Rachel Maddow calls b.s. on Orrin Hatch

There has been lots of talk this week about Orrin Hatch's appearance on Meet the Press last Sunday. During his appearance, Hatch mentioned Carol Lam, a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California and one of the eight attorneys recently fired by the Justice Department.

During his appearance, Hatch mentioned that Carol Lam worked for the Clinton campaign (see video below).

At the heart of Hatch's inaccuracies is this paragraph:

Carol Lam, it’s amazing to me she wasn’t fired earlier because for three years members of the Congress had complained that there had been all kinds of border patrol capture of these people but hardly any prosecutions. She was a former law professor, no prosecutorial experience, and the former campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton, and they’re trying to say that this administration appoints people politically? Of course they do.

Here's the video clip...



Rachel Maddow (top left), who hosts her own program on Air America Radio, did a little digging of her own and began poking holes in Hatch's lies and distortions, writing this letter to the Hatch:

Dear Senator Hatch-
You don’t call, you don’t write...

I’ve just about exhausted myself trying to get someone in your office to call me back this week. Please apologize to your adorable receptionist on my behalf – the poor man now gets audibly exasperated as soon as I say "hello."

What I’d like to talk with you about is very simple: on NBC’s Meet the Press this past Sunday, you said this about Carol Lam, the US Attorney for San Diego who was fired by the Justice Department in December:

"She was a former law professor, no prosecutorial experience, and the former campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton"

I checked the transcript against the video (or click here for the specific clip) and it’s clear to me that you weren’t misquoted.

Here's my question for you or your staff: what in the Lord's name are you talking about?

Here at Air America, we called John Emerson, who managed Clinton's California campaign in '92 and again in '96 to ask if Carol Lam had been the "campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton" – you might have thought we'd asked him if the sky was green.

First of all, uh, NO, she wasn't.

And second, Carol Lam was an Assistant US Attorney at the time of Clinton's campaigns, and she therefore couldn't have also been a campaign manager for any presidential candidate without violating the (ironically-named) Hatch Act, which restricts political activity by federal government employees.

Then we called a source close to Carol Lam in California, who expressed utter bewilderment at what old Orrin said on Meet the Press.

The source confirmed for us publicly-available documents about Lam's career which indicate that she is not a law professor, she's "been a federal prosecutor for nearly 18 years and [has] never been a fundraiser for any president."

Senator Hatch, what’s going on here?

Were you thinking of someone else? You seemed under the weather on Sunday - did you maybe fall asleep and wake up in the middle of what you thought was a totally different interview – an interview about someone who DID work for Clinton's campaign?

Don't you want to apologize and set the record straight? Won't you be embarrassed if Meet the Press has to run a correction about something you said, that you won't retract?

Or do you have secret information that no one else has, that will back up your off-the-wall claims about Carol Lam?

Senator Hatch, call me.

My voicemails have filled up the systems on all of your press guys' phones, so I know you know how to reach me.

When you call me back, I'll give you all the time you want on my radio show to either explain your top-secret Carol Lam information, or to apologize for your utterly outrageous, inexplicable smear.

I know it's difficult to have to defend the Bush Administration for their political purge of the US Attorneys - but that doesn't mean you get to make stuff up about the US attorneys that you think will make it seem like they deserved what they got.

Come on, come on, Senator Hatch. I caught you on this one. Return my calls - I'll help you make it all better.

All best wishes,
Rachel Maddow
Host, "The Rachel Maddow Show"
Air America Radio 6-8 PM Eastern

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Who says that letters don't make a difference? Hatch has responded in a letter to Tim Russert. [Click on letter for larger image.]

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And Maddow responds to Hatch's b.s. letter. ...

Apparently this open letter thing works!

Senator Hatch has now issued a letter climbing down from the pile of lies he told about Carol Lam on Meet the Press this weekend.

He now says thought he was talking about a person named "Alan Bersin" when the name "Carol Lam" accidentally escaped his lips instead.

Given the massive media attention and debate about "Alan Bersin" recently, I can understand his mistake.

For more on this weird controversy, tune into my next show, titled, as always, "Yet Another Two Hours of Talk Radio All About Alan Bersin."

Rachel

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Bravo, Rachel - keep up the good work. For those of you who haven't listened to her show, I urge you to - visit her blog Here, where you can find out more about her, the show, get lots of opinion, and best of all - downloads of audio and video files from her show.

By the way, for those of you who don't think Hatch's mistakes are important, think again. They are, because all signs point to the fact that they were deliberately said. The fact is that Lam and the other dismissed U.S. Attorneys are having their reputations wrongly and needlessly smeared so this administration can cover its ass.