Facts check: Ossoff’s false claims, Loeffler ‘has been campaigning with a klansman’

Facts check: Ossoff’s false claims, Loeffler ‘has been campaigning with a klansman’

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When asked on Wednesday about recent comments Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler made against his Democratic opponent, Rev. Raphael Warnock, Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff went on the offensive, claiming that Loeffler was campaigning with a Ku Klux Klan member .

“[H]Here’s the result, Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a Klansman, “Ossoff told Fox News on Wednesday.” Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a klansman, “he repeated,” and for that reason she is demeaning herself to these cruel personal attacks to distract from the fact that she is campaigning with a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. “

Ossoff tweeted the Fox News video, again writing that “Kelly Loeffler campaigned with a klansman.”

Facts first: This is fake. A former KKK member took a photo with Loeffler while she campaigned earlier this month. Loeffler’s campaign said the senator did not know who the man was and would have removed him from the event if she had known. This is by no means the same as “campaigning with a klansman”, as Ossoff said. Politicians often take pictures with people they don’t know.

The photo, taken at a December 11 campaign event, shows Loeffler posing with Chester Doles, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance who was sentenced to prison in the 1990s for assaulting a black man in Maryland.
After Doles uploaded the image to a Russian social media site, as reported by CNN, it spread elsewhere online and was widely criticized by Democrats.
On December 13, Loeffler’s campaign condemned Doles, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Kelly had no idea who he was, and if he had, he would have kicked him out immediately because we condemned in the strongest terms everything he stands for.”
At the time, CNN reported that there was “no evidence that she recognized Doles or sought his support”.
Ossoff’s campaign provided CNN with a recent Huffington Post article showing several photos of Loeffler campaigning with individuals allegedly associated with far-right groups, but these photos do not demonstrate that Loeffler campaigned with a former KKK member like Ossoff alleged. The Loeffler campaign told the Huffington Post that the senator “denounces all forms of hatred”.

CNN’s Alex Rogers contributed to this article.

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