ACS: Impeachment – Did Ann Coulter Tamper with Linda Tripp’s Tapes?

Ann Coulter played a crucial role in the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

First, she betrayed Paula Jones by leaking attorney client-privileged information to scuttle the settlement that Jones’ desired in her case against President Clinton. This meant that Jones’ case could be used in the impeachment.

Second, Coulter had illegal access to Linda Tripp’s illegally-recorded tapes of conversations with Monica Lewinsky and there is the possibility that she tampered with one or more of those tapes to remove exculpatory material or make portions of those tapes more damaging then they really were.

A rather curious sequence of events enabled Coulter to gain access to those critical tapes illegally recorded by Linda Tripp before they were turned over to the OIC. Coulter recommended one of her closest friends, Jim Moody, to represent Tripp, who accepted that recommendation despite his inexperience in that field of law. Moody replaced Kirby Behre as Tripp’s attorney.

Moody soon took possession of Tripp’s tapes. Behre confirmed that while the tapes were in his possession, no unauthorized individuals had access to them and no copies of those tapes were made.[1] Within hours, Coulter had access to those very tapes from Moody, whom she herself had suggested represent Tripp.

Coulter would later engage in damage control, writing,

“Moody came in to the case, Toobin says, when New York lawyer George Conway ‘remembered an old friend in Washington’ – Jim Moody. George Conway barely knew Jim Moody; the two had met only briefly once or twice before in group settings. It certainly was not George Conway who thought of suggesting his name to Tripp.”[2]

Coulter is right. It was Coulter herself who thought of suggesting Moody as Tripp’s lawyer. And it was Coulter to whom Tripp’s tapes were brought.

Early Morning Rendezvous

One of Coulter’s “greatest moments” had national implications and international repercussions. In the early morning hours of January 16, 1998, Coulter illegally listened to illegally-recorded audiotapes of conversations between Linda Tripp and her friend, Monica Lewinsky, who was President Clinton’s lover. Those tapes would prove crucial to impeaching Clinton and would pave Coulter’s path to glory, a glory which would somehow never transcend Coulter’s deep insecurity and low self-esteem.

Coulter could not contain her joy over gaining possession – secretly and illegally – of such a critical piece of evidence. She exclaimed,

“I must say, I don’t mind reliving the greatest night of my life over and over again. I was dancing a jig. I was bouncing off the walls.”[3]

To this day, it remains unknown whether Coulter tampered with those tapes prior to them being turned over to the OIC.

Five people, all lawyers, listened to those explosive tapes during the early morning hours of January 16, 1998. Conway and Moody were physically present with Coulter in her apartment, while Marcus and Porter participated via telephone conference call. Significantly, with the exception of Moody, all of those present (either in person or via telephone) have refused to comment on those events for this book.

Given Moody’s paranoid cloak-and-dagger evasive tactics[4] after obtaining the tapes from Kirby, why would he wait till the afternoon of the 16^th to turn them over to Starr’s office? He certainly wasn’t listening to them at his home on his antiquated tape recorder (the stated reason for playing them at Coulter’s apartment). Where were they and what was done with them?

The details are murky, but it is unquestioned that Coulter was in possession of those tapes – without the approval of Linda Tripp – before they were turned over to Ken Starr’s office.

The critical time frame – January 15-16, 1998 – has escaped serious scrutiny because the story is complicated, with overlapping sequences and a conflation of events. The three midnight meetings make for a good thriller, but confusion arises over which date each of those late night/early morning meetings actually occurred. Proper sequencing simplifies the complicated.

1/15/98      Moody acquires the Tripp tapes from Tripp’s previous lawyer (Behre).

1/16/98      At 2 a.m., the elves (Coulter, Moody, Conway, Marcus and Porter) listen to the tapes in Coulter’s apartment.

                  Moody gives one tape to the FBI in the morning and the remainder in the afternoon. (Where were those remaining tapes during the interval?)

                  Tripp tricks Lewinsky into a meeting at the Ritz-Carlton, where the FBI interrogates Lewinsky from 12:30 p.m. to 12:23 a.m.

                  That evening, Moody and Conway meet Jones’ attorney (Wesley Holmes) at Tripp’s home. Moody does not have the tapes which Holmes wanted to hear.

1/17/98      At a midnight meeting, the FBI gives a copy of the first tape back to Moody (with Conway hiding in the foyer). Around 12:30 a.m., that tape is played at Newsweek (Moody, Conway, Isikoff, McDaniel, Klaidman, Thomas) are present.

Disinformation from Moody

In late January, the Washington Post published this interesting piece of disinformation from the elves:

Moody is uncertain how Tripp learned about him, but he scoffs at the notion that he got the job because of ties to conservatives. His best guess is that while Tripp worked for the White House counsel’s office during the Bush administration, she was impressed with his success in badgering officials to drop decades-old regulations in the citrus industry.[6]

Everything Moody told the Washington Post was a lie. He knew who recommended him to Tripp (Coulter) and who was involved (all the anti-Clinton elves). His cover story was clearly concocted to preserve the identity of the (conservative) conspirators.

