Fact check: Georgia Republicans run more misleading attack ads against Warnock and Ossoff

Fact check: Georgia Republicans run more misleading attack ads against Warnock and Ossoff

by

Since then, Republicans have run some additional misleading ads targeting two Democratic candidates, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. Here is an analysis of two of those ads.

Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler made a concerted effort to portray Warnock, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, as “radical” and “dangerous”.

As alleged evidence, Loeffler Ads presented brief snippets of a comment Warnock made about “ending mass incarceration” at a conference he held at his church last year.
At least two of Loeffler’s ads show Warnock saying, “Someone needs to open the prisons and let our kids go.” At least one of the ads features an even shorter part of the sentence: “Someone needs to open the prisons.”

Facts first: All of these Loeffler ads deceptively take Warnock’s observation out of context. He was advocating the release of people arrested for crimes against marijuana in particular, not a general release of people arrested for all types of crimes.

In fact, Loeffler’s own campaign posted a video on YouTube in early November that shows Warnock’s comment in context.

Here is what he said: “Marijuana is seen as an illegal substance. It is a terrible irony, and we feel this, that right now in America, there are some people who are becoming billionaires for selling the same things that imprison our children in all over America. Where’s the justice? It’s not enough to decriminalize marijuana. Someone has to open the prisons and let our kids go. “

Loeffler is free to criticize Warnock for defending the release of people imprisoned for marijuana offenses. But the ads created the impression that he was advocating some kind of mass amnesty for all incarcerated criminals. He was not.

“Reverend Warnock supports efforts to eliminate the records of those convicted of non-violent cannabis-related crimes and has worked in the community to help eliminate the records so that Georgians who have served their sentence can seek job and housing opportunities without discrimination,” the Warnock campaign said in an email to CNN.

Ossoff and a Senate committee

A campaign ad by Republican Sen. David Perdue says Ossoff “may face a federal investigation” for initially omitting certain payments from his Senate financial disclosure forms.
Facts first: This statement is highly misleading. The alleged basis for the claim that Ossoff could face a federal investigation is the fact that the Republican Party of Georgia sent a letter Senate Ethics Committee requesting an investigation. But any supporter can send a letter to the committee asking for anything, and there is no current evidence that an ethical investigation is actually being considered. Ossoff filed changed the disclosure forms in July that listed payments.
The professed source of the announcement for the allegation that Ossoff could face a federal investigation is a December 9 article in Fox News. But that article only reports that the Republican Party of Georgia has requested an investigation.
“The fact that someone has made a complaint has no stature under the law. It’s just a crude allegation,” said Stanley Brand, general counsel to the Chamber of Deputies in the 1970s and 1980s who has since represented several public officials in ethical cases and criminal prosecutions. “Someone has to take note of this and investigate, and my guess is that nobody is going to investigate.”
The committee is known for its reluctance to act even on the acts of acting senators. In that case, he would have to claim jurisdiction over an alleged issue before Ossoff took office. Brand said, “For something as technical and insignificant as what they are claiming, I just don’t see it.”
The Georgia Republican Party’s claim is that Ossoff, the CEO of a company that makes investigative films, intentionally did not disclose in May the payments it received from Hong Kong company PCCW Media – in which a Chinese state-owned company had a minority shareholding – and Al Jazeera.
Ossoff, however, submitted amended forms in July that listed these payments, as well as payments from other media companies located around the world. Its July forms listed payments from 32 media companies, up from 21 in the May release.
We are not excusing May’s omissions, but it is common for senators and candidates to submit amendments that disclose information not included in the initial files. As Ossoff’s campaign notes, Perdue himself has repeatedly amended.

The ad uses Ossoff’s review to suggest that he has a “scandal in China”, claiming that the Democrat was “paid for by the Chinese Communist government through a media company”. The ad insinuates that the payment was suspect, asking pointedly: “Why does China really pay Ossoff? ”

There is no evidence for the ad’s suggestion that the Chinese government paid Ossoff for nefarious reasons. Ossoff’s campaign says his company received about $ 1,000 in royalties because Hong Kong media company PCCW aired two of its ISIS war crimes investigations.

We cannot independently corroborate Ossoff’s campaign explanation of the reason for payment, nor the total amount, but neither Purdue’s campaign nor anyone else provided a reliable alternative explanation or alternative value. And a modest fee to license documentaries – for a media entrepreneur, from a media company in which the Chinese government is not the majority owner – would certainly not be enough to justify Ossoff’s image in the ad as a suspicious China puppet.

In addition, Ossoff’s campaign says that the payment of about $ 1,000 was actually made to Ossoff’s company, not by the Hong Kong company itself, but by a third-party media production and distribution company, Sky Vision, which licensed the investigations for the Hong Kong company (as well as for other companies worldwide).

The campaign says that Ossoff listed PCCW itself on its amended disclosure forms because it wanted to be transparent about who was broadcasting his company’s productions. The campaign says that transparency is also the reason he listed the PCCW on the forms, although the payment was below the $ 5,000 threshold for which reporting is required.

.Source