Court Documents Contradict Gingrich's Claims of First Divorce

In a CNN report, newly recovered Court documents contradict Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's version of his first divorce. What is shocking in the report is Gingrich's casual yet cruel statement to former close friend Leonard H. Kip Carter that his (Gingrich's) wife was not pretty enough to be a president's wife.

According to the report, Carter said to CNN, He (Gingrich) said, 'You know and I know that she's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a president.' Carter, a former colleague of Gingrich's at West Georgia College in Carrollton, also said that he didn't approve of Gingrich's treatment of his ex-wife during their divorce.

Gingrich, constantly under fire due to his personal history, has continuously maintained that it is his first wife Jackie Gingrich who asked for divorce and not him. His campaign Web site Answering Attacks-Personal life says that it is Jackie Gingrich who requested for a divorce, quoting their daughter Jackie Gingrich Cushman's column.

Jackie Gingrich Cushman, who was thirteen years old when her parents filed for divorce, supported her father's claim in her column. Here's what happened: My mother and father were already in the process of getting a divorce, which she requested. Dad took my sister and me to the hospital to see our mother. She had undergone surgery the day before to remove a benign tumor, she wrote.

But now CNN has recovered court documents relating to Gingrich's first divorce which clearly indicate that it was Gingrich, and not his ex-wife, who first filed for the divorce. The documents also clearly indicate that Jackie Gingrich did not accept Gingrich's claim that their marriage was irretrievably broken and requested the judge to reject the divorce petition.

This completely contradicts what Gingrich and his daughter have claimed. But the Gingrich campaign stands by its claim. In its exclusive report, CNN quotes Gingrich campaign's spokesman R.C. Hammond, who said, Carroll County Georgia court documents accurately show Newt Gingrich filed for a divorce from his wife Jackie Battley, but it was Jackie Battley who requested the divorce and Gingrich obliged.

The pleadings made by Jackie Gingrich in response to the divorce petition cast doubts on Gingrich's argument. If Jackie Gingrich had wished for a divorce, as claimed, then she would not have denied her husband's divorce plea that their marriage was irretrievably broken and fought the divorce.

CNN also quotes an earlier Washington Post interview in which she reportedly said, He can say that we had been talking about it for 10 years, but the truth is that it came as a complete surprise, in support of the report.

CNN report also has quotes from his other former friends who contradicted Gingrich's claim.

Gingrich is already on an apologizing spree for his moral flip flops and errors in the past. It will be too early to judge whether these discoveries will take his already depleting voter support to further doom.

You can find the Court documents recovered by CNN below.

Gingrich Court Documents: Original Divorce Complaint

Gingrich Court Documents: Motion for Contempt

ingrich Court Documents: Petition for Alimony Modification