EXPOSED: Danny Shaw admits gun trafficking charges “not 100% truthful”

In a secretly recorded meeting, former professor Danny Shaw admitted that his public claims that journalists Dan Cohen and Kim Ives as well as American Communist Party (ACP) executive committee members Haz Al-Din and Kyle Pettis plotted to traffic weapons to Haiti were “not 100% truthful” and were intended to harm their reputations.

“I was definitely trying to take them out, I just fucked up. I just didn’t do it artfully and 100% truthful, and that looked very bad,” Shaw said.

ACP member Zachariah Primiano recorded the meeting under the direction of the party’s Director of Personnel Kyle Pettis. It not only fully debunks Shaw’s slanderous allegations against Cohen, Ives, Al-Din, and Pettis but is clear evidence of the disgraced former professor’s deceit and intent to defame them in a COINTELPRO-style smear campaign aimed at destroying the ACP from within.

The meeting was held at former ACP and Midwestern Marx member Daniel Gutierrez’s apartment in Queens, NY on January 21, and was also attended by Christopher Prewitt and Shuvu Bhattarai.

On January 17, Shaw published on X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, and his personal website a series of written articles and a video resigning from the ACP.

While Shaw spends most of the 43-minute video denouncing Haz Al-Din and doxxing him by revealing his true identity (Ali Hammoud), he alleges that he witnessed, on a Zoom call, his then-comrades Al-Din and Pettis with his former colleagues Cohen and Ives, discussing plans to traffic weapons to armed groups in Haiti, particularly to Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, leader of the Viv Ansanm Political Party, whom Cohen and Ives have repeatedly interviewed and profiled in their written and video reports and in their documentary series Another Vision: Inside Haiti’s Uprising.

“Ali, Kyle, Dan Cohen, and Kim Ives began to coordinate arms trafficking with sketchy foreign actors and oligarchs to the paramilitary factions in Haiti,” Shaw said.

In another post titled “On the Cultishness and Liberalism of Ali “Haz” Hammoud & the ACP Executive Board”, Shaw alleges that “On November 1st, I was tricked into coming to a sit-down with Dan Cohen and Kim Ives so they could send more guns to Haiti through Haz.”

Far from being ambushed, Shaw had been pressuring Cohen for a public debate while rebuffing numerous requests from his ACP comrades to participate in a private meeting with Cohen and Ives to clarify and resolve his political differences with them.

Shaw speculates that Hammoud and Pettis are working on behalf of the U.S. government. “I felt deceived and trapped. The question that went through my head was: Are these federal agents or just ultra leftists who do the bidding of the federal government?” Shaw wrote.

Shaw also falsely claims that Cohen, Ives, Al-Din, and Pettis disparaged the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) and that he repeatedly objected to such deprecation, but that the four men just ridiculed him.

“I raised every objection. They laughed and laughed at me, at the PSL, at Black Alliance For Peace & other groups who they said were ‘liberals’ and ‘humanitarians’ like me and actually cared about the masses. Why would Cohen and Ives take advantage of someone like Ali Hammoud, who has zero experience as a leader? I was forced to contact my lawyers and submit a sworn affidavit of this reckless adventurism that put me and the entire party at risk,” he wrote.

As he gorged himself on mango chicken and banana fritters, washed down by beet and celery juice, Shaw vacillated between overconfidence, bitterness, and spinning out more lies to his fellow plotters. By the end, he was audibly worried that his plot against his former comrades and colleagues had failed and there would be fallout.

Shaw’s allegations were an attempt to mount a coup against the ACP leadership.

The smear job was coordinated with Brianna “Bree” Barry, who resigned from the party on December 7, and John Molera, who was the party’s official attorney until he publicly resigned on the same day as Shaw. Shaw confesses that Molera helped co-write his articles, in which he doxxed Al-Din’s legal name. This violates legal confidence and could get Molera disbarred.

