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Tag: contempt

  • Bill and Hillary Clinton face House showdown over Epstein ties

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    For some of their conservative critics, this is the scandal that could finally topple them. Their resistance to testifying proved futile. And now, staring down another epic fight, they’re harnessing their considerable political skills to try to turn the tables on their accusers.For Bill and Hillary Clinton, the 1990s are back.The Clintons are slated to testify Thursday and Friday in a House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, part of a deal with Republicans after it became clear that Congress — with the help of some Democrats — was on track to hold them in contempt if they refused to cooperate. For the battle-hardened couple, it amounts to one more Washington brawl. And like so many of the battles that came before, this one is another mix of questionable judgment, sexual impropriety, money and power.Video above: Justice Department releases more than 3 million items in final batch of Epstein filesDuring his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton pitched his candidacy as “two for the price of one,” previewing a presidential marriage like none that had come before, with a spouse whose professional credentials rivaled his. In the years since, that partnership helped the Clintons weather repeated scandals, including those so personal that many other relationships would have shattered. When his political career was ending, hers was ascending when she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, then served as secretary of state before becoming the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.For those who have long watched the Clintons, this moment is a reminder that the couple — weaned on the politics of the Vietnam War and Watergate — has never been far from the heat of a cultural fight. And with the Epstein case unfolding unpredictably around the world, the Clintons are once again ensnared in the scandal of the moment.“It’s kind of a sad but fitting coda to extraordinary political lives,” said David Maraniss, who has written two biographies of Bill Clinton.There’s no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Clinton when it comes to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide in 2019 while he was in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.But Epstein had ties to Bill Clinton for years, visiting the White House multiple times in the 1990s, according to visitor logs. After Clinton left office, Epstein was involved in his philanthropy and the former president flew multiple times on his private jet.“Traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward,” Bill Clinton wrote in his 2024 memoir. “I wish I had never met him.”Bill Clinton’s ties to EpsteinBy last summer, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for the Clintons. For months, Bill Clinton, 79, and Hillary Clinton, 78, largely ignored the matter in public, but that became harder to sustain in December when the former president was featured prominently in the first batch of Epstein files.Among thousands of documents made public, some photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another showed Bill Clinton in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was redacted. Yet another photo portrayed Bill Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.The oversight panel’s chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they didn’t comply with the subpoenas, a historic move considering a former president has never been compelled to appear before Congress. Between his first and second terms, Donald Trump invoked that precedent to fend off a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.While there was no context surrounding the photos of Bill Clinton, they underscored how his political promise has always been tempered by personal indiscretions.The 1992 campaign that represented the emerging preeminence of the Baby Boom generation was the same one dogged by rumors of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. A presidency largely defined by economic prosperity was nearly derailed when Clinton was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice when he denied engaging in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.Each time, many Republicans thought they finally found leverage over the Clintons. But each time, the Clintons found a way out of the vise.Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican congressman from Arkansas who was a House manager during Clinton’s impeachment trial, described the couple as “a smart lawyer and brilliant communicator.”The Clinton playbook: fight back fiercelyAs each crisis surfaced, a pattern emerged: the Clintons fiercely denied the allegations and often dismissed women who came forward with claims. They villainized the GOP and re-centered the public’s attention on more favorable themes like the booming economy of the era.Bill Clinton, who famously told voters “I feel your pain,” always managed to stay connected with the public. Indeed, he enjoyed some of the highest approval numbers of his presidency during his impeachment inquiry and trial, when about 7 in 10 U.S. adults approved of the way he was handling his job.Hillary Clinton similarly dispatched Republicans who sensed an opening in her handling of a 2012 attack on a compound in Libya that killed four Americans. She came out of an 11-hour televised congressional hearing in 2015 appearing poised. Even the Republican chair of the committee probing the attack said he wasn’t sure she revealed anything new about an issue many in his party considered a scandal.That experience has informed how the Clintons are approaching this week’s testimony. Hillary Clinton has been especially vocal in calling for the proceedings to happen in public, rather than in private as Comer currently plans.“We have nothing to hide,” she told the BBC earlier this month.Bill Clinton’s communication operation has taken a sharper tone, recalling the political “war room” popularized during the 1992 campaign to respond to negative storylines.One release accused Comer of “lying in every appearance he’s made this week.” Another mocked GOP Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona with a “hypocrisy award of the day,” noting how the Oversight Committee members defied subpoenas from the Jan. 6 panel.Meanwhile, the Clintons released a four-page letter to Comer on social media defiantly belittling a process they said was “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”Much as they tried to refocus attention during the 1990s, the letter hit the White House for dismantling institutions, imposing a harsh immigration crackdown and pardoning those involved in the Capitol riot.Conservative attacks on the ClintonsThe Clintons’ rise to power paralleled the explosion of talk radio as a political force, with Rush Limbaugh using his daily show as a platform to constantly berate the White House. Today, conservative podcasters like Benny Johnson have filled Limbaugh’s space and were gleeful after the House panel moved last month to hold the couple in contempt.“Do you understand Donald Trump made good on his oldest promise arguably which is he told all of us 10 years ago that Hillary Clinton would be going to jail?” Johnson said last month.Still, some dynamics have changed.The lockstep support the Clintons enjoyed among congressional Democrats has eroded as a new generation of lawmakers has taken office — nine Democrats joined with Republicans on the House committee to advance the contempt resolution. Trump, who has faced scrutiny over his own ties to Epstein and may be uncomfortable with the precedent of forcing a former president to testify, has expressed rare concern for the Clintons.He told NBC News that it “bothers me that somebody is going after Bill Clinton.” He has described Hillary Clinton as a “very capable woman.”Even Hutchinson, who helped make the case for Bill Clinton’s impeachment, expressed sympathy for the couple.“It’s frustrating and disappointing that President Clinton and Secretary Clinton are having to go through this fact-finding ordeal,” he said. “That’s difficult for them.”

