FROM: David Brock, Founder, Correct The Record
TO: Members of the Press
DATE: September 26, 2016
CORRECT THE RECORD’S GUIDE TO SPOTTING DONALD TRUMP’S DEBATE LIES
TRUMP IS A SERIAL LIAR. DON’T LET HIM GET AWAY WITH IT.
Donald Trump Is A Serial Liar
Tonight, Donald Trump will take his campaign of lies to its biggest stage yet: the presidential debate.
Reporters can’t let him get away with it.
Over the past fifteen months, Trump has waged a one-man war on the truth. For Trump, lying is not just about simply spouting inaccuracies. It is literally who he is. His businesses, his biography, his policy proposals, his campaign rhetoric—they are all based on lies. Trump’s entire public persona for the past five decades is a carefully woven fiction.
This pattern of deception goes far beyond simply saying inaccurate statements. It is an all-out assault on the fact-based politics that have been the cornerstone of modern American politics. Trump’s lies are literally off the charts. PolitiFact has rated 70 percent of Trump’s statements that they fact checked lies. The previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, received a 42 percent false rating—a 28 percent difference. Last week alone, Trump told at least 83 lies.
This level of mendacity is unprecedented in American politics and poses a unique challenge to political journalists covering the first presidential debate. Already, the Republican nominee is spreading lies in an attempt to influence and neutralize any fact checking by the debate moderators. Trump has falsely attacked moderator Lester Holt as a Democrat (Holt has been a registered Republican since 2003) and insisted Holt should not “succumb to pressure” to fact-check during the debate.
Even without this pressure from the Trump campaign, the volume, breadth and ubiquity of Trump’s falsehoods demands a historic commitment to fact checking from media outlets. Trump’s unprecedented lying must be met with an unparalleled effort from reporters to debunk Trump’s many falsehoods. The current standard—where fact checkers and reporters will simply check the most obvious and egregious lies—leaves many of Trump’s more bizarre lies unexamined. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has written Trump’s “lies are constant, coming in steady torrent, and are never acknowledged, simply repeated […] keep[ing] the news media flummoxed, unable to believe, or at least say openly, that the candidate of a major party lies that much.”
It’s time to acknowledge that Trump does lie “that much”—and hold him accountable for it.
How to Identify Trump’s Lies
There are five broad categories that help demonstrate how Trump lies and what he commonly lies about. First, Trump constantly lies about his own biography. Second, he deflects criticism by criticizing his opponents of doing the same thing, only worse. Third, Trump has a penchant for inventing imaginary characters and conversations that validate his beliefs. Fourth, Trump uses easily identifiable rhetorical “tells” whenever he lies. Finally, Trump insists on making outlandish and bizarre claims without evidence or supporting information—he cannot answer, “How?”
Myths
Trump is a master mythmaker. For decades, Trump has built a specific image of himself as a 21st Century Daddy Warbucks who conquered Manhattan real estate yet remains a champion of middle class Americans. The truth? Trump depended on millions from his father to launch his business and is likely worth billions of dollars less than he claims—a subject he’s especially sensitive about. Trump has even lied about the height of Trump Tower. We usually trust politicians to tell the broad outlines of their own personal narrative—but in this case, reporters should be on the lookout for Trump’s fictitious mythmaking.
I Know You Are, But What Am I?
With little facts or specific proposals to rely on, projection is one of Trump’s go-to rhetorical strategies. Trump has a tendency to respond to every serious criticism with ‘I know you are, but what am I?’ After Hillary Clinton delivered her speech on the alt-right, Trump accused her of being a “bigot.” During the rollout of his widely-panned maternity leave plan, Trump said that Hillary Clinton had no child care plan—an outright falsehood. Projection is a clear sign that Trump is both lying and desperately looking for a way to muddy the waters.
Imaginary Friends
Decades ago, Trump invented his own spokesman “John Barron” and then impersonated him for years. Old habits die hard. Throughout his presidential bid, Trump has created a whole coterie of characters who supposedly provide him with information, shower him with compliments and give him updates about subjects as diverse as the California drought and ISIS.
One of the most troubling examples of Trump’s wayward imagination occurred earlier this year when Trump invented an ISIS advisor. On January 21, Trump claimed that a “very good soldier” told him that ISIS’ equipment was superior to the United States. On February 1, he told the same story, but this time the story featured his friend’s son who had served two tours. Other times, he notes that doesn’t know if the soldier is injured—while in some stories, he’s still in the Middle East.
Tells
Trump also has a few very simple “tells” when he lies. Trump often makes claims that are so outrageous and disingenuous that he’ll literally ask his audience to suspend their disbelief or bear with him. “Believe me,” “that I can tell you” and “everybody is saying” are all tell-tale signs that what’s coming next—or what immediately preceded—is a complete falsehood.
How?
In Trump’s world, he is not only the smartest—he has a superhuman ability to single-handedly make Mexico build the wall, defeat ISIS, deport 11 million people, implement racial profiling and fix the economy. Trump has taken credit for popularizing the word “rigged,” identifying the California drought as a hoax and making polling a major factor in presidential campaigns. Trump doesn’t offer any real explanations of his past achievements or future plans, he just asks us to “believe” him. Tonight, it’s critical to remember that despite his bluster, Trump doesn’t have superhuman powers—and simply repeating the same falsehoods will never make any of his claims true. By simply asking “how?” Trump’s biggest boasts fall apart.
Conclusion
As The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold has shown in his dogged reporting on the Trump Foundation, Trump’s most basic claims often fall apart under scrutiny. Tonight, reporters must look at the stories Trump tells about himself very skeptically. Since launching his presidential campaign (and before) Trump has literally lied about his own biography, made up campaign validators and said that as president, he can do the impossible. Trump tells a dizzying number of lies and displays a disturbing pattern of deceit and deception. Instead of letting Trump get away with it, tonight journalists must counter Trump’s falsehoods with the most powerful tool they have: the truth.
[gview file=”http://correctrecord.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Correct-The-Record-Debate-Lies-Memo.pdf”]
]]>Washington, D.C.—Today, Correct The Record Founder David Brock released the following statement calling on Donald Trump to immediately shut down the Trump Foundation:
“The Trump Foundation is a morally bankrupt, self-aggrandizing scam and must be immediately shut down,” said David Brock, Founder of Correct The Record. “For years, Donald Trump has used his Foundation as an excuse to take other people’s money and indulge his endless vanity, settle legal disputes and make an illegal campaign donation. Trump is literally funneling money that could be used for actual charity work to buy portraits of himself, promote himself and advance a blatantly self-serving political agenda. Like Trump University and the Trump Institute, the Trump Foundation is just another scam to defraud people and enrich Donald Trump. Its very existence is a stinging insult to every charity in America that is working hard to aid communities across the country. The Trump Foundation must be immediately shut down.”
