Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) is finally talking about the mystery company that paid him a total of $350,000 in 2011 and 2012. He says it’s all made up.
In an interview with Breitbart News published Wednesday, Stockman accused The Houston Chronicle of “making up” information in its article last month spotlighting the $350,000 he made from an entity called “Presidential Trust Marketing.” The Chronicle found that Stockman has “failed to make federally required disclosures about business affiliations that stretch from Texas to the British Virgin Islands, and has provided no details about the business he claims as his sole source of income.”
Stockman, who returned to Congress in 2013 after more than 15 years out of office, this week announced that he would challenge Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in next year’s Republican primary. In an interview nominally about his Senate bid, Breitbart News asked Stockman about the Chronicle story.
“That’s inaccurate,” Stockman said when asked about Presidential Trust Communications and the $350,000. “You pull the report. It doesn’t match what they say. They insistently say $350,000. It’s like, ‘where are you getting that?’ They say ‘offshore banks.’ Where are they getting this shit? They’re making it up and I’m not going to talk about it. You can duplicate some of their research and find out it’s not true.”
Breitbart later pulled the paperwork and verified that the Chronicle had accurately reported the details of Stockman’s House disclosure forms. But Stockman insisted that the Chronicle had made up the $350,000 figure.
“About that $350,000, too, you can pull the report,” Stockman said. “It’s like, ‘where do they get this number?’ It’s just like out of whole cloth.”
Breitbart also asked Stockman to talk about just what Presidential Trust Marketing is — no media outlet has been able to determine exactly what the entity is or does.
“You’re not listening to me,” Stockman said in response. “I’m telling you that this is something I’m not going to keep going after. They [the Houston Chronicle] know what it is. And you can find out what it is. I’m not going to dignify their paper. I mean, they’re nuts. They are wholly crazy about this. And it’s why we’ve been at war with them for 20 years and they’re the only paper, I might add, that’s printing that stuff.”
