In 1975, Hillary Clinton defended a man accused of raping a 12-year-old child during the early years of her private legal practice. She wrote about the case in her 2003 memoir, “Living History.” It was the subject of the 3,000-word story by Newsday during the 2008 presidential campaign.
But after the Washington Free Beacon published an audio recording Sunday in which Clinton discussed the case, conservatives then spent Monday dissecting Clinton’s role anew.
The Free Beacon portrayed Clinton’s attitude as “casual and complacent” while she discussed the case in an interview for a never-published story by Esquire magazine.
At the beginning of the recorded discussion, Clinton called it “a terrible case.” But she laughed while sharing some of the details of her casework, though not the crime itself. That was still the detail that caught the attention of many conservative outlets; the Free Beacon noted that Clinton could “be heard laughing at several points.” The site also questioned (via an expert) whether she had violated ethical obligations by disclosing the results of a polygraph test taken by her client.
PJ Media described the tape this way: “Hillary Rodham cackles as she describes defending a child rapist.” Townhall.com was slightly more reserved in its portrayal of the tape: “Hillary Clinton Talks Laughs About Defending Rapist.”
Clinton negotiated a plea deal that resulted in minimal jail time for her client, which she explained on the tape. But, while the Free Beacon quoted a legal expert who noted Clinton’s ethical obligation to defend her client, conservative operatives and opinionators leapt on her perceived crassness while discussing the case.
Imagine if a #GOP candidate was on tape laughing about the guilt of a man accused of raping of a 12 year old girl. http://t.co/pCebTuTt0a
— Brad Dayspring (@BDayspring) June 16, 2014
Everyone knows lawyers have an ethical obligation to laugh about how they got a child rapist off on a technicality. http://t.co/BYcnpU1J0X
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) June 16, 2014
Others used the Free Beacon’s publication of the audio recording to revisit details from the Newsday feature from 2008, which included some elements of the story that Clinton neglected to include in her memoir — such as her strategy of “attacking the credibility of a 12-year-old girl,” as Newsday described it.
“When Hillary Clinton Trashed A 12-Year-Old Rape Victim” was the headline from TruthRevolt.org. National Review Online pondered how 2016 voters would look at the incident:
While the case is nearly forty years old, some Americans may feel discomfort at the thought of a potential president who attacked the credibility of a girl who was raped. Yes, every American accused of a crime deserves the best defense they can get. But many outside the legal arena will conclude that attacking the victim crosses a line, and contributes to why some rape victims are so reluctant to come forward.
Clinton supporters criticized the story and its follow-up in the conservative media as “shameful.”
“This is another desperate and shameful attempt by the right to distract from Hillary Clinton’s strong record,” Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the pro-Hillary group Correct The Record, said in a statement to TPM. “Hillary Clinton went on to fight for groundbreaking justice for rape victims.”
Of note: Newsday tracked down the victim in the case, who was left unnamed. “I’m sure Hillary was just doing her job,” she told the newspaper in 2008.
But the Free Beacon also called that into question, reporting instead that the victim holds “a deep and abiding hostility” toward Clinton — though it included no direct quotes and stated the victim “declin(ed) an interview.”
The right wing will leave no stone unturned to derail Clinton. If she chooses to run, the voters will decide if this matters to them or not. My guess is that the anti-Hillary people don’t need this to influence their vote.
Trust the right wing to turn the victim of a child rape into a political football against her will.
If those reporting on this case cared about the victim, they never would have had her relive the ordeal by asking her questions about a 40 year old case.
However, good reporting would have let us know if Hillary’s client was a recidivist (did he commit more crimes after his release from jail).
For instance, even supporters of Governor Mike Huckebee cringe when they realize that he commuted the sentence of a man who went on to kill four police officers.
Thank you Bush/Cheney 2004, for introducing us to swift boating as a verb.
The only thing this really says is that with all the digging around by GOP strategists, their smear campaign if Clinton runs is going to be pretty weak. All the “research” they’ve been doing and all the time they’ve had to dig around, they finally find something that happened in 1975, and that Clinton herself wrote about in her memoir and spoke about in an interview as recently as 2003. It’s like when Obama ran, and every week was some new conspiracy theory about his history or his father, or mother’s religion and so on and every wing nut was up in arms with “wHYE Dudn’t THEM there Librul mEDIA SPEEK aBouT THIS!!!”. And the response was always “because everybody already knows about it because it’s all in Obama’s book, dip shit.” It’ll all be as effective with Clinton as it was with Obama. Meanwhile, no legitimate GOP candidate will emerge, and no new ideas on their behalf will be proposed, and Clinton II coasts into the White House, leaving the GOP to ask yet again “what happened?”.