"Did Clinton laugh about a rapist’s light sentence and attack sexual harassment victims?"

The WaPo fact checker, Glenn Kessler addresses 2 statements in a recent National Republican Senatorial Committee ad:

1. Hillary Clinton "[d]efended an accused child rapist, then laughed about his lenient sentence."

The laughter in question comes from an audio recording — which you can listen to, as I did, here — so the fact-checking is easy to do. Clinton indeed laughs 4 times during her recounting of the story of defending an accused child rapist, and none of the 4 instances comes at the point when she refers to the light sentence. But the NRSC says it relied on an ABC News report that said: "Clinton is heard laughing as she describes how she succeeded at getting her client a lighter sentence, despite suggesting she knew he was guilty."

Kessler says: "The laughter on the tape is open to interpretation; certainly some might find it disturbingly lighthearted. But it’s a stretch to say she laughed about the sentence." That's a fair and sober conclusion in my view.

2. "She politically attacked sexual harassment victims."

The NRSC says it based that on the interview Hillary gave in 1998 about the Paula Jones case. By chance, I just quoted Paula Jones's deposition in the previous post, so I'm a bit taken aback to read Kesslers statement that Bill Clinton merely "propositioned her and exposed himself." (By Jones's report, Clinton "pulled" her over to him, ran his hands up her cullottes to her "middle pelvic area," kissed her on the neck, tried to kiss her on the lips as she protested, and then "pulled his pants down" and asked "Would you kiss it for me?")

In the interview, Hillary blamed a "vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband." That's not attacking the alleged victims. You have to look for other material about Hillary, and Kessler doesn't look very far before awarding 3 Pinocchios. (He only looks to Hillary's own memoir!) The NRSC should have presented better information here. They made it easy for Kessler to dismiss them, but I'm not impressed by Kessler's awarding the Pinocchios based on the NRSC's failure to hand him better information. The NRSC needs to respond immediately.