Outrage Continues: Cochran Camp Denies Fraud and Threatens Lawsuit Against Journalist Who Exposes It

By Isabel Matos

The GOPe has never stooped lower.  Not only have they denied that any fraud has taken place (Reince Priebus has kept so silent you can hear a pin drop). Not only did Cochran’s camp lie to black voters about McDaniel taking away their food stamps and make racist allegations about him that scared them. Not only did the camp STIFF the pastor of money they had agreed on and then DENY he did all the work requested in the first place, they are NOW going after investigative journalist Charles Johnson of http://gotnews.com/. Johnson was ready for it. He had let everyone know they’d come after him. In the two videos below he reviews what was said and claims more pastors will corroborate Fielder’s accusations which Cochran’s campaign is portraying as not so credible.

Charles Johnson on Focal Point just published, July 1st (Parts 1 and 2):

By now we all know what Fielder admitted to in his paid interview (which Johnson had also admitted to): that McDaniel was not the racist he was described as. He said that what was being done was unfair and that he was no longer as interested in getting his money as he was in setting the record straight because people were lied to.  Gary pointed all of this out in a bombshell report last night, one which Senator McDaniel posted on his timeline as a must-read.

This is how Cochran’s team is spinning the story to make the accusations based on the Fielder interview look false. From the Clarion Ledger:

Blogger Charles C. Johnson of GotNews.com reported that Stevie Fielder said the Cochran campaign told him to offer black voters in the Meridian area $15 each to vote for Cochran in the June 24 GOP primary runoff against Chris McDaniel.

Cochran campaign spokesman Jordan Russell called those accusations of illegal vote buying “baseless and false” and says:

“The author of this article admits he paid his source for the story.”

Charles Johnson had already said that before he did the interview. No big story there.  But then the Cochran campaign goes on. Russell said the campaign hired Fielder for get-out-the-vote work.

“We hire a lot of people, black, white, young, old, to help with get out the vote efforts,”

Jordan said the campaign agreed to pay Fielder $600, half up front for campaign work.

“He was paid for reimbursement for gas, driving people around, get out the vote work,” Russell said. “But he never completed any work for the second $300. He never provided any names and addresses of people he said he was getting to work. He waffled on providing names and addresses.”

Russell said the campaign’s “standard rate” for people knocking on doors and doing other GOTV work is “$25 a shift — $25 in the morning, then a lunch break, then $25 for the afternoon.”

“This is obviously a guy who is a liar, who sold his story to a blogger who’s openly proclaiming he will pay people to tell him a story,” Russell said. “… Most disturbing is (Johnson) is attempting to solicit pictures of Mrs. Rose Cochran in her nursing home, with a bounty up to $1,000.”

Fielder claimed in the GotNews report – which has been picked up by numerous national conservative websites – that while he wasn’t paid money he was promised, he was given cash in envelopes to distributed in exchange for Cochran votes and that other people were doing likewise.

Russell said Cochran is considering litigation over the allegations.

https://twitter.com/ChuckCJohnson/status/484059212364779520

https://twitter.com/ChuckCJohnson/status/483994937243869186

https://twitter.com/ChuckCJohnson/status/483979411788529664

Focal Point says they want to get to the truth. The truth is that a seed was planted from the start -June 3rd- when instead of stepping down as Cochran should have done, but stayed in the race. He would have saved the GOPe not only a huge black eye but Mississippians the aggravation and division that ensued. That’s okay. The GOPe in Mississippi has gotten more of us involved. We’re all fired up over what is going on. It has only helped us let the world know that Republicans are acting like Democrats and that the GOPe is TOO BIG TO FAIL. It WILL FAIL because they are overplaying their hand instead of quitting while ahead.

It’s always a raw deal when you get involved with crooks in the establishment, whether Republican or Democrat (in Cochran’s case he is both) because no one comes out of shady deals unscathed. This should be a warning to Republicans who haven’t even won elections yet to stay clear of corrupt ties with the GOPe, but it isn’t helping our party. This division cannot stand much longer. Something must give. Fielder should be out of the business of accepting any money to recruit voters no matter what side of the political aisle they’re from. It still does not excuse Cochran from trying to buy votes. His denial is a total desperation for power. It is blind, irrational and reckless. There will be many who will follow their GOPe leaders, downplay or pretend this never happened, or accuse truth-tellers they are lying hysterical hobbits. Or get sued. We’re the ones who are wrong in their eyes, but always right and they are the ones who are right but always wrong.

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Focal Point videos H/T  William

Clarion Ledger article H/T David