Citrus industry-deregulation as a prerequisite for pressing a sexual harassment case against the POTUS? Is it merely coincidence that Coulter would later publish a column in George magazine attacking Isikoff with these words:

“It’s not like we secretly disliked Clinton because of his administration’s position on California’s citrus cartels or something, and then set to work on some crazy scheme to destroy him using a pathological intern as our Mata Hari.”[7]

For the next six months, the elves operated in secrecy as Coulter wrote her book advocating the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton. During that time, she appeared on scores of TV shows to discuss the Clinton scandals and no one knew about her secret involvement with those scandals.

Coulter’s First Book

In High Crimes and Misdemeanors,[8] released in August, Coulter has surprisingly little to say about the Tripp tapes. The two most significant passages follow:

“Jones’s attorneys hadn’t deposed either Lewinsky or Tripp on the eve of Clinton’s deposition. That night, however, one of Jones’s lawyers [Wesley Holmes] informally interviewed Tripp to fill in the details of the anonymous phone calls.”

[REALITY CHECK: Holmes wanted to hear the tapes, which Moody no longer possessed.]

“Tripp had agreed to an informal meeting with Jones’s attorneys in hopes of avoiding a formal deposition. She had only recently discovered that her home state of Maryland was one of the few states that prohibit people from taping their own phone conversations without telling the other people on the line; she had not told Lewinsky …”

[REALITY CHECK: The elves, including Coulter, facilitated that meeting. Coulter left out their involvement, and their conflict of interest.]

Interestingly, Coulter later bragged about “getting a best-seller out of” her involvement with the elves.

Coulter Outed

Meanwhile, hidden from public view, was Coulter’s intimate knowledge of, and clandestine connection with, the now-infamous Tripp tapes. Ironically, it was the Starr Report which exposed her involvement:

“[Tripp] said she subsequently learned that Moody, before turning the tapes over to Starr’s office, had given them to Ann Coulter – a conservative lawyer and frequent talk show guest who has since written a book outlining the case for Clinton’s impeachment – for copying.”[9]

The Starr Report included Tripp’s testimony which revealed that Coulter once had access to the tapes which ultimately led to Clinton’s impeachment. For a few weeks, the question was “What did Coulter hear and when did she hear it?” In the Starr Report, Tripp testified:

Q:        And your information was that he (Jim Moody) and a woman named Ann Coulter had copied the tapes, and that Ann Coulter had a complete set of tapes?

A:        Well, I was told from a couple of different sources – asked, actually, was I aware that … he had Ann Coulter make high speed dubbings of each tape … but has since listened to all the tapes.

“Tripp later testified that they [Coulter and Moody] did so [make copies of the tapes] contrary to her instructions.”[10]

Only the five conspirators knew of the early morning rendezvous when they listened to Tripp’s tapes in Coulter’s apartment. How, then, did Tripp hear rumors of that event? After all, the elves were almost pathological in keeping their activities and identities secret. So, who told what, when, and why?

Perhaps Coulter could not contain herself over what she described as the “greatest night” of her life. She was, you will recall, the elf who gave the elves their name in her hint to Isikoff in 1997. The baby princess had to prove her worth despite the need for secrecy.

The media’s suspicions were initially aroused when, in a Crossfire debate, [11] Coulter refused to give a direct answer on this topic: “A real quick question on the tapes. Have you ever personally listened to the Linda Tripp tapes? … How’d you get them?” Caught off guard, Coulter gave a Clintonesque evasion. When she was first publicly questioned about her connection with the Tripp tapes, Coulter was speechless! Then she asked a delaying question: “Which tapes?” Then she gave a non-responsive Clintonesque admission: “Well, do you think it’s OK for a president to perjury himself under oath? So what do you think of a political pundit lying on TV?”

Why such obfuscation if there’s nothing to hide? Was Coulter concerned about the legal ramifications of her actions? Why not speak the truth? Even the Washington Post reported that event:

“On a recent edition of ‘Crossfire,’ Coulter was briefly speechless when asked if she had heard any of Tripp’s tapes before the story became public. She now admits she heard one of the tapes, saying that an unidentified friend needed her recording equipment to copy it.”[12]

Three days later, towards the end of her book tour for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Coulter gave a speech in which she tried to dismiss her own involvement with the tapes which led to the subject of her book:

“In this document dump on Friday I made my debut in Volume III in which I was accused in Linda Tripp’s testimony of making copies of all of her tapes. She had heard rumors that I made copies of all 17 tapes back in January, which I can assure you if it had been true they would have been – all over the world – air-dropped by January 22^nd. And apparently that’s what Ken Starr’s prosecutors thought because I never heard from them. But, you know, suppose I were asked, “Did you make copies of these tapes?” Well, I suppose, you know, I could just say “No,” then later say, “Well, when you said tape I mean a track tape and listen, really what, what does it really mean to listen? Listening is one of the great mysteries of life.”[13]

Evasion, wrapped in humor and blanketed by rationalizations. If the President of the United States can debate the definition of the word “is,” surely Coulter can play the same semantic game. After all, she’s one of the “good guys.”

Denials and Smokescreens

On Rivera Live,[14] Coulter first denied hearing the Tripp tapes, then admitted to hearing one tape, and lied about her source for the tapes.

RIVERA:         “Did you ever listen to and/or make copies of those tapes?”

COULTER:      “No, I literally would have had them air-dropped across America and I’d probably be a millionaire by now. … they would have been on Entertainment Tonight, they would have been on your show and I’d be a multi-millionaire.”

