# TahaGate: the timeline connecting Taha Saleh to Porterville First Canonical URL: https://www.tahagate.com/ Taha Saleh is a candidate for Porterville. Evidence that proves Taha is running a deceptive, divisive smear campaign that has hurt Main Street. Not a leader. An evil divider. ## Opening He campaigns as the peacemaker. The record shows a coordinated smear. For months, an anonymous Facebook page called Porterville First has been used to smear Greg Meister—Taha Saleh’s opponent—and to divide the community with hate. It does not stop with Meister. It smears anyone around him, his allies and supporters, and has targeted even elected official's kids and family. The page’s purpose is simple: paint Meister as hateful, racist, and cruel, while Saleh stands apart as the unifier. His slogan is “One Porterville.” It's deceptive. We've all seen the Facebook page. We've seen the childish emojis and namecalling, the timewasting AI slop poems, and the same few people that always flock to comment, like, and promote these posts. They're not interested in the truth. They're interested in the drama. They're interested in the hate. They're interested in the division. They regularly claim to have “receipts.” What they post is a sliver of information: a line from a document, a few second of a video, cut free of the context that would let anyone judge it. Ask for the rest of the record and they refuse to produce it. Ask a question, and they dismiss you with “do your research.” They've even gone as far as to create fake records to support their claims. It's a disgrace. The files on this site show something else. That vicious, divisive page was not a stray activist account. **It was part of a campaign strategy**: Saleh requested Meister’s filings, received them, called them “perfect,” and about an hour later those records were on Porterville First—among the very first posts after the page was created. He runs it with others as a coordinated plan to influence an election. He hopes that enough hate will get him elected. This isn't some rumor. It is a proveable documented sequence—City emails and screenshots taken at the time. ## Timeline - **March 19:** Saleh requests campaign statements and prioritizes Greg Meister’s records. - **March 22:** Porterville First appears. - **March 24, 1:50 p.m.:** The City sends the requested records to Saleh. - **March 24, 8:18 p.m.:** Saleh replies, “This is perfect.” - **About 9:21 p.m.:** Porterville First publishes material from Meister’s campaign statement. ### March 19, 2026 — Saleh requests the records At 12:44 p.m. on March 19, Saleh contacted the Porterville City Clerk’s Office for past campaign-finance statements. At 4:26 p.m., after the City asked whose records he wanted, he requested filings for all City Council candidates from 2022 and 2024. At 4:52 p.m., he said whose records should come first: > “If time becomes an issue, we can prioritize the records for Greg Meister and Ed to start.” Exhibit: [email-redacted-no-metadata.pdf](https://www.tahagate.com/files/email-redacted-no-metadata.pdf) ### March 22, 2026 — Porterville First appears Three days after Saleh requested the records—and after he specifically prioritized Greg Meister—the Porterville First Facebook page appeared. Its first post is dated March 22. When the page first started, the Meister records were among the very first things it published. Exhibit: [FirstPost.jpg](https://www.tahagate.com/files/FirstPost.jpg) ### March 24, 2026 — Saleh receives Meister’s records At 1:50 p.m. on March 24, the City Clerk’s Office emailed Saleh the requested campaign-finance documents. At 8:18 p.m., Saleh replied: > “This is perfect, thank you so much!” Those messages are in the same email chain. ### About one hour later — the records appear on Porterville First A screenshot taken at 4:21 a.m. on March 25 shows Porterville First displaying information from Meister’s campaign statement. Facebook marked the post as seven hours old. That puts publication at about 9:21 p.m. on March 24—roughly one hour after Saleh wrote that the records were “perfect.” Within about an hour of Saleh praising the records he had received, those records were being used by Porterville First to attack a political figure whose filings he had specifically asked the City to prioritize. That timing is not speculation. It is in the files. They have deleted the original post, but reposted it the next day. Exhibits: - [IMG_3192.jpg](https://www.tahagate.com/files/IMG_3192.jpg) — original screenshot of the first post of them posting Taha's requested records (includes metadata timestamp) - [IMG_5160.jpg](https://www.tahagate.com/files/IMG_5160.jpg) — iPhone screenshot of showing the timestamp of the first post; this was the picture provided to the Council - [March25 Video.jpg](https://www.tahagate.com/files/March25%20Video.jpg) and [Facebook (1).mp4](https://www.tahagate.com/files/Facebook%20(1).mp4) — March 25 reel (still live) ## What the record shows The documents show that Saleh requested the records, prioritized Meister’s filings, received them, called them “perfect,” and that material from those records appeared on Porterville First about an hour later. The records do not, by themselves, determine who pressed publish or prove the group that controls the page. But they do raise an inescapable conclusion: Taha Saleh and the Porterville First page has been a campaign strategy since the beginning. To pretend that Taha is not part of what's been going on would be purposefully ignorant. The reality is that in a small city like Porterville, there's not that many independent actors that could have pulled this off. We all know the people who have been involved in Taha's divide-and-conquer faction, and we all know that Taha is at the center of it. It's time to face the facts. Until they do, Porterville residents will have to determine for themselves if this is the kind of leader they want to represent them. ## Why it matters That is not a peacemaker. That is not a leader. Porterville First does not invite debate. It beleaguers and silences anyone who dissents. It smears people. It blocks those who ask questions. It acts as an enforcer of its own “truth.” Taha Saleh is the divider. He is running a dirty campaign. As a Chamber of Commerce board member—alongside Scott Bowler, a candidate in another district—he has used the Chamber to launch his political campaign. Taha and his campaign team used the Chamber to intimidate businesses on Main Street. To destroy long freindships. The Chamber's Board has had nonstop resignations. Businesses are pulling their membership. And he's working with outgoing Councilmember Raymond Beltran in a bid for power that treats disagreement as something to crush. They bully. They intimidate. They call it unity. It is Evil. Porterville deserves better.