Jennifer Rubin caught Newt Gingrich in what should be a major transgression in Sunday’s debate. Here’s the thing: It is flat-out illegal for a candidate to coordinate in any way with a SuperPac. Yet at Sunday’s debate, Gingrich showed knowledge of details of a new long-form ad being produced by a SuperPac supporting him, before the ad aired. How can that be? If he hasn’t coordinated with them, how does he know who the sources are for the claims made in the ad?!?
Writes Rubin:
Gingrich said, “When the 27 and a half minute movie comes out, I hope it’s accurate. I– I– I– I can say, publicly, I hope that the Super PAC runs an accurate movie about Bain. It’ll be based on establishment newspapers, like the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Barron’s, Bloomberg News, and I hope it is totally accurate. And then people can watch the 27 and a half minutes of his career at Bain and decide for themselves.”…. You can judge for yourself whether Gingrich said he hopes the ad would contain those sources or whether he seemed to know what the sourcing of the yet-to-be-released ad is. But, I suppose the proof will be in the pudding. If the super PAC ad does use these “establishment” newspaper sources to make its case there will be lots of questions: How did Gingrich know? And when did he know it?
Remember that Gingrich has gone so far as to call Mitt Romney a “liar” when Romney denied knowing what the Romney SuperPac was going to do against Gingrich. Gingrich’s attitude seems to be that it is beyond belief that a candidate would be unaware, in advance, of a SuperPac’s plans. Well, this latest exchange seems to fit with that assumption. The reason he disbelieves Romney, perhaps, is because he, Gingrich, is in touch with his SuperPac, so he doesn’t believe that anybody else would follow the law and avoid coordination with other SuperPacs.
This quite literally calls for a federal investigation. There is probable cause to believe coordination occurred, based on Gingrich’s own words. Shouldn’t somebody subpoena his phone records, or something? Again, if he did coordinate, it would be a clear and unambiguous violation of federal law. It might be a stupid law, but it IS law. And there really does seem as if there is no other explanation for how he knows the sourcing for an ad whose contents he is not even supposed to know about.
QED, perhaps?
