Did the Mob Beat the Crap Out of a US Senator?

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.

Breitbart News reported that an investigation of the home exercise accident story told by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) appears basically "to discredit his version of events surrounding a New Year’s Day incident that left him with gruesome injuries to his eye, face and ribs."

On January 22, three weeks following the accident, Reid told his version of how he obtained his injuries to the assembled Washington DC press: "I know there are a lot of rumors as to what happened, but that’s very simple. My wife and I were in our new home. I was doing exercises that I’ve been doing for many years with those large rubber bands and, uh, one of them broke and spun me around and I crashed into these cabinets and injured my eye."


"It didn't knock me out but it sure hurt. And, uh, I was taken to the hospital, and, uhm, we came back here after a couple of days. I have some bones broken around my eye."

According to Breitbart:

From the moment the story broke, many have been highly skeptical of Reid’s claim his injuries came from a home exercise accident. Most of this skepticism–based mostly on speculation and the gruesome nature of the injuries—led some to offer a version of an alternate theory that somebody beat up Senator Reid.

“It’s pretty obvious from the photographs that somebody beat the bejesus out of the soon-to-be former senator from Nevada. And yet the national media has uncritically swallowed the cover story that ‘exercise equipment’ was to blame for the loss of sight in the former majority leader’s right eye. Baloney,” Michael Walsh wrote at PJ Media.

Even Rush Limbaugh weighed in with skepticism as to Reid’s story:

By the way, does anybody believe that Harry Reid really had an accident with his exercise machine? Does anybody really believe that’s why Harry Reid is still bruised and is still wearing dark glasses, what, months after this accident with his exercise machine? 

I don’t believe for a minute that whatever happened to Harry Reid has anything to do with an exercise machine unless somebody repeatedly threw him intoit. Harry Reid looks like and is acting like — and now with this announcement, behaving like — somebody who may have been beaten up. Nobody… I’ve never seen anybody have an accident with an exercise machine that ends up suffering symptoms much like Harry Reid’s for as long as Harry Reid has. 

Breitbart News noted that its investigation of Reid’s home exercise accident "has uncovered facts that appear to discredit Reid’s version of the home exercise accident for ... very specific reasons."

Reid seems to have lost an eye -- or at least he can't see through it. He also is not
running again for his seat.

PowerLine blog postulated what happened to Reid in a story called: What really happened to Harry Reid?

Their answer is: "he ran afoul of some mobsters."

... Yet the national press has studiously averted its eyes from Reid’s condition, and has refused to investigate the cause of his injuries. To my knowledge, every Washington reporter has at least pretended to believe Reid’s story, and none, as far as I can tell, has inquired further.  

A friend of mine was in Las Vegas a week or two ago. He talked to a number of people there about Reid’s accident, and didn’t find anyone who believed the elastic exercise band story. The common assumption was that the incident resulted, in some fashion, from Reid’s relationship with organized crime. The principal rumor my friend heard was that Reid had promised to obtain some benefit for a group of mobsters. He met with them on New Year’s Day, and broke the bad news that he hadn’t been able to deliver what he promised. When the mobsters complained, Reid (according to the rumor) made a comment that they considered disrespectful, and one of them beat him up. 

Is that what really happened? I have no idea, but it is a more likely story than the elastic exercise band yarn....

So we throw open this question to our audience, some of whom, we are reasonably certain, can offer a rather informed opinion as well as anyone else we can think of.

What the hell happened to Harry Reid?

And is he better off than the poor bastard that former veep Dick Cheney blasted with a shotgun?

We're just kidding with the second question but not the first....