Former U.S. Rep. Dick Armey, defending his former House speaker, said Newt Gingrich is taking too much heat for his tenure in Congress.
"Newt had problems, but I don't think that it was accurate to say he resigned in disgrace," Armey said, in response to Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney's attacks.
CNN reported Armey's comments, which the Gingrich campaign sent as an email statement.
In the days before Florida's Jan. 31 primary, former Massachusetts Gov. Romney has been hammering the point that Gingrich faced a $300,000 penalty from the House Ethics Committee in 1997.
But Armey, whose tea party group FreedomWorks has been campaigning aggressively against Romney, said the point is moot.
"By the time he left his speakership, he had resolved all the ethical allegations that had been alleged and formally charged against him," said Armey, who was House majority leader under Gingrich in the late 1990s.
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