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(UPDATED 2X) Republicans pulled attack ad

By David Lombardo

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Two Capital Region television stations are planning to stop airing an ad from the National Republican Campaign Committee that attacks Democratic congressional candidate Julian Schreibman, according to his campaign.

WXXA, the Fox affiliate, and WNYT, the NBC affiliate, will stop airing the ad as soon as possible, which the Schreibman campaign said speaks volume's to the inaccuracy of the ad in question.

The ad attacks Schreibman for his time as a defense attorney, specifically in the case of Mark Holzwanger. The Schreibman campaign notes that the ad falsely identifies its sources and makes false claims.

Schreibman’s campaign manager, Jonathan Levy, said in a statement, “This is a desperate attack by the faltering campaign of Congressman Gibson and his Washington pals. Congressman Gibson claims to be a reasonable voice while letting his Washington allies do his dirty work."

Below are the key points highlighted by the Schreibman campaign, in the campaign's own words:

The NRCC has falsely claimed that a client, named Mark Holzwanger, was “convicted of defrauding his clients.” In fact, Holzwanger was the part-owner of a small payroll services company who was wrongly accused of a crime.

Holzwanger was never convicted. A federal judge wrote that “no rational jury” could have found Holzwanger guilty and said that there was “no evidence” that Holzwanger lied to the company’s clients.

In two cases, the NRCC states that allegations as if they were fact. They went so far as to cite a story published before the trial to say that Holzwanger was convicted and that he defrauded his clients.

The NRCC has abandoned any semblance of the truth to the point that they try to tie Julian to Bernie Maddoff when Julian in fact represented many Madoff victims, including by filing suit against the U.S. government based on the negligence of the Securities & Exchange Commission to stop Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. [Applestein v. United States of America, case #: 1:11-cv-00521-LTS]

UPDATED 6:33 p.m. A spokesman for the NRCC says the Schreibman campaign's claim that the two local stations pulled the ad is factually inaccurate.

"We voluntarily and proactively asked that the stations change the ad with an ad that had previously been running," said Nate Sillin of the NRCC

He added that the NRCC will continue to expose the unsavory characters that Schreibman got rich defending.

As to why the NRCC chose to pull the ad, Sillin declined to provide any further elaboration and pointed to his previous comments.

UPDATE 2X, 7:33 p.m. Schreibman campaign manager Jonathan Levy acknowledged that the RNCC pulled its "factually inaccurate" attack ad, but stressed that they did so to beat the local stations to the punch.

Schreiman campaign attorneys had previously highlighted the discrepancies in the aid in a letter sent to the television station managers. Those stations, he said, then approached the NRCC.

"They brought this down because it was riddled with mistruths," he said of the NRCC decision to pull the ad.

As to the contradiction in the Schreibman campaign's afternoon release, which had a headline of, "Two TV Stations Refuse To Air It," and the later acknowledgement that the NRCC pulled the ad, Levy simply reiterated the fact that the NRCC pulled the ad.

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