Dear Friend,
As Election Day draws closer, we all expected the political attacks on conservatives to grow even sharper … especially those from the liberal media. Their goal is to disrupt our conservative message and distract the public because they simply can’t win when it comes to the issues.
And almost as we predicted, last week a reporter from the Charleston Post & Courier Newspaper wrote a political hit piece about me by misrepresenting my campaign’s reporting, reimbursement and documentation of legitimate political and official legislative expenses.
You may have heard about this, but what you may not know is that this reporter has a long history of frivolously attacking Republicans in our state – even if that requires creating a political scandal where none exists.
The charges this article made were serious – and seriously misleading. It challenged my integrity and made accusations that simply were not true. This reporter crossed the line when she falsely claimed that I had broken our state’s ethics laws.
I want to personally let you know that this story is nothing more than just another misguided, media-driven political attack. The truth is: I am in full compliance with all aspects of our state’s Ethics Act … and, not only are all these campaign expenditures publicly disclosed online, I have the documents to back them up.
Faced with these facts, earlier this week the Post & Courier printed several corrections to their original article admitting that they had falsely accused me of violating the law … While correcting some of their mistakes now makes it clear that I did nothing wrong, it was too little too late on their part since the false front-page headlines had already run.
My duties as Speaker of the House often require me to travel extensively. I regularly use private campaign funds, instead of public funds, to pay for official legislative expenses. It’s a sad day when the media resorts to attacking conservatives for trying to save taxpayers money.
I take my responsibility to you, the House of Representatives and our state very seriously. As such, I keep detailed financial records in order to verify that my campaign expenditures are legitimate and properly documented should the Ethics Committee ever need to review any of them.
The day after this hit piece ran, I allowed a different reporter, one who actually has a history of fair and accurate reporting, to thoroughly review all these documents. After a 2 ½ hour review of them, this Associated Press reporter saw that I had the proper documents, that these were all legitimate expenses and that I was in full compliance with the Ethics Act. The complete AP article that she wrote saying just that was run by media outlets statewide … That is, execpt for in the Post & Courier.
This election is crucial for Republicans and the main stream media knows that. The closer we get to Election Day, the more the Far Left will ramp up their smear campaign. Unless we are willing to stand up to this machine with the truth, our neighbors may begin to believe their lies.
I’m going to continue standing up for our conservative beliefs, and I’m asking you to stand with me.
Sincerely,
Bobby Harrell
Speaker of the House
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