A top staffer for Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is leaving his position with the Senate Judiciary Committee after it was discovered that he was fired from a previous job over charges of sexual harassment. Garrett Ventry was fired from his position as social media adviser for the North Carolina House Majority Leader in 2017. He was then hired by Chuck Grassley as a communications aide and given charge over communications for the Judiciary Committee. Ventry has been the point man for Grassley in fielding questions about Kavanaugh.
Ventry’s history was surfaced by Heidi Przybyla at NBC News. He denied the charges of sexual misconduct, but would not discuss the reasons for his firing. Republicans connected with the effort to confirm Kavanaugh insist that Ventry is leaving out of concerns that he “could not be an effective spokesman.”
On Friday, Ventry denied that Grassley was connected to the blame-someone-else scheme published on Twitter by Republican insider Ed Whelan. Ventry has appeared on Fox News to express disdain for the charges against Kavanaugh and Democratic insistence that there be an investigation.
Saturday, Sep 22, 2018 · 2:52:32 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
NBC is up with an article on Ventry’s firing, and it has an extremely interesting connection:
Ventry appears still to be employed at CRC Public Relations, a prominent GOP firm helping to promote Kavanaugh’s nomination to the high court, according to a Zoom Info listing dated July 25, 2018. NBC has reached out to CRC for comment.
CRC would not just be the group doing PR for Kavanaugh’s nomination, but also the group that was helping to push Ed Whelan’s blame-someone-else theory. They are also the people behind the Swift Boat campaign that spent months impugning John Kerry’s military service. Ventry was simultaneously employed as the communication director of the Senate Judiciary Committee and by CRC, a group pushing right wing propaganda. That’s super special.