The ad at the top of this post takes North Carolina House Speaker and GOP senate candidate Thom Tillis to task for having not one but two of his top staffers—one of whom was his roommate—involved in sexual affairs with married lobbyists and then using taxpayer dollars to reward their service before announcing their resignations.
It's a pretty tough ad, but it's accurate. Nonetheless, Tillis is crying foul, putting up an ad of his own accusing Democrats of launching a "false" and "sleazy" ad. But as the Washington Post's Glenn Klessler explains, the facts aren't on Tillis's side because everything in the ad that has him so upset is basically true: His staffers did have the affairs with lobbyists, one of them was his roommate, and when he announced their resignations, he also authorized paying them one month of salary—something that he was not required to do under North Carolina law.
As Kessler notes, Tillis defended those payments at the time:
“I recognized that their jobs and careers were forever affected by their choices,” Tillis said in a statement quoted in the Raleigh News & Observer, “and that serious family obligations still existed for each of them. I stand by my decision to accept their resignation while recognizing the difficult transition period they are now entering.”
But now he says it's "false:"
“Seen those ads attacking Thom Tillis? They’re false. Tillis fired the staffers.”
But that's not the issue. The issue is whether he used taxpayer dollars to effectively give a parting bonus to a pair of disgraced staffers. And in his own words, that's exactly what he did. So the only thing "false" here is is Tillis's claim to have been wronged.