Ginger White: Is Herman Cain's accuser credible?
Ginger White, the Atlanta businesswoman who claims she had a 13-year affair with GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, was on television Wednesday morning repeating her claims. She told George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America” that “I can’t make this stuff up. Never in a million years could I make this stuff up.”
Is she credible? After all, Mr. Cain is denying the extramarital affair ever happened.
Ms. White spoke slowly and in a monotone in response to Mr. Stephanopoulos's questions. She seemed calm, if somewhat reserved. But more than her demeanor, it’s her phone records that appear to be the most important evidence of an affair that she has produced so far.
And on Wednesday morning she produced more records. She gave ABC phone bills showing contact with Cain’s private cellphone number into the fall – all the way up to mid-November.
“November 8, 13, 14 – he’s texting you all month long,” said Stephanopoulos. He sounded astonished.
“That’s correct. Our communication was up until just last week,” said White.
Wow. If this is true, Cain was in contact with a mistress during the very period when he was beset by revelations that he had been hit with sexual harassment complaints in the past. Was he trying to get White to stay quiet?
“No,” said White. “Never in a million years did he think I would speak out.”
For his part, Cain is challenging White’s story. He has denied the whole thing, and in an e-mail to supporters he called White a “troubled ... woman” who is using “national media outlets to promulgate a fabricated, unsubstantiated story.”
White has indeed been involved in trouble in the past. Whether that makes her “troubled” is another question. She lost a libel suit filed by a former business partner. That same ex-partner, bodybuilder Kimberly Vay, filed a restraining order against White, but says today that the order was never made final.
In a brief interview with the Hillsdale College newspaper Tuesday evening, after a speech at the Michigan school, Cain said he was “done” with the allegations and that the media were overplaying his comment to supporters that he was “reassessing” the campaign.
He isn’t listening to the usual suspects, he said.
“The reassessment isn’t based on what the media wants, or what the establishment wants, but what the people want,” he told the paper.
So the principals in this argument have not only conflicting stories but conflicting universes, apparently. Who is right? It would seem that the allegations are checkable, in that there should be some kind of documentary trail establishing the affair – hotel records, plane tickets, and so forth. White did produce the phone bills, but implied she had not kept much else.
“When you enter into a private relationship that you do not care to share with the public you really do not enter into that holding onto receipts, holding onto gifts to come out with that say, yeah, that happened, here’s the proof,” said White on ABC.
Whom do you believe here? Feel free to enter into a conversation in the comments below.
