Christine O’Donnell Abruptly Cancels Fox Appearance After CREW Says It Will File Complaint Charging She Embezzled Donations

Why would a media savvy candidate like Christine O’Donnell blow off a coveted opportunity to appear on the Sunday political shows? Could it be because her lawyers warned her against risking incriminating herself by discussing on-air an ethics watchdog group’s charge that she embezzled campaign funds?

Christine O'Donnell speaking a Christian political rally after filing of embezzlement complaint was announced
Christine O'Donnell speaking a Christian political rally after filing of embezzlement complaint was announced
On CNN Friday night, CREW, the nonpartisan Washington ethics watchdog group, announced it will file a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission on Monday charging that Delaware’s new Republican U.S. Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell lied on forms she filed when she launched her candidacy and misappropriated $20,000 in campaign funds from two prior failed runs for the Senate.

O’Donnell became the right wing’s latest overnight celebrity when she defeated Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware’s Republican primary on Sept. 14. She promotes herself as a Christian whose morality forbids her from lying. “A lie, whether it be a lie or an exaggeration, is disrespect to whoever you’re exaggerating or lying to, because it’s not respecting reality,” she said in a televised exchange years ago. When asked if her adherence to the truth would have prevented her from lying to protect Jewish families who were hiding from Nazis during World War II, she demurred. “You never have to practice deception,” she said. “God always provides a way out.” (In other words, “no.”)

The funds in question were donated to her two previous Senate campaigns, first in 2006, when she came in third out of three in the Republican primary, and then in 2008, when she won the GOP nomination but was soundly defeated by Sen. Joe Biden in the general election.

On AC360 Friday night, CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan told Anderson Cooper that witnesses had come forward who had firsthand knowledge that O’Donnell had illegally put donated funds to personal use in 2009 and early 2010 when she was not an active candidate for any office:

“It turns out Ms. O’Donnell has treated her campaign funds like they are her very own personal piggy bank. She’s used that money to pay for things like her rent, for gas, meals and even a bowling outing. And that’s just flat-out illegal,” said [Sloan]…

“For example, in 2009, Ms. O’Donnell wasn’t a candidate for anything, yet she had numerous campaign expenses, things like travel and gas, and yet she had no actual campaign,” Sloan said.

Earlier on Friday, CREW had issued a news alert in which the group added O’Donnell to its list of 2010’s most crooked candidates:

“Ms. O’Donnell has had no discernable job for several years, and instead has lived the life of a professional candidate, using the generosity of her campaign donors for her support,” said [Sloan]. “That may just be freeloading to most people, but it’s embezzlement for a federal candidate.”

Ms. O’Donnell has demonstrated a disturbing pattern of fraud, lies and fiscal irresponsibility. On her campaign website she claimed to have graduated from a university years before she actually received her diploma — a mere two weeks ago. The IRS slapped liens against her to the tune of over $11,000, and records show that she has been essentially unemployed. Rather, she has lived in her campaign office and makes a profit by renting out rooms – in clear violation of campaign finance law. Ms. O’Donnell also lied when claimed she had won two counties in her 2008 Senate race against Senator Biden and when caught, lied again claiming the two had tied. In essences, Ms. O’Donnell has demonstrated a total disregard of ethics and integrity.

CREW is a nonpartisan ethics watchdog group that has recently targeted Democratic Reps. Charlie Rangel of New York, Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois and others, as well as Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Sen. John Ensign of Nevada and Rep. Don Young of Alaska.

On CNN Friday night, Sloan said CREW would be filing the embezzlement and other complaints against O’Donnell on Monday, Sept. 20.

Around the same time Sloan was on CNN, on HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher played a clip from a 1999 appearance by O’Donnell on “Politically Incorrect,” which he also hosted, in which O’Donnell — who is now a Christian radical — claimed to have participated in witchcraft:

“I dabbled into witchcraft — I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. … I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. . . .

“One of my first dates with a witch was on a Satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. … We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a Satanic altar.”

On Saturday, O’Donnell appeared as a last minute addition to the line-up for the “Values Voter” conference, an annual right-wing Christian political event sponsored by the Family Research Council. During her 17-minute rambling, buzzword-laden but nonetheless well-received speech, she also appeared to be putting advance spin on the coming embezzlement charges:

“Will they attack us? Yes. Will they smear our backgrounds and distort our records? Undoubtedly. Will they lie about us, harass our families, namecall to try to intimidate us? They will. There’s nothing safe about it…”

Not long after her FRC appearance on Saturday, word circulated on Twitter and elsewhere that she had canceled an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation” the next morning, citing a prior commitment to attend a picnic in Delaware.

Until Kentucky’s tea bagger Senate candidate Ron Rand Paul canceled on “Meet the Press” this summer, it was unheard of for candidates — especially first-timers — to bail on Sunday morning political chat shows. (In fact, Paul was only the third guest to cancel in MTP’s 62-year history.)

