Oh, this is rich!

After nearly two weeks of REALLY bad press, Danbury's dishonest Mayor Mark Boughton attempts to weasel out of his previous misleading statements regarding campaign contributions he received from Lisa Wilson-Foley...contributons that he previous denied exist.

First, lets backtrack...

The New Haven Register had this to say about Boughton after the indictment of disgraced governor John Rowland.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton has chosen "People Over Politics" as the slogan for his 2014 campaign for Connecticut governor, but on two critical issues, he's not living up to that promise.

On Thursday, former Gov. John Rowland was indicted on charges that he conspired with failed 2012 congressional candidate Republican Lisa Wilson-Foley and her husband to break federal campaign finance laws. Prosecutors claim he attempted to do the same with congressional candidate Mark Greenberg, but was rebuffed.

We reported all of the key details of both the Wilson-Foley and Greenberg schemes two years ago, before the Republican state nominating convention in the 2012 race. Instead of condemning Rowland and Wilson-Foley, Mark Boughton tried to bail out her campaign, endorsing her prior to the convention and swinging Danbury's significant bloc of delegates to her.

"I don't really see it having the impact that the pundits think it's going to have," was all Boughton could muster when he asked him about it at the time. "Rowland is popular in the 5th District. I don't know about the rest of the state, but in the 5th District, he remains popular."

Hartford Courant columnist and DailyRuctions.com blogger Kevin Rennie wondered at the time what really was at play with the endorsement, considering the Rowland taint on her candidacy and Boughton's past disdain for Wilson-Foley, whom he narrowly defeated in a 2010 Republican primary for lieutenant governor.

Our guess is that Boughton got in bed with Wilson-Foley and her husband Brian for the same reason that Rowland did - because they're millionaires with a significant ability to raise money for his future gubernatorial campaign.

The accurate editorial from the Register sent Boughton into a predictable hissy fit and with a letter to the editor response which is littered with misinformation.

A recent editorial (“Mark Boughton’s hypocrisy on John Rowland, guns”, April 11, 2014) made assertions about my candidacy for Governor that are contradicted by publicly-available facts.

As a candidate participating in the state’s clean elections program, the maximum contribution allowed to my campaign committee, Team Boughton, is $100. No one, not even wealthy individuals like Brian and Lisa Wilson-Foley or John Rowland, are eligible to contribute more than $100. The finance report filed on Thursday last week shows none of them donated to the committee.

There are several problems with Boughton's rant, in which is attempts to give the impression that Wilson-Foley did not contribute to his quest for governor.

For one, the NH Register never stated that Wilon-Foley or people connected to her contributed to Boughton's campaign...again, this is what the paper stated.

Our guess is that Boughton got in bed with Wilson-Foley and her husband Brian for the same reason that Rowland did - because they're millionaires with a significant ability to raise money for his future gubernatorial campaign.

As several people pointed out, this statement from the Register is CORRECT.

Kevin Rennie points out that Wilson-Foley DID contribute to Boughton's campaign.

Republican gubernatorial Mark Boughton hopeful is caught in his own web. The popular Danbury mayor’s tight alliance with disgraced Republican Lisa Wilson-Foley (formerly Wilson Foley) is undermining his bid for governor a month before the party nominating convention. He’s having trouble explaining the $375 maximum contribution he received last fall from Wilson-Foley and her nursing home magnate husband Brian Foley.

And as I reported, this isn't the first time Wilson-Foley and her husband gave the maximum contribution (1,000 dollars) to Boughton's run for mayor in the summer of 2011...and as someone who knows a thing or two about Boughton's lust for money, trust me when I say that the contributions and the mayor's sudden love for a person he despised in 2010 is no coincidence.

In response to being caught red-handed in a boldface lie, Boughton's campaign goes into damage control mode and the dishonest one attempts to "clairfy" his previous rant.

The paper wrote an editorial this week criticizing Boughton for, among other things, his prior support for Wilson-Foley and receipt of help from her.

Boughton responded with a letter to the editor saying his campaign had not received funds from Wilson-Foley, her husband or Rowland. That’s true, though he did receive money to his exploratory committee from Wilson-Foley and Foley.

Candidates in an exploratory committee can accept up to $375, according to state rules. Those candidates wishing to participate in the citizen’s election program can only accept donations up to $100 in “qualifying donations” that can follow them when they become a declared candidate. They can’t take donations greater than $100 with them to the formal committee. Therefore, money donated by Wilson-Foley and her husband are not included in his current campaign, and were spent when he was deciding whether to run.

“None of them (Rowland, Wilson-Foley, Foley) have contributed to our committee. The exploratory committee, with was a different committee is already closed and operated under different rules from the candidate committee,” [campaign manager Heath] Fahle said. “Those funds would have been spent in the pursuit of testing the waters to see if there was sufficient support for the mayor’s candidacy statewide.”

Talk about splitting hairs afer being caught in a lie...I swear, you can't make this stuff up!