As News Channel Nebraska first reported, a 2021 federal lawsuit involving illegal immigration and tax fraud raised key questions for Jim Pillen, one of the GOP’s top candidates for governor.

Now an NCN investigation is raising questions regarding an attack ad highlighting that lawsuit by one of Pillen’s top rivals, Charles Herbster.

[See the full ad above]

The lawsuit, filed by a fired Pillen employee, accused Pillen’s giant hog operation, Pillen Family Farms, of hiring undocumented workers and dodging tax payments by classifying workers as “contract” labor.

Pillen adamantly denied the accusations and earlier this month the case abruptly ended with both sides agreeing the “matter should be dismissed,” according to U.S. District Court records in Nebraska.

According to several published reports, the Pillen campaign would not comment on the dismissal.

All of which found Herbster’s campaign launching a 30-second statewide TV ad that declares, “Illegal immigration? Jim Pillen is the problem.”

The ad mixes and matches the lawsuit’s accusations against Pillen with the Omaha World-Herald’s July 22, 2021, report on the lawsuit, which followed NCN’s initial investigation.

And that mixing and matching prompts questions of a misleading attack, something Team Herbster denies and here’s why.

As the announcer on the ad proclaims, “Court documents say Pillen schemed to break federal law,” the video shows the following words: “Court documents allege Jim Pillen schemed to break federal law.” The Herbster campaign insisting that adding the word “allege” shoots down any talk of a misleading ad.

But in the very next few seconds of the ad, the Herbster campaign throws up three key quotes that point directly to that potentially “misleading” label.

The quotes accuse Pillen of “hiring undocumented workers…falsifying documents…to avoid payment of taxes.”

And as those words dot the screen, the Omaha World-Herald’s masthead appears as well.

And yes, those words were in the state’s largest paper.

But—and here’s the key issue—those words did not originate in the newspaper; they are not part of a World-Herald editorial. No, they are from a straight news story: The OWH is quoting the lawsuit.

Prompting News Channel Nebraska to ask Team Herbster: “Isn’t it misleading to portray those two quotes as coming from the OWH, when the OWH was reporting information, alleged information, from the lawsuit?”

A Herbster spokesperson’s blunt 10-word response: “Our ad is not misleading. Our ad even writes ‘allege’.”

But the word “allege” is not on the screen when the Omaha World-Herald’s logo appears.

In addition, the Herbster campaign does not directly answer our specific question regarding its arguably out of context use of the newspaper’s masthead.