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His office may not have been bugged, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell may have been right in his assertions that liberal Democrats were behind a leaked recording of his re-election campaign strategy sessions.
The Louisville Courier Journal reports that Jason Conway, of the Jefferson County Democratic Executive Committee, told the newspaper that two members of the liberal group Progress Kentucky confessed to him that they recorded the conversations through a door at McConnell’s Louisville office.
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Mr. McConnell had previously said that his offices had been bugged, “Watergate-style,” and blamed his liberal opponents in Kentucky. It now appears that an iPhone or some other small device may be to blame.
One of the men implicated in the recording, Shawn Reilly, the executive director of Progress Kentucky, says he broke no laws, the newspaper reported.
“He is at most a witness to potential activity,” Mr. Reilly’s attorney, Ted Shouse, told the Courier Journal.
He added that his client is cooperating with an ongoing FBI investigation into the matter.
The other man, Progress Kentucky member Curtis Morrison, wouldn’t answer questions and refused to confirm whether he’d hired an attorney, the newspaper said.
While the focus remains on how the recordings were made, the McConnell camp has yet to address the actual content of the tapes, first released publicly by the liberal magazine Mother Jones.
In the recordings, the McConnell campaign can be heard plotting strategies to defeat the senator’s potential Democratic opponent, actress Ashley Judd.
Ms. Judd eventually decided not to run, but the tapes show that the McConnell campaign was prepared to invoke the actress’s history of mental illness — including suicidal thoughts during her teenage years — to beat her.
Pressed by reporters earlier this week, Mr. McConnell refused to say whether such a political strategy is appropriate.
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