The Trump Foundation’s Record of Corruption
Trump Has Used Foundation Funds for Political Purposes
Donald Trump’s foundation made a $25,000 donation to a political organization supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who at the time was weighing whether to bring a lawsuit against Trump University.
And in 2013, the Trump Foundation donated $25,000 to a political organization supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi—an action the foundation is prohibited from taking, and which it failed to report on its disclosures. The Trump campaign blamed this failure on clerical mistakes, but legal experts are sounding the alarm because at the time Bondi was reviewing complaints surrounding the businessman’s controversial Trump University project.
Bondi later declined to pursue legal action against Trump University.
The donation came from one of Trump’s charities six days after Bondi’s then-spokeswoman told a reporter their office was ‘currently reviewing the allegations’ against Trump University in a class action lawsuit in New York, according to internal emails that were among more than 8,000 pages of documents originally requested by The Orlando Sentinel and also obtained by CNN. Florida never pursued any investigation or action against Trump or his university.
Trump had to pay a $2,500 fine for the illegal political contribution from his charitable foundation.
Donald Trump paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty this year, an official at Trump’s company said, after it was revealed that Trump’s charitable foundation had violated tax laws by giving a political contribution to a campaign group connected to Florida’s attorney general. The improper donation, a $25,000 gift from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, was made in 2013. At the time, Attorney General Pam Bondi was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. She decided not to pursue the case.
Donald Trump’s charitable foundation donated $100,000 to right-wing group Citizens United, helping to fund the group’s lawsuit against New York AG, Eric Schneiderman, in the midst of Schneiderman’s fraud suit against Trump University.
Donald Trump’s charitable foundation gave $100,000 in 2014 to a conservative activist group that was used to help finance a federal lawsuit against New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — the same public official who was suing the real estate mogul for fraud over the operations of Trump University. The size and timing of the donation to the Citizens United Foundation, an arm of the sprawling conservative network run by David Bossie, who is now Trump’s deputy campaign manager, could raise fresh questions about whether Trump has used his tax-exempt charity to further political and personal causes… A review of tax returns filed by the Trump Foundation shows that the 2014 donation to Bossie’s Citizens United Foundation was by far the largest it gave to any organization that year, substantially exceeding its contributions to more traditional charities.
Donald Trump used his charitable foundation’s money to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservative political groups since he began considering running for president.
But the story of his charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, illustrates a different side of Trump. Donors give money to the foundation; the billionaire scratches their backs and uses their money to burnish his ego and, more recently, his political reputation. Initially, the charitable foundation gave mostly to nonpolitical causes. But since 2010, when Trump began considering a run for president as a Republican, his foundation has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservative political groups, including the Citizens United Foundation, the Iowa-based Family Leader Foundation and Liberty Central, the advocacy group led by Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Trump Has Used Foundation Funds to Benefit His For-Profit Business
Donald Trump made one of his largest donations apparently to settle a lawsuit.
In many cases, the Trump foundation’s donations appear to have been spurred by one-off encounters in Trump’s own life. For instance, the fifth-biggest donation in the Trump Foundation’s recent history — $158,000, in 2012 — seems to have been used to settle a lawsuit against one of Trump’s golf courses. A man named Martin Greenberg had sued, claiming a mistake at the course cost him a huge hole-in-one prize. On the day the parties told a court their suit was settled, Trump’s Foundation sent Greenberg’s foundation a check.
Donald Trump used $258,000 from the Trump Foundation to settle lawsuits involving Trump’s for-profit businesses.
Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses, according to interviews and a review of legal documents. Those cases, which together used $258,000 from Trump’s charity, were among four newly documented expenditures in which Trump may have violated laws against ‘self-dealing’ — which prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses.
The Trump Foundation made a $5,000 donation to purchase ad space that was used to promote Donald Trump’s hotels.
In another instance, from 2013, the Trump Foundation made a $5,000 donation to the D.C. Preservation League, according to the group and tax filings. That nonprofit’s support has been helpful for Trump as he has turned the historic Old Post Office Pavilion on Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue NW into a luxury hotel. The Trump Foundation’s donation to that group bought a ‘sponsorship,’ which included advertising space in the programs for three big events that drew Washington’s real estate elite. The ads did not mention the foundation or anything related to charity. Instead, they promoted Trump’s hotels, with glamorous photos and a phone number to call to make a reservation. ‘The foundation wrote a check that essentially bought advertising for Trump hotels?’ asked John Edie, the longtime general counsel for the Council on Foundations, when a Post reporter described this arrangement. ‘That’s not charity.’
Trump Has Used Foundation Funds on Luxury Items for Himself
Donald Trump spent $20,000 of Trump Foundation money earmarked for charitable purposes to buy a six foot tall painting of himself.
In two cases, he has used money from his charity to buy himself a gift. In one of those cases — not previously reported — Trump spent $20,000 of money earmarked for charitable purposes to buy a six-foot-tall painting of himself.
Donald Trump spent $10,000 of Trump Foundation money to purchase a second painting of himself.
The last of the four newly documented expenditures involves the second painting of Trump, which he bought with charity money. It happened in 2014, during a gala at Mar-a-Lago that raised money for Unicorn Children’s Foundation — a Florida charity that helps children with developmental and learning disorders. The gala’s main event was a concert by Jon Secada. But there was also an auction of paintings by Havi Schanz, a Miami Beach-based artist. One was of Marilyn Monroe. The other was a four foot-tall portrait of Trump: a younger-looking, mid-’90s Trump, painted in acrylic on top of an old architectural drawing. Trump bought it for $10,000…A few days later, the charity said, a check came from the Trump Foundation. Trump himself gave nothing, according to Sharon Alexander, the executive director of the charity.
Donald Trump used his charitable foundation’s money to buy himself a Tim Tebow-signed football helmet.
Did Donald Trump violate IRS rules, by using a charity’s money to buy himself a signed football helmet? Four years ago, at a charity fundraiser in Palm Beach, Donald Trump got into a bidding war at the evening’s live auction. The items up for sale: A Denver Broncos helmet, autographed by then-star quarterback Tim Tebow, and a Tebow jersey. Trump won, eventually, with a bid of $12,000. Afterward, he posed with the helmet. His purchase made gossip-column news: a flourish of generosity, by a mogul with money to burn. ‘The Donald giveth, and The Donald payeth,’ wrote the Palm Beach Daily News. ‘Blessed be the name of The Donald.’ But Trump didn’t actually pay with his own money. Instead, the Susan G. Komen organization — the breast-cancer nonprofit that hosted the party — got a $12,000 payment from another nonprofit, the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
Donald Trump used his foundation to bid on a luxury vacation to Paris.
