Dann's TX-based political spokeman now claims, "What press conference?"

If anyone wanted an example of how badly Marc Dann is at managing anything. I think today is a great example.

The group blogging news is that Dann really was at lunch with an aide (@ Mitchell's, isn't that where Gutierrez went on that fateful night to the condo?), but is now back at the office where he has learned he'll need to stop at the Statehouse gift shop to buy a deck of cards to play Solitaire as his office computer was seized by the Inspector General.

After being quoted in today's Dispatch and elsewhere that there would be a noon press conference and that attendence would be "mandatory,"  Dann's campaign spokesman, Jason Stanford of Texas, was unavailable to return calls during the lunch hour.  Now, according to the Dispatch:

Stanford didn’t return calls later in the day, but later claimed he hadn't told The Dispatch about the press conference.

Read that again.  Dann's political spokesman is claiming that the Dispatchmade up the whole press conference.  They even went to the trouble of, apparently, inventing a direct quote from Stanford which they put in the paper.

You'd think that as an oppo research guy would have caught the news being reported that his client was going to have a press conference at noon, that you were the source about the press conference, and that, if not true, you'd do something about it before the media shows up to watch the Highway Patrol strip your client's office of potential evidence with great art for the paper and evening news.

Dann, who remained in the center of swirl of rumors about his political future today, said nothing except that reports of a noon press conference were “false.”

Obviously.  But when did they become false, and why? I mean, does he honestly expect us to believe that James Nash and Alan Johnson of the Dispatch made the whole story up, including inviting direct quotes from Stanford?

Why did nobody in the AG's press office do anything to dispel this rumor before noon?  Did they really not know it was out there? 

Or did Stanford just get left holding the bag and looking foolish about calling a press conference right around the time the IG's office was to do their office evidence sweep?

How "Keystone Cops" does Dann's press operations, both official and political, look now?

I'll give Governor Taft credit.  If the IG did a sweep like this on him, he wasn't dumb enough to cause a bunch of reporters to stand around his office when it happened.