It may be too little too late, but CNN's John King finally caught Newt Gingrich in lie and determined that Gingrich never offered ABC any of his personal friends to rebuke Marianne Gingrich's claims of Newt's open marriage requests.  At last week's debate Newt Gingrich claimed to have offered up several personal friends to ABC News to challenge Marianne Gingrich's "open marriage" interview. Gingrich thoroughly embarrassed King in the opening moments of the South Carolina debate, insisting that his campaign had offered ABC News several personal friends to rebut his ex-wife's claims. "We offered several of them to ABC to prove it was false, they weren't interested because they would like to attack any Republican," Gingrich said. "He even added yesterday, "We had several people prepared to very clear and very aggressive in their dispute about that and they [ABC] were not interested. It's a point which set the tone for the rest of the debate and Gingrich's South Carolina win. The only problem is that ABC never got those pro-Gingrich close personal friend offerings.

Yes, we still aren't quite sure what kind of personal friends would be able to vouch or discredit for those sort of intimate details, but King (perhaps driven just a little bit by embarrassment and pride after last week's dressing down) pushed Gingrich on those close friends rebuttals, and came up with a response last night. "Tonight, after persistent questioning by our staff, the Gingrich campaign concedes now Speaker Gingrich was wrong — both in his debate answer, and in our interview yesterday," King said (video below). "Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond says the only people the Gingrich campaign offered to ABC were his two daughters from his first marriage."

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Alexander Abad-Santos