By Betsy Woodruff

Rep. Steve Scalise may have just ineptly admitted to speaking at a white supremacist event that eyewitnesses say he never attended. Two event attendees say it’s factually inaccurate to characterize Scalise’s comments as directed at the supremacist gathering—even though Scalise’s own office has said the House majority whip spoke to the group 12 years ago.


Kenny Knight is a longtime associate of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who ran for governor of Louisiana in 1991. He’s been a key player in news that broke on Sunday that indicated Scalise addressed the white supremacist convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization when he was a Louisiana state representative in May 2002.

Knight said on Tuesday that it’s “totally incorrect” to say Scalise spoke at that convention. “He spoke early in the day to a contingent of people, prior to the conference kicking off,” Knight said. “He was not there as a guest speaker at the conference.”

According to Knight, he and Scalise were neighbors in 2002, living in the Old Jefferson neighborhood outside New Orleans. They were friendly and lived within a few blocks of each other. Knight recalls that Scalise would beep the horn and wave at him if he drove by in his car. “Now and then I’d see him at a Republican function, we’d say hello, but we never exchanged any philosophy ideas,” Knight said.

According to Knight, the EURO conference was slated to start in the early afternoon, roughly around 1 p.m. But his reservation at the hotel gave him access to the conference space for a few hours before the event’s official kickoff. At the time, Knight headed the Jefferson Heights Civic Association, which was largely comprised of elderly people who lived in his and Scalise’s neighborhood.

Knight said he set up a morning event for his own civic association in the hotel space before the EURO conference started. Though that event was in the conference’s hospitality room, it wasn’t at all related to the EURO event, he said.

“It was my room to do what I want with it,” he said.

Knight invited then–state Rep. Scalise as well as a representative from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office and a person from the American Red Cross to speak to the civic association at the hotel. Knight said he thinks the Red Cross speaker was from a local chapter but didn’t remember specifically. He also said he didn’t remember the names of either of the other speakers. The representative from the sheriff’s department spoke to attendees about a neighborhood watch program, and the person from the Red Cross discussed CPR techniques. Scalise also spoke.

“I wanted to reach out to him and give him an audience so he could talk to people from his district about legislation he was proposing,” Knight said. “I did that as a courtesy.”

for more:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...did.single.html
for a different take on the event:

Slate Discovers Scalise Did Not Attend White Supremacist Event By P.J. Gladnick | December 31, 2014 |
"Soooo... How long must we wait until all those MSM outlets who jumped on the incorrect version of this "scandal" issue corrections? Oh, and kudos to Slate staff write Betsy Woodruff for investigating this matter. -

See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/pj-gladnick...U.SBP2UDG6.dpuf
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/pj-gladnick...U.SBP2UDG6.dpuf