March 27, 2019

"if... only."

91 comments:

rhhardin said...

He committed perjury.

Henry said...

There was no fucking either.

Dave Begley said...

I don't think that was the law at the time.

And, Monica, dear. You are famous. You need to cash-in better. How about a book? We want *all* the details. All the pillow talk. What brand cigar? What did Bill tell you about his so-called wife?

Henry said...

Seriously, we would all have been better off. The Independent Prosecutor should have been killed when Lawrence E. Walsh decided to use obstruction of justice (sound familiar?) against Cap Weinberger.

Jake said...

Did the law change? If so they should follow the law.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

In response to other posts I brought up how the media experts (Orin Kerr is a lawyer for goodness sake!) remain obstinately ignorant of the way the Special Counsel works, and this is a perfect example of them trying to gaslight the public instead of provide useful info. Okay, no one goes to Twitter for useful info. However, this Tweet from Kerr is obviously designed to create a feeling of unfairness: the release of Starr's report was unfair, the fact Barr is in control of the Mueller report is unfair, it's all just so unfair!

But Starr was required to present his report to Congress because the Independent Counsel was a creation of Congress, truly independent from the DOJ. After the rules were rewritten BY DEMOCRATS in the DOJ after Clinton's impeachment so that future Special Counsels would report only internally up to the AG. Because Democrats assume they'll always be in charge.

But Bad Orange Man won this time and the new rules are the new rules and the counsel is no longer "independent" but well within the control of the DOJ just like Democrats wanted. Until they didn't want it. Now. So now the mission of Progressives is to blur the line and try to highlight "inequities" and of course they got a "you betcha!" from Monica, another person destroyed by the Clinton Machine.

Ralph L said...

Starr was also horrified it all became public.

iowan2 said...

The legislature created the special counsel position. The Legislature set the rules for how it operated, who answered to who, and how the results were presented. The legislature has demanded this be handled in a specific way, and codified those demands.
Attorney General Barr is following the law as written.
The legislature can change that law, I have yet to hear any politician of any stripe suggest the law be changed.

wildswan said...

Poor old Monica. I remember thinking at the time how little she really understood the world when she was got herself involved with President Bill Clinton. Some Presidents have romances in their past or time spent with very good-looking mature women. But one just used young women - which is another thing that happens in the world, but Monica hadn't heard about it.

rehajm said...

She probably shouldn't use 'fucking' as a word of emphasis in any context.

Dave Begley said...

Bill actually did commit crimes: perjury, obstruction of justice in a civil case and suborning perjury.

stlcdr said...

Well, that sure does suck.

Karen of Texas said...

So the conclusion is that all attorneys general are corrupt, slaves to the President they serve. Well why even have them then if they're merely figureheads, simply doing the President's bidding?

And are we intimating that the Russia collusion crap was payback, a little tit for tat?

I think Monica did get a raw deal - but it was at the hands of Billy and Hilly - and the press. If she thinks that her name wouldn't have come out or that she wouldn't have been persona non gratia around the denizens of DC, she's still naive.

rehajm said...

Imagine if the Mueller Report was requested by Congress and Barr decided to destroy it by hitting it with a hammer.

Fen said...

Imagine if Bill hadn't perjured himself, suborned perjury, obstructed justice and violated Paula Jones' right to discovery in a sexual discrimination case?

Imagine if Democrats, after as decade of lecturing us about sexual predation in the workplace, had stood by those principles instead of claiming "it's just about sex, MoveOn(.org)"

Imagine if Democrats weren't delusional liars without shame.

Professional lady said...

If only women would realize that having an affair with a powerful married man is not likely to turn out well for them.

Ken B said...

I expect better from Kerr. The report must be redacted first to comply with the law. He knows this but does not care.

Birkel said...

Imagine how people's lives were damaged.
Ms Lewinsky abides.

Leftist Collectivists cannot grok that they lost.

Birkel said...

And of course the law under which Starr operates was different than the law under which Mueller pretended to be operating.

