***COCHRAN CAMPAIGN RESPONDS TO VOTE-BUYING ALLEGATIONS***

Sen. Thad Cochran's camp issued the following response to the allegations of vote-buying made by Meridian's Rev. Stevie Fielder:

"There is absolutely no truth to these baseless and false allegations," said Cochran campaign spokesman Jordan Russell. "It comes from a blogger who in the last 24 hours has accused a Mississippi public official of being responsible for an individual's death and had to retract other outlandish accusations regarding another Mississippi elected official. The author of this article admits he paid his source for this story."

Truth be told, Chuck Johnson (they guy who reported the story) and Rev. Fielder don't make for the most believable of characters. That being said, Speaker pro tem Rep. Greg Snowden (R - Meridian) trusted Rev. Fielder enough to pay him over $2,500 in his last campaign for "organizational assistance."

At least parts of Fielder's story should be easy to verify. He has text messages, and he claims to have been called by Cochran folks. Phone records would easily verify whether or not those calls and texts actually came from the people he claims made them. And considering that Fielder just laid out his part as a co-conspirator in an illegal election fraud scheme, there's no reason subpoenas can't issue for his records.

And we thought we'd seen it all. 

*My apologies for the font issues in this post. I'll fix them shortly