Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has been caught in a number of untruths recently, which on their own might go unnoticed but lumped together weave a pattern.
CLAIM: Gingrich provided ABC News with several people who were prepared to knock down claims by one of his ex-wives that he asked for an open marriage.
TRUTH: Gingrich told CNN’s John King during a South Carolina debate last week that his ex-wife’s claim that he asked for an open marriage is false.
“Every personal friend I have who knew us in that period says the story was false,” Gingrich said. “We offered several of them to ABC to prove it was false. They weren’t interested, because they would like to attack any Republican.”
He reasserted his claim about ABC a second time in an interview with the Spanish-language TV station Univision a week later.
Hours after that, Gingrich admitted that his campaign had not in fact offered anyone to ABC to speak on his behalf, beyond two daughters from his first marriage, Kathy Lubber and Jackie Cushman.
CLAIM: That Gingrich, unlike former President Bill Clinton, told the truth while giving depositions during his two divorces
TRUTH: Gingrich never gave those depositions.
While Gingrich led calls to impeach Clinton following his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the former House Speaker was involved in an extramartial affair of his own with a Capitol Hill staffer whom he later married. Gingrich says he supported impeachment because Clinton lied under oath about his affair, not because Clinton engaged in extramarital sex.
“I have been through two divorces,” Gingrich told Univision. “I have been deposed both times under oath and both times I have told the truth in the deposition because I know — I am not a lawyer — so I know it is a felony. Bill Clinton, who is a lawyer, a Yale Law School graduate, he knew he was lying under oath, he knew it was perjury.”
Lawyers for Gingrich’s two ex-wives both said he was never deposed, The Daily Beast reported.
CLAIM: Gingrich often boasts in the campaign about how much he helped former President Ronald Reagan achieve during his two terms.
But Gingrich and Reagan were never close friends, according to Elliott Abrams, an assistant secretary of state under Reagan.
“Gingrich was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail, and in all of this he was dead wrong,” Abrams wrote in National Review.
Gingrich’s campaign responded with a statement from Reagan’s eldest son, Mike, who denied Abrams’ claim.
“I am deeply disturbed that supporters of Mitt Romney are claiming that Newt Gingrich is not a true Reaganite and are even claiming that Newt was a strong critic of my father,” Reagan said.
