Dem Senate candidate: I didn’t know about FBI probe until story
Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.) claims he knew nothing about an FBI investigation into an alleged straw donor scheme connected to his first run for Congress until reading about it in The Hill.
Murphy, the Democratic Florida Senate candidate, said “no” when asked twice Thursday by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota whether he was aware of the investigation before The Hill published the story Wednesday.
{mosads}“Our campaign follows the letter of the law,” Murphy told CNN. “We’ve never been contacted by the authorities. No one on my campaign has been contacted.”
Murphy’s denial that he knew anything about the FBI investigation before the story’s publication is new. The rest of his statements don’t contradict anything in the original report.
In reporting the original story, when The Hill asked the Murphy campaign whether he was aware of the FBI investigation, the campaign refused to say.
The Hill reported Wednesday that the FBI is investigating an alleged illegal donation scheme connected to Murphy’s longtime friend and political donor Ibrahim Al-Rashid. The FBI investigation pertains to Murphy’s first campaign for Congress in the 2012 cycle.
And while FBI agents have visited people named on the alleged scheme in Texas and Florida, The Hill reported that it had found no evidence that Murphy was involved in, or even aware of, the alleged scheme.
In the original story, Murphy’s campaign said neither he nor anybody on his team had been approached by authorities. The Hill also reported that a Republican group, the Senate Leadership Fund, submitted the original complaint.
The Murphy campaign refused to answer a question from The Hill about whether any legal representative of Murphy’s or his campaign’s had discussed the FBI investigation with Al-Rashid’s attorney. Murphy has still not answered that question.
“As you saw in the story, it’s a lot of speculation,” Murphy said on CNN’s “New Day” Thursday morning.
“And, look, there is a reason why the authorities didn’t even comment on this,” Murphy added. “It’s another attempt by the Republican super PACs, these right-wing groups, trying to distract from the fact that Marco Rubio is a no-show, that he doesn’t even like his job.”
Murphy’s opponent, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), seized on the FBI probe in a Thursday radio interview.
“Yesterday, we learned Patrick Murphy — a very big donor to him, a Saudi Arabian family that’s given him $400,000 — are now under FBI investigation,” Rubio told WJNO. “He continues to deny knowing anything about it.”
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