At the risk of sounding like an idiot who hasn't done enough research, I'm going to post this diary full of doubts about
Madsen's election fraud claims.
In the fourth paragraph of his article, he states:
The money to rig the election in favor of Bush reportedly came from an entity called Five Star Trust, largely based in Houston but a worldwide entity that is directly tied to the Saudi Royal Family. Five Star Trust was termed "a well-protected vehicle" that has been used to support both Bush and Osama bin Laden in the US and around the world.
I see one huge problem with this: I can't verify the existence of "Five Star Trust" based in Houston.
And I don't think it's because of a lack of trying. If Five Star Trust was a large enough operation to handle a $29 million dollar check to rig an election, one would figure that they'd pop up right on a Google search, right? At least they would have a webpage?
Wrong. Googling '"five star trust" houston' fetches returns related to Madsen's article.
So how about googling for Five Star Investment? Since that's what Madsen decided to call the firm in his second article on the matter:
This reporter has obtained a copy of a bank check for $29,600,000 that was allegedly sent to cover the cost of the Texas-based vote rigging operation. The check is dated October 22, 2004, and was made payable to "Five Star Investment Ltd.," a trust said to have long connections to Saudi-funded operations in Texas and around the world.
Googling '"five star investment" houston' fetches one return that isn't related to Madsen's article. It's a comment on a Five Star Investment worker going to jail. It's from 2002, but it's on one of the internet's most unreliable sources,
a message board.
Striking out with Google, I fired up Lexis/Nexis and searched to articles from all wire services and all news services in Texas. My search dates were 1/1/1995 to today. I searched the full text of articles for any instances of "Five Star Investment" or "Five Star Trust," and "Houston."
I came up empty handed. I even plugged in "5 Star Trust" and "5 Star Investment" just for shits and giggles, and I'm still coming up empty handed.
Hell, I can't even find anything in Superpages.
Am I wildly off the mark? Just plain stupid? Or does this Five Star Trust/Investment that Madsen speaks of just not exist?
Update: I'd like to make it clear that I really, really want to be wrong here. I'd love to believe Madsen's article, and would like nothing better to see somebody post a comment saying, "Hey idiot, you missed this," and provide some proof for Madsen's claims. Typically, my habit after finding unusual results during research into a story is to ask somebody to do research independent from mine to see if I made a mistake. So, if somebody says, "Hey idiot, you missed this," nothing would make me happier.