 Jesse Lee |
The wife of President Obama’s new online response team leader is a top official at Moveon.org and was the promoter of the group’s notorious attacks on Gen. David H. Petraeus.
This week the White House named its online guru, Jesse Lee, to a new position within its communications department titled Director of Progressive Media & Online Response.
The Huffington Post reports Lee will be responsible for responding to negative stories as Obama prepares for his reelection bid.
Last April, Lee married Nita Chaudhary, a progressive activist.
Choudhary has led MoveOn’s campaigns on the Iraq War and U.S. Constitution as well as running the group’s fundraising program for MoveOn’s 2008 electoral effort. She is MoveOn’s campaign director for political action.
MoveOn is funded by philanthropist George Soros.
During the period Choudhary led the group’s Iraq campaign, MoveOn was behind a notorious ad accusing Petraeus of “cooking the books for the White House.” The ad also labeled him “General Betray Us.”
Choudhary stood by the Petraeus ad after it created national political controversy.
“It’s unfortunate that they’re concentrating on the headlines instead of the facts in the ad,” said Chaudhary. “We stand by every single fact [in the ad], and we challenge Boehner … and any other politician to refute those facts.”
At MoveOn, Choudhary advocated against what she called “right wing extremists.”
In an August 2009 email from the organization, Choudhary wrote, “Right-wing extremists have been crashing tons of events and trying to dominate the national debate.”
Continued Choudhary: “But MoveOn members won’t let them succeed-we’re pushing back with Real Voices for Change, an ambitious campaign to show that the overwhelming majority of Americans continue to support President Obama’s plans for change.”
Two months later, she sent out a blast email decrying “big insurance” companies.
“We need to make sure Democrats who side with ‘Big Insurance’ face consequences with the voters back home,” she wrote.
In a dispatch last June, Choudary warned against a “secret cabal” of “conservatives” trying to slash Social Security and Medicare.
Wrote Choudhary: “It sounds like something Glenn Beck would cook up: a powerful cabal of right-wing ideologues hatches a secret plan to force cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and they’re on the verge of succeeding. But it’s true.
“Right now, the stars are aligned for conservatives who’ve spent decades trying to cut Social Security — the heart of the New Deal.
“And instead of articulating a progressive response, Democrats seem frozen, like deer in the headlights,” she wrote.
Choudhary previously was director of online organizing for the Voter Contact Department of the Democratic National Committee.
In 2007, she was a trainer at the MoveOn-created progressive New Organizing Institute boot camp.
The NOI board of directors includes Color of Change, an environmental group founded and run by Van Jones, Obama’s former “green” jobs czar. Jones resigned in September 2009 after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary organization and called for “resistance” against the U.S. government.
With research by Brenda J. Elliott
