TRUTH ALERT: Missouri attorney general attack ads
The hotly contested Missouri attorney general race has included some harsh attack ads on the Republican side between state Sen. Kurt Schaefer and MU law professor Josh Hawley.
First, an advertisement paid for by Citizens to Elect Kurt Schaeferclaimed that Hawley “defended a terrorist.”
This was in reference toGregory Holt, also known as Abdul Maalik Muhammad, an Arkansas Muslim serving life in prison for cutting his girlfriend’s throat.
Hawley’s former firm,the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, was fighting in the Supreme Court to allow Holt to grow a beard in prison for religious reasons.
The firm said the SCOTUS blog mistakenly listed Hawley’s name in the filing despite Hawley not being involved in the case. The Becket group published another version of the document that does not include Hawley’s name.
A follow-up ad from the Schaefer campaign pointed out that Hawley worked to get former terrorist organization Mujahedin-e Khalq off of the U.S. State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list.
Hawley is listed in the lawsuit against the department and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
It was the secretary’s opinion in 2012that because the group renounced violence in 2001 and assisted in U.S. interests in Iran, MEK should no longer be considered a terrorist group.
“The department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992,” the State Department said in a memo. “The department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.”
The group was removed from the FTO list in September 2012.
Schaefer was attacked by the Tea Party Patriotsin an ad claiming that the state senator from Columbia voted to allow China to buy Missouri farmlands.
The ad refers to Senate Bill 12 which, in 2015, eased the regulations for foreign ownership of Missouri farmlands.
The bill was passed unanimously by the Senate and was eventually signed by the governor.
This allowed the sale of the massive Smithfield Food Co., which did have operations in Missouri, to be sold to a Chinese company.
ABC 17 News is contacting both campaigns and will have more on this story.
