Ron Paul has recently suggested there was only a “total of about eight or ten sentences” of “bad stuff” in the newsletters that he regularly used to publish under his name. This assertion was patently false: As TNR has shown, the newsletters contained dozens of statements marked by bigotry and conspiratorial thinking. In light of Paul’s continuing evasions about the newsletters, and with hopes of clarifying the matter definitively, TNR is now making more of them available.

Authorship

Paul and his supporters have repeatedly claimed that, even though the newsletters had “Ron Paul” in the title, were sometimes written in the first person, and often carried his signature and photo, the general lack of bylines proves he didn’t author them. Others have claimed that Lew Rockwell, Paul’s former chief of staff, was the author. However, the most infamous of Paul’s publications, the June 1992 issue of his Political Report entitled “A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” (which I reported on in my original 2008 investigation for TNR), was later published as a monograph entitled “Race Terrorism in America,” and was bylined by Paul.

In the December 1996 Survival Report, the last issue before he re-entered Congress, Paul wrote that subscribers would receive a free subscription to The Triple R, or Rothbard-Rockwell Report, published by Lew Rockwell and libertarian activist Murray Rothbard. Paul, who has repeatedly claimed over the past month that he “didn’t read” his own newsletters, wrote, “I don’t agree with it 100% either, but I still grab it from the mailbox and read it, front to back, the minute I get it.” This issue also referred to Rockwell in the third person: “The editor, my old friend Lew Rockwell, was my chief of staff in the House, and he’s worked with me for 12 years on this newsletter.” The June 1991 Political Report invited readers to “Join Me” at a conference, mentioning that Rockwell and Rothbard would be speaking alongside Paul.

Racism