    WASHINGTON —

    For some of their conservative critics, this is the scandal that could finally topple them. Their resistance to testifying proved futile. And now, staring down another epic fight, they’re harnessing their considerable political skills to try to turn the tables on their accusers.

    For Bill and Hillary Clinton, the 1990s are back.

    The Clintons are slated to testify Thursday and Friday in a House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, part of a deal with Republicans after it became clear that Congress — with the help of some Democrats — was on track to hold them in contempt if they refused to cooperate. For the battle-hardened couple, it amounts to one more Washington brawl. And like so many of the battles that came before, this one is another mix of questionable judgment, sexual impropriety, money and power.

    Video above: Justice Department releases more than 3 million items in final batch of Epstein files

    During his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton pitched his candidacy as “two for the price of one,” previewing a presidential marriage like none that had come before, with a spouse whose professional credentials rivaled his. In the years since, that partnership helped the Clintons weather repeated scandals, including those so personal that many other relationships would have shattered. When his political career was ending, hers was ascending when she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, then served as secretary of state before becoming the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.

    For those who have long watched the Clintons, this moment is a reminder that the couple — weaned on the politics of the Vietnam War and Watergate — has never been far from the heat of a cultural fight. And with the Epstein case unfolding unpredictably around the world, the Clintons are once again ensnared in the scandal of the moment.

    “It’s kind of a sad but fitting coda to extraordinary political lives,” said David Maraniss, who has written two biographies of Bill Clinton.

    There’s no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Clinton when it comes to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide in 2019 while he was in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

    But Epstein had ties to Bill Clinton for years, visiting the White House multiple times in the 1990s, according to visitor logs. After Clinton left office, Epstein was involved in his philanthropy and the former president flew multiple times on his private jet.

    “Traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward,” Bill Clinton wrote in his 2024 memoir. “I wish I had never met him.”

    Bill Clinton’s ties to Epstein

    By last summer, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for the Clintons. For months, Bill Clinton, 79, and Hillary Clinton, 78, largely ignored the matter in public, but that became harder to sustain in December when the former president was featured prominently in the first batch of Epstein files.

    Among thousands of documents made public, some photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another showed Bill Clinton in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was redacted. Yet another photo portrayed Bill Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.

    The oversight panel’s chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they didn’t comply with the subpoenas, a historic move considering a former president has never been compelled to appear before Congress. Between his first and second terms, Donald Trump invoked that precedent to fend off a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    While there was no context surrounding the photos of Bill Clinton, they underscored how his political promise has always been tempered by personal indiscretions.

    The 1992 campaign that represented the emerging preeminence of the Baby Boom generation was the same one dogged by rumors of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. A presidency largely defined by economic prosperity was nearly derailed when Clinton was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice when he denied engaging in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

    Each time, many Republicans thought they finally found leverage over the Clintons. But each time, the Clintons found a way out of the vise.

    Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican congressman from Arkansas who was a House manager during Clinton’s impeachment trial, described the couple as “a smart lawyer and brilliant communicator.”

    The Clinton playbook: fight back fiercely

    As each crisis surfaced, a pattern emerged: the Clintons fiercely denied the allegations and often dismissed women who came forward with claims. They villainized the GOP and re-centered the public’s attention on more favorable themes like the booming economy of the era.

    Bill Clinton, who famously told voters “I feel your pain,” always managed to stay connected with the public. Indeed, he enjoyed some of the highest approval numbers of his presidency during his impeachment inquiry and trial, when about 7 in 10 U.S. adults approved of the way he was handling his job.

    Hillary Clinton similarly dispatched Republicans who sensed an opening in her handling of a 2012 attack on a compound in Libya that killed four Americans. She came out of an 11-hour televised congressional hearing in 2015 appearing poised. Even the Republican chair of the committee probing the attack said he wasn’t sure she revealed anything new about an issue many in his party considered a scandal.

    That experience has informed how the Clintons are approaching this week’s testimony. Hillary Clinton has been especially vocal in calling for the proceedings to happen in public, rather than in private as Comer currently plans.

    “We have nothing to hide,” she told the BBC earlier this month.

    Bill Clinton’s communication operation has taken a sharper tone, recalling the political “war room” popularized during the 1992 campaign to respond to negative storylines.

