Former Clinton adviser Mark Penn is urging ABC to launch an investigation into the planning and execution of its presidential debate.
Penn called for the investigation during his appearance on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast, Just the News reported.
“I actually think they should do a full internal investigation, hire an outside law firm,” he said. “I don’t know how much of this was planned in advance.”
“I don’t know what they told the Harris campaign. I think the day after, suspicion here is really quite high, and I think a review of all their internal texts and emails really should be done by an independent party to find out to what extent they were planning on, in effect, you know, fact-checking just one candidate and in effect, rigging the outcome of this debate,” he explained. “I think the situation demands nothing less than that.”
Penn recently wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal with former Democrat New York City Council president Andrew Stein, describing the numerous “fact checks” debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis used on Trump.
According to Penn and Stein, Mur and Davis had “decided in advance” that they would fact-check Trump and not Harris.
“Had the moderators turned to Ms. Harris after her lies and said, ‘That has been debunked,’ we might be having a totally different conversation about the debate, given how she tends to react when challenged,” they wrote. “We would be saying she was having a good night until she couldn’t help herself and went too far. Mr. Trump would have been freed from having to spend so much time defending himself against false charges, and the country would have gotten to hear more of his plans for America.”
Commission on Presidential Debates Co-Founder and Co-Chair Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. also criticized the debate moderators.
Fahrenkopf told Newsmax that the moderators “bent backwards” to help Vice President Kamala Harris.
“A debate is between the candidates, not a debate between the candidate and the moderators. And these moderators, so far as I was concerned, it was the worst performance that I’ve seen,” he said. “And I’ve — as I said, I’ve done 33 of these things over the years. I don’t know what their thoughts were, but they clearly were oversized, I think, on the way they treated the former President and the way they treated the present Vice President, I think they bent backwards to help her.”
