It’s not been a good week for Joe McGinniss. Even the left-obsessed media has condemned, doubted, and blown off his anti-Palin book. Yesterday, it became public knowledge, via his own email, that he had no proof to support the claims he made in the book. Today, Chuck Heath, Jr., Governor Palin’s brother, issued a statement. Big Journalism reports:

The McGinniss book is filled with one lie after another. The final straw for me was when I learned that he used me as a source for his lies about my sister and brother-in-law’s marriage. He included in his book comments falsely attributed to me by one of his unnamed sources. Neither McGinniss nor Crown/Random House reached out to me to verify, or even comment on, this alleged hearsay from an unnamed source. They just ran with it, and as a consequence, the tabloids picked it up and used it to fuel false rumors about my sister getting a divorce. All of this is a total lie, and I’m sick of seeing my sister, her family, and our extended family being trashed by smear-merchants like Joe McGinniss and his publisher.

(h/t Josh Painter)