Barbara J. Comstock

From dKosopedia

Category: Republicans

Barbara J. Comstock is a right-wing political operative, lobbyist, and media advisor in the USA. She is consulting on the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney. For much of the 1990s, she worked for House Republicans conducting investigations of President Clinton and other Democrats. In 1999, she joined the senior staff of the Republican National Committee (RNC), where she led research and strategic planning. She was in charge of opposition-research for the first Bush Jr. campaign in 2000, and played an infamous role in Florida to delay the counting of votes for US President. She was Director of the Office of Public Affairs (chief spokeswoman) for former US Attorney General John Ashcroft from December 2001 to January 2003 (13 months), where Monica Goodling worked for her, before joining the Blank Rome PR firm. Subsequently, in December 2006 she co-founded her own law/PR firm, Corallo Comstock, with another former Justice Department spokesperson, Mark Corallo. The Washington Post noted that the timing was "just as the Hill is staffing up…to investigate administration officials." ThinkProgress declared: "Right-Wing Operatives Form ‘Crisis Management Firm’ To Profit Off Scandal-Ridden Conservatives."[1] She has helped Progress for America, a Republican-aligned conservative advocacy organization, regularly appears on television shows (such as Scarborough Country or Crossfire to promote conservative and Republican viewpoints, and served as a guest host on MSNBC's Connected Coast to Coast.

Earlier, she became an appropriations aide/senior aide for Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) from 1991 to 1995, after volunteering in his office and leaving the private practice of law.[4] Comstock briefly began her congressional career as an intern for Senator Ted Kennedy.[4] Her team was also instrumental in assisting Republican operatives in the 2000 Florida vote recount and in writing the Republican 'playbook' defending Bush nominees such as John Ashcroft, for attorney general.[4]

In his book Blinded by the Right, formerly conservative journalist David Brock discusses Comstock's Whitewater investigative efforts against the Clintons, characterized as "almost unhinged" by other critics. Brock notes that Comstock would regularly make late-night telephone calls with "the latest tidbit she had dug up in the thousands and thousands of pages of administration records she pored through frantically," and visited Brock to "watch the rerun of a dreadfully dull Whitewater hearing she had sat through all day." To Brock, Comstock seemed "especially intent on proving that Hillary [Clinton] had lied about her role" in Travelgate.

Comstock serves on the Board of Trustees of the Theodore Roosevelt Association.

On 27 May 2004, Comstock published an article in the on National Review Online, quoting Charles Krauthammer's comment that it "Looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again." She continued: "Outside of MoveOn.org, the biggest cheers for Gore must have been coming from caves in Afghanistan and diehards in Fallujah." In reference to MoveOn.org executive director Eli Pariser, she wrote: "His group has promoted ads comparing Bush to Hitler."[2]

According to Roll Call: "Corallo and Comstock are forming the crisis management firm Corallo Comstock, Inc. They aim to open shop on Jan. 1 [2007], just before the new Democratic chairmen will start banging their gavels and demanding information from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. “Just in time for subpoena season,” Corallo told HOH. … Together, they’ll be doing crisis management, communications strategy, strategic consulting, government relations and basically helping GOP folk who are up a creek without a paddle."[3]

Comstock and Corallo cut their teeth investigating the Clinton administration on the House Government Reform Committee in the 90s under then-Chairman Dan Burton (R-IN), where David Bossie was a close ally. Comstock was Chief Investigator. Both Comstock and Corallo have gone on to represent prominent scandal-stricken conservatives in recent years. Corallo was Karl Rove’s spokesman during the Valerie Plame investigation. Comstock worked for Scooter Libby in the Plame affair. She has also represented indicted former Congressman Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), who is under federal investigation.

One blog commenter wrote: "As an attorney representing an accounting firm (with no axe to grind on any side), I had to deal with her when she worked on the House Committee in the early 90’s in connection with its investigation of Travelgate. She had absolutely no interest in the truth; just in scoring points for her side — which was to destroy the Clintons at all costs. She literally walked in the room screaming at my witness and me before any testimony had even been taken for no reason other than her pre-conceived notion that the testimony might be unfavorable to her anti-Clinton agenda. I hadn’t heard of her then, so I was, naively, shocked that a governmental employee (and a staffer, at that) could be so maniacally partisan and, indeed, unhinged. Since then, she’s been on my radar screen, so I now realize that what I had to deal with was symptomatic. She is trouble with a capital T."[4]

Others commented that Blank Rome helped fund the Swiftboaters, and that Comstock was responsible for promoting various over-hyped “scandals” of the Clinton era. Her research team also built a massive “Gore file” database used by conservatives to tarnish Gore during the 2000 campaign. She has been a face behind the GOP dirty tricks for many a year now. The Washington Post labeled Comstock as a “One-Woman Wrecking Crew” for her lies and smears against Democratic Leaders.

Comstock has attached her signature to joint letters advocating the appointment of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton and urging renewal of the USA Patriot Act. Comstock is listed as an "author" on the Republican National Committee's official weblog.

Background: {college? law school?} {mentors?} {work history in 1980s?} {family background?}