Somewhere on the campaign trail, Florida - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich continues to dispute Gov. Mitt Romney's claim that he paid a $300,000 "fine" following a 1997 ethics investigation.
Many media accounts continue to refer to the payment as a fine, although the official Ethics Committee report on the matter, which the House accepted in its sanction of Gingrich, "clearly indicated otherwise."
Gingrich paid the cost of legal bills associated with a multi-year House inquiry, which probed whether he had misused a tax-exempt organization he controlled for political purposes.
A look at the Congressional Record shows that he was paying a "reimbursement" or a "sanction" to repay the cost of the investigation carried out in the House Ethics Committee's probe of the matter.
As it turns out, a political committee formed in his behalf paid the - ah - reimbursement, or, uh, well, "sanction" on his behalf. Uh, well, yes! That's how it was, after all.
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