    One release accused Comer of “lying in every appearance he’s made this week.” Another mocked GOP Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona with a “hypocrisy award of the day,” noting how the Oversight Committee members defied subpoenas from the Jan. 6 panel.

    Meanwhile, the Clintons released a four-page letter to Comer on social media defiantly belittling a process they said was “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”

    Much as they tried to refocus attention during the 1990s, the letter hit the White House for dismantling institutions, imposing a harsh immigration crackdown and pardoning those involved in the Capitol riot.

    Conservative attacks on the Clintons

    The Clintons’ rise to power paralleled the explosion of talk radio as a political force, with Rush Limbaugh using his daily show as a platform to constantly berate the White House. Today, conservative podcasters like Benny Johnson have filled Limbaugh’s space and were gleeful after the House panel moved last month to hold the couple in contempt.

    “Do you understand Donald Trump made good on his oldest promise arguably which is he told all of us 10 years ago that Hillary Clinton would be going to jail?” Johnson said last month.

    Still, some dynamics have changed.

    The lockstep support the Clintons enjoyed among congressional Democrats has eroded as a new generation of lawmakers has taken office — nine Democrats joined with Republicans on the House committee to advance the contempt resolution. Trump, who has faced scrutiny over his own ties to Epstein and may be uncomfortable with the precedent of forcing a former president to testify, has expressed rare concern for the Clintons.

    He told NBC News that it “bothers me that somebody is going after Bill Clinton.” He has described Hillary Clinton as a “very capable woman.”

    Even Hutchinson, who helped make the case for Bill Clinton’s impeachment, expressed sympathy for the couple.

    “It’s frustrating and disappointing that President Clinton and Secretary Clinton are having to go through this fact-finding ordeal,” he said. “That’s difficult for them.”

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  • Bill and Hillary Clinton face House showdown over Epstein ties

    [ad_1]

    For some of their conservative critics, this is the scandal that could finally topple them. Their resistance to testifying proved futile. And now, staring down another epic fight, they’re harnessing their considerable political skills to try to turn the tables on their accusers.For Bill and Hillary Clinton, the 1990s are back.The Clintons are slated to testify Thursday and Friday in a House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, part of a deal with Republicans after it became clear that Congress — with the help of some Democrats — was on track to hold them in contempt if they refused to cooperate. For the battle-hardened couple, it amounts to one more Washington brawl. And like so many of the battles that came before, this one is another mix of questionable judgment, sexual impropriety, money and power.Video above: Justice Department releases more than 3 million items in final batch of Epstein filesDuring his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton pitched his candidacy as “two for the price of one,” previewing a presidential marriage like none that had come before, with a spouse whose professional credentials rivaled his. In the years since, that partnership helped the Clintons weather repeated scandals, including those so personal that many other relationships would have shattered. When his political career was ending, hers was ascending when she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, then served as secretary of state before becoming the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.For those who have long watched the Clintons, this moment is a reminder that the couple — weaned on the politics of the Vietnam War and Watergate — has never been far from the heat of a cultural fight. And with the Epstein case unfolding unpredictably around the world, the Clintons are once again ensnared in the scandal of the moment.“It’s kind of a sad but fitting coda to extraordinary political lives,” said David Maraniss, who has written two biographies of Bill Clinton.There’s no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Clinton when it comes to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide in 2019 while he was in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.But Epstein had ties to Bill Clinton for years, visiting the White House multiple times in the 1990s, according to visitor logs. After Clinton left office, Epstein was involved in his philanthropy and the former president flew multiple times on his private jet.“Traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward,” Bill Clinton wrote in his 2024 memoir. “I wish I had never met him.”Bill Clinton’s ties to EpsteinBy last summer, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for the Clintons. For months, Bill Clinton, 79, and Hillary Clinton, 78, largely ignored the matter in public, but that became harder to sustain in December when the former president was featured prominently in the first batch of Epstein files.Among thousands of documents made public, some photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another showed Bill Clinton in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was redacted. Yet another photo portrayed Bill Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.The oversight panel’s chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they didn’t comply with the subpoenas, a historic move considering a former president has never been compelled to appear before Congress. Between his first and second terms, Donald Trump invoked that precedent to fend off a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.While there was no context surrounding the photos of Bill Clinton, they underscored how his political promise has always been tempered by personal indiscretions.The 1992 campaign that represented the emerging preeminence of the Baby Boom generation was the same one dogged by rumors of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. A presidency largely defined by economic prosperity was nearly derailed when Clinton was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice when he denied engaging in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.Each time, many Republicans thought they finally found leverage over the Clintons. But each time, the Clintons found a way out of the vise.Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican congressman from Arkansas who was a House manager during Clinton’s impeachment trial, described the couple as “a smart lawyer and brilliant communicator.”The Clinton playbook: fight back fiercelyAs each crisis surfaced, a pattern emerged: the Clintons fiercely denied the allegations and often dismissed women who came forward with claims. They villainized the GOP and re-centered the public’s attention on more favorable themes like the booming economy of the era.Bill Clinton, who famously told voters “I feel your pain,” always managed to stay connected with the public. Indeed, he enjoyed some of the highest approval numbers of his presidency during his impeachment inquiry and trial, when about 7 in 10 U.S. adults approved of the way he was handling his job.Hillary Clinton similarly dispatched Republicans who sensed an opening in her handling of a 2012 attack on a compound in Libya that killed four Americans. She came out of an 11-hour televised congressional hearing in 2015 appearing poised. Even the Republican chair of the committee probing the attack said he wasn’t sure she revealed anything new about an issue many in his party considered a scandal.That experience has informed how the Clintons are approaching this week’s testimony. Hillary Clinton has been especially vocal in calling for the proceedings to happen in public, rather than in private as Comer currently plans.“We have nothing to hide,” she told the BBC earlier this month.Bill Clinton’s communication operation has taken a sharper tone, recalling the political “war room” popularized during the 1992 campaign to respond to negative storylines.One release accused Comer of “lying in every appearance he’s made this week.” Another mocked GOP Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona with a “hypocrisy award of the day,” noting how the Oversight Committee members defied subpoenas from the Jan. 6 panel.Meanwhile, the Clintons released a four-page letter to Comer on social media defiantly belittling a process they said was “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”Much as they tried to refocus attention during the 1990s, the letter hit the White House for dismantling institutions, imposing a harsh immigration crackdown and pardoning those involved in the Capitol riot.Conservative attacks on the ClintonsThe Clintons’ rise to power paralleled the explosion of talk radio as a political force, with Rush Limbaugh using his daily show as a platform to constantly berate the White House. Today, conservative podcasters like Benny Johnson have filled Limbaugh’s space and were gleeful after the House panel moved last month to hold the couple in contempt.“Do you understand Donald Trump made good on his oldest promise arguably which is he told all of us 10 years ago that Hillary Clinton would be going to jail?” Johnson said last month.Still, some dynamics have changed.The lockstep support the Clintons enjoyed among congressional Democrats has eroded as a new generation of lawmakers has taken office — nine Democrats joined with Republicans on the House committee to advance the contempt resolution. Trump, who has faced scrutiny over his own ties to Epstein and may be uncomfortable with the precedent of forcing a former president to testify, has expressed rare concern for the Clintons.He told NBC News that it “bothers me that somebody is going after Bill Clinton.” He has described Hillary Clinton as a “very capable woman.”Even Hutchinson, who helped make the case for Bill Clinton’s impeachment, expressed sympathy for the couple.“It’s frustrating and disappointing that President Clinton and Secretary Clinton are having to go through this fact-finding ordeal,” he said. “That’s difficult for them.”

