Unlikeable: The Problem With Hillary (16 page)

CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 25

A SUB ROSA INVESTIGATION
A SUB ROSA INVESTIGATION

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

—Niccolo Machiavelli,
The Prince

S
everal weeks after the Oval Office meeting with Hillary, Valerie Jarrett invited an old friend to spend the night in the Lincoln bedroom. That evening, the friend joined Jarrett, the president, and the first lady in the family dining room.

“We ate on the new White House china service,” the friend recalled. “It had deep blue rings that Michelle said were inspired by the waters of Hawaii. She called it Kailua Blue. The family dining room is small by White House standards, and the dinner was pretty informal. No white table cloth. Red and white wine were offered and everybody had a few glasses except Michelle, who drank sparkling water. The president drank a California
Chardonnay. The dinner was a roasted striped bass served with kale and sweet potatoes. Dessert was carrot cake with decaf coffee.

“‘We eat healthy here,' the president joked, ‘except when Michelle is out of town. Then I order up burgers and fries.'

“The conversation was mostly about the Clintons and the 2016 election. From time to time, the president drifted off the subject and talked about baseball; he didn't think A-Rod should be allowed to catch up with Willie Mays in the official homerun count. But Valerie kept steering the conversation back to the Clinton Foundation's foreign-donor problem and Hillary's private e-mails. I could tell Barack would have preferred to talk baseball. He was also excited about building his presidential library, moving back to Chicago, and enjoying some real downtime.

“‘I'm looking forward to spending a hell of a lot of time in Hawaii golfing with friends,' he said.

“Both Michelle and Val thought that the FBI and the Justice Department should be ordered by the president to investigate the Clintons' conflict of interest. Valerie argued that Hillary had deliberately lied to the president about not taking foreign donations for the foundation while she was secretary of state, and that she had ignored warnings about the use of her private e-mail account.

“The president flinched at the idea of an official investigation. He said it would infuriate the DNC [Democratic National Committee] and Hillary loyalists. And it could cost the party the election.

“Val and Michelle got pretty heated.

“‘You need to do your duty and order an investigation,' Michelle said. ‘Even the goddamn
Washington Post
and the
New York Times
are outraged about the Clintons. [Attorney General Loretta] Lynch isn't going to move on Hillary unless you make it clear that you approve.'

“The president replied, ‘The voters don't give a shit about the foundation.'

“Michelle and Valerie looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

“Finally, after a lot of back and forth, they reached a compromise. The president agreed that the Department of Justice would launch a sub rosa investigation going over the known facts of the Clinton Foundation case and the e-mails, and that the attorney general would come back to the president privately within sixty days or so and give her opinion as to whether the situation merited an official investigation.

“It was awkward, but the two women got what they wanted. At least some investigation of the Clinton Foundation would move ahead.

“At that point, the president threw his napkin on the table and went out to smoke an e-cigarette.”

CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 26

MISSING IN ACTION
MISSING IN ACTION

I'm not invited. I'm not on the A list, haven't been on it in 20 years and my feet have never trod its red fluffy carpets.

—Nick Mancuso, actor, writer, director, producer, and painter

T
hree weeks after Hillary launched her campaign for the White House, President Obama spoke at a celebration marking the fiftieth anniversary of the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Forty thousand people, including Obama's predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush, gathered in Selma to commemorate “Bloody Sunday,” the day in 1965 when police officers with billy clubs beat peaceful protesters, most of them black, as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

But where was Bill Clinton, “the first black president”?

And where was Hillary, the Democratic Party's likely standard-bearer in 2016?

They were nowhere to be seen in Selma.

“According to people familiar with her thinking, Mrs. Clinton had discussed whether to go [to Selma] several weeks ago, as some of her allies pressed for her to attend,” noted the conservative blog
Hot Air
. “People close to the Clintons, who both made note of the Selma event, described them as in a bind regardless of what they did, given that their presence could have made people see the event through a political lens.”

But that wasn't the real reason that Hillary and Bill didn't go to Selma.

They didn't go, because they weren't invited.

As part of Valerie Jarrett's vendetta against the Clintons, the White House had left the Clintons off the invitation list.

“Hillary very much wanted to go,” said a source who spoke with both Hillary and Bill. “It was a natural photo-op type of event for her. She thought she was denied it because the Obama people didn't want her marching in the front row with two presidents, Obama and George W. It would have made her look like a peer and, by definition, a future member of the President's Club.

“Bill, on the other hand, wouldn't have gone if they had begged him,” the source continued. “He said, ‘I'm finished dealing with this guy [Obama].'

“Hillary would have even gone alone if she had been asked. She knew she would get shit for not going to Selma. But without a White House invitation it would have been awkward. The Obamas would have done everything but drop banana peels so that she would fall on her ass crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge.”

