Barack Obama Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter Over South Carolina Republican Ad Attacking Joe Biden
Former president Barack Obama has not spoken out much about the South Carolina Democratic primary. However, after a Republician attack ad implied that former vice president Joe Biden supports "plantation politics,” Obama is now speaking out via a cease-and-desist letter, CNN reports.
Drafted by Perkins Coie, the law office representing Obama, the letter read in part, "This unauthorized use of President Obama's name, image, likeness, voice and book passage is clearly intended to mislead the target audience of the ad into believing that the passage from the audiobook is a statement that was made by President Barack Obama during his presidency, when it was in fact made by a barber in a completely different context more than 20 years ago.”
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The letter continued, "To this end, the Committee to Defend the President must immediately remove this ad ... further the Committee to Defend the President must agree on behalf of itself and all affiliated entities to refrain from future misuse of President Obama's intellectual property or right of publicity."
The ad was created by The Committee to Defend the President, a super PAC that supports President Trump, and used a brief clip from the audiobook of Obama’s 1995 memoir Dreams From My Father claiming Obama is criticizing Biden. The ad is scheduled to air this week in South Carolina this week.
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Katie Hill, an Obama spokeswoman, told CNN that he "has several friends in this race, including, of course, his own esteemed vice president," and Obama still "has no plans to endorse in the primary because he believes that in order for Democrats to be successful this fall, voters must choose their nominee."
However, she was also critical of the people who put out the ad.
“This despicable ad is straight out of the Republican disinformation playbook, and it's clearly designed to suppress turnout among minority voters in South Carolina by taking President Obama's voice out of context and twisting his words to mislead viewers,” Hill said. “In the interest of truth in advertising, we are calling on TV stations to take this ad down and stop playing into the hands of bad actors who seek to sow division and confusion among the electorate."
Ted Harvey, chairman of The Committee to Defend the President, said in a statement, “The Committee has a long history of taking on Joe Biden, beyond Nevada and South Carolina. President Obama made a point in his book about Democrats paying lip-service to the African-American community and we believe his point applies perfectly to Joe Biden."
The South Carolina primary is Saturday, February 29 and Black voters are crucial to winning the state. Biden has an 18-point lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders, according to a Clemson University poll.
