Will the real Tripp Johnston please come down?

Trig and Tripp

I first met up with Mr. Sherman "Tank" Jones late in April right after Levi, Mercede, and Sherry returned from doing the Larry King show. We had a very animated conversation in his office, where I offered to help the Johnston family in any way that I could, and things progressed from there. 

The relationship with Jones, which occasionally included Rex Butler as well, lasted until December of last year. (That would be December 2009.)

I wrote this passage back in July 2010. I go on to say that after awhile I became convinced that Tank was not being honest with me about what he was doing for Levi, and that I began to believe that he and Rex were purposefully mismanaging his "career."

All of that is absolutely true. However early on it seemed that Tank was not focused on making money off of Levi, in fact he really seemed to want to help him, and was providing me with very interesting and completely unknown information. Much of this information I was able to verify independently, though in some cases it took years, but there was one very explosive piece that I have never been able to verify.

Back in May of 2009, Tank asked me to meet him at the Glacier Brewhouse near his office, because he had something BIG to tell me.

He was late as usual, but once we sat down, and we had ordered, he shared some information and related to me an incident that he had witnessed when he had driven Levi out to the Palin house sometime in March.

According to Tank, Levi entered the house and later emerged with a young boy that he estimated to be about a year old. As Levi put the boy into his car seat he kept referring to the child as "Tripp."

Now remember this was in March of 2009, when Tripp would have been no more than three months old. According to Tank he then drove them to a house, NOT his mom's house, and dropped them off.

I was of course skeptical and I confronted Tank on his version of events, while telling him that it was impossible for a one year old child to be the same Tripp that had just been born in December, but Tank was adamant that he was telling me just exactly what he saw. I then accused Tank of not knowing enough about babies to be able to judge the age by looking at them. Once again Tank assured me that since he had a son of his own, and had spent a substantial amount of time around babies, that he could certainly tell the difference between an infant and a child that was clearly at least a year old.

I asked if he had confronted Levi about this, but Tank said they had a policy about never discussing the child. (Later in May Levi would pose in GQ magazine with a naked baby. When I confronted Tank with these photos he swore that this baby was NOT the same one that he knew to be Tripp.)

Now at this point I am sure most of you are thinking "Poor Gryphen, got taken in by a liar and STILL doesn't realize it." That is a good point, and there have been times that I have almost agreed with it. Except for a couple of things.

First, that conversation did not take place JUST between myself and Tank Jones.  There was a third person at that table as well.

Shannyn Moore.

I had brought Shannyn along to be a witness to this big story that Tank was going to divulge. And she was sitting right there, mouth hanging wide open, as Tank revealed that the baby that he knew as Tripp was at least a year old, NOT five months old as reported by the Palin family.  What's more he claimed Bristol's pregnancy was "not as it appeared" during the RNC.

Which of course should not shock anybody with two good eyes.

Or even ONE for that matter.

Tank went on to explain that Trig WAS indeed Sarah Palin's child. When I asked him if she had given birth to him, he said "I did not say that. I said that he was her child." He went on to say that we would never be able to prove otherwise, because any paperwork to the contrary would be impossible to access. Essentially he said that she had covered her tracks very well, and it was unlikely that anybody could PROVE she was not his birth mother. (In a separate conversation Rex would describe the hospital scene that Levi witnessed as a "show' which Sarah put on for the benefit of certain people.)

Shannyn and I left the restaurant and went down the street for a beer.  We found ourselves giggling and shaking our heads at this new bombshell, but neither of us knew what to do with it.

As you know Shannyn simply kept it to herself. And until now, so did I.

However it changed my perspective completely on who might be Trig's actual birth mother. Up until then, like most of us, I had assumed it was probably Bristol. But after that conversation I realized that was impossible.

I changed my focus and started looking for more clues to explain this other child. That is when the picture of the "ruffled ear baby" made its appearance.

"There," I thought,  "now things are starting to make sense." So I arranged another conversation with Tank, only this time I invited another knowledgeable person to participate.

I invited my friend Audrey, of Palin's Deceptions.

We arranged a three way call on July 30th. During the call Tank once again told his story about the other, older, Tripp.  However when asked specifically about any ear deformities, Tank claimed that the child he had seen had perfectly normal ears. Dammit! Another dead end.

Here is the e-mail that Audrey sent me right after our conversation:

Jesse, I don't know what to make of Tank's story any more. 

He seems absolutely credible and believable to me that the baby he saw last winter was much larger than newborn AND that Levi introduced him as Tripp. Last winter (March, say) Tripp should have been barely three months old. That's still a tiny baby. The baby he described was a toddler or nearly so. 

But then when we ask him if the "big Tripp" had a messed up ear, he says no. When we asked him point blank if "Tripp is Trig" he was emphatic: no. How many babies are there? And are we to think that they were hiding another Tripp in the house for months and NO ONE noticed? That "old Tripp" was still there when "new Tripp" was brought home? I have wondered for a long time if there are twins somehow but can't put it together. 

