Surprise! Maryland Governor and Candidate for Democrat Nominee for President Wes Moore Has Long History of Lying About His War Record and Academic Record

This is no disqualifier for a Democrat politician. Indeed, it's essentially a prerequisite.

Maryland governor Wes Moore, now considered a serious prospect for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, got his big break in 2006. Fresh off a one-year deployment to Afghanistan, President George W. Bush awarded Moore, then 27, a White House fellowship, a prestigious, year-long internship during which he served as a special assistant to then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. It put Moore on the path to ultimately becoming Maryland's governor, and he won the fellowship--in the turbulent years after 9/11--claiming to be a "foremost expert" on radical Islam thanks to his academic work at Oxford University.

"As a Rhodes Scholar, I took advantage of the opportunity and examined radical Islam in the Western Hemisphere," Moore wrote in his application to serve as a White House fellow, indicating that he had graduated from Oxford in 2003 with a Master of Letters, or MLitt, in international relations. "I completed my degree with honors and my research has led me to be touted as one of the foremost experts on the threat." The White House parroted the claim in a press release announcing the 2006 fellowship class, borrowing from Moore's application to note that his Oxford thesis, which it said was titled The Rise and Ramifications of Radical Islam in the Western Hemisphere, had "earned him praise as one of the foremost experts on the topic."

That a 27-year-old could claim to be a "foremost expert" on the Islamic threat based on a year at an American military base in Afghanistan and two years at Oxford could be excused away as an ambitious young man's puffery. But on close examination, Moore's claims of expertise and of being a serious scholar completely unravel, as do his claims, also on his White House fellowship application, that he was working toward an Oxford doctorate.

The problems start with confusion--which neither Moore's staff nor Oxford's registrars were willing or able to clear up--about when Moore completed his studies, when he received his degree, whether he submitted his thesis, and what the title of the work was.

In his White House fellowship application--which is public record--Moore wrote that he graduated from Oxford in 2003. But in the résumé attached to that application, Moore reported a different graduation date: June 2004.

Asked to reconcile the two dates, a spokesman for the governor didn't provide a photograph of Moore's degree, but rather, a "degree confirmation," generated last week by Oxford's registrar's office, indicating Moore completed his graduate studies as a full-time student and "has been awarded the degree," but has not yet been issued a formal certificate. The "degree confirmation" generated by Oxford gives another contradictory date, showing that Moore completed his full-time graduate studies in November of 2005, a full four years after he began his Oxford studies, though a master's degree typically takes two years to earn.

According to Moore, by November 2005, the month when Oxford now says Moore completed his master's studies, he was serving in the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan. He also says he began working as an investment banker at Deutsche Bank in London in March 2004.

...

The story does fit a narrative, Moussa is right about that. But it is one that is likely to be problematic for Moore, just as it was for Minnesota governor Tim Walz (D.) when he stepped onto the national stage. The narrative, backed now by well-established matters of fact, is that when you scratch the surface of many of Moore's braggadocious claims, there is something off, something a little untruthful about them. Moore claims to have been a doctoral candidate after he received his master's degree, for example, but he and Oxford declined to provide the name of his academic adviser or any evidence he was enrolled as such.

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The mystery surrounding the title of and content of Moore's thesis could be resolved with a cursory review of the document. But that, too, poses a problem for Moore. His office could not produce a copy of the document since we began requesting it in early November.

And good luck finding it at Oxford's legendary Bodleian Library, which archives all MLitt theses from the university's graduate students. A senior librarian told the Free Beacon she couldn't find "any trace" of Moore's paper, because he never submitted it.

....

The confusion about when and where Moore was when he was doing his graduate studies--along with the convenient change in the title and subject matter of his missing thesis--is part of a pattern of self-serving, self-aggrandizing, and not entirely true claims that have persistently dogged, yet heretofore not tripped up, the ambitious Democrat.

Moore has a long history of Biden-like and "Danang Dick" like embellishment of his academic record and war record.

>b?Moore claimed on his 2006 White House fellowship application, for example, to have been inducted into the Maryland College Football Hall of Fame, an organization that doesn't exist; that he received a Bronze Star for his service in Afghanistan, which he had not; and that he was born in Baltimore, which he was not.

And of course he claims to be from the 'hood but he's really the son of a comfortable middle class family.

If this Black Walter Mitty is a world-renowned expert on Islamic terrorism, why have no other terrorism experts ever heard of him?

The questions and discrepancies surrounding Moore's missing graduate thesis notwithstanding, his claim to be a "foremost expert" on the threat of radical Islam is ridiculous.

"I have never come across Gov. Moore's name in the course of my academic life," said the French political scientist Gilles Kepel, described by the New York Times as "France's most famous scholar of Islam."

Several other prominent academics in the field, including Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program of Extremism at George Washington University, said they've never heard of Moore in the context of any scholarly work.

"I have been studying political Islam in the West for the last 25 years and Moore's name has never popped up on my radar," Vidino told the Free Beacon. "It's a small, niche field, I'd know."

Former CIA case officer Reuel Marc Gerecht, now a scholar of Islamic terrorism at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said he's never heard of Moore in the context of his expertise in Islamic terrorism.

"If there was an up-and-coming scholar in radical Islam, if he had written something novel, then yes, I would certainly have heard of it," Gerecht said. "This is news to me."

posted by Ace at 06:32 PM

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