Since I was not yet a political junkie back in 1990's, all I remember about the charges brought against Gingrich is that they were all dropped except for one. I seem to recall that on that one remaining charge (which was something not in the earth-shattering category) he was not "fined", but had to reimburse for the cost of the investigation. I may be completely wrong on that point and haven't done any checking up on what I remember.
And now we have Nancy Pelosi claiming she knows something about Gingrich we don't know. You can almost hear her saying, "So there, you silly people in fly over country."
Pelosi on a Gingrich Presidency: "That will never happen."
I'm shocked that a 71 year old woman would talk and act like some giggling middle-school girl on the school bus imparting some juicy gossip to her gaggle of girl friends. What is wrong with that woman?
I'll be bookmarking this following article by Byron York at the Washington Examiner for future reference and checking on some of what he has written.
As always, trust but verify.
What really happened in the Gingrich ethics case?
The Romney campaign has been hitting Newt Gingrich hard over the 1990s ethics case that resulted in the former Speaker being reprimanded and paying a $300,000 penalty. Before the Iowa caucuses, Romney and his supporting super PAC did serious damage to Gingrich with an ad attacking Gingrich's ethics past. Since then, Romney has made other ads and web videos focusing on the ethics matter, and at the Republican debate in Tampa Monday night, Romney said Gingrich "had to resign in disgrace."
In private conversations, Romney aides often mention the ethics case as part of their larger argument that Gingrich would be unelectable in a race against President Obama.
Given all the attention to the ethics matter, it's worth asking what actually happened back in 1995, 1996, and 1997. The Gingrich case was extraordinarily complex, intensely partisan, and driven in no small way by a personal vendetta on the part of one of Gingrich's former political opponents. It received saturation coverage in the press; a database search of major media outlets revealed more than 10,000 references to Gingrich's ethics problems during the six months leading to his reprimand. It ended with a special counsel hired by the House Ethics Committee holding Gingrich to an astonishingly strict standard of behavior, after which Gingrich in essence pled guilty to two minor offenses. Afterwards, the case was referred to the Internal Revenue Service, which conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter. And then, after it was all over and Gingrich was out of office, the IRS concluded that Gingrich did nothing wrong. After all the struggle, Gingrich was exonerated. read the rest
H/T Jammie Wearing Fools
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