7.25.00
They're Still Crooks

7.20.00
FBI v. Trulock, Cont.

7.20.00
Former Coverdell Staffer Kyle McSlarrow

7.14.00
Lou Cannon

7.11.00
The Oklahoman's Patrick McGuigan on Frank Keating

7.07.00
The Heritage Foundation's Baker Spring

7.05.00
Harry Browne

6.30.00
Nebraska Attorney General Donald Stenberg

6.29.00
Grover Joseph Rees Says...

6.28.00
Pro-Life Activist Clark Forsythe

6.22.00
Condoleezza Rice

6.21.00
Rep. Richard Baker

7/25/00 1:30 p.m.
They're Still Crooks
The transcript speaks volumes.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NR associate editor---------------lopezk@ix.netcom.com

Mark R. Levin is president of the Landmark Legal Foundation.

opez: Why did the White House release the president's April fundraising testimony yesterday?

Levin: I guess they released it because Clinton is proud that he has absolutely no memory ever of any significant event, which is quite remarkable for a sitting president. The liberals talk about Dick Cheney's bypass surgery, which occurred twelve years ago. Bill Clinton won't release his medical records. But given his severe memory loss whenever he's under oath or whenever he's faced with prosecutors, I'd say now more than ever we need to know what this poor man's medical condition is. Clinton and Gore have this belief that if you release this information, that somehow it shows that they are forthcoming. But when you read the information that they actually released, it proves that they are crooks.

We're told that 26 years ago, Hillary Clinton is alleged to have made a Jewish slur. Bill Clinton remembers every detail of that meeting, every detail, and he picks up the phone — not once, but twice — in the middle of the Mideast peace negotiations to tell the New York Daily News that he was there at that meeting, that he was an eyewitness, and Hillary Clinton never made that Jewish slur, and he knows because he was there and he remembers. That was 26 years ago. Now eight years ago, he happened to be taking a ride with his friend James Riady in which John Huang, another Clinton former friend, says that Riady offered to raise a million dollars for Clinton's campaign — and don't you know, he basically did that. But the man who benefits from all this — Bill Clinton — can't remember what was discussed on the ride, if anyone else was in the car, where they were driving to, what the scenery was. Suddenly, the poor guy blanks. But he does say that if a million dollars was raised, Gee, I think I would have remembered that.

This is the kind of rope-a-dope that this administration is famous for. And they think that by releasing these transcripts, that it gets them off the hook — because they are much more interested in manipulating the media, which are susceptible to manipulation, than to telling the truth. When you read this transcript, it becomes clear that Bill Clinton, just like Al Gore, is a pathological liar who will never tell the truth.

Lopez: Do we learn anything new — about Riady, about the coffees?

Levin: We don't learn anything new. What's interesting about it is that Clinton still insists that these coffees were nothing more than get-togethers. The fact that shortly after these coffees, millions poured into their campaign coffers is just a coincidence. But Lanny Davis himself, in his own book, makes clear that none of them believed that these White House coffees were anything but fundraisers. Either Bill Clinton is lying or Lanny Davis is lying. In this case I think it's clear that Bill Clinton is lying.

Lopez: And what about Webb Hubbell?

Levin: Bill and Hillary took a vacation with Hubbell about a week after Hubbell allegedly took $100,000 from a Riady enterprise. All Clinton can remember about that, according to the transcript: "The only thing I remember about the vacation is that I took a long walk with him [Hubbell]. I asked him if he was in trouble. He said, No, he was having a billing dispute with a law firm and he would resolve it." He denies having any role whatsoever in any money being provided to Webb Hubbell during what was a very crucial period. And, of course, we know that hundreds of thousands of dollars were provided to Webb Hubbell after it became known that he had ripped off his clients in Arkansas. And we also know that Webb Hubbell never fulfilled his agreement with the office of the Independent Counsel to tell all he knew about the Clintons' schemes. And so he never rolled over as prosecutors thought he would, so we are left to believe that all of this is merely coincidental and routine. Which, of course, it's not.

Lopez: Is the White House counting on no one reading the transcripts — or at least planning on it getting buried beneath Cheney and Republican- convention stories?

Levin: Well, that has served their purposes in the past, which is why they always release this stuff on Friday afternoons. The days of serious investigative reporting are long gone. Even if you look at the AP wire today, or any day, you will see these stories that look like they came directly out of the White House: the attacks on the Frays and MacDonalds, who were the eyewitnesses who claimed that Hillary Clinton made the Jewish slur. There was an entire AP story regurgitating all the Clinton talking points. The press is far more willing to accept propaganda from a Democratic regime than it is from a Republican administration. If you replaced Bill Clinton's name with Richard Nixon in this transcript they would be ridiculing him all over the national media. They wouldn't buy this. Or Ronald Reagan — they'd be talking about how dementia had set in. They'd be talking about how he's looking old these days. How the office is bigger than the man. And they'd be demanding that he come forward and tell the truth, give a statement to the nation, preferably a televised speech — that's what they did all through Iran-Contra.

Lopez: In the transcript, Bill Clinton says, seemingly brazenly: "Webb Hubbell was persistently persecuted by the independent counsel because he would not lie about me or Hillary. I never worried about what Webb Hubbell would say. If he wanted to say something bad about me, he'd have to make it up." What does that say about him at this point?

Levin: I don't doubt that he never did worry about what Hubbell would say about him, given what we know now. As for his allegation that the independent counsel was trying to get him to say something that was untrue — this is why the man needs to be disbarred. He has no evidence to back that up; yet he is an officer of the court and has spent much of his presidency undermining the court and undermining the independent counsel, the independent-counsel statute. He's a disgrace. And, you see, all these comments by him are self-serving. That monument he's building to himself in Little Rock — which he calls a library — is going to be a propaganda mill where he is going to spend the rest of his life saying that he was defending the Constitution, when he was undermining it. When you think about it, this is a very pathetic man who has a very pathetic future ahead of him. And so this statement about Hubbell is typical of Bill Clinton.

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