Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) put on a big show about suing the NSA. This is all part of his freedom boy image (freedom for some, but for minorities, women, etc — forget it). But as usual, whenever Rand Paul is involved, trouble isn’t too far behind.
Dana Milbank revealed in the Washington Post tonight that the suit Paul filed was allegedly stolen. Yes, the actual language in the lawsuit is said to have been written by someone else, and that person is not very happy.
Paul had been working with former Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein to draft a class action lawsuit against the NSA (also known as raising money for his own coffers). But Milbank reports that when Paul filed the suit Wednesday morning, “Fein’s name had been replaced with that of Ken Cuccinelli, the failed Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia who until last month had been the state’s attorney general.”
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Milbank continued:
Fein, who has not been paid in full for his legal work by Paul’s political action committee, was furious that he had been omitted from the filing he wrote. “I am aghast and shocked by Ken Cuccinelli’s behavior and his absolute knowledge that this entire complaint was the work product, intellectual property and legal genius of Bruce Fein,” Mattie Fein, his ex-wife and spokeswoman, told me Wednesday. “Ken Cuccinelli stole the suit,” she said, adding that Paul, who “already has one plagiarism issue, now has a lawyer who just takes another lawyer’s work product.”
Rand Paul has a history of plagiarism. He has plagiarized speeches, books, newspaper op-eds, and even his own congressional testimony. And now, he stands accused of basically stealing a lawsuit and tacking Cuccinelli’s name on it. Oh, irony.
After being busted for plagiarism the last time around in November of 2013, Paul dismissed the people who reported on his plagiarism as haters. Then he said that if it were legal he would challenge those reporting the facts to a duel. Then, when all hope was lost, he blamed the help.
Now Paul is allegedly plagiarizing lawsuits. This will go well for his presidential ambitions.
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