When the news broke last week that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise spoke to a group of white supremacists, a defender stepped up. Kenny Knight, political adviser to David Duke, stood up and swore the group that Scalise spoke to was a civic group, not Duke's EURO organization.
Knight also denied any personal involvement in David Duke's organizations, but it turns out he was just wrong about that.
The David Duke associate who disavowed membership in a white nationalist group linked to U.S. House Majority WhipSteve Scalise was at one time an officer in that group, according to public records. Kenny Knight told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune on Wednesday that he was not a member of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, but documents filed with the Louisiana secretary of state's office list him as treasurer of its predecessor, the National Organization for European American Rights, in 2000.
Further, a May 16, 2002, news release on an an archived version of EURO's former website, www.whitecivilrights.com, lists Knight as "EURO Louisiana State Representative Kenny Knight." The release says Knight was expected to address the group's May 17-18, 2002, conference.
Duke, the Louisiana neo-Nazi and former politician, created the organization to espouse "white civil rights." Knight is a longtime Duke political adviser and friend.Knight has said he rented a meeting room for EURO in 2002 at the Landmark Hotel in Metairie as a favor for Duke, but he said he was not a member and did not line up speakers for its meeting. He said he arranged for Scalise, a Jefferson Republican then serving in the Legislature, to address their neighborhood group, the Jefferson Heights Civic Association, at the same location 2 and 1/2 hours before the EURO conference.
What's that saying again? False in one, false in all?
Or perhaps, where there's smoke, there's fire.