Instead, Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea went to a Clinton Global Initiative conference at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. There, Bill officially announced the appointment of Donna Shalala as the new head of the Clinton Foundation.
For the privilege of hosting the Global Initiative program, the university shelled out at least $250,000.

While in Florida, Bill and Alonzo Mourning, the former Miami Heat star, and Mourning's wife, Tracy, held a fund-raiser at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables for the Clinton Foundation and the Mourning Family Foundation. Tickets for the event fetched as much as $25,000. Afterward they made appearances at gatherings in South Beach to raise more money. Bill charmed his way through the rooms, posing for selfies.

“As usual, women were all over Bill,” said a source who attended the fund-raiser with Bill. “He was flirty with the women, but Tracy and her security people held everyone at arm's length and whisked Bill and Alonzo in and out as quickly as possible.”

CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 27

A TABLOID STAPLE
A TABLOID STAPLE

There were times when I was physically abused to the point that I remember fearfully thinking that I didn't know whether I was going to survive.

—Virginia Roberts, who alleged in court documents that Bill Clinton visited convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's private island, where he witnessed sexual orgies

H
er friends claimed that Hillary had mellowed with age. The famous Rodham temper was under control, they said. She didn't vent her spleen or get as physically aggressive as she used to. She didn't poke people in the chest with her forefinger or throw hard objects at their heads.

That was all in the past.

There was a “New Hillary.”

These apologists drew a picture of a woman who had the maturity, composure, and self-discipline to be president of the United States. It was a pretty picture, a politically expedient picture,
but it bore no resemblance to the Hillary who came barreling into Bill's home office in Chappaqua one evening shortly after the New Year in 2015.

As Hillary later described the scene to friends, she was trembling with rage and could hardly get the words out of her mouth.

“You've thrown us in the crap again!” she screamed. “I've never been this pissed off at you! I don't think you really want me to be president.”

Bill looked up over the rim of his eyeglasses, which were perched on the tip of his nose.

“Calm down,” he said.

His air of nonchalance only made Hillary angrier, and with a sweeping motion of her arm, she shoved everything off the top of his desk, sending papers and an expensive piece of Chihuly blown glass flying onto the floor.

“
Jesus!
” Bill said.

He got up to retrieve the Chihuly sculpture, which fortunately wasn't damaged.

He put it carefully back on his desk. He had one of the largest private collections of Chihuly glass in the country.

“You don't care about anything but that fucking piece of glass,” Hillary said. “This can be as bad as the Lewinsky mess. How can you be so smart and so fucking dumb?”

“What's this all about?” Bill asked.

“It's about Jeffrey Epstein,” Hillary said.

Of all the dodgy characters Bill Clinton had consorted with over the years, none was more radioactive than Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile and registered sex offender.

On at least eleven occasions, between 2002 and 2003, Bill flew on a plane owned by the billionaire money manager. According to flight logs for Epstein's customized Boeing 727, Bill was accompanied to Africa by Epstein's close companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the late, disgraced British newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell.
Ghislaine would later be accused of recruiting underage girls for Epstein and tutoring them in the art of erotic massage.

“What [originally] attracted Clinton to Epstein was quite simple: He had a plane ( . . . the Boeing 727, in which he took Clinton to Africa, and, for shorter jaunts, a black Gulfstream, a Cessna 421, and a helicopter to ferry him from his island in St. Thomas),” wrote Landon Thomas Jr. in
New York
magazine. “Clinton had organized a weeklong tour of South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, and Mozambique to do what Clinton does. So when the president's advance man Doug Band pitched the idea to Epstein, he said sure. As an added bonus, Kevin Spacey, a close friend of Clinton's, and actor Chris Tucker came along for the ride.”

A year after the Africa trip, Bill flew to Hong Kong aboard Epstein's plane, which was outfitted with a massage table and was appropriately nicknamed the “Lolita Express.” Along for the ride were two young women who were listed on the manifest only as “Janice” and “Jessica.” Bill enjoyed the free-and-easy atmosphere
on the “Lolita Express” so much that he later used the plane for flights to Moscow, Oslo, Shanghai, and Beijing.

After Epstein was arrested in 2005, Bill reportedly severed ties with the pedophile and with Epstein's alleged procurer, Ghislaine Maxwell.

At least, that was Bill's story.

In fact, the Clinton Foundation accepted a $25,000 donation from Epstein in July 2006. And Ghislaine was a guest at Chelsea Clinton's wedding in 2010.

Bill's relationship with Epstein became a matter of public knowledge when four of Epstein's alleged victims resurfaced in 2011, which was about the same time that Epstein was released from the Palm Beach County Stockade, where he served thirteen months for soliciting a minor for prostitution. By then, Epstein had settled more than thirty cases out of court for undisclosed amounts of money.

