Letters to the Editor
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The Real Gingrich Shocker! - His record is clean.
Letter to the Editor
January 10, 2006
Salon.com
Dear Editor:
In Michael Scherer’s piece ("Newt: I'm shocked, shocked by Abramoff scandal!" – Salon.com - January 2006), he falsely asserts that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was required to "pay a $300,000 penalty” for “misusing nonprofit organizations for political purposes, personally benefiting from political contributions and giving false statements to ethics investigators.”
Mr. Scherer should have checked the facts first. Democrats filed 84 politically motivated ethics charges against Speaker Gingrich. All of them were found to be without merit. The last three were dismissed on October 10, 1998. The fact is, not a single ethics charge filed against Speaker Gingrich was ever found to be based in fact - not one.
During the investigation into the bogus charge of “misusing nonprofit organizations for political purposes,” a letter responding to an inquiry by the Ethics Committee prepared and filed by a Gingrich lawyer did contain an inaccuracy. When Gingrich learned about the discrepancy, he personally accepted responsibility for the misstatement, corrected the record, and agreed to reimburse the Ethics Committee for the cost of that investigation.
The voluntary reimbursement did not stem from the phony charge, but was paid because of the error made by counsel during the investigation - an investigation that concluded no wrongdoing by the Speaker whatsoever and was dismissed by the bipartisan Ethics Committee as was the case in all 83 of the other charges. It was specifically not a penalty according to the Ethics Committee agreement.
The fallout in the case resulted in an IRS investigation and a Federal Court case. Ultimately, Speaker Gingrich was cleared of any wrongdoing by the bipartisan Ethics Committee, the IRS, and a Federal Judge.
So it is simply wrong to mislead readers by suggesting that Speaker Gingrich paid a fine, misused nonprofit organizations or personally benefited in any way from political contributions. The facts show that he took responsibility for a single error during the investigation and reimbursed the committee from his personal funds making him extraordinarily well-qualified to be an outspoken critic on the current and very real ethics scandal.
Best regards,
Rick Tyler
Communications Director and Spokesperson
Gingrich Communications
Speaker Newt Gingrich
540-338-1250
RickTyler@newt.org
www.newt.org