Factcheck.org Debunks Obama's Smear Of McCain Concerning Ralph Reed

The following is the non-partisan Factcheck.org response to this ad:

The ad calls Reed a “power broker” who was “in the middle” of “one of Washington’s biggest scandals,” the Jack Abramoff affair. And it says that McCain, as chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, “never even called Reed to testify” in the Abramoff investigation.
That’s all true, but what’s not said is that McCain’s report caused Reed political embarrassment, making public evidence that contradicted Reed’s claim that he hadn’t known that his lobbying activities among anti-gambling Christian activists had been paid for by casino-owning Indian tribes who wanted to suppress competition…
McCain’s investigation focused primarily on how Abramoff and Scanlon fleeced tribes by charging them millions in lobbying fees for lobbying work they never performed. But as the report details, Reed actually performed the lobbying work he was paid to do. In fact, Abramoff and Scanlon eventually pushed Reed aside, so they could keep for themselves the money they might otherwise have paid Reed…
So what could Reed have told the committee if McCain had called him as a witness? We don’t know, and the Obama ad doesn’t say.


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