At a glittering 2008 gala hosted by Gucci to benefit Madonna’s charity, Donald Trump bid more than $100,000 for a trip to Paris, earning him press from New York to London. But most of the money he used wasn’t his. It came from his foundation, to which he had donated just $30,000 that year…With Trump’s winning bid on the vacation, most of the money almost certainly did not come from Trump himself. Tax records from his foundation show that in the preceding years, the foundation had spent virtually all of its money each year. Then in, 2008 — the year Trump won the vacation — he donated $30,000 to his foundation. (The year before, Trump also donated just $30,000.) The largest donor in 2008 was the Willard T.C. Johnson Foundation, which gave $250,000 to the Trump Foundation.
Trump Foundation Funds Come from People Other Than Trump
Washington Post Headline: “How Donald Trump retooled his charity to spend other people’s money.” [Washington Post, 9/10/16]
Nearly all of the Trump Foundation’s “money comes from people other than Trump.”
The Donald J. Trump Foundation is not like other charities. An investigation of the foundation — including examinations of 17 years of tax filings and interviews with more than 200 individuals or groups listed as donors or beneficiaries — found that it collects and spends money in a very unusual manner. For one thing, nearly all of its money comes from people other than Trump. In tax records, the last gift from Trump was in 2008. Since then, all of the donations have been other people’s money — an arrangement that experts say is almost unheard of for a family foundation.
Donald Trump hasn’t donated to his own foundation since 2008.
In the 15 years prior to the veterans donation, Trump promised to donate earnings from a wide variety of his moneymaking enterprises: ‘The Apprentice.’ Trump Vodka. Trump University. A book. Another book. If he had honored all those pledges, Trump’s gifts to charity would have topped $8.5 million. But in the 15 years prior to the veterans’ gift, public records show that Trump donated about $2.8 million through a foundation set up to give his money away — less than a third of the pledged amount — and nothing since 2009. Records show Trump has given nothing to his foundation since 2008.
Nothing is below Donald Trump, including paying Kathleen Willey’s mortgage so she could ‘hit the road and start speaking out on Hillary. It is no surprise that this serial liar is willing to pay for the re-peddling of these unfounded, already-discredited claims. The media needs to ask: Who else is Trump paying? And, if Trump is willing to stoop to the equivalent of bribes to propagate lies against the Clintons, where else is the biggest liar in the history of American politics willing to go?
Donald Trump has been telegraphing for months that he would engage in these smut peddling tactics, and if you follow this ‘story,’ you see a new and concerning alliance has formed during the Republican primary to help make Trump the next President of the United States. On Day One, this ‘story’ appears in Trump’s favorite outlet, the National Enquirer, which sought to discredit at least five of Trump’s opponents in the primary; Day Two, a version appears in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal; Day Three, a new version appears in Murdoch’s tabloid, the New York Post. This morning, Trump mimicked the Post’s characterization of this ‘story’ as a ‘bombshell’ on Murdoch’s Fox News, and Donald Trump, Jr. retweeted the Journal piece.
“Trump and his right- wing backers are desperate. They are pushing tabloid trash in order to distract from the fact that Trump thinks his tax returns are ‘none of your business,’ wants to ban Muslims from our country and thinks women who exercise the right to abortion should be punished. No one should be surprised that Republicans are, yet again, descending into the gutter to dodge the critical issues at stake in this election.
Trump supporter Ron Kessler included the same rumor in his book.
The National Enquirer also published the rumor.
Washington Post review said Kessler’s 2009 book was “National Enquirer-style gossip” that was “dangerous.”
What is truly dangerous is the kind of National Enquirer-style gossip in Kessler’s book. In the future, without ‘trust and confidence’ in their agents, presidents will want to keep them at a distance, out of spying range — and out of safety range, when split seconds may count. And with President Obama, such concerns may be especially acute. ‘Once Obama became president,’ Kessler says, ‘the Secret Service experienced a 400 percent increase in the number of threats against the president, in comparison with President Bush.’ Two weeks ago, outside an Obama town hall meeting in Maryland, a man held a sign reading ‘Death to Obama’ and ‘Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids.’
Kessler falsely reported that “Obama attended hate America sermon.”
As USA Today reported in 2007:
NewsMax has now posted a ‘clarification’ that says its reporter can’t give a specific date of when this was supposed to have happened… The story that’s at the center of the storm today is this one from Ronald Kessler at the conservative-oriented NewsMax.com. ‘Obama attended hate America sermon,’ it’s headlined. Kessler bases that conclusion on a story that NewsMax posted last August. Freelance journalist Jim Davis wrote then that he attended a July 22, 2007 service at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, that Obama was there too… As we reported this morning, the Obama campaign said the senator was not present at the July 22 service. A few minutes ago, Kessler told us by telephone that ‘the NewsMax editors have talked with Jim Davis’ and ‘he might have been wrong about the date.’ Davis, Kessler added, ‘says he could have been wrong about the date, but it definitely happened.’ Kessler added that he’s confident about the rest of Davis’ reporting because ‘I was impressed by the details he had.’ Asked if getting the date wrong isn’t something that would raise questions about the rest of a reporter’s work, Kessler said no.
Kessler said Hillary triggered Vince Foster’s suicide.
[My] book, ‘The Secrets of the FBI,’ reveals for the first time what triggered Vince Foster’s suicide. He was the deputy White House counsel under Bill Clinton. About a week before, he had a meeting with Hillary Clinton in the White House in front of a lot of other White House aides, and the FBI found that Hillary totally humiliated him in front of all these aides – called him ‘just a small-town hick lawyer’ ‘you’ll never make it in the bigtime, because you disagree with some legal opinion that he’d given.’ Well, after that, his behavior went downhill. He became very withdrawn, he would break into tears easily, and a week later he committed suicide. So the FBI concluded that the death was triggered by this meeting with Hillary Clinton.
This week, the Enquirer resurfaced Kessler’s old allegations of infidelity with McMahon. “Bill first met busty, blond socialite Julie in 1998 through her father, Michigan millionaire Joel Tauber. Bill started pursuing her after Hillary was elected to the Senate. A source claimed: ‘they even slept in Hillary’s bed.’ Known as the Energizer, she would occasionally reward Bill’s protection team with cookies during visits!”
