Ed Rollins, the campaign manager for Rep. Michele Bachmann’s unsuccessful Presidential bid, criticized his former boss in a Fox News opinion piece after the Congresswoman sent a letter to the State Department suggesting that well-known Clinton aide Huma Abedin may have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
“I have been a practitioner of tough politics for many decades. There is little that amazes me and even less that shocks me,” Rollins, who managed Ronald Reagan and Mike Huckabee’s campaigns, wrote. “Michele Bachmann’s outrageous and false charges … reaches that threshold.”
The letter, sent to the State Department’s Inspector General, cites a report from the deeply conservative think tank Center for Security Policy. The letter notes that Abedin’s father, mother and brother had ties to the Brotherhood and goes on to list situations wherein the party may have received preferential treatment.
Representatives Louie Gohmert, Trent Franks, Thomas Rooney and Lynn Westmoreland signed the letter.
Rollins charged that Bachmann’s letter is comparable to McCarthyism, the 1950s communist witch hunt.
“I am fully aware that she sometimes has difficulty with her facts, but this is downright vicious and reaches the late Senator Joe McCarthy level,” Rollins wrote.
Rollins isn’t the only conservative to defend Abedin. Sen. John McCain condemned the letter on the Senate floor Wednesday.