Congress would be to blame if blame is to be given.

Wince said...

Just wondering:

1.) Didn't Democrats vote to change the Watergate-era special counsel law specifically to make that change?

2.) Did Barr really "read it privately"? Didn't Rosenstein co-author the 4-page summary?

3.) Didn't Mueller also say there was no proof of crimes?

4.) By contrast, wasn't there sufficient evidence to charge that Clinton lied under oath?

5.) Didn't Janet Reno refuse to recuse herself over the Starr investigation and used her discretion to add the Monica affair to Starr's investigation rather than the DOJ?

6.) Wan't Monica out of the bag well before any of this?

Amadeus 48 said...

Go Monica! She has a lot of moxie.

I hope that girl is happy.

Clinton was horrible, and so was Starr. Once the investigation turned to Monica and peeping through keyholes, no one on either side was ever going to come out of this looking good.

And why did Clinton get impeached? Process crimes. Trump's lawyers played this really well.

By the way, if Mueller couldn't marshal the evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice, he essentially said we can't prove obstruction of justice. End of case.

Ralph L said...

As I remember, it was House Democrats who wanted the Starr report and Clinton's video testimony made public. In the long run, the sympathy factor helped Clinton. They did hold back Brodderick's testimony.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

apples and oranges.

Chuck said...

The interesting unspoken thing with this post is the presumption that the Mueller Report will never be made public.

Michael K said...

She missed the point. If only Bill had settled the lawsuit with Paula Jones.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Hey you know what's funny? Monica Lewinsky lied to FBI agents. Monica Lewinsky actively obstructed justice and could probably also have been charged with witness tampering. Because her testimony was useful in going after a bigger fish, the President, she got away with those serious felonies...but there can be no doubt she committed them. People who continue to view her as some heroine or the "good guy" in Clinton's sordid, illegal mess are silly.

As is, of course, this entire discussion. The full Mueller report will come out--everyone agrees on that. Democrats whining about the speed of the release seem to forget just a few weeks ago when they were complaining about Republican congresspeople releasing closed-door testimony as it might "burn sources" or impede ongoing investigations. The Mueller report contains grand jury information/testimony and that, along with other sensitive information, will have to be screened and likely redacted before the thing can be released. Call the hell down, idiots.

gspencer said...

If ... f__k__g ... only ... Bill ... didn't ... thrust ... that ... big ... throbbing ... thing ... in ... my ... face

and

If ... f__k__g ... only ... I ... didn't ... move ... toward ... it


Spare us, honey.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

wildswan said...

Poor old Monica. I remember thinking at the time how little she really understood the world when she was got herself involved with President Bill Clinton. Some Presidents have romances in their past or time spent with very good-looking mature women. But one just used young women - which is another thing that happens in the world, but Monica hadn't heard about it.

Bill Clinton is as big a scumbag as has ever inhabited the Oval Office. However, Monica was no innocent little school girl. Clinton was the second married man with whom Monica had an affair.

Clinton was the most powerful man in the world, but Monica had a power of her own, and she was using it for her own purposes. I don't think she knew all the potential consequences of what she was doing*, but she knew damn well what she was doing.

*Do any of us, ever?

Maillard Reactionary said...

It appears that Monica's verbal skills are not as good as her oral skills.

Lucien said...

Any time people are shortsighted enough to talk about Monica Lewinsky and giggle over stained dresses and cigars, instead of talking about Juanita Broaderick and rape, it’s a moral victory for the Clintons. (Or it would be if they had any morals.)

cubanbob said...

If only she hadn't been so foolish by getting involved with a man old enough to be her father and essentially having her life ruined by doing so.

Jupiter said...

I'm a bit perplexed by Lewinsky's reaction. As I recall, the Clintons did their best to keep the whole thing quiet. If she had kept her mouth shut (ahem), they would probably have been successful, and she would be one more of the thousand or so anonymous bimbos who had something resembling sex with Bill Clinton back in the 20th Century. If she hadn't held onto a certain dress, her good friend Bill and his wife would have successfully painted her as a deranged stalker. Is she trying to claim that she was somehow victimized by the release of the Starr Report?

narciso said...

