It would be nice to see the blogs take up this issue.
New York Times Trashes Hillary Accuser
Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2005 11:55 a.m. EST
newsmax.com
New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's media friends have fired the first journalistic salvo in their bid to discredit accuser Peter Paul, whose testimony and documentation helped the feds put together an indictment of her 2000 Senate campaign finance director last month.
Up till now the Clintons have remained mum on Mr. Paul's accusations - with their scandal lawyer, David Kendall, dismissing inquiries about the case as much ado about nothing.
But that changed on Wednesday, with a nearly 2,000-word report in the New York Times trashing Paul as a "troubled" character with "a checkered past" who turned on Bill and Hillary in a bid to extricate himself from prosecution.
In fact, the Times report spent more time trying to undermine Mr. Paul's credibility than it did explaining the evidence against Sen. Clinton - and went out of its way to portray her campaign finance director, David Rosen, as someone who was victimized by the "desperate" witness anxious to save his own skin.
Obviously, a Los Angeles grand jury saw things differently when it filed a four-count indictment against Rosen over a year ago (it was unsealed Jan. 10), accusing the top Clinton aide of failing to report most of the $1.2 million Paul spent to produce a gala August 2000 fund-raiser for Hillary's Senate campaign.
Reading the Times report, however, one never learns that Mr. Paul has directly implicated Mrs. Clinton in Rosen's alleged bid to hide campaign cash.
"Hillary Clinton personally called the producer of the concert part of this event," Mr. Paul told Fox News Channel's Eric Shawn late last year. "She asked him to lower the fee that he was charging of $850,000 at my request. So I don't understand how she could possibly say that she didn't know" about the true costs of the event.
Paul's legal team, Judicial Watch, says he "wrote [Sen. Clinton] a letter in 2001 telling her that the FEC forms from her campaign were false."
"Hillary Clinton knew Peter was paying for the event and was personally involved in negotiating the production fee for the event," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told NewsMax in January.
But rather than mention inconvenient details like these, Wednesday's Times report adopted the attack strategy perfected by the Clinton White House during the impeachment scandal.
The Times describes Paul as "a smooth operator with myriad connections and a troubled past ... a well-connected figure with a checkered past ... [whose] law license was suspended after he pleaded guilty to cocaine possession."
In a bid to further discredit the troublesome witness, the Old Grey Lady even invokes another Clinton accuser, Aaron Tonken, who was also involved in the August 2000 event and who has given reams of damaging testimony against both Bill and Hillary Clinton.
But in a surprising quote, Tonken told the Times: "I know David Rosen personally and he is a good person. [Peter] Paul knew that he had to give up Mrs. Clinton to save himself."
Tonken, however, is anything but a Clinton defender, as the Times well knows. Still, the paper of record apparently couldn't find room for his previous comments on his involvement in the case.
"I'm a star witness against President and Mrs. Clinton," he told attorneys in an unrelated civil case two years ago. "I'm a star witness in New York in the grand jury regarding the Marc Rich pardon and regarding the fund-raising activities that I've done on behalf of the Clintons."
In a proposal for his book, "King of Cons" - released just two months ago - Tonken claimed he was a White House guest seven times during Bill and Hillary's last three months in office, that he handed out checks to "certain pols" that were "illegal" and that he personally witnessed a "brown bag" stuffed with cash going "someplace it shouldn't."
No wonder Hillary's media friends are spinning so furiously. |