Virginia Roberts, one of the alleged victims who had not yet been paid to go away, told the London
Daily Mail
that Epstein had trained her as an underage prostitute and flown her to London for the express purpose of having sex with Britain's Prince Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth. She also charged that Bill Clinton had visited Epstein's one-hundred-acre private island in Saint Thomas, called Little Saint James, where he witnessed sexual orgies, although he himself did not participate.

“I only ever met Bill twice, but Jeffrey had told me that they were good friends,” Virginia Roberts, now thirty-one years old, told the British tabloid. “I asked, ‘How come?' and he laughed
and said, ‘He owes me some favors.' Maybe he was just joking, but it constantly surprised me that people with as much to lose as Bill and [Prince] Andrew weren't more careful.

“Bill must have known about Jeffrey's girls,” Roberts continued. “There were three desks in the living area of the villa on the island. They were covered with pictures of Jeffrey shaking hands with famous people and photos of naked girls, including one of me that Jeffrey had at all his houses, lying in a hammock.”

Bill's attraction to Epstein wasn't entirely over airplanes and sex. He was fascinated by Epstein's connections.
The reckless billionaire, who lived in a fifty-one-thousand-square-foot mansion that was reputed to be the largest residential property in New York City, counted among his acquaintances some of the richest and most powerful figures in business and finance—James “Jimmy” Cayne, a former CEO of Bear Sterns; Alan “Ace” Greenberg, the former chairman of Bear Sterns; Marshall Rose, a highly respected real estate developer; and Leslie Wexner, the founder and CEO of The Limited.

Even after Epstein was released from prison in Florida, he was able to allure prominent figures in the worlds of entertainment and television news to his dinner table. One such dinner, organized by the public-relations maven Peggy Siegal in December 2010, included Woody Allen, George Stephanopoulos, and Katie Couric.

I interviewed Epstein by telephone on June 6, 2011, for an article I was writing for
Vanity Fair
about his relationship with Prince Andrew. Epstein pooh-poohed Virginia Roberts's allegations and called them “a 99 percent fabrication.” I noted in my
article, which appeared in August 2011, that Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell strenuously denied Roberts's version of events.

Nonetheless, the sordid story brought back memories of Bill Clinton's past tabloid encounters with Juanita Broaddrick, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Dolly Kyle Browning, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, and Monica Lewinsky.

But this time, Bill wasn't just hurting his own reputation. He was threatening Hillary's chances of winning the White House. The salacious details of the Epstein saga were fresh in people's minds just as Hillary was about to launch her campaign for the presidency. As a headline in the
New York Post
put it:
“Bill's Libido Threatens to Derail Hillary—Again.”

Shortly after Hillary's meltdown over Jeffrey Epstein, Bill set up a video conference call on Skype with Hillary and one of the Clintons' trusted legal advisers.

“Bill was sipping iced tea and pacing the floor in his penthouse apartment in Little Rock,” the adviser said in an interview for this book. “He likes to look at you when you talk. As usual, the Clintons weren't in the same place. Hillary was in her study in Whitehaven.

“Bill wanted me to reassure Hillary that the Epstein problem could be contained from a legal point of view,” the adviser continued. “Epstein was waffling about paying off some of the girls who were suing him under the Crime Victims' Act. Pressure had to be put on Epstein to settle with the girls so that the problem would go away. Epstein had to be told that bluntly—very bluntly.

“The same was true of the lawyers for the girls. Some of them wanted to make Bill a material witness, depose him, and call him to testify. They had to be contacted and told they couldn't call the former president and put him in a compromising position.

“But I was too close to the Clintons to take on that assignment. Instead, I enlisted a third party, who was removed from Bill and me by several degrees, to make the contacts. It worked. We heard back that Epstein had instructed his legal counsel to bring the problem to a conclusion.

“My assurances didn't seem to placate Hillary. She was furious that the Epstein matter was creating a major distraction from her political plans. ‘Can you really make this fucking thing go away?' she asked. ‘My head is going to explode if I hear one more thing about this damn degenerate.'

“During the video conference, Bill asked me to fly down to Little Rock. He sent a plane to pick me up, and when I got there I found him on the garden terrace of his penthouse, chipping golf balls into the Arkansas River.

“Bill's assistant, a very pretty blond, maybe twenty, came to fetch him. Two law professors from the University of Arkansas had been summoned to offer their judgment on the Epstein case. They had some well-reasoned opinions, but I could have saved Bill the trouble of bringing them in, since the matter was already being handled.

“But when Bill's in crisis mode, he always feels the need to be surrounded by many people offering many opinions. It's the old college bull session approach. That's the way he ran things when he was in the White House.

“After the meetings with the professors, there were other legal people from the Clinton School of Public Service. All interesting, smart folks.

“Then we went downstairs and Bill purposely walked through the library greeting tourists, shaking hands, posing for selfies, kissing babies. It was something to behold. He is the most natural politician of his time.”