On October 18, ABC's political newsletter The Note included in its daily list of “Must-Reads” an October 17 column by American Spectator senior editor Quin Hillyer about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and former President Bill Clinton. Titled “Crooked Hillary,” the column claimed that there was a “vast record of Hillary's joint misdeeds with her spouse” but offered false or misleading examples as evidence of these purported “misdeeds.” For instance, Hillyer falsely asserted that “the Clintons both benefited financially” from Whitewater -- a failed land deal in which the Clintons actually lost money, according to a report prepared for the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) by the law firm Pillsbury, Madison, and Sutro.

In The Hunting of the President (2001), Joe Conason and Gene Lyons note that the Pillsbury report “verified the amount lost by the Clintons on their investment” in Whitewater was “just over $43,000.” Additionally, though Hillyer listed Whitewater itself as one of the Clintons' “misdeeds,” Republican-appointed counsel Robert Ray, the third and final counsel assigned to investigate the Clintons, announced on September 20, 2000, that he had closed the Whitewater probe after concluding that “the evidence was insufficient to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that either President or Mrs. Clinton knowingly participated in any criminal conduct.”

Hillyer later cited as another of Sen. Clinton's misdeeds that she “was intimately involved with the botched handling of the firing of longtime White House Travel Office employees.” Apparently referring to her sworn statements in 1995 regarding the Travel Office allegations, Hillyer added, “Remember that Hillary Clinton actually was cited by independent counsel Robert Ray for making false statements at a 1995 deposition.” But while Ray, in his 2000 report on the Travel Office firings, did conclude that her 1995 statement to the counsel denying involvement in the firings had been “factually false,” he also found “insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Clinton's statements to this Office or to Congress were knowingly false” and therefore declined to prosecute. Ray further determined that the decision to terminate the Travel Office employees “was a lawful one” and that “the evidence is insufficient to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that either Mr. Watkins or Mrs. Clinton committed perjury or obstruction of justice during the course of their testimony before GAO, the Congress, and this investigation.”

From the summary of Ray's report:

With respect to Mrs. Clinton, the overwhelming evidence establishes that she played a role in the decision to fire the employees and provided input into that decision to [White House staff members David] Watkins, [Mack] McLarty, [Vince] Foster, and [Harry] Thomason. Thus, her statement to the contrary under oath to this Office was factually false.

The evidence, however, is insufficient to show that Mrs. Clinton knowingly intended to influence the Travel Office decision or was aware that she had such influence at this early stage of the Administration. To a real degree, her interest in the matter was first generated by Thomason's intervention, and then overstated by him to others. Thus, absent persuasive, corroborated, and admissible evidence to the contrary, there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Clinton's statements to this Office or to Congress were knowingly false.

From the October 18 article in The American Spectator:

The truth is that Pardongate and the other end-of-presidency improprieties were child's play compared to the vast record of Hillary's joint misdeeds with her spouse -- and this is not including any that had anything directly to do with sex.

Still, for instance, there is no honest explanation for Hillary's killing in the cattle futures market, when she made about $100,000 very quickly on a $1,000 investment just at the time when brokers appeared to be curiously post-dating and probably re-allocating trades to benefit favored clients.

Then there was Whitewater, somehow written off by the big media as irrelevant even though the investigation landed about a dozen convictions of (mostly) close Clinton associates, even though the Clintons both benefited financially from the whole imbroglio, and even though Hillary's own Rose Law Firm was hip-deep in the whole mess -- as was shown when the infamous firm billing records mysteriously and belatedly showed up in a spare White House office, reportedly with Hillary's fingerprints (real, not figurative) all over them.

Hillary Clinton was intimately involved with the botched handling of the firing of longtime White House Travel Office employees, combined with the odd and scary (and utterly disproportionate) use of the FBI to investigate the employees on what proved to be utterly spurious charges.

[...]

Remember that Hillary Clinton actually was cited by independent counsel Robert Ray for making false statements at a 1995 deposition. They are part and parcel of a voluminous record of lies that she has been caught making through the years on matters big and small, for reasons apparently ranging from the most nefarious to the most petty.