Posted on 07/19/2007 7:33:24 AM PDT by pissant
This may be the political version of Evolution. The New York Times is out this morning with a story about billing records that show Fred Thompson did indeed charge for his time while helping a pro-choice group. Details from the article below:
Billing records show that former Senator Fred Thompson spent nearly 20 hours working as a lobbyist on behalf of a group seeking to ease restrictive federal rules on abortion counseling in the 1990s, even though he recently said he did not recall doing any work for the organization.
According to records from Arent Fox, the law firm based in Washington where Mr. Thompson worked part-time from 1991 to 1994, he charged the organization, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, about $5,000 for work he did in 1991 and 1992. The records show that Mr. Thompson, a probable Republican candidate for president in 2008, spent much of that time in telephone conferences with the president of the group, and on three occasions he reported lobbying administration officials on its behalf.
Mr. Thompson's work for the family planning agency has become an issue because he is positioning himself as a faithful conservative who is opposed to abortion.
Read the whole article here. The Brody File has a call in to Thompson's people. Check back later for an update. Already, email is coming into The Brody File about the story. Here's one:
"The significance of this is not what Fred did 16 years ago. Had he been candid and honest, and explained himself, all would be well. The issue is that Fred lied for political expediency, and allowed others on his staff to do so on his behalf."
Lied may too strong a word. It seems like Thompson did what most politicians do. They beat around the bush and try to avoid an outright apology. Let's review shall we?
When this story first broke, Thompson's spokesman Mark Corallo said the following:
"Fred Thompson did not lobby for this group, period."
Then it became Thompson had "no recollection of doing any work on behalf of this group. He may have been consulted by one of the firm's partners who represented this group in 1991".
Days after the story broke, Thompson told radio talk show Sean Hannity:
"You need to separate a lawyer advocating a position from the position itself. They will probably come at me, in 35 years of law practice, with some people, I represented criminal defendants. I was a prosecutor. I had a general law practice. So that in and of itself doesn't mean anything anyway. … I'm not going to get down in the weeds with everything they dredge up over the next six months."
Thompson also sent in a column to the Powerline blog where he seemed to suggest he did some work:
"A lawyer who is a candidate or a prospective candidate for office finds himself in an interesting position because of the nature of the legal profession and the practice of law. … I've experienced another gambit of those schooled in the creative uses of law and politics: dredging up clients - or another lawyer's clients -that I may have represented or consulted with and then using the media to get me into a public debate as to what I may have done for them or said to them 15 or 20 years ago. Even if my memory serves me correctly, Even it would not be appropriate for a lawyer to make such comments."
Any way you slice it, what we have here is an "evolving story". This isn't really about the abortion issue. Because of Thompson's consistent pro-life record in the Senate, pro-family groups will probably give him a pass on that aspect. But Thompson needs to be careful. He wants people to see him as a plain spoken, tell it like it is southerner. But evolving stories like this are normally left to "inside the beltway" Washington insiders. For his campaign to be successful, he needs to be seen as a Washington outsider not just another politician who is spinning his way out of a mess.
He had sponsored that bill every year since at least 1996. He can’t get it passed becuase of too many RINOs in the GOP. Even if it made it to the Senate, there were Senators like Thompson that did not (and he still does not) support the bill.
Twenty billable hours out of a lawyer's time is nothing. I'm sure I worked on commercial property title examinations that took as much time that I wouldn't remember all this many years later. If one of those buildings had an abortion clinic in it, I'd have no recollection of it.
This may end up being minor. But the Mitt folks are gonna be all over it, that much is sure.
if fred wins the nomination, who will the shallow, petty conservatives, turned off by a younger, attractive wife of an older man, vote for? hillary?
Doesn’t matter. It could be 1 billable hour. We have the Saints who demand perfection (of others), and we have the liars who were never open-minded about Thompson in the first place. They just want to pretend indignation and ballyhoo their own candidate.
Still AMNESTY...as long as “it’s not easy”.
I’d rather have a LEADER like Hunter who will deport them...that’s current law. Fred doesn’t think ENFORCEMENT works. Sounded just like Chertoff....weak.
By the way...look at the whole quote. You can spin it all you want, but Fred doesn’t think that a fence works either when it clearly has worked for San Diego.
That’s why I support Hunter. His house is granite. ;o)
is that what’s holding him down so his numbers can’t rise...; ) ?
The amount of importance dedicated to proving someone is pro-life or pro-abortion is ridiculous. Does anyone really think this country is going to outlaw abortion now or in the near future?
Probably not the best time to call people liars since just a few days ago many of you were loudly pro-claiming that this lobbying story was a false allegation made up by the LA Times. One would think that Fred could have been honest about his work rather than having his campaign mislead his supporters and imply that the story was false.
Talk to me in october about that. ;o)
He introduced the bill multiple times for many years while the Republicans had majority in the House. Unfortunately, they never really gave him the time of day on it (the bills always ended up being stuck in committee, IIRC).
Imply? His manager said he talked to fred and said he did not do it, “period”.
Fred’s wife doesn’t fit into the whole family values model everyone is always espousing. Lets delve into the layers of the average voter’s psyche. I’m trying to divide and onquer here. I just do not see how Thompson can defty manage the visuals with his wife.
I went back to the video; there's no mention of any fence, nor whether he is for or against one.
Still AMNESTY...as long as “it’s not easy”.
That's odd... I seem to recall Fred speaking out against the Amnesty bill.
I’d rather have a LEADER like Hunter who will deport them...that’s current law.
Did Fred say he wouldn't? No.. the closest he came was saying that it's unreasonable to think we'll be able to deport all 12 million of them.
By the way... if you want your LEADER (and I truly don't doubt that he is) to have a chance, you'd probably do better to work to support him in the real world than to bash other conservative candidates here on FR. He seems to be having some traction issues.
Yep, here it is:
Mountains from Molehills
It appears now that the Times has dug up billing records showing that Fred Thompson spent a grand total of 20 hours “consulting with” a pro-abortion group back in 1991-1992.
The work was done as a professional courtesy for one of the Arent Fox partners and amounted to very little other than the minimal “lobbying” (3.5 hours) certain “administration officials” on behalf of the organization. One does not lobby for 3.5 hours in a year and a half, at most it was consultation and direction.
Nothing dredged up by the Times contradicts Thompsons statements that didn’t he recall doing any lobbying work for the organization or that he DID NOT lobby John Sununu the White House Chief of Staff. Considering that Thompson career in law spans some 30+ years, not remembering 20 hours of consulting work 16 years ago is both plausible and understandable.
It’s not the hard right pushing this story but rather the left. They are palpably fearful of the Fred and seem to feel that this story is particularly damaging to him. In the misguided belief that many of his supporters are uninfomred one issue dullards who will toss any candidate overboard if he can be even remotely linked to a pro-abortion group regardless of the circumstances; They greatly underestimate the right.
Fred Thompson is the staunchest pro-life top tier candidate we have. His voting record and statements on the subject show a strong consistent and long held opposition to abortion. The conservative electorate knows this and most if not all will see this grand kerfuffle for the red herring it is.
You are correct. I was just being extra cautious since I didn’t have the exact quote and expected to get blasted by Fred’s supporters.
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