    WASHINGTON —

    For some of their conservative critics, this is the scandal that could finally topple them. Their resistance to testifying proved futile. And now, staring down another epic fight, they’re harnessing their considerable political skills to try to turn the tables on their accusers.

    For Bill and Hillary Clinton, the 1990s are back.

    The Clintons are slated to testify Thursday and Friday in a House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, part of a deal with Republicans after it became clear that Congress — with the help of some Democrats — was on track to hold them in contempt if they refused to cooperate. For the battle-hardened couple, it amounts to one more Washington brawl. And like so many of the battles that came before, this one is another mix of questionable judgment, sexual impropriety, money and power.

    Video above: Justice Department releases more than 3 million items in final batch of Epstein files

    During his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton pitched his candidacy as “two for the price of one,” previewing a presidential marriage like none that had come before, with a spouse whose professional credentials rivaled his. In the years since, that partnership helped the Clintons weather repeated scandals, including those so personal that many other relationships would have shattered. When his political career was ending, hers was ascending when she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, then served as secretary of state before becoming the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.

    For those who have long watched the Clintons, this moment is a reminder that the couple — weaned on the politics of the Vietnam War and Watergate — has never been far from the heat of a cultural fight. And with the Epstein case unfolding unpredictably around the world, the Clintons are once again ensnared in the scandal of the moment.

    “It’s kind of a sad but fitting coda to extraordinary political lives,” said David Maraniss, who has written two biographies of Bill Clinton.

    There’s no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Clinton when it comes to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide in 2019 while he was in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

    But Epstein had ties to Bill Clinton for years, visiting the White House multiple times in the 1990s, according to visitor logs. After Clinton left office, Epstein was involved in his philanthropy and the former president flew multiple times on his private jet.

    “Traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questioning afterward,” Bill Clinton wrote in his 2024 memoir. “I wish I had never met him.”

    Bill Clinton’s ties to Epstein

    By last summer, the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for the Clintons. For months, Bill Clinton, 79, and Hillary Clinton, 78, largely ignored the matter in public, but that became harder to sustain in December when the former president was featured prominently in the first batch of Epstein files.

    Among thousands of documents made public, some photos showed him on a private plane, including one with a woman, whose face is redacted, seated alongside him with her arm around him. Another showed Bill Clinton in a pool with Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and a person whose face was redacted. Yet another photo portrayed Bill Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.

