McConnell Seeks Investigation Into Judd Tape

Mitch McConnell’s reelection campaign is firing back after Mother Jones published a tape of a strategy meeting, asking the FBI to investigate how the magazine obtained the recording. “Obviously a recording device of some kind was placed in Senator McConnell’s campaign office without consent,” said campaign manager Jesse Benton. “By whom and how that was accomplished presumably will be the subject of a criminal investigation.” The tape revealed McConnell and his aides discussing attacking Ashley Judd, who was weighing a run for McConnell’s seat, as a carpetbagging Hollywood liberal with “suicidal tendencies” and a history of depression. One aide called her life a “haystack of needles.” Earlier, the campaign claimed the recording was the result of “Nixonian tactics to bug campaign headquarters.”