Category Archives: Katty Kay

Check out Laura Trevelyan’s hard hitting investigation about Ground Zero Mosque developer Sharif El-Gamal.

Sorry, did I say “hard hitting investigation”? I meant “credulous, predictable piece of propaganda”.

Unsurprisingly Trevelyan neglects to mention this recent news:

Sharif El-Gamal, who runs the real estate firm Soho Properties and is heading the project two blocks from Ground Zero, was slapped with eviction proceedings last month after tallying up $39,000 in back rent, a Manhattan Housing Court filing shows…
It’s not the first time El-Gamal’s company has fallen behind in rent.
Royal Crospin sued Soho Properties last year for nearly $89,000 in back rent. El-Gamal’s firm paid $56,000 to settle.

How unlike Katie Connolly’s profile of Christine O’Donnell which included these nudge-nudge, passive aggressive nuggets of information:

In 2008 she defaulted on her mortgage and in 2010 the US government filed a claim stating that she owed more than $10,000 (£6,430) in back taxes and penalties. She has said this was a mistake, and a computer error…
Accusations that she inappropriately used campaign funds – to pay her rent, for example – have also surfaced.

The GZM developer gets the full sympathetic spin. The Tea Party “witch” gets the full load dumped on her.

And while I’m on the subject, does anybody recall the BBC covering this story in July?

Election watchdogs have directed Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign to pay the U.S. Treasury more than $219,000 to resolve issues caused by sloppy bookkeeping and accepting excessive contributions, including a discounted flight on a private jet.

The audit was released Friday by the Federal Election Commission.

It determined that the Biden campaign accepted an improper corporate contribution in the form of a round-trip flight between New Hampshire and Iowa in June 2007 for three people. The Biden campaign paid GEH Air Transportation $7,911 for the first-class airfare, but regulators say the campaign should have paid the charter rate of $34,800.

The FEC also found that the Biden campaign could not document repaying at least $106,000 in donations that were over the limit, and the campaign was ordered to pay the U.S. Treasury more than $85,000 for stale-dated checks.

The Biden campaign also failed to disclose more than $3.7 million in payments and roughly $870,000 in debts.

A bit more substantial than O’Donnell’s $10,000, and yet I can’t seem to find it mentioned on the BBC website. They did find space for this Biden story in the same month, though. I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the fact that Katty Kay’s good friend and co-author Claire Shipman is the wife of the Vice President’s chief spin doctor.

Update 19:45. Here’s Michelle Malkin on the double standards over O’Donnell’s financial problems.