Thread by @robinskyleigh

For those of you following this situation:

A contact high-up in the Warren campaign this morning confirmed to me that Ashlee Marie Preston "is not and never was" on the payroll of the campaign.

From my source in the campaign:

"Liz takes selfies with everyone. We can not be responsible for how people use these pictures afterwards and can not prevent people from claiming an official professional relationship that does not and has never existed."

Jason Hilton, Preston's publicist, responded with this...curious statement:

"This is the only comment we will be making on the subject. Ashlee is proud to be on TeamWarren and will not be silenced by the media smear campaign against her."

Quotes aren't smears, Jason, but ok.

To be clear, I'm not falling on either side of this, but I was given permission to quote the campaign source and I'm passing it along.

Preston is a tire fire with an ugly history. Warren's campaign would be smart to put as much distance between itself as her as humanly possible. I would think her history of misrepresenting/lying about Sanders's history on LGBTQ issues would have been enough to disqualify her.

I'm not trashing Warren, for the record. I like her. She espouses many of the same beliefs I do. But I think her campaign needs to get out in front of this, officially, NOW because a lot of folks feel some type of way about Preston's tweets, and they feel invisible right now.

#TeamWarren owes no one an apology. But they do owe their supporters — ESPECIALLY their LGBT supporters — an assurance that Ms. Preston is NOT a part of the campaign and will never be again.

One more thing, and this is my conjecture, but an important point:

My impression speaking with the campaign this morning is that they are still working on damage control. So. Stay tuned.