Much like Warner bros ores tsujihara who was removed from the anita hill led sexual harassment commision.
Starr must have been confused because four years earlier they approved of all of the packwood case disclosures

gerry said...

Well, that sure does suck.

...and makes your breath smell funny. It makes whatever comes out of your mouth not credible ("incredible" has other connotations).

wwww said...


They wanted to release all of the prurient details to the public because too many adults are sniggering adolescents. Their sexual and gossipy interest in the make-out sessions and mutual masterbation trumped, for them, all other interests.

If the two had been chatting about, say, criminal tax corruption, the story wouldn't have gotten close to the coverage or attention.

CJinPA said...

The response I'm seeing on Twitter is that Mueller's was an Intel investigation into a foreign country meddling in our elections. Different from Starr's probe.

That, and Mike's explanation:

But Starr was required to present his report to Congress because the Independent Counsel was a creation of Congress, truly independent from the DOJ. After the rules were rewritten BY DEMOCRATS in the DOJ after Clinton's impeachment so that future Special Counsels would report only internally up to the AG.

Dave Begley said...

With Monica, I am always reminded of what Stingo said of Leslie Lapidus in Sophie's Choice, "She could say it, but she could not do it."

Infinite Monkeys said...

What did Bill tell you about his so-called wife?

Are you trying to get her killed?

Rob said...

But then we’d never have learned about footnote 209. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/icreport/6narritfoot.htm

Dude1394 said...

And the comments to Monica's tweet mostly do not get that she is supporting what Barr is doing, not condemning it.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Iowan2, I'd offer a small correction to you. The Independent Counsel was created by Congress in 1983 (with individuals appointed court order, nominated by the AG) but the statute was allowed to expire (1994), after which the DOJ created an internal process for appointing Special Counsels (1997) as needed, with a requirement for specificity (that Rosenstein allegedly ignored, but we won't know until the referral is declassified and released). These are the rules Mueller operated under.

Notice both the expiration of the IC and the creation of the SC happened during Clinton's presidency.

Bob Boyd said...

Kerr reminds us with his tweet, the Clintons were willing to put the country through a terrible divisive nightmare to avoid responsibility and advance their political ambitions, the media went along with it then and now they are doing it again.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Monica is no victim.

If she hadn't been caught gobblin' Slick Willie's knob, she'd have wound up writing a book about it at some point.

She needs to shut her pie hole.

Jamie said...

I don't know how the Ds clinging (bitterly, no doubt) to the collusion thing think Barr could stop Mueller's entire team from standing up and saying "Whoa whoa whoa, that's not what we said!"

Temujin said...

We should have learned from all of that. The Starr Report was supposedly about investigating Whitewater. It then went down the rabbit hole like all of these special prosecutorial investigations do. Clinton was essentially impeached over a lie given during a questioning about a topic that had nothing to do with Whitewater. However, unlike Flynn, Manafort, or Stone, he didn't spend any time in jail. He just got a wrist slap, then re-elected.

He was impeached for perjury, which was important back then, but later, his wife would lie freely to Congress and anyone else, with no repercussions. As would James Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper. Times change.

And all of this happened after Janet Reno gave the OK to kill everyone in the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.

Those were the days.

Nihimon said...

... if only the two reports were comparable. Alas, their conclusions were different in an important way.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

"And, Monica, dear. You are famous. You need to cash-in better. How about a book?"

She wrote a book. I know someone who bought it, I'm ashamed to say.

Seeing Red said...

Open up the impeachment files. There’s no reason for secrecy.

Bob Boyd said...

As Kerr reminds us with his tweet, the Clintons were willing to put the country through a terrible divisive nightmare to avoid responsibility and advance their personal ambitions, the media went along with it then and now they are doing it again.

Meade said...

Henry said...
"There was no fucking either."

