Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Newly released court documents cast doubt on Gingrich version of first divorce
CNN ^ | 12/26/2011 | Alan Duke

Posted on 12/26/2011 9:41:27 AM PST by TBBT

Carrollton, Georgia (CNN) -- Newt Gingrich claims that it was his first wife, not Gingrich himself, who wanted their divorce in 1980, but court documents obtained by CNN appear to show otherwise.

The Republican presidential candidate, now in his third marriage, has been peppered with attacks and questions about his divorce from Jackie Gingrich for the past three decades.

Questions about his past -- and what that past tells voters about his personal behavior -- have re-emerged as he has returned to the political scene 13 years after he resigned as speaker of the House.

A new defense that has arisen as Gingrich entered the presidential race this year is the insistence that she, not he, wanted the divorce.

On the "Answering the attacks" page of his campaign website, Newt.org, which "(Sets) the Record Straight: Newt's Positions on the Issues and His Record," the campaign discusses Gingrich's first divorce.

"It was (Jackie Gingrich) that requested the divorce, not Newt," the campaign website said, referring readers to an online column written by Gingrich's youngest daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, last May.

Cushman, 13 when her parents separated in 1980, was rebutting persistent rumors that her father served divorce papers on her mother the day after cancer surgery. In the column, Cushman writes that papers were never served in the hospital, and that her mother did not actually have cancer.

(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: adultery; gingrich; newt; newtdivorce
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-82 next last
To: Kickass Conservative
Because using the word “actually” infers she had another serious ailment so Newt will still look bad.

Newt's daughter wrote the passage you are referring to.

"In the column, Cushman writes that papers were never served in the hospital, and that her mother did not actually have cancer."

41 posted on 12/26/2011 10:20:21 AM PST by alicewonders ((GO PERRY!))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: silverleaf
After initially being told that the divorce documents were sealed, CNN on Thursday obtained the folder containing the filings in the divorce, which had been stashed away for years in a Carroll County, Georgia, court clerk's drawer. Retired clerk Kenneth Skinner told CNN his deputy took Gingrich's file out of the public records room around 1994, "when he (Gingrich) became the center of attention," because Skinner feared tampering and theft.
42 posted on 12/26/2011 10:21:38 AM PST by normy (Don't take it personally, just take it seriously.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: TBBT

Funny how they wait until the very last line in the article to say something good about Newt. The press does this all the time, doing the very bare minimum with a little counterpoint at the very end to be able to call the article “balanced.”


43 posted on 12/26/2011 10:22:42 AM PST by JediJones (Newt-er Obama in 2012!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TBBT

So according to CNN, since his wife didn’t file, it proves something, as though a woman “with cancer” awaiting surgery in the hospital can be the responsible party to file for divorce.


44 posted on 12/26/2011 10:23:09 AM PST by drierice
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: EagleUSA

Newt may be a bastard. But he’s OUR bastard.


45 posted on 12/26/2011 10:23:55 AM PST by JediJones (Newt-er Obama in 2012!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: silverleaf

Yes, that is BO’s MO.

Gingrich should shrug it off and turn it back on the media, and their refusal to do even the most rudimentary background check on Obama. And he should hammer this point home at every opportunity he has, using different examples of their negligence.

“My divorce thirty years ago? Hmmm. Was that before or after Obama was indulging in cocaine on a regular basis? Hey, did you guys ever establish if he was maybe a dealer?”

I would PAY to see that! ;^)


46 posted on 12/26/2011 10:24:03 AM PST by Shelayne
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: Jedidah

>> All candidates have baggage

All candidates except Obama.

Isn’t amazing how the media can dig up an amazing level of detail on every candidate except the one they continue to breast feed and nurture for POTUS.


47 posted on 12/26/2011 10:27:44 AM PST by Gene Eric (Save a pretzel for the gas jets.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: Coldwater Creek

Obama appreciates your vote. Google “yes, we can fundamentally transform America” to submit your donation.


48 posted on 12/26/2011 10:29:05 AM PST by JediJones (Newt-er Obama in 2012!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: TBBT

:”During these years, you had to make sure those papers were there,” Skinner said. “People could go in those files and get things out. We didn’t have enough security to control it.”

Current Carroll County Clerk of Court Alan Lee said he called the retired deputy clerk, who told him where to find the papers, after CNN began looking for them last week.

The documents, and interviews with people close to the couple at the time, contradict the Gingrich claim about who wanted the divorce.”

