Two aspiring Democratic Senators from Georgia accused Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler of “campaigning with a Klansman”, which she denied.
Jon Ossoff, who faces current Republican Senator David Perdue in the second round of the January 5 election, raised the charge during a discussion with the press on Wednesday in response to a question from Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy.
“Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with Klansmen,” he said, repeating the same line on the next breath for emphasis. “She is demeaning herself to these cruel personal attacks (against Warnock) to divert attention from the fact that she is campaigning with a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.”
Reverend Raphael Warnock, who faces Loeffler in the state’s other final race for the Senate, doubled in a tweet on Thursday. He shared a photo taken earlier this month that shows Loeffler smiling alongside a former Ku Klux Klan leader named Chester Doles. It also included a newspaper clipping showing Doles leading a march with other Klans men.
A spokesman for Loeffler’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News.
But Loeffler, R-Ga., Called Ossoff a “pathological liar” on Wednesday during another interview with Doocy, on the grounds that she had “campaigned” with a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
“Georgia knows that Jon Ossoff is a pathological liar. He is a trust fund socialist whose only job has been working for the Chinese Communist Party in recent years,” said Loeffler, referring to payments by a media conglomerate linked to the Hong Kong government for Ossoff’s media company, which he initially did not list on a financial disclosure form this year.
She said she does not know the man and condemned his beliefs two weeks ago.
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“Kelly had no idea who he was and, if he had, he would have thrown him out immediately because we condemned in the strongest terms everything he stands for,” Stephen Lawson, spokesman for Loeffler’s campaign, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution shortly after Doles shared the “selfie” with a Russian social media site.
American Senator Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., Speaks to supporters during a campaign event on December 31 at McCray’s Tavern in Marietta, Georgia. (AP Photo / Ben Gray)
Candidates often pose for selfies with people throughout the campaign, and Doles does not appear to have been part of the campaign, as Ossoff claimed.
Doles has spent years as a vocal white supremacist, and he is a former member of the KKK, as well as other racist groups. He marched at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., In 2017, where a woman was killed by a white supremacist who drove her car against a crowd of protesters.
Doles pleaded guilty to a battery charge after attacking a black man seen in a truck with a white woman in Maryland in the 1990s, according to the Baltimore Sun. As part of a court agreement to reduce the charge of intentional assault of murder, he agreed to testify against a fellow accomplice to Klansman.
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Doles told the Associated Press earlier this month that he recently renounced racism “and asked God’s forgiveness”. Despite this, the media reported that he maintains ties with friends who remain involved in the white supremacy movement.
Loeffler had been appointed to the seat of Senator Johnny Isakson, who resigned a year ago. His run with Warnock is a special election for Isakson’s chair.
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Ossoff managed to force a second round with Perdue after neither candidate got enough votes to win the seat immediately on election day.
Republicans need to keep at least one seat to maintain their majority in the Senate.
Peter Hasson and the Fox News Associated Press contributed to this report.