(This is the first in a series of articles and editorials scheduled through 2018 drilling down into the behavior and alleged criminality of Rep. Duncan Hunter — R-50th Congressional District. As a public service, The Grapevine will be taking a more pro-active role in coming months examining Hunter’s activities and behavior.)
(DUNCAN HUNTER #1) Fun with Duncan on the world wide web
Click and shoot/Courtesy
Welcome to the wonderful world of web trolling brought to you by YOUR incumbent Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-50th Congressional District) who has quite the time online when he’s not responding to FBI investigators concerning his use of campaign funds for personal expenses.
And you can thank President Trump, Hunter and the Republicans in Congress for access to some of Hunter’s online gems he posted under the troll name of uberjaeger, an apparent reference to the Jagermeister liquor favored by frat boys and alcoholics alike.
On March 28, 2017, some 265 members of Congress voted to repeal a set of Obama-era privacy rules that would have stopped internet service providers (ISPs) from selling your browsing data to advertisers without your consent.
Popular arguments against this rule change include “protecting privacy” and “respecting consumers.”
Popular arguments for it are harder to come by, but they may include “I receive donations from major ISPs,” or “I would like to make lots of money lobbying for ISPs after I am out of Congress.”
Duncan Hunter, “the vaping congressman” and also the under-investigation-for-campaign-finance-fraud congressman, was among those apparently more persuaded by the latter arguments.
Now that Trump has signed the bill into law, ISPs like Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T are free to sell your sensitive browsing data (which could include geolocation coordinates, browsing history, and app usage data) to advertisers as they see fit.
The main lobbying group that represents those ISPs, CTIA, supports this state of affairs: “Web browsing and app usage history are not ‘sensitive information,’” CTIA told the FCC this year. As that is apparently a position shared by Congressional Republicans, let’s embark on a journey to see what Hunter and his 264 cohorts have been up to online. None of this information is, after all, “sensitive.”
Presumably the raison d’etre for Hunter’s online avatar known as…/Courtesy
We don’t have the means to purchase the browsing history of our esteemed senators and congressmen and women outright, but we do have all investigative tools the internet has to offer; as we’ve seen before, the internet offers plenty.
Ashley Feinberg, of Deadspin/Splinter, took a peek behind the curtain of some of Hunter’s online dealings or, as Hunter was known to the bodybuilding and vape enthusiast forums of the net, “uberjaeger.”
To be sure, not every uberjaeger online is Hunter. However, The uberjaeger who used to be active on the venerable right-wing news board Free Republic seems to be our man.
In response to an article posted on FreeRepublic.com, user uberjaeger responded to an article about how Duncan Duane Hunter, not yet in office, was planning to run for office despite having been recalled to active duty.
In response to an article about how Hunter’s congressman father had fired two advisers over racist remarks about immigrants, uberjaeger writes:
And here he is plugging away at his dad’s campaign:
An old YouTube account under the same name contains only two videos, both of which star the elder Duncan Hunter. It had a grand total of nine subscribers.
Where else might Duncan Hunter show up on the world wide web?
As we all know, Duncan Hunter loves to vape. As he proudly proclaimed just over a year ago: “Yes, I vape.” Like most vapers, Hunter also apparently loves to post online; as far as vaping sites ago, he appears to be active on both the ScrewDriver forum and E-cigarette-forum.com. It’s on the latter where he truly gave himself away.
In a 2008 thread titled “Contacting your representatives,” uberjaeger offers the big reveal:
But Hunter’s not just here to talk politics. He’s also here to tell weird, rambling stories, with odd references to Freud and no apparent point. In a thread titled “San Diego Chargers and the Pen Style,” uberjaeger contributed this:
Vaping the friendly skies
Have bunny, will travel…on campaign dollars/Grapevine
When not flying around his family pet rabbit, and family, on campaign donor money, the subject of his FBI criminal investigation, Hunter vapes. He likes to vape at the airport, which he confesses in a thread titled “I vaped at the airport”:
And if you were wondering whether Duncan Hunter has ever vaped on a plane, Duncan Hunter has vaped on a plane:
Uberjaeger hits the weight (and supplements) chat room
Still, a man can only vape so much, and Rep. Hunter is a man of myriad interests. It should come as no surprise, then, that this former Marine also spends some time on the the legendary forums of BodyBuilding.com.
The majority of Hunter’s posts are admittedly mundane discussions of the technical aspects of bodybuilding. There are, however, a few gems.
Here’s uberjaeger discussing his use of Lipo-6x, a weight-loss supplement product that my colleague Hamilton Nolan describes as “basically legal speed, and people take it either to suppress appetite or to get hype before they work out.” (Nolan went on to say, “If you ask me all you need is a cup of coffee and the heart of a lion.”)
Hunter’s constituents deserve to know that the man they voted for not only owns but wears a bodybuilding.com t-shirt.
That’s all for now, more will follow in coming months…
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