Friday, May 27, 2016

Trump Attacks of the Day DEBUNKED. Emails and Whitewater

Emails and Whitewater
Thom Palmer
May 27, 2016

"Add all this up, and you have harassment and abuse. A constant verbal beating of a good woman..."

EMAILS: I keep hearing pundits and Republicans falsely claim that Hillary has not been transparent, and that she continues to lie. This is false. Other than the fact that she continued to use her personal secure server while policy (not law) required her to use her dot gov email, as did all other Secretaries of State before her, there is nothing to talk about here. She admitted that she was in error by using her personal server. Transparency is transparent. Here are key factors in your defense of Hillary's use of her private server. The medial frenzy and adjectives such as "devastating", etc are simply for ratings. Facts are facts.

1. Every email sent had her personal email extension. ie: hillary@clintonemail.com . Nobody ever set her up a hillary@state.gov email and trained her on the use of such an email. Her focus was on State Department business, not technical business. 

2. Every State Department  email was sent to,  or received from a dot gov account. ie: barackobama@whitehouse.gov. Therefore, every email was stored on the government server on the other end. Every email is retrievable, assuming that government did not delete them permanently from their server.

3. Every single recipient of her emails was aware that she was not using a dot gov account. This was transparent. If it were lacking in transparency, there would have been a hillary@state.gov.clintonemail.com address for example. Everything was above board. The President, as well as all of Congress were aware all along of her personal secure server use. Nobody considered it an issue, because it was not an issue.

4. The entire email issue was trumped up along with the other fake scandals initiated by Republicans in their decades long witch-hunt, designed to trash Hillary's political future.

5. The server was NOT hacked, and no sensitive or classified emails were compromised. End of story. Move along.

WHITEWATER EXPLAINED

"There is no evidence that the Clinton's engaged in any criminal activity"

Back in 1978, The Clinton's entered a partnership with Arkansas businessman Jim McDougal and his wife Susan, to purchase 230 acres of land and build a vacation community that they named Whitewater. At the time, Bill and Hillary's combined income was just $51,000 per year. If successful, the Whitewater Development Corporation would bring a nice supplement to their income. The four of them took out a loan for $200,000 and put the money into Whitewater Estates, which eventually failed due to high interest rates. At the time, mortgage interest had shot up to 20%, and the project went bust. The Clinton's lost their investment.

Later, Jim McDougal would run Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan and also invested in other risky real estate ventures. Castle Grande was a housing development project highly funded by McDougal's Madison Guaranty. Castle Grande went bust, followed by Madison Guaranty.  In 1985, McDougal hired Hillary Clinton, then attorney at Rose Law Firm to handle legal dealings surrounding McDougal's risky investments and how money was being raised and allocated. 

Republicans, led by Ken Starr claimed that McDougal hired Clinton in order to offset the Clinton's losses from the Whitewater project. I'm still trying to figure out why this would be considered a scandal, even if it were true. She was hired because McDougal trusted her, and other than the fact that he knew the Clinton's, I cannot see any wrongdoing. Later on, Ken Starr would publicly state that there was insufficient evidence to continue the investigation. Republicans then decided to create a false connection between the Vince Fosters death, conjured up Travelgate and Filegate to further attempt to wreck the Clinton presidency, and to mitigate Hillary Clinton's chances at future political advancement. 

January 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Robert Fiske as special prosecutor in the Whitewater investigation.  The appointment was highly praised by Republicans for about six months. That's when Fiske determined that there was absolutely "NO EVIDENCE THAT ISSUES INVOLVING WHITEWATER OR OTHER PERSONAL LEGAL MATTERS OF THE PRESIDENT OR MRS. CLINTON, WERE A FACTOR IN VINCE FOSTERS SUICIDE". At this point, Republicans turned on Fiske, declaring him "Unfit for the job". The Republican congress then fired Fiske and hired Ken Starr to take over the investigation. It was clear by then that this was a witch hunt and nothing more. As much as Starr tried, he ended up shutting down the investigation due to lack of evidence against the Clinton's. Bill Clinton was convinced that this was a witch hunt designed for pure political purposes, in order to put a Republican in the White House. This was true, and in the end, it did, but not before Starr and the Republicans had a field day with the Lewinsky scandal, which they happily forced porn into the homes of millions of families, since their fake scandals of Whitewater, Travelgate, and Filegate ended up making them look like idiots. 

As far as Whitewater goes, the final report said that there was NO EVIDENCE THAT THE CLINTON'S ENGAGED IN CRIMINAL ACTIVITY. That should about wrap it up, right? Wrong. 

Here's the Republican game plan.

The Republican game plan; in the absence of facts to back their claims, is to create a drip, drip, drip of false narratives regarding all of their fake scandals surrounding Hillary, so that they infect the electorate with theoretically plausible information, bringing down Hillary's trustworthiness numbers. They created and continue the drip, drip, drip and then say that Hillary is unfit to lead due to the drip, drip, drip of false information that they continue selling as fact. Here's a list of their favorites, and they've all been proven to be lies by Republicans.

WATERGATE SCANDAL - DEBUNKED
WHITEWATER SCANDAL - DEBUNKED
FILEGATE SCANDAL - DEBUNKED
FOSTER SCANDAL - DEBUNKED
HILLARY the ENABLER - DEBUNKED
WAL MART SCANDAL - DEBUNKED
MONSANTO SCANDAL - DEBUNKED
HONDURAS COUP - DEBUNKED
BENGHAZI - DEBUNKED
EMAIL SCANDAL - DEBUNKED (but still being challenged)

Add all this up, and you have harassment and abuse. A constant verbal beating of a good woman, and a clear abuse of power, and a waste of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars by Republicans, in their attempt to infect the electorate with false information. Even if you choose to believe the email scandal, compare this harmless controversy to Republican and Trump's daily lies, climate change denial, pipelines, nuclear weapons expansion worldwide, misogyny, racism, guaranteed collapse of our housing and financial markets due to his "negotiating" power, and overall recklessness in a world that requires intelligence and a steady hand. Then make your choice.
Lyin' Donald Exposed