More Arrests in Mississippi Scandal

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The weirdest political scandal ever:

Authorities say the vice chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party and two other men conspired with Clayton Kelly to photograph U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran’s bedridden wife in her nursing home and create a political video against Cochran.
Mark Mayfield of Ridgeland, an attorney and state and local tea party leader, was arrested Thursday along with Richard Sager, a Laurel elementary school P.E. teacher and high school soccer coach. Police said they also charged John Beachman Mary of Hattiesburg, but he was not taken into custody because of “extensive medical conditions.” All face felony conspiracy charges. Sager also was charged with felony tampering with evidence, and Mary faces two conspiracy counts.
The arrest of Mayfield, well-known in political, business and legal circles, caused shock in Mississippi, in a criminal case and election that already had Mississippi in the national spotlight. . . .
Cochran’s opponent in a bitter GOP primary race, tea party-backed state Sen. Chris McDaniel of Ellisville, continued to deny any involvement with Kelly or the video and to accuse Cochran of gaming the incident for political points.
Authorities said they have no evidence at this point linking the alleged conspiracy to a campaign. But Cochran’s camp has continued to question when and how McDaniel and his staff knew of it, and point to inconsistent answers McDaniel and others on the campaign have given since Kelly’s arrest Friday night.
McDaniel in a statement Tuesday called on Cochran to take down a new ad. It says a “Chris McDaniel supporter has been charged with a felony for photographing his wife in a nursing home. Had enough? … Rise up against dirty politics.”
McDaniel said, “It is shameful for a sitting U.S. senator to engage in such desperate slander and lies.”

(Via Memeorandum.)

 

25 comments

  1. It’s a shame that tea party people would attempt to use typical Democrat scandal strategy.

  2. From a different news article we learn Kelly is “charged with exploitation, filming without permission and conspiracy.”

    I’m confused. What he did is definitely @ssholeish, but, exploitation? What does that even mean in legal terms?

    Filming without permission? The government, from local to federal, does that every day in all sorts of manners. So do private businesses. And it’s not always posted that you’re being monitored.

    Conspiracy? Again, what does that even mean in this context?

  5. Don’t know the specifics of MS, but in many states the elder abuse statute includes exploitation. Which would probably include using private images of a person without their consent.

  6. McDaniel said, “It is shameful for a sitting U.S. senator to engage in such desperate slander and lies.” Where’s the lie? Where’s the slander? The only desperation I can see is in the McDaniel camp. And rightly so now that we’ve gone from crazy kid blogger to Tea Party conspiracy. McDaniel may well be a victim here, time will tell.

  7. Interesting. I did not know that.

    That said, one would think it would apply to everyone. Of course, that would give The Government trouble, since they constantly film us.

  8. “Filming without permission”
    It’s generally called “Reasonable expectation of privacy.”
    If you are in the lobby of a public building, you should assume you are/can be filmed.
    If you are in the bathroom of the same public building, you should have the expectation of privacy.

  9. At this point it seems McDaniel is a victim. Some one on the McDaniel campaign asked the blogger to take the video down the day after it went up. It seems some one on the campaign staff knew about it and tried to deal with it.

  10. I hope McDaniel is in the clear on this. I just think that his response to the ad was wrong.

  11. What I haven’t seen explained anywhere yet is how the fzck images of his wife in a nursing home could possibly be used in any attempt to smear, belittle, or harm the guy. If she was wandering the streets in an alzheimer’s daze, I could see some a$$wipe maybe thinking he could abuse such an image as a portrait of her husband’s purported “neglectfulness.” But in a nursing home?

    I don’t get anything about this entire deal.

  12. You haven’t looked very hard, then. The images of Cochrane’s bedridden wife were used as backdrop to accusations that Cochrane was having an affair. Not hard to see how images of the invalid wife would be inflammatory.

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