"White House political director Patrick Gaspard once served as the 'right-hand man' for Bertha Lewis, who heads up ACORN."
Steve Doocy, Tuesday on Fox and Friends
The ruling
A throwaway line in a blog posting in May — which turns out to be wrong — provided just enough fodder to allow political pundits to brand a top White House official with the political scarlet letter "A," for ACORN.
Under the spotlight is Patrick Gaspard, director of the White House Office of Political Affairs.
The accusations have their roots in an article written by Matthew Vadum for the American Spectator on Sept. 28 under the headline, "ACORN's Man in the White House." So what is the evidence?
Vadum cites a May 16, 2009, posting from ACORN founder Wade Rathke's "Chief Organizer" blog. Rathke resigned last year as "chief organizer" for ACORN amid speculation about his role in helping to conceal from the full board almost $1 million embezzeled from ACORN by his brother. Bertha Lewis, then head of New York ACORN, took Rathke's place.
In May, Rathke wrote this on his blog: "Tell me that 1199's former political director Patrick Gaspard (who was ACORN New York's political director before that) didn't reach out from the White House and help make that happen, and I'll tell you to take some remedial classes in 'Politics 101.' "
The part in parentheses comes from Rathke. But current ACORN officials say Rathke was wrong.
"He (Gaspard) never worked for us," said Brian Kettenring, a spokesman for ACORN.
It's a case of mistaken identity, Kettenring said. Rathke worked for ACORN national and not ACORN in New York. He clearly confused Gaspard with someone else, Kettenring said.
Scott Levenson with the Advance Group, which does PR work for ACORN, echoed that in an e-mail saying, "There is NO accuracy to the fact that Patrick Gaspard ever worked for ACORN."
And so we e-mailed Rathke.
"I misspoke," Rathke responded.
For their part, Doocy and others relied on the reporting of Vadum in the American Spectator. And Vadum relied on Rathke's blog posting. So the mistake is understandable. But in their zeal to paint an "A" on Gaspard's sweater, the pundits never made an effort to find out if it was right. And it wasn't. We rule the statement False.
PolitiFact staff writer Robert Farley. This ruling has been edited for print. For the full ruling — and others — see PolitiFact.com
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