Interestingly, just hours before I had interviewed Moody about whether Coulter had copied the tapes. His reply was almost identical – “If she had them, believe me, she would have been the first to release them wholesale. I mean, she’s doing a book on the Clinton scandals.”[15] – the very same argument used by Coulter on Rivera Live later that night.

Directly challenged by Rivera, Coulter conceded listening to one of the tapes: “I heard the same tape that was described by Newsweek.”

But Coulter adamantly denied getting the tape from Moody: “I got nothing out of him [Moody] and I must say being one of his friends that did annoy me.” Is it coincidental that Moody also spoke of Coulter’s annoyance at him over the tapes? Moody told me, “She’s kind of annoyed at me for not giving her the tapes so she could put them in her book.”[16]

Still, Coulter continued to blow smokescreens, claiming she got the tapes in her capacity as a journalist/investigative reporter (“people send me things”). In fact, she got the tapes because of her friendship with Moody.

In discussing the tapes, Rivera said, “You got a bestseller out of it.” Coulter boasted: “Yes, I did.”[17] Coulter herself noted the exquisite timing of High Crimes – “Yeah, it was good timing”[18] – and, tongue-in-cheek, admitted “I thought impeachment might be in the news this year.”[19] How and why did she think so? And did Coulter orchestrate to some degree the events which thrust her into the limelight and her book to the top of the best-seller list?

What is the truth behind the Tripp tapes and what exactly was Coulter’s role? To what extent has Coulter manipulated the media and the judicial system for her own personal gain? And to what degree has Coulter changed history for the benefit of her own career?

Coulter admitted she “had” (indicating active possession and not passive audience) “them” (i.e., more than one). Furthermore, Coulter and Moody BOTH admit that she asked him for the tapes. They BOTH said she didn’t get the tapes. They BOTH said she was “annoyed” at his refusal. They BOTH said that if she had gotten the tapes she would have published them and made a fortune. They BOTH lied. Repeatedly.

Link Between Tripp and Jones

Two days later a Washington Post profile of Coulter exposed her secret connection with both Jones and Tripp.

She referred Linda Tripp to her attorney friend Jim Moody (Coulter and Moody are both Deadheads who followed the Grateful Dead to dozens of far-flung concerts, she says). Coulter says she suggested to Moody that Tripp take her tapes of Monica Lewinsky to independent counsel Kenneth Starr; he had already thought of the idea.[20]

She advised Paula Jones’s lawyers in their suit against Clinton and helped Jones find new attorneys when the first pair quit.[21]

“I was a little concerned about the ‘right-wing cabal’ appearance of things,” Coulter says. Although Starr is examining whether Tripp lied about how the tapes were made, Coulter says she’s not worried about being questioned.[22]

Both Coulter and Moody say he was not the source of the tape she heard. “She’s kind of annoyed at me for not giving her the tapes so she could put them in her book,” Moody says. Still, he says, “I always enjoy her because she doesn’t pull her punches. We all want to appear dignified and thoughtful and contemplative, and Ann is just Ann.”[23]

From the beginning, the elves secretly and zealously conspired to topple the Clinton presidency. They also desperately sought to keep their involvement secret. When their involvement came to light, they stonewalled – refusing to cooperate with legitimate investigations into their actions.

Flip-Flop on Tapes

Once Tripp’s tapes had served their purpose – furthering the cause of impeachment – Coulter downplayed their importance. Months earlier Coulter was a one-woman ad campaign promoting their significance.

“23 hours of tapes. On C-Span, over and over and over again. … and there are 23 hours of tapes. … It’s not Clinton vs. Starr. It’s not even Clinton vs. Congress. It’s C-Span playing all of the evidence that Ken Starr has, including, at a minimum, 23 hours of tapes of Monica Lewinsky weeping and crying – on the phone.  … But moreover, the important point is – Look! The most important point of what you just said was that Monica denies it. Well, no, actually, she’s on tape admitting to it when she doesn’t know she’s being taped. She has said nothing since then … But she’s on tape. This is why tapes are such amazing evidence.”[24]

Pressure became so intense that Coulter became desperate not to talk about the Tripp tapes. Again, on Rivera Live, Coulter said:

“[Asked about her source for the tapes] I will stipulate to the fact that I’m a drug-dealing serial killer so that we can talk about something other than me [laughingly]. … [asked about testifying before OIC] Let’s assume I’m the devil incarnate [laughingly]. … I don’t want to talk about the tapes. I want to talk about Clinton.”[25]

Why the flip-flop?

The day after her Crossfire debate Newsday reported that some of those tapes had been tampered with. “Tripp also indicated that Moody may have an explanation for the mystery surrounding her tapes – which, according to FBI forensic tests, have in some cases been duplicated or tampered with.”[26] Apparently nine of 27 Tripp tapes “were copied from the originals” and “one tape may have been tampered with,”[27] sparking controversy over their credibility. One example of a corrupted critical passage is this one concerning Lewinsky’s fear for her life:

LEWINSKY:    “I know [tape skip] [inaudible] my mom will kill me if I don’t tell him – make it clear at some point that I’m not going to hurt him, because – see, my mom’s big fear is that he’s going to send somebody out to kill me.”

The previous portion of the tape shows Tripp encouraging Lewinsky to hang up on the president, not talk to him:

TRIPP:             “Well, let me put it to you this way. By hanging up and saying you’re telling your parents, and then hanging up the phone, you’re saying a whole hell of a lot more than you could ever do in a 20-minute conversation.”

