Lone Republican ‘Faithless’ Elector Has an Ashley Madison Problem
With more than 100 Democratic electors demanding to know more about the alleged Russian hacking meant to influence the 2016 presidential election on President-elect Donald Trump’s behalf, it’s interesting to note that only one Republican elector has given even the slightest hint that he won’t vote for his party’s nominee when the Electoral College convenes in the 50 state capitols on Monday.
That lone elector, Christopher Suprun, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times earlier this month, explaining why he would be a “faithless” elector next week. In it, he claimed the president-elect doesn’t meet the qualifications Alexander Hamilton wrote about in Federalist 68, that the president is “not engaged in demagogy, and independent from foreign influence.”
Calling Trump a demagogue and suggesting the self-made billionaire “plays fast and loose” with the law, in part, he wrote:
The election of the next president is not yet a done deal. Electors of conscience can still do the right thing for the good of the country. Presidential electors have the legal right and a constitutional duty to vote their conscience. I believe electors should unify behind a Republican alternative, an honorable and qualified man or woman such as Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. I pray my fellow electors will do their job and join with me in discovering who that person should be.
Suprun also frequently used “faithful” in his commentary, perhaps intending it to be a coy play on words since he was announcing to the world he would be a faithless elector. But it also led to some tragic irony, according to new reports this week.
GotNews.com broke the story that Suprun signed up and paid for an Ashley Madison account in 2012 with an “affair guarantee.” The well-documented report says that’s “only the beginning” of Suprun’s troubles, though.
With a screenshot of the hacked Ashley Madison data, it shows an account created using Suprun’s given name, Stephen (Christopher is his middle name), with a birth date just a few days off from his real birth date, and a post office box number that matches the box number of his 9/11 charity. The report notes that charity is still listed on his personal Twitter profile, although the charity itself hasn’t provided any evidence of charitable work in the past several months.
Here’s what GotNews reported about the cheating website data:
According to the data, Suprun joined Ashley Madison in February 2012, just six months after joint-filing for bankruptcy with his wife, Dianne Michelle Suprun, in September 2011, and paid for an “affair guarantee” in September 2012.
An “affair guarantee”, which costs $249 today, is a discounted “package” for “credits” that allow men to chat with potential cheating partners on the website. Suprun, who had three kids under the age of 10 at the time, listed himself on the site as “attached male seeking female.” …
In the year before he signed up for cheating website Ashley Madison, Chris Suprun was unemployed (and eventually bankrupt) for eight months, with three young kids, while his wife worked full-time …
Suprun and his wife in total owed more than $214,000 …
While GotNews could not find definitive proof of employment or unemployment in 2012, the bankruptcy court docket never records Suprun becoming employed or requesting a change of payment plan due to employment. Suprun’s publicly available professional history seems to end in 2007, and a July 2012 archive of his now-defunct consulting business Consurgo, LLC shows that their last “publication” was in 2008.
The report continues digging, unearthing connections to a payday loan scam website, multiple post office boxes in Texas and Virginia and connections to a public relations firm run by Democratic strategist and CNN commentator Van Jones. It also paints the disturbing picture that Suprun could possibly be speaking out against Trump because he’s benefiting financially from doing so.
As we’re praying over the election to its conclusion next month, we should take time to pray for Suprun and his family. {eoa}