Donald Trump is most interested in attacking Hillary Clinton for things Bill Clinton did (or allegedly did) decades ago. Democrats have their response ready on those attacks. But every now and then Trump throws in another name, of a woman who claims to have been harmed by Hillary herself: Kathy Shelton. And Democrats—the kind of Democrats who go on cable news—need to get their act together on this one. The failure of Democratic surrogates like Hilary Rosen to smack down the Shelton attacks is mystifying, because this one shouldn’t be hard.
You may have seen the viral graphic claiming that Hillary Clinton volunteered to represent a child rapist, got him freed through victim blaming, then laughed about it while admitting he was guilty. This is false, start to finish. Clinton was appointed to represent the man, and tried to get out of it. Once she was his lawyer, she defended him—but she didn’t free him. Instead, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, a plea supported at the time by the victim—Kathy Shelton—and her mother to avoid a grueling trial. And the supposed victim-blaming was Clinton quoting a child psychology expert in order to ask that the girl undergo a psychiatric examination.
What you’ve got to this point is Clinton doing her duty as a defense attorney. Even alleged child rapists are entitled to a defense, and someone has to do it. That’s a fundamental part of our legal system.
Okay, but what about Clinton laughing while admitting her client’s guilt? In an interview in the 1980s, Clinton discussed the case. “Of course he claimed that he didn’t,” she said dismissively. “All this stuff.”
He took a lie detector test! I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.
And then she laughed a little, about her faith in polygraphs. And that’s the foundation of “she admitted she knew he was guilty and she laughed about it.” Not “oh, boy, I screwed over this 12-year-old rape victim, isn’t it hilarious,” but “hey, my client probably committed rape and yet he still passed a polygraph, so much for the reliability of lie detector tests.”
The facts are clear. The response when the Trump camp raises this is not hard: Hillary Clinton didn’t want to defend a child rapist but once a judge appointed her to do so, she did her job. She did not victim-blame. She did not free him. She did not laugh at the victim’s pain. It’s simply a lie to say Clinton did anything but her duty to her client. And Democrats need to be as clear and confident dismissing this as they are dismissing Hillary Clinton’s responsibility for her husband’s alleged past actions.
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