Report: Harris tried to implicate Scarborough in intern's death

RAW STORY
Published: Friday July 14, 2006

Katherine Harris' downward slide began with a phone campaign to implicate Joe Scarborough in the 2001 death of an intern, according to insiders quoted in a report in today's Miami Herald.

Excerpts from the Herald story follow:

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...It was Joe Scarborough, host of the prime-time MSNBC show Scarborough Country and a former Pensacola Republican congressman who was courted last summer by national Republicans to run against Harris. But before he could announce he wouldn't, Harris called major donors and suggested Scarborough would have to answer questions about the strange death of a former staff member in 2001, according to two former high-level Harris staff members, a GOP donor and Scarborough.

''That was the first clue that something wasn't right with Katherine Harris,'' Scarborough told The Miami Herald in a recent interview, noting that a medical examiner found his staff member's death was natural and not the result of foul play.

Harris, through a spokeswoman, denied Scarborough's account, saying she ''would never insinuate publicly or privately'' that he did anything untoward.

But her former staff members say they expected her to deny the previously untold anecdote, which they say marked the beginning of the Harris campaign's tailspin. Since then, Harris has been dogged by her connections to an indicted defense contractor and by heavy staff turnover from last fall through Thursday, when five top aides announced their departure a day after her spokesman quit. Her campaign had issued a news release Wednesday suggesting only spokesman Chris Ingram was leaving.

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Read the full story here.