Well, OK, except she isn’t really “anonymous” because Cain knows exactly who she is, and has specifically spoken about incidents with her.
And the fact that there was a complaint, and that it was settled, and that money changed hands, are not conjecture, or sourced anonymously anymore, as Cain himself has stated.
Cain could have, at ANY time in his presidential run, put out a press release noting that during his time as head of the NRA, he was once formally accused of sexual harassment, that it was investigated, that it was baseless, and that there was an agreement reached with a small settlement.
Cain says this is the ONLY time he was ever accused of sexual harrassment, so it’s not like he had to worry about doing this again and again. And he clearly wasn’t covered by an NDA, since this is what he said on Monday. HE clearly didn’t need Politico to run the piece in order for him to give out information he already knew.
And if he didn’t want to put this out on his own, he could have at least had a press release ready to go if it did leak out. But if I was clearly innocent, but had this hanging over my head, I’d want to get out in front of it, not bumble through it like his campaign did.
No, this isn’t an anonymous hit piece — it’s a story about an actual event, acknowledged by Cain himself, and he knew exactly what the story was, and didn’t think it was important to tell until Politico found it.
And I don’t care who the candidate is — if a reporter discovers a settlement of a harassment complaint, it IS NEWS. They researched it, verified that the settlement was real, and asked Cain for his story.
Cain’s team decided the best thing to do what to not cooperate, and were happy that three people were quoted in the article saying he was a great guy. But then they had to deny everything, and that denial could have been part of the story, if they had simply offered it.
But apparently, they were worried that they did NOT know everything about what Politico was reporting. Their statement suggests that they didn’t want to admit to this one case Cain new about, in case the story was about a different case.
Apparently, you don’t know the meaning of baseless. And it’s pretty obvious they knew THAT too but printed the BASELESS accusation anyway. So that people like YOU could say what you just said.
And APPARENTLY, the\ Cain campaign did NOT know what politico was capable of because they did print a supposed accusation from someone else who DIDN’t bring a formal complaint OR receive compensation, and they could have added several more if they wanted to and who would have been the wiser?