Falsehoods in Federal Court, Part One

Thirteen months ago, after a "run" of only two days and three posts, I stopped publishing anything on this blog because its mere existence seemed to have accomplished its purpose.

Susan Stanton and I had a brief email exchange that I interpreted as an uneasy truce, then I went on with my life because she stopped making outrageous statements and threats about me and my family. I never stopped believing that she privately wished us harm, nor did I stop suspecting that she was trying to figure out a way to harm us, but since she laid down her arms in public, I did the same.

Unfortunately, using her twin sister Erin Budinscak as her proxy, she broke the peace three days ago in a federal courthouse in downtown Tampa -- so here I am to call her out.

The venue was my father's sentencing on charges of failing to file tax returns (a misdemeanor of which he is guilty) and obstructing an IRS investigation (a felony of which I believe he is innocent, but that's another topic for another blog). The attack that Susan unleashed against me and my family came in the form of a letter to the judge. Rather than appear in court herself, she had Erin read it in her stead.

Susan's letter contained many falsehoods and I will deal with them one post at a time. The one I am mentioning today is this: Her letter stated that my father's "family and friends harbored him" when he was a fugitive. Perhaps he stayed with a friend when he was wanted by the law, and since I don't know I won't comment on the "friends" portion of her comment, but my father did not stay with me and I can say with absolute certainty that he did not stay with any other member of my family.

For that matter, he did not even receive any assistance from me, and I can again say with absolute certainty that this is also true for everyone else in my family. We did not know where he was until we read of his arrest in the newspapers, at which point his whereabouts were "in custody."

This past Thursday was not the first time Susan has leveled her false allegation that we conspired with my father while he was on the run. However, all of her previous alleging was done in some version of privacy, like the time she left a rambling message on my uncle's answering machine. If she thinks that by leveling her allegation in public she is going to take me into waters I haven't swum before, she is wrong because I have already been questioned by none other than the FBI. And I will tell you, Susan Stanton, that being asked questions in the car of an FBI Special Agent is far more intimidating than watching your pathetic attempts to stir a pot that doesn't even exist.

The bottom line, however, is that when this past Thursday came, Susan Stanon made sure to air her false accusations not only in public, but in front of a federal judge, while providing testimony for a federal prosecutor, with reporters from two major newspapers on hand. This was an act of malice. What she accused us of is a crime for which people have gone to prison.

I am not a lawyer, but as far as I am concerned, the stakes involved in her falsehood make her letter itself a crime. Even if the law does not back me up on that, there is no doubt that her falsehood was a threat. It will be treated as such if the authorities come knocking on my door again.

The Two Faces

Yesterday, in this blog’s original post, I linked to this article in the Tampa Bay Times. As it turned out, later that day Susan Stanton began posting in that article’s comments section. And you might say that she had two faces just within that section, since she originally pretended to be someone else -- but later, after being called out by yours truly when her screen name clued me in to who she really was, she had to admit her identity and start referring to herself as “I.”

However, the main thing about Susan Stanton’s two-facedness is the way she wears one face in public and another in private. Needless to say, they are polar opposites and the one she wears in public is the nice one she wants the world to believe is true.

In one part of the comments section, while posing as a disinterested onlooker, she wrote: “Susan only wants a small portion of the money taken from their company during their marriage.” In another part, once her real identity was exposed, she wrote: “I only want a small portion of money earned during our marriage and what I am entitled to.”

Obviously, what she puts out in public is what she wants the public to see. And when it comes to how she wants the public to perceive her, this whole thing about “only” wanting “a small portion” speaks for itself.

Then there is the private face. In electronic messages she sent to my wife last week, she wrote that she is “entitled” to 27.5 million dollars -- not assets, mind you, but dollars, cold hard cash. She said this is “half” of what my father earned during their marriage, which I highly doubt, but even if it is true, “half” is hardly “a small portion.”

And more importantly, in those same messages, Susan Stanton falsely alleged that we have lied in family and federal court and are therefore going to jail. She typed the following: “when I am through with you it won’t be so funny!! Jail time for the Stanton’s!!”

She made a more specific threat against us in those messages, but I will not get into it here because her vindictiveness is obvious enough.

The Delusion

There may be many motivators behind Susan Stanton’s attacks against me and other members of my family, but the overriding theme is her claim that we are all in cahoots with my father and living high on the hog with money that belongs to her.

That claim is false, but the thing is, I suspect she really believes it. She has even made comments on at least one newspaper’s web site, saying she has “records” to prove this. In the same comments section, she also said that she paid $800,000 to obtain these mysteriously unnamed records, yet elsewhere in that same section she said she is broke.

Since Susan Stanton’s fevered imagination has her believing that my family is living a Hamptons kind of life on my father’s dime, all while hiding him from the feds, here are some facts:

I have not seen my father since last year and have no idea where he is. Neither does any other member of my family.

Erika and I struggle to make ends meet, just like most Americans, and we do it on my income with no assistance whatsoever.

Erika has worked off and on in the seven years since Sarah was born, but is not currently working due to heath problems and the cost of day care.