Washington Post headline: “The very cozy relationship between Donald Trump and the National Enquirer.”
New York Magazine: “Donald Trump’s Alliance with the National Enquirer”
Trump and Enquirer CEO David Pecker have been friends for years. ‘They’re very close,’ said a source close to the Enquirer. In July 2013, Trump even tweeted that Pecker should become CEO of Time magazine, which at the time was being spun off from its corporate parent, Time Warner. ‘He’d make it exciting and win awards!’
Donald Trump repeatedly tweeted that David Pecker should be named CEO of Time magazine.
In 2013, Trump repeatedly tweeted support for David Pecker — the CEO of American Media, Inc., which publishes the Enquirer — to be named the new CEO of Time magazine.
Former Donald Trump allies like Fox News and NBC have been taking shots at the presidential hopeful since his bid began — but he has at least one staunch media ally. Industry insiders tell us Trump is ‘very close’ with David Pecker, head of The National Enquirer and CEO and chairman of American Media, which means the outlet is unlikely to dig too deeply into his personal life as he campaigns. This is an about-face for the Enquirer, which broke scandals that spectacularly ended the presidential hopes of John Edwards and Gary Hart, among others. ‘Trump is a big friend of Pecker,’ says our insider. ‘So no John Edwards-type investigations.’ Our source says that with Trump ‘protected’ by the tabloid, ‘Some of the staff are furious. Trump’s such fertile ground, and it drives them crazy to not only be staying away from it, but running puff pieces for him.’
Since August 2015, Donald Trump has served as a contributor to the Enquire penning Op-eds.
Trump became a National Enquirer contributor in August, writing an op-ed on his greatness. (It would not be the last time the Enquirer would bear his byline.) ‘I am the only one who can make America great again!’ Trump penned. ‘And, on a personal note, my wife, Melania, would make a terrific first lady!’
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has been leading in the polls for months, but he’s just received his first endorsement from a major publication – the infamous tabloid The National Enquirer. … ‘Trump Must Be President,’ blasts a headline from within the Enquirer’s pages, which includes a list of reasons why the real the estate mogul should be elected, including: ’He will chase down illegal immigrants and toss out the criminals who came streaming through our open borders.’ That particular statement is ironic, considering the fact that the Enquirer recently published a racially insensitive article about one of its reporters dressing as a ‘terrorist’ and crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, in their estimation damning evidence of how porous it is. This appears to be the first time The National Enquirer has ever endorsed a candidate for president. MSNBC reached out to the tabloid’s parent company for comment about why the Enquirer decided to take the plunge with this year’s contest but has not heard back at this time.
National Enquirer Headline: “New poll: Donald Trump’s the one!”
National Enquirer Headline: “Donald Trump: The Man Behind The Legend!”
New York Daily News: “When it comes to Donald Trump, tabloid won’t Enquire too deeply”
The Washington Post’s Callum Borchers:
Although the tabloid has printed sensational claims about other candidates […] Trump has been conspicuously spared this treatment.” “At a minimum, the Enquirer’s unsubstantiated story about multiple Cruz affairs is the work of a publication with an obvious rooting interest in the election. Although the tabloid has printed sensational claims about other candidates — Jeb Bush had a cocaine habit in the 1980s; Hillary Clinton is on her death bed; Ben Carson crippled surgical patients for life — Trump has been conspicuously spared this treatment.
The Clinton Global Initiative, which arranges donations to help solve the world’s problems, set up a financial commitment that benefited a for-profit company part-owned by people with ties to the Clintons, including a current and a former Democratic official and a close friend of former President Bill Clinton. […] Energy Pioneer Solutions was founded in 2009 by Scott Kleeb, a Democrat who twice ran for Congress from Nebraska. An internal document from that year showed it as owned 29% by Mr. Kleeb; 29% by Jane Eckert, the owner of an art gallery in Pine Plains, N.Y.; and 29% by Julie Tauber McMahon of Chappaqua, N.Y., a close friend of Mr. Clinton, who also lives in Chappaqua.
The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp.
Today, the New York Post connects the alleged affair with the Clinton Foundation donation.
Bill Clinton’s foundation doled out $2 million to a power company partly owned by a wealthy blond divorcée about whom questions have been raised as to whether she is the frequent visitor to his home nicknamed ‘Energizer.’ The ‘commitment’ to Julie Tauber McMahon’s firm from the Clinton Global Initiative was placed on its 2010 conference agenda at Clinton’s urging, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. […]McMahon, 54, is rumored to be the woman dubbed ‘Energizer’ by the Secret Service at the Clinton home because of her frequent visits, according to RadarOnline. Secret Service agents were even given special instructions to abandon usual protocol when the woman came by, according to journalist Ronald Kessler’s tell-all book, ‘The First Family Detail.’
The New York Post is owned by News Corp.
The New York Post endorsed Donald Trump in the GOP primary.
Trump is now an imperfect messenger carrying a vital message. But he reflects the best of ‘New York values’ — and offers the best hope for all Americans who rightly feel betrayed by the political class. He has the potential — the skills, the know-how, the values — to live up to his campaign slogan: to make America great again. For those reasons, The Post today endorses Donald Trump in the GOP primary.
Today, Donald Trump appears on Fox News to call the story a “bombshell.”
I think this is a bombshell and people have been talking about it for a long time.
Rupert Murdoch is the Executive Chairman of 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News.
Rupert Murdoch is Executive Chairman of News Corp.
Rupert Murdoch is Executive Chairman of News Corp, the largest news and information services provider in the English speaking world comprising leading newspapers in each of the US, Australia and the UK; integrated marketing services; digital real estate services; book publishing; digital education; as well as sports programming and pay-TV distribution in Australia.
According to the Atlantic, Rupert Murdoch is backing Donald Trump.
Rupert Murdoch: YEA The hugely influential conservative mogul—owner of The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and the New York Post—suggested in March that the Republican Party coalesce around Trump:As predicted, Trump reaching out to make peace with Republican “establishment”. If he becomes inevitable party would be mad not to unify.
3/2/16: Rupert Murdoch tweeted the GOP would be “mad not to unify” around Donald Trump.
As predicted, Trump reaching out to make peace with Republican “establishment”. If he becomes inevitable party would be mad not to unify.
The Post, of course, is owned by Murdoch, once a vocal critic of Trump’s presidential campaign. The tabloid’s endorsement comes amid a thaw in tensions between Trump and Murdoch’s media empire. Trump and Murdoch have had several meetings and conversations in recent months, according to sources close to both men. Those discussions were brokered by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the owner and publisher of the New York Observer, the sources said. Related: New York Observer loses top reporter over Trump coverage Kushner, who helped write Trump’s speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference last month, encouraged Murdoch to have a dialogue with the Republican frontrunner. Over the course of these discussions, Murdoch has apparently come to see Trump not only as a serious candidate with potential, but also as the GOP’s inevitable nominee, the sources told CNNMoney.
