Top conservative doubts Scalise story

Conservative blogger Erick Erickson on Monday questioned how newly elected House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) could have not known he was speaking to a white supremacist group in 2002.

“How do you not know? How do you not investigate?” Erickson wrote Monday afternoon on his blog RedState.com. “David Duke is the [reason] I am no longer a resident of Louisiana.”

{mosads}The No. 3 House Republican’s office confirmed to The Washington Post earlier on Monday that the lawmaker, while serving as a Louisiana state representative, had spoken to the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, a group founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. 

Scalise’s office said the lawmaker was unaware of the group’s white-supremacist leanings, adding in a statement that the group’s message is a “stark contradiction to what Mr. Scalise believes and practices as a father, a husband, and a devoted Catholic.”

But Erickson said it was difficult to believe Scalise didn’t know what the group represented.

“By 2002, everybody knew that Duke was still the man he claimed not to be. Everybody,” Erickson wrote. “How the hell does somebody show up at a David Duke organized event in 2002 and claim ignorance?”

In a statement, Scalise’s spokeswoman Moira Bagley Smith noted that Scalise “has spoken to hundreds of different groups with a broad range of viewpoints.”

“In every case, he was building support for his policies, not the other way around. In 2002, he made himself available to anyone who wanted to hear his proposal to eliminate slush funds that wasted millions of taxpayer dollars as well as his opposition to a proposed tax increase on middle-class families,” she said.