Update: This story is on Roll Call now as well.
The NY Times just sent an email news alert out that Rick Davis' firm was paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 until last month.
While we've known that Davis was a lobbyist for Freddie Mac already, the article in the Times indicates that this new disclosure contradicts a statement by the McCain campaign on Sunday that Davis had no involvement with the company for the past several years.
More new lying after the fold:...
Here are a couple of excerpts from the article:
Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said.
The McCain campaign seems incredibly adept at sticking their foot in their mouth.
On Sunday, the campaign had said:
in an interview with CNBC and the New York Times, Mr. McCain responded to a question about Mr. Davis’s role in the advocacy group by saying that his campaign manager "has had nothing to do with it since, and I’ll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it."
Well, it seems that the Times, no friend of the McCain campaign anymore, decided to examine that record more carefully and found that Davis' firm was working for Freddie Mac until the government takeover last month.
On McCain's claim that he has tried for sometime to rein in Freddie and Fannie, one Freddie Mac official said,
Mr. McCain "never took on the role that some other Republicans did" to try to limit the companies. He named instead Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, John Sununu of New Hampshire and Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, all of whom were on the banking committee during recent years. "I remember working against a number of amendments and they were always introduced by Hagel and Sununu. John McCain was never anywhere to be found."
A Times check of legislation mentioned in the article,
shows that Senator Hagel was the original sponsor on Jan. 26, 2005, and Senators Sununu and Dole were co-sponsors then. Mr. McCain did not sign on as a co-sponsor for more than a year, on May 25, 2006.
Update II: More from Roll Call: (h/t to justmy2)
"All lobbying activity has stopped, and all political consulting contracts at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in the process of being terminated," said Stefanie Mullin, a spokeswoman for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which assumed control of the troubled mortgage giants earlier this month.
....
Davis Manafort has remained on Freddie Mac’s payroll, however, although it is not clear what work Davis Manafort has performed in order to earn its paycheck.
Ah, yes Senator McCain....so, how does that $520 shoe taste firmly planted in your mouth?