Who tampered with the tapes? Was exculpatory evidence erased? Was damaging evidence fabricated? Who stood to profit?

Prior to this revelation, Coulter lied about hearing the Tripp tapes: “I was just thinking last night one thing we still have to hear are the tapes. The two most famous women in America, Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp and no one has ever heard their voices.”[28] Of course, Coulter had heard those voices.

Suspiciously, Coulter and Moody told almost the exact same story. Their cover story: absence of widespread dissemination and personal profit. Coincidental? Coulter lied about hearing the Tripp tapes, about having the Tripp tapes, and about her source for the Tripp tapes.[29]

Still, few people grasped the import of Coulter’s possession of those tapes.

For further details about the Machiavellian machinations of the secret cabal against Bill Clinton, see Case Study #2: (Linda) TRIPPed Up! in Vanity: Ann Coulter’s Quest for Glory at http://bit.ly/1M2z2O5.

Endnotes:

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[1]       Author interview.

[2]       Ann Coulter, “Vast concoctions II,” 3/10/00.

[3]       David Daley, “Ann Coulter: lights all shining on her,” Hartford Courant, 6/25/99.

[4]       Susan Schmidt and Michael Weisskopf, Truth at Any Cost: Ken Starr and the Unmaking of Bill Clinton, HarperCollins, 2000, pg. 34.

[5]       David Daley, “Ann Coulter: lights all shining on her,” Hartford Courant, 6/25/99.

[6]       David Segal, “Dream Case Is a Burden, Lawyer Finds: No Pay, Long Hours For Tripp’s Counsel,” Washington Post, 1/26/98, pg. A09. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/moody012698.htm.

[7]       Ann Coulter, “Spikey and Me,” George, May 1999.

[8]       Ann Coulter, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, Regnery, 1998, pg. 31.

[9]       John Riley, “Starr Aide’s Role As Tripp Advisor,” Newsday, 10/3/98.

[10]     Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000, pg. 351.

[11]     Ann Coulter, Crossfire, CNN, 10/2/98.

[12]     Howard Kurtz, “The Blonde Flinging Bombshells at Bill Clinton,” Washington Post, 10/16/98. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/coulter101698.htm.

[13]     Ann Coulter, speech at Monday Club, Washington, D.C., 10/5/98.

[14]     Rivera Live, CNBC, 10/14/98.

[15]     Author interview.

[16]     Howard Kurtz, “The Blonde Flinging Bombshells at Bill Clinton,” Washington Post, 10/16/98, pg. D4.

[17]     Rivera Live, 11/16/98.

[18]     Ann Coulter, Equal Time, 8/19/98.

[19]     Ann Coulter, Drudge Report, 8/8/98.

[20]     Howard Kurtz, “The Blonde Flinging Bombshells at Bill Clinton,” Washington Post, 10/16/98. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/coulter101698.htm.

[21]     Ibid.

[22]     Ibid.

[23]     Ibid.

[24]     Ann Coulter, Rivera Live, CNBC, 3/4/98.

[25]     Ann Coulter, Rivera Live, CNBC, 10/23/98.

[26]     John Riley, “Starr Aide’s Role As Tripp Advisor,” Newsday, 10/3/98.

[27]     Carl Limbacher, “Tripp Tape ‘Doctored’ where Monica Speaks of Death Fears,” Newsmax.com, 10/6/98.

[28]     Ann Coulter, Inside Politics, CNN, 5/6/98.

[29]     Howard Kurtz, “The Blonde Flinging Bombshells at Bill Clinton,” Washington Post, 10/16/98, pg. D4.

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ACS: Impeachment – Coulter Betrays Paula Jones

Coulter’s Perfect Storm

The Perfect Storm dramatized the real-life story of a sword-fishing crew caught in “the storm of the century,”) created by the confluence of weather conditions creating the perfect storm.[1] Many Republicans desperately sought to find the Perfect Storm (scandal) to finally bring down President Clinton, otherwise known as the Comeback Kid and Slick Willy, for his ability to evade responsibility for any number of scandals and imbroglios. With the Lewinsky scandal, conservatives thought they had discovered their political Perfect Storm.

In the midst of “serious” Clinton-administration scandals, Paula Jones’ story of sexual harassment by then-Governor Bill Clinton seemed more a nuisance than anything else.

Jones claimed her reputation had been damaged and she sought an out-of-court settlement to escape the limelight. (Jones: “I wanted this case settled. I always wanted this case settled.”^[2])

Enter the Elves

Right-wing hatred of Bill and Hillary Clinton began long before Clinton’s first inaugural. Joe Conason and Gene Lyons documented what they regard as a ten-year campaign by the Right to bring down the Clinton administration.[3] Hillary Clinton exaggerated the extent of that campaign with her almost paranoid perception of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

However, a small, tightly-knit cadre of conspirators, colorfully known as “the elves,” served the purpose by enthusiastically pursuing the downfall of the Clintons. Their methodology included legal maneuverings and illegal machinations, investigative and tabloid journalism, media manipulation, betrayal of at least one colleague and of at least one client, and, perhaps, even tampering with evidence and unethical conduct with the Office of Independent Counsel (OIC).

