Source: Progress Kentucky Behind Mitch McConnell Campaign Recording:
A secret recording of a campaign strategy session between U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell and his advisors was taped by leaders of the Progress Kentucky super PAC, says a longtime local Democratic operative.Mother Jones Magazine released the tape this week. The meeting itself took place on Feb. 2.Jacob Conway, who is on the executive committee of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, says that day, Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison, who founded and volunteered for Progress Kentucky, respectively, bragged to him about how they recorded the meeting.Conway says neither the local nor the state Democratic party had any part in the incident.
This is the same Democratic PAC which ran racist ads against McConnell’s wife.
As previously discussed, the means of recording would determine whether it was illegal. The report is that they were not in the room and therefore not a party to the conversation, but eavesdropped:
Morrison and Reilly did not attend the open house, but they told Conway they arrived later and were able to hear the meeting from the hallway.“They were in the hallway after the, I guess after the celebration and hoopla ended, apparently these people broke for lunch and had a strategy meeting, which is, in every campaign I’ve been affiliated with, makes perfect sense,” says Conway. “One of them held the elevator, the other one did the recording and they left. That was what they told to me from them directly.”The meeting room door is next to the elevators on that floor. McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton has told multiple media outlets the door was shut and locked on Feb. 2. But the door has a vent at the bottom and a large gap underneath.“Apparently the gentlemen overheard the conversation and decided to record it with a phone or recording device they had in their pocket. Could’ve been an iPhone, could’ve been a Flip camera or something like that,” Conway say.
If this holds up, it is very, very big time, and on its face appears to be a violation of law.
Mother Jones and David Corn better start lawyering up (which I assume they already have), because the question will become What did Mother Jones know about alleged McConnell bugging, and when did it know it?
In that prior post, I told you that the wording of Mother Jones’ denial of a “Watergate-style bugging operation” was a suspicious way of phrasing the denial. Again, if this story holds up my instincts were right, it was not a “Watergate-style bugging operation,” but it was a bugging:
That doesn’t answer all the questions. It was not “involved in the making of the tape” is not a completely denial of prior knowledge, and that it was not a “Watergate-style bugging operation” is a curious way of putting it — was it some other type of “bugging” whether or not an “operation”?
Update — Mary Katherine Ham at Hot Air has more, including the fingerpointing.
More — David Corn is sounding pretty confident, linking to a WaPo article discussing the First Amendment privilege for journalists to use unlawfully obtained evidence:
While Corn may be off the hook if he were truly an innocent recipient, if he participated in any way in even delivery of the information to him the situation could be trickier, as the main case cited in the WaPo article indicates:
I’ll reserve judgment until all the facts come out, but I did offer Corn this unsolicited advice:
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