CNN Money headline: “How Rupert Murdoch warmed up to Donald Trump’s candidacy.”
Guardian headline: “Donald Trump makes Rupert Murdoch dance to his tune.”
]]>Dear Senator Sanders,
I’m writing today to urge that you and your campaign immediately halt all negative campaigning against our party’s prospective candidate for the Presidency, Secretary Hillary Clinton.
After first pledging to wage a positive campaign for President, you and your campaign have for weeks now engaged in a relentlessly ugly barrage of false character attacks against Mrs. Clinton, including running negative TV advertising of the sort you promised you never would.
Following the Nevada caucuses, you had the opportunity to live up to the self-professed ideals of your own campaign by delivering an aspirational message of systemic change, but instead you chose to ramp up spurious negative attacks against the winner of those caucuses.
These attacks –- ranging from baseless insinuations that Mrs. Clinton is somehow compromised in her ability to support meaningful reform in the financial sector, when her record shows the opposite, to unfairly impugning her reputation as a true progressive, despite her 40 years of committed, passionate advocacy – must cease.
Your continued suggestions that Mrs. Clinton is untrustworthy and even corrupt – when nothing could be further from the truth – are a threat to our party’s standing, up and down the November ballot.
With Mrs. Clinton now universally recognized as the leading candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, at this juncture, by staying negative, all you are doing is helping Karl Rove and his ilk do their general election dirty work. In fact, Rove and his wealthy right-wing backers have already spent millions of dollars echoing the smears you and your campaign have unfortunately directed at Mrs. Clinton.
Senator Sanders, I speak for many Clinton supporters in applauding you for raising important issues in this campaign and for helping to engage a new generation of Democratic voters. You and Mrs. Clinton agree on many priorities and goals, and the comparing and contrasting of your respective policies and programs has spurred a robust, healthy debate about how to achieve those critical aims. You can play a constructive role in the party by continuing this substantive dialogue and staying positive for the duration of your campaign.
You and I both know that the stakes for our country are just too high this November – with the Presidency, and control of the Senate and the Supreme Court hanging in the balance – for you to continue to spend your energy and resources on destructive attacks that stand to hurt all Democrats.
Please stop.
Respectfully,
David Brock
]]>Washington, DC – David Brock, founder of Correct The Record and author of the New York Times bestseller Killing The Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government, will deliver the remarks below at6pm EST tonight in Philadelphia at the World Affairs Council indicting the political charade known as the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
A livestream will be available here: https://livestream.com/correctrecord/events/4444248
Remarks at World Affairs Council, Philadelphia
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Two years ago tomorrow, Media Matters published a book called The Benghazi Hoax in which we exposed how Republicans had twisted the facts, invented charges out of thin air, and dishonored the memory of four brave Americans who died in Benghazi in their attempt to turn a national tragedy into a political weapon.
Last month, I published Killing the Messenger, a book whose subtitle is: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government. The centerpiece of the book is about the centerpiece of that plot: a partisan witch hunt that began with the despicable politicization of a terrorist attack on the United States and has since spiraled into a desperate fishing expedition and completely out of control effort to destroy Hillary Clinton at all costs.
Tomorrow, Secretary Clinton will testify before the Benghazi Select Committee, as she has been asking to do for months. She’s been called not because of the committee’s concerns about diplomatic security, but about her emails.
Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail account as Secretary of State followed the law and followed precedent. It has nothing to do with Benghazi, as the committee chairman himself has admitted.
But to Republicans, it doesn’t matter. As I detail in Killing the Messenger, the Benghazi investigation was never about getting to the bottom of what actually happened. It was always a dirt-digging operation, a wild search for some hint of scandal that could stop Barack Obama from being re-elected, and, when that failed, stop Hillary Clinton from succeeding him.
And in the days that followed my book’s release, Republicans started to finally admit it.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy didn’t just acknowledge the Benghazi hoax, he boasted about it.
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he crowed. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.” The GOP’s goal, McCarthy added in his mangled English, was to paint Clinton as “untrustable.”
Then another Republican Congressman, Richard Hanna, confessed that the committee was “designed to go after” Hillary.
And last week, Republican officials told the New York Times that the committee began focusing on e-mails because Speaker of the House John Boehner thought it was “a way to keep the issue alive and to cause political problems for her campaign.”
Meanwhile, a whistleblower emerged from within the committee staff: a former investigator, Air Force Reserve officer, and self-described conservative Republican named Bradley Podliska.
Major Podliska told CNN of the absurdity of life on the Benghazi committee. Staffers regularly wasted time online and sometimes drank on the job. Several joined a “gun buying club,” whiling away the hours at the office designing personalized weapons – “chrome-plated, monogrammed, Tiffany-style Glock 9-millimeters,” to be exact.
He also reported that the committee “trained its sights almost exclusively on Clinton” following news reports on her emails. And he revealed that he had been fired for refusing to go along – which would make his firing unlawful.
The committee responded by attacking Podliska as a “lousy employee” and divulging details of his employment – which is also against the law, in this case the Congressional Accountability Act, which prohibited the committee from making public the details of the ongoing mediation surrounding Podliska’s firing.
Indeed, this response was just the kind of thing you’d expect from a political war room, which is exactly what the Benghazi Select Committee is.
Over its 17 months in operation – longer than the investigations into the Kennedy assassination, the Iran-Contra scandal, or even Watergate – the committee has taken on a role as a taxpayer-funded arm of the Republican National Committee, spending $4.6 million of your money and careening from subject to subject in an attempt to manufacture scandal.
Well, they succeeded, alright. As MSNBC’s Steve Benen wrote, “The Benghazi Committee isn’t investigating a scandal. The Benghazi Committee is the scandal.” What’s been discovered so far is an abuse of Congressional power, leaking and lying to the press, and alleged violations of several laws and Congressional rules. And the perpetrator is none other than the chairman of this sham investigation, Trey Gowdy.
Now, if you want to know how we got here, you have to go all the way back to the 1970s.
The Watergate scandal still sticks in Republicans’ craw. And they’ve been trying to avenge it ever since.
As many of you know, I was working deep in the heart of the vast right-wing conspiracy when Bill Clinton rose to national prominence during the 1992 campaign. Funded by the billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, we were determined to find the scandal that would bring down this dynamic young Democrat – or, failing that, invent one.
