The College Republican and McCain campaign volunteer who staged her own mugging and blamed backwards “B” scratched into her face on a fictitious big black Barack Obama supporter is out of jail.

Ashley Todd, 20, will be required to undergo mental health treatment. If she stays out of trouble, her criminal record will be expunged.

The hoaxster who scratched a “B” into her own cheek and claimed that a fictional black Obama-supporting thug did it now blames the media for blowing her politically-motivated hate crime into a political firestorm: “She just opened up and said she wanted to tell the truth,” Bryant said, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “She was upset with the media for blowing this into a political firestorm.”

The executive vice president of Fox News predicted that if Ashley Todd’s claims of mutilation at the hands of a black man turned out to be a hoax, the McCain campaign would be toast:

Breaking on KDKA Channel 02: “A Pittsburgh police commander says a volunteer for the McCain campaign who reported being robbed and attacked near a bank ATM in Bloomfield has confessed to making up the story. Police say charges will be filed.”