I came across Leo C. Donofrio first in connection with his Obama and McCain eligibility lawsuit in New Jersey, Donofrio v. Wells. My short biographical page on him was published in December of 2008; there would be many more articles to follow. Donofrio is known famously, or perhaps infamously, as the inventor of a new meaning for the constitutional term “natural born citizen,” the proposition that US Presidents must be born in the country to two citizen parents.
Donofrio showed a conspiracist bent right from the first with his novel claim that US President Chester A. Arthur conspired to keep his father’s naturalization status (Irish) a secret by lying about his age and burning his papers just before he died. In truth, his father’s nationality was known, but not widely discussed because that was before Donofrio came up with a theory where it mattered.
In addition to being a lawyer, a professional poker player and rock musician, Donofrio is also a filmmaker working under the pseudonym Jet Wintzer. To his credit is a film titled Towers, about a post apocalyptic world where most people have been destroyed by radiation from cell phone towers. Donofrio plays a survivor named “DJSpectacle” (photo at right by Carlos De Deios © Filminco Productions 2011). Donofrio’s other film credits include Colourfly (2012) and The Art of Forced Collaboration (2013).
Donofrio’s new film, NASA NOT SOUND, according to its YouTube trailer, promotes the claim that Moon landing video footage from NASA is fake because one can hear sounds allegedly transmitted through the vacuum.
I have never decided in my own mind whether Donofrio believes any of the stuff, or if he is just trying to prove how smart he is by fooling other people.
Read more:
- Fogbow biography of Leo Donofrio
- Leo Donofrio’s blog
- Jet Wintzer YouTube Channel
Hey Doc, I didn’t know if you saw Leo Donofrio’s new film trailer. He’s moved onto Moon Landing Truther:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW0NJsMu8kg
I posted about it over at Fogbow. 🙂
I’m not sure I know what you mean.
http://www.thefogbow.com/birther-claims-debunked1/birther-cast-and-crew/lawyers/leo-donofrio/
I believe he quit birthering when he and The Pidgeon were sanctioned $128k by the Court.
How is Donofrio connected to the Moon Landing hoax video? I don’t see his name on it.
A link to a photo of “Jet Wintzer” aka Leo Donofrio.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4569683/
Leo Donofrio is Jet Wintzer. (he’s also ‘Burnweed’ and ‘Paraclete’, but that’s another story.)
The Moon Landing Truther Film I linked is by him. In the description box of the video: “Written, researched and presented by award winning filmmaker Jet Wintzer (Best Sci Fi Feature 2012 Philadelphia Independent Film Festival; Best Feature 2012 FLICKERS RI Int. Horror Film Festival: Best Feature 2012 US Super 8 Film & DV Fest)”
The music score is by Schizo Fun Addict. That’s Leo’s band.
You can see Leo defending his film in the comments at YouTube.
His prior film, Towers, won some awards. It was online (might still be), but I didn’t watch it. The trailer was kinda weird for me.
http://vimeo.com/71848583
And then there was his short film: The Art of Forced Collaboration.
http://nt.gmnews.com/news/2013-02-13/Front_Page/Filmmaker_to_take_part_in_film_festival_at_Rutgers.html
And other stuff. He has an entry at imdb:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4569683/
No big deal. I just found it weird that he’s gone from birther to moon landing hoaxer. :/
Hey thanks. This will make a good story, I think.
Well this is fun. Leo/Jet:
“Jet Wintzer
4 hours ago
General reply to most of your comments all at once: you are all way off base on facts. First, the research in the full film is impeccable. Both inside and outside of ship are in vacuum. No possible mics inside of ship. All mics are accounted for. Comm Cables were stowed along with extra headset. And you can hear the suit fan when clank happens after Irwin throws cord at ship. Also, anyone claiming there is an atmosphere on the moon capable of throwing sound should take that up with NASA who we document as stating that is impossible on moon. That’s science. Anyone who argues there is an atmosphere on the moon capable of transmitting sound is a crackpot. Sorry. But not even NASA will claim that, and, in fact, has published statements otherwise, which we feature in film. Additionally, this is a feature length film. You have seen a 3 minute trailer. Nobody has offered anything we don’t already cover like a blanket with science. Our film is a gamechanger. We contacted scientists to ask for official refutation. No scientist was willing to officially deny our findings either on or off the record. But if anyone comes up with something intriguing, we will address it. So far, nobody here has said anything we haven’t covered in film. Thanks to all for commenting, bad or good. This film is going to wreck history.”
Yep! he’s gonna “wreck history”!
Does Donofrio not know that sound travels through many different solid mediums, and that when introduced to atmosphere, sound waves travel from the original medium into the air? For example, if an astronaut hits a hammer against a moon rock, vibrations produced by that action travel through the hammer to his hand, and into his space suit at 768 miles an hour. Since the suit contains an atmosphere, the sound waves can then travel to the astronaut’s ear or mic.
I recall television programs where discussions of producers of documentaries like “The World at War” brushed aside the ethical reasons for not adding sound effects to what was basically all silent film footage of World 2, (doors slamming, gunshots, sirens, bombs, crowd noise, marching, etc.) by saying that omitting such generic sounds was jarringly distracting and ironically, itself, created an unreal quality that would decrease most viewers belief in the authentic historical nature of the scenes being shown.
I can’t imagine that NASA would have hesitated to add such simple effects as hammer blows etc. I recall also many adults expressing extended surprise that the Challenger explosion did so much damage because there was no loud explosion sound effect accompanying the news coverage on TV.
And suddenly I remember a time when The History Channel was all about historical programming. I didn’t realize how good I had it, until it was gone…
I resemble that remark.
I can. I can thoroughly imagine NASA not tarting up historical footage, at least when presented as such. In fact, it would completely boggle my mind if I discovered they were adding random foley work because that was how it was “supposed” to sound.
If I remember right, Leo was a “two-US-parents-required” birther—but he changed his view on Obama’s place of birth promptly after the Hawaii birth notices were shown. From that point on, he said that the “Obama was born in Kenya” and “he wasn’t born in Hawaii” claims were crazy.
A “Wild West Tech” marathon was an awesome way to spend an afternoon.
Give me a Carradine talking about historically accurate cowboy stuff, and I’m a happy camper. Keith was the better shot on that show too. I say this because when you test fired guns, they always showed what he was shooting at, when David took over, you never saw the targets he was supposedly shooting.
I admit I did get rather tired of seeing “Machines at War” after about the 407th gazillion repeat.
No one ever argued that Leo is not creative.
In all respects.
Leo is too quick to draw conclusions. He leaps to conclusions with full faith in them and then goes about to substantiate them, -even though they are not soundly based, -as was the case with his misinterpretation of what Vattel wrote. I’ve had to debunk it in a hundred different ways (not literally).
Undoubtedly there is a simple fundamental flaw in his No Sound scenario of fakeness but he failed to grasp it, and without it everything about his conclusions looks legitimate. One has to wonder who vetted the source video that he “exposed”.
Just as there are image fakers who use Photoshop, there are also audio fakers who can add sound anywhere in any video and it seems original. But it isn’t.
The mind reels.
Mr. Nash,
You seem to be indicating that the audio Leo aka Jet aka the Paraclete used was not the original NASA version, but, if it had been, his analysis would have been sufficient to demonstrate his claim. This is patently ridiculous nonsense. Leo did nothing to establish that his interpretation led to a better explanation of all of the pertinent evidence than any alternative. This approach is conspiracy theory 101 (something you yourself are well acquainted with) and shows the opposite of an objective, scientific mindset. I would also point out that Leo’s misunderstanding of Vattel does not even come close to your own.