Former top Huckabee aide: He DID try to influence parole board to set rapist free

This directly contradicts what Huckabee told ABC News, CNN, and every other network (and the American people). And now one of his former top aides is speaking out. An aide who was at the parole board meeting with Huckabee. And aide who the Huckabee campaign recommended the Huffington Post people speak to. Big mistake, that one.

From the Huffington Post:

Directly contradicting Mike Huckabee's claims, his former senior aide tells the Huffington Post that, as governor of Arkansas, Huckabee indeed told the state's parole board that he supported the release of a convicted rapist.

The senior aide, Olan W. "Butch" Reeves, personally attended a controversial parole board meeting with Huckabee in Oct. 1996.

"The clear impression that I came away with from the meeting was that he favored Dumond's release," Reeves said, referring to convicted rapist Wayne Dumond. "And I can understand why board members would believe that to be the case."

This stands in stark contrast to Huckabee's assertion, repeated at a press conference today that he "did not ask [the board] to do anything." When asked directly about trying to influence the board, Huckabee responded: "No. I did not. Let me categorically say that I did not."

But, according to Reeves, Huckabee actually told the parole board members that the prison sentence meted out to Dumond for his rape conviction was "outlandish" and "way out of bounds for his crime." Huckabee believed there "was something nefarious" about the how the state's criminal justice system had treated Dumond, Reeves said.

Reeves's admission comes as a surprise since the interview was encouraged by Huckabee's presidential campaign. Reeves served as chief counsel to then-Gov. Huckabee until 2003, and was subsequently appointed by Huckabee as chairman of the Arkansas Workers' Compensation Commission. Reeves has donated to Huckabee's presidential campaign.

Something nefarious? That's Huckabee's code for saying that he thought Bill Clinton was responsible for trumping up false charges against the rapist, since that's what all of Huckabee's good buddies on the far right kept telling him. And Huckabee believed it. Huckabee let his hatred for Bill Clinton cloud his judgment and it resulted in the rapes and murders of two women.

And now he's lying about it. Makes Rudy Giuliani lying about illegally using government funds to enable his extramarital affairs seem downright quaint.