Good news for Hillary Clinton. Former campaign worker David Rosen was cleared by a jury yesterday of charges he stole money collected at a Los Angeles fundraiser during her run for the U.S. Senate in 2000. You won’t find this story on the front page of today’s Los Angeles Times however – or even on the top the screen of the paper’s homepage, above.
Think about it. If Rosen been found guilty, is there any doubt that the allegedly liberal Los Angeles Times would have trumpeted the news on the front page? I’m not saying it would have been the the lead story above the fold, but the paper definitely would’ve run it in the third or fourth position. Instead, the story can be found on the front of the “California” section of the paper, which is like the “Local” section in other dailies.
A former top aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton was acquitted Friday of charges that he deliberately concealed more than $700,000 in contributions to finance a fundraising gala for her 2000 Senate campaign.
David Rosen, who served as Clinton’s national finance director, embraced his lawyer and smiled broadly as U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz announced the jury’s verdict after a three-week trial.
“I’m relieved this ordeal is over,” Rosen said afterward. “This has been going on for five years. I now have closure in my life.”
Although Clinton was not charged in the case, her political foes had seized on it, anticipating incriminating disclosures that might affect her possible 2008 presidential run. But their expectations were dashed on opening day when a Justice Department prosecutor told jurors that Clinton was not involved in any wrongdoing.
The fact that Clinton was not implicated or under suspicion will not matter to her enemies. The “facts” have never gotten in the way of smears created by folks like Richard Mellon Scaife, Ted Olson, Ken Starr and their minions who ran the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy against the Clintons in the 1990’s. Facts won’t matter to the folks who pick up the mantel of character assassination if Hillary decides to run for president in 2008.
In the early years of the Clinton Administration, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post all printed stories about the Clintons that later proved to be false without ever printing a retraction. (See “The Hunting of the President,” by Joe Conanson and Gene Lyons and “Blinded by the Right,” by David Brock, among other books, for details.) Many of these stories were used by the rightwing to establish credibility for the outright lies they propagated about the First Family and their friends. Sad to see that this bias continues even today.
How did I miss this story two weeks ago? Vice President Dick Cheney, the father of a devoted lesbian daughter, flew to Colorado to be the big ticket draw at a fundraiser for an ultra-rightwing member of Congress who happens to be a sponsor of the proposed constituitional amendment to ban gay marriage. 