{"id":115,"date":"2012-05-22T03:02:14","date_gmt":"2012-05-22T03:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/?p=115"},"modified":"2012-05-22T03:02:14","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T03:02:14","slug":"emails-reveal-new-details-about-ariannas-role-in-huffpo-founding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gabrielsnyder.com\/notes\/2012\/05\/22\/emails-reveal-new-details-about-ariannas-role-in-huffpo-founding\/","title":{"rendered":"Emails reveal new details about Arianna\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s role in HuffPo founding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A series of emails between Arianna Huffington, her partners and the late conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart shed new light on the early days of The Huffington Post.<\/p>\n

The story of the site\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s founding is the subject of a bitter lawsuit filed by two Democratic political advisers who claim Huffington blatantly stole their idea for a leftwing alternative to the conservative Drudge Report.<\/p>\n

In October, a New York judge dismissed a number of claims but allowed\u00c2\u00a0Peter Daou and James Boyce, both\u00c2\u00a0former advisers to Presidential candidate John Kerry, to go forward with a state claim<\/a> based on theft of an idea. The judge later allowed them to conduct document discovery of the defendants.<\/p>\n

The discovery process produced a number of emails and minutes from meetings that are described in the amended complaint filed today.<\/p>\n

The complaint argues that the emails help show that Huffington and her business partner Kenneth Lerer build the Huffington Post on a stolen idea and that they actively sought to recruit others to implement it while stringing along Daou and Boyce:<\/p>\n

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Huffington and Lerer likewise were secretly communicating in December 2004 with a political activist named Andrew Breitbart in an effort to persuade Breitbart to participate, without Boyce and Daou [..] the timing of these discussions exposes Defendants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 fraudulent intentions, because Defendants were already in discussions with Breitbart about Plaintiffs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 ideas \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 at a time they were still pretending to be working with Plaintiffs. […]<\/p>\n

Breitbart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153quick first email pass at the idea\u00e2\u20ac\u009d identifies the very same two primary components of the website that Plaintiffs had previously identified for Huffington and Lerer: […]\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0This \u00e2\u20ac\u0153quick idea\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which became The Huffington Post \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is the very idea that was stolen from Boyce and Daou.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The late Breitbart was a prominent conservative journalist who, after falling out with Huffington, claimed that he \u00e2\u20ac\u0153created the Huffington Post\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I drafted the plan. They followed the plan.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The new complaint also includes emails from Daou to his aunt, writer Erica Jong, in which he claims credit for founding the website. In another email to President Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s former press secretary, Robert Gibbs, that was allegedly forwarded to Huffington herself, Boyce refers to being \u00e2\u20ac\u0153involved with the Huffington Post\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from the beginning.<\/p>\n

In public statements and legal filings, Huffington and Lerer have downplayed the role of Daou and Boyce and claimed that the ideas they presented in an ideas memo are different from what the website actually became.<\/p>\n

The new complaint also contains allegations of a cover-up based on minutes of a meeting held between Huffington, Lerer, Breitbart and an editor in which the group debated what \u00e2\u20ac\u0153narrative\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to offer the media about the Huffington Post\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s origins:<\/p>\n

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Breitbart proposed this answer: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I knew what was missing in the blogosphere, I just needed the rolodex to be able to put it all together, and Arianna provided that. \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Arianna called Andrew to talk about an alternative to the Drudge Report. Andrew called Arianna about the group blog \u00e2\u20ac\u201c there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nobody he knows besides Arianna who could make this work.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d […]Deceitfully, however, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153narrative\u00e2\u20ac\u009d wrote Boyce and Daou out of the picture entirely.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The emails and other documents cited in the new complaint don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t appear to contain smoking gun proof that Huffington schemed to cut out Daou and Boyce after stealing their idea. But the new allegations, including an email in which Huffington appears to have forwarded a confidential business plan written by Boyce to a subordinate, could strengthen the plaintiffs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 case.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs also use the documents to reassert new claims for fraud and breach of contract that the judge had initially struck out last October.\u00c2\u00a0The overall legal process is likely to drag on for many more months.<\/p>\n

AOL bought the Huffington Post for $315 million in the spring of 2011. The acquisition has proved rocky in recent months and led to rumors that the two entities might part ways.<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is the amended complaint:<\/p>\n

Amended HuffPo Complaint<\/a><\/p>\n

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