him how he knew they were non-violent drug dealers.

When MMM first reported the T-Bone controversy, we asked, Did Booker Fabricate A Drug Dealer Or Did He Harbor A Fugitive?  Last week, I argued that Booker’s “story telling” to make a point or to inspire action was not a big deal and was politically insignificant.

However, if Booker is telling the truth in his stories, as he insists he is, it is a big deal.  It seems to me that Booker is confessing to his own crimes of harboring fugitives and maybe even aiding and abetting.

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Cory Booker is a good story teller

In the video below of Cory Booker addressing the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy in 2010, the mayor recounts how his father’s stories get better (or worse, depending on the point of the story) the more often he told them.

Good story telling to make a point, or move an audience or teach a lesson, either in a conference room, college graduation, church or family dinner table, is a trait Booker apparently inherited from his father.

At the 14 minute mark of the video, Booker tells the story of “the lowest point” of his life. Wazn Miller’s murder in 2004.

In the version of the story told at ACS, Miller doesn’t die in Booker’s arms.

Booker gave basically the same talk at NYU Law in October of 2010. In that version, Booker was present when Miller died.  He starts the Miller story at the 6:30 mark and speaks of the death at the 8 minute mark.

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More Booker Stonewalling

© Jim Urquhart / Reuters;

GOP U.S Senate nominee Steve Lonegan has sued the city of Newark for the release of Mayor Cory Booker’s expense records since he took office, because the city has failed to comply with the Lonegan campaign’s OPRA (Open Public Records Act) requests.

Newark activist Donna Jackson said that Newark’s government is hiding the real conditions in the city in an effort to give Booker political cover. “Booker’s national profile is killing us,” Jackson said.

Now, today we learn that Newark has also been stonewalling the National Review over public records.

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Lonegan: Booker’s Syria Position Is As Fake As ‘T-Bone’

GOP U.S. Senate nominee Steve Lonegan said this afternoon that his Democratic opponent, Newark Mayor Cory Booker is afraid to admit his support of President Barack Obama’s desire to attack Syria.

“Mayor Booker claims he cannot say whether he will support or oppose President Obama’s proposed military attack on Syria allegedly because he has no access to classified information,” Lonegan said, calling that argument “as fake as T-Bone.”

“The American people have figured out very quickly that President Obama has not made the case that American interests are at stake in Syria,” Lonegan said.  “Americans are sick of being the world’s policeman and sick of getting involved in domestic civil wars where there is no evidence that America’s national security is threatened.”

“Cory Booker is afraid to admit he supports the President’s proposed war in Syria,” Lonegan said, “so instead he attempts to hide behind the smokescreen of not having enough information.  But people are on to the Mayor’s act now, and his refusal to speak out against the President’s war can only be interpreted as assent.”

T-Bone is a character in a parable that Booker used early in his political career, until the Star Ledger raised questions about the authenticity of talent.  Booker claimed that T-Bone was a Newark drug dealer who once threatened his life and then a few year later pled with the mayor, in tears, to help him avoid prison.  In published reports Booker has claimed that the character is both “1000% a real person” and “an archetype.”

Regarding Syria, Booker initially said he would not support a strike, then equivocated.  Now he says he does not have enough information to say whether or not he would vote to authorize a military strike.

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Did Booker Fabricate A Drug Dealer Or Did He Harbor A Fugitive?

Says T-Bone “could be my Dad”

Cory Booker used to tell at story of T-Bone, a Newark drug dealer, who once threatened his life and later asked him for help avoiding arrest and prison.  Booker told the story “millions of times” on the stump in Newark, at colleges and at fundraisers where the moving tale separated donors from their money.

Booker stopped telling the story after  The Star Ledger questioned its veracity in 2007, even though Booker insisted T-Bone is both “1000 percent real” and an archetype.

The National Review has revived the story.

Our friends at #BookerFail found a video of Booker telling the tale, which is posted above.

Either Booker made up T-Bone, or he confessed on video to harboring a fugitive.

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