The elves were a “secret clique of lawyers in their thirties … [who] were deeply involved for five years in the Paula Jones lawsuit … Ms. Jones never knew they worked on her behalf.”[4] The elves began their work in the early 90s. George Conway, Richard Porter and Jerome Marcus formed the core of the conspiratorial group, searching out Clinton scandals to exploit and using their legal expertise and political connections to good advantage.

It is almost certain that Coulter was privy to their activities while on the periphery of the circle of elves during the mid-90s. At a critical juncture in the summer of 1997, Ann Coulter entered the fray, providing clandestine behind-the-scenes legal services for Jones. The secrecy, apparently, was for Coulter’s sake because she reportedly feared the disapproval of her law firm, the Center for Individual Rights.

By then, she had become a key conspirator and major player since she alone, of all the elves, spoke at length with Jones and then, in early 1998, enabled her close friend, Jim Moody, to become Linda Tripp’s attorney. Coulter later joked about the conspiracy, “I’m ticked off the Federalist Society is getting all the credit for this conspiracy – it should be the Dead.”[5]

Coulter’s involvement with both the Paula Jones sexual harassment case against Bill Clinton and Linda Tripp’s taped conversations with Monica Lewinsky would prove crucial to not only undermining the Clinton agenda and tarnishing the Clinton legacy, but would also provide the impetus for impeachment of the President and, not coincidentally, provide Coulter with her first best-seller.

Getting the President

Coulter’s unbridled hatred for feminism reached fever pitch with her 1991 unpublished essay for National Review. Her enmity eventually expanded to include all liberals, especially Bill and Hillary Clinton. Like many conservatives during the mid-90s, Coulter viewed the Clinton presidency as illegitimate, and, like many conservatives, Coulter wanted that presidency to end. Coulter’s soon-to-become close friend, Rush Limbaugh, often spoke of “America Held Hostage” and his show featured a daily countdown to freedom. To them, the two-term Clinton presidency was a fluke (at best) or the product of a liberal media conspiracy (at worst).

At the very time Coulter was writing her Human Life Review essay attacking Supreme Court Justice Brennan for his misogyny, she was secretly “helping” Paula Jones in her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton. Coulter’s help proved disastrous for Jones and her family. In the end, Coulter would harm Jones more than Clinton had allegedly done – all because her end (“get the president”) justified the means (destroying Jones’ life).

Coulter’s Betrayal

As it turned out, Coulter’s goal was not to represent her client but to “get the president.” Consequently, after Coulter gained possession of incendiary information – namely, the specific nature of Clinton’s “distinguishing characteristics” which Jones claimed to be able to identify – Coulter vigorously leaked those details to the press for the express purpose of sabotaging Jones’ delicate settlement negotiations.[6] As Coulter herself admits: “We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the president.”[7]

There was only one thing to do: scuttle the negotiations by planting a rumor – by disclosing secret attorney-client privileged information. Just as Coulter’s legal assistance to Jones was secret, as was her planted story, again to protect Coulter, not Jones.

To preclude settlement, Coulter approached numerous media outlets to leak a rumor that Clinton was afflicted with Peyronie’s Disease. Coulter was furious with those media outlets which declined to publish her rumor, and she was elated at its exposure on the Drudge Report. From that point on, Coulter and Drudge would become close friends.

Coulter aggressively promoted her rumor, eventually finding fertile soil in the print media (Newsday), on talk radio (Don Imus) and on national TV (Rivera Live). Even the Washington Times[8] reported the rumor. Coulter’s anonymously-released rumor hit the front pages of the nation’s newspapers: “The New York Post ran a one-page story of the ‘distinguishing characteristics.’ So did the Washington Times, complete with Paula Jones’ diagnosis as to what caused the distinction.”[9]

That rumor definitively scuttled any chance of an out-of-court settlement between President Clinton and his alleged victim. Coulter took pride in anonymously exposing the rumor (and later using this published rumor she planted as source material) in order to thwart the legal efforts of Paula Jones’ attorneys.[10] As Coulter explained, “I thought if I leaked the distinguishing characteristic it would show bad faith in negotiations. Bob Bennett would think Jones had leaked it. Cammaratta would know he himself hadn’t leaked it and would get mad at Bennett. It might stall negotiations.”[11]

Even Jones’ own actual attorney, Joseph Cammaratta, was unaware of Coulter’s involvement: “It was amazing to me to hear of her involvement with the case. I can’t remember hearing her name.”[12] Coulter worked “behind the scenes as an advisor to [Paula] Jones’s strategists,”[13] leaked the bombshell privileged information to the media, and then blamed the Jones’ genuine legal team for its release.

“Most women I know want further details on this DPC [Distinguishing Personal Characteristics]. We don’t actually know that it was Peyronie’s Disease, this was just a little tangent that Paula Jones’ earlier lawyers went on to. All she said was that it was slightly bent. So there’s my last parting comment because that’s what women really want to know most about from what I can tell.”[14]

“Ken Starr with 30 million dollars and the top prosecutors in the country hasn’t been able to lay a finger on Clinton, and poor little picked on Paula Jones has completely destroyed him and humiliated him.”[15]

Author Joe Conason later clarified matters for Geraldo Rivera, saying,

“The official Paula Jones lawyers – Gil Davis and Joe Cammaratta, whom you’ve had on this program – did want to settle. It was the secret Paula Jones lawyers – George Conway, and others, including Ann Coulter, who’s been on here many times – who did their best to sabotage the settlement.”[16]

Consequences of Conspiracy

In a speech earlier that year, “Coulter further made her case that Jones was wronged, not only by the President, but also by ‘the media, lawyers, and feminists.’”[17] Pardon me, but Coulter – as a member of the media, while a lawyer, and being a post-feminist – certainly wronged Jones.