Conservatives managed to get a story written in the New York Times alleging that the Clintons had given improper favors to their investment partner in a failed land deal called Whitewater.
The story didn’t show any wrongdoing by the Clintons, and a CNN analysis would later identify nineteen separate errors of fact in it.
But when Bill Clinton became president, Republicans saw it as an opportunity to even the score at one disgraced president per side. And, hey, if they could take down his formidable wife at the same time? Even better.
Fact finding wasn’t the goal. Whitewater was about the journey, not the destination: an investigation would mean getting subpoena power to ask all manner of questions, request all manner of documents, spread innuendo, leak juicy factoids to friendly or gullible reporters – and then hold up those same stories as proof that the investigation needed to continue, or even widen.
That’s how the Whitewater story gave birth to a highly-politicized $70 million federal investigation of the Clintons, led by an overzealous prosecutor, Ken Starr. Along the way, Starr found plenty of excuses to continually expand his failed investigation until he could gin up spurious impeachment charges.
Which, of course, was the goal from the beginning. From Day One, it was a search for a crime that could fit the punishment Republicans had already resolved to impose.
More than a decade later came the night of September 11, 2012, and news of an attack on an American diplomatic facility in Libya.
Note that there had been 64 attacks on American diplomatic targets overseas during the Bush administration – and Democrats hadn’t used any of them to play politics.
In fact, never before – dating back to Ronald Reagan – had a tragedy like this been fodder for a political attack from either party. But Mitt Romney’s campaign was desperate.
And so, on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and well before all the facts were in regarding the unfolding events in Libya, Romney flat out accused the president of “sympathizing” with terrorists. How disgraceful.
And then the entire right-wing machine revved up to turn Benghazi into the magic bullet that would wreck the Obama administration.
Indeed, there is an untold back story to today’s ill-conceived and unsavory GOP smear tactics. After the 2010 midterms, a shadowy organization called Groundswell, a sort of coordinating body for a whole host of right-wing groups led the Heritage Foundation’s Ginni Thomas – the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – began secretly meeting. A recording of the group’s deliberations, published by Mother Jones, shows that, after the Benghazi attack, they began agitating for a special Congressional investigation. They formed the Benghazi Action Committee to push that agenda forward. On March 5, 2014, the activists signed a letter to Boehner urging the appointment of a select committee, which the speaker did, on May 2nd.
Among members of the BAC was Judicial Watch, a right-wing group that for years, going back to the 1990s, has engaged in a campaign of legal terrorism against the Clintons, bombarding them with frivolous lawsuits and document demands.
Also in the coalition was a group called the Citizens’ Committee on Benghazi, a project of the long-time right-wing media watchdog Accuracy in Media. One of its board members was Wayne Simmons, who you may have seen on Fox News touting his 27 years of CIA experience to demand Congressional action on Benghazi. You won’t be seeing Simmons anymore, though – last week, he was arrested for fraud. Simmons never worked for the CIA.
Speaking of Fox, the network was also an important driver of events, airing 1,098 evening segments on Benghazi in the first twenty months after the attacks. Senator John McCain proclaimed that Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes “deserves credit” for the Benghazi investigation, and Senator Lindsay Graham cheered, “Thank God for Fox!”
Never mind that by the spring of 2014, six Congressional committees had released reports detailing the results of their exhaustive investigations. Two other committees had also held hearings. And, that fall, the Republican House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence would release its own report, making it the ninth congressional committees to investigate the attacks.
And not one of them found any evidence to verify the far-flung theories of the far right. There was no stand-down order that prevented the saving of lives, no deliberate effort to mislead the public about the motive behind the attack, no muzzled whistleblowers, no cover-up – nothing.
More than 30 hearings, 200 witnesses, eleven published reports totaling nearly 800 pages, and millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars – the most recent estimate is at least $20 million overall – and the Republicans still hadn’t found any wrongdoing.
In her prior Congressional testimony, in January 2013, Clinton said she took responsibility for the events in Libya, took immediate action to guard against such attacks in the future, and was transparent throughout, even releasing to the public the full report of State’s Accountability Review Board investigation. Even a Fox News commentator concluded she “hit the ball out of the park.”
Yet, clearly, it was time for yet another Benghazi committee. But why?
From the moment she left the State Department, Republicans knew what Democrats also knew – that Clinton would be an almost unprecedentedly strong candidate, and, as president, would implement an ambitious progressive vision to move the country forward.
So three and a half years before Election Day, with so much unknown about how the race would shape up, Republicans knew one thing: They really, really didn’t want to run against Hillary. So they moved to take her down.
The right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch, the Richard Mellon Scaifes of our time, pledged to spend whatever it took from their bottomless treasure chest to defeat Hillary.
One thing I’ll say about the Koch Brothers: they plan ahead. They groomed Trey Gowdy for his star turn and they couldn’t have found themselves a better pawn to serve as this generation’s Ken Starr.
Gowdy owes his political livelihood to the Koch brothers. Five years ago, when an incumbent Republican Congressman from South Carolina named Bob Inglis wandered off the reservation by acknowledging that climate change is a real threat, the Kochs backed Gowdy – then a County Solicitor – to run against Inglis in a primary, helping him win a stunning upset victory.
They’ve gotten their money’s worth. In 2012, Gowdy was one of just 40 members of the House to receive a 100 percent score from the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity, a perfect score he has maintained throughout this Congress, as well. He backed measures to expand offshore drilling – including off the coast of South Carolina – a key Koch priority. And, to this day, the Kochs remain his second-largest career donor.
So Gowdy was the ideal candidate to run this show trial and help achieve the Kochs’ number-one goal: keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House.
That was Gowdy’s mission from Day One, one that has elevated his reputation in Republican ranks.
Conservative operative Bill Kristol has declared Gowdy “the Most Valuable Republican of the 2016 election cycle so far.” In the last few weeks, Gowdy was being floated as a candidate to move up to Majority Leader or even Speaker. Donald Trump said he’d make Gowdy his Attorney General, and Lindsey Graham said he should be on the Supreme Court someday. There was even talk about Gowdy ending up on a presidential ticket. Quite a rise from County Solicitor in just five years.
Initially, Chairman Gowdy pledged to run a non-partisan fact-finding inquiry. “I have no friends to reward,” he said, “and no foes to punish. We’re going to go wherever the facts take us.”
This was a lie.
