Davis Still an Officer at Lobbying Firm, Docs ShowWe knew we hadn’t seen the last news report on McCain campaign manager Rick Davis’ ongoing ties to the lobby firm he founded, Davis Manafort.
Newsweek has taken a look at annual filings made by the company to the Virginia state government. Those filings, the most recent of which is from April of this year, list Davis as one of two officers and directors of the firm.
As the magazine notes, that information suggests that in recent days, the campaign “appear[s] to have overstated the extent to which Davis had severed his relationship with his lobbying firm.” A statement posted on the McCain campaign website by a spokesman Wednesday morning — in response to reports that Davis’s firm was being paid by the home-loan giant Freddie Mac as recently as this month — asserted that Davis “separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006.” And a campaign spokeswoman wrote in an email to Newsweek Tuesday that Davis “left” the firm that year.
Of course, the fact that someone is listed as an officer on a corporate filing doesn’t prove that he was involved in the day-to-day running of the company during the period in question. But Newsweek’s find will certainly keep the heat on Davis, who yesterday skipped lunch with reporters, at a time when McCain would prefer the focus to be on his own efforts, belated and vainglorious as they may be, to help avoid a financial meltdown.