Aide Distributed Fake Badges to Romney Staff
NYTimes Buries The Lede
The story below is reprinted in its entirety and with its misleading, significance-omitting title
Romney Aide Resigns
By Sarah Wheaton
A top aide to Mitt Romney has resigned amid accusations that he impersonated a police officer and distributed fake badges to staff.
Jay Garrity, who had been on leave from his position as the Romney campaign’s director of operations since earlier impersonation allegations surfaced, stepped down Friday following a report in The Boston Herald in which unidentified people accused him of distributing badges to members of the advance team to gain early access to event venues, control crowds and reporters and avoid paying a highway toll.
Mr. Garrity denied the charges in a statement to The Associated Press:
"I have resigned from the Mitt Romney for President campaign so that the media attention on me will not become a distraction to the campaign’s efforts."
"I am completely confident that I will be cleared of any wrongdoing because the allegations being made against me are demonstrably false."
Notes:
(1) Imagine if the Clinton campaign (and I wish utter failure upon Hillary Clinton) had done something like this.
(2) In the back of my mind, I refer to Chris Hedges:
A paramilitary force that operates outside the law, one that sows fear among potential opponents and is capable of physically silencing those branded by their leaders as traitors, is a vital instrument in the hands of despotic movements. Communist and fascist movements during the last century each built paramilitary forces that operated beyond the reach of the law.
One of the arguments used to assuage our fears that the mass movement being built by the Christian right is fascist at its core is that it has not yet created a Praetorian Guard, referring to the paramilitary force that defied legal constraints, made violence part of the political discourse and eventually plunged ancient Rome into tyranny and despotism.
