Beto O’Rourke Called Out for Lying About DUI Incident

During a Senate debate with Ted Cruz last week, Democrat challenger Beto O’Rourke said that the facts about a DUI incident he was involved with 20 years ago had been blown out of proportion. While he admitted what he had to admit – that he was drunk beyond his capacity to drive at the time of the car accident – he said that he did not attempt to flee the scene of the crime at any time.

“I did not try to leave the scene of the accident,” he said at the debate. “Though driving drunk, which I did, is a terrible mistake for which there is no excuse or justification or defense, and I will not try to provide one.”

O’Rourke’s answer, while appearing to take full responsibility for the crime, is in conflict with contemporaneous police reports about the incident. The Washington Post, which is accustomed to giving liberal Democrats a pass when they bend the truth, knew this was one they had to nail O’Rourke on. They gave him the dreaded Four Pinocchios for his debate answer, telling readers that one could hardly prefer O’Rourke’s 20-year-old, drunken memory of the incident over what police said at the time.

“The defendant/driver then attempted to leave the scene,” reported Officer Richard Carrera at the time. “The reporter then turned on his overhead lights to warn oncoming traffic and try to get the defendant to stop.”

“At The Fact Checker,” wrote the Washington Post, “we place a high value on contemporaneous records. The police reports show not only that O’Rourke was highly intoxicated but that a witness to accident said he tried to leave the scene.

“O’Rourke was so drunk that he could barely get out of the car without falling, so perhaps he would not have gotten far – or he was simply confused,” the paper continued. “Perhaps in his memory, O’Rourke believes he did not try to leave. But, given his BAC level at the time of the accident, O’Rourke’s memory 20 years after the fact is not nearly as credible as the police reports written just hours after the accident.”

Not only does this throw O’Rourke’s credibility and honestly into question, it raises serious doubts about his judgement. Do the voters of Texas really want to elect someone who would not only drive drunk, but also try to leave the scene of an accident? And then lie about it for twenty years? And then, on top of that, get off easy because his father was a local judge?

But what’s most interesting to us, frankly, is this sentence from the Post: “Given his BAC level at the time…O’Rourke’s memory 20 years after the fact is not nearly as credible as the police reports written just hours after the accident.”

Hmm, didn’t Debbie Ramirez admit to being extremely drunk during that 35-year-old supposed encounter with Brett Kavanaugh?

Some memories must hold up better than others…