The allegations were uncritically promoted by professors Daniel Tutt and Colin Bodayle. Tutt is a George Washington University lecturer who is affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, an unofficial affiliate of the Democratic Party, and brands himself as a “public critic” of the ACP. Bodayle is a graduate assistant at Villanova University.

Shaw’s hit job was also cheered on by Jonathan Meade, who uses the X account @jonnysocialism, and Andrew Saturn, both of whom are members of the Socialist Party of America. Saturn describes himself in his X bio as a “federal appointee.”

Molera, a licensed attorney, had begun investigating Meade and Saturn for potential links to intelligence agencies, according to ACP leadership, but began to receive online harassment and death threats. He then suddenly turned against the ACP, culminating in his public resignation, which he coordinated with Shaw. Molera has since deactivated his X account and left DDGeopolitics, a channel where he had planned to launch a show.

Tutt told Cohen in a January 24 phone call that he suspected that Saturn is a federal agent. When Cohen asked Tutt why he objectively allies with people he suspects to be operating on the U.S. government’s behalf against the ACP, Tutt insisted that his criticism is different from theirs. He also stated that the ACP is worse than the Democratic Party.

👇 Daniel Tutt conversation with journalist Dan Cohen 👇

Alternative media personality Fiorella Isabel of The Convo Couch also promoted the defamation, privately insisting to Cohen that ACP Executive Board member Jackson Hinkle is an FBI agent, although providing no evidence.

Back at the meeting, asked for evidence of the weapons trafficking allegations, Shaw admitted that he has none.

“The most I have is screenshots of Ali Hamoud preparing for the meeting, but it would have been him and Dan Cohen [who] were back channeling. I can’t access that. The Zoom recording Ali Hamoud promised me.”

On January 21, the ACP sent a cease and desist letter to Shaw.

That evening, Shaw published a second video claiming to offer a “clarification and apology” but repeating the same allegations against Cohen, Ives, Al-Din, and Pettis. Shaw insisted that a recording of the November 1 meeting be made public and called for all parties to be subjected to polygraph tests, visibly smirking at his own suggestion, while reiterating the lie that the other men plotted to traffic guns through “Russian contacts.”

In the meeting at Gutierrez’ house, Shaw boasts that his “apology” was “mad slick.”

Even as he boasted of his duplicitous behavior, Shaw was aware that his smear campaign had backfired, although still posturing as a victim.

“These two journalists have completely mistreated me and the Haitian people, so I’ve tried to take them down too, but I just… I bit off more than I can chew.”

“My biggest mistake, right, like I told the comrades yesterday – any victory, small victories are ours – any mistakes, I take full responsibility. By dragging in the two journalists with the gun thing, it’s spiraled out of control,” he repeated, explaining that “it’s distracted from the work at hand” of destroying the ACP.

However, Shaw hoped to use Tutt as an intermediary to negotiate with with Cohen and Ives in order to isolate the ACP.

Tutt called Shaw during the meeting, suggesting that he fully retract his posts and accusations, based on the advice of a “lawyer” he had consulted.

When Cohen asked Tutt who the “lawyer” is, Tutt insisted that he is “a buddy of mine from college” who “doesn’t even practice law.”

In the phone call with Tutt, Shaw remained defiant and insisted that he separate his conflict with ACP executives Al-Din and Pettis from that with Cohen and Ives.

Even as Tutt attempted to help Shaw, the group of conspirators denigrated their allies. Shaw said that talking to Tutt is like talking to Gargamel, the villain from the Smurfs children’s show, while Guttierez called Bodayle a “little wimpier.” The two then agree that Bree Barry is “a little bit of a loose cannon” and “individualistic.”

Shaw, worried that he and Tutt will be unable to negotiate their way out of conflict with Cohen and Ives, became audibly distressed by his plot’s failure and began to beg for divine intervention.

“I think Daniel Tutt is in for a rude awakening. I don’t think they [Cohen and Ives] really want to talk to me,” Shaw concluded.

“Cross your fingers though,” interrupted Gutteierez.

“Oh God!” Shaw prayed. “If I can get out of this one. Heavenly Father, oh Mother. I’ll join the Christian church if I can get out of this one. Oh God!”

