The industry of anti-Clinton books has a new entry, and it's one that Republicans have been
dropping hints about for weeks. The claim of Republican operative Peter Schweizer's forthcoming book,
Clinton Cash, is basically that, as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton sold America's foreign policy to foreign entities for donations to the Clinton Foundation and speaking fees to former President Bill Clinton.
The New York Times is all in, with Amy Chozick writing:
But “Clinton Cash” is potentially more unsettling, both because of its focused reporting and because major news organizations including The Times, The Washington Post and Fox News have exclusive agreements with the author to pursue the story lines found in the book.
It's disturbing enough to hear that the
Times would enter into a weird opposition-research agreement with a Republican operative, but it gets more disturbing when you learn more about Peter Schweizer. Media Matters does the honors, rounding up
a history that you would think would scare off any reputable media organization.
Schweizer, a former speechwriting consultant for the George W. Bush White House, former Sarah Palin foreign policy adviser, and contributor to a Glenn Beck book, is yet another unneeded example of how Republicans can continue to get major media attention despite long records of failure and falsehood.
- In a 2011 book, Schweizer accused Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of using his position to essentially commit insider trading. According to Schweizer, the Rhode Island Democrat unloaded a bunch of stock in 2008, after a congressional leadership briefing on the financial crisis. Problem being, Whitehouse was not in that meeting and selling stock wasn't some unique act during the financial crisis. Schweizer also suggested that Whitehouse sold stock in a company after learning, through his membership on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, that its Medicare reimbursements would be curtailed. Except Whitehouse was not on the HELP Committee at that time, and there were public questions about the company's drugs that made insider information sort of beside the point anyway.
- In 2012, Schweizer's "Government Accountability Institute" made a splash with the claim that President Obama had skipped more than half of his intelligence briefings. Turned out, different presidents receive intelligence briefings in different ways, and while the ones named Bush like to be briefed in person by a CIA officer, that's not the only way to do it—and not the way Obama has chosen. The Washington Post fact-checker called the claim "bogus" and noted that:
Under the standards of this ad, Republican icon Ronald Reagan skipped his intelligence briefings 99 percent of the time.
- Schweizer claimed that Obama and then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius met only once one-on-one, which was simply false: they met "at least 18 times."
- Two reporters from the Sunday Times (UK) investigated one of Schweizer's books and concluded that "Facts that are checkable do not check out. Individuals credited for supplying information do not exist or cannot be tracked down. Requests to the author for help and clarification result in further confusion and contradiction."
And that's just the tip of the iceberg of Schweizer errors and dishonesty. Schweizer's goal with Clinton Cash is clear. He's a Republican operative who wants to get his story out there, betting that he can do some damage even if he's slammed by fact-checkers and forced to issue a series of retractions. But this is who the New York Times and Washington Post are getting into bed with in his anti-Clinton crusade, and who the Times' Chozick describes as having produced "focused reporting" that should make Clinton nervous. Are the Times and the Post actually trying to destroy their reputations in some kind of bizarre journalistic suicide pact?
