Immediately following her 2010 Republican primary victory over the heavily favored Rep. Mike Castle, the watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the U.S. Attorney’s office and even went as far as calling her “a criminal”. That complaint was dropped earlier this month, but now she’s taking the fight to CREW.
In appearance on Wednesday’s “Fox & Friends,” O’Donnell explained she would be using her political action committee ChristinePAC to take the fight to CREW, which she and Cleta Mitchell, counsel to ChristinePAC, claim has a tendency to target only Republicans.
“[W]hat happened was CREW and Melanie Sloan launched a broadside attack against Christine O’Donnell the morning after she won her primary and CREW has followed this same pattern in many, many cases, probably Christine O’Donnell’s race was the most egregious,” Mitchell said. “But, the IRS – we are asking the IRS to revoke CREW’s tax exempt status because they’re not supposed to be involved in campaigns and they attack Republicans. They attacked Christine O’Donnell falsely. She’s been exonerated and it’s time that CREW be held responsible and act and – be held to be a political organization which is what they really are.”
O’Donnell likened the attacks to false sexual assault accusations, which are given credibility when they’re registered with the Feds. That, she said, was a waste of taxpayer money.
“And what I like in their whole action, too, is imagine you don’t like a candidate,” O’Donnell said. “So you knowingly get someone to accuse them of sexual assault or even worse, rape. To give your rape more credibility or to give your claim more credibility, you actually file that complaint with the U.S. Attorney’s office. Now, they’re obligated to investigate. That’s an abuse. And meanwhile, keep in mind you knew this was a false accusation. That’s an abuse of taxpayer dollars. It’s an abuse and misuse of the justice system. It’s using the justice system as a political weapon so that’s why we’re standing up to fight back to say what you did to me was wrong. You cannot make a politically motivated claim, false claim, and get away with it.”
The former GOP senatorial nominee said fighting back is a necessary course of action because it may prevent CREW from making the same false accusations in the upcoming 2012 election cycle.
“And again, as we enter into the 2012 elections, they’re going to get more desperate because they have no platform, no record, no plan to stand on.” O’Donnell continued. “So they’re going to continue to resort to the politics of personal destruction, abusing the justice system and we started ChristinePAC so we can legally fight back and stop this. Now, someone might say, aren’t you doing the same thing by filing a counter complaint and asking the IRS to revoke their status? And what I say is we’re stopping this. We are justifiably filing a complaint against a very wrong action that they did indeed do and we have all the evidence posted on our website.”
