UPDATE: Herman Cain wasn't talking about the subject Monday morning on his way to an economic policy speech in Washington, D.C. His campaign team, meanwhile, was doing all it can to put out the fire -- with somewhat mixed results.
Mark Block, Cain's cigarette-smoking chief of staff, told MSNBC's Daily Rundown thatPolitico's anonymously sourced article claiming the GOP candidate had sexually harassed a pair of former employees was wrong -- although his comments concerning any cash settlement the women may have received appeared much less definitive.
"Let me tell you that Herman Cain has never sexually harassed anybody, period. End of story," Block said at the start of the interview. "The only people who spoke publicly about the story in that article are the ones that were in the best position to know. They were the chair, vice chair and immediate past chair of the National Restaurant Association during Herman Cain's tenure. Yet all three -- and all three said that he was a man of total integrity. Every negative word and accusation in the article is sourced to a series of unnamed or anonymous sources, and this is questionable at best."
But here's the line that left the door open on the settlement front: "I am not personally aware of any cash settlement relating to sexual harassment charges to Mr. Cain," he said. Block was then asked a number of follow-ups by NBC's Chuck Todd on the topic, but Block directed Todd to pose those questions to the National Restaurant Association.
POST Sunday, Oct. 30 at 11:50 p.m.: Here's the top talker of the day/week, if not much longer:
Politico reports that Herman Cain was accused of sexual harassment by two female employees who worked with him at the National Restaurant Association in the late-1990s. The women reportedly later took financial payments in the "five-figure range" before parting ways with the Washington trade group, which Cain led as president and CEO from late 1996 to mid-1999.
Cain's campaign, which Politico says declined on multiple occasions over the past 10 days to directly address the allegations prior to the story's publication, scrambled Sunday evening to deflect – and then deny – the report, spinning it as a politically-motivated attack aimed at marginalizing the candidate.
"Fearing the message of Herman Cain who is shaking up the political landscape in Washington, Inside the Beltway media have begun to launch unsubstantiated personal attacks on Cain," the campaign said in a statement. "Sadly, we've seen this movie played out before – a prominent Conservative targeted by liberals simply because they disagree with his politics."
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