During the scandal, Coulter expressed not one word of empathy for Paula Jones. Indeed, Coulter gloried in Paula’s misery because Paula became a weapon to use against the President.

As a result of the sabotaged negotiations, Jones reluctantly went to court, the Lewinsky scandal erupted, and Jones’ life was radically altered. Rather than receiving the settlement she so desperately desired, Jones entered media hell and gained a fractured family. Coulter, however, benefited, later boasting that she “got a bestseller out of it.”^[18] Meanwhile, Jones remained in media hell.

But why would Coulter care? She never cared about Jones! This came sharply into focus when Coulter exclaimed, “I love the facts about this case.”[19] And then gleefully recounted the specifics of the Jones’ lawsuit – even having memorized the paragraph numbers of the lawsuit. Others would have been horrified at the facts of her case – not “loved” them.

One might expect outrage over a sexual assault, or righteous indignation over abuse of power. Instead, Coulter’s face, voice and body language exulted in pure joy. (Empathy for Jones was absent; present, instead, was exultation and anticipated victory over the Clintons.)

Hypocritically, the elves’ secret machinations ultimately led to the public humiliation of both Jones (their client) and Tripp (their other client, whose tapes they unscrupulously obtained). In the name of preserving the “rule of law” (their refrain throughout the Clinton presidency), they willfully violated attorney-client confidentiality.

In the name of vindicating Jones’ reputation, they propelled her to public ridicule, then, once their purposes had been served, Coulter condemned Jones as “trailer park trash” – the very charge the elves were purportedly repudiating at the outset. 

In the end, the elves surreptitiously shaped history and irreparably transformed America’s political and cultural landscape. As Coulter would put it:

“I do think [Tripp is] a great American hero. We never would have found out about the corruption and illegality at the very top of the government but for Linda Tripp. If you imagine what the world would be like if Linda Tripp hadn’t kept those tapes – a very different world.”[20]

Despite the murkiness of their secretive shenanigans, sufficient details exist within the public sphere to gain a good grasp of their activities. Certainly, these affairs offer a glimpse into their character – so much so that Coulter would later gloat over her own involvement.

Ann Coulter, “attorney and self-admitted anti-Clinton elf,”^[21] styles herself as the consummate champion of the weak and voiceless, citing her clandestine aid to Paula Jones as evidence. As it turns out, Coulter’s service was self-serving, not selfless, and the beneficiary of her help became impoverished, not enriched.

For details about the Machiavellian machinations of the secret cabal against Bill Clinton, see Case Study #1: Oh, Paula (Jones)! in Vanity: Ann Coulter’s Quest for Glory at http://bit.ly/1M2z2O5.

Endnotes:

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[1]       http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1800352372/details, accessed 9/27/07.

[2]       Paula Jones, Rivera Live, CNBC, 10/25/00.

[3]       Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000.

[4]       New York Times, 1/24/99.

[5]       Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, “The Secret War,” Newsweek, 2/9/98, pg. 43.

[6]       David Daley, “Ann Coulter: lights all shining on her,” Hartford Courant, 6/25/99.

[7]       Michael Isikoff, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story, Crown, 1998, pg. 183.

[8]       F.J. Murray, “Is This The President’s ‘Distinguishing Characteristic?’” Washington Times, 10/15/97.

[9]       Mary McGrory, “’Distinguishing’ Journalism,” 11/6/97.

[10]     Ann Coulter, Hartford Courant, 6/25/99.

[11]     Ibid.

[12]     Author interview.

[13]     Mary Jacoby, “The Pundettes,” Capital Style, December 1997.

[14]     Ann Coulter, Vantage Points: Issues for Women, Amazon City Radio, 12/5/97.

[15]     Ibid.

[16]     Joe Conason, Rivera Live, CNBC, 3/15/00.

[17]     Jillian Ruddiman, Quad News, http://quad.wcupa.edu/78/09/news/president.shtml.

[18]     Rivera Live, CNBC, 11/16/98.

[19]     Ann Coulter, MSNBC, 6/7/97.

[20]     Ann Coulter, Rivera Live, CNBC, 5/24/00.

[21]     Geraldo Rivera, Rivera Live, CNBC, 6/7/00.

ACS: Impeachment, Coulter’s Crusade Against Clinton

Ann Coulter was at the epicenter of a secret cabal whose sole purpose was to bring down the Clinton presidency.[1]

Why? Coulter passionately hated the Clintons.

Ann Coulter – Hater!

Coulter adored John McCain before she despised him.

Coulter loved George W. Bush before she hated him.

Coulter worshiped Donald Trump before she detested him.

Before them, Coulter hated Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Coulter has always been a hater.[2]

Coulter on Bill Clinton

On MSNBC, 9/22/96:

“Bill Clinton is smarmy and slick and he really comes of well with people who are looking for government to be their mother or father.”

On MSNBC, 9/28/96:

“Bill Clinton is an incredibly unpopular president for a lot of reasons. He is up to his ears in financial problems, in murders all over the White House and in his background. This whole CIA and the drug deal brings up Mena, Arkansas and the drugs coming back on CIA flights into Mena.”

