Harding Institute and Marin Eisenstadt not real

Confirmed.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months.

In the comments at Hot Air, Debbie Schlussel claims to know the hoaxer, who has a very political background.

In real life, Eitan Gorlin is a former Orthodox Jew, whom I once knew and who worked for then-Congressman Jack Kemp as an intern. He became a left-winger and made a horridly boring and despicable anti-Israel movie that went up in smoke.

On the hoax, the guy who outed him noted that Eitan took part of my own bio for his “Martin Eisenstadt” character. I kept getting these e-mails from people touting Eisenstadt and the e-mails were always slightly weird and a little off-kilter, so I never fell for the tips, repeated them on my site, or included them on my blogroll, which they kept asking me to do. They told me that Jeffrey Hart was supporting Obama, which was the first hint they were fakes.

I thought the guy looked like and sounded like Eitan when, last night, I saw the videos they made, including one where “Eisenstadt” (Gorlin) claimed he saw Michelle Malkin having an affair with John McCain behind close doors. As if. . . . Puh-leeze. Democratic Underground bought into that, though.

Michelle did cite Eisenstadt’s comments on Paris Hilton, though.

The strangest thing, though, is that we never heard from the McCain campaign throughout the entire year of this non-person creation claiming he is a McCain advisor. Never a mention that, “Hey, we don’t have an advisor by that name.”

UPDATE

"Martin Eisenstadt" also was interviewed by a less-than-convinced host on Breitbart TV.