More Ado About Nothing

Tomorrow’s New York Times tries to keep alive the “issue” of Fred Thompson’s work on behalf of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. The Arent Fox law firm has apparently found its billing records and provided them to the Times–they should give the Rose Law Firm lessons in how to preserve billing records–and the files confirm that Thompson did a de minimis amount of work for the abortion rights group in 1991 and 1992.
Specifically, over that one to two year period, he spent a whopping 3.3 hours lobbying “administration officials” on behalf of the organization, and also talked to its president 22 times, presumably advising her about how to take her case to the executive branch. Nothing in the records contradicts Thompson’s statements that 1) he has no recollection of working on behalf of this group, and 2) he is quite sure that he did not lobby John Sununu on its behalf.
Arent Fox’s current chairman, Marc Fleischaker, says,