He is also emphatic that the pregnancy during the campaign is not as reported, but won't tell us why. 

Very frustrated at this point. 

A

And of course she was not alone.  It would take me another seven months to finally write my Two Babies post, after extensive research and my finally becoming comfortable with the fact that it could withstand the scrutiny that I was sure would be coming after it was posted. (How's THAT for an understatement?)

However up until now I have never known what to do with this information.  I had hoped that Levi would write about it in his book (I even found him an author, who was eventually rejected, back in December of 2009), but of course now we all know that he not only did not mention it, we know that he stayed fairly close to the Palin version of events.

So we are left with the question as to whether to believe Tank Jones concerning this information or not. Would he really lie to two different bloggers with access to large audiences, and a radio host with ties to the national media?

That seems unnecessarily risky. And besides what would be the point of doing so?

Oh wait I left something else out.

Tank Jones was NOT just a guy that I was using as a source for the blog.  He in fact worked for me.

The above is my receipt from the deposit I put down to hire Tank Jones Investigations Group.

In other words when Tank relayed the information about the larger child that Levi referred to as "Tripp," he was doing so as a private investigator relaying information to the client who hired him. Me.

Tank is a licensed PI, to purposefully relay false information would immediately put his license in jeopardy. He also was not relaying information gleaned from an anonymous source, he was reporting his own eyewitness account.

Before Tank and I had our falling out over Levi's first book deal with my author friend, I asked him about this a couple of times. He ALWAYS said "Jesse I did not lie to you."

The last time I saw Tank face to face was a year ago when Rachel Maddow was up here.

Tank wanted to know why we don't talk anymore, and when I brought up that I thought he had been less than truthful with me in the past, he again said "I have never lied to you. Never!"

Now that statement is NOT completely true.  But what IS true is that the information which Tank provided me while working as my PI, and that I was able to verify, always checked out as truthful.

So at this point you might be wondering what all of this has to do with Levi's book, since I sort of promoted this post as part of a review of "Deer in the Headlights." Well I'm glad you asked.

Levi's book actually has some rather startling and potentially damaging (to the Palin brand at least) pieces of information within its pages. Such as:

• Levi again points out that Todd and Sarah are in a loveless marriage, and NEVER sleep together.  
• That Palin quit being governor simply to make money, and that while she WAS still governor came home midday everyday and complained about how much she hated her job.
• That Bristol got pregnant on purpose.
• That Bristol had numerous cosmetic surgery procedures while still in her teens.
• That Bristol admitted that Todd and Sarah were not married when Track was conceived.
• That Sarah "had it set up for Bristol to receive her high school diploma" whether she submitted her school work or not. (I KNEW she did not earn that degree!)

And of course many others that I have already mentioned in my earlier posts about his book.

However we have heard very little from the Palin-bots, or the Palins themselves, attacking his book. Which, to be honest, seems kind of odd.

As a matter of fact compared to how aggressively they went after Joe's book, NONE of the other books, not Bailey's, not Dunn's, nor Levi's, have received quite the same vitriol and aggressive attempts to block efforts to publicize it, that The Rogue has suffered. One cannot help but wonder why that would be?

What the other books seem to have in common is that they either barely mention the questions surrounding Palin's pregnancy, or they go out of their way to refute them.  Which is EXACTLY what is found in Levi's book.

On pg.87, Levi even seems to go that extra mile to dispute the "rumors:"

It was Christmas Day 2008. Bristol was huge; a photo of that belly would have cut off at the knees the Trig truthers who insisted she was his mom.

There are other parts of the book that seem written for the sole purpose of putting the controversy to rest as well.  Which beggars the question, why did Levi put so much emphasis on bolstering the official version of Trig's birth? Especially since, according to Tank, Levi must know full well that the "Trig truthers" are absolutely correct?

And what is it that Levi supposedly knows about Sarah Palin that could be considered "bigger than Watergate," or that would have concerned Palin so much that she had twenty pages removed from her "Going Rogue" manuscript before it went to the publishers? (Before publication the National Enquirer had reported that Palin slammed Levi in the book, but when it came out there was hardly a mention.)

Because whatever that is, it certainly does not show up in Levi's book. Neither does any mention of this mystery baby that Tank has repeatedly claimed exists. (Though as we have already observed, Levi seems to have significant difficulty keeping the dates of Tripp's conception and due date consistent.)

So does this new information clear things up, or only create more confusion? Well dear reader I leave that up to you to decide.

I will say this however. I think that many of us have been right all along in believing that the scandal which Sarah Palin is the most desperate to keep quiet has nothing to do with politics, her marriage, or even her religious beliefs. But it has everything to do with the births of two little boys.