Actress and activist Ashley Judd said a leaked tape featuring Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) discussing with aides how to take her on as a potential opponent is an example of "politics of personal destruction."
The tape -- leaked by Mother Jones and reportedly recorded at a Feb. 2 meeting -- featured discussions between McConnell and his aides weighing Judd's mental health and religion as weaknesses that could be politically attacked in the case of a Senate challenge.
Though Judd announced she would not run against McConnell, she didn't hold back from criticizing the senator's political motives. A spokesman for Judd gave the following statement to Us Weekly:
This is yet another example of the politics of personal destruction that embody Mitch McConnell and are pervasive in Washington, D.C. We expected nothing less from Mitch McConnell and his camp than to take a personal struggle such as depression, which many Americans cope with on a daily basis, and turn it into a laughing matter. Every day it becomes clearer how much we need change in Washington from this kind of rhetoric and actions.
Curtis Morrison and Shawn Reilly, two men from a super PAC called Progress Kentucky, have been accused of taping the private conversation from a hallway outside McConnell's Louisville headquarters. A lawyer for Reilly has denied he was involved in the leak, and Morrison said he "has no statement" on the incident.
McConnell's campaign has said it's working with the Federal Bureau of Investigations in a probe of the leak.
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