AP Retracts Story Accusing VA Candidate Of Lying

The AP made a major error on Wednesday in a report that accused Terry McAuliffe, a candidate in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, of lying to a postal inspector during an investigation into an insurance scam.

According to The Wrap, the AP’s Virginia political reporter Bob Lewis mistook a man referred to in an indictment relating to the case by the initials “T.M.” for McAuliffe. McAuliffe was mentioned by name in the documents, but only as an investor into what would later turn out to be an insurance scam that used the identities of terminally ill people to obtain death benefits from insurance companies.

“T.M.,” on the other hand, was accused of lying to a postal inspector who was investigating the case. Though he apparently has the same initials as McAuliffe, he is a completely different person.

The AP posted a story naming McAuliffe as the man who lied to the inspector based on those initials. That story also went out to its thousands of member organizations, such as the Washington Post, which posted the story directly to their websites.

The McAuliffe campaign, which had apparently never been reached for comment before the AP’s story went up, quickly denied the story to a local NBC affiliate: “The person referenced on page 68 is absolutely not Terry McAuliffe since he was a passive investor and did none of the things referenced: First, he was not interviewed by law enforcement on April 20, 2010; rather, he was in Richmond for a day of meetings.”

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