WaPo's Karen Tumulty: Mitt Romney Has Again Mangled Facts on Gingrich Ethics Case and Resignation

From Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post:

"Mitt Romney has again mangled the facts about the ethics investigation of former House speaker Newt Gingrich and the circumstances surrounding his resignation.

"In an interview on Fox News Channel’s 'Fox and Friends' Monday morning, Romney said of his GOP presidential rival: 'His experience as speaker of the House end[ed] so badly, with an ethics scandal and him having to resign in disgrace and with his own members, 88 percent of them Republican members, voting to reprimand him.'

"There was indeed a reprimand, and there was a resignation. But the two events occurred nearly two years apart and did not have anything to do with each other.

"The Washington Post’s own Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, has already taken Romney’s campaign to task for a similar distortion in an ad. But now that it is coming directly from the frontrunner’s lips, it is worthwhile to revisit those events to see how they really played out."

Tumulty than goes on to lay out a history of the events with links to Washington Post news reports written at the time of the events. This article and its links are well worth reading.

Especially interesting is Tumulty's explanation in the comments section of why she wrote the piece:

"I am old enough (sadly) to have actually covered both of these events. And I was really startled to hear Romney say today that Gingrich had resigned as a result of the ethics charges. That was simply not true, which is why I felt compelled to write this blog post."