Fact-checking Newt Gingrich

It’s almost official. Twitter delivered this news May 9, 2011: @newtgingrich to announce by Twitter and Facebook on WED. Hannity will have the first interview on Fox. Newt speaks to GA Conv. on FRI.

It seemed like a good time to look back at some of our fact-checks on the prospective candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

Our most recent fact-check of Gingrich was April 5, 2011, when PolitiFact Georgia, took a look at an op-ed column he had written earlier that year with Pat Nolan, a former California lawmaker who is now vice president of a Christian ministry that aids prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families. According to the column, “While crime fell in nearly every state over the past seven years, some of those with the largest reductions in crime have also lowered their prison population.”

The figures backed up that assertion, which was rated True.

We also looked at what appeared to be two conflicting statements by Gingrich on Libya. On March 7, 2011, he told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News that, if he were in charge, he would establish “a no-fly zone this evening, communicate to the Libyan military that Gadhafi was gone and that the sooner they switch sides, the more (likely) they were to survive, provided help to the rebels to replace him.”

Then, on March 23, after President Barack Obama had intervened in Libya, he told NBC’s Matt Lauer on the Today Show that “I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Gadhafi.”

We gave him a Full Flop on his position.

Still earlier this year on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Gingrich said that the Obama administration “actually cut out the democracy in Egypt funds inside the State Department,” which we found to be Half True.

See all the statements PolitiFact has checked on Gingrich here.