Correct. What Monica Lewinsky should have tweeted:

if. sexual relations. only.

Michael K said...

If the two had been chatting about, say, criminal tax corruption, the story wouldn't have gotten close to the coverage or attention.

Of course not. That would have been perfectly proper. Were you joking ?

AZ Bob said...

Mueller wrote the report knowing that one way or another, it will be seen. If there is anything to hurt Trump, it will be leaked. Haven't we been through this over the last two years?

Big Mike said...

Hard to be sympathetic to a young woman who should have known better than to have an affair with one of the most highly visible married men in the world.

Buttercup said...

I've often wondered if there is some kind of nondisclosure agreement between Lewinsky and the Clintons with a big payout. She has been notably quiet for years, no books, few interviews, no movies, etc. Especially since she could have cashed in pretty big. She also seems to not notice that the Clintons were working hard to discredit her (the nuts and sluts strategy) before the fact that she still had the dress came out, thanks to Linda Tripp.

Buttercup said...

Correction: Lewinsky gave interviews to Andrew Morton for the book Monica's Story. Morton's book is an entirely sympathetic book to both Clinton and Lewinsky and paints the Starr investigation in a very bad light. So, not really the kind of tell all that she could write and cash in. It even seems she might not have gotten paid for the interviews.

Drago said...

wwww: "They wanted to release all of the prurient details to the public because too many adults are sniggering adolescents"

Actually, they were explicitly following the law the democrats passed.

But you be you.

Note: Democrats really really hate following the laws they pass.

n.n said...

Internsexual is a trans-social sexual orientation. Oral sex is fucking.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Imagine if Trump had sex. In the oval office. during his presidency. with a 22 year old intern.

Imagine the Maddow/Schiff/Brennan reaction.

stlcdr said...

Jamie said...
I don't know how the Ds clinging (bitterly, no doubt) to the collusion thing think Barr could stop Mueller's entire team from standing up and saying "Whoa whoa whoa, that's not what we said!"

3/27/19, 9:24 AM


Trump has gotten to Mueller and his team with ... threats of something. Obviously.

Richard Dolan said...

Perjury was (and still is) a crime, and no one ever disputed that Clinton had knowingly lied under oath. So that would have been an impossible conclusion for Reno to have reached. As it happens, almost all of Mueller's indictments of the Trump guys other than Manafort were for false statement crimes (Sec. 1001). It's possible to say that those crimes should not have been prosecuted (in Clinton's case, of course, it wasn't) but that's a different matter. As for keeping such a report secret (either Starr's or Mueller's), that strikes me as hard to justify (other than the need to comply with grand jury secrecy requirements) in this unique situation, involving a very public investigation of the president.

Quaestor said...

She needs to shut her pie hole.

She needs to shut her cock holster (both of them, the genome deserves defending).

So does Stephen Colbert and anyone else from Charleston who pronounces that coal-BEAR.

Herb said...

he was found guilty of perjury though in that case. Justice dept guideline call for no realease if they determine their is not crime.

Greg Q said...

Dave Begley said...
Bill actually did commit crimes: perjury, obstruction of justice in a civil case and suborning perjury.

Fen said...
Imagine if Bill hadn't perjured himself, suborned perjury, obstructed justice and violated Paula Jones' right to discovery in a sexual discrimination case?


That's some amazing TDS, Professor Kerr. The Starr report clearly delineated crimes committed by President Clinton.

The Mueller Report states that neither Trump, nor anyone in his team, engaged in collusion with the Russians to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.

You can't "obstruct justice" if you haven't committed a crime.

So thank you, Prof Kerr, for demonstrating that you're a delusional idiot who should be ignored. I hope there wasn't anything else you were trying to accomplish

narciso said...

It was Susan mcdougals stone wall that led to Starr switching tacks, Geragos was behind that.

Howard said...

Lying about blowjob's is a high crimes while KGB interference in the US President election is a Nothing Burger. Onward Christian shirkers

Roger Sweeny said...

