Echols’ fingerprints are all over the script — either he wrote it himself, or he has the most incompetent consulting team to ever run a statewide race in Oklahoma
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Jeff Starling for Attorney General campaign today called on TV stations to immediately pull its dishonest television ad smearing Jeff Starling, and called on the appropriate state authorities to investigate whether the ad’s content reflects illegal coordination between career politician Jon Echols and the so-called independent expenditure group attacking on his behalf. The ad is so petty, so dishonest, and so personally vindictive that it reads less like the product of a professional political committee and more like a script written by an unhinged candidate watching his political career circle the drain.
“This ad isn’t just false — it’s a four-lie cocktail mixed by somebody with a personal grudge and no shame,” said Tim Edson, a spokesman for the Starling campaign. “Either Jon Echols dictated this script himself, in which case there’s an illegal coordination problem the state ought to look at, or ECHO PAC has hired the most incompetent campaign team to ever attempt a statewide race in Oklahoma. There is no third option.”
The ad makes four demonstrably false claims…every one of them debunked below:
LIE #1: Starling “worked for Never-Trump Senator John Warner.”
Jeff Starling worked for Senator Warner, primarily as his driver, nearly 30 years ago when he graduated college and before law school, long before Donald Trump entered politics and long before the term “Never Trump” existed. Echols knows this. Implying that a young man’s job behind the wheel three decades ago is a political endorsement of every position the senator ever held is the kind of lie you tell when you’ve got nothing real.
LIE #2: Starling “backed Hillary Clinton.”
A bald-faced fabrication. Echols has not produced one shred of evidence — not a donation, not a quote, not a social media post. It never happened.
LIE #3: Starling “called Trump unfit for office.”
This never happened. Not once. In fact, Jeff Starling is the only candidate in this Attorney General race who stood with President Trump from the beginning. Jon Echols backed Ron DeSantis, and it’s the one Echols is desperate to bury under a pile of lies.
LIE #4: Starling “worked with China and Anti-Trump prosecutors.”
Factually untrue, top to bottom. There is no record, no case, no client, no anything to support this smear because it was 100% manufactured. The law firm cited has a thousand lawyers and several thousand employees across more than fifteen offices. Mr. Starling left the firm in early 2012, well before any “Anti-Trump prosecutors” could have been hired by the firm, and Starling has never even met those individuals. Further, the law firm never did any work with “communist China.” That work was done by a different company with a similar name, but with a different management team, different employees, and for which Starling never worked. It’s a complete fabrication.
“Jon Echols is desperate, and he’s lashing out as voters get a clearer look at his real record — raising taxes, selling out our conservative values, and enriching himself in the state legislature for twelve years,” Edson continued. “And the most insulting part? He has so much disdain for the people of Oklahoma that he actually thinks they’ll buy this. Oklahoma Republicans are smarter than Jon Echols, and they can spot a lie when it’s run on every TV station in the state.”
The Starling campaign is calling stations to pull the ad immediately and is reviewing legal options for formal complaints regarding the apparent coordination between the Echols campaign and the committee.
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