    The oversight panel’s chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they didn’t comply with the subpoenas, a historic move considering a former president has never been compelled to appear before Congress. Between his first and second terms, Donald Trump invoked that precedent to fend off a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    While there was no context surrounding the photos of Bill Clinton, they underscored how his political promise has always been tempered by personal indiscretions.

    The 1992 campaign that represented the emerging preeminence of the Baby Boom generation was the same one dogged by rumors of an affair with Gennifer Flowers. A presidency largely defined by economic prosperity was nearly derailed when Clinton was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice when he denied engaging in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

    Each time, many Republicans thought they finally found leverage over the Clintons. But each time, the Clintons found a way out of the vise.

    Asa Hutchinson, the former Republican congressman from Arkansas who was a House manager during Clinton’s impeachment trial, described the couple as “a smart lawyer and brilliant communicator.”

    The Clinton playbook: fight back fiercely

    As each crisis surfaced, a pattern emerged: the Clintons fiercely denied the allegations and often dismissed women who came forward with claims. They villainized the GOP and re-centered the public’s attention on more favorable themes like the booming economy of the era.

    Bill Clinton, who famously told voters “I feel your pain,” always managed to stay connected with the public. Indeed, he enjoyed some of the highest approval numbers of his presidency during his impeachment inquiry and trial, when about 7 in 10 U.S. adults approved of the way he was handling his job.

    Hillary Clinton similarly dispatched Republicans who sensed an opening in her handling of a 2012 attack on a compound in Libya that killed four Americans. She came out of an 11-hour televised congressional hearing in 2015 appearing poised. Even the Republican chair of the committee probing the attack said he wasn’t sure she revealed anything new about an issue many in his party considered a scandal.

    That experience has informed how the Clintons are approaching this week’s testimony. Hillary Clinton has been especially vocal in calling for the proceedings to happen in public, rather than in private as Comer currently plans.

    “We have nothing to hide,” she told the BBC earlier this month.

    Bill Clinton’s communication operation has taken a sharper tone, recalling the political “war room” popularized during the 1992 campaign to respond to negative storylines.

    One release accused Comer of “lying in every appearance he’s made this week.” Another mocked GOP Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona with a “hypocrisy award of the day,” noting how the Oversight Committee members defied subpoenas from the Jan. 6 panel.

    Meanwhile, the Clintons released a four-page letter to Comer on social media defiantly belittling a process they said was “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”

    Much as they tried to refocus attention during the 1990s, the letter hit the White House for dismantling institutions, imposing a harsh immigration crackdown and pardoning those involved in the Capitol riot.

    Conservative attacks on the Clintons

    The Clintons’ rise to power paralleled the explosion of talk radio as a political force, with Rush Limbaugh using his daily show as a platform to constantly berate the White House. Today, conservative podcasters like Benny Johnson have filled Limbaugh’s space and were gleeful after the House panel moved last month to hold the couple in contempt.

    “Do you understand Donald Trump made good on his oldest promise arguably which is he told all of us 10 years ago that Hillary Clinton would be going to jail?” Johnson said last month.

    Still, some dynamics have changed.

    The lockstep support the Clintons enjoyed among congressional Democrats has eroded as a new generation of lawmakers has taken office — nine Democrats joined with Republicans on the House committee to advance the contempt resolution. Trump, who has faced scrutiny over his own ties to Epstein and may be uncomfortable with the precedent of forcing a former president to testify, has expressed rare concern for the Clintons.

    He told NBC News that it “bothers me that somebody is going after Bill Clinton.” He has described Hillary Clinton as a “very capable woman.”

    Even Hutchinson, who helped make the case for Bill Clinton’s impeachment, expressed sympathy for the couple.

    “It’s frustrating and disappointing that President Clinton and Secretary Clinton are having to go through this fact-finding ordeal,” he said. “That’s difficult for them.”

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  • Brigitte Bardot Remembered: In ‘And God Created Woman’ and ‘Contempt,’ She Projected a Bold New Image of Feminine Identity and Erotic Power

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    It has always been easy to trivialize Brigitte Bardot. In 1957, starring in the movie that made her a global sensation, “And God Created Woman,” what she did was not widely regarded as accomplished screen acting — or, in a certain way, as acting at all. The movie treated her as a ripe object of erotic fixation, and that’s just what she was called upon to play. She is introduced with shots of her bare feet arched just so, her body lying naked, face down on the ground. “Sex kitten.” “Baby doll.” “Teenage temptress.” At the time, she was branded all those things. Was the movie a sober French drama or soft-core porn? It was marketed as something in between.

    Yet there was more at stake. And part of it is that Bardot, who died Sunday at 91, made no less a figure than Marilyn Monroe seem a sex symbol from an entirely different era. Monroe, while a huge star, still had one arched foot in the straitlaced past; Bardot was the woman-child of the world to come — the brazen girl who already embodied and anticipated the spirit of the swinging ’60s.  