Imagine if the Starr Report had been published and the respectable reaction was, "he's just a dirty old man and a Republican partisan, and there's nothing in the report that anyone should care about."

Paul Snively said...

Monica Lewinsky was an adult woman when she snapped her thong at President Clinton. She's a victim, all right--of her own stupidity.

Paul Snively said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
exhelodrvr1 said...

Howard,
"KGB interference in the US President election is a Nothing Burger."

Well, considering that the President, the CIA, the FBI all knew about the Russian interference in the U.S. election and did squat about it, I can't fault your statement.

Mark O said...

Only. There. Was. No. Fucking.

Ralph L said...

Starr took the tip from Tripp to Reno, who assigned the investigation to Starr (with the concurrence of the 3 judge panel empowered by the statute [or the other way 'round]) because his group was up and running and time was of some importance, to Paula Jones at least.

Birkel said...

Clinton's personal behavior means Clinton is not guilty.
The behavior of third party foreign nationals means Trump is guilty.

Do I have the #LeftistLogic right?
Howard?

Seeing Red said...

—-Lying about blowjob's is a high crimes while KGB interference in the US President election is a Nothing Burger. Onward Christian shirkers—-

Lolololol

The 80s are calling. Ignore him,(RR) we’ll still work with you. Tip O’Neil COLLUSION!!!!


And so are the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s 60s 70s....

Bay Area Guy said...

If only I hadn't let him splooge on my dress.....

narciso said...

I call him camelbert,

Category error seems infect most even not in the bezosphere.

Jamie said...

Stlcdr said in response to my comment, "Trump has gotten to Mueller and his team with ... threats of something. Obviously."

But stlcdr, they are the Untouchables, aren't they? Manly men, womanly women, otherly others who cannot be blackmailed or threatened, who will stand for Their Truth come what may?

Except I already saw the counterstory to that: Mueller and key members of his team are actually loyal Republicans who were doing Trump's bidding all along. Because Trump has loooved trying to be president while his legitimacy was under a thick dark cloud.

Sigh. One of the great things about the Social Media Era is that you can live your life as if each of your utterances stands alone - no need for consistency.

Kevin said...

In response to other posts I brought up how the media experts (Orin Kerr is a lawyer for goodness sake!) remain obstinately ignorant of the way the Special Counsel works

Don't assume their ignorance. Assume their complicity.

When the liar gets caught lying, the way forward is through more lies.

William said...

What's the latest feminist position on Monica? I understand that it's now misogynistic to describe her as a "portly pepperpot". Still, after the thong flashing, it's hard to think of her as an innocent victim and almost impossible to think of her as any kind of heroine in this drama......My own feeling is that she was a bit of a manipulator who deceived herself as to her ability to manipulate events. She could compete in the high school softball league, but she was playing against major league players.

Kevin said...

I hope Fox and other outlets bring Monica on to discuss why the entire report won't be made public.

People need to hear more than just the spin, and the reasons are foundational to how our justice system properly functions.

tcrosse said...

Lying about blowjob's is a high crimes while KGB interference in the US President election is a Nothing Burger.

Howard is still trying to draw to that inside straight. Thoughts and prayers.

Drago said...

Howard: "Lying about blowjob's is a high crimes while KGB interference in the US President election is a Nothing Burger."

It must have been a nothing burger, since obama and his entire administration did nothing about it and no lefty, including yourself, even bothers holding him or his administration responsible for that.

Can you explain why you refuse to hold obama and his administration responsible?

(pssst, we already know why. This is just the latest of the historical ploys by the dems/left/LLR's to transfer democrat responsibility/guilt to republicans).

And by the way, Clinton lied under oath to a Grand Jury AND we know he suborned perjury (which is what destroyed Nixon....but Nixon didn't have the media on his side so Clinton got away with telling others to lie under oath but Nixon didn't)

Drago said...

Quick followup question for Howard:

You do understand fully now that the law in effect during the 1990's is what governed the release of Clinton documents and that the law was changed in 1999 which is what governs how Barr will proceed now, don't you?

