Talk radio host Mark Levin is not very happy with my report yesterday on Christine O’Donnell’s $6.9 million gender discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, a conservative group called the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. In the 2005 lawsuit, O’Donnell alleged that ISI caused her to suffer severe “mental anguish” by demoting and firing her. O’Donnell also falsely implied in the lawsuit that she was taking master’s degree classes at Princeton.
On his Facebook page, Levin defends O’Donnell on many questions raised by yesterday’s report (more on that in a moment), but he remains silent on O’Donnell’s claim that Castle supporters may have broken into and vandalized O’Donnell’s home and office and stole files in 2008. (There was no police report.)
In response to a round of emails Levin initiated with me last week, I asked Levin, O’Donnell’s biggest defender, if he cared to defend her against those who claimed she was “delusional” and “paranoid” on these points. Levin replied: “That’s ok.”
In response to Levin’s criticism on Facebook, I emailed him last night while waiting for Mike Castle to show up at Katherine Rooney’s Irish Pub in Wilmington:
Do you think it is acceptable for O’Donnell to claim she was in the master’s program at Princeton, when in fact she only took one undergraduate [non-matriculated] class?
Does O’Donnell’s claim that her house was burglarized and vandalized in 2008, perhaps by Castle supporters, lead you to question her honesty at all? Do you find that story plausible? Do you find it concerning that she did not call the police about this burglary?
Levin’s response, in full:
Sent from my iPhone
Since that doesn’t offer much to work with, I’ll address the rest of his Facebook post. He writes:
Does Levin really think that this information wouldn’t have come to light if I hadn’t reported it? Does he think voters don’t have the right to know the details of the lawsuit filed by O’Donnell before going to the polls?
Levin goes on:
It’s a judgment call for conservatives as to how liberal a Republican can get before reasonable conservatives would want to toss said RINO overboard (see Chafee, Lincoln; Weicker, Lowell). Is Castle more of a Lincoln Chafee or a Scott Brown, who would vote to repeal Obamacare and vote to confirm Supreme Court justices like Samuel Alito? Castle seems to be closer to the latter, but that’s not entirely clear.
Of course, ideology isn’t all that matters. So does character. And O’Donnell has history of having trouble telling the truth, which brings me to Levin’s next point:
Levin’s assumption appears to be at odds with the facts. I contacted the O’Donnell campaign Saturday afternoon and published the report just before noon on Sunday. The only response came from O’Donnell campaign manager Matt Moran, who wrote that O’Donnell “was not admitted to a Masters Degree program at Princeton. She took an undergraduate non-matriculated class at PU on constitutional government.” Moran did not reply to my subsequent email asking why O’Donnell claimed “ISI violated its promise to allow Miss ODonnell time to take Master’s degree classes at Princeton,” thereby costing her $150,000 in earning power.
So here are the facts: O’Donnell repeatedly referred to taking master’s degree classes at Princeton; in fact, she did not, and her campaign has refused to issue a statement trying to explain this apparent falsehood.
Levin goes on:
True enough. Readers are free to read through O’Donnell’s complaint and judge for themselves whether O’Donnell’s reaction (even assuming her allegations are all true) is reasonable. According to the complaint submitted by O’Donnell herself:
Miss O’Donnell’s mother and sister both noticed and spontaneously told her at the time, prior to litigation, that she was differently [sic], and urged her to seek medical evaluation…
Levin:
I don’t make that assumption. Read the piece.
Levin:
If McCormack is going to write the definitive piece on O’Donnell’s work history, why ignore this?
Duly noted. O’Donnell told me she worked at CWA for about a year in the mid-90s. Since that job, O’Donnell was in charge of her own Christian conservative group, the Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth, and then worked for about a year at ISI before being fired in February of 2004. Since then she has made a living by running for Senate three times and doing varying amounts of freelance consulting.
Levin writes that I’m “smearing [O’Donnell] by cherry-picking,” but I gave her a chance to respond after I read all 82 pages her court complaints. Perhaps Levin should read the lawsuit in full before he continues to argue about it.
