Reporter: Las Vegas Sun Editor Spiked Column Critical of Harry Reid’s Attack on Mitt Romney

A well-known Nevada reporter revealed Wednesday that back in 2012, he wrote a column criticizing Senator Harry Reid for his irresponsible claims about Mitt Romney’s tax returns. However, the column was spiked by the editor of the newspaper at the time because the editor was a friend of Senator Reid.

Political commentator Jon Ralston noticed Senator Reid’s response to CNN‘s Dana Bash which was published in an interview Tuesday. Asked if he had any regrets about making false claims about Mitt Romney’s payment of taxes, Reid replied, “Romney didn’t win, did he?” That cynical response was apparently too much for Ralston who published the following statement on his own website:

Now that CNN’s Dana Bash has found Harry Reid to be unrepentant about his Mitt Romney tax lies, it’s finally time to publish a column I wrote contemporaneously with the Nevada senator’s McCarthy-like tactic during the 2012 campaign. The column was never published because Las Vegas Sun Editor Brian Greenspun attempted to protect his friend, Reid, from the criticism.

I never wrote for the Sun again.

What follows is a blistering critique of Harry Reid’s “ruthless, Machiavellian” politics. Ralston says the tactics Reid used against Romney are the same as those once used by Senator McCarthy. His piece concludes:

It’s one thing to use every trick in the book to win a campaign or to carelessly spout invective about other public figures. But it’s quite another thing for one of the most powerful Democrats in the country to make serious assertions about a Republican presidential candidate, without any proof and without a named source. Sometimes the ends do not justify the means, even in the political swamp. Someone needs to draw the line for Reid since he is so unable to draw one for himself.

Earlier on Wednesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked if the president, who often talks about the need for civil political discourse, had anything to say about Reid’s statement to CNN. Earnest declined saying he wouldn’t comment on something that happened three years ago.