I mean, you DO understand that, don't you?

Steven said...

It then went down the rabbit hole like all of these special prosecutorial investigations do.

Ken Starr was handed, by an outside source, evidence that Vernon Jordan was bribing witnesses to commit perjury for Bill Clinton with jobs at Revlon. One of the witnesses in Whitewater was given a job at Revlon by Vernon Jordan. Ken Starr accordingly entirely appropriately investigated the evidence he'd been handed to see if Vernon Jordan was bribing witnesses to commit perjury for Bill Clinton.

The result of that investigation was that if Jordan was so bribing witnesses, he was doing so in a manner that left insufficient evidence to pursue the charge, and so the line of inquiry was dropped.

However, following that entirely appropriate line of Whitewater-related inquiry resulted in the collection of evidence that Bill Clinton had committed perjury and obstruction of justice in a matter unrelated to Whitewater. And the independent counsel statute positively required Ken Starr to provide that evidence of a crime to Congress, no matter what the subject matter and no matter whether Starr thought about it.

So to say Starr acted inappropriately requires that one believe that he either should not have investigated an outside tip which brought up the possibility that Vernon Jordan was bribing witnesses in the Whitewater investigation, or that Ken Starr should have broken the law to cover up a crime he discovered as a result of that investigation into the possible suborning of perjury.

tim in vermont said...

So according to Howard, Bill Clinton should have gotten off (sorry) for provably obstructing justice for his non crime and Donald Trump should be impeached, removed, and probably hanged, right? because people feel like he just must have obstructed justice where there wasn’t even a crime in the first place.

Ken Starr left out the Juanita Broaddrick rape PROOF because he felt it was irrelevant to his investigation. But everybody is happy to let the forcible rapist off even though he not only lied under oath, but suborned perjery. You guys would be very happy to remove Trump from office if you had evidence of those crimes even if he is not guilty even so much of getting a blow job from an intern entrusted to his supervision.

Steven said...

Lying about blowjob's is a high crimes while KGB interference in the US President election is a Nothing Burger.

The last time the KGB could have interfered in a US presidential election was December 3, 1991. That would have been the cycle that elected Bill Clinton. I'm perfectly willing to believe that the Russians thought the Clintons useful idiots and accordingly conspired to defeat George H.W. Bush, but you're going to have to provide some evidence.

tim in vermont said...

My goodness, who do you think might be guilty of this one:

Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

If she had an R after her name, she would be rotting in prison.

Chris Lopes said...

"Lying about blowjob's is a high crimes while KGB interference in the US President election is a Nothing Burger. Onward Christian shirkers"

Lying about a blow job in court is indeed a crime. Not colluding with KGB agents trying to interfere with a US Presidential election is not a crime. Much like not robbing a bank or not hijacking a plane are not crimes.

Earnest Prole said...

It’s a false analogy because Starr concluded Clinton broke the law by committing perjury. But I take the point about the report itself: Upon reading its blow-by-blow descriptions, Americans, including many libertarians and conservatives, grew queasy over impeaching a man for such a squalid affair. If Starr had simply cited the blue dress DNA results and left it at that, Clinton would likely have been removed.

Jim at said...

So we're now supposed to feel sorry for Monica Lewinsky? Is that the message?

Meade said...

Howard said...
"Lying about blowjob's is a high crimes while KGB interference in the US President election is a Nothing Burger. Onward Christian shirkers"

Yes, lying about anything, under oath, when one holds high office, should be considered a high crime. Even if you don't believe sexual harassment is something one shouldn't do.

As to what is or isn't a Nothing Burger, it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.
If the—if he—if "is" means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing.

If it means there is no Nothing Burger, that was a completely true statement. …
Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of Nothing Burger with KGB interference, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.

0_0 said...

As I remember it, the Clinton team chipped away at the definition of intercourse until oral sex was excluded. Then Bill could truthfully say "no, I did not have sex with that woman".