Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff has been caught in a bald-faced lie about Republican Senate candidate Kelly Loeffler. In a rare display of journalistic integrity, CNN’s Jake Tapper called the Democrat out on the dishonesty on Sunday’s State of the Union program.
Tomorrow’s Georgia Senate run-offs will pit Ossoff against Republican incumbent David Perdue, while Loeffler is trying to fend off a challenge from Democrat Raphael Warnock.
Since mid-December on the campaign trail, Ossoff has been repeating the spurious claim that Loeffler was “campaigning with” white supremacists after a photo emerged with candidate Loeffler smiling while standing next to Chester Doles, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and a member of the National Alliance — an alleged neo-Nazi group.
“You attacked Senator Loeffler,” Tapper said. “You said that ‘Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a klansman.’ That is not true. It is true that a former member of the Klan took a photo with her at a campaign event. Her campaign says she didn’t know who he was at the time, and she has condemned him. I’m sure you’ve taken photos with thousands of strangers. Isn’t it important for candidates to tell the truth?”
Ossoff completely sidestepped the allegation, instead choosing to double down on the lie.
“It is .. .and this isn’t an isolated incident,” Ossoff said. “Kelly Loeffler has repeatedly posed for photographs and has been seen campaigning alongside white supremacists, and I believe they are drawn to her campaign because her campaign has consisted almost entirely of racist attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and on the black church. The fact that these elements continue to be drawn to her, to support her, to campaign alongside her, to appear in photos next to her is deeply distressing.”
At this non-answer, Tapper felt the need to correct Ossoff again. “Alright, we just need to be clear, she was not campaigning with a klansman,” Tapper asserted. “That wasn’t true, what you said.”
Previously, Ossoff told the Fox News Channel the same lie: “Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a klansman,” Ossoff said when asked if he was afraid that Loeffler’s allegations against her opponent Raphael Warnock might affect his campaign against Senator David Perdue.
“She is stooping to these vicious personal attacks to distract from the fact that she’s been campaigning with a former member of the Ku Klux Klan,” Ossoff said.
Loeffler and her campaign deny knowing who Doles was and condemned him in no uncertain terms upon finding out. “Kelly had no idea who that was, and if she had she would have kicked him out immediately because we condemn in the most vociferous terms everything that he stands for,” said campaign spokesman Steven Lawson.
Ossoff’s fellow Democrat Raphael Warnock, Loeffler’s opponent, is also on record accusing her of having ties to white supremacists.
At the debate between he and Loeffler in December, Warnock claimed that Loeffler “welcomed the support of a QAnon conspiracy theorist, and she sat down with a white supremacist for an interview.”
It could be that Ossoff’s oft-repeated untruth is just an attempt to assist his Democrat colleague who has had a bad couple of weeks. Warnock has been credibly accused of running over his ex-wife’s foot with his automobile after an argument. Warnock has also been dogged by accusations of child abuse at a summer camp run by him. Anthony Washington, now 30, claims that counselors at a camp run by Warnock threw urine on him and forced him to sleep outside when he was 12 years old. Warnock denies both of those claims.
Regardless, Ossoff’s accusation that Loeffler was campaigning with Klan member is an outright fabrication — even CNN has called him out on the lie.
The Georgia run-off elections are set for tomorrow, January 5, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. One Republican win in the two races would assure the GOP of retaining a majority in the U.S. Senate, while a Democrat sweep of the two races would potentially give Democrats control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the presidency should President Trump’s attempts to overturn fraudulent election results in key swing states fail.
