After Judge Eagles’ decision to deny the Stein campaign’s request for a preliminary injunction, today the North Carolina Democratic Party (NCDP) delivered a letter to Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman requesting a prompt and thorough investigation and prosecution of Jim O’Neill for making false and derogatory reports during his 2020 campaign for Attorney General.

NCDP spokesperson Kate Frauenfelder released the following statement: 

“Judge Eagles’ reversal yesterday makes clear that District Attorney Freeman should apply equal protection under the law and open an investigation into Jim O’Neill’s repeated efforts to spread knowingly false and derogatory reports against Attorney General Stein with the intent to hurt his reelection campaign. North Carolina’s sexual assault survivors have a champion in Attorney General Stein and any attempt to imply otherwise is a distraction from the important work that he is leading on behalf of our state.” 

Over the course of his 2020 campaign, Jim O’Neill circulated false and derogatory claims against his opponent Attorney General Josh Stein’s exemplary record tackling the backlog of sexual assault kits with reckless disregard for the truth, doubling and tripling down on his claims despite multiple fact checks.

• On October 7, 2019, Mr. O’Neill issued a statement on Twitter falsely claiming that Attorney General Stein “has stood on the sidelines for almost his entire term while more than 15,000 untested rape kits have sat on the shelves of the lab that Stein is responsible for, collecting dust.” and repeated similar claims on a number of other reported occasions. 

• In the fall of 2019, two independent fact checkers examined Mr. O’Neill’s claims regarding Attorney General Stein’s record. Both concluded that Mr. O’Neill’s contentions were false. 

• On October 18, 2019, UNC’s MediaHub concluded that O’Neill’s claims were “misleading at best and false at worst.”

• On December 14, 2019, the North State Journal reported that Mr. O’Neill said: “When I look at the 15,000 sexual assault kits sitting up on the shelves in Raleigh, and our current attorney general not making that a priority until three and a half years into his four-year term, it just makes me mad as fire.” 

• On January 18, 2020, O’Neill falsely declared, “The only time that rape kits became important to Attorney General Josh Stein was when I came out in January [2019] and announced I was running against him because I was tired of 15,000 kits sitting up on the shelves collecting dust.” 

• On February 5, 2020, the Smoky Mountain News quoted Mr. O’Neill as saying, “In January, when I announced, I had had enough of the thought of 15,000 rape kits sitting up on the shelves at the lab that (Stein’s) responsible for and he’s done absolutely nothing about.” 

Two specific instances occurred within the last two years: 

• On September 4, 2020 Mr. O’Neill stated, “Unfortunately, [Stein] ignored those things until I had had enough and in January [2019] I filed and I came out and said one of the reasons I am running against the current AG is because he’s done nothing about the rape kits.” 

• On September 8, 2020, Mr. O’Neill said, “This Attorney General here in North Carolina sued Donald Trump over the funding of that border wall.” 

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