Greta Van Susteren may be Fox’s so-called “liberal” in prime time but she (again) acted as a Republican handmaiden last night as she uncritically promoted Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s completely unsupported belief that his state is a victim of an IRS target because of his conservative policies. And didn’t mention that his claim might, just might be useful in his very tight campaign for governor.

Cuccinelli made it clear in his very first sentence that he had no real information to back up his accusation that the IRS was withholding funds due the commonwealth as the result of a Medicaid fraud investigation he led.

Hey, Greta, I don’t know that I was targeted but, you know, after eight months of incompetence when they’re sitting on the biggest asset forfeiture I think a state’s ever gotten and lo and behold it happens to be Virginia, with a Republican governor and with me who’s been pretty, has been fighting with this administration for so many months, for so many years, really. It starts to raise other questions and I’ve heard you raise other questions tonight. I can’t point to an email or something that says, “OK, we’re gonna deny Cuccinelli in Virginia their rightfully earned money in the biggest healthcare fraud case ever investigated by a state, a billion and a half dollar finding against Abbott Labs last year, biggest one ever done by a state,”… and this would be the biggest asset forfeiture that I’m aware of a state ever getting and the IRS was the only player left that had to fill out a two-page form that they do in a lot of other cases. This is not new to them. They’ve done it hundreds, maybe thousands of times, to move the asset forfeiture along and lo and behold – whose asset forfeiture doesn’t move but Virginia’s?

After eight months of incompetence, it starts to look like a little more than just incompetence.

In other words, Cuccinelli has nothing, nada, zip to support his suspicion – beyond the fact that it made for a nice bit of free air time on Fox News that cast him as both an IRS victim and a state hero for supposedly uncovering this fraud and getting this huge settlement.

And, as a matter of fact, a quick Google search turned up the news that Cuccinelli used this very claim in a fundraising letter yesterday.

If Van Susteren recognized how neatly her show fit into a GOP campaign strategy, she was more than willing to play along. She not only helped Cuccinelli disguise his campaign message as news but failed to make any attempt to verify his politically-expedient hunch. Her only question was “Any other state have to wait?”