Russ Feingold is hitting back after a deceptive ad from a Koch-backed group accused the then-senator of ignoring a memo about a scandal at Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Wisconsin. Except that the memo warning of the over-prescribing of painkillers, which ended in several deaths, was never sent to Feingold, according to the whistleblower who sent it.
But when Sen. Ron Johnson took office, he did get that tip, and as the new ad from Feingold shows, he did nothing about it.
In an ad debuting Thursday, Feingold blasts Johnson for saying “job interviews and stuff” prevented his office from quickly responding to the overprescribing of opiates at the Department of Veterans Affairs clinic in Tomah. The deaths of three people who were treated at the clinic are under investigation. […]
In Feingold’s ad, he notes a Johnson aide passed complaints onto other Johnson staff in 2014, but no one did anything about it. The spot also features a clip from a 2015 radio interview in which Johnson says his office got the complaint at a time of high staff turnover and “job interviews and stuff” kept it from being dealt with promptly.
You can see the new Feingold ad below. A Johnson spokesman says that the senator didn't hear about the problems at the medical center until January 2015. The buck doesn't stop anywhere in Johnson's office, clearly. It's a level of disengagement on Johnson's part that's unpardonable. The Kochs sure as hell didn't do him any favors by bringing this whole episode up.
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