An aide to “moderate” New York Congressworm Mike Lawler almost certainly posed as a local lefty activist to stir shit up with libs who heckled the Michael Jackson superfan at a May 4th town hall, Lohud.com has concluded after matching Lawler’s assistant district director Erin Crowley’s number to that of an apparently fictional “Jake Thomas” who infiltrated a Signal chat group prior to the event.

“Jake” posted “I can’t stand how he lies!” to the “Fight Lawler” group during the event at 6:38 pm on May 4th. “We should boo him off the stage!” It was then that, due to the vagaries of how Signal and similar apps interact with existing contacts in people’s phones, that Erin Crowley and not “Jake Thomas” appeared as the name on the phone of one of the “Fight Lawler” group members who’d had Crowley in his contacts. Then, after two of the libs were carried out for interrupting Lawler, “Jake” posted “Should we walk out en masse? Make a point we won’t tolerate his bullshit anymore.”

“Walking out of the hall would have been to their benefit. That would have been great for them. I said on the chat that I didn’t think it was a good idea,” said the group’s co-founder Ann Starer.

“Ciro Riccardi, Lawler’s director of communications, did not respond to two emails and a phone message seeking comment over the past three weeks. Crowley has not responded to three email requests for comment since first contacted on the issue May 20. She walked away from this writer on June 16 when asked about the Signal group following a meeting of Putnam County legislative committee in Carmel. She did so again on July 1, as she was escorted by a Putnam County deputy sheriff to a legislative meeting,” Lohud reporter David McKay Wilson writes about his efforts to get Crowley – also a Putnam County legislator – to answer some basic questions about the incident.