Is the Gasbag Lying? Or Is He Just Ignorant?

The Rick Davis story continues to percolate with this New York Times headline, "McCain Aide's Firm Was Paid by Freddie Mac Through August."

The disclosure undercuts a remark by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that [his] campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.

How long will it be before the untethered Gasbag announces that, Gee, I didn't know the details of the payments Davis received? Just as he didn't know the details of the $42-million golden parachute his corporate mouthpiece Carly Fiorina received after being fired as CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

("I don't know the details of her compensation package. But she's one of many advisers that I have." Watch the video.)

Davis was paid $2 million in salary -- $30,000 to $35,000 a month for five years, from 2000 to 2005 -- to head an "advocacy coalition" that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac created to defend them from government regulation. When that salary ended, Davis asked for, and received, a consultant fee from Freddie Mac that payed him $15,000 a month.

The Times reports this morning,

Freddie Mac's payments of roughly $500,000 [to a firm that Davis owns], the people familiar with the arrangement said, began in late 2005, immediately after Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae disbanded an advocacy coalition that they had set up and hired Mr. Davis to run.

According to half a dozen sources, "Freddie Mac's post-2005 contract with Mr.Davis" was "widely known among people involved in Freddie Mac's efforts to influence policy makers." So the Gasbag was either lying or ignorant on Sunday in an interview with CNBC and The Times, when he

responded to a question about that tie between Mr. Davis and the two mortgage companies by saying that [Davis] "has had nothing to do with it since [2005], and I'll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it."

I'd say the Gasbag was ignorant, because a lie so readily checked would have been too brazen even for him. Although claiming not to know about Carly's golden parachute has to make you wonder. He couldn't be that uninformed.

As to his campaign's attack on The Times, accusing it of being "150 percent in the tank" for Obama because of its reporting on Davis, what a load of manure from Steve Schmidt -- aka Sergeant Schmidt, The Bullet -- a Karl Rove protégé who's running the Gasbag's day-to-day operation.

Question: "Do we really want an out-of-it president surrounded by corporate lobbying sleazeballs?"

Answer: "D'oh!"

(Crossposted at HuffPo)

Postscript: Sept. 28 -- Read all about it: the crooked Gasbag.