Georgia GOP Senator David Perdue’s campaign exposed a lie perpetuated by the incumbent’s Democrat challenger, Jon Ossoff, and Senate Majority PAC (SMP), an ally of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Both Ossoff and SMP prematurely claimed that Georgia’s senior senator was guilty of insider stock trading, as financial scandals infiltrated the upper chamber after a private briefing on coronavirus in January. Sen. Perdue was not present at the briefing, which drew controversy for other GOP senators, but welcomed investigations into his financial records.
On Wednesday, his campaign revealed that Sen. Perdue was cleared of wrongdoing by the Department of Justice (DOJ), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee:
It is unclear why both Ossoff and SMP would deem Sen. Perdue guilty of insider trading, without tangible proof, before the independent government entities had drawn their own conclusions; this is not Ossoff’s first instance of pushing false narratives.
Ossoff’s campaign is fueled by his promise to “fight corruption,” but the senate hopeful has been caught in an abundance of lies, even before he launched his bid to unseat Sen. Perdue. Ossoff was put on the political map in 2017, when he ran and lost in one of the most expensive congressional elections to date, during which he inflated his resume, boasting nonexistent national security credentials, and deceived voters about living in the district which he sought to represent.
While running against Sen. Perdue, Ossoff pushed a debunked narrative about the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, falsely claiming that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were being silenced. He continued his trend of lying to voters by making false claims about the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which served as a lifeline to struggling Americans. Hoping to convince voters that he would “fight corruption,” Ossoff promised to “end big money in politics,” but Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show that he indirectly benefited from corporate donations via Leadership PACs.
A self-proclaimed investigative journalist, Ossoff’s foreign-based film company received thousands of dollars in donations from Al Jazeera, a Qatari-backed network widely known as a “mouthpiece for terrorists.” Complicity with the widely-condemned news network with reported ties to terrorism hardly seems to promote “fighting corruption.”
Sen. Perdue’s campaign notes that Ossoff’s work history and tendency to promote falsehoods hardly constitutes fighting corruption:
“Jon Ossoff talks a big game about exposing so-called corruption. Making films for Al Jazeera and foreign-based companies is not fighting corruption,” said Perdue for Senate Communications Director John Burke. “Simply put, Jon Ossoff and Chuck Schumer's super PAC were caught lying -- again. It’s not the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last, but this leaves us to wonder what else they are lying about to hide their dangerous radical agenda?”
Democrats have their eyes on Georgia, as Sen. Schumer hopes to flip the majority in the Senate in November, but Ossoff’s continued false attacks on Sen. Perdue do not seem to help the minority party’s chances.