Tag: William Safire

E-Mailgate: HIllary Never Asked State Department’s Permission to Use Private Server. The Lifetime of Lies Continues…

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Hills-Safe-Space-600-LIThe possibility of Presumptive Democrat Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton facing a Federal Grand Jury Indictment before the 2016 Presidential Election occurs next November is becoming more and more a certain reality.

The New York Times reports that

The State Department’s inspector general on Wednesday sharply criticized Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, saying that she had not sought permission to use it and would not have received it if she had.

The report, delivered to members of Congress, undermined some of Mrs. Clinton’s previous statements defending her use of the server and handed her Republican critics, including the party’s presumptive nominee for president, Donald J. Trump, new fodder to attack her just as she closes in on the Democratic nomination.

The inspector general found that Mrs. Clinton “had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business” with department officials but that, contrary to her claims that the department “allowed” the arrangement, there was “no evidence” she had requested or received approval for it.

The State Department’s inspector general on Wednesday sharply criticized Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, saying that she had not sought permission to use it and would not have received it if she had.

And while other senior officials had used personal email accounts for official business, including Colin Powell when he was secretary, the rules made clear by the time she became the nation’s top diplomat that using a private server for official business was neither allowed nor encouraged because of “significant security risks.”

The report, as well as an F.B.I. investigation and other legal challenges seeking information about her emails, is certain to keep alive a controversy that has shadowed Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

Mrs. Clinton and her aides have played down the inquiries, saying that she would cooperate with investigators to put the email issue behind her. Even so, she declined to be interviewed by the inspector general, Steve A. Linick, or his staff, as part of his review. So did several of her senior aides.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, Brian Fallon, did not respond to a request for comment about her refusal, among other questions. In a written statement, he said that the report showed that her use of a private email account was “not unique,” citing the use of personal emails by some of her predecessors. “She took steps that went much further than others to appropriately preserve and release her records,” the statement said.

The depth and breadth of Hillary’s lying is no surprise, either.

She has had a lifetime of practice.

In 1971, she arrived in Washington, D.C. to work on U.S. Senator Walter Mondale’s sub-committee on migrant workers. The next summer found her out west, working for the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern.Then, in the spring of 1974, Rodham became a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff, advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives during the Watergate Scandal.Her boss back then, Jerry Zeifman, now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, tells a very revealing story concerning her work there.According to Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former Yale Law Professor, Burke Marshall, also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair.When the Watergate Investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation. That made the Future First Lady and Secretary of State one of only three people who earned that badge of dishonor in Zeifman’s 17-year career.Why?

According to Zeifman,

Because she was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.

Zeifman claims that she was one of several individuals including Marshall, Special Counsel John Doar, and Senior Associate Special Counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum, who plotted to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.

Zeifman believes that they were deathly afraid of putting the break-in’s mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by Counsel to the President. The reason being, Hunt had the goods regarding some dirty dealings in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a kid busting open his Piggy Bank…dealings which purportedly included Kennedy’s complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.

Hillary and her associates were acting directly against the decision of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, who all believed that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel.

The reason that Hillary and the rest came up with the scheme is because they believed that they could gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon.

In order to pull off this scheme, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.

Hillary wanted to present in her brief that there was no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. Zeifman told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970….

As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer.

Douglas was allowed to keep counsel by the Judicial Committee in place at the time, which clearly established a precedent. Zeifman told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files.

That was a mistake, per Zeifman…

Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public.

Hillary then wrote a legal brief which argued that there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding…ignoring the Douglas case completely.

The brief was so laughingly fraudulent, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had ever actually submitted it to a judge.

Zeifman says that if Hillary and her associates had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even be a part of the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.

President Richard M. Nixon resigned that August. (***courtesy of canadafreepress.com and discoverthenetworks.org)

On Jan. 8, 1996, in a still-relevant commentary titled “Blizzard of Lies,” New York Times columnist William Safire described Hillary Clinton as “a congenital liar.” Here are excerpts from that article.

Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar. Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.

1. Remember the story she told about studying The Wall Street Journal to explain her 10,000 percent profit in 1979 commodity trading? We now know that was a lie told to turn aside accusations that as the Governor’s wife she profited corruptly, her account being run by a lawyer for state poultry interests through a disreputable broker.

She lied for good reason: To admit otherwise would be to confess taking, and paying taxes on, what some think amounted to a $100,000 bribe.

2. The abuse of Presidential power known as Travelgate elicited another series of lies. She induced a White House lawyer to assert flatly to investigators that Mrs. Clinton did not order the firing of White House travel aides, who were then harassed by the F.B.I. and Justice Department to justify patronage replacement by Mrs. Clinton’s cronies.

Now we know, from a memo long concealed from investigators, that there would be “hell to pay” if the furious First Lady’s desires were scorned. The career of the lawyer who transmitted Hillary’s lie to authorities is now in jeopardy. Again, she lied with good reason: to avoid being identified as a vindictive political power player who used the F.B.I. to ruin the lives of people standing in the way of juicy patronage.

3. In the aftermath of the apparent suicide of her former partner and closest confidant, White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, she ordered the overturn of an agreement to allow the Justice Department to examine the files in the dead man’s office. Her closest friends and aides, under oath, have been blatantly disremembering this likely obstruction of justice, and may have to pay for supporting Hillary’s lie with jail terms.

Again, the lying was not irrational. Investigators believe that damning records from the Rose Law Firm, wrongfully kept in Vincent Foster’s White House office, were spirited out in the dead of night and hidden from the law for two years — in Hillary’s closet, in Web Hubbell’s basement before his felony conviction, in the President’s secretary’s personal files — before some were forced out last week.

…One reason for the Friday-night dribble of evidence from the White House is the discovery by the F.B.I. of copies of some of those records elsewhere. When Clinton witnesses are asked about specific items in “lost” records — which investigators have — the White House “finds” its copy and releases it. By concealing the Madison billing records two days beyond the statute of limitations, Hillary evaded a civil suit by bamboozled bank regulators.

Another reason for recent revelations is the imminent turning of former aides and partners of Hillary against her; they were willing to cover her lying when it advanced their careers, but are inclined to listen to their own lawyers when faced with perjury indictments.

So, now, here we are.

A Modern Madame Bovary, who has assumed power and vitality at the expense of others, from Arkansas to New York to Washington, DC, is about to be the Democrat Nominee for the Presidency of the greatest country on the Face of the Earth, with the present (in more ways than one) President as, apparently, her willing accomplice…and, an emaciated-appearing, crotchety, old Ex-President playing the role of Renfield to her incarnation of Dracula (“Yes, Mistress..heh heh…heh heh.”)

The late, great William Safire was a prophet.

Lying comes as naturally to The Former First Lady as breathing in and out.

As I have written, from the time she was fired from the Watergate Investigative Committee to wiping her private e-mail server, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

Machiavellian in political ambition and armed with a vocabulary that would make the legendary Gong Show Judge, Jaye P. Morgan, blush (look her up, kids), “the Hildebeast” has cut a wide swatch in her path to Political Power.

It should be obvious to Americans by now, that she believes that morality and ethics are for “the little people” (i.e., you and me).

We already have a congenital liar in the White House.

We certainly do not need another one.

Oh…and Ambassador Christopher Stevens remains unavailable for comment.

And, Vince Foster lies buried…and not in paperwork.

Until He Comes,

KJ

E-mailgate: FBI Offers Staffer Immunity While the Potential President Proceeds With Her Prevarications

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

Her-shadow-600-LI (2)As the “Inevitable” Democrat Presidential Candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, continues her march toward that Political Party’s Nomination, the FBI Investigation into the mishandling of Top Secret E-mails by her and her staff, while she was the Secretary of State, continues to grow.

The Washington Post reports that

The Justice Department has granted immunity to a former State Department staffer, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, as part of a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information, according to a senior law enforcement official.

The official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009.

As the FBI looks to wrap up its investigation in the coming months, agents are likely to want to interview Clinton and her senior aides about the decision to use a private server, how it was set up, and whether any of the participants knew they were sending classified information in emails, current and former officials said.

The inquiry comes against a political backdrop in which Clinton is the favorite to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

So far, there is no indication that prosecutors have convened a grand jury in the email investigation to subpoena testimony or documents, which would require the participation of a U.S. attorney’s office.

“There was wrongdoing,” said a former senior law enforcement official. “But was it criminal wrongdoing?”

Clinton has since apologized for what happened: “Yes, I should have used two email addresses, one for personal matters and one for my work at the State Department. Not doing so was a mistake. I’m sorry about it, and I take full responsibility.” 

Any decision to charge someone would involve Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, who told Congress when asked last month about the email inquiry: “That matter is being handled by career independent law enforcement agents, FBI agents, as well as the career independent attorneys in the Department of Justice. They follow the evidence, they look at the law and they’ll make a recommendation to me when the time is appropriate.”

The fact that there is ambivalence concerning going forward with an indictment is not a surprise.

There is too much at stake.

The depth and breadth of Hillary’s lying is no surprise, either.

She has had a lifetime of practice.

In 1971, she arrived in Washington, D.C. to work on U.S. Senator Walter Mondale’s sub-committee on migrant workers. The next summer found her out west, working for the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern.Then, in the spring of 1974, Rodham became a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff, advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives during the Watergate Scandal.Her boss back then, Jerry Zeifman, now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, tells a very revealing story concerning her work there.According to Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former Yale Law Professor, Burke Marshall, also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair.When the Watergate Investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation. That made the Future First Lady and Secretary of State one of only three people who earned that badge of dishonor in Zeifman’s 17-year career.Why?

According to Zeifman,

Because she was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.

Zeifman claims that she was one of several individuals including Marshall, Special Counsel John Doar, and Senior Associate Special Counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum, who plotted to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.

Zeifman believes  that they were deathly afraid of putting the break-in’s mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by Counsel to the President.  The reason being, Hunt had the goods regarding some dirty dealings  in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a kid busting open his Piggy Bank…dealings which purportedly included Kennedy’s complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.

Hillary and her associates were acting directly against the decision of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, who all believed that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel.

The reason that Hillary and the rest came up with the scheme is because they believed that they could gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon.

In order to pull off this scheme, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.

Hillary wanted to present in her brief that there was no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. Zeifman told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970….

As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer.

Douglas was allowed to keep counsel by the Judicial Committee in place at the time, which clearly established a precedent. Zeifman told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files.

That was  a mistake, per Zeifman…

Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public.

Hillary then wrote a legal brief which argued that there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding…ignoring the Douglas case completely.

The brief was so laughingly fraudulent, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had ever actually submitted it to a judge.

Zeifman says that if Hillary and her associates had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even be a part of the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.

President Richard M. Nixon resigned that August. (***courtesy of canadafreepress.com and discoverthenetworks.org)

On Jan. 8, 1996, in a still-relevant commentary titled “Blizzard of Lies,” New York Times columnist William Safire described Hillary Clinton as “a congenital liar.” Here are excerpts from that article.

Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar. Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.

1. Remember the story she told about studying The Wall Street Journal to explain her 10,000 percent profit in 1979 commodity trading? We now know that was a lie told to turn aside accusations that as the Governor’s wife she profited corruptly, her account being run by a lawyer for state poultry interests through a disreputable broker.

She lied for good reason: To admit otherwise would be to confess taking, and paying taxes on, what some think amounted to a $100,000 bribe.

2. The abuse of Presidential power known as Travelgate elicited another series of lies. She induced a White House lawyer to assert flatly to investigators that Mrs. Clinton did not order the firing of White House travel aides, who were then harassed by the F.B.I. and Justice Department to justify patronage replacement by Mrs. Clinton’s cronies.

Now we know, from a memo long concealed from investigators, that there would be “hell to pay” if the furious First Lady’s desires were scorned. The career of the lawyer who transmitted Hillary’s lie to authorities is now in jeopardy. Again, she lied with good reason: to avoid being identified as a vindictive political power player who used the F.B.I. to ruin the lives of people standing in the way of juicy patronage.

3. In the aftermath of the apparent suicide of her former partner and closest confidant, White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, she ordered the overturn of an agreement to allow the Justice Department to examine the files in the dead man’s office. Her closest friends and aides, under oath, have been blatantly disremembering this likely obstruction of justice, and may have to pay for supporting Hillary’s lie with jail terms.

Again, the lying was not irrational. Investigators believe that damning records from the Rose Law Firm, wrongfully kept in Vincent Foster’s White House office, were spirited out in the dead of night and hidden from the law for two years — in Hillary’s closet, in Web Hubbell’s basement before his felony conviction, in the President’s secretary’s personal files — before some were forced out last week.

…One reason for the Friday-night dribble of evidence from the White House is the discovery by the F.B.I. of copies of some of those records elsewhere. When Clinton witnesses are asked about specific items in “lost” records — which investigators have — the White House “finds” its copy and releases it. By concealing the Madison billing records two days beyond the statute of limitations, Hillary evaded a civil suit by bamboozled bank regulators.

Another reason for recent revelations is the imminent turning of former aides and partners of Hillary against her; they were willing to cover her lying when it advanced their careers, but are inclined to listen to their own lawyers when faced with perjury indictments.

So, now, here we are.

A Modern Madame Bovary, who has assumed power and vitality at the expense of others, from Arkansas to New York to Washington, DC, is about to be the Democrat Nominee for the Presidency of the greatest country on the Face of the Earth, with the present (in more ways than one) President as, apparently, her willing accomplice…and, an emaciated-appearing, crotchety, old Ex-President playing the role of Renfield to her incarnation of Dracula (“Yes, Mistress..heh heh…heh heh.”)

The late, great William Safire was a prophet.

Lying comes as naturally to The Former First Lady as breathing in and out.

As I have written, from the time she was fired from the Watergate Investigative Committee to wiping her private e-mail server, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

Machiavellian in political ambition and armed with a vocabulary that would make the legendary Gong Show Judge, Jaye P. Morgan, blush (look her up, kids), “the Hildebeast” has cut a wide swatch in her path to Political Power.

It should be obvious to Americans by now, that she believes that morality and ethics are for “the little people” (i.e., you and me).

We already have a congenital liar in the White House.

We certainly do not need another one.

Oh…and Ambassador Christopher Stevens remains unavailable for comment.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Little White Lies, Bald-Faced Lies, and Hillary: “I’m For Huge Campaign-Finance Reform”…Except in the Clinton Foundation

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

untitled (19)There is a very logical reason that the Main Stream Media, in cooperation with the Democrat Party, is scheduling the Democrat President Primary Candidate Debates late on Weekend Nights:

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Late last night, hidden in the abyss of Sunday Television Programming at 9:00 p.m. Center, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bernie Sanders, And Martin O’Malley (Who!), , took the stage in South Carolina for another Democrat Presidential Democrat Candidate Debate.

…which, once again, ended early.

Even politicians can blatantly lie for just so long, I suppose.

For example…

SANDERS: “We need someone with the guts to stand up the private insurance companies and all of their money, and the pharmaceutical industry. That’s what this debate should be about.” 

CLINTON: “Well, as someone who, as someone who has a little bit of experience standing up to the health-insurance industry, that spent — you know, many, many millions of dollars attacking me and probably will so again because of what I believe we can do, building on the Affordable Care Act — I think it’s important to point out that there are a lot of reasons we have the health-care system we have today. I know how much money influences the political decision-making. That’s why I’m for huge campaign-finance reform. However, we started a system that had private health insurance. And even during the Affordable Care Act debate, there was an opportunity to vote for what was called the public option. In other words, people could buy-in to Medicare, and when the Democrats were in charge of the Congress, we couldn’t get the votes for that. So, what I’m saying is really simple, this has been the fight of the Democratic Party for decades. We have the Affordable Care Act. Let’s make it work. Let’s take the models that states are doing. We now have driven costs down to the lowest they’ve been in 50 years. Now we’ve got to get individual costs down. That’s what I’m planning to do.”

Liar, liar…pantsuit on fire!

On April 18, 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported that

The board of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation has decided to continue accepting donations from foreign governments, primarily from six countries, even though Hillary Clinton is running for president, a summary of the new policy to be released Thursday shows.

The rules would permit donations from Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the U.K.—countries that support or have supported Clinton Foundation programs on health, poverty and climate change, according to the summary.

That means other nations would be prohibited from making large donations to the foundation. But those governments would be allowed to participate in the Clinton Global Initiative, a subsidiary of the foundation where companies, nonprofit groups and government officials work on solutions to global problems.

Ministers from any government would be allowed to attend meetings and appear on panels at the group’s meetings and their governments would be allowed to pay attendance fees of $20,000.

The new policy, which was designed to address growing concern that the donations would present a conflict of interest for a Hillary Clinton presidency, all but ensures that Mrs. Clinton’s links to the charity will be a feature of the emerging presidential campaign.

Just how dishonest is Hillary Rodham Clinton? She wouldn’t lie about her own family would she?

…I mean, besides Bubba.

Is Michael Moore barred from all buffets in the Continental United States?

On April 23, 2015, I wrote a blog titled, “Foundationgate: There’s Little White Liars, Bold-Faced Lars, Statistical Liars, and Then, There’s the Clintons”.

Here is some pertinent information contained in that blog…

NYMag.com reports that

The qualities of an effective presidency do not seem to transfer onto a post-presidency. Jimmy Carter was an ineffective president who became an exemplary post-president. Bill Clinton appears to be the reverse. All sorts of unproven worst-case-scenario questions float around the web of connections between Bill’s private work, Hillary Clinton’s public role as secretary of State, the Clintons’ quasi-public charity, and Hillary’s noncompliant email system. But the best-case scenario is bad enough: The Clintons have been disorganized and greedy.

The news today about the Clintons all fleshes out, in one way or another, their lack of interest in policing serious conflict-of-interest problems that arise in their overlapping roles:

The New York Times has a report about the State Department’s decision to approve the sale of Uranium mines to a Russian company that donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Global Initiative, and that a Russian investment bank promoting the deal paid Bill $500,000 for a speech in Moscow.The Washington Post reports that Bill Clinton has received $26 million in speaking fees from entities that also donated to the Clinton Global Initiative.The Washington Examiner reports, “Twenty-two of the 37 corporations nominated for a prestigious State Department award — and six of the eight ultimate winners — while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State were also donors to the Clinton family foundation.”And Reuters reports, “Hillary Clinton’s family’s charities are refiling at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments, and said they may audit other Clinton Foundation returns in case of other errors.”

The Clinton campaign is batting down the darkest and most conspiratorial interpretation of these stories, and where this all leads remains to be seen. But the most positive interpretation is not exactly good.

When you are a power couple consisting of a former president and a current secretary of State and likely presidential candidate, you have the ability to raise a lot of money for charitable purposes that can do a lot of good. But some of the potential sources of donations will be looking to get something in return for their money other than moral satisfaction or the chance to hobnob with celebrities. Some of them want preferential treatment from the State Department, and others want access to a potential future Clinton administration. To run a private operation where Bill Clinton will deliver a speech for a (huge) fee and a charity that raises money from some of the same clients is a difficult situation to navigate. To overlay that fraught situation onto Hillary’s ongoing and likely future government service makes it all much harder.

And yet the Clintons paid little to no attention to this problem. Nicholas Confessore described their operation as “a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.” Indeed, as Ryan Lizzareported in 2012, Bill Clinton seemed to see the nexus between his role and his wife’s as a positive rather than a negative:

Regardless of Bill Clinton’s personal feelings about Obama, it didn’t take him long to see the advantages of an Obama Presidency. More than anyone, he pushed Hillary to take the job of Secretary of State. “President Clinton was a big supporter of the idea,” an intimate of the Clintons told me. “He advocated very strongly for it and arguably was the tie-breaking reason she took the job.” For one thing, having his spouse in that position didn’t hurt his work at the Clinton Global Initiative. He invites foreign leaders to the initiative’s annual meeting, and her prominence in the Administration can be an asset in attracting foreign donors. “Bill Clinton’s been able to continue to be the Bill Clinton we know, in large part because of his relationship with the White House and because his wife is the Secretary of State,” the Clinton associate continued. “It worked out very well for him. That may be a very cynical way to look at it, but that’s a fact. A lot of the stuff he’s doing internationally is aided by his level of access.”

The Obama administration wanted Hillary Clinton to use official government email. She didn’t. The Obama administration alsodemanded that the Clinton Foundation disclose all its donors while she served as Secretary of State. It didn’t comply with that request, either.

The Clintons’ charitable initiatives were a kind of quasi-government run by themselves, which was staffed by their own loyalists and made up the rules as it went along. Their experience running the actual government, with its formal accountability and disclosure, went reasonably well. Their experience running their own privatized mini-state has been a fiasco.

On Jan. 8, 1996, in a still-relevant commentary titled “Blizzard of Lies,” New York Times columnist William Safire described Hillary Clinton as “a congenital liar.”

Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar. Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.

1. Remember the story she told about studying The Wall Street Journal to explain her 10,000 percent profit in 1979 commodity trading? We now know that was a lie told to turn aside accusations that as the Governor’s wife she profited corruptly, her account being run by a lawyer for state poultry interests through a disreputable broker.

She lied for good reason: To admit otherwise would be to confess taking, and paying taxes on, what some think amounted to a $100,000 bribe.

2. The abuse of Presidential power known as Travelgate elicited another series of lies. She induced a White House lawyer to assert flatly to investigators that Mrs. Clinton did not order the firing of White House travel aides, who were then harassed by the F.B.I. and Justice Department to justify patronage replacement by Mrs. Clinton’s cronies.

Now we know, from a memo long concealed from investigators, that there would be “hell to pay” if the furious First Lady’s desires were scorned. The career of the lawyer who transmitted Hillary’s lie to authorities is now in jeopardy. Again, she lied with good reason: to avoid being identified as a vindictive political power player who used the F.B.I. to ruin the lives of people standing in the way of juicy patronage.

3. In the aftermath of the apparent suicide of her former partner and closest confidant, White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, she ordered the overturn of an agreement to allow the Justice Department to examine the files in the dead man’s office. Her closest friends and aides, under oath, have been blatantly disremembering this likely obstruction of justice, and may have to pay for supporting Hillary’s lie with jail terms.

Again, the lying was not irrational. Investigators believe that damning records from the Rose Law Firm, wrongfully kept in Vincent Foster’s White House office, were spirited out in the dead of night and hidden from the law for two years — in Hillary’s closet, in Web Hubbell’s basement before his felony conviction, in the President’s secretary’s personal files — before some were forced out last week.

Why the White House concealment? For good reason: The records show Hillary Clinton was lying when she denied actively representing a criminal enterprise known as the Madison S.& L., and indicate she may have conspired with Web Hubbell’s father-in-law to make a sham land deal that cost taxpayers $3 million.

Why the belated release of some of the incriminating evidence? Not because it mysteriously turned up in offices previously searched. Certainly not because Hillary Clinton and her new hang-tough White House counsel want to respond fully to lawful subpoenas.

One reason for the Friday-night dribble of evidence from the White House is the discovery by the F.B.I. of copies of some of those records elsewhere. When Clinton witnesses are asked about specific items in “lost” records — which investigators have — the White House “finds” its copy and releases it. By concealing the Madison billing records two days beyond the statute of limitations, Hillary evaded a civil suit by bamboozled bank regulators.

Another reason for recent revelations is the imminent turning of former aides and partners of Hillary against her; they were willing to cover her lying when it advanced their careers, but are inclined to listen to their own lawyers when faced with perjury indictments.

Therefore, ask not “Why didn’t she just come clean at the beginning?” She had good reasons to lie; she is in the longtime habit of lying; and she has never been called to account for lying herself or in suborning lying in her aides and friends.

No wonder the President is fearful of holding a prime-time press conference. Having been separately deposed by the independent counsel at least twice, the President and First Lady would be well advised to retain separate defense counsel.

The late, great William Safire was a prophet.

The revelation contained in today’s blog should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.

Lying comes as naturally to The Former First Lady as breathing in and out.

As I have written, from the time she was fired from the Watergate Investigative Committee to wiping her private e-mail server, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

Machiavellian in political ambition and armed with a vocabulary that would make the legendary Gong Show Judge, Jaye P. Morgan, blush (look her up, kids), “the Hildebeast” has cut a wide swatch in her path to Political Power.

It should be obvious to Americans by now, that she believes that morality and ethics are for “the little people” (i.e., you and me).

We already have a congenital liar in the White House.

We certainly do not need another one.

Oh…and Ambassador Christopher Stevens remains unavailable for comment.

Until He Comes,

KJ
 

 

 

Hillary’s E-mailgate: “Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave…”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

Hillary Ramirez CartoonBack in the early 1980s’, HBO taped a couple of live performances of America’s “Clown Prince of Comedy”, Richard “Red” Skelton. Even though the ol’ redhead was 78 years old, he was still as sharp as a tack…and was still an absolute master of comedic timing. At one point,  he was telling the audience how much he loved his wife, when abruptly, he looked from side to side, got a mischievous grin on his legendary face and said,

But, where that woman spits, grass never grows again.

He could have been speaking about Hillary Clinton.

By now, unless you have been living under a rock, I am sure that you have heard about the latest scandal involving Former First Lady and Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It appears that Mrs. Clinton used her own personal e-mail account exclusively to conduct “business”, while she was Secretary of State under Barack Hussein Obama, which is not only very clandestine in nature, but, also a breach of Government Protocol and time-honored rules and regulations.

According to The New Republic…

The Times doesn’t say why Clinton didn’t turn over all emails. If she and her advisers selectively chose which emails to hand over, we need to at least know the selection process. Otherwise, who knows what she left out?

The Clinton camp adamantly denies that it’s trying to hide anything. “Like Secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any Department officials,” her spokesman, Nick Merrill said. “For government business, she emailed them on their Department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained.” Hillary had every expectation, they say, that all of her communications from her time at the State Department would become public.

Clinton herself isn’t speaking. As a still-unofficial presidential candidate, she doesn’t feel compelled to answer questions about this latest damaging report. But she should—because it’s starting to appear that Clinton is far less prepared for a presidential run than anyone expected.

First, she made multiple gaffes about her own wealth, saying her family was “dead broke” after Bill Clinton left office. At the same time, she has given numerous speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And over the past few weeks, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reported in separate investigations that the Clinton Foundation had accepted donations from foreign countries both during and after her time as secretary of state. Many of those countries, like Saudi Arabia, do not have stellar records on human rights.
 
Hillary Clinton’s Worst NightmareFor a would-be presidential candidate with her deep experience in Washington, that’s a lot of unforced errors. The foundation shouldn’t have accepted donations from foreign countries so that no one could ever accuse Clinton of being influenced by that money. She should have stopped giving paid speeches a long time ago. And she should have used a government email address at the State Department. These should all be easy decisions to make, and yet Clinton got them all wrong. (And, in the case of the paid speeches, continues to get wrong.)

This should frighten Democrats. Who knows what other past mistakes might surface, or ones yet to come? It hasn’t taken much digging from journalists to find these stories. Republican opposition researchers are surely going into overdrive now that they smell blood in the water.

The best way for a party to vet a candidate, and get all of the dirt out of the way, is in a primary. But the Democratic Party is not going to have a competitive primary. At best, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and former Senator Jim Webb will be her challengers. That’s not a particularly tough primary.

The wild card is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, whom liberals have long wanted to run for president. Warren has basically ruled out a presidential run. She has made no moves to indicate she is considering one. But as she sees Clinton struggle before even hitting the campaign trail, Warren—and other party leaders—has to be thinking about it more every day. She probably wouldn’t win, but it would still make for a far more competitive primary, take some of the heat and press coverage off Hillary, and make her a far more battle-tested candidate for the general election. That’s exactly what the Democratic Party needs.

Additionally, theoretically, any non-RINO Republican Candidate, who is willing to get down in the trenches and slug it out, should have a field day citing Hil’s notorious past along the 2016 Presidential Campaign Trail.

Because, the fact of the matter is, the Hildebeast has traveled a “long and winding road” of prevarication.

For example…

On Jan. 8, 1996, in a commentary titled “Blizzard of Lies,” New York Times columnist William Safire described Hillary Clinton as “a congenital liar.”

Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar.Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.

1. Remember the story she told about studying The Wall Street Journal to explain her 10,000 percent profit in 1979 commodity trading? We now know that was a lie told to turn aside accusations that as the Governor’s wife she profited corruptly, her account being run by a lawyer for state poultry interests through a disreputable broker.

She lied for good reason: To admit otherwise would be to confess taking, and paying taxes on, what some think amounted to a $100,000 bribe.

2. The abuse of Presidential power known as Travelgate elicited another series of lies. She induced a White House lawyer to assert flatly to investigators that Mrs. Clinton did not order the firing of White House travel aides, who were then harassed by the F.B.I. and Justice Department to justify patronage replacement by Mrs. Clinton’s cronies.

Now we know, from a memo long concealed from investigators, that there would be “hell to pay” if the furious First Lady’s desires were scorned. The career of the lawyer who transmitted Hillary’s lie to authorities is now in jeopardy. Again, she lied with good reason: to avoid being identified as a vindictive political power player who used the F.B.I. to ruin the lives of people standing in the way of juicy patronage.

3. In the aftermath of the apparent suicide of her former partner and closest confidant, White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, she ordered the overturn of an agreement to allow the Justice Department to examine the files in the dead man’s office. Her closest friends and aides, under oath, have been blatantly disremembering this likely obstruction of justice, and may have to pay for supporting Hillary’s lie with jail terms.

Again, the lying was not irrational. Investigators believe that damning records from the Rose Law Firm, wrongfully kept in Vincent Foster’s White House office, were spirited out in the dead of night and hidden from the law for two years — in Hillary’s closet, in Web Hubbell’s basement before his felony conviction, in the President’s secretary’s personal files — before some were forced out last week.

Why the White House concealment? For good reason: The records show Hillary Clinton was lying when she denied actively representing a criminal enterprise known as the Madison S.& L., and indicate she may have conspired with Web Hubbell’s father-in-law to make a sham land deal that cost taxpayers $3 million.

Why the belated release of some of the incriminating evidence? Not because it mysteriously turned up in offices previously searched. Certainly not because Hillary Clinton and her new hang-tough White House counsel want to respond fully to lawful subpoenas.

One reason for the Friday-night dribble of evidence from the White House is the discovery by the F.B.I. of copies of some of those records elsewhere. When Clinton witnesses are asked about specific items in “lost” records — which investigators have — the White House “finds” its copy and releases it. By concealing the Madison billing records two days beyond the statute of limitations, Hillary evaded a civil suit by bamboozled bank regulators.

Another reason for recent revelations is the imminent turning of former aides and partners of Hillary against her; they were willing to cover her lying when it advanced their careers, but are inclined to listen to their own lawyers when faced with perjury indictments.

Therefore, ask not “Why didn’t she just come clean at the beginning?” She had good reasons to lie; she is in the longtime habit of lying; and she has never been called to account for lying herself or in suborning lying in her aides and friends.

No wonder the President is fearful of holding a prime-time press conference. Having been separately deposed by the independent counsel at least twice, the President and First Lady would be well advised to retain separate defense counsel.

Safire was being too kind.

Vince Foster and the Benghazi 4 remain unavailable for comment.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Legend of the Hildebeast: “Hillary Papers” Released

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

Hillary2Back in the early 1980s’, HBO taped a couple of live performances of America’s “Clown Prince of Comedy”, Richard “Red” Skelton. Even though the ol’ redhead was 78 years old, he was still as sharp as a tack…and was still an absolute master of comedic timing. At one point,  he was telling the audience how much he loved his wife, when abruptly,he looked from side to side, got a mischievous grin of his legendary face and said,

But, where that woman spits, grass never grows again.

He could have been speaking about Hillary Clinton.

FreeBeacon.com reports that

On May 12, 1992, Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake, top pollsters for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, issued a confidential memo. The memo’s subject was “Research on Hillary Clinton.”

Voters admired the strength of the Arkansas first couple, the pollsters wrote. However, “they also fear that only someone too politically ambitious, too strong, and too ruthless could survive such controversy so well.”

Their conclusion: “What voters find slick in Bill Clinton, they find ruthless in Hillary.”

The full memo is one of many previously unpublished documents contained in the archive of one of Hillary Clinton’s best friends and advisers, documents that portray the former first lady, secretary of State, and potential 2016 presidential candidate as a strong, ambitious, and ruthless Democratic operative.

The papers of Diane Blair, a political science professor Hillary Clinton described as her “closest friend” before Blair’s death in 2000, record years of candid conversations with the Clintons on issues ranging from single-payer health care to Monica Lewinsky.

The archive includes correspondence, diaries, interviews, strategy memos, and contemporaneous accounts of conversations with the Clintons ranging from the mid-1970s to the turn of the millennium.

Diane Blair’s husband, Jim Blair, a former chief counsel at Tyson Foods Inc. who was at the center of “Cattlegate,” a 1994 controversy involving the unusually large returns Hillary Clinton made while trading cattle futures contracts in the 1970s, donated his wife’s papers to the University of Arkansas Special Collections library in Fayetteville after her death.

The full contents of the archive, which before 2010 was closed to the public, have not previously been reported on and shed new light on Clinton’s three decades in public life. The records paint a complex portrait of Hillary Clinton, revealing her to be a loyal friend, devoted mother, and a cutthroat strategist who relished revenge against her adversaries and complained in private that nobody in the White House was “tough and mean enough.”

As Arte Johnson used to say on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, “Verrrry Interesting”.

That explains Whitewater.

A while back, the Washington Post published the following timeline:

1978

Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton join with James B. and Susan McDougal to borrow $203,000 to buy 220 acres of land in Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains. They soon form the Whitewater Development Corp., intending to build vacation homes.

Clinton is elected governor.

1980

Clinton loses his reelection bid and enters private legal practice.

James McDougal, who served briefly as Gov. Clinton’s economic development director, quits government to buy a small bank in Kingston, Ark. He loans $30,000 to Hillary Clinton to build a model house on a Whitewater lot.

1982

McDougal buys a small savings and loan and names it Madison Guaranty.

After two years as a private citizen, Clinton is once again elected governor.

1984

Federal regulators begin to question the financial stability and lending practices of Madison Guaranty, criticizing Madison’s speculative land deals, insider-lending and hefty commissions paid to the McDougals and others.

Clinton is reelected.

1985James McDougal holds a fund-raising event at Madison Guaranty to help pay off a $50,000 Clinton campaign debt. Investigators later determine some of the money was improperly withdrawn from depositor funds.

McDougal hires the Rose Law Firm, where Hillary Clinton is a partner, to do legal work for the ailing savings and loan.

Hillary Clinton and another Rose lawyer seek state regulatory approval for recapitalization plan for Madison.

1986

McDougal borrows $300,000 from a company owned by David Hale, a former Little Rock judge. Hale’s company receives federal funds from the Small Business Administration to lend to disadvantaged business owners, but an investigation 10 years later alleges that he lent up to $3 million to political figures instead.

Citing improper practices, federal regulators remove McDougal as Madison Guaranty’s president, but he retains ownership.

1988

Witnesses from the Rose Law Firm say Hillary Clinton requested the destruction of Madison land contract files.

Hillary Clinton writes James McDougal to ask for power of attorney to sell off remaining Whitewater lots and clear up bank obligations.

1989

Madison Guaranty collapses after a series of bad loans and a change in government accounting procedures. The federal government shuts it down and spends $60 million bailing it out.

James McDougal is indicted on federal fraud charges related to his management of a Madison real estate subsidiary.

1990

McDougal is acquitted.

1992

The Clinton presidential campaign gathers information on Whitewater and Madison Guaranty. A report commissioned by the campaign claims the Clintons lost $68,000 on Whitewater, an estimate later adjusted down to somewhat over $40,000.

The Federal Resolution Trust Corp., investigating causes of Madison’s failure, sends a referral to the Justice Department that names the Clintons as “potential beneficiaries” of illegal activities at Madison.

January 1993

Clinton’s first term as president begins.

May 1993

White House fires seven employees in the travel office, possibly to make room for Clinton friends. An FBI investigation of the office ensues, allegedly opened under pressure from the White House to justify the firings.

June 1993

Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster files three years of delinquent Whitewater corporate tax returns.

July 1993

Foster is found dead in a Washington area park. Police rule the death a suicide. Federal investigators are not allowed access to Foster’s office immediately after the discovery, but White House aides enter Foster’s office shortly after his death, giving rise to speculation that files were removed from his office.

If one is to believe all the weighted “push polls” one sees, Hillary is, by far, the front runner among all of the potential Democrat Candidates for President in 2016. If that is indeed the case, any non-RINO Republican Candidate, who is willing to get down in the trenches and slug it out, should have a field day citing Hil’s notorious past along the 2016 Presidential Campaign Trail.

On Jan. 8, 1996, in a commentary titled “Blizzard of Lies,” New York Times columnist William Safire described Hillary Clinton as “a congenital liar.”

Safire was being too kind.

Vince Foster and the Benghazi 4 remain unavailable for comment.

Until He Comes,

KJ