Before he was even appointed, and long before Kevin McCarthy let the cat out of the bag, Gowdy sat down for a little-noticed interview with none other than Ginni Thomas, a key player in the original effort to politicize Benghazi, published in the right-wing Daily Caller. In it, Gowdy pre-judged the entire inquiry, stating flatly that he believed Hillary Clinton had committed unspecified crimes, and that he was certain she was ready to perjure herself before Congress.
In other words, the fix was in from the first bang of his gavel.
For example: Six months into the committee’s work, Democratic Ranking Member Elijah Cummings wrote to Gowdy that Democrats were being wrongly excluded, pointing to at least five witness interviews that took place without Democratic members or staff allowed to be present.
Moreover, Cummings noted that Gowdy was consistently downplaying or outright hiding information gained from these secret interviews that might undermine his trumped-up case against Clinton.
Gowdy has steadfastly refused to adopt committee rules that give the Democratic minority a voice in its proceedings – or even a heads-up about what Republican members and staff are doing.
In addition, Gowdy established a pattern of abusing his authority to issue subpoenas without debate, and even without a vote, dictating the course of the investigation himself without input from the Democratic minority.
Meanwhile, Gowdy consistently refused to provide full public transcripts of secret witness interviews, or even allow for a committee vote on disclosing them. Instead, he and his henchmen leaked cherry-picked excerpts to skew the news.
Committee leaks, in fact, were behind two blockbuster New York Times stories – one suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail account may have violated federal law, and the other that a federal criminal investigation into her e-mail practices was underway. Both of these stories were based on false information, and had to be corrected or retracted. Yet both of them dominated the news cycle and set off fevered speculation about the imminent collapse of Hillary’s presidential hopes.
Earlier this month, Gowdy made a new accusation against Clinton, alleging that she had received the name of a CIA informant in an e-mail from former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal. “Armed with that information,” Gowdy charged, “she forwarded that e-mail to a colleague – debunking her claim that she never sent any classified information from her private e-mail address.”
Gowdy made sure to underscore that “the name of a human source is some of the most protected information in our intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but human lives.” He released a copy of the e-mail with the name of the individual in question redacted, making it look even more like Hillary was sharing classified information over her private e-mail.
Gowdy got the headlines he wanted – such as “Clinton Burns CIA Libya Contact” – but he didn’t get his facts straight. The CIA, which Gowdy hadn’t bothered to ask about the e-mail, slapped down Gowdy’s claim as false, saying that in fact the information in that e-mail was not classified at all. It turns out, Gowdy had doctored the document, inventing his own reasons for the redactions in order to defame Clinton.
Gowdy’s false claims were made in a communication to members of Congress, making him vulnerable to a referral to the Department of Justice for the criminal act of lying to Congress.
By now, Trey Gowdy is very far away from his original mission.
Indeed, last week, the New York Times reported that eight months after Gowdy announced he planned to hold a dozen interviews with intelligence and national security officials, only one has actually been conducted. Gowdy had also proposed eleven public hearings about the attacks; not one has taken place.
Instead, in an effort to shift the focus from Benghazi to Hillary’s email, the committee has demanded testimony from at least 18 former Clinton staffers, including three speechwriters and the IT guy who maintained Hillary’s server.
And last week, the Huffington Post noticed something else peculiar.
The Benghazi Select Committee has held a total of 54 witness interviews, but Gowdy himself has showed up for fewer than ten. He skipped hearings featuring testimony from top intelligence officials. He no-showed hearings featuring survivors of the attacks, eyewitnesses to the events the committee was supposed to be investigating. In fact, the only times Gowdy bothered to show up were when those close to Clinton were testifying.
One of Gowdy’s very first subpoenas went to Sidney Blumenthal, who was grilled in a closed deposition for nine hours. The committee has been pursuing a loony conspiracy theory that Blumenthal instigated the war in Libya and that he did it in order to profit. But it turns out that Gowdy is lying about a humanitarian aid idea, an idea that was raised in the middle of the war, never came to pass, and no money ever changed hands. Secretary Clinton is expected to be quizzed on all this tomorrow, even though Blumenthal was asked—and he answered—every question put to him about it.
The committee also pursued a wholly out of bounds line of questioning about Blumenthal’s political activities and relationships.
According to a count of the questions Blumenthal was asked, made public by Democrats on the committee, Blumenthal fielded more than 160 questions about his relationship and communications with the Clintons; more than 50 questions about the Clinton Foundation, for which Blumenthal had consulted; and more than 45 questions about the inner workings of the organizations I run, for which Blumenthal works, and which have been critical of the committee. Blumenthal was asked zero questions about the U.S. presence and personnel in Benghazi.
It’s no wonder that Gowdy refuses to release the transcript of Blumenthal’s deposition.
Just the other day, Gowdy, trying to deflect questions about the committee’s partisanship, appeared on CBS’ Face the Nation and claimed he wasn’t at all interested in the Clinton Foundation, which obviously has nothing to do with Benghazi. Yet he asked Blumenthal more than 50 questions about it. Simply put, Gowdy was lying through his teeth.
Unfortunately for Trey Gowdy, the press is starting to wake up to his shenanigans. The New York Times ran an editorial two weeks ago, declaring his committee “an insult to the memory of four slain Americans,” and calling for it to be shut down.
Yesterday, on CNN, another committee member, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, touted the emails of the Ambassador in Libya who lost his life in the Benghazi attacks as a new revelation the committee will release tomorrow. But the anchor, Chris Cuomo, pointed out that the emails had been available to the Accountability Review Board three years ago. Westmoreland then impugned the integrity of the Board, which was headed by two officials who had served Republican administrations in high posts.
And so it goes. To be sure, there’s no reason to keep this farce going. With Secretary Clinton scheduled to testify tomorrow, however, it may be too late in the day for the committee to disband altogether. But if the public is to have any confidence in this committee’s findings, Gowdy should resign his chairmanship immediately. Gowdy must go.
Next, there ought to be an investigation into the Benghazi hoax itself. And Gowdy should spend his freed up time as the star witness.
For example: House rules prohibit the use of official resources for campaign or political purposes. If Gowdy used $4.6 million to further the aims of the Republican National Committee, he is guilty of an extremely serious, career-ending ethics violation.
And when we’re done with that investigation, let’s take a look at the suspicious activities of some of the right-wing groups devoted to defeating Hillary in 2016 that seemed to be awfully in sync with Gowdy’s committee.
We still don’t know the details of the committee’s interactions with partisan Republican groups hyping the pseudo-scandal in their own communications. But there are some tantalizing clues. The chairman of the Benghazi Action Committee referred to his group as an “asset” of the committee’s.
