The American Conservative Union banned Frank Gaffney from speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the past two years because members of the board who looked into the charges he made against other board members found them to be baseless, a source close to the board tells TPM.
As first reported by Alex Seitz-Wald of Think Progress, the board decided not to invite Gaffney to speak, CPAC Chairman David Keene said.
Keene said in a statement that Gaffney “has become personally and tiresomely obsessed with his weird belief that anyone who doesn’t agree with him on everything all the time or treat him with the respect and deference he believes is his due, must be either ignorant of the dangers we face or, in extreme case, dupes of the nation’s enemies.”
Gaffney had charged that Suhail Khan and Grover Norquist were helping CPAC become infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The ban came about, according to the person close to the board, because Gaffney “was making these accusations and several board members looking into them and found them to be false.”
One of the board members who reportedly looked into the charges was GOP super lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who is set to appear on the Sean Hannity radio show this afternoon to defend Khan and Norquist. (Mitchell, notably, is opposed to the participation of the conservative gay group GOProud in CPAC). She didn’t immediately respond to a phone call on Tuesday.
A representative for Gaffney said he was not immediately available on Tuesday and already had another interview lined up for 2 p.m.
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