Gingrich confronted over cash, charity

Concord, New Hampshire (CNN) – Newt Gingrich's campaign vehemently denied any wrongdoing following an ABC News report Tuesday that questions business practices between two of his organizations, one a for-profit business and the other a charity.

"Despite all the innuendo in the ABC story, their team of journalists did not find any activity that was not fully supported by the law," the GOP presidential candidate's Communications Director Joe DeSantis wrote in a statement.

The ABC News report said Gingrich's charity, Renewing American Leadership (ReAL) paid $220,000 over two years to Gingrich Communications, one of the candidate's for-profit businesses.

The story also said that the charity "also served as another avenue to promote Gingrich's political views, and came dangerously close, some experts say, to crossing a bright line that is supposed to separate tax-exempt charitable work from both the political process and such profit-making enterprises as books and DVDs."

Blasting back that ABC News put out "baseless insinuations," the Gingrich campaign's DeSantis added that "both ReAL and Gingrich Communications took great care to make sure all resources were being used legally and ethically. Most of the payments from ReAL to Gingrich Communications were to compensate the time of ReAL's part time executive director, who was an employee of Gingrich Communications. This is perfectly normal and common practice."

"The rest was to purchase books, which ReAL used for their fundraising efforts," the statement continued. "The book purchases were made 'at cost' meaning there was zero profit made by Gingrich Communications or Newt on the sale."

The strong statement of denial follows a testy exchange caught on video earlier Tuesday in which Gingrich dodged – then verbally dressed down – a reporter after being repeatedly pressed about the business practices.