Bachmann, Coulter Named As Witnesses In Suit Over Alleged Tea Party TV Scam
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Jillian Rayfield checks in on the TPHD channel debacle.
TPHD was founded in 2010 by Loiacono and Bill Hemrick, purporting to be the “world’s first HD provider of news about the Tea Party.” But Hemrick and the five other businessmen who invested in the company claim that Loiacono never put in his share of the funding, used the existing money as his “personal bank account,” and didn’t do the work laid out by the initial deal. “In reality it was an investment scheme to defraud politically conservative-minded citizens who support the Tea Party mission,” the suit said.
Loiacono countersued last month, asking for $1 million in damages each from Hemrick and the other five investors. In his initial response the lawsuit, Loiacono said he would be willing to settle the suit through a televised “lie detector challenge” between he and Hemrick. If he were to win, Hemrick would have to drop the suit and cover Loiacono’s legal fees.
Before being named as a witness, Bachmann already had a tangential connection to the suit. Hemrick is a prominent conservative fundraiser who acted as the financial director for her presidential campaign in Tennessee.
And, in one of its ventures that did come to fruition, Tea Party HD operated that camera that Bachmann was famously staring into — instead of the camera operated by CNN that was carrying the live broadcast — during her Tea Party Express rebuttal (to the rebuttal) of President Obama’s State Of The Union address in 2011.