Ashley Todd- the McCain campaign volunteer who claimed that she was mugged, beaten and carved with a letter B- was lying. 

According to Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard, Ashley Todd, 20, told investigators today that she “was not robbed and there was no 6′4″ black male attacker.” 

Todd initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield Wednesday night and that the suspect began beating her after seeing a John McCain bumper sticker on her car. 

Todd claimed that the mugger even cut a backwards letter “B” in her cheek. 

But today investigators say Todd confessed that the attack never happened. 

At a news conference this afternoon, officials said they believe that Todd’s injuries were self-inflicted. 

Police investigating the report said Todd’s story began to unravel early on and they administered a polygraph test. 

Investigators asked Todd to return to the police station today for more questioning and to help them release a composite sketch of the suspect. 

When she did, police say she admitted that she made the whole thing up and that it snowballed out of control. 

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“She indicated that she has prior mental problems and that she does not remember how the backward letter B got on her face,” Richard told reporters today. 

Todd told police that while she did not remember how the backward “B” got on her face, she may have done it herself since she was the only one in the car. 

According to police, Todd said she thought of Barack Obama when she saw the “B” in her rearview mirror. 

Todd is being charged with filing a false police report and will spend the weekend in jail and is scheduled for a psychological evaluation on Monday. If she does have mental health issues, she will hopefully receive the proper treatment for them. If she doesn’t have mental health issues, she should receive some sort of punishment. Not only did she waste the time and resources of police officers that could have been tending to real crimes, she invoked the image of the Scary Black Man to create her hoax. Thankfully, the Pittsburgh police department handled the case well, realizing early on that there were suspicious elements of her story and investigating them. In the wrong hands, it could have devolved into a Charles Stuart type situation. 

John Moody, the executive vice president of Fox News, wrote yesterday that if the Todd story turned out to be a hoax “…Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.” If McCain was going to be torpedoed by race-baiting, it would’ve happened by now. The angry racism at the McPalin rallies has been in the media for weeks without it sinking him. 

The McCain campaign did not have anything to do with Ashley Todd’s actions. McCain and Sarah Palin behaved reasonably, calling to check in on the girl but refraining from making a public statement. But that doesn’t mean the campaign has clean hands. It appears that Peter Feldman, the campaign’s communications director, was pushing the Todd story hard into the media before there had been time to verify the facts of the incident. Feldman also added some dramatic license- playing up the racial tones of Ashley Todd’s story to feed the anger and hatred of McPalinstein’s monster.  If a head has to roll because of this incident, Feldman might want to remove his necktie.