Democratic congressional candidate Gregory Whitten accused his opponent, Abe Hamadeh, of being a “liar” — and the Arizona Republic initially published his claims without fact-checking them.
Whitten falsely claimed in a televised interview on Tuesday that Hamadeh had “never prosecuted a case” while working for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Hamadeh did take cases to trial and served as the lead prosecutor, per the Arizona Republic’s own reporting from 2022. Yet, the outlet initially presented Whitten’s claims uncontested.
The Arizona Republic has since corrected their reporting, citing a Politifact fact check that Hamadeh had prosecuted 27 cases as lead chair. Their outlet issued corrections to their coverage after the Hamadeh campaign notified them that their coverage was false. The outlet failed to add that Hamadeh had assisted in over 100 cases during his tenure.
That is more than what presidential candidate Kamala Harris is believed to have prosecuted. Former acting attorney general Jeff Clark said he was unable to source records of any transcripts in which she prosecuted a case to trial. Clark also reported discovering that Harris never argued an appeal.
Yesterday, I had promised my followers to run a search to see if Kamala Harris had ever argued any appeals — ever. Even just one.
I got busy but have now completed that task.
The short answer is “no, never.” I could not find any evidence she had ever argued an appeal.
— Jeff Clark (@JeffClarkUS) September 25, 2024
The Arizona Republic article was formerly titled “Gregory Whitten: Congressional foe Abe Hamadeh is ‘a liar’”. The title has since been updated to reflect a more skeptical view of Whitten’s remarks: “Abe Hamadeh ‘lying so that he could get elected,’ Democratic opponent claims on TV.”
Although the Republic debunked Whitten’s claims of Hamadeh’s prosecutorial work after pushback from the Hamadeh campaign, they opted not to fact-check other claims from Whitten.
As a point of comparison between him and Hamadeh, Whitten claimed that his “whole career” has been for Arizonans.
“I’ve worked my whole career for Arizonans,” said Whitten. “[Hamadeh] worked his whole career lying so that he could get elected.”
Only three years out of Whitten’s nearly two decades in the workforce have been based in Arizona: his work from 2007 through 2008 on the Obama campaign, and his work from October 2022 to January of this year with the Glendale offshoot of a California-based healthcare company specializing in genomics.
Whitten worked 14 of the last 19 years in Washington, D.C., either as an Obama administration bureaucrat or government consultant. Whitten worked within the Department of Defense mainly on healthcare under Obama, and with a working group on COVID-19 and other health policy under Biden.
Comparatively, Hamadeh began his career in the Army Reserve a year before joining the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Prior to that, Hamadeh attended Arizona State University for his undergraduate degree and the University of Arizona for his law degree.
While working at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, Hamadeh was deployed overseas with the Army Reserve to Saudi Arabia for 14 months.
Whitten has been working for Democratic politicians for nearly 20 years. He did communications for former President Bill Clinton and campaign work for former President Barack Obama’s first run. That latter work secured him employment within the Department of Defense through both of Obama’s terms. In the last year of Obama’s second term, Whitten moved onto government consulting. During President Joe Biden’s first (and now only) run in 2020, Whitten again joined the campaign side of politics as a policy advisor. However, Whitten declined to enter government work during this administration, instead remaining within government consulting.
