On OffQ This Evening

I caught my friend Johnny Mac on OffQ this evening and was struck by something fellow panelist Heather Heidelbaugh said.

The conversation was bouncing back and forth about, I think, Senator Clinton when McIntire asserted to Heidelbaugh that she hated Bill Clinton because of the Lewinsky scandal.

Heidelbaugh immediately corrected McIntire and stated outright that she hated Bill Clinton because he raped Juanita Broaddrick.

Good lord, do we have to rehash THIS?

Look, it's simple (and as an attorney, Heather Heidelbaugh should understand the legality of all this) but Juanita Broaddrick signed an affidavit on January 2, 1998 that stated:

During the 1992 Presidential campaign there were unfounded rumors and stories circulated that Mr. Clinton had made unwelcome sexual advances toward me in the late seventies. Newspaper and tabloid reporters hounded me and my family, seeking corroboration of these tales. I repeatedly denied the allegations and requested that my family's privacy be respected. These allegations are untrue and I had hoped that they would no longer haunt me, or cause further disruption to my family.

The Starr Report states that about 3 months later on April 8th 1998, she told OIC investigators that that affidavit was false. So which is it? Did she lie when she signed the affidavit or did she lie when she told the OIC investigators (and weren't these guys FBI? Just checking) that she lied?

For those who don't know, an affidavit is a sworn statement of fact. It's done under oath. So if Attorney Heidelbaugh believes that Juanita Broaddrick was raped by Bill Clinton, she also has to believe that Juanita Broaddrick has committed perjury.

But is the story of the rape true? Here's Salon.com in February, 1999 after the story made it on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page:

"This is a story that's been knocked down and discredited so many times, I was shocked to see it in the Journal today," says Jack Nelson, Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times. "Well, not shocked, since it ran on the editorial page. Everyone's taken a slice of it, and after looking at it, everyone's knocked it down. The woman has changed her story about whether it happened. It just wasn't credible. I don't know if NBC will run it, but if they do, they'll do it knowing there are real problems with it."

Significantly, the Wall Street Journal's own news department has declined to run the Broaddrick story in its pages. When asked if Journal reporters had pursued it, the paper's Washington bureau chief, Alan Murray, replied, "I'm not going to comment on how we devote our resources. But you're right to observe this has not appeared in our news pages, except in brief references." The Journal was the first to report that House managers were showing Starr's sealed "Jane Doe" material, Murray says. Later, in its Washington Wire column, the paper revealed that House Judiciary Committee counsel David Schippers had decided not to include the Broaddrick materials in the impeachment trial, since she had given different versions of the story and there was no evidence of obstruction of justice by the Clinton administration in the changed tales.

So the rape allegations weren't a part of the materials in the impeachment trial? And so much of that case was so sturdy, wasn't it? No charges on Whitewater, no charges on Travelgate. Just charges related to the blowjobs in the White House.

Given all the investigatory power of the OIC run by Kenneth Starr and they decided NOT to include the Broaddrick materials in the impeachment trial.

What should that tell you about the rape allegations?

By the same token, did you know that Ronald Reagan was a rapist?