New Blog from Leo Donofrio (who did excelelnt legal analysis of Obama's NBC issue):
http://darkknighttruth.wordpress.com/
The Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request made by CBS news revealed that James Holmes received grants in the amount of $26,600, including a $21,600 federal grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and a $5000 grant from the State of Colorado. The CBS Foia also revealed that the “grants were dispersed in monthly stipends of $2,216.67″, and that the grants lasted “from July 2011 through June”. But the CBS report failed to mention two crucial pieces of information. The written report (and accompanying CBS video) failed to discover the important date upon which the June 2012 stipend was paid to James Holmes. CBS also failed to reveal that the directors of the Neuroscience Program at the University of Colorado were directly responsible for approving all monthly payments made to Holmes, including the final payment for June 2012.
In this exclusive report, Dark Knight Truth can now reveal that official University records prove James Holmes was paid the final stipend for the month of June, on July 2, 2012, and that this payment was directly authorized by the Neuroscience Program staff.
This revelation was confirmed by documents found on the University of Colorado’s Medical School web page, as well as the University’s payroll web page. Furthermore, it appears that the Neuroscience Program’s online PDF manual may have been edited to erase this sensitive fact from public view.
Immediately after the Dark Knight shooting on July 20, 2012, officials from the neuroscience department at the University of Colorado came under scrutiny for having removed web pages associated with the program, including curriculum materials, faculty information, and the program’s PDF manual.
Recently, the course materials have come back online, including the Neuroscience Program’s PDF handbook. The manual is currently available at the following page (backed up here):
http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/co.../Handbook.aspx
When you land on that page, click the Handbook link. A pop up window will appear allowing you to save the PDF.
The cover page states that the manual was “Revised July 2012″. This raised an immediate red flag, so I sought the metadata and discovered the revision date was actually July 31, 2012. The document was created by Program Director, Angie Ribera. (When you open the manual, go to FILE, then click PROPERTIES. This will tell you the author of the document, as well as the date it was created.)
The revision date being eleven days after the shooting was very suspicious. And the first thing that caught my attention was Section 2.0, which states:
2.0 Student Support. Students accepted in the Ph.D. program are provided full tuition, health insurance, and a stipend of $26,000 per year for living expenses (for the 2012-2013 academic year). Continued support is contingent upon satisfactory academic and research performance by the student. When a student enters a thesis lab, the thesis mentor assumes complete responsibility for the student’s stipend, tuition, fees, and associated research costs. Out of state tuition is paid only in the first year. All students must establish Colorado residency during and by the end of their first year in the program.
This makes clear that the stipend is only paid upon “satisfactory academic and research performance“. Since the CBS Foia report stated that Holmes received the full grant, it appears he must have been in good academic standing for the entire year.
This casts serious doubt upon the widely circulating media reports, mimicking the Aurora Prosecutor Pearson’s allegations that James Holmes suffered from poor research and examination performances. Had his performances been off, rather than suggesting he find another career, which is what the tabloid media is parroting, Program Director Ribera and staff could have simply pulled his grant according to the manual. They do, after all, have an obligation to spend the tax-payer funded grant wisely.
Another very important issue has been overlooked since the shooting, and this concerns the date upon which the stipend was paid to James Holmes each month. Had Holmes truly withdrawn from the program, he would not have been entitled to the future grant payments. So, if Holmes either failed to satisfactorily perform on his June 7 exam, and/or withdrew by an email on June 10, then he would not, according to the manual, be entitled to a stipend for June if payments were made at the end of the month.
If payments were made at the beginning of the month, before he allegedly messed up the exam, and then dropped out, that would be more in line with the official story. So the day of the month that the stipends were paid is a paramount issue.
Section 8.4 of the manual states:
8.4 Payroll Paperwork. Before you can receive your stipend, you must fill out the appropriate paperwork with the Neuroscience Program and the payroll liaison. Note: An original social security card is required before you can be entered in the University payroll system. If you do not have an original card, you must apply for one immediately after you arrive. Be sure to get a letter from the clerk in the social security office stating that you have applied for a new card. A copy of this letter must be given to the Payroll and Benefits office before you can be paid. When your new card arrives, bring your card to the payroll liaison in the department so a photocopy of your card can be kept in your file
This gave me a lead where to look for payment information; “the payroll liason”. (Also note that there’s no period (“.”) at the end of this section after the word “file”, and we shall come back to it later.)
At the ”Admissions page“ for the CSD program, a separate part of the University Medical School, I found an information page featuring virtually the exact same paragraph as Section 8.4 from the Neuroscience Program manual, except that this paragraph is followed by a second paragraph. The admissions page reads as follows:
8.4 Payroll Paperwork. Before you can receive your stipend, you must fill out the appropriate paperwork with the CSD Program and the CU-AMC Payroll Department. Note: An original social security card is required before you can be entered in the University payroll system. If you do not have an original card, you must apply for one immediately after you arrive. Be sure to get a letter from the clerk in the social security office stating that you have applied for a new card. A copy of this letter must be given to the Payroll and Benefits office before you can be paid. When your new card arrives, bring your card to the payroll liaison in the department so a photocopy of your card can be kept in your file.
Your stipend will be paid monthly on the last working day of the month (or as deemed by the State of Colorado). Appropriate taxes will be withheld from your pay, based on the withholding form you submit to payroll. If you want more details about what your net pay will be, contact payroll at (303) 7356500 (Boulder).
The only material difference in the first paragraph is the name of the program. “CSD Program and the CU-AMC Payroll Department” appears exactly where “Neuroscience Program and the payroll liason” appears in the Neuroscience Program manual. But it’s this second paragraph that raises a huge red flag. The CSD program’s Admission’s page indicates that stipends “will be paid monthly on the last working day of the month”. Also note that this policy is set not by the University, but rather the State of Colorado.
If the same policy was in play for the Neuroscience Program, then Holmes, having received the full $26,600 grant, would have been paid the June stipend on the last working day of the month, which was June 29, 2012. This would, of course, throw a huge monkey wrench in the official version of events, so I was determined to lock that down before going public with this report. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look much further into this to establish the payment date.
Direct confirmation was found on the “Payroll Basics” web page for the University of Colorado’s Human Resources Department, which contains the following information:
Since the University of Colorado has a consolidated payroll system and cannot single out one employee type, the June payday for all monthly employees will be the first working day of July. All other months will be paid on the last working day of the month.
Notice that the word “all” is underlined. James Holmes was paid as a monthly employee, and therefore his final stipend payment for the month of June was July 2, 2012, the first working day of July. The CBS Foia report stated that the grant lasted from July 2011 through June. The first payment for July 2011 would have been the last working day of July 2011. And the stipend payment for May 2012 would have been the last working day of May. But the June stipend, as mandated by State law, and University policy, had to be paid on the first working day of July, which was July 2, 2012.
Since the CBS Foia report made clear that Holmes received the entire grant, concluding with the June 2012 payment of $2216.67, we know for a fact that Holmes received the payment on July 2, 2012. This strongly indicates that he did not perform poorly in either his research, or his exams, and that he had not withdrawn from the program.
Furthermore, it appears that Ribera may have edited the second paragraph out of Section 8.4 after the shooting. Could the missing period “.” be evidence of a sudden revision of Section 8.4 to cover up that Holmes was paid his stipend on July 2d, 2012? I do not see any reason why that paragraph should not have been part of the Neuroscience Program manual, since the first paragraph is virtually identical to the CSD Program page.
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Originally Posted by MNeagle
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