The FBI is investigating how a magazine obtained a recording of Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell's campaign strategists talking about how mental health issues could be used against Hollywood star and potential 2014 opponent Ashley Judd.
“Senator McConnell’s campaign is working with the FBI and has notified the local U.S. Attorney in Louisville, per FBI request, about these recordings,” McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton said in a statement Tuesday obtained by
Politico.
“Obviously a recording device of some kind was placed in Senator McConnell’s campaign office without consent. By whom and how that was accomplished presumably will be the subject of a criminal investigation.”
The recording in question was made on Feb. 2 and quotes from it were published this week in Mother Jones, a liberal magazine.
According to Politico, One of McConnell’s strategists is heard saying that Judd, star of the new action-thriller “Olympus Has Fallen,’’ is “emotionally unbalanced.’’
“I mean it’s been documented. Jesse can go in chapter and verse from her autobiography about, you know, she’s suffered some suicidal tendencies. She was hospitalized for 42 days when she had a mental breakdown in the ’90s,” the strategist says.
At another point, somebody says there is a “wealth of material” that could be used against Judd.
McConnell, the Senate minority leader, is heard talking about the strategy to be used for beating opponents.
“I assume most of you have played the, the game Whac-A-Mole? This is the Whac-A-Mole period of the campaign . . . when anybody sticks their head up, do them out,’’ he says.
The campaign has not disputed the authenticity of the recording, Politico noted.
After long consideration, and consultation with Democratic Party officials, Judd announced last month she would not challenge the Senate's Republican leader.
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