Hoffman links Doheny to earmarks, bailouts

Doug Hoffman, the Republican candidate for Congress, released his first television ad today - and it's an attack piece that ties primary opponent Matt Doheny to earmark spending and bailouts.

Here's the transcript:

"It'll take leadership to change Congress. But that's not Matt Doheny's idea. Ending wasteful earmark spending? Sorry. Doheny said everyone else should stop first. One of us? Nope. He's Wall Street millionaire whose firm invested in mortgages you had to bailout. Doug Hoffman has pledged to end earmark waste. A true conservative, he opposed the Wall Street bailout. Republican Doug Hoffman. The conservative choice. I'm Doug Hoffman and I approved this ad."

FACT CHECK

CLAIM: "Ending wasteful earmark spending? Sorry. Doheny said everyone else should stop first."

SOURCE: This April 9 Adirondack Daily Enterprise story

CONCLUSION: Now false, but its truthfulness, based on the source, is open to interpretation.

Although this is a source of disagreement between myself and Team Doheny, Matt has modified his position on earmarks. The candidate is now unequivocally opposed, although he hedged a bit when talking to the Enterprise's Nathan Brown in April.

"Doheny said he would love to see earmarks abolished, but 'until we can get rid of them altogether, I'm not going to unilaterally disarm,'" Mr. Brown wrote.

First, let's get the technical out of the way: Mr. Doheny is never quoted as saying "Everyone else should stop first."

Second - and I'm parsing hard here - there's two ways that I can think of to "get rid of them (earmarks) all together."

• The House leadership or the president abolishes the earmark process.
• Everyone in the House agrees not to take earmarks, although the process remains.

In the first instance, it wouldn't take everyone. In the second, it would.

CLAIM: "His firm invested in mortgages you had to bailout."

SOURCE: See below.

CONCLUSION: Misleading and false.

Fintech Advisory, which Matt started working at in May 2008, bought 36,509,300 shares of Countrywide on June 26, 2008, five days before the troubled lender is completely bought by Bank of America. Bank of America receives a $25 billion bailout from the federal government in fall 2008 and an additional $20 billion bailout in January 2009.

The line from the advertisement suggests a cause and effect relationship. Because Fintech invested in bad Countrywide mortgages, we had to bail Bank of America out. That's simply not true. The government gave the money to help Bank of America's merger with Merrill Lynch.

It's also worth noting that Bank of America repaid its $45 billion bailout to the government in December 2009.

Part of Mr. Doheny's duties at Fintech is to assess if a company is worth investing in, so he does have a material impact on deciding his firm's stock purchases. His spokesman would not say if he worked on the acquisition of Countrywide shares, saying that it is proprietary knowledge.

Here's a statement from Alison Power, Mr. Doheny's spokeswoman, about the ad: