the jewel in the gop crown

Washington Post: Employees of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich grew increasingly concerned in recent years about their boss’s purchases from luxury jeweler Tiffany & Co., worried that if he followed through on plans to run for president it could become a political liability.

The purchases included jewelry items valued as much as $300,000 for his wife’s Christmas gifts, selected each year during a fall Potomac River cruise sponsored by the jeweler. On a smaller scale, Gingrich spent about $40,000 over four years buying Tiffany trinkets as Christmas gifts for up to 100 employees…

… Gingrich and his wife maintained a $250,000 to $500,000 personal credit line at Tiffany in 2005 and 2006 … The Gingrich campaign recently confirmed to The Post that Gingrich maintained a second Tiffany credit line for $1 million…

… Gingrich campaign communication director Joe DeSantis declined to address the details offered by the employees, and dismissed their accounts as trivial. “Class warfare does not create jobs,” he said in a written statement. “Newt’s Jobs and Prosperity Plan will.”

… The employees said the Tiffany cruises became an annual outing for the couple to choose Callista’s Christmas presents.

… Sixteen Gingrich campaign staffers resigned on June 9 , claiming that Gingrich was allowing his wife to dictate the terms of his campaign schedule. The disagreement between staff and the candidate came to a head when Gingrich insisted he would go on a Greek cruise that Callista Gingrich had been planning for the couple.

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😆

Thank you Loriah!

aw, bless

Newt Gingrich, who turned 68 last week, celebrated with a birthday party at his Atlanta campaign headquarters today.

Fixed that for ya Newt:

yikes … newt gets glitterized

Meanwhile….

….and:

hey big spender….

GOPolitico: Newt Gingrich, a fiscal conservative? Not when it comes to Tiffany’s. In 2005 and 2006, the former House speaker carried as much as $500,000 in debt to the premier jewelry company…

Gingrich, who represented Georgia in Congress for two decades, retired in 1999. But his wife, Callista Gingrich, was employed by the House Agriculture Committee until 2007, according to public records. She listed a “revolving charge account” at Tiffany and Company in the liability section of her personal financial disclosure form for two consecutive years and indicated that it was her spouse’s debt. The liability was reported in the range of $250,001 to $500,000.

When asked by POLITICO whether Gingrich has settled this debt, and why he owed between a quarter-million and a half-million dollars to a jeweler, Rick Tyler, Gingrich’s spokesman, declined to comment.

Full article here