    In “And God Created Woman,” she’s frisky, she’s sultry, she’s angry, she’s spectacularly uninhibited, and she signifies a new kind of erotic abandon that is liberated from the old strictures of the femme fatale. Her character, Juliette, is not a gold-digger; she rejects the advances of the rich men who come on to her. She simply does what she wants to do. “All the future does is spoil the present,” she tells a potential new lover. Yet when she learns, a bit later, that his proclamations of love are for the birds — that he doesn’t want a future with her, just a fling ­— the wounded smolder on her face becomes the ripest thing about her. At the climax, doing a dance of abandonment to the music of a hot Caribbean band, you see her literally spinning out of the control of the men around her.

    A word about the Bardot pout. It’s sexy as hell, but it’s a pout of steel. It has resolve. Which is why it’s so sexy. There was as much power in that pout as there was in Barbara Stanwyck’s snarl or Rita Hayworth’s come-hither glare. Maybe more. Because it’s as if Bardot had absorbed the temptation vibrations of all the screen goddesses who had come before her and was standing on their shoulders, reaching for something more…real.  

    Two years after “And God Created Woman” came out, becoming the top-grossing foreign-language film of all time in the United States, the great French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote of Bardot, “Her clothes are not fetishes, and when she strips she is not unveiling a mystery. She is showing her body, neither more nor less, and that body rarely settles into a state of immobility. She walks, she dances, she moves about. Her eroticism is not magical, but aggressive. In the game of love, she is as much a hunter as she is a prey. The male is an object to her, just as she is to him.”

    The title “And God Created Woman” sounds grandiose, but what it meant is: God had now created a new kind of woman. A woman who’s effortlessly confident and coveted, who’s the quintessence (to quote Jim Morrison) of a 20th century fox, and one who will not be the victim of the gazes of the men who surround her. When Juliette, to avoid being sent back to the orphanage she came from, agrees to marry the nice, sweet, dorky Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a priest warns him, “That girl is like an animal. She needs to be tamed.” But actually, there’s no taming what Bardot had: a casual freedom that was there in the way she held her body, and in every glance she gave.

    If she was triumphantly brazen in “And God Created Woman,” in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt” (1963) she broke the law of every film ever made about love. In movies, love and romance are the most powerful of religions, and when relationships fall apart it’s for all kinds of reasons. They break down, crack up, go bust. But in “Contempt,” Bardot plays Camille, the wife of a playwright (Michel Piccoli) who’s hired to rewrite the script for a film version of “The Odyssey,” and when the fire goes out of their marriage, it’s not for some tidy dramatic explanation. It’s because…she has decided…that the fire is gone…just because. Because in the newly modern world, where women are no longer under the thumb of men, their feelings might change, and the reasons for that might be…inaccessible to the man left holding the bag of their now-empty union.

    The way Bardot plays this, uttering the word “contempt” (the feeling she now has for her husband) as a wall made of stone, she exudes a tragic matter-of-factness that resides on the other side of cruelty. It is cruel, but not because she’s cruel. It’s that life is cruel. And her beauty, in cinematic terms, is part of the cruelty; it’s part of what she will now withhold. Bardot portrayed all of this, in 1963, with what could be called the consciousness of the new woman. A new awareness of choice, and of how the old rules holding the world together no longer applied.

    Discussing “Contempt,” male critics tend to get fixated on the film-industry woes of Piccoli’s screenwriter (a Godard surrogate), and the world-weary travails of the director Fritz Lang (playing himself). But the heart of the movie is the half-hour-long sequence in which Bardot and Piccoli wander around their apartment in Rome, having the kind of fight that sounds less like a movie fight and more like a real fight than almost any scene in movies you could name. The sequence suggests that if Godard hadn’t decided to go the route of being an allusive postmodern brainiac creator of prankster-troll cinematic puzzles-that-never-quite-fit-together, he could have been an extraordinary poet of emotional naturalism. And the coldly beating heart of the film, which is arguably Godard’s greatest, is Brigitte Bardot’s performance.      

    Looking back and watching Bardot’s movies now, you see hints and echoes of so many of the actresses who would come after her, from Maria Schneider to Nancy Allen to Dominique Sanda to Uma Thurman to Adèle Exarchopoulos to Sydney Sweeney. She was marketed as a pin-up, yet she was a singular presence who forged a path of sensual and spiritual fearlessness. And part of it is that she insisted, just as the Madonna of the ’80s and ’90s did, that for a certain kind of performer (her kind), sexuality was inseparable from artistry. Bardot’s eroticized projection of female identity was itself a transcendent performance. If God created woman, Bardot made you feel like she had created herself. Only time will tell if the future is female. But once she’d made her mark, the future was most definitely Bardot.

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  • How to Lead With Respect in Challenging Times

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    The cost of contempt in the workplace is high, but the rewards of respect are invaluable.

