[Update- 4/11/13] Confirmation: McConnell Campaign Meeting Recorded Illegally And Divulged By Mother Jones
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The topic was Ashley Judd and the meeting was held before she publicly decided not to run against McConnell'
It's common for political campaigns to plot their offensives, and the secretly-recorded audio of the February meeting gives a glimpse of how McConnell's campaign might have pursued their attack strategy if Judd became a candidate.
"She's clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced," one staff member said in the tape. Mother Jones did not disclose how it obtained the audio. "I mean it's been documented. Jesse can go in chapter and verse from her autobiography about, you know, she's suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the '90s."
Judd has been public about her struggles and tension within her family, which includes her country legend mom, Naomi Judd, and her sister, Wynonna. She has openly described herself as a three-time survivor of rape and wrote in her autobiography about her troubled past growing up around drugs, alcohol and divorce.
Her website talks about her 2006 decision to enter an "intensive in patient treatment program" at Shades of Hope, a rehabilitation center in Texas, for "unresolved childhood grief that manifest as depression and codependency."
The audio and transcript is here, but CNN encapsulates the gist of the session:
At the McConnell meeting, staff members and advisers mocked some of Judd's previous writings and statements. While they touched on Judd's emotional history, the meeting mostly focused on her political views as their would-be ammunition. They highlighted her support and campaigning for President Barack Obama, as well as her support for same-sex marriage and cap-and-trade policies. In the meeting, they described her as "anti-coal," which would be a big liability for Judd in coal country.
McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton tells CNN the FBI has been asked to investigate how Mother Jones, obtained a recording of political aides meeting with McConnell.
"Obviously a recording device of some kind was placed in Senator McConnell's campaign office without consent. By whom and how that was accomplished will presumably be the subject of a criminal investigation," Benton said in a statement.Benton also states "Senator McConnell’s campaign is working with the FBI and has notified the local U.S. Attorney in Louisville, per FBI request, about these recordings. Obviously a recording device of some kind was placed in Senator McConnell’s campaign office without consent. By whom and how that was accomplished presumably will be the subject of a criminal investigation.
"We've always said the Left will stop at nothing to attack Sen. McConnell, but Watergate-style tactics to bug campaign headquarters is above and beyond," Benton also said.
Kentucky Law:
It is a felony to overhear or record, through use of an electronic or mechanical device, a wire or oral communication without the consent of at least one party to that communication. Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 526.010. A person is guilty of eavesdropping when he intentionally uses any device to eavesdrop, whether or not he is present at the time. Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 526.020.Whether legal action can be taken against both the person who recorded the conversation and Mother Jones, is completely is dependent on the results of the investigation.
Divulging information obtained through illegal eavesdropping is a separate crime, punishable as a misdemeanor. Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 526.060.
Anyone who inadvertently hears a conversation transmitted through a wireless telephone on a radio receiver does not violate the eavesdropping statute, but if that same conversation is recorded or passed on to others without the consent of a party to the original conversation, a violation occurs. Ky. Att’y Gen. Op. 84-310 (1984). This prohibition includes recording any oral communication of others without their consent, so long as the recorder used an eavesdropping device.
If the person who recorded the conversation was a participant of the meeting, then neither they nor Mother Jones did anything illegal and cannot be charged with any criminal actions.
If the person who recorded the conversation was not a participant, then it opens both that person and Mother Jones to be charged with committing a crime, by recording it and divulging the illegally recorded conversations.
In a statement, Mother Jones claims the magazine was “not involved in the making of the tape” but that “it is our understanding that the tape was not the product of a Watergate-style bugging operation.
Washington Post's Chris Cillizza appears to be not impressed with the Mother Jones scoop, calling it "much ado about not much":
But, this — as any campaign operative will tell you — is the basic blocking and tackling of opposition research that every candidate does both against their potential opponents and against themselves. And, the average voter won’t a) follow this story or b) care all that much if they do — especially since this news is breaking on the day after the Louisville Cardinals won the NCAA basketball tournament.
(Republicans, rightly, note that how this recording was obtained matters. The original Mother Jones report didn’t detail how that happened although the McConnell campaign is pushing for an FBI investigation into how the audio was obtained. Stay tuned on that front.)
The scoop has been pronounced yawn-worthy by most that understand campaign sessions discussing opposition research, especially on people that have publicly admitted they are bat-shit crazy, is nothing new and par for the course in a campaign.
The investigation and what could result from it should the private meeting recording be found to have been taken by someone not present at the meeting and not a participant... that is news worth watching.