In September 2014, a group called Stop Hillary PAC delivered more than 260,000 signatures to the committee demanding that Gowdy subpoena Hillary to testify. The next day, Gowdy began the process to do just that. Then the PAC emailed its list soliciting campaign funds to “support Trey Gowdy.” Sounds like the sort of thing the Federal Elections Commission might be interested in.
In April 2015, Stop Hillary PAC ran ads soliciting contributions using Gowdy’s name and picture and identifying him as chairman of the Benghazi committee. A month later, the group delivered another petition to Gowdy “to express our gratitude and support.”
As The Washington Post reported, the PAC’s treasurer, Dan Backer, previously served as treasurer of a now-defunct fundraising committee affiliated with Gowdy. He is also treasurer of three other political action committees that each donated to Gowdy’s campaign in May.
Last Friday, Gowdy, caught red-handed, returned the donations.
And why stop there? The misuse of taxpayer dollars doesn’t just violate House ethics rules, it may violate federal law. In 1993, a former House employee pled guilty to a charge of theft of government property after he was caught doing campaign work on the taxpayers’ dime. And I can’t imagine the damage to taxpayers then was even close to $4.6 million.
Trey Gowdy may be the Ken Starr of his generation. But even that may be too generous an assessment of his legacy.
Sixty years ago, there was another Republican legislator who turned an oversight investigation into a nightmarish political travesty, trampling on Constitutional rights and engaging in repeated and serious abuses of power in his quest to destroy his perceived enemies.
When the extent of his malfeasance was exposed, he was censured by the Senate, shunned by his own party, and sent home to live out the rest of his days in infamy.
Joseph McCarthy managed to find a communist or two. All Gowdy has done is besmirch the memory of four dead Americans while betraying the public trust.
Gowdy deserves to sit down to a banquet of consequences. Our country simply cannot function if this is how one of the two major political parties chooses to compete for power.
Sixty years after McCarthy disgraced the Senate, we remember him as an ugly example of Congressional power run amok for partisan gain, never to be repeated.
Let’s hope it doesn’t take sixty years for Trey Gowdy and the rest of the Benghazi hoaxsters to meet the same fate.
Thank you.
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“It ought to tell you something about Marco Rubio that he’s willing to take on faith the words of a man that even Rush Limbaugh thinks is full of you-know-what,” said David Brock, Founder of Correct The Record. “It’s not surprising, really, Marco Rubio and Ed Klein deserve each other. The only thing less reliable than Klein’s commitment to the facts is Rubio’s commitment to his past principles.”
“Senator Rubio, it must be flattering to think you’re a threat, but the fact is you’re doing a good enough job destroying yourself by adopting radical, right-wing positions on immigration and a woman’s right to choose,” said Brock. “In reality, Bill Clinton probably gets more heartburn from breakfast than from your anemic campaign.”
Here’s what objective and even conservative journalists have said about Ed Klein’s widely discredited work:
“There’s a danger when you throw together rumor, innuendo, mind reading, and unsubstantiated blind quotes from sources who overtly hate your subject. And it’s not just the risk of looking (as Edward Klein does) like an author devoid of credibility.”
– Nina Easton, formerly of Fox News, in a review of Klein’s new book for the Boston Globe
When discussing Klein’s book Blood Feud on his 6/23/14 show, Rush Limbaugh said “some of the quotes strike me as odd, in the sense that I don’t know people who speak this way.” Limbaugh compared Klein’s quotes to “grade school chatter.” [Media Matters, 6/29/14]
“When I learned that Mr. Klein was booked on SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY, I asked questions. What were the stories? Who were the sources? And, most importantly, what was the relevance? After learning the stories were inflammatory, the sources were weak and the book’s relevance was less than zero, I canceled the booking. Why? Because it was the right thing to do.”
– Joe Scarborough, on one of Klein’s previous books [MSNBC, 6/27/05]
“This is one of the most sordid volumes I’ve ever waded through. Thirty pages into it, I wanted to take a shower. Sixty pages into it, I wanted to be decontaminated. And 200 pages into it, I wanted someone to drive stakes through my eyes so I wouldn’t have to suffer through another word.”
– John Podhertz, on an earlier Klein work [New York Post, 6/22/05]
September 30, 2015
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C., 20515
Dear Representative McCarthy:
Sir, yesterday you displayed a level of candor not seen in many politicians. However, by admitting – in fact sir by bragging – that the House Select Committee on Benghazi is little more than a partisan cudgel intended to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, you have pulled back the curtain on your own party’s abuse of power and misuse of taxpayer funds to advance a nakedly political goal.
Your admission that the work of the taxpayer funded Benghazi Select Committee had only one goal in mind – destroying Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions – must have consequences. I have already called, publicly, for the Benghazi Committee to be disbanded immediately and for the Office of Congressional Ethics to open an investigation into the scope of your majority’s shameless abuse of the public trust.
Yet there must be an even broader recognition of the wrong that you, personally, have done.
Mr. McCarthy, you are widely-reported to be the next in line for the Speakership—a role that is tasked with representing the whole of the House of Representatives. However, it’s abundantly clear that you intend to run your office like an annex of the Republican National Committee and that you are even willing to use public money to undertake political dirty work against your partisan opponents. Frankly, that is evidence enough that you are unfit to lead. As such, you should withdraw from consideration as Speaker immediately and make way for someone whose sense of decency and national service isn’t completely overwhelmed by partisan ambition.
It’s clear now from every available fact that Hillary Clinton is innocent of any wrongdoing, yet you have tried to smear a lifelong public servant with lies and innuendo for nothing more than partisan gain. Shame on you sir. For the good of the country and credibility of the House of Representatives shut down the Benghazi Committee and end your campaign for Speaker.
Sincerely,
David Brock
Correct the Record
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]]>“Kevin McCarthy’s admission that the Benghazi Committee is a taxpayer funded political hit job to bring down Hillary Clinton should be the final straw for the media, for Members of Congress, for taxpayers and for the families of the four Americans who died in the Benghazi tragedy,” said Brock.
“I call on John Boehner, Trey Gowdy and House Republicans to end this investigation and issue an apology for this terrible exploitation of the deaths of four brave Americans. House Republicans led by Trey Gowdy have shamelessly, recklessly and erroneously leaked misinformation to the media and blatantly fundraised off the tragedy to benefit Republicans in 2016. It is time this investigation comes to an end and Republicans admit – like McCarthy did last night – that this entire thing was a political sham.
“Next, the House Ethics Committee must open an investigation into for this abuse of power and misuse of taxpayer funds for political purposes.”
McCarthy told anchor Sean Hannity that “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee.A select committee. What are her numbers today?”
See the Video
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