Americans under 40 probably don't remember much about the Whitewater scandal. Jim and Susan McDougal ran a savings-and-loan into the ground (costing taxpayers millions), but they drew their greedy friends Bill and Hillary Clinton into a real-estate scheme, and Jim also hired Hillary as a lawyer for his pseudo-banking. The McDougals were convicted on multiple counts of fraud in 1996, and the networks pretty much ignored the trial and pretended the guilty verdicts said nothing about the Clintons. Susan McDougal would go on TV and compare independent counsel Ken Starr to the Nazis.
Fast forward to today, as the amnesia continues. In the wake of Sam Nunberg's bizarre cable-news crusade insisting Trump was guilty of something on Monday evening, MSNBC touted an interview Tuesday with Susan McDougal, as an expert on not testifying to special counsels. MSNBC host Craig Melvin called her “The former Clinton business partner who was jailed for refusing to comply with a subpoena during the Whitewater investigation.” Not "the former Clinton business partner convicted on four counts of fraud and conspiracy." Susan kept up her "not gonna get me, copper" lines against Starr's team:
SUSAN McDOUGAL: I wasn't trying to save anybody, for one thing. My entire stance was about the fact that they never asked me a single question. Never once. Even at the very first meeting. They had a story that they believed was true and wanted me to go with it. I mean, I hear this guy saying all these questions that they ask him, and they never asked me a question. And it was a set-up from the beginning. We'd already had one special prosecutor for almost a year named Robert Fiske, and he was fired and Ken Starr came in. Fiske said there was no wrongdoing. We had a U.S. Attorney who said there was no wrongdoing. And they came and said, if you cooperate with us, we'll give you global immunity. That was the first meeting I ever had with them. And it didn't get any better after that.
Susan came to MSNBC's attention after being interviewed by The Washington Post, telling Nunberg "you're not going to save anybody." As she sat in jail for refusing to testify, the ongoing theory was she was protecting Bill Clinton. Even now, she still trots out the preposterous "Clintons never did anything wrong" defense, and MSNBC just allowed it:
KATY TUR: What do you make of those who say that they are facing a similar situation? That they think that this is all a witch hunt, and they don't want to sit down for those questions, because they don't think it's fair.
McDOUGAL: You know, the funny thing is, is that he's gone on all of these television shows and everyone believes that he knows so many things that have been done wrong and he has kind of intimated that he knows these things. And you know, the difference there is, I think from the first moment I ever met them, I said, I don't know anything the Clintons have done that might be wrong. And I've said that consistently. I never did. And this man, I don't know him, but he seems to know a lot. And I think it is a matter of character. I mean, I wasn't trying to hide anything that anyone had done. I didn't know anything anyone had done. And it seems to me that is where he is. He's trying to, it's almost like I’ll go to jail for this guy who’s broken all these laws. I think it’s a totally different situation.
So MSNBC is laying out the "evidence." The Clintons have never done anyting wrong, and Trump has "broken all these laws" in colluding with the Russians. Who calls this cable "news"?
