Ron Paul - Newsletters Controversy

Newsletters Controversy

Beginning in 1978, for more than two decades Paul and his associates published a number of political and investment-oriented newsletters bearing his name (Dr. Ron Paul's Freedom Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report, the Ron Paul Investment Letter, and the Ron Paul Political Report). By 1993, a business through which Paul was publishing the newsletters was earning in excess of $900,000 per year.

A number of the newsletters, particularly in the period between 1988 and 1994 when Paul was no longer in Congress, contained material that later proved highly controversial, dwelling on conspiracy theories, praising anti-government militia movements, and warning of coming race wars. During Paul's 1996 congressional election campaign, and his 2008 and 2012 presidential primary campaigns, critics charged that some of the passages reflected racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic bigotry.

The newsletters included statements such as:

• "...I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."
• "Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer, Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day!"
• "An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible... I frankly don't know what to make of such advice, but even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming."
• “I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities. They could also not be as promiscuous. Is it any coincidence that the AIDS epidemic developed after they came 'out of the closet,' and started hyper-promiscuous sodomy? I don't believe so, medically or morally.”
• “ Johnson may be a sports star, but he is dying because he violated moral laws.”
• “he criminal ‘Justice’ Department wants to force dentists to treat these Darth Vader types under the vicious Americans With Disabilities Act;" and “e all have the right to discriminate, which is what freedom of association is all about, especially against killers .”

Other passages referred to former Secretary of Health & Human Services Donna Shalala as a “short lesbian” and Martin Luther King, Jr. as a pedophile and “lying socialist satyr" – while offering praise for former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke and other controversial figures.

When criticism of the newsletters was leveled against Paul during his 1996 congressional election, he did not deny writing the newsletters, but instead defended them and said that the material had been taken out of context. In later years, Paul said that the controversial material had been ghostwritten by members of a team that included 6 or 8 others and that, as publisher, not editor, he had not even been aware of the content of the controversial articles until years after they had been published. He eventually disavowed those passages, and stated that in 1996 his campaign advisers had thought denying authorship would be too confusing and that he had to live with the material published under his name. Some political commentators made note of the changing nature of the explanations he had provided over the years about his involvement with the newsletters.

An estranged former long-term aide of Paul, Eric Dondero, alleged that Paul was lying about his role in the production of the controversial newsletters. During the 2012 Republican presidential primary campaign, in January 2012, the Washington Post reported that several of Paul's former associates said that Paul had been very involved in the production of the newsletters and had allowed the controversial material to be included as part of a deliberate strategy to boost profits. Paul's former secretary said, "It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product... He would proof it." Paul continued to deny the accusations and to disavow the material.