So the case (I Think) was sealed and the info has been laying around in a desk for 30 years............I smell something stinky


49 posted on 12/26/2011 10:30:01 AM PST by blueyon (The U. S. Constitution - read it and weep)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: JediJones

from the article

Leonard H. “Kip” Carter, a former close Gingrich friend, backed the contention that it was Newt Gingrich who wanted the divorce.

“He (Gingrich) said, ‘You know and I know that she’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a president,’ “ Carter, who now lives in South Carolina, told CNN recently, relating the conversation he had with Gingrich the day Gingrich revealed he was filing for divorce. Carter served as treasurer of Gingrich’s first congressional campaigns.

Carter, who was a fellow history professor when Gingrich taught at West Georgia College in Carrollton, said he broke off his friendship with Newt Gingrich because of the congressman’s treatment of his wife during the divorce.

Asked in an e-mail whether that conversation in 1980 occurred the way that Carter recounted, Gingrich spokesman Hammond did not respond.

Gerald Johnson, a Georgia state legislator at the time who also was in Gingrich’s Sunday school class, said it was his memory that Jackie Gingrich did not want a divorce. Johnson laughed when told the presidential campaign is now saying she requested the divorce, calling that “surprising.”

When Gingrich filed for divorce, he was already seeing a 28-year-old congressional aide, whom he married six months after his divorce was final in 1981. The second wife, Marianne Ginther Gingrich, told Esquire magazine last year that Gingrich even introduced her to his parents in the summer of 1980, the same time he filed for divorce.

“They were thrilled because they hadn’t wanted Newt to marry (Jackie Battley),” she told Esquire.

Gingrich divorced Marianne Gingrich 19 years later, after an affair with a younger congressional aide whom he married soon after his divorce. The third wife, Callista Bisek Gingrich, is now a major figure in his presidential campaign.


50 posted on 12/26/2011 10:30:16 AM PST by normy (Don't take it personally, just take it seriously.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: TBBT

This stuff is not important to me but I am not sure it will play well with a lot of women. His gender gap was narrowing but my best guess is that it will start widening again.


51 posted on 12/26/2011 10:30:27 AM PST by freespirited
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: blueyon

“When Jackie Gingrich and her daughters moved from their other home in Fairfax, Virginia, back to their house in Carrollton, Georgia, there were “no lights, no heat, no water, no food in the home,” former Gingrich friend and academic colleague Carter said.”

Why would they have had food in the house and all the utilities on if no one was living there? This smells like a 4-Pinocchio line to me.


52 posted on 12/26/2011 10:31:50 AM PST by JediJones (Newt-er Obama in 2012!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: TBBT

Out of date issue and no longer germane.

Why don’t they investigate Larry Sinclair’s story of Obama’s homosexual affair and extensive use of illegal drugs instead of this idiocy?


53 posted on 12/26/2011 10:34:40 AM PST by Iron Munro ("Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight he'll just kill you." John Steinbeck)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TBBT

Communists News Network (CNN) is not to be believed.


54 posted on 12/26/2011 10:39:24 AM PST by Logical me
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Iron Munro

To think he could have just raped, committed adultery and have homosexual affairs and everything would be okay. Oh wait, that’s only Democrats that can get away with it.
Divorce papers are usually a bunch of lies and everyone knows it.


55 posted on 12/26/2011 10:39:38 AM PST by Cowgirl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: TBBT

Nice job, CNN. Now where are the Bamster’s college transcripts and his thesis for law school?


56 posted on 12/26/2011 10:48:15 AM PST by Joann37
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Cowgirl

Best to be a liberal and just “live in sin.” “Breaking up with your girlfriend” never looks as bad in the headlines as “divorce.” Actually this stigma of divorce is one reason so many fewer people are getting married these days. Of course there’s no stigma on cohabitation outside of marriage. Then we would be “judging” somebody.


57 posted on 12/26/2011 10:50:51 AM PST by JediJones (Newt-er Obama in 2012!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 55 | View Replies]

To: Coldwater Creek

Like John McCain perhaps?


58 posted on 12/26/2011 11:05:08 AM PST by silverleaf (common sense is not so common- voltaire)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: JediJones

Many times in life when I moved into a vacant house I had to arrange to get the utilities turned on and buy food

Oh the humanity


59 posted on 12/26/2011 11:07:11 AM PST by silverleaf (common sense is not so common- voltaire)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 52 | View Replies]

To: Coldwater Creek
I had rather have a POTUS that was faithful to his family rather the smartest man available.

So are you switching to Santorum, less baggage? There's only a week to go.

60 posted on 12/26/2011 11:10:23 AM PST by Theodore R. (I'll still vote for Santorum if he is on the April 3 ballot.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-82 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson