“Last Wednesday, Bill Clinton ratcheted up Clintonworld’s counter assault on Clinton Cash, the book by conservative author Peter Schweizer that ignited the latest media frenzy over the former First Couple’s $2 billion foundation. “There’s just no evidence,” Clinton defiantly told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, during an interview at the Foundation’s confab in Morocco. “Even the guy that wrote the book apparently had to admit under questioning that we didn’t have a shred of evidence for this, we just sort of thought we would throw it out there and see if it flies, and it won’t fly.”
Clinton’s analysis is flawed in at least one regard. As my colleague Jonathan Chait recently wrote, the Clintons’ web of murky relationships and opaque finances exacts a political cost whether or not their critics ever find a there there. The Clintons, more than anyone, should know that negative press — true or not — can have potentially catastrophic consequences. Remember, it was David Brock’s 1993 American Spectator article alleging that Arkansas State Troopers arranged Bill’s trysts which sparked Paula Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit, which led to the Supreme Court case, which led to Monica Lewinsky lying under oath about the affair, which led Linda Tripp to turn the tapes over to Ken Starr, which led to impeachment.
The Clinton Foundation scandal cycle is already spinning off new complications. A case in point: After being the subject of a spate of negative newspaper accounts about potential conflicts of interest and management dysfunction this winter — long before Clinton Cash — the Clinton Foundation wound up on a “watchlist” maintained by the Charity Navigator, the New Jersey-based nonprofit watchdog.”
To Read the Full Article, Click Here.