My mother has been selling her personal possessions to pay for living expenses.

My sister lost her house and is on food stamps.

And none of us complain about it because we take responsibility for ourselves (like adults are supposed to) and we do not feel entitled to whatever money my father may or may not have earned over the years. We are not the ones who earned it.

On the other hand, Susan Stanton lives in an upscale home in Los Angeles that was paid for with cash. Her neighbors include Hillary Duff, Annie Lenox, and George Lopez…In 1998, around the time she married my father, she sold a home for $196,000. And one year later, she moved into a home that was bought with $620,000 cash; i.e., no mortgage. Then, she sold that home for $710,000 in 2010, after moving to her mortgage-free home by the stars.

What I wrote in the above paragraph I know to be true. In addition, I have heard (but not independently verified) that she pocketed all of the proceeds from the 2010 sale, and that she had $1.1 million in the bank at the beginning of last year.

Yet, she claims that she is broke and we are wealthy. Fortunately for us, our happiness has nothing to do with money…Sadly for her, and tragically for her son, she does not know what happiness is and gets pleasure only from money …But as the existence of this blog shows, our lack of materialism does not mean we will allow her to attack and threaten us while she no doubt plots to take whatever possessions we do have.

What is this blog?

Abraham Lincoln once said that “truth is generally the best vindication against slander.”

For some time, members of my family have been the targets of a barrage of false statements made by one Susan Stanton, who is my father’s ex-wife and the mother of one of my brothers (technically, their son is my half-brother). She has said things that are not merely false, but outrageously false, and are intended to paint a picture of our lives versus her life that is the exact opposite of reality. Many of her statements are personal attacks that deliberately defame the character of whomever she is referring to, so in my opinion they are slander when she speaks them and libel when she writes them.

Much of her targeting stems from her divorce from my father, John Stanton III; in other words, from their private issues. Yet she has chosen to lash out at people who are not involved. She has chosen to tell falsehoods about those people and to drag them into her own self-made drama.

Up to now, Susan Stanton has waged her one-sided war both in private, via harassing phone calls and electronic messages, and in public via newspapers and television. The public side of her war has mostly been aimed at my father, and has involved the publishing of some selectively chosen facts; however, the private side of her war has been very much aimed at the rest of us who have nothing to do with their private issues. Her behavior crossed the line a long time ago, but her most recent tactic of aggression was the last straw, and she no longer has the luxury of punching people without them punching back.

Last week she posted public comments on one of my blogs that did not stop at defamation and harassment, but constituted a direct threat. On the same day she posted those comments, she also sent defamatory, harassing, and threatening messages to my wife on Facebook.

There are reasons why no one in my family has previously responded to Susan Stanton’s attacks. For one, we have chosen to take the high road because we have done nothing wrong and have no desire for conflict, so why stoop to what seemed like a petty tantrum of mud-slinging? And more importantly, we are concerned about the welfare of my brother.

He is 13 years old now, was younger when all this began, and his mother has intentionally estranged him from his father. There is no doubt that whatever she tells him about his father (and us) in the privacy of their California home must have a negative effect of his young mind, but my father has always been of the opinion that subjecting him to a back-and-forth battle of accusations between mom and dad would be even worse; and he has therefore accepted the reality of the situation with the hope that my brother would come to know the truth with the passage of time. When the rest of my family (me, my wife, siblings, mother, aunts, uncles, and grandmother) discuss this sad state of affairs, we all agree that my brother’s emotional well-being is paramount, and so we have all bitten our tongues even when Susan Stanton targeted us. We have bitten our tongues even though we are painfully aware that she is not doing my brother any favors when it comes to protecting his emotions -- and even though we are painfully aware that her depiction of my father’s character is grossly inaccurate.

But like I said above, she has now escalated her war from one of harassment and defamation to one of threats, and has done so in a public forum. Plus, she chose to place my brother in the public eye when she had a Tampa news program say his name and show his photograph on television, and when she had his name and photograph published in the Tampa Bay Times. So now all bets are off and my family will no longer fight with its hands tied behind its back.

Another great quote from Lincoln was when he observed, “Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you can not do what the enemy is constantly doing?” Nobody in my family likes to think of individual human beings as enemies, but Susan Stanton, by her words and deeds, has made it clear that she considers us enemies even though we have never done a thing to her except leave her alone. Well, now we are fighting back and will not permit wrong to prevail.

The purpose of this blog is to tell the whole story, rather than the warped version told by Susan Stanton and the selectively out-of-context morsels which have appeared in the press. In the spirit of Abe Lincoln’s quotes, this blog will use truth to fight slander and will ensure that Susan Stanton no longer has free reign to say and do whatever she pleases without fear of rebuttal.

The coming posts will tell the story and let the public know things they otherwise wouldn’t. The reason these things would not otherwise be known is simple: Susan Stanton does not want them to be known. Hopefully, airing them will compel her to put an end to her ignorant allegations and her machinations against innocent people. But I won’t hold my breath.

If you would like to contribute any information, you may do so at erikaandjohn(at)gmail(dot)com.