Petrelis Files

WH Logs: 22 Visits by
Solmonese/Solomonese/Solmenese

While under the 420 influence last night, I recalled that a $500 donation from Human Rights Campaign leader Joe Solmonese to Martha Coakley doesn't show up in Federal Election Commission records, unless his last name is misspelled as Solomonese. That mistake is due to incorrect info from Coakley's campaign staff to the feds, and will never turn up when searching FEC records for contributions from Solmonese.

But if you search FEC filings using "Human Rights Campaign" as the employer of the donor, the Solomonese donations to Coakley turns up. This is a good example of why employer info is crucial to following the money and other things, through the FEC and other transparency tools and search engines.

As I've pored over the White House visitor logs, the missing employer info has stood out as an omission the administration should immediately end, and the three spellings of the HRC executive director's name, without that info, illustrate the need for employer details. It shouldn't take bad typing to gather the complete number of visits.

Also, in my tally of visits by HRC's "man behind the curtain" senior administrator David M. Smith, I can't say for sure how many times his name is in logs because there are dozens of David Smith's listed. All of them lack employer details and that should be unacceptable to all sunshine advocates.

I tried to search the logs using the name Solomonese, but I mistakenly keyed in Solmenese, and up came two visits by Joseph R. Solmenese. The first was on May 11, 2009, with gay liaison Brian Bond for what is described as a roundtable meeting. Thirty-three people were present.

A second Solmenese meeting is listed for June 17, 2009, with POTUS, and the description reads: "MEETING WITH PROMINENT MEMBERS OF THE LGBT COMMUNITY."

That was the day Obama signed a memorandum expanding benefits to the domestic partners of federal employees and HRC's leader was there for the photo-op.

But what about info on Solomonese? Sure enough, the visitor logs reveal a single visit by Solomonese with VPOTUS Joe Biden on June 16, 2009, the day before the President signed that memo.

Under his real name, Solmonese has made 19 visits to the White House, and that number inches up to 22, including the three visits under an alias.

Total number of HRC visits now stands at 107, and the figure for visits by Gay Inc types, which excludes reporter Jonathan Capehart, is 193.

Memo to my fellow searchers of federal logs and files: It pays to think of misspelling a person's last name when drilling down any search engine.