What possible purpose did it serve to drag Hillary Clinton into the House Oversight Committee’s hearing on Jeffrey Epstein other than to invite the Democrats to perform the same gratuitous stunt to Melania Trump one day?
There are plenty of reasons to subpoena Clinton’s testimony, but asking her how she feels about photos of her husband in a hot tub with Ghislaine Maxwell and an unidentified woman is not one.
Nor are lunatic questions about Pizzagate and UFOs.
Hillary’s role in launching Russiagate, meanwhile, went unexplored. How she must have laughed.
The nine-hour video of the Clintons’ testimony released this week is embarrassing.
Somehow, Republicans like Lauren Boebert managed to make the loathed former first lady look rational and serious and allowed Bill to pose as a statesman who claimed he was testifying because “I love my country,” rather than because he and his wife faced possible jail for contempt of Congress if they didn’t comply with the Oversight Committee’s subpoena.
The most clownish moment in the Clinton depositions near their Westchester home in Chappaqua last week came almost four hours into Hillary’s stint, thanks to Congresswoman Boebert, who had already disrupted proceedings by snapping an unauthorized photo of the former secretary of state and sending it to a pal to post on social media.
‘Humiliating’ move
That suggested the deposition was less about discovering the truth about Epstein on behalf of his victims than humiliating the Clintons for internet clout.
Boebert dredged up the debunked “Pizzagate” conspiracy that claimed a pedophile ring linked to Hillary was operating out of a Washington, DC, pizzeria.
Hillary played her role perfectly, pursing her lips, glaring at Boebert with utter disdain, shaking her head in disbelief and laughing.
“Pizzagate was totally made up,” she said.
“It was an outrageous allegation that ended up hurting a number of people . . . I can’t believe you’re even referencing it.”
Among all the genuine scandals in which the Clintons have been ensnared, Pizzagate has the least credibility.
It’s such a convenient distraction that you almost wonder if the Clintons themselves had planted it.
Just as the Hunter Biden laptop, false stories and doctored images suggesting Hunter was a pedophile threatened to hijack genuine evidence of corruption implicating Joe Biden.
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You’d think Republicans might have learned from their Monica Lewinsky debacle three decades ago.
What was supposed to be an independent-counsel investigation of then-President Bill Clinton and his wife over alleged financial improprieties involving a failed Arkansas real-estate development called Whitewater when he was Arkansas governor 20 years earlier went right off the rails.
No conclusive evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons was found, and Ken Starr’s final report had almost nothing to say about Whitewater.
But it lavishly explored President Clinton’s affair with 22-year-old White House intern Lewinsky, ruining her life.
No prurient detail of the Oval Office sex scandal was left uncovered by the three dozen attorneys working on the $60 million investigation, complete with descriptions of the “first penis” and DNA tests on Lewinsky’s rather modest blue dress.
Bubba’s infamy
On Aug. 17, 1998, just 10 days after al Qaeda bombed US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people, the president testified under oath about the Lewinsky affair for four hours via closed-circuit video from the White House to a federal grand jury.
That was when he spoke the immortal words: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
A few hours later, he gave a televised national address from the White House, admitting he had an “inappropriate” relationship with Lewinsky and uttered another immortal quote: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
An estimated 68 million Americans tuned in to watch his mortification, along with a massive global audience.
It was front page news from the Sydney Morning Herald to Le Monde.
It made a laughingstock of the presidency on the international stage.
I go through all this ancient history because the outcome was just the same as the Democrats’ witch hunt against Donald Trump that backfired on his persecutors and is a big part of the reason Trump sits in the Oval Office today.
The Lewinsky impeachment, similarly, was an unmitigated disaster for Republicans.
The Senate acquitted Clinton after the House impeached him for lying under oath about the affair, and his approval rating soared to an all-time high of 73% in the Gallup poll.
Republicans lost five seats in that year’s midterm elections, including the seat of Speaker Newt Gingrich.
It was bad for the country, too, just as the Democrats’ malicious impeachment of Trump in 2019 (he was acquitted, too) distracted the administration and paralyzed Congress during the crucial period when COVID-19 started circulating.
Back in 1998 and 1999, the Clinton administration was dealing with a number of serious national-security decisions — on terrorism, Iraq, Russia and the war in Kosovo.
Three days after his grand jury testimony, Clinton in half-hearted fashion turned his attention to the embassy bombings two weeks previously.
He ordered cruise missile strikes on a random aspirin factory in Sudan and on an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.
The strikes missed Osama bin Laden and only boosted the terrorist’s prestige in the Islamist world and set the stage for 9/11 three years later.
Apart from that, the Lewinsky witch hunt also poisoned bipartisanship for the next three decades, and gave a green light to Biden and Nancy Pelosi and pals to pursue Trump over the most spurious allegations.
Fanning public outrage
Once you’ve hauled in a president to question him about the shape of his penis, all bets are off.
The current Epstein scandal, while infinitely more sinister than the Lewinsky affair, has placed both Democrats and Republicans in a Mexican standoff, with each side fanning public outrage and selectively trawling the files for gotchas to portray their opponents as pedophiles implicated in an elite pedophile network run by Epstein, with shadowy foreign-intelligence ties pulling the strings — especially Mossad, of course. No conspiracy theory is complete without Jewish villains.
But despite their best superficial efforts and a whole lot of irresponsible rumors, they’ve come up empty on Trump and haven’t advanced our knowledge about Epstein’s activities beyond some suggestive photographs and the arrest of the UK’s disgraced former Prince Andrew over allegations he gave state secrets to Epstein in return for sex with underage girls.
But no pedophile ring has been busted and probably never will be.
Nevertheless, if the Democrats regain office, expect Trump and First Lady Melania to be subpoenaed over Epstein in another grubby tit-for-tat and probably another impeachment of Trump to consume Congress.
There is a high cost to weaponizing scandal that neither side of politics seems to take seriously.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
