Dodd lying to Left over online lender lobbyist ties?

Credit where credit is due: this is a nice piece of reporting on Dodd by the Huffington Post. The title (“Dodd Dinner With Online Payday Lenders Transforms Into Fundraiser“) explains a bit already, but the background is this: there’s a lobbying group called the Online Lenders Alliance.  Fair enough.  They’re throwing a conference this week. So far, so good.  There’s a bunch of people from Congress involved or speaking, on both sides of the aisle.  Fine*.  Senator Dodd was one of the scheduled Senators for the event, except when asked about it first his staff, then Dodd himself flatly denied that he was there on OLA’s behalf at all; it was an independent fundraising dinner.  Nothing unusu… wait, what?

Inside the restaurant, Dodd staffers said the dinner, which was not open to press, was not even sponsored by the Online Lenders Alliance.

The dinner “is not an OLA event,” OLA spokeswoman Lisa McGreevy said in a subsequent phone interview. But the OLA agenda lists a Dodd dinner — was there a mixup?

“I don’t think there was any mixup,” she said. “There is a fundraiser tonight for Senator Dodd.”

McGreevy added: “There may be some OLA people there.”

Needless to say, the Huffington Post has a contradictory screenshot, presumably from the OLA website.  They also helpfully note that Dodd takes the cash from payday loan people, although I don’t know how fair it is to point that out, particularly since 44 grand isn’t that much in the scheme of things.  Anyway, it looks like Dodd’s lying to somebody: he’s either using what should have been a perfectly-normal lobbying event to quietly and deniably raise some cash, or he doesn’t want the Left to think that he’s playing both sides of the fence when it comes to credit card ‘reform.’

Either way, let’s get rid of him once and for all.

Moe Lane

*No, really.  It all depends on how you feel about the core topic.  The GOP base doesn’t object when our politicians speak at industry affairs, and the Democratic base doesn’t object when their politicians go to an antiwar rally.  I don’t know anything about the OLA, but if it has Senators showing up then it’s probably not engaged in cannibalism and human sacrifice.

Crossposted to RedState.