The BRAD BLOG has received confirmation that the Virginia Attorney General's office is investigating the Newt Gingrich campaign for fraud after some 1,500 signatures needed to get Gingrich on the GOP primary ballot were found to be bogus. Gingrich failed to get the necessary signatures needed to get on the primary ballot in Virginia; the only ones who did were Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. More after the doom squiggle.
According to Gingrich himself, the bogus signatures came from a campaign worker that, by his own admission, committed fraud:
In late December, after Gingrich had failed to turn in enough valid signatures to qualify for the Virginia primary ballot, he was caught on video tape telling a supporter in Iowa that the reason for the failure was due to a campaign worker who created 1,500 fraudulent signatures.
"We turned in 11,100 --- we needed 10,000 --- 1,500 of them were by one guy who, frankly, committed fraud," Gingrich is seen and heard saying in video originally aired by CNN.
The former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives downplayed the incident, by explaining to the woman that the entire affair was "just a mistake," after they had "hired somebody who turned in false signatures."
The fraudulent signatures prompted the State Board of Elections to refer the case to the Virginia Attorney General's office two weeks ago. The Deputy Secretary of the SBE called the actions described by Gingrich, if true, "definitely an illegal act". The case has been taken up by the Attorney General's office, which declined to comment on the investigation due to its ongoing nature.
Brad also points out that the former Speaker himself denounced ACORN in 2009 for allegedly having "a long history of engaging in voter fraud".
If convicted, Gingrich's campaign will have a history of voter fraud. And unlike the organizations targeted in his rantings, it will be real.