RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the winter of ’56, Khrushchev told the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that Stalin may not have been a very nice guy. In the fall of ’17, the media began to concede that maybe Bill Clinton did abuse a whole bunch of women. And maybe those women weren’t really part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to make a bloated piggish progressive hero seem like he might not be a very nice guy.

Why are Democrats turning on the Clintons? Same reason Khrushchev turned on Stalin. They’re purging the Clintons for the same reasons that they defended them. They’re calling out Bill Clinton for his sexual assaults for the same reasons that they covered them up. It’s about power and money.

The Democrats smeared Bill Clinton’s accusers then. Now they’ll exploit them to throw the Clintons out.

The #MeToo campaign provided an opening. But if you really want to understand why the left is disavowing Bill Clinton, ignore the hashtags and look at the bigger picture.

Earlier this month, the rollout of Donna Brazile’s book raked Hillary Clinton and her campaign over the coals. The former interim DNC boss made the case that the Clinton campaign had rigged the primaries.

Brazile’s outrage at the rigging is laughable. Not only was she caught passing a debate question to Hillary, but the only reason she was allowed to replace Debbie Wasserman Schultz is that she was a Clintonista who had served as a Clinton adviser and was promoted to head Gore’s campaign.

After Hillary’s collapse, Brazile was left out in the cold. Like Schultz, she was one of Hillary’s fall girls. And unlike Schultz, she didn’t have a cozy congressional district to call her own. Her CNN contract was torn up after the debate question leak. (Though if you think CNN was actually surprised that a Clinton ally leaked it to the Clintons, you’re also shocked that there’s gambling going on at Rick’s Cafe Americain. CNN had disavow Donna who then had to disavow Hillary. Now the Dems are disavowing the Clintons.)

Brazile’s book tour was Act 1 in purging the Clintons from the Dem establishment. Talking about Bill Clinton’s sexual harassment and abuses is Act 2. And the odds are very good that there’s an Act 3.

Why get rid of the Clintons? Let’s look at what the First Grifters have been doing to the Dems.

In May, Hillary rolled out Onward Together. The new SuperPAC was supposed to fundraise for lefty groups. But the groups don’t actually appear to be getting the cash.

Understandable. The flat broke Clintons always have lots of bills to pay and private jets to book. And good chardonnay doesn’t come cheap. A 1787 vintage Chateau d’Yquem runs to $100K a bottle.

Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson refused to answer key questions during his seven-hour closed-door appearance Tuesday before the House Intelligence Committee, Fox News reported Wednesday. But he did acknowledge that he personally discussed allegations in the Steele dossier with members of the media, even though he did not speak to the sources behind the allegations himself to verify whether they were true.

Moreover, he reportedly said that he leaked details from the dirty dossier to reporters right before the 2016 election because he was “upset” that then-FBI director James Comey had reopened the Clinton email case.

Simpson told investigators he never spoke to the underlying sources of the document, never traveled to Russia and did not verify the dossier beyond comparing the claims to “open source” media reporting.

The source said Simpson also told investigators he was “upset” when then FBI Director James Comey re-opened the Hillary Clinton email investigation in late October 2016, and Simpson wanted to push back.

Simpson’s attorneys negotiated the details of his appearance before the committee last week, agreeing to voluntarily testify rather than be subpoenaed.

“Throughout this entire year, the White House and its allies on the Hill and elsewhere have attempted at every turn to smear Fusion GPS because of its connection to the Steele dossier,” Simpson’s attorney Joshua Levy said Tuesday.

Levy admitted that Steele and Simpson had briefed reporters on the dossier last year, but insisted that neither Simpson nor Fusion GPS paid members of the media to publish stories of any kind.

Banker turned human rights activist Bill Browder has accused Fusion of hiring journalists to plant stories in the media.

Fusion, meanwhile, continued to fight the Intel Committee’s request for their bank records in court on Wednesday.

According to The Daily Caller, Steele has revealed in court papers in London that “he was directed by Fusion to brief reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Yahoo! News and The New Yorker in September 2016.”

Steele also gave an interview via Skype to Mother Jones reporter David Corn, who published an article about Steele’s allegations on Oct. 31, 2016.

Levy maintains that the dossier is legitimate.

“What they did do is they contracted with Christopher Steele…. This experienced British intelligence official came back with a report that now in hindsight looks quite accurate,” Levy said.

Fox News is standing by its report that Simpson met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya before and after the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign officials. CONTINUE AT SITE

American politics has become an endless fox hunt. The hounds’ heads jerked up this week on news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, responding to a request from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, had asked the Justice Department’s career lawyers to look into the possibility of appointing a second special prosecutor, to investigate Hillary Clinton.

Set aside for a moment what the precise meaning of “investigate” might be. The day doesn’t pass anymore without a demand, from the Oval Office or the ozone, that someone should “look into” some political malefaction. Theoretically, we could have public officials being led to the executioner’s block weekly in Washington.

Indeed, the movement to name a second special prosecutor flows from the fact that the Washington press corps in January decided en masse to “look into” the notion that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to defeat Mrs. Clinton, a thought dropped into the water by the departing Obama administration.

What followed was a river of stories purporting Trump-Russian collusion. Months later, it remains true that the federal code recognizes no crime called “collusion.” Eventually the river of collusion stories joined with Oval Office mania over them to produce special prosecutor Robert Mueller. CONTINUE AT SITE