The Invisible Scandal

Newsmax relays a New Orleans Times-Picayune story that would seem to have everything the media loves in a scandal: sex, lies, audio tape, corruption. It just lacks one thing: the perps are Democrats instead of Republicans.

Audiotapes recorded by Kennedy in-law Raymond Reggie while cooperating with an FBI probe into an August 2000 gala fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton could be devastating for the Democratic Party, according to Louisiana's Times Picayune, which has obtained transcripts of the Reggie tapes.

The paper reports that a September 4th, 2002 tape of Reggie talking to Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate race finance chairman David Rosen "captures a conversation rife with gossip about the seamy side of political life, including the sex, drugs and prostitutes enjoyed by big-name Democratic stalwarts."

Beyond making incriminating statements on the September 2002 recording, Rosen told Reggie about an episode where prostitutes were allegedly provided to Clinton allies by a big-money donor.

According to the Times Picayune:

"The salaciousness reaches its pinnacle with Rosen's rambling anecdote about a fat cat Clinton donor who said after a night of partying that he sent prostitutes to the hotel rooms of two top Clinton loyalists."

Quoting Rosen directly, the paper reports:

"So the next day, [one of the loyalists] calls [the donor] from the golf course with [President] Clinton. Clinton gets on the phone, he goes, I just wanna tell you something. ... The day I'm outta office, I'm going out with you."

Sounds just like the Clintons and their crowd to me. As does David Kendall's glib denial:

The paper said a lawyer close to the Clinton circle denied that the former president ever made such a comment.

I've never understood why Mr. Bill makes these denials. Nobody really takes them seriously, and such allegations never hurt him politically, but rather seemed to make him even more popular. Indeed, I always thought he should have just scheduled a prime time address to the nation and, when the cameras were rolling, brought Monica out in nothing but her thong, sat back, and let her service him for the entire world to see. If he'd done that, he could have won a plebicite to become president for life.

Rosen's taped comments also indicate just how big a sucker he is, and consequently why Hillary hired him:

The indicted Clinton aide also expresses concern about a joint defense arrangement he has with the former first couple's legal team.

"The former White House wanted to hire, or argue the case in a certain way," Rosen says in the transcript. "And I did it for them. Like, I bit the bullet and went in as a guinea pig, and argued their argument for me."

What a patsy, even to this day:

Rosen hinted that if he wanted to, he could have implicated higher-ups.

"Instead of frettin' and runnin' and coverin' my ass," he told Reggie, "I was a good soldier. ... So far it's worked out, but I coulda done it a lot different."

Well, it isn't working out so well for him now, is it?

And yet....

The paper offers no indication that Rosen made any incriminating statements about Hillary Clinton. So far, there is no evidence Hillary Clinton was aware of the fund-raising costs – or that they exceeded in-kind contribution limits.

A good soldier, indeed. Even though it defies credibility to suggest that Mrs. Clinton, who is a notorious micromanager in addition to her well-earned reputation for scheming and swindling, could possibly have been completely unaware of these fundraising shenanigans. Plausible deniability only stretches so far.

A fact that would be excruciatingly apparent were it a Republican senator who had been the beneficiary of Rosen's, and Peter Paul's, financial "services," as Brother Hinderaker concludes:

I can't help wondering why none of this constitutes a "scandal." It's not that campaign finance is too boring a topic for the [extreme] media; consider the newsprint that has been devoted to the indictment of several of Tom DeLay's aides on campaign finance charges. If the indictment of DeLay's aides by a long-discredited Democratic activist in Travis County, Texas, is a big news story, then why isn't the indictment of Hillary Clinton's finance director by the Justice Department an equally big story? It's often said that newspapers focus on lurid stories to boost circulation; if that's true, why aren't they jumping all over a story that features, as the Times-Picayune's headline put it, sex, lies and secret tape recordings? Not to mention the Kennedys, the Clintons, and a supporting cast of Hollywood stars.

See my second sentence above.