“But Kristol’s charge was seconded by Randy Scheunemann, a longtime foreign policy adviser to McCain who is also close to the Standard editor and was thought to be a Palin ally within the campaign.

‘Steve Schmidt has a congenital aversion to the truth,’ Scheunemann said. ‘On two separate and distinct occasions, he speculated about about Governor Palin having post-partum depression, and on the second he threatened that if more negative publicity about the handling of Governor Palin emerged that he would leak his speculation [about post-partum depression] to the press. It was like meeting Tony Soprano.’

Schmidt said Scheunemann’s charges were ‘categorically untrue.’…

‘Bill Kristol, going back to the time of the campaign, has taken a lot of cheap shots at the campaign without ever offering a plausible path to victory,’ Schmidt said. ‘He’s in the business of ad hominem insults and criticism.’…

‘At end of campaign there were a series of leaks that were so damaging that it was consuming the 24-hour cable news cycle. Leaks to reporters where Sarah Palin was called all manner of names. [McCain senior adviser] Rick Davis and I jointly felt that was outrageous. So we made an attempt for the first time in the campaign to try to ID who was leaking information that was so damaging and demoralizing to a campaign that was in very difficult circumstances,’ Schmidt said.

‘What was discovered was an email from a very senior staff member to Bill Kristol that then entered into the news current and continued the negative in-fighting stories for an additional news cycles. I recommended tough medicine for that individual that was carried out,’ Schmidt said, again referring to Scheunemann. ‘Bill Kristol might not have liked that decision, and he might be mad about what happened to his friend, but going all the way back he has been a part of this story and I’ve preserved his confidentiality in that until now. But his use of his public forums to take a personal fight and make character attacks is just simply dishonest and wrong.'”