Clinton Allies Send Davis To Set Up Spin Operation Outside Gowdy’s Committee By Jim Geraghty
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/378134/print
From the last Morning Jolt of the week:
Guess Who’s Setting Up a Spin Operation Right Outside Gowdy’s Committee?
Let’s start the Friday off right by exposing something that a bunch of Progressives don’t want you to know. At dinner last night, Larry O’Connor of WMAL mentioned his latest interview with the affable but indisputably ruthless Lanny Davis:
Davis will be heading up something he calls “The Truth Squad,” and will position himself right outside the committee room where Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) will be conducting his investigations into the events of the Sept 11th Benghazi attacks.
Davis joined me and my co-host, Brian Wilson on our morning radio show in Washington DC on WMAL Thursday morning.
Okay, that’s not surprising, a Democratic spin doctor sets up shop to “fact check” the findings and questioning of Gowdy’s special committee. But a guy like Davis – who’s represented the Clinton White House, some unsavory foreign clients and Redskins owner Daniel Snyder – doesn’t come cheap. So who’s putting all this together?
Davis said his partner in the effort is an advocacy group called “Correct The Record”, which is funded by the American Bridge 21st Century PAC.
Davis claimed, “They are funded by thousands of grassroots people all over the country,” said Davis. “It’s a great organization, because all they do is put facts out, and that’s really all I do.”
Who is American Bridge 21st Century PAC? Not quite the common definition of “a great organization” of “grassroots people” that only “puts facts out.” Here’s FactCheck.org’s summary of the organization:
American Bridge 21st Century is a liberal super PAC that conducts opposition research to aid Democratic candidates and organizations.
The group was founded in November 2010 by David Brock, a conservative-turned-liberal activist. After making a name for himself as a self-described “right-wing hit man,” Brock reinvented himself as a liberal crusader. In 2004, Brock founded Media Matters, a liberal website that monitors the media for “conservative misinformation.”
Rodell Mollineau, a former staffer of Sen. Harry Reid, is the group’s president. Its chairwoman is Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland and the eldest child of Robert F. Kennedy.
As a super PAC, American Bridge can accept unlimited donations and is largely funded by major Democratic donors and labor unions. Billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros, a well-known supporter of liberal causes, was the group’s largest donor for the 2012 cycle, contributing $1 million.
So…David Brock, a Harry Reid staffer, and a big pile of money from George Soros are getting together to make sure Lanny Davis is standing outside Trey Gowdy’s panel. This is the same David Brock who spoke at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock in March.
This is, in short, a branch of the Clinton Empire:
The “super PAC” Mr. Brock founded, American Bridge, has tapped into a rich network of Clinton supporters. Among them, according to federal disclosures, are George Soros; Steve Bing; Stephen M. Silberstein, a Bay Area entrepreneur; and Susie Tompkins Buell, a friend of Mrs. Clinton’s based in San Francisco.
Last year, Mr. Clinton delivered the keynote address at a fund-raiser in New York for Mr. Brock’s biggest donors. Mr. Brock thanked the former president and Mrs. Clinton for “giving me the gift of forgiveness,” said one person who attended the fund-raiser, which was closed to the news media, but could not discuss the event for attribution.
Two lessons from this. First, never believe Lanny Davis when he tells you he’s working for “a great organization” “funded by thousands of grassroots people all over the country” “because all they do is put facts out.”
Second, the Clinton team must be worried about Gowdy’s special committee, because if they were certain that the panel wasn’t going to find anything, or that it was inevitably going to be seen as a silly, time-wasting partisan circus, they wouldn’t be putting resources into this spin operation right outside Gowdy’s committee room.
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