Did Sen. Gillibrand lie about knowledge of NXIVM and her father’s former role in sex cult?

Artvoice [a publication I own] published the following story today:

Yesterday, a formidable opponent to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand emerged officially to oppose her.

Chele Farley was nominated to be the Republican candidate to run against Gillibrand, a tax and spend liberal who loudly advocates for women’s rights.

Manhattan Republican Chairman Andrea Catsimatidis criticized Gillibrand saying “She has built her career through political convenience at the expense of New Yorkers.”

Part of that convenience is that Gillibrand is the daughter of Albany political fixer Doug Rutnik.

Papa Rutnik once worked for NXIVM — a secretive group headquartered in Albany —led by pedophile and sex abuser Keith Raniere.

Raniere made headlines recently after Artvoice [and Frank Report]  broke the story of his cattle branding women on their pubic region as his slaves.

The story was followed up in the New York Times and other media outlets worldwide.

When asked by the New York Post, if she cared to comment on her dad’s former affiliation with Raniere and the latter’s practice of branding women on their pubic area with a hot iron cattle brand to mark them as slaves, Gillibrand declined comment.

A spokesman for the senator may have lied for Gillibrand, telling the Post, “Sen. Gillibrand had never heard of this group [NXIVM] until she recently read about them in the newspaper.”

This does strain the boundaries of reasonable credulity. Gillibrand’s hometown is Albany and everybody [and I mean everybody] in Albany knows about their local sex cult – NXIVM. It has been featured in scores of front page stories by the local newspaper, the Albany Times Union.

If Gillibrand can read, she could not have missed the stories starting in 2003 and continuing to the present.

She would have had to have lived under a rock not to have heard of NXIVM — even if her father never worked for them!

Her father not only worked for NXIVM, but wound up being sued by them. He paid a $100,000 settlement to the sex abusing cult after a group of NXIVM women alleged Rutnik sexually harassed one of the NXIVM women – Nancy Salzman.

In addition, NXIVM’s biggest financial supporter, Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman, contributed $2,400 to Gillibrand’s 2010 special-election campaign, records show.

While declining to criticize the branders and abusers of women in her hometown Albany, Gillibrand was quick to go after her former friend and supporter Bill Clinton this year for his past abuses of women.

“Sen. Gillibrand went after Bill Clinton for something that happened decades ago, but she’s done nothing about the women who are being branded and tortured right now, and right in her hometown,” Frank Parlato, a NXIVM whistle blower, and publisher of Artvoice, told the New York Post.

Artvloice has written several stories about the relationship Gillibrand’s father had with the sex and female abusive cult

Frank Parlato