Patrick McHenry Lashes Out; Threatens to Sue

by: Brandon Friedman

Tue Apr 22, 2008 at 01:40:22 AM EDT

Via McClatchy:

WASHINGTON -- A North Carolina congressman has threatened legal action against his Republican primary challenger over a television ad that accuses him of "revealing troop positions" during a recent trip to Iraq, "and just two days later, two Americans died."

Rep. Patrick McHenry says the 30-second ad, being aired on local cable channels and the Internet by attorney Lance Sigmon of Newton, N.C., is defamatory.

The controversy began last month when McHenry, a two-term lawmaker, returned from his first trip to Iraq.

In a speech to local Republicans, McHenry said he'd tried to get into a gym near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad but was turned away by a "two-bit security guard." Then, McHenry posted a video of himself in the Green Zone talking about how close enemy rocket attacks had come while he was there.

McHenry voluntarily pulled the video after a veterans group called VoteVets.org accused McHenry of giving away intelligence information that could aid terrorist organizations in targeting the Green Zone.

Aside from questioning whether or not McHenry might have played a role in the deaths of two American soldiers, the ad also tacitly suggests that McHenry may have violated the Espionage Act of 1917 during his Easter trip to Iraq.  Here it is:

The problem for McHenry is that each time the story starts to die down in the media--seemingly letting him off the hook--he lunges like a drunken brawler to defend himself, exercising the same lack of judgment for which the Pentagon criticized him in the first place.  Last week he trotted out a Democratic Congressman to publicly defend him, and this week he's threatening a lawsuit--again putting the story back in the public eye.

Can somebody please get McHenry a competent PR person?  He needs to either apologize like Geraldo and then shut his mouth, or just simply keep his mouth shut.  By filing this lawsuit against Sigmon, McHenry is only drawing more attention to the fact that he assisted Shi'ite insurgents in Baghdad first by revealing on video how successful their rocket strikes against the Green Zone had been, and then by posting it on his official Congressional website.

If McHenry is panicking under the looming shadow of his May 6 primary--as he may well be--perhaps that can explain why he's botching the handling of this so badly.  In that case, as jimstaro says of the national security-challenged Republican, maybe he "needs a straitjacket."

Maybe he does.  As long as he's kept away from our troops serving in combat, I don't care.

UPDATE: From the Hickory Daily Record:

Republican congressional candidate Lance Sigmon said Monday he would not be intimidated or threatened by a letter from his opponent's attorney demanding him to remove a TV advertisement from the airwaves or face legal action.

Pass the popcorn.