Jessica Morse, a Democratic rival to Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) in the 2018 midterm elections, is being accused of “taking credit for things that she did not do” on her resume and on the campaign trail.
Morse, 35, is reportedly the leading frontrunner among three Democrats seeking to unseat McClintock, who served for years in the military, the State Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). According to the Sacramento Bee, Morse claimed to have managed half of America’s foreign aid budget, rewritten the U.S.-India defense strategy, and served as a national security advisor for a four-star admiral.
In fact, the Bee reports, Morse was reportedly “was a relatively junior member of larger teams within a massive bureaucracy. Government documents and interviews with former senior officials who served in these departments corroborate that.”
For example, the publication notes that at a candidate forum in Mariposa in December, Morse reportedly said, “I served as the adviser to the four star admiral at U.S. Pacific Command, that’s our military headquarters for Asia. I was in charge of the U.S.-India defense relationship.”
She stated further that she “rewrote the entire U.S.-India defense strategy around using renewable energy technology transfer.”
However, retired Navy Captain David Cutter told the Bee that, “there are probably thousands of people … across the government that are involved in this relationship. She was certainly the one on my team.” He also noted, “She wasn’t working at the [Defense Secretary’s] office writing it. She wrote what we worked on at the regional combatant commanders level;” a post he described as “essentially the third echelon down.
The Bee notes that Georgia congressional candidate Jon Ossoff, a fellow Democrat, was also blasted by Republicans for claiming he had five years of experience as a national security staffer in Congress while two of those years were spent working part-time as a college student.
Despite many big-name endorsements from those in Hollywood, Ossoff lost his bid against Republican Karen Handel in Georgia’s 6th district special congressional election last June.
Read the entire Sacramento Bee story here.