“I gave up shame years ago.” Those words from actor John Lithgow appear to have been taken to heart by Hillary Clinton who has severed any sense of self-awareness or shame in her public comments. Lithgow’s statement came to mind this week as Hillary Clinton heralded the prosecution of former president Donald Trump in Manhattan as “election interference” by keeping “relevant information” from voters before an election. For those of us who criticized Clinton for the funding of the infamous Steele dossier, it was a perfectly otherworldly moment.
In the interview, Clinton went after the Supreme Court for delaying a trial of Trump despite the push by Special Counsel Jack Smith for a verdict before the election. She then left many in disbelief with the following statement:
“And the one going on now currently in New York is really about election interference. It is about trying to prevent the people of our country from having relevant information that may have influenced how they could have voted in 2016 or whether they would have voted.”
In the same election, it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that lied about funding the Steele dossier and then hiding the funding as a legal expense through then Clinton General Counsel Marc Elias.
The Clinton campaign staff has never been known of transparency. Buried in the detailed account is a footnote stating that Elias “declined to be voluntarily interviewed by the Office.” Likewise, Durham noted that “no one at Fusion GPS … would agree to voluntarily speak with the Office” while both the DNC and Clinton campaign invoked privileges to refuse to answer certain questions.
Elias, his his former partner Michael Sussmann, and the campaign was later found involved in not just spreading the false claims from the Steele dossier but other false stories like the Alfa Bank conspiracy claim.
It was Elias who managed the legal budget for the campaign. We now know that the campaign hid the funding of the Steele dossier as a legal expense.
New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”
Elias was also seated next to John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, when he was asked about the role of the campaign, he denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Even assuming that Podesta was kept in the dark, the Durham Report clearly shows that Elias knew and played an active role in pushing this effort.
Elias is now ironically advising Democratic campaigns on election ethics and running a group to “defend democracy.” He is still counsel to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) headed by Rep. Suzan Kay DelBene, D-Wash. Elias was later severed by the Democratic National Committee from further representation and has been previously sanctioned in federal court in other litigation.
Notably, the Federal Election Commission sanctioned the Clinton campaign for hiding the funding as a legal expense. The Clinton campaign litigated the issue and insisted that the term is broadly used to cover a wide array of payments through counsel. That is precisely what the Trump team is arguing in the Manhattan case.
Lying to the media and hiding the funding was a conscious effort to hide “relevant information that may have influenced” voters. With the help of the media, these false stories were spread throughout the country and later was used to start the Russian collusion investigation.
Famous philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once declared that “the only shame is to have none.” Hillary has finally achieve that ignoble status. She appears now to have lost even the capacity for shame.