39 Facts About David Brock

David Brock is an American liberal political consultant, author, and commentator who founded the media watchdog group Media Matters for America.

David Brock has been described by Time as "one of the most influential operatives in the Democratic Party".

David Brock wrote the book The Real Anita Hill and the Troopergate story, which led to Paula Jones filing a lawsuit against Bill Clinton.

David Brock has since founded super PACs called American Bridge 21st Century and Correct the Record, has become a board member of the super PAC Priorities USA Action, advised The 65 Project, and has been elected chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

David Brock was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, and was adopted by Dorothea and Raymond Brock.

David Brock has a younger sister, Regina, who was adopted.

David Brock's father, whom Brock has described as "a Pat Buchanan conservative", was a marketing executive.

David Brock grew up in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey, where he went to Our Lady of the Assumption School, and later attended Paramus Catholic High School in Paramus, New Jersey.

David Brock became editor of his high school newspaper, which he says he "fashioned into a crusading liberal weekly in the middle of the Reaganite Sunbelt".

David Brock worked as a reporter and editor for The Daily Californian, the campus newspaper.

David Brock arrived at college as a liberal Democrat, but at Berkeley he was "repelled by the culture of doctrinaire leftism" and turned to the political right.

Shortly thereafter David Brock became a full-time staff member at that publication.

In 1993, David Brock expanded his article into a book, The Real Anita Hill.

David Brock replied to their book with a book review of his own in The American Spectator.

David Brock later recanted much of what he had written about Clinton and Jones.

In Blinded by the Right, David Brock said that he had reached a turning point: he had thoroughly examined charges against the Clintons, could not find any evidence of wrongdoing, and did not want to make any more misleading claims.

David Brock further said that his former friends in right-wing politics shunned him because Seduction did not adequately attack the Clintons.

In July 1997, Esquire magazine published a confessional piece by David Brock entitled "Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man" in which he recanted much of what he said in his two best-known American Spectator articles and criticized his own reporting methods.

In 2001, David Brock accused one of his former sources, Terry Wooten, of leaking FBI files for use in his book about Anita Hill.

David Brock's book Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative was published in 2002.

David Brock founded the group with help from the Center for American Progress.

When David Brock proposed the idea of Media Matters, Hillary Clinton invited him to the Clintons' Chappaqua home to pitch the idea to potential donors.

David Brock was active in Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency in 2008.

David Brock announced in 2010 that he was forming a Super PAC, American Bridge 21st Century, to help elect liberal Democrats, starting with the 2012 election cycle.

In 2011, David Brock founded the PAC, which seeks "to track every utterance of every major GOP candidate".

In late 2013 David Brock founded Correct the Record, described by The New York Times as Hillary Clinton's "own personal media watchdog", keeping track of all negative news surrounding her.

David Brock had first come up with the idea for the group that summer.

In early 2014, David Brock was named to the board of Priorities USA Action as the super PAC announced its support for a possible Hillary Clinton presidential run in 2016.

In February 2015, David Brock abruptly resigned his position with the super PAC.

In 2014, David Brock relaunched the American Independent News Network, formerly a network of progressive state-based reporting outlets, into the American Independent Institute, a group which provides grants for liberal investigative journalism projects.

In 2014, David Brock became the chairman of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington board of directors, in what was characterized as a more explicitly partisan stance for the organization.

David Brock was elected as CREW's board president after laying out a broad plan to turn the organization into a more muscular and partisan organization.

David Brock was particularly critical of the Times's senior politics editor and former Washington bureau chief Carolyn Ryan.

In 2015, David Brock formed an investment venture, True Blue Media, to purchase an 80 percent stake in Blue Nation Review, an online news website.

David Brock later was forced to apologize for his lies about her.

David Brock was reportedly considering doing the same to congressional Republicans.

David Brock was formerly in a long-term relationship with James Alefantis.

On March 22,2017, David Brock suffered a heart attack while at work at Media Matters headquarters.

David Brock claimed to have stopped working directly with American Bridge, although its staffers continued to operate out of his office.