Mitch McConnell aides secretly taped ripping Ashley Judd
Actress Ashley Judd addresses the crowd during the Tennesseans For Obama Benefit at The Cannery Ballroom on October 4, 2012 in Nashville, Tennessee. Her name has been thrown out as a possible contender for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s seat in 2014.
Mother Jones, the publication that released the now infamous video clip of Mitt Romney talking about the "47 percent" of Americans who don't pay income taxes, has done it again.
The liberal magazine is out with another damaging political secret tape which records a meeting between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky and his campaign aides, discussing attacking potential rival Ashley Judd’s mental health if the actress challenged his Kentucky seat in 2014.
“She’s clearly, this sounds extreme, but she is emotionally unbalanced,” a McConnell aide said on the recording. “I mean it’s been documented. Jesse can go in chapter and verse from her autobiography about, you know, she’s suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the ’90s.”
McConnell is heard presiding over the meeting, which included a number of possible opposition research strategies they were considering using against Judd.
Judd, who had considered running against McConnell, decided not to enter the race.
“We’ve always said the Left will stop at nothing to attack Sen. McConnell, but Nixonian tactics to bug campaign headquarters is above and beyond,” Jesse Benton, McConnell’s campaign manager, said in a statement obtained by Politico.
Benton later said he has asked the FBI to investigate how Mother Jones obtained the recording.
“Obviously a recording device of some kind was placed in Senator McConnell’s campaign office without consent,” Benton said. “By whom and how that was accomplished will presumably will be the subject of a criminal investigation.”