New York Times Smears McCain Adviser For Toxic Paper Ties

The New York Times claims that John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, has received money from Freddie Mac until last month. Here's the lede:

One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

The McCain campaign responded quite vigorously, claiming that the Times is nothing more than an Obama shill.

In fact, the allegation is demonstrably false. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis has seen no income from Davis Manafort since 2006. Zero. Mr. Davis has received no salary or compensation since 2006. Mr. Davis has received no profit or partner distributions from that firm on any basis -- weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual -- since 2006. Again, zero. Neither has Mr. Davis received any equity in the firm based on profits derived since his financial separation from Davis Manafort in 2006.

Further, and missing from the Times' reporting, Mr. Davis has never -- never -- been a lobbyist for either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Mr. Davis has not served as a registered lobbyist since 2005.

Though these facts are a matter of public record, the New York Times, in what can only be explained as a willful disregard of the truth, failed to research this story or present any semblance of a fairminded treatment of the facts closely at hand. The paper did manage to report one interesting but irrelevant fact: Mr. Davis did participate in a roundtable discussion on the political scene with...Paul Begala.

The Times has repeatedly ignored or minimized the fact that the Obama campaign is thoroughly surrounded itself with those who are involved in the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mess, including former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson and has sought advice from former Freddie Mac head Franklin Raines. Both of those men headed the very corporations that are at the epicenter of the Wall Street toxic paper mess.

Obama made Johnson a member of Obama's vice presidential search committee until he was forced to remove him because of the exposure of his ties to Fannie Mae. Yet Obama continues to rely on Johnson.

Obama's campaigns have benefited from his relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with more than $100,000 in lobbyist contributions. Then again, nearly everyone in Congress took money from those two organizations. However, only Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Chair of the Banking Committee took more money from these two comapnies.

Obama also has close relationships with radical community groups like ACORN, which claim to seek affordable housing for people, but who have also lobbied Congress to relax lending rules so as to extend loans to those who simply cannot afford to repay them. Relaxing these lending rules meant that banks had no choice but to lend to those who would never be able to repay, and while everything worked when home prices increased, the whole thing fell like a house of cards when prices dropped. No one could figure out exactly how much was on the books because Fannie and Freddie essentially hid these facts from public view until it was too late.

UPDATE:
Apparently Ben Smith has a problem with reading comprehension because he claims that McCain's campaign doesn't deny parts of the New York Times. How about the basic premise - that Davis was still on the payroll. McCain makes it quite clear that Davis wasn't on the payroll for the time in question, and wonders whether the Times spilled any ink in investigating Obama's clear and omnipresent ties to the banking industry.