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  • House Republicans move forward with holding AG Merrick Garland in contempt

    House Republicans move forward with holding AG Merrick Garland in contempt

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    House Republicans will take their first step towards holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress on Thursday for refusing to turn over the audio recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden.Video above: Special Counsel Robert Hur testifies before House committee about his report on Biden’s handling of classified documentsThe House Oversight and Judiciary committees will each hold markups on their respective reports recommending a contempt of Congress resolution against Garland for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. If passed out of the committees, the resolutions would next go to the House floor for a vote by the whole chamber. It is not clear when that vote would be held.Shortly after Hur closed his investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents in February, Republicans subpoenaed the Department of Justice for a number of documents and information, including the audio recordings of the special counsel’s interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.While Hur’s probe led to no charges against the president, Republicans have seized on Hur’s description of Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in his final report.CNN has sued for access to recordings of federal investigators’ interview with Biden in the now-closed probe over his handling of classified documents.Through their subpoenas to DOJ, House Republicans have argued that the audio recordings are crucial to their impeachment inquiry into Biden, which remains stalled as the prospects of the investigation ending in impeachment are increasingly unlikely. Without the votes in their narrow majority or evidence of an impeachable offense, Republicans are now struggling with how to end their probe and are looking for ways to target other members of the Biden administration.Video below: Special counsel report says Biden willfully retained classified infoThe Department has made the majority of the subpoenaed materials available to House Republicans, including transcripts of the special counsel’s interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter, but it has doubled down on its decision to not release the audio files of the interviews, stating that Republicans have not established a legitimate legislative purpose for demanding these recordings.In their contempt reports, Republicans stated that DOJ does not get to determine what information is useful to their investigation, and argued that the verbal nuances of an audio recording provide unique insight into a subject that are not reflected in a transcript.“The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to dictate to Congress how to proceed with an impeachment inquiry or to conduct its oversight,” the report reads.In a recent letter to the Republican-led committees, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote to the House Oversight and Judiciary panels that Republicans do not need the audio recordings since DOJ turned over the transcripts, which would address Republican allegations made about the president as part of their impeachment inquiry.“It seems that the more information you receive, the less satisfied you are, and the less justification you have for contempt, the more you rush towards it,” Uriarte wrote.DOJ has also outlined distinct privacy concerns related to an audio recording of an interview compared to a written transcript, and how the release of such an audio file could dissuade cooperation from future witnesses in criminal investigations.Raising concerns that Republicans want these audio files for political purposes, he added: “the Committees’ inability to identify a need for these audio files grounded in legislative or impeachment purposes raises concerns about what other purposes they might serve.”Republicans, meanwhile, argue in their report that while the transcripts of the interviews reflect what was said, “they do not reflect important verbal context, such as tone or tenor, or nonverbal context, such as pauses or pace of delivery.”Such pauses and inflections, Republicans claim, “can provide indications of a witness’s ability to recall events, or whether the individual is intentionally giving evasive or nonresponsive testimony to investigators.”Republicans pointed to a recent example of when a transcript and audio recording of the president diverged, stating that at a speech last month, Biden read a teleprompter cue out loud during his speech, which was reflected in the recording of the event but not in the initial transcript of his remarks.The House Oversight Committee pushed back the start time of its Thursday markup so that Republican committee members can attend the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump in New York City, two sources familiar with the planning told CNN.When asked to comment on the reason for the schedule change, an Oversight Committee spokeswoman told CNN, “Due to member schedule conflicts, the markup is now starting at a different time to accommodate members’ schedules.”

    WASHINGTON —

    House Republicans will take their first step towards holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress on Thursday for refusing to turn over the audio recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden.

    Video above: Special Counsel Robert Hur testifies before House committee about his report on Biden’s handling of classified documents

    The House Oversight and Judiciary committees will each hold markups on their respective reports recommending a contempt of Congress resolution against Garland for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. If passed out of the committees, the resolutions would next go to the House floor for a vote by the whole chamber. It is not clear when that vote would be held.

    Shortly after Hur closed his investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents in February, Republicans subpoenaed the Department of Justice for a number of documents and information, including the audio recordings of the special counsel’s interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.

    While Hur’s probe led to no charges against the president, Republicans have seized on Hur’s description of Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in his final report.

    CNN has sued for access to recordings of federal investigators’ interview with Biden in the now-closed probe over his handling of classified documents.

    Through their subpoenas to DOJ, House Republicans have argued that the audio recordings are crucial to their impeachment inquiry into Biden, which remains stalled as the prospects of the investigation ending in impeachment are increasingly unlikely. Without the votes in their narrow majority or evidence of an impeachable offense, Republicans are now struggling with how to end their probe and are looking for ways to target other members of the Biden administration.

    Video below: Special counsel report says Biden willfully retained classified info

    The Department has made the majority of the subpoenaed materials available to House Republicans, including transcripts of the special counsel’s interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter, but it has doubled down on its decision to not release the audio files of the interviews, stating that Republicans have not established a legitimate legislative purpose for demanding these recordings.

    In their contempt reports, Republicans stated that DOJ does not get to determine what information is useful to their investigation, and argued that the verbal nuances of an audio recording provide unique insight into a subject that are not reflected in a transcript.

    “The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to dictate to Congress how to proceed with an impeachment inquiry or to conduct its oversight,” the report reads.

    In a recent letter to the Republican-led committees, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote to the House Oversight and Judiciary panels that Republicans do not need the audio recordings since DOJ turned over the transcripts, which would address Republican allegations made about the president as part of their impeachment inquiry.

