(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Donald Trump committed a crime when his campaign was sinking. Bill Clinton went on 60 Minutes [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-02 Trump isn’t the first presidential candidate to see their campaign threatened by a sex scandal. But Trump’s solution was criminal. President-elect Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and their daughter Chelsea, in Little Rock, AR, Nov. 3, 1992 Sen. Gary Hart exited the 1988 Democratic presidential primary over rumors of infidelity, and in the very next presidential cycle the campaign of rising star Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas was similarly on the verge of being sunk over sex. A state employee, Gennifer Flowers, claimed Clinton had had an extramarital affair with her spanning 12 years. The Star tabloid had paid an undisclosed amount for her story, published a few weeks before the New Hampshire primary. In a do-or-die move, Bill and Hillary Clinton decided to sit for a post-Super Bowl 60 Minutes interview. The governor flatly denied Flowers’s story but refused to answer questions about infidelity in general; he acknowledged having “caused pain” in his marriage but asserted that further details were no one’s business but their own. (Years later he would admit under oath to a onetime sexual encounter with Flowers while maintaining that there was no prolonged affair). He came in second in New Hampshire, declared himself the “Comeback Kid,” and went on to win the nomination, soundly beating fiery runner-up Jerry Brown, who petulantly refused to endorse Clinton, somewhat reminiscent of — but not quite as understandable as — Ted Cruz’s bitterness toward Donald Trump in 2016. Now just imagine if instead of doing a 60 Minutes interview to try to rescue his campaign, candidate Clinton had conspired with The Star to “catch and kill” damaging stories like Flowers’s and to plant scandalous stories about Jerry Brown, and had arranged to pay off Flowers to keep her quiet, and had concealed the deal by falsifying payment records. And then try to imagine anyone saying “he did nothing wrong.” Republicans can impugn the justice system from now till the cows come home, but they know damned well there’s only one person to blame for Donald Trump’s conduct, arrest, and conviction — Donald Trump. The Dirty Tricks CNN — March 29, 2016 Ted Cruz on Tuesday night accused Donald Trump’s allies of conspiring to publish a National Enquirer story alleging the Texas senator had multiple affairs with unnamed women. … Representatives for National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But on Friday, the company said in a statement that “no one influences” the tabloid magazine’s reporting “other than our own reporters and editors.” ... Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN in a statement Tuesday that the campaign is “emphatically denying any truth to this claim.” Cruz was right, only it wasn’t just Trump allies who were conspiring with the tabloid — it was Trump himself. The Conspiracy AP — April 23, 2024 A veteran tabloid publisher testified Tuesday that he pledged to be Donald Trump ‘s “eyes and ears” during his 2016 presidential campaign, recounting how he promised the then-candidate that he would help suppress harmful stories and even arranged to purchase the silence of a doorman. ... With Trump sitting just feet away in the courtroom, Pecker, the first witness, detailed his behind-the-scenes role in Trump’s rise from political novice to the Republican nomination and the White House. He explained how he and the National Enquirer parlayed rumor-mongering into splashy tabloid stories that smeared Trump’s opponents and, just as crucially, leveraged his connections to suppress seamy stories about Trump, including a porn actor’s claim of an extramarital sexual encounter years earlier. ... Their ties were solidified during a pivotal August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower involving Trump, his lawyer and personal fixer Michael Cohen, and another aide, Hope Hicks, in which Pecker was asked what he and the publications he led could do for the campaign. Pecker said he volunteered to publish positive stories about Trump and negative stories about his opponents. But that wasn’t all, he said, telling jurors how he told Trump: “I will be your eyes and ears.” The Payoff AP — May 13, 2034 Donald Trump was intimately involved with all aspects of a scheme to stifle stories about sex that threatened to torpedo his 2016 campaign, his former lawyer said Monday in matter-of-fact testimony that went to the heart of the former president’s hush money trial. “Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” said Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer-turned-foe and the prosecution’s star witness in a case now entering its final, pivotal stretch. In hours of highly anticipated testimony, Cohen placed Trump at the center of the hush money plot, saying the then-candidate had promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign. “We need to stop this from getting out,” Cohen quoted Trump as telling him in reference to porn actor Stormy Daniels’ account of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. The then-candidate was especially anxious about how the story would affect his standing with female voters. The Coverup [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/2/2243501/-Donald-Trump-committed-a-crime-when-his-campaign-was-sinking-Bill-Clinton-went-on-60-Minutes?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/