You don't get forced out of the House of Representatives unless you have some serious skeletons in your closet. We all know Newt is not exactly a beacon of integrity, and recently he has been busy trying to downplay his past indiscretions...notably his first divorce.
For those who don't know the story, he served his first wife with divorce papers while she lay in a hospital bed, stricken with cancer no less. That's the sort of thing that tends to alienate social conservatives, so it's no small wonder Newt has tried to rewrite that chapter. Unfortunately, court records do not bear out his revisionist version of events:
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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.
(The pdfs of the court docs are available at the below link)
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/26/politics/gingrich-divorce-file/index.html
He also failed to make the ballot in Va but then again so did most of the rest of the GOP field. His polls numbers have eroded so not a good stretch for the latest 'flavor of the month' GOP Presidential pick.
For those who don't know the story, he served his first wife with divorce papers while she lay in a hospital bed, stricken with cancer no less. That's the sort of thing that tends to alienate social conservatives, so it's no small wonder Newt has tried to rewrite that chapter. Unfortunately, court records do not bear out his revisionist version of events:
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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.
(The pdfs of the court docs are available at the below link)
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/26/politics/gingrich-divorce-file/index.html
He also failed to make the ballot in Va but then again so did most of the rest of the GOP field. His polls numbers have eroded so not a good stretch for the latest 'flavor of the month' GOP Presidential pick.
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