    “It seems that the more information you receive, the less satisfied you are, and the less justification you have for contempt, the more you rush towards it,” Uriarte wrote.

    DOJ has also outlined distinct privacy concerns related to an audio recording of an interview compared to a written transcript, and how the release of such an audio file could dissuade cooperation from future witnesses in criminal investigations.

    Raising concerns that Republicans want these audio files for political purposes, he added: “the Committees’ inability to identify a need for these audio files grounded in legislative or impeachment purposes raises concerns about what other purposes they might serve.”

    Republicans, meanwhile, argue in their report that while the transcripts of the interviews reflect what was said, “they do not reflect important verbal context, such as tone or tenor, or nonverbal context, such as pauses or pace of delivery.”

    Such pauses and inflections, Republicans claim, “can provide indications of a witness’s ability to recall events, or whether the individual is intentionally giving evasive or nonresponsive testimony to investigators.”

    Republicans pointed to a recent example of when a transcript and audio recording of the president diverged, stating that at a speech last month, Biden read a teleprompter cue out loud during his speech, which was reflected in the recording of the event but not in the initial transcript of his remarks.

    The House Oversight Committee pushed back the start time of its Thursday markup so that Republican committee members can attend the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump in New York City, two sources familiar with the planning told CNN.

    When asked to comment on the reason for the schedule change, an Oversight Committee spokeswoman told CNN, “Due to member schedule conflicts, the markup is now starting at a different time to accommodate members’ schedules.”

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  • Obama Judge Holds Investigative Journalist Catherine Herridge In Contempt, Possible Fine Near $300,000

    Obama Judge Holds Investigative Journalist Catherine Herridge In Contempt, Possible Fine Near $300,000

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    Opinion

    Screenshot: CBS New York

    Catherine Herridge, a veteran journalist formerly with Fox News and CBS News, has been held in civil contempt by a federal judge for refusing to reveal her source for a series of stories published in 2017.

    Herridge found herself in hot water regarding a court case in which she was protecting the identity of a source used for a report written that year regarding a Chinese American scientist who was investigated by the FBI but never charged with wrongdoing.

    The case has significant First Amendment implications.

    Herridge was facing fines of up to $5,000 per day if she refused to be interviewed under oath for the case, a situation critics have defined as an attack on free press principles.

    U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper imposed a fine of $800 per day until Herridge complies, which could lead to a total of nearly $300,000 if she holds out over an entire year.

    The fine will not be imposed while she appeals.

    RELATED: CBS Seizes Materials Of Fired Journalist Who Was Investigating Hunter Biden

    Herridge Is Protecting Her Source

    The judge’s decision to hold Herridge in contempt for refusing to reveal her sources is a dangerous precedent that could have a chilling effect on investigative journalism.

    It sends a message to potential sources that they cannot trust journalists to protect their identities, which could result in fewer people coming forward with important information.

    Judge Cooper, in his decision, said that he “recognizes the paramount importance of a free press in our society” and the critical role of confidential sources in investigative journalism, but noted the court “also has its own role to play in upholding the law and safeguarding judicial authority.”

    Cooper was nominated for his role on the bench in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama. He was confirmed unanimously in the Senate the following year.

    RELATED: CBS News Chief Behind Firing Of Catherine Herridge In The Midst Of Investigating Biden Family To Receive Free Speech Award

    Chilling Effect

    Forcing journalists to reveal their sources undermines the public’s right to information and could have a chilling effect on investigative journalism. It is important for journalists to be able to protect their sources in order to ensure that the public is well-informed and that those in power are held accountable for their actions.

    “Herridge has long been a respected investigative journalist at Fox News and CBS News,” writes Legal Insurrection’s Mary Chastain. “She has always faced the wrath of the left when she exposed anything negative about Democrats.”

    Fox News issued a statement condemning the judge’s decision to hold Herridge in contempt.

    “Holding a journalist in contempt for protecting a confidential source has a deeply chilling effect on journalism,” they said.

    Even CBS News, who fired Catherine Herridge in the midst of this First Amendment battle and then temporarily seized her files, criticized the Obama-appointed judge.

    A spokesperson for the network said that the contempt order “should be concerning to all Americans who value the role of the free press in our democracy and understand that reliance on confidential sources is critical to the mission of journalism.”

    President Barack Obama himself has a history of chilling free speech and going after reporters.

    The former President used his Department of Justice (DOJ) to try and shut down Fox News reporter James Rosen by spying on him and accusing him of committing a crime.

    A 2010 subpoena approved by Eric Holder implicated Rosen as a possible co-conspirator under the Espionage Act of 1917. As such, investigators gained access to the times of his phone calls and two days’ worth of Rosen’s emails.

    The DOJ also mounted a serious attack on the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press by seizing the records of reporters at Fox News and the Associated Press (AP).

    The AP reporters – 20 of them – had their phone records subpoenaed through their providers, something they claimed at the time was a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into news-gathering operations.

    Imagine this were a Trump-appointed judge in this case and instead of Herridge, the reporter trying to protect their sources was Jim Acosta or Don Lemon. Would there be outrage at that point?

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    Rusty Weiss

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