Former Aide: Michele Bachmann Had “Unnatural Relationship” With Debate Coach [View all]

[brooklynite]

Source: BuzzFeed

Michele Bachmann's high-profile debate coach, Brett O'Donnell, developed an "unnatural" and "Rasputin-like" relationship with his candidate during her failed 2012 presidential campaign, another former aide told BuzzFeed, a charge O'Donnell denies.

Peter Waldron, an evangelical organizer who served as Iowa field coordinator for Bachmann and helped her win the Ames straw poll said O'Donnell exercised an "unusual power over Mrs. Bachmann." Waldron and other former Bachmann staff also currently say the Congresswoman has yet to pay them for debts owned from her short-lived campaign.

"He prohibited her husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann, from sleeping in the same room with wife while on the campaign trail," Waldron said in an email to BuzzFeed. "He prohibited legendary consultants Ed Rollins and Ed Goeas from attending debate prep sessions. He told her when she could get off the bus (Waterloo event with Gov. Perry), he wrote most of the words that came out of her mouth, he wrote all of her speeches."

Waldron, who led Bachmann's outreach to the religious groups that helped fuel an early surge in Iowa and bring voters to the Ames Straw Poll, is a veteran of Republican politics and a colorful character in his own right. An Army veteran who says he leads an organization called Christians Restoring America's Greatness, he spent a month in jail in Uganda in 2002, on terror charges that he denied.

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/former-aide-michelle-bachmann-had-unnatural-rela

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