Earlier in the meeting, Shaw implied that he is planning to blackmail the PSL, which he belonged to until 2018, when he was expelled.

“You know the PSL leadership is sitting back like ‘ah, we hope Danny doesn’t come for us next.’ You better toss me some bone, motherfuckers,” Shaw chides. “I’ll expose the shit out of those petit-bourgeois fools.”

Nonetheless, Shaw indicated that he was pleased that journalist Ben Norton called to congratulate him for his attack against the ACP, Cohen, and Ives.

Norton was fired in 2021 from The Grayzone for violations of his contract and then seized the Moderate Rebels podcast and its associated Patreon page from Grayzone editor and podcast co-host Max Blumenthal, who described Norton as a “criminal mind.” Now relocated to China, Norton co-founded the Geopolitical Economy Report website.

A history of lies

Shaw has a history of misrepresenting his experience on the ground in Haiti to advance his career. He has often claimed to have interviewed “thousands” of Haitians, whom he depicts as having a clear and unified position against Jimmy Cherizier.

In a March 7, 2024 interview with the Dominican outlet VISIONRDN entitled “Terrible gringo reveals – what Barbecue told him in Haiti”, the interviewer repeatedly and incorrectly stated as fact that Shaw had met and interviewed Cherizier, but Shaw did not correct the misinformation and stated that Cherizier was a “mercenary” and “death squad” leader.

Shaw’s attacks are the latest in a broader campaign of incitement against Cohen and Ives, a phenomenon that might be described as “Barbecue Derangement Syndrome.”

In the recording, Shaw boasts that he is “the principal voice of the anti-gang perspective,” a position which aligns with the U.S. State Department’s calls to “hunt down” Cherizier, which the French and Canadian governments also support.

In recent months, Shaw has platformed two of the most vociferous racialist and counterrevolutionary Haitian voices – Jean Saint-Vil aka Jafrikayiti and Dahoud André – who have dedicated themselves to smearing Cohen, Ives, and Haiti Liberté for their reporting and analysis on Haiti’s national liberation struggle.

The ACP was not the only organization deceived by Shaw. Numerous English and Spanish-language publications and channels have published his tirades too, including The Jimmy Dore Show, The Grayzone, Venezuelan-state media outlet TeleSUR, Truthout, NACLA, and the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), among others.

Even as Shaw’s plot spirals out of control, he insisted he will do it again.

“Won’t be making any mistake like that in the next campaign,” Shaw says. “Nothing like a mistake to teach you in life.”

A COINTELPRO operation?

However amateurish, Shaw’s libelous smear campaign bears the hallmarks of a COINTELPRO operation, which U.S. intelligence agencies have long used to disrupt parties and organizations that they see as a threat.

It is notable that Shaw alleged that Cohen, Ives, Al-Din, and Pettis disparaged both the PSL and BAP, which is not only false but a typical COINTELPRO tactic to create or exacerbate acrimony between like-minded groups.

Whether or not U.S. intelligences agencies were involved in Shaw’s ill-conceived and sloppily executed attempt to sabotage the ACP from within and smear Ives and Cohen, the false accusations objectively aim to accomplish the same thing as any COINTELPRO operation: sow division, confusion, fear, and distrust. It is a cautionary tale of how progressive, anti-imperialist organizations and media outlets can be bamboozled by malicious actors that exploit good faith or naivete to advance a nefarious, imperialist agenda.

“In a Communist Party as young as ours, and which shows so much potential, wreckers and infiltrators like Shaw and Molera are to be expected,” said the ACP’s Chairman Haz Al-Din. “However, after their plot to subvert our Party’s constitution and depose me failed, their latest attempt to defame the Party has massively backfired, and our Party has emerged out of this stronger than ever.”

“Shaw has exposed his duplicitous and bankrupt moral character for the entire world to see,” Al-Din concluded. “Meanwhile, we will move forward with even greater resolve to meet the challenges of forming a united and independent party of the American working class.”