“It is peculiar how many people have died around President Clinton, from the wife of his security guard to his roommate at Oxford, Vince Foster.”

[For credibility, Coulter called allegations that Vince Foster was murdered an unfounded conspiracy theory in her first book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors.]

“Well, the odd thing about this – no, what I’m suggesting is with these people anything is possible. Nobody can just say ‘Oh, well, that’s preposterous!’ Anything is possible with him.”

On MSNBC, 10/6/96:

“smarmy Bill Clinton … Oprah-style of feeling everybody’s pain.”

On Politically Incorrect, 10/17/96:

“I think it’s clear [Bill and Hillary] loathe and detest one another, and this is political expediency.”

On Equal Time, 7/24/97:

“Bill Clinton has a 64 percent approval rating, something he’s never been able to get in the only public opinion poll that really counts, an election. He can’t even get 50 percent of the vote, but suddenly, 14 percent, after all these fund-raising scandals, love Bill Clinton. They’ve changed their mind. They didn’t vote for him two times in a row. I’m sorry, I don’t believe the media’s polls any more than I believe their impression of Newt Gingrich.”

“Well, except that, and Clinton would be lucky to have the American people believe that he’s only doing what the Republicans have been accused of, and that’s doing something legal that they’re claiming sort of looks bad. We have actual illegal activity under the current laws. The most you can say about Haley Barbour is money came in to a non-profit organization.”

On MSNBC, 2/9/97:

“It is more preposterous to say that when an 18-year-old girl is unconscious on a bed and her employer pulls a Bill Clinton move – raping an unconscious woman – and the judge has to say ‘Well, oh, this is the dream of a lot of males, honestly, to have an unconscious woman on a bed,’ I mean, you can’t say this is people not understanding domestic violence.”

After the commercial break:

“OK, [Bill Clinton] wasn’t accused of raping Paula Jones.”

On Hardball, 6/4/97:

“[Bill Clinton] routed S&L’s to fund his campaigns and political activities. That’s one sentence. That explains [the Whitewater scandal]. … He, through a series of deals took, took money illegally, defrauded the government.”

Coulter on Hillary Clinton

On MSNBC, 11/30/96:

“I couldn’t be happier if [Hillary Clinton] were put in charge of welfare reform. A highly-placed Democratic official was quoted in the New York Times yesterday that would be the kiss of death for any liberal welfare reform, so I must say I think it’s an excellent idea.”

“I think the President does sort of owe her. I mean, I think she has the goods on him. She’s kept her mouth quiet, she’s stood by him, and, ‘Oh, well, we’ve had our problems but I’m standing by my man.’ I, I, I think he, he, he cannot keep denying her like this.”

“And, so far her expertise in policy … She was elected to nothing, she was appointed to nothing, she was not nominated, she didn’t go through the Senate hearing, and she was put in charge of completely redesigning 1/6^th of the American economy in, I think, a somewhat arrogant way for the entire administration and not just Hillary, but her personality didn’t help.”

“I think it’s just appalling the way she keeps hiding behind the fact that she is a woman. It has absolutely nothing to do with her being a woman.”

“She is constantly raising the fact that the reason she is being attacked is because she is a woman. No, it’s because her ideas are stupid. They were rejected. She assumed too much power.”

[This is the second in a multi-part series providing background and undisclosed details related to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.]

For details about the Machiavellian machinations of the secret cabal against Bill Clinton, see Vanity: Ann Coulter’s Quest for Glory at http://bit.ly/1M2z2O5.

• Case Study #1: Oh, Paula (Jones)
• Case Study # 2: (Linda) TRIPPed Up

Endnotes:

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[1]              See Ann Coulter is at the Center of ACS: Impeachment at https://bit.ly/3BNYKpY.

[2]              See Chapter 7: The Spawn of Satan Convention in the Beauty of Conservatism at http://bit.ly/2a79k0j.

Coulter to Impeach Trump

Hell hate no fury like an Alt-Righter scorned!

(And Trump isn’t even in office yet!)

On the Sean Hannity Show (11/15/16), Coulter summarized her (that is, Trump’s) policy agenda and what would befall President Trump should he fail to implement his (that is, her) agenda:

“The wall and deporting illegals … renegotiating trade deals and not starting pointless wars – those are the big ones. If he betrays us on those, they’ll impeach him and there’ll be nobody to defend him.”

In other words, if Trump doesn’t pursue and achieve her policy goals, he should and will be impeached.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

But, in her 1998 bestseller, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Coulter declared that impeachment is designed to target “moral misbehavior” and criminal activity, but not policy disputes.

Again, Coulter contradicts herself.

In 1998, Coulter was regarded as an expert on impeachment. In her book, Coulter wrote (emphasis added):

“Personal misconduct took a larger role in impeachments, for example, and policy disputes became irrelevant to impeachable conduct.” (pg. 10).

“One additional distinction the Constitution requires is this: policy disputes are not to be resolved by resort to impeachment.” (pp. 11-12).

“That policy disagreements cannot form the basis for an impeachable offense in this country is more than a logical deduction from the structure and purposes of the Constitution.” (pg. 12)

“Other comments from the framers further demonstrate that the purposes of impeachment did not include policy disputes – but did include personal misconduct.” (pg. 12)

Apparently, the Alt-Right will do whatever it takes – including threaten its standard-bearer – to achieve its goals.