But then came the astounding news that O’Donnell had also canceled an appearance the Fox channel’s GOP-friendly Sunday morning show — where, under normal conditions, she would have been guaranteed a free ride, with softball questions carefully selected not to cause controversy for her campaign.

The cancellation was also remarkable because earlier in the week O’Donnell’s mentor, Sarah Palin, had publicly advised her, on the Fox channel, to “speak through Fox…”

But while Chris Wallace, the ersatz journalist who hosts the GOP-Fox Sunday show, would likely have helped O’Donnell by ignoring her dabble in witchcraft, he could not have avoided asking her to explain the embezzlement charges without revealing himself as merely just another Republican mouthpiece on Fox’s propaganda team.

If the embezzlement charges are serious — and there are disgruntled former campaign staffers and volunteers who say they have direct knowledge that they are — then it’s a dead cinch O’Donnell’s lawyers are advising her not to submit to interviews in which she might say something incriminating, including even on Fox.

Update: I added a link to O’Donnell’s exchange on giving up Jews to Nazis, and updated the paragraph to include her exact words. What is accurate here is that had she meant that she would have done the compassionate thing and lied to Nazis to protect Jews from their killers, she would have said so.

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19 thoughts on “Christine O’Donnell Abruptly Cancels Fox Appearance After CREW Says It Will File Complaint Charging She Embezzled Donations”

  1. Just another GOP/Tea Party crook. And the easily manipulated idiots that follow the Tea Party will look the other way because it doesn’t fit in with their make-believe reality.

  2. Ok, so O’Donnell BROKE THE LAW. What I want to know is when’s the hearing? It sure sounds like there’s ample evidence.

  3. Just like Sarah “Cut ‘n Run” Palin, who also cut short her “political” career when charges were about to be filed for similar indiscretions…

    When will people stop voting for women just because they’re pretty? Talk about a short attention span.

  4. The baggage this woman carries…

    Like everything else, did she and her handlers actually think that no one would look into this? Or are they so unabashedly craven for wielding power, they think they can make suckers out of everyone?

  5. “…he could not have avoided asking her to explain the embezzlement charges without revealing himself as merely just another Republican mouthpiece on Fox’s propaganda team.”

    I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling going on in here.

  6. This woman is the biggest phony to come along since Queen Sarah herself. I remember her from her many appearances on Politically Incorrect. Mostly I considered her to be a complete joke, a rather bad one at that. But now she has the funding and the media attention that the right-wing provides in copious amounts. It’s frightening but she actually could wind up to be the next Senator from Delaware. Even if CREW does a perfect job of presenting it’s case, there are so many angry, uninformed voters in America,that anything could happen. I think we’re in very deep trouble and the American people had better wake up fast or we’ll find ourselves being ruled, not governed, by this latest incarnation of the religious right. The tea party is nothing new, it’s only changed it’s name and presented some new players. For all intents and purposes, they are the American Taliban. This is the stuff of nightmares.

  7. Whoah, there, a second. I’m just as appalled by this moronic hypocrite’s presence in the political spectrum as any left-leaner (I’m a bit more moderate, but NOT neoconservative by any stretch)… But the author here makes a very misleading statement.

    In the 2nd paragraph, Jon Ponder writes, “She once claimed to be so honest that, had she been living in Europe during World War II, she would have informed Nazis had she known where Jewish families were hiding to avoid being killed in concentration camps.”

    Aside from the fact that this comment was entirely unnecessary as she’s exhibited plenty of dubious behavior that has actually something to do with policy, positions and campaign finance… The statement is misleading at best and blatantly false at worst.

    Even thinkprogress.com tried to twist what she said into an admission of cooperation with Nazi’s but read the transcript they themselves provide here: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/15/odonnell-lie-jews/

    She never actually answers the question. She tap dances around it. And it’s absolutely right to pounce on her for tap dancing around the question. But what’s unprofessional and contributes to the perception that bloggers are not journalists is the practice of completely spinning this into something she refused to answer.

    That doesn’t excuse her from trying to run away from the question, which was really aimed at trying to undermine her claim of absolute honesty to demonstrate she doesn’t really practice the high moral ground that she preaches about. However, it isn’t license for a journalist to write equally convoluted statements that completely undermine the progressive cause and risk making us look as batshit insane as the religious right.

    If you want to be taken seriously as a journalist, Mr. Ponder, and separate yourself from the ranks of muckrakers at MSNBC and Fox News, and all of the shmuck blogs that act as todays tabloids, then I encourage you to retract or amend your statement.

  8. Rubin, thanks for dropping by, but I have to turn your critique back at ya. It was you who made a misleading statement when you suggested I should “separate [myself] from the ranks of muckrakers at MSNBC and Fox News…”

    The assertion that MSNBC and Fox are equivalent is false. Fox is, in fact, a subsidiary project of the Republican Party. Its owner, Rupert Murdoch, is a an unabashed right winger who recently donated $1 million to the Republican Governor’s Association. Fox’ president, Roger Ailes, is a former Nixon message-packager and operative. Nearly all its producers and on-air talent are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans.

    Fox’ purpose is not to deliver news. It is set up intentionally to deceive its viewers by presenting Republican propaganda as “news.” Anti-Democratic Party bias is woven into both the daytime “news” content and, of course, the primetime commentary. If it weren’t for the anti-liberal bias, the primetime hosts would literally have nothing to say.

    As to MSBNC, two of the network’s hosts, Dylan Ratigan and Joe Scarborough, are conservatives — there is not one liberal host on Fox. But more importantly, tune into the liberal opinion shows on any given night and you will hear Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, and Ed Schultz criticize Pres. Obama and the Democrats routinely — sometimes multiple times during the hour. Still, if they were asked whether the Democrats were more incompetent or malfeasant than Bush and the GOP, all the primetime hosts would answer with a unanimous “no.”

    On Fox, the hosts rarely, if ever, criticize the GOP establishment or its tea bagger or Christian nationalist bases. There was virtually no criticism of George W. Bush on Fox during the eight years he was president, and by any measure, he was the worst president we’ve had in a century or more. The rare exception was when Karl Rove set off what has been described as a civil war on the right when he dared criticized Christine O’Donnell after she won the primary. He was apparently called on the carpet afterward and then made an appearance early the next morning to walk back his criticism.

    Liberals criticize each other — we don’t march goosestep in lockstep like Republicans. The constant intra-party critiquing is one of the fundamental things that makes liberals different from conservatives. It is popular for independents to elide the two ideologies as somehow being equivalent, but the comparison is disingenuous and, frankly, a little lazy. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

    Fundamentally, MSNBC hosts base their opinions on journalistically provable facts. At Fox, the hosts’ opinions are based on whatever disinformational narrative Ailes and his producers are spinning that day. They lie all the time.

    Finally, O’Donnell’s answer to the question about whether she would turn in Jews who were hiding from Nazis was not oblique to me: “You never have to practice deception,” she said. God always provides a way out.” If her answer had been “No, I would lie to protect people from being killed,” she would have said so — therefore, clearly her answer was yes.

  9. It’s good to see that a Conservative such as Ruben doesn’t back this nitwit. I’ve searched Twitter (#tcot #donnell) trying to see how her supporters explain her behavior. I can’t find them and maybe that’s a good sign.

    However Ruben does not seem to comprehend that MSNBC has several shows, not just one like FOX. I watch one of them, on *occasion* two. People that watch FOX only watch that station. My news…I get from the Internet, from people or blogs.

    The author has nothing to defend or retract. Blogs are opinions and his is right IMO. This woman had ample opportunity to clarify her position on lying. They gave her enough chances. Jasmine Guy and the rest of the folks there gave her that chance by discussing it but O’Donnell didn’t back down.

    Great post. I couldn’t find your Twitter feature, so I’ll go to your Twitter page to RT it.

  10. Democrat Party officials are relieved – this embezzlement thing is the perfect excuse not to finish her off with the masturbation and witchcraft thing. Its so much more principled to go after her on embezzlement because hey thats a legal sounding term that will not do anything to prevent her from getting elected whatsoever – even with a Billion Dollars to make commercials about embezzlement – and it will take forever to work through the courts.

  11. Haha, I just watched her tell Bill Maher that she wouldn’t lie to Hitler to save Ann Frank’s life. I guess she’ll lie to get free money though. What a capital cunt.

  12. You watched her say she wouldn’t have to lie to Hitler to save Anne Frank’s life, because God wouldn’t put her in that situation. The real WTF is that she is out of touch with reality enough to not clue in that people were placed in that situation.

  13. This cute imitation of Sarah Palin has already won! She didn’t go on Tv because she was in a hurry to get her greedy little hands on all the money that the Koch Brothers threw her way. She will come out and attempt to pay off her outstanding bills and explain away her embezzing as ignorance on the part of a staffer.

    After she gets throughly trounched on November 2nd, she will write a book and milk the teabaggers for millions and we won’t here from her again. Mission accomplished! You know what they say about a fool and his money!

    besides sarah can’t have anyone in the Tea Party or GOP that look better then her, actually talk and present themselves better then her. Joe Sarbough has already come out and said that she is a better version of Palin therefore if she does get any more popular with the teabagers Sarah will do everything she can to discredit and get rid of her!

  14. Well, maybe she would show up at an interview or debate if the promoters allowed her to bring a lawyer & let her take the 5th every once in a while.

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