The Daily Background
| NYT gets ahold of billing records showing Thompson lobbied for abortion rights firm
by Arlen Parsa
As Melissa so eloquently put it this morning, Mr. Thompson, I Do Believe Your Pants are on Fire.” Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
The New York Times today runs an article about Thompson’s history of lobbing for an abortion-rights group that the former senator claims he despises, and they were able to get ahold of what Thompson’s spokespeople were saying didn’t exist: actual billing records for the work that Thompson apparently did for the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association.
Billing records show that former Senator Fred Thompson spent nearly 20 hours working as a lobbyist on behalf of a group seeking to ease restrictive federal rules on abortion counseling in the 1990s, even though he recently said he did not recall doing any work for the organization.
According to records from Arent Fox, the law firm based in Washington where Mr. Thompson worked part-time from 1991 to 1994, he charged the organization, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, about $5,000 for work he did in 1991 and 1992.
That works out to about $250 per hour. In addition, the Times says, Thompson was on the phone with the NFPRHA no less than 22 times- which raises questions about the presidential hopeful’s memory, if he claims to have zero recollection of being involved or paid by them. The NYT also notes that Thompson’s pro-choice lobbying, which included hours of trying to convince Bush (sr) Administration officials to overturn the ban on abortion counseling “put him at odds with the anti-abortion movement, which considered the ban a crucial victory.”
Thompson’s new response, via his spokesman Mark Corallo (a former employee of Karl Rove), is that “It is not unusual for a lawyer to give counsel at the request of colleagues, even when they personally disagree with the issue.” I guess that makes sense on some level, until you remember that Thompson now says he considers abortion “murder,” and so if this is true, he essentially lobbied the White House so that more of what he saw as murder could take place. Hardly ethical for somebody that’s anti-abortion, and it raises questions as to how he might act as president.
