PolitiFact Rules Terry McAuliffe a Liar(again)

Last weekend, in the first of a series of debates, Ken Cuccinelli and Terry McAuliffe squared off at the Homestead under the auspices of the Virginia Bar Association. The debate was focused mainly on the two men saying directly to each other what their campaigns and communication outfits had been saying to each other for months now. 

"GreenTech" 

"Ideologue!"

"Outsider!"

"Pro-Life!"

"Lack of ideas"

"GIFTS!"

It was at about this point in the debate, that Terry McAuliffe slipped up (again). Citing a legal report on the AG's admission and correction of unreported gifts from 2009 to 2012, Terry said that Cuccinelli "should have been prosecuted" for disclosure violations, but Virginia's law was too weak.

Without skipping a beat, Cuccinelli said he would leave this one up to fact checkers. Politifact has come back on Terry's statement almost immediately, rating it "Pants on Fire", the falsest of the false. To quote from their article, 

"McAuliffe said the ethics report said Cuccinelli "should have been prosecuted, but Virginia laws are insufficient."

There is nothing in the report that remotely supports McAuliffe’s claim. To the contrary, the report concludes Cuccinelli did not violate any laws.

McAuliffe’s hyperbolic statement is not only wrong, it defies any reasonable reading of the report. We rate his comment Pants on Fire."

With that, we begin (again)Watch 2013. How many of those tags will be assigned to the fallacies, manipulations, and outright lies before the election is over? This is not the first time that Terry McAuliffe has tried to steal the election on false laurels. By our count, there have been three big (again)'s. 

The recent three Pinocchio's he garnered from the Washington Post about Medicaid, the false ruling that Politifact gave his explanation of how GreenTech passed over hard-hit areas of Virginia for employment, and his constant strategy to divide Virginians based on ideology amidst an election about jobs and economic growth. Now this becomes the fourth.

Virginia does not need an injection of federal bureaucracy, and does not need a Governor who cares so little (if at all) about the average citizen. If Terry thinks he can lie his way into the Governor's mansion, then we will point out those lies; (again) and (again). 

VA GOP Caucus

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