Fred Steps In It

Fred's lobbying career comes back to bite him in the ass. You just know there's a cancelled check out there somewhere. LATimes (07.07.07):

"Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the group hired Thompson that year."

Thompson lobbied for abortion-rights group, it says

"His task was to urge the administration of President George H. W. Bush to withdraw or relax a rule that barred abortion counseling at clinics that received federal money, according to the records and to people who worked on the matter."

"Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo adamantly denied that Thompson worked for the family planning group. 'Fred Thompson did not lobby for this group, period,' he said in an e-mail."

"But Judith DeSarno, who was president of the family planning association in 1991, said Thompson lobbied for the group for several months."

"Minutes from the board's meeting of Sept. 14, 1991 — a copy of which DeSarno gave to The Times — say: 'Judy [DeSarno] reported that the association had hired Fred Thompson Esq. as counsel to aid us in discussions with the administration' on the abortion counseling rule."

"Former Rep. Michael D. Barnes (D-Md.), a colleague at the lobbying and law firm where Thompson worked, said that DeSarno had asked him to recommend someone for the lobbying work and that he had suggested Thompson. He said it was 'absolutely bizarre' for Thompson to deny that he lobbied against the abortion counseling rule."

"'I talked to him while he was doing it, and I talked to [DeSarno] about the fact that she was very pleased with the work that he was doing for her organization,' said Barnes. 'I have strong, total recollection of that. This is not something I dreamed up or she dreamed up. This is fact.'"