More of the same from McCain, with revelations that Rick Davis, campaign manager, had a connection to Freddie Mac through last month. This is such a basic issue, it's hard to believe how the McCain campaign continues to bump into one another on these.
This is something to have gotten straight at the time of an interview. It's at the beginning of the relationship when the individual is being considered for a position that care must be taken to avoid conflict of interest such as this. It's hard to believe that the right vetting might not have been done for such an important job.
And it's an example of how the job shouldn't have been done. To have something like this come back and bite a candidate at a crucial point in a campaign is intolerable.
What's worse? McCain made erroneous statements about it - amplifying the problem.
Here's the excerpt:
WASHINGTON — One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.
The disclosure undercuts a statement by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.
Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said.
They said they did not recall Mr. Davis’s doing much substantive work for the company in return for the money, other than speak to a political action committee of high-ranking employees in October 2006 on the approaching midterm Congressional elections. They said Mr. Davis’s firm, Davis & Manafort, had been kept on the payroll because of Mr. Davis’s close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who by 2006 was widely expected to run again for the White House.
Mr. Davis took a leave from Davis & Manafortfor the presidential campaign, but as a partner and equity-holder continues to benefit from its income. No one at Davis & Manafort other than Mr. Davis was involved in efforts on Freddie Mac’s behalf, the people familiar with the arrangement said.
A Freddie Mac spokeswoman said the company
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