Fallout from the Delaware U.S. Senate battle: Christine O’Donnell files complaint against CREW

Former Delaware U.S. Senate candidate, Christine O’Donnell, is challenging the IRS tax exempt status of CREW, a group that filed an FEC complaint against her during her campaign against now Senator Chris Coons (D) last year.

O’Donnell wants U.S. Attorney for Delaware Charles Oberly and the Department of Justice to launch an investigation in to Citizens for Responsibilty and Ethics in Washington (CREW).  She claims CREW knew that the claims they made about her use of campaign funds for personal expenses were false.  

O’Donnell says that the complaining witness in CREW’s legal filing, described as a “registered voter in Delaware” was the father of CREW’s executive director Melanie Sloan. 

Federal prosecutors looking into the allegations of O’Donnell’s illegal campaign spending have ended their investigation without bringing any charges.

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John McCain vs. Christine O’Donnell

The skirmish with CREW is not O’Donnell’s only front on which she’s fighting.  John McCain invoked her name while reading from a Wall Street Journal editorial during debate about raising the debt ceiling on the Senate floor, and it wasn’t to praise O’Donnell.  The editorial is critical of those who favor stalemate in the debt debate, which would force a default, and force Democrats to reduce spending.  “This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees,” quoted McCain.

O’Donnell responded to McCain’s comments in a statement, saying “I think that it is inappropriate to insult the judgment of the majority of Republicans in Nevada and Delaware and that the implication that nominating RINOs somehow means we win was irrefutably disproven by McCain’s own presidential candidacy debacle.”  She calls McCain’s campaign a nightmare, adding that after his loss to President Obama, “McCain had to veer right so fast he almost got whiplash from all his flip-flopping just to keep his Senate seat. It doesn’t help him to attack those conservatives and Tea Partiers who graciously gave him another chance to keep his job.”

Coincidentally, or not, O’Donnell’s memoir Troublemaker hits bookstore shelves in mid August.

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