[A new book, #NeverTrump: Coulter’s Alt-Right Utopia, sheds some light on the #OnlyTrump movement and its Alt-Right constituency. It is now available on Amazon at http://amzn.to/2fzA9Mr.]

Coulter Lies About Supreme Court Case

Ann Coulter leads the charge of those seeking to crush a Cruz candidacy with a lie!

When she thought she could foist Romney on us again in 2016,[1] Coulter began to attack Cruz on his citizenship. With Cruz posing a serious threat to Trump, her new-found soul-mate,[2] Coulter has shifted into high gear, stridently claiming Cruz is ineligible to be president.[3]

This isn’t Coulter’s first attempt at subverting the Constitution for political purposes.[4]

Backdrop: Elián González

The Elián González case became international political theater during the 2000 presidential race. It rekindled the Cold War in miniature. Coulter fed into that political hysteria by telling lies of her own, lies which fit into her own ideological sensibilities. Those lies included turning a Supreme Court decision on its head, claiming it said the exact opposite of what the Court decided.[5]

The heart and core of Coulter’s case for denying Juan Miguel González custody of his own son rested on Coulter’s decades-long belief that fathers have absolutely no rights or responsibilities to their own children except through marriage.

On talk TV – contrary to what the law actually says – Coulter continually insisted that putative fathers have no rights to their children: “The law used to account for these things by saying the father doesn’t have rights to a child unless he’s married to the mother. That’s how a man can claim his heritage and his claims on a child. … That’s how a father gets the right to children, by being married to the mother.”[6]

Coulter reaffirmed – again and again – that only marriage confers custodial rights: “First of all, the idea that a father has rights to a child by donating sperm; No! A father gains rights to a child by being married to the mother. … He has absolutely no rights to the child! Fathers gain rights to children by marrying the mothers.”[7]

The only problem with Coulter’s claims is that they are false. The law has always upheld the biological rights of fathers, irrespective of whether the child is born out-of-wedlock.

Lying About Supreme Court Cases

Coulter’s view of parental rights was her principal argument to separate a son from his father, but that core point of her position, that central concept, was an outright lie! To buttress that lie – which she has consistently expressed for almost twenty years – Coulter lied about a Supreme Court ruling which any layman can read and see that reaches the exact opposite conclusion. Coulter wrote:

“Let’s just consider the initial presumption that a father gets custody of his son. The law is indeed clear, at least to this extent: That ‘law’ refers only to legitimate children. … The Supreme Court last weighed in on the legal rights of unwed fathers in 1989 when it cut off all of the father’s rights to his child, including visitation.”[8]

In her essay, Coulter literally reversed the decision of the Court, falsely claiming it denied those custodial rights. Contrary to Coulter’s fiery opinion, the law says otherwise. The Supreme Court, in five cases, upheld the principle of paternity rights for putative fathers. Those cases were all cited in the Supreme Court case cited by Coulter.

In a rather remarkable display of truth twisting, Coulter took this Supreme Court case which affirms the custody rights of natural fathers and declared it the definitive denial of those rights![9]

The father in Coulter’s cited case was not denied parental rights due to illegitimacy but because his claim of fatherhood was filed after the filing deadline. That father had failed to assert his rights within two years of his daughter’s birth. Illegitimacy was never the issue. The Supreme Court has consistently confirmed custodial rights of natural fathers, both in principle and in practice. So, the case Coulter cited says the exact opposite of what Coulter claimed.

“Bald assertions about the very question under dispute,” Coulter once wrote, “is an odd method of argument,”[10] yet that is precisely what Coulter did (and continues to do). According to Coulter, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion; everyone is not entitled to his own facts.”[11] Apparently Coulter is not above making up her own “facts.”

Strangely (or not, for Ann), Coulter recently asserted, “Apparently that’s the way constitutional analysis goes these days. You determine, we’re all Ruth Bader Ginsburg now: Whatever you want the Constitution to say, that’s what it says, miraculously. Well, that has never been me!”[12]

Sorry, Ann, but you are the allegedly “conservative”[13] Ruth Bader Ginsburg!

Endnotes:

[1]               See “Adios, Ann: Only Mitt for Me” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-70.

[2]               See “Coulter Hates All GOP Candidates But Trump” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-bj.

[3]               See “Coulter Claims Cruz Ineligible” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-9j.

[4]               See a series of case studies in Vanity: Ann Coulter’s Quest for Glory, 2012, available as a free download at www.coulterwatch.com/vanity.pdf.

[5]               For greater details on the González case and Coulter’s perversion of constitutional law, see “Case Study # 4: In the Name of Elián (González),” Vanity: Ann Coulter’s Quest for Glory, 2012, available as a free download at www.coulterwatch.com/vanity.pdf.

[6]               Ann Coulter, MSNBC, 1/22/97.

[7]               Ann Coulter, MSNBC, 1/25/97.

[8]               Ann Coulter, “The bastardization of justice,” 4/26/00.

[9]               Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 410 (1989).

[10]             Ann Coulter, “Miranda Not a ‘Constitutional Straightjacket,’” 12/15/99.

[11]             Ann Coulter, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, Regnery, 1998, pg. 3.

[12]             Ann Coulter, John Gibson Show, Fox News, 1/8/16.

[13]             See Never Trust Ann Coulter – at ANY Age, 2